IKEA Monkey

Last night's Northern Lights show delivered on its promise—if you were in the upper Midwest. [ more › ]

On Wednesday, international hunk and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau announced his new cabinet—which, for the first time in the country’s history, is half female.

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Houston police are looking for a man who raped a 12-year-old girl in a CVS bathroom on October 16. While conveying that information to the media, a detective on the case said the victim “was not necessarily all that unwilling.” That rumbling you hear is a shitstorm brewing.

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Sleater-Kinney’s, Portlandia‘s, Transparent‘s and now the institution of marriage’s Carrie Brownstein made the news yesterday for more than just her current book tour for her memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. While at a stop along said tour in Pasadena, California, one audience member asked Carrie Brownstein to marry her and her moments-later-wife.

Conveniently, the particular space in which Brownstein was doing her Q&A surrounding her memoir was the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, and more crucially, Brownstein does happen to be an ordained minister. (She’d gotten credentialed so she could marry her friends.) The woman who’d made the request allegedly knew that Brownstein was officially qualified, and had prepared by bringing a marriage license so that it could all go down on the spot, which it did. Amy Poehler also happened to be present, as Brownstein’s guest mediator for the Q&A.

A source told US Weekly, “Amy was visibly excited and shocked, and turned to Carrie [and said] ‘You gotta do it!’ The crowd cheered and applauded wildly.”

Poehler supposedly proceeded, after the Q&A, to pluck flowers from arrangements in the church while Brownstein prepared an impromptu (but according to the same source, “sincere, thoughtful, and impressive”) speech. The two women — Kendall Oshiro and Genevieve Hernandez — hopped onstage with Brownstein, and Poehler sat down at a piano and announced that she only knew how to play “Greensleeves.” It all lasted for around 10 minutes, by the end of which a couple had been joined by the coolest minister/wedding pianist ever.

Here’s a clip of the ceremony:

As more Syrian refugees try to reach Europe, worsening weather is making their sea-crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands more perilous. There have been numerous reports of capsized boats, and the toll of drowned refugees, including children, is rising. The following is the diary of a volunteer on Lesvos.

Wednesday, October 29, 2015, Lesvos, Greece:

5:00 PM:
Like so many things here in Lesvos, it starts with a WhatsApp message, "FIRST BOAT HAS 10 unconscious children." So I run to the harbor, armed with nothing but a desire to help, a handful of emergency blankets, and a dim memory of CPR training undertaken over a year ago. Rushing down the hill, I see an ambulance, sirens blaring. We have had flimsy, overcrowded dinghies stuffed with refugees arriving in the harbor before, but this time, the increasingly alarmed messages on my phone tell me that something is more badly wrong than normal.

I arrive to see people everywhere, faces pale and drawn. Scrambling to unwrap blankets with my fellow volunteers, I'm informed that one of the wooden refugee boats sent by Turkish people smugglers has sunk, leaving an estimated 300 people in the sea. Ten children are in a critical condition and have been taken to Mytilini hospital, over 65 kilometers away. We prepare makeshift beds out of rescue blankets on the cold stones of the harbor.

Then the coastguard comes in. They take the children off the boats first. There are so many. Nothing prepares you for being confronted with the sight of an unconscious child. No breath—just foam-covered blue lips. I am handed a girl. She looks Syrian, around seven years old. I pull her clothes off and wrap her in an emergency blanket. Where is the doctor? They are all busy with other children. I tilt her head to try to check her airway, but her jaw is clamped shut from the cold. I hold her face and say "habibti." No response. I start chest compressions. The nearest medic is doing to the same to a little boy, whom I later learn is her brother. I check for her breath again. Nothing. So I turn her around onto her front and try to knock the seawater out of her. Still nothing. More chest compressions, more foam at her mouth, still no breathing. I turn her again and strike her from behind once more. This time, she vomits, but her breath is weak and ragged. Finally, a doctor comes. It's been barely a minute, but it felt like hours. My body floods with relief as he takes over. She and her brother will survive.

6:00 PM:
The coastguard brings more people. We desperately need oxygen as there are children teetering on the brink of life and death. We are lucky. The Frontex team are in the harbor and they have O2 to spare. The next few hours are a blur of emergency blankets, car runs for dry clothes, food distribution. And howls of grief from mothers of missing babies, men who can't find their wives. Many bodies are still floating in the darkness.

9:00 PM:
Several of us volunteers look after children who have lost their parents. Some of them we might find, some definitely not. The smallest ones don't understand, but the teenagers understand all too well. I don't know what to say them. I just distract them and keep them warm. We order them chips. We try to hide our tears from them.

10:00 PM:
The village of Molyvos opens the church and a restaurant so that traumatized people have shelter. We have 118 people in the harbor and 124 of the rescued refugees are transported to us from the neighboring village of Petra. But there is not enough space for everyone. Some people may have to sleep outside. I see mothers and fathers reunited with their children. Relief is tainted with the despair of those who are still searching for loved ones.

A refugees child is comforted by a volunteer on Lesvos. Photo via Oscar Webb

2:00 AM:
I meet a woman from Iraq and her husband. She is is 35 weeks pregnant. She was in the water for hours, along with her two sons, aged eight and three. I tell them "Yalla, you are staying at my house tonight." I take them home and put them to bed. They are asleep within minutes but I can't catch a wink.

8:00 AM:
The woman tells me she can feel her baby kicking. Then the family share their story. They paid $3,000 each for their voyage, more than double the normal price, as they were told this was the safest kind of vessel. The same journey would cost me about ten euros. The smuggler captain left the ship after ten minutes, going back to Turkey on a little boat. The ship began to creak and nails began springing out from the timbers. Then it fell apart. The husband and wife managed to find a life-ring and kept their children close. They told their boys, "Today is not the day we are going to die." While the woman was swimming, she felt the limbs of drowned people brushing against her belly. One of her sons was scared of sharks. She told him that Jaws didn't live here and when they got to dry land she would buy him the roller-skates he always wanted.

Related: Watch VICE News' documentary 'Death Boats to Greece: Europe or Die'

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10:00 AM:
I take the Iraqi family to the harbor to wait for their bus. There's an Afghan girl there and she is screaming. She has lost her whole family. She speaks no English. She will not get up from the floor. Grief consumes her. She is undone.

12:00 PM:
I have a coffee. I reflect. I am surrounded by broken people—volunteers and refugees alike. But we have to keep going. While big aid agencies are doing their best, it's the volunteers across Europe who keep this refugee crisis from collapsing into the biggest humanitarian disaster since the Second World War. But we are very, very tired. My organization, Starfish, was started by one woman, Melinda McRostie. One year later we have over 30 volunteers, run a transit camp, and we work alongside the UN, the IRC, the Red Cross, and many others. But we need more help. We need more money, medical staff, volunteers, and translators. And we need more compassion so that men, women, and children stop dying on the water.

I say goodbye to my Iraqi family as they leave for registration in Mytilini. We will meet again. They give me their prayer beads to keep me safe from harm. I can't help but feel they need them more than I do.

Kim Davis arguably has a lot of contempt: for gay people, for the legal system, for the Second Amendment (that’s a long sleeves joke) but she doesn’t want it on her record.

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People love steak. We love steak so much that people who want to eat steak but can’t afford it will steal, it, and do so by stuffing it down their pants. Why pants? Why steak? We can answer the second half of that question, at least.

People are stealing all of the beef they can fit down their pants lately, but why? The problem, explains CBS New York, (warning: auto-play video at that link) is that a drought in the midwest means cattle feed is more expensive, which in turn raises beef prices. Higher beef prices mean that the meat is less affordable and more steal-able.

There’s also more demand for beef: one owner of a meat shop pointed out that the popularity of low-carb diets means that people buy more meat, and greater demand drives prices even higher.

Over the weekend, there was yet another meat-down-pants incident, this time in Indiana. Employees at a Marsh grocery store called police on a shopper. Police found $80 worth of steak down his pants, and arrested him for theft. His ability to at least believe that he could conceal $80 worth of meat down his pants shows how high beef prices have risen.

Police: Man tries to hide steak theft by stuffing $80 in meat down pants [WTTV]
Sirloin Swipers: High Beef Costs Lead To More Meat Thefts, Experts Say [CBS New York] (Warning: auto-play video)

The Northern Lights are expected to perform tonight, and a large swath of the Northern U.S. that includes most of the Midwest should be able to catch the show. [ more › ]

Dear White People Of A Certain Age, we have some bad news. You’re dying more rapidly than every other age, racial, and ethnic group. In fact, while death rates in America are otherwise declining, researchers have detected a rise in middle-aged white American deaths.

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It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Scott Griffin

Screencap via YouTube

The incident: A man tripped while running away from a guy with a fake chainsaw at a haunted house.

The appropriate response: Not running away. Everyone knows the actors aren't allowed to touch you.

The actual response: He sued.

Way back in 2011, a man named Scott Griffin went to the Haunted Trail, which is an outdoor haunted house-type attraction in a park in San Diego.

As is standard at these type of things, actors jump out at patrons as they walk through. As Griffin was exiting the attraction, an actor with a fake chainsaw jumped out, spooking him. When Scott attempted to run away from the actor he fell andinjured his wrist.

Griffin took legal action against Haunted Hotel Inc., the company that runs the Haunted Trail, suing them for negligence and assault. This lawsuit was, thankfully, dismissed by California's Superior Court.

This didn't stop Griffin, though, who appealed the decision.

Last Friday, the lawsuit was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, who concluded that Griffin should have probably expected to get scared when he was paying money to be scared by professional scarers at a scary attraction. "The risk that a patron will be frightened, run, and fall is inherent in the fundamental nature of a haunted house attraction like The Haunted Trail," the court said, according to a report in the San Diego Reader. "Being chased within the physical confines of The Haunted Trail by a chainsaw-carrying maniac is a fundamental part and inherent risk of this amusement. Griffin voluntarily paid money to experience it."

Cry-Baby #2: Chris White

Screencap via ABC

The incident: A man who is scared of spiders arrived at work to discover plastic spiders had been put up around his office.

The appropriate response: Laughing.

The actual response: He took out a gun and threatened to shoot the fake spiders.

Earlier this month, assistant prosecutor Chris White arrived at his job at an office opposite the courthouse in Logan, West Virginia, to find that the office's secretaries had decorated for Halloween. The decorations included several plastic spiders like the ones pictured above.

Chris, who reportedly has arachnophobia, allegedly "became irate" when he saw the decorations. Speaking to WCHS, Chris's boss, John Bennett, said that Chris told the secretaries that "it wasn't funny" and that he "couldn't stand them."

Chris then allegedly took out a gun and threatened to shoot the fake spiders. "It had no clip in it, of course they wouldn't know that, I wouldn't either if I looked at it, to tell you the truth," Bennett said.

"Quite naturally, the ladies were concerned, as I would have been. Anybody would be, I would think, with a gun no matter where it was," he added.

As of Wednesday of this week, Chris has been suspended indefinitely. He was at the company for five years. "I never saw it coming, that's for sure," Bennett said. "Obviously, I wouldn't have even hired him if I had seen it coming."

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this little poll down here:

Previously: A mom who freaked out over Halloween decorations vs. some parents who freaked out because their children were taught about ISIS in school.

Winner: The ISIS parents!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

Kaylyn Pryor was the winner of Mario Tricoci's 2015 "Mario, Make Me a Model" competition.

From WCYY Radio in Portland, Maine comes what is purportedly “A Bad Encounter With Funny Man David Sedaris.” But is it?

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Some Blue Line train service has been suspended by the CTA Tuesday morning after a man was struck by a train near the Clark/Lake Station at 7:50 a.m. [ more › ]

President Barack Obama tore into Republican presidential candidates Monday night at a Democratic fundraising event in New York, saying their complaints about CNBC's debate moderation aren't an encouraging preview for their governing abilities.

In an odd twist, Pizza Hut Japan offers pork sausage attached to a bone as a side dish.

It's like they took the meat off the bone, ground it up and seasoned it, and then put it back on the bone (i.e. they deboned and then re-boned the meat). It seems like a lot of work.

When I first saw the picture, I thought it was some sort of weird brown banana for a second. From the description, it seems like the idea is for the bone to serve as a handle to eat the sausage the same way you'd eat a rib.

I don't know when these first appeared on the Pizza Hut Japan menu but they don't appear to be new.

When you hear "Italian movies," you probably think of Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, maybe Roberto Benigni, maybe Cinema Paradiso ... and Bicycle Thieves (a.k.a. The Bicycle Thief; see below). Directed by Vittorio De Sica and shot mostly on the rubble-strewn streets of postwar Rome, Ladri di biciclette has been a revered classic of world cinema for more than 65 years, far eclipsing the fame of its own director. Get your bike out of hock and join us as we discuss some behind-the-scenes details about this poignant Italian drama.

1. IT WENT BY THE WRONG TITLE FOR 60 YEARS.

In Italian, it's Ladri di biciclette—Bicycle Thieves. (The nouns are plural. Singular would be “Ladro di bicicletta.”) But for some reason, when it was first exported to America, it was translated as The Bicycle Thief—singular, and with "the" added. Nobody knows why, either, but that's what it was called in the subtitled prints, in advertisements, and in virtually every review and news article about it in this country. (It was correctly titled Bicycle Thieves in the U.K.) It wasn't until Criterion released its definitive edition in 2007 that the American title was corrected. Since then, it has gradually come to be better known as Bicycle Thieves, and The Bicycle Thief is fading away. If you've seen the film, you understand how important the seemingly minor alteration is.

2. MOST OF THE CAST WERE NON-PROFESSIONAL ACTORS.

Bicycle Thieves was part of what came to be called Italian Neorealism, a post-war movement where the glossy, polished studio productions of the past were replaced by gritty, authentic depictions of Italian life. Part of the aesthetic was to use non-actors, or at least actors who were very good at being natural. Director Vittorio De Sica wrote, "The man in the street, particularly if he is directed by someone who is himself an actor, is raw material that can be molded at will ... It is difficult—perhaps impossible—for a fully trained actor to forget his profession. It is far easier to teach it, to hand on just the little that is needed, just what will suffice for the purpose at hand." 

3. THE LEADING MAN WAS A FACTORY WORKER WHO DIDN'T WANT TO BE AN ACTOR.

In April 1948, when De Sica was casting about for non-professionals to be in his film, a woman from Rome named Giuseppina Maggiorani heard a radio announcement calling for a nine-year-old boy. She took a photograph of her son, Enrico, to De Sica's office. The director didn't want the boy, but he was struck by the face of someone else in the photo: Enrico's father, Lamberto, a 38-year-old machinist. Giuseppina persuaded her husband to meet with De Sica, and he was hired for a salary of $1000 (the equivalent of about $10,000 today). Lamberto Maggiorani got great reviews for his naturalistic performance in the film, but things went downhill for him afterward. He returned to his factory job but was soon let go. Business had slowed down, and though Maggiorani had been there for 16 years (minus three months off to make the movie), his co-workers and boss jealously assumed he was a millionaire now and could afford to be fired. At his wife's urging, he returned to the movie business and acted in about a dozen more films, but he never found either the fame or the fortune that the star of one of Italy's greatest movies deserved. 

4. THE KID WHO PLAYS YOUNG BRUNO GOT THE PART BY JUST HANGING AROUND.

De Sica had to start shooting before he'd found someone to play Bruno, the main character's son. As fate would have it, the right person showed up randomly. While filming the scene where Antonio looks for a friend to help him search for his bike, De Sica saw "an odd-looking child with a round face, a big funny nose, and wonderful lively eyes" in the crowd of spectators. His name was Enzo Staiola, he was eight years old, and he was hired on the spot. He acted in a few more films later before becoming a math teacher as an adult.

5. IT WAS BASED ON A BOOK, BUT WAS DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT FROM IT.

Luigi Bartolini's 1946 novel was about a man searching for his stolen bicycle. That's just about where the similarities end. Bartolini's guy wasn't a poor working-class man but an artist who hates the poor. What's more, he has another bike to ride around on while looking for the stolen one! 

6. DESPITE THE DO-IT-YOURSELF FEEL, THE FILM WAS NOT IMPROVISED OR UNPLANNED (OR CHEAP).

The Neorealist movies often looked spontaneous, almost documentary-like, and some were indeed very loose productions where the directors came up with their stories as they went along. But Bicycle Thieves was actually methodically scripted and had to be carefully planned, especially when it came to the crowd scenes. (There's fake rain in one scene, too—not the sort of thing you can add on a whim.) The total production cost was about $133,000, similar to what films in the U.S. and U.K. typically cost at that time. The fact that it feels like it was made on the fly for no money is a testament to De Sica's skill as a director, and to his non-actors' ability to be natural in front of the cameras.

7. FOR A WHILE, IT WAS CONSIDERED THE GREATEST FILM OF ALL TIME.

Every 10 years, the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine conducts an international poll of directors, critics, and other film professionals to compile a list of the greatest movies of all time. It's considered one of the most prestigious (and, yes, elitist) lists in the industry. The first list, in 1952, had Bicycle Thieves at the top of it, followed by Charlie Chaplin's City Lights and The Gold Rush. Bicycle Thieves fell to seventh place in the 1962 poll, and subsequently disappeared from it altogether. But for a decade, it was the cream of the crop. (To answer an obvious question: nope, Citizen Kane wasn't on that first list at all.) 

8. HOLLYWOOD'S CENSORSHIP BOARD WOULDN'T APPROVE IT.

Before the MPAA rating system, there was the Production Code, a set of rules that Hollywood studios semi-voluntarily (but grudgingly) followed. The Code seems silly now—it mandated that even married couples could not be shown sharing a bed, for example—and seemed only slightly less ridiculous at the time. Bicycle Thieves couldn't get approved without making two cuts: a shot of a little boy peeing in the street, and a (sexless) scene set in a brothel. None of the major studios would distribute a movie without the Code's Seal of Approval, so three independent theater chains released it instead. The result? People saw the movie, and almost nobody was offended. The power of the Production Code was weakened. 

9. IT COULD HAVE BEEN A HOLLYWOOD PRODUCTION STARRING CARY GRANT.

When De Sica (who was already an established filmmaker) was looking for financial backing for Bicycle Thieves, he got an unusual offer. David O. Selznick, producer of Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, and Spellbound, offered to finance Bicycle Thieves ... if De Sica would cast Cary Grant in the lead. De Sica later recalled his reaction: "Grant is pleasant, cordial, but he is too worldly, bourgeois; his hands have no blisters on them. He carries himself like a gentleman. I needed a man who eats like a worker, is moved like a worker, who can bring himself to cry, who bats his wife around and expresses his love for her by slamming her on the shoulders, the buttocks, the head. Cary Grant isn’t used to doing such things and he can’t do them."

10. IT WAS POPULAR PRETTY MUCH EVERYWHERE EXCEPT ITALY.

Italian audiences weren't too keen on these drab Neorealist films that depicted post-war Italy as a shattered country with high unemployment and rampant poverty. (Not that the depiction was inaccurate, they just didn't like to see it.) De Sica's previous film, Shoeshine, had been shunned at home while being lauded abroad, and that was to be Bicycle Thieves' fate as well. 

11. IT HAD A PROFOUND IMPACT ON THE CINEMA OF ... INDIA. 

In 1950, a young Indian man named Satyajit Ray spent three months in London at the headquarters of the ad agency he worked for. While he was there, he saw almost 100 movies, one of which was Bicycle Thieves. He said later (and he repeated it many times) that he came out of Bicycle Thieves determined to become a filmmaker. Which he did: his widely acclaimed Apu Trilogy—Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and Apur Sansar (1959)—is a milestone in Indian cinema, and was hugely influential internationally. Directors as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Danny Boyle, Akira Kurosawa, and Elia Kazan have cited The Apu Trilogy as an influence on their own work, which means some of the credit ultimately goes to Bicycle Thieves. 

Additional sources:
Bicycle Thieves, by Robert Gordon
7 Masterpieces of 1940s Cinema, by Inga Karetnikova
Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach, by Christopher Waggstaff
Soundings on Cinema: Speaking to Film and Film Artists, by Bert Cardullo

According to a survey published by the Huffington Post, around 26% of people said the color of a cat was important to them when considering adoption. While the saying about a black cat crossing your path being bad luck seems like pure superstition to most people, 13% of Americans are genuinely terrified by it. It certainly isn’t a myth that black shelter cats struggle to find permanent homes, but photographer Casey Elise is doing her part to help these misunderstood kitties find loving owners.

Screenshot from 'Hocus Pocus'

Read: Witches of Seattle Tell Us About the Appeal of Magic

I was never allowed to trick-or-treat as a kid, so I mostly spent Halloween watching spooky movies by myself. My favorite was Hocus Pocus, the tale of three executed Salem witches (played by Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and a pre-Sex and the City Sarah Jessica Parker) who are brought back to life 300 years later, after an anxious-to-impress virgin lights the magical Black Flame Candle.

When it was released in theaters in 1993, the film was widely considered to be both a commercial and critical flop. But 22 years later,Hocus Pocus has solidified itself as a cult classic. And now, there are rumors of a sequel.

Hocus Pocus producer David Kirschner said in an interview with Yahoo! this week that he was definitely on board for a sequel and had even pitched the idea to Disney a couple of years ago. The studio wasn't down for his idea of a theatrical release (boo), but Kirschner said there was still a possibility of Hocus Pocus 2 as a Disney Channel Original Movie.

Leah Remini has been openly critical of the religion she spent over 30 years practicing, Scientology, since her 2013 departure from the church . On tonight’s episode of 20/20, she appeared to share more behind-the-scenes details and promote her upcoming book, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology.

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I said stop it.

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This is all a liiiiiiiiiiittle too scary.

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“My name is Minga!”

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Kids are evil. You’d think free candy on Halloween would be enough, but no—these middle schoolers show us that there is no limit to what they’ll do for a little extra candy.

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There’s something really awesome about seeing people react in real time to brush strokes on canvas. It’s like every single thing Bob Ross does, no matter how gentle and delicate, is as big as a major play in the World Series.

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The higher education community is aghast today at news that no one expected to hear: a dumb idiot in an unlikely position of power has proposed a stupid regressive anti-intellectual idea—in Florida.

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Yesterday, the New York Times’ Ben Widdicombe wrote about a vilified archetype of NYC nightlife: the Party Crasher. These are wily revelers who show up uninvited to the kind of high-brow parties that are usually thrown by rich wannabe celebs and big, bougie brands. The story gives examples of some of a particular downtown scene’s most well-known crashers, and it can get pretty embarrassing. There’s mention of the person who showed up at a party before organizers even started setting up, the guy who got so aggressive that a publicist had to take out a restraining order him, and a list of examples of typical faux-pas that gatekeepers have learned to spot, and tolerate.

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It’s called the baby penalty: Working women with children tend to earn less than similar women who don’t have children. For some groups, however, having a baby is actually a bonus, with some moms earning more than their counterparts.

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If you’ve been on the internet this week, you’ve probably seen some fresh headlines about the new Suicide Squad movie. That’s because Empire magazine has an exclusive spread of photos in its latest issue, and that means it’s time for everyone to get hyped about Harley Quinn’s eye makeup and whatnot.

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