IKEA Monkey

Detroit Lions wide receiver Ryan Broyles signed a contract in 2012 that was worth $3.6 million over four years, with $1.42 million of that being guaranteed money. If he was like most people who came into that much money overnight, Broyles would have burned through a good chunk of that splurging on some of life’s finer things, but Broyles is not like most people.

In a profile for ESPN, Broyles revealed that he and his wife Mary Beth live on an annual budget of just $60,000 per year “give or take.” The rest of Broyles’ money has been used in investments and savings. He and his wife drive Mazdas (he drives a rented Ford Focus during training camp), and the couple recently bought their first home in Texas for them and their son Sebastian.

Broyles hasn’t just taken smart financial advise himself; he has been pushing for his fellow players, as well as the next generation to do the same, via ESPN:

Broyles immersed himself in the financial world. In March, he went to Washington, D.C., with New Orleans running back Mark Ingram to speak to students about financial planning. Broyles worked with VISA and the NFL on promoting a Financial Football video game in classrooms to help teach financial security and planning in both D.C. and his home state of Oklahoma.

“I studied as much as I could,” Broyles said. “Talked to people wealthier than me, smarter than me. So that definitely helps.”

Broyles isn’t a guarantee to make the Lions roster this year, but if he doesn’t, his smart financial planning will make it so that he and his family will be set for some time even when his career ends.

Sixteen percent of NFL players go bankrupt, which is a number the league needs to take steps to reduce, and players like Broyles are an excellent example of putting your money to good use.

(Via: ESPN)

Louisiana woman Monica Butler Johnson, 45, was beaten to death on Sunday night, hours after hosting a graduation party for her teenage son. Her ex-husband, David Johnson, has been charged with the crime, which police say comes after months of escalating abuse. The sheriff of Ascension Parish, where Johnson lived, suggested in an interview that her death could’ve been avoided if she’d had a concealed handgun license. He also suggested that women should kill their abusers if necessary: “Drop him.”

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For every oooh and ahhh we reflexively burp up over Western bridal designs, the intricate and colorful wedding style of South Asia puts our stuff to shame. To wit: India Bridal Fashion Week just wrapped up, and the gowns, saris, and lehenga cholis sent down the runway in New Delhi were a hundred times more delightful than anything you’d see in New York or Paris.

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As if you needed more proof that dolphins are cool: they enjoy surfing.

Tags: dolphins   sports   surfing   video

Judge Richard Berman held a hearing in New York Federal Court today for Tom Brady’s civil case against Roger Goodell and the NFL, and Berman did his best to move the process along as both sides’ legal teams took shots at each other, but the best part of the whole event was the courtroom sketch of Brady, in which he looks like a sullen Uruk-hai.

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This Man Has Been Trying to Live Life as a Goat

The beating death of a Pomeranian named Fox may have been eclipsed by the hand-written note left behind: "We beat it 2 death lol HAHAHA!"

Pat and Joe Prosey, the owners of the largest Cabbage Patch Kids collection in the world, have decided to sell their dolls. They are asking for $360,000 for the whole thing.

I met Pat and Joe earlier this year when I went to their house in Maryland to film them for a VICE documentary about how Xavier Roberts, the "creator" of Cabbage Patch Kids, stole the idea for the dolls from an independent artist.

The Proseys' collection, which is housed in a private, custom-built museum they call Magic Crystal Valley, is made up of about 3,000 pieces of Cabbage Patch Kids memorabilia, as well as around 5,000 Cabbage Patch Kids dolls (though the couple refuses to call them "dolls," opting instead to call them "kids," and spelling out the "the D-Word" whenever they need to use it in their presence—like when people say "W-A-L-K" around a dog).

The cheapest of the dolls the Proseys bought was $10.99. The most expensive was $8,000. By Pat's estimate, the collection is worth substantially more than their asking price, somewhere around $900,000.

This picture shows less than half of Pat and Joe's collection.

Pat and Joe's obsession with Cabbage Patch Kids has been such a priority for them that, despite owning a 6,000 square-foot building and almost $1 million worth of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls and merchandise, they do not own a house. The couple live in a trailer attached to their museum.

Their collection has made them (sort of) globally famous. In addition to the documentary they did with VICE, Pat and Joe have been featured on TLC's My Crazy Obsession, Anderson Cooper's talk show, and VH1's Totally Obsessed, amongst others.

Pat and Joe with their "Kids."

I called Pat late last week to ask her about the sale. When she answered the phone, she sounded deflated—a far cry from the upbeat Cabbage Patch lunatic I'd filmed a few months previously. She told me that she and her husband didn't want to sell their collection, but felt they had to so they could move to California to be closer to their grandchildren. "It was a very tough decision to make," she said. "Other things in life take a higher precedence now, I guess."

Because property costs are substantially higher in California than in Maryland, the Proseys were unable to find a place there with enough room to house their collection, unless they were willing to box the dolls up and put them into storage. Which, Pat said, was something she would "not be a big fan of."

In addition to the difficulty she and Joe will have letting go of their collection, Pat said that the greater community of Cabbage Patch Kids fans will also mourn the closing of their museum. "I've gotten quite a few emails, there's people who haven't come to the museum that are regretting not coming, and more people that have been here and wanna come again, they just..." Pat trailed off. "It's not gonna be the same anymore without the Proseys' museum."

A Cabbage Patch Kid for the Confederacy, one of the more than 5,000 dolls included in the Proseys' collection.

While filming the Proseys, it became clear that they were not as insane as they appeared on television. Before traveling to Maryland for the documentary, the couple told me over the phone that they would be willing to act however we'd like them to for the piece. In previous media appearances, they explained, they'd done things to seem crazier for the cameras, at the insistence of producers—like the time they appeared on a television show pretending to have raised a Cabbage Patch Kid named Kevin as though he were an actual child (something they assured me was not actually true).

Read: This Guy's Trying to Collect Every Single Copy of the Movie 'Speed' on VHS

I got the impression that the Proseys were willing to play up their craziness because it gave them control over it. By pretending to be weirder than they are, they were able to get in on the joke. Which is not to say they're not crazy. They're definitely spend-$1 million-on-dolls crazy. Just not raise-a-doll-as-though-it's-a-real-child crazy.

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Related: Watch our documentary about how Cabbage Patch Kids founder Xavier Roberts stole the idea for his doll:

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The reality of Pat and Joe is much more boring. They're just a normal couple who are really into their hobby. Like many people with an extreme obsession, whether it's sports, or celebrities, or games, the Proseys' obsession with Cabbage Patch Kids seemed to be more about the friendships and experiences they've had as a result of their collection, rather than the actual objects themselves.

"We have met so many nice people," Pat told me. "We have met and kept them as friends over the years that we still talk to. We just came back from West Virginia and spent a weekend with some Cabbage Patch friends of ours."

Pat and Joe with Cabbage Patch Kids "creator" Xavier Roberts (left) and a Klingon Cabbage Patch Kid (right)

The decision to ditch their collection is perhaps made slightly easier by the fact that, in recent years, the Proseys have become disillusioned with Original Appalachian Artworks, the company that makes Cabbage Patch Kids.

The cracks in their love for the company and its products first started to appear in 2012, when the Proseys ran out of room for their collection, and decided against building an extension to their museum (which they'd already extended a few years earlier). Worried that they wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of buying more "kids," Pat and Joe decided against going to the annual collector's meetup that Original Appalachian Artworks holds in Georgia. It was the first time in 20 years that they hadn't attended the meet-up. It was also the first year they hadn't paid their annual dues for membership to the Cabbage Patch Kids Collectors Club.

Because she and Joe had been such a huge part of the Cabbage Patch Kids scene, Pat said she expected to hear from someone at Original Appalachian Artworks asking about their absence. That, she said, didn't happen. "When we stopped going to conventions and didn't pay our dues, no one in that organization acknowledged that we weren't even a part of Cabbage Patch. No phone call, no email, no nothing. It was like we didn't exist."

Read: This Kid Rented Out a Theater and Recreated an Entire Lady Gaga Concert

Pat felt that, because she wasn't giving Original Appalachian Artworks any more money, the company no longer cared about her. People at the company who she had previously been in regular contact with completely cut off all contact, she told me. "I think they care more about the bottom dollar than they do the collector."

Pat said that, to this day, she hasn't heard from anyone at Original Appalachian Artworks—a silence she finds especially bothersome, given how much free publicity she and Joe have given the company on TV and in print over the years.

"That was 30 years of our life just about," she said.

She also felt that the company's founder, Xavier Roberts, had stopped giving the collectors the respect they deserve. "When I first started going to the conventions down in Georgia, Xavier would be there for every convention, but now he's not part of the convention anymore," she said. "I don't think he showed up at all this year or last year. I could be wrong, but, y'know, it's a one time event they have down in Georgia and you would think he would wanna be there with his collectors at least one day out of the year... that's kinda disheartening."

The Proseys with their collection of unwanted Cabbage Patch Kids dolls.

It's hard to imagine who would buy the Proseys' collection. I asked Pat if she would be willing to come down on the price if it meant keeping the dolls together, and she told me that's the exact reason the collection is listed at such a reduced price already. "We didn't get into this to make money," she said. "We're trying to price it at a price where somebody might be able to take it and do what we did."

"I'm trying to get someone to take the collection and open up a museum sort of like we did. It's the most iconic toy of the 80s, I mean, so..." she added, before trailing off.

The Cabbage Patch Kids fans who do still exist seem to be slowly disappearing. While filming with the Proseys, I spent some time in a trailer on their property that they've packed with hundreds of other Cabbage Patch Kids (which you can see in the photo above) that had been given to them either by collectors who had been forced to get rid of their dolls when moving into nursing homes, or by the surviving partners of collectors who had died. It was, without question, the saddest trailer in the state of Maryland.

Young people aren't exactly flocking to become collectors, either. Though Original Appalachian Artworks still produces Cabbage Patch Kids products, the dolls haven't managed to capture the hearts of children in the way they did during the 80s and 90s. As I write this, the official Cabbage Patch Kids Twitter account has 1,897 followers.

Over the years, Pat and Joe have hosted a lot of events for Cabbage Patch collectors at the museum. But Pat said she doesn't think she has it in her to host a farewell event. "I'm not sure I'm up to that," she told me. "I know it sounds silly, but I've put so much into this collection, and it's so hard to let it go."

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

Weather map gets a rise out of commenters | NJ.com: Looks like the east coast is due for a...

Hyperallergic noted a suspicious similarity between an almost-complete sculpture (which made the Chinese news rounds today) in the city of Karamay and Chicago’s 2006 sculpture by Anish Kapoor — The Bean (fine, officially titled Cloud Gate.)

The new sculpture, they note, does not have an artist’s name attached to it, so there’s just as much of a (highly unlikely) possibility that Kapoor (secretly) made it as anyone else on the planet. The key factor differentiating the two works: the Kapoor is bean shaped, and the whoever’s-this-is bears the title “Big Oil Bubble,” suggesting, indeed, that it’s big-oil-bubble shaped. It also has a flashier underbelly, adorned with LED lights, and some mini-but-still-by-oil-bubble-standards-large droplets beneath it.

There is a reason for such a big oil bubble as this oil bubble to grace Karamay — the city in which it’s been erected gets its name from the word for “black oil” in the Uyghur language; the sculpture was constructed atop the historical site of the city’s first well.

Obviously, you can determine for yourself whether the seeming knockoff is bubble, bean or something in between:

Head over to Hyperallergic for all of the details. 

Keith Wilson didn’t make the Miami Heat’s final squad, but he did leave everything out on the court in his audition soundtracked by Beyoncé. The 28-year-old dance teacher has attended tryouts since 2012, and though he hasn’t made the cut yet, he’s happy that the Heat gives him the opportunity. Now, watch Keith dance the hell out of everyone else:

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Heavily-armed members of a controversial patriot group added an extra dose of unease to protests in Ferguson.

LEXINGTON, MA—Impatiently scanning store shelves while tersely repeating requests for an inventory of clothing and other items that would be taken along, local mother Susan Vernon, 51, channeled her escalating fears regarding her daughter leaving for college later this month into a fight about storage bins, sources reported Saturday.

The argument, which first flared up 10 minutes earlier in the lamps and lighting section of a local Target retail location before beginning in earnest in the home storage containers and organizers aisle, reportedly served as a convenient proxy for the elder Vernon’s growing anxieties about her daughter, Molly, 18, leaving home in just two short weeks to attend the University of Vermont.

“Molly, we need to figure this out right now,” said a visibly agitated Vernon, who, unable to reconcile the memory of holding her beautiful newborn daughter in her arms for the first time with the fact ...

We’re suckers for a good dance sequence. But in compiling this list, we tried to avoid straight-up movie musicals and dance films (your West Side Stories, your Step Ups, your Center Stages), because honestly, that’s a list in and of itself. Instead, with help from Perrier (who is currently making our Lunch Breaks extraordinary, so they know a thing or two about dance breaks), we’ve rounded up our favorite dance scenes in cinema — in no particular order, it should be noted — from some perhaps less expected titles. Enjoy! And if you’re in NYC, LA, Chicago, or Miami and get inspired by this list, RSVP to join us at our next Lunch Break. There’s just one more in each city this summer.

15. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Kicking things off with a classic. Not gonna lie, once we saw this scene, parades were kind of ruined for us.

14. Little Miss Sunshine

Ladies and gentlemen, Abigail Breslin. Killin’ it.

13. Reservoir Dogs

You thought we’d go with Pulp Fiction for our Tarantino entry, didn’t you? Too many ears in that one.

12. This Is The End

Because we almost got up and danced too when we saw this in theaters.

11. Beetlejuice

Barely edging out Beetlejuice‘s “Shake Señora” scene, mostly for superior use of props.

10. A Knight’s Tale

Bowie goes medieval.

9. The Breakfast Club

Proving that dance truly is the great uniter: the Jock, the Princess, the Criminal, the Basket Case, and the Brain can all get down.

8. Silver Linings Playbook

I think the word you’re looking for is “endearing.”

7. Boogie Nights

We’ll take Mark Wahlberg over John Travolta for ’70s steez any day.

6. House Party

We’ve been chasing Kid n Play’s moves at graduation parties and weddings ever since.

5. 500 Days of Summer

Nothing quite captures that “new love” feeling like a choreographed group dance number.

4. Moulin Rouge

OK so this is skirting the “no musicals” rule, but if a scene gives you chills upon *every* viewing, it’s a worthy exception.

3. Drop Dead Gorgeous

Bonus points for Denise Richards’ dancing partner on this one.

2. The Artist

When is a silent movie not a silent movie? When they keep the taps in.

1. Do The Right Thing

Leave it to a Fly Girl to come out at #1. Rosie Perez, you’re our hero.

It’s hard enough for some people to keep plants alive and thriving on the face of the Earth, but a team of astronauts on the International Space Station have green enough thumbs that they’ve managed to cultivate plants in space. Today, they’ll get to eat the fruits of their labors, chowing down on the first-ever lettuce grown in space.

Fresh food is rare in space, and there isn’t a lot of room for refrigeration. Most fresh things get consumed immediately upon arrival in orbit. But space missions are getting longer, especially if we ever want to move a colony to Mars, so researchers have focused on how to grow greens in space for those long hauls.

The red romaine lettuce called “Outredgeous” was planted, grown and now harvested in space, Business Insider reports, as part of a NASA experiment called Veg-01. Scientists have been working on an effective way to grow plants in orbit, using a technology dubbed “Veggie” that combines the efforts of NASA and an aerospace research company called Orbital Technologies Corporation.

There are all kinds of factors that don’t exist on land: No gravity means water and soil won’t stay put, and roots tend to grow in weird directions. Not to mention a lack of rain or sunshine inside a metallic space station.

The plant growth system cultivated by astronauts thrives in zero gravity, in something akin to a tiny greenhouse. The Veggie system uses plant “pillows” as a bed for roots with a water reservoir below. Its lightweight structure made from special fabrics is filled with soil, fertilizer and seeds. Red and blue LEDs provide the colors of light that plants use for photosynthesis.

The set of Veg-01 pillows used for this batch were set in motion on July 8 and have grown for 33 days. Astronauts will get to eat the lettuce today, as part of a six-hour live-stream event on NASA TV that began just before 10 a.m. EDT on Monday, that also includes the Russian crew performing a spacewalk.

Anticipation was already running high last night, and puns were on point:

Here’s more info on the science behind space lettuce:

Uh-oh! Looks like the love of your life Robin Thicke is once again off the market! According to Life & Style, he has proposed to his 20-year-old girlfriend April Love Geary and she has accepted his offer of marriage! How terribly heartbreaking for you!

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You may remember our post about a month ago of a home on the market that captured an era so perfectly that it just stunned the Internet. We were in love with “the ’80s house,” as we called it around the office. Now anyone can own a piece of what makes the house so stunning, because tomorrow and Saturday, the owners are having an estate sale.

Don’t worry: the couple who lived there are fine. Holding an estate sale doesn’t mean that you’re dead. People also use estate sale companies when downsizing and getting rid of most of their stuff: our source tells us that’s what is happening here. The owners are moving to a smaller home that will also be impeccably decorated. We assume.

This style of furniture and art is actually called “Memphis Style,” as opposed to “1989 mall food court,” “early ’90s teen sitcom set,” or “where Amy Schumer’s ’80s Ladies (auto-play video at that link) live.” If you live in the area and/or are especially dedicated to this style, here’s where you can find the sale. The company running the sale also has a site, in case you don’t want to take our word for it.

12 Contessa Court, Williamsville, NY 14221
Friday, August 7 and Saturday, August 8, 9 AM to 4 PM

The estate sale site shows off some details that either weren’t shown or that you may not have noticed in the original real estate listing photos, like this stained-glass window and this cat sculpture.

A One Of A Kind Sale! [Sales by George]

PREVIOUSLY: This Glorious ’80s Time Capsule House Is Real, In Living Primary Colors

Meet Jeff Dabe, a champion arm wrestler with 19-inch forearms. Dabe competes in the World Arm Wrestling League, traveling the country and manhandling competitors with his Popeye arms and ridiculously large hands.

Seriously, some of these photos look straight out of a cartoon.

This one is a side-by-side of Dabe and Andre the Giant, a man who suffered from gigantism and acromegaly.

Surprisingly, Dabe is completely normal. He doesn’t suffer from elephantiasis or the aforementioned acromegaly. He simply has very large limbs. But things haven’t been so easy for him in the arm-wrestling department. In 1986, he suffered an injury to his dominant hand that prevented him from competing. Twenty-six years later, he decided to start using the other one. And he’s doing quite well.

Here’s a compilation video of him beating the crap out of people.

All in all, Dabe seems to be enjoying life.

“Thanks to the World Arm Wrestling League, I am now competing with people from all over America.”

“It’s so fun to travel to places we wouldn’t normally go.”

“I was always good at arm wrestling, but the size of my hands did shock people at first. I had the strength to back it up.”

“People freak out when they see my hands in real life.”

But why would they freak out Jeff? It’s not like, OH MY GOD HE’S THE HULK.

(Via Daily Mail)

Ralphie is such a little love bug! We love watching him scamper and play through the yard. We're so glad to have him in our lives and can't imagine our home without him now.

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

Cry-Baby #1: Judy Lorraine Syrek

Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: Some people were, allegedly, allowing their dog to shit on their neighbor's lawn.

The appropriate response: Yelling at them.

The actual response: The neighbor allegedly committed a hate crime against the dog owners.

According to a statement she later gave to police police, 56-year-old Judy Lorraine Syrek of Grand Rapids, Michigan (pictured above), has been having a problem with her neighbors allowing their dogs to poop in her front yard.

Last Monday, this apparently became too much for Judy, and she confronted the neighbors. Obviously, confronting her neighbors was the right thing to do, as allowing your dog to shit in someone else's yard is super unacceptable.

However, according to police, Judy reacted a little strongly. She reportedly pointed a pellet gun at her neighbors and threatened to shoot them with it, before "letting loose with a stream of racial epithets." It is unclear whether or not the neighbors were aware the gun was only a pellet gun.

"She was upset over the neighbor's dog and feces in their yard," said Terry Dixon of Grand Rapids Police to the local ABC affiliate. "Apparently those neighbors were not addressing that particular problem. She got upset and felt the need to bring out a long gun and then point it at several subjects."

Police arrested Judy and charged her with felonious assault and ethnic intimidation, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Cry-Baby #2: An officer from the Rohnert Park Police Department

The incident: A man filmed a cop.

The appropriate response: Nothing. Comes with the job.

The actual response: The cop pulled a gun on the guy filming.

Earlier this week, Don McComas, a resident of Rohnert Park, California, uploaded a video to his Facebook page showing a run-in he'd had with an officer from the Rohnert Park Police Department.

The video starts with the officer driving towards Don as Don films from his driveway. After sitting in his car and filming Don through the window, the officer exits the vehicle and asks Don to take his hand out of his pocket. Don refuses, saying he has done nothing wrong.

The officer then takes out his gun and begins to approach Don, who backs away, telling the officer repeatedly to go away.

When Don asks why the officer got out of his vehicle, he responds, "You're taking a picture of me, I'm taking a picture of you."

The exchange lasts several minutes. During the conversation, the officer confirms that he does not suspect Don of a crime. At one point, the officer asks, "Are you some kind of a constitutionalist crazy guy or something like that?"

The video ends with Don telling the officer he is going to put the video on YouTube. "Go ahead and have a nice day, put it on YouTube, I don't really care," the officer says. He then gets back in his vehicle and drives away.

According to the Los Angeles Times,Los Angeles Times, the police department has launched an internal investigation into the incident.

"We've been made aware of this matter, and we are taking it seriously," Rohnert Park mayor Amy Ahanotu and city manager Darrin Jenkins said in a statement to the paper. "We understand the concerns that have been raised by our community and others and we want the public to know that your trust in law enforcement in our city is a top priority."

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know just here, please:

Previously: A guy who called the cops because his girlfriend fed his bacon to a cat vs. a Starbucks manager who banned a guy for sticking up for drivers with disabilities.

Winner: The Starbucks manager!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

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The Wiccan community is outraged by a police assertion that a triple homicide in Pensacola, Florida, was a "Wiccan ritual killing."

Bear with me folks, as I’m currently writing to you through a liquid veil of salty tears: sometimes, when countries aren’t getting along, they impose trade sanctions on each other like import or export bans on certain foods. Which is sad for people in those countries who can’t get their favorite grub. But it’s also sad when tons of premium cheese gets bulldozed and/or incinerated, the victim of trade spats between Russia and Western nations.

In an incident dubbed “fromagicide” by Russian news source RT (video autoplays at that link), Russia is destroying tons of illegally-imported food that came from Western countries, reports NPR News.

It’s been a year since the country banned agricultural products from the West, a response to economic sanctions the U.S. and its European allies placed on Russia due to its efforts to influence neighboring Ukraine.

Along with Parmesan and Dutch cheese, fruits, vegetables, Spanish ham and other food has reportedly been run over by steamrollers and thrown into incinerators today, after President Vladimir Putin ordered all “contraband” foods to be destroyed. Though those products were banned, many were relabeled and smuggled into the country, NPR notes.

It’s not a popular move with many in Russia, with an online petition calling for the food to be given to the poor.

Watch the video below, if you can stand the thought of tons of fine cheese being bulldozed and buried in a landfill, never to please anyone’s palate with their smooth creaminess or fill a welcoming stomach with delight. Let’s just all hug our cheese a little closer tonight.

We Will Bury You: Russia Bulldozes Tons Of European Cheese, Other Banned Food [NPR]

Donald Trump defended past disparaging remarks about women during Thursday's GOP debate, saying he doesn't have time for "total political correctness" and that oftentimes he's just kidding.