Benedict Cumberbatch: Will he photobomb you, like he photobombed U2 at the Oscars? No. Please? No. Please? No. Stop asking!

In a recent interview with Variety, Benedict Cumberbatch addressed his—to me previously unknown, if I can be honest—life as a "meme," after photobombing in a (supposedly) famous photo if U2 at this year's Oscars. It was spontaneous, he says, and he doesn't appreciate you attempting to force whimsy on his otherwise authentic meme life:

"The amount of people I get asking me" — here, he puts on his best Valley Girl accent — " 'Omigod, can you photobomb me?' No. I'm not a performing monkey. When it gets really banal and reductive, I'm like, let's move on."

See? Stop asking Benedict Cumberbatch to photobomb you, you boring weirdos. Instead, ask him for one sweet kiss. :)

[image via Getty]

Mississippi rap duo Rae Sremmurd (Ear Drummers Backwards) had a breakout year thanks to "No Type," an anthem that's now so big that even nearly-septuagenerian conspiracy theorist game show hosts vibe to it.

Wheel of Fortune's Pat Sajak recited the "No Type" hook with Dan Le Batard's dad, Papi, on ESPN's Highly Questionable yesterday, in a duet that he apparently wasn't all that proud of:

Appearances on ESPN yesterday dramatically altered my career. Hoping that counseling will salvage what's left of it.

— Pat Sajak (@patsajak) December 12, 2014

I'm with Bomani Jones on this one, looking away and squeaking "whatjusthappened?"

Seven and a half years ago, one of the most acclaimed pro wrestlers of all time, Chris Benoit, murdered his wife and his seven-year-old son. He then killed himself. Today, some gamers want to play as Chris Benoit in a wrestling video game and keep trying to make that happen. The company behind the game doesn't want them to.

"We're deleting inappropriate content," a man named Marcus Stephenson, who Tweets about WWE games for publisher 2K, was telling gamers on Twitter a lot over the last week.

The "inappropriate content" Stephenson has been referring to are fan-made versions of Benoit, the ferocious Canadian wrestler who held world championships in WCW and WWE but who WWE has been loath to acknowledge since the murders.

Benoit is not part of the official roster of this fall's WWE 2K15 game. He doesn't appear alongside the likes of Randy Orton, Bray Wyatt and Stone Cold Steve Austin. But fans can add to the roster through the game's "create-a-wrestler" mode and then share those new characters online for others to download into their copies of the game. To an extent, they've succeeded. Alongside fan-made versions of former WWE stars such as Mr. Perfect and non-wrestlers such as Superman, WWE 2K15's community creations page, as of mid-week, showed numerous fan-made Benoits.

In response, WWE 2K15's creators keep removing some of the fan-made Benoits. That decision has spiraled Stephenson into Twitter debates with some players. I first noticed the back and forth thanks to a Reddit thread last week. I was fascinated both by the arguments in them and by my own reaction—as a gamer and as a wrestling fan—to Benoit's legacy and the idea of being able to play a game as a man who actually murdered his family.

I was intrigued, also, by the fact that you might get banned from playing the game online if you uploaded Benoit to WWE 2K15's servers. More on that later.

Earlier this week, I played as Chris Benoit in WWE 2K15. Despite all the moderation that's been going on, I had no trouble finding copies of the wrestler on the game's servers. There's clearly no ban on the man's name, no auto-filtering that makes "Benoit" a banned word. I downloaded a Benoit of them to my PS4.

If you play as Benoit, you play as something cobbled together with the game's equivalent of wrestler Photoshop. Players can approximate his face. They can get the tights to match. They can select moves for him that largely match the types of moves he would do in his matches. But they can't draw on his full move-set and they can't add some of the garnish that makes a WWE performer feel, well, authentic. There is no official Chris Benoit theme music to play when he enters the ring, no live-action footage of the man to display on the giant screen rendered over the in-game arena rampway. It's amazing that the game's ring announcer can even pronounce Benoit's last name. It's a neat trick that he does:

It's him but it's not him, right?

It didn't really look like Benoit. At first, it didn't really feel like playing as him. It didn't feel like this is the guy who went on to kill his wife and kid, because it didn't feel like this is the guy. It's a couple of meta layers removed from the real person, of course, a fan creation of a man. I know this... or I knew this. I'm not Chris Benoit. I'm not wrestler Chris Benoit. I'm a fan's relatively crude rendition of what Chris Benoit the wrestler looks like. It's an artifice of an artifice.

Or so I felt, at the start.

The debates I saw Stephenson having—and the feelings I'd come to have while playing as Benoit—didn't seem to just be about whether a people should be able to play as a controversial wrestler in a video game. They're about how we privately and publicly regard deeply flawed people, how we remember them. They're about what happens when you layer the artifice of video game unreality atop the artifice of pro wrestling and then try to sort out what the truth of it all is. What does it really mean to play as WWE wrestler Chris Benoit in a video game?

"I only delete profane, nudity, and inappropriate creations." That's Stephenson Tweeting to players last week as he tried to explain the parameters for disallowing uploads of Benoit.

The idea that Benoit was "inappropriate" irked some people, much as Stephenson presented that as obvious. "We're a WWE product," Stephenson had said. "How do you think that's OK?"

"Well, why is it not?" the gamer replied. "He was an actual wrestler. He existed."

"This is a video game," another player pushed back. "So if someone upload "Ted Bundy" they'll get banned?"

"[N]ot banned, but [their Ted Bundy wrestler would be] deleted," Stephenson replied. "Yes. Because it's on a public server where others are able to download.

"That is total bs banning people for using in game content you made available," someone else shot at Stephenson.

"It's obvious why this is a violation," Stephenson replied. "I'm just relaying." When asked, he said they were deleting Create-a-Wrestler versions of Adolf Hitler, too.

(I reached out to 2K Games several times in the past week as well as to WWE to learn more about the policies regarding uploads to the game and about Benoit. They did not have comment by press time. UPDATE: 2K has declined to comment.)

All of this might sound silly or horrid to outsiders who don't follow WWE or know much of Benoit's life aside from his actions on the final days of his life. But Benoit is wrestling's version of Roman Polanski or, if the allegations prove to be true, Woody Allen or Bill Cosby. He's a man who for decades was admired for being one of the best in his field and whose fans have since had to grapple with the idea that he's done vile things.

Benoit was no WWE underachiever. He's considered, in terms of technique, to be one of the best pro wrestlers of all time. A pro wrestler can be excellent for a variety of reasons. Some have mastered the art of delivering compelling trash talk that makes fans want to cheer for them to beat someone up or get beaten up. Others are acrobatic in the ring. Benoit was a boring speaker and lacked the impressive physical presence and charisma of a Rock or Hulk Hogan, and yet, in 2004, WWE still made him their world champion. His in-ring performances were that good. He was superb at making his fake fighting look real and painful, while mostly working safely without injuring his opponent. To the extent that putting on a great pro wrestling match involves a mix of good choreography, skilled improvisation and an ability to make fake violence look real, Benoit mastered all of it. (Note: This is not to say that pro wrestling doesn't hurt. It does, and it often inflicts damage on performers' bodies in both sudden and subtler long-term ways.)

Hang out on a WWE message board or listen to a wrestling podcast and the mention of Benoit will invariably elicit comments from fans who say the real Benoit should be put in WWE's Hall of Fame. They separate the man in the ring from the murderer. Others say that's absurd. The debate is essentially a more intense version of the argument baseball fans have about whether Pete Rose, the most prolific hitter in Major League history, should be allowed in the baseball hall of fame despite betting on games he was involved in.

I'm repulsed by Benoit. I used to enjoy his matches, but I've avoided watching them since he killed his family. I understand that some feel that Benoit was ill, that his brain was damaged and that turned him into an irrational murderer. A recent segment on HBO's Real Sports about the uncharacteristically violent acts of damaged ex-NFL players adds credence to that argument. The fact that Benoit killed his wife and son hours apart, according to a report of the autopsies, and was coherent enough that weekend to contact WWE colleagues and lie about why he couldn't come to his next scheduled event does not.

The wrestler Chris Jericho, who was close friends with Benoit, recently spoke about the man on his podcast. He doesn't think Benoit should go in the WWE hall of fame. "You cannot differentiate the two Chris Benoits," he said. "There's the Chris Benoit who spent most of his life as a huge fan and student of wrestling [and was] one of the best workers—one of the best wrestlers—of all time. Some might even say the best. And then [there was] the guy who committed these horrible crimes in the last weekend of his life." Jericho and Benoit wrestled scores of times, and Jericho thinks that at least a dozen of those matches are among the best in his own career. Still, he said, "I can't even watch Chris Benoit matches at this point in time."

Deep into one of the Twitter discussions WWE Games' Stephenson was having with gamers, one fired back at those who seemed so eager to celebrate Benoit's career: "It's insane how many stupid fucks still support somebody who murdered their kid."

Nevertheless, there are plenty of Benoits to choose from in WWE 2K15, all created by fans.

When I played as Benoit, using a character I'd downloaded to my PS4, I wasn't immediately repulsed. I didn't enjoy it, either.

When I played a match as my favorite pro wrestler, Daniel Bryan, I felt the vicarious thrill of doing some of his signature moves. Playing as Benoit initially just left me numb. I think some of that is due to how vaguely the player-created Benoit resembles the real wrestler, let alone the real man.

The fan-made Benoit I had grabbed approximated the real man less effectively than the game's official versions of other wrestlers. The resemblance didn't immediately click. The uncanny valley—that divide that often reminds us that, say, virtual Kevin Spacey isn't real Kevin Spacey—kept me at a distance from identifying with Benoit, at first.

I matched Benoit against Rob Van Dam, a cool real-life wrestler whose worst real-life offense seems to have been smoking a lot of pot. I was just learning the game, and Benoit's moves mostly felt generic. There wasn't much to this. He was an avatar on the screen. I was his puppeteer. The more we play a video game, though, the more our relationship with a character develops.

When we play, say, Super Mario Bros., though, we begin to identify with the fat plumber. An enemy kills Mario, and we might exclaim: "He killed me!" When we make a difficult jump, we don't think "Mario did it!" We think: "I did it!" We don't think we're Mario, but we begin to think that he is an extension of us, a puppet on our hand but, in some ways, our actual hand or even our whole body. Are we him? More and more, it feels like he is us.

When I loaded WWE 2K15 again and took control of Benoit in a new match against WWE icon John Cena, I began to think of things differently. I found myself beginning to identify my character's success with mine. I wanted to beat Cena. I was going to beat Cena. I was hitting the striking button on my controller and... there it was: signature Chris Benoit "knife-edge chops."

I knocked Cena down and moved Benoit to the corner of the ring. He climbed to the turnbuckle and I pressed a button. There it was... his signature flying headbutt...the headbutt he did night in and night out...the headbutt that some fans think damaged Benoit's brain.

A new thought popped into my head: someone made this. Someone took a blank virtual wrestler, named him Chris Benoit, gave him Benoit's tights and boots, and selected just the right moves from WWE 2K15's moveset so that when I pressed the buttons, virtual Benoit would do what the real Benoit would do.

I pressed the game's taunt button. I knew exactly what was going to happen. Virtual Benoit did the taunt that the real Benoit always did. He curled his right hand into a half-fist and extended his thumb, touched it to his neck and slowly, in the pantomime of slitting a throat, pulled it across.

I'm not that good at WWE 2K15, and Cena is programmed to be very good. Soon enough, computer-controlled Cena was taking charge of the match. I was fine with that.

I failed to counter Cena's attacks. Cena hit his big moves. Cena pinned Benoit. I... Benoit... failed to kick out. Match over. So be it, I thought. I felt myself getting angry. To hell with Chris Benoit. I wouldn't want to win as him anyway.

I found myself thinking about the murders. The game couldn't help me grapple with them. It wasn't designed to, of course, but that's all I care about regarding Benoit at this point. Not his wrestling. Not any more.

Since 2007, WWE basically wrote Benoit out of its version of wrestling history, despite the fact that he wrestled for them for seven years. TV announcers go out of their way to not mention his accomplishments. They've talked, for example, about record-holders in the WWE's Royal Rumble event without mentioning Benoit by name. The company's video editors carefully exclude shots of Benoit when showing historical moments that might have involved Benoit's presence. Once a star signing for the company, Benoit became the wrestler best not named.

Things changed a little this year with the launch of the WWE Network, an online streaming service that WWE sold with the promise that viewers could watch every major televised event in company's history, largely unedited. This included shows such as Wrestlemania XX, which ended with Benoit triumphant in a three-way main event. WWE still doesn't talk about Benoit, but they appear to have recognized the limit they can go to act as if he didn't exist. Many of the shows on the Network that feature Benoit matches (as well as those that contain other controversial content) begin with a warning:

The warning message on the Network might be the kind of thing that'd confuse a WWE 2K15 gamer. It suggests that WWE sees a difference between the Chris Benoit who wrestled within their ring—a "character"—and the real man. Surely, by that logic, a digital Benoit made of polygons in a video game is even more distanced from the man. To an extent, I think that's right. To an extent he's not the same guy.

I get that virtual Chris Benoit is no murderer. He's just a bunch of polygons pretending to pretend to fight. I also get that the real Chris Benoit is a part of WWE history, one that even WWE can't excise and that clearly some fans don't want to forget.

I get that to play a video game character isn't to celebrate the actions we have them commit, that many of us who shoot a person in a video game would never shoot a person in real life. And I get that all virtual Benoit does in WWE 2K15 is wrestle.

I even feel for the fans who want to in some way showcase a wrestler—a character—they championed.

Video games have the potential to make us empathize with the characters we control. We don't become them, but we become closer to them. I got a chance to play a video game as Chris Benoit this week, and my feelings about that are no longer ambiguous. Chris Benoit is not someone I want to be closer to.

Chris Benoit is not a character I want to control, not for the sake of virtual pro wrestling. If the game helped me better understand Chris Benoit's final, vicious days, I'd be more interested. But to play him as a wrestler? Count me out.

A post-script: This morning, I checked to see if there were more virtual Benoits on the game's servers. A couple of days earlier, I'd uploaded the one I'd downloaded, just to see if there were any warnings prior to uploading the character. There weren't.

Nevertheless, when I tried to go online today, this is the message I got:

To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.

Top image by Sam Woolley.

After running on Time Warner cable this week in New York, this ad for the Nasty Pig clothing line was pulled from the air. The exact reasons are as yet unspecified, but speculating shouldn't be too hard.

Nasty Pig CEO David Lauterstein forwarded me the following emails that an account executive in TWC's Media Sales Coverage department that were sent to Tara Wolf, whose Wolf Media Inc., handled the ad buy:

From: <redacted@twcable.com>

To: Tara Wolf

Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2014 11:26 AM

Subject: Re: Nasty Pig

I've been trying to call you to explain the situation. I got feed back yesterday but it's not good.

This really got blown out of the water because we were running on networks that were not appropriate to run the spot on (Cartoon Network and TBS). It was flagged and now we're refusing any revision to the original spot and will not run the spot on any networks.

I understand this is a very delicate situation and I apologize for the way it played out. Please call me if you need any clarification.

From: <redacted@twcable.com>

To: Tara Wolf

Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2014 11:49 AM

It's the content that is the issue. If we were to use the old spot we used in November we wouldn't have a problem. But the holiday spot is edgy, and we take customer complaints seriously. I apologize again. I know this puts you in a bad spot.

I called the account executive to confirm that the spot has been pulled (it has) and that it was because of a complaint. "It was a call-in yes," the exec told me. He would not specify how many complaints Time Warner Cable received, or whether caving to complaints is a common practice. When I asked about whether the call or decision was homophobic, he told me, "Yeah, I don't know what you're fishing for, but it's not really the case. We had a call-in, a complaint for the commercial, which is pretty edgy and we had to pull it."

Wolf told me that based on the schedule she and Time Warner had agreed upon before airing, or "pre-log," the Lil Internet-directed ad aired four times on the gay-themed channel Logo before being yanked. It was also scheduled to run on TBS (during Big Bang Theory, Family Guy, and American Dad), Cartoon Network (during Family Guy and American Dad), Lifetime (during Project Runway), and Logo. On Logo, the commercial was slated for an ROS or "run of schedule," "because everything on Logo made sense," given the network's gay content, according to Wolf.

Wolf, like the Time Warner exec I talked to, used the word "edgy" to describe the ad, which features hunky, muscle-bound men in various states of undress. A few times, they come this close to making out. "It's edgy because it's an alternative lifestyle. It's not necessarily something you'd see in the mainstream media all the time. It is a little bit different than usual," she told me.

Nasty Pig produces a wide range of apparel, but is best known for its underwear and jock straps. It is a brand that pushes the envelope of the socially acceptable, and shamelessly so. Look no further than its name for proof.

Nasty Pig is a provocative brand that produced a provocative commercial. This tactic works for grabbing attention—think salacious (hetero-centric) spots from Calvin Klein or Trojan or Carl's Jr., or basically anything Victoria's Secret has ever produced, including the lingerie company's annual fashion show that aired this week. But even when this tactic fails, it works—GoDaddy and Porn Hub received plenty of attention for ads that were ultimately banned in some capacity. Lauterstein told me that producing a spot that would be banned (for example, this post) and thus immediately infamous (a la Madonna's "Justify My Love") was not his m.o.

"I just wanted to make a commercial that represented my brand and the customers we sell to," Lauterstein said. "We never intentionally made this commercial with the thought of being banned just to get press. We gave them plenty of time to offer edits as we knew this commercial might be strong for television. You can't do stuff like this for press. That's why there's an approval process. You can't do sensational things on non-live TV. That's why they have a standards board, to prevent situations like this."

Wolf said that Nasty Pig submitted the ad early, on November 20. She asked Lauterstein to do this "knowing the product that we have and being very open and forthcoming about the product that we have." Initially, she says, she received word that edits might have to be made. She pushed back, indicating that Nasty Pig would refuse to do so. Then, she says, Time Warner Cable gave the spot a green light.

When Time Warner Cable notified her on Tuesday of this week, though, that the ad was being pulled, she asked for specific problems so that revisions could be made to the ad.

"That's very commonly done with media," said Wolf. "[When I represented rock and roll], if someone had a pentagram or an upside down crucifix, we would change that. I've had my own company since 1998, I've been doing advertising since 1992. I've never had somebody not tell me exactly what the problems are. I've never just had them flat out reject like that. That's what bothered me. The hair went up on the back of my neck, like, this is wrong. It felt like homophobia to me. I didn't understand why they just didn't tell me what the problems were so that I could give them an alternate solution."

Wolf had previously done business with Time Warner Cable on behalf of Nasty Pig in October, when an ad for the company's fall line ran during American Horror Story: Freak Show in New York and Los Angeles markets. Because they targeted specific local markets, Wolf and Nasty Pig worked with the cable company and not the networks their ads were airing on. The October spots ran without incident, but then, everyone in them was fully clothed:

We've seen plenty of half-naked people on TV selling things like underwear and condoms. We've never, though, seen a bunch of guys in a commercial behaving in a way that suggests they just might all fuck after those 30 seconds end, and feel great about themselves and each other after. The ad is audacious and meant to grab attention, but why? Is it because it is outrageously sexual by any standard, or is it because we're still not used to seeing men socialize in this manner on TV? Is Time Warner calling the bluff of an ad that was tailored to be just short of too hot for TV, or is the company expressing preemptive discomfort on behalf of the public because Americans don't like when gays act gay?

That question might be too difficult for Time Warner Cable to answer. I have reached out to the company's media sales and publicity divisions for further clarification on this matter but have yet to hear back. I will update this post if and when I do.

Nelson and Joyce Coniglio have come out victorious in a harassment suit against Bank of America. They were awarded more than $1 million this week after the bank made 700 automated calls across four years.

In their suit, WTSP reports, the couple claimed that when they started falling behind on their mortgage payments in 2009, they started receiving calls with pre-recorded messages from Bank of America asking them to pay up.

Even after having lawyers send cease and desist letters, the bank continued calling, sometimes up to five times a day. In addition, the couple claimed they received "threatening collection letters asserting false and misleading information."

The Tampa couple was awarded triple damages, the judge ruled, because Bank of America continued to call even after they were asked to stop.

"This judgment against Bank of America is an epic win for consumers across the country," Billy Howard, the Coniglios' lawyer, actually told ABC News. "It's time to fight back against these 'robo-bullies'."

For their part, Bank America defended themselves by saying they were just doing their job, or something. From Bank of America Senior Vice President Dan Frahm's statement released to ABC News:

Bank of America has helped 2 million homeowners avoid foreclosure. Our calls to the Coniglios were not to collect a debt, but rather to help them avoid foreclosure after they fell behind on their mortgage payments in 2009. Because our calls were not answered and our efforts to help the Coniglios avoid foreclosure were urgent, these calls continued. We are committed to help homeowners in need of assistance avoid foreclosure.

Bank of America settled a class action lawsuit last September to the tune of $32 million for 7.7 million customers who complained of the same automated calls.

[Image via MoneyBlogNews/Flickr]

This is one of those moments when a movie comes along that is so repugnant, and so bland, and so pretentious, that it's almost impossible to believe. And yet, like a voice from a burning bush, Exodus is an unbelievable event that will nevertheless lead thousands of people on a terrifying quest — to movie theaters.

Light spoilers ahead.

I will admit right up front that I am a die-hard fan of the original story that Exodus is based on. Don't get me wrong — I think Kings I and II and Judges are pretty badass books of the Old Testament. But Exodus has always been my favorite. I'm not religious, but I always observe Passover, the Jewish holiday devoted to recalling the events of Exodus. So I went into this movie a little biased. I wanted to see those deadly plagues visited on Egypt in full CGI glory, and I wanted to feel the righteous wrath of the Jews as they fought slavery. It should have been the ultimate holiday action flick.

Instead, it was a muddled, dissonant mess. The biggest mistake that director Ridley Scott made was that he didn't seem to understand that Moses is the hero of the story. Instead of watching Moses grow up, and gaining sympathy for him as a (semi) outsider among the Egyptian royalty, we meet him as an adult fighting beside his adoptive brother Ramses on the battlefield. And Ramses, who has a complex, conflicted relationship with the more talented leader Moses, comes across as vastly more interesting and sympathetic character.

This problem extends to the plight of Moses' people, the Hebrews, whose lives we glimpse only out of the corners of our eyes as Scott's cameras eat up the vast palaces and statues of Rameses' growing empire. For the Exodus story to work, we need to feel Moses' plight keenly, as he's torn between loyalty to his adoptive family and his growing awareness of his connection to the enslaved Hebrews. We need to feel outrage, injustice, and horror as the Jews are mistreated and abused at the hands of their Egyptian captors. Instead, we just hear Egyptian minsters ticking off numbers of slaves, which actually dehumanizes and distances them from us. When we do finally meet some Jews, they look and act more like angry villagers than people desperate for freedom.

In fact, the only true horror we see are the plagues that God visits on the Egyptians. As we watch their animals and crops die, and the faces of so many innocents erupt with boils, we wind up feeling far more sympathy for them than the people they have enslaved. It's peculiar to watch a story about a slave uprising where there are no emotional beats devoted to the horrors of servitude and the triumphant battle cries of the newly-liberated.

I'm not saying the Egyptians shouldn't be shown suffering — a crucial part of the Exodus story is that God forces the (mostly innocent) Egyptian people to suffer more plagues because he "hardens" Pharaoh's heart. But without any sense of who the Hebrews are, and what their lives are like, there's no feeling of justice behind these horrific acts. And there's no urgency to the Jews' struggle for freedom. I have never witnessed a more lackluster rendition of "let my people go."

Maybe part of the problem is that this movie that profoundly misunderstands the God of the Old Testament. In the original book, we're dealing with a God who cannot be embodied — he even forbids the creation of "graven images" as blasphemy. He speaks to Moses from a burning bush as nothing but a voice because he is abstract righteousness, totally unrepresentable as anything other than the words "I am." But in the movie Exodus? He comes to Moses in the form of a little boy. It's like some kind of new age Christian interpretation of God.

Tonally, nothing could be more wrong. God in the Old Testament is like an invisible, heavy metal version of Smaug — all fire, all power, all violent badass stormbringing. He is anything but humble and childlike. The Old Testament God of brutality and power is exactly the kind of entity that the humbled, degraded, shackled Hebrews need on their side. Who else could help them defeat the greatest empire on Earth at the time?

Scott has watered down his protagonists, giving us almost no insight into their suffering and burning need for liberation. And he's made the people of Egypt so fascinating and realistic that we can't help but wonder why the whole situation couldn't have been resolved diplomatically rather than with the angel of death killing every firstborn son in Egypt. It's a bizarre and unconvincing interpretation of one of the most powerful stories we have about why slavery isn't just doomed to fail — it's doomed to destroy the civilizations that depend on it. And don't even get me started on the fact that the Ten Commandments are treated like a footnote.

Look, I knew there would be problems. I mean, Scott cast a dude named Christian as Moses, the greatest Jewish superhero in history (well, other than Superman). In fact, he cast a bunch of white people in roles that belonged to black and brown people in the book that Exodus is based on.

When fans of the book asked Scott about his choice, he gave an answer that was clueless at best and racist at worst. Speaking to Variety, Scott said he couldn't get financing for the film if he didn't cast white actors. "I can't mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such," he said. "I'm just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn't even come up." But as science fiction author Saladin Ahmed noted, this kind of unapologetic racism is "probably accurate" when it comes to Hollywood.

So maybe the casting couldn't have gone any other way in Hollywood. But even if we accept that that's true, as Ahmed does, this movie is still a complete disaster. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is a weird moment when Ramses is playing with giant snakes, milking them for poison that he wants to drink in order to be strong. Sounds cool, right? But shouldn't Moses have all the memorable scenes of over-the-top strength? And shouldn't we believe in the righteousness and power of his mission? I mean, that's kind of the whole point of the book that Exodus is based on.

What I'm trying to say is that Exodus misses the point. It's not just that I wish it were more like the original book. It's that I wish the main arc of the movie — freeing the slaves — felt vital and intense. Instead it feels like everybody is just going through the motions. Yes, the effects are great. But your heart will never pound in sympathy with our supposed heroes. Instead, you'll feel like you're sitting through a boring sermon, delivered by somebody who had too much to drink the night before and just wants to go back to bed.

There is no finer tradition in this great country of ours than sitting on our asses and watching TV. And with the holiday season upon us, it's prime time to couch with your extended family. You guys probably watch the same movies every year. What are they?

I'll start: Every year, You've Got Mail and It's Complicated will be on WE, Oxygen, TBS, or some other mid-dial cable channel that sounds like a great prescription drug. One or the other is always on, without fail. Both are hifalutin yuppie fantasies about people with no genuine problems beyond finding love with an old guy.

Mostly, I enjoy marveling at Meg Ryan's enormous Upper West Side apartment she could never afford as the owner of a failing children's book store and those fucking chocolate croissants a "high" Meryl Streep and Steve Martin make together. (I have tried to make those croissants. They never taste as good as they look in the movie.)

These movies fulfill every consumerist fantasy I've ever had. They are also breezy and inoffensive to nearly a fault. They play in the background as my mother cooks, or as me and my brothers wrap gifts, or play with the baby. You can look at the flickering screen at any point in either movie and be entertained.

Here are recommendations from other members of the Gawker.com staff. (All staffers were given the opportunity to contribute. Some opted not to, against their better judgment. In the New Year, this slight against me will be forgiven. Maybe.)

Allie Jones

I realized today I've been watching The Holiday multiple times every December since I was 16 years old, which is too much watching of The Holiday. But when I think of Christmas, I think of Cameron Diaz staring at Jude Law looking down at Kate Winslet smiling over at Jack Black in a snowy Nancy Meyers dreamscape. The main idea is that Kate (Brit) and Cam (Angeleno) switch houses for "the holiday" after breaking up with their bad, bad boyfriends. Both ladies learn a lot about themselves, and the men learn nothing. I love it!

Jason Parham

By definition, The Wood is not a traditional holiday film. It follows the reunion of three friends—Mike, Roland, and Slim—as they come together for a wedding, which poses to fracture the group's strong ties. Told through a series of flashbacks, there's all the typical, warm-pulsed experiences that define the ecstasy of youth: girl-chasing, succumbing to peer pressure, awkward middle school dances, the ebb and flow of puberty, and the promise of immature, pimple-faced love. Miracle on 34th Street this is not. But, like clockwork, I revisit The Wood every year I travel home for Christmas. Unintentionally (or maybe it is intentionally), the film captures what, for me, has become an unavoidable fact of life: my precarious connection to home as an adult. Returning to once-regular haunts, running into old friends you've lost touch with, reminiscing about long-ago, after-school excursions to the Fox Hills Mall or Saturday trips to Six Flags. At its best, The Wood is a reminder of all that's most important in life: the substance of family, and the good fortune of friends who have become family.

Kelly Conaboy

When my brothers and I were young, my family loved watching Pee-wee's Playhouse together. It is a wonderful and joyous television series and anyone who doesn't like it is a humorless grinch with a blackened heart full of shit, no offense. During the holidays, along with the California Raisins Christmas special, we would always watch Christmas at Pee Wee's Playhouse. It's great. Dinah Shore calls Pee-wee on the phone, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello make Christmas cards with potatoes, Pee-wee teaches Little Richard how to ice skate, Charo performs, and so much more. A few years ago, I purchased the special on DVD to reignite the tradition with my family. It was met with a bit of confusion and to be honest I had to press the idea that we should all watch it together again a bit more than I thought I would, but in the end we all watched it and I enjoyed it very much. I will do the same this year, I don't care if my family would prefer not to.

Dayna Evans

Home Alone is a movie I never intend to watch during the holidays but then I take one look at that baby McCallister face and I can't look away. What's not to love about the John Williams-scored, Joe Pesci-slapstick, fast-paced thrill ride through one child's dream-meets-nightmare-meets-cheese-pizza-pigout. I love watching smug, babyfaced McCauley Culkin eat an ice cream sundae like there may never be another ice cream sundae again, and every subtle facial expression he makes that proves he really does love his family is a heartbreaker. Not to mention the tantalizing feeling of knowing what happens when Pesci puts his hand on that hot door is too much to handle. Give me the hi-jinx of Home Alone over the sincerity of It's a Wonderful Life any day. Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.

Rich Juzwiak

Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, because it is the most inadvertently honest Christmas movie of all time. As a product cash-in, it completely encapsulates the commercialization of Christmas. Also, Pigeon Lady is cool.

Andy Cush

There's no one holiday movie I watch every year, but if I watch one this year it will probably be Elf. Will Ferrell hasn't made a hit in a while, but he remains an amazing genius, and Elf—released right between Old School and Anchorman—is right in his sweet spot. As if Ferrell weren't enough on his own, thrift-store ukulele Zooey Deschanel also makes an appearance, and she sings! What could possibly be more joyful?

Jay Hathaway

" Stop saying Die Hard is your favorite Christmas movie!" No, I will not, because it is.

Die Hard is not just a Christmas movie on the "technicality" that it takes place during Christmas Eve—"Families, stockings, chestnuts, Rudolph and Frosty. Those things ring a bell?"—it's a Christmas movie because its hero is motivated by that classic holiday theme of reunion with loved ones. Ever hear of a little song called "I'll Be Home for Christmas?" John McClain probably has, motherfuckers. His heroic transformation from everyman to badass wouldn't have been possible if he and Holly hadn't had their relationship (and their lives) on the line. If that's not Christmas-y enough for you, your Grinch heart is a few sizes too small.

Is it fair that other Christmas movies have to compete in the same category as the film that defined the contemporary American action genre? Not really, but that doesn't mean you get to arbitrarily disqualify it. And if you think Rickman was better in Love Actually than he was as Hans Gruber, I just can't help you.

Die Hard is the best Christmas movie. It's not "clever," it's just true.

Leah Finnegan

There are very few movies I can watch again and again, but when time slows over the holidays I make room in my life for Erin Brockovich. This is a great movie. Nothing gets me quite like the scene in which Albert Finney buys Julia Roberts a Chevy Blazer. It is a film about the power of humanity, the power of research, the power of the law, the power of the truth, and the power of women. That is what my Christmas celebrates.

Lacey Donohue

The only movie to watch during the holidays is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Hallelujah. Holy shit. Where's the Tylenol?

[Image via Michael Betley/Flickr]

Aaron Sorkin has a fruitful working relationship with Sony Pictures Entertainment. The studio distributed his hit films The Social Network and Moneyball and is actively seeking to develop new projects with him, including at one point the ill-fated Steve Jobs biopic. But none of that stopped SPE co-chairman Amy Pascal from alleging in an email that Sorkin is broke—or that he's sleeping with an author whose book he is turning into a movie.

Sorkin has spent much of the last two months discussing three films with SPE. One is the untitled and perhaps nonexistent Steve Jobs biopic that caused Pascal and producer Scott Rudin to have a prolonged meltdown. The other two films are the financial-industry drama Flash Boys, based on the Michael Lewis book Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt; and Molly's Game, an adaptation of a book of the same name about a woman named Molly Bloom who ran an underground poker ring in Los Angeles.

Since at least October, when he sent an email listing projects he wanted to work on, Sorkin had been going back and forth about Flash Boys and Molly's Game with Pascal and other SPE executives over email. But on Nov. 13 his agent Ari Emanuel told SPE that Sorkin was deciding not to take on Flash Boys, and wanted to shop Molly's Game around town.

Later that day, Pascal sent a long and biting missive to Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group, as well as Michael De Luca and Hannah Minghella, the co-presidents of production at Columbia.

In the email, Pascal runs down the statuses of a number of projects—and lashes out at Sorkin, saying that he's trying to play hardball, is "broke," "just wants to get paid" and is maybe sleeping with Bloom, the author of Molly's Game.

Sorkin, it's clear from Emanuel's email, vastly prefers Molly's Game to Flash Boys—but Pascal would much rather he work on Flash Boys than "the poker movie." Sorkin and Emanuel are shopping the movie around to "Donna" (Langley, the Universal Pictures chair) and "Stacey" (Snider, who had just started as co-chair of 20th Century Fox). She also notes that Sony paid Sorkin an "insane fee" for some sort of work on Flash Boys—over the summer, trade reports suggested that Sorkin had all but signed on to to adapt the film.

It's unclear what exactly Sony paid Sorkin to do on Flash Boys considering he decided to not go forward with the film, but we do have an idea of what his "insane fee" might look like. Below is a document that lists various salaries for the non-existent Jobs film, which shows Sorkin being paid $2 million for his draft of the film as well as $3 million in deferred money.

A day later, Pascal emailed Sorkin to tell him that she doesn't think she can raise enough money to get the Michael Fassbender version of the Jobs movie made. Sorkin responds to her by saying that in order to make up for the Jobs debacle, she's asking him to write a film he doesn't want to write—Flash Boys—while putting the one he does want to do—Molly's Game—on the backburner.

In an email later that evening, Sorkin elucidated to Pascal his reasoning behind not wanting to do Flash Boys—not only did he think Flash Boys was too research-intensive and didn't have an obvious plot, it would be hard to make because its protagonist is Asian-Canadian but "there aren't any Asian movie stars."

"All of this is happening," he continues, "against the the backdrop of the disintegration of Steve Jobs, which is completely blowing my mind." Clearly, producer Scott Rudin wasn't the only person frustrated with Sony's handling of the Jobs movie.

Pascal responds to this email by asking Sorkin to call her. After their phone call, Sorkin sent the following email, which confirms that he was shopping Molly's Game around and that he is looking for money to pay for his teenage daughter Roxy's schooling:

Sorkin tells Pascal that Paramount is interested in the film, as well as Stacey Snider at 20th Century Fox, though Sorkin says that Snider is nervous about angering Tobey Maguire's father-in-law Ronald Meyer, chairman of NBC Universal, probably because Bloom writes negatively of Maguire in her book.

Despite all that, Sorkin maintains that he wants to make the movie with Pascal and Sony. He leans on their personal relationship—"I know you and I like you and I have an important relationship with you that I want to continue"—and even says that he will take a deal based on the success of the film as long as he gets enough money "in the meantime" to pay for his daughter's tuition.

Pascal, in turn, forwarded that email to fellow Sony executives Belgrad and DeLuca. Belgrad responded, "Don't let Aaron guilt you by mentioning Roxy's tuition."

That is the last that Sorkin and Pascal discussed Molly's Game in the emails leaked by Sony's hackers. But after the death of the Jobs biopic at Sony, Pascal asked Sorkin if she could call him, and he responded, "Absolutely—anytime you want."

Sorkin and Pascal need each other, of course. As long as he is writing blockbusters, Sony will still saddle up to him. As Pascal says herself in her rant, the studio "want[s] to be in the Aaron business." And Sorkin, it appears, could use the money.

It's a dark day. The woman who crafted the best assessment of Taylor Swift that has ever been verbalized has made nice with the perpetually perky singer-songwriter. Why, Aretha? Why?

You may remember that during a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Aretha Franklin was asked for her opinion on Swift and Franklin replied, "OK, great gowns, beautiful gowns." That's funny! It's succinct. It's a way of getting at Swift's utter soullessness. It's the most delicious example of celebrity-on-celebrity shade that we've been treated to this year.

But now, for some reason, Franklin decided to serenade Swift at Billboard's 2014 Music in Women event.

Making matters worse is that the rendition, via the Instagram video above and the Vine below, finds Franklin in lovely voice. Franklin's recent showings have been flawed (albeit fascinating), but this is straight-up gorgeous. Great gowns on my body. Beautiful frowns on my face.

Swift turns 25 tomorrow. Turns like milk.

[Top image via Getty]

Is the CIA physically capable of speaking the truth about its torture program? Not under conventional interrogation. About 20 minutes into CIA director John Brennan's somber-squirrel performance in his press conference yesterday, a reporter for the Associated Press asked him a pointed question: "Do you agree with President Obama's statement that the CIA, in common parlance, tortured detainees?"

To this point, Brennan had been carefully going on and on about "EITs": the acronym for "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," which is the agency's preferred term for its global campaign of beating, waterboarding, freezing, raping, and otherwise violating—torturing—its captives. Thus the question. Could he step out from behind the obfuscatory jargon and name the agency's misdeeds in plain American English?

Not at all. Instead, for more than a full minute, Brennan delivered the halting filibuster in the above video—his agents had "exceeded [pause] the policy [pause] guidance that was given"; they had gone "outside the bounds in terms of their actions"; their actions were "harsh....In some cases I considered them abhorrent." It was all "regrettable" and there were "mistakes, shortcomings, and excesses."

But as for the naming of the CIA's behavior, the director of the CIA said, "I will leave to others how they might want to label those activities" (for instance, the Justice Department, which found "no prosecutable crimes"). It would be "EITs" the rest of the way. The CIA is nothing if not deferential.

According to a New York Times investigation, a group of Brooklyn NYPD officers may have planted guns and invented nonexistent informants in order to arrest as many as six innocent people.

The Times focuses on the cases of Jeffrey Herring, Eugene Moore, and John Hooper, all of whom were arrested by some of the same officers on gun charges that involved tips from anonymous informants. The Times lays out some other similarities:

Each gun was found in a plastic bag or a handkerchief, with no traces of the suspect's fingerprints. Prosecutors and the police did not mention a confidential informer until months after the arrests. None of the informers have come forward, even when defense lawyers and judges have requested they appear in court.

Taken individually, the cases seem to be routine examples of differences between the police account of an arrest and that of the person arrested. But taken together, the cases — along with other gun arrests made in the precinct by these officers — suggest a pattern of questionable police conduct and tactics.

Moore's charges were dismissed after he spent a year in jail—he could not afford bail—because a judge found Detective Gregory Jean-Baptiste, one of the arresting officers, to be "extremely evasive" and not a credible witness.

Hooper was also arrested by Jean-Baptiste and Sergeant Vassilios Aidiniou, another of the arresting officers in Moore's case, as well as Lieutenant Edward Babington. He too spent almost a year in jail before entering a guilty plea with a sentence of time served. Prosecutors did not bring the informer who supposedly tipped cops off to Moore's gun to court, and Justice Guy J. Mangano said this of Jean-Baptiste's testimony:

"Supposedly this defendant doesn't see the police coming, but elects out of nowhere to take the object out of his pants pocket and dump it in a garbage can?" Justice Guy J. Mangano said. "I find it incredible that they thought it was a gun."

Court proceedings in Herring's case have not yet concluded; he is scheduled to appear at State Supreme Court in Brooklyn Monday. Babington, Jean-Baptiste, and Aidiniou all participated in his arrest, and despite being ordered by a judge to do so, prosecutors have not yet produced the informant who allegedly called in Herring's gun.

An NYPD spokesman told the Times that the department's Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating the officers' conduct. Debora Silberman, Herring's attorney, speculated that the cops may have fabricated the arrests in order to meet quotas, along with an even more sinister reason: The NYPD's Operation Gun Stop program awards $1000 to informers whose tips lead to a gun arrest—if those confidential informers weren't real, the officers could have taken the money for themselves.

[Image via Dave Hosford/Flickr]

IF a man has walked the stony path and IF he has seen the rising sun and IF he has sipped from the frigid waters and IF he has trod upon the rolling hills THEN and ONLY THEN may he—Eric? Eric. I'm literally doing a thing, right here. Stop.

The koan: "Publishing the Sutras"

Tetsugen, a devotee of Zen in Japan, decided to publish the sutras, which at that time were available only in Chinese. The books were to be printed with wood blocks in an edition of seven thousand copies, a tremendous undertaking.

Tetsugen began by traveling and collecting donations for this purpose. A few sympathizers would give him a hundred pieces of gold, but most of the time he received only small coins. He thanked each donor with equal gratitude. After ten years Tetsugen had enough money to begin his task.

It happened that at that time the Uji Rive overflowed. Famine followed. Tetsugen took the funds he had collected for the books and spent them to save others from starvation. Then he began again his work of collecting.

Several years afterwards an epidemic spread over the country. Tetsugen again gave away what he had collected, to help his people. For a third time he started his work, and after twenty years his wish was fulfilled. The printing blocks which produced the first edition of sutras can be seen today in the Obaku monastery in Kyoto.

The Japanese tell their children that Tetsugen made three sets of sutras, and that the first two invisible sets surpass even the last.

The enlightenment: "This guy had the right idea," said Stephen King.

"He sure did" said John, G-something, who wrote all those lawyer books.

"Yes he did," agreed the lady who wrote Eat Pray Love.

"It's settled then" said Mark Twain. "Instead of publishing any more of our books we're gonna stop doing that and give all the money to the needy instead."

And so they did. Many lives were saved. And did people miss all the books? Not at all. They just read all the books that were already out there, big deal.

At that, he looked up at the calendar... it was Christmas day. [The end]

This has been "Zen Koans Explained." Step in the hole.

[Photo: Shutterstock]

At least three people were injured today during a shooting outside Rosemary Anderson high school in Portland, Oregon. KGW's Mark Hanrahan reports that the victims—two boys and one girl—were all alive when they were taken to the hospital.

All three victims were conscious and breathing at the scene said @PortlandPolice. #Npdxshooting

— The Oregonian (@Oregonian) December 12, 2014

Three victims in school shooting all students shot outside roseMary Anderson hs and ran in.

— Tim Gordon (@TimGordonKGW) December 12, 2014

In a hilarious blow to the credibility of an ex-gay organization, a billboard purporting to depict "identical twins: one gay, one not" actual features the same model twice. He is gay, and both of him were born that way.

South African model Kyle Roux reached out to NBC 12 in Richmond, VA, to respond to his image being used on a billboard that sits on I-95 in Richmond. The sign is an advertisement for Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and it claims, "Nobody Is Born Gay."

"It just seems like there no place in today's world for an organization that is promoting this as being some kind of deviant or distasteful lifestyle, because I've lived my life openly gay and happy for my entire life," said Roux, who posed for the pictures about 10 years ago. They were available for use as stock photos.

You can watch the NBC 12 report here.

A PFOX representative responded with a bunch of slimy lies similar to the ones found on the billboard. "The issue isn't the photo on a the billboard, but the actual science," said PFOX board member and counselor Chris Doyle.

[H/T Raw Story]

Occasionally, against all odds, you'll see an interesting or even enjoyable picture on the Internet. But is it worth sharing, or just another Photoshop job that belongs in the digital trash heap? Check in here and find out if that viral photo deserves an enthusiastic "forward" or a pitiless "delete."

Image via Twitter

DELETE

In which the @HarvardHBS professor just couldn’t let it go… http://t.co/Sj9wvNFr1I pic.twitter.com/aqqN1uZqsK

— Howard Riefs (@hriefs) December 11, 2014

Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman provided the Internet Mockery Machine with a perfect target this week when he prickishly harassed a Boston-area Chinese restaurant over a $4 bill discrepancy. By Tuesday evening, Edelman's asshole behavior against Sichuan Garden had been exposed, pilloried and apologized for, when the incident suddenly took a dark, racial turn.

On that day, Sichuan Garden received the above super racist email, purportedly from Edelman, which Boston.com published under the headline, "Ben Edelman Appears to Have Sent Racist Email to Chinese Restaurant Owner. Today." As quickly became clear, however, the message came from the restaurant's contact form (on which anyone could present themselves as "Ben" at "ben@benedelman.org") and not the professor's actual email account.

Late Tuesday night, Boston.com pulled the story, replacing it with a note reading, "We cannot verify that Edelman, in fact, sent the email." Edelman himself denied sending the stupid racist joke, telling The Boston Herald, "To my eye, the emails look like obvious counterfeits — formatting different from genuine emails from me, plus not the kind of thing I'd write. So far as I know Boston.com didn't try to confirm their authenticity before posting them."

DELETE

German and British troops forgot about the war for a moment and played football in the Christmas Truce of 1914 in WW. pic.twitter.com/W4bogQHzOq

— ClassicPics (@History_Pics) December 9, 2014

As first pointed out by @PicPedant and explained in depth by Factually, this supposed Germans vs. Brits football photo is of an entirely different group of war-bros chilling Top Gun-style. Part of Britain's "MINISTRY OF INFORMATION FIRST WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION," pictured here are members of the Royal Army Service Corps footing around in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1915.

DELETE

According to National Geographic, this is what the average human will look like in 2050: pic.twitter.com/F7WDQPt81W

— Globe Pics (@Globe_Pics) December 8, 2014

Thousands of horny Redditors celebrated this picture of 2050's "average human" when it showed up online this week, furiously upvoting the image. Unfortunately, even our most optimistic futurists haven't actually predicted a Rashida Jones planet.

In reality, this photo was one many of portraits of real people taken for a October 2013 National Geographic feature highlighting our nation's mixed-race future, which, collectively, illustrated the increasing number of multiethnic Americans (with no specific year mentioned).

The misconception presumably came from a misleading Mic story titled "National Geographic Determined What Americans Will Look Like in 2050, and It's Beautiful," an article that could have just as accurately used a photo of Louis C.K.

DELETE

When this wonderful engagement announcement for "Buffalo Custardbath" went viral yesterday, sites across the Internet vaguely credited it to an unnamed "Australian newspaper." But that shortchanges the actual authors, attendees of the University of Sheffield who wrote the piece for the satire section of their student newspaper, Forge Press.

According to one student editor, however, the paper's staff is taking the misattribution pretty well, reportedly "enjoying the mythology arising from this piece."

Image via Twitter

DELETE

And here's a pregnant ferret pic.twitter.com/ahe7ZgltXl

— bruh (@xcatzz) December 8, 2014

This one's actually pretty sad, so you're probably better off just trusting me when I say everything on the Internet was fake and horrible this week and you should stop reading here.

For the morbidly curious, the real cause of this ferret's grossly distended belly wasn't widdle baby weasels as originally claimed on Reddit, but fluid build up related to a partial heart collapse, an apparently fatal condition.

Below is a picture of an actual pregnant ferret, which, Leeder9000 helpfully notes, "Still looks like a ball sack."

Image via Imgur

Looking forward to a warm night in with someone you are super comfortable around? Crack open some wine and enjoy these recently added streaming delights, selected specifically for you the consumer.

NEW MOVIES ON PRIME

• Thanks For Sharing (2013)—Horny Gwyneth Paltrow will do anything for the d, even turning Mark Ruffalo's life into a horrific, sexual grand guignol.
• The Addams Family (1991)—Pretty good, but especially good if you watch it right before the second one.
• Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues or, if you are into things that are good, Airplane!
• The Fifth Element (1997)—Classic French cinema that isn't afraid to get political; also known as the superheroic origin story of Adam Devine, from the Comedy Central series Workaholics. Guest-stars a young Sam Smith as the alien Diva.
• Koko look Good Will Hunting (1998), Hook (1991), Jumanji (1995). Koko look Jumanji.
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory—This 1971 story of nepotism, class warfare and slavery falls smack in the middle of Edward Heath's time as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but is still relevant today.
• Annie (1982)—The real one. You know what I mean.
• Life After Beth (2014)—Stars the greatest actor of our generation, Dane DeHaan, along with Grumpy the Cat as the voice of disaffected zombie Aubrey Plaza.
• Jerry Maguire—1996 prequel to 2014's Gone Girl; lauded at the time both for Bonnie Hunt's performance and its chilling portrayal of a doomed marriage to a sociopath.

NEW TV ON PRIME

• American Horror Story: Coven joins Asylum and Murder House
• Both seasons of Vikings (ten more episodes ordered for 2015)
• Seasons 1-4 of Downton Abbey (Season Five airs soon in the US) and Teen Wolf
• The most recent seasons of Broad City, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Key & Peele, The League, Parks & Recreation and Inside Amy Schumer
• The first seasons of the three best sophomore dramas on television: The Americans, returning at the end of January, and Hannibal and Orphan Black, expected later into the spring. Really highly recommend finally sitting down and taking those on.

HULU+

Always forgetting the Criterion thing. No great new shows have been added lately, but if you're in the mood for some childhood memories, here are three very spooky movies.

• Watership Down (1978)—A retelling of the Aeneid, this intense story about rabbits inspired the religion of Stevie Nicks. The original Greek tale contained no rabbits, but did feature recording artist and Eminem frenemy Dido.
• Breaking the Waves (1996)—A filmic version of Gilberto Hernandez's classic tale of Palomar, "Human Diastrophism." Made before whatever happened to Lars von Trier to make him like he is now.
• Scanners (1981)—This satirical tale about people with exploding heads was director David Cronenberg's seventh feature, but remains his most Canadian.

NETFLIX

• La Bare is Joe Mangianello's crucial documentary proving that he's about a lot more than just muscles and male strippers. But whoops, it is about exactly those same things!
• I've been told Nick Offerman: American Ham is less of the standup I didn't think it was going to be, and more of the one-man "humorist" show I was terrified it was going to be. Buckle in for some rope tricks—and maybe a melody or two, about the issues of the day!
• Bill Burr: I'm Sorry You Feel That Way is the latest Netflix standup special. I don't care for Bill Burr, and so am forced to accept his apology.
• 30 for 30's always good, but very few are Tonya Harding good. Recently they released what I would call an instant classic even for them, "Brian & the Boz." Watch immediately.
• I feel like Labyrinth was gone for a while, but either way it's back now. Revisit this classic tale of The Penis in Your Face, and The Goth Chick Who Went Up an Asshole But Came Down Marginally Less of an Asshole.

[Image via]

Previous editions of the Weekend Stream are here. You live in the future now! Almost any media you can think of, you can find from the chair you're sitting in. Even if you can't, take comfort in the fact that the amount of things you can't find online will never go up: Only down. In that spirit, Morning After asks: What are you streaming this weekend?

Here's a lovely photograph of a sorority girl from the University of Maryland celebrating her 21st birthday in the traditional way—with a fun, alcohol-themed cake that's piled with mini-bottles, Blue Moon, and shitty wine and adorned with the inscription "suck a nigga dick." Wait, what was that last thing again?

The racist cake, allegedly inspired by the Three Six Mafia track of the same name—and definitely not by the Lil Wayne line "suck a nigga dick for some Trukfit" (stop trying to make Trukfit happen, Weezy)—has already earned condemnation from the school's Greek Life department, the Black Student Union, and even the Delta Gamma Sorority.

The DGs threw the original poster of the photo under the bus in a Facebook post that attempted to distance the chapter from #suckaniggadickgate with as much haste as possible:

We have become aware of an unacceptable Instagram post by a member of our chapter. The Fraternity volunteers and staff are working with our chapter at the University of Maryland at this time to hold this member accountable. Delta Gamma Fraternity is a dynamic organization committed to diversity and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religious affiliation, color, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, marital status or physical disability. All efforts are in place to guarantee those selected for membership are committed to living our values. Delta Gamma stands for high ideals of friendship, promoting cultural and educational interests, a true sense of social responsibility and developing the best qualities of character.

The Instagram photo had 77 likes when the most-shared screenshot was taken. I can't imagine any of those were from Delta Gamma members, who epitomize social responsibility and quality of character. That would be absurd.

Incidentally, Delta Gamma at UMD is the same chapter that gave us Rebecca "Cunt Punt" Martinson, possibly the greatest composer of deranged email missives in the history of the U.S. sorority system.

It's nice(?) to see them carrying on the proud(?) tradition of using technology to make huge mistakes even huger.

[h/t BroBible]

Listen, drinking all night is not healthy. But it's holiday party season, that perfect storm of open bar and all of your colleagues waiting to see who will be this year's obnoxious, puking, passed out and/or dead person at the party. Don't be that guy.

After alcohol is swallowed, it is absorbed primarily from the small intestine into the veins that collect blood from the stomach and bowels and from the portal vein, which leads to the liver. From there it is carried to the liver, where it is exposed to enzymes and metabolized... BAC [Blood-Alcohol Content] is influenced by environmental factors (such as the rate of alcohol drinking, the presence of food in the stomach, and the type of alcoholic beverage) and genetic factors (variations in the principal alcohol-metabolizing enzymes alcohol dehydrogenase [ADH] and aldehyde dehydrogenase [ALDH2]).

Got it? Good. Now some tips.

Pace Yourself

Duh. Drinking throughout a long party should be approached as an endurance event. You are literally slowly poisoning yourself for hours on end and seeing how long you can take it. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Listening to your body is the number one most important thing. If it tells you, "I've had enough," well, you had a good run, but you need to stop, because you could do some serious damage. However, your body may send the message, "Just gimme another 15 minutes. I'm still working on that last one," in which case, game on. Respect those messages, though, and do your best to listen for them.

Maximum Volume, Minimum Impact

ABV (alcohol by volume) is critical here. The lower the better. Continuing the metaphor from the last section, this is a marathon. Sipping beer (typically 6 percent ABV) is a slow, steady jog that is more likely to get you to the finish line. Taking a shot of whiskey (typically 40 percent ABV) is like doing a 100-yard dash as fast as you can in the middle of said marathon. You're going to blow yourself out too quickly, and very well might not finish unless you slow way down immediately afterward.

Yes, I know this is problematic for those of us who love sipping on whiskey. It's delicious, it's classy, it makes you feel like John Hamm. Sure, but taking tiny little sips is hard to do. Especially when you start getting thirsty from standing around for so long, or because you want to do something with your hands to fill the gap in an awkward conversation. It can be done, but it takes great self-restraint. If you're going to do it, try to drink it in tandem with a glass of water, at least, and remember, slow and steady wins the race.

Eat

This is absolutely essential. Drinking on an empty stomach is a recipe for disaster. Blackouts, blood-poisoning, all kinds of bad shit. It's a rookie mistake—don't ever, ever do it. Ever! You need to eat and we're not talking about potato chips—real meals. You have the entire day to prepare.

Start with a big, hearty breakfast. As mentioned, alcohol is primarily absorbed in the small intestine. You know what else is? Complex carbohydrates. Fuel up with a breakfast of whole-wheat pancakes, or oatmeal, but don't stop there. Because BAC is affected by gastric emptying rates, put something more substantial in there, like ham and eggs. Proteins and fats take longer to digest, so they'll stay with you longer and continue to work their anti-spins magic. Cheeseburgers are a superfood in this sport.

Keep eating once you get to the party, too, and do not stop. Not only will keeping plenty of food in your stomach slow the rate of alcohol absorption, but it will make you feel full, which will encourage you to drink slower.

Drinking stuff that fills you up will help, too. Again, beer is great for this. Y'know what else is? Egg nog. If you can control how much alcohol goes into it, then you've got yourself a hearty (yet appropriately festive) drink that will slow down the rest of the booze you're drinking. Just go light on the booze.

Rehydrate

Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it makes you pee more, which can lead to dehydration (one of the major causes of getting sick from drinking, and also of hangovers). Water is your friend. Not soft drinks, not fizzy water, water. Aim to have once glass of water for every alcoholic beverage you consume. It's hard to do it, and you will pee quite a lot, but try.

Hydration is absolutely critical for maintaining proper brain function. The more you dry out, the more your head will hurt and the harder thinking straight will become, and that will lead you down a nasty path very quickly. Do you want to tell your secret office crush that you've loved them for years and would do anything for just one night with them? No? Then definitely drink as much water as you can throughout the night.

Sleep

Have you ever noticed that when you're tired, one beer can hit you like it was three? There are a number of contributing factors here. Part of it is just that when you're tired, thinking clearly is more difficult. Ever heard the phrase "sleep drunk?" The symptoms of exhaustion can manifest themselves in a manner similar to drunkenness. Adding alcohol to the equation only amplifies this effect. But there's something else going on as well. According to the University of Rochester:

General fatigue or tiredness will lead to a higher BAC than normal as one's liver is less efficient at processing and/or eliminating alcohol when one's general energy level is low. Furthermore, as alcohol is a depressant, consuming alcohol when tired will, in general, simply increase one's level of tiredness while magnifying alcohol's traditional effects.

Extreme tiredness = pass out = you lose. If you know you're in for a long night of drinking, get as much sleep as possible the night before.

Stay Cool

Heat and alcohol are not a good combination. The U.S. Army agrees, that alcohol "raises the body's blood pressure, increasing the risk of a heat-related illness like hyperthermia (over heating) and heat stroke (especially for people with high blood pressure)."

Plus, when you're hot you sweat more and need more water to maintain equilibrium. Because alcohol is a diuretic and you're already losing a lot of fluids, this is a bad combo. Heat can also exacerbate the symptoms of drunkenness. Yeah, it's December, but a lot of holiday parties really crank up the heat inside. Keep checking in with your core temp, and stand by a window to get some fresh air when you need it.

Supplements

When you're pissing like a goat every ten minutes, you aren't just losing water, you're losing some important nutrients. In order to avoid painful hangovers (which may start long before the day is over) it's important to replenish these nutrients. B vitamins are one of the first things alcohol depletes you of. There are plenty of foods that are a good course of B vitamins, or you could pop a B-Complex.

You're also going to needs some electrolytes. While sports drinks like Gatorade are supposedly electrolyte-balanced to help with rehydration, but they also have a lot of sugar. You know what's better? Those little pouches of Emergen-C. They're cheap, it's easy to keep a few in your pocket, AND they have all the B vitamins you need. Epic win. Look for drinks with plenty of potassium in them, too, since that's one of the first things to go (Gatorade typically only gives you 2-percent of your RDA for potassium—you can do better).

Now, some also recommend taking aspirin as you drink (do not exceed recommended doses). Aspirin has been show to interfere with the action of alcohol dehydrogenases, thus slowing down the rate of absorption. While it may keep you sober longer, there is potential for harmful interaction, so we do not recommend this. Using Tylenol (acetaminophen) is a definite DON'T as you can really damage your liver. In fact, it's best to stay away from any NSAIDS while drinking. A hangover the next day is far preferable to organ damage.

Many people choose to caffeinate while drinking. It's true that it will keep you more alert, but it will not keep you more sober. In fact, this goes against the "listen to your body rule," because you are artificially tricking it into thinking it's better off than it is. This can lead to too much drinking, too fast, and serious black-out experiences. Also, caffeine is a diuretic, like alcohol, so it will further dehydrate you. We're not saying we never do this, we're just saying that you should be extra, extra careful when you do. Four Loko was banned for a reason.

Above All, Think

Again, exercise judgement here. We understand that sometimes you want to cut loose, but don't hurt yourself or others. Have your fun, but stay safe, and make sure you're alive (and still employed) in the morning.

Illustration by Tara Jacoby

Deadspin How CBS And The NFL Teamed Up To Screw Wheel Of Fortune And Jeopardy! | Gizmodo Another Torrent Site Has Resurrected the Pirate Bay | io9 The Real Story Of Apollo 17... And Why We Never Went Back To The Moon | Jezebel Shade Court: A Royal Eye Roll, Self-Shade and Netflix Tries It | Kinja Popular Posts

This weekend on TV Barbara Walters tells you which exactly ten people are fascinating, the Newsroom finally ends as gracefully as it ran, Homeland hits its penultimate hour, and two great Fox comedies head into the winter break.

FRIDAY

At 8/7c., The Amazing Racers are "Hooping It Up" in Manila, while on ABC both Last Man Standing and Cristela come to their fall finales.

AT 9/8c.

• Grimm meets the Chupacabra, Hawaii Five-0 takes a "Ke Koho Mamao Aku," or "Longshot," and three more episodes of Legend of Korra get us almost caught up to the online schedule before next week's 90-minute finale.
• In TNT's Wake Up Call, The Rock and the President of the UFC try to save teens from themselves through a mixture of martial arts. You had me at The Rock! That guy's great.
• Also on TLC this crap is happening:

Since 1984, Bob Pranga—aka Dr. Christmas—and his partner Debi Staron have operated a holiday decorating company in LA that provides custom Christmas and special events design and décor for everyone from "the house next door" to celebrity clientele and businesses... In the hour-long special Deck The Halls With Dr. Christmas ... they transform Hollywood homes into remarkable winter wonderlands.

This year it's the houses of Mario Lopez, Brooke Burke-Charvet, and Alison Sweeney, who are two of my greatest enemies and one of my favorite people but I will never say which is which.

• Showtime's got a documentary about the making of Nas's 1994 debut Illmatic, which Wikipedia—the illest of all pedias—helpfully explains "features multi-syllabic internal rhymes." In reality, a show is called Wives With Knives. Run for your lives! The wives got knives!
• Kendra continues to tell the "Untold Story" behind being On Top, and
• Shark Tank shows you what it is like to eat a dream: Sometimes it's arbitrary, done solely for the ecstasy of annihilating the dreamer, other times you grow fat upon the dream. But no matter how many dreams you eat, my shark friend, you will never leave your tank.

AT 10/9c.

• If you are the kind of person who watches AHC and/or H2, that must be what you mostly watch. So it's tough on Fridays when you have to decide between Ancient Assassins and Brad Meltzer's crackpot Lost History. Luckily, the former ends tonight with "The Sicarii," a very good sect among assassin sects in my opinion, and that's versus the Moon Landing, which is low-hanging fruit. Even lower-hanging if you know it was staged in Burbank, which I believe, but will have to check, is closer to sea level than the Moon.
• Momsters: When Moms Go Bad is about sex work this week, so whatever, because LMN's I Survived returns with the story of some ladies who survived some very vaguely horrible things that I didn't care to look into further.
• My favorite member of Constantine's Newcastle crew, Sister Anne Marie, finally shows up and sends John and Chas to Mexico City. More importantly, she is played by someone named Claire van der Boom. Vanderwhat? Van der BOOM!

At 11/10c. on IFC, Eric Andre wears "A Cat Collage Shirt & Sneakers" on Comedy Bang! Bang!, which sounds about right, before a new Birthday Boys.

SATURDAY

At 8/7c. you have your choice of original telefilms with Christmas spirit: Hallmark's Best Christmas Party Ever in which legitimate hotties Torrey DeVitto and Steve Lund fight over a party-planning business so hard they fall in love, versus Lifetime's vastly less interesting The Santa Con, in which Barry Watson pretends to be Santa Claus to fuck Melissa Joan Hart. No way does that sound good! I would have thought they were on opposite networks. I would have failed that quizlet for sure.

AT 9/8c.

• Fatal Vows is the ID show where the team of experts explain why divorces get so ugly that eventually there is a murder
• America Unearthed is the AHC show where the team of experts dig under America, through the loamy earth, down through the mantle and into the core, in an attempt to prove something about pirates usually
• The Missing is that Starz show where the kid is missing and no amount of experts will make him cut it out
• 30 for 30 is the only interesting thing about sports but it's always really interesting so you are not missing out by sticking just to 30 for 30, whose fall finale is tonight but don't let that stop you from going back and watching the random ones on Netflix that are constantly going away and coming back again
• And finally I'm sorry to say that Ghost Inside My Child which was once my favorite LMN show based entirely on episode titles, has run aground: "Twin Tragedy & Family Agony" doesn't even rhyme
• Nas would be so disappointed
• 30 for 30 should do a special episode because Ghost Inside My Child, you just "dropped" the "ball."

At 10/9c. ID's I'd Kill For You, which is about people that would kill for others, is entitled "Texas Black Magic," which is what I call my most secret sexual technique, but be forewarned it could send you to the ER just like in TLC's program Sex Sent Me to the ER, in which this week people are sent to the ER by the kind of sex known as "Holiday Hanky-Panky." Then at 10:30 it's the recently renewed Black Dynamite on Adult Swim, and an hour after that, Saturday Night Live with Martin Freeman and Charli XCX.

Sherlock. Hobbits. Fargo. Sexy Fun Teen Cancer. <— These are things a very good episode of SNL would be made of, if this season didn't suck balls. Last week was the best one so far, but still not great. And yet I still believe, I go on believing. Indefatigably. It seems to me that this could be Lorne Michaels being vindictive: Fine, you don't like the way I do things? Here's my mean "Network" version of what I'm disingenuously pretending to think you were asking for.

SUNDAY

At 7:00 PM, ABC takes you backstage for 20 years of Disney on Broadway—two things America just loves!—while Travel Channel gives you two more things, in the form of specials Christmastown USA, which is about a store and not a town at all, and its somewhat derivative sequel More Christmastown USA. Finally, TLC jumps on the "fake documentary about stupid shit" bandwagon that brought us a million Discovery exposés on mermaids, dragons and ethics in videogame journalism with the two-hour Secret Santa, which blows up Santa's spot but good.

AT 8:00 PM

• Speaking of things that are not actually for grownups, Once Upon a Time goes through Disney's garbage once again, producing well-known fairytale characters like Cruella de Ville for next half-season's sophisticated romp now that Frozen has been irretrievably soiled, and The Librarians branches out from being about King Arthur to being about the Cretan Minotaur.
• In other fairytales, Undercover Boss—the show that takes CEOs down a notch—returns tonight, so you can put down your pitchforks and hammers and sickles already because the Boss is back Undercover and could be watching you.
• Rev Run's Sunday Suppers on Cooking Channel brings us "Rev Run's Happy Holidays," which is fitting, since it's Sunday, and since the holidays are upon us.
• Hallmark's The Christmas Parade stars certified hotties AnnaLynne McCord and Jefferson Brown as your typical business-class bitch and typical scarf-wearing artist who throw a parade—and each other!—for Christmas.
• On Travel Channel's Trip Flip: Hobbit Adventure, an unsuspecting couple is sent on a surprise trip to Middle Earth, where they will battle orcs, get gay on a mountaintop, and find themselves tempted by the One Ring, Isildur's Bane.
• On Real Housewives Of Atlanta, essentially the same deal.

At 8:30 and 9:30 respectively, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Bob's Burgers have their fall finales. Of particular note: The latter episode is entitled "Tina Tailor Soldier Spy."

At 9:00 PM

• Newsroom is ending, finally, without my having seen more than twenty total minutes of it; I don't say that to be whatever, but just to say that if you enjoyed the show, I am sorry it's ending, unless you think it's the right time to end, in which case I am happy you are satisfied.
• Homeland and The Affair will end their seasons next week; both are already renewed.
• There's also 90 Day Fiancé on TLC, but honestly the oft-retired Barbara Walters presenting her 10 Most Fascinating People Of 2014 is where all eyes will be.

Here's the lineup:

• Very fascinating bajillionaires David Koch and Elon Musk
  
• America's fascinating, befuddled morning husband Michael Strahan
  
• Fascinatingly gay-married close-up magician Neil Patrick Harris
  
• Fascinating alien life forms/recording artists Scarlett Johansson and Taylor Swift
  
• Three fascinating people that are a secret
  
• And Oprah Winfrey, who has ceased to fascinate Barbara Walters, to the point of being kind of a bitch about it: "The challenge with Oprah is to try and find new things that she hasn't talked about," says Walters. Good luck with that, Babs!
  

Who are the other three people? My guess: Edward Snowden, either Jennifer Lawrence or Darren Wilson but not both, and Sofia Vergara.

If I were to say the most fascinating people of 2014, Oprah and Taylor Swift would be on that list, yes. And Amy Dunne for sure. Or if she is not real, Allison Williams.

At 10/9c. it's basically Comeback and the Getting On finale, that's honestly it.

I mean my favorite channel, the American Hero Channel, is doing a special on the secrets of that American Hero, The Biblical Moses, but I don't really want to end my weekend that way, surprisingly enough. I can save that for later in the week. Mostly I just want Barbara Walters to get up somebody's ass about if they are really bisexual, which is still my favorite thing I have ever seen involving Lady Gaga.

Babs: "Okay but aren't you just speaking for queer people, like any other straight person bruiting your privilege around? Aren't you just the new Margaret Cho?"
Gaga: "Like Margaret Cho and everyone on Tumblr, I am bisexual. In my imagination."
Babs: "But how does your internal feeling of queerness earn you the right to profit from, much less speak for, anyone else's actual lived experience?"
Gaga: "Kathy Griffin makes it work okay. Look, I feel like you want to me to lie. I feel like you're trying to Azealia Banks me."
Babs: "Lady Gaga, I was born at night, but it wasn't last night. It was hundreds of thousands of years ago. Stop fucking around and ante up. Have you lain with woman."
Gaga: "Like what base?"
Babs: "Like all the way. Like, quid pro quo."
Gaga: "Well..."
Babs: "I am fucking Barbara Walters. I will know if you're lying."

So good. See you Monday.

Morning After is a surprise trip to Middle Earth for grown-up television discussion and appreciation, brought to you by Gawker. What are you watching this weekend? What are we missing out on? Recommendations and discussions down below.