firehose

Prosecutors on Monday charged a former teacher and public school administrator with 16 counts of sexual abuse after a former student confronted her and posted a recording of their phone conversation on YouTube.

assbuttsdoitspookier:

gildatheplant:

avantblargh:

"He’s like an enormous, muscular Ellen DeGeneres."

I would like to applaud this show for challenging racial, occupational, and gender stereotypes

I need to see this show because this man seems absolutely adorable.

BUT WHAT SHOW IS THIS

Ha, what show indeed.

urbanination:

Concept for a bike storage system that takes up unused urban spaces. 

WASHINGTON—Claiming that he would “be up Shit Creek without a goddamn paddle” if he wasn’t able to locate one, a frantic, out-of-breath Vice President Joe Biden reportedly arrived at a D.C.

theslipperiestbutt:

bapgeek:

littlemyakovsky:

paperalphabet:

mollitudo:

My feelings.

SAME

Nice.

"Nobody wants a hero when there isn’t something to save." 

I forget where I read that, and I’m probably paraphrasing, but that just stuck with me. Post War Useless and Unwanted Harry makes sense, not that its his fault, really. But heroes in peaceful times are trouble.  

Hi, guys!  I’ve missed you so much!  So, here’s the deal:  I assumed my buy-Season-5-or-I-won’t-review-it ultimatum would last a lot longer and wouldn’t be resolved until my Mom ended up buying them (my Mom totally reads FHR.  Hi, Mom!  Maybe you were right about all that tv rotting my brain…).  I’d planned on writing a series of articles entitled, “The Writer’s Strike” while the stalemate played out, both to retain readers during the hiatus and also because I thought it would be fun to do some pop-culture blogging that wasn’t strictly about Full House for a change.  But, much to my surprise, a few readers seemed pretty eager to get to Season 5 and the DVD’s came right away.  Who woulda thunk it!

But there was one “Writer’s Strike” idea that was too good to pass up, so I thought I’d offer this intermission, or “half-time show” for you football fans, before returning to the seemingly-endless slog that is reviewing every episode of Full House in chronological order.  And so I offer you this one-time entry that celebrates another shitty show, one I’d call the most divinely shitty show of them all, Saved By the Bell.

I fucking love Saved By the Bell.  It’s completely garish and nonsensical in every way imaginable, and since it was continually renewed for syndication throughout my entire upbringing, it’s been a ubiquitous part of my life.  I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve watched this show so fucking much that I’ve even developed an affection for all the colorful background characters who illuminate the hallways of Bayside High.  That’s right, even though 6 kids completely dominate every single class and school activity that takes place at Bayside, there is a large and diverse cast of unsung heroes who populate the school and create a vibrant, living ambiance throughout the series.  Some of them do little more than stand in the background and react accordingly to the main characters’ antics, but others eventually graduate to speaking, or even supporting, roles.

And so, without further ado, here it is:  the only non-Full House, Full House Reviewed article you’ll ever read.  This Friday, rather than commiserate about one awful show for it’s lack of craft or tact, we celebrate the inane minutiae of a much more charming but equally terrible show.  This week, we pay tribute to:

The Top 10 Saved By the Bell Background Characters: 

10)  The Surfer Guy

The Surfer Guy is there to reaffirm stereotypes about early 90′s Southern California surfer guys.  His interests include surfing, skateboarding, and, presumably, smoking pot in a van in the Bayside parking lot.

One of the only times he ever speaks onscreen is when he and his doped up surfer buddies pitch their business idea, a collapsible cardboard surfboard, as a class project.  Even A.C. Slater, inventor of Buddy Bands, can see what an idiotic idea this is.

Surprisingly, his habit of skateboarding through the halls never provokes Mr. Belding to say, “hey hey hey hey, WHAT is going on here?”

9)  The Short Girl 

Although less flamboyant than many of the other kids at Bayside, The Short Girl stands out because she’s literally like 5 feet tall.

The Short Girl likes to party, evidenced by her appearance at just about every school dance or birthday throughout the entire series.  She also has some pretty great reactions to all the ridiculous nonsense that occurs on and around Bayside.

Apparently her locker is right next to the staircase, making her a captive witness to all sorts of bizarre spectacles.  But, I wonder, would the absurdity of these situations be as apparent to us, the viewers, without her emotive reactions?

8)  The Guy With Butt Rock Hair

Originally cast as one of The Surfer Guy’s crew, The Guy With Butt Rock Hair carves out his own unique identity over time.  Although he, too, reaffirms Southern California stereotypes and surely spends a great deal of time in that van in the parking lot, he also spontaneously plays air guitar at parties, making him an entity unto himself.

7)  Fat Enid 

Although obsessive SBTB devotees (I can’t be the only one) will point out that Fat Enid’s name is revealed during the graduation ceremony at the series’ climax to be Margo Mason (what a gratifying conclusion to the series it is to see so many background characters finally named!  We also learn that The Short Girl is actually named Wanda Wilcox), she is affectionately referred to by my friends and I as “Fat Enid” because she resembles a plus-sized Enid Coleslaw from Ghost World.

Fat Enid’s attire begs a question that can be applied to several of Bayside’s ambient extras:  is she supposed to be a hipster, or some executives outdated archetypical rendition of a nerd?

Fat Enid is also apparently the only Jew at Bayside, which we learn when a teacher asks everyone in the class who’s Jewish to raise their hands.  I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, but whatever, it only served the purpose of aiding one of Zack’s zany schemes when he claimed to be one of the chosen people to get out of class, so who cares?

6)  The Asian Chameleon 

You might think that being the only Asian person to ever walk the halls of Bayside High would be enough to land a spot on this list, but the Asian Chameleon has so much more to him.

So what’s the deal?  He seems pretty normal, right?  But there’s one thing about the Asian Chameleon that separates him from the rest of these background characters (well, two if you count the fact that he’s the only Asian person.).

The Asian Chameleon occasionally plays the role of a nerd.  He’s the only extra who plays a dual role, presumably because they wanted an Asian nerd but refused to hire another actor.  What’s most amazing about it is that he sometimes plays both of these roles in a single episode.  What, we’re supposed to think that he’s two different guys?  Don’t rerun your show four times a day for twenty years if you want to try to get away with a stunt like that.

5)  Ollie, the Nerd With a Frog in His Throat

Ollie, the Nerd With a Frog in His Throat, is a more well-known background character, as he tends to get a few lines whenever he appears onscreen.  He’s often on committees or in school clubs and contributes his opinions with his trademark scratchy baritone. He’s also a common easy mark whenever Zack tries to sell some bullshit product to a bunch of rubes.

I wonder if the actor who plays him really talks like that or if his weird voice is just some schtick he came up with to score more lines.  He does get a laugh pretty much any time he says anything, regardless of whether it’s a joke or not.  I also find it remarkable that so many of the background characters at Bayside are nerds.  Is it because of the popularity of the Revenge of the Nerds movies?  Seriously, Bayside’s like %40 nerds.

4)  Herbert, The Twitchy Nerd

Speaking of Bayside’s abundance of nerds, here’s Herbert, the Twitchy Nerd, who has the same ridiculous sneer on his face for every single second that he appears onscreen.

Herbert is often paired with Ollie, and I like to think that they’re best friends, although Herbert can be seen getting pretty friendly with other nerds from time to time.

Herbert is probably the hardest working extra of them all, as his unwavering dedication towards fixing his face to look like he just sniffed a turd has got to be pretty strenuous.  He also moves in quick, jerky movements that are surely the product of years of study at the Oxford School of Drama.

3)  Ox/Scud

Ox almost doesn’t qualify for this list, as he’s more or less a supporting character in the Tori episodes, but, fuck it, I never saw his ass in the credits.  Besides, there’s just so much to say about him.

Ox originally appeared as Scud, the red herring character in the “No Hope With Dope” episode, but for some reason he was later recast as a different one-dimensional character. What’s even weirder is that there was already a dumb jock character named Moose on the show.

Ox really draws attention to the fact that Saved By the Bell is more or less a live-action adaptation of Archie comics.  Although the characters at Bayside aren’t one-to-one analogs of the kids at Riverdale, they’re both essentially stories about the improbable adventures of archetypical teenage stereotypes, written for children by out-of-touch hacks.  These parallels are never as evident as when the character of Ox shows up, who actually is a one-to-one analog of an Archie character, who interestingly enough is named Moose.

I’d feel guilty if I didn’t mention that Archie comics have really improved in the past few years.

2)  The Twins

The twins are probably the most iconic Saved By the Bell Background characters, or the ones most often recognized even by people who don’t have an unhealthy obsession with the series.

The Twins always wear matching outfits, which both emphasizes the amazingly awful fashion trends of the early 90′s and gives the backgrounds a distinct, David Lynchy feel.

The Twins are your best choice for a Saved By the Bell background characters drinking game, as every time there’s gossip, every time Jesse is looking for supporters for her feminist cause, every time Zack needs to swindle someone or hit on them, they’re there.

1)  This Guy

Although This Guy is less conspicuous than many Saved By the Bell background characters, mostly because he’s considerably less cartoonish in his appearance than most of them, I can guarantee you that once you’ve seen him, you will never un-see him ever again.

This Guy offers so many amazing moments, as he’s present throughout the entire series.  No background character better exemplifies the collective reactions of Bayside’s student body to a given situation than he does.

When A.C. Slater gets in trouble with the military, we’re assured of the seriousness of the situation by This Guy’s astonished expression.

All he can do is hang his head as he tries to process the dire consequences of Slater’s mistakes.

In a lighter scene, This Guy lets us know that Slater’s drumming for the talent competition is supposed to be good by rocking out behind him and giving him a congratulatory pat on the back when he’s done.

This Guy provides a sense of empathy to the audience that the main characters cannot.  You see, Saved By the Bell is a story presented to us by Zack Morris, an omniscient narrator who knows he’s in a story and controls every element around him, be it the winning results of a raffle or the movement of time itself.

Since we, the viewer, can never know what it’s like to control the very fabric of reality, we can only see Zack as the other, an unknowable entity.  This Guy embodies the experience that more closely resembles our own, as a passive spectator in the drama surrounding Zack.

This Guy is the face of Bayside’s largely marginalized student body, forced to dance aimlessly in the background in a wizard robe as the real drama plays out in the foreground, a plane only attainable by 6 students at Bayside and maybe whoever they’re trying to bang that week.

But This Guy still has a few glorious moments of his own, like in the episode that chronicles the aftermath of Zack and Kelly’s breakup.

During a montage of dates, Zack goes to a series of screenings of the same movie, two of which are attended by This Guy, who has a different date each time!  Dang, way to play the field, This Guy.

This Guy only speaks once in the entire series, despite being present for damn near every episode.  When he and his friends are asked to voice their opinions about Bayside’s radio programming, they praise everyone’s performance except for Slater’s.  What is it with This Guy and Slater?  They seem to have a pretty complex relationship…

Here’s the you, This Guy, the greatest background character in this history of television! You are Bayside’s unsung hero no longer!

 

Finally, since I had to fast-forward through the entire fucking series to create this blog entry, I took a few more screencaps of moments that were too good not to share.

Alan Fairbanks just barely didn’t make the list.

See you guys next Friday with the premier of Full House Season 5!

Original Source

Did something happen Sunday night? According to the newspapers: a big old whompin'.

Here are the best newspaper front (or back) pages we could round up on Monday morning. All non-Twitter images culled from Newseum.

Check out today's back page of the @NYDailyNews after the Seahawks' 43-8 rout of Broncos: OMAHA-HA pic.twitter.com/nKzcZcs4Un #SB48

— Manish Mehta (@MMehtaNYDN) February 3, 2014

Colorado, the home state of the Denver Broncos, seemed to have a recurring theme. See if you can spot it!

C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER

This one's pretty good (unless you're a Broncos fan, I guess):

And now on to Washington state! I wonder if they're in a better mood.

Whoa, sweet drop-shadow. Is "Sound Publishing" just a front for Geocities?

And let's wrap up with the most creative headline of all:

Great job, most newspaper manufacturers!

Jared Lorenzen has gotten older, and -- somehow -- gotten bigger. But just because the Hefty Lefty's NFL days are over doesn't mean his days of destroying regular-sized football players are done.

Monday night, we were just minding our own business, when this picture crossed our Twitter timeline.

Jared Lorenzen and NKY River Monsters warming up for 8 pm kick vs Bluegrass Warhorses. pic.twitter.com/hyswW5OAv0

— Kyle Scott (@Ky1eSc0tt) February 4, 2014

That's Jared Lorenzen -- the Hefty Lefty -- getting ready for his season debut in a league called the Continental Indoor Football League for a team called the Northern Kentucky River Monsters. (Yes, he looks kind of like a river monster.) He's 32. He's 320 pounds. And although the Super Bowl was yesterday, his year is just getting started.

If you aren't familiar, once upon a time, Lorenzen was a star at Kentucky and later a backup NFL quarterback. Just looking at his stats, nothing was remarkable about him. He started for four years at Kentucky, setting school records in attempts and completions, leading the perennial cellar-dwelling Wildcats to a 7-5 record in a 24-touchdown, five-interception season in 2002. In the NFL, he threw eight passes in two seasons, although he was lucky enough to be on the Giants when they won the Super Bowl in 2008.

No, nothing was particularly notable about Lorenzen, except his enormous size. He was listed at 260 pounds in college, huge for a quarterback, and although he had a cannon for an arm, it seemed none of that weight was muscle, but rather all pudge.

This is what made him famous. This is why he got his nickname -- The Hefty Lefty -- and how he became a piece of football folklore.

But as that photo of Lorenzen playing with something called the Northern Kentucky River Monsters shows, there's something else notable: Lorenzen will not stop playing football. And furthermore, as a gargantuan quarterback monster, he's completely unstoppable at low levels of football you didn't know existed.

We've tried our best to create a timeline of Jared Lorenzen's post-NFL football career. It is incredible.

January 2008: Lorenzen wins the Super Bowl as Eli Manning's backup with the New York Giants. He is listed at 6'3, 288 pounds. He looks like this:

Jim O'Connor, USA Today Sports

Huge, to be sure.

September 2008: A few months after winning the Super Bowl with the Giants, Lorenzen is cut by the Indianapolis Colts. He is listed at 6'4, 285 pounds. (He grew an inch, apparently.) He looks like this.

Kirby Lee, USA Today Sports

Again, enormous, to be sure.

February 2009: Lorenzen signs with the Kentucky Horsemen of af2, a minor league affiliate of the Arena Football League. They play in Rupp Arena, home to the basketball team at the school where Lorenzen played college ball. He is dominant:

It becomes clear that although Lorenzen was a perfectly suitable quarterback -- good enough to briefly play in the NFL -- he was born to dominate arena football. Science tell us momentum is mass times velocity, and we've taken a game about running people over and put it on a tiny field where 4.4 40 speedsters can't hit their peak tempo. All that's left is mass, and Lorenzen has all of it.

He's majestic. Sometimes he slings 40-yard passes past his competition. Sometimes he gets the need to run, and all of a sudden 300 pounds are on the move, ready to beeftank.

And unlike real football, it works. He bowls dudes over, hits the end zone and spikes the ball, having accomplished the thing he was built to do.

(Low-key favorite thing about that video: his original No. 22 jersey gets destroyed, so he ends the game tearing things up in a No. 57 jersey.)

However, the Horsemen are short-lived. They go 10-6 with Lorenzen at QB, but the team and the league both fold in October after the season ends, because it's minor league arena football.

March 2010: Lorenzen becomes QBs coach at his high school, Highlands.

September 2010: After a hiatus, Lorenzen is apparently no longer interested in playing football. He's been named general manager of the newly formed Northern Kentucky River Monsters. They play their games at the Bank of Kentucky Center, in Highland Heights, home to Northern Kentucky University's basketball team et. al. They are members of the Ultimate Indoor Football League, an Arena Football League somewhere below the Arena Football League.

The playing days are over, but he's settled down. He's a coach. He's a GM. He was bigger than playing football.

February 2011: Apparently fed up with searching for lesser players, Lorenzen QUITS HIS JOB AS THE TEAM'S GENERAL MANAGER TO BECOME QUARTERBACK.

Said Lorenzen: "I been around it since September and I have resisted the urge. Then when the pads came out, I couldn't resist any longer." League rules prevent Lorenzen from playing and being a general manager, so he's stepped down for now and will just be a "front office consultant."

In FIFA, there is a player-manager mode. Because it's a video game, I always make my players comically absurd. My FIFA player is 6'10, the tallest height allowed, and a 16-year-old goalkeeper from Cuba who wears silly pants and a gold helmet. His first move as manager of a Premier League team -- why it hired a 16-year-old, goodness knows -- is to sell all the other goalkeepers on the team and make himself the starter.

Jared Lorenzen is my FIFA player, come to life. He's 100 pounds too fat, and he's taken over a football team so he can play football.

Not only does Lorenzen play, he DOMINATES. Here he is running over three defenders, tossing them away like an angry Hulk:

He leads the Ultimate Indoor Football League with 3,473 yards, throws 81 touchdowns and is intercepted 19 times, and guides the River Monsters to an 11-3 season for the best record in the league. He is named the league's MVP.

July 2011: Lorenzen is named the MVP of the Ultimate Indoor Football League.

That's right: in five months, he quit his job as GM of a team in a league, became that team's QB, became that league's MVP, and then was named its commissioner.

However, commissioning a minor league indoor football league is somewhat difficult, as evidenced by the Wikipeida's list of teams in the UIFL by year:

Long story short: If a team is in the UIFL, there is like a 1-in-4 chance they will play in the UIFL the next year. (In 2012, the "U" stood for United, but it has since snapped back to "Ultimate.")

March 2013: Lorenzen signs with a team called the "Owensboro Rage," a team that bills him as bringing "Super Bowl experience." He now looks like this:

Jared Lorenzen & Jackson Tolle, now teammates on the Owensboro Rage, 39-38 winners tonight in CIFL pic.twitter.com/OFOMSiJ5xB

— Danny Weddle (@DannyEWeddle) March 24, 2013

The Rage folds by the end of the season.

Today: Lorenzen is once again with the Northern Kentucky River Monsters, who haven't played football since 2011. He's now listed at 6'4, 320 pounds -- the second-heaviest player on the roster, despite playing QB -- and he now looks like this:

A different shot of Jared Lorenzen tonight, per @Ky1eSc0tt. pic.twitter.com/6C05ldwO41

— Bart Hubbuch (@HubbuchNYP) February 4, 2014

Lorenzen has gotten older, and he has somehow gotten larger.

Lorenzen won the Super Bowl, kind of, but the NFL told him his career would be a short one. Many would have given up. But instead of letting somebody tell him he wasn't good enough, he just moved to a level where he was good enough. A level where he could continue slinging the ball and continue trucking regular-sized people people at a lower level, for teams you didn't know existed.

For this, Lorenzen is an American hero, and we salute him. Godspeed, Hefty Lefty. Godspeed.

geekishchic:

playmygayheartstrings:

marchesamedici:

fishy:

novazembla:

fast-food-knight:

plenilune:

gingerbreadcottage:

Back in high school, I was looking up Victorian etiquette for a project, and I stumbled upon this game on a Canadian museum website. You pick a gender and then go through little scenarios where you’re quizzed on the proper Victorian way to act.

It is the greatest thing.

And usually it’s more fun to pick the incorrect answer, because sometimes NINJAS AND ALIENS pop up. I’m not even kidding.

GO PLAY IT.

YOU DIDN’T MENTION THE VOICES, OH LORD. IT’S LIKE A CROSS BETWEEN MONTY PYTHON ANIMATION AND WONDERMARK, COMPLETELY ON CRACK OPIUM WHILE STILL UNFAILINGLY COURTEOUS.

I KEEP LAUGHING UPROARIOUSLY AT MY SCREEN. THIS IS A RIDICULOUS DELIGHT.

This is amazing, oh my god. 

I know some people who need to see this.

I will absolutely be playing this.

I found this in Grade 12 after a slight obsession with Oscar Wilde. Needless to say, I’ve never looked back.

FUCKING

I am so aware of victorian manners and what is proper, and yet I can’t help doing everything wrong

omg

Our world would be a way more wondrous place if Disney and Hayao Miyazaki's characters littered the logos of our lives.

Read more...

I couldn't be less interested in Super Bowl commercials... and in fact? I'm done. HOWEVER! If someone could guarantee that commercials as excellent as the following two-minute ad—shown only in Georgia and starring personal injury lawyer Jamie Casino—would be shown every season? I'd be there every year for the rest of my life. In fact? Screw the Super Bowl. Just give me two hours every year of CASINO'S LAW.

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Some users found that quitting and restarting Mail forced the application to download new messages, but Apple has now published an awkward workaround that allows the app to stay open while still forcing a download of new messages.

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, during its fourth-quarter earnings report, Facebook revealed it had 1.23 billion monthly active users, 757 million daily active users, 945 million monthly active mobile users, and 556 million daily active mobile users. In its 10-K filing published on the weekend, the company estimated that in 2013, between 5.5 percent and 11.2 percent of these users were fake." Another anonymous reader sent in a link to a recent interview where Mark Zuckerberg appears more pragmatic in his opinions about forcing real identities online: "Former Facebook employees say identity and anonymity have always been topics of heated debate in the company. Now Zuckerberg seems eager to relax his old orthodoxies. 'I don’t know if the balance has swung too far, but I definitely think we’re at the point where we don’t need to keep on only doing real identity things,' he says. 'If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some Symbiosis work from last night. Huuuuge fauna.

Ikaruga, the dual-tone GameCube shmup from Japanese developer Treasure, is hitting Steam with a few tweaks and tune-ups, including Double Play Mode and game screen rotation. Double Play Mode allows the player to control two ships with one gamepad, ...

FremantleMedia North America has acquired the rights to adapt Neil Gaiman's acclaimed novel "American Gods" for television.

“If it be in your power, bear serenely with imitators. My Jungle Books begat Zoos of them. But the genius of all the genii was one who wrote a series called Tarzan of the Apes. I read it, but regret I never saw it on the films, where it rages most successfully. He had ‘jazzed’ the motif of the Jungle Books and, I imagine, had thoroughly enjoyed himself. He was reported to have said that he wanted to find out how bad a book he could write and ‘get away with,’ which is a legitimate ambition.”

- Rudyard Kipling on Edgar Rice Burroughs, in his autobiography Something of Myself

endlessquestion:

 Lod Mosaics 

Discovered near Tel Aviv in 1996 in Lod, Israel, the Mosaic, from 300 C.E., was unearthed while enlarging a highway. 

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Danvers doesn't so much negotiate a salary with Jameson as unflinchingly demand fair pay, which she squeezed out of the man that took a sick pleasure from delaying every one of Peter Parker's paychecks. When the gruff publisher tried to impose his idea of a woman's magazine on her – filled with "new diets, and fashions, and recipes" – Carol stood her ground; "And one thing more, Jonah… My name is Ms. Carol Danvers, and as far as diets and recipes go -- forget it." http://www.comicbookreligion.com/sr/1898/37.jpg

“

Paste: Do you think there is a Pynchon or David Foster Wallace of comics out there?

Fraction: That’s such a loaded question I want to punch you in the face.

”

- One of my finer moments with Garrett Martin @ PASTE (via mattfractionblog)