IKEA Monkey

Submitted for your approval: A Saturday Night Live sketch out of time, with Jimmy Fallon and Will Ferrell in drag as teen girls, joined by FLOTUS Michelle Obama in one of those guest appearances that proves that a prominent non-actor is a “good sport” — a little stiff but game, exactly as she should be. Michelle plays it just right — she’s clearly having fun, playing it mostly straight, with only a minimum of mugging required of her. Plus kale chips.

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The number of households buying gluten-free products has more than doubled since 2010, while sales for gluten-free companies like Udi's and Glutino were up by 50 percent last year. Gluten-free is now big business, and dominant national brands are trying to tap into what has become a billion-dollar industry.

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Meryl Davis and Charlie White won the gold medal in ice dancing at the Sochi Olympics on Monday but they assure their fans that they weren’t always so graceful.

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Considering hopping onto the "engagement season" train just as it pulls out of the station? A jeweler says they'll throw in a free XBox One with the purchase of every engagement ring, as long as it's got at least a 3/4 carat diamond.

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Growing up in the modern world it's impossible not to have knowledge of the famous Freudian concept of penis envy. Less well-known is the concept of womb envy, and even less well-known than that is the woman who came up with it.

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Here is your new favorite cover of Frozen showstopper "Let It Go." It is a bombastic rendition retitled "Just Don't Go," written by an Ohio traffic reporter and replacing the original lyrics with reasons not to leave your home in wintery weather.

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On Tuesday, Taylor Swift became a card-carrying member of the short hair club.

Archaeologists say they unearthed a rare find during a dig in Egypt: a sarcophagus that's 3,600 years old -- with a mummy still inside.

Larry wants to be cryogenically frozen when he dies, and he needs Conan to make sure it all goes off without a hitch.

You may have heard that yesterday the Indiana State Senate decided not to consider a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. In this day and age, you might think of this as a victory, but not Indiana State Senator Mike Delph. He just had an epic, but predictable Twitter meltdown over the decision. After the jump are some of his best tweets and how they fit into a typical pattern of desperate complaining that people do when they are on the wrong side of history.

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Mixed feelings about the fall 2014 collection shown by Michael Kors yesterday. Some of the pieces — like a sequin-flower embellished collarless gray flannel coat — are simply beautiful; others are just oddly-hued, shapeless and boring.

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Good news if you like to laugh at people stuffing frozen meat and seafood down their pants! It turns out that the suspect in Tuesday’s steak-and-lobster-down-pants incident may not have carjacked and kidnapped an older man and a teenage girl. That’s what witnesses thought they saw, prompting an Amber Alert on the vehicle, but no one has reported anyone matching that description missing.

Police were able to identify the driver, and now have a suspect in custody after people in the neighborhood recognized the man featured on surveillance video from inside the store.

Sure, the situation wasn’t really the urgent kidnapping of a teenage girl. Police decided to put out an alert based on the information that they had, and witness accounts made it sound like the suspect threatened strangers at knifepoint and forced them to drive away. “We have to treat it as a carjacking and kidnapping. We would be negligent if we did not,” a police spokesperson pointed out.

[San Francisco Chronicle]

Word to the wise, don’t threaten to burn down a restaurant days after you’ve eaten there. You won’t receive the refund you want and you’ll end up in jail. Just ask a New Jersey man, he knows how it goes.

Managers at an Applebee’s in Vineland, New Jersey called police on Feb. 2 after a man allegedly threatened to burn down the restaurant, NJ.com reports.

The man reportedly entered the restaurant complaining about his Applebee’s experience two days earlier, saying he did not enjoy his meal and didn’t appreciate the way he was treated by staff.

When managers told the man he could not be reimbursed for the meal, he became enraged.

After the man threatened to burn down the restaurant and made other disturbing comments, managers called local police. The man left the restaurant and was located in a nearby city where he was arrested on two counts of terroristic threats. He was later released on summons.

So, remember, if you don’t like your meal, it’s better to say something while you’re actually eating it.

We can’t run this story without including this incredibly relevant, NSFW clip from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle:

Millville man threatens to burn Applebee’s down after refund denial [NJ.com]

If you were a girl growing up in the 90s, chances are Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue were an integral part to your early female development. [ more › ]

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

Cry-Baby #1: Ryan Walker

via the Daily Mail

The incident: Two girls bullied a teenager by calling him "Harry Potter."

The appropriate response: Depending on how long the bullying had been occurring—insulting them back or reporting them to the authorities. 

The actual response: He attacked the two girls, stabbing one in the face so hard that he broke his knife.

Nineteen-year-old Ryan Walker (pictured above) was walking back to his apartment in Southampton, England. 

To get to his front door, he had to pass 15-year-old Emma Keeble and 16-year-old Leah Pearce, who were sitting outside. 

As he walked past them, one of the girls, who had apparently been picking on Ryan for a while, called him "Harry Potter."

Furious, Ryan went into his apartment and retrieved a bottle of water which he threw over the girls. 

He then went back inside, grabbed a vegetable knife, and walked across the street to a local park in the hope that the two girls would follow. They did.

Once in the park, Ryan turned to Leah and stabbed her in the face. 

He then turned on the other girl, smashing her head into a fence, punching and kicking her while shouting, "Die! Die!"

He stabbed Leah with such force that the blade of the knife broke off in her face. Ryan was arrested shortly after. He immediately confessed to police and called his actions "monstrous."

He was charged with wounding with intent, attempted wounding, and possessing a bladed article. All of which he pled guilty to.

Ryan's lawyer, Keely Harvey, told the court that Ryan had been bullied at school. "He finally lost it. He flipped and attacked them in the most horrific way. Not justifiable, but I hope they can now see where it came from," she said.

While, obviously, Ryan has my sympathy for having to endure bullying, there is perhaps some kind of middle ground he could've found between "ignoring them" and "stabbing them in the face." He created a situation in which nobody is in the right and nobody wins.

Judge Peter Ralls, who sentenced Ryan, said that the girls' behavior was no justification for Ryan's attack. "It was deliberate and planned," he said. "It was a sustained attack in which you used [a] knife as a weapon."

He was sentenced to four and a half years in jail. 

Cry-Baby #2: Drake

via the Daily Mail

The incident: Drake was replaced with Philip Seymour Hoffman on the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: Drake tweeted saying that he was "disgusted."

As you already know, Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a suspected heroin overdose earlier this month. 

Off the back of this, Rolling Stone decided to drop Drake from the cover of today's issue and replace him with PSH.

When Drake learned about this (apparently after being contacted by someone from Rolling Stone) he tweeted,"I never commented on Yeezus for my interview portion of Rolling Stone. They also took my cover from me last minute and ran the issue."

The first portion of the tweet refers to a section of the Rolling Stone article in which they quote Drake as saying, "There were some real questionable bars on there. Like that 'Swaghili' line? Come on, man. Fabulous wouldn't say some shit like that." Drake reportedly made the statement off the record.

Despite not giving Philip Seymour Hoffman any of the respect that he's due, Drake followed with another tweet saying, "I'm disgusted with that. RIP to Philip Seymour Hoffman. All respect due. But the press is evil." 

Finally, Drake declared that he will no longer be doing interviews with magazines, as it's the only way his "message gets across accurately."

Drake has since deleted the first two tweets.

Which of these guys is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll right here:

Who is the bigger cry-baby?

Previously: Some people who arrested a kid for Snapchatting a drawing of a dick vs. a guy who allegedly burned down his apartment because his landlord asked him to stop masturbating with the door open

Winner: The Snapchat guys!

@JLCT

According to one of my Top 3 favorite people to follow on Twitter, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue model Chrissy Teigen, the magazine’s iconic 50th anniversary cover is going to be unveiled tomorrow night on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Will it feature Kate Upton for the third year in a row? Will Teigen rightfully take her place as the new face of the annual issue? Will SI go the “tradition” route and feature a “Then, Now and Future” theme with Kathy Ireland, Upton and Emily Ratajkowski? Or will SI cave to what’s hot right now and make Ratajkowski’s debut on the cover? I’m not psychic, so all I can say is that we have to wait until tomorrow night at 11 PM ET.

Sports Illustrated did tease fans a little by releasing a promotional cover that features Barbie, but that’s only because the magazine has teamed up with Mattel in this issue to honor another legacy – the Barbie Doll’s 55th birthday. Barbie will be wearing the same black-and-white suit that she wore way back in 1959, and she’ll be accompanied by a new branding battle cry of “#UNAPOLOGETIC.” The hash-tagged confidence is Mattel’s answer to years of criticism that the doll’s design promotes an unrealistic body image for young girls.

“As a legend herself, and under constant criticism about her body and how she looks, posing in” the issue “gives Barbie and her fellow legends an opportunity to own who they are, celebrate what they have done and be #unapologetic,” Mattel said in a statement on Tuesday. (Via the New York Times)

The difference, obviously, between Barbie and the SI Swimsuit models is that they are real and she is a doll, so it’s a lot easier for people to look at the models and think, “That’s cool, she’s proud of her body” than it is to empathize with a company that currently values the dolls at $1.3 billion and is feeling the constant sting of pissed off women. Did people take to Mattel’s Facebook page and Twitter to voice their outrage over the four-page spread? A few did, while some others voiced support and appreciation.

Even former Bank of America Global Wealth President Sallie Krawcheck spoke for the outraged on today’s edition of In the Loop on Bloomberg News.

To be honest, I didn’t even realize that Barbie Dolls are still a thing. I just assumed they’d been replaced by pogs or whatever the cool kids are playing with these days. But I’m sure someone somewhere would be offended by that, too.

Longtime readers of this site know that we love dogs as much as the next group of Internet nerds, and in many ways the Westminster Kennel Club’s Dog Show is like our Super Bowl. But this year’s show, the 138th of its kind, has really struck a chord with a new audience, because mixed breed dogs were allowed to compete for the first time ever, and proud mutt dads like myself finally got to daydream that it was our beloved pooches winning the Agility Trials.

Tonight’s coverage of the second day of the 138th Westminster Dog Show is still airing on USA, and the big winner has yet to be named. That matters little to me, though, because I would make the worst dog show judge on the face of the planet. Ultimately, I’d want to roll around and give delicious cookie treats to all of the doggies in the middle of the arena, so I could throw my arms in the air and declare all of them the winner.

So instead of waiting for the actual Best in Show winner, I’m just going to go ahead and rank 25 of the dogs based on the adorable photos that have been taken since the festivities began last weekend. I’m scientific and fair if anything.

Side note: Before you dive into my meaningful photo essay on the elegance and cultural importance of the Westminster Dog Show, I’d like to reiterate how awesome it is that the mixed breeds are involved now. For example, Millie in the banner image is a rescue dog, as is Emma, who was the subject of a story in the Globe and Mail, and I urge you to go read it now. It will melt your heart, and if you, like me, adopted a dog from a near-death situation, I guarantee you’ll hug it harder than ever.

Other side note: I’m very, very biased to bulldogs. That is all.

25. Look at this tiny dog being brushed!

24. This goofy dog looks like Judy Greer!

23. Haha, someone’s getting his hair did!

22. This dog should lick that grumpy guy’s face.

21. Corgi legs are about the cutest damn thing on the planet.

[Photographs: Joshua Bousel]

As I made my way from my home to the train one brisk winter's day about two years ago, I was blinded by the sun saturating the bright yellow paint of a food truck parked by the station entrance. I live in a rather family oriented, residential corner of the city, and aside from the halal and coffee carts that have likely been around for decades, it had never been food truck territory. It was an exciting new prospect, and I enthusiastically marched over for a taste of the waffles this cart was slinging.

As I approached the counter, I noticed a waffle choice that was adorned with speculoos spread, which became my wife's meal choice that day. Both truck and speculoos spread have certainly been around for a while, but at that moment, both were new to me. As soon as I had my first taste of the thick and sweet spiced cookie spread, I was instantly hooked.

What is Speculoos?

Speculoos may have been a foreign word to me at that time, but I quickly found that I was already familiar with the namesake crispy Belgian shortbread cookies, commonly spiced with a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and cardamon. The most prolific brand of speculoos cookies in the United States are Biscoff, which just so happens to be the same brand distributed on the numerous Delta flights I've taken over the years.

Speculoos cookies have long been a traditional part of the feast of St. Nichola in Belgium and the Netherlands, but their popularity has more recently made them available year-round and across the globe. This international fascination is what led to the formal invention of speculoos spread—a thick and smooth spreadable iteration of these cookies—in 2007. Stateside, the spread can most commonly be found under the Biscoff name in groceries or as Speculoos Cookie Butter at Trader Joe's.

Spreadable Cookies

Although it's not hard to find a great speculous spread if you know where to look, I wanted to see if I could reproduce it at home. I like a challenge and figured it might wind up coming in at half the cost, to boot. The ingredient list on the Biscoff spread is mainly cookies and oil, so I figured I'd take stab by just grinding the two together. But while it made a spread in no time, it was gritty and oily—certainly not Serious Eats caliber stuff. I quickly realized that I needed to get my cookies into a smooth state before mixing them with the fat. And what, I ask you, softens cookies better than milk?

The first spread also lacked some sweetness, so I started my next batch off with both brown sugar and milk, heated slightly to help the sugar dissolve. I added about 3/4 of a sleeve of Biscoff cookies, which quickly swelled and broke down into a smooth, thick paste that already tasted like a thinned-out speculoos spread.

My next step was to switch from canola oil to vegetable shortening, for a neutral fat that would solidify at room temperature for better texture and consistency. I melted the shortening, slowly poured it into the cookie mixture in a running food processor, jarred it, and then waited for it to cool and thicken.

After about an hour in the fridge, it was pretty darn close to the peanut butter-like viscosity of the store-bought spread. But I was after perfection, something a little thicker, a little sweeter, and a little more spiced—the milk and shortening had diluted some of that distinctive flavor.

With my last sleeve of Biscoffs, I tried the recipe out using less milk, more sugar, more vegetable shortening, extra cinnamon, and bit of lemon juice to add a very slight acidic touch. All went according to plan: the final spread has a wonderfully smooth and thick texture, with the right level of sweetness and an enhanced spiced flavor. Most importantly, it tastes like a speculoos cookie in spread form, which I warn you is dangerously addictive.

About the author: Joshua Bousel brings you new, tasty condiment every other Wednesday and a recipe for weekend grilling every other Friday. He also writes about grilling and barbecue on his blog The Meatwave whenever he can be pulled away from his grill.

Get the Recipe!

As someone who studies the morality of babies, I am sometimes asked "Are we naturally good or naturally evil?" My answer is yes.

From Serious Eats: New York

[Photographs: Dave Cook]

Marani, a recently opened Glatt kosher Georgian restaurant in Rego Park, prides itself on being only the second kosher Georgian restaurant in the world featuring two separate kitchens. Upstairs is a modern restaurant, serving meat-based Georgian specialties while Alicia Keys plays over the speakers. Nestled in the basement is a far more spartan bakery, serving cheesy khachapuri and other dairy products.

Our group was determined to gorge on food from both kitchens. As it turns out, the basement khachapuri is the standout. While waiting for our breads to bake, we passed around the two competing brands of Georgian mineral waters—Borjomi (my personal favorite) and Nabeghlavi—as well as a powerfully green tarragon soda, plus a pear soda that tasted suspiciously like the "Champagne" flavored-cola popular in the Caribbean.

First came the Khachapuri Megruli ($12), a brown-speckled, bubbling disc filled with sulguni cheese (think ricotta with a sharper, feta-like flavor) and topped with a star of even more cheese. The baker conveniently sliced the khachapuri for easier eating.

Next came the Khachapuri Imeruli ($10). Perhaps the purest of the khachapuris, it's stuffed with cheese, but lacks the distinctive cheese topping of the megruli. It recalls a stuffed pizza, since it essentially tastes like two white pizza slices sandwiched together, oozing cheese and oil.

Khachapuri Adjaruli ($13) is invariably the showstopper. Shaped like a fat canoe, it's filled with sulguni and more butter than I care to think about, then finished with raw egg. Mix everything up, then pull off bites as the cheese/butter/egg threatens to spread all over the plate.

These khachapuri were very good, not as top-notch as what you'll find in Tblisi or Sheepshead Bay, but superior to Alphabet City's Oda House. If you're looking for a cheesy bread fix, Marani has you covered.

http://www.today.com/style/michelle-obama-wears-carolina-herrera-ball-gown-state-dinner-2D12100066

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United States Olympic freeskier Gus Kenworthy doesn’t make his Sochi debut until tomorrow in the ski slopestyle competition, but he’s already the Team USA leader for Tweeting the best photos that will make sure he’s the favorite of every woman back at home. Amid all of the talk about Sochi’s stray dog problem and how the city’s solution was to just start gassing them, Kenworthy scooped up a couple of stray puppies yesterday and posed for the above photo. This guy could lose everything tomorrow and be forced to live on the streets, but as long as he carries this picture with him, he’ll be able to stay at a different woman’s home every night.

Actually, the above image was the second adorable picture that Kenworthy Tweeted, with the first one being a lot more unfair to the rest of us guys.

This guy could wipe out the second his skis touch snow, and it wouldn’t matter because he already laid down a gold medal foundation to being the biggest individual star of the 2014 Winter Games. I’d definitely rank him above Ashley Wagner’s “That’s bullshit” face in terms of the most important things that American athletes are doing that don’t involve kicking other countries’ athletes’ asses.

In "Stand Your Ground" Florida, Michael Dunn said he felt threatened by a car full of teens playing loud music and pumped about 10 rounds from his 9 mm pistol into their SUV, killing 17-year-old Jordan Davis. There were, of course, no return shots, because the teens were unarmed. Dunn is white, and all the teens in the car were black. He didn't bother to call the police afterward.

   Kate just rewore a Jenny Packham, so obviously her love for the label has not diminished (although between you and me, I think she could stand to be a little less frugal about the re-playing thing… then again, she’s probably spending a wad of cash on a brand new Australia wardrobe so in this case Read More ...

A mixed-breed dog named Emma is competing at the prestigious Westminster dog show today after being rescued from a kill shelter in South Carolina just hours before she was scheduled to be put down and OH MY GOD LOOK AT HER FACE AM I CRYING YES I AM CRYING.

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Employees at Rush University Medical Center are looking for the people responsible for this heartwarming message written atop a parking structure on the hospital’s campus last weekend. [ more › ]

That dimple. That smile. Those curls.

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Some very exciting news for the birther conspiracy community seemed to erupt Monday afternoon, only to be snatched away immediately. For a few short hours, it appeared that Birther Hero Sheriff Joe Arpaio had confirmed that he’d assigned two full-time detectives to some aspect of the investigation of Barry Hussein Soetoro Bopshabop Peggy Fleming’s birth certificate, a claim that first surfaced last Friday in a radio interview with Lt. Mike Zullo, the head of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Birth Certificate Task Force. (What, your county sheriff doesn’t have an Obama Birth Certificate Task Force? Tough for you.) But then a few hours later, the MCSO issued a clarification saying, nah, mang, there aren’t any detectives doing that. Now the only question remaining is: Who did the Obamabots get to?

In an interview (caution – loud sound effect at start of recording) with birther fringe character Reverend Carl Gallups,* Zullo said that two detectives had been dedicated to the birth certificate case. Monday, the Arizona’s Politics blog said that it had received confirmation from MCSO that

“We have two Sheriff’s detectives assigned to look into other issues surrounding the birth certificate, however they are not investigating the birth certificate issue itself.”

But then, two and a half hours later, the same blog reported that MCSO Lt. Brandon Jones, a spokesman for Arpaio, had withdrawn the earlier confirmation and said that the detectives are, in fact,

“not working on anything regarding the birth certificate. Not even surrounding. Mr Zullo was incorrect, they are working on other sensitive cases not even related.”

And so birthers everywhere cried to learn that while the Task Force may ultimately issue some “universe-shattering” news, there aren’t any fulltime detectives working on the birth certificate. Actually, hold the phone! Not all birthers cried: we have this brilliant analysis from “Joe Mannix” over at Birther Report:

Hold on a minute fella’s. I just noticed ‘ArizonaPolitics.com’ is posting over at Fogbow [a birther-debunking site -- Dok Zoom] and noticed he has 21 posts to date there. This could be a deception by Obots to attempt to make Zullo out to be liar. We need confirmation from another trustworthy source. I don’t think a spokes person from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office would be on the phone this time of night talking to a blogger about what is going on with these detectives.

And it was at this moment that we had our great insight into the Birther Movement: They approach the law and reality itself with the same zeal and standards of proof that you’d find in a science fiction fan community. “I seriously doubt that Starfleet would allow Picard to bend the rules like that! Totally unbelievable!”

As the comment thread continued, “Joe Mannix” even turned up a sarcastic comment on another blog by Arizona’s Politics blogger Mitch Martinson, who said in response to the accusation above, “Awesome! I am somebody! Hi, my name is Mitch Martinson, and I am an Obot.” Needless to say, Joe Mannix had all the proof he needed: “You’re posting an notorious Obot site and you call yourself an Obot. That’s all the context anyone needs.” Yr Doktor Zoom just loves these guys. (He admitted it!)

And finally, we were seriously disappointed by the headline at Arizona’s Politics, which said that “Arpaio Now Has 2 FT Detectives Working On Investigation” — for a moment there, we thought it was pretty cool that Arpaio had found some two-foot detectives.

*Incidentally, in the same interview, Rev. Gallups denied that he had sent a letter to Orly Taitz asking her to “stand down” from her own birther litigation, so we guess there’s no internecine birther slapfight after all. If we thought this nonsense mattered, we might do a post on it. But probably not.

[Arizona's Politics / And Again / Birther Report]

Follow Doktor Zoom on Twitter. He thinks the real birth certificate was in Benghazi, which would explain a lot.