Mondays, am I right? The guys behind Insane Office Escape know what I'm talking about.

Billed in some circles as the Russian remake of Mike Judge's Office Space, the sequel to the "best music video ever" is twice as take-no-prisoners as the first.

Literally: The number of people shot, maimed, and or otherwise incapacitated in pursuit of the mysterious teleportation MacGuffin is several orders of magnitude greater this time around.

Of course, as one YouTube users helpfully points out, in Russia this video is known as "Perfectly Ordinary Office Skedaddle."

[H/T: BIOTV]

A 20-year-old Greek soccer player has been banned for life from Greece's national teams for apparently throwing up a Nazi salute after scoring a game-winning goal on Saturday. (Deadspin's got video, here.)

Giorgos Katidis maintains he didn't know what the Nazi salute meant, and was merely pointing at a teammate in the stands. (Hitler.) According to the Guardian, he described himself as "not a fascist" on Twitter before deleting his account.

Katidis' coach Ewald Lienen (incidentally: a German) defended his player's total lack of self-awareness, historical knowledge, and general brainpower, saying it was very likely that this adult human being who had grown up in the world had no idea what a Nazi salute looked like or stood for.

What "most likely" happened, according to Lienen, is that Katidis saw a picture of the move on the Internet one night while performing a Google Image search for "cool moves to do + no context," then blindly copied it.

"He is a young kid who does not have any political ideas. He most likely saw such a salute on the internet or somewhere else and did it without knowing what it means."

In other words: Katidis doesn't even know if he's a Nazi yet.

Unfortunately, Greece's national soccer federation, the EPO, isn't giving the (now former) AEK Athens player any time to make up his mind on that one. They've already released a statement banning Katidis from the federation for life:

"The player's action to salute to spectators in a Nazi manner is a severe provocation, insults all the victims of Nazi bestiality and injures the deeply pacifist and human character of the game."

To help you avoid blunders like this, here's a quick refresher on how to point to a friend:

1. Extend one arm in the direction of your friend and (IMPERATIVE) fold all of your fingers except the index into a fist.
2. Use the index finger to pinpoint the location of your friend.
3. Don't salute the Führer.

[Guardian // Image via AP]

A few years ago, a tiny social network catering exclusively to rich wastrels called ASmallWorld became a momentary fascination of gossip sites like ours, because, hey—an "invitation only" snobby Facebook for rich people? Someone dial up the NYT Style section piece at once! At the peak of its hype, the company attracted Harvey Weinstein as an investor; but ASW's traffic remained flat, and the sheen of the "Myspace for Millionaires" wore off, and he offloaded his stake. Eventually, people who weren't members of ASW stopped hearing about it.

Until now! Because ASW—which still exists, like a relic from an earlier, more innocent time—is now trying to regain its bygone sense of exclusivity. First was an email that went out to members last month, informing them that "As part of a larger initiative to ensure the integrity of our membership, we are closing our community to new members on March 1, 2013." And then, today, the lucky surviving members received this notification of the purge:

Dear Valued Member,

Trust is important to us. How important? Well, as part of our ongoing efforts to protect the integrity of our membership, we have decided to terminate the accounts of anyone who undermines the unique spirit of openness that serves as the cornerstone of ASW-and sets our community apart.

Obviously you are not one of those people! You're receiving this email because we value your contributions to the community, and we hope you always feel comfortable here at ASW, online and off. The reality is simply that our growth has inadvertently allowed certain members to degrade this trust, and those are the people we're exiling, effective immediately.

It is our hope that this will help you feel even more at ease in sharing your life with the rest of the ASW community.

Warm Regards and Happy Travels,
The ASW Team

P.S. Should you wish to review the conduct expected of an ASW member, feel free to read our Rules. In the event that you feel a member is in clear violation of our Rules, please email support@asw.com.

It sure sounds like ASW is purging people who are leaking hot inside information like, I dunno, where Hud Morgan is eating brunch. Which is strange, since there hasn't been any good ASW-related gossip in years.

If there is something worth leaking from this flailing Eurotrash mutual masturbation society, you should, of course, send it to us.

Hillary Clinton did not, apparently, before this morning, officially support gay marriage; now, she announces in this YouTube video, she does. And only three days after conservative Republican Senator Rob Portman, too. And four years after Dick Cheney.

Beyoncé is so cute when she gets angry: If the art accompanying her new song(s) "Bow Down / I Been On" is any indication, she looks like her prepubescent pageant-girl self Photoshopped onto a picture of her old living room/trophy display area. That's only the first indication the weirdness of the release, which came via Beyoncé's Tumblr yesterday. The song amassed over a million streams on Soundcloud in less than 24 hours, which must be some sort of record.

Singing her melodramatic heart out, Beyoncé rhapsodizes herself ("I know when you were little girls you dreamt of being in my world") and commands those who look up to her to "bow down," like they aren't already. It's redundant and a more straightforward way of boasting than, say, the elegant fuck-you of her Super Bowl performance. Just when it seems a little too human, the song transitions to "I Been On," in which a scarily pitched-down Beyoncé voice raps about her past ("I remember my baby hair with my dookie braids…shout out to Willie D. I was in that Willie D video when I was about 14. Lookin' crazy. Shout out to Pimp C. We used to sneak and listen to that U.G.K.").

Miss Info reports that "Bow Down" was produced by Hit Boy and Planet 6, while the spacey and sparse "I Been On" was done by Timbaland, Polow da Don, Sonny Digital, with The-Dream. Did they each push one button, and like Kraftwerk can we please have them line up and do that at MOMA?

Caution: Video opens on a close shot of an extremely dead cow.

Taking his brand new Sony NEX-VG30H Handycam for a spin, Nathan Bverbeez decided to shoot some still footage of a dead cow for some reason.

After a minute he noticed a herd of cattle drifting in his direction, but wasn't initially concerned because cows.

Even after a young bull appeared to take a particular interest in his unusual hobby, Nathan still thought he had the upper hand, and tried to stand his ground.

Not his brightest idea, as he would quickly learn while sprinting away for dear life.

The day wasn't a total loss, however: At least Nathan got to test out the camera's Steadyshot feature.

[H/T: Reddit]

Talk about lost luggage: An English Springer Spaniel scheduled to fly in the cargo hold of a United Airlines plane bound for Phoenix somehow ended up on a flight to Ireland, instead.

Hendrix's owner, Edith Lombardo-Albach, was moving from New York to Arizona along with the rest of her family, so she booked a one-way flight to Phoenix for her pet, expecting United to take care of the rest.

But an unexplained "mix up" landed the dog on a different flight: One bound for Shannon, Ireland — 5,000 miles in the opposite direction.

"Somebody called me and told me that there was something wrong with the dog, and that the dog was on its way to Ireland instead of to Phoenix," Lombardo-Albach told CBS 2.

The call came just ten minutes before Hendrix was due to arrive at the airport.

"I felt like somebody punched me in the stomach. I mean, that's my dog. That's like my child," Edith's daughter Meredith Grant told ABC 15.

United promised Hendrix would be placed on the next flight out to Phoenix via Newark, and airline staffers would take care of the dog's every need in the meantime.

24 hours later, the dog was finally reunited with his family, but despite the happy ending and a full refund, Grant remains unsatisfied.

"I wasn't even looking for a refund. I just wanted somebody to say we screwed up," she said. "That's not what they said."

United hasn't apologized for the error or explained what caused it, but did release a statement saying the "circumstances surrounding the situation" were being reviewed and the company "will take steps to prevent this from happening again." The airline also insisted that "Hendrix's experience is not typical of the service we provide to the more than 100,000 pets who travel with us every year."

[screengrab via ABC15]

It's not just that you don't have anything interesting to say about Brooklyn; we don't have anything interesting to say about Brooklyn. Neither blogs, nor magazines, nor newspapers, nor serious academic thinkers, nor urban planners, nor philosophers, nor international jet-setters, nor fashion mavens, nor foodies, nor social theorists have anything interesting to say about Brooklyn. Neither wide-eyed outsiders, nor wry, self-loathing insiders have anything interesting to say about Brooklyn. Neither griping native Brooklynites nor dewy recent transplants have anything interesting to say about Brooklyn. And—it should go without saying—the glossy, luxury ad-laden fashion magazine insert of the New York Times does not have anything interesting to say about Brooklyn.

"Brooklyn is no longer the home of Luddite dignity within an urban context; it is the very idea of Luddite dignity within an urban context."

Everyone shut the fuck up. Please.

[Photo: Paul Lowry/ Flickr]

Bill O'Reilly wants his ex-wife to go to Hell. Literally. As we previously reported, the Fox News falafelist became separated from his former wife Maureen McPhilmy at some point in 2011, and later went on an apparently corrupt crusade to destroy the career of the Nassau County Police detective she was dating. We have now confirmed that O'Reilly and McPhilmy have been formally divorced, that she has since married the detective, and that O'Reilly is in the midst of a scorched-earth custody battle—dubbed, appropriately enough, Anonymous v. Anonymous—over the ex-couple's two children. It involves a surreptitious attempt by O'Reilly to undermine his custody arrangement by hiring, as a member of his household staff, the woman he and his ex had agreed on as a neutral arbiter of their disputes. It also involves O'Reilly's attempts to annul his marriage and have McPhilmy potentially booted from the Catholic Church.

To catch you up: In May 2010, O'Reilly and his wife began living in separate houses less than half a mile from each other on Long Island. In 2011, O'Reilly used his connections with the Nassau County Police Department (and the potential for donations to a nonprofit affiliated with the department) to try to launch an internal affairs investigation into McPhilmy's new boyfriend—a Nassau County detective—for the crime of sleeping with Bill O'Reilly's wife. With the help of the New York Civil Liberties Union, we are currently suing the NCPD for access to public records, including O'Reilly's correspondence with former commissioner Lawrence Mulvey, about the episode. That case is on appeal to the Second Department of New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division.

Which brings us to another case we found rattling around in the Second Department: Anonymous 2011-1 v. Anonymous 2011-2. Family law cases in New York are not a matter of public record. But their existence, in the form of a docket entry with the names of the participants—as in Kramer v. Kramer—generally is. In rare cases, a judge will grant a motion to anonymize the names to protect the interests of the children or the privacy of public citizens. Anonymous 2011-1 v. Anonymous 2011-2 is one of those cases.

The dispute behind Anonymous 2011-1 v. Anonymous 2011-2 has been bitter enough, though, that the case ended up in the appellate division, where decisions are routinely published, often laying bare sensitive details. It's a custody action, commenced in September 2011, and you can read all about it right here, on the web site of the New York state court system. It involves a treacherous father who attempted to maintain control over the children he shared with his ex-wife by buying off and co-opting their purportedly neutral therapist. Anonymous 2011-1 is McPhilmy. Anonymous 2011-2 is O'Reilly.

The dispute was heard by the Second Department in January, after a trial court denied McPhilmy's motion to amend the couple's custody agreement.

Here's what the Second Department opinion reveals:

• O'Reilly and McPhilmy separated on April 2, 2010.
• They divorced on September 1, 2011.
• They agreed to share custody of their two children, aged 13 and 10.
• The couple's separation agreement included provisions allowing for shared custody—they each got the children on alternating weeks. And it also appointed a "neutral therapist" to, according to the opinion, "act as a neutral mediator to help them resolve any parenting disputes."

And here's where it gets interesting. In October 2011, McPhilmy took O'Reilly to court after learning that the woman she thought had been a neutral therapist serving the needs of her children was in fact a member of her ex-husband's household staff. The therapist, a Long Island licensed social worker named Lynne Kulakowski, was working long days and some evenings in O'Reilly's house, on his payroll, and basically acting as the children's nanny. From the opinion:

The mother claimed that the [father] had repeatedly violated conditions of the agreement. The mother further alleged that, after the execution of the agreement, the father had hired the children's therapist as a full-time employee to perform virtually all of his parental duties.... The mother's affidavit contained specific allegations concerning the father's repeated violations of the custody provisions of the agreement since its inception.... Moreover, the full-time employment of the children's therapist, the person designated in the agreement as a neutral third-party "arbitrator" of custodial disputes, by the father, constitutes a significant change of circumstance which could undermine the integrity of the agreement's custodial provisions.

At a Second Department hearing in January, McPhilmy's attorney claimed—and O'Reilly's attorney did not dispute—that Kulakowski was earning a six-figure salary from O'Reilly. All of this, of course, made a mockery of the custody agreement's appointment of Kulakowski as a neutral arbiter of disputes—O'Reilly rigged the game against his ex-wife. A lower court initially denied McPhilmy's request for a hearing about O'Reilly's co-optation of the therapist, but the appellate court agreed with McPhilmy and sent the case back for a hearing. In a highly unusual step for an appellate court, it also ordered the appointment of an independent attorney for the children, an indication that the dispute has become particularly poisonous.

Another indication that it has become poisonous: the Catholic Church has gotten involved. Gawker has learned that McPhilmy has been formally reprimanded in writing by her church for continuing to take communion in her Long Island parish despite having been divorced and remarried—a no-no according to the Pope. The reprimand also instructed her to stop telling her children that her second marriage, to the Nassau County detective O'Reilly tried to destroy, is valid in the eyes of God. It warned her that if she didn't comply, harsher measures may be in order.

Chad Glendinning, a professor of canon law at Canada's St. Paul University, couldn't say whether the reprimand was a first step on the road to excommunication. But he did say it appeared to be a first step toward barring her from the sacraments if necessary. "Public denial of holy communion is to be avoided as far as possible," he said. "Instead, pastors should take precautionary measures to explain the Church's teaching to concerned persons so that they may be able to understand it or at least respect it. It is possible that the letter you describe is such an attempt."

There presumably aren't too many people besides O'Reilly who know what McPhilmy is saying to her children about how God views her marriage. And O'Reilly, who interviewed Timothy Cardinal Dolan last year and donated more than $65,000 to New York Catholic parishes and schools in 2011, according to the tax return of his nonprofit foundation, carries considerable weight in the archdiocese.

While he's busy harassing McPhilmy for asserting the holiness of her second marriage, O'Reilly is trying to deny the existence of his first: He is, Gawker has learned, seeking an annulment of his 15-year marriage, which produced two children. Null and void. Invalid in the eyes of God. Never happened. This despite his manifest belief in the "stability" that straight marriage brings to the culture and concern at the (purportedly) declining marriage rates in countries that allow gay people to marry one another. If successful, the annulment would presumably render his 2004 escapade with former producer Andrea Mackris, whom he repeatedly and vividly sexually harassed with threats to take "the falafel thing...and put it on your pussy," retroactively kosher with Jesus. (It would also make him even more of an asshole than his familial nemesis Joseph Kennedy, who tried and failed to have his 12-year marriage annulled.)

The bow on this whole package is the matter of McPhilmy's attorney, listed atop the Second Department decision: She has hired a firm called Greenfield Labby, and is represented by one Casey Greenfield. Gawker readers will remember Greenfield as the daughter of network newsman Jeff Greenfield and babymama to CNN's Jeffrey Toobin, whom Greenfield had to sue for support in 2009 after the birth of their son. (Toobin was and remains married to another woman, and insisted for months that the child was not his; a paternity test proved otherwise.) Greenfield went on, according to the New York Times, to form a boutique divorce firm. She has apparently put her familiarity with TV assholes to good use.

We contacted Fox News, O'Reilly's attorney, Kulakowski, and Greenfield for comment; none did.

[Photos via Shutterstock and Getty Images]

Jason Molina, the musician and songwriter behind the great Magnolia Electric Co. and Songs: Ohia, passed away on Saturday at 39, Chunklet's Henry Owings reports. Molina had struggled with severe alcoholism, and had released no new recordings since 2009; in 2011 his family held a fundraiser to pay for medical bills he had accrued during treatment for his addiction. The Magnolia Electric Co. Tumblr has a moving memorial:

This is especially hard for us to share. Jason is the cornerstone of Secretly Canadian. Without him there would be no us - plain and simple. His singular, stirring body of work is the foundation upon which all else has been constructed. After hearing and falling in love with the mysterious voice on his debut single "Soul" in early 1996, we approached him about releasing a single on our newly formed label. For some reason he said yes. We drove from Indiana to New York to meet him in person and he handed us what would become the first of many JMo master tapes. And with the Songs: Ohia One Pronunciation of Glory 7" we were given a voice as a label. The subsequent self-titled debut was often referred to by fans as The Black Album. Each Songs: Ohia album to follow proved a new, haunting thesis statement from a prodigal songwriter whose voice and soul burned far beyond that of the average twenty-something.

Tech makes you giddy. Tech makes you fly. Tech makes you sumo wrestle. These are just a few of the things I learned in the whiplash-inducing commercial for the BBC America show Gizmodo: The Gadget Testers, which premieres tonight. (Full disclosure: Gizmodo is owned by Gawker Media and that is 100 percent of the reason why I am reviewing a commercial.) Apparently featuring at least one person (Joel Johnson) that I hear I work within feet of but cannot be sure of because there are too many crappy TV shows to watch and Mariah Carey gifs to make for me to swivel around and survey the Gizmodo area of the Gawker office, Gizmodo: The Gadget Testers none the less seems like it's full of swell, fun-loving people whose gizmos make them say, "Yeah!" "Whoo!" and "Holy crap!" Spoiler alert: It's pretty clear that the gizmos passed their tests. It's pretty clear that the show does, too: The breathlessly frenetic 31 seconds of this ad spot just fly by. It's an exquisitely paced commercial.

Do you like crotch? Well, has Gizmodo got the show for you! Or at least, it's the show for me. The nether regions of the pretty young gadget testers who populate the show are, in a word, unmissable. We see boys walking in spandex under their mawashi. We see one PYGT crouch in a wide sumo stance. Very erotic. A cam shoots right up the crotch of a male on a downhill concrete luge. We see that same boy (I think) sitting on some ledge saying, "I will be scared," his relaxed crotch also on display. How's it hangin'? Chillin'.

Spoiler alert, Pt. 2: At the end of the commerical, we learn that this show will air at 10:20 on BBC America, because they do things differently in England, even when England is in America.

Obviously, this show is full of surprises, and I have a feeling that so are our gadget testers. Let's find out. Who's with me?

[via Gizmodo]

Lindsay Lohan is headed back to rehab for 90 days.

After arriving to court almost fifty minutes late, Lohan accepted a plea deal for charges stemming from last year's car accident. The deal consists of 90 days spent in a locked down rehab facility, 30 days of community service (which may be done in New York), and 18 months of psychotherapy (of which a small part has already been completed). She'll also have to pay restitution to the truck driver she hit. And she's back on probation for two more years.

Technically, the 90 days could have been served in jail; Lindsay has elected to serve it in rehab.

As Lohan walked into court, someone threw what appeared to be gold glitter at her. There was no visible glitter on her in feed from the courtroom. She looked sad and tired.

UPDATE: As Lohan's lawyer, Mark Heller, was giving a statement to reporters after court (Lindsay had already left the scene), Lohan's father, Michael, began screaming at Heller from the assembled crowd. Eventually, Heller cut short his remarks after Michael began barking "Why are you still up there?!" over and over.

Michael Lohan then took Heller's place at the microphone, and told reporters that Heller would lose his license ("You're getting charged, Heller! You're gonna lose your license again, I guarantee it!") for failing to keep Lindsay properly briefed during negotiations and for "tampering with a witness." He also said that Heller owes him $160,000, because why not?

UPDATE II:


If you happen to live a rich, full life that does not entail the watching of live feeds from Lindsay Lohan's courtroom, you might have missed a couple super tense, whispery moments between Lohan and Heller that TMZ's camera picked up.

At one point near the end of the session, Heller stood up to make a clarification about Lindsay's legal standing and, once he'd sat back down, she whispered, "Why would you even say that?" After the judge corrected Heller's clarification, Lohan leaned in and instructed, "Don't say anything else. I just wanna go."

[TMZ // Image via AP]

CNN earned the ire of thousands over the weekend when it aired coverage of the Steubenville Rape trial that was shockingly sympathetic toward the rapists.

"Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures," correspondent Poppy Harlow told anchor Candy Crowley, who then turned around and asked a legal expert to weigh in on the "lasting effect" being found guilty of rape will have on the lives of "sixteen-year-olds just sobbing in court."

Given the Onion-y nature of CNN's coverage, it may not be all that surprising to learn that The Onion did a story two years ago that shares some disturbing similarities with CNN's take.

"I was a staff writer on the Onion's show 'SportsDome' which aired on Comedy Central in 2011," writes Krister Johnson in the intro to Onion Sports Network story "Athele Overcomes Rape." "This is one of the stories we did—full credit to David Iscoe for the idea and script. It could have been produced by the CNN team covering the Steubenville rape verdict."

Who needs Onion-like stories in real life when actual Onion stories are becoming real life?

[H/T: BroBible]

Downton Abbey's Matthew Crawley, somewhat known for his portrayal of British actor Dan Stevens in a tedious, long-term project known as everyday life, surfaced recently looking way different than he once did, and people could not believe it. He used to look the one way and now he looks very much another. How had it happened, and why, and could it be undone?

(If you're still waiting to watch the Season 3 Downton Abbey finale, don't read this post or any other Downton Abbey post.)

The new Matthew Crawley was noticeably thinner than he had ever been, even during wartime, which was difficult for all of us here at Downton Abbey, where we all live. His hair was dark and spiky, like a puffer fish at midnight. He had some scraggly facial scruff that made him look like a Sunglass Hut model.

It was all just different!

British tabloids immediately began speculating about just what had happened to poor Matthew Crawley (a parasite? An evil secret gnawing at him from within?), who, it must be said, looked more alive when he died at the end of last season than he does now. In the end, the papers' consensus was: "Hollywood Makeover." Indeed, he did now resemble a part-time actor waiting tables in West Hollywood; a "background artist" on Vanderpump Rules.

But why has he done this to himself?

Since allowing his Downton Abbey contract to expire, Stevens has begun accepting roles that take him further and further away from his home, where he lives, where we're all waiting for him: Downton Abbey.

He recently appeared thousands of miles from our home, on Broadway, opposite actress Jessica Chastain in The Heiress. In his upcoming film, A Walk Among the Tombstones, Stevens portrays a heroin trafficker who has never been to Downton Abbey.

But maybe it's not too late for rewrites?

[Image via Getty]

A news anchor for a Fox affiliate in North Alabama unwittingly broke the news of her own marriage proposal this past Saturday when a "breaking news script" introducing the proposal was plugged into her teleprompter at the last minute.

Nine O'clock News weekend anchor Jillian Pavlica was reportedly informed by her producer, Dana Conley, that breaking news had just been received, and was instructed to read the teleprompter as-is.

"We've got breaking news to share with you tonight," Pavlica said at the start of Saturday's telecast. "FOX54 has just learned that a Huntsville news anchor is being proposed to on live TV right now!"

At that, Pavlica realized what was going on, and her then-boyfriend Vince came out to seal the deal.

"Did I just really get proposed to live on air???" Pavlica later tweeted. "Umm.. why yes.. I think I did?!?!?! Holy cow!"

And no one believed Fox 54's breaking news alerts ever again.

[H/T: HyperVocal]

Bernard Baruch's famous quote-turned-cliché, "Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter," becomes quainter and more obsolete by the day. Technology has made the public-communicating elite more accessible, and as a consequence, more vulnerable to critique. Feedback lurks in every corner – your inbox, your @replies on Twitter, Facebook, comment sections. If you choose to ignore the criticism, people will inform you of it nonetheless ("Don't let ‘em get you down," they will say.) If you are sensitive enough to be sourcing your emotions for content, you are probably sensitive enough to be affected by these words, especially when they are negative. You may even end up exploring them, sorting them out or just plain responding to them in your further work, which will then be up for public dissection, which could get under your skin some more, causing you to react again, etc. Modern discourse is full of noise, thanks in no small part to these feedback loops.

Lena Dunham matters and minds. "I take that criticism very seriously," she told Terry Gross, regarding the widespread idea that the show Dunham created, stars in, writes and sometimes directs, Girls, wasn't diverse enough. She answered that criticism by having on Donald Glover as her temporary love interest in the show's second season. Within the first few minutes of the show's Season 2 premiere, she and Glover's character were fucking. "I wanted this so bad...I'm finally getting it...It's about fucking time," her character moaned. Later Dunham told Vulture that while she had "always wanted to work with Donald," his appearance was somewhat in service of a dialogue with viewers. "It was a pretty clear statement that we are comfortable, that there isn't a political agenda against having black characters in the show," she said.

Glover lasted on the show only long enough to make a statement. His character and Hannah broke up in the season's second episode after a particularly fraught argument about race and his political beliefs. (During, which, by the way, she receive his criticism of her writing with the same grace that Dunham tends to employ.) "Thank you for enlightening me on how things are tougher for minorities," his character said at one point after she brought up the disproportionate amount of black men on death row, implying his Republican status was somehow doing them a disservice. Enlightening people on how things are tougher for minorities is in fact what Dunham did when she made a show about a bunch of white people in New York. Glover's character was a token, but one used to illustrate how out of her depth Hannah and Lena Dunham are when it comes to talking about black people, and why her creative decision is, in fact, accurate. It's not admirable but it is clever.

The same can be said for so many of Dunham's responses embedded in Season 2 of Girls, the main function of which was to summarize our modern call-and-response dialogue and to define the fashion of the day: Thin skin is in. In the process, though, Dunham & Co., have found a way to make Internet-driven integration sophisticated in a time when it's an accepted practice for shows to cluelessly plaster tweets onscreen, forcing one medium onto another in the most unsightly way possible.

Responding to the series premiere, Frank Bruni wrote in the Times last year that:

You watch these scenes and other examples of the zeitgeist-y, early-20s heroines of Girls engaging in, recoiling from, mulling and mourning sex, and you think: Gloria Steinem went to the barricades for this?

And yet, last night's series finale ended back-to-back-to-back sex scenes in which the women dictated exactly what they wanted. When surveying her romantic life with an affluent young doctor she had a multi-day affair with (played by Patrick Wilson in the most controversial episode of the second season), Hannah described a time when she asked a guy to punch her in the chest and then ejaculate where he had just hit. "What make me think I deserve that?" she wondered. Exactly other people's point.

That controversial episode, "One Man's Trash," resulted in wildly divergent interpretations all over the Internet that focused on the likelihood of frumpy Dunham being the temporary fuck buddy of by a piece as hot as Wilson. (Insult to injury: His character referred to Hannah as "beautiful.") That's only looking at it from one perspective – Hannah's – which is a fair enough direction given how Hannah-centric the first season was and how Dunham-centric this show is (in the same way that her actual name half-rhymes with her character's, Lena's life seems to half-rhyme with her that of the writing, thinking, feeling, New York-dwelling Hannah). What many didn't take into consideration is that some dudes will fuck anything, regardless of where he fits on the 1 to 10 scale, and that sometimes people have these tangential half-narratives that don't exactly fit in with their lives or what outsiders would expect from them. Hannah had just a bit role in the life of Wilson's character. She was that weird thing he did.

If the first season of Girls was all about the me-ness of culture, the second focused on the communal aspect of modern communication. Two episodes after the Wilson lightning rod, when Hannah visited Jessa on a trip home to visit her father, Hannah was confronted with the very idea that she is the center of only her world: Jessa's father's girlfriend (played by Rosanna Arquette) described Hannah as a "cushion" she had prayed to manifest for smoother relations between Jessa and her father during their visit. Hannah played a supporting role in that narrative, and, for that matter, several others in the season (especially that of Marnie, who barely gave Hannah the time of day during a party Marnie was hosting for her artist boyfriend). This counters so much of the criticism Dunham received for being egocentric. You think she's a megalomaniac? Well, the guy who had the most screen time (to a virtually insufferable level) was Shoshana's boyfriend Ray (Alex Karpovsky), who explicitly stated that he wasn't attracted to Hannah. So there.

The end of last night's Season 2 finale found Hannah's ex-and-maybe-future boyfriend Adam racing to her, his too-perfect abs glistening, to save her from herself. Her character began unraveling midway through the season, right around the time she told Wilson's character that she was deeply lonely. She fell into old OCD patterns, hurt herself badly enough to require hospital care and defaulted on her e-book deal. While Marnie and Shoshana beamed with happiness, no mulling or mourning to be found, and Jessa was off somewhere probably getting her vagina pierced and speaking a language that wasn't English, Hannah was either being rescued by her true love, or she was sinking further in a hole by a guy who fucked her like she was an animal, who made her feel like shit, whom she spent a lot of time giddily fleeing from in the season we just saw. As usual, it was open to interpretation, and perfectly tailored.

What did Vice President Joe Biden and newly-ensconced Pope Francis talk about in their brief conversation on the long receiving line following the new pope's first mass? It's probably best left to historians and Joe/Frank 'shippers (#Friden), but one imagines the working class came up, as it often does (we hear) in conversation with both Biden and the former Cardinal Borgoglio. It was a brief chat, in any event; 70-year-old Biden was polite enough to let the 76-year-old pope off the hook quickly (unlike, who was that, the wife of the President of Portugal? Who talked his ear off), and Francis continued his long meet and greet, which included Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, barred from EU travel but allowed in the Vatican. The mass that preceded the receiving line was short and simple, focused on the poor and the call to service; it drew a large (and loud) crowd to receive communion from priests carrying yellow umbrellas. If nothing else, Biden seemed to have a good time:

[Guardian | NPR | BBC]

Ten years ago today, President George W. Bush announced the U.S. invasion of Iraq, to "disarm" the country, "free its people," and transform it into a "united, stable and free country."

Today, more than 50 people are dead in a dozen explosions across Baghdad and south today as Sunni insurgents seeking to undermine the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government picked up their bombing campaign against Shi'ite targets.

Among the targets were a crowded market near the Green Zone, Shi'ite neighborhoods in Baghdad, and a Shi'ite town south of the capital.

"I was driving my taxi and suddenly I felt my car rocked. Smoke was all around. I saw two bodies on the ground. People were running and shouting everywhere," said Ali Radi, a taxi driver caught in one of the blasts in Baghdad's Sadr City.

Elections have been postponed in two provinces over security fears; Sunni protestors are demonstrating against the prime minister; and "security officials say al Qaeda is regrouping in the vast western desert of Anbar province bordering Syria." (Syria, of course, poses its own set of problems to Iraq.)

In his announcement, President Bush warned that the campaign "could be longer and more difficult than some predict." Indeed.

[Reuters, image via AP]

A United Methodist Church in North Carolina is taking a dramatic stand on the issue of marriage equality by announcing the immediate cessation of all its marriage-related services until the right to marry is granted to all couples, including ones of the same sex.

"North Carolina prohibits same sex marriage and all the rights and privileges marriage brings," the Green Street United Methodist Church said in a statement released through Equality NC. "The Leadership Council has asked that their ministers join others who refuse to sign any State marriage licenses until this right is granted to same sex couples."

The Council's request that its senior pastor, Kelly Carpenter, "refrain from conducting wedding ceremonies" for straight couples is unlikely to be met with resistance, as the pastor told WXII News he believes all congregants should be allowed to "share a sense of the love that they have found."

In lieu of marriages, the church plans to hold "relationship blessings" until such time as the right to marry is recognized by both the denomination and the state.

While other UMCs have taken a similar stance, the Green Street UMC is believed to be the first southern Methodist church to do so.

The battle is certain to be an uphill one: Though a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 58 percent of all Americans believe same-sex marriage should be legal, North Carolina voters just last year overwhelmingly (61%) approved a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman alone.

[H/T: The Raw Story, photo via Facebook]

Fourth meal is doing nobody no good. Not only is a healthy weight associated with a full night's sleep, but a recent study shows something more shocking and immediate—cutting down on sleep hours over just a week can lead to immediate weight increase.

Certainly stress, income, other lifestyle factors affect both sleep and nutrition. Researchers have long known that sleeping less than five hours a night is associated with weight gain for adults, and weight gain for children is associated with sleeping less than ten hours a night. But this study reveals that the weight and sleep association is not just about a lifestyle, it's an immediate relationship.

Sleep researchers at the University of Colorado studied 16 healthy men and women over two weeks and published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers imposed strict sleep schedules on the participants and then painstakingly measured their metabolism and eating habits (every single bite they consumed). They wanted to see how sleep loss over just one week, something that would occur during exams or in the face of looming work deadlines, would affect people's weight and behavior.

For the first week, half the group could sleep a full nine hours and half the group was restricted to five. For the second week, the sleep schedules switched. All groups were given unlimited access to food.

Amazingly, staying up late increased metabolism. The sleep-deprived participants burned 111 more calories a day. However, this group more than made up for this calorie-burn increase by chomping away on a ton of food. The group that had reduced sleeping time ate 6% more food than the people who got nine hours—resulting in a weight gain that averaged two pounds. When the sleep schedule switched, the group that had lost sleep and gained the weight began to lose some of the weight they have put on in their first week of restricted sleep.

The researchers believe that the weight gain was mostly due to psychological factors. When people were sleep-deprived they couldn't resist carby, fatty food or late-night snacking. They consumed more calories while snacking after dinner than in other meal meal during the day. More sleep lead to more healthful eating (fewer carbs and fats). While a carefully calculated lab study of this phenomena is certainly a helpful step on the path to helping people learn more about managing their weight, the researchers could have visited any late-night area of a university library to meticulously observe some twizzler/pizza/soda gluttony.

[New York Times, image via Getty]