In these last few days of 2012, parting with some of our favorite phrases and trends is proving to be a rough experience. ABC must be having a hard time saying goodbye to one of its most beloved catchphrases. One of the network's top stars, Katie Couric, embraced YOLO, or "You Only Live Once," like a child of her own.
On Friday in Los Angeles, a young old woman named Demi Moore sold all her beautiful hair for $20, so she would have some money to buy a fine Christmas present for her husband Ashton. After ransacking the stores for hours, she finally came upon the perfect gift: a platinum fob chain for his treasured pocketwatch.
America is strutting around the universe with a little kick in its step today, as Miss USA was crowned Miss Universe last night for the first time EVER in the last 15 years.
Ke$ha's recent single "Die Young" is suffering an early death from radio airwaves, since right now no one wants to hear someone gleefully singing about dying young, even when it comes in the form of a hyperbolic simile ("Let's make the most of the night like we're gonna die young!"). The song has lost millions in audience impressions since the tragedy, a lite version of the 2001 Clear Channel memorandum that banned 165 songs (including John Lennon's "Imagine," Elton John's "Daniel," and Alanis Morissette's "Ironic") from the radio in a fit of post-9/11 sensitivity.
Ever since HBO's Girls debuted this past spring, viewers have wracked their brains trying to identify precisely what about it they find slightly irritating and also which shades of nail polish best embody its characters.
America's official unemployment rate is 7.7%. That doesn't reflect the millions of people who have dropped out of the labor force. Millions are set to lose their unemployment benefits at the end of the year. Each week, we're running true stories of unemployment, as told by the unemployed. This is what's happening out there.
I don't usually enjoy doured-up covers of pop songs whose cheery arrangement barely obscured inherent sadness in the first place (see Frente!'s cover of New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle"). However, taking a little pep out of Wham!'s "Last Christmas" serves it well — as much as I like the original, it sounds anesthetized. "Last Chrismas" needs to deal with its feelings, damn it. It purports to every year and always fails.
Women. Always putting make-up on their face skin and designer sunglasses in their purses without paying for them. And no one is better at (allegedly) combining the two than Sarah Jessica Parker's personal makeup artist Leslie Lopez.
NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel has gone missing in Syria, according to Turkish news reports. The reports also say that Aziz Akyavaş, a Turkish journalist working with Engel, is unaccounted for. NBC News has been successfully keeping Engel's status subject to a news blackout—one to which Gawker agreed until now—for at least the past 24 hours.
There is no form of intrigue more delicious than archaeological intrigue, and this story is just riddled with it: royal exhumations, parking lots, anonymous sources, whiffs of conspiracy and official denials. Select your finest knife and heftiest fork; draw a damask napkin over your lap, and prepare to tuck in.
Probably the most widely viewed Twitter trending topic in the United States right now is "#prayfornewton." The ad hoc hashtag is indicative of both the public's desire to show support for the victims in today's Connecticut school shooting—most of whom were children— but also our ignorance of what exactly happened at Sandy Hook Elementary: the shooting was in Newtown, not "Newton."
Let the Booker Backlash begin. Newark Mayor Cory Booker has enjoyed an endless stream of slavishly positive publicity—in the national press, at least—since he first became mayor in 2006. There was the time he rushed into a burning building to save a neighbor. And the time he personally shoveled out constituents' sidewalks after complaints about the city's response to a snowstorm on Twitter. And now, in response to a Twitter challenge, he's pledged to live on food stamps for a week to get a better sense of how the other half lives. The New York Times today takes a look at how he's actually performing as mayor: And it's not so great.
The best thing about celebrities is that as long as at some point some charity somewhere gets money, they can still be bought and sold like common chattel. This is especially convenient around the holidays, when the awkward rich, flush with cash and scant of social skills, start itching to give one another elaborate gifts.
Up until 1968, the United States government had a Top Secret plan for what to do in the event that the president died or went missing under mysterious circumstances. The plan was: Nuke the shit out of everyone right now.
Today's Taylor Swift Perfect Dream World Action Shot™ comes to us from an after-party held following One Direction's December 3rd concert at Madison Square Garden. In it, Taylor Swift recreates the iconic "lift" scene from Dirty Dancing, a movie about a girl who deceives her father to get money for her friend's abortion.
Happy Tuesday. How are you doing? Lindsay Lohan's fabulous, having a cool time and making a lot of neat decisions. Classic Lindsay stuff.
In an outcome that seemed inevitable as soon as news broke of Kate Middleton's nurse's suicide, Southern Cross Austereo has announced the "termination" of the radio program that aired the prank call to King Edward VII Hospital in London.
