New York mayor Bill De Blasio says JPMorgan Chase's request for $1 billion in public subsidies for its new Manhattan headquarters is "a nonstarter." He said nothing about arresting Jamie Dimon for having the temerity to even ask. De Blasio's revolutionary credentials remain an undecided topic.

Stevie Nicks wanted to be an R&B singer when she was young, and so she's thrilled (in a customarily monotone Stevie Nicks way) when contestants Kelli Douglas and Damien duet on the classic "Knock on Wood." Before their battle, she issues one warning to the coaches. A warning that they do not heed.

And really, there must have been some serious editing here, as when Adam names Damien the victor and none of the coaches steal Kelli, we do not see Stevie Nicks: a) swoop in from behind a white lace shawl; b) place some sort of curse on the coaches while screaming that she's making them cry, making them break down, and shattering their illusions of love; c) further add to the confusion by shaking a ribbon-laden tambourine in their faces; d) twirl Kelli off to join her Voice rejects super-team, also featuring Maiya Sykes; e) throw in one anecdote about Lindsay Buckingham being a dick, for good measure. NBC probably didn't think we could handle such excitement, and maybe they were right. In any case, I'm seeing Fleetwood Mac in concert this week and will totally keep an eye out for Kelli.

With all due respect to Stevie, who is a marvel, the best guest mentor of this season has been Ms. Alicia Keys. While Little Big Town is excellent at pointing out when you're singing the wrong harmony note (sorry, Bree Fondacaro) and Gavin Rossdale can coach you out of your boy band moves (take note, Ryan Sill), Alicia Keys manages to connect with Pharrell's battlers on a deep level, deliver a quality hug when necessary, give them advice that's good for the music and the soul, and then rock out joyfully when their performances are transformed. Check her out with big-voiced divas Danica Shirey and Toia Jones.

Now, granted, Pharrell putting the two ladies with dead fathers together and having them sing Beyonce's "Halo," and Alicia asking, "Whose halo can you feel?" is some vintage exploitative Tyra Banks-level shit. But the resulting breakthrough, accompanied by wise words from both Pharrell and Alicia, is so lovely that you can't even blame them. Especially when this is the performance that resulted:

Granted, they set some new sort of Guinness World Record for most runs in one song, and my dad would have asked, "Why are they screaming?" but I rather enjoyed it. Though I will add that the stylists on this show are not doing anything to make these ladies look less like middle-aged bank secretaries.

When Pharrell named Danica the victor, Adam wasted no time in pushing his steal button. He thought the steal was locked until Gwen did her signature stealth last-minute attempted steal of a steal. It didn't work with Toia, who ultimately chose Adam, and also didn't work with Blessing Offor, who was left without a team when Pharrell deemed youngster Katriz Trinidad the victor of their battle. First of all, can you believe that Pharrell made the blind guy sing Stevie Wonder? And second, it's a testament to the depth of Team Pharrell that Adam and Gwen are all over his sloppy seconds.

And also, if you're keeping track of such things:

• Gwen chose Ryan Sill over Jessie Pitts after their version of Ellie Goulding's "I Need Your Love." Blake stole Jessie, and solemnly swore to learn who Ellie Goulding is.
• Adam chose adorable Harry-Potter-with-Neck-Tattoo Matt McAndrew over adorable porkpie-hat-wearing Ethan Butler on Coldplay's "Yellow." Ethan was not stolen.
• Blake went with retro country enthusiast Taylor Brashears over breathy vocalist Bree Fondacaro on Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good." None of the coaches stole Bree.

Gwen is the only coach left with a steal, which she has to use tonight in the final episode of battle rounds!

[ Videos via NBC.]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow @GawkerMA and read more about it here.

Oxygen's Bad Girl Club: Redemption airs tonight (Tuesday 8/7 c) and in anticipation they put up a 15 minute promo that was utterly perfect.

The stated premise of Bad Girls Club is that production selects a group of girls with hair-trigger tempers and rage issues to live in a house together and rehabilitate each other via empathy and, like, osmosis.

But what production actually does is select a group of charismatic provocateurs who can craft amazing one-liners and have a flair for impromptu dramatic spectacle and the ensuing ratings have rehabilitated Oxygen's image and demographic in the cable world and provided them with multiple successful spinoff series.

These ladies aren't being paid like staff writers but they're working like ones: in the fifteen minute promo I caught thirteen quotes that made me want to watch the shit out of the next episode. Take out the commercial blocks and that's a ratio of incredible dialogue to screen time any writer would be proud of, incredible lines such as:

13. "I fucking genuinely care about Judi."

12. "I just came from church but the Lord told me I could go off."

11 "You really need to sit down somewhere and put your clothes all the way on."

10. "Guess what? My ass doesn't have craters in it, bitch."

9. "Natalie, your book was only 65 pages including the special thank yous. That's the shortest book ever besides a coloring book."

8. "We all know she probably goes to bed and even has nightmares about her own chin, so it hurts her. I can see the hurt."

7. "It's like Pleasantville up in this fucking bitch."

6. "I don't care about the division in the house. That other group is so depressing it irks me."

5.

(the earnest "No, don't!" is the perfect response.)

4. "I'm excited to be going on this book outing because I do sell my own lashes but my goal here is definitely to become a businesswoman and further my brand and Natalie has a business mentality."

3.

2. "I'm pissed that you're shedding tears right now. You're shedding tears for what? For who? I'm sorry. Get the fuck over it. Conversation over, conversation deaded, get out of your motherfucking feelings, have a fucking plate of food and get the fuck over it."

1. "A stray always finds its way back home." Which, okay, really deserves to be heard:

That last one is just so poignant. I intend to stray home to the Bad Girls Club over the next couple Tuesdays and bask in the sunshine of their bon mots.

[ Video via Oxygen]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow @GawkerMA and read more about it here.

Real Housewife of New Jersey Teresa Giudice is looking forward to being a Real Housewife of Fun! Jail, according to her legal crisis manager, who just quit. Wendy Feldman tells E! News she dropped Giudice as a client after she asked a judge to send her to the Orange Is the New Black prison.

Feldman has had it up to here, okay? She explains:

Sadly, my time with Teresa and has come to an end. My client relationships are very important to me, however today's filing regarding Teresa's Bureau of Prisons designation request was not done with my knowledge or input.

I am not the consultant referred to in filing. This is clearly not the first time my advice has not been followed, but this is the time where the stakes are the highest.

Both for my clients and myself, I work hard to maintain a strong relationship with the Bureau of Prisons. As I've tried to instruct Teresa, this is a process that must be respected. A designation to a camp is a gift, not a requirement from the BOP and the judge. By making this request, Teresa has jeopardized months of work, months of preparation and in fact may jeopardize where she is ultimately designated or sent to.

Giudice requested the Danbury Federal Prison in Connecticut, the inspiration for that fun show on the Netflix about the pretty blonde jail lady.

Previously, Giudice admitted to Bravo's Andy Cohen that she wasn't exactly sure what a plea deal was when she took one for bankruptcy, mail, and wire fraud. She will serve 15 months in prison somewhere, but probably not at the made-for-TV jail.

[Photo via Getty]

The Dallas Cowboys announced today that Michael Sam, the first openly gay player to be drafted into the NFL, has been cut from the team's practice squad.

Here is the full statement announcing the move:

IRVING, Texas – The Cowboys have decided to waive defensive end Michael Sam.

The practice squad player who joined the team on Sept. 3, spent the first seven weeks of the season on the 10-man squad and never made it to the 53-man roster.

Sam, the first openly-gay player in the NFL, was a seventh-round draft pick of the Rams. He spent all of the offseason and training camp with the St. Louis before being released and signed to the Cowboys' practice squad.

The move opens a spot for linebacker Troy Davis, a second-year pro from Central Florida who worked out with the team on Monday.

Sam has yet to appear in a regular-season NFL game.

[Cowboys.com]

Before Handy, a house cleaning and odd jobs startup, became the darling of the New York startup scene and raised $30 million dollars, the company was called "Handybook." And according to a person who spent a day interviewing there, its office was a showcase of the worst tech worker stereotypes. Sexism, racism, privilege, and all-around juvenile antics were all on display.

Amanda Tomas writing for The Billfold chronicled Handybook's interview process. The job? A customer service gig that would have her working 60 hours a week, not including a "rotating weekend shift."

The initial interview wasn't that bad. However, Handybook's founder flaunted what Tomas called his "privileged background," which she said raised a "small red flag for me."

"The idea for Handybook occurred to me when I was studying at Harvard. It was so hard to find a reliable cleaning service to tidy my apartment! You know?" He smiled hard at me.

I gave a smile and nodded back, as if I was familiar with the difficulties of finding a good cleaner when I was a student. I'd actually worked retail part-time throughout school so I could afford to pay $200/month rent splitting a un-air conditioned house in Atlanta with three other people. Hiring a maid would have been laughable.

That's nothing compared to Handybook's "tryout day" for the $35,000/year position.

The staff showed up later than expected. Customer service representatives, the only people working when she got there, openly mocked their contract employees:

After one phone call, Ashley announced, "Oh my god. That was the maid Mrs. Wong again. Crazy Chinese lady!"

A programmer giggled and called out, "Ashley, do your Chinese washer woman impression again!"

"My Chinese washa wo-men?" she pulled back the skin on the sides of her face. "I do you laund-wy! Own-wy ten dollah!" She laughed hysterically, "I clean you house!"

Tomas detailed other shortcomings of the customer service operation. Because Handybook contracted out their services, the startup didn't know how much it cost to perform most tasks. Tomas uses pseudonyms throughout. In one instance, the company's founder, who Tomas called "Ajay," instructed her to tell a customer that re-tiling a bathroom would only cost $250 and take six hours.

I seriously doubted this was correct, and quickly Googled "bathroom retile quote," discovering that the job usually took two days and cost $1,000 minimum.

I quickly announced what I found. Ajay looked at me blankly. Matias smirked. The customer was still on hold. I guessed we were going with the $250 quote.

The company culture proved to what you'd expect from a founder who purposefully under-quoted job estimate. For example, one male employee told an openly sexist joke to Tomas, who he had just met:

"Want to hear a joke I heard today?" a programmer asked, eying me and giggling. "What's the difference between a woman and a refrigerator?"

"…what," I said.

"Refrigerators don't moan when you put meat in them!"

In this frat house atmosphere, Handybook's founder couldn't get anyone to do their work:

Late in the day, one of the programmers took out a toy helicopter and began flying it around the office.

Ajay was still at his laptop, laughing along but looking increasingly desperate at his lack of control over the employees.

"Come on, guys, what about some work?" he asked pathetically.

Everyone ignored him...

To Tomas, this was a "startup from hell." But the staff thought Handybook's culture was a benefit: "Don't you feel like you're back in college?," one of the staffers asked her.

The 12-hour tryout day made Tomas "feel sick." She asked for a salary figure, which left her would-be co-worker feeling "panicked."

"I could not leave fast enough."

Update 5:40pm: The Billfold confirmed to Valleywag that the author of the account was also using a pseudonym.

In a statement, Handy co-founder Oisin Hanrahan says the company is "different today."

While it posted today (October 21), the article by Amanda Tomas relates to an experience she says she had 15 months ago, in July of 2013. At that time, Handybook employed less than 15 people. Today, Handy is two and a half years old and employs 200 people.

Every young company goes through growing pains, and we're no different. While we don't think the article was in any way representative of the experience working on our team, we do of course find it disturbing. A lot of the facts in the piece have no bearing on our company today, and reflect a fast growing team that has learned along the way.

For instance, today our customer experience team works a regular eight-hour shift, not 12. We supply our employees with laptops, they don't use their own. And we don't ask prospective employees to work a trial day before they are hired. Was it always this way? No. And when Amanda says she applied nearly a year and a half ago, our company was newer, smaller and still figuring out best practices. In short, things are different today than they were then.

At the same time, the allegation that there was any racism or sexism– overt or otherwise – in our office or amongst our team is one that we take extremely seriously. We at Handy do not stand for harassment of any kind. If we find any indication otherwise, the reaction will be swift and clear — that kind of behavior is not tolerated at our company, and never will be.

In short, as we continue to grow we're working every day to ensure the happiness of our customers and employees. We understand today more than ever that our employees and professionals are the lifeblood of our business.

http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/my-day...

To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.

Photo: Handy

A developing nor'easter will affect New England during the second half of this week, bringing heavy rain, gusty winds, and widespread media panic. You'll probably survive, but you should hug your loved ones a little tighter tonight, just to be safe.

The word "nor'easter" can strike fear into the heart of even the most hardened winter enthusiast. Some of the most notorious winter storms that have affected the I-95 corridor were nor'easters. However, not all of these coastal low pressure systems produce snow—don't worry, though. Newscasters are frantically screaming the word "nor'easter" as many times as possible to make you worry, anyway.

Nor'easter.

This nor'easter's greatest impact will be widespread rains over parts of coastal and interior New England, with rainfall totals exceeding five or six inches in areas that receive the heaviest precipitation. The above map depicts predicted rainfall totals over the next seven days, with the nor'easter producing one of three major bullseyes for precipitation around the country.

What makes a nor'easter a nor'easter is the winds. Gale warnings are in effect for waters off of the northeast, as sustained winds are expected to reach 20-30 MPH with gusts up to 50 as the nor'easter develops and deepens. The strongest winds affecting land will occur along the coast from Massachusetts up through Nova Scotia. The strong winds could result in some coastal flooding and beach erosion.

Folks who live in low-lying areas or along creeks and rivers should keep an eye on flood alerts issued by local National Weather Service offices. This much rain will prove beneficial for the ongoing drought along parts of the East Coast, but too much rain at one time can be dangerous.

Nor'easter Word Count: 12/299, 4.02%.
Media Panic Skill Level: Local News Reporter at the D.O.T.'s Salt Dome

[Images: author, WPC, WeatherBELL]

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

Novelist William Giraldi wants you to know he would appreciate it very much if everyone would stop comparing him so much to Cormac McCarthy. Such a burden, to be ceaselessly compared to Cormac McCarthy, just because Giraldi, like Cormac McCarthy, is interested in the "primitive flux and flex of violence."

Loyal-yet-insistent English terrier mix James Blunt regrets that he's known for just one thing: Leaving "You're Beautiful" all over the carpet back in 2005 and rolling in it until it took years to get the smell out. Blunt told Hello! this week that he's very sorry and he hopes you can forgive him.

"There was one song that was force-fed down people's throats – You're Beautiful – and it became annoying," he admits. "And then people start to associate the artist with the same word," he said.

"I think, at the end of the day, I was marketed by a record company to appeal to women during Desperate Housewives commercials and you lose 50 per cent of the population in doing so."

Women are fine with annoying music, apparently, but the other "50 percent of the population" (men, I guess?) couldn't stand all those serious, forthright emotions being forced through their sensitive and discerning hearing-holes.

"The marketing also painted me out as an insanely serious person, an earnest person and, as all my friends know, I'm anything but," said the playful-but-protective shaggy puppy.

"I have a couple of over-emotional miserable songs that I'm known for, but I think it's turned that corner now. People can see I don't take myself that seriously."

Blunt's unserious, less-Desperate-Housewives new record, Moon Landing, is out now. The Guardian called it "Blunt at his Bluntest."

Aww, poor guy. It just makes you want to scratch him behind the ears.

[h/t Spin]

ABC News reports that the FBI caught three American girls, ages 15-16, en route to Syria to join militant groups. A law enforcement official said the girls had made their way to Germany and were planning to join groups, including ISIS, "to fulfill what they believe is some vision that has been put out on a slick media campaign."

The girls were not arrested and have been reunited with their families back in the States. ABC News reports,

The girls were persuaded to travel overseas and were in contact with someone in Germany, the official said, noting that someone close to them notified authorities.

They were turned around and sent back to the United States, the official said, noting that because they are minors it remains unclear whether they will be charged with anything or be "arrested."

These girls are not the first American teens to try to join ISIS—Denver resident Shannon Maureen Conley, 19, was arrested in July after she tried to join her ISIS boyfriend in Syria. The girls caught recently are also, perhaps coincidentally, from Denver.

The law enforcement official described them as "disaffected youth."

[Photo via AP]

Sister Cristina Scuccia is an Italian Ursuline nun who won the Italian version of the singing competition The Voice earlier this year. She has elected to release a cover of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" as a single. Here is what she says the song is about:

I chose it. With no intention to provoke or scandalize. Reading the text, without being influenced by previous interpretations, you discover that it is a song about the power of love to renew people. To rescue them from their past. And this is the way that I wanted to interpret it. For this reason we have transformed this song from the pop-dance piece which it was, into a romantic ballad, a bit like the ones by Amos Lee. Something more similar to a lay prayer, than to a pop piece.

Here is what Reservoir Dogs says the song is about:

MR. BROWN: Let me tell you what "Like a Virgin"'s about. It's all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick. The entire song, it's a metaphor for big dicks.

MR. BLUE: No, it ain't. It's about a girl who's very vulnerable. She's been fucked over a few times and then she meets a guy who's very sensitive.

MR. BROWN: Whoa...whoa...time out Greenbay. Tell that bullshit to the tourists..."Like a Virgin"'s not about some sensitive girl who meets a nice fella. That's what "True Blue"'s about. Granted, no argument about that...OK. Let me tell you what "Like a Virgin"'s about. It's all about this cooz who's a regular fuck machine. I'm talking morning, day, night, afternoon— dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.

MR. BLUE: How many dicks is that?

MR. WHITE: A lot.

MR. BROWN: Then one day she meets this John Holmes motherfucker, and it's like, whoa, baby. This cat is like Charles Bronson in The Great Escape. He's digging tunnels. She's getting this serious dick action and she's feeling something she ain't felt since forever— pain. Pain...It hurts. It hurts her. It shouldn't hurt her. Her pussy should be Bubbleyum by now, but when this cat fucks her, it hurts. It hurts just like it did the first time. You see, the pain is reminding a fuck machine what it was once like to be a virgin. Hence: "Like a Virgin."

You decide who's right.

Recode tried to warn you over and over that Silicon Valley found love in a hopeless place (Florida). Now it's official. Google announced that it led a $542 million round in Magic Leap, an augmented reality startup run by wackadoo supreme Rony Abovitz.

That's Abovitz in the space suit above giving a talk at TEDxSarasota—apparently the trippiest TEDx of them all.

More than a handful of venture capital and private equity firms also participated in the round, including Obvious Ventures (from Twitter cofounder Ev Williams), Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and David Petraeus' new hangout, KKR.

All 542 of those millions were handed over before Magic Leap launched a product. But Recode says investors are betting big because they think it could have advantages over leading virtual reality companies like Oculus Rift:

But the thrust is that [Magic Leap] is working on hardware and software to deliver "augmented reality" that adds computer-generated images on top of what you're seeing naturally to create convincing optical illusions. The company's website shows off images of a baby elephant that appears to be hovering above someone's hands and a submarine floating above a city street.

Sources say a key part of Magic Leap's plans involves a wearable device that will track users' eyeballs and project images onto them. We're also told the company intends to use an infrared camera similar to the Microsoft Kinect to create a 3-D understanding of the world around the wearer — so the virtual objects can appear to go both in front of and behind things.

This is called "object occlusion," and along with the capability for depth perception, it's supposedly a leg up Magic Leap would have over today's virtual reality players like Oculus VR, which Facebook bought for $2 billion earlier this year.

Who's the Florida fella trying to augment your reality? Abovitz previously cofounded a surgical robotics company, then sold it for $1.65 billion. But he's much stranger than that successful sale might imply. Kevin Roose has filled an entire cabinet with the man's eccentricities:

Abovitz was once a semi-prolific blogger, writing at length about topics as varied as wheatgrass, Saddam Hussein, and vegetarianism. Futurism figures heavily in his writings, which sound a bit like those of a college philosophy major who hit the bong a little too hard.

Roose quotes a typical entry from Abovitz, circa 2005, entitled "The New People":

I think that our society is drifting off into some strange new lands. What will become of us networked, blogging, ipodded, wireless, bluetoothed, myspaced, googled freaks?

Does wikki = democracy in the truest sense? What of Brazil and free culture and remixing and Lessig going on and on about these things?

What of Richard Stallman and all things Linux? What say the Chinese when they unfurl their might on the $99 PC?

Will the New People understand the past, or will it all be a single moment in time, remixed at will, all here, right now, right now?

What is software? If it can wirelessly trasmit from blackberry to ipaq to pc, why can't our souls float as they will?

When we have control of stem cells and DNA - what will we become?

Really puts that space suit in context.

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

[Image via TEDx]

A 26-year-old man in Goiania, Brazil has confessed to murdering 39 people, including a 14-year-old teenage girl, homeless people, and several transvestites. He told police that he would gun down his targets while cruising his city's streets at night on a motorbike.

During an interview on national TV, Tiago Henrique Gomes da Rocha claimed that his crimes were inspired by great anger and that killing was his only way of getting the rage out of his system.

From the Mirror:

He said: "I tried to do other things to get it out, but they didn't work."

And he indicated that the number of people he has murdered could be much higher than police had originally thought.

Claiming he started killing at the age of 22 - three years earlier than investigators believed - he said: "There could be 41 or so. I can't really remember."

Da Rocha also said he was sexually abused by a neighbor when he was a child and claimed that he could speed-read back to front, which he did in front of prosecutors by reading 40 magazines out loud.

Police say when da Rocha was tracked down after a nine-month manhunt, he was found with a hammer, several knives, and handcuffs.

[Images via Getty Images]

Francois Hollande, President of France, has something to say to the haters about the giant inflatable butt plug that was recently removed from Paris's Place Vendome: get used to it!!!

What he actually said, translated by Hyperallergic, was:

"France will always be on the side of artists, just as I am on the side of Paul McCarthy, whose work was sullied, no matter what one's opinion of the piece may have been," said François Hollande at last night's opening of Paris's Fondation Louis Vuitton, according to Agence France Presse. "We must always respect the work of artists … France is always ready to welcome artists and creatives coming from every country in the world."

...

"France is no longer herself when she is folded in on herself, tormented by ignorance and intolerance," Hollande added hyperbolically. "The country would plunge into decline if it refused to be itself, if it was afraid of the future, afraid of the world."

[Image via Getty]

In Los Angeles, accidentally working out near movie stars is considered especially common. Today, my friend exercised next to Shia LaBeouf, who was wearing jeans, for an hour. This is her story.

If you're wondering whether this story contains a bit about Shia LaBeouf staring uncomfortably at my friend, I'll just go ahead and let you know that the answer is "yes."

So I was at Ultra Body Fitness in Hollywood, a gym just for personal trainers, when I saw him. My trainer has told me he comes in but I hadn't seen him before. A lot of celebs use the gym, I often see Rebel Wilson and Terrance Howard there.

When I walked in, I saw him at a weights machine. He had a full beard, was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and these sock-like grey hi-top sneakers. I've never seen anyone in the gym wearing jeans before so that was weird.

As I passed him I overheard him venting about some "bougie bitch" to his trainer, who was mostly listening and not responding. Then I started doing circuit training and he ended up doing the same right next to me. He was doing bench presses and swearing but I couldn't make out what about because I was in my zone and not thinking about that.

He didn't seem very focused on fitness, as he kept getting up and pacing and talking to his trainer. For a good 2 minutes he just stared at me while I was doing lunges in his direction which made me feel really uncomfortable. He didn't seem crazy or anything. He just seemed eccentric.

It was at 11 am if that matters.

Los Angeles is a magical wonderland (?).

[image via Getty]

Film writers Fariha Roísín and Sara Black McCulloch are covering the New York Film Festival this year as a series of conversations about the festival and its programming. The third dispatch includes David Fincher's Gone Girl, Josh and Ben Safdie's What Heaven Knows and Nick Broomfield's Tales of the Grim Sleeper.

Fariha: This week we've got another girl-centric dispatch from NYFF. We'll be talking about the highly anticipated adaptation of Gone Girl directed by David Fincher, starring Ben—he has risen again—Affleck as Nick Dunne, alongside a terrifying performance by Rosamund Pike as Amy Dunne. For those of you who don't know (I mean, really?) Gone Girl is a confusing thriller focusing on the disappearance of Amy, when soon after her disappearance, the spotlight quickly turns to Nick, who is under suspicion for the murder of his wife. It's confusing because it's a layered look at female vengeance and rape narratives, as it's simultaneously compelling and problematic.

Next we have Heaven Knows What by Josh and Ben Safdie, a faux-fictionalized documentary about Harley (played by Arielle Holmes, who also wrote this story initially), a homeless teen in love with a psychopathic boyfriend, Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones), and their lives in a ghettoized, drug-induced trauma with New York as its harrowing background.

Lastly, we have the most menacing documentary I have watched as of late, Tales of the Grim Sleeper by Nick Broomfield. The documentary focuses on Lonnie Franklin Jr., who is the accused Grim Sleeper, and is a critical look at the lack of effort by the LAPD to safeguard the lives of over a hundred and fifty women that were murdered by Franklin. Broomfield focuses on the crack epidemic as a reason for their disregard, but there is an undoubted undercurrent of race (all the victims were women, and nobody cares about black women).

Sara, let's start with Gone Girl. Also, if you don't already know—spoilers ahead!

Sara: One of the wonderful things a Fincher film does to you is suck you into the world he's created. I was so immersed in this film that I forgot the date and time and that's exactly what I want/need in a movie sometimes. Personal preferences aside, Fincher is so skilled with suspense—or at least with building it. Here we have an unreliable narrator who fools everyone by creating a narrative of her own—of abuse, of her own death, and, eventually, her return. We also get insight into what was driving her motivations. Amy is a "crazy bitch," as Nick and his sister often call her, but she's also been raised to have these high, unrealistic expectations.

So, Fariha, I wanted to really get into this with you, because, I still don't know exactly how to feel about a female narrator who has been duping everyone for the sake of revenge. I mean, I believe in revenge, and I love a good revenge story, but this is obviously a very different situation. I wanted to know how you felt about her portrayal? I'm still so torn. I'm still trying to process this entire film. Everyone in this story is so complex and morally ambiguous.

Fariha: I love female revenge narratives. Earlier this year I was a part of an amazing programming event at BAM in conjunction with n+1 and that really cemented my love for female vengeance films. You know so many of these women have been brutalized by life, they're hardened by the horrific disappointments they've experienced, so they retaliate—and that's exciting to me! But when you finally get Nick's narrative in the second half of Gone Girl—and of course he's not innocent—you do begin to feel for the guy. So readily I escaped to this "crazy bitch" trope where I was intoxicated by this idea that Amy was inherently evil, or menacing, because she wanted to see Nick burn. This was primarily because Nick also, to me, seemed relatively faultless. He was an adulterer, but who in this day in age, especially in Hollywood, isn't? So, I felt pretty unattached to, and by, her anger. This tormented me, though. I badly wanted to be on her side, but I wasn't. This is probably a good time to admit that I haven't read the books, so I don't really know what happens. But, irrespective—Amy annoyed the shit out of me, and that's really disappointing as a female viewer. How about you, Sara?

Sara: I remember with movies like Double Jeopardy or Enough, the women plot these elaborate revenge schemes in order to survive. Here, we root for the women because their plots are retributive. But with Gone Girl, we want so badly to root for Amy until we find out more and more about why she did all this—why she killed herself off to prove a point. In essence, she killed off someone who wasn't alive anymore—she says this!—so we're so conflicted. The more and more she kept explaining, the more and more I saw myself siding with Nick.

Here, we have a woman who drew out the torture—she didn't just frame Nick, but brought his sister down with him too. And yet, we somehow understand her logic—I didn't agree with it, but it felt less polarized than, say, Hungry Hearts, because at least we got her side of things. I'm wondering if we get swept up into this world because we get swept up in her world; like she's controlling us too, she wants us to live up to her expectations. There's a change in tone once she resurfaces—I mean once she abandons her role as narrator. She takes on a new life and wreaks more havoc. She becomes an icy blonde again. She starts wearing whites and pastels. The typical David Fincher coloring changes when she begins plotting a way to get back to Nick. Did you notice this too? Like here, it looks less like a David Fincher film/story? It feels like she's taken the reigns of the entire movie, let alone story.

Fariha: Yeah, for sure! I mean, Amy Dunne is a complete sentence. You know? She's an all-encompassing entity, unlike male-dominated stories—she was the thread that linked all stories, she is/was the main character. So she's totally controlling us, we're under her spell—and Fincher is wielding it for her. So in this instance, Gone Girl is "feminist" in whatever loose way, however she's so disruptive that I felt sick whenever she was on screen. Her presence was analogous to a male character you don't like—I found her too annoying, too snarky, too everything.

Elif Batuman articulated really perfectly in her article for the New Yorker that Gone Girl re-stages "marriage as a violent crime—an abduction." That really resonated with me. There were so many things that felt so right about the film, Amu was this outwardly intelligent, articulate, well-rounded woman, and yet in the end, ultimately, she's triggered by jealousy and a compulsion to ruin. That felt like such a copout for her character. It's so reductive. It's almost as if to insinuate no matter how smart women are, in the end they are always vindictive. I hated that. The book is in many ways misandrist, but it's digestible misandry—because ultimately the woman has no perceptible raison d'etre, if she did then maybe she'd be more appealing as a character.

Sara: Right! In the end, Nick is essentially trapped because the public is on Amy's side: if he leaves her, he looks bad. The public will turn on him and he's left powerless. Her only misstep is when she lets go and celebrates a mini-golf win. Her thick money belt falls out and the two other runaways notice its thickness. ("That's a lot of bills," the girl remarks.) That misstep costs her. And that's when she has to phone her obsessive ex-boyfriend.

As for the stories and tropes she plays up: she is a beautiful, accomplished, successful white woman who is abducted and disfigured (by her own hand, no less). Amy plays up expected identities—in marriage, in abduction, in abuse—but Amy isn't a victim. Amy is agentic in her own success and her own narrative and in the plotting of her own death. "Kill self?" she scribbles on Post-it notes. Does she mean her "wife" self? Does she mean her "Amazing Amy" self? Her old life? What was all this for?

Fariha: Before I answer the question, I wonder if it's just dissatisfaction? As for Nick, Amy's "lessons" were mainly to hurt him for cheating, so he gets the ultimate death. As for Amy planning her own death, I don't really have an idea, and maybe that's why Amy is ultimately unidentifiable to me, at a certain point her humanity is lost. I had chills of anger when she was crawling to the security camera, pretending to have been raped, pretending as if she was bleeding. I mean, also, again, Amy is playing the victim when she's not—she's assaulting the image of abused women, she's misusing another trope, using it to her advantage, distorting the image—centering it around her own anger, perpetuating the girl who cries rape mythology that exists in society. Society is in favor of that mythology, it supports their fantasies of women being a certain way.

I kept thinking as I watched this, "How many bros are going to use this as an example of 'crazy women lie about rape'?" So that irked me, but then again, there is an undeniable power to Amy. She is not the result of any of our imaginations, she just is—complicated, vindictive, but ultimately powerful. She controls her husband, she controls her parents, she controls the susceptible minions around her—like the stupid soccer mom who she befriends so she can be on her side. That kind of control is fascinating, and in fact you don't see a woman in film that's so fleshed out and imperfect. As women, we want the portrayals of women to be honest, especially when concerning rape, but is Amy's portrayal dishonest? There is a weird magnetism Amy has that we're drawn to her, despite it all. Despite her annoying sensibilities I was pulled to her. Women like her have a right to exist, because they're women. Women's stories contain multitudes.

There is a fragility that lies in Rosamund Pike's characterization of Amy, it's not just there when she's robbed, it's also there when she comes home—in Nick's embrace there is a need on her part, to be loved, and so there's moments of vulnerabilities—as he tucks her in bed, or even as they're in the shower together. Her manipulation is coded. This is not a story for a woman—but this is a woman's story, and there is a difference in those two things. I think Fincher did a beautiful job of matching Amy in her power, he was her counterpart in her game. Marriage is a performance, and Amy is doing her part. Fincher's able to bring out the complexities of her, and still realize the undercurrent of susceptibility that exists. It's there, you just have to really look for it sometimes.

Sara: In a lot of ways, she's playing the game by the rules—the rules and roles assigned to her by society. I think that's what bothered me so much too—that despite being this brilliant, accomplished, ambitious woman, she still plays by these rules. But also, she's a product of all the rules and privilege: she's white, attractive, slim, and she has a trust fund. She knows this and it's why she knows that her abduction is going to be all over the news and covered widely.

Fariha: Well, good point that'll tie in to what we have to say shortly about the Tales of the Grim Sleeper, but before that—Heaven Knows What which was arguably my least favorite film of the whole festival. I found it obnoxious, dishonest, and heartless. Whilst watching this film I kept thinking of Susan Sontag's apt point in Regarding The Pain Of Others: "Pathos, in the form of a narrative, does not wear out. But do people want to be horrified? Probably not." There's a way that this story could have been told, and manipulating your actors by letting them live their lives for your benefit, is disgusting. It's their life, their very real lives, fetishisizing it for "a story," is absurd to me. Within the first few moments, like a ticking time bomb, there's a threat that Harley's going to kill herself. Then, in the middle of a park, she does, with a box cutter. We watch her do it, and as she begins to sear through her skin, I really couldn't believe it. I could feel the burn on my skin as I watched it, also.

I want to talk about images that are triggering. I don't think the world has to be PC, but I think it's important to educate ourselves about social and ethical codes. It really is a privileged person's mentality to assume that things are necessary "for the art." I mean violence can be done in art, but with a message—someone like Ana Mendieta, who used violence throughout her art, did it to challenge norms in society—she was a woman of color who was redefining narratives of rape, and violence against women. That kind of art makes sense to me. Or even Francis Bacon, who consistently used violence as a means to talk about social and political issues. I've used Haneke as an example before, there is a conversation that exists in Caché or The White Ribbon (which isn't violent, but always threatening to be) but Haneke's violence is also different to the violence of suicide. Having experienced suicidal violence in my past meant that as I sat there, watching Harley cut herself, there was an immediate abreaction of events. This is not an exaggeration— I thought I was going to pass out. I am confused as to why the filmmakers would want this reaction in me, or you—as I know you were as uncomfortable as I was. Is it for people who have never experienced pain so it's a thrill to watch someone else's? From that moment onwards I couldn't even comprehend why someone would like this film.

I have to point out that I liked the narrative to a certain degree, but I wasn't attached to Harley, or Ilya. I understand the threat of love, and how devastating the demise of a relationship is, but it was never even explained. When she began to cut herself, it was impulsive (as she is, and I understand that's the point) but nothing is established. I could see what they were going for but I thought it was a weak attempt at filmmaking. It was essentially poverty porn, a glorification of drug users, to elucidate how devastatingly destructive their lives are, without any purpose. There was no demystification of storyline, or character. It was a jumble of feelings that is never relieved, or that comes to any organic conclusion. This film was incomprehensible to me.

Sara: During that scene, Isao Tomita's "Clair de Lune No. 3" is playing and it recurs throughout the film too—especially when the kids tell stories. The song sounds spacey and you feel like you're in a trance and I thought that was insulting—that these kids, because they're high all the time, are just space cadets. The song overpowers what a lot of them are trying to say…it felt like a joke. We hear less and less what is that they're saying and we just see them—they're hands in the air as they're telling each other about other people who have screwed them over or tried to cheat them out of money. These are the people we ignore every day or who we just look at without really listening. And it seemed like that was what was happening here. So I wondered what the hell the point was because there was still this distance from them.

The thing about Ilya and Harley, and I mean, they're codependent and for various reasons. All these kids depend on each other for resources: like food, shelter, company, and even a fix. I'm not going to act like I know what that's like, but in a situation with Ilya torturing Harley, and threatening to leave her alone—I don't even think Harley is catastrophizing because she's so young and it's difficult trying to survive alone. But then there's also the way she's portrayed in the film, like she's the only one who is so dependent on other people for help. You're right, too—we get no background, we get no insight into the nature and history of the relationship between Harley and Ilya. In the press conference, the directors had mentioned how Arielle's chapter on Ilya was very long and developed, and that's why they were so drawn to it, so I'm not sure what happened there. I want to know how you felt about the fact that this film was actually a fictionalized version of Arielle's unpublished memoirs.

Fariha: Well I think it's a classic example of taking a woman's story and giving her very little agency in the process of making the film. Throughout the press conference it seemed as though everything pointed towards this appropriation of experience. Even though Arielle was at the press conference, she seemed like a ghost in this story that is ultimately hers. The Safdie brothers mentioned that they wanted to fictionalize her experience, but why? What's the purpose of fictionalizing something, and yet adding in, or keeping horrifying imagery? Supposedly everyone was using during the making of the film—but what was the purpose of that? So it adds to the "reality" of a story that they're purportedly trying to fictionalize? Everything seemed so disconnected, adjuncted, and again—dishonest.

I felt the way in which they used Arielle's story and glorified her experience while simultaneously eradicating her agency from it was disturbing to me as a viewer. You're right, it did seem like a joke—and a highly stylized one at that. The only thing about it to me that was appealing was the color palette, it really worked, this sense of bleakness. I also though Arielle was really easy to watch. She should act more!

Sara: The press conference made me feel even more uneasy because everyone just admitted to stylizing this story and didn't seem to have a problem with anything. I'm definitely much more curious about Arielle's depiction of her own life than this version of it. Let's talk about Tales of the Grim Sleeper, shall we?

Fariha: I hope we'll get to see her book. I'd like to read it.

Onto the Tales of the Grim Sleeper. A menacing and overwhelming film that focuses on the murder of black woman in South Central LA. It's not surprising to me to see that Lonnie Franklin, Jr. got away with these murders for so long, as all of the woman in the documentary reiterated one thing throughout the film—"Nobody cares about black women." It reminded me of that Village Voice article on R. Kelly, and how the ritualized ruination and torment of black women, by either sexual abuse, or murder, is accepted as a norm of society, and especially by the police force, because, to them, black women are all prostitutes anyway, so who cares? It was hilarious to see that once the police commissioners had finally arrested Lonnie, they were so self-glorifying and how the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murderers leader, Margaret Prescod, was like, "Nope. We literally came to you with evidence." I loved how defiant Margaret was, she was calling bullshit. I mean it was very obvious that the LAPD seemed to know it was Lonnie for a long time, but what better way to kill off black people? You just let someone else do it.

How did you feel about this film, Sara?

Sara: I really enjoyed and felt as though Broomfield really made an effort to immerse himself into the story and situation. The way the film covered and discussed crime reminded me a lot of David Simon's Homicide: A Year of Killing on the Streets. Lonnie had such control over his image and yet, we watch as his friends begin to question and remember certain things he said or even a pair of handcuffs in the car. It was interesting watching people question just how much they thought they knew someone. Tales of the Grim Sleeper doesn't just put the blame on the murderer, but the police force who did nothing to stop him.

But then the press conference ruined the experience for me a bit? Someone in the audience asked director Nick Broomfield about the way black women are objectified and regarded by most of the men in the film—and how this feeds into a larger problem. (Lonnie and his friends used to take pictures of the women they slept with in various positions. Some of the photos even include women who look passed out.) And Broomfield said that he thought the major problem in South Central LA was a... crack problem. You and I were discussing how this is more of a race and gender problem—that the cops didn't even warn the community about a serial killer and subsequently, more and more women went missing or were murdered because of this. The thing all of Lonnie's friends kept saying during the interviews was that Lonnie had this insatiable desire for women and sex, and the more and more I heard this, the more it sounded like a justification for the violence. Like, it seems as though a lot of the reasoning was: this man was fucked up by women and this in turn, fucked up his attitude towards women.

Fariha: I mean, how could Broomfield have shots of so many women saying, "I am worthless to society because I am a black woman," and not think that this is a race problem. It's plain and simple—Lonnie would not have been able to kill the amount of women that he killed if these were white women being killed. The fact that people in the neighborhood didn't even know there was a serial murderer around, the fact that the law enforcement didn't even think to go and give warnings so people could be safe, is also emblematic of a larger issue. All in all, it was an eye-opening documentary.

Sara: And once you don't behave the way a man wants you to, you're wrong. There's the larger point made (and we saw this in Gone Girl) by Margaret Prescod, which is that if a white woman went missing, it would be all over the news. If three white women went missing, then we'd have a serial killer on the loose. If these white women attended Ivy League universities and weren't sex workers or doing drugs, then we would not stop hearing about them until justice was served. We'd be hearing about human rights and justice and vengeance. And it was disappointing to hear the filmmaker allude to a drug problem as the source of all this. This is a community that has been left behind and to blame it all on drugs, despite the fact that throughout the film, we keep hearing about about a race and gender problem.

But there were some incredible women in this film. We talked about Prescod, but there is also Pam, whom Bloomfield enlisted as a researcher. She was a former prostitute who knew Lonnie. There are so many instances where Bloomfield asks her these questions about Lonnie's behavior, and she keeps telling him he did these things because he's a sick man. She even explains how some of the things Lonnie asked her to do were just sick, vile and disturbing. I mean, what I thought the film did so well was show us that there was more at play here; a bigger picture; a larger set of issues. And Pam kept reiterating all this, so I'm disappointed that Bloomfield said that.

Fariha: Pam was the heart of the film, and they seem to realize that they couldn't have had this affecting of a film if they didn't have Pam's help. She really alleviated a lot of the issues because also, black people, especially in America, are very rightly mistrusting of white people—so I get that Broomfield had the "right intention" but when you look at the history of the United States, and of course—slavery—America very clearly still has a race problem, and you have learn to be an ally. Pam helped transform their roles and gateway them into a neighborhood so this story could be told. And what a great, important story.

That's it for today. Tune in for our last NYFF dispatch in the next few days!

[Image via Getty]

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How's your week going so far? 'Round here it's just mostly trying to nail the perfect time of year to buy as much cheap candy as possible and then hide it from the people in the house long enough to save it for the children that require it. It's a multilevel scheme of checks and balances that ultimately means room for a lot of television in the meantime, so let's waste no time in getting to it.

AT 8/7c.

• Animal Planet has a special called Real Apes of the Planet that is I think two hours of apes throwing wine in each other's faces.
• Bad Girls Club had the audacity to do an episode called "Lashing Out," which differentiates itself from other episodes of Oxygen's long-running charm offensive by focusing merely on the catalytic events of emotional explosion, not their precursors or aftereffects: To break truly Bad is to devote oneself to process, to means rather than ends.
• PBS helps some celebrity chefs find their roots on Finding Your Roots: Tom Colicchio learns about the bandits of Northern Italy, Aaron Sanchez learns about Mexico, and Ming Tsai goes back 2000 years further than the Maoist Revolution from which his family originally fled. Looking forward to Bourdain's response episode, in which he reveals his ancestors are a dragon that could eat the sun if he felt like it, and a giant knife that shoots guns.
• The Voice has its fourth Battles episode, or if you are really feeling performative, ABC Family is ushering in their annual Halloween blitz with a one-hour special about its flagship series, Pretty Little Liars, to be followed later in the evening by the first in a two-night event of video pranks, Freak Out!
• ABC's comedy block, Selfie and Manhattan Love Story, if you're interested in where we're at sitcom-wise and cancellation-wise at this point in the American century, NCIS if you are too old for those, the newly announced full-season hit Flash if you are too young...
• Or, if you are Winona Ryder, ID's episode of Motives & Murders titled, "Who Took Polly Klaas?"

AT 9/8c.

• On ESPN, another 30 for 30: "When the Garden Was Eden," all about the heyday of the Knicks, as documented by actor/sports fan Michael Rapaport.
• ID's Beauty Queen Murders is still called that, and still worth thinking about how there are so many beauty-queen related murders that we're into a second season about 'em.
• PBS's Makers series investigates "Women in War," while two women—Jennie Garth and different trainwreck Tori Spelling—are pitted in a "war" of their own: One of ratings. HGTV's new Jennie Garth Project hits home with a two-episode debut featuring both a home and a garden, while True Tori returns after a very brief hiatus with a second season of weird sex and marriage issues, fake therapy sessions, and little to no Ebola-having.
• After the second Marry Me—in which the guy moves in with the chick and she acts all weird about it—NBC introduces the second part of their Tuesday comedy block, the second season of About A Boy, in which things most likely return to the status quo threatened in last season's cliffhanger finale.
• Continuing the lucky thread of Adrianne Palicki being everywhere all the time, she'll be appearing opposite herself tonight on ABC's Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. as a fan-favorite character who may or may not be evil but is certainly undercover at Hydra.
• Supernatural, NCIS:NOLA, and Oxygen's Nail'd It also air, although one assumes for much more niche audiences.

AT 10/9c.

• On basic cable you've got MTV's Awkward. and Faking It, double episodes of both Chrisley Knows Best on USA and Town of the Living Dead on Syfy, and an episode of Sons of Anarchy called "Greensleeves" that is probably about arm-length tattoos, which we can assume because they ride motorbikes on that show.
• Network offers Chicago Fire, a Black Dahlia-related Forever on ABC, and Jason Ritter guest-starring on Person of Interest.
• Finally, Kim of Queens on Lifetime and The People's Couch on Bravo will face off against BET's hour-long third-season premiere of Real Husbands of Hollywood to see who can best scratch that particular itch.

AT 11/10c. you've got a new Happyland on MTV, while Watch What Happens: Live offers the chance to see What Happens to both John Leguizamo and the creepy/adorable embodiment of Halloween, Modern Family's magical Ty Burrell.

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.

A con artist who pretended to be in a coma every time he wanted to get out of court apparently managed to keep the charade going for more than two years.

Police in South Wales say 47-year-old Alan Knight—who had also been illegally living off benefits by pretending to be a quadriplegic—had spent about three years conning his neighbor out of $65,000 when he came up on their radar.

He told authorities he had injured his spine in a garage door accident, paralyzing him from the neck down and causing seizures that occasionally put him into a coma. His wife played along with the charade, "caring" for him at the hospital and pushing his wheelchair into court.

But the imaginative conman got busted after the court was presented with CCTV footage of Knight—un-paralyzed, very-much-awake—driving and shopping at a supermarket.

His doctors also reportedly discovered something was amiss when their coma patient began "eating, wiping his face and even writing."

Detectives also note Knight is kind of an asshole:

Jim Davis, prosecuting, who did not open the case, said another aggravating feature was that Knight had made a "totally false" attempt to blame his own son for the offences.

[image via Shutterstock]

Legendary Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee died Tuesday at age 93 after battling Alzheimer's Disease for several years.

Bradlee, who began as a managing editor in 1965, led the Post through some of the biggest stories in its history—he oversaw the paper's now-famous coverage of the Watergate scandal and, alongside publisher Katherine Graham, made the decision to publish stories about the Pentagon papers.

Under Bradlee's helm, the Post's circulation nearly doubled and the paper's Pulitzer count quadrupled.

Bradlee—who was close friends with John and Jackie Kennedy and apparently lusted after Lauren Bacall—was also beloved by Post reporters:

The staff drenched him in an outpouring of emotion on his last day in the newsroom, July 31, 1991. Most of the men and women on the staff had bought, borrowed or faked a striped shirt with a white collar and cuffs, mimicking those made by Turnbull & Asser in London that Mr. Bradlee had been wearing for years. For tribute after tribute, Mr. Bradlee kept his eyes dry. But then he heard the telegram from Nora Boustany, who had covered the war in Lebanon for The Post and was back in Beirut for a visit at the time of the retirement party. Her comments were read aloud:

"Whenever I found myself alone on the streets of Beirut, I would just shrug off the shelling, the gunmen, and the dark corners, telling myself there is this distinguished eminence up there who really appreciates and understands the true meaning of courage in journalism. . . . For me you will always be the grand, brave man of the news who watched over me and made me want to give just a little bit more. Thank you for giving us all something so special to believe in."

Bradlee's health began to wane in recent years, his wife Sally Quinn revealed this year, and he began hospice care in September.

He reportedly died at home with his family.

[The Washington Post, image via AP]