Just once in your life, cook a brisket, over smoky charcoal heat, on the grill. Do it for the solemn pride of having done so, and for the rime of authority it will lend to your future haughty pronouncements on the quality of others’ briskets. Do it because brisket—a massive cut of tough working muscle from the chest of a cow—is one of the pillars of barbecue mastery, and a good challenge to take on for yourself. Do it because it will make enough delicious, smoky meat for everyone you know to enjoy some. Do it because I am telling you to do it. And, do it just once, because it will take most of the rest of your life to finish. My God it takes fucking forever.

Strictly speaking, not much actual work goes into the cooking of a brisket. You get a brisket, you season it, you leave it alone in a hot, smoky, enclosed space for a long time, and it’s done. It only feels like the most laborious goddamn thing you ever did, because you’re on the hook the whole time, uncomfortably aware all the while that the longer it takes, the better the end result must taste to justify the time you invested in it. This probably is not amounting to much of an argument for cooking a brisket.

Nevertheless, cook a brisket. It will taste divine, and you will forever after be A Cooker Of Brisket, Sage And Authoritative, Like Gandalf Would Be If He Cooked A Brisket. It’s a long weekend, which is good for brisket-cookery, because you can give a friggin’ day to the process and have time leftover for recovery. And for eating brisket. Which you will only be able to do after you have cooked the goddamn thing, so let’s get started.

The first thing you’ll need to do is acquire a brisket. Many regular supermarkets won’t have briskets, and many of those that do will have small, shitty two- or three-pound briskets with all the fat trimmed away; slow-cooking one of these over a smoky charcoal fire will yield a wad of compressed wood pulp and a howl of grief tortured enough to bring Mandy Patinkin racing to your doorstep. You’re looking for a big ol’ brisket—somewhere between six and ten pounds, with a nice thick sheaf of fat on one side—and might have to hunt around for it.

The next step, once you’ve found your brisket, is staring at it, shaking your head, and muttering, “Christ, what the hell am I gonna do with this fuckin’ thing.” It looks like a barge! If you weren’t cooking it, you could stretch a fitted sheet over it and take a nap. But don’t. It is the breast of a cow.

Congratulations! By traveling to the butcher shop and back, you have completed like 64 percent of the actual work of preparing a brisket. The trick is, even though you’ve done most of the work already, you’ve only put in a fraction of the time; the cooking part takes forever. (You: “Oh, so, roughly as long as reading this column.” Me: “Shut up.”) Which means you’ll need to have gotten your brisket the day before you intend to cook the fucker, unless you intend to eat it in the middle of the damn night, alone, probably between sobs, like a weirdo. So! Get on with your day, because you are not eating or cooking brisket until tomorrow.

Good morning. It’s early as hell, and time to prepare your brisket. Prepare the brisket itself by unwrapping it, patting it thoroughly dry with a wad of paper towels (owing to its size—it’s bigger than your damn Playstation!—this will take longer than your morning ablutions did) seasoning it, and letting it rest. Do this on a cookie sheet or a double-layer of heavy-duty aluminum foil, so as not to get horrifying meat-liquids all over your kitchen counter.

Now, listen. People have their spice rubs, and that’s cool. If you have a Lloyd’s (your name is Lloyd, in this formulation) Signature Smokin’ Spice Rub that you insist on talking up literally any time you are in the presence of meat and other human beings, use your spice rub, and that will be fine. (If you do not have a spice rub, you could do worse than salt, brown sugar, ground cumin, garlic powder, cayenne powder, and black pepper. A small fistful of salt, a similar portion of sugar, and big pinches of the other stuff.) Rub it all over your brisket, generously.

Just know, though, that you don’t actually need to do this. The only thing your brisket really needs is salt. Salt the hell out of it. Like, a heaping tablespoon of salt per side, rubbed all over. That’s a lotta fuggin’ salt! Wrap the brisket in aluminum foil and let it hang out in its salt outfit on the counter for at least an hour; this, in my experience, gives the salt time to flavor the brisket’s juices. You can use this time to get your shitty charcoal grill ready.

That part is pretty straightforward. You’ll need to set it up for indirect heat. If it’s a large enough grill for you to build a fire under one half of the cooking grate and place the brisket on the other half, so that there’s no burning charcoal directly beneath it, that’s the way to go; otherwise, you’ll need to setup your charcoal in a ring around the edge of the bottom grate and cook the brisket in the middle. The important thing is, you won’t want your brisket cooking directly over hot coals.

Oh and also! Buy, and soak in water, some wood chips. Hickory or apple or [ducks] yes, mesquite will be fine. Have these ready. You’ll use these to make smoke, so that you can say you smoked your brisket, so that internet weenies can say actually, no you didn’t, because you did not do it in Amarillo or wherever the fuck.

Lastly, you’ll need to make a decision about how you want to prevent your brisket’s rendered fat from igniting inside the grill, and plan accordingly. You’ve got a couple options, here. You can place an aluminum foil bread pan under the part of the cooking grate that will be hosting your brisket, so that it can catch the fat as it renders and drips down through the grate, or you can do that and use a few layers of that heavy-duty aluminum foil to fashion a little shallow pan for the brisket itself to sit on as it cooks. The virtue of the latter (which Epicurious does, to its credit) is that this will keep at least some of the drippings above the grate, where they will help keep the brisket moist and you can use them to baste it when you check on it every once in a while. What I am saying here is that you should fashion a little shallow pan out of aluminum foil for your brisket to sit on as it cooks. Or don’t! It’s your damn food, after all.

Grill ready? Brisket ready? You ready? Cool. Time to cook this fucker. Drain a big fistful of those soaked wood chips and toss them on the hot charcoal; lay the brisket fat-side-up (in its little pan that you made!) on the part of the grate that is not directly over the charcoal; shut your grill’s vents nearly all the way to lower the heat; slap the lid on that fucker so that the vents are over the brisket, not over the charcoal; set a timer for an hour, and immediately begin fretting.

(Another thing you can do, that we did back when you slow-roasted a pork shoulder on the grill, was to stick a pan of water on the grate next to the meat. This is still kind of a neat thing to do: The water evaporates over time, keeping the air inside the grill more damp than it would be otherwise. Also, it gives you a quick way to gauge the temperature inside the grill with just a peek under the lid: If the water is boiling vigorously, the air inside your grill is hotter than water’s 212-degree boiling point; if it’s not boiling, it’s cooler than that; if it is blood, and the sky is blood and everything is blood except for all the skeletons, you have made at least one grave mistake. This section is in parentheses both because this step is optional, and because presenting it as though it is optional even though it’s clearly a smart thing to do enables your internet food person to pretend that this procedure has fewer steps than it actually does.)

The fretting is important! Or anyway it’s unavoidable, so you might as well sell yourself on the idea that it somehow works to the benefit of this far-off feast of smoky meat. Fret and fret and fret. Try to distract yourself with work or reading or tossing a frisbee, but really: fret. Is the fire too hot? Not hot enough? Should I check it? If I check it, will I ruin it? Have I already ruined it? Am I, myself, ruined.

It’s going to be okay. This thing has a long while to go on the grill; you mostly can’t ruin it in the first hour, so long as the heat is very, very low—definitely less than 250 degrees, and as low as 220 if you can maintain it there. To that end, if you don’t have a grilling thermometer or aren’t very confident in your ability to judge the heat of your grill, make sure those vents are pretty much all the way closed: you’d much rather err on the side of too little heat than too much, at least for the first little while, until you get a sense for what amount of airflow will settle the water in that little pan you (“optionally”) parked on the grate into a steady simmer.

Wait just a damn minute, you are saying, side-eyeing so hard your eyebrows hurt: Just how damn long is this “a long while to go on the grill”? Ah. Hmm. Well. Yes. See, the thing is, you’re going to want to check on your brisket every hour or so—

But how long will it be on the grill.

—to baste it with its juices (if you did the aluminum foil pan thing) and refresh the charcoal and wood chips as necessary—

You are being evasive.

—and, hhhhhhehhh, well, yeah, you’ll be checking it at least, uh, six times.

Wait.

I know.

Wait!

I know!

Six hours???

(Possibly as many as twelve, depending on the size of your brisket.)

I will kill you.

It doesn’t have to be that many! After five hours or so of the refreshing-the-coals-and-wood-every-hour-or-so routine, if the temperature in there mostly hung between 220 and 250 degrees, the brisket will be as smoky as it’ll get, and you can move it to the steady security of a roasting pan in a 225 degree oven until it’s fully cooked. This still might take a while! I hope you were not planning on doing anything cool today, other than cooking a brisket, which is cooler in the abstract than as an actual way to spend a summer day. But, if you do it this way, at the very least you will not have to worry about refreshing charcoal and wood chips every hour.

You’ll probably need to cook your brisket for at least an hour per pound of meat, I am very sorry to say. After that, it will be tender enough that you could, for example, rip it into hunks with your bare hands and pelt them at an internet food person in your great pent-up wrath, but please don’t. If you have a thermometer, you can jam it into the thickest part of the brisket, and it’ll register right around 200 degrees. That means your brisket is done. Haul it out of the oven or grill and let it rest for another half-hour (hey, what’s another half-hour when you decided long ago not to even waste your time with this shit?) on your countertop. While it does that, and while the smell causes your nose to tug impatiently at the flesh of your face in hopes of detaching itself and crawling across the floor to nuzzle against the giant wad of hot meat, let’s talk about barbecue sauce.

Grilling dorks like to sneer at barbecue sauce, but it’s a fine condiment for brisket—so long as you make your own, so that it’s not just corn syrup with liquid smoke and brown food coloring in it, and so long as you use it in moderation, so that it does not drown out the smoky, meaty flavors you spent so much time cultivating in your brisket. Your brisket doesn’t need it, strictly speaking, because it is delicious and you worked very hard to make it so, but the stuff can add some welcome accompaniment.

Making barbecue sauce is easy, and even kind of fun. You’ll need some sweetness, some tartness, and some heat; within that broad framework, do what you like. Tomato paste, molasses, white vinegar, and maybe some powdered cumin and cayenne will do nicely; so will ketchup, hot sauce, a splash of beer, and a spoonful of grape jelly; so will gochujang and honey and yellow mustard. Really. Heat the stuff in a small saucepan so the flavors come together; when it tastes good and coats a spoon, it is good barbecue sauce.

Eventually that half-hour of resting time will elapse. Slice the brisket thinly, at a 90-degree angle to the grain; dump these slices into a big disposable casserole dish and pour any remaining drippings over them. You have cooked a brisket. Are you ready to hug? No? Still in more of a murdering frame of mind? That’s cool. We can hug later.

You can decide for yourself how to serve your brisket, of course. Your basic barbecue presentation—beans, greens, coleslaw, buns or bread for making sandwiches, etc.—will be just incredibly satisfying, a smoky, greasy, meaty, outrageously indulgent feast. Or, you can figure you did enough cooking already without having to make friggin’ beans, too; in this case, chop some raw stuff (cilantro, avocado, onion, cabbage if you’re particularly enlightened), put out some warm tortillas, and have brisket tacos. Or, you can drop that tray of sliced brisket on the table from slightly too high, bark, “Here. It’s ready.” at your guests, and go off to a quiet corner to shake and mutter off your resentment at the hours you gave to this giant slab of beef for this buncha goddamn ingrates.

Bring a little plate of brisket for yourself, though. It damn near melts on your tongue! You did great, and I’m proud of you.

Hey, Foodspin is on Pinterest, now! Go pin our stuff to your stuff, or however that works.

Albert Burneko is an eating enthusiast and father of two. His writing appeared in Best Food Writing 2014 by DaCapo Press. Peevishly correct his foolishness on Twitter @albertburneko, or send him your creepy longform hate-missives at albert.burneko@deadspin.com. Image by Sam Woolley.

Peruse the complete Foodspin archive here; you can find lots more Foodspin here.

As a U.S. American, just how terrified should you be this weekend about terrorism? “The vigilance surrounding this year’s celebration carries added weight,” according to NBC News. “The reason is ISIS.” Uh oh! Pretty terrified, it sounds like.

After more than 12 months of brutal ISIS news, it is perhaps unsurprising that the fear-mongers are... mongering (?) extra hard ahead of July 4th this year. “Worries of ISIS-Inspired Attacks Cloud July 4 Holiday Weekend,” says NBC. “U.S. on high alert heading into July 4 weekend,” warns CBS News. “U.S. boosting security measures ahead of July 4th,” cautions CNN.

#ISIS fighter published map of #FBI operating centres across #US few days after #FBI issues Independent Day alert. pic.twitter.com/pAFSuzrGId

July 2, 2015

ISIS tweets map of July 4th FBI command centers http://t.co/j7UuktiC8v pic.twitter.com/gZH1LocIjU

July 2, 2015

But, haha, also:

Authorities told NBC News that they are unaware of any specific or credible threat inside the country. But the dangers are more complex and unpredictable than ever.

According to one official, there is no “specific, credible intelligence” about an attack; only that Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has called for attacks “against members of the military, law enforcement, the U.S. government and the American public.”

“There is no specific, credible intelligence to indicate any threats against celebrations over the Fourth of July weekend,” the official said.

That’s NBC, CBS, and CNN, respectively. And, according to Snopes, the map in the tweets embedded above is taken from a Daily Mail article rehashing information from a Fox News story.

So, right. Enjoy your barbecues, y’all.

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

No. 1 seed Serena Williams squeaked by unranked Heather Watson 6-2. 4-6, 7-5 in the third round of Wimbledon on Friday. Williams survived after falling behind 3-0 in the third and decisive set, rallying to win and set up a battle with her sister Venus in the next round.

An unusually raucous Wimbledown crowd threw their support behind the 23-year-old Watson, who hails from Guernsey, England. But Serena, as she often does, earned the last laugh. In the midst of her furious comeback, Serena won a big point in the 10th game of the third set, then reminded a booing Wimbledon crowd who was in charge with a finger wag punctuated by a “don’t try me.”

Other notable Wimbledon results from the past couple days of action: Rafael Nadal continued his backward slide with a loss to unranked Dustin Brown in four sets Thursday. Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka all won their most recent matches. On the women’s side, Sloane Stephens was bounced in three sets Friday, while Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova both won in two.

Photo via Associated Press/Video via ESPN

On Saturday, police in the Philippines said that they had filed murder complaints against the owner, captain, and crew of a ferry that capsized off Ormoc City this week, the Associated Press reports. The local prosecutor will review the complaints and decide whether to file charges.http://gawker.com/at-least-50-de...

According to regional coast guard commander Captain Pedro Tinampay, at least 59 people died and 145 people survived the accident on Thursday. It is still not clear how many people were aboard the ferry when it flipped.

Among the survivors is retired American firefighter Lawrence Drake, who questioned the validity of the complaints against boat captain Warren Oliverio and his crew. From the AP:

“It’s wrong. It’s wrong. I feel bad,” he said by phone from Ormoc.

Drake said Oliverio stripped down to his underpants, jumped into the water to grab people drifting away, and then put them on one of the outriggers to cling to while waiting for rescue boats.

Drake also disputed accounts that the captain abruptly turned the boat, causing it to capsize.

“That is 100 percent incorrect. I was 10 feet from the captain,” he said, recounting that he was in the front seat of the boat at the time.

Police say the boat was overloaded with cargo—an abrupt turn caused its weight to shift, thus capisizing the boat. Police official Asher Dolina told Agence France-Presse, “They were not careful, showing there was an intent to kill. They were reckless on purpose.”

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

An Airbnb host catered to horny hooligans with a listing referred to as a “Hollywood Hills Camping Retreat.” For only $35, renters could stay in a tent on a Hollywood Hills lot to engage in all kinds of debauchery, according to annoyed neighbors. Local residents complained of all the strange sexin’ going up in them hills. “Who knows who’s coming up to our neighborhood,” said a neighbor to NBC 4. “People buck naked, people doing sex out in open,” said another concerned resident.

The listing has been taken down from the website, but can still be seen through a Google cache, reports LAist. It boasted the spot having a “walking distance to Lake Hollywood underneath Hollywood Sign” as well as the option to shower and use bathrooms in a house next door for an additional fee. Another neighbor cited the dreadful drought as means for concern. Those post-sex cigarettes could spark a fire and “take the whole hillside and take the houses with it.”

As for the person responsible for the listing, it’s a mystery. The verified host shows a “marketing executive” named Judith, but the accompanying photo is of C-list actress Dita de Leon, whose IMDB shows a part in a movie with Paris Hilton called Bottoms Up. Sounds legit.

Contact the author at marie.lodi@jezebel.com.

Image via Shutterstock.

“Officer Otero thought his participation would help show the boys that officers were human, too, but he said he ended up learning more than he expected.” Happy to hear it, Officer Otero.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the death of Christian Siqueiros, who died in police custody on Thursday, NBC Los Angeles reports. Siqueiros was arrested after the Montclair Police Department received a disturbance report from someone in his former apartment building.

Montclair police said Siqueiros “became combative” when they arrived at the apartment building, out of which he had recently moved, and to which he had briefly returned, NBC reports, on Thursday. He went into cardiac arrest while in custody and died at a hospital.

According to his sister Maria, Siqueiros—who would have turned 26 on Monday—was in good health. One neighbor, who witnessed the arrest, told NBC Los Angeles that she saw between five and eight officers taking Christian down, sitting on him, and tying his legs together.

“They don’t need 20, 30, 10 cops to be on top of the guy just to stop him,” Maria Siqueiros said. “I just want to know the truth so we can be at peace.”

Image via NBC. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

According to a report citing Star magazine, Tom Cruise may be considering leaving the Church of Scientology, of which he has been the most visible devotee for many years. The actor’s alleged crisis of faith comes, apparently, after a phone call with his daughter Suri.
http://gawker.com/5002269/the-cr...

“She was going on and on about her ballet class and how much she loves it. That’s when Tom realized he’s never seen her perform ballet and he started to tear up,” a Cruise insider reportedly told Star. “It hit him that she’s growing up before his eyes and he’s not there to witness most of it. They talk on the phone and video chat, but it’s not the same.”
http://gawker.com/why-i-left-sci...

“Tom has been under tremendous pressure where Suri and Katie are concerned because the church doesn’t want him close to them. They can’t stand that their own poster boy isn’t raising his child in the church,” this person said.

“If they label Suri a suppressive person (a Scientology term for an enemy of the church), as they’ve been known to do with dissenters, that would make it hard for Tom to have a relationship with her. He’s between a rock and a hard place, but he’s finally making a choice to put his daughter first.”

(The report echoes a similar one from 2012, also in Star.)

“Tom has missed birthdays, school events, all the special parts of childhood that happen so fast and are gone before you know it. Suri is not a baby anymore; she is fully aware that her father isn’t around much,” the source said.

“When she speaks to him on the phone, it’s becoming more and more like she’s talking to a stranger.”

Also, his relationship with the Church has ruined all three of his marriages, which surely must be exhausting, and wouldn’t it just be easier to walk away? Come into the light, Tom.

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Here, wise words from modernist writer and literary badass Virginia Woolf: “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” May your Independence Day, and all the days that follow, be full of beer and endless barbecue. Happy 4th!

“Swole Without a Goal” by Anshuman Iddamsetty

A theory: We crave beauty because, like the unalterable spectra of light itself, it finds us, and not the other way around. We’re helpless to its whims. Beauty could seek us, or not. Beauty couldn’t care less. Power has the same allure—we only understand what it can do, and to whom, after a demonstration. Exactly how much of beauty or power is that elusiveness, I don’t know. But what I do know is that what I increasingly find magisterial, unquestionably beautiful, involves the smashing of 400-pound bellies. I’ve written about my attraction to fat people before, but this is… different.

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/longre...

“Hooked” by Greg Nichols

Gortimer is one of a slate of original children’s shows being produced for Amazon Instant Video, which, along with other streaming services, is dumping money into content for children. Kids watch a lot of TV, which increasingly means watching a smartphone or tablet — in 2013, according to Common Sense Media, 75 percent of u.s. children aged 8 and younger had access to a smart mobile device in their homes. This, combined with young kids’ habit of playing favorite episodes again and again, gives video-on-demand networks such as Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu Plus a big advantage over traditional broadcast and cable networks. Executives see an opportunity to shape a new generation’s viewing habits, as well as to turn parents, eager to entertain their kids with nonjunk, into subscribers.

https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-07-05/why...

“The Definitive Oral History of How Clueless Became an Iconic 90s Classic” by Jen Chaney

More important, Clueless touched a chord in the culture that was clearly primed and ready to be struck. Pre-teen and teen girls raced to malls in search of plaid skirts and knee-high socks. Almost immediately, Paramount began working with Heckerling to develop a TV adaptation. Within a year, the movie’s soundtrack would sell enough copies to be certified gold, and would eventually reach platinum status. The success of Clueless also would defibrillate the barely breathing high-school movie genre, resulting in a flood of teen movies in the late 90s and early 00s.

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015...

“A Visit to Rubbin’ Buttz BBQ for White Appreciation Day” by Mairead Case

I ate Carolina-style brisket and cherry hot sauce, a garlicky, mustardy potato salad that didn’t need salt and tasted just like my grandma’s, and two warm, creamy honey corn muffins. I ate quickly and quietly, like a funeral had happened, and I needed to eat to remind myself of my body. The food was delicious, and I said so. When I got my receipt the discount was already on it, which made it feel like a secret, which made me angry. It felt like a reward for getting sunburns easily and cleaning my plate and not making a ruckus. If this is being a white person, then being a white person is boring, is Casper, is pure capitalism. It felt weird to go someplace because I am white, because I am a writer, then not actually talk about either at all. In my bag I’d brought Mab Segrest’s autobiography, C. Carr’s Our Town, and the music issue of Eaves of Ass, where Craven Rock quotes War: “I’ve seen you round for a long, long time / I remember you when you drank my wine / Why can’t we be friends?”

http://jezebel.com/a-visit-to-rub...

“Joy of a Black Planet” by Jenna Wortham

In September 2013, Ugochukwu created Travel Noire, a resource for black globe-trotters, continuing in a long online tradition of pulling together otherwise diffuse groups of like-minded people: tattoo artists on Pinterest, gamers on Reddit, and so on. In keeping with the times, Travel Noire is more of a brand than a publication, taking on many incarnations: a website, a vivid Instagram account and private forums. ‘‘I wanted to create a place for people to dream about a destination and read about how another person did it,’’ Ugochukwu said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/mag...

“Distraught People, Deadly Results” by Wesley Lowery, Kimberly Kindy, and Keith L. Alexander

For this article, The Post analyzed 124 killings in which the mental health of the victim appeared to play a role, either because the person expressed suicidal intentions or because police or family members confirmed a history of mental illness. This approach likely understates the scope of the problem, experts said.

In many ways, this subset mirrors the overall population of police shooting victims: They were overwhelmingly men, more than half of them white. Nine in 10 were armed with some kind of weapon, and most died close to home.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigati...

“The Oral History of the President’s Speech in Independence Day” by James Harris

Waldman: Looking at the scene again, what comes to mind a little bit is George W. Bush’s most memorable moments from his presidency. The staging and iconography of his “Mission Accomplished” moment looks like they borrowed a lot from that movie. I mean, Bush wearing his fake fighter pilot outfit on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln [aircraft carrier] looks so much like this scene. And one of the high points of his presidency was when he jumped up on the fire truck at Ground Zero and spoke into a megaphone to the firefighters and the first responders and said, “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you.” It is so similar to this scene.

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/20...

[Image via Getty]

My mama is 79. Wednesday night is her bible study. Just like Ms. Ethel Lee Lance, mama has her circle of church going elders—black women in their 60s, 70s, and 80s for whom church is home. Maybe even safer than home. Their pain was safe in the hands of this particular Jesus. Unshed tears from the Middle Passage were here. Friendships decades deep were here. Sanctuary was here. Comfort, too. Prayers unheard by a black community too often deaf to the pain of black girls and women were heard here, by this Jesus. Or so they thought.

Mama goes to Roman Ridge Church in Accra, Ghana, is proudly Ashanti and deeply Christian. Ms. Ethel went to AME in Charleston, South Carolina. She was one of six black women, two of them elders, killed by a white terrorist doing the work of white supremacy: attack, destroy, bury black bodies, dreams, and lives.

“I forgive you”; “We forgive you”; “My family forgives you”; we heard these pardons again and again as family members of the massacred lined up and spoke during the first court hearing of Dylann Roof. That outpouring prompted swift reaction. Their words of forgiveness were both praised and criticized. The last time I heard that kind of outpouring on forgiveness was during my trip to South Africa in 1997. It was at the height of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. A global white media watched in awe, relief, and approval as Nelson Mandela said, speaking to the black South African majority of the white minority, “Let us forgive them.”

Mandela turned into a global hero. His heroism was rooted in that moment, rooted in those words. He became a leader by which the rest of Africa should follow. Forgive white atrocities. Forgive white supremacy. Tutu held press conferences, face wet with tears telling the assorted camera, mics, and print journalists that black South Africans just wanted to know who to forgive. They just needed the killers of their children, the torturers of their bodies, the executioners of their dignity, to tell the truth. Some told it. Others didn’t. Still, Tutu asked that black South Africans continue to forgive.

I traveled to Alexandria, South Africa’s second biggest township, and sat with black South African women. These women spoke of rage, pain, and powerlessness. They spoke of this soil, grave to their children, and still home to unspoken and unspeakable horrors. One woman, a Xhosa woman, who was mother to a girl not yet 12, talked about her daughter going to protests with her father. She was mad, scared, and proud of her daughter. “I raised her that way,” she told me. “Why would I forgive them? I am here, my child is not. She is dead, buried by their hate. Forgive them? Who are they? I cannot forgive my husband. He let her leave that morning. She was in school uniform. And still they brought the dogs, the sticks, the guns. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there.”

Women and men, one after another, shared moments of Apartheid atrocity. This was, they said, a calculated cruelty, a designed destruction legislated by a white government and supported by global corporations and governments. One woman spoke of the morning raids. Those family moments were interrupted, desecrated by the boots, truncheons, and shouting voices of police breaking down doors and dragging women in headscarves and nightdresses from bed. All this to be interrogated and assaulted. Why? Reasonable suspicion. Forgive them? “I want them to suffer as we have,” she told me. “But no, they tell us to forgive them.”

I thought about them as I was ushered into Desmond Tutu’s office in Cape Town days later during that same trip. This man led the TRC. His demeanor, language, speeches, and tone spoke only of forgiveness. The global media was still here, seeking and telling stories of white atrocities, white terrorism, and black South Africans offering forgiveness for the most heinous of acts. I sat opposite the architect of this white economy of black forgiveness. I shared my interview time with a white Swiss journalist. Archbishop Tutu told us that “South Africa would be a Mecca for whites, as Kenya was.” I asked why he was so worried about how white people felt, since they were not the targets, but the beneficiaries of Apartheid. I asked how many of their children had been buried, and why South Africa was so focused on their feelings and fears.

I asked why he could support and direct the black majority of this nation to forgive legislated hate, the killing of black children, and the torture of the innocent, but was unwilling to forgive Winnie Mandela, a black woman, an activist, a mama who like the women in Alexandria was subject to morning raids where police constantly terrorized the community. They would not and did not forgive Winnie. They castigated, humiliated, exposed, denied, and rejected her. My interview was over.

Tutu invoked Kenya as a Mecca for whites, an example South Africa wanted to follow. I traveled to Kenya in 2003. It is the birthplace of President Obama’s father and his father’s people, the Luo tribe. The president’s grandfather had been accused of supporting the Mau Mau, and been tortured by the British. The Mau Mau were a group of Kikuyu-tribe dominated Kenyans, described by British colonialists as “rebellious.” They were freedom fighters; demanding, organizing, and fighting for Kenya’s independence. The height of the conflict was known as the Mau Mau Uprising and the Kenyan Emergency, from 1952 to 1960, which was the same time the civil rights movement was gaining momentum in the US. President Obama’s paternal grandfather—Hussein Onyango Obama—was a cook for a British army officer. He was arrested and tortured, his testicles crushed by the British in a high security prison. Kenyan freedom fighters spoke of being castrated, raped, and whipped while imprisoned by the British colonial authority. The treatment of the Mau Mau by the British was similar to the violence enslaved Africans endured in the antebellum South. The obsession with black bodies mirrored that of plantation overseers. Onyango Obama denied he had done anything wrong when he was arrested. The British media sought the perspective of a British historian about Onyango Obama’s detention. Reasonable suspicion, the Brit historian confirmed.

Reasonable suspicion. First South Africa, then Kenya. It is a term known by black boys who are stopped and frisked by police on New York City streets. The British media downplayed the violence suffered by Kenyans in those prisons. In 2013, the British government paid 14 million pounds as a settlement to Mau Mau veterans after 8,000 documents from 37 former British colonies were released, revealing details of torture, castration, and rape. In one memo sent out during the height of these atrocities, Kenya’s then Attorney General Eric Griffith-Jones wrote: “If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly.”

Tutu told me this country, with this history, was a Mecca for whites.

Tribe is to Africa, what race is to America. It is complicated. We are complicated. Tutu’s celebration at the hands of the white media didn’t stop him from telling me during that same interview how “whites are beginning to take this offer of forgiveness for granted.” Under that forgiving smile, he was angry. I was shocked. I think about Tutu wanting to get chosen by white South Africa, but his unwillingness to forgive Winnie Mandela—a black South African woman—for an alleged crime for which she was eventually acquitted. Worse, the willingness to use Winnie’s black woman body, to lay it out at the feet of white South Africa and stand on it, in order to achieve that choosing.

Debate continues about Charleston, that moment in court, forgiveness, black folk, white terrorism, and white supremacy. White America, so much of Black America, applauded this forgiveness outpouring, was soothed and calmed by it. As white South Africa was soothed and calmed by Mandela and Tutu’s call for forgiveness, and the outpouring that followed.

Charleston, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya: we have a global black inheritance of white supremacist terrorism. It has left a legacy of untreated trauma. That inheritance has trained us to pour our pain into our own bodies. And then turn away when that pain manifests. Particularly when it comes to black girls and women. Our bodies are vehicles for rage, rejection, resentment, and denial to acknowledge the depth of our hurt. Instead, we are judgmental of each other in our pain. We are unkind, we replace empathy with analysis and invite an audience to engage the strength of our intellect. Our pain goes unheard and so instead it finds sanctuary in the intimate violence we subject ourselves and our bodies to. What, now, can we do with our pain? What forgiveness process might we create for ourselves, for all the ways we hurt and harm each other? Will we ever be able to trust each other with our pain?

Black folk are globally committed to notions of justice, due to our intimate relationships with injustice. Our emotionality must be part of that justice project. Emotional justice is crucial to our collective and individual healing. How is our emotionality not profoundly fucked up when every part of our history, the pain inflicted on us still requires that you centralize whiteness? How do we heal when there is no respite from the violence? Who do we become when white supremacy’s manufactured fear matters more than our bruised, battered, and bloodied black bodies?

Apartheid was white terrorism. What the British did during the Kenyan Mau Mau was white terrorism. Dylann Roof was a white terrorist, supported by state sanctioned institutions of white terrorism. We do not negotiate with terrorists. That’s what America teaches. Except white terrorism. Then we don’t negotiate; we privilege; we prioritize; we centralize. Then we spit up that privilege via white Jesus, heart disease, fibroids, violence, obesity and a soft, slow, sure killing. White supremacy does not worship our God. It prays at the altar of coffins filled with black bodies. It tithes in the blood of black folks. Its hymn is the sound of our tears and screams. Its amen is the stillness of our stolen breath.

To continue this conversation, check out Esther Armah on The Spin.

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

“The European financial system was architected to make lending to Greece — and Spain and Portugal and Italy — a money machine for bankers... [who] understood perfectly well that there was in fact a long-term risk, an uncertainty, a constructive ambiguity.” Gosh, this all sounds awfully familiar.

Summer is in full swing, which means it’s time to head outside for some fun in the sun. And you know what that means: hamburgers, hot dogs, watermelon, and more.

This video compilation from our Quick Hacks series details 10 classic, simple tricks for better grilling, enjoying summer fruit, and making the most of your barbecue, including:

• Turn a bag of chips into an instant snack bowl
• Make watermelon smoothies in seconds with a drill and coat hanger
• Deseed a pomegranate in seconds with a wooden spoon
• Peel a mango in seconds with a glass
• Peel a head of garlic in seconds with two bowls
• Easily ignite your charcoal grill with an egg carton
• The best way to shape your burgers for even cooking on the grill
• Spiral cut hot dogs for maximum meaty goodness and plenty of room for toppings
• Cook an entire chicken on the grill with a brick
• Clean your grill with an onion

Happy 4th of July, now go enjoy the outdoors!

A new video, reportedly released by ISIS, appears to show 25 soldiers being executed at the amphitheater in Palmyra, Syria. The men’s executioners look to be boys in their teens. The video has not yet been independently verified.

In the video, a group of several hundred men watch as the uniformed soldiers are forced to their knees, guns to their heads, and executed. The BBC reports that the Islamic State has said that the executed men were soldiers captured in the city of Homs. According to Al Arabiya, the video begins with a recitation of the Quran.

The video can be seen here, for now.

After capturing Palmyra in May, ISIS announced that it would not destroy the city’s ruins. (It has, however, destroyed statues found at the site.) This is at least the second round of executions the militant group has carried out in the city’s ancient amphitheater.

Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

With the release of yet another time travel movie this week (Terminator Genisys), it’s time for us to look back at the great time travel movies of our past. Here are all the major time travel movies ever, ranked.

Here are the rules: No animation. No short films. And no movies that where someone is frozen (or something) and then they wake up in the future (so Mel Gibson’s Forever Young, Encino Man are OUT).

Back To The Future (1985)

A boy named Marty and his best friend a disgraced scientist named Doc build a time machine that takes Marty back to when his parents met. But then Mary messes it all up and his Mom falls in love with him and somehow he must foist her emotions onto his young father, or he will never be born. This is, the best time traveling movie ever made.

Primer (2004)

A complicated and very messy look into time travel. The premise is simple: two friends build a time machine. But the result is infinitely more complicated.

Groundhog Day (1993)

Bill Murray is stuck forever in a time loop in the small town Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. And we all become better people for it.

Back To The Future 2 (1989)

Marty and the Doc reteam to go BACK TO THE FUTURE where everything is Nike, Pizza Hut, Pepsi Cola awesome.

Time Bandits (1981)

Terry Gilliam gives time travel a real sense of adventure when a young boy takes up with a crew of renegade space-time repairmen who cruise through history in order to steal riches — only to get caught up in the plot of a reality-manipulating sorcerer. And young Kevin reminds us that a good time tourist never leaves the present without his camera.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

A human-killing robot is sent back in time to save John Connor, but another one is sent back as well, and this one can turn into liquid.

Donnie Darko (2001)

One day, Donnie Darko wakes up in a tangent universe, one that will collapse in on itself in a few weeks and potentially destroy the world in the process. Donnie has to learn about time travel theory and God’s plan for him in order to save the world and find some inner peace. It’s one of those movies that requires a diagram to fully understand, but not to enjoy.

Looper (2012)

Set in the future where time travel is outlawed, but still used by the mob. A Looper is a hit man in the past who waits for future bosses to send back whomever they want to kill. But the Looper’s job is a short one as they all eventually end up “closing their own loop” and killing their future selves to keep things tidy for the people in charge. But eventually one gets away, and it’s up to the younger version of the target to hunt him down.

12 Monkeys (1995)

Based on the french short film La Jetée, Terry Gilliam’s super dark dystopia is set in the 2030s, where humanity has all been almost wiped out. Their only hope is to jettison future prisoners on possibly suicide missions back to the 1990s in hoping of stopping the plague that took out most of the world’s population. Also, almost everyone is just a little bit crazy.

Terminator (1984)

A gigantic, human-hating killing machine is sent back in time to kill the woman who will one day give birth to the savior of humanity in the future human vs. robot wars. Don’t worry, the humans send back their own warrior, Michael Biehn, for sexy times and fighting.

Brigadoon (1954)

Gene Kelly stumbles upon the magical town Brigadoon in the Scottish Highlands. This little city seems to be a time capsule, but really it’s been blessed (or cursed depending on who you are) and only appears one day every 100 years.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

Two high school kids are gifted a time traveling phone booth from the future, so they can ace their school project.

Midnight In Paris (2011)

Owen Wilson is a struggling writer who looks for solace on the streets of Paris. Through a series of inexplicable events he winds up back in the Jazz age of Paris with all his literary heroes including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

Timecop (1994)

Jean-Claude Van Damme is a member of the future time traveling crime fighting organization Time Enforcement Commission (TEC). At one point he does the splits in his kitchen to avoid getting shot at. The end.

Timecrimes (2007)

Nacho Vigalondo’s exceptionally creepy time travel thriller that all starts when a man catches a bandaged bandit in the woods spying on a woman undressing.

Time After Time (1979)

The father of the time travel story himself, Herbert George Wells (Malcolm McDowell) is the hero of this film, in which he pursues Jack the Ripper to the year 1979, like one does. The serial killer decides he quite likes the future and starts up his murders in San Francisco. While Wells works to stop the Ripper, he also finds something in the future to love: a bank employee played by Mary Steenburgen.

Flight of the Navigator (1986)

A little boy is abducted by a UFO and jettisoned into the future where everything sucks and his big brother is now a teenager and no one understands him. So what does he do? Escape with a bad ass spaceship and a new best friend alien.

Army of Darkness (1993)

Bruce Campbell’s Ash fights the Deadites in 1300 AD after getting sucked through a time portal. And sure, his chainsaw and “boomstick” come in handy, but they’re not nearly as useful as the science textbooks in the trunk of his car. Knowledge is always power, but it’s especially powerful in an era when people are still trying to turn lead into gold.

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1998)

A 14th-century boy believes he can save his fellow townsfolk by tunneling into the Earth. When they emerge on the other side, the ancient people have been transported to 1988 New Zealand. Naturally, they lose their shit. It’s so great.

The Time Machine (1960)

Possibly the most beautiful time machine ever created. Ever.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Tom Cruise is trapped in a deadly and doomed invasion against an alien oppressor that landed on Earth. But every time he dies, he’s sent back to the day before the big battle, thus allowing himself to become a skilled and deadly warrior. And hopefully save humanity on top of it all.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

Four friends get drunk in a hot tub in their old ski resort high school stomping grounds. The next day they wake up in the bodies of their old selves back in the ‘80s. And they take advantage of this in really wonderfully horrific ways.

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

In a twist, an ape from the Planet of the Apes future is sent back in time to the human world. It does not go well. (Planet of the Apes could ALSO be included here if we want to but we thought this was more time-traveling back in time being aware of it so we chose to highlight Escape.)

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

While most time-travel movies focus on, well, traveling through time, Safety Not Guaranteed focuses on the sort of person who wants to travel back in time. After Kenneth puts an ad in a newspaper looking for someone to travel back in time with him, magazine intern Darius poses as an aspiring time traveler for a story. But the pair gradually bond over their dissatisfaction with their lives and the aching wish that things had turned out differently.

About Time (2013)

A young man discovers that he belongs to a family of time travelers. And while this seems pretty simplistic, the way in which this drama/romantic comedy uses the time paradox is pretty great. As the character gets older, there are certain times in existence he cannot cross or he will forever change the his own future. For example, crossing past the birth of your child might mean you come back to the present and discover you have an entirely new child.

The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)

According to the legend of the 1943 Philadelphia Experiment, the US Navy managed to render the USS Eldridge invisible to enemy devices. But in the film, the alleged Philadelphia Experiment has a much stranger result: it catapults to of the sailors to the year 1984, when scientists are trying to replicate the experiment.

Back to the Future Part 3 (1990)

Wonderful franchise Back to the Future runs out of ideas and decides, “Fuck it, let’s just make a Western.” And it’s almost worth it just for the ZZ Top old-timey band.

Interstellar (2014)

For all the crying the time travel aspect, this movie was both intriguing and had an enticing bit of time travel on the water planet. It also uses the long and arduous time gap between Earth and the wormhole world quite beautifully.

The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)

A sad little drama about what it might be like to be married to a time traveler - including witnessing your own husband’s death right before your eyes and knowing that there’s nothing you can possibly do to stop it. Also it’s a little bit creepy, because time traveler Eric Bana kind of ends up spending a borderline uncomfortable amount of time with his wife (Rachel McAdams) as a child.

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

Peggy Sue heads to her high school reunion and gets a second chance when she’s sent back in time to her high school days for a do-over.

Predestination (2015)

Okay, on its face, a movie where Ethan Hawke travels through time to pursue a time-hopping terrorist sounds very ho-hum, been there, did that, got the t-shirt emblazoned with Jean-Claude Van Damme’s face. But this movie’s based on one of the weirdest time travel stories ever: Robert Heinlein’s “—All You Zombies—.” The movie version will seriously screw with your brain.

X-Men Days of Future’s Past (2014)

Wolverine goes back in time and tells everyone to stop acting like total assholes. It works, sort of.

Final Countdown (1980)

A modern aircraft carrier goes back in time to 1941, just hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. What do you think happens next? UPDATE: Apologies sorry this wasn’t on the first list, added!

Deja Vu (2006)

Denzel Washington traveling back in time to stop a woman from being murdered should be an easy win, but maybe not when he’s saddle with thudding lines like, “For all of my career, I’ve been trying to catch people after they do something horrible. For once in my life, I’d like to catch somebody before they do something horrible.” We’ll just rewatch Man on Fire again, thanks.

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

The less exciting sequel to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure where Ted and Bill are murdered.

Somewhere In Time (1980)

Christopher Reeve is approached by an alderwoman in his present time (1979) who tells him to “come back to me.” Intrigued, he does a little detective work and traces the woman back to an old photograph of a famous actress from 1912. He then proceeds to fall in love with that picture and wills himself back to the past where the two meet and fall in love. Unfortunately Reeve finds a modern-day penny in his pocket which rockets himself back to the present day. So naturally, he decides to force himself into a coma and wills himself back into the past. Also probably starving himself, because it appears that Reeve doesn’t go back in time but to heaven. So... yeah. Love, I guess.

The Last Mimzy (2007)

A toy is sent back in time to gather human DNA to save the future. Cool toy hon, *scooches away*

The Jacket (2005)

Adrien Brody plays a struggling veteran who is mistakenly blamed for a murder and imprisoned in a mental hospital where the doctor runs odd experiments on him by tying him up in a jacket and locking him in a morgue shelf. Imprisoned in the jacket, Brody begins to travel to the future… or does he?

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

The Star Trek Enterprise crew travels back in time to save some whales.

Daleks: Invasion Earth 2051AD (1966)

Peter Cushing’s Doctor Who time traveling TARDIS movie.

The Time Machine (2002)

A remake of the original Time Machine movie, and while it’s not bad… it’s not very good either.

Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982)

Super sweet motorcycle racer Lyle Swann is sent back into the Wild West. Everyone freaks out because he has a motorcycle.

Freejack (1992)

Possibly the best plot premise ever created. Rich people from the future are kidnapping folks from the past (right at their moment of death) to harvest their bodies for themselves. Race car driver Emilio Estevez is taken and escapes his future captors. But now he has to survive in the future world. Also, Mick Jagger is in this movie.

13 Going on 30 (2004)

A 13-year-old’s consciousness travels from the year 1987 into the body of Jennifer Garner, who, despite being rich, successful, and looking like Jennifer Garner, is having an unfulfilling life. The day is saved by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” terrible candies that turn your tongue blue, and the fact that her childhood best friend grows up to be Mark Ruffalo. Sure, it’s sweet, but too many viewings will make your teeth hurt as badly as Razzles do.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

This time it’s a FEMALE TERMINATOR sent back to kill John Connor. WHAAAAT!

Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)

Michael Meyers plays a spy who travels back in time to have sex with a bunch of people, and also, solve crime.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court/Black Knight/A Kid in King Arthur’s Court

All movies that bring people back in time to fictional realms of the past are all equally terrible.

Men In Black 3 (2012)

We’re convinced that the only reason that Will Smith’s Agent J goes back in time to stop an alien from killing a young Agent K in the third Men in Black movie is because someone realized that Josh Brolin does a brilliant Tommy Lee Jones impression and just had to commit it to film. It certainly wasn’t because they had a stockpile of great time-travel jokes lying around.

Kate & Leopold (2001)

A love story about two people so selfish they are ready to rip apart the time continuum to be together. Hugh Jackman plays blue blood Leopold from the 1870s who follows Liev Schrieber back through time by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. Once in the new world, all the elevators stop because it turns out Leopold invented elevators. Leopold is a genuine dick to everyone he meets, screaming about bad tasting non-fat butter and flirting with other people’s crushes. But eventually he settles on Kate (Meg Ryan). Thankfully, Kate loves Leopold back and decides to give up her entire life and family to travel back in time to be Leopold’s wife, and also possibly irreversibly changing the world’s future. But who cares? They’re in love!

Timeline (2003)

Based on the Michael Crichton novel, a group of archaeology students travel through a man-made wormhole to save their professor from medieval France. For a movie about wormholes and time travel, it is criminally boring.

Just Visiting (2001)

Actually an American remake of the 1993 French film Les Visiteur. A French nobleman and his servant time travel from the 12th century and wind up in Chicago in the ‘90s. Christina Applegate takes care of them; it’s terrible.

The Sound of Thunder (2005)

It’s the future and ALL THE ANIMALS ARE DEAD. Meanwhile, rich people get their kicks traveling back in time to kill a real-life dinosaur. The tour group that runs the show picks a specific T-Rex that is going to die anyway (so as not to disturb the future), but on one trip back a guest steps on a butterfly, thus changing the future into what could only be described as a Jumanji world.

The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Ashton Kutcher learns that he can travel back in time by reading. So he does that, and mostly just fucks up the lives of everyone around him, until one day he blows off his own hands in the past and then no longer has any journals to read. But it’s OK, because old home movies work too. Sooooooooo........ yep. Oh, and all the other Butterfly Effect movies can go here too.

Click (2006)

Adam Sandler finds a magical remote control in the “beyond” section of Bed Bath and Beyond. This magical remote allows him to fast forward through his life. But the remote is broken (for reasons) and just jumps ahead, destroying Sandler’s life. In the end we all learn a lesson that you shouldn’t buy magical remotes from Christopher Walken.

The Lake House (2006)

The movie we hate so much but continue to watch every time it’s on TNT. Why? WE DON’T KNOW WHY. It’s a devil movie. Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock stay at the same lake house two years apart and communicate through letters passed by a time portal mailbox. A mailbox.

Additional writing from Lauren Davis.

This article originally appeared back in January 2015.

Here is a video montage showing only the fights from the first episode of the ABC reboot of BattleBots. Why not!http://gizmodo.com/battlebots-is-...

H/T Digg. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

In 2011, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick purchased a 150-year-old townhouse in Greenwich Village for $18,995,000. Last week, they sold the home for $18,250,000—a loss of $745,000, plus however much they invested in restoring and refurbishing the place. Whoops!

According to the New York Times, Parker and Broderick first listed the house in late 2012 for $24.99 million. Last summer, they lowered the price to $22 million. The most recent asking price was $19.95 million: $1.7 million more than what they ultimately got for it.

Annual property taxes on the five-floor, six-bedroom, 6,800-square-foot townhouse are about $92,695, the Times reports. But wait, there’s more:

The master suite, which encompasses the entire fourth floor, has a fireplace and an en-suite bath that features an oval hand-carved stone tub and its own fireplace, along with a nearly 25-by-10-foot private terrace overlooking the rear garden. One floor up is the spacious family room and media center, with two skylights.

Then there are the closets — capacious enough to tantalize even Carrie Bradshaw, Ms. Parker’s fashionista “Sex and the City” character. The floor plans show a wall of closets near the master bath and a nearly 17-by-7-foot dressing room, as well as a walk-in closet, which, judging from the photographs that were in the listing, looked as if it had stored some of Ms. Parker’s own shoes and designer outfits.

Still—even at the low, low price of $18,250,000—this was New York’s most expensive closing of the week.

(“Capacious enough to tantalize even Carrie Bradshaw.” Haha, Jesus.)

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

The owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, the Oregon bakery that refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple, has been ordered to pay $135,000 in damages. According to the Associated Press, the damages were ordered by Oregon’s bureau of labor and industries for the “emotional suffering” caused by the bakeries actions.

The bakery’s owners, Aaron and Melissa Klein, refused to bake the cake in 2013 citing their religious beliefs. The Kleins’ actions sparked a national debate about the right of private business owners to refuse services to members of the LGBTQ community based solely on abstract religious principles.

Oregon’s bureau of labor and industries ruled, however, that the couples violated the state’s 2007 discrimination law. The AP reports that the law, “provides an exemption for religious organizations, but the agency ruled that exemption does not allow private businesses to discriminate against potential customers.”

This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage. It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal, Oregon labor commissioner Brad Avakian said in the final order.

The Kleins’ attorney called the order unconstitutional and a violation of free speech principles. They will likely appeal the decision.

Image via Getty.

Long-lost Gawker darling Melissa Berkelhammer has been evicted from her Fifth Avenue apartment, the New York Post reports, after being arrested on shoplifting charges in May. “I’m convinced that you all won’t be happy until I’m dead,” Berkelhammer recently wrote on Facebook. How the mighty have fallen!

In honor of Independence Day, we will now relay an independent thought Kristin Cavallari once had about politics.

In June 2008, Kristin attended a “launch party for Op clothing,” at which event a reporter for Access Hollywood asked her how she planned to vote in the upcoming presidential election. Before first explaining that her “busy acting schedule does not allow for much time for politics,” Kristin offered the following observation:

Obama seems like a really cool genuine guy, which I think is hard to find nowadays in a president.

Really cool that Obama actually is the president nowadays and that Kristin was able to take time out of her busy acting schedule to offer an opinion on him.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

On Saturday, piano man Billy Joel was in a marrying state of mind.

The New York Post reports that Joel and girlfriend Alexis Roderick, who in April announced she was pregnant, turned their Fourth of July party yesterday into a surprise wedding ceremony, presided over by Governor Andrew Cuomo. (LOL, can you imagine?)

Actor Kevin James was reportedly also in attendance at the small ceremony at Joel’s Mansion on Center Island in Oyster Bay.

This is Joel’s fourth marriage. He is 66. Roderick, a former Morgan Stanley staffer, is 33. They are expecting their first child later this summer.

Image via Joel’s ex-wife Christie Brinkley’s Instagram, how fucked up is that lol. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.