Two hours before the ball dropped in Times Square last night, the Senate was hard at work and managed to pass a plan that would avert the fiscal cliff. The deal was strongly agreed upon in an 89-8 vote.
Barack Obama is a master of the casually revealing photo. For months, you'll see the President of the United States blocking out a stiff rectangular space behind all those podiums, seeming a little vulnerably gangly in one of his slightly roomy grey or blue suits, alternating among a familiar reserve of strained expressions meant to convey leadership, certainty, disappointment, concern, reason, gravity, and occasional disgust. But then, at a regularly reaffirming clip, there are these moments when the President of the United States seems most at ease, somewhat unguarded, and most resolutely human. In these scenes, Obama's character doesn't shrink, it swells.
In news that basically shattered the internet when it first hit Twitter, Kanye West announced Sunday night that Kim Kardashian is pregnant with his baby. West broke the news during his concert in Atlantic City, telling the crowd something along the lines of: "Stop the music and make some noise for my baby mama" before pointing at Kardashian.
When George H.W. Bush was released yesterday from the intensive care unit of a Houston hospital, most news outlets reported the event in a straight forward enough fashion, with some even taking the opportunity to compliment the 88-year-old on his excellent taste in socks. Germany's Der Spiegel, however, took a different approach; instead of reporting his improving health, the magazine accidentally published their pre-written obituary for the former president.
You can never be too rich or too thin or have enough portmanteaus for your post-adolescent generation. It's Twixters, now. Who is a Twixter? Everyone, probably. Any woman who has ever listened to music while wearing a hat is a Twixter. Any man who has ever looked at a picture of Mila Kunis is a Twixter. You are, just for having read the word. Welcome to the Twixter generation. Here is your knit cap and sense of purposelessness. Characteristics include "ESPN" and over-employment.
Actor and profesional crazy person Charlie Sheen recently hosted the opening of his new bar in the El Ganzo hotel in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, was on hand to watch Slash perform. What a party!
PR email blasts take on a kind of terrifying, poetic majesty at this time of year. Some caps become all caps; "don't-miss" becomes "can't-miss"; I have now read the words "burlesque" and "cabaret" so many times that they have lost all meaning. Everything is burlesque. All things are burlesque. Nothing is burlesque. Endless cabarets. The limit does not exist.
Hurricane Sandy relief efforts continued over the holidays with volunteers dropping off meals on Christmas eve and confidential documents being returned from the wreckage to their rightful owners. But good will can only go so far and victims in the north east are still waiting for federal aid to trickle in.
The fiscal cliff is imminent. We are hurtling, not to mention barreling, toward it. Also, it's looming. Every news organization has been churning out folksy little cartoons explaining the situation at the rate of thousands a day since August. There have also been a lot of Wile E. Coyote jokes, and for that alone we deserve as a people to be bound hand and foot and cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
If that bulky headline didn't give you warning enough, prepare to jump down the rabbit hole now. Cast your mind back to a few days ago. Neetzan Zimmerman noted that local New York paper the Journal News' decision to publish the names and addresses of gun owners in Rockland County had come under criticism:
Remember when elegant British superstar Kate Winslet married a man who, like an idiot, changed his name to "Ned RocknRoll," and the whole world let out a collective, "Huh?" Today comes news that clarifies everything: Winslet's wedding gift, courtesy of RocknRoll's billionaire uncle, Richard Branson, is a trip to space. See? Doesn't this all make a lot more sense now?
After a year in storage, Portland resident Julie Keith unpacked a box of Halloween decorations she bought at Kmart only to find what she claims is an authentic letter penned by a Chinese labor camp prisoner.
