The whole "who would you rather have a beer with" method of president selection is, we know, so stupid — who cares how fun or cool the president is? — but, come on, imagine Mitt Romney on stage at the Apollo (Obama was there for a fundraiser), trying to pull off an Al Green line. Actually, just try to imagine Mitt Romney on stage at the Apollo, period. Right?
The nomination deadline for the 2012 Pulitzer Prizes is five days away. Newspaper editors around the county are busy crafting nomination letters, putting together elaborate packages showcasing their best work, and forking over $50 entry fees for a shot at winning journalism's most prestigious prize later this Spring. No one will care.
The two night premiere of Season 11 of American Idol just wrapped up. As usual, the judges made some pretty interesting faces while all those people sang. Here is a compilation of the weirdest ones.
On tonight's Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert took stock of the latest issues hurting the campaigns of the Republican candidates. Newt Gingrich is dealing his ex-wife's open marriage claim, Rick Santorum never shared a couch with anyone but his wife, Mitt Romney didn't really win in Iowa, and things got so bad for Rick Perry that he bowed out this morning. Even Colbert has some problems: the Jon Stewart-lead Super PAC rolled out an ad attacking him yesterday. Who could have known that an off hand remark about Rosa Parks could ever be used against him?
The main focus of tonight's Daily Show was the ABC News bombshell that Newt Gingrich asked his second wife for an open marriage before eventually divorcing her, while she was sick to boot. It's not really all that surprising, Newt has always been on the side of the free market and less regulation. If only it didn't completely contradict his years of moralizing about traditional American values, particularly the sanctity of marriage.
Kremlin backed propaganda artists Russia Today have predicted that the United States could erupt into a violent class war within two years. "With an assumption that a strong or very strong conflict exists increasing in only two years time, at this rate 85 percent of Americans would sense a class war in two years' time," reads the barely coherent missive. The economy is down and jobs are hard to come by, so pretty soon we'll all be killing each other in the streets. Should you be scared? You should probably not be scared.
It seems Nigel "Spud" Ely got a little carried away while working in Iraq in 2003. The Englishman somehow got a hold of a fragment of a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein. That piece just happened to be a buttock. A picture accompanying the article provides little help with determining whether it was the left or right buttock, or even whether or not it is a buttock.
This has already been the best day of shallow political horserace infotainment in the election cycle, and the evening bill of events hasn't even begun. There's a Republican debate between four candidates in South Carolina on CNN right now. It's going to be filthy and nasty and an embarrassment to humanity, hooray. At 11:30, ABC's interview with Newt Gingrich's second ex-wife, Marianne, will air and you perverts will love it. Here's your open thread, which we're trying out instead of a liveblog because why the hell not? Enjoy.
Seniors in Tokyo are turning up at the city's specialized brothels more and more, according to the Tokyo Reporter. Kayoko Kageyama, the author of a book about the sex industry in Japan, sees it as results of Japanese attitudes towards sex loosening up in the 60's and 70's, when most of these men were coming of age.
Game of Thrones is the best show on television and I would happily murder three people of your choosing if you were able to get me a screener of the second season. George R.R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series that the HBO show is based on, is a wizard who created an entire alternate universe from his own imagination.
News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch's puzzling Twitter feed of spontaneous crank missives turned out this surprising political position this afternoon: "Carried interest tax racket. Billions over many years. Why and where has Obama been?" If we're translating this correctly, he's calling the controversial carried interest tax loophole, which is in the news thanks to Mitt Romney's comical tax history, a "racket" that his cost the Treasury billions of dollars in revenue over the years, and he's wondering why Obama hasn't pushed to eliminate it. Will the tycoon allow us the honor of correcting him?
By far the most surprising thing about the news that four people have been arrested by the FBI in connection with a 72-page indictment handed down on file-sharing site Megaupload (and its streaming-video sister Megavideo) was learning that rap producer and Alicia Keys husband Swizz Beatz is the company's CEO. Otherwise, well, they definitely saw this coming, right? Sure, it's little bit odd to hear the government describe the site where you watched most of season four of Friends while you were sick last week as a "a worldwide criminal organization whose members engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering on a massive scale." But we've always got Videobb. [WSJ, image via AP]
Former Real Housewives of New York maniac Kelly Killoren Bensimon has listed her East Hampton home at $12 million. The five bedroom hovel is designed in the same style as a Sims house I once created, and is set on a sprawling 1.2 acres. The home includes all the requisite amenities: fireplaces, stainless steel kitchen, high ceilings, wood floors, and a heated pool. House of Tears, as it was lovingly dubbed by her children, has been on the market for years.
Desperate for a hit, NBC is doing everything it can to make people watch Smash, their making-of-a-Broadway-musical drama. They're hyping it to The Voice levels of annoyance, they're putting it on the Monday after the Super Bowl, and they're making it available for free on iTunes right now! So, I watched the show. Just like a Broadway hoofer, it's brilliant...and a bit of a mess.
