This must be one those "how long can you last" videos: A painfully flow-less Christian teen spitting h-ate-ful rhymes about homosexuality in a video entitled "Rated T for Tolerance."
Sartre was wrong: This is Hell.
[H/T: Towleroad, video via Christian Nightmares]
Adalia Rose, the six-year-old girl with progeria we told you about recently, is going to make her national television debut on an upcoming episode of Anderson Live, according to her mother Natalia Amozurrutia.
Adalia's 24-year-old mother Natalia, who hadn't been inclined to talk to any media, told me over the phone that she's agreed to do the show because the appearance will be "spreading awareness" for her daughter's rare disease.
What changed Natalia's mind about the publicity? "Honestly I didn't—I didn't want to do anything," Natalia said, interrupting our conversation to ask Adalia if she'd finished going to the bathroom. "My husband really changed my outlook on things and told me to stop worrying about people using us." The only way to speed up the process of finding a cure for progeria, they now reason, is to bring media attention to the rare disorder and so when Anderson Cooper's producers called, Natalia said yes after some consideration. The family of four will be flying to New York later this week to film an episode of Anderson Live, that's currently scheduled to air April 15.
"This wasn't in the plans," says Natalia. "I didn't want to do any of this."
Lee Daniels' upcoming historical drama The Butler was bound to be weird given Daniels' guiding hand (have you seen his The Paperboy, and did you like when Nicole Kidman peed on Zac Efron?), the casting (Robin Williams is Eisenhower, John Cusack is Nixon, Nancy Regan is Jane Fonda, oops I mean Jane Fonda is Nancy Regan) and Mariah Carey's turban. Now, count on it to be weird and creepy because Terence Howard recently started frothing at the mouth to Next Movie about playing the love interest of Oprah Winfrey's character, Gloria Gaines:
Oprah and I had such chemistry. To be able to make out with Oprah and to have love scenes with her and those tig ol' bitties. I mean, she's such a lovely and voluptuous woman. She's very, very beautiful and that was wonderful.
He was erect, why aren't you erect? Perhaps you will be when you watch The Butler, and won't that be something?
"Tig ol' bitties," for those who haven't figured it out, is a polite way of saying "big ol' titties," and mentioning them is a rude way of praising someone that you worked with. The phrase, as heard from Da Brat in the remix of Mariah Carey's "Heartbreaker" (among places), manages to be both euphemistic and more emphatic than what it's standing in for. It's kind of like "pooh," which evokes way too much in the ease with which it slides off the tongue than say, "shit."
Cool guy, that Terrence Howard.
Ever since 22-year-old Lawrence Reed, pictured at left, was found driving—and subsequently crashing—33-year-old Marco McMillian's SUV on a highway in Tennessee last week, news outlets have been trying to piece together exactly how the two men knew each other. McMillian, an openly gay candidate for mayor in Clarksdale, Mississippi, was found dead near the Mississippi River after Reed pointed police to his body, prompting many to immediately presume McMillian's death was a hate crime (a black gay man being murdered by bigots in Mississippi wouldn't be much of a stretch). Yet as more details emerge, McMillian's killing seems to be less about a targeted hate attack and more about a relationship that soured.
An article from the Jackson-based Clarion-Ledger reports that while people close to both Reed and McMillian agree the men met and became friendly at a bar in Clarksdale, the stories differ from there. Some people believe the two men were just friends, while others claim they were romantically involved.
Friends of Reed told Memphis television station WPTY that the two recently had met at a Clarksdale bar and became close. Then, sometime either late Monday night or early Tuesday morning, McMillian made sexual advances on Reed, the friends said, adding that Reed is straight.
The Clarion-Ledger couldn't reach Reed's friends, but it's also the version of events investigators were told. After being hit on, Reed allegedly snapped, strangled McMillian, then drove McMillian's SUV to the levee west of Clarksdale and tossed his body near the river.
Friends of McMillian, however, say the two men were romantically involved and quarreled immediately before the slaying.
"They were having an affair, said 18-year-old Carlos Jones. "They got to tussling."
So far there has been no official motive granted by the authorities. Reed, who is black, has been charged with murdering McMillian, but the Coahoma County Sheriff's Department says it "isn't exploring [a hate crime charge]," which goes against McMillian's family's wishes. Even if Reed did kill McMillian in a homophobic rage, Mississippi's hate crime legislation does not have an inclusion for sexual orientation, saying that a hate crime is only a crime committed "because of the actual or perceived race, color, ancestry, ethnicity, religion, national origin or gender of the victim." The federal definition of a hate crime adds disabilities and sexual orientation to that list.
[Image via AP]
Remember last week when IKEA recalled some meatballs for containing horsemeat, even though horse is a kind of meat, so technically they were still balls of meat, i.e. "meatballs"? Today the Swedish furniture behemoth recalled some almond cakes after tests revealed they contained a bacteria normally found in poop.
Poop is definitely not a kind of almond.
Chinese officials destroyed 1,800 pounds of the frozen cakes last December, after tests revealed the product contained "excessive levels" of coliform bacteria. Coliforms are found in abundance in the feces of warm-blooded animals, but can also exist in water, soil, and on plants. They are real chill, down-for-anything bacteria. Just give them a pillow and a blanket and they're good.
Somehow, IKEA's head office didn't find out about that small catastrophe until this week, at which point it promptly (3 months later) recalled all potentially contaminated cakes from sale.
The recalled cakes originated from the same supplier in Sweden, land of poopcakes, but had been exported to 23 of Earth's hottest countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates.
The U.S. once again avoided the gross food recall, which is ironic considering how much shit we eat.
Eager to find that silver lining, IKEA points out that, although the presence of coliforms can serve as an indication that harmful bacteria like E.coli are present, none of the cakes were found to contain E. coli. Since coliforms alone generally do not cause illness when ingested, it's almost like you should thank IKEA for putting fecal bacteria in your almond cakes, or, at the very least, not sue them because nothing is wrong and we're all friends here.
Quoth a spokesperson:
"There is no health risk associated with consuming this product…However, since the product does not comply with our strict food quality standards we have decided to withdraw the concerned production batches from sale in the 23 affected countries. "
Could this be a sign that, just because a store is great at making inexpensive lighting fixtures for your dorm room, does not mean it is great at making food you should put in your body?
Whatever, the American cakes were fine.
After a vicious random attack at the Rikers Island visitors' center left him with a long, gory gash on his face, 20-year-old Chard Seegars thought his suffering had reached its apex.
But when he learned that one of the correction officers at Rikers had snapped a photo of his wound so he could share it on Facebook, Seegars realized "adding insult to injury" was no longer just a saying.
"The Things That Happens On The Island Smhh [shaking my head hard]," read the officer's Facebook caption.
Seegars subsequently filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court against the officer, the Department of Correction, and the city of New York for causing him "further distress and humiliation" by making him relive the incident.
The February 10th assault that left Seegar with an eight-inch cut on his right cheek required 90 stitches to close, but there were no additional details provided on the identity of the suspect.
"I was devastated," Seegars' mother Shalanda told the New York Daily News. "My son's face was split open like a pear."
[photo via AP, screengrab via NYDN]
Deadline reports that Daily Show host Jon Stewart is taking the summer off to make a movie about an Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was imprisoned after appearing in a Daily Show sketch. For eight of his 12 weeks off, Stewart will be replaced by regular John Oliver.
The movie, which Stewart wrote, is based on Bahari's 2011 book Then They Came For Me: A Family's Story Of Love, Captivity And Survival, about his experiences covering the 2009 Iranian presidential elections, and his subsequent four-month imprisonment—and torture—in Iranian prison on charges of conspiring to launch a revolution. Bahari has been on the Daily Show—initially as a participant in a sketch:
Shortly before his arrest, Mr. Bahari had participated in a "Daily Show" sketch, conducted by one of the show's correspondents, Jason Jones, who was pretending to be a spy. Mr. Bahari's captors used the footage against him.
"You can imagine how upset we were," Mr. Stewart said, "and I struck up a friendship with him afterward."
Mr. Stewart said he eventually read Mr. Bahari's book and "because I'm naïve about the movie business" started to think about a film. He said he did not intend to also adapt the screenplay. "It just kind of happened," he said.
The movie is called Rosewater; Oscar-winner Scott Rudin will produce.
It's only 25 days until the 24,000 of you who applied to Princeton University will receive a letter on Princeton letterhead regretfully informing you that your application does not meet the University's standards, a thanks-for-playing certificate. But you know who else was rejected by the No. 2 school in the country? No. 1 in America's hearts Tina Fey. She told Kelly and Michael:
My mom had had this dream ever since I was a baby, for some reason she wanted me to apply to go to Princeton. I was a good student, but I didn't have any of that private school polish. I went in there and I was like "hi what's up?" and they were just like "No, no..."
If Princeton wasn't good enough for Tina Fey, it definitely isn't good enough for YOU. Plus, I'm sure Yale won't be *that* bad.
The past few months have been full of navel-gazing essays about the relative merits of writers writing navel-gazing essays. Blogger Kate Fridkis weighs in with one more this week—a fairly run-of-the-mill heave in defense of personal writing. One argument in particular deserves to be highlighted:
When I read about a duty officer at a Russian nuclear command center who saved the world from nuclear destruction and never received much credit, I immediately thought, "I wish he'd written a personal essay about this!"
Fair enough: anyone who saves the world from destruction can write a personal essay. The rest of us can chill for a while.
[Via The Frisky; photo via. Previously.]
Tipping! It's not a city in China, but it might as well be considering how foreign it is to many Americans.
The latest example of questionable tipping that is stirring controversy on the web comes from the friend of pizza delivery guy who claims his buddy got a lousy $10 tip on an 85 pizza order that totaled $1463 and change.
As Consumerist points out, it's very possible that an additional, more satisfactory tip was handed to the driver upon completion of the exchange (its likely a delivery of that magnitude required several trips back and forth from the pizza shop).
But assuming for the sake of argument that $10 was the extent of the gratuity, did the pizza festival organizer commit an atrocious tipping faux pas, or was he right on the money?
That depends — on where you get your tipping guidelines from.
Emily Post says pizza delivery tips should be based on size of the order and difficulty of delivery, but sets the maximum at $5.
Slice, Serious Eats' pizza blog, says big orders deserve at least a 10% tip ("never less") — though that suggestion is based on a four-item delivery.
Finally, tipthepizzaguy.com has by far the most generous tipping rule-of-thumb: 15%. Their reasoning? "Instead of going out to a restaurant, the restaurant goes out to you."
According to the site's built-in pizza tip calculator, the person who purchased 85 pizzas should have handed the driver at least $219, and thank him or her for their service to our country ("Pizza delivery is considered a hazardous job by the US government").
Long story short, learn to cook.
[scan via Reddit]
The trailer for Noah Baumbach's new movie, starring and co-written with Greta Gerwig, is black and white and indie all over. It ostensibly tackles the pitfalls of relationships and derailed ambitions. But so much adorable hipster nonsense is packed densely into two minutes of the Frances Ha trailer that it calls for a game of indie movie bingo. Some items spotted straight off the bat:
Aside from these near-cliches, Frances Ha looks like a potentially bright and endearing account of the New York 20-something. Here's to seeing Greta Gerwig back as her adorably plucky character after lamentable/grating versions in Damsels in Distress and Lola Versus. Also she's actually dating Noah Baumbach—real sweet.
[Vulture]
An utterly baffling layout decision at the Mankato (Minn.) Free Press has resulted in what, by most accounts, may be the most unfortunate article headline in print journalism history.
What was supposed to be a throwaway evergreen about grapefruits was transformed in an instant into a bitter, inedible tragedy thanks to the substitution of the letter G with a decidedly un-G-looking piece of grapefruit.
But one graphic designer's typo is a Facebook comedian's treasure, and Free Press readers have certainly been having themselves quite a field day.
"I've never heard of rapefruit but it sounds like an intense way to start my day," wrote Jenn Schweitzer, who posted a scan of the offending food piece to the newspaper's Facebook page.
"I didn't know that rapefruit was good for every meal," reader Rachel Emery chimed in. "I tend to avoid rape-anything, but that might just be me."
And reader Jake Slasherton Miller couldn't help but go for the groin: "Don't even get me started on rapenuts."
[scan via @BryanAGraham]
Hugo Chávez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, has died at the age of 58 after a long battle with an undisclosed type of cancer, Vice President Nicolás Maduro announced today.
Chávez had been ill since at least 2011, when he had his first operation to remove an abscessed tumor. The situation progressed poorly, and by December of last year Chávez was in Cuba—long an ally to his socialist politics—where he had a fourth cancer operation. The president, who won another six-year term in October 2012, stayed in Cuba for more than two months, only returning to Caracas on February 18.
In recent days, Chávez's health had declined even further as he struggled with respiratory problems. "The breathing insufficiency that emerged post-operation persists and the tendency has not been favorable, so it is still being treated," read an official government report delivered to Venezuelans on February 22. Save for a few photos released by governmental authorities, Chávez's time in Havana was the last time he was ever seen or heard from publicly.
Chávez spent 14 years atop Venezuela, and during that time he enjoyed high approval ratings and a fan club that called themselves "chavistas." Yet Chávez's Bolivarian-Marxist leadership often did no favors for the nation he was governing. As Ricardo Hausmann, director of Harvard's Center for International Development, put it in a recent Guardian article, what made Chávez's popularity especially strange was that it lingered in spite of his numerous failures:
Chávez's sustained electoral success is remarkable because he managed to achieve it despite a dismal economic and social performance. Since 1999, the year he took over the presidency, Venezuela has had the lowest average GDP per capita growth rate and the highest inflation of any Latin American country except Haiti. It has also seen a fivefold increase in assassinations to arguably the highest murder rate in the world. In spite of having the largest oil reserves in the planet, he managed to reduce Venezuela's share of OPEC oil output from 4.8% to around 3%. He also managed to stimulate the largest out-migration of Venezuelans in memory.
Chávez shuttered "bourgeois" golf courses and forced TV stations that crossed him off the air. Stories of corruption within his inner circle were notorious, and in 2002 a group of military officers briefly forced Chávez to resign as deadly riots overtook the streets of Caracas. The Bush White House, officials of which met with the leaders of the coup, and The New York Times, whose editorial board enthusiastically backed the ouster, celebrated: "Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator," the paper crowed, barely acknowledging that Chávez had, in fact, been democratically elected president. As seemed to frequently be the case in those days, no one thought very much about what the country's citizens would think. Three days later, Chávez was reinstated when the businessman who'd taken his place proved unable to drum up support for his new regime. When the Times asked a Bush official if the administration recognized Chávez as legitimate, he replied, ''He was democratically elected... Legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters, however."
Throughout it all, glimpses of Chávez's benevolence—gifts of new refrigerators and apartments to poor voters around election time, thanks to the state's oil riches—were generally enough to keep the president's ratings afloat and his head off a coup's chopping block. The Venezuelan government even extended some of its kindnesses to the United States, donating heating oil to low-income families throughout America via a CITGO goodwill program. Still, Chávez knew he had disappointed many Venezuelans, saying late last year, just before the election, "This government will be much better than all the governments of Chávez [he regularly talked about himself in the third person]. I promise I will be a much better president than I have been."
The question now is what's up next for Venezuela, where rampant corruption, the drug trade, violence, and poverty could potentially throw the nation into chaos without a stable government. According to Sean Burges, a senior associate in the Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies at the Australian National University, Article 232 of the Venezuelan constitution says "new presidential elections must be held if a president dies, resigns or is fired from the presidency within the first four years of their term."
Perhaps assuming he'd be dead soon, Chávez proclaimed before his most recent surgery that he wanted his vice president, Maduro, to take his place if he passed away. "In effect Chávez is trying to exercise a practice that Mexicans under the 71-year authoritarian rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party knew as the 'dedazo,' or the touch of the president's finger to anoint the chosen successor," wrote Burges. "The question in Venezuela is whether Chávez's finger will be strong enough to reach out from his grave."
After a collision with a drunk driver in 1996 left Linda Smith with brain damage and a mild case of dementia, her daughter Lisa quit a full-time modeling job to become her mother's live-in caregiver.
The Menifee, California, natives got by on what money they could gather from Lisa's part-time jobs, Linda's disability, and a caregiver stipend Lisa received from the government.
But recently Linda was informed by her doctors that she was well enough to live alone, and the plug was pulled on Lisa's caregiver income.
As a result, she has been forced to reenter the full-time job market following a 16-year hiatus.
"I've been putting out resumes since August," Lisa told a local CBS affiliate. "I did a record number of 31 in three weeks and got absolutely nothing."
Linda knew there wasn't much she could do to help her daughter land a job — but she was determined to do what she could.
Lisa admits that having her mother hold a sign offering $500 to any passing motorist who helps her get a job was strange at first, but trying and failing for so long eventually got to her. "I started acquiescing," she told the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
Linda's money does come with strings attached, however.
"I'm offering $500 cash the minute she gets hired for $15 or more as an executive assistant or an office job," she said.
A few drivers stopped to pick up a resume, but many declined, telling Linda they were job seekers themselves.
[screengrab via the Press-Enterprise]
Yesterday, when Williamsburg revealed its designs for the old Domino sugar factory site, people marveled at the gleaming new towers planned for the waterfront, or, more specifically, the giant gaping holes planned inside them. If solid buildings were the past, empty space-buildings are the future. Everything seemed very cool and neat and, at the end of the day, who doesn't love sugar so what were we talking about?
Indeed, it seemed that, once the development was complete, Williamsburg would have just about everything chic: gingerbread condos, expensive food trucks, and a pool used by white people and black people.
Only one thing would still be missing: people who knew how to dress in a manner that was very unique, groovy, and "a la mode," as they say say.
Then Crain's reported that Williamsburg would soon be getting its first Urban Outfitters and its first Anthropologie.
Finally.
Long have the denizens of Williamsburg languished in the barren fashion badlands, wearing clothes that their mom picked out and looking not hip or hep at all.
Women flock to the borough's famous loft parties wearing graphic tanks and bubble skirts purchased from Aeropostale. On their feet, they wear sensible Comfort Plus pumps from Payless. Their hair is adorned, not with a whimsical crown of artificial flowers, but with human hair. Their own hair.
Meanwhile a typical outfit for a male consists of an old coffee sack with holes cut out for arms, worn over ragged trousers. Upon his head, he wears an inverted mushpan. Upon his feet, he wears his hands.
But now the fashions of the nineties—babydoll dresses and open-back baby doll dresses, mostly—can be purchased right there in Williamsburg. Finally these "hip people" can dress like their idols in Indiana (which has three stores) and Georgia (which has four, including one at the Perimeter Mall in Dunwoody).
Will this retail explosion herald the birth of a new "cool dressing scene" in Williamsburg?
(Note: If you live in some parts of Brooklyn, it may be more convenient for you to continue shopping the Manhattan Urban Outfitters locations.)
The Harlem Shake has been declared over time and time again.
But despite getting students suspended, getting miners fired, and launching a full scale federal investigation, the phenomenon simply refuses to quit.
But now — finally — it seems we've reached the meme's acme.
Make that its nadir.
The Dutch Parkinson's Association last week released its own contribution to the viral trend, starring its chairman Eric Roos as "man suffering from Parkinson's disease."
Not even kidding: According to the group's official website, Roos can be seen in the video "making the typical Parkinson moves to the music."
The organization is clearly aware it's two-stepping all over the boundaries of good taste since the video is called "worst Harlem Shake ever!"
And things turn out much better than expected. But still.
[H/T: Reddit]
On Tuesday, Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton was tottering around a "fishing heritage center" in the middle of nowhere (technically: the coast of nowhere), all pregnant, probably singing Britney Spears' 2000 single "Lucky" over and over in her head and wondering if she wouldn't have been happier with Tristan after all.
The Daily Beast reports that Kate was broken out of her reverie by a 67-year-old woman who gave her a teddy bear. According to the woman, Kate accepted the toy and said "Thank you, I'll give that to my d—" then stopped herself.
The woman asked Kate if she'd meant to say "daughter."
At first, says the woman, the duchess responded "No, we don't know!" When pressed, she amended her answer to "We're not telling."
British papers have already decided that this "slip" is evidence that Kate Middleton knows she is having a girl.
But before we jump to conclusions, let's take a look at all the things she could have been about to say:
Given the possibilities, it's pretty clear that Kate's verbal diarrhea is no indication she's having a girl.
Having said that, women who who suffer, as Kate did, from hyperemesis gravidarum, are more likely to give birth to girls. So she probably is.
[Daily Beast // Image via AP]
A young, gay couple was kicked out of a California mall last Saturday for holding hands and kissing. Jose Guzman, 24, and his boyfriend Daniel Chesmore, 21, were in the Westfield Galleria in Roseville, California for just two minutes before they were asked to leave by a security guard, according to Chesmore.
"We were just holding hands and kissing each other on the cheek," Daniel Chesmore told the Daily News. "It was friendly and playful. There was nothing sexual about it."
The guard reportedly told the couple that their behavior was inappropriate because there were children nearby. At that point, Chesmore began to record the incident. He later played the recording for Sacramento's Fox 40:
"If you continue to kiss, you will be asked to leave the mall. Period," the voice on the recording said. "I counted you guys kissing 25 times. I told you before, we contact any couple [...] about this."
Chesmore denied that he and Guzman had kissed that many times, saying it was impossible considering how long they'd be in the mall. He also expressed outrage that the guard said he was a threat to children, noting that both he and Guzman work as tutors at an elementary school.
"I feel isolated," Chesmore explained. "I feel I'm being discriminated against because of my sexual orientation. For some reason I am some threat to children…but I work with children."
Fox 40 asked Galleria General Manager Eddie Ollman for comment. He declined to go on camera, but issued a statement, saying, "Persons that violate the Code of Conduct are asked to leave the property."
The news station couldn't find anything in the mall's code of conduct that mentions public display of affection, and reporters from the station later went "undercover" at the mall, where they saw "dozens of straight couples sitting inside of the Galleria, holding hands and smooching, right out in the open."
After an outpouring of support for the couple online, the mall posted a second statement to their Facebook wall, saying they "celebrate the diversity" of their community and showing support of a "kiss in" at the mall scheduled for this Saturday.
[Daily News/Image via Fox 40]
Florida Man, meet Drunk, Half-Naked Arkansas Woman: sometime Tuesday, 28-year-old Jamie Craft, of Jonesboro, Arkansas, allegedly went for drunken joyride in Jonesboro, Arkansas and crashed into a mobile home. Details are still sketchy now, but at some point between the crash and the arrival of the police, Craft reportedly took off her pants and attempted to flee the scene in what was apparently the only functional vehicle nearby: her son's battery powered Power Wheels truck.
Police said Craft was "pretty irate" when they caught up to her. They also noted her lack of pants and extreme drunkenness – her blood alcohol level was reportedly 0.217, nearly three times the legal limit.
Craft is facing a variety of charges, including disorderly contact, driving with a suspended license, and, presumably, a DUI.
[Image via KTLA 5]
Big week for Israel: First came news about Palestinian only buses and now an exciting announcement about a Hebrew edition of Playboy. The English-language edition of the magazine has been available in the holy land for years, but this version will include Israeli models and articles by Israeli writers. Owner, publisher, and probably all-around excellent person Daniel Pomerantz has big plans for the venture.
"Our target is men who want a taste of the good life and also women who are curious about the tastes of the men in their lives," Pomerantz said. "I believe that the special formula that has brought Playboy to a rare level of success throughout the world will continue to succeed in my new home Israel."
As the Associated Press notes previous Hebrew-only porn attempts have failed, including an attempt to produce an Israeli edition of Penthouse in 1989, but Pomerantz isn't worried.
"Israel is a very complicated country with tradition and modernity and also with serious things and fun fashionable things and that is exactly the character of Playboy. It is a complicated and beautiful magazine for a complicated and beautiful country," he said.
"People will see just from the words Playboy Israel that we are a normal country, fashionable, modern, people who work every day with a passion and if you read Playboy magazine you see that it's not just beauty and fashion but it's also depth and politics and issues, people who care and think about the world they live in," he said.
Right. Good luck with that, not that anything could go wrong with launching a print-only pornographic magazine in 2013.
[Image via AP]
