"It's so good," the actress Christine Baranski told a film crew at the Four Seasons last night, "to have another paper in town." The paper in question was the New York Observer, celebrating 25 years of publishing. The camera crew was from the New York Observer, reporting on itself.
Could the reason for Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps' hyperbolic hatred of homosexuals be the result of an ongoing battle with his own repressed homosexuality?
As though shit-encrusted cruise ships weren't enough: a Greyhound bus traveling from Atlantic City to New York was forced to evacuate because of a roach infestation:
Sky News correspondent Mark Stone was detained by Chinese police in Beijing this morning while in the middle of a live segment on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Most of the episode—include the moment they were detained, and Stone's conversations with one officer in the midst of their detention—was captured by Sky's camera operator and broadcast live to viewers of the English cable channel. (The entire incident was also captured by another police officer, who filmed the incident on a portable camera.) Stone says that they were detained for saying an unspecified word ("protest"? "Massacre"?) during the report; the English-speaking cop with whom he talks says they were stopped from filming because they didn't have the right permits. [TV Newser]
The United States' most notorious food ban is finally being lifted.
An online friendship doesn't mean you share mutual affection, trust, history, or any of the other standard qualifiers for a relationship and this is mostly chill because it's Facebook and that's how Facebook has worked for years. Well Connecticut-based photographer and astute cultural observer, Ty Morin has discerned this as well and he plans to do something about it.
Ten years ago next week, the United States invaded Iraq. The ensuing decade of war would destroy Iraq, kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers, and cost trillions of dollars. It was not worth it. Not even close. A new accounting from the Costs of War project at Brown University lays bare just how much blood and treasure ten years of the War in Iraq has cost. For example:
The hacker who obtained and released private email correspondence between President George Bush and his family and friends is on a new tear. "Guccifer," who earlier this week took over former Secretary of State Colin Powell's Facebook page, also broke into the ex-general's email account, and the email account of Clinton aide and confidant Sidney Blumenthal.
Getting a newsman to read aloud what at first blush appears to be an innocuous name, but in actuality is a dirty word, during a live broadcast, is the oldest trick in the book.
Matt Lauer, the man who, for so long, has made our mornings slightly uncomfortable in indescribable ways, could be gearing up to make us slightly uncomfortable in the early evenings. According to the New York Post, several "knowledgeable sources" report that Lauer is the first choice to replace Trebek after the Jeopardy! host's contract expires.
A Wisconsin court has banned a local man from all the libraries on the planet after he was caught openly masturbating inside the Racine Public Library.
The 16-year-old girl at the center of the rape trial of two Ohio high-school football players learned of the assault over text messages the next morning, it was testified this week. The trial is focusing primarily on text messages, cell phone pictures, and social media surrounding the alleged crime.
When you think "The Montezuma (Iowa) Record," you think "just good journalism, as befitting the town that is home to Iowa's best competition motocross race track, Fun Valley Motocross." I'm sad, and chuckling, to tell you that you may be disappointed in the Record's latest effort, however. (Unless you are racist).
The 44-year-old lawyer who leaped from her eighth floor apartment with her 10-month-old son strapped to her body in a baby carrier, killing herself but cushioning the blow for the infant, who survived with just a bruise, left a 13-page handwritten suicide note in which she described her final act as "evil."
Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican and a top contender for the party's vice-presidential candidacy last year, has come out in support of gay marriage—after his son, Will, came out as gay. "As a congressman, and more recently as a senator, I opposed marriage for same-sex couples," Portman writes in an editorial published today in the Columbus Dispatch. "Then something happened that led me to think through my position in a much deeper way." In 2011 Will, then in his first year at Yale, told his parents that he is gay. That knowledge, Portman writes, "prompted me to consider the issue from another perspective."
