[Images via Daily Mail; map via The Underground Bunker]

In 2005 or 2006, Shelly Miscavige, the wife of the head of the Church of Scientology, disappeared (high-profile Scientology member Leah Remini eventually left the Church over the disappearance), and eventually it sort-of came out that she was being kept at the Church's top secret, 500-acre compound near Lake Arrowhead, the headquarters of its Church of Spiritual Technology, sometimes known as Twin Peaks, Rimforest, Rim of the World, or Crestline. Scientology watchdog Tony Ortega calls CST "the most hush-hush unit of a secretive organization"; it owns the copyrights to L. Ron Hubbard's works and "In order to preserve Hubbard's legacy for future generations — and in order to ensure that his legacy survives a nuclear holocaust — CST's job is to create underground vaults for storage." Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and other high-level Scientologists supposedly have secret nuclear apocalypse bunkers at the site. And now Daily Mail says it's dug up the first close-up photos, and they add "It's the only Scientology base never to have been pictured before apart from afar on Google images."

Both DM and TO talked to apostate Dylan Gill, who worked at the base; he told TO that "CST Headquarters has several buildings that are used for housing workers and for doing the work of archiving — plans for the vaults include etching Hubbard's millions of printed words on steel plates and storing them in titanium boxes." It also has "upscale residences" and an exercise yard (a gyro-gym!). Work started in 1989 and was originally budgeted at $18 million, "but it cost way more," according to Gill, who says also that it is lousy with cameras and heat and motion sensors.

The majority of Scientologists, even high-ranking ones, supposedly don't even know about the compound. Or they didn't, assuming they believe anything the Daily Mail says.
· EXCLUSIVE - Pictured for the first time: Secret 'Twin Peaks' Scientology base in the California mountains 'where Shelly Miscavage has lived since disappearing seven years ago' [DM]
· SHELLY SPEAKS: Scientology Leader's Banished Wife Says She'll Get Out "Only One Way" [The Underground Bunker]

One of the most popular tablet and phone games is Candy Crush Saga, which is a variation on the “match 3 on a grid” style of timed puzzle games. (I was a fan of Bejeweled when it first came out.) The overriding theme, of course, with Candy Crush is the fact that it’s candy-themed. Why didn’t they come out with this a year ago?

The game has finally been licensed for actual eating instead of just virtual play by King.com to Healthy Food Brands. The launch of the candy line includes four varieties: Candy Crush Sour Fruit Gummies, Fruit Mix Gummies, Jelly Fish and Color Bombs. They come packaged in boxes, with between 3 and 3.5 ounces in each. I picked mine up at Dylan’s Candy Bar where they’re priced at $4.00 a box.

The design of the box is trippy and colorful, matching the design elements of the game very well along with more animated characters on each box. Today I’ll review the Gummies together (the others later this week).

The Candy Crush Mixed Fruit Gummies box features a colorful unicorn on the front. There gummi flavors are: Blue Raspberry, Green Apple, Lemon, Cherry, Orange and Grape. Each of the candies, as you’d imagine, relates to a candy piece within the game.

The gummis are soft with a bit of a matte finish to them. Most are about 1/2 an inch in diameter, with the red ones clocking in at almost one inch.

I don’t know what the pieces are supposed to be in the game, if they have names or represent some sort of real world candy.

Orange Oval is orange. It’s mild and ordinary. It’s a soft chew with a nice balance of zest, juice and tartness.

Green Cube is green apple and it’s completely weird. It tastes rather ... grassy. There are the apple juice notes and less of the fake Jolly Rancher flavor to it, but mostly it was weird. It was also inconsistently sized. Some were cubist, some were flat.

Purple Berry is grape. The shape indicates it should be raspberry, but the flavor is definitely grape, as in grape soda. Nice, not too dense and artificial but a note of the colorings does taint it with a bit of a metallic note.

Yellow Drops are lemon. These are nice, well rounded with a lot of zest, a zing of tartness and just a little sweet lemon poundcake note.

Red Stripes are cherry. Well done black cherry. It’s much more intense than the orange or purple flavors, a better gummi version of Life Savers than the Life Savers gummis.

Blue Dots are blue raspberry. This is quite nice, they’re understated and rich. There’s a floral note to begin with, then a sort of black-tea seediness that really sells the berry flavors. They’re a little tart, so it’s kind of jammy. I’m not usually a fan of the blue varieties of raspberry, but this one is good.

The gummis are good, the flavor variety is different from the standard Haribo or Life Savers gummi combination, so there’s that going for it. The pieces are quite small, so you can get quite a few flavor combinations in a single handful if you’re into that.

The Candy Crush Sour Fruit Gummies are just a sour sanded version of the fruit mix. The flavor variety is the same: Blue Raspberry, Green Apple, Lemon, Cherry, Orange and Grape. This box has a green theme and a friendly alligator on the front.

(Nope, there are no plays on this game board.)

Orange Oval is orange. Sour orange is actually less flavorful than the regular one. It seems less about the zest flavors are more about Tang.

Green Cube is green apple. It’s hard to say much about these since I only had two of them in my bag. They have the same weird grassy flavor combined with apple juice but this time it’s quite sour to start then too sweet at the finish.

Purple Berry is grape. Shazaam! These are a curious little, poppable version of grape soda.

Yellow Drops are lemon. These retain all of their zest but get the extra zing of the sour sand. Very well done without being too acidic.

Red Stripes are cherry. These are quite tart, which brings out more of the wild cherry flavors and less of the dark berry notes of the black cherry. (As if there’s much of a difference.)

Blue Dots are blue raspberry. The seed flavor that’s kind of like iced tea doesn’t quite work in the super sour version. It’s still floral and tart, but towards the end it gets into something that’s trying to be sincere but just feels sarcastic. It’s too sweet with a sort of vanilla note to balance with the earlier tartness.

Of the two candies, I preferred the Mixed Fruit. The sours just weren’t as good as many other sour gummis I’ve had. As far as whether or not they meet my expectations of what the candy from the game should be, I kind of though the candy pieces were different kinds of candy - that some were like Runts, others hard candies and some might be jelly beans.

According to their website, Healthy Food Brands is the international marketer of “better for you” confections and chocolate products. The Candy Crush Fruit Gummis are made with white grape juice from concentrate, along with sugar and corn syrup, a touch of sorbitol (a sugar alcohol that bulks up the product but adds less sweetness than sugar) and a bunch of artificial colors and flavors. They’re made in Mexico.

This isn’t the first game-app-themed gummi I’ve tried from Healthy Food Brands, as they also make the officially licensed Angry Birds Gummis. Those packages were also made in Mexico but marked as peanut free and gluten free. I don’t know why this product couldn’t also qualify for that notification. There’s actually no allergen statement at all on the package. If you have questions, they list only a mailing address… no email, no website. Not exactly what I’d say fulfills something called a healthy brand.

Name: Candy Crush: Mixed Fruit and Sour Gummies
Brand: King.com distributed by Healthy Food Brands
Place Purchased: Dylan’s Candy Bar (Farmers Market)
Price: $4.00
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 85 & 92
Type: Gummi/Sour
Rating: 6 out of 10 & 5 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Candy Crush Jelly Fish
2. Candy Crush Color Bombs
3. Haribo The Smurfs Gummi
4. Angry Birds Fruit Gummies
5. Sky Bar Twilight Saga - Eclipse
6. Au’some Snerdles Super Mario Power Up Box
7. Sunkist Fruit Gummies
8. Wii Candy Dispenser & Nintendo Gummis

The Hollywood Reporter reports that The "Dwayne Johnson" Rock will star in and executive produce Seal Team 666. No, that's not a name of a Funny or Die sketch, but a real horror action movie based on a book by Weston Ochse. Johnson plays a member of a Navy Seal team that fights demons and the like. Hercules writer Evan Spiliotopoulos wrote the script. Though no director is attached yet, John McCain has already published an open letter complaining about the film's inaccuracies. 

Read more posts by Jesse David Fox

Filed Under: seal team 666 ,movies ,the rock ,dwayne johnson ,casting couch

Ever wonder, "Hey, why was the spawn of Twilight lovers Bella and Edward such a hideous CG monster troll?" Well, guess what? It could have been much, much worse. Behold the animatronic monster so hideous it scared the cast of Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2, and had to be cut from the film.

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As we previously reported, boxer Magomed Abdusalamov has been in a medically-induced coma since his HBO fight Saturday night with Mike Perez. The latest update to his condition is, sadly, not a good one.

BoxingScene.com reports that Abdusalamov is now on life support as his condition has worsened. Shortly after being put into the coma, his condition stabilized. However, he has since suffered a stroke, resluting in his current condition.

The boxing community has come together in their support for Abdusalamov and have set up a fund to help with his medical bills (via BoxingScene):

"We are going to do what we need to do for Magomed. He and his family are going to need our help," Sampson Lewkowicz said in a statement released Tuesday. "He is going to need financial assistance for the medical bills for his treatment, and for his family who are faced with an urgent financial crunch from this terrible accident."

"We cannot, as a boxing family, turn our backs on the brave men and women who compete in our sport when they need us most," Lewkowicz continued." We are going to do everything possible to help him get back on his feet. Magomed will never fight again, but he is a good man and a brave man with a nice family. We are going to make sure they all pull through this intact. That is the right thing to do. Every dollar will help."

Details on contributing to the fund can be found here. The WBC has already pledged $50,000 towards the fund.

Mike Perez, Abdusalamov's opponent Saturday night, released the following statement:

‘Mago' is in my thoughts and prayers and I hope he recovers quickly. He fought like a true warrior, I'm happy to be victorious but my main concern is for his health.

We will continue to update you on Abdusalamov's condition. Until then, please join us in sending your thoughts out to Mago and his family.

Well, four of them, but it's a start: the Swedish cinemas in question have added gender-bias rating to all of their showings. In order to get an A, the films must pass the Bechdel test (in which two female characters talk about something other than a man). Sundays are for A-rated films — like the Hunger Games — only. Meanwhile, in America, we get pink football jerseys on Sundays. Keep it up, Sweden.

Read more posts by Amanda Dobbins

Filed Under: women ,sweden ,movies

Vaumara Rebelo
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Sharie de Castro
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Veneta Krasteva
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Riza Santos
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Jin Ye
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Lucía Aldana
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Fabiana Granados
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Melita Fabčeić
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"Sweetie" is a digital decoy designed to trick perverts into thinking they're having webcam sessions with a real live 10-year-old Filipina. In just two months, researchers were able to identify 1,000 people who offered money to the fake profile in exchange for sex acts.

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A fast food restaurant chain discovered that Japanese women don't like to eat big burgers because they are ashamed of opening their mouths wide. So they invented this clever paper holder to hide their mouths while stuffing their face like piggy men. Surprisingly, the invention was a huge success.

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Kevin Roderick: The key words here are rotting balls of fish flesh and corpse wax. Bon appetit.

[Not a San Gabriel Mountains bear; this is a Griffith Park bear being lured back into her cage in 1934 after the New Year's flood, via LAPL]

Yesterday, a hilariously irreverent bear who obviously loves to play by his own rules caused a mess of trouble in Granada Hills when he climbed a 50-foot tree near a church and school, then "ran through backyards and across a golf course," undeterred by a tranquilizer shot. After an 11-hour chase and five tranquilizer darts, wildlife officials and the LAPD found him passed out in a Juniper patch, and were planning this morning to take him back home to the Los Padres National Forest. But this bear has caused trouble before: he was also caught and sent back to the forest on June 3. Last week, a bear nearly ended it all on the 210 Freeway after a romp through Pasadena, and last year a bear named Meatball foraged his way into Glendale's trashcans and hearts over repeated visits to the city. Why are SoCal bears so bad? Maybe because they're all descended from criminals, like Australians?

Earlier this year, the LA Sheriff's Department put out a bear advisory that casually mentioned that "The Black Bears were introduced into the San Gabriel Mountains in 1933. They are all descendants of 11 bears deported from Yosemite National Park for being troublemakers." In other words, the San Gabriel Mountains were like a penal colony for hard-living Depression-era bears and no one ever stopped to consider what would happen if Los Angeles sprawled all the way out to the edge of this prison forest.

But that's actually a bear smear: these were really CLOWN bears. KPCC tracked down the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's "bear whisperer," who in turn tracked down a 1930s wildlife journal noting that the state's Fish and Game president at the time wanted some bears in the Angeles and San Bernardino National Forests, for amusement. In November 1933, 28 bears were captured in Yosemite and transported to Southern California (one bear was "lost through injuries which occurred during trapping and transportation," 11 were placed near Crystal Lake in the Angeles National Forest). The journal says that "If they thrive, they will become a real attraction to the thousands of visitors who spend summers and week-ends in the mountain playgrounds. Their comical, clownish appearance and actions are a never ending source of amusement to youngsters and adults alike." But it does not mention anything about them being particularly bad.

[Another adorable old-timey bear, on Venice Beach in 1936, via LAPL]

It does note that natural feed was scarce up there, which is probably still why bears are seen down in civilization so often. A Fish and Wildlife rep tells KTLA "It's very normal fall behavior ... They're bulking up for winter; they're getting their fat layer." And there's no evidence that there are any more bears now than ever (there are probably a few hundred at this point), we just like watching them more. The rep adds: "Bears have taken over car chases in Los Angeles."
· Bears gonna bear: 'Troublemakers' may have been falsely accused [SCPR]

Sometimes I can't tell if Nashville is great or terrible or what. I know that the music is pretty good, though I'm among the world's least qualified country music critics. I know the hairstyling department is doing a superb job. And whoever's in charge of finding snap-front, Western-cut, plaid shirts for the guys must be spread thin. But week to week, it's not clear to me that Nashville has any idea what it's actually good at, nor does it seem to know how long a show is supposed to take to tell a story. A few suggestions.

No more Peggy, no more politics, and, for God's sake, end the stupid fake pregnancy story line already.
Raise your hand if you give two farts about Nashville's mayoral race. See? No one. It is actually not possible to care about it! One of the weirdest parts of the first season of Glee was a protracted fake-pregnancy plotline, with Mr. Schue's wife (remember her? no?) going so far as to wear a prosthesis and refuse to be touched. Do not retread this territory, Nashville. Teddy cheated on the heroine of the series. Who cares if he gets to be mayor, or if his stupid mistress is lying to him? What's at stake? What would he or the show lose? Nothing.

The thing where Rayna lost her voice could have gone on a lot longer.
In general, I loathe when stories get dragged out. But this one had legitimate legs! After the car accident at the end of last season, Rayna was severely injured and intubated for a while. Luckily, the show did not drag out the coma story line, but the idea that a singer's vocal cords could be damaged is a very resonant one. Combine that with, say, Shania Twain's very famous long-term stage fright, and there's an actual story in here that means something! Instead, Raina was magically healed by the power of supportive country music fans.

Is Scarlett stupid?
She's lived in Nashville for what, a year and change? Get off the turnip truck, lady! Learn to lead an adult life! Her constant "Wha? Lil' ol' meeeee?" routine is exhausting, and the weird helplessness she displays at her label runs completely counter to what we know about her toughness with Deacon. Scarlett is allegedly ambivalent about a life in the spotlight, but it's not like she's pursuing anything else: It's totally fine not to want to be famous, but then why are you singing at the Bluebird Cafe and signing record contracts? Go to a Meetup for people who want to learn Italian.

Juliette is the best.
Nashville probably wouldn't work as The Juliette Barnes Show, but every character is at his or her most interesting when interacting with her. Even if the show's not going to give Juliette that much more to do, at least let more characters cross paths with her in any given episode. Juliette has a sense of humor; let her use it.

Give Avery and Gunnar something concrete to do.
The idea that these two are still mooning over the intellectually vacant Scarlett is tedious at best. Their collaborative songwriting is a step in the right direction, but on the whole, the series struggles to find specific, identifiable things for its characters to do. Shows about politics have Election Day. Glee has regionals. High school shows have proms; many shows have weddings; other series have central mysteries. Nashville feels like it's spinning its wheels, because it is — there's no narrative momentum at all, no looming danger, no project everyone is working on together.

More songs, better atmospheres.
Last week's episode closed with Scarlett and Deacon singing a duet, with him plunking on the piano with his accident-damaged hands and her strumming a banjo. The song was gorgeous and sad and appropriate. Weirdly, though, their house was covered in romantic tea candles, which is not the vibe you'd really want for a scene about a niece and uncle.

Read more posts by Margaret Lyons

Filed Under: nashville ,tv ,how-to guides

While we're all freaking out trying to figure out if Team Dog will destroy Team Cat and if Team Giraffe will rise up and destroy them, possibly while working all in league with Team Red Panda, this baby pygmy hippo is over here just giving ZERO FUCKS. He is killing it. Absolutely killing it.

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Durk Dehner was in a gay bar in New York more than 30 years ago when he came across the artwork created by a man known as Tom of Finland, whose homoerotic drawings of men with bulging body parts in tight jeans and leather gear were popular in gay culture.  “I just found it to be so compellingly sexy and desirable,” said Dehner, a model. Dehner tracked down Tom of Finland, a Finnish artist named Touko Laaksonen, and the two men forged a close and long lasting relationship, with Dehner becoming Laaksonen’s muse and patron.  Dehner would later invite Laaksonen, who died in 1991, to visit his Echo Park home on palm-tree lined Laveta Terrace, where the artist would come for extended visits and take up  residence on the top floor of the Craftsman-style home.  The interior of that home, which now serves as  the home of the Tom of Finland Foundation and a museum of homoerotic art,  is featured in a video created in conjunction with an exhibit, BOB MIZER & TOM OF FINLAND, that opens this weekend at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Pacific Design Center gallery.

The video includes scenes of the interior and grounds of the more than century-old  house, which is packed with thousands of pieces of drawings, posters, photos, books and other pieces.  The room Laaksonen occupied in an attic-like space has been preserved in museum-like fashion.  Dehner describes Laaksonen’s morning routine when he was in residence:

He would walk out the back door and go down the stairs to the lower terraces and sit on a stoop. The cats and dogs would always follow him … He loved the California mornings, the sunshine  He would then go back and he’d go upstairs …  He could shut off the door and he could actually draw and never come out of there for hours.

The MOCA show is the first time a U.S. museum has staged an exhibit of the erotic art  Laaksonen and fellow artist Bob Mizer.

[Photographs: Kevin Liu]

Last week researchers at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore proposed what might be the most plausible explanation yet for the Mpemba effect [PDF].

You've probably heard before that hot water freezes faster than cold water—that's the Mpemba effect. I remember when my older sister told me that when we were kids. I didn't believe her then and went on not believing her for many years. It's the kind of thing that has the ring of an old wives' tale.

But let's get one thing straight: there's not really any debate about the fact that the Mpemba effect exists. It has been observed in numerous controlled experiments.* Aristotle first noted its existence when he wrote about how ice fishermen would heat up water to get it to freeze faster over two millennia ago. The effect is named after the Tanzanian Erasto Mpemba, who, as a secondary school student in 1963, noticed that hot ice cream mixes would freeze faster than cold ice cream mixes. His question to guest lecturer Dr. Denis G. Osborne, "If you take two similar containers with equal volumes of water, one at 35 °C (95 °F) and the other at 100 °C (212 °F), and put them into a freezer, the one that started at 100 °C (212 °F) freezes first. Why?" was initially mocked, but Osborne later reproduced Mpemba's results and co-authored a paper with him explaining the observations in 1969.

*And no, your buddy who says, "One time I filled an ice cube tray with hot water and another with cold and the cold froze faster," doesn't count as a controlled experiment.

It's completely counterintuitive and seems to violate the basic laws of thermodynamics. To be clear, what we're saying here is that under certain conditions, the total time it takes for a volume of warm water to freeze will be smaller than the total time it takes for an equal volume of cold water to freeze, given the exact same external temperature. It's a really strange thing. I mean, at some point in the process, doesn't the warm water reach the exact same initial state as the cold water? And if so, why does that cold-water-that-was-recently-hot freeze faster than the water that started out cold? It's left folks scratching their heads or outright denying its existence for decades.

Since then, numerous explanations have been put forth to try and explain the phenomenon, but none have been much more than plausible-sounding theories. Here are a few of them:

Theory: Convection currents in the warm water caused by large temperature differentials will cause it to cool more rapidly, and those convection currents continue even after the water has dropped to the same temperature as the cooler water, thus allowing it to overtake the cooler water in freezing.*

*Problem: Water is pretty viscous stuff and convection currents like that will not continue to flow for the time it takes to cool the water.

Theory: Hot water evaporates. Less water left behind means less water to freeze.**

**Problem: Even accounting for evaporation, hot water has been observed to freeze faster than cold.

Theory: Hot water creates convection patterns in the air inside a freezer, which increases its cooling efficiency.***

***Problem: You can run an experiment with hot and cold trays in the same freezer and still observe the warm one to freeze faster than the cool one.

Theory: Cold water freezes in a layer on top, creating insulation and preventing the rest from cooling very fast.****

****Problem: The hot water will also form this frost layer.

The experimental problems are large because there are so many variable to control—aside form starting temperatures, there's also the shape of the freezer, the volume and shape of the container, the insulative properties of the container, the dissolved solids in the water, etc. Up until last week's paper, the most plausible work done was by interested lay-person James Brownridge, who proposed that heating water changes the nature of its impurities, which in turn alters its freezing point (he observed that most water actually supercools beyond 0°C and doesn't begin to crystallize until significantly below this temperature).

The new paper claims that there's actually a chemical explanation for the effect, and one that mathematically fits observed data—as far as I know, the first explanation to be able to do so.

Water molecules consist of two hydrogen molecules attached to an oxygen molecule primarily through strong covalent bonds. Normally, covalent bonds will soften and lengthen as they are heated. But in water, because of the unique properties of hydrogen bonds—the interaction between the hydrogen atoms in one water molecule and the oxygen molecule in a neighboring molecule—the opposite effect happens. As a body of water absorbs energy, the hydrogen bonds will stretch (causing individual water molecules to move apart from each other), but the covalent bonds within each molecule become shorter and stiffer—the same thing that happens when water freezes.

So on an individual molecular level, heated water more closely resembles frozen water than the initial colder water did. More importantly, the rate at which the energy in these shrunken covalent bonds is released dependent exponentially on how much energy was initially stored. Effectively, hot water has energy wound up like a spring which gets released when you begin to cool it, allowing it to cool and freeze faster.

Neat, huh?

You can read up on the details in the full paper here, complete with completely unintelligible diagrams and charts.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that CBS is in preliminary conversations with 20th Century Fox TV about producing a potential spinoff of How I Met Your Mother, since the original is ending after nine successful seasons. The pilot for this female-centered show would come from a collaboration between HIMYM co-creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas and Up All Night creator Emily Spivey, but include none of the original cast. Basically, expect to see “a similar set of friends” gathered around MacLaren’s Pub, except instead of seeking a wife, it’s the age-old search for a husband that takes front row. More importantly, who will play lady Ted?

Read more posts by Delia Paunescu

Filed Under: spinoffs ,how i met your mother ,cbs ,20th century fox

Okay, first of all, aren't we all in a little bit of a fight with Guy Fieri's hairdresser? And second of all, HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAA. Apparently, in a car on the way home from the airport, the Mayor of Flavortown and his hairdresser Ariel Ramirez got drunk and started punching each other. Oh, also there's a video.

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Today’s stars aged 50 and over are more well-preserved than ever, whether through exercise, diet, surgery, or chemicals. And because of it, many of them seem ageless and forever young (at least when in makeup, Photoshopped, or flatteringly lit on the big screen). Want to learn a trick to suddenly make them feel more aged, though? Compare them with past notable actors who at the same age just seemed old.  

George Clooney (52) is a year older than Wilford Brimley was when Cocoon was released.

Daniel Day Lewis (56) is the same age as Walter Matthau was when The Bad News Bears was released.

Julianne Moore (53) is two years older than Gloria Swanson was when she appeared in Sunset Boulevard.

Harrison Ford (71) is two years older than Burgess Meredith was when Rocky was released.

Marisa Tomei (48) is the same age as Jean Stapleton was when All in the Family started.*

Samuel L. Jackson (65) is two years younger than Jack Lemmon was when Grumpy Old Men was released.

Ellen DeGeneres (54) is one year older than Bette Davis was when she appeared in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Denzel Washington (59) is a year younger than Andy Griffith was when Matlock began.

Kim Cattrall (57) is one year older than Olympia Dukakis was when Moonstruck was released.

Bruce Willis (58) is a year younger than Spencer Tracy was when The Old Man and the Sea was released.

Tom Cruise (51) is the same age as Tommy Lee Jones was when Men in Black was released.

Demi Moore (51) is the same age as Rue McClanahan was when she started The Golden Girls.

*  star identified as Maureen Stapleton, not Jean. We apologize for the mis-Stapletoning.

Read more posts by Guy Cimbalo

Filed Under: movies ,george clooney ,denzel washington ,daniel day-lewis ,julianne moore ,samuel l. jackson ,harrison ford ,marisa tomei ,ellen degeneres ,kim cattrall ,bruce willis ,tom cruise ,demi moore ,time check

This lamb gamboling about the skate park after its human companion is the most life-affirming thing you’ll see all day, right until the camera catches the lamb wandering dangerously close to a pentagram that’s been graffitied in the middle of the park. I have to believe that, even though it’s dangerously close to Halloween, the lamb and pentagram have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Let’s all go on thinking just that.

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Welcome to Friendzone, Jezebel's column devoted to dealing with the valuable people in your life who you're not humping. Got an issue and looking for guidance? Email friendzone@jezebel.com.

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[PCH at the current site of the Chart House; more on that rock formation here]

Last week, one of KCET's fantastic historians (Nathan Masters) rounded up photos of some of Los Angeles's most famous streets (PCH, Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood Boulevard, Wilshire, Third Street in Santa Monica, Colorado in Pasadena, etc.) from the early twentieth century: "Horses once casually left droppings where shoppers stroll today along Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade. A dusty wagon road alongside the Ostrich Farm Railroad eventually became Sunset Boulevard. A century ago, Los Angeles was a much emptier place, and what today are major thoroughfares were then dusty cow paths through open countryside or pockmarked roads rutted by wagon wheels." Which got us thinking: hey, they don't look anything like that anymore. So we took to Google Street View to see just what how much they've changed. Enjoy these seven historic/contemporary looks at six of LA's great streets:

[Sunset at Normandie] [Sunset at Gower] [Hollywood at Sunset] [Third at Broadway, Santa Monica] [Colorado at Marengo, Pasadena] [Wilshire (then Nevada) at Ocean, Santa Monica] · Photos: When L.A.'s Most Famous Streets Were Dirt Roads [KCET]

June 12, 2013

This A+ list celebrity/singer not only picked up one of the most well known athletes in the world the other night, apparently she also convinced him to experiment with umm, devices that would penetrate him. Not sure why else her assistant had to rush out in the middle of the night to find a device for our celebrity/singer to wear.

 Rihanna/Christiano Ronaldo

The treacherous tides of the internet have swept up a pair of unsuspecting old people who just wanted to take a nice vacation from the drudgery of their daily lives in Australia to exotic Canada, land of a thousand enchantments. The couple believed they’d won an all-expenses-paid trip to Canada, complete with brand new luggage, from an online contest they’d entered, but it turned out that they’d actually won an opportunity to transport a whole lot of crystal meth across international borders.

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Over five decades, from the forties until his death in 1992, photographer Bob Mizer built his own libidinal archipelago on West 11th Street in downtown Los Angeles. This compound, surrounding a boardinghouse his mother owned where he lived his whole life, served as head­quarters for what he called the Athletic Model Guild, and as home to a churn of young, often troubled men he photographed for AMG’s magazine Physique Pictorial.

This was a risky operation at first—Mizer even went to jail for distributing his photos through the mail. But he was, in his way, both a visionary and a relentless entrepreneur, serving, and to some extent stoking and shaping, what was then an outsider market for idealized depictions of male beauty. Painter David Hockney credited ­Physique Pictorial with inspiring his move to L.A., and Mizer took pictures of notable hotties like Alan Ladd, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joe Dallesandro, and Jack Pierson, along with 10,000 less famous men he captured in 3,000 sometimes peculiar films and over a million photos, many of them still un­developed. Some were documentary, others more or less conventionally athletic or heroic, but over time the compound became like a studio lot, churning out odder, often jarringly dreamy compositions of young men in various stages of undress and costume (in antlers, or as Nazis or cowboys), in images that seemed to combine totally discordant eras and places.

Two exhibitions opening next month argue for Mizer’s significance: “Excavating Bob Mizer,” at NYU’s 80WSE gallery, and one at MOCA in Los Angeles (both arrive on the heels of an archival exhibition at the Invisible-Exports gallery this past winter). “Back in the seventies, I followed Physique Pictorial,” says Jeffrey Deitch, the former MOCA director who set the Mizer show in motion before he left this summer. “I’ve always been a student of vanguard culture, and I understood that Mizer was doing much more than just showing seductive images of men. He was part of the process of creating this new masculine identity, which coincides with the invention of the teenager and biker movies and surf culture.” Mizer cooked up “this private world but also this public world,” explains MOCA curator Bennett Simpson. “He knew the archetypes of masculinity. This was at the same time as James Dean and Marlon Brando. He was good at plucking these things out of the air.”

“Bob is like three or four artists,” says Billy Miller, who works with the Mizer estate and is co-curating the NYU show. “So much of it has been branded as kitsch and camp, but people don’t realize that it was once a subversive underground language.” Miller does admit that “he’s sort of called a pornographer,” a reputation reinforced by the plethora of penises in a 2009 Taschen coffee-table book (Bob’s World). But Miller is more interested in the photographer’s obsessive, idiosyncratic documentation of postwar L.A.’s subculture petri dish. “His work could never have happened here or Chicago or even San Francisco,” Miller says. “It was the ­environment of L.A. after the war which made it possible.”

*This article originally appeared in the November 4, 2013 issue of New York Magazine.

Read more posts by Carl Swanson

Filed Under: photography ,bob mizer ,slideshow ,nyu 80wse gallery ,physique pictorial ,los angeles moca

Argh, I hate being late for meetings! (Via Gawker.)

(Previously: Going to the Store.)

Traditional photography with actual cameras has gone way of the handy camera we all have on our smartphones. It also seems we can’t avoid slapping a filter on it via some photo app and sharing it on every social network out there. Instagram is the leader of the pack when it comes to photos, filters, and sharing and London-based Bruno Ribeiro decided to take the idea into the real world with his series of photos called Real Life Instagram. Because we all know how difficult it is to disconnect the digital world from the every day, mundane analog one.

Know any children who won't go to bed? Well, sit them down in front of this video, in which the demonic lead vocalist of the legendary metal band GWAR reads this classic children's book to them. It won't help them sleep, but they should run into their bedrooms in pure terror immediately, and that's close enough.

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Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Hedgehogs (But Were Afraid to Ask)