If only we could have sat in on the meeting where the marketing team for this Osaka department store came up with the idea for their "Fuckin' Sale," spotted early this month by a reader of Jake Adelstein's Japan Subculture blog.

All the paparazzi pictures show this actor getting comfy with his new famous girlfriend, but what you don't see is his boyfriend waiting back at the hotel. Also, some intel on a very famous newborn. No fakes there!

The American Man has, in recent history, been beset on all side by feminizing influences: Pumpkin Spice Lattes, Spanx for Men, fancy shampoo... where does it end?

Whoops! Mix-up at Papa John's! "Hey Papa John's, just FYI my name isn't 'lady chinky eyes.'"" ProPublica communications manager Minhee Cho helpfully Tweeted on Saturday, posting a photo of a receipt with "lady chinky eyes" listed as the name. Guess the real Lady C.E. won't be getting her pizza.

We're fascinated by Bronies, the subculture of mostly-male internet nerds obsessed with the new animated series "My Little Pony." So on Saturday, Gawker's Max Read and I visited their natural habitat: the Winter 2012 BronyCon in midtown Manhattan.

Julian Fellowes' Edwardian soap Downton Abbey returns for its second season Sunday night which is very excited news indeed. The first season was filled with many a twist and turn and, very often, this news was delivered via ominous letters that our beloved characters stared at blank-faced. In fact, each of the first season's seven episodes included at least three instances of characters receiving news, most times troubling news, in a letter. Here are all of them.

The mysterious actress suing IMDb for revealing her "real age" and "real Asian name" has been revealed: Huong Hoang, stage name Junie Hoang, is a 40-year-old Vietnam-born Texan who says IMDb's ruthless privacy invasion has jeopardized her career as "Ghetto Girl Three" in Hoodrats 2: Hoodrat Warriors and "Sandy" in Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver.

This week we had some issues with how people talk about transgender Americans. It's like Work It up in here or something. But that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was people seeing something and not saying something.

Facebook has finally allowed the residents of the Irish town of Effin to list the place as their hometown, after months of blocking it for being "offensive". You know, 'cause "effin" sounds like the F-word, and Facebook's sensitive servers might blow up if even a hint of coarseness brushes their fiber optics.

At around 3:17 on Wednesday morning, every student in NYU's Department of Social and Cultural Analysis received a bizarre "open letter" to NYU President John Sexton, from a student who claimed she'd been "forced" to do an ethnographic assignment on Occupy Wall Street. It was 2,800 words long, oddly typeset, and quickly followed up by another five equally eccentric emails. Someone sent us the full set of emails, which everyone at NYU—and elsewhere—was talking about. Want to read them?

Implant cancer! Brain melting! Autism vaccines! Big tumor! Drug users! Chimera monkeys! Face transplants! Yoga danger! And the future of your baby, made clear! It's your Friday Health Watch, where we watch your health—but not for long!

The return of Jersey Shore, the most important sociological experiment of our time reminds us of a number of platitudes: You can never go home again, there are no second acts in American life, the rich are different, you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose but you can't pick your friend's nose. Oh, what a sad homecoming it was.

In the mood for some class rage? (Of course you are.) Gothamist points us to message board on uptight parenting forum UrbanBaby asking, "What's your hhi [household income] and do you FEEL poor, middle class, upper middle class or rich where you live. No judging."

What drives a teenager to steal thousands of Israeli credit cards and slowly leak them to make a political point? We tried to figure out in a Skype chat with a 19-year-old Saudi hacker named 0xOmar.

We know how it is. You were raised completely by the internet, your entire personality is an online creation, and though you're suave on IM, the prospect of chatting up a girl in person is a strange and terrifying prospect. Some of you have been reduced to paying hundreds of dollars to professional wingpersons to help you approach women in public. Fret not, lovelorn computer aliens. Help is here.

Hi there: apparently not everyone (?) in the world has a subscription to the Gawker.com website, and therefore has not read Hamilton Nolan's helpful primer on making parody rap videos. Step one: don't. Don't ever make a rap video. That goes for all of you. Also: step two: no wigs. Thanks. [via Christian Nightmares]

Last week, rage-tastic The Fighter director David O. Russell was doing "abdominal exercises" with his 19-year-old transgender niece and "asked questions about her transformation." Then, according to TMZ, this happened:

As gay men and lesbians get closer and closer to the mainstream they've often traded in their image as the queer radicals who started the Stonewall Riots for the milquetoast assimilationists who want to get married and have kids and put HRC bumper stickers on their cars. That doesn't mean we're still not queer radicals. It just means we're hiding it from you.

These two started a fake feud to get publicity and now don't want it to stop. This actress is pissed her famous boyfriend left her for another woman, and this singer and actress have been having a long-distance affair. And the return of our original blind item about the slutty fitness buff.

As a close follower of the position papers of Republican presidential candidates, I've long been under the impression that teachers in America are a bunch of shady unionized borderline thugs, like the Teamsters with frumpier clothing. But according to a new study, a few good apples out there in our crumbling schools are actually getting something accomplished, while robbing the taxpayers blind. Who knew? The NYT reports: