IKEA Monkey

Andrew Puzder, the CEO of fast-food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr who was tapped today as Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary, was accused of domestic abuse by his first wife, Lisa Henning.

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Chicago is filled with longstanding, beloved mom and pop spots—the kind with red-checked tablecloths, free-flowing Chianti and servers who treat you and yours like long lost relatives. [ more › ]

This decade has been the one in which the American mainstream finally realized we have a profound economic inequality problem. It is only now becoming clear just how far we are from turning this around.

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Look, I know nothing about World of Warcraft, so don’t expect any clever commentary about the above clip that features Ronda Rousey talking about it. Much like Conan O’Brien, I have no idea what she’s talking about. But apparently she played the game with Vin Diesel while shooting one of the 800 Fast/Furious movies and can’t get enough of it in general. Apparently it’s another of her nerd tendencies.

She seems to really enjoy the anonymity of playing online against strangers who don’t know it’s Ronda Rousey on the other end of the connection. This news will probably lead to nerds across the globe using algorithms and data tracking to figure out when she’s playing, thus ruining the experience for her.

It’s probably pretty obvious when her and Diesel are playing together though. Just look for two elves driving a super-fast car through the woods with some sort of bad guy chasing them.

(Late Night With Conan O’Brien)

It’s only natural that after shooting up a pizza parlor because you believed it could be operating a child sex ring on behalf of Hillary Clinton and you just wanted the facts, you might come to regret some stuff. According to a New York Times article published on Wednesday, “Pizzagate” shooter Edgar Welch, apparently…

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A prime rib roast makes for a great celebratory meal, but they aren’t cheap. Here are a few tips to ensure you get the nicest cut for your money.

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Mom Calling To Ask If She Can Throw Away 3-Ring Binder From Middle School

RACINE, WI—Concerned that you might be upset if she were to get rid of it without permission, your mother reportedly called Wednesday to ask if she could throw away your three-ring binder from middle school. “Hi honey, I just wanted to check in and see if I can throw out this binder I found when I was cleaning out your closet, the one with the dark blue cover and your name written in marker on the back,” said your mom, describing the plastic organizer containing seventh-grade science and math notes that had sat unused in a cardboard box for over 15 years. “It has a lot of papers in it, so I figured you might still want it. Just let me know and I can send it to you.” At press time, despite having your consent to dispose of the binder, your mother said she’d just hold onto it so you could decide what to do with it next time you visit.

John Cena is hosting “Saturday Night Live” this week, and the pro wrestling world is on pins and needles about it. You better believe that Cena himself is fired up, too, as evidenced by the above promo for Saturday’s show. He’s not an idiot, though; he knows better than to pick a fight with Leslie Jones. He’s gotten up close and personal with her before, so he knows how physically intimidating she is and how things can go south in a hurry if you get on her bad side.

Big ups to SNL, by the way, for already having a custom “SNL” belt made for the occasion. At first, I thought that was a spinner belt, and I was about to get wrestling nerd-upset about the anachronism, but everything worked out in the end! Hooray!

But man, Cena is just such a badass, it makes us miss him in WWE even more. How amazing is that run into Studio 8H and that slide onto the stage? Very amazing. Maybe next year’s super-elaborate WrestleMania entrance can feature him being carried to the ring by former SNL cast members. God knows Chris Kattan could use the work.

If you were worried you wouldn’t be able to score your customary morning cup of coffee from Starbucks whilst traipsing around the world, worry not: The coffee giant unveiled plans to add 12,000 more stores globally by 2021.

Starbucks announced the global expansion efforts this morning as part of the five-year plan presented at the company’s investor conference

The expansion plan aims to nearly double the number of stores to 37,000 cafes over the next five years.

A majority of those new stores — about 5,000 — will be located in China, which already operates 2,500 cafes. The company says that it currently opens about one store a day in the country, adding that stores in China will one day eclipse those in the U.S.

Not all of the new locations will be regular old Starbucks cafes, the company said. Instead, it plans to open at least one of its new upscale Reserve Roastery stores in Shanghai next year.

Starbucks opened its first Reserve coffee and roasting room in Seattle in 2014, a place that CEO Howard Schultz has described as a “magical coffee ride,” where you can buy roasted limited-supply Reserve coffees that sell for up to $50 per eight-ounce bag.

In other plans to drive business, the company says it will focus more on its food offerings, introducing Sous Vide Egg Bites in January 2017, a Certified Gluten-Free Breakfast Sandwich in the spring; and additional Bistro boxes to add to its lunch lineup.

Additionally, the company says that it will soon unveil a new ordering system, dubbed My Starbucks Barista, that adds artificial intelligence to the company’s mobile order and pay app.

With the app customers will be able to place their orders via voice command or messages.

The My Starbucks Barista feature will roll out first on iOS in limited beta in early 2017 and be made available to more iOS and Android users later in the year.

“We are today executing against an ambitious, carefully-curated, multi-year strategy to further elevate the entire Starbucks brand and customer experience around the world, and further extending Starbucks leadership around all things coffee, retail and mobile,” current Starbucks President and COO Kevin Johnson, who will take over as CEO for Howard Schultz in April 2017, said in a statement.

This gag usually entails videos that aren’t sports, and come on genuinely slow news days. Well, this is absolutely sports, and no matter what sort of highlight-reel dunks or goals come tonight, this is better.

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This morning TIME Magazine named Donald Trump its “Person of the Year,” a designation that means nothing and does nothing and yet here we are, talking about it. The cover features Trump, with some but not all of his hairs slicked back, seated in a chair looking back at the camera. But there appear to be some secret…

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If you've always gotten an Egg McMuffin with a fresh-cracked round egg, you might be surprised to know that you could have also gotten it with scrambled eggs or egg whites. In fact, there are actually five different preparations of eggs at McDonald's and here's what you get with each:

- Round Egg - The default of the McMuffin, the round egg is just a egg cracked into an egg ring and cooked over the grill.

- Scrambled Egg - Available in McDonald's breakfast platters, liquid eggs (Eggs, Citric Acid) are cooked on the grill.

- Folded Egg - This is standard on McDonald's biscuit sandwiches and come to each restaurant pre-cooked and frozen. They're heated up when they're needed and contain a combination of the following: Eggs, Nonfat Milk, Modified Food Starch, Salt, Citric Acid, and Soy Lecithin.

- Egg Whites - The key feature of McDonald's Egg White Delight McMuffin, these are egg whites cooked on the grill.

- Sausage Burrito Eggs - The name's a bit self-explanatory: these are the eggs that come in the Sausage Burrito. Like the folded eggs, they're pre-cooked and frozen. The ingredients are a bit different as the scramble also includes sausage and vegetables. Here's the full list: Whole Eggs, Pork, Tomatoes, Skim Milk, Soybean Oil, Green Chilies, Onions, Modified Corn Starch, Spices, Salt, Water, Dextrose, Natural Flavors, Xanthan Gum, Citric Acid, Sugar, Rosemary Extract, Calcium Chloride, and Citric Acid.

While it's easy enough to get a a round egg or egg whites on your Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit with the availability of the All Day Breakfast menu, you might be able to finagle some sausage burrito mixture onto your hamburger at some McDonald's restaurants...

Photo via McDonald's.

For 45 minutes, police said, Edgar Maddison Welch, cradling an AR-15 assault-style rifle, roamed the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant looking to prove an Internet conspiracy theory that the popular Washington, D.C., restaurant harbored juvenile sex slaves.

The few patrons had fled before Welch...

Chris Suprun is a paramedic from Dallas, Texas. A Republican member of the Electoral College, he has previously voiced his support for PEOTUS and poorly dressed meatball Donald Trump. In the last month, however, Suprun has changed his mind.

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Remember the first time that The Rock hosted SNL, and we were all blown away by his versatility and crossover charm and appeal? That was all the way back in the Mummy 2/Scorpion King days. The dark ages. Now The Rock has hosted SNL four times and is the biggest damn movie star in the world. I’m not saying it was a result of his first hosting gig, but it sure didn’t hurt to knock the socks and/or pants off of America when helming the pop culture institution.

John Cena has been ratcheting up his assault on the entertainment business, and he’s about to take a Rock-sized step, to match his enormous johnson in Trainwreck. Next week, he’ll host SNL for the first time.

Weep, WWE fans, for we are likely in the last few years of Cena as primarily a pro wrestler. He’s done gigs similar to this in the past, like hosting the ESPYs and guesting on Maya & Marty, but it’s hard to argue this isn’t a gargantuan move for him (and a huge score for WWE).

During the Rock’s first hosting gig, when he was still very much a full-time WWE wrestler, he brought along Triple H and Big Show for cameos. Will Cena follow suit? Will Dean Ambrose pop up to get his weasel juice all over Studio 8H? We’ll have to tune in next week and find out.

The best thing about fall and winter is all the smells. Not the actual IRL smells, but the ones that brands dig up for their limited edition, made up things like ‘Tis the Season and Fresh Sparkling Snow. You can stock up on those scents and more with 3-wick candles from Bath & Body Works. Already marked down to $13,…

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Donald Trump is "thrilled" to nominate Ben Carson as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, his transition team said.

Taco Bell puts out yet another mash-up menu item with the release of the new Cheetos Quesadilla exclusively in the Philippines.

Available for a limited-time, the item features a fairly run-of-the-mill quesadilla (melted three-cheese blend in a flour, grilled flour tortilla) but with the addition of Crunchy Cheddar Jalapeno Cheetos for extra heat, flavor, and crunch.

Taco Bell is no stranger to stuffing Cheetos in their menu items. They introduced a Cheetos Crunchwrap Slider up in Canada back in April and tested a Cheetos Burrito in August here at home (which I got to sample at a media event). Still, putting Cheetos in a quesadilla puts it halfway to Grilled Stuft Nachos territory.

Fortunately for Cheetos fans, a Cheetos Quesadilla is pretty easy to make at home. You can also just bring along some Cheetos to Taco Bell, order a quesadilla, and stuff it yourself.

Photo via Taco Bell Philippines.

Long John Silver's latest deal is the $10 Chicken Family Pack for a limited time this winter.

The special includes eight pieces of chicken tenders, one large side, and eight hushpuppies for $10.

In case you're looking to feed more people, there's also the $15 Chicken Family Mega Pack, which consists of ten chicken tenders, two large sides, and ten hushpuppies for $15.

Both deals are available through January 29, 2017.

Photo via Long John Silver's.

All photos Michael Goldberg

A remote Old West town teeming with creepy, malfunctioning robots that stare at you with murderous eyes, where everything seems on the verge of going haywire while its enigmatic creator sits back waiting for the chaos to unfold.

Westworld?

No, but probably the closest thing to it you're gonna find in the real world, save for Tweetsie Railroad in Boone, North Carolina. This is the 1880 Cowboy Town in Buffalo Ridge, South Dakota: roadside Americana at its weirdest and most surreal.

One-part museum, one-part ghostly amusement park, one-part outsider art exposition, and about 27 parts Whaaaaat the fuuuuuuuuck this is so uncomfortable and awesome, it's a dilapidated simulacrum of a one-horse frontier outpost with the requisite saloon, wagon repair shop, post office and, why not, an opera house and Chinese laundry, too.

But what makes this place memorably disturbing and great and well worth the visit (that is, if you just happen to be passing through the area, as we were not long ago on our way to the Badlands) are the dusty, decaying animatronic townsfolk who are steadily coming unglued, quite literally.

Populating the filthy, cluttered innards of each of the crumbling buildings, these tattered automatons—the ones that are still moderately functional, anyhow—reenact various tableaus at the push of a button or when you trigger a hidden pressure plate on the floor when you walk in. Scenes range from a blacksmith hammering horseshoes to a macabre quintet singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" on a tiny stage covered with mothballs, or a Stetsoned, patchy bearded doctor dispassionately amputating a man's leg with a rusty saw while a wide-eyed, smiling mannequin teen watches the hilariously grotesque robot surgery with undisguised glee.

Scratchy ancient audio seemingly beamed in from another planet gives voice to many of the town's mechanized denizens, whose jaws and limbs look like they're going to break off as they move either glacially slow or all herky jerky like 19th-century tweakers.

The accompanying hand-scrawled or press-on-letters signage—which delves into such topics as the "prairie loneliness" of frontier wives or how the Chinese railroad workers of the era enjoyed blasting tunnels through mountains due to "their natural love of fireworks"—help fill in the blanks for the automatons who can no longer speak or move due to various circuitry snafus.

The whole freaky scene is the brainchild of one Dean Songstad, son of South Dakota and retired high school social studies teacher, who clearly didn't intend for the place to be any kind of a bizarro land when he bought a bunch of acres outside Sioux Falls in 1970. Along with his pal Bill Jorgenson and a few others, Songstad built the replica frontier and its animatronic inhabitants behind his gas station and opened 1880 Cowboy Town in 1972—a year before the original Westworld opened in movie theaters.

Songstad is 85 now, and not in the best of health. Most days, you can find him manning the till inside the gas station, which serves as a fireworks emporium and souvenir shop as well. If you're interested, he'll sell you buffalo meat from the modest herd kept on the property. Songstad's son, Brad, co-runs the joint, and butchers buffalo every Wednesday.

Songstad's perfectly polite, but he's not an eager conversationalist. And despite all visual evidence to the contrary, he doesn't think his 1880 Cowboy Town is particularly eerie, just a little run-down. He's fiercely proud of the place and the frontier history lessons he designed it to impart.

"Make sure you pay attention and read everything, you'll probably learn something," he intoned after we plunked down our eight bucks. Songstad pointed us to the screen door at the back of the gas station, beyond which a quarter-mile-long dirt path lined with wagon wheels and rusting farm equipment leads you to oddball land.

You'll pass real-life buffalo idling in the tall grass, waiting to be turned into delicious real-deal jerky. And then you're right smack in the middle of the run-down, screwy splendor.

Inside you'll find a robot Abraham Lincoln. Press the button, and he starts talking about the Dakota Territory, created under his watch. But truly all you're really thinking about is how fucking ghoulish this mechanized iteration of ol' Abe looks with his bulging eyes, terrifying teeth, peeling face, decrepit beard, and chewed-up stovepipe hat.

It's the silenced robots and dead-eyed mannequins that are perhaps the most unsettling, whether it's the bowed clergyman who sorta resembles Tall Man from Phantasm, the grinning gunslinger bellied up to the bar, or the unintentionally sinister little girl in the post office who is the stuff of enduring nightmares.

Many dwell in the shadows, looking like they're sizing you up. We visited at the height of tourist season and the place was deserted, no one to help us in the event of an android-cowboy uprising (which, when you're standing in the midst of 1880 Cowboy Town, seems like a totally real thing that could happen).

Songstad's friend Bill used to make an annual visit to repair the robots and tableaus as best he could, but he passed on about five years ago. "We don't have anyone now as steady or as good as Bill was," Songstad lamented. "So the ones that don't work anymore, I just take the push buttons out."

We rang Songstad up this week to see if Westworld had helped generate an uptick in interest for 1880 Cowboy Town. "What's that?" he responded, saying he hadn't heard of either the show or the movie, and that if any visitors have ever noted any similarities, they've never articulated them to him. "People come here from all over the world because they love the history of it," Songstad insisted. "Maybe Brad might know something about the show, but he's out working with the buffalo right now," he added.

In the end, Dean Songstad and his weird, remarkable creation are one and the same—hanging on defiantly against the ravages of time, and both indelible parts of the American landscape. You should stop by.

And though we didn't ask, no, you can't fuck the robots.

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Kellyanne Conway can't stop crying, Trump's big league illegal immigration problem, and Webster's requests more words. Your daily news brief!

Cheesy ramen and bacon hasselback potato is a major upgrade your college dorm room ramen. 📷: @thevulgarchef #forkyeah http://ift.tt/2h13Slj

THANK GOD she's back.

Continuing with the theme that paced his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump was anything but a traditional politician on Friday, holding a phone call with the President of Taiwan.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate said in an op-ed that the incentives offered to Carrier could inspire other to threaten to leave.

Like this, but the opposite. Photo of Legally Blonde from MGM

When I was 22, I moved to Chicago with $500, no job, and an English degree from a state school that impressed literally no one outside my extended family. After a few weeks of rejection emails from pretty much every job in the literary world, I decided paying rent was more important than impressing anyone back home. I got a job as a receptionist at a swanky salon in the Gold Coast, a neighborhood filled with million dollar brownstones, terrible nightclubs, and warring factions of high-class escorts.

My interview for the position was more like a casting call. I was required to include a headshot along with my résumé, and the hiring manager's first order of business was to compare my picture to my actual, in-person face. She asked me a few throwaway questions about my nonexistent experience as a receptionist, then deemed me pretty enough to start the following week. She made it clear that the girls at the front desk were walking advertisements for the salon. Our hair was to be perfectly done every day, our makeup, immaculate. If we showed up wearing something frumpy, we had to either go home and change, or buy something new to wear with our generous, $9 an hour salary.

I'll be the first to admit that working in this environment turned me into a narcissistic bitch. I was on the spectrum before, but it's hard not to become completely obsessed with your appearance when it's the only thing anyone talks about. On my first day, three separate people told me I would look a lot better if I dyed my eyebrows, and they were right. Turns out I looked great with dark eyebrows, balayaged hair, perfectly placed winged eyeliner, and the full spectrum of Aveda lipstick at my disposal. I wish I was kidding when I say I used to spend literal hours staring at myself in the mirror both during and after work. I was a fucking monster.

Luckily, my new raging ego was torn down on a daily basis. I'd waitressed during college, so I thought I knew what it was like to be treated like a piece of human garbage on the job. But the drunk patrons at my old Minneapolis sports bar had nothing on the entitled, wealthy housewives who frequented the salon. I rarely got through a full day without being called a stupid bitch for something that wasn't my fault. One rainy day, a woman in a fur coat remarked that the weather made her "melancholy." When I agreed, she rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, honey, don't pretend you know what that word means."

Every day featured some such indignity. The $10 blow dry charge the salon tacked on to hair services always set off the crazies. Guests were fine paying $200-plus for a haircut, but God forbid they pay a cent more to get it styled. I can't count how many times women carrying Birkin bags that cost more than my college education screamed at me over a miniscule $10 charge.

The salon was located in a part of the Gold Coast that locals call the 'Viagra Triangle.'

We also had a cash-only tipping policy, which resulted in fewer tips for the stylists who depended on tips to live. One repeat customer would get $400 in services every two weeks. After she checked out, she would claim she needed to run to the ATM across the street to get cash for a tip. Every damn time she'd leave the salon and—within full view of everyone at the front desk—slip into a cab.

The only thing rich people seemed to hate more than spending a cent more than necessary was having to wait. One day, I called a woman to tell her the appointment before hers was taking longer than expected, and asked her to come in at 4:20 instead of 4 PM. She informed me the 20 minute wait was unacceptable. She would come in for her scheduled time, and not a second later.

She showed up in a huff at 3:15, 45 minutes early for her original appointment. I'd told her my name on the phone, and when I politely repeated that, yes, she would still have to wait, she began yelling my name at the top of her lungs: "Well, CAROLINE, I don't know who was dumb enough to hire you, but you won't have a job in THIS TOWN for long. MY TIME IS VERY VALUABLE. I TOLD YOU ON THE PHONE."

The salon was located in a part of the Gold Coast that locals call the "Viagra Triangle" for its abundance of wealthy old men and the fake-breasted women they pay to accompany them to nightly dinners and, presumably, freaky hotel butt stuff. These women frequented our salon, treating themselves to full-body scrubs, replacing their long blond extensions, and buying thousands of dollars of product in cash. The highest rollers were in their mid to late 40s and botoxed to oblivion. They weren't all upfront about how they'd come into money to the girls at the front desk, but they gabbed with abandon to their stylists, who'd tell us all the dirt—the $12,000 weekends in Cabo, the million dollar apartments paid for by their longtime sugar daddies.

You had to be a little crazy to work in a place where every customer was a walking time bomb. One sweet baby angel, fresh off the bus from Nebraska, quit three hours into her first day when a disgruntled guest called her a dumb cunt over the phone. Nice girls dropped like flies in that place. Working there gave me a thick skin, but it also made me mean. I wasn't a saint before, but after just a few short weeks of having daily shit dumped on me by the filthy rich, I developed a flippant "fuck 'em before they fuck you" attitude. Combined with the full tilt narcissism the job all but required, and I had become a real treat to be around.

I was an asshole—working in an environment that was equal parts shallow and hostile facilitated it. If you treat someone like a piece of shit who's only valued for their looks, they're eventually going to start acting like one. I now go out of my way to treat every customer service professional like they've just given me my long-overdue Hogwarts acceptance letter. I'm a goddamn ray of sunshine.

I learned some basic life skills at that job: how to apply lipstick, how to calm down a menopausal psycho who's threatening to stab your co-worker with a pair of $100 tweezers, how to be cool while helping B-list celebrities find the perfect dry shampoo. But the most important lesson I learned from my year as a punching bag for rich housewives was simple: Don't be a fucking dick. No one owes you anything, least of all the girl ringing up your $800 skincare products. She probably drank a day-old cup of coffee for breakfast because she was too broke to buy a new one. She doesn't need your shit.

Follow Caroline Thompson on Twitter.

Dinner Party Conducting Full-Scale Investigation To Determine If Tip Was Included

SAN DIEGO—Carefully examining the bill for any fragment of conclusive evidence, a local dinner party at Mitch’s Seafood restaurant conducted a full-scale investigation Tuesday night to determine if the tip was included in the check. “It feels like it’s already part of the total, right?” said principal investigator Victor Rodriguez, attempting to decipher the cryptic item codes at the bottom of the receipt before passing the document around to several of his fellow detectives for further review, one of whom ran a rough quantitative analysis by adding up the cost of all the items in his head and comparing that to the amount they were charged. “Did anyone see anything about the gratuity policy on the menu? Don’t they always add it when there’s more than six people? Or does it have to be eight?” After successfully closing the case, the team then conducted another thorough probe minutes later to determine why, after everyone had pitched in money to cover the bill, they were still several dollars short.

Of all the DIY home-cured foods, gravlax is one of the most satisfying.

The process doesn’t take long – or much of your attention – and it’s so pretty!

Give fresh salmon a sprinkle of salt, sugar, and herbs and a few days in the fridge, and it will transform into a beautiful, flavorful dish ready for the brunch table.

Continue reading "How to Make Salmon Gravlax" »