Obviously we live in a cruel and absurd universe of well-rewarded idiocy and undeserved second chances, but if we didn't, these are the ten people you'd meet in the nu-depression's breadlines.
New Year's Eve—the most important drinking night of the year—is almost upon us! What kind of party are you going to? Only five types exist, which I will detail for you after the jump.
We don't know about you, but where we come from a "Thanksgiving massacre" is what happens to the Detroit Lions, not a disturbing, well-coordinated terrorist attack in the world's fifth-largest city, involving anywhere from two dozen to 50 terrorists, many of whom haven't been caught, who had no demands but death and destruction, leaving 170 dead so far. Here is your amusing Weekend Gawker listicle: our top four favorite horrific descriptions of the violence in Mumbai this week!
Every movie star everywhere is quitting! In today's case of old Clint Eastwood it makes sense, because he's, y'know, old and his directing career has been a lot more illustrious than his acting career has for the past decade or so. But the once-promising, now-squandered Joaquin Phoenix? Baby mill Angelina Jolie? Nicole Kidman?? If they leave, then what are we to do? Find new movie stars, I guess. Trouble is, there aren't really any good, young understudies waiting in the wings. But there might be some! We'll take a look at who could replace these four retiring (or maybe semi-retiring) actors after the jump.
So the election is over! What good news for us and what terrible news for... um, news. All the CNN and MSNBC and Fox junkies who were glued to the tube while the election Wehrmacht rolled its ruinous iron wheels over the land will now be leaving the news behind and returning to their regularly scheduled shitty programming. Or at least the people in charge of that shitty programming hope so! It's kind of a crock theory because news nets' ratings weren't that high that they seemed to be distracting a huge amount of TV watchers, and regular television was in a decline long before people started caring about politics anyway. But there must be some folks who traded their CSI for their POTUS and would now like an inroad back to the glorious world of primetime entertainment TV, hopefully with a methadone-dash of politics thrown in to add a bit of spice. And we've got a guide to Politics-related television for them, after the jump! How handy!
It's over! It's all over! Tomorrow the campaign will be done! No more caring about what crazy things John McCain and his bitchy friend said on the news, no more feeling bad for him despite yourself, no more checking 538 (sorry Nate Silver, you're obsolete now!), no more forwarded YouTube clips from your mom, or your coworker, or some lunatic internet person. Boy, if we were assholes, we'd write something about how this was "the YouTube election." But instead we will just post the YouTubes themselves, from 2004 through the never-ending primaries, through the finally ending general election. All your favorites are here! Come pal around with crying Hillary the Senator, stare deep into Mike Gravel's eyes, and don't look your opponent in the eyes, after the jump. Back in 2004, this guy named Barack Obama gave a really really good speech at the Democratic National Convention. Watch it again, if you haven't lately, because it's really good. Can you believe we're gonna elect this guy?
As AlleyInsider notes today, little online video clips have helped shape the election. And you know who else has helped? Celebrities!! Yes the rich and frivolous famous folks who would like to gay marry the sound of their own voices have been out in force, most supporting a Arab man who drives a fancy Volvo full of explosives named Barack Obama. Though John McCain has had some vocal supporters too, most notably the braying little marmot named The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck. After the jump we'll take a look at Ms. Hasselbeck and several other celebs who have lent their questionable names to their candidates' causes.
Tomorrow is Halloween! It's a sacred holiday for children, what with the heaping mounds (if you do not feel like a nut) of candy and the fun, scaaarryyy costumes. The costume aspect also makes it something of an important day for adults because, to paraphrase the Dead Kennedys, you get a night of being someone else before you step back into your mold the next day. But really, you're always you and one can tell a lot about a person from their choice of Halloween attire. Really, there are five types of costumes (and only five types of people!), and we'll dissect them—and what they say about their wearer—after the jump.
Economic analysts on the right and left continue to openly suggest that we may not have hit bottom yet. If you want hope, don't talk to an economist, ask a novelist. Fiction writers tend to have a more optimistic view: once they've thrust characters into a financial abyss, they are forced to script a path out of it. What have our finest authors found to redeem us from this depression?Speculative fiction often refrains from defining the terms of an economic collapse, but it's always forced to either solve the problem or make things considerably worse in the end.
The "voting" bit of the endless 2008 election has not yet happened, but honestly the winner of that particular contest is of little concern to anyone but plumbers and unemployed auto workers and ladies who want their precious "abortions." No, from here, two weeks out from Election Day, with Obama suspending his campaign and John McCain abandoning swing states, we can already plainly see who's really come out on top over these last couple months. Media whores! And, you know, media people who we actually like and wouldn't therefore call "whores." After the jump, the five real winners of the 2008 elections.
Well isn't this handy! Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz has produced a list of the 36(!) Jews "who have shaped the 2008 U.S. election." That is a lot of them! It really takes so many to run the world? This is not even all the Jews involved in deciding who will next lead this glorious Christian nation! "But the Jewish vote remains a key element in battleground states, and, playing a wide variety of roles, Jews have helped to shape the campaigns. Thirty-six of them are mentioned below. This list is by no means all-inclusive, and, for considerations of space, many Jews who have played active parts in the campaigns do not appear," Haaretz explains. Still, it is nice of them to provide in one convenient location all the people who the crazies will blame for stealing the election next month. Streisand! (Listed: the original Lehman brother who is long dead. Not listed: all the other evil Wall Street people who burned all the money.) [Haaretz]
Boy, there are some real wackos out there, right? And this election, whoo, it really brings out the worst in the crazies. Stuffed monkeys with Obama stickers, shouts of "kill him," insane email forwards, there are countless examples from this miserable election of outright racism. But those are just fringe losers—bunch of racist nobodies, right? That's why it's fun that this week's three worst examples of outright bullshit hate-mongering all come from professional, official Republican party staffers!
Jim Cramer has changed his mind! Just last week, you may recall, the shouty CNBC stock picker appeared close to tears as he begged Americans to pull all the cash they'd need for the next five years out of the crippled stock market. Well, whatever, that was last week. Now he says that we've already reached "the beginning of the end of the crisis." That sure was fast! This, of course, is in line with his (physical and intellectual) penchant for wild gesticulation. Let's take a brief look back at Mr. Cramer's unpredictable recent past, shall we?
Actor Tobey Maguire has had another confrontation with the ever-dogged paparazzi, this incident ending in bloodshed. Apparently, his friend punched some photographer and was hauled off to jail. This is the second such outburst for the Spider-Man star, but he's not the only one to lash out at the wicked, prying photogs and their gaggle of flashing lights and inane questions. After the jump take a took at five other celebrities who have stood up and barked "No!" at the insidious rabble.
Cosmopolitan (I'm assuming the British version because Gordon fucking Ramsey made the list too) says that 21 Jump Street star Johnny Depp—who's also in movies—is the hottest male on earth. Usual suspect George Clooney is runner up. And (what?!) Jake Gyllenhaal comes in third place. Gyllenhaal? Like, from Bubble Boy? The rest of the list after the jump. Spoiler alert: Manshark Michael Phelps didn't make the cut. 1 Johnny Depp, 45 2 George Clooney, 47 3 Jake Gyllenhaal, 27 4 Daniel Craig, 40 5 Brad Pitt, 44 6 James McAvoy, 29 7 JustinTimberlake, 27 8 Will Smith, 40 9 David Beckham, 33 10 Wentworth Miller, 36 11 Christian Bale, 34 12 Jonathan Rhys Meyers, 31 13 Take That: Gary Barlow, 37, Mark Owen, 36, Howard Donald, 40 and Jason Orange, 38 14 Ashton Kutcher, 30 15 Dermot O''Leary, 35 16 David Tennant, 37 17 Patrick Dempsey, 42 18 Clive Owen, 44 19 Pierce Brosnan, 55 20 Mark Ronson, 33 21 Gordon Ramsay, 41 22 Russell Brand, 33 23 Pharrell Williams, 35 24 Ryan Reynolds, 31 25 Olivier Martinez, 42 (ANI) [TopNews via OhNoTheyDidn't]
Remember when John Edwards got a couple of $400 haircuts and everyone made fun of him and called him a spendthrift pretty boy? Rush Limbaugh said he might be the "first woman president"! Har har! (And, remember, when Edwards slept with that lady and maybe had a love child and how the hair didn't seem like such a big deal after all?) Well, Edwards, in truth, isn't the only of the recent candidates to undergo special, fancy, or expensive cosmetic treatment. Sarah Palin maybe has lip tattoos! John McCain has the same makeup artist as Clay Aiken! Joe Biden maybe gets Botox! And Barack Obama... um... covers up his gray hair? Indeed. If you're curious to know more, we've put together a little compendium of these bits of cosmetic detritus for you, after the jump.
Recently Videogum did a little deep dive into the world of viral videos, and came back with some interesting findings. It seems that 2006 was the peak year for dumb mashups, terrible singers, heartwarming lion hugs, and all manner of other popular YouTube crap (basically all those people that got killed on that one episode of South Park). So what's happened since then? Where have all the virals gone? Well, we think they're kinda dead, and after the jump we'll tell you why.
We're not even officially in a recession, and already the culture czars over at New York have dubbed the economic crisis precipitated by our financial system's collapse The Greatest Depression! Such hyperbole, I know! So what makes the tag feel so goddamn right? Other than the fact that I think it is really great I don't have to write about subprime celebrities anymore? I found five things that are basically all the same thing and formed a little listicle!1. Because money is overrated! We know this. We know it so well. And just to prove it we pay billions of dollars to science to prove it to us, year after year after year. And yet. As a society we totally live and die (no not really, we just act like we live and die!) by the tiny nuances of the trajectory of the aggregate of all the flows of all that money, as if it Really Totally Matters. We do this, obviously, because we're obsessed with making comparisons - am I at least doing as well as last year? Am I really smarter than his last girlfriend? Shouldn't I buy a house now that all my friends are doing it? - because it is just so much easier than the Is This Bringing Me Joy question that seems so totally sappy and sentimental we find it to be a hilarious joke when some little Third World country like Bhutan pragmatically invents a Gross National Happiness Index because no one actually thought of that first. But as the Times reminds us today:
Dreamy Silver Fox Anderson Cooper may have a new boyfriend. Village Voice gossip Michael Musto is doing some whispering about a strapping young lad named Jonathan Chase who may or may not be canoodling with the esteemed CNN anchor. Cute! We care not because we're pointing fingers at a gay person, but because it's as newsworthy (or, at least, gossipworthy) as who Kate Hudson or Leonardo DiCaprio is dating. We're, um, orientation blind. After the jump, we've provided a small listicle (because why the hell not) detailing some of the Coop's previous romantic dalliances.
