At a press conference this afternoon, Mayor de Blasio asked activists protesting the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown to put their demonstrations on hold until after this weekend, when Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu—the two NYPD officers shot to death on Saturday—will be buried.

"It's important that regardless of people's viewpoints that everyone step back," de Blasio said. "It's a time for everyone to put aside political debates, put aside protests, put aside all of the things that we will talk about in all due time."

"Our first obligation is to respect these families," he added. "Our first obligation is to stand by them in every way we can. And I call upon everyone to focus on these families in these next days

The mayor also took issue with the media, blaming reporters for highlighting the small groups of protestors calling for or supporting violence.

“They, my friend, are not the majority," @BilldeBlasio says of anti-cop protesters. "Stop portraying them as the majority.”

— Tina Moore (@NYDNTinaMoore) December 22, 2014

De Blasio says protesters who do KKK chants are not the majority, are just "the few who want conflict." To press: "You guys enable that."

— Danielle Tcholakian (@danielleiat) December 22, 2014

Police commissioner Bill Bratton admitted that some NYPD officers—and their unions—had lost faith in the mayor, though he defended their actions as standard.

Bill Bratton: "can you point to me one mayor who has not been battling with the police unions in the last 50 years? Not one."

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) December 22, 2014

Bratton also confirmed reports that Ismaaiyl Brinsley—the man who killed Ramos and Liu—attended an Eric Garner protest in New York City.

Brinsley was at a Union Square protest, but just watching, Bratton and Boyce say.

— Danielle Tcholakian (@danielleiat) December 22, 2014

[Image via AP]

It has not been the most splendid holiday season for Madonna, who had an entire album's worth of new songs leak last week. Nonetheless, she appears to still be in the Christmas spirit. Above you see the lone Christmas decoration outside her mansion on 81st Street in Manhattan: a wreath with dangling chrome letters spelling out the phrase "DAT ASS."

Below you can see a wide angle shot, sent along with the close-up by a tipster, showing the wreath against a gate that guards her $32 million compound:

It looks like Santa will have a special kind of snack this year. (Madonna's ass.)

A video file by the name of "2 guys 1 fish" is making its way around Twitter today. The video depicts a man receiving oral sex from a large fish. If you want to watch the video—which, let's be clear, depicts what is almost certainly an illegal act of animal abuse—it is located here. If you don't want to watch, but want to be familiar with the events contained therein, here's a description of the act.

The video takes place in a shallow, almost marshy expanse of brown, mucky water. Turbidity has reduced water visibility to almost nil. Kneeling in the water is a shirtless male wearing only a backwards baseball cap and swim trunks of some sort. Across from him is another male, who is guiding the fish onto the man's genitals, as one might load bag of groceries into the back of a Volvo.

The fish is really going for it, rapidly moving back and forth with the man's penis in its gullet with a motion that can only be described as "sucking hard." The fish—species unknown—is only partially submerged. Its fins are flapping. A sound coming from the male receiving fellatio indicates he's deriving sexual pleasure from the experience, perhaps rivaling that of a man with a human woman. The gender of the fish cannot be derived from the video.

The quality of the video is very low. It is grainy. There is sound, though mostly splashing, giggling, soft moans, and comments in a conversation that is not English. It's unclear if the man or fish achieve climax.

This is what happens in "2 guys 1 fish."

h/t the perverts at The Daily Dot

Previously: If You Don't Want To Watch A Guy Fuck A Snake, Here's A Description

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Earlier today, Eric Garner's daughter visited the memorial for Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, the two NYPD officers killed on Saturday. "I just had to come out and let their family know that we stand with them, and I'm going to send my prayers and condolences to all the families who are suffering through this tragedy," Emerald Garner told ABC News.

"I don't feel conflicted because I was never anti-police," Garner, whose unarmed father was choked to death by an NYPD officer this summer, added. "Like I said before, I have family that's in the NYPD that I've grown up around, family reunions and everything so my family you know, we're not anti-police."

Tonight we've got more tiny homes than you can shake a regular-sized stick at, Christmas wars, the ageless beauty of the Beaten Generation and some randos named Kennedy. Do not be alarmed.

AT 8/7c.

• E! has a special that they are calling The Kennedy Wedding but do not be fooled, they're just random people that don't matter. E!'s version of the Kennedy Honors is just feeding ducks in the parking lot of a Chuck E. Cheese's. E!'s version of a Schriver is dating Miley Cyrus.
• But best wishes to the happy Kennedy couple, Jason and Lauren, of the E! family and not the Kennedy family.
• ABC's Great Christmas Light Fight finally comes to an end, as the remaining families receive their harshest criticism yet, from an old man that cannot see and hates the fuck out of Christmas. Whose display will be bright enough to win his approval? And what will happen when his identity is revealed? For it was Johnny Knoxville all along, playing his loveably irascible "Blind Grampy" character. A miracle of sorts.
• On PBS, it's the redundantly titled Antiques Roadshow: The Boomer Years. Old people just put your junk away, okay. If it was worth anything you'd know. Stop looking for a get-rich-quick scheme, an easy shortcut to riches: That's how the S&L crisis happened. You didn't start the fire, we get it already.
• Also at 8:30, Mike & Molly is titled "Tis the Season to Be Molly," which pisses me of I don't even know why.

AT 9/8c.

• Did you ever wonder what would happen if Guy Fieri pushed it all the way and just went ahead and became spectacular? Let's check in on that fresh concept tonight on the Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives: Southern Spectacular.
• Major Crimes has a "Chain Reaction," not unlike what happens when you watch
• Two hours of Bravo morons, Vanderpump Rules and Euros of Hollywood, or
• FYI's triple threat of comfortingly tiny homes, first with the season premiere of Tiny House Nation and two-episode premiere of the new show Tiny House Hunting, in which adorable tiny-yet-livable houses are tracked, stalked, and murdered for their precious pelts.

In a just world there would be as many or more shows about tiny homes than there are about cake. That's just my honest opinion. I don't care about cake, but I do care deeply about seeing things and people arranged aesthetically into perfect spaces. What can you do with a cake? Just wreck it. Just take something beautiful and shove it in your face and masticate it. What can you do with a perfect tiny space? Sit very still forever, part of an intricate design, clean and without end, combining form and function. A place for everything, and everything in its place, forever and ever, amen. End of a cake show: That cake is gone, like it was never there. End of a tiny house? That tiny tale—or should I say story—is only just beginning.

AT 10/9c.

• Anger Management has some easy to understand episodes happening at this time: "Charlie & the Sexy Swing Vote," in which Charlie learns about hard and soft limits, safe words, and the extremes of pain and pleasure when you are fucking the state of Iowa, and "Charlie & the 100th Episode," in which Charlie Sheen does something vile to women for the 1,000th time and we all shower him with money and attention for his behavior.
• My Strange Criminal Addiction continues to be a strange addition of the legal kind with "Eye of the Beholder," which I can only imagine is about one of those pee-pee/poo-poo men they always find lurking in the toiletry of state parks across our great nation.
• NBC's State of Affairs fall finale finds Secretary Charlie in over her head, because she is a peeping tom who has hidden herself in the plumbing of a national park rest station. The state of her affair this week is, the state of being in big trouble.

At 11/10c. one thing I can't imagine doing is Watching What Happens: Live when Seth Rogen and James Franco visit what will probably be a very giggly, not to say thirsty, Andy Cohen.

Around midnight Netflix introduces its new biggest thing ever, a ten-episode dramedy called Mozart in the Jungle, in which the trashy chick from Gone Girl—the one with the crack burn on her lip that is Jessa's sister in real life and they have another sister named Domino also in real life—is an oboe player who realizes that orchestra drama is next level. Not ballet drama level, but still pretty weird. About the antics of these musical prodigies and their foibles, you will be like Oboe they didn't.

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

Below is a clever video that edits together Sarah Koenig's own words for a meta critique of the divisive, just-wrapped podcast Serial. To summarize: "I don't know. We don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Kind of like I don't know. Maybe, I've never really—I don't know. I have no idea. Who knows."

Adam Goldman, creator of the web series The Outs and Whatever This Is, put this together alongside editor/co-conspirator Jake Teresi.

[Photo via WBEZ Chicago]

That big gap of space in front of a semi truck? That's not for you.

Here's how this plays out — a red Saturn pulls in front of a semi truck in the left lane to pass a trailer truck ahead in the right lane. As the Saturn comes up on the second semi, the driver gets on the brakes. The problem is that a Civic has cut into the gap in front of the semi. The Honda driver has nowhere to go as the Saturn closes is from the front and the semi can't give enough space in the back.

Here's how the trucker described the incident in this LiveLeak posting.

The girl driving the impacted car was transported to the hospital with minor injuries after she made a VERY poor decision. An 80,000 lb rig vs. your 2,000 - 4,000 lb car will result in at least your car being torn up, at worst, we are pulling your corpse out from the wreckage. Give us room to work, stay away from our rear and sides and front.

I'm not going to say that the trucker is clear of responsibility in this wreck, given that the guy looks like he was camping out in the left lane, but at a certain point it doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong.

You just don't cut off a semi.

It was "a week of tumult" and "invective" at the New York Times, the former Timeser felt, gazing over all the shattered dishware left in the wake of publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger's abrupt and controversial ouster of executive editor Jill Abramson. But there were also lessons to be learned, and hugs and pats on the back to be handed out.

"[T]hose of us who consider the paper our professional home," wrote Jane Gross, who worked for the Times in various capacities from 1979 until 2008, "had a rare opportunity to mull what the Times means to us and why."

The letter, initially intended for the newspaper's letters page, wound up getting published on Jim Romenesko's media news site. It was a treacly paean to the "tribe" of Times colleagues who, Gross wrote, "are like family even if they aren't."

Privately, though, Gross had some invective of her own for the elders of the tribe. "Question re Pinch," she wrote in a May 18 email, five days after Abramson was sent packing, "is he a moron (yes) and/or mentally disturbed (???)."

That email comes to us via the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack, which has revealed a host of embarrassing missives between the movie studio's executives, many of them involving Amy Pascal, the chair of Sony's Motion Pictures Group. And because Pascal is married to Bernie Weinraub, a playwright and former theater reporter at the New York Times, the hacks have also given us a glimpse under the Gray Lady's hoopskirt, revealing the startling degree of influence Sony wields at the Times, as well as simply showing us how Times people talk to one another when they think nobody's listening.

Take Gross, founder of the Times's New Old Age blog, where she's still an occasional contributor. In an email exchange with Weinraub, she was impatient with the coverage of Abramson's firing, particularly with the idea that it was related to her gender.

This question was prominent in the media, for good reason: Abramson hadn't been accused of professional incompetence, but was called "brusque," "difficult," and "condescending" by anonymous staffers in a Politico profile before she was fired, and Sulzberger said her departure was due to "an issue of management in the newsroom." As was widely pointed out at the time, plenty of male editors are famously "difficult," and yet manage to keep their jobs. Abramson's salary was also lower than her male predecessors. (Sulzberger answered these criticisms with a statement reiterating that her firing "had nothing to do with pay or gender.")

Gross and Weinraub agreed that newsroom gossip showed that Abramson wasn't fired because of sexism. (The exchange was forwarded to Pascal, who clearly took a keen interest in the internal politics of the Times.) From Weinraub:

my sense is:

1-jill was warned several times that she was losing control of the newsroom. she actually sounds far more out-of -control than Howell.

2-she did this weird end run to hire this Guardian type—and baquet, pinch et al, went nuts. How could she do that?

3-the feminist issue is bullshit. (is the anyone more politically correct than the boy genius publisher?)

the last Politico piece was goo [sic]

("Howell" is Howell Raines, a previous executive editor at the Times. "Baquet" is Dean Baquet, who replaced Abramson. The "boy genius publisher" refers to the 63-year-old Sulzberger.)

Gross agreed, and then some, adding that any discussion about it took away from more important feminist issues and was "lazy-minded." (The "innovation report" she refers to was an internal document leaked from the Times.)

Read Ben McGrath in NYer. Read 96 pg innovation report. See her daughter's Instagram pix of Jill in boxing gloves. I'm so sick of it I could puke. But yes yes and yes. And I've been a most unpopular woman on FB making the un-PC argument that it has nothing to do w gender and any woman who is lazy minded enuf to think so shud worry instead abt states w no abortion clinics, clinical trials w no female mice, Nigerian school girls snatched fr their classrooms etc. But bet your friend Maureen doesn't agree :-). I'm at a friend's kids softball game is more later. Question re Pinch is is he a moron (yes) and/or mentally disturbed (???). Addictive, that's for sure.

It's a bummer to see a longtime female Times writer pushing the suggestion—privately, of course—that people lack the intellectual bandwith to care about both the gender dynamics of Abramson's firing and "states w no abortion clinics." But Gross was right about one thing, and gap between her shit-talking emails and her simpering letter to the editor confirms it. The Times really is like a family.

Abramson in 2010. Image via AP

Rich: I can't believe we woke up at 6:30 in the morning to experience a live commercial for FAO Schwarz.

Caity: I can't believe all the toys weren't alive, seeing as the toy store was not yet open.

Rich: I don't think I've ever woken up so early for anything Gawker-related and I hope I never do again.

Caity: I was wearing a pajama top. Do you think the other people on our tour could tell?

The best restaurant in New York is

Breakfast with a Toy Soldier at FAO Schwarz

Menu style

Sparse buffet

Cost

$80 for admission for two

Rich: I don't think those people cared for much other than themselves. It IS Christmastime, after all.

Caity: While there is no dress code for FAO Schwarz's Breakfast with a Toy Soldier Tour, there is one firm rule: The tour begins PROMPTLY at 8:00 a.m. Guests are asked to arrive at 7:45.

Rich: We showed up at 7:55, which was a feat—we (kind of) did it! I felt a sense of victory and it wasn't even 8 am yet. You're definitely winning at life when you get to stand around a toy store and take in its many wares alongside little girls named things like Madison, Maya, and Ava.

Caity: We slunk inside the store (which wasn't locked—toy soldiers are perhaps not the best form of security) and were greeted straightaway by a freakish mutation terrifying to behold. Half toy; half man, he introduced himself as Toy Soldier Roy.

You would think that these servicemen might be unaware that they were toys or, if they were aware, perhaps a little self-conscious about it. But he was proud. I guess it's like being a member of the Swiss Guard.

Rich: We were informed that we had to take a picture with Toy Soldier Roy (on our smartphones) immediately, before the tour started, and all I could think was...What if he ends up doing a shitty job? That's like giving a musician a standing ovation for walking out on stage before playing a note. Who does Toy Soldier Roy think he is, Ani DiFranco?

Caity: The thing I appreciated the most out of the entire tour experience was that they didn't try to sell us any photos. Photos were the first and last thing they didn't try to sell us.

One minute after we had our picture snapped, the tour began. Toy Soldier Roy led our group over to a staircase on the first floor, and gestured to the enormous and terrifying flesh-colored face of FAO Schwarz's famous clock. At what I suppose must have been precisely 8 a.m. ("The first tick-tock!"), the clock burst into song. Welcome to our world! / Welcome to our world! / Welcome to our world (of toys)!

Rich: If you listen to the clock's song backward, the message is: "Throw a screaming tantrum until your parents promise to buy you exactly two of every item that you want."

Caity: I must say, the four children (all girls) on our tour were very well-behaved. Did they have the best attitudes? No, the Australian one did not. But they were well-behaved, particularly for children who had been woken at dawn to spend an hour listening to an adult tell them riddles they could not solve and jokes they often did not understand.

Rich: To hear a stranger speak over their heads and right into the pockets of their consumer parents.

Caity: We should note up top that Toy Soldier Roy was very pleasant and engaged with the children.

Rich: He was wonderful. He is very good at his job. His mustache was very twisty and the wax made me feel right at home, as if FAO Schwarz had come to Williamsburg.

Caity: You couldn't ask to be accompanied by a friendlier, more capable mercenary than Toy Soldier Roy.

Rich: He described himself as a "booger" when he stood under a pair of lights and hanging blue orb arranged to look like a face in front of the Muppet Whatnots Workshop—

Caity: He also displayed a Santa-esque talent for not only remembering, but really seeming to know everyone's names.

Rich: —That really impressed me.

Caity: The booger thing or the names thing?

Rich: Both. One bespoke deep humility, the other, considerable mental capacity.

I don't know if it was the coffee talking, but paying $99 for a customized Muppet seems like a bargain to me.

Caity: After hearing Toy Soldier Roy's take, I'm pretty sure it actually costs more for me to not customize a Muppet and take it home with me.

Rich: Toy Soldier Roy has two Muppets.

Caity: Toy Soldier Roy is a strange and delightful lunatic.

Rich: He told us he got a second one because he feared the first was lonely. I believed that story and I still do!

Caity: They let us play with pre-customized Muppets for a few minutes, so we could see how much better they felt to have in our hands than two $50-bills. That was fun for about 90 seconds and then I was like "I get it." My hand started to get tired. Jim Henson's team didn't play with Muppets for fun; that was their job.

Luckily after our Muppet hand jobs, it was time to march into FAO Schweetz: a marvelous candy paradise where my dreams came true.

Rich: Our REAL breakfast, before the pitiful breakfast they would serve us later.

In this section of the store, Toy Soldier Roy highlighted a bunch of outlandish candy for sale: a 5-pound gummy bear that he brought home and "carved like a turkey" for his nephews; a Snickers bar that was the size of a child's arm; a "cereal" that was made up entirely of marshmallows.

Caity: After sowing seeds of desire for these monstrous treats in the girls' heads, Toy Soldier Roy and his suit-clad assistant, Normal Guy Name Not Given, handed out small, conical plastic bags to each and every one of us, adults and kids alike, and told us to fill them up at the candy station!

Rich: I like that we were asked, "Who wants free candy?" Which is one way of looking at it. The other is: that candy cost Gawker Media LLC $40 a bag.

Caity: I did not get $40 worth of candy, or even $4.24 worth, which is how much those 4 oz bags cost to fill if you buy them outside the tour, but I absolutely got some, and the collection of it was thrilling, like hunting candy in the wild. My haul consisted of: Raisinets, chocolate covered pretzels, Goetze's caramel creams, ropes and ropes of sour sugar gummies, and a couple Swedish fish.

Rich: I had to try a gummy chili pepper, which was, "not knock-you-down spicy, but it's a nice surprise." It was good. Light.

Caity: Then Toy Soldier Roy showed us some giant stuffed puppy dogs, a toy panda that cost nearly $1500, and a bouncing koosh ball game you can play "at the beach" or inside FAO Schwarz at 8 a.m.

By this point I was ready for the tour to end so I could sit down and eat my eight Raisinets, but there was still much to come.

Rich: Oh I'd been eating chocolate covered pretzels the whole time. I don't understand why we were given sealable bags. A feed bag would have been more suitable.

I think the stuffed panda was the most expensive toy we saw.

Makes the $800 teddy bear seem like a steal.

Caity: Those Hansa animals looked great.

Rich: They looked like furniture.

Caity: What child wouldn't feel better knowing a hyper-realistic facsimile of a mallard was waiting on her canopy bed with glass-eyed determination for her to return home from ballet class?

Rich: I would have to choose between them or furniture because both couldn't fit into my apartment. I'd also have to choose between them and eating.

Caity: If everyone reading this would only donate $1000, we would have enough money to buy a couple of the animals but not all.

On the second floor of FAO Schwarz were more things children love: rare teddy bears behind protective glass and rare Madame Alexander steampunk Wizard of Oz dolls behind protective glass.

Rich: One of the rarest Steiff brand bears recently sold for $25,000. Toy Soldier Roy informed us that that means we should "be good to your toys because your toys will be good to you."

I admired Australian Madison for refusing to hold a doll from the doll hospital, reasoning that it was "too creepy." Baby's first uncanny valley.

Caity: To which I say: This is America, Madison! Leave that rude 'tude back in Oz! Hold the fucking baby doll or get out, mate!

Rich: The dolls were busted. I stand with Madison.

Caity: At Toy Soldier Roy's urging, I accepted a baby doll from French Alexia (ALAXYAH! VAS-Y, VAS-Y!) And all the adults in the crowd (also at Toy Soldier Roy's urging) said "Ohhhh..Hahaha, uh-oh!" and nudged you in the ribs with their eyes, as if to say...

Rich: ...GET ER DONE.

Caity: I tell you what, I would not consent to raise a child with any man who tried to bring me to any place before 8 a.m.

Rich: Also on the second floor was something called "Super Awesome Me," which provides you with an action figure in your likeness. You just pose in FAO Schwarz and a month later, you're shredded in plastic. $100 is a small price to pay to look like a human god.

Caity: How exact a likeness the resulting action figures are was unclear.

Rich: Hm, get back to me in a month and I'll show you.

Caity: I thought this would make a funny and creepy surprise gift to give someone (I made a voodoo doll of you!), but then I realized that you must be there to be photographed in person. So that's out, unless you can somehow trick your friend into thinking they're being photographed on the Super Awesome Me create-your-own action figure photography stage for an unrelated purpose.

Rich: It would be a very good gift for a gay man and an even better gift for his self-esteem. Especially this gay man.

Caity: I fell into my old habit of taking lots of pictures of beautiful Barbies that were too expensive for me to ever own own, and then it was time to go look at teeny tiny cars for children to drive without a license. In one teeny tiny Mini Cooper ("It's got an iPod dock!" shouted Toy Soldier Roy), you and I saw what appeared to be some sort of discarded mouth guard.

Rich: I thought it was poop.

Caity: Huh. Everything's a mystery in Toyland.

Rich: Up next was Lego, and several references to The Lego Movie, the gift that keeps on giving to Lego.

Caity: Toy Soldier Roy told us that professional lego statue assemblers make six figures, and I have spent the past six days wondering if that was a pun or simply a sign that life is meaningless.

Rich: Then we came upon "the room that everyone asks for, that people can't wait to get in."

GET EXCITED. Please feel this moment and invest in the idea that it will live up to the hype and absolutely nothing will go wrong.

Caity: I would describe enormous in-floor piano as a BIG disappointment.

Toy Soldier Roy started off by succinctly recounting the plot of Big. His appraisal of the film included the statement "And, of course, there's no one bigger than Tom Hanks," which I keep thinking about because it makes no sense.

Rich: I think he was speaking from the perspective of a person stuck in 1995, when Hanks won his second Oscar in a row.

Next he asked if we remembered what songs Tom Hanks and that old guy played on the giant piano in Big. Yes, "Chopsticks" and "Heart and Soul," but I didn't answer because I didn't want to seem like a know-it-all Hanks aficionado.

Caity: I answered "Heart and Soul" after no one got "Chopsticks" because I hate the anxious silence of an unanswered question voiced to a group.

Rich: "And," said Roy, "that sounds a little bit something like..."

His suited assistant stepped on the keyboard and...

Nothing.

Caity: An even more anxious silence.

Rich: That was the biggest anticlimax of the year—perhaps of my life.

Caity: The suited man lost it. Understandably so. It was the worst moment of the lives of everyone in the room, but especially his.

Rich: Everyone lost it. It was madness. (Quiet, disappointed madness.) A giant ladder was brought out. Many sound checks occurred.

Caity: Alexia didn't know what was going on or care, probably. The FAO Schwarz schtaff very graciously and nervously apologized to us, over and over again.

Rich: The man in the suit said that he couldn't apologize enough, in fact. He didn't kill anyone, but he did kill our dream of hearing music from a giant keyboard on the floor, and did the required penance.

Roy said, "I'll make sure that everybody your next visit here you will get Toy Soldier Roy on the piano with you."

I'm sorry, sir, we have to come back? What if we come back and Toy Soldier Roy is sick in bed? Will he come into work and stand on the keyboard with us?

Caity: No offense to Toy Soldier Roy—there's no one bigger than Toy Soldier Roy—but he was not the main appeal of dancing on a piano. If anything, I would prefer to have no one on the piano with me. This is is a solo performance—all heart no soul.

Rich: I was, frankly, relieved. If I didn't pull off flawlessly tap dancing either of those songs, I would have felt so embarrassed. It was nice to have that pressure immediately erased.

Caity: We still took photos on the keyboard. And if anyone who was on the tour showed their friends the photos and said, "Oh we had fun, it sounded just like in the movie with the enormous Tom Hanks" and now their friends are reading this post and realize they are liars, I'm always grateful for new readers and I'm sorry. But that keyboard would play no notes that morning. The guy who repairs it lives in Connecticut, apparently. In a MAGIC HOUSE, I imagine.

Rich: I want to know what else he does. Is there a three-story French horn somewhere that he is also responsible for?

Caity: If his job is to keep the FAO Schwarz stomping keyboard in working order, I would say he is...maybe not great at it? The man in the suit later told us that the rare occasions it does short typically fall around the holidays, due to increased foot traffic.

Rich: "I'm just as stunned as you guys," he said.

Caity: He seemed more stunned than us, frankly. I would not describe myself as "stunned." "Mildly disappointed but ultimately not too invested" was my reaction.

He.

Was.

Floored.

Rich: Something died that day. Something bigger than our hearts or our souls: a giant keyboard you play with your feet.

Anyway, the rest of the tour was like aftershocks of an anticlimax.

Caity: After that we saw some more fuckin' whatever.

Rich: We got $10 off coupons if you spent $50 building little cars (no thanks). I smelled a candle that looked like a brain (REALLY no thanks).

Caity: We saw a doll house workshop where a man will make an exact miniature replica of your house. I wouldn't want one, but I guess if you can afford one you probably live in a house worth recreating en miniature.

Rich: As we walked down to the basement party room, Roy told us the staff was having its morning meeting. We heard clapping, and I assumed that it was an incredibly successful meeting, but then I saw a bunch of kids walking a carpet that was just in front of the store's front door. The staff was cheering for the store's first customers of the day.

Well—the first customers who didn't pay a $40 admission fee.

Caity: Then we were herded into the subterranean realm of the flesh-colored clock for...I guess you could call it breakfast. Not really worth breaking a fast for these scraps, though.

The tables in the party room bore enormous fake candles that transformed them into very large, thin birthday cakes. There were extra-enormous fake candles lining the walls as well. FAO Schwarz has really tapped into what intrigues children about candles: the overall shape and design.

We were instructed to take what we pleased from a buffet table. Unlike the candy grab portion of the day, no one was excited about the breakfast buffet.

Rich: It was all carbs! There were small bagels, smaller chocolate chip muffins, not-quite-baked croissants, and…What's the thing I'm forgetting?

Caity: Soft pieces of toast-shaped bread with sugar on them. They were pastries, I guess, but not with the fun and flair that word implies.

Basically, everything tasted about a shade worse than if you had bought it in a grocery store for yourself. The flavor of items purchased in bulk but, honestly, none of the bulk? I would not describe that table as "laden" with food. There was food on it, but I felt bad taking one of everything. (I also felt queasy handling food after touching so many communally fondled objects, but I WAS STARVING.)

I also had an orange juice (the only juice option available), and a mini bottled water, served room temperature.

Rich: I had a coffee, which was knock-you-down-and-your-tongue-out-of-commission hot. Let's face it: the candy was the real breakfast and we ate that before witnessing the tragedy of the Big piano (RIP).

Caity: Yes, the tour could have ended after the candy grab and while it wouldn't have been worth $40, it would have been basically as enjoyable overall, and would have eaten up a lot less time.

Toy Soldier Roy collected our plates (kind of weird and unexpected, but...polite?) and, roughly one hour after it began, Breakfast with a Toy Soldier was over. Just in time to grab breakfast without a toy soldier and head into work.

Rich: We all fall down, the end.

Is Everything OK?

Questions About the Dining Experience

Would you go back?

Caity: I would go back with someone who had once wronged me, and I would spend the whole subway ride there hyping up the Big keyboard and how much fun it is to prance on, and then, when they stepped on it and nothing happened, I would look them dead in the eye and say "Life is full of disappointments." This would happen at 3 p.m.

Rich: No. I will never wake up for anything at 6:30 a.m. again.

Is it a good first date spot?

Caity: YEAH, A WALK THROUGH AN EMPTY TOY STORE AT 8 AM IS A GREAT FIRST DATE.

Rich: It's a good first date if you're a psychopath who wants to look at all the toys you'll be buying your future children with a person that you don't know. You'll also get to hold a life-size baby doll while standing next to that person, to the delight of the bored parents of actual children.

Is it a good place to have an affair?

Caity: No. You are watched like a hawk on this tour by Toy Soldier Roy and his smiling silent minions. There will be no dilly dallying in FAO Schweetz. There will be no lovers' holidays in Legoland.

Rich: Are men who can speak for an hour without stopping for so much as a breath your "type?" Do you like mustache wax? Are you "into" men in uniform? Well, I have a friend named Roy I'd like to introduce you to...

Is it a good place to bring a doll?

Caity: No. You wouldn't bring your wife to a whorehouse.

Rich: It would be a good place to bring a doll if you don't want to have the awkward conversation with her about where babies come from—and where they can be left for better, more expensive, limited edition babies.

There are a bunch of restaurants in the world, including some in New York City. But in a city of over 24,000 restaurants, how do you find the best? You begin your search in places that are already popular: New York's hottest tourist destinations. In The Best Restaurant in New York Is, writers Caity Weaver and Rich Juzwiak attempt to determine the best restaurant in New York.

Previously: The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The Best Restaurant in New York Is: The Rockefeller Center Ice Rink; The 9/11 Memorial & Museum Café; The Empire State Building; The Macy's Basement; Wall Street Bath & Spa; El Museo del Barrio; The Williamsburg Urban Outfitters ; The Central Park Boathouse; The Tommy Bahama Store; The Bronx Zoo; The Armani Store;The Crown Cafe at the Statue of Liberty; The Campbell Apartment inside Grand Central; The U.N. Delegates Dining Room; Play at the Museum of Sex; Le Train Bleu inside Bloomingdales; LOX at The Jewish Museum; The American Girl Café

[Images by Rich Juzwiak and Caity Weaver]

Here is a nightmare before Christmas: Love magazine's video of 19-year-old Kendall Jenner robotically dancing in her underwear with her mother and manager, the newly-divorced Kris Jenner. Both wear reindeer antlers and a disturbing lack of rhythm.

Scene 1: Kendall and Mom move their behinds in time with each other but not the death march that soundtracks the video. Scene 2: More shadowy butts dance across the wall. Scene 3: Mother and daughter turn their faces to the camera, producing signature Kardashian dead eyes.

Then there's the breakdown:

It's bone-chilling from start to finish.

In the end, Kendall and Kris fell a neon pink Christmas tree and shatter the ornaments, showing no remorse.

The Kardashians wish you a sexy, spooky holiday.

Facebook is changing its privacy policies at the beginning of the new year. As usual, everyone's wondering if they should be worried about it.. When it comes to Facebook, the answer is usually yes—but not for the reasons most people think.

Facebook is no stranger to scandals. With 1.3 billion users, it'd be hard not to attract some false information. (Remember all those times we were worried Facebook would start charging for access?) However, knowing there's a problem and identifying it are two separate things. Today, we're breaking down specifically why Facebook's approach to privacy is so scary.

Facebook Erodes Your Privacy Regardless of Policy

Privacy policies change regularly. In fact, you've probably gotten several notifications this month from various services that will be changing their policies next year. It's difficult to know exactly what changes, and inevitably, armchair lawyers try to "explain" the new panic. If this seems like a familiar dance, that's because it is. In fact, the pattern for Facebook's privacy changes has become very distinct:

1. Facebook announces updates to its privacy policy or settings.
2. Users are understandably upset.
3. Facebook "simplifies" its privacy settings in response.
4. Privacy on Facebook is still complicated.

Sometimes these new, less private features come shortly after the privacy policy itself has changed. Often, however, they don't. In fact, Facebook changes how its privacy settings behave far more often than the policy itself. Which means that Facebook doesn't need to ask permission every time it wants to try something new. After a decade of changing policies, you've already given enough permission. This may not make you feel better, but it does mean that the privacy policy itself isn't likely to protect your data.

Many of us may forget, but back in 2012, Facebook "gave" its users an option to influence privacy policy decisions. We use sarcastic quotes because the challenge was laughably unwinnable. The company asked that at least 30% of its 1 billion plus users vote on whether or not they'd like the ability to vote on future privacy changes. They did not meet that threshold. If 30% of users had voted (and a majority agreed), they could have had the ability not only to continue voting on policy changes, but on specific features and how they're implemented. Because the company couldn't get nearly three Super Bowls worth of votes, the option disappeared.

And therein lies the problem. Facebook largely sets its own rules for what its rules are. Remember, the company's privacy policy only dictates what it's allowed to do in legal terms—not how specific features are implemented. However, Facebook can and has drastically changed how your data is presented without necessarily changing its policies to do it. And whether it's a change to policy or functionality, Facebook is largely unaccountable due to its massive size.

Back in 2010 (when Facebook was far smaller), a developer named Matt McKeon made this interactive graphic showing how Facebook's privacy settings have changed over time. This looks at the default settings, and some can be changed, but for the most part, this is the average Facebook users' experience. In 2005, the only data that was visible to all Facebook users was your name, picture, gender, and which networks you were in. No data was completely public. By April 2010, the general, non-Facebook using public could potentially see your wall posts, photos, likes, friends, and other data unless you intentionally lock it down. It happened gradually over a period of years and some policy changes were required (one notable change added the previously-absent public tier), but many changes did not.

This trend of taking information you intended to be private and turning it public never really stopped. In October of last year, Facebook eliminated a feature that allowed you to prevent someone from looking you up by name. Paired with Facebook's policy of no fake names and this made it very hard to have a private Facebook experience.

Facebook has made some very intentional moves to give you more control over who can see your stuff on the site. And if you proactively protect your posts, constantly audit your privacy settings, and don't post anything you don't want people to see, you might be able to stay ahead. At the end of the day, though, you simply can't know who Facebook is going to show your stuff to over the long term. Even if you have it under control now, a change later may mean stuff that you think is buried is suddenly right on the surface.

Facebook Has Access to Tons of Data, and You'll Never Fully Know Why

Facebook's grasp on your data isn't limited to what happens on their site, either. Facebook is frequently used to log in to other web services. It also has access to a wide variety of permissions on your phone. While this can make it very useful, there's virtually no accountability for how that data is used.

Take phone permissions as an example. As we've talked about before, an app needing permissions doesn't necessarily indicate that something nefarious is going on. For instance, when Facebook Messenger came out, there was some concern about how many permissions it had. However, of all the permissions Messenger asked for, there were only four that the main Facebook app didn't also request. In fact, the main Facebook app requests many, many more (you can see a comparison here). Not only that, but the permissions requested by Messenger—like camera, microphone, and location—were all related to pretty run-of-the-mill, useful features. Even if you're worried that Facebook is going to listen in on your microphone whenever you post a status (which, by the way, they've played around with), seeing a permission in a list doesn't mean it's happening.

However, both Android and iOS lack the ability to distinguish which feature you're giving permission to. Android users have to accept permissions wholesale. You can't install Facebook if you don't accept the entire app's use of your camera or microphone. iOS is only slightly better. While you can allow permissions piecemeal (and selectively revoke them later), a given permission is either all on or all off. So, while you may give Facebook permission to use your microphone when recording a video, you can't ever know for sure if it's also listening to your TV in the background.

If you're worried about which permissions Facebook is asking for, how you react depends on your platform. If you're on iOS, you can take a more active role by turning off permissions when you're done with them. For Android users, until Google improves the situation, it's difficult to do much, but you can send the company feedback in the Play Store (open the slide-out menu and select Help & Feedback) and ask for them to give you more granular controls. (And in the meantime, you can use the Facebook mobile site for a somewhat less intrusive experience.) In either case, though, whether you can trust the mobile apps really boils down to whether you can trust Facebook itself. And Facebook hasn't always proven itself to be trustworthy.

Facebook Manipulates Your Feed—A Lot

We've all heard it before: Facebook is replacing real relationships, it's too much information, and it makes us "busy" rather than helping us get anything done. It's one of the biggest reasons that people leave Facebook, and it's actually probably one of the best reasons to quit. If you're just wasting time on the site, don't be afraid to quit and get that time back.

However, this isn't a problem inherent with Facebook itself. It's a problem with us. Distractions and procrastination existed long before the internet. We've talked a lot about how to defeat distractions and get your work done. In fact, Facebook can even be useful. As we've discussed before, Facebook groups are excellent at helping you organize people and events. Taking breaks during your workday is also helpful for relaxing your brain, as long as you keep it limited.

What Facebook does show you may not be as much of a problem as what it doesn't show you. By its very definition, Facebook's News Feed is a curated list of what your friends and family are posting. You can have some control over this if you put in the effort, but unless you hunt down the increasingly buried Most Recent feed, you'll probably never see everything.

This might not seem like that big of a deal on its face. However, earlier this year, Facebook found itself in hot water for using a small percentage of its users in a psychological experiment. While this isn't the kind of thing that most people assume they're being signed up for when they get on a social network, it's also not uncommon for large sites to conduct tests with user experiences.

However, while most people were upset that the test was conducted, the results of the study were more noteworthy. According to Facebook's own research, it was possible to manipulate the moods of users by showing them different types of posts. Now, chances are that your feed isn't going to be subject to an experiment. However, much like with Google, your usage of the site can create a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

The problem with this may be more subtle, but it's still important. Your perception has a huge impact on your reality. If you get into heated political arguments on Facebook a lot, the news feed might assume you're interested in political posts and show you more, tempting you to argue even more. You might see more negative posts that drag you down because supportive people interact with a post and drive it up. And let's not forget the manipulative effect of advertising.

Not all of this means Facebook is evil, of course. But it does mean that you have to understand that your feed is an illusion. It's easy to get yourself down because everyone on Facebook seems happy, or to feel like an imposter because everyone else seems to have their lives in order. For better or worse, Facebook is a big part of how most of us perceive our friends and family's lives, which puts it in a unique position to skew our perceptions. Even if it's not intentional.

This was the year I realized life could encroach on reading unless I made a decision not to let it happen. I picked up big books, small books, weird books, popular books, and here are a few that slayed me.

First, A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava. There's something so compelling about seeing the American criminal justice system through the eyes of Casi, de la Pava's narrator and protagonist. The novel is messy and strange, acidly comic, brutal in its descriptions of the system that brutalizes the poor seemingly for sport. This is a protest novel that thankfully doesn't read like one. Never didactic, always inventive, a page turner that is at once hilarious, bizarre, and maddening. I can't say enough about this novel. I liked it so much, I set up an interview with Sergio, just so I could chat with him.

Francisco Goldman's The Interior Circuit is a marvel, and if you've been reading his incredible reporting from Mexico for The New Yorker, you know that Goldman knows the country well: its moods, its culture, its history. This particular book is almost unclassifiable (maybe that's a theme for this year—2014, the year of unclassifiable books?). Part memoir, part reportage, part homage to Mexico City, The Interior Circuit tells the story of Francisco's relationship with the world's largest urban center in the aftermath of his wife Aura Estrada's tragic death. He realized after she passed, that he could either break free from the city where they fell in love, or dive deeper in, and get to know it as never before. Thankfully for us, his readers, his fans, he chose the latter, and wrote this marvelous book as a result.

Lastly, the letters of Emma Reyes. I was gifted this amazing book when I was in Bogotá, a tiny little book, 130 pages, pressed into my hands by a young woman, who said I simply had to read it. It took me a few months, but I did. Fucking hell! Emma Reyes was a Colombian painter who passed a few years ago, and her letters, really her autobiography in letters, were collected and published this year in Colombia. Her poetic retelling of her childhood of grinding poverty in Bogotá and provincial Colombia is stunning. Every moment is beautifully drawn, subtle, strange, with a hint of anger. I loved this book so much I decided to translate it. So, New York editors: Anyone want to publish it in English?

Daniel Alarcón is the author of War by Candlelight, Lost City Radio, and At Night We Walk in Circles. In 2011, he co-founded Radio Ambulante, a Spanish-language podcast committed to telling Latin American stories.

Sony Pictures has reportedly authorized a limited release of The Interview on Christmas Day. The Plaza Theater in Atlanta and an Alamo Drafthouse theaters in Texas have both announced plans to show the film.

The Alamo Drafthouse in Dallas has already added the film to their website's showtimes page.

Two sources have confirmed to CNN that the films will be shown on Christmas.

Going live by phone on @CNN right now — two sources now confirming that "The Interview" WILL play in limited release on Christmas Day...

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 23, 2014

UPDATE 12:57 pm: Sony has confirmed the news. From the Hollywood Reporter:

"We have never given up on releasing The Interview and we're excited our movie will be in a number of theaters on Christmas Day," said Michael Lynton, chairman and CEO of Sony Entertainment, in a statement. "At the same time, we are continuing our efforts to secure more platforms and more theaters so that this movie reaches the largest possible audience."

"I want to thank our talent on The Interview and our employees, who have worked tirelessly through the many challenges we have all faced over the last month," Lynton's statement read. "While we hope this is only the first step of the film's release, we are proud to make it available to the public and to have stood up to those who attempted to suppress free speech."

The Interview star Seth Rogen has also confirmed the film's release:

The people have spoken! Freedom has prevailed! Sony didn't give up! The Interview will be shown at theaters willing to play it on Xmas day!

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) December 23, 2014

[Image via AP]

Leonardo DiCaprio wakes up from a restful sleep. He stretches and yawns. He is satisfied. "Ah, another day, another day," he says to no one, with a sigh. "No one on Earth has partied with more ladies than I have, after I partied with those 20 ladies at Art Basel." He smiles and checks his phone. "WHA-WHAAAAAT?"

So sorry, Leonardo DiCaprio, but it looks like you've been babe bested. Page Six reports that Derek Jeter—Mr. Baseball himself!—had a Meatpacking District party with 30 "attractive girls." Ten more than Leonardo's Art Basel thing. Oh, our poor baby.

The group met at Chester restaurant on Sunday to watch the Seahawks/Cardinals game:

Joining him at the private viewing party were some male pals and 30 attractive, model-like women, sources told Page Six.

While Jeter had insisted upon his retirement that he hoped to settle down and start a family, noticeably missing from the guest list was his Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue model girlfriend of two years, Hannah Davis.

Never did Leonardo DiCaprio think the phrase "attractive, model-like women" would sting so acutely.

PageSix's source adds, "Derek had a really great time partying with his guests and watching the game."

Did he even think of Leonardo DiCaprio at all?

Could that be what hurts the most?

[image via Getty]

A familiar lament that crosses career lines during the holidays is the human desire for ample time off from work, better schedule flexibility, and pay for hours spent on the job but off the clock. Whether you've been given a free week to enjoy your family this winter or you're working through into 2015, here's a reminder that teachers' daily schedules appear impossible to maintain for anyone other than superhumans with body doubles.

In the third edition of our series on America's public schools, we asked teachers (present and former) to submit detailed itineraries of their days on the job. For relativity and honesty's sake, my schedule as a staff writer at this website is to wake up around 8 a.m., work on my current projects, and then sign off when I'm done, fielding emails and doing interviews at certain intervals. Every so often, I have a meeting. Some days are longer than others.

What I found among the many emails and comments from America's public school teachers: every minute in a teacher's day is preciously used and planned out, even down to when a teacher can afford a bathroom break. While many think of a teacher's job as an "easy" 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. babysitting shift, what our submissions revealed is a rationing of time so exact that you have to wonder if teachers ever breathe or sleep. Their endless meetings, heaped-on responsibilities from administrators, and interactions with students leave it so every single minute is valued.

An email submission from a teacher with young kids:

The schedule of teaching is great for teachers with kids—older kids. For teachers with young kids, it is difficult. During the school year, I drop them off at daycare and latchkey (for which I pay a combined $1030 per month) at 7 so I can be at school before my students. I put them to bed at 8, then resume school work most nights. I routinely tell my daughter that no, I can't volunteer at Santa Shop or attend that field trip because I have to work, and I get the same disappointed look every time. On weekends I find myself saying, "Let mama finish her school work, then we'll play." Yes, I signed up for this, and I love my job, my school, and my students. But the amount of work I must do at home to be competent in the classroom limits the time I can give at home. So, for the eight summer weeks that I do nothing related to teaching, I feel zero guilt, because I am spending them with my own children, who must share me during the other 44.

From an email submission that details how any instance of teachers' allegedly "wasting time" impacts their administrators' evaluations of them, putting their jobs at risk:

In our district, there have been no fewer than forty educational initiatives introduced to teachers over the past thirty years, the majority of which have been a waste of time, designed to fill up some Administrator's resume and keep teachers where they want them—jumping through hoops or walking on eggshells. You pick the metaphor. Connecticut has recently initiated a lengthy, cumbersome evaluation system that requires teachers collect useless data and prove the value of how and what they are teaching by uploading 'artifacts' (that's educational jargon for student work) to a frankly unworkable internet program called Bloomboard. Teachers are 'rated' based on the number of 'domaines' they hit such as "Arrangement of the physical/virtual learning environment and the logistics of learning." No, I don't know what they're talking about either. So called informal drop-ins occur without rhyme or reason. My last 'evaluator' snuck into the first ten minutes of an eighty minute class when I was hurrying to make copies of vocabulary homework for my unfocused students randomly misbehaving before the lesson could begin. This particular class of sophomores are sweet but antsy and it always takes me at least ten minutes of—"Let's everyone get in their chairs." "No, you can't go to the bathroom, the last time you went you were gone for twenty minutes," No, we don't throw our hats across the room." "Hands to self, Tyler, we don't give backrubs in school." "Joseph, please no shouting, he didn't mean to touch your chair." And "Students—please, put away your cell phones!" My 'evaluator' entered into Bloomboard "Students did nothing for the first ten minutes of class."

Such is life. The relationship between teachers and Administrators have become, over the years, decidedly adversarial. There are those chosen teacher favorites; the rest are either overlooked or harassed. They don't trust the people they have hired despite those educators having eight years of advanced university training, years of practical teaching experience, creative intelligence, endurance, and many, many ideas of how to improve education. But no one asks. In short, it's all about them and teachers—as they have told us many times—are lucky to have a job.

From an email submission that details a fourteen-hour work day:

I am a high school teacher in a rural, poor county. Folks who critique teaching without actually having taught or having made an effort to understand what teaching requires frustrate me to no end.

I love teaching. I love working with students, planning with colleagues and being a part of a community focused on providing kids with a safe space to learn and grow. I love learning new things myself, and lord knows teaching is a profession where you never stop doing that. The critiques I have come from a place of love, and a desire to make my profession a sustainable one.

So much of the debate around education focuses on "big data" and test scores. To those who think that's the magic bullet for understanding and fixing schools, I say to you: you are wrong, and your focus on this at the expense of other factors is to the detriment of the entire education system.

This is not about data. This is not about test scores. That's a part of teaching, sure. But there is so, so much more to it. You cannot break what makes a good teacher down into numbers a spreadsheet.

Here's a teacher schedule for a day typical day in my school:

7:00 – 7:30 Prep for your classes. Last minute copies, schedule adjustments, reviewing what you're teaching.

7:30 – 8:20 Mandatory morning meeting with a different department each day (committees, grade level, department, whole staff.)

8:20 – 8:25 Go to the bathroom because you're not going to get another chance.

8:25 – 8:30 Passing period. Monitor the hallways, break up the rare fight (even better, spot the tension before it happens and stop it.) Say good morning to all the students as they pass, ask some to take off hats, remind some about homework or activities or parent meetings.

8:30 – 9:35 First class. Teach students of widely varying ability levels (I'm talking about a class of students ranging from kids who can't read to kids already doing college work.) There are 25 kids in class, all with 25 different worlds and lives, and you have to manage behavior, differentiate, teach, counsel, crisis manage, entertain, and constantly adjust. Also, during first period you have kids still waking up and kids coming in late, which means you have to be extra energetic and have strategies in place so that the tardy kids can catch up to the rest of the class without interrupting the flow of your lesson.

9:35 – 9:40 Passing period. No time to prep for your 2^nd class, because you have to be in the hallway.

9:40 – 10:45 Second class. See the first class description for what you have to do. Also! It's a different class than what you teach first, so you have to make your brain do a U-turn during passing period.

10:45 – 10:50 Passing period, be in the hallway.

10:50 – 11:55 Third class. Everyone is hungry. You are STARVING. Don't eat in front of your kids in class though, because that makes you a jerk.

11:55 – 12:45 Half lunch, half advisory. Sometimes you have lunch to yourself, but usually you're on duty somewhere, or working with student organizations.

12:45 – 12:50 Passing period, spend most of it helping whatever student org you were with clean up, regret drinking so much water at lunch because you really have to pee but don't have time.

12:50 – 1:55 Fourth period: this is your plan period, which elementary teachers don't get every day, I have no idea how they do what they do. Elementary teachers are the most hardcore of us all. Your plan is when you have time to grade student work, prepare for future classes, do the piles of paperwork and data entry that we are required to upload but never use. Just kidding! There's a staff shortage, go sub for a teacher who's out.

1:55 – 2:00 Passing period. Rush back from the class you were subbing and steal a minute from being in the hallway so you can get the materials ready for your last class.

2:00 – 3:05 Last academic class of the day. Everyone is crotchety. Everyone. Worst behavior happens in this class because kids have used up all their brain power and patience. You have too! But you can't show that because this block deserves a good teacher as well.

3:05 – 3:10 Passing period. Lots of students want to skip now, and you're responsible for making sure they don't

3:10 – 3:45 Mandatory study hall time. If students were crotchety in 4^th block, imagine how having to remember to bring work and do work feels. It really sucks to be the broken record "do your work, did you remember your work, put your head up," etc etc forever.

3:45 – 3:50 That one student who promised to get work from you never showed up. Track him down before the bus leaves at ! It's like a video game – dodge students in the hall, search different areas, avoid surprise meetings with your principal, locate your target, achieve your objective, level up!

3:50 – 4:00 FINALLY YOU CAN PEE.

4:00 – 5:30 Afterschool tutoring, coaching, admin meetings, prep work. If you actually leave at four, it feels like you're skipping out early.

5:50 – 6:30 Inevitably, someone has missed the afterschool bus. Drive them home.

6:30 – 8:30 Do all the work that you didn't get the chance to do during your plan.

9:30 Go to bed because teaching turns you into an old person.

From an email submission that reveals what teachers actually do during their "free time":

School day is 8:00 to 3:30, but we are required to be on duty every third week starting at 8 so that means we have to be here well before 8 to get organized. First and second block last about 86 minutes each. We then go to homeroom which we are responsible for helping students complete make-up work, work on their scheduling, organize and implement a community service program with them, and monitor their grades among other things.

We have a 23 minute lunch period in which we are required to serve a duty once every third week as well. In the afternoon, we have two more blocks at about 86 minutes each.

We do get a planning block, which we are supposed to use to plan for upcoming classes and to grade assignments. However, we are required to cover others' classes, attend meetings, etc.. during this period. It really bothers me when non-teachers call this free time. What I do during my planning period is pretty much what other people do throughout their day— them claiming it is my free period since I don't have kids is the same as them saying they don't do anything all day!

Any teacher worthwhile gets involved in extracurricular activities as much as possible, often without pay. While I do get paid to coach football and wrestling, it works out to less than $4 an hour. During football, I usually don't leave every night until 7 PM, meaning I work 11 hour days Monday through Thursday. I don't leave school until midnight or later on Fridays due to games. This year, football went from the beginning of August until the first week of December!!!!! This doesn't include the time spent of weekends scouting the next opponent, planning practices, or studying film. On average, I would say it averages over 60 hours a week.

As soon as football ends (this year we had a successful football team, so there was a lot of overlap), wrestling begins. We usually have matches on Wednesdays which puts me at school until 10 PM. On Mondays and Tuesdays we have a youth program (unpaid and I don't have any of my own kids in the program) immediately following varsity practice which ends at 7:30. We get done with practice at 6 PM on Thursdays and Friday but I usually spend the next hour or so running kids home all over the county. I spend pretty much every Saturday at a tournament, often leaving school at 6AM and not getting back until well after 8 PM. If my math is correct, that is about 70 hours a week (ugh)

In the spring time, I continue with the youth practices right after school until about 5:30 (unpaid) three days a week. Our state has recently allowed out of season practice for football so I spend many afternoons working with the football team in the weight room and on the field.

I have not included any time that I spend at home grading papers or planning lessons. It is hard to gauge due to a variety of factors, but I am comfortable in saying that it is at least 5-10 hours per week. It was much worse during my first several years teaching.

Our salaries have been frozen for at least 5 of the past 6 years. With the increase in insurance and other deductions, we have been getting paid less and less every year. At this very moment, we are attempting to work with our Board of Supervisors and School Board to get more money, but we are met with resistance from a very small minority of anti public school advocates that wish it was still 1953 and pre-Brown vs. Board of Education. (I currently live and work in Southside Virginia, the hotbed of massive resistance and the emergence of private academies instead of integrating)

From an email submission that shows the painstaking bureaucracy that pops up in schools: (For emphasis from the submission below, this is completely bonkers: "I fail to mention that due to the newest educational trend sweeping my district, I have to work on two different bell schedules. I have to teach both grade levels under 45 minutes while other teachers in one grade level can teach in 70 minutes and others can teach in 50 minutes.")

I am currently a Special Education teacher (Self-Contained and Inclusion) in one of the largest districts in my state, and compared to the other faculty members in my department, I get paid the least and have the most responsibilities and duties. I am usually one of the first teachers who arrives at school/work (6:00 in the morning) and the last teacher who leaves (7:00 at night, if I am lucky). Sometimes, the custodians who work the late shift leave before me. My class is the farthest classroom in the building; I am in a temporary building pod with semi-working campus streetlights and no alarms. I spent a lot of money to fix some basic maintenance problems in my classroom; I often liken my room to the boiler room of the 21st century. My campus is located in a high-poverty area, so it is not safe for someone like me to be there so late (especially with this daylight saving time thing in where it gets dark at 5:30 in the afternoon). But everything that I need to do can be only done at the campus; other work that can be done at home is being shoved into my backpack at the end of the day/week.

It burns me inside when colleagues and administrators, including my assessment specialist/diagnostician (the one over my department), think my job is easy/easier because of the amount of the students who I have under my caseload/in my self-contained class. They are looking at the quantity and not the quality of the students. Across my district, we have students who are below grade-level and they are not labeled students who should be getting services under the Special Education program. My students are students who are unable to make academic progress in the General Education classroom, and for that reason, they are with me. I am expected to have the students to pass the state assessment, and this state took away the modified assessment, the only test that they are used to. Not even the students who are in the General Education classroom can pass the regular state assessment. How could someone who is Intellectually Disabled (Mentally Retarded) pass this test? They cannot spell their names correctly on some days. I am feeling the pressure from administrators who do not understand what being a Special Education teacher is like. They say that growth matters. That is bull (excuse my French) because all that I see, scores is the most important thing in my district/campus. If they walk a feet in my shoes, then they would see my side.

Schedule: Oy, boy. This is why that I wanted to post here on Gawker. In my self-contained classroom, I have both grade levels of my campus at the same time. I am expected to teach mathematics and language arts to both grade levels. I can do just fine with language arts, but with the new mathematics standards for my state, I am unable to do that. One grade level is on prime and composite and another grade level is on rates and ratios. I am 6 weeks behind in one grade level, and 10 weeks behind in another grade level. It does not help that I am being called for ARD meetings and being called by faculty members in my department to help them with paperwork and stupid crap the other times (e.g. one time, a faculty member, the same faculty member who wanted me to stop instruction to help with her paperwork last minute, wanted me to send one of my students to fetch water from her room to give to her while she was in the Inclusion classroom).

For several weeks, I work on a 50 minute conference/planning period, while the other Special Education teachers (full Inclusion teachers) worked on a two-hours (120 minutes) conference/planning period. I am required to attend all core subjects area department meetings during my conference (because either I serve students or am the teacher of records in that particular subject) while the other two are only required to attend one subject area department meeting. This is the best part: for three months, because the administrators did not want to listen to me regarding suggestion of the schedule, I have to bring my self-contained students to one of my Inclusion classes in an effort to maintain "compliance." When I found out that there was a simple solution to my problem in that they could have combined two Inclusion classes, leaving one of the teachers free to take one assignment from me, I blew a gasket. As soon as the new schedule took effect, I was being called out by administrators and that teacher who lost one of their conference periods and being told by all parties that what I did was out of my "boundaries." The teacher wanted me to remain silent while my students suffer. What?! I lost a hour of instructional time every single day. I can never catch up, even if I tried to do after-school tutoring. I had to do something, somewhat of a last attempt, to give my students a fighting chance. I am not the one who made the new schedule; I merely brought up this concern. I am doing paperwork every single day, even during break/holidays. I am flipping tired.

I fail to mention that due to the newest educational trend sweeping my district, I have to work on two different bell schedules. I have to teach both grade levels under 45 minutes while other teachers in one grade level can teach in 70 minutes and others can teach in 50 minutes.

Final comments (for now): One of my colleagues encouraged me to try paralegal work. You know what? He is right. This is bull (again, excuse my French). This is the icing on the cake of what I have to face with as a Special Education teacher. I need to find a career in where I would be appreciated. I will be part of the statistics of the low rate of teacher retention.

From an email submission on "violating protocol" aka going to the bathroom:

I used to teach seniors at a charter school in Washington Heights. During the three minutes students had to pass between classes, teachers were instructed to stand in the hallway to help monitor transitions. I taught from 8:15 am straight through until about 12:30pm - these three minute transition times were the only time I had to use the restroom, but we were specifically forbidden to abandon our posts outside our doors. My classroom was directly across from the women's bathroom, so I would sneak to the bathroom on occasion. The head of the school caught wind that teachers were going to the bathroom during transition times, so she started monitoring the security cameras from her office to catch teachers using the bathroom. She called me down to her office to review a "week's worth" of footage of me "blatantly violating protocol." I went to the bathroom twice, each visit less than a minute, and towards the end of the year this was used against me as they tried to fire me (second big piece of evidence was that I was caught sitting down while teaching - my ankle and lower leg were in a cast at the time.) Anyone who thinks charter schools are the solution to education issues in America is insane - at least my union contract at my previous job included time for bathroom breaks.

From a commenter that suggests teachers likely have a high rate of (unreported) anxiety-related illnesses:

Wake up at 4:30am. Try to eat breakfast and not vomit from the stress of your job. Grade papers or write lesson plans for two hours. A quick shower, get dressed, and you're out the door by 6:45 so that you clock in at 7. More paperwork. Kids come in at 8:30 and the bell rings to start the day at 8:45. Admin crap. Uniform checks (supposedly, anyway—I'm told those are actually rare). Maybe teach for an hour before morning recess, during which you're either on duty or desperately trying to catch up on yet more paperwork. Teach for another hour and a half before it's lunch. If you're lucky, you can suck down a pack of crackers before the kids are back. Afternoon recess is the same as the morning one. You might get to teach for two hours in the afternoon. The bell rings at 3:45pm, but you've got another hour wrapping things up at school or—god forbid—a workshop or meeting. When you get home, you might be able to squeeze in dinner sometime because there is still more paperwork, and parents to call, and lessons to prep for the next day. Exhausted yet? This happens Monday to Friday from August through May. Holidays and weekends are spent stressing out, and even the summers you're supposedly off for are spent doing school-related work. It is amazing to me that there aren't more stress- and anxiety-related illnesses reported among teachers.

From a commenter on the lack of the necessary prep block:

I see you're talking about scheduling next. That's always my favorite. We currently have 4x86minute blocks a day and teach 3 out of every 4. This sounds pretty sweet until you get my schedule: I teach 4 different classes in my 3 blocks, including one inclusion class. That means my "prep" block is regularly filled with SPED, 504, or RTI meetings. Actually getting prep work done during prep is something I've yet to achieve this year. Did I mention that my co-teacher and I don't have the same prep block? We literally never have school time to meet, plan, and modify for our special education students, one of whom has an IQ of about 70 and a communication processing disorder...and is expected to do the same curriculum as the rest of the class.

In January, we'll get new classes and odds are I'll have students who haven't taken an English class in a year due to the 4x4 schedule. It's amazing what regular education students lose, skill-wise, after a year of not having a class, never mind the special education students.

From a commenter on taking sick days in order to get work done:

As an elementary music teacher, I see my students twice a week for half an hour. In music teacher land this is AWESOME. So many others only see their kids once a week. So in that regard, I can't complain. But what I can complain about is how my schedule is set up. Because it's EXHAUSTING.

Since my contract only states that my schedule limitations are "no more than 40 classes per week," there's a lot of flexibility in how that plays out. On Mon, Tues, and Fri I have 9 classes. But on Weds I have 6 and on Thurs I have 7. Now, if I taught at the high school, I'd be limited to 8 classes per day and my schedule would be balanced, but since no one respects elementary teachers this doesn't happen for us.

And you'd think that the schedule would be organized. Say... all 5th grades in a row, all 4th grades, all 3rd, etc. But it isn't. On Friday, it looks like this: 4th grade, 1st grade, 4th grade, 2nd grade, 2nd grade, 5th grade, 1st grade, 3rd grade, 2nd grade. I get one prep and that's only after the first four classes have happened. There is no time in between classes, either. One class goes from 8:55-9:25, then the next from 9:25-9:55 and so one. So if a teacher is late in picking up or early in dropping off the shift is even more impossible. My classroom literally has a revolving door. I have a class of 3rd graders immediately before a choir class of 40 5th graders and the chairs are too big for those kids to set up so I have to line them up early so some 5th grade helpers can come in and set up the chairs. And of course the behavior for choir is off because I didn't get the time to set up the room the way I need it to be set up. As a professor of mine once said: Control the environment before it controls you. Too bad I don't get the chance.

And I probably wouldn't know any better had I not worked in districts in which all the grade levels were grouped or I at least received 2 mins between classes. Or where the union contract states how many classes per day can be taught. Or how many grade levels per day can be taught. I've even worked in districts in which the contract required 2 preps for day. Technically, my district can get away with only giving me time for lunch in a day and I'm just lucky they haven't done that to me.

On top of this, we are expected to finish a class at 3:20 and be at a meeting across town by 3:30 on threat of being reamed out by the assistant superintendent. Door duty? Find someone else to do it those days. Can't be to the meeting on time? Get coverage for the last 15 minutes of your class. I'm sorry, what happened to the job you want me to do? To those duties that are going into my final APR score for doing?

And in being a specials teacher, your schedule is automatically less important than someone else's. For in-school concerts and assemblies that I have run, I have often JUST finished directing the entire school and since a teacher has music right after that, brings their students down to my room because "they need their prep." What about the one I sacrificed for the assembly? The one during which I was conducting/accompanying/working my ass off for over an hour while they just sat there on their phone? And no, the principal doesn't defend you. The principal takes their side because they would complain more.

And the final thing I will leave you with: I have actually taken sick days in order to get work done because I don't get enough time in my week for all the extra that is asked of us.

As always, we are accepting submissions from America's teachers, aides, and administrators. Please comment with your stories below or email me here: dayna@gawker.com.

Previously in this series:
Why Teachers Pay for Students' Supplies Out of Their Own Pockets

Teachers Want You To Know: We Don't Get Summers Off

[Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Shutterstock]

Luka Rocco Magnotta, a former gay porn actor also known as the "Canadian Cannibal" was convicted of first-degree murder today for the 2012 killing of Concordia University exchange student Jun Lin. Magnotta killed, dismembered, and mailed parts of Lin's body to political offices in Ottawa and two schools in Vancouver.

Lin, 33, was last seen alive entering Magnotta's apartment in Montreal on May 24, 2012. The next day, Magnotta, 32, uploaded a video online titled "1Lunatic 1Icepick" that apparently depicted the killing and dismembering of Lin. Days later, Lin's torso was found stuffed in a suitcase. Following a weeklong manhunt, Magnotta was arrested by police in Berlin.http://gawker.com/5914359/canadi...

Magnotta was convicted by a jury of all charges brought against him, including: criminally harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other members of Parliament, mailing obscene and indecent material, committing an indignity to a body, and publishing obscene materials.http://gawker.com/5915463/suspec...

His lawyer's argued that Magnotta is schizophrenic and "suffered a psychotic episode when he killed Lin," making him "not criminally responsible for Lin's death." Two psychiatrists testified that they would diagnose Magnotta as schizophrenic. Prosecutors successfully argued that Lin's killing was premeditated. From the Toronto Star:

Among the evidence put forward by the Crown was an email Magnotta sent to a British newspaper reporter in December 2011, six months before the murder. In the message, Magnotta talked about moving on from the cat-killing videos he had previously produced and posted, and suggested his next victim would be human and that the murder would be filmed.

The Crown also revealed that Magnotta had filmed another individual tied to his bed in a pose identical to that of Lin and that this footage made up the opening seconds of the infamous murder video. Security camera footage from Magnotta's Montreal apartment showed the man walking groggily out the front doors the morning of May 19, 2012. The identity of this man remains a mystery.

Following the discovery of Lin's body parts, videos of Magnotta torturing, killing, and defiling the corpses of animals were discovered online.

[Image via AP]

Vincent Chase, you mad dog. You're making the movie? You made the movie. We made the movie, bro. For everyone who has been waiting, here is the trailer for the forthcoming Entourage movie, directed by Doug Ellin. We made the movie.

As Gawker.com's bro correspondent (brorrespondent, if you will), I'd like to mention that while this flick looks like it's got the works, it seems unlikely that it will tear down the mountain of thrills, kills, and camaraderie (bromraderie, if you will) on which Vin Diesel perches. But as Johnny Drama eloquently puts it in this trailer, "I don't want to go back to Queens, bro!"

Us either, Drama. Us either.

The Food and Drug Administration is lifting its 31-year ban on blood donation from men who sleep with men. But don't get all excited and gay about it, gays.

The ban was enacted in 1983, during the early "plague years" of AIDS, and now it's changing except not really very much at all. The New York Times reports:

But science — and the understanding of H.I.V. in particular — has advanced in the intervening decades, and on Tuesday the F.D.A. acknowledged as much, lifting the lifetime ban but keeping in place a more modest block on donations by men who have had sex with other men in the last 12 months.

Hear that, guys? Refrain from having sex for a year and then you can sit in a chair and someone will sap the blood from your veins. What a worthwhile trade-off.

Great Britain, the Times notes, has a similar one-year restriction. My doctor tells me it generally takes a few weeks for HIV to be detectable in blood after contracting it.

The F.D.A., like many Americans, "likes" gays, but not when they act gay.

[Image via Shutterstock]

Earlier this month, after a grand jury in Staten Island declined to prosecute the cop who placed an unarmed Staten Island father named Eric Garner in a chokehold, Mayor Bill de Blasio appeared on ABC’s This Week, where he mentioned having “the talk” with his 17-year-old son Dante when he was little.

“We said, look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do, don’t move suddenly, don’t reach for your cell phone,” de Blasio explained, “because we knew, sadly, there’s a greater chance it might be misinterpreted if it was a young man of color.”

De Blasio’s frank admission—that he taught his biracial son to automatically obey police officers in spite of their inherent suspicion of young black men—has rattled more than a few members of City Hall’s press corp. It is why, Politico insists, the mayor has “lost the police”: Because he instructed his son not to malign or disrespect the police, but to unconditionally accept whatever they told him to do.

While Politico treats the police’s response as reasonable or natural, the New York Post refuses to even grant the premise of de Blasio’s remarks. Today the tabloid published a jaw-dropping editorial, titled “Dante’s real danger isn’t the NYPD,” in which the Post’s editorial board assures the mayor that black criminals—not violent cops—are much more likely murder his son.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has spoken of conversations with his son, Dante, about the “dangers he may face” from the police. Like so many other assertions connected with the cases of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, it is a fiction—and a dangerous one. Truth is, a young man of Dante de Blasio’s age faces far more danger from violent men his age than he does from cops.

Of course, the Post is delicate enough to avoid specifically mentioning the race of those “violent men his age.” But we know the tabloid really means “black men.” The Post approvingly cites a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Jason L. Riley, who argues that the real threat facing black people is simply “other blacks”:

Blacks are just 13% of the population but responsible for a majority of all murders in the U.S., and more than 90% of black murder victims are killed by other blacks. Liberals like to point out that most whites are killed by other whites, too. That’s true but beside the point given that the white crime rate is so much lower than the black rate.

The Post concludes their own editorial on a weary note of contrition, having been forced by de Blasio to point out who, exactly, would be most likely to kill his son:

Normally, we wouldn’t bring the mayor’s son into arguments. But it was the mayor’s choice to use his son to advance a false narrative—one that, by the way, contributes to the distrust among cops that de Blasio was trying to deal with at his desperate press conference Monday.

In other words, the paper’s editorial board never wanted to point out who might murder Dante de Blasio—up until the moment his father confessed he was afraid, and rightly so, for his young son’s life.

At the time of de Blasio’s interview on ABC, there was a certain amount of chatter praising the mayor for being candid and direct about race and policing in ways that President Obama wouldn’t. But if this is what an honest public conversation about race ultimately inspires—the contempt of an arrogant police force and the predatory wink of race-baiting newspaper editorials—it’s easy to see why Obama keeps his platitudes vague.

Give the Post this, though: At least they didn’t call anyone a thug. After all, their readers know exactly what they mean.

Photo credit: Associated Press