For our readers fortunate enough to not be in the NYC area today, I'll give you a short summary of what the weather is currently like outside: Hell. It's freezing, windy and rainy (and my umbrella may or may not have imploded during my walk to Jossip HQ). Granted, I'm from Texas so anything below 60 degrees weirds me out, but the overwhelming majority opinion is that today is one of those days where you stay inside as much as possible.
Enter the PETA crazies, who heard that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen would be at a Manhattan Barnes & Noble to sign copies of their latest book. No amount of bad weather was going to keep these people from lining up outside in those dumb Trollsen masks and frightening passersby.
One insane person's personal account of the protest, after the jump. CONTINUED »
Magical tool David Blaine is pulling every excuse out of thin air for his failed stunt Wednesday night. First it was George W. Bush's fault (well, everything is, really). Now it's Mother Nature's fault, because she had the audacity to ruin his plans for "the most amazing ending for a stunt ever" (his words, not ours) with high winds.
Blaine said his grand finale of diving from a platform 44 feet to the ground while attached to a harness didn't go according to plan. He was supposed to jump and, at 10 feet, be swept away by a bunch of helium-filled balloons. Instead, he dangled awkwardly for a moment before disappearing in an ascent into the night sky.
Blaine said ABC, which aired the event in a two-hour special called David Blaine: Dive of Death, had encouraged him not to dive because of high winds. 'I wasn't going to let everybody down, so I just jumped, and somehow the guys with the balloons made it work, and they pulled me slowly up and I went over into the park and they pulled me down,' he said.
He went on to add that he knew the stunt had failed when his friends called him afterward to ask what happened because they were confused. DB? Those aren't your friends. That was every American idiot who sat through your ABC special. Don't get the two confused.
As journalists charge Gov. Rick Perry and the federal government with restricting access to the areas damaged the most by Hurricane Ike, reports have come in that Galveston might not be ready for habitation for months and shelters in Houston are having trouble feeding everyone in a timely fashion (one shelter fielded 10,000 requests for food and water just yesterday). But as hectic and tragic as things are in the Texas Coast, there is a severe humanitarian crisis in Haiti and Cuba, both of which Ike tore through before it made its way to the U.S.
As a very dangerous Hurricane Ike approaches Texas, forecasters are warning that people in the Galveston area are facing "certain death," and residents much further inland have been evacuated. The government estimates that the 3.5 million people live in the storm's impact zone.
Indeed, not a single celebrity died during yesterday’s 5.8 earthquake in Los Angeles. But that’s not the only (yes we’re morbid) bad news: Mother Nature didn’t hamper a single reality television show filming in the area. The jerkoffs on Big Brother, who aren’t allowed any communication with the outside world, were told by producers that the reason the soundstage was shaking was not because Kirstie Alley had a new show filming next door, but because tectonic plates were moving about beneath them.
But there is one minuscule bit of good news.
Rainn Wilson took over the CNN newsroom to shamelessly plug his new movie, which might be considered annoying if we weren't completely in love with him. The anchor calls Rainn "the guy from The Office" and then questions his credentials. Uh, if anyone is qualified to discuss gales and hail storms, it's Dwight K. Schrute.
It's snowing in Saudi Arabia! My father is over there doing whatever it is he does and he sent me these pictures. "The coldest winter in decades," he says.
I think it resembles Hoth, just more nonsecular: "Morning and afternoon prayers are being combined in many mosques because of the morning cold…"
The overturned vehicles are no surprise, as the Saudis drive like careless, selfish madmen, and uncharacteristically icy roads can't help a thing. But if you can ignore the twisted steel, the landscape is beautiful in a unique way.
(This isn't pop culture related, but neither is almost everything.)
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