Click to viewThe Pakistani government caused a worldwide, two-hour-long YouTube outage on Sunday after it ordered Internet service providers to block the site. Reports suggest these two videos were responsible for the ban. The first animates the Danish cartoons which caused riots in 2005. The second is a trailer for Forbidden, a film which argues Islam is an inherently violent religion. Here's that clip:
In case any of you ugly ducklings out there stare at the impossibly adorable and feisty Elisabeth Hasselbeck, The View panel's hawkish contributor, and see in her an unattainably shrill ideal, fear not. She too was once a gawky pre-adolescent, smiling past the sadness through a wall of orthodontic appliances and tragically outmoded frames purchased at the short-lived Sally Jesse Raphael Optical Centers (Your Glasses—and Some Tough Love—in About An Hour!™).
Every once in a while the heavens bestow on us a beautiful shining gift. Something so awesome, so fantabulous, that we can't help but share it with everyone we know. Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that gift would include Coolio. But oh, does it ever. Here's a program that puts to shame everything currently on the Food Network and the Travel Channel combined. Take that, Bobby Flay. Look into the eyes of greatness and tremble, Paula Deen. Cookin' With Coolio is here and there's no turning back.
Last night on Conan, Howard Stern sidekick Artie Lange showed us exactly why he's become one of the most reliably effed up talk show guests to come down the pike in a long while. After making fun of previous guest Randy Jackson, Artie proceeded to explain why he's called in sick to the Stern show for the past few days. Here's a hint: he ran out of cocaine!
In the middle of a political riot in Belgrade, two young Serbian women went looting, looking just like a couple of Mardi Gras sorority girls except for all the stealing of food, shoes and coats from stores. It's so much more aggravating to see them carting off all this stuff than just some regular poor, acting like they're on a perfectly acceptable shopping spree. As alarms go off, the girls (the one in the sweatsuit shows off her tramp stamp!) stuff clothing into their stolen Adidas bags and yell at the cameraman to stop shooting. Watch it and let the hate seethe in you.
The decade's best Oscars host Steve Martin (we still cherish his Best Actor intro line, "gay poet, crazed artist, a shipwrecked victim, a roman gladiator....but enough about me...") stopped by the Late Show with David Letterman last night to catch up with his old friend. Touching upon the topic of the writers strike, Martin, like so many of his fellow scribes, suddenly found himself with an abundance of free time, which he chose to fill by "writing movie scripts and TV pilots...and then I would sell them to the studios."
It's snowing! We are vaguely aware that this is an inconvenience to people who need to go to the airport and such, but we don't care, we love it. Winter days without snow feel a hundred times more miserable. Celebrate New York's proverbial white blanket before it all turns into a mess of disgusting slush with this atmospheric clip of the gentleness that falls from the heavens. Suggested listening material: "Taking Tiger Mountain" by Brian Eno, Vince Guaraldi's "Skating" song from A Charlie Brown Christmas, Sinatra's "Sleep Warm" if you are feeling emo, or that easy-listening classic "Steal Softly Thru Snow" by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band.
If you aren't yet familiar with magical Mormon munchkin David Archuleta, chances are you will be soon. Already dubbed the Chosen One by the LAT, the 17-year-old singing wunderkind seems as though he were literally fashioned out of plasticine by disconcertingly bedentured Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe, ready out-of-the-box for mass tween consumption. And while his aw-shucks humility has served him well thus far in the competition (his reaction to the judge's gushing and Ryan Seacrest's mild flirtation after his first performance was something akin to tickling a five-year-old mercilessly), Archuleta, in keeping with the theme of this year's vet-heavy Idol, is no stranger to high-stakes performing.
Meghan Asha — the SIlicon Valley heiress who keeps TechCrunch's Michael Arrington as her on-again, off-again boy toy — found a new dog to play with at yesterday's toy fair in New York. Improvements over Arrington: He can't talk, but he can wag his tail."Do you want a date?" Asha asks. "Do you want to come home with me? I would take really good care of you." Below, in another clip, Asha in a lurid threesome.
We've completely forgotten the grating, chintzy, and pandering tones of the Obama Girl and will.i.am thanks to the very first entertaining musical salute to a candidate in the history of YouTube. It's called Viva Obama, and it's a catchy tune that will have you humming "Viva Obama! (Viva!) Familias unidas, seguras y hasta con plan de salud!" in no time. Sorry, Hill, your miniature Mexican stereotype is no match for an entire mariachi band. Video after the jump, crank up the volume.
Sigh. Fat Clooney, Black and White Clooney, U.N. Clooney, even bathroom stall Clooney—there's just no one quite like George. Just ask Time magazine columnist Joel Stein, who, assigned with the burden of perhaps one of the most culturally significant cover stories of our time (hint: it's called "The Last Movie Star,"), did the nearly unthinkable: He invited the Michael Clayton star to his home. For a home-cooked dinner. And George said yes.
After witnessing the multi-hued splendor of Tuesday's boys' night, last night's all-girl competition on American Idol was something of a letdown, each contestant virtually indistinguishable from the pageant-ready hopeful who came before her. Even Carly Smithson, the focus of some controversy for having already released a major-label album only to see it flop spectacularly, failed to impress an even-ornerier-than-usual Simon Cowell, who diverged from his two articulation-challenged co-judges to (rightfully) observe, "there's so much hype about you...so much expectation...there's a buzz about you...everything about it for me was a letdown."
· We suppose we could do some research to find the name of the guy who rocked the meanest motherscratching ukulele solo we have ever heard on Conan last night, but frankly, it's late and we're tired. Besides, all you need to know is that this fella is even more earnest in his desire to rock than Jables was in School Of Rock. Roy Smeck, eat your heart out. [Late Night with Conan O'Brien]
· Human Giant's Rob Huebel finally gets around to learning the lesson that John Bobbitt taught us back on a warm summer night in 1993. Namely, that having your penis cut off is the fastest way to get famous. [Funny Or Die]
· Slashfilm has the first look (at least the first that we have seen) of Richard Kelly's next directorial effort, The Box. [Slashfilm]
· Jamie Lynn Spears got grounded. What possible trouble can a pregnant girl get into that doesn't involve burger phones, you ask? Going out in public with her boyfriend, that's what! [Radar]
· Look up, it's a solar eclipse! (And by solar, we really meant lunar.) [LAist]
Our fondness for Attack Of The Show's impossibly shiny haired Olivia Munn has been well-documented on these here pages. Aside from our fanboyish appreciation of her considerable physical charms, the thing that we feel separates Munn from the other pretty faces that grace the telly is her fearlessly honest assessments of some of the, shall we say, floozier members of the Young Hollywood set. Take her comments on Lindsay Lohan's boob-baring photoshoot, for example. What other female television color commentator would dare label LiLo as looking "haggard" and then follow that crack by putting her low-hanging boobs on blast? We can answer that for you: none. Olivia Munn, we salute you and your impossibly shiny hair. Stay gold.
Tim Draper is the VC backer of Hotmail, Skype and Glam Media backer. But when it comes to singing, he's backup at best. From this portion of a recent Hooman.tv interview, we learn that Draper "is the risk master. Lives fast and drives faster. Skates on the edge of disaster. He is the risk master." The singing, at least, lives up to the "edge of disaster" billing.
At long last, the American Idol chaff has been removed (farewell, STG. Farewell, fan-waving hippie. Farewell, toe-tapping girl—or, rather, hello to Defamer's newest celebrity commenter), and we can focus on the unpolished kernels of wheat vying for karaoke's ultimate crown. Only watching the top 12 boys compete last night, we were instantly struck by something: These are some of the gayest wheat-kernels we've ever laid our eyes on!
A while back, we learned of popular right wing hack and '80s relic Ben Stein's upcoming documentary, Expelled. It's about how all the secular Darwinist scientists persecute those people brave enough to speak made-up truths to power. Stein, whose training and expertise in the sciences is limited to a career of unrepentant bullshitting, wishes to give creationists, intelligent design advocates, and other various nutjobs their rightful place in the sun of academia. If you see his movie, though, don't review it.
The final Runway four climbed onto Live with Regis and Kelly's barstools this morning, offering us, the way-too-involved Project Runway fan, the illusion of seeing some old, completely-charisma-free friends on national morning TV! (Perhaps the same is being said of us.) Moments after Jillian Lewis shared the many, many mishaps that made the construction of her Twizzlers dress such a living nightmare (so many licorice-related complications!), Reeg goes in for the kill:
