Patrick Kennedy

Jenny wasn’t about to let that bitch Natalie get the last broccoli. 

The Wall Street Journal's Kevin Clark, who has been pumping out fun, off-color NFL stories all year, has another good one today. It's all about how a handful of Green Bay Packers got hooked on Settlers of Catan, the board game that all of your buddies who are bearded craft-beer enthusiasts are addicted to.

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‘Kim Jong-un: Friend or Foe’, North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un Reimagined as Pop Culture Heroes and Villains

“PRAY TO ME”

This isn’t the way Steven Gerrard’s Liverpool career was supposed to end. This is the way Steven Gerrard’s Liverpool career ends.

This time yesterday, most Liverpool fans assumed Steven Gerrard would retire a Red. Today, he’s set to head abroad, likely to MLS, to see out the final years of his playing career in a lesser league where he believes he can still make an impact while logging heavy minutes. Despite the rumours of his impending departure coming from reliable sources, many wanted to believe that things might not end this way. Because they shouldn’t have ended this way and didn’t have to.

Official confirmation from Gerrard and the club today, though, means that his career as a Red is going to end this way, and that he will not be a one-club man when he does eventually retire. Steven Gerrard is leaving Liverpool when his current contract expires, likely to head to the MLS, and he intends to sign a pre-contract agreement with what will be his new club before the month is out. This isn’t how the career of one of Liverpool’s greatest ever players should have ended. This is how it ends.

"This has been the toughest decision of my life and one which both me and my family have agonised over," read a statement from the captain. "I am making the announcement now so that the manager and team are not distracted by stories or speculation about my future. Liverpool Football Club has been such a huge part of all our lives for so long and saying goodbye is difficult, but I feel it's something that's in the best interests of all involved, including my family and the club itself.

"I'm going to carry on playing and although I can't confirm at this stage where that will be, I can say it will be somewhere that means I won't be playing for a competing club and will not therefore be lining up against Liverpool—that is something I could never contemplate. My decision is completely based on my wish to experience something different in my career and life and I also want to make sure that I have no regrets when my playing career is eventually over."

From the outside, heading abroad to a league where he will play at least some of his matches on artificial turf in stadiums not built for football and in search of an MLS Cup for a club that likely won’t have existed when his playing career began seems an unsatisfying conclusion to that career. Hopefully, though, Gerrard will find whatever it is that he’s looking for, be it playing time or importance to a side or simply a new experience. And hopefully, in the end for him, that will be worth what he’s giving up.

This isn’t the way Steven Gerrard’s Liverpool career was supposed to end. This is the way Steven Gerrard’s Liverpool career ends. All the luck in the world to him in finding what it is he’s looking for, wherever it is he ends up moving on to.

Helen Green drew all the hairstyles worn by David Bowie from before he was a star in 1964 on up to the present day. Here's they are in a glorious animated GIF:

Green also did a one-sheet of the B&W drawings. See also every Prince hairstyle from 1978 to 2013. (via @Coudal)

Tags: David Bowie   Helen Green   illustration   music

Design Concept for a Slim and Simple Media Player That Streams Music From Services Like Spotify

‘The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People’, An Informative Infographic Showing How Artists Spent Their Day

Literature Lover in Los Angeles Hacks a Road Sign to Say ‘Read a Fucking Book’

Masked gunmen wielding Kalashnikovs and a rocket launcher killed at least 12 people and injured 10 more at the Paris offices of satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday before escaping. French president François Hollande called the shooting "unquestionably a terrorist attack."

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You don't typically think of The Wire as a show that used audio to great effect, but you'd be wrong. From the show's use of music only ambient to the scene (e.g. a car radio playing), the season-end montages, and the background soundtracks that accompanied certain characters or situations, The Wire's use of music and sound was quite calculated and effective. At Reddit, a sound editor who worked on the show shared her experiences.

One of my crew's challenges, then, was to find ways to evoke mood with backgrounds. When a character is in a crowded situation he is not comfortable with, listen for background laughter. When McNulty is drunk and on the prowl, listen for dogs barking (because he's a dog - my own private commentary on his character). There was a whole world of work that went in to creating the sound of Hamsterdam and building it from an empty to thriving enterprise.

Working with Felicia Pearson was challenging:

Snoop was tricky. That DeWalt scene wasn't the first time she was in the show (she's a scout for Marlo the first time we see him in season three maybe?) but it was the most dialog she had up until then, and the HBO note was that she was completely unintelligible. I had her in the studio to do pretty much the entire scene over it felt like, and whenever I had a new actor in the studio, I would always ask (unless I recognized them from something else) if they had done ADR before because "The Wire" used so many non-actors. She said "no ma'am" so I walked her through the process and she did a great job. Stayed in sync, matched her cadence... and sounded exactly as unintelligible as she did on set!

But so was Dominic West:

McNulty (Dom West) came in often and was awesome, as well. His accent showed most often when the character was drunk or angry. Oddly, the name "Stringer Bell" tripped him up a lot. "Stringa" and then a very over-enunciated end to "Bell-eh." Also, the words "fuck" and "cunt" came out "feck" and "cahnt" and the only way to break him of it was to stand right in front of him (so he could watch the mouth shape) and say the word over and over again. So a Dom West ADR session often went like this:

Me (with Dom staring at my mouth): Cunt. Cunt. Cunt.
Dom: Cahnt. Shit, do it again, please.
Me: Cunt. Cunt. Cunt.
Dom: Cunt. Cunt. OK, let's record...
(three beeps, the line starts and):
Dom: ...cahnt. Feck! Say it again.
Me: Cunt....

There were some instances where we didn't bring Dom in for ADR because the emotion and energy of the scene would be compromised if we tinkered with his accent, and I support that decision, but it still pains me to hear those lines and feel like something slipped by me. I was like, the last checkpoint before dialog went on the air.

Which reminds me, the "Fuck" scene (McNulty/Bunk) -- when picture came to me, there were only about 30 "fucks" in it. We brought the guys in together and played the scene over and over and slammed a variation of "fuck" everywhere it would fit. I think the final mix tops off at somewhere in the 80 range? My personal contribution was Bunk's "fuck, fuck fuckitty fuck."

And Michael K. Williams cannot whistle:

Michael K Williams cannot whistle! It's totally true. We brought him in and he tried but it just wasn't happening. Omar's whistle is provided by a lovely and talented loop group member named Susan, who is an actor and John Waters' personal assistant.

To which another Redditor replied, "Susan's coming yo!" The whole thread is great, read it.

Tags: audio   The Wire   TV

A major study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health has found a significant link between autism and the exposure of the mother to high levels of air pollution during the third trimester of pregnancy.

Researchers focused on 1,767 children born from 1990 to 2002, including 245 diagnosed with autism. The design of the study and the results rule out many confounding measures that can create a bias, Weisskopf said. The researchers took into account socioeconomic factors that can influence exposure to pollution or play a role in whether a child is diagnosed with autism.

The fact that pollution caused problems only during pregnancy strengthened the findings, since it's unlikely other factors would have changed markedly before or after those nine months, he said in a telephone interview.

The ultimate cause of autism remains a mystery in most cases, said Charis Eng, chairwoman of the Lerner Research Institute's Genomic Medicine Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. While the Harvard study isn't definitive and the findings could be coincidental, it's not likely given the large size and the precise results, she said in a telephone interview.

"The truth is there has to be gene and environmental interactions," said Eng, who wasn't involved in the study. "I suspect the fetus already had the weak autism spectrum disorder genes, and then the genes and the environment interacted."

It would be a huge help (and I am not in any way being facetious about this) if Jenny McCarthy and all the other celebrity "vaccines cause autism" folks threw their weight behind cleaning up pollution the way they attacked vaccination. Redeem yourselves. (via @john_overholt)

Tags: autism   Jenny McCarthy   medicine   science

Thirty-four years ago, at the launch of Ted Turner's Cable News Network, the founder made a grandiose and specific promise about his newly created round-the-clock operation. "Barring satellite problems, we won't be signing off until the world ends," Turner declared. And in anticipation, he prepared a final video segment for the apocalypse:

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Cards Against Humanity took its "windfall profits" from its "Holiday Bullshit Promotion" and donated $250,000 to The Sunlight Foundation, an organization that tracks campaign contributions and lobbyist activities directed at the U.S. government.

"Cards Against Humanity believes that in American politics, cash is king," a post on the card game's official site reads. "If you want to get anything done, you've got to buy your way in. That's why this year, $2,414,337,089 was spent by 11,509 professional lobbyists trying to sell their bullshit to Congress."

On Black Friday, Cards Against Humanity sold cow dung to anyone willing to buy it for $6. It also offered a wider, days-long promotion including multiple gifts for $15. As announced...

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kylemetcalf:

Fuller, Go easy on the Pepsi!

We TOTALLY watched this again last night.

Gold.

A Skewed but Accurate Synopsis of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ That Makes Dorothy Sound Like a Serial Killer

At the NY Times, Nicholas Blechman weighs in with his picks for the best book covers of 2014.

Dan Wagstaff, aka The Casual Optimist, picked 50 Covers for 2014.

From Jarry Lee at Buzzfeed, 32 Of The Most Beautiful Book Covers Of 2014.

Paste's Liz Shinn and Alisan Lemay present their 30 Best Book Covers of 2014.

And from much earlier in the year (for some reason), Zachary Petit's 19 of the Best Book Covers of 2014 at Print.

Tags: best of   best of 2014   books   design   lists

Technology makes a convenient villain in science fiction(*). In our books, movies and TV shows, computers, robots and other inventions are forever gaining sentience and turning on us, punishing mankind for the hubris of trying to make like the Almighty. (*) Also, at times in traditional fictio...http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching

Play was temporarily suspended in today's Beşiktaş-Tottenham Europa League match when the power in the stadium went out in the eighth minute. In the interim, fans used the glow of their cell phones to light up the place. Here's video of when the lights went out, and some cool shots of fans waving their phones:

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Orlando Scandrick apparently visited a children's hospital yesterday, and according to linebacker Justin Durant, Scandrick whooped some punk in Madden. The Cowboys cornerback even went with a surprise onside kick on the kid. You have to be ready for anything, little Timmy.

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[Internetwork Notes]

I'll admit it: when some six months passed after the airing of the Playing House season finale, and USA said nothing about its intentions to renew it despite having renewed its other sitcom, Sirens, almost immediately, I gave up hope that we would ever get to see more of Maggie and Emma and Mark and Bruce and Zach and Birdbones and the guy with all the gnomes and the baby I guess. But CHRISTMAS DONE COME EARLY, Y'ALL!

I was thrilled to stagger out of bed this morning and see the news that Playing House is getting a second season -- "Better late than never," as Deadline's Nellie Andreeva very rightly put it. But now is not the time for recriminations. Now's the time to celebrate. And to start making lists of UCB alumni who still need to show up in guest roles.

Update: This just in via press release: USA is using Playing House to pilot a new scheme, by which VOD viewers will be able to watch episodes a week before they air on USA. I seem to recall that FX did this with Season 2 of The Bridge and it...didn't work. I am going to make it my personal business to ensure that it DOES work here, AND SO SHOULD YOU.

Explore the Playing House forum.

Playing House Has Been Renewed For A Second Season! appeared first on Previously.TV.

‘My email is a monster’, A Comic by The Oatmeal About the Persistent Problem of Unread Email