New York Knicks owner and JD & the Straight Shot frontman Jim Dolan is bored with ruining the Knicks. His next project: Ruining music.

Dolan seems to fancy himself a truth-tellin', rock-n-rollin' troubadour à la Neil Young, and his new song "Under That Hood"—premiered at the New York Times—is his "Ohio": The tale of an unconscionable killing, told bluntly, with lots of vocal harmonies.

The Trayvon Martin-referencing tune differs from "Ohio" in one key aspect: It is bad. It is very bad. From the lyrics to the phrasing to the harmonica fart sounds that penetrate the third verse, everything about it is bad. Its closest analogue...an Applebee's jingle?

The full lyrics are below, courtesy of Kevin Draper:

Here are the lyrics to Knicks owner James Dolan's song about Trayvon Martin. pic.twitter.com/qW9ZcYE4Xh

— Kevin Draper (@kevinmdraper) September 12, 2014

If you happen to be a fan of political allegory told from the unique perspective of a guy who owns two major sports franchises and at least as many Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band records, a reminder: you can catch these guys tomorrow night at Madison Square Garden.

Gawker.com is the premiere JD & the Straight Shot Fan Blog on the internet. Please visit Gawker.com for all your JD & the Straight Shot news.

A man in California was arrested on stalking and animal cruelty charges after allegedly killing his ex-girlfriend's Pomeranian and feeding him to her.

USA Today reports the ex-girlfriend of 34-year-old Ryan Watenpaugh told Redding, California police Watenpaugh assaulted her and took her dog—a Pomeranian named Bear—in August after a fight. The couple reportedly got back together briefly in early September, at which point Watenpaugh cooked his ex a meal.

According to NBC News, police report that the next day "the victim received a text message from Watenpaugh asking how her dog tasted, and referenced the meal he had cooked for her." She then found a pair of severed dog's paws on her doorstep. Police are now reportedly testing the remains. Redding Police Sergeant Todd Cogle spoke to NBC News, saying dogs are innocent, "all they want is affection and love":

"For someone to take advantage of that innocence is obviously sad and depressing."

Watenpaugh, who admits to leaving the severed paws but denies killing and cooking Bear, is being held on a $250,000 bail.

[image via Redding Police Dept.]

Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj performed their "Flawless" remix live for the first time last night at a stop on Beyoncé and Jay Z's "On the Run" tour in Paris. You can watch it now, if you want!

The concert was the first of two in Paris, both of which are being filmed for HBO's "On the Run" concert special, which will premiere on September 20.

Unlike these clips, the HBO special will (presumably) not be filmed with a cell phone.

[h/t Stereogum, Vulture; image via Instagram]

The AP reports two troopers in Blooming Grove, Pennsylvania were ambushed and shot late Friday night during a shift change outside of a state police barracks. One trooper was killed and the other was injured.

Trooper Connie Devens said 48-year-old Jeffrey Hudak was being questioned by police as a person of interest, but no arrests have been made. State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan confirmed to the AP that one trooper was killed and the other was injured and underwent surgery at Geisinger Medical Center in Scranton, where he is currently in stable condition.

CNN reports Noonan said he did not have any information about the motive, but that the attack "seems to be directed particularly at the Pennsylvania State Police."

Police from New York and New Jersey are reportedly aiding in the search for the shooter.

[image via AP]

I am an angel in this nation.

And I suspect the New York Times or Fox News would remember me as an angel if I am murdered in the middle of the road by a police officer in California, Florida, Missouri or Washington. Of course, I don't worry much about being shot by a police officer. I have the ultimate get-out-jail-free card, the most powerful form of protection: whiteness.

I have no reason to believe that I will be written off as a disrespectful punk, a "thug," a "troubled kid" looking for fights. I will be seen as just another white boy figuring out the world.

I stole a lot as a kid. That will not matter. I fought a lot. That will not matter. I punched holes in doors, and drank throughout high school. On the football field, I was known as "an enforcer," a term reserved for the white athletes in my division who bullied and wreaked havoc. None of that will ever be counted against me.

I'd like to challenge the national racial logic that contributes to all too deaths, that sanctions and rationalizes the almost daily killing of black youth. I'd like to really question how this nation constructs and ultimately forgives its angels. Why are we angels always white?

In what has become a predicable playbook, Michael Brown's death resulted in a public trial and conviction of the victim. The police and much of the media and the public engaged at what has become the ultimate two-step: first denying racism, only to quickly deny Brown's innocence but implicate and convict him in his own death. In the words of John Eligon of The New York Times, Brown was "no angel."

Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life. Shortly before his encounter with Officer Wilson, the police say he was caught on a security camera stealing a box of cigars, pushing the clerk of a convenience store into a display case. He lived in a community that had rough patches, and he dabbled in drugs and alcohol. He had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar. He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.

Not done, Eligon painted Brown as a "handful," a child who spent a lifetime wreaking havoc, defying authority, and otherwise getting into trouble. "When his parents put up a security gate, he would try to climb it. When they left out pens and pencils, he would use them to write on the wall. He used to tap on the ground, so his parents got him a drum set; his father played the drums."

If Brown were white, and his murderer black, would his experimentation with drugs and alcohol, his love of rap music, and any other mistakes be been dismissed as youthful indiscretions? If he'd been white, would the story have been that he was curious because he wanted to explore beyond the security gate, that he was a budding artist who expressed himself through his drawings and his music?

Like me, Mike Brown might have smoked marijuana and even sagged his pants prior to being gunned down in the streets. In response to Times piece, and the persistent criminalization and demonization of black victims, people took to Twitter to express their outrage, questioning why Darren Wilson, the Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, or James Holes were provided more sympathetic narratives than Brown, Martin, McBride, or countless others.

African Americans took to social media to challenge the double standards and societal stereotypes that govern black entry into public discourse. #IfTheyGunnedMeDown juxtaposed images that mirrored dominant stereotypes with the others defying expectations of white America: a young black male puffing smoke and wearing a hoodie; the same young man in his Navy uniform.

The question was, if the time came, which photo the media would use, and which person white America would see: a thug, a criminal, a pot-smoking threat, or a soldier, a student, a professor, a doctor, a son, daughter, father, mother and loved one?

Why are all the angels white? Out with my teenage friends one Saturday night, we found ourselves, loitering, seemingly looking for trouble on the Santa Monica Promenade. Standing around, we were talking shit, mad-dogging and scowling every dude the block. We were teenage boys, entitled, white, and without a worry in our minds. That didn't change when a group of bicycle cops rode up

"What is this?" I yelled. "A fucking donut convention?"

Satisfied by my friends' laughter, and feeling a sense of accomplishment, I puffed my chest out. Fearless, I was challenging authority. The officers looked at me, tucked their tails between their legs, and rode off to look for some "real criminals," some dangerous "punks" up to no good.

Out for lunch with the same group of friends, we found ourselves sitting next to a group of LA's finest at a West Los Angeles McDonalds.

Alerting us to the presence of the cops, a friend blurted loudly "MC WOOOOOOOOOO."

Laughter ensued.

"MC Woo."

More laughter.

Hearing our laughter and our continuous uttering "MC Woo," one of the officers turned around, unamused.

"What's so funny?"

"The joke was not meant for you, MC Woo," one of us replied.

Laughter continued as we strolled back to school.

This is what white privilege looks like. This is but one of the experiences of an American angel. The fact that we said these things, and didn't fear consequences reveals the power of whiteness, of our middle-class existence. We could act like jerks, punks, and thugs without punishment or shame. The fact that the police didn't respond, didn't exert their power, didn't teach us a lesson, merely confirmed our status.

The protests in Ferguson and the campaigns online are not simply a refutation of the dehumanization and criminalization of Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Rekia Boyd, Ayana Jones and so many others; they are resounding arguments that black life matters, in a supposedly post-racial nation where blackness is probable cause and all the angels happen to be white.

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor and chair in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He regularly writes about issues of race, gender, inequality, and the criminal justice system. His work has appeared in a number of academic journals and anthologies. He is a regular contributor to Vitae, The Chronicle of Higher Education, NewBlackMan, and Feminist Wire, and a past contributor to Ebony, The Root, and the Washington Post.

[Image by Tara Jacoby]

This post contains some information about the movie The Skeleton Twins that could be considered spoilers. It's a great movie, and you should see it without knowing too much about it, so enter at your own risk.

When we meet Milo, Bill Hader's character in Craig Johnson's movie The Skeleton Twins, it's in the middle of a failed suicide attempt. When his estranged sister Maggie (played by Kristen Wiig) visits him in the hospital, he describes himself as "another tragic gay cliché." You can't quite tell if he's resigned himself to the role or if he's being sarcastic. Maybe it's both. The movie spends much of its running time reinforcing and undoing that label, as it charts his reunion with his sister in the town in which they grew up, Nyack, NY.

The hoodie-and-T-shirt-wearing Milo sometimes suggests what would happened if you passed a Boys in the Band character through a modern-indie filter. He spouts deadpan witticisms and is capable of bringing down the house with impeccable lip-synching skills (his and Maggie's rendition of Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" is three minutes of mid-movie bliss). He dresses in drag for Halloween. He's prissy about manual labor and stridently queer—when Maggie's Labrador of a husband (flawlessly played by Luke Wilson) suggests they have a "dude's day," just the two of them, Milo quips, "I think your version of a dude's day and my version are totally different."

And yet, Milo's arc doesn't rely on the tropes that have long-defined gay characters and their strife. Yes, Milo is tragic and gay, but here, those two traits do not have a causal relationship.

"What I always loved about what [Skeleton Twins co-writer Mark Heyman] and I created was a lead character who's gay, who has a lot of problems in his life, none of which have anything to do with the fact that he's gay," explained Johnson when I talked to him by phone earlier this week. "It's the one thing he's cool with and it's just part of who he is. If I think about it on any larger social level or cultural level or cinema level, I think we are at a place in our society where you can have a movie that's getting a relatively wide release that is intended for all audiences, to a certain degree, with a lead character who's gay but it's just kind of a shrug of the shoulder."

That matter-of-fact and de-pathologized approach to its gay character caused Variety to name-check The Skeleton Twins (with a similar quote from Johnson) in an August piece about Ira Sachs' terrific Love Is Strange and its potential to break Hollywood's glass ceiling for including characters who are unmistakably gay and also much more than that. Those movies sit alongside Josh Thomas's hilarious and often poignant Australian TV show Please Like Me (which airs on Pivot in the U.S.) as capturing the way that being gay can complicate one's existence: It is both no big deal, and the biggest deal at once. I told Johnson as much.

"I've said literally that sentence when people ask me how big of a deal is it that Milo's gay," he replied. "It's not any big deal at all, and it's the biggest deal in the world. You just gotta hold those two ideas in your head at the same time. And Milo's not asexual. He's a gay guy. But it's not the source of his issues and it's not what the movie is ultimately about."

His sexuality may not be the source of his issues, but it is intertwined with maybe his most vexing one. Back home in Nyack, Milo reunites with Rich (played by Modern Family's Ty Burrell), his former high school teacher and first love. Milo was 15 at the time, and the movie finds them reuniting about two decades later, with Milo eager to rekindle their relationship. A storyteller less concerned with nuance or less consumed by duality might have portrayed their relationship as a traumatic predator/victim scenario, but not Johnson.

"It doesn't judge either of the guys, which is interesting. Any other movie, that would have been the whole movie. It would have been a movie about the teacher and student," said Hader. "To be able to play that part, it was hard. I had to see it from Milo's standpoint: it was the first person he fell in love with. When you're 15, gay, and coming into your own, you have to have some sort of an outlet for it. It wasn't just a physical thing for him, it was the first person he fell in love with. And I think the reason he fell in love with him was that [Rich] said, 'You're a really good actor. You're a really good writer.'"

"[He] could have easily been painted as a monster, which is why you cast someone like Ty Burrell, who's so likable and so warm and relatable, so that your feelings become more complex about the whole situation," said Johnson.

Earlier this year, when The Skeleton Twins played Sundance to raves and took home the festival's Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic, Hader told Conan O'Brien that a makeout scene between him and Burrell had been cut from the movie. To me, Hader said that the scene found them falling on the bed and the camera panned to a bedside picture of Burrell's Rich with his girlfriend and daughter. Hader wondered whether the shot was too heavy-handed to be included, though Johnson told me that he "fucked up" the directing, and that ultimately, the movie didn't need the scene: "We still understood from a story perspective, that Bill had gone home for the night with that character," he said.

Hader he told me that he and Burrell "went for it," though he couldn't remember if it involved any tongue. I asked him if at any point, he had to get over any hetero masculinity bullshit to do the gay stuff he's done on screen and he told me he didn't. He is as matter-of-fact about Milo's gayness as Johnson and The Skeleton Twins itself. Hader is more focused on his similarity to the character than his differences. He told me, for example, that he related to Milo's failed attempt to make it big in Los Angeles (Hader had such an experience before SNL, when he went to L.A. to attempt a screenwriting/directing career).

"It's finding someone who's different than you but also the Venn diagram of where you, me, overlay that guy, so it can be nuanced and grounded," he told me.

Hader has been praised for this approach, but he's also gotten some feedback on portraying a character that could accurately be described as mincing. On Salon, Andrew O'Hehir wrote that Hader "definitely verges on dangerous territory in terms of gay typology or even stereotype." Hader, who's married to a woman, told me that he identifies as straight and has had to defend treading on that "dangerous territory."

"I've had people who have seen the movie say, 'You get a little bit too…'" he said, trailing off, searching for the right word. I suggested "swishy" or "prissy." He continued: "But I'm like, 'Yeah, but I have good friends who are that way.'"

Hader has now two memorable gay characters under his belt, the first being Stefon, SNL's absurd, self-styled aficionado of nightlife. I wondered if he has ever worried about coming off as insensitive or donning "gayface" in these roles.

"Oh no," he told me. "Craig Johnson's gay, and he hired me for the movie. I trusted that he would tell me, 'Hey man, take it down a notch.' If anything, it was the opposite. When I dressed in drag, he told me, 'You have full permission to be fabulous.'"

What I appreciated so much about The Skeleton Twins is that permissiveness. Being fabulous is not a mandate, but an option. Milo exhibits stereotypes, but he isn't made only from them. While I know several guys who confound traditional images of "gay man" and several others who reinforce it, most of us fall somewhere in between, of exhibiting certain culturally recognizable traits within our own highly individual existences. It seems to me, too, that to go in the opposite direction and iron out the queerness from gayness runs the risk of coming off as shame-filled overcompensation, which is its own kind of gay cliché (see: all the guys who describe themselves as "masc" on various dating platforms).

"A cliché by definition, is rooted in some sort of recognizable truth," Johnson told me. "Where it becomes a cliché and where it becomes not a cliché just has to do with tone and how you treat it. Gay people dress up in drag. Gay people drop little witty bon mots. It's all about how you render it that walks that line between it feeling like a cliché and feeling like that's just who this person is."

The Skeleton Twins is now playing in New York and Los Angeles. It opens nationwide next week.

Last night, the cast of The Simpsons gathered at the Hollywood Bowl for "The Simpsons Take the Bowl," a musical event celebrating the show's 25th anniversary. A number of the show's most memorable musical moments were revisited, but perhaps the most exciting was Conan O'Brien's performance of "The Monorail Song," from the episode "Marge vs. The Monorail."

Conan, backed by the Los Angeles Gay Mens' Choir, was dressed as Lyle Lanley for the performance and paid tribute to Phil Hartman before breaking into song. Here are a few other selections from the envy-inducing event:

[h/t Uproxx]

Here's something you don't see every day: A glimpse at the internal structure of a rather large (and rather occupied) wasp nest. Put down the flamethrower and check it out. Trust us on this one, you'll want to see this.

YouTuber Vang Tsal captured the footage when a colony of wasps opted to construct its hive against a window in the attic of his house. "Big wasps are building a huge nest in my window," he writes. "I can observe its construction in real-time cross-section!" (Which window, you'll be relieved to learn, is sealed and double-paned; "no worries for me or the neighbors," Tsal notes.)

Pretty incredible, right? It's like an ant farm, only considerably more intense.This reminds me of an old episode of BBC's The One Show, in which host George McGavin, covered head-to-toe in beekeeper gear, uses a tiny camera probe to explore the entrance to an active wasp nest:

"What would be really great would be if I could open this up and examine the internal structure," says McGavin, his voice overlaid atop what is nevertheless some really great footage of the nest's crowded antechambers. "But there's so many wasps in there I think it would be a bit dangerous." Later in the episode, he slices open an abandoned nest to reveal the intricate beauty of its stratified architecture. But the miniature metropolis is a ghost town, its layered combs long since vacated.

Tsai's cross-sectional footage gives us the best of both worlds: A transverse view of a wasp colony humming with life. The results are pretty mesmerizing, with various degrees of structural detail on clear display. The smallest architectural unit, the strong and efficient hexagonal cells that house food and larvae, give rise to a tiered system of combs that divide the colony into discrete, orderly sections. The combs, in turn, lend the nest its overall shape. Meanwhile, the wasps go busily about their business.

Here's hoping Tsal continues documenting their progress – we'd love to see what becomes of this nest.

[YouTube via /r/videos]

H/t Lauren!

The rare respiratory virus that has already sent hundreds of kids the the hospital has spread to New York, reports CNN. More that a dozen cases of Enterovirus D68 have been confirmed by the CDC.

In a statement released on Friday, the New York State Department of Heath said, "EV-D68 is causing cases of severe respiratory illness ... sometimes resulting in hospitalization, especially among children with asthma." CNN reports more than 80 cases have been confirmed in Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, and Missouri, while many other states have samples to the CDC for testing. New York is reportedly the first state to have confirmed cases in the Northeast.

New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker spoke about the spreading virus:

"It is important that we follow common sense rules to prevent the spread of this virus, as we do for flu and other contagious illnesses. ... Because there is no specific treatment or vaccination against this virus, our best defense is to prevent it by practicing proper hygiene."

[image via CNN]

Kanye West allegedly pulled a real Joe Biden at a performance in Melbourne last night when he threatened to stop a performance if a wheelchair-bound fan—whoops!—didn't stand up.

According to the Daily Mail, a concertgoer said Kanye announced he couldn't perform a particular song unless everyone was standing, adding, "Unless you got a handicap pass and you get special parking and shit." In this instance, Kanye reportedly moved on when the audience member he was waiting on waved a prosthetic limb in the air, confirming that he did, in fact, get special parking and shit.

But this wasn't the only case of accidentally-asking-a-wheelchair-bound-fan-to-stand Kanye experienced last night—later, the Daily Mail reports Kanye sent his bodyguard to make sure a seated audience member was, in fact, handicapped:

But when another fan remained seated, he stopped the song Good Life, saying, 'This is the longest I've had to wait to do a song, it's unbelievable,' before sending bodyguard Pascal Duvier into the arena to check whether the person was in fact in a wheelchair- which they were.

'The crowd was also yelling that he was in a wheelchair but he waited for Pascal's confirmation,' the witness said, while others said the crowd made 'wheelchair motions' to alert the singer to his mistake.

Kanye continued with the performance after getting the confirmation, telling the wheelchair-bound fan that remaining seated was "fine." Phew!

Luckily, as long as they're standing, Kanye has no problem performing to a crowd of people making wheelchair motions.

[image via Getty]

ISIS released video Saturday evening that shows the beheading of David Cawthorne Haines, a British aid worker. Haines' death comes just weeks after the execution of two American captives, James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

The gruesome video, first reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, is nearly identical to those showing Foley and Sotloff's executions. The clip begins with Haines reading a statement blaming British Prime Minister David Cameron for his death. From the video's transcript:

My name is David Cawthorne Haines. I would like to declare that I hold you, David Cameron, entirely responsible for my execution. You entered voluntarily into a coalition with the United States against the Islamic State, just as you're predecessor, Tony Blair, did. Following a trend amongst our British Prime Ministers who can't find the courage to say no to the Americans. Unfortunately, it is we, the British public, that will in the end pay the price for our Parliaments selfish decisions.

The executioner, apparently the same man who killed Sotloff and Foley, then reads a statement, calling Cameron an "obedient lapdog" who "will only drag you and your people into another bloody and unwinnable war," and pulls a knife to Haines' throat. The video then fades to black, before returning to show Haines' severed head on top of his body.

The video ends with the executioner threatening to kill a second British hostage, identified as Alen Henning: "If you, Cameron, persist in fighting the Islamic State, then you, like your master Obama, will have the blood of your people on your hands."

Cameron appeared to confirm the beheading later Saturday, calling it an "act of pure evil" in a statement.

Haines was captured in a small Syrian village in March 2013 while working with a French group to deliver humanitarian aid. His abduction had been a secret until the publication of Sotloff's execution video earlier this month.

Haines is survived by his wife, Dragana, and two daughters. On Friday, his family released a statement directed at ISIS. "We are the family of David Haines," the message said. "We have sent messages to you to which we have not received a reply. We are asking those holding David to make contact with us."

Danièle Watts, an African-American actress who played Coco in Django Unchained and appears as Martin Lawrence's daughter on FX's Partners, says she was handcuffed and detained on Thursday by police in Los Angeles who suspected she was a prostitute.

According to Watts, she was approached by two police officers after kissing her husband Brian James Lucas, who is white, in public. Watts was reportedly asked to show ID and, when she refused, she was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car. They let her go after finding out who she was.

Watts wrote about the incident in a Facebook post:

Today I was handcuffed and detained by 2 police officers from the Studio City Police Department after refusing to agree that I had done something wrong by showing affection, fully clothed, in a public place.

When the officer arrived, I was standing on the sidewalk by a tree. I was talking to my father on my cell phone. I knew that I had done nothing wrong, that I wasn't harming anyone, so I walked away.

A few minutes later, I was still talking to my dad when 2 different police officers accosted me and forced me into handcuffs.

Lucas backed up Watts' account in his own post on Facebook:

From the questions that he asked me as D was already on her phone with her dad, I could tell that whoever called on us (including the officers), saw a tatted RAWKer white boy and a hot bootie shorted black girl and thought we were a HO (prostitute) & a TRICK (client).

Watts and Lucas also posted several photos of the incident, including a photo of an injury Watts sustained while being handcuffed:

Variety reached out to an LAPD public information officer who said, because Watts wasn't arrested or brought to the station, there was no record of the incident.

[images via Facebook]

The AP reports North Korea's Supreme Court sentenced 24-year-old American Matthew Miller to six years of hard labor on Sunday, charging him with "entering the country illegally to commit espionage."

Miller, of Bakersfield, California, has been detained in the country since April 10 when he tore up his tourist visa upon arrival at Pyongyang's airport and, reportedly, asked for asylum. He did not know what charge would be brought against him until he went to trial.

The trial reportedly lasted about 90 minutes and Miller waived the right to a lawyer. From the AP:

Earlier, it had been believed that Miller had sought asylum when he entered North Korea. During the trial, however, the prosecution argued that was a ruse and that Miller also falsely claimed to have secret information about the U.S. military in South Korea on his iPad and iPod.

Miller was charged under Article 64 of the North Korean criminal code, which is for espionage and can carry a sentence of five to 10 years, though harsher punishments can be given for more serious cases.

The U.S. State Department urged North Korea to release Miller—as well as two other Americans being held, Kenneth Bae and Jeffrey Edward Fowle—after Sunday's sentencing.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki released a statement saying, "Now that Mr. Miller has gone through a legal process, we urge the DPRK to grant him amnesty and immediate release."

[image via AP]

Cool Pope marries 20 couples, some of whom are already living together and one couple who already has a child, in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014. Image by Alberto Pizzoli, via AP.

Martha Stewart shared a stunning, easy, one-step life recipe in Net-a-Porter's Porter magazine for Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow and other actresses who might want to venture into lifestyle blogging: shut up.

The New York Post reports that Stewart had some words for Paltrow in particular:

"She just needs to be quiet. She's a movie star. If she were confident in her acting, she wouldn't be trying to be Martha Stewart."

You don't see Martha Stewart trying to have a kid named Apple, do you? You don't see Martha Stewart trying to play an alcoholic country star!

Martha wasn't as open about her feelings towards Blake Lively, an actress who came to her for advice before starting her site Preserve, leaving her senior vice president Kevin Sharkey to do the dirty work, saying:

"I don't get the sense she's credible. She's enthusiastic, but she's not credible."

Aw. She is enthusiastic, isn't she?

The lesson remains, of course, as true as it always has been: don't fuck with Martha's shit.

[images via Getty]

Hurricane Odile (pronounced "oh-DEAL") is a category four hurricane this afternoon with winds of 135 MPH. The storm is on a direct path towards the Baja California, and the worst winds are expected to rake much of the peninsula over the next few days.

Here is the latest forecast from the National Hurricane Center as of 8:00AM PDT:

The track that Hurricane Odile is forecast to take brings the eye of the storm just off and paralleling to the western coast of the Baja California peninsula. This track is pretty bad for the nearly 700,000 people who inhabit the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, as this track will drag the most intense portion of the hurricane's eyewall over land for an extended period of time; not only does this track expose residents to winds greater than 100 MPH, but it keeps the eye over water, preventing the hurricane from undergoing too much weakening.

Even if the track of the storm stays just offshore, the entire peninsula is still in the cone of uncertainty—meaning that the hurricane's eye could travel anywhere within the cone—and tropical storm and hurricane force winds extend well away from the storm's eye. A slight jog to the east in Odile's path could result in colossal damage to Cabo San Lucas and surrounding areas.

Thankfully, Odile will move into an area unfavorable for strong storms (due to drier air and colder water), and the storm will rapidly begin to weaken after Monday. It's worth noting that residual moisture from the system could extend up into the southwestern United States next week, setting up an atmosphere similar to (but not as extreme as) what we saw with the remnants Norbert last week.

Impacts

Storm Surge: Odile's current track shoves much of the system's destructive storm surge into the southern tip of the peninsula, which is where heavily-visited Cabo San Lucas is located. The hurricane's current forecast track (or a slight shift to the east) could spell disaster for the popular tourist destination.

Wind: As mentioned, the hurricane's forecast track rakes much of Baja California Sur with hurricane force winds for 12+ hours as the system approaches the region tonight and lasts through midweek.

Rainfall: The latest advisory from the NHC says that much of the peninsula can expect 5 to 10 inches of rain, with some areas seeing upwards of 15 inches of rain where winds run up against terrain.

Since Odile is so close to land, the NHC will issue advisories on the storm every three hours. The next intermediate advisory (basically a position update) for Odile comes out at 200PM/1100AM PDT, with the next full forecast coming out at 500PM EDT/200PM PDT.

[satellite image via NASA, map by the author]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

On Saturday, serial party-crasher Bill Murray attended the South Carolina birthday party of one Marvin Larry Reynolds. Murray, for all his innumerable charms, is still just a goofy old white guy, so fittingly, he danced poorly to "Turn Down for What" and "867-5309/Jenny."

Murray's invitation to the intimate living-room fête appears to have come from Brett Mckee, a South Carolina chef who catered the event and whom The Post and Courier describes as a "long-time friend" of the comedian's. Murray turns 64 this week and used the occasion to celebrate his own birthday as well.

He swayed back and forth and wiggled his arms as Lil Jon played.

And busted out the air guitar for "Jenny."

It's unclear whether Murray actually knew Mr. Reynolds, the party's guest of honor, or if this was one of his famous unannounced appearances. He seems to enjoy the attention, but it's hard not to imagine he'd like to cut a rug just once without it becoming a news story.

[Image via Facebook]

I arrived at the 9/11 Cultural Festival last Thursday thanks to a confusing mixture of repulsion and attraction I felt upon viewing a flier for it online.

Below a grainy photo of the Twin Towers spewing black smoke, it touted the "honest dialogue" about 9/11 that the three-day array of theater events intended to advertise—"honest dialogue" being a surprisingly effective dog-whistle for "conspiracy theory." It promoted plays with obviously tinhat-friendly names like 9/11 and the YouTube Tapes along with others like To Kill Eric Garner, The Horrors of Cocaine, and Gaza Emergency Pageant.

Naked Uncle Sam was the first of Thursday's scheduled plays. I was the only audience member, and the four actors read from scripts, yelling above the din of traffic lurching by the First Street Green Park, where the reading took place. At the opening of the play, three girls find an unassuming vagrant man on a Central Park bench, who we later learn is Uncle Sam, stripped of his dignity and patriotic garb. He begins detailing his sins—America's sins—to the girls, and with every story, they bring him back a piece of his outfit. At first, the narrative is palatable: Sam talks about slavery, and Martin Luther King, and violence against Native Americans. But by the end of the play, he's in full stars-and-stripes regalia, yelling about the Pentagon and false flag operations. All appears to be merry for the truthers until an irritable NYPD officer realizes what the girls have become and chases them off. "9/11 was an inside job!", they scream at him in unison.

Most of the ideas I discussed with the actors and playwrights who performed are the same kinds of ideas I discuss with friends and colleagues, and that get published on sites like Gawker every day: Income inequality needs to be fixed. Institutionalized racism is alive and well in America. The flow of military equipment to local police departments is deeply troubling. War is bad. The only difference is that for these people, the imagined U.S. government conspiracy behind 9/11 is to blame.

For Exavier Wardlaw, the playwright who directed and produced the festival, all the issues in Naked Uncle Sam are intimately connected. "Since 9/11, how much money has been spent? How much money went to the military-industrial complex?" he asked me during a conversation before the plays. "How much American money—the money of the citizens—went to buy tanks, and bombs, which we ship to Iraq wholesale? And half of those are now in our police departments. And the police are making war on American citizens. That's all 9/11. That all stemmed from 9/11. Those programs that allowed the police to get military weapons—that's all 9/11."

Earlier in our conversation, Wardlaw mentioned Michael Brown: "Poor man is just killed for living while black. Not driving while black, living while black. He was killed. The same with Eric Garner." He also mentioned that jet fuel can't melt steel, and two planes can't knock down three buildings, and a Boeing aircraft can't fly 550 m.p.h. at sea level. When I told him I don't believe that the government was behind the attacks, and asked him what he'd say if he were trying to convince me, he responded, flatly: "Well, first of all, I'd tell you that you're wrong."

Ben Adducchio, an actor and former public radio journalist who plays the police officer, doesn't actually believe 9/11 was an inside job, but enthusiastically participated nonetheless. He, too, described a connection between the events of that day and mainstream progressive issues:

"Had there not been a 9/11, there most likely would not have been a Patriot Act. I think that, regardless of our views, whether or not you believe that 9/11 was engineered by the American government, I think that everyone can agree that the Patriot Act violates Americans' Fourth-Amendment rights," Adducchio said. "And the invasion of the right to privacy is directly corollated to police brutality against minorities, to oppression in impoverished neighborhoods, and the like."

He added: "I wonder what the world would be like now, had there not been a 9/11."

The next play, Gaza Emergency Pageant, was considerably more polished, and drew dozens of spectators. The Bread & Puppet Theater, a protest theater troupe that's been active since Vietnam, performed a solemn, near-silent elegy for the victims of violence in Gaza, complete with masks, violin music, and towering, elaborate creatures. It was moving in its austerity, and it didn't so much as mention September 11.

I asked Joeseph Therrien, a resident puppeteer with the company, whether he felt any personal conflict about performing. "I'm definitely not willing to say that our government caused 9/11, or brought the buildings down, but I do know that there are government files that have been made public, that are official files that have similar scenarios throughout history, where they were planning on bombing our own cities, and then blaming it on—it obviously never happened," he said. (It's possible that he was referring to the "Northwoods" memorandum, a real, truther-favorite Department of Defense memo from 1962 that proposed committing acts of violence in America to create support for a war on Cuba.)

He continued: "I guess I wouldn't put anything past our government."

After Gaza Emergency Pageant, Thursday's event was over. I spoke to Wardlaw and Carla Cubit, who wrote The Horrors of Cocaine, about their history together. Decades ago, they were East Village squatters. They saw the neighborhood, and the city, and the country, wrestled away from artists and people of color like themselves in real-time, and for them, for whatever reason, 9/11 is a kind of climax in that narrative. I wondered how two nice, passionate people became so misguided on their festival's central issue.

Cubit told me she'd never encountered the term "truther" before helping to organize the festival. She was visibly agitated when describing the dismissiveness she's encountered along the way. "I've joined some 9/11 groups on Facebook in trying to promote this event, and some of the groups are '9/11 truthers are crazy,'" she said. "So I'm thinking: 'What the heck are truthers?' Oh, truthers are the 9/11 people who they think are crazy."

We live in a glorious country, America, where not only can police forces buy extremely armored vehicles, but they can equip themselves to the point where they are, for all and intents and purposes, armies. But why just limit that notion to police forces? Because a school district just bought its first armored behemoth.

The BAE Systems Caiman is a six-wheeled, 18-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, or MRAP, equipped with the best in Tensylon composite armor, stations for any manned or unmanned weapons system you could ever possibly want, and a V-shaped hull to deflect the crushing blast from massive land mines and improvised explosive devices, and the San Diego School District just picked up its first one.

Because that is necessary.

As visions dance in your head of Assistant Principal Bone gleefully peering out the top hatch, ready to crush any truant that dares to step in his way, San Diego Unified School District Police Chief Ruben Littlejohn said that all of the weapons have been removed, really, an enormous MRAP is about protecting the kids, and making them feel good, according to local radio station KPBS:

"There will be medical supplies in the vehicle. There will be teddy bears in the vehicle. There will be trauma kits in the vehicle in the event any student is injured, and our officers are trained to give first aid and CPR," he said.

Teddy bears. Joy.

And just in case the whole "SWAT-team gray" paint scheme is a bit off-putting, the school district has come up with a render of the thing in Red Cross white:

Littlejohn went on to say that the vehicle would be used by police officers for protection in the case of an active shooter, or if the school needs to rescue children from a fire, because no one in this situation has apparently ever heard of a fire department.

But there is hope. Local school district trustee Scott Burnett, possibly the only reasonable person left in the entire universe, has called the MRAP a "misguided priority," what with the 10 police cruisers the district already has falling apart.

And Burnett's right. But on the other hand, MRAP.

Photos credit: San Diego Unified School District

Michael Powell, a longtime New York Times columnist, usually writes fine, if inoffensive, copy. However, in his recent move to the Sports desk, it appears he's reaching—very badly—for metaphors. Check out this appalling, tone-deaf lede to his most recent column on Ray Rice's domestic abuse scandal:

Ray Rice: An athlete of unbelievable aplomb even when he's beating the shit out of his wife. Go Ravens!

The sad thing about this little bit of text—besides the fact that it now exists, on the record, in a seemingly liberal publication, for epochs to come—is not only that Powell thought to write it, but that the many editors who it went through didn't think it was fucked up.

I look forward to Powell's next column, in which he appraises Adrian Peterson's parenting skills.

Update: In response to several Twitter messages from inquiring readers, Powell wrote that the paragraph in question was being taken out of context from his entire column. To another reader, he wrote ominously, "my point was to provoke. I suppose i succeeded ..."