The good news is we’re definitely getting more Sherlock. The bad news is it probably won’t be for some time. There was a two-year gap between seasons two and three, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are only getting busier. For the near future, fans will have to just keep rewatching this last batch — especially Sherlock’s excellent best man speech — but to give them closure, I sat down with the series' executive producer Steven Moffat to discuss burning questions from the season finale, “The Last Vow,” in this order: Moriarty, Magnussen, mum, the mind palace, and Molly. (Spoilers for those who haven't watched the finale yet, obviously.)

He’s aliiiiiive. I think? Is Moriarty the long game villain for the show?
I can’t really say what we’re doing with that, but there is no last-minute whim in this. We’ve had what we’re going to do with Moriarty in place from before the second season. Exactly what we’re going to do. I remember talking it through with Andrew Scott, who plays Moriarty. Wait and see what’s going to happen.

Are you running with Moriarty because of Andrew’s performance, which is great, or had you planned the character as an ongoing presence prior to casting?
Well, obviously Sherlock Holmes must have a Moriarty. The thing that happened that was different because of Andrew was that, originally, in “The Great Game,” the only scene that you saw Moriarty in was when he plays who we used to call Gay Jim. Gay Jim from IT. He comes in and Sherlock deduces that he’s gay. It was quite good. At the very end, Sherlock would have realized that he was Moriarty and that he’s just missed him. The great game has begun! But we weren’t going to see Moriarty again.

The problem was we had to then cast Moriarty on the basis of Gay Jim, but know he was going to be our Moriarty. So I wrote the most daft scene, the most ridiculous scene anyone’s ever written, as a confrontation between Sherlock and Moriarty just for the audition. It’s full of the maddest dialogue. “I would burn the heart out of you!” and all this crap, just to see if anyone could say any of this shit. And then Andrew came in and he did it and he was amazing. I said to [executive producer] Mark Gatiss, “Well, not only are we gonna cast him, but we’ve got to do a version of this scene now.” So we just changed the whole end of the episode to include a confrontation in the swimming pool — which has never made much sense, let’s be honest. Why? Why did he do it? Why now? What’s he doing? But you don’t really complain because Andrew Scott comes on for the first time and he’s incredible. If you really want to entertain yourself, watch that last scene back to back with the first scene in “A Scandal in Belgravia.” In just a few minutes, you have the most ridiculous set of events you’ve ever seen in your life. If you just show those two things together to someone and say, “This is what Sherlock is like,” they’d be like, “What? What the fuck is this series? What are you all on?”

I liked, but was surprised that Sherlock kills Magnussen. Is it going to affect him next season?
[Laughs.] People are worried so much about that! Have we forgotten that John shot someone in the back in episode one? And then had a giggle about it? Do you know what? I would have shot Magnussen.

It was the right thing to do, but ...
I think people who behave like that should get shot. I don’t have a problem with it. If someone treated my family like that I would kill them and I’d spend absolutely no time worrying about it beyond thinking, It was really messy, wasn’t it? It’s a bit icky when he was bleeding all over there. But fuck it, if you behave that way, what do you think is gonna happen to you? I don’t think that will change Sherlock. He certainly won’t be haunted by guilt. He’s way in control of his emotions enough to say, “It’s time to switch that man off.” And again, he’s friends with John, who was laughing after he shot a guy minutes after he did it. C’mon! These are dangerous boys.

The really interesting thing is if Sherlock Holmes hadn’t blundered like an incompetent into the room where Mary was going to shoot Magnussen. She’d have just shot him, then she’d have gone back to being Mrs. Watson and they all would have been living happily ever after. Sherlock would be saying, “It’s really great someone shot him!” and he and Dr. Watson would carry on solving crimes unaware the killer was moving around them all the time, just killing anyone who was trying to attack them. Their secret protector.

Sherlock’s parents turned up this season (played by Cumberbatch's real folks), and they’re pretty normal! How did they wind up producing kids like Sherlock and Mycroft?
Any time anyone has ever speculated on the parents of Sherlock Holmes they say he must have had a cold and loveless childhood. But that’s baloney! Sherlock and Mycroft are not the kind of kids who would have resulted from cold and loveless parents. Timid, frightened children are the product of loveless homes. Adults who are completely confident and don’t mind being different from everybody else, that’s the product of a very, very loving home life. That’s the product of someone always being told, “Doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be like anybody else. You can be who you are. Just be who you are.” This is what Sherlock’s been told, possibly too often given how he turned out.

So first we said he had loving parents, and at a certain point we thought, Do we dare bring his parents on? Then we dismissed the idea. But then we thought we weren’t being true to the updating unless we see them, because while I understand a Victorian man in his thirties might not have much of a relationship with his parents, I find it very hard to believe a man in the modern day wouldn’t know his mom and dad. He just would. They’d be part of his life. So they’re gonna turn up on Baker Street. We do reveal of course that one of them, mum, is actually super clever. The brains have to come from somewhere. But yeah, they are the product of a loving home and parents who just think they’re great anyway.

How did you come up with the look for Sherlock’s mind palace?
First, mind palaces do exist. People have them. I can’t because I’m not clever enough, but clever people can have them. You construct it out of spaces you’ve actually been in. You start in a house you live in and you put things in it and then you maybe join it to a theater you know well or something. So you’ve got a map in your head of places with which you’re familiar. The look of his mind palace would be conditioned by where Sherlock had been. There had to be places in contemporary London he knew well. And of course as he falls apart, as he gets shot, it becomes a bit more surreal. He’s a man in a mad dream trying to stay alive.

Molly started as a girl with a crush on Sherlock and has since become one of the most important people in his life. She’s up first in his mind palace, and saves his life after Mary shoots him. Can you talk about her evolution?
She’s developed hugely. She wasn’t even meant to come back after her first appearance, but she worked so well. Louise Brealey was so good. The girl with the unrequited crush became the first person to make Sherlock apologize in “A Scandal in Belgravia,” and then you see it really shift around. Whereas all of Sherlock’s emotion on the rooftop when he’s talking to John in “The Reichenbach Fall” is completely faked — he’s just trying to give his friend a bad time so he’ll be in an emotional state to believe what’s about to happen — the emotion when Sherlock turns up to Molly in that episode and says “I need you,” I mean, it’s amazing everyone didn’t just get it right there. For God’s sake, what do you think he’s thinking about? He’s gone to a woman who works in a morgue — what do you think happens next? So she’s become one of a very small select band of people he absolutely trusts. And he adores Molly, of course he does. He loves her. I don’t think she has the same sort of crush on him anymore. She’s fascinated by him, but she knows that’s not who she actually wants to end up with. She properly cares about him — and gets angry at him, and tells him off. It’s revealing that she’s in his mind palace. She’s one of the people he keeps himself up to the mark with.

Read more posts by Denise Martin

Filed Under: sherlock ,steven moffat ,the last vow ,tv ,postmortem ,season finales

From a death notice in the Greenwich Time:

* Leonard M. Smith death notice in the Greenwich Time (legacy.com)
* Earlier: “He loved everything about NYC, except the New York Times” (jimromenesko.com)

MA'ALEH ADUMIM, WEST BANK – Scarlett Johansson's decision to part ways with international anti-poverty outfit Oxfam so she can keep her endorsement deal with Israeli fizz-maker SodaStream has intensified the global controversy over businesses that operate in the occupied Palestinian territories. But the Palestinian employees here basically have no idea who she is.

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(Photo: Scott Lynch)

Is East New York the “next Bushwick”? [Untapped Cities]

And is Crown Heights the “new Williamsburg”? [Curbed]

The owners of the Jarmulowsky Bank building have decided to restore its dome as they convert it into a hotel managed by Ace. [The Lo-Down]

Taavo Somer has turned the upstairs of Isa into a “sort of New Age community center,” with dinners that are accompanied by “mindfulness teachings.” [NY Times]

The city’s only cat groomer makes calls in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. [Brooklyn Paper]

Basquiat’s former girlfriend is putting some of his early works up for sale. [Wall Street Journal]

Check out Drawing the Line, a documentary about Keith Haring that features Tony Shafrazi, Barbara Haskell, Dennis Hopper and more. [Dangerous Minds]

A storytelling salon will take place at a secret location in Greenpoint. [Free Williamsburg]

Lower East Side gallery Invisible Exports promised a performance by Marina Abramovic but delivered an impersonator instead. [Blouin]

Callicoon Fine Arts is moving to a larger Lower East Side space. [Gallerist]

Here’s your chance to preview the newly renovated Williamsburg Savings Bank. [Atlas Obscura]

Nitehawk’s Tumblr documents the doodles that customers leave on their order slip. [The L]

An update on the North Brooklyn Boat Club boathouse bound for Greenpoint. [Curbed]

A row of Bushwick buildings just got their certificate of occupancy. [Brownstoner]

The husband-wife team that were chefs and partners at Calliope have left the East Village restaurant. [NY Times]

A Lower East Side “Poetry Brothel” involves “poetry whores” and scantily clad dames. [Untapped Cities]

109 years ago, there were lines to get into the Tompkins Square Library. [Off the Grid]

It's no secret that subway maps are mere approximations of geography. Designed for maximum readability, they map the subway system onto stylized curves and evenly spaced stops. Still, the images of these familiar maps distorted by geographic accuracy are more striking than I even imagined.

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Bone Lick Park, the tiny, five-year-old Kansas City-style barbecue restaurant in the West Village, closed at the end of last year, with a series of farewell messages on Facebook. But if this month's CB2 Manhattan SLA Licensing II agenda is any indication, however, the smokers at 75 Greenwich Avenue will once again be up to temp with the addition of the enormously popular Mighty Quinn's, which has a perpetually jammed Smorgasburg stall in addition to its East Village smoked-meat flagship. The barbecue restaurant, which is applying for a license to serve wine and beer in the West Village, also has Brookfield Place and Clifton, New Jersey locations in the works. [CB2, Earlier]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: empire building, barbecue, bbq, expansions, hugh mangum, mighty quinn's, west village

Because sometimes a mozzarella stick is just a mozzarella stick.

Golden Corral

Pro: It's all you can eat.
Con: You will probably lose your appetite pretty quickly.

Flickr: 59247791@N08

Sizzler

Pro: It's a great option for a place to go for dinner if you are joking.
Con: When someone takes you seriously, you are stuck going to the Sizzler.

Flickr: houseofhall / Creative Commons

Applebee's

Pro: There's one in just about every town now; you can always count on Applebee's to serve you food.
Con: You can never count on Applebee's to serve you good food.

Flickr: 23508701@N00

Perkins Restaurant & Bakery

Pro: If you are going to Perkins, you may well be eating with your grandparents.
Con: Perkins serves the kind of food only your grandparents like.

Flickr: 66759009@N00

View Entire List ›

Who knew? Just add water to your ramen, and you end up with…ramen.

But leave it alone and you get…a hot ramen dance party!

This just in: According to our Seattle submitter, two of his office mates have started fires trying to microwave dry ramen. (NO PARTY FOR YOU!)

related: Four horsemen…and a microwave

The greatest new app on the market is Baidu Translate, available for Android and iOS, which has the ability to identify and translate everyday objects using only a photograph. Amazing, right? You have no idea.

Contributor, musician, 中国人 Ben Plafker

Video Editor Gabe Clermont, person to take three shots with, attend to supermodel parties with

Contributor Alicia

Managing Editor Patrick Lozada, pregnant but eligible bachelor

Contributor Marjorie Dodson, not an M&M (see: this commercial)

“…that’s the man who molested my kitten!”

Editor-in-Chief Anthony Tao

Maybe the app does better with objects?

Baidu Translate is either a wonderfully earnest answer to Google Goggles or a Kaiser Kuo prank gone horribly right.

Oh, and one of our male contributors did what you would inevitably do with this app. The result was “Black Mini Poodle” and “Syphilis.”

Got fun results of your own? Do share! Tweet them at us or send along the old-fashioned way.

UPDATE:

Two via Sean Silbert:

This one via Twitter:

Via @emilyywu: “Yes both should be treated seriously religiously.”

The writer Bich Minh Nguyen posted a question on Facebook the other day that drew a swell of discussion:

Grammar dilemma over here. According to grammar sites we’re supposed to write “Hi, Jane” rather than “Hi Jane” (because “Hi” is different from “Dear”). But this just doesn’t sit right with me. I dislike the two commas involved: “Hi, Jane,” looks cluttered compared to “Hi Jane.” I’m starting to feel a little anxious whenever I start an email. Will the person I’m writing disapprove of my (lack of) grammar? Which path should I take?

Responses ranged from the euphonic (“’Yo Jane!’ has a nice ring to it”) to the technical (“Personally sometimes I use the comma, other times not; the not being when I am using Siri on a I-device and Siri does not always understand it is supposed to insert a comma rather than spell out the word ‘comma’”). Though several writers suggested the syntactic approach (“’Dear Jane’ starts with an adjective; ‘Hi, Jane’ starts with an interjection”), the solutions offered with that premise quickly became problematic. Those advocating the initial comma tended to prefer end punctuation after the addressee’s name, leaving Bich with an uncomfortable choice between end-stopping the email just after it begins (“Hi, Jane. Hope you’re well”) or waxing overly enthusiastic (“Hi, Jane! Hope you’re well”). One respondent admitted “cheating,” “in that I most likely follow the whole salutation not with a comma but with an m-dash or a colon.” Those arguing against the initial comma gave no quarter: “I’m for overthrow,” wrote one respondent. “The end of the unnecessary comma’s dominance is nigh.”

Bich herself participated in the thread with her usual good humor. “I feel like a ghost ship of cannibal commas is coming right at me,” she wrote—at which point I asked if she and I might correspond a bit about this urgent matter.

And so we did. Following are a few excerpts, which Bich has kindly allowed me to reproduce.

Hi, Bich!

I’m going to try just about every iteration of this greeting, to see how we do. Of course, the alternative some of us have started practicing is to leave off the “Hi” and start simply “Bich,” though that seems abrupt to me. And it’s at the point where “Dear Bich” feels as if I’m about to propose marriage or gently end our relationship.

Hi, Lucy–

As I’m trying out the m-dash, I’m feeling kind of tense. The look of the line signals tension to me, a sense of halting, as it does in poetry.

Part of the problem is that most informal salutations are supposed to sound friendly, which “Hi” generally conveys. Starting with just the person’s name seems abrupt; starting with just “Hi,” without any name, seems vague and borderline rude.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, especially because more and more people have been writing “Hi, Bich,” in their emails to me. I can’t bear the awkward double comma but at the same time I wouldn’t want anyone to scorn my grasp of grammar!

Does that mean the whole thing is really about self-consciousness, about how our email personas are established? In terms of grammar I’ve always been one to follow the “rules,” but I’m feeling rebellious about this one.

I’m completely with you, Bich. And you’ll notice that in this response I managed not to use any salutation at all but just to use your name in the first sentence, as though we were having a conversation. That’s the way I like to avoid the whole grammatical mess when the emails are close enough together. Of course, when they aren’t, it rears its head again. And then I don’t know how this translates cross-culturally, either. I’ve been corresponding with a friend in Pakistan who still uses “Dear Lucy,” which is kind of a relief, but I’m afraid I’ll slip and write “Hi Shazia” at some point and she’ll be offended!

Do you really think the email salutation thing has been around long enough to have rules? Feels to me as though we’re stuck somewhere between letters and conversations and so the rules don’t match up.

 

I try to do the same thing, Lucy, after a correspondence has been started. I basically try to avoid salutations in email whenever possible. It seems to me that any kind of formality can be read as aloof. I worry about this. As a result, I use exclamation points far more often than I ever would have imagined. My emails are filled with them!

I’m really pulling for “Hi Jane” to become the norm. It’s brief, it’s friendly, it’s uncluttered. Grammar does change, after all. I think, with a lot of support, we can make this happen.

Email sign-offs are easier for me because “All best” and “Best” are so widely used and accepted and because it’s easier to end a message by wishing someone well. As in:

Hope you’re well!

Bich

So there you have it, a panoply of choices. Not to mention that Bich and I would like to give the lie to that perfidious rumor that writers don’t correspond these days.

Bich Minh Nguyen is the author of Pioneer Girl, just published by Viking.

• “Nikee Rider” (2007)
• “Brown Eyes” (2010)
• “Khadija” (2010)
• “Kesh Angels” (2010)
• “Rider” (2010)
• “Kick Start” (2006)
• “Gang of Marrakesh” (2000)
• “M.” (2010)

This week’s issue of the magazine includes a photograph from Hassan Hajjaj’s series “ ’Kesh Angels.” Hajjaj, who is fifty-three, was born in Morocco and moved to London in his teens, where he worked as a d.j., a promoter, a stylist, and a designer. Before taking up photography, in his late twenties, Hajjaj returned to Morocco to work as an assistant on a photography shoot for a fashion magazine. He says that he was frustrated to see his native country used only as a backdrop for Western women and clothing, and that the experience pushed him to make Morocco a prominent subject in his own work.

Hajjaj’s portraits draw on the work of African luminaries such as Malik Sidibe and Seydou Keita, but they also retain a modern feel, juxtaposing traditional Muslim clothing —hijabs, niqabs, babouches, and abayas—with Moroccan biker culture and famous Western brands, like Nike and Louis Vuitton. Hajjaj uses his friends as models, and he designs their outfits with traditional prints and counterfeit brand-name fabrics from markets in London and Marrakesh. He also builds the frames for these pictures from found objects: Legos with Arabic lettering, cans of Fanta, boxes of chicken stock. Hajjaj’s first solo show in New York opens tonight, at the Taymour Grahne gallery, in Tribeca, and is on view through March 8th.

All photographs courtesy Taymour Grahne gallery, New York, and Rose Issa Projects, London.

No crisis can last forever, and the main lesson I’m taking from the 2014 World Economic Forum is that, at least as far as the world’s elite are concerned, we’ve finally put the financial crisis behind us. There are still a lot of things to worry about, of course, both political and economic. But this was by far the least economically interesting Economic Forum I’ve been to.

Now admittedly I’ve been coming to this conference during extremely interesting times. My first WEF was in 2008, when the credit crisis was top of mind; in all of the conferences since then, the unquestioned center of the proceedings has been the various conversations — formal and informal, public and private — between all the financial-sector bigwigs who attend. Finance ministers, central bank governors, bank CEOs — this was their conference, and it was important because they controlled the levers at the heart of all the world’s major economies.

Last year, I got a brief glimpse behind the curtain when I made it into an invitation-only discussion of monetary policy. The intellectual firepower in the room was absolutely astonishing: great central bankers of the past and present; Nobel laureates in economics; policymakers with decades of deep immersion in the issues at hand. The level of discussion was unremittingly high, and it was clear that everybody in the room was getting real value out of it.

This year, by contrast, economic issues were pretty much an afterthought. Sure, the central bankers and finance ministers all still turned up, and had the meetings they always have. But no one seemed to care. There was dutiful discussion of tapering, for instance, but it was clear that no one’s heart was really in it.

Similarly, while there has never been any shortage of heads of state at the WEF, and while there have even been quite a few foreign ministers in attendance, the reason for the big-name politicians’ presence has always been clear: they want the support of the international economic community. As a result, the job of any given president at Davos is pretty simple: give speeches, appear on panels, take bilateral meetings — and push a simple message at every opportunity. My country is open for business, we welcome investment, our civil society is strong, the opportunities are amazing.

This year, that changed. Two heads of state were in the spotlight — Shinzo Abe, of Japan, and Hassan Rouhani, of Iran. In both cases, the narrative diverged subtly from the economic focus so familiar to the Davos elite. Questions of Abenomics took a back seat to concerns about the new Japanese prime minister’s belligerence, and whether he might be moving towards a real conflict with China. And Iran, of course, is always a political issue first, with economic questions coming a distant second.

At the same time, there was a real urgency in Davos about two national disasters — Syria and Ukraine. Davos is endemically optimistic: its entire raison d’être is for leaders to come together with the purpose of making the world a better place. But this year provided the exception to the rule. Never have I seen a consensus in Davos, on any subject, as grimly pessimistic as I saw with respect to the probable course of both Syria and Ukraine. And so, for all that US foreign minister John Kerry was dashing around holding meetings and giving speeches, there was a real undertone of futility at Davos 2014.

After all, there’s no way that an annual four-day World Diplomatic Forum, held in some remote ski resort, could ever gain momentum. Davos, at its best, is a schmoozefest: it’s a place where CEOs from all over the world can get to know each other socially, and reassure each other that they think the same way and can do business together. For that kind of thing, a series of short meetings and well-lubricated “nightcaps” is perfect. But international diplomacy runs on a very different schedule, and in any case the big-name politicians are the one group which still gets to retain a cordon of aides, preventing the kind of serendipitous mingling at which Davos excels.

This year, as the Davos center of gravity shifted from the economic to the geopolitical, it seemed if anything less relevant and important than ever. Davos is fueled by talk, the more vapid and platitudinous the better. Such talk has real value, to the talkers: it’s a way of creating weak social bonds (which are actually more important than strong social bonds), and it helps to create the illusion that we’re all closer together than we are in reality. (One of my first Davos Moments, back in 2008, involved a 20-minute conversation in a shuttle bus with a very likable ayatollah.)

In the world of international diplomacy, on the other hand, the big personalities already know each other — or have made a tactical decision that they don’t want to. Talks can drag on for months or years, and positions are fought fiercely. There are no problems here that 20 minutes of meditation, or a boozy encounter at the Salesforce party, are likely to solve. As we learned in 2011, the institutionalized shallowness of Davos is incapable of providing any kind of constructive engagement on genuinely salient geopolitical issues.

The irrelevance of Davos is, arguably, good news: it’s a sign that the economic crisis is over, at least if you’re a member of the 0.01%. And the WEF was never designed to be any kind of replacement for the UN: it can’t be faulted for the intractability of the Syria crisis. In fact, Davos 2014 was in many ways the most honest WEF that I’ve been to. Business was conducted, friendships were cemented, and countless panels were convened on matters of Global Importance, mostly featuring men in suits who were a little bit vague about what exactly they were expected to contribute. Seen up close, there was a lot to learn; seen at a distance, it was basically a formless smudge.

Davos 2014, then, was all very fun and busy for the people who made it up the alp. But there was no reason whatsoever for anybody outside Davos to care what was going on. And that’s exactly how it should be. Don’t be fooled by the huge amount of media coverage the conference receives: most of it simply comprises the work of journalists trying to justify their junket. But this year more than ever, Davos was like any other conference: it had value only to the people who attended. Let’s hope (because none of us wants another global economic crisis) that it stays that way.

I sent an email to the onion for an answer

Last month the Explainer paused while packing up his things to ask if his faithful readers would help decide the final Question of the Year. Thousands of you sifted through the topics that this column was unable to address in 2013—a list of matters of minuscule importance, such as why venison is not usually made into soup, and when people started drinking beverages through straws. But these were just the also-rans. What were the runners-up?

The original Hot or Not, which launched in 2000, was the precursor to today's ratings apps—a website that let strangers judge pulchritude by profile pic alone. It's so old, Mark Zuckerberg ripped off the idea to get Facebook rolling. So how did the newly relaunched version get to no. 13 in Apple's App Store? With the help of good old fashioned email spam.

Read more...

One of the sad byproducts of the media conspiracy to ignore this week's pro-life conference in Washington was that we almost missed this new iPhone app for baby-savin'. If only we'd seen it on Wednesday, we could've told you how much it sucked sooner:

Read more...

An errant charity trip to Sierra Leone may have just ruined Downton Abbey forever.

Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Cora, the Countess of Grantham on the hit British show Downton Abbey, went to Sierra Leone to visit the child she sponsors through the charity organization World Vision. She was accompanied by Telegraph reporter Jake Wallis Simons, who recounted her trip in a bizarre, unplugged article that chronicled the star actress' journey to Africa as an ambassador for World Vision. McGovern, whose once-promising film career unraveled in the 1980s only to be revived by Downton, offers some off-the-cuff insights on nutrition, the sexual habits of "African" people, genital mutilation, and more. With the U.S.  premiere of the show's fourth season on PBS earlier in January, the Telegraph story from just before Christmas kicked up a Twitter storm Thursday. 

The Downton star's trip to Sierra Leone is ripe with irony. Critics have repeatedly accused the show of glorifying the classist, racist colonial world of earls and dukes of early 20th century England. Lady Grantham's decision to choose a former British colony, once a transit hub for slave trade, as her charity case is but the cherry on top. Even better, as much as we crow about the colonial guilt and cultural insensitivity of the former British empire, the Downton star who embarrassed herself in Africa is ... American. Here are seven times the kindhearted Lady Grantham, known for the consideration she shows her legion of servants, utterly embarrassed herself in Sierra Leone.

1. Are we in Darfur yet?

McGovern had never been to Africa before her trip to Sierra Leone. Wallis, rather charmingly, points out her first mishap of the trip: "As if to prove this point, when we refuel in Dakar, Senegal, she gets mixed up and says we have stopped in Darfur, a region in western Sudan, some 4,000 miles away." Whoops. By the way, Cora, Sierra Leone concluded a brutal, decade-long civil war in 2002. 

To that, Sarah Wilson, a representative of World Vision, the charity that paid for McGovern's trip said, "We have to break in our new celebrities slowly ... There will be lots of breaks so she doesn't get overloaded." Carson, get this woman some tea.

2. Wait, what, World Vision is Christian?

In a video shot during McGovern's trip she says that she has often been hesitant in the past about "throwing a lot of money" at charities, because she didn't really know where the money was going. Well, she still doesn't. 

Wallis asked the actress, who is not Christian, why she chose to support a religious organization instead of, say, UNICEF, a common choice for celebrities. McGovern had no clue that World Vision was a Christian-affiliated group. The organization's representatives never told her, as they thought it obvious -- "they had assumed that McGovern would take a look at the World Vision website." A glance at the group's logo probably would have given her a hint. It's a shining cross. The group's website makes it even more obvious: "World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice."

"I was stupid not to realise it," McGovern said. 

Though World Vision is adamant that its charity work does not include proselytizing, a driver is quoted in the Telegraph article telling McGovern and Wallis that after the organization's employees convince local Muslim populations that they are "good people," they pay pastors to preach to them. "Christianity is our goal," the driver says. 

One can't help but wonder about the arrangement the Telegraph had with McGovern, as it seems nothing was off-the-record, even her discussions of other media coverage of the trip. "Before I do interviews, I need to know what distinguishes World Vision from its competitors," Wallis quoted McGovern saying. "Is it less well-known because it spends less on promotion?" Perhaps she failed to realize that she is the promotion. World Vision, which is one of the largest aid groups in the world, sponsored McGovern's not-so-cheap trip.

3. OMG, their food is so healthy!

As McGovern and Wallis were eating a lunch of fried plantains and chicken curry, McGovern remarked: "Their food must be so healthy ... You don't see all those crap chains and stuff. But I guess that will change as the country gets more modern. It's like a holiday. I feel a bit guilty." 

4. Brad Pitt was here?! Oh, I slept with him once

McGovern, it seems, is totally immune to picking up on irony. In one breath, she offers the following gem: "I get the impression that in Africa people have sex far more freely than we do back home." Informed that they will soon be staying at a hotel at which Brad Pitt had once overnighted, she offers up the following revelation: "Oh, I've slept with Brad Pitt before ... Before he became a sex object."

(She would later tell Wallis that she was referring to an on-camera sex scene.) 

5. "And that clitoris thing is awful"

McGovern also has some thoughts on how World Vision should prioritize its work. "You see certain cultures where there's just endemic cruelty to women," she said. "I wonder if World Vision would take on the problem of women wearing the burka? And that clitoris thing is awful."

That clitoris thing? Perhaps she means genital mutilation?

6. Call me "mum"  

As shown in the video, accompanied by a sometimes uplifting, sometimes somber tune, McGovern kneels down to meet Jestina, the girl she sponsors. She calls herself the girl's "sponsored mum." That's a title she acquired for $38 per month -- a modest amount that doesn't even go to the girl, but as Wallis notes, to projects in the community. "A cynic might view all this as histrionic," he writes, though he later notes that McGovern's emotions seemed genuine.

7. Lady Grantham drops her iPhone in the toilet, Africa weeps

"My overwhelming feeling is the gratitude of the people for the money that they're getting," McGovern told Wallis. While they were touring a poor area, McGovern came out of her room "white as a sheet." She had dropped her iPhone in the toilet. As someone suggested that rice would help drain the moisture from the phone, McGovern asked the hostess for some rice -- in a country where over 21 percent of children under the age of five are underweight.  

It didn't work, and so it happened that poor Lady Grantham traveled all the way to Sierra Leone with no access to Instagram. Thank God for the video footage. Otherwise all that hugging of poor black children would have been for nothing. 

I can’t think of anything better.

Look at this little guy giving himself a hug. Don't you want to get in on that?

Well, this journalist DOES get in on that without even asking.

But then the seal is like "AW SHUCKS, I CAME ON TOO STRONG!"

And then another guy is like "I GOTTA SAY HI TOO!" and the penguins look on in amazement.

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Truly a day for the history books. Good ol’ Skookum .

"I'm just a me, sitting here alone."

skookumthesamoyed.tumblr.com

"Oh no, now is someone trying to touch me?"

skookumthesamoyed.tumblr.com

"This is making me... feel... something."

skookumthesamoyed.tumblr.com

"Now I'm happy! Thank you, hug!"

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Björk has been living in New York for a while now, and if you’re in New York and you get a chance to see Jay Z live, you go; duh. Last night, Björk went to Jay’s show at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum, and Jay shouted her out from the stage as his band played a piece of her “Pagan Poetry.” That’s not even one of her big singles! This is clearly the best rap tribute to Björk since RZA said “talk strange like Björk” on Wu-Tang’s “Reunited.” Check out video below.

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Yesterday, BBC reporter Steven Rosenberg posted this picture from the biathlon and cross-country skiing venue for the Winter Olympics in Sochi. So why did the building planners put two toilets in the same stall? It's one of many mysteries of these upcoming games.

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Egg’s new home. (Photo: Melissa Hom)

The bad news is: Parish Hall, the well regarded but undertrafficked restaurant that rightfully snagged New York‘s Best Brunch honors last year, is closing Friday.

The good news is: its over-trafficked sister restaurant, Egg, will move into its bright, sunny, Scandi-sleek digs next month.

That’s right: Williamsburg’s quintessential Southern-breakfast spot is finally ditching that narrow little nook you’ve spent so many Saturday and Sunday mornings waiting outside of while cursing your desperate need for biscuits and gravy. Meaning you’ll now be able to walk to the bathroom without your tote bag inadvertently braining diners in the back of the head.

According to a press release, chef Evan Hanczor, who had been doing double duty at Parish Hall, will continue to oversee the locavore menu at Egg, which will stay open until its move to 109 North 3rd Street next month.

Update: A rep has answered some additional questions about Egg’s new place. They’ll have a full liquor license there (so, Bloody Marys!) and while the menu will initially be the same, they’ll slowly add a few things as they go. Hours will also be the same, or close to it.

Ottawa, Canada.

The Worst (bath)Room

"Please note that the bathroom door does not close if you are using the toilet unless you sit sideways :)"

Dr. Lecter completely understands why the FBI has to investigate him in the trailer for Hannibal Season Two. After all, they have to clear him of all those terrible accusations made by deranged former profiler Will Graham before the season starts February 28. Remember Will Graham? The serial killer? Totally lost his mind last season? Anyway, please don't go in that sealed room or look in Dr. Lecter's freezer, which is filled with very innocent, very unimportant meats. Here, take another oddly sensual cheek swab instead. No, really, Dr. Lecter insists. Swab away. Just really get your whole hand in there.

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Filed Under: hannibal ,tv ,trailer mix ,nbc

This page one on the right offended Auburn fans? Really?!

“It is insulting and demeaning.”

“Whoever wrote that should GO TO HELL.”

Those are some of the messages that Montgomery Advertiser executive editor Tom Clifford got after running this hed the day after Auburn lost to Florida State in the BCS National Championship Game.

Clifford says some readers thought the paper was saying, “Auburn sucks,” and that the hed “is somehow evidence of our continuing bias against Auburn.”

I can accept that a few disappointed, diehard Auburn fans were hurting after the tough loss, and in their haste they read an insult in the headline’s colloquial play-on-words, where none existed. But the headline fit the accompanying photo of a dejected player, as well as the mood for fans near and far.

It was fine, Tom.

The tipster who forwarded the column and front page image makes this observation: “It’s hard enough to be responsible for errors and misjudgments we make that turn out wrong. Here’s one that was right, and the editor still has to apologize.”

* Some responses to “AU Shucks” headline shocking (montgomeryadvertiser.com)

Pop star Bruno Mars is set to play a show at the TU Center July 20. Tickets go on sale February 3 -- they're $43 and up.

Mars is one of the biggest pop acts currently in circulation. His most recent album hit #1 on the Billboard 200 chart. He's had five #1 singles. He pulled off the rare host-and-perform on SNL. He's nominated for song of the year and record of the year at this year's Grammys. And he's playing the Super Bowl halftime show this year.

The opener for the July 20 show at the TU Center is Aloe Blacc.

Live Nation advertises on AOA.

photo: Kai Z Feng via Bruno Mars website

The lede of the day comes from a New York Times story about a rivalry between the big men in charge around here: "Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has asked people if they think Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York State, wears eyeliner." (Nope: "People told of his condition say he has glaucoma, for which he takes a medication whose published side effects include increased eyelash 'thickness' and 'darkness.') They are beautiful lashes.

Read more posts by Joe Coscarelli

Filed Under: makeup ,andrew cuomo ,eric schneiderman

Edgar Ortiz, a 65-year-old educator of children in the Bronx, was not fired for sleeping with a sex worker. (“She’s a young lady,” he reportedly told cops during his arrest. “I don’t know her name. I picked her up on Southern Blvd. and 178th St. for $20. I jumped on it because it was so cheap.”) But at a disciplinary hearing, he was fined $7,500 by the Department of Education. Can you believe that? Ortiz can’t either: He’s suing the city to fight the punishment.

“Teachers are not indentured servants subject to school direction and control 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he argues in a real-life lawsuit. “Teachers must have a zone in which they may exercise their own prerogatives and activities.”

It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds (really ridiculous): A Manhattan judge this week refused to toss the case and ordered the city to answer his petition about the fine after it “failed to offer any legal basis for penalizing a teacher for illegal conduct that has little or no apparent connection with his teaching duties.” Ortiz — for the record — makes $89,307 a year, plenty for his purposes, since we already know he’s thrifty.

Read more posts by Joe Coscarelli

Filed Under: crimes and misdemeanors ,education