In the second-to-last episode of Married at First Sight, a very Simpsons-esque moment where you could actually see Doug's heart break, above. Brutal, but perhaps this swift figurative kick to the face was for the best, as the big focus this episode was the couples' one month anniversaries and pursuant gifts.

Perhaps this moment of ice-cold candor saved Doug a small bundle he might have otherwise spent on diamonds and champagne for Jamie. Instead, he got her what I consider the worst anniversary gift out of the bunch, and possibly out of any option in the length and breadth of human existence.

But please, you be the judge, what would you rather get as an anniversary gift from your spouse of one month:

A t-shirt with the shared last name printed on it, like Jason got Cortney?

A pair of tickets to the Broadway musical Rocky, like Cortney got Jason?

A watch, like Monet gave Vaughn?

A watch, like Vaughn gave Monet? (Okay, same giftsies, that's cute.)

A "romantic" photo session like Jamie got Doug?

Or... an open mic stand up comedy session dedicated to you, like Doug got Jamie?

I didn't even realize you could dedicate open mic sets to people, it seems almost blatantly insulting, like dedicating a thorough nose-blowing session to someone, or a wedgie successfully picked with James Bond stealth in a public place; both of which feats are technically more impressive accomplishments than a 3-minute set at an open mic. (BURN! I used to do them all the time myself so BURN on me too.) Has Jamie's spell broken? Has Doug punctured the gas can of his heart and is he now throwing a match over his shoulder as he roars off into the sunset?

This is your last week to place hard money on who is in and who is out of these telegenically arranged marriages. Will Jason break Cortney's heart? Will Jamie stun us all and hold onto Doug? Will Monet take what she's learned about men who love traditional values and start fresh?

Time to put your money on the table, partner.

[Videos and images via FYI]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. What are you watching tonight? What are we missing out on? Recommendations and discussions down below.

Amid the ravers, art freaks, and dust-covered Earth mothers of Burning Man 2014, one man likely stood out from the rest: Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and all-around conservative icon, who made his first trip to the playa this year.

Norquist remembers the experience fondly in an essay published at The Guardian today. Unsurprisingly he views the festival's famous free-for-all atmosphere as a kind of cosmic libertarian ideal, calling the spectacle "greater than [he] ever imagined":

A community that comes together with a minimum of "rules" demands self-reliance – that everyone clean up after themselves and help thy neighbor. Some day, I want to live 52 weeks a year in a state or city that acts like this. I want to attend a national political convention that advocates the wisdom of Burning Man.

...

The demand for self-reliance at Burning Man toughens everyone up. There are few fools, and no malingerers. People give of themselves – small gifts like lip balm or tiny flashlights. I brought Cuban cigars. Edgy, but not as exciting as some "gifts" that would have interested the federal authorities.

Norquist elaborated in an interview with New York's Kevin Roose, who also attended. (Roose's account, which opens with a burner asking Norquist if he'd like his taint washed, is worth reading in full.)

But Norquist insists that his ideals aren't incompatible with Burning Man's ethos — that, in fact, Burning Man is a natural place for free-market libertarians. And he's got a point. After all, Black Rock City is largely a lawless setting, and while the festival does have its own infrastructure, including a ranger force and makeshift hospital, its supervision is hardly hands-on. Norquist became famous for suggesting that government be made small enough to be drowned in a bathtub; Burning Man's free-for-all model is about as close to drain-size as it gets.

"Burning Man is a bunch of people who think the government doesn't need to be here," he says. "Nobody told anybody to do this stuff. I mean, talk about Hayekian spontaneous order — this is, like, exhibit A."

A society in which everyone hangs out naked, doing drugs and stuff, helping each other and sharing all their possessions without any meddling government telling them they have to. It does sound nice. But that such an ideal might be a little easier to attain for a week in the desert than it is in real life should be obvious. State-free living works at Burning Man because at Burning Man everyone already has money, and everyone is on vacation. The actual world, with its pesky jobs and poor people, is much more complicated than that, and that's where Norquist's dreaded taxes come in.

More interesting than the small-government schtick is the wide-eyed way in which Norquist takes in the revelers:

Some self-professed "progressives" whined at the thought of my attending what they believed was a ghetto for liberal hippies. Yes, there was a gentleman who skateboarded without elbow or kneepads – or any knickers whatsover. Yes, I rode in cars dressed-up as cats, bees and spiders; I watched trucks carrying pirate ships and 30 dancers. I drank absinthe. But anyone complaining about a Washington wonk like me at Burning Man is not a Burner himself: The first principle of Burning Man is "radical inclusiveness", which pretty much rules out the nobody-here-but-us liberals "gated community" nonsense.

Absinthe! Skateboarders...without any knickers whatsoever! As The Wire points out, he even got his nails painted.

Quite true “@bobmcmillan: Back from @burningman where my 7-year-old daughter painted @GroverNorquist's fingernails... Black (with sparkles)”

— Grover Norquist (@GroverNorquist) September 2, 2014

Now, however, the nail polish is off, the fantasy is over, and Grover and the rest of the thinkfluencers of Black Rock City are back in DC and New York and San Francisco, waiting for next year.

Um, don’t tell my wife about the nail polish tweet. She made me remove them before I met today w/ Tennesse state legislators. Not sure why.

— Grover Norquist (@GroverNorquist) September 3, 2014

A federal judge ruled today that Louisiana's gay marriage ban is constitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman's ruling is the first to uphold a gay marriage ban since the Supreme Court struck down DOMA last year.

New evidence collected by Human Rights Watch shows that the mass executions ISIS committed in June were on a larger scale than anyone imagined. Previously, ISIS bragged that it executed 1,700 soldiers near Tikrit around June 14. Only about 160 of those deaths were confirmed by HRW then, but now the group says 560 to 770 Iraqis were mass killed.

Per the Associated Press:

The Human Rights Watch ... said the revised figure for the slain soldiers was based on analysis of new satellite imagery, militant videos and a survivor's account that confirmed the existence of three more "mass execution sites." The number of victims may well be even higher as more evidence emerges ...

HRW adviser Fred Abraham said today, "These are horrific and massive abuses, atrocities by the Islamic State, and on a scale that clearly rises to the crimes against humanity."

Back in June, ISIS posted grim images of the executions online.

Another pic of mass execution by #ISIS. They killed these #Iraq(i) soldiers because they are shiite. pic.twitter.com/7H2KMaSgzK

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) June 14, 2014

Outgoing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said today that Iraqi troops killed some members of ISIS who carried out this attack and that "security forces were pursuing" more.

[Image via AP]

Maybe if more professors could legally carry firearms at work, there'd be fewer school shootings. Or maybe they'd just unintentionally shoot themselves, like this Idaho State University chem professor.

Despite widespread opposition from college leaders, faculty and students, Idaho's appropriately named governor, Butch Otter, signed a law in March that authorizes gun owners to carry on public campuses across the state. One unnamed ISU-Pocatello professor seized on the opportunity Tuesday afternoon to show his students what an armed citizen can do:

The Idaho State Journal said that the professor was teaching a chemistry class, when he got shot in the foot.

Pocatello Police Lieutenant Paul Manning said that the instructor was carrying a pistol in his pocket that went off unexpectedly. The injured man was taken to Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello.

ISU president Arthur Vailas called the accident "unfortunate."

"I'm sure the incident was scary and embarrassing," he told the State Journal.

Local News 8 stressed that the professor, who could walk of his own accord after the small-caliber pistol discharged, did "have the enhanced concealed carry permit required to carry a weapon on campus," so take heart in knowing that he was not an irresponsible gun owner, but One of The Good Ones.

"When they passed this law it was bound to happen," Vailas, the prof's boss, added. Meantime, this Boise State professor is still waiting around for some answers to his tactical shooting questions.

The above mugshot belongs to Brandy Allen, 31, an Arkansas woman arrested on Labor Day for allegedly stealing $144 worth of eye makeup from a mall cosmetics store. Fayetteville police say she grabbed "handfuls of makeup without looking at the color or labels. She didn't appear to be checking prices, either."

5News reports that after being confronted by an officer inside the Ulta store, Allen started pulling cosmetics out of her bag and smearing them with her fingers to make them look used, then shouted "No one fucking saw me steal anything!"

Allen posted bail the same day. The motivation behind her alleged eye shadow theft will forever remain an inscrutable mystery.

[Photo via 5news]

As I wrote last week, Malaysia Airlines is burning through cash at the rate of about $2 million per day. This week they hosted a "My Ultimate Bucket List" contest hoping to lure customers back to the airline. Maybe it's not just bad luck, maybe Malaysian Airlines is also truly awful.

A "bucket list" refers to a list of things you'd like to do, or places you want to see before you die. And for an airline involved in the deaths of 537 passengers and crew this year, the contest name was an incredibly poor choice, or at the very least, unfortunate timing. I'd suggest that airlines would want to avoid any language that brings death to mind.

The airline faced criticism immediately via social media, as a result of the poor naming choice. For the opportunity to win a round-trip coach ticket and an iPad, participants were asked to write a 500 word essay, describing "What and where would you like to tick off on your bucket list, and explain why." They have since swapped in "to-do list" in exchange for the bucket list.

Top photo: Malaysian soldiers unload the remains of passengers from MH17 (Associated Press)

Source: The Telegraph

The biggest day in the life of any child is that very first day of school, where they leave their parent's side for the first time and enter the big, sometimes scary world on their own. It's a next step in their evolution into an identity separate from their parents. It's the day when they finally become big boys or big girls, forever.

It's a day you only get once in life, and a west Texas school managed to fuck it all up for a five-year-old boy—simply because he didn't look like the other kids.

According to CBS-7 in Odessa, clueless school officials in the ironically-named town of Seminole sent Malachi Wilson—a member of the Navajo Nation—home from school last week because they said his hair was too long.

Malachi's parents say that it's against their religion to cut their hair, but that didn't stop administrators at F.J. Young Elementary School in Seminole from sending the boy home until he got a haircut.

"Our hair is sacred to us, it makes us part of who we are," Malachi's mom, April Wilson, told CBS-7. She said that her son had been excited to start school all summer long, but her son's once-in-a-lifetime experience was ruined.

"It's kind of heart breaking because how do you explain to a five-year-old that he is being turned away because of what he believes in, because of his religion, because of what's part of him, how do you explain that to him?" said April.

School officials claim that they were only following procedures, and that Malachi was allowed to begin school with his hair intact once his parents provided paperwork showing that he was a member of the Navajo Nation.

This, incidentally, is the F.J. Young Elementary School mascot:

The school administration's demand that a Native American child get a haircut before being allowed to attend school is a disturbing flashback to an ugly and not-often discussed chapter in American history: Indian schools, in which supposedly well-meaning but undeniably racist white folks opened schools that tried to strip Native American children of any cultural identity, in essence trying to turn them white.

The process—typically enforced through often cruel if not barbaric forms of corporal punishment—included banning the use of native languages, the forced adoption of white names, dress and customs, vocational training in fields (usually farming or other manual labor) that weren't relevant either culturally or economically and the indoctrination of the children into white churches.

Often times the first step in that process involved an especially traumatic haircut.

April Wilson says that she's contacted the American Indian Movement for assistance, and is considering pulling her son out of public school over the incident. She's also looking into finding a lawyer to open up a discrimination case against the district.

Welcome to the big world, Malachi.

Image via YouTube/CBS-7

Perhaps out of legitimate fears over ISIS's increasing power among civilians in the Middle East and jihadists far beyond, or perhaps just because it's an election year, one Republican congressman has unveiled legislation to declare a ceaseless war against at least six terrorist groups in multiple countries.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who's made his bones as a strong pro-military representative, went "full bombard" in an announcement today:

[H]e will introduce legislation next week authorizing the use of military force against international terrorist groups, including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al Qaeda and its affiliates, like al Nusra, Ansar al Sharia, al Shabaab and Boko Haram, while encouraging close coordination with NATO and regional allies on any action.

The text of Wolf's bill authorizes President Obama "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those countries, organizations, or persons associated with or supporting" the groups namechecked above, as well as "any other emerging regional terrorist groups that share common violent extremist ideology with such terrorist groups, regional affiliates, or emerging terrorist groups."

The U.S. has not had a congressionally "authorized use of military force" in effect since the 2001 and 2002 edicts that authorized the Afghanistan war, which is still going on, and the Iraq war, which is currently in sudden-death overtime, with the U.S. occasionally diving in for a scripted play or two.

"For far too long the Obama Administration and the Congress have been debating whether or not authority exists for action to address this threat," Wolf said in his statement:

"This resolution would provide clear authority for the president and our military, working with coalition partners, to go after these terrorists, whether in Syria, Iraq or elsewhere. We cannot continue operating on outdated authorities passed 13 years ago; it is time for this Congress to vote."

Reaction to Wolf's proposal has been somewhat chilly among Twitter pundits so far:

frank wolf's AUMF against basically everyone http://t.co/G6ERhHyPDz (h/t @attackerman)

— Jim Newell (@jim_newell) September 3, 2014

Via @steve_vladeck, Rep. Frank Wolf gives us a textbook lesson in how *not* to write an AUMF http://t.co/KbRoxPnTEE

— Rob Golan-Vilella (@RGolanVilella) September 3, 2014

Frank Wolf proposes an authorization for the use of military force against basically anybody: http://t.co/qtEsIriEkU (via @steve_vladeck)

— Cora Currier (@coracurrier) September 3, 2014

If I'm a defense contractor, I'd be hyping up Wolf's AUMF. Talk about never-ending business.

— Bradley P. Moss, Esq (@BradMossEsq) September 3, 2014

like war, but forever http://t.co/cmzva1mSUD

— John Wonderlich (@JohnWonderlich) September 3, 2014

Wolf also promises that the military authorization "would fill in the gaps from past authorizations to deal with the current terrorist threat," because Lord knows, if there's one thing that's hampered U.S. operations against fugitive and captured terror suspects, it's been the national leadership's unshakeable commitment to abiding by black-letter law.

[Photo credit: Twitter]

Baidu, the Chinese search engine, has launched a set of "smart" chopsticks called Kuaisou, which it claims "can detect oils containing unsanitary levels of contamination," as well as PH levels, temperature, and calories. The intelligent utensil is sort of like Vessyl, the magical cup, except for solid food.

Add another section in your cutlery drawer because there's more where that came from. Nothing is allowed to be dumb anymore except ideas.

[Image and video via iqiyi.com]

Lakewood, Wash. police responded to a call last Friday evening from a tax driver who claimed to have a rider that refused to pay his fare. When police arrived, KOMO reports, the rider, 45-year-old Maurice Barb, asked police to arrest him. They refused, and at Barb's request, dropped him off at a nearby Denny's.

But just after dropping Barb off, he apparently called police to tell them that he was planning to rob the gas station next to the restaurant. A clerk claimed Barb had held him at gunpoint and demanded the money in the cash register. Police arrested Barb for the alleged robbery, potentially his third offense—he had previously been convicted in California and Washington state.

According to court documents obtained by the New York Daily News, Barb has been in and out of prison over the last 10 years, and apparently told police when they first found him in the taxi cab that he wanted to be arrested because he had "no place to go." If convicted for a third time, Barb faces a lifetime prison sentence.

[Screengrab via KOMO]

Melissa Rivers, daughter of Joan Rivers, has released statements almost daily about Joan's health since the comedian was placed in a medically induced coma last Thursday. Today's update states that Joan has been moved from the intensive care unit.

Us Magazine reports Joan Rivers has been transferred to a private room at New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital. From Melissa's statement:

"My mother has been moved out of intensive care and into a private room where she is being kept comfortable," the statement reads. "Thank you for your continued support."

Melissa has been vocal about her gratitude for fans' outreach during Joan's heath troubles, adding in yesterday's statement:

"My mother would be so touched by the tributes and prayers that we have received from around the world. Her condition remains serious but she is receiving the best treatment and care possible. We ask that you continue to keep her in your thoughts as we pray for her recovery."

[image via Getty]

Labor Day is gone, but summer is here, the undead heat and humidity having just arrived when the season was supposed to be gone. How to live like summer now that it feels like summer? Buy a carload of peaches and make jam.

End-of-summer jam (as well as tomato sauce and delusional vodka ice pops to cry over) is a perfect antidote to the sadness induced by never having a truly hot week until it was too late to appreciate it, after you'd packed up your white pants and used all your vacation days. Tasting the ripe fruit in December can be your standing celebration of this greatly mistimed summer of 2014.

Last week, I got so depressed at the thought of not being able to get peaches come winter, I decided to learn to make jam. I'd attempted similar recipes before in compotes for pancakes and angel food cakes, so I assumed that the process would be roughly the same, just with the added step of actually canning the boiled fruit.

I looked up a number of recipes, judging each based on how few steps they demanded, and landed on a hybrid of this one at One Hundred Dollars a Month and this instructional guide to canning at the Ball canning-jar company's website.

New Jersey peaches (and nectarines) are soft, juicy, and perfect for canning just at the end of summer. Mid-August is best, but like the weather, you can still find them in peak summer form into September. The easiest way to tell a peach's ripeness is by its aroma: does it smell like a peach? Then you're ready to make jam.

Here is the simplest, least Etsy way to make peach jam that will last you through the winter at times of melancholy. This jam is great on scones, dark breads with butter, as topping for vanilla ice cream, and straight from the jar when you're feeling particularly sad. It is very sweet, a factor you can modify with your own sugar measurements.

Ingredients

• 8 cups of peaches, cubed and pitted (You can peel them but that's prissy; I like my jam chunkier and with skins, like marmalade)
• 10 cups of white sugar
• 5 tablespoons of lemon juice
• 12 tablespoons of pectin

Tools

• 12 eight-ounce canning jars
• 1 funnel
• 1 big pot and a big colander that can nestle inside it (If you're fancy, you can buy a canner, which is just a large pot with a rack built-in, making the lowering of jars into boiling water easier and more stable, but I like to improvise)
• 1 small pot for boiling lids
• 1 medium-sized pot for peaches
• Some sort of heatproof lifting tool like a pair of tongs

* I purchased this Ball Utensil Set and it largely covered all my utensil needs, but you can find most of that stuff in piecemeal fashion in your own kitchen.

Steps

1. Unpack your jars, lids, and bands, and wash them thoroughly with hot water and soap. Set them out to drain.
2. Place the colander inside your large pot and fill the pot three-quarters of the way with water, so that the colander is well submerged. Put your jars into the colander standing upright, so that they're completely covered and full of water. Cover the pot with a lid. Place your jar lids and bands in the smaller pot, uncovered, turning it on to a simmering heat. Let the pot with the jars come to a rolling boil and keep it boiling for 15 minutes, then lower the heat. You'll leave both pots at a low-to-medium heat while you prepare the jam.
3. In the medium-sized pot, mix the chopped peaches, lemon juice, and pectin. Bring to a full rolling boil while stirring constantly to avoid burning. The mixture should reach a point so that when you stir with your spoon, it will continue to bubble up around it at a mild boil. When it gets there, add sugar and stir constantly for one more minute. Remove from heat.
4. Remove one jar from the pot of hot water, dump out any water that's in it, and spoon some of the jam into it through the funnel, until the jar has only 1/8 inch available room left. Stab a knife or other tool down into the jar, all the way to the bottom of the jam, to release any air bubbles. Close tightly with a jar lid and a band. Repeat until all jars are full, but don't take the pot off the heat.
5. Lower each jar slowly back into the canner or colander, making sure each one is covered by about two inches of water. When they are covered, place the lid back on the pot and bring to a boil again. When water is boiling, set timer for 10 minutes.
6. After 10 minutes, remove the jars from the pot using tongs and place them on a rack to cool. The surface of each lid should be flat to the touch; if you feel a raised bump in the center, that means your jars are not completely sealed. In 24 hours, if the bumps have stayed flat, your jam is sealed and can be stored for one year. If the tabs have popped up, the seal didn't work, but the jam can be saved in the refrigerator for three months.

The latest Bloomberg analysis shows that Whole Foods "has become one of the cheaper chains for grocery shopping in Manhattan." Of course. Fuck.

Alex Robinson, resident of the great city of Boston, Massachusetts, discovered a heartwarming message—presumably written by a benevolent former resident—while pulling up floorboards during a renovation of his Charlestown home.

It read:

And America at war to fight Germany. Threshold 5/10/41 by Albert Stella this floor was laid. Go fuck yourself.

Albert Stella's screed, Boston.com notes, was penciled in cursive on a piece of wood. "Go fuck yourself," among Bostonians, serves as a traditional greeting and de facto mantra—like the Hawaiian "Aloha," or South Asian "Namaste." This instance, assuming the date is correct, serves to remind us of the deep history from which Boston's treasured local customs spring.

"I really liked the floors Albert Stella put in, but I wasn't able to keep them," Robinson told Boston.com. "I realized the floors weren't level, so the only thing to do was pull them up. Lo and behold, I was told to go fuck myself."

Who could know that Stella would decide to reach through the ages and touch Robinson on such an ordinary day? We can only imagine how the tech consultant felt, discovering a note from his ancestor, written in the language they share. As if to say, "You are not alone, Alex, but one perfect step in the miles-long march of tradition, which is wicked cool if you think about it. Anyway, I gotta go make a packie run, because the stores close early today, but I'll be watching over you. Take care of yourself, kid. Fuck your mother. Go Sox."

[Image via Boston Public Library]

Welp, it was easy to see this one coming: Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX's "Fancy" is the official song of the summer of 2014, according to Billboard, which derives its rankings from a combination of airplay and sales data (white privilege and black magic are, apparently, not part of the criteria or so they say). "Fancy" spent every week atop Billboard's Songs of the Summer chart (which runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day) and has sold about 3.5 million units in the U.S. It spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (the pop chart) and provoked a lot of thoughtful discourse (some of it angry), much like last year's official song of the summer, "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke, T.I., and Pharrell Williams. Though they're associated with feel-good times and lazy days, our songs of the summer tend to make us think hard (or at least act like we're doing so on Twitter).

The Top 10 Songs of the Summer, according to Billboard, were:

10. DJ Snake & Lil Jon "Turn Down for What"

9. Pharrell Williams "Happy"

8. Calvin Harris "Summer"

7. Jason Derulo featuring Snoop Dogg "Wiggle"

6. John Legend "All of Me"

5. Nico & Vinz "Am I Wrong?"

4. Sam Smith "Stay with Me"

3. Ariana Grande featuring Iggy Azalea "Problem"

2. MAGIC! "Rude"

1. Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX "Fancy"

"These songs don't represent me or my experience!" you may be saying, if you are the type of person to take such exceptions. Indeed, this may be true. Songs of the summer are not to be confused with summer jams, which are a personal choice based on your taste and life events. You can share those below, if you are so inclined, or just cry about the fact that summer is over (unofficially, yeah, but you go to the beach this weekend and see if it has retained its magic [it hasn't]). The next time of year that gets its own celebrated sounds of the season is—gulp—Christmas.

[Image via Getty]

Sorry, comrades: Capitalism won! If you need proof, check out the upcoming auction for all this junk from the space race-era Soviet cosmonaut program, including one adjustable-size "brown lace-up full body suit with breathing apparatus." You know, for dogs.

Props to Animal New York for flagging this: Designed for "Sputnik 5" and complete with a "tube for oxygen supply," this outfit (starting bid: 4,000 euros) "was one of the first space suits for dogs to test the effects of low gravity and high-speed launches on living organisms," Auctionata reports. "This dog space suit was used in the training of the dogs Belka and Strelka," who amazingly survived four orbits of the earth in 1960 and paved the way for human space flight.

The suit and hundreds of other Russkie space items are being put up for sale by Andora, an East German-born pop artist who apparently painted a rocket for the Russian space program that was actually launched into the cosmos, supposedly went through some cosmonaut training, and subsequently came into all this bizarre gear. Even if you don't speak decent Russian or German, this video explanation is a hoot:

Other goodies in the collection include an empty bottle of cognac signed (and allegedly drunk) by Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space; a mess of spacesuit gear, boots, and helmets; a very uncomfortable-looking handheld "space toilet" system; pop art; and also a whatever this is, but hey, it's designed by Andora and Philippe Starcke:

Is it legit? Is it an art project? Is it a ploy by an aging marginally relevant art-industry huckster to cash in on old notoriety? Who cares? Dog spacesuit, dude.

[h/t Animal New York]

A clown working a dunk tank at Memphis, Tenn.'s Delta Fair was supposed to throw out insults at fairgoers to provoke them into dunking him, but he was fired after a black family reported his commentary had taken a racist turn.

"Hey, nappy head!" the clown reportedly shouted at Tanya Jones, using the same repulsive racial slur that got famous radio bigot Don Imus fired back in 2007, "Yeah, I'm talking to you, Shaneneh. You look unbe-weav-able."

"You got cheap weave, you must've got it from the Dollar Tree!"

Jones and Mario Curry, who were at the fair with three young children, told WMAC they understand insults are part of the dunk-tank clown's job, but the alleged racially charged comments crossed a line.

Delta Fair president Mark Lovell agreed, saying the fair is supposed to be fun and family-friendly, and the insult clown was told to keep his material free of sexual or racial connotations.

The clown has since been replaced, and the fair has refunded the cost of the family's tickets, around $100.

[h/t Opposing Views]

Benedict Cumberbatch won "Actor of the Year" at the GQ Men of the Year Awards last night—congratulations, I'm sure—and, in his speech, he admitted to having a few drinks before accepting his award. You could barely tell, JK!

Of course, even through the stumbling and accidental insults and old-timey reference bloopers, Benedict Cumberbatch remained handsome and charming as ever—certainly someone I would not mind going on a fancy vacation with, if he were to ask.

Thank you very good—much!

[h/t Uproxx]

Teens these days: they're watching this Miley Cyrus person, they're becoming interested in sexual activity, they're ... they're twerking. One high school principal has had enough. Mount Anthony Union High School's fearless leader Sue Maguire canceled this fall's homecoming dance because of this "highly sexualized form of dancing."

In a letter to the editor of the Bennington Banner (MAUHS is located in Bennington, Vermont), Maguire explained why there will be no more dances until these dang teens find a more suitable way to dance:

Over the past couple of years, since Miley Cyrus took the stage "twerking" at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, our students' dancing behavior has crossed the line of what we can condone as appropriate behavior at a school. Twerking is dancing to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving a low squatting stance and thrusting movements. Students do not face one another or remain with the same person for the length of the song.

If you haven't seen twerking, I would encourage you to research this online.

Students do not face one another or remain with the same person for the length of the song. What's happening to this world? What's more, these teens can't be stopped:

We have been asked why we don't just stop it. Try to picture our cafeteria, with 400 to 500 students in tight clusters of about 80 students. It is very difficult to get into the middle of the clusters to monitor every student who is dancing inappropriately.

The teens have left Maguire no choice. She and Dean of Students David Beriau did promise that dances may be reinstated if students learn some goddamn respect, for chrissakes.

[Ht Gothamist, Photo via Youtube]