There are some things you will never be able to unsee, and this is one of them: a snorkel designed specifically for the purpose of going down on ladies, which also somehow reminds me of the Honey Nut Cheerios mascot Buzz the Bee.

Did I mention it glows in the dark? Heaven help us all.

But seriously, observe:

The snorkel, which is listed on Amazon, is described as a device that “allows a man to continue breathing while performing oral sex on a woman in a spa, bathtub or even a bowl of green Jell-O.” Whether the fact that the product description omits lady-loving-ladies, lady-loving-non-binary people, non-binary-loving-non-binary people, and so forth is distinctly on purpose or a byproduct of heteronormativity is only secondary to the semantics of going down on someone with a vagina in a bowl of green Jell-O, honestly.

And yes, it only gets worse from here:

Insert the breathing apparatus into your nostrils, rub the clitoral stimulator against your favorite coral reef and start with the tongue action. With the Pussy Snorkel, any man can be a dive master.

Where do I begin? “Favorite coral reef”? “Dive master”? At least someone is sticking to an oceanic theme, I guess?

If anything can be a saving grace right now, it’s this starred (and satirical) review by an Amazon user named Ruud Lubbers:

I don’t know who’s idea this was, but I don’t think they thought it through very well.

I ordered one of these for my cat, Mr. Razzles, and it took me forever to get it on his head - I don’t know what the makers were thinking, but it’s waaaay too big for the average housecat.

Finally - after quite a struggle - I got it on and proceeded to throw Mr. Razzles into the pool. Well he absolutely FREAKED OUT! He thrashed around in the water for a minute or so before wriggling out of the pussy snorkel and then swam right for the side of the pool and climbed out before I could even get in the water with him to enjoy a nice swim.

When I tried to put it back on him, he started hissing and biting and bolted out of the backyard back into the house, where he hid under the credenza for THREE DAYS before my husband finally lured him out with some tuna...

He’s been traumatized and distrustful ever since! I don’t recommend this for cat owners or pet lovers - it’s just a bad idea all around!

I guess some semblance of humanity exists after all.

---

Contact the author at jamie.reich@jezebel.com.

Images via Amazon and General Mills.

A few weeks ago The Atlantic published a piece that was designed to shock its readers, it but didn’t surprise me at all: “The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans: Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 in a crisis.” And no, they were not talking the working poor; they were, as advertised, talking about the actual middle class.

The Federal Reserve Board regularly conducts surveys to ascertain the “financial and economic status of American consumers” (don’t you just love being a consumer instead of a citizen? Yeah, me neither) and they find out all kinds of data. But the stat that seems to have really caught some of us off guard is this: “The Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer: 47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all.”

When I first read the piece, this didn’t blow my mind whatsoever. I saw no reason to put four hundred dollars in italics and be like, “OMG CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? 47 percent of Americans wouldn’t be able to come up with $400 on the spot,” because that seems pretty reasonable to me. I have spent most of my life being an American who would have a hard time coming up with $400 within a few hours. Now, granted, since becoming an adult, I have more or less always had a small smattering of family from whom I could borrow the money, and I recognize that this makes me fortunate. But shock and dismay were not two of the reactions I personally registered upon reading that stat. Because as the author says:

I never spoke about my financial travails, not even with my closest friends—that is, until I came to the realization that what was happening to me was also happening to millions of other Americans, and not just the poorest among us, who, by definition, struggle to make ends meet. It was, according to that Fed survey and other surveys, happening to middle-class professionals and even to those in the upper class. It was happening to the soon-to-retire as well as the soon-to-begin. It was happening to college grads as well as high-school dropouts. It was happening all across the country, including places where you might least expect to see such problems. I knew that I wouldn’t have $400 in an emergency. What I hadn’t known, couldn’t have conceived, was that so many other Americans wouldn’t have the money available to them, either. My friend and local butcher, Brian, who is one of the only men I know who talks openly about his financial struggles, once told me, “If anyone says he’s sailing through, he’s lying.” That might not be entirely true, but then again, it might not be too far off.

Depending on my job situation, I’ve been there throughout the years. For example, a year ago, I was living in Oregon and running a successful wedding photography business that gave me a tremendous amount of joy (and brought in plenty of cash). Then we moved to Tennessee last August, and I missed most of the couples down here who were booking spring and summer weddings. My husband enrolled in a work-related course and didn’t get a job for four months, and suddenly everything was on me. Booking weddings became mandatory in a very real way, and what I was getting paid for ten hours of work a week—as I was just starting at APW—was a quarter of our income. And this isn’t just a right now kind of thing. The nature of my life as a working adult has always been half self-employment, half stringing together part-time gigs. This is partially by choice: I wanted to stay home with our child but needed to have a job, and I like having flexibility with my job (even if it means I don’t make as much as I could) but also the nature of this kind of work. Things are up lately—both my husband and I recently received significant-for-us promotions (yay, APW!) and I’m booking weddings into 2017—but suffice to say, I get paycheck to paycheck.

And it’s not just people cobbling together their work life the way I do. My husband is surrounded by nurses who similarly live check to check, and we both know plenty of teachers and creatives who face the same truth. The reality for a lot of Americans is that every check counts. Sure, you can make sure your bills are paid, pay for childcare and your health insurance, and pay down some of your endless student loan debt, but building a savings account? That’s not always feasible.

One reason reading this piece was a challenge for me is because while I totally relate to the 47 percent of Americans who are in a similar boat, I don’t entirely feel bad for the author himself. Yes, money woes impact more than those who speak up about them, and I do applaud him for putting his voice out there, but having parents who can cover your kids’ educations at Stanford and Harvard isn’t exactly a plight that makes me full of pity. Particularly when your story is that you drove yourself into a financial black hole by deciding to put your kids in expensive private school, an option most of us can’t even fathom.

What does make me feel many things is this:

Looking at annual inflation-adjusted household incomes, which factor in the number of hours worked by wage earners and also include the incomes of salaried employees, doesn’t reveal a much brighter picture. Though household incomes rose dramatically from 1967 to 2014 for the top quintile, and more dramatically still for the top 5 percent, incomes in the bottom three quintiles rose much more gradually: only 23.2 percent for the middle quintile, 13.1 percent for the second-lowest quintile, and 17.8 percent for the bottom quintile. That is over a period of forty-seven years! But even that minor growth is somewhat misleading. The peak years for income in the bottom three quintiles were 1999 and 2000; incomes have declined overall since then—down 6.9 percent for the middle quintile, 10.8 percent for the second-lowest quintile, and 17.1 percent for the lowest quintile. The erosion of wages is something over which none of us has any control. The only thing one can do is work more hours to try to compensate. I long since made that adjustment. I work seven days a week, from morning to night. There is no other way.

This I relate to heavily. This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night, and not just for myself—for all of us that experience this. If people who already make a lot of money are making more, and bottom third of us aren’t… where will we be in five years? In ten? Running your own show can regularly mean working morning to night (and often times well into the night) seven days a week, but that kind of work breaks a mind and body.

APW: could you come up with $400 in an emergency? Does this article freak you out? do you relate—or do you not? 

Image Credit

Death to the Stock Photo

The post I’m Not Shocked That Half of Americans Don’t Have Emergency Money appeared first on A Practical Wedding: Blog Ideas for the Modern Wedding, Plus Marriage.

In a YouTube video entitled, "How to pay a speeding ticket. #ResistTheft," Texan Brett Sanders walks viewers (1.5 million of them, as of this writing) through the process.

First, call around to local banks to find one willing to sell you 25-packs of penny rolls. Then, unbox and smash the rolls with an anarchy logo in view. Third, spray-paint some buckets to read, "policing for profit" and "extortion money." And finally, take your buckets to the municipal courthouse to pay your bill using more than 200,000 pieces of loose change.

Sanders told the Washington Post that after he failed to get his speeding ticket dismissed in court, he decided to make a statement when he paid it. "I wanted to not only clog the system, but to send a message, too," he said, noting that police discretion and the sheer quantity of laws give cops wide leeway to engage in "policing for profit," a tactic for municipalities to pad their pockets which was put in the spotlight by federal investigation of Ferguson, Missouri.

After his act of protest, Sanders received a call from the courthouse saying he'd overpaid by $7.81 and should come pick up his change.

She went and got a Tyson at the tattoo shop. [ more › ]

This baby looks almost identical to Chef Gordon Ramsay, and it’s BANANAS

Right-wing extremists attacked a vegan cafe in Tbilisi, Georgia, on Sunday evening — only the attackers' weapons weren't knives or crowbars, but sausages.

"They pulled out some grilled meat, sausages, and fish and started eating them and throwing them at us, and finally they started to smoke," Kiwi Cafe wrote in a statement. "They were just trying to provoke our friends and disrespect us."

According to Radio Free Europe, the incident erupted after the men were told to leave the no smoking area of the cafe during a screening of the animated sitcom Rick And Morty. "Customers said the group of rowdy Georgian men entered the cafe as the screening was under way, wearing sausages around their necks and carrying slabs of meat on skewers," Radio Free Europe reports.

And while "antivegan provocative action" is a somewhat preposterous-sounding accusation, the attack on the counterculture and LGBT-friendly Kiwi Cafe is symbolic of a larger trend of intolerance in Georgia, where neo-Nazis and "fascist ideas" are on the rise.

However, Kiwi Cafe has said they are still "ready to accept all customers regardless of their nationality, race, appearance, age, gender, sexual orientation, or religious views" — just not, perhaps, diet.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff has released a statement saying North Korea tried to launch an unidentified missile early Tuesday morning in the Wonsan area, but likely failed.

The Yonhap news agency reports the missile was a mid-range Musudan, which has a potential range of 2,180 miles, making U.S. military bases in Guam targets. If this report is true, it will be North Korea's fourth unsuccessful test launch of the Musudan since April. South Korea believes North Korea is working on technology to make a missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland

We finally know why stamps are placed on an envelope’s top-right corner

The dining rooms are coming. It’s how I know my neighborhood is becoming aspirationally middle class.

My neighborhood is filled with “shotgun” houses. Probably from West Africa, they are designed for a hot, humid climate. The homes consist of several rooms in a row. There are no hallways (and no privacy). High ceilings collect the heat and the doorways are placed in a row to encourage a breeze to blow all the way through.

Around here, more often than not, they have been built as duplexes: two long skinny houses that share a middle wall. The kitchen is usually in the back leading to an addition that houses a small bathroom. Here’s my sketch:

As the neighborhood has been gentrifying, flippers have set their sights on these double shotguns. Instead of simply refurbishing them, though, they’ve been merging them. Duplexes are becoming larger single family homes with hallways (which substantially changes the dynamic among its residents) and makes space for dining rooms. Check out the new dining room on this flip (yikes):

At NPR, Mackensie Griffin offered a quick history of dining rooms, arguing that they were unusual in the US before the late 1700s. Families didn’t generally have enough room to set one aside strictly for dining. “Rooms and tables had multiple uses,” Griffin wrote, “and families would eat in shifts, if necessary.”

Thomas Jefferson would be one of the first Americans to have a dining room table. Monticello was built in 1772, dining room included. Wealthy families followed suit and eventually the trend trickled down to the middle classes. Correspondingly, the idea that the whole family should eat dinner together became a middle class value, a hallmark of good parenting, and one that was structurally — that is, architecturally — elusive to the poor and working class.

The shotgun house we find throughout the South is an example of just how elusive. Built before closets, all the rooms in a traditional shotgun are technically multi-purpose: they can be used as living rooms, bedrooms, offices, dining rooms, storage, or whatever. In practice, though, medium to large and sometimes extended families live in these homes. Many residents would be lucky to have a dedicated living room; a dining room would be a luxury indeed.

But they’re coming anyway. The rejection of the traditional floor plan in these remodels — for being too small, insufficiently private, and un-dining-roomed — hints at a turn toward a richer sort of resident, one that demands a lifestyle modeled by Jefferson and made sacred by the American middle class.

Cross-posted at Inequality by (Interior) Design.

Lisa Wade, PhD is a professor at Occidental College. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture, and a textbook about gender. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

(View original at https://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Why is there a 24/7 knife infomercial channel, anyway?

We've all heard about a fighter trying to get into their opponent's head before a fight, so why not provide them with some pure nightmare fuel in your walkout?

Okay, sure, there's nothing that scary about a dancing Captain America, or a dancing Spiderman. Mickey Mouse? That's debatable. But whatever that puffy-faced, Raggedy-Ann, dog-boy creature is, that's absolutely terrifying and more than enough to put fear into the hearts of the bravest of men.

4-1 rising fighter Gabriel Macario faced Juliano Militao at Aspera FC 38 this weekend, on May 27th in Barueri, Brazil. The fight was Macario's first since a submission loss to Gerardo Nunez last month in Spain. The formerly unbeaten prospect was looking to jump back on the winning side, and came out with what I can only assume was meant to be a much more intimidating version of the Haka. Check it out below (h/t to MMA Fighting):

Oh, and as for the fight, Macario did pretty well there too,  scoring the KO off a clean counter left hook. No doubt aided by the fact that his opponent had just seen him tear away a dog face to reveal himself:

"There are a number of things in life that can calm down just about anybody; burning wood fires, and hanging out in hot tubs are chief among them," says J.D. Digiovanni at HiConsumption.com.

The Soak outdoor wood-fired hot tub ($4,450), created by a Canadian design and fabrication firm, combines both pleasures. Made from marine-grade aluminum, stainless steel, and red cedar, this tub for two heats up via a wood fire or propane. The tub's Bauhaus-inspired modernist lines aren't what you expect from a wood-fired tub, but the look is "a great fit for almost any backyard."

I bet you didn’t know there’s a major controversy sweeping through the world of curling. Yes, that quirky sport that pops up on TV during the Winter Olympics actually spawned a worldwide scandal—not over drugs, not over bribes, but over brooms.

It’s about new fabrics on the brooms that curlers use to sweep the ice in front of the stone, and it’s bad enough that ice experts and top athletes are calling it “broomgate.” They gathered in Kemptville, Canada this week to investigate the contentious brooms that were changing the way this 500-year-old game was played.

‘It got to the point where the sweeping was making a greater difference in shot-making than the actual shot-making.’Jaime Bourassa, Olympic ice technician

Jamie Bourassa stood among them, an Olympic-level ice technician there to help resolve the controversy. He and the rest of the Sweeping Summit tested the disputed brooms to see which ones had too strong an influence on the stones. The World Curling Federation will use the data to vote in September on new rules for brooms.

After the summit, Bourassa flew straight to the Sharks Ice Facility in Fremont to prep for the Bay Area’s annual curling tournament, held the weekend before Memorial Day.

At the 2016 Golden Gate Bonspiel, curling teams from the Bay Area and beyond will sweep and glide their way to glory. The San Francisco Bay Area Curling Club (SFBACC) is hosting the event, which puts curlers of all skill levels onto the ice. Teams with names such as Game of Stones, and Star Wars: The Frost Awakens will play through Sunday until four champions emerge, to be awarded a bottle of wine and medals.

Bourassa arrived last night to train local curlers in the science and art of maintaining their ice.

“He is a true ice meister,” says Brent Halpenny, former president of the SFBACC who attended the training. “He does amazing things with water. It’s the only way to word it.”

The Science and Art of Making Ice

Curling is all about reading the ice. One person glides the 42-pound curling stone toward a bulls-eye at the end of the court. The rock veers in one way or the other—that’s the curl. The frantic brushing melts the surface of the ice to coax the stone a little farther or prevent it from curling too far astray.

The strategy of curling begins long before anyone throws the first stone.

“The better we make the playing surface, the better the players can play,” Bourassa says. He prepped the ice for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and does the same for curling championships all over the world.

The first step is to level the ice. Ice technicians use lasers to map the hills and dips carved out by hockey skates. A Zamboni shaves away the highs and technicians flood low points with water as pure as they can get.

“If you use the tap water in an ice tray, you’ll feel rough patches on the ice cubes,” Bourassa says. “You don’t with pure water.”

Next comes the pebbler. Armed with a water-filled backpack and hose, a technician walks backward, spraying the hose back and forth until the ice sheet is covered in tiny bumps. The brooms melt the tops of the pebbles, creating a rounded, slick pathway to gently nudge the rock in one way or the other.

Chess on the Ice

By the end of a curling round a dozen stones may crowd the bulls-eye and only the rock closest to the center takes the point. The team’s last thrower, called the skip, must set up her shot to knock out the opponent’s stones or pull off a tricky curl.

“They call it chess on the ice,” says Loreen Makishima-Wolf, 51, who will compete on the team The Dancing Minas. Makishima-Wolf prefers to throw early when the ice is clear, but still feels the pressure if her throws go sour.

“It sets the table,” she says. “If I have a lousy game, and don’t put my rocks in play at all, it leaves it open for the other team. If I don’t do my job, I make it harder for everybody else.”

The throws called shots get the stone closest to the middle point and are the heart of the game, showcasing the skill of the thrower. The brushes that launched the broomgate controversy compromised that, Bourassa says.

The World Curling Federation noticed during competitions last fall that some of the brooms seemed to change the rock’s original trajectory, and they banned them.

“It got to the point where the sweeping was making a greater difference in shot-making than the actual shot-making,” Bourassa says.

In the end, curlers are looking for a great shot. The sport has strong rules of etiquette to keep it friendly.

“If someone has a good shot, they say, ‘Hey, good shot!” says Debbie Doherty, chair of the 2016 Golden Gate Bonspiel. “And the winner buys the first round of drinks.”

Curious about curling? You can check out the 2016 Golden Gate Bonspiel at the Sharks Ice Facility in Fremont or watch the live stream here!

McDonald’s is opening a fries-only restaurant this weekend in one lucky place

If you frequently visit McDonald’s just to eat their fries, then this piece of news might make your day: McDonald’s is opening its first-ever fries-only pop-up restaurant for the weekend of May 27-29. Yep, as in right NOW. Except, here’s the curveball; it’s in Sydney, Australia. (Incidentally, they call McDonald’s “Maccas” in Australia, so that’s how we’ll be referring to it from now on.)

The special Maccas restaurant is appropriately called “Fries With That,” and apparently everything is entirely 100% free. The reason behind that is they want to get people trying new flavors that might potentially be added to their Loaded Fries range, which include Gravy, Guacamole & Salsa, and Bacon & Cheese Sauce. SO, included on the very creative pop-up menu are even more delicious sounding fancy-pants toppings, like Chipotle Cheese Sauce, Pesto Mayo & Parmesan, Caesar Sauce Bacon & Parmesan, Curry, Sweet Chilli & Sour Cream, and Peri Peri Cheese Sauce. And of course, the popular Gravy. Okay, now we’re getting jealous. 7 exciting flavors!

Quick flight to Australia, perhaps? OR can this revolutionary concept please spread to other shores? In time for when we get hungry?

Trying all of @maccas' new loaded fries at #FriesWithThat! @mrmikechristian pic.twitter.com/8vrbsOzq0T

— 2DayFM 104.1 (@2DayFM) May 27, 2016

Don’t feel too left out if you can’t get to Australia in the next 48 hours. In the U.S. (specifically in Bay Area of California), there are new yummy garlic fries at some McDonald’s locations, so we can fulfill our cravings.

Let’s hope the restaurant Down Under is amazingly successful, and then we’ll probably be seeing fries-only locations appear in the U.S. and the UK as well. Hopefully sooner rather than later. We also would not turn down a milkshake only restaurant, just sayin’.

In the meantime, Australia: Know that we’re living vicariously through you right now. Please send us detailed descriptions of the wonders of each and every one of these incredible-sounding flavors!

The post McDonald’s is opening a fries-only restaurant this weekend in one lucky place appeared first on HelloGiggles.

Holy hell, when will we stop fighting over pee-peeing.

KSL reports that a man named Christopher Adams was shopping at a Walmart in Clinton, Utah, when his two kids told him they needed the restroom. He decided to take his 7-year-old son Kyler and 5-year old daughter Emery with him into the men’s room, saying, “There was a family restroom but with two kids that have to go to the bathroom I just decided we’ll all go to the men’s bathroom and get it done.”

A man entered as the family was washing up. The man proceeded to freak the f*ck out about seeing a female child in the men’s room, though she was accompanied by her father. Adams described the scene to The Daily Beast:

“He came in and we finished washing our hands and it escalated really fast,” he said.

“What the fuck is she doing in here?” the man said, according to Adams. “It is inappropriate that she’s in here.”

Adams said he tried to keep cool.

“I was just like, ‘Wait, what? What is going on?’”

Adams tried to tell the guy to back off.

“I told him ‘Whatever A-hole.’”

Then the guy “instantly snapped,” suckerpunching Adams in the mouth.

“He pushed me and I caught myself and then he punched me in the face,” Adams said. “I took it and then moved him out of the bathroom… He was just exploding.”

Kyler drew his sister into a stall and locked it as their dad pushed the man out of the restroom and held him down until Walmart management was alerted. The guy briefly escaped and proceeded to shop as though nothing had happened until he was apprehended by police.

There’s nothing to directly indicate that the suspect’s irrational attack was connected to controversy over access to public restrooms for transgender people, but it crossed Adams’ mind:

“I don’t know what he was freaking out about,” Adams said. “The only thing that makes sense in my head at the the time was whole Obama thing with forcing transgenders to use bathrooms.”

“I never gave much thought about Obama trying to push this and now I do,” he said. “It shouldn’t matter what you identify with but families should be allowed to go to the bathroom without trouble.”

The phrase “whole Obama thing with forcing transgenders to use bathrooms” is another example of the confusion, politicizing, and lack of basic understanding about bathroom access currently running rampant from state to state. We should all be able to use the bathroom without trouble.

http://jezebel.com/unironic-conse...

Screenshot via KSL.

August 7, 2012

Most of you have heard the Charlie Sheen shooting Kelly Preston story, but there is one that would have made the world explode with gossip if this one had ever got out to the public. This couple was everywhere. They were all over every tabloid. The actor, all movies all the time is still A+. Back in the day not so long ago he was a drinking and drugging machine and had a thing for antique weapons. Still does. Brings them to the set all the time. Much more careful with them now though. His girlfriend at the time was A list. She was strictly a booze and cigs kind of person with the sometime coke night if she was really having fun. Well, one night, our actor was showing off a new gun he had purchased at auction and was drinking and playing around and swinging it and shot his girlfriend. Bam right in the ribs. The bullet sliced off a chunk of the side of her ribs right below her bra line. She was not wearing a bra at the time. She was naked. There was blood everywhere. They screamed for several minutes before one of them finally got the idea of trying to towel it off. Yeah, that did not last long. They then used the hotel room drapes. Finally our actor made a call and the hotel sent up a doctor. The girlfriend did not need surgery because it went in and out. It did cause her a whole lot of pain and to help with her pain she started using some stronger drugs which took her ten years to break.

Johnny Depp/Winona Ryder

Five decades in the making, the Backbone Trail will officially be complete June 4

Diehard Los Angeles hikers have a lot to look forward to now that a long path through the Santa Monica Mountains, in the works for decades, is finally approaching completion. The Backbone Trail will officially be finished June 4, and will extend from Will Rogers State Park all the way to Point Mugu in Malibu. That's a distance of 67 miles—making it one of the longest continuous trails in Southern California.

Building such an extensive trail that cuts through some of the most prime real estate in the country has been no easy task. According to the LA Times, work began on the Backbone Trail in the 1960s, when the National Park Service, California Department of Parks and Recreation, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority began buying parcels of land in order to construct the route. All told, 180 tracts have been purchased since then, including many areas around the trail to prevent future development from blocking views or disrupting the natural beauty of the surroundings. "Development destroys views, and an unobstructed viewshed is important to us," Szymanski tells the Times.

Most recently, the National Park Service tried to purchase 40 acres of property from Arnold Schwarzenegger and fitness guru Betty Weider. Conveniently, both agreed to donate the land instead. They aren't the only celebrities who have parted with pieces of land that have been added to the trail; James Cameron sold a massive 703-acre tract in 2014 for $12 million. All of these parcels have now been patched together to create an uninterrupted trail that hikers will be able to (legally) travel for the first time in more than a half century.

The park service is now trying to get the Backbone Trail designated as a National Recreation Trail. This will give it a little bit of extra prestige, in addition to increased funding for maintenance and the purchase of more land. Joe Edmiston, director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, tells the Times he's hoping that the trail will someday extend all the way to Griffith Park. If the history of the trail as it exists today is any indication, that's a long way off, but hikers certainly can't be blamed for dreaming of that glorious day.

• You can now hike 67 miles through the Santa Monica Mountains uninterrupted [LA Times]
• 8 Los Angeles Hikes With Spectacular Endings [Curbed LA]
• Mapping The 11 Most Celeb-Filled Hiking Trails In Los Angeles [Curbed LA]
• LA Wants to Protect Mountain Lion Trails From Development [Curbed LA]

Customers in a Didsbury, England, coffee shop began to "freak out" after they heard shouting and "gunshot-like bangs," prompting one man to dive head-first out a window to escape, Metro reports. The Costa Coffee patrons believed they were experiencing a terrorist attack — although the sounds turned out to be noisy school children banging their trays downstairs.

"It sounded like shots were being fired. It was not just me who thought that," one woman who asked not to be named by The Manchester Evening News said. "Other people were running around trying to get out on to the balcony but the door was locked. I think that's why the man went for one of the front windows. When I looked round I could only see his feet hanging from the window. He was climbing out head first. To be honest I wasn't surprised by his reaction because we all thought an attack was happening. It sounded like there was a shooting downstairs. I was expecting people wearing balaclavas and carrying guns to come upstairs."

The man who jumped out the window may have broken his arm, and was taken to the hospital. Costa Coffee wishes him a speedy recovery.

Teens will be teens! [ more › ]

Legendary Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu trainer Rigan Machado believes his star student Ashton Kutcher edges out Conor McGregor in a pure grappling match.

These days, it seems like everyone either wants a piece of Conor McGregor, or is being pitted against him.

Most recently, the name of actor and former "Punk’d" host Ashton Kutcher was thrown in on the mix by his own trainer, legendary Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu mentor Rigan Machado.

Machado, who holds an 8^th degree red and black belt under Carlos Gracie Jr., spoke to TMZ Sports about his star student, whom he described as "one of the toughest guys in his school, across the board."

"He’s a purple belt, but he has a good background in wrestling. I think he has a chance to be one of the top guys in jiu-jitsu."

Related: Dos Anjos mocks McGregor's BJJ photo: He doesn't know how to tie his belt, what a joke

Kutcher stands at 6’3", and weighs around 200-pounds. And when asked how he would fare against McGregor, who stands around 5’9" and walks around at 155-pounds but is ranked higher at brown belt, Machado says he is assured about his student’s chances.

"I put all my money on Ashton Kutcher," Machado confidently said. "I think he can do really, really good. He’s the best."

Disney princesses imagined as moms is fascinating and magical

“Happily ever after” happens at the end of every Disney film. But what we don’t usually get to see is what happens during the happily ever after — like, after the magical kiss and wedding… once things settle down and babies begin.

Well one artist has used his imagination, talent and love of Disney to create drawings of princesses and princes as parents, and they’re utterly beautiful. Isaiah Keith Stephens from Lowell, MA has illustrated different scenarios that are giving us so many fantastic Disney feelings.

Here are some of our favorites:

Belle has no problem breast feeding in public, and it’s beautiful.

A photo posted by Isaiah Keith Stephens (@isaiahks_art) on May 8, 2016 at 10:47am PDT

Here’s Aurora giving birth while Prince Phillip helps with lamaze.

A photo posted by Isaiah Keith Stephens (@isaiahks_art) on May 8, 2016 at 10:41am PDT

Mulan and Shang pose in what looks like a maternity photo shoot they’ll likely post to Facebook.

A photo posted by Isaiah Keith Stephens (@isaiahks_art) on May 8, 2016 at 10:39am PDT

Aladdin obviously super ready to show his baby a whole new world.

A photo posted by Isaiah Keith Stephens (@isaiahks_art) on May 8, 2016 at 10:31am PDT

Ariel seems to not be super impressed with her adorable red-headed toddler’s idea of a good time.

A photo posted by Isaiah Keith Stephens (@isaiahks_art) on May 8, 2016 at 10:33am PDT

Cinderella’s daughter clearly takes after her mom when it comes to a love of glass slippers.

A photo posted by Isaiah Keith Stephens (@isaiahks_art) on May 8, 2016 at 10:27am PDT

Elsa’s mini-me was born with her mom’s frozen talents.

A photo posted by Isaiah Keith Stephens (@isaiahks_art) on May 8, 2016 at 10:27am PDT

The post Disney princesses imagined as moms is fascinating and magical appeared first on HelloGiggles.

The “Inception” donut has arrived and we’re not worthy

Finally, we have the perfect food to snack on while we debate whether or not the end of Inception was a dream or reality! This beautiful and decadent donut piles donuts on donuts on donuts for a mind-blowingly delicious taste.

A photo posted by Jessica Nguyen (@jess_scuh) on May 27, 2016 at 12:51pm PDT

Well, to be specific, it’s a beautiful raspberry filled donut that has three mini sugar cookies (of course shaped like donuts), which are topped with cheerios (obviously glazed to look like donuts themselves). The variety of tastes and textures actually makes this mind-bending treat even more appealing.

My brother's logic: He takes me to the gym so I won't get fat but yet buys me amazing food like this. ⚖ on on #inceptiondonut

A photo posted by Rosario Ramirez (@rosarioxr) on May 27, 2016 at 3:38pm PDT

According to BuzzFeed, the donut was invented by chef Adam Soebel at The Cinnamon Snail who had literally just watched the movie Inception and had a stroke of brilliance when he decided to add dream within a dream idea to create a oh-so delicious result.

How many donuts do you see? (the donuts here are actually really really good though) @cinnamonsnail @thepennsy #InceptionDonut

A photo posted by Mike Chau (@mikejchau) on May 26, 2016 at 10:29am PDT

Unfortunately, the treat was only available for a limited time and only in New York City. It doesn’t yet have a date set to make its grand comeback, but there’s at least talk of it possibly returning for National Donut Day (which is next week, in case you didn’t know — which we did). If that goes well, one can only possibly hope that they’ll continue to exist so we can snag them anytime (even if it means making a special trip to the Big Apple for a bit of this big taste).

Which would be amazing because I mean look at this:

Lotsa stuff goin' on here with this Inception Donut from @cinnamonsnail @thepennsy # # #foodbabylovescinnamonsnail #foodbabylovesthepennsy #foodbabylovespiccoliny

A photo posted by Food Baby (@foodbabyny) on May 26, 2016 at 3:28pm PDT

Knowing that something this incredible existed but only seeing it in pictures totally makes us wonder… did any of it even ever happen? Is any of it even real? Will the top continue spinning and why, oh why, didn’t we snag one of these when we got the chance?

The post The “Inception” donut has arrived and we’re not worthy appeared first on HelloGiggles.

The fermentation flavors include dill pickle sorbet, sourdough ice cream with ribbons of chocolate and strawberry jam, and of course the Sqirl collab, which pairs avocado cardamom ice cream with a house-made fermented carrot custard. [ more › ]

One writer is afraid of the "new people" the Expo Line will bring to Santa Monica. [ more › ]

SiriusXM host Julia Cunningham, of Sirius XMU and Entertainment Weekly Radio’s LA Daily, is on The Blaze with Lizzie and Kat podcast this week to talk about all of our favorite show, Beverly Hills 90210! To read the December 1992 Variety article referenced in this week’s Chuck’s Corner, click here.

Download episode 77

What we were drinking: Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey
What we were eating: pizza

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James Turrell transformed the Guggenheim into a tripped-out color-changing alien space ship in 2013. Right now, he’s showcasing his first experiments with light at Pace Gallery in two locations in New York.

Each piece consists of a simple geometric shape projected against the corner of a room. That’s it… and it’s amazing. Conceived in the mid-60s, Turrell first displayed these works in a vacant hotel, which may explain the construction of single rooms for each sculpture, a lowered gallery ceiling, and the carpeted floors, only for this exhibition.

Though I’ve never seen the apparatus for projections, I read recently that he uses silver-taped 35mm slides. If, like me, you entered art school pre-2000s, you’re familiar with the silver tape you use to “crop” the slides in your art portfolio (so the wall would appear completely black) – which is exactly what he used to mask these shapes by hand. As one would expect, he was also extremely particular about the projector itself, first using a Leitz slide projector, then a custom Xenon projector (if you’re interested, read the full technical journey here).

As HoloLens and this CRAZY Tilt Brush become reality, these analog projections aren’t losing their magic. First, it’s amazing that Turrell successfully achieved the illusion of solid and three-dimensional volume without a computer or video projector, let alone virtual reality goggles. But now viewing these works 50 years later (!!!), their non-digital elements are refreshingly realistic. For example, a grain of dust occasionally and accidentally clings to the edge of a slide in the projector, which translates on the wall to something resembling a hand-cut paper edge. These tiny “flaws” feel more tangible and object-like than a perfect pixelated line, without betraying the work’s precision.

The collection spans two locations of Pace Gallery, and each space includes a unique bonus. In Chelsea, that bonus is a collection of 36 drawings: the 6 projections on view PLUS 30 more variations!

I love the efficiency of his drawing process. It appears as if each work is made up a print or xerox copy of gridded lines. onto which he drew a red shape, and then used white-out to remove the unwanted lines inside. You can see it best below, and even better in person.

The “bonus” in the midtown gallery location is a series of recent holograms! Created in 2014/2015, they are physically IMPOSSIBLE to photograph, so you either need to run up there immediately, or stretch your imagination while you view the photograph below: This is a holographic green triangle that extends into thin air, straight out from the glass, towards the viewer. It gradually fades into nothing as it reaches the limit of how far a hologram can project away from its source… which Turrell has stretched to nearly a foot.

Finally, I want to give a quick shout-out to the unrecognized graphic designers of gallery postcards in general, and whoever designed the material for this show in particular. I’ve seen a number of super-smart gallery postcards, and this one impressed me with it’s simple yet brilliant solution to representing one of these corner light works. Nailed it.

A note on photography: This the selfie show of the season. Everyone looks amazing under this lighting.  I pulled a few of my favorites below.

But notice that the Instagram photographs and the postcard above it are the SAME piece (Afrum, Pale Pink) and look COMPLETELY different. The problem is that smart phones, in addition to overexposing the cube, white-balance to the ambient light and therefore make the cube look white. The gallery postcard also doesn’t look correct: it may be “technically true” but it certainly does not look that pink to the naked eye in the gallery at all. So my personal strategy to represent these accurately for this article was to photograph each piece twice with two different exposures to capture the projection and the wall independently (see below on left). I then used the Brushes app on my iPad to sketch a color study in the gallery (the “glow” of the iPad resembled the effect better than a colored pencil on paper), which I used later to color correct in Photoshop when I merged the two exposures.  It’s not scientific, and still probably not 100% accurate, but it is the absolute closest I could get to what the actual real experience looks like in person. Go check it out.

What: James Turrell: 67 68 69
Where: Pace Gallery, 534 W 25th St & 32 East 57th St
When: May 5 – June 17, 2016

All photographs of projections by the author, David Behringer.
Photographs of drawings by Kerry Ryan McFate / Pace Gallery, © 2016 James Turrell, Pace Gallery
Instagram images via: @edythehughes @sugarwang @_kimgoon

Spoilers ahead for the most recent episode of Game of Thrones.

Kristian Nairn, who plays the much-beloved Hodor on Game of Thrones, once told us how he'd like his character to die. "It would be like a Michael Bay film," he imagined. "Lots of fireworks and explosions. Huge transforming robots falling out of the sky. I die with a cyber-spear in my chest. Is that dramatic enough?" But the actual death scene he got in Sunday's episode was far more moving than anything we could have dreamed up. Nairn chatted with Vulture to help us through our grieving process.

I am so heartbroken!
[Laughs.] I can hear it in your voice. I'm glad to hear that, in a perverse way.

While it's so sad, it's also a confusing scene for some people, so I'm wondering if you can help explain what exactly happened here.
Where would you like me to begin? This is my understanding of it, and it's just my interpretation — I could be completely wrong. The way I saw it was, obviously there was Bran in the past, watching the rerun, and shit starts to go down in the present day. The White Walkers arrive, and when Meera starts to shout at him to warg into Hodor, think of it like a telephone call. The lines start to get crossed. Bran has almost this physical force, like electricity, which he can use to engage with the brains of animals, and obviously Hodor as well. And he just didn't know how to make that call from within the past, and he didn't really know what he was doing. And somehow, the call got connected to the wrong Hodor. It got caught in some kind of temporal ...  and he didn't understand this, either. You can see that on his face. He didn't know what he'd done. When poor Wylis starts having a seizure, you can see him get increasingly concerned. He knew he'd done something, but what? It created some kind of vortex, and it sort of erased poor Wylis, and left him like an echo chamber. It wiped his brain.

So it wasn't Bran's fault.
A few people have said, "Was it actually Bran who killed Hodor? Was he the one making him hold the door and stuff?" I don't think so. Meera was the one who said, "Hold the door," not Bran. And Hodor was terrified. He wanted to run down that corridor. That wasn't the fearsome warged Hodor of breaking Locke's neck fame. That was just normal Hodor. I think when he warged Hodor, it was just to get him up on his feet, more like slapping the side of a horse. Like, "Come on! Get up! We need you here!" It was just a jolt of electricity. It wasn't a full warg. That's my interpretation of it, and I think that's fairly close to the truth.

So the moment when Hodor holds the door is actually pure Hodor, not Bran-warging-Hodor.
It's very much coming from Hodor, because otherwise Meera wouldn't have had to ask him. Or she would be talking to Bran, not Hodor.

Do you think as Wylis grew up and later encountered Bran, that he recognized him? Did he live with the knowledge of his own impending death, the way Jojen did?
No. I don't think he recognizes Bran. I don't think when he saw Bran in his real, everyday life, his reaction was, "Oh, that's that little bastard from the courtyard. I'm gonna steer away from him!" I don't think he remembers. But he does feel a bond with Bran, because obviously Bran's been in his brain before. They were always sort of fated to be together. People say that Bran changed things, but has he really? Or was it always meant to happen?

It seems more like a closed loop.
Yeah, it's a closed loop. And that's what I love about this. It's answered questions, but it's also raised more which are unanswered. I love that. We've lost Hodor, but we're always going to have a bit of an enigma here. It's always fun to have your own theory, even if it's completely fucking wrong.

We're sometimes wrong when we theorize about these things, but at least a few fans were proven to be right about Hodor. One in 2008, and another who got in an elevator with George R.R. Martin and joked, "It's clear to me now that Hodor is short for 'hold the door.'" George told him, "You don't know how close to the truth you are!"
Wow. That's really annoying, because I've asked George many times, and he wouldn't tell me! So after all those wasted drinks I bought him, all I had to do was get in an elevator with him. You know, I tried to get him drunk, and it didn't work. It's alright. Someone else told me about the person who accurately predicted it, but these days, every time I open up my Facebook profile, I'll see all these sites with "Top 15 Theories," or "Top 20 Things That Might Happen in Next Week's Game of Thrones," and I go, "Oh my God. One of these is bound to get it right! Stop ruining it for yourself!" People have gone nuts. Breaking Bad didn't suffer the way we're suffering here. I didn't go on Facebook and say, "Uh, next week on Breaking Bad, he's going to take this meth and he's going to sell it." You know what I mean? People are trying to predict what we're going to bloody do! It's like, Stop it!

But everyone is so grateful for the level of passion that the fans have for this show. It's the best thing about it. I love the fans, even in their weird, silly ways. I'm the same way about things I'm passionate about. I'm a fan of things. I'm annoying. I'm in London at the moment so I can go to the Warcraft premiere on Wednesday, and I've got all my T-shirts and everything, and I'll be in the front.

Do people ever find you on World of Warcraft? Do they want to play with you?
I'm sort of hidden there. At first, I thought it would be a good idea because I love to interact with people, but I've had to pull back a little over the years as things have grown, because I realized I was spending most of my time staring at Twitter or Facebook, and it was getting annoying. And Warcraft to me is such an escape. But people would be like, "Oh my God, did you see that episode? What happened?!" And I just want to kill shit. I just want to hunt the monster. I don't want to talk about Game of Thrones there. As much as I appreciate it, that's my holiday. So I kind of disappeared into the ether. But some people know who I am. I run about the place with two little pets — one's called Nairn, and one's called Hodor. So it's pretty obvious. [Laughs.]

Did you see the rap battle between Hodor and Groot?
Yeah, I saw that. [Chuckles.] I don't know how to react to things like that. I think they're funny. I think people have too much time on their hands, but they're very creative. I'm just getting too old. The grumpier and older I am, the better.

You can't be grumpy about Hodor!
It's so beautiful, the fan reaction. I remember being at a convention, and a lady came up to me, and she had her son or nephew with her, and he was severely autistic. And she said that whenever Hodor came on the screen, he would light up, and he would start to talk. Apparently, he rarely spoke. But he would say, "Hodor." So I made him a video, and the reaction was incredible. I cried like a baby.

Hodor doorstops have officially taken over the internet