IKEA Monkey

On Wednesday morning, President Trump sent out a series of tweets that appeared to warn Russia that strikes against Syria are coming.

Seth Meyers told his "Late Night" audience Monday that when his son, Ashe Olsen, was born two years ago, they worried he might arrive in an Uber.

These step-by-step instructions show how to clean and fillet fresh whole sardines using nothing more than a pair of scissors and your fingers. Read More

Just what it says in the headline.

Josh Rosen, an excellent quarterback who’s also famous for having opinions like a human or something, gives a fascinating interview to ESPN in which he drops such polarizing statements as “I want to be the best QB that I possibly f---ing can be. When the NFL decides I suck, I want to be the absolute best at the next thing in my life.” The gall!

During one segment, in which interviewer Sam Alipour is running through Rosen’s many character critiques (some of which Rosen acknowledges as fair), this happens as part of the “Rosen’s too smart for football” discussion:

What else are you curious about presently?

Film. I’m a big documentary guy. I just saw Icarus. That was pretty good. And I love every Christopher Nolan movie. Especially Interstellar. I’m a big Neil deGrasse Tyson fan. I’ve read all his books -- now I’m on Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. I watched the whole Cosmos series. And I’m a huge fan of Elon Musk. I think he’s getting ready to nuke the poles, spark some global warming over there --

Wait, slow down, bro. What are we talking about right now?

[Laughs] Not to sound like a nerd, but Elon’s goal with Mars is to find a way to speed up the greenhouse effect, heat up the planet and grow vegetation, possibly by launching nuclear warheads at the poles. You know how a volcano erupts and ash suffocates Earth? If you do that on Mars -- see, now people will go, “He’s too smart!” No, I just think it’s cool! [Laughs] I’m not smart enough to be an astrophysicist. I’m curious enough to read what they want to tell me.

Live your life in such a way that your interviewer has to ask you what question you’re even answering.

Is that Mars thing real?

Oh, like Josh Rosen would tell you lies. Of course it’s real. In Elon Musk’s head. Which is a simulation in which we all live.

[Musk] doesn’t want to nuke the surface of Mars; he just wants to nuke the sky over the Martian poles every couple of seconds.

The idea, he said, is to create two tiny pulsing “suns” over the regions. “They’re really above the planet, they’re not on the planet,” Musk said at an event for Solar City in New York City’s Times Square this morning. Every few moments, he wants to send a large fusion bomb over the poles, to create small blinking suns. “A lot of people don’t appreciate that our Sun is a large fusion explosion,” he said.

The tiny suns would then warm up the planet and turn any frozen carbon dioxide into gas. CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas, meaning it absorbs and traps heat. The more of the gas that’s in the atmosphere, the warmer the surface of Mars becomes.

Rosen’s UCLA career is a Rorschach test in which some see really underwhelming production and others see brilliant mechanics doomed by injuries and a bad team. But this draft has four guys I could see as a legit No. 1 -- Baker Mayfield would be my pick, I’m cool with Rosen and Lamar Jackson, and I’m coming around on Sam Darnold -- and not really any actual character concerns that we know of in the bunch.

Rosen’s said a lot of stuff, and he admits he wouldn’t say things now the same way he did as a college sophomore. Imagine having to defend some of your wildest opinions from when you were an underclassman. Right?

Now can I show you something?

Thank you.

Much of Isao Takahata’s 1991 animated film Only Yesterday is told through vivid recollections: Its Japanese title, Omoide Poro Poro, literally means “memories come tumbling down.” The protagonist, Taeko Okajima, is a 27-year old woman heading to the Japanese countryside on vacation when she is idly struck by memories of her 10-year-old self, formative stories and events that take on new meaning for her in hindsight. The present-day scenes are animated realistically—the characters are less cartoonishly expressive, their facial muscles given greater detail. Meanwhile, the flashbacks are more plainly drawn, with unfinished backdrops rendered in a hazy, half-remembered glow.

In one scene, young Taeko walks home past a boy who, according to some of her giggling schoolmates, has professed that he has a crush on her. Blushing, he stammers out a question: “Rainy day or cloudy or sunny day, which do you like?” She pauses to consider as he stares at his shoes, then replies, “Cloudy,” to his delight. “Me too!” he yells, walking off triumphantly. Taeko runs toward her home, and as she does, she trots into the sky, a burst of magic in a moment that’s otherwise naturalistic. It’s the kind of scene that could only be executed by Takahata, one of the founders of the legendary Studio Ghibli, who time and again mixed the impressionistic joy of animation with an unusually tight grasp on realism and the nuance of human relationships.

Takahata died of lung cancer April 5 at the age of 82, according to a statement from Ghibli. Though he was never quite as renowned (particularly in the U.S.) as one of the studio’s other founders, Hayao Miyazaki, Takahata’s smaller body of work still stands as some of the most impressive filmmaking in the history of animation—a feat that’s all the more fascinating given his background. Having graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1959 with a degree in French literature, Takahata was never an animator himself. By his own admission, he couldn’t even draw. But he was constantly interested in bending the medium, often adopting radically different visual styles from project to project (or, in the case of Only Yesterday, within the same film).

In the 1960s, Takahata worked at Japan’s hugely popular Toei Animation, mostly as an assistant director for TV and movies. There, he met Miyazaki, who like him chafed under the company’s rigid hierarchy. When Takahata got the chance to direct his own film for Toei, 1968’s The Great Adventures of Horus, Prince of the Sun, it was a flop that the company saw as too adult and violent. Now, though, it’s regarded as a groundbreaking entry in Japanese animation. When making the movie, Takahata had set his sights beyond traditional children’s fare. “This was the greatest joy for me and for the entire staff who had unstintingly poured their talents into the project,” Takahata later said, reflecting on the appreciation Horus eventually received. “[Toei] should have aimed this film toward high-school and university students and young adults, those who had not been interested in animation films. But the company made no efforts to do so.”

Takahata left Toei in 1971 and bounced around from company to company, often still collaborating with Miyazaki. In 1985, the pair helped form Ghibli based on the success of Miyazaki’s recently released Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Takahata’s first film for the company was his World War II drama Grave of the Fireflies, released in 1988 as part of a double feature with Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro. While Totoro was an instant, beloved children’s fantasy classic, Grave of the Fireflies was a much more complex, upsetting work, a sober retelling of the last months of the conflict from the perspective of two Japanese children.

In depicting the firebombing of Kobe, Takahata drew on his own childhood memories, which helped make Grave one of the most stark World War II films made in any medium to this day. (It’s wrenching enough that I find it difficult to rewatch.) Though Takahata would never make another movie that was quite as devastating, Fireflies did establish his reputation as the more grounded of the two Ghibli giants. His follow-up, three years later, was Only Yesterday, my personal favorite of his canon and certainly the most underrated of all the studio’s films.

Only Yesterday isn’t nearly as bleak as Grave of the Fireflies, but it does, once again, seem less obviously aimed at children—even though half of its action is centered on the younger version of Taeko as she navigates puberty, family drama, and young love. It’s a melancholy tale that presents Taeko’s memories with swooning romanticism (in an old-fashioned anime style, drawn in a nearly heavenly light), but also probes past the surface to find subtleties she didn’t understand as a child. Only Yesterday went on to be a surprise box-office hit in Japan. But Disney (which at one point owned the American rights to Ghibli movies), didn’t release it in the U.S. until 2016, a move some critics have attributed to Only Yesterday’s discussion of issues like menstruation.

Takahata’s other ’90s movies were more fanciful. Pom Poko (1994) is an environmental allegory dressed up as a children’s film about anthropomorphic, shapeshifting raccoons; it was a colossal hit in Japan. My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) is an adaptation of a Japanese comic strip, drawn to look like a simple, stylized watercolor. It’s a charming work, presented as a series of whimsical vignettes poking fun at the family unit. But coming in between Miyazaki’s immense box-office smashes Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, My Neighbors the Yamadas was a financial disappointment for Ghibli. Takahata retreated to producing and mentoring other artists for the next decade, while he slowly put together his final (and most massive) project.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), based on a 10th-century Japanese folktale, is a visually flabbergasting work drawn in fluid charcoal strokes and watercolors. Recalling an old painting that has come to life, the film is stunning and elegiac, representing a millennia-old world through advanced animation techniques. Though it’s a mythic story (in which a family finds a young girl growing inside a glowing bamboo shoot, and eventually raises her into a life of nobility, with tragic consequences), its characters feel genuine. That was Takahata’s finest skill as an artist: his ability to draw out the humanity in the most spellbinding of images.

“I’m not saying fantasy is bad. I myself enjoy the genre from time to time. However, I don’t agree with getting an audience excited by seeing a character do something incredible that defies logic,” Takahata said in a 2015 interview. “Too many films these days feature characters who overcome difficulties using nothing more than the power of love.” His movies resisted those simple notions, appealing to viewers not through tales of invented triumph, but rather by speaking to the deepest parts of their imagination.

This vision came through in Takahata’s writing and his visuals, which always relied on a hand-drawn look. In defending two-dimensional animation (over the CGI approach favored by companies like Pixar), Takahata said, “By keeping everything flat, animation allows viewers to imagine what is behind the images.” There is plenty of visual beauty to behold in each of his films, but it’s what’s going on behind them that made Takahata such a titan of both animation and cinema.

You probably know that adding people to your inner circle takes time, but how much time it actually takes to go from strangers to buddies has been somewhat of a mystery—until now. A new study suggests you need to spend at least 90 hours with someone before they consider you a real friend.

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Lots of things are pink in the new music video for Janelle Monáe’s “PYNK.” A convertible. A strawberry milkshake. Lipstick. Bubblegum. A very suggestive grapefruit. But the pinkest thing in the musician’s latest queer masterpiece has to be a pair of poofy full-length pants fashioned to look like a vagina, complete with vulva ruffles. Forget pussyhats. This is way better.

TJ Miller’s ongoing fall from comedy grace just reached a new level of bizarre, as Variety reports that the ex-Silicon Valley star was arrested last night at New York’s LaGuardia Airport for calling in a fake bomb threat last month. The United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut says that Miller was…

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My work takes me to small, energy-rich towns around the country - the places where America gets its power, where multiple generations of energy workers live and worship and raise their families.

Umami Issues is The Takeout’s exploration of cooking food with the rich, savory, mysterious taste sensation known as umami. 

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In the largely static gun control debate often lacking in precedent in the U.S., activists on both sides often look to crime-related data from other countries to bolster their arguments for or against the regulation of firearms.

Five songs into musical comedy legend “Weird Al” Yankovic’s second sold-out night at the Vic for his “Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour,” I scanned the crowd and caught a beautiful moment. A boy — probably 10 or so — turned to his dad with a big grin on his face and gave him...

Without a doubt, weekday breakfasts can be one of the biggest meal struggles for busy families. Everybody wants to sleep an extra few minutes, but then you still have to get ready for the day and get out the door on time—plus find something to munch on at some point!

These freezer breakfast burritos, filled with sweet sausage, seasoned potatoes, cheese, scrambled eggs, and salsa verde, are my answer to this weekday struggle.

Continue reading "Freezer Breakfast Burritos with Sausage, Eggs and Salsa Verde" »

Because only a CrossFit competitor could possibly need this much meat.

Stashed away in shoeboxes, basements, and broom closets around the world are some of our greatest treasures.

That’s where we might find old prom photos, expired driver’s licenses, handwritten letters from faraway friends, or maybe, if we’re really lucky, one of those beautiful gems known as an old Love Tape.

Love Tapes are simply any mix tape carefully put together by someone who like-likes you. Yes, that blurry, distant boyfriend or girlfriend probably spent hours timing songs to fit perfectly on a side of a tape, painstakingly scrawled out love notes and drawings on stickers, and maybe, if you’re lucky, even sprayed it with a bit of perfume.

Depending on your time frame, your mix tape, or mix 8-track, or mix CD may contain gems such as:

1. Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers
2. More Than Words by Extreme
3. Everything I Do (I Do It For You) by Bryan Adams
4. Can’t Help Falling In Love by UB40
5. I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston
6. I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) by Meatloaf
7. My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion
8. Is This Love by Bob Marley
9. End Of The Road by Boyz II Men
10. You Were Meant For Me by Jewel
11. God Only Knows by The Beach Boys
12. Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper
13. Eternal Flame by The Bangles

So search your heart. Search your soul. And when you find mix tapes there, you will search no more. So don’t tell me, they’re not worth looking for. You can’t tell me, they’re not worth searching for. You know it’s true. Everything mix tapes do.

They do it for you.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here

— Follow me on Instagram —

The post #873 Finding an old mix tape given to you by a boyfriend or girlfriend years ago appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

You’ve heard of ideas so simple and dumb that they just might work? Exhibit A: Two California kids reportedly plotted to get an adult to buy them beer by stacking one atop the other’s shoulders, wrapping themselves in a trenchcoat, and impersonating a detective.

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Oh dear me, and sorry about how you are hurling vomit all over the place. However, in light of how Donald Trump Jr. is all Mr. Divorcey Horsey right now, and in light of the stories about how that one singer lady was having an affair with him way back in the days of “The Celebrity Apprentice” and was so heartbroken by their split she composed several chansons about her pain, we need to share with you some information from an old interview done in 2007, wherein Junior, the one Daddy doesn’t really love all that much, told Very Funny And Important Comedian Adam Carolla and several others what happens when he looks at his dad’s peener in the shower and is his peener bigger than his dad’s or is his dad’s peener too yooge, tremendous and gold-plated for Junior’s to ever compare:

HOST: I got one question, Donald Jr.: When you and your pops are in the shower, who’s got the bigger package? You know what I’m saying.

DIPSHIT: You know, and I will get fired for this, but I’m never going to say that I don’t. I will get fired for that. By the way, they’re both pretty substantial I think.

Why. Are. They. Showering. Together. We know it is against Daddy’s religion to work out his orange chunk-body, because he thinks it will deplete his energy reserves, so this did not happen at the gym.

Also … like … this is not framed as “One time when I was five years old I was in the shower with my dad and was like WHOA WILL MINE BE THAT BIG SOME DAY?” This is framed as “One time when I was 30 years old I was in the shower with my dad and was like WHOA WILL MINE BE THAT BIG SOME DAY?” To be fair, Junior said his own dingle was bigger, but we bet he’s lying like a rug that lies.

This interview was unearthed by enterprising and badass journalist Ashley Feinberg, who is kind of a specialist in unearthing things like this. It also includes this nugget, about what a bummer it is for his pregnant wife to be all pregnant while he’s trying to score some strange at the Playboy Mansion:

DIPSHIT: Do you believe the hell I’m going through? I’m at the Playboy Mansion with a pregnant wife! It doesn’t get worse than that, does it? Now, I love my wife, but that is rough. And I’m going to pay for these statements later on tonight. I’m gonna pay.

Oh, fuck off. Why don’t you have an affair with one of the contestants on “The Celebrity Apprentice,” so she can do really bad covers of “Somebody That I Used To Know,” about how she misses your sexxx body? Oh wait, you did that several years after this interview.

Also in the interview Dipshit kinda says he’s at least had a fleeting thought of pulling a Menendez to get all his dad’s money (please remember how Daddy doesn’t love him all that much, for context) and says his stepmother Melania is “a lovely lady,” by which we guess he means he’s thought about boning New Mommy at least once.

Feel free to listen to it all for yourself, but it’s goddamned stupid and Donald Trump Jr. talks a lot.

Barring that, you could do literally anything else, because you are grossed out enough already.

And on that note, OPEN THREAD!

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE.

Are you a fairly regular Wonkette reader and have had a nagging little voice for some time saying “you should throw Wonkette a buck every month”? That is called your conscience. Listen to it! It feels good!

[Huffington Post / Web Archive]

Editor’s note: Lucky Peach was a magical food magazine that existed from 2011 to 2017. It was beloved by readers, regarded as a destination publication for writers, and won a slew of James Beard Awards. After its untimely demise, the website—and all the stories it ever published—disappeared into the digital ether. In…

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The custom duplex was designed by Chicago’s Krueck + Sexton Architects in 1992

A top-floor corner co-op boasting an architectural pedigree as impressive as its Lake Michigan views is up for grabs in Chicago’s Gold Coast. Known as the Stainless Steel Apartment—for obvious reasons—the one-of-a-kind home was created in 1992 when Krueck + Sexton Architects combined a pair of stacked units on the 25th and 26th floors of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s 860 N. Lake Shore Drive building.

Originally built in 1951, the landmarked tower represented a major breakthrough for the post-war modernist movement with its pioneering steel frame and glass curtain wall. The idea to connect two vertical units into a unified home, however, wasn’t something that had been done in the building before.

“When we suggested opening up a floor to create a duplex, everyone’s first response was ‘you can’t do that,’” explained architect Mark Sexton, who worked on the project for over a year with partner Ron Krueck. “But we found Mies’ old shop drawings, worked out the structural engineering calculations, and appealed to the co-op board for approval.”

Instead of hiding the connection between the levels out of sight or along a wall, the designers crafted a floating stainless steel staircase flanked by translucent, sandblasted glass to be the home’s architectural centerpiece. The result successfully bridges the two volumes, floods the home with light, and gives the effect of descending into Lake Michigan.

Alumni of IIT, both Sexton and Krueck respected Mies van der Rohe’s original vision throughout the design process. “The steel construction of the building was obviously an inspiration but we wanted to move the design forward instead of copying the past,” Sexton told Curbed Chicago. “Consider it the next generation of interpretation.”

As its name would suggest, the Stainless Steel Apartment makes abundant use of the hardy material in its millwork, room dividers, and built-in furnishings. While some might assume the choice is cold and sterile, the result is anything but, argues Sexton. “The steel has an unexpectedly rich texture and beautifully reflects light. Combined with the home’s lake and city views, it is as ethereal as it is durable.”

The theme of strength meets beauty is seen in the 3,400-square-foot home’s flooring—a terrazzo job embedded with sparkling crystal glass chips. The architects balanced all the hard surfaces with velvet-like cotton curtains, bespoke furniture, and custom wool carpeting.

The like-new condition of the home is perhaps the biggest testament to its durability and timelessness. “The pictures don’t really do it justice,” added Sexton. “The home is like a well-maintained sports car in both its design and the performance of the materials. It’s even more astonishing when you realize that everything’s more than a quarter century old.”

The architecturally significant three-bedroom, four-bathroom home listed this week with a $2.15 million asking price plus an additional $6,769 per month in co-op fees. It remains 860 N. Lake Shore Drive’s only duplex unit.

• 860 N. Lake Shore Drive #25-26M, Chicago IL [@properties]
• See a condo by Ron Krueck in a Mies van der Rohe building [Crain’s]
• Mapping Mies van der Rohe’s career in Chicago [Curbed Chicago]

LONG LONG MAAAAAAN!

I’m not going to pretend this series of ads for “Sakeru Gum” are sports. I’m not going to make some tenuous link, or try to compare them to sports. But I care about you, and like showing you weird things — and I haven’t really been able to function since I watched all 11 ads featuring “Long Long Man.”

Gum ads are inherently weird, because there’s not much left to say about gum. However, the fine people at Sakeru Gum gave us an 11-part mini series featuring a woman named Chi, her boyfriend Tooru, and Long Long Man — who is basically Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man in the World”, but with long gum.

I’ll map out what happens, just so we can share a close reading.

No. 1

Chi and Tooru are enjoying gum on a park bench. Suddenly Chi becomes distracted by the sensual perfection of Long Long Man.

No. 2

Chi and Tooru go to the zoo. The animals are a joy to behold. Suddenly an elephant’s trunk becomes a reminder of a handsome figure, and Long Long Man sensually tears his gum.

No. 3

Tooru calls Chi on the phone and tells her he found a whole stash of mango Sakeru Gum that he is sending her by bike messenger. The delivery driver ends up being Long Long Man. She is bewitched by his guile and asks him to stay.

No. 4

Still inside the apartment, Chi asks if she can touch Long Long Man’s gum. He says it’s OK. The pair realize it’s a bad idea and we are left on a cliffhanger.

No. 5

Tooru rings the doorbell, worried Chi is okay because she wasn’t answering her phone. He enters the apartment and finds long gum in her bed and imagines the pair enjoying long gum together.

No. 6

Tooru is incensed. He feels inadequate because he only has short gum. Chi faints. Waking up she tells Tooru she is dying, and doesn’t have much longer. She loves long things because they make her feel better.

No. 7

In school, Chi is talking to a classmate about her betrayal of Tooru for Long Long Man. The classmate explains that long gum and short gum are equally satisfying, but the short gum is made to be more compact. Chi breaks down crying

No. 8

Back together, Chi and Tooru stroll through a mall. He asks her how she would like to be proposed to. She says that she’d like anything but a flash mob, causing Tooru to freak out and hastily cancel the flash mob he organized. Tooru hastily asks Chi to marry him before she becomes distracted by a rabbit with long ears that remind her of Long Long Man.

No. 9

Tooru and Chi say goodnight. He leans in for a kiss and she says “no,” not until they’re married. She gets into a cab and as it pulls away she grabs her seat belt — it’s long gum, and Long Long Man is her driver. He asks where they will go — before the hallucination ends and a normal driver is revealed.

No. 10

It’s Chi and Tooru’s wedding day. She seems unimpressed by the events. Suddenly a long limo pulls up. It’s Long Long Man, with a bouquet of long gum and long long tails on his coat. Chi is overjoyed and runs to him.

No. 11

Chi tells Long Long Man she’s been waiting for him and apologizes to Tooru. Long Long Man speaks, for the first time, saying “Since I first lay my eyes on you.” He walks forward, past Chi, a montage plays. Long Long Man was in love with Tooru all along.

The two reach for each other’s gum, while Chi cries out “No, no, no, no, no!” in the background.

So, there you have it. The weirdest and best set of 11 commercials I have ever seen, with more twists in six minutes than most movies can pack into three hours. I love you Sakeru Gum, I love you Long Long Man.

It’s almost barbecue season, and you can be ready with a set of Char-Broil potato screws, now marked down to an all-time low $8 for six. As you might have guessed from the name, you screw these stainless steel corkscrews into potatoes, and throw them on the grill. The screws make them easier to grab with tongs or…

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Here at Slate, we’re always eager to shine a spotlight on people who are working to make the world a better place, and on Wednesday night, no one worked harder than John Cena. He may have been booked on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote his upcoming film Blockers, but he asked the host to donate some of that airtime for a cause that’s dear to his heart—and the hearts of all Americans. It’s going to take more than one PSA to defeat such a pernicious and omnipresent social problem, but the first step is breaking the silence, and Cena’s work here will begin that difficult national conversation.

An attempt by a police department in England to find the suspect involved in a burglary on Monday as instead has turned into an ongoing joke online.

China Wednesday announced plans to hit the United States with new tariffs of 25 percent on soybeans, aircraft, cars and other imports worth $50 billion, hours after Washington unveiled its own target list. China's commerce ministry listed 106 products to be targeted and said a date for the implementation of the tariffs would be announced separately. The new tariffs mark a significant escalation of the brewing trade war between the world's two largest economies -- with the $100 billion worth of goods cumulatively targeted representing about 17 percent of the $580 billion in two-way trade last year.

Every year we make a point of reading the Name of the Year bracket out loud, and every year the bracket succeeds in reducing me to a puddle of tears. But THIS bracket … my god man, this year’s bracket nearly killed me. I know I say every bracket is the strongest bracket ever, but holy shit. When you got Chardonnay…

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In 2017, just a few days after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, a freshman GOP lawmaker with only a few days on the job of his own, proposed House Resolution 861. Its language was ominous: “The Environmental Protection Agency shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”

A Curbed editor watches the show for the first time—on finale night

As an editor at a website about all things related to the home, I had never watched a single episode of Fixer Upper, the uber-popular HGTV series hosted by married couple Chip and Joanna Gaines and set in Waco, Texas. So with the show coming to a close after five seasons, what better time than now to do so?

I started with ... the end and watched the series finale, which didn’t feel momentous at all. Just another day for the Gaineses! Like all makeover shows, this one followed the same formula, and I was expecting a little more. But is that even fair to ask? Perhaps it’s reality television’s predictability that keeps bringing viewers back to the reseeded yard.

Or maybe it’s Chip’s winning personality? Say what you will about the guy, but I liked his energy, man! Especially when he air-guitared all over the place to prove his mettle to the episode’s subjects, rocker Mike Herrera, the frontman of punk band MxPx, and his wife Holli, a Texan, who were relocating the fam from Washington state to, yes, Waco. Punk no longer, eh?

Which brings me to Joanna, arguably the face of the entire Magnolia enterprise. She seemed a little low-energy, but I still dug her vibe. Down-to-earth, patient with her man-child husband, and, most importantly, decisive about her vision. And after five seasons of home renovations—which we all know are not walks in the park—done in the sweltering Texan heat, who can blame her?

So the budget for Mike and Holli, who have two kids, was $300,000. That included the cost of the new house and the renovations, which was kind of shocking to me in how low that seemed, but I suppose it is true that everything’s bigger in Texas, including what you can get for your hard-earned cash. They wanted an older house that could also accommodate a recording studio for the punkmaster.

The first of three houses they looked at was a five-bedroom-two-bath for $110,000. That left $190,000 for the reno, which seemed incongruous? Why not just buy a new house for that money instead of adding value to a home that isn’t worth the cost of the reno? In any case, they passed on it.

They passed on the second one, too, which was a three-bed-two-bath for $95,000. $95,000! Does that even cover the cost of the materials to build the house in the first place? Anyway, they didn’t even go inside because the bright yellow paint job, ominous metal fence, and concrete “yard” were enough to turn them right around. I liked it. And with a $210,000 renovation budget, they could have easily replaced all three eyesores a million times over. But what do I know.

The third house, which, spoiler alert, is the one they chose, was a 1910-built three-bed-two-bath measuring 1,924 square feet (significantly larger than the other two) with an asking price of $125,000. Walking in felt like a breath of fresh air: tall ceilings, molding, window trim, baseboards, and, above all, great proportions.

Jennifer Boomer/Verbatim Photo Agency courtesy of HGTV

I liked how, as soon as they got inside, Joanna already knew what she was going to do: move the walls, open up the space, redo the floors, all new light fixtures, and so on. It was like she was narrating the renovation in real time. Good instincts, Joanna!

Out on the front porch, Chip asked what they thought of the house. “I honestly don’t even think we have to think about it,” Holli said. “This just feels like home.” Bam! How many times have those very words been uttered in the history of Fixer Upper?

Chip wanted to take an aggressive stand with the offer, so he put in a lowball offer of between $95,000 and $110,000. They purchased the house for $110,000, leaving $190,000 for the reno. Still a lot of money. But as Joanna noted, old houses often have expensive surprises. And sure enough, there were plenty.

On demo day, which I can tell is Chip’s favorite day, the little caravan of towheaded Gaines children came to help. The good news was that they found old shiplap walls behind the new ones. The bad news was that a lot of it had been eaten up by termites. And some of the basic structural elements were poorly done.

“We’re spending so much money building this house the way it should be that our budget’s about to be shot,” Chip said. “This is very frustrating,” Joanna sighed. Maybe they should have gotten an inspection?

But ever the optimists, they knew they could make it work. “The good thing about catching stuff like this early on is that it really sets my expectations for design and budget,” Joanna said. “We just manage the budget but we also still try to implement beautiful design. That’s the balance that I love the most.” Hear! Hear!

Jennifer Boomer/Verbatim Photo Agency courtesy of HGTV

Fast forward to the reveal of the “modern industrial farm”-inspired house, which came together pretty nicely. There was an abundance of shiplap, which I personally don’t care for, as it makes the interiors look rough-hewn and shoddy. Maybe that’s where the “farmhouse” part comes in.

But the only truly cringeworthy element of the new design was a very large metal board bearing the lyrics of a song that Mike wrote for Holli during their early days of dating that Joanna thought would add a personal touch to the dining room. Just, no. But Mike and Holli liked it and even got a little emotional seeing it, which is all that matters, really.

If I’m being nitpicky, I also didn’t love what they did to the living room. It was all shiplap walls, with a large built-in bookshelf painted a dark blue and dressed in decorative books. An old fireplace mantel was moved from another room and slapped on to this section—and looked it. This particular wall looked like some hotel chain’s idea of what a cool, moody library would look like. But the rest of the living room looked comfortable and inviting.

The kitchen, on the other hand, turned out great. “This is just beyond. This is beyond!” Holli exclaimed. A subway tile backsplash (in a herringbone pattern behind the stove), dark cabinets, white counters, shiplap ceiling, large island—all of the things. The master suite and bathroom (concrete counter and marble tiles, nice) were also well done, as was the little girl’s room painted in a pink ombre that I wouldn’t mind for myself.

The transformation of the garage into a music studio for Mike wasn’t too shabby either. An acoustic wall made of cut blocks was a cool touch that the homeowners appreciated. I warmed up to it.

All in, the renovation cost $175,000, leaving the project $15,000 under budget, which I thought was pretty impressive. Would I decorate my theoretical fixer upper like this? Why not. Did I learn valuable lessons about construction, design, and how much work it takes to make a house a home? Yes. And what about those Gaineses? I feel like I’ve made two new friends.

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From the moment Ma Anand Sheela appears in Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, it’s clear she is not to be fucked with. In her opening monologue in the six-part documentary, the former administrative leader of the Rajneesh religious cult talks about how one cannot wear a crown without the threat of death by "guillotine."

"In spite of guillotine, they haven't killed me yet, they haven’t killed my spirit," Sheela, now graying in her late 60s, says. "No matter where I go, I will always wear crown… I'm not afraid of being under guillotine."

It was an appropriately dramatic introduction to one of the most fascinating anti-heroes I’ve ever come across, Walter White not withstanding.

At the cult's peak in the 1980s, there were thousands of Rajneeshees around the world who worshipped their guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho), a white-bearded Indian man they likened to a rock star. Many Rajneeshees were educated, upper-middle-class white Americans who flocked to India to gain enlightenment by being in Bhagwan’s presence. Bored of capitalism and craving meaning in their lives, they were easily convinced to join the Rajneesh movement, donning red robes all the while. Eventually, hundreds of Rajneeshees and Bhagwan himself moved from India to America. They formed a commune near Antelope, Oregon, on 64,000 acres of rural land, and had it incorporated as a city called Rajneesh, complete with stores, a school, and a landing strip for planes. Eventually, the cult known for unique meditation practices and lots of sex engaged in a full-on war with the nearby townsfolk who despised them. According to the documentary, it was a war the Rajneeshees fought with mass poisonings, drugs, rigged elections, attempted assassinations, and an arsenal of assault weapons they practiced with on their land.

Bhagwan was their leader, but Sheela, his tiny cherub-cheeked, foul-mouthed secretary, was pulling the strings. And despite her crimes—she pleaded guilty in 1985 to attempted murder and assault for poisoning hundreds of Oregonians with salmonella—I found myself in awe of Sheela while watching the doc.

Sheela was a master of manipulation. She overthrew Bhagwan’s other secretary, Laxmi, to become his righthand, and she seemed to revel in the power. She once made a young Australian disciple wax her legs in the middle of the night, later promoting her, and much later instructing her to murder Bhagwan’s doctor. The woman obeyed, though she wasn’t successful. It’s fucked up. But how many people can command that type of loyalty?

Sheela courted controversy, doing media appearances solely to troll the townsfolk of Antelope, Oregon, who wanted the Rajneeshees gone. Asked on 60 Minutes how she felt about people who "don’t want the orange people in our town," she replied, "What can I say? Tough titties." She rejected the notion of turning the other cheek, stating that the Rajneesh philosophy was to "take both of their cheeks."

On The Merv Griffin Show, when one of the Antelope residents noted that Bhagwan had collected between four and 14 Rolls Royces, Sheela all-too-smugly corrected her to say they were about to hit 20.

She declared that Rajneeshees "are the only people who enjoy sex fully" and posed nude for a German magazine. At a time when society was far more close-minded than it is now for white women, let alone for an Indian woman who served a strange, bearded man, I cannot stress how surreal it felt to witness her antics.

Although the residents of Antelope had very valid reasons to be pissed about the Rajneeshees even before all the poisonings took place, bigotry was clearly another factor. In footage shown in the doc, former Antelope mayor Margaret Hill asks, "Should… a group of people of like persuasion be allowed to enter an area and literally wipe out the culture that is there?” Apparently she'd forgotten the entire history of the American Revolutionary War.

In its prime, the Rajneesh cult was worth $65 million, with money pouring in from massive festivals hosted at the Oregon commune, as well as books and other materials sold worldwide. I won’t lie, it’s a tad amusing that Sheela and Bhagwan duped all these white people searching for authenticity into handing over their money. The inverse of cultural appropriation, if you will.

I recognize that Sheela had major flaws, and may even be a psychopath. I also feel like if she was a man (or at least if she hadn't ended up in jail) she could have been the leader of a country. Hell, she could’ve been the president of the United States. The world could use a little bit more Sheela. But not too much.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.