IKEA MonkeyERIN LOOK AT THIS
In April, Pakistan was host to two separate fashion weeks: one in Karachi at the beginning of the month, and another in Lahore held by the Pakistan Fashion Design Council, which just ended this week. If your idea of fashion perfection is centered purely on craft and textiles for luxuriating, I invite you to look at what some designers showed at these two events, and let the gorgeousness explode like little fireworks in the back of your eyeballs. Because this shit is GOOD.
IKEA Monkey"This is for a fight nearly six years too late and between boxers out of their prime and aging for a sport barely more relevant than the WNBA."
ouch
USA TODAY Sports
Sixty Seconds.
That’s all the time that was needed today to sell out of tickets for the biggest boxing match since Tyson-Holyfield II in 1997. Fans who waited nearly six years flooded Ticketmaster the moment the tickets went public and bought every one available for Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather on May 2nd.
All of them.
Disappointed fans yearning for a ticket will have to make do with the resale market and that will prove to be an expensive endeavor.
Per CNBC:
“The average asking resale price on the May 2nd bout between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao stood just short of $11,000 on Thursday…The mean price is $500 higher than this year’s Super Bowl and trumps any boxing match in the last five years.”
It’s beating the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl:
“The most expensive seat- a fifth row ringside view-was priced at $77,500. The “get in” or cheapest ticket to attend the event hit nearly $4,500 on Thursday.”
As you can see here on Stubhub, wow.
Stubhub
From the moment the two boxers signed on the dotted line many expected the fight to break every boxing box office record and every live gate record in the sport’s history. Estimates of $250 million to $400 million have been thrown around for the total gross for the fight. And if Thursday is any indication the fight is well on its way to being the highest grossing match of them all.
This is for a fight nearly six years too late and between boxers out of their prime and aging for a sport barely more relevant than the WNBA.
As Don King would say: “Only in America.”
IKEA Monkey"Ultimately, Little Boy throws out any ambiguity, any traces of doubt, with its absurdly happy ending. Thinking that Dad died in the POW camp, the family holds a funeral service, bawling their eyes out for several minutes, and our hero learns a valuable lesson about theology—namely that, as Tom Wilkinson’s character puts it earlier on, God won’t always save you from tragedy, but he will provide the strength to get you through it. Except, never mind, Dad isn’t actually dead; they confused a different body for his. All of Little Boy’s prayers are answered. He believed hard enough and his dad came home. The end. Gag me."
I am kind of in love with how bad this movie sounds
Thoughts on, and a place to discuss, the plot details we can’t reveal in our review.
Yes, the title of Little Boy has two meanings. It refers not just to the main character, a shrimpy grade-school moppet picked on by his faster-growing peers, but also to the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me that this tacky faith-based entertainment was going to incorporate that horrific event into its plot. But sure enough, Little Boy prays and prays in the direction of Japan, and—in a scene I’m still having trouble processing—walks through town the next morning an unwitting hero, as strangers wave a newspaper in his face and celebrate the miracle he caused. It’s truly ghoulish.
Am I being unfair to the movie? Part of what Little Boy is after is a vision ...
IKEA MonkeyTravolta, you look RIDICULOUS
As Ray Cutter, the title character in The Forger, John Travolta speaks with a sleepy mumble that makes it hard to hear what he’s saying a lot of the time. The movie is set in Boston, but Travolta doesn’t seem to be attempting a Boston accent; it’s more as if he’s trying to minimize his own distinctive palooka cadence. Or maybe it’s just age catching up with him, in a way that can’t be disguised as readily as some others. (That’s quite an impressive head of hair for a 61-year-old.) In any case, the modification has sapped him of his movie-star charisma, and there’s precious little left in its place. Nicolas Cage at least manages to bring the occasional jolt of electricity to disposable genre tripe like this. Travolta is practically comatose.
Granted, he’s playing a ridiculous character from which any ...
IKEA MonkeyThis is amazing
Meet Tamah Jada Clark, a “Floridian-American” sovereign citizen who brought a whole new meaning to “swearing before the court” when she recently filed an obscenity-filled court document titled “Notice: To F*ck This Court and Everything that it Stands For” after a judge dismissed a lawsuit that she’d filed. Clark had claimed that her civil rights were violated five years ago when she was arrested in a failed attempt to break her boyfriend out of prison.
Read more on Sovereign Citizen Lady Is Citizen … OF OUR HEARTS!…
New videos of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's SUV (singular, not a full motorcade) running two red lights, one of the SUV driving into oncoming traffic, have surfaced. [ more › ]
IKEA Monkey"I am, instead, afraid of the things I should be afraid of—the fact that there will be no Social Security when I'm old. The idea of living in a studio apartment, oppressed by student loan debt, for the rest of my life. The rise of the police state."
This articulates a lot of how I feel about things. Yet while I am personally not that afraid to walk around my neighborhood, at night or otherwise, I still worry about everyone *else* doing the same.
[body_image width='2048' height='1139' path='images/content-images/2015/04/08/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/08/' filename='i-was-assaulted-on-the-street-but-i-still-walk-home-alone-at-night-408-body-image-1428519885.jpg' id='44278']
Photo by Flickr user Anders Eriksson
I was jumped once, in a lily-white neighborhood in Washington State. It wasn't even particularly late, and it was on a well-traveled boulevard. I had my headphones on, and I didn't notice the man until he was right on top of me. I escaped thanks to luck, and thanks to his confused, probably drug-addled condition.
More than a decade later, I remain unafraid to walk alone. Nothing like that incident has happened again. I used to reside in a "dangerous" neighborhood, where I was constantly told I was foolhardy for traversing through it solo after darkness fell. But traverse through it I did, both sober as a judge and drunk as a skunk. I'd wander home at two, three, four in the morning, fumbling to fit my key in the lock when I eventually reached my destination. Time and time again, nothing would happen. I'd enter my apartment, shut the door, and pass out unscathed.
Were I to have cowered in my apartment during that period instead of indulging in walking and observing, one of the few joys I have in life, I would have let that creep on the bridge hold one over on me; I would have let him win. Fuck him. I win
I spend a lot of time alone. I'm used to it. In the past, it was less of a choice (I was an unpopular only child raised in an orchard on the edge of town), but now my isolation is deliberate. I have friends, am an in-demand conversationalist, and could choose to socialize any night of the week. However, I'd rather wander by my lonesome, up lightless hills and down shadowy streets listening to my carefully cultivated collection of Jon Brion bootlegs. Socializing does not make me feel safe. Isolation does.
I walk alone at night. I do so most nights of the week. Whenever I relay this information to another party, they are usually aghast. I'm a broad, they delicately remind me. I've been attacked before. Shouldn't I be scared?
It is impossible for a woman to ever truly be safe, even if she were to lock herself up and throw away the key.
Being a woman means being told, from infancy, to fear the unknown. Meanwhile, the known is far more fearsome. More stepfathers have molested their de facto daughters than strangers have jumped out of bushes and deflowered the innocent. This is a statistical fact.
We are nevertheless told to fear the phantom hands and dicks of strangers because it's easier than explaining that, more often than not, the most insidious characters lie right under our noses. How do you explain to a girl child that, when her father's friend Jim makes her sit on his lap, he might have ulterior motives she's too young to understand? It's far simpler to make her fear a man she's never met, a man who's never plied her with candy while telling her she'll make a "beautiful woman" when she grows up.
"Be safe," people invariably tell me whenever I leave a place on foot around midnight. At best, the words sound like a challenge; at worst, a threat. Regardless of their intent, they are meaningless. It is impossible for a woman to ever truly be safe, even if she were to lock herself up and throw away the key. Windows can be broken, locks jimmied. I could be lying on my couch, minding my own beeswax while wearing a burqa, but if a man with a hard-on and a grudge against the fairer sex deems it necessary to violate my personal space, he will do so, and there is nothing I could do to stop him. I'm five foot two and slight, with no upper body strength to speak of. I don't own a gun, I don't own mace. I'm easily incapacitated. So what, then, is the point of "being safe"? Or, for that matter, living in fear?
I've been raped, sure, but by someone I loved, not a stranger in the night. When it comes to physical conflict, I'm passive-aggressive. I just lie there and get hit. I've been hit in public, I've been hit in private. In both environments, no one batted an eyelash at my being battered. This is, for the time being anyhow, the world we live in. I cannot change it, so what's the use in being afraid of it? By allowing myself to live in fear, I'm depriving myself of the ability to live, period.
I am, instead, afraid of the things I should be afraid of—the fact that there will be no Social Security when I'm old. The idea of living in a studio apartment, oppressed by student-loan debt, for the rest of my life. The rise of the police state. Dying before I get laid again. These are still fears, sure, but fears I can carry with me outside of my apartment, fears I can allow to sit in the back of my mind when I'm out doing whatever I can to avoid their presence. I don't wallow in them. Yes, they're fears, but I'm not scared of them.
So now, even though it's around midnight, I'm taking a walk around a dirt track near my apartment while listening to Olivia Newton John's "Xanadu," my safe song. I'll look over my shoulder periodically, surveying the territory, but what (and who) is behind me won't matter. The things that do aren't tangible. I consider this fact more a comfort than a terror.
Follow Megan Koester on Twitter.
Have a seat—and let Chris Hansen fill you in on what went on behind the scenes of 'To Catch a Predator.'
IKEA MonkeyThe steak doesn't really feel like steak. It feels more like tender bits of beef jerky but with more moisture.
IKEA MonkeyIt looks like a geoduck
IKEA MonkeyI guess we saved the whales
IKEA MonkeyWowwww
The signature image in Little Boy, a colossal miscalculation in audience uplift, is of the title character stretching out his arms, scrunching up his face, and groaning with intense concentration. Small for his age, hence the nickname, 7-year-old Pepper Flint Busbee (Jakob Salvati) performs this ritual several times throughout the film, always when attempting to move an object with the sheer power of his belief. More often than not, it actually works: Onstage, during a magic show, he appears to slide a glass bottle across a table, Jedi-style. Later, in a far grander display of his apparent gifts, he wows a crowd of skeptics by seemingly creating an earthquake while trying to nudge a mountain. What Pepper really wants, though, is to bring his father back from the war. And so he stands on a dock and points his hands in the direction of the Pacific Ocean, defying the setting ...
IKEA Monkey"Overall, Taco Bell's Spicy Ranch Crispy Chicken Griller was pretty good, especially if you like eating chicken strips without the mess or on-the-go."
IKEA MonkeyMy brother was a dramatic re-enactor. He did one 10 minute segment when he was 10 or 11 and got residual checks for a few years after. It was cheesy but it was awesome.
There’s a proliferation of true crime shows currently on cable. TruTV, Investigation Discovery, and a multitude of other channels have programming that highlights a real criminal case or mystery. Often times, in addition to interviewing the people involved, these shows also incorporate dramatic reenactments of the case. These can range from the crime itself being re-done for the camera to the act of solving it being dramatically interpreted for the screen, to make it more interesting for the viewers. But who are these people who have to play the scumbag boyfriend or the intrepid detective hot on the trail of his suspect?
Hopes & Fears tasked an actor who has appeared in multiple true crime shows with writing about his experiences, from how the reenactments are cast to what it’s like to film the scenes. It’s a great piece that’s full of insight into a very ...
IKEA MonkeySo rad
Look, it’s the most rare thing: pure human wonder, expressed by adults, in a respectable setting. Via BoingBoing, here is a video capturing the reaction of a handful of scientists on board the Exploration Vessel Nautilus, whose remote operation vehicle has descended to nearly 2,000 feet under the sea near the coast of Louisiana, and has very suddenly encountered a magnificent whale. They are stunned. “In-credible,” they keep saying. “Wow. Just wow.”
IKEA MonkeySORCERY
I'd never heard of freeline skates before...they're like little skateboards, one for each foot. This video shows how they're used for tricks and such:
That looks hard, much more difficult than skateboarding or inline skates. But maybe not, once you get the hang of it? Can't beat the portability though...they'd slip right into a small bag when you're not using them. (via @matiasfrndz)
Tags: sports videoIKEA MonkeyMe and my dad's Great Dane Bubba and his new Rhodesian Ridgeback Freja. Not picture is Nelly, the pitt mix just chilling right behind me because she loves me and is my BFF when I got back to my dad's house
Who wants to go for a ride?
IKEA MonkeyMy #1 karaoke jam
In We’re No. 1, The A.V. Club examines a song that went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts to get to the heart of what it means to be popular in pop music, and how that has changed over the years. In this installment, we cover Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop,” which spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Rap Songs chart in late 1993.
Salt-N-Pepa’s status as hip-hop trailblazers was already cemented by 1993, when the group was gearing up to release its fourth studio album, Very Necessary, which contained the Billboard Top 5 hit “Shoop.” The group’s members were safe-sex and AIDS-awareness advocates, fashion icons, and fierce role models within a traditionally male-dominated genre. However, the trio—Cheryl “Salt” James, Sandra “Pepa” Denton and Deidra “DJ Spinderella” Roper—were at a personal and professional turning point. Each had become a mother since ...
IKEA MonkeyOur lake is beautiful
The last bit of ice has finally disappeared from Lake Michigan, revealing, to those in the air, what lies beneath the crystal clear waves: Shipwrecks. Lots of shipwrecks. On a patrol last Friday, a crew from the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Traverse City in Michigan snapped some gorgeous photos of just a few of the wrecks along the shoreline, then posted them to Facebook.
Unpredictable weather on Lake Michigan has sent many a ship to a watery grave. The vessels the Traverse City-based Coast Guard photographed are located in an area called the Manitou Passage Underwater Preserve, which, according to Michigan Live, has numerous wrecks from the 19th century—which, these days, are popular diving destinations. There are two sunken ships in this photo, neither of which the Coast Guard has identified.
According to MichiganPreserves.org, "During the heyday of Michigan lumbering, this was a booming shipping area. It is also an area where ships have sought safety by attempting to ride out storms in the lee of the Islands. These activities have produced a substantial inventory of known and unknown shipwrecks." This wreck has yet to be identified.
This wreckage belongs to the Rising Sun, a 133-foot-long wooden steamer that was owned by a religious group called the House of David, and, according to the Daily Mail, was "returning from High Island, where [the group members] spend the summer, when it crashed in a sudden snowstorm." The vessel was stranded north of Pyramid Point on October 29, 1917, and the passengers and crew escaped in lifeboats and were rescued the next morning; the Rising Sun was torn apart by waves and weather (you can see the vessel before it sank here).
This is the wreckage of the James McBride, a 121-foot-long brig that was launched on April 1, 1848. That same year, the ship made a historic trip. According to the Traverse City Coast Guard, "the McBride sailed to the Atlantic Ocean to pick up a cargo of salt at Turk Island. On her return she stopped at Nova Scotia and added codfish to her manifest. She delivered her cargo to Chicago on December 4, 1848. This trip created a sensation because it was believed to be the first cargo carried direct from the Atlantic to a Lake Michigan port."
But the ship was not destined to have a long life: In mid-October 1857, the ship sailed for the Manitou Islands, where it picked up wood cargo before heading back to Chicago. But on October 19, the McBride was caught in a gale and ran aground near Sleeping Bear Dune. The boat was uninsured and in poor condition, so the crew abandoned it—which owner John Stafford was apparently fine with, "saying the vessel had returned more in profits than his investment of $4000." The wreckage now sits in 15 feet of water.
[h/t Yahoo!]
IKEA Monkeyhow do people not know
You would think that people would learn by now, right? But apparently, the answer is a resounding “No.” Despite the fact that time and time again, dressing in blackface has proven to be one of dumbest things you can do, people still go ahead and test everyone’s nerves by doing it. This brings us to Australian Fox News host Briony Ingerson and her bright decision to dress up in blackface on Instagram to support her colleague who was competing on the jungle-set reality show I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, as captured by her friend and former colleague Ahmed Yussuf. She captioned the photo:
In honour of our bestie @belindamorters running “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” we have gathered across the country to celebrate the first episode We Love You Linda!! Xx #africa #hopethiswashesoff #jungle #ferns @carapelc @penelopekcross
Hope it washes off, everyone! Before her Twitter was very wisely changed to private, the Sydney Morning Herald reported the host tweeted the hashtag #notracistatall. See, that cleans everything up! After the media caught wind of the post, it was quickly removed and Ingerson released a statement:
“I’m deeply upset that my Instagram post offended people in the community,” she said. “That was not my intent; it was a very poor error in judgement and I now understand how inappropriate it was.
“The post has been removed and I offer my sincere apologies to those that were hurt by it.”
If there’s any advice that we at Uproxx can offer, just listen to our very own The Cajun Boy on the question of dressing up in blackface:
“No.
Just no.
NO!
The answer to the question, “Should I go out in blackface?” is always a resounding NOOOOOOOOO! Just don’t do it. It’s a terrible, terrible idea.
Well said.
(Via The Sydney Morning Herald)
IKEA MonkeyJEALOUS
The Time 100 always represents a strange confluence of agendas: celebrities big-upping their pals, actors trying to look smart and politically aware by shouting out activists, politicians trying to look cool by reminding us that they know actors, serious writers condensing the threat of despots into a pithy paragraph.
But we can forgive the annual feature for its odd juxtapositions because it also generally provides us with at least one pure gift of a subject/blurber pairing. This year, the greatest of those gifts is Tilda Swinton’s paean to her friend Amy Schumer, who she calls “an honesty bomb.”
“When you wished the funny ones were also kind, when you wondered why none of the clever ones had real guts, when you wanted sexy to look like something properly glamorous and more interesting than an action figure, it was Amy you were dreaming up,” Swinton writes. “She’s the one who misses nothing: who buys no bullsh-t, fitted with a radar as keen as a rabbiting spaniel.”
Swinton’s celebration of Schumer comes just months after Schumer praised Swinton to the unholy heavens at the Gotham Independent Film Awards, telling the crowd,
She’s the greatest friend you will ever have. She is the coolest. Hanging out with her makes me furious at everyone else I’ve ever met that they are not her. There’s no way to describe what it’s like to spend time with Tilda Swinton, other than, like, saying it’s life changing and heart stopping. And right now, you’re like, OK, relax Schumer, she’s not going to fuck you. But, like, Fuck you. She is that awesome. That someone can be that present and selfless, and still someone that you’d want to drink Scotch with till you black out, that is a real lady.
No reasonable human being could resist a touch of jealousy at the love between Amy and Tilda. So here’s hoping there’s at least a Swinton appearance on the upcoming season of Inside Amy Schumer in it for us.
IKEA MonkeyCool
Dynamic husband and wife creative duo Adam and Shawn-Marie Ravazzano aren’t your average wedding photographers. The couple specializes in underwater portraits, which we first discovered on Fubiz. Elegant and ethereal, the pictures take place in the depths of Maui’s crystal blue waters, where bride and groom take the plunge. The Ravazzanos got married in the pouring rain, as their bio details, so they’re used to celebrating love in an aqueous wedding setting. See how bride and groom become merpeople for a day in our gallery.
Photo credit: Adam and Shawn-Marie Ravazzano
IKEA Monkeylol good luck
According to the Washington Post, Russia has taken a brief respite from usurping the Ukrainian government to focus its attention on another adversary: images distributed online that overlay the likenesses of celebrities with messages crafted in large, sans-serif type. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s joint media agency/internet censor, has announced a ban on any memes that involve public figures when “when the image has nothing to do with the celebrity’s personality.”
The reasoning Roskomnadzor gave for the ruling is to protect the “honor, dignity and business of public figures.” Or, put another way, “The Russian government spends a lot of money propping up public figures. Please don’t tease them.” The announcement, which is apparently a clarification of a more vague, but still depressing existing law, stems from a lawsuit filed by singer Valeri Syutkin, who objected to a meme that paired his photo with the lyrics of another artist ...
IKEA MonkeyCorey
IKEA Monkeywow
Sometimes low-quality resolution adds to an old video’s charm, but the poor quality of a newly unearthed early ’90s music video is more a cause for grief, as it blurs a nearly naked Jason Statham. This is the kind of thing that should be shown in high-def, projected on the wall of a warehouse while drugged-up youth get down. The video’s audio is just fine, unfortunately. It’s “Comin’ On” by the EDM band Shaman, and it embodies the worst sort of excess of the early ’90s British dance scene—though a very shiny Statham in nothing but cheetah-print underwear, black socks, and black shoes dancing and spinning in outer space makes it worthwhile.
Luckily for us, Statham danced in his underwear in a much better quality music video of the early ’90s, which we dug up for journalism. Erasure’s “Run To The Sun” video sees Statham ...
IKEA Monkey1) He's my favorite, and I will always love him, but his style ranges from "fine" to "questionable" (oh dear: http://www.overstock.com/Clothing-Shoes/Lane-Boots-Womens-Dawson-Mule-Cowboy-Mule/9612931/product.html) and 2) I had no idea Stormy Simon, the spokesperson from those porny "Its all about the O" commercials, was now the President of Overstock.com (previously she was the senior VP of Customer Service). Good for her. Lean in, Stormy.
Just as every rose has its thorn, so now every couch has its throw, thanks to a line of “curated products” endorsed by former lead singer of Poison and current headliner of casinos Bret Michaels. Michaels, who previously taught our pets how to rock, is now teaching us how to live, because, as Michaels puts it, “Sometimes you need to rock, and sometimes you need to live.”
Michaels’ new philosophical outlook comes courtesy of Overstock.com, which, from the press release announcing the partnership, sounds more like a meditation cult than an online discount retailer: “The first time I experienced Overstock’s soul was during a special company-wide event where I performed. It was pure magic meeting everyone,” Michaels says. “I’ve seen them on television, I’ve shopped on their website, but the synergy with the entire group brought things to a whole other level,” he adds, marking the ...
