Kate Winslet and Bear Grylls reenacted the classic stand-on-boat/"I'm flying"/ohhhh romance scene from Titanic. Remember that? The part when Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio were so in love but also so doomed, and it was amazing and horrible? Because of the iceberg and socioeconomic status?
Only this time, instead of being precariously perched on the rail of a boat, Winslet was on the side of a mountain in a segment for Running Wild With Bear Grylls. It's hilarious, but it also makes me kind of sad. It's hard to rewatch that scene from Titanic without thinking about the tragedy that Leonardo DiCaprio has still never won an Oscar.
Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who shot beloved Zimbabwean lion
Cecil, is not having a good day on Yelp.
And yet he still gave Palmer two stars. Maybe he liked the free toothbrush?
Earlier this month, people became outraged when they discovered that Cecil, a famous 13-year-old protected lion in Zimbabwe, had been killed. Not just killed; killed and skinned for sport, aka "that douchetacular hobby that's a gigantic waste of money and endangered animals." After initially telling the press it was an mysterious Spaniard, authorities have discovered who killed Cecil — Walter Palmer, a Minnesota dentist who, according to the statement he released, believed he was acting legally at the time. As you might have guessed, I think this kind of hunting sucks whether or not it was legal, but it's not my place to decide whether he deserves punishment. There are, however, over 2000+ angry new reviewers on Palmer's dentistry Yelp page who are more than happy to act as judge, jury, and executioner of his star ratings. Oh, and they don't recommend his dental practice, either:
There's also Cialis and therapy.
Five stars!
So... how'd it feel?
That pretty much sums it up.
The reviewers also have some choice words for Yelp, which has apparently been deleting many of the reviews:
Yelp has been claiming that the reviews aren't relevant to the business.
Also, while you'd think that these new reviews actually ruined Palmer's Yelp score, he only had three reviews before today — and two of the three were terrible:
Well, now we know what those high fees were going towards.
Josh Newell was peeking around the closed-off Cougar exhibit at the Columbus Zoo when he noticed that "the cats were looking like they wanted some love." Did Josh just stand there and let those felines wallow in their own loneliness? No. He didn't. Because he is a self-proclaimed "animal lover" with a heart. He hopped over their barrier and started petting them through the wire fences, capturing the whole thing on YouTube:
Josh had apparently seen a video of a friend swimming with a shark and wanted to one-up him in a game of wild-animal themed "Who is has the bigger dick?" The video shows a rare, close-up encounter with a cougar, but also a super dangerous and illegal one. Josh is being charged with criminal trespassing. He admits that it was a "very bad decision," and based off his interview with NBC4i, it seems like he's more worried about being banned from the zoo than any other punishment, which is weirdly kind of sweet. When asked what would've happened if he was bitten, he stated he "wouldn't have sued the zoo," as if he would have any power to do so after jumping a fence into a literal lions' den.
The zoo stated that they have very specific rules in place for keeping animals and guests safe, and that Josh was lucky he wasn't hurt:
No matter how relaxed and comfortable those pumas seemed to be with that guest, the next thing they were going to do was bite him. Why it didn't happen we really don't know.
Maybe it was sheer luck. Or maybe Josh is the cougar whisperer we've been waiting for all along...
"You merely adopted the bike lane. I was born in it, molded by it."
You shouldn't park in the bike lane because it's a dick thing to do. You shouldn't park in the bike lane because you put cyclists at risk of injury. You also shouldn't park in the bike lane because somewhere, this hulking cyclist is out there, waiting for the excuse to move your car whether you want it moved or not. Next time, he may not be so kind. Next time, you may find your car turned all the way over. Next time, you may be there and he may see you. That would be bad.
The only thing I hate more than babies is bad diction. (via YouTube)
New parents think everything their child does is amazing. And that's beautiful. The joy the smallest utterance or gesture brings them is truly heartwarming. But parents often have a tendency to get carried away, mistaking standard baby stuff for special abilities. When I was eight months old, for example, I stuck my head in a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs and my parents thought it demonstrated "A predisposition for exploration and discovery."
A few days ago, Ted Moskalenko of New Jersey posted a video of his three-month-old son allegedly saying "I love you." The Internet blew up over it, and the video has over a million views. Babies aren't supposed to utter phrases like this until around 18 months, so I was excited to watch it and see this amazing act of speech at such a young age. I was sorely disappointed:
It barely sounds like "I love you." It's more of a "Ah laahh vvvv." Why is everyone going crazy? At first, I was thinking that I was the odd one out, so I watched it like 30 times and started to hear it.
Then, I just realized that I was tricking myself into hearing it because I wanted to hear it, kind of like what this dad and the rest of the Internet did.
There is an old saying that "Washington is Hollywood for ugly people." That saying is a really good one.
First of all, yes, word nerds: "congress" is a word for sex. As in "sexual congress." So yes, SexyCongress.net is kinda named "Sexy Sex." More importantly, although it's taken at least 15 years since the technology that powered HotOrNot was first developed, someone finally created a website devoted to ranking Congress by eff-ability. If you're at work and can't be caught actually clicking through elected representatives and deciding which one you'd rather do (the option to kill or marry is not given), let me present you with some findings from the overall rankings.
1. America would rather have sex with women, although it doesn't elect all that many of them.
Almost half of the women in Congress appear on this list before the #1 dude.
There are 99 women in Congress, which amounts to fewer than 20% of the total membership. However, they DOMINATE the top of the "who would you rather have sex with" rankings. Either we as a nation just prefer the female form, or there are a lot of dudes using this website. OR, we unfairly judge women based on appearance, and so there are a lot more ugly dudes in Congress. I'm sure someone will write a PhD thesis on this using SexyCongres.net as their source by the end of the next academic year.
2. Marco Rubio is the second-hottest male in Congress.
"My family came here from Cuba because we were too hot for Communism."
After Martin Heinrich of the Studmuffin Party. Rubio's 2016 chances just went up, in my book.
3. Although my coworker swears Boehner was #69 earlier today, you apparently don't need looks to run the House.
"I'm NOT crying. Just take the picture!"
Pelosi is ranked #38. Apparently the bottle-tan look isn't winning over America, John.
4. Steve King is ranked way too high.
"I'm the only person in my state still authorized to teach sex ed."
Is it the crazy eyes? We all know crazy is good in bed, so I'm going to assume it's the crazy eyes.
5. Joe Kennedy is ranked way too low.
"My Irish eyes aren't just smiling, they're telling a raucously hilarious bar story."
How is this charming Irishman not running the table on the rest of these chumps?!
6. I am proudly represented by the 29th hottest member of Congress.
"I'm an incredibly accomplished person, and this is the first time you've ever probably heard of me. God, I love America."
Remember when you were bullied as a kid, and your mom tried to comfort you by telling you that bullies don't feel good about themselves or what they do? Turns out that your mom was full of shit.
"Isn't it great to be mean to other people and not feel bad about it?" (via Thinkstock)
Great news, fellow former victims of bullying: We have something new to take to our therapists this week! Researchers at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada just published a study suggesting that bullies have high self-esteem and low rates of depression. That's right — there's a good chance that the person who ruined all of ninth grade for you had a f*cking ball doing it.
Oh, and the bullies got laid more too. At least, the bullies among the 135 Vancouver high school students surveyed for this study did.
According to Jennifer Wong, the professor who headed up the study, bullying is largely about establishing social status. “When you're in high school, it's a very limited arena in which you can establish your rank, and climbing the social ladder to be on top is one of the main ways … Bullying is a tool you can use to get there.”
The theory flies in the face of conventional bullying wisdom, that bullies are somehow broken people acting out because they feel bad about themselves or are dealing with troubles at home. Nope! In fact, bullying might even be in the genes, a survival mechanism helping drive these high-self-esteem, not-depressed jerks to procreate more.
Wong does admit that a survey of 135 high school students is far from definitive, but she's planning to do more research. I, meanwhile, am planning to look up all of my childhood bullies on Facebook with the hope that even if they were high-self-esteem children, they're now sad adults. And then I can laugh to myself until I remember that I'm a grown-ass adult woman, and it's really silly to look up people I haven't spoken to for 20 years to see if I'm doing better than them.
Before I watched this, my view of the world was much darker.
Look at that tail wagging and that floppy nose! Yes, that baby elephant is disarmingly cute, but that's just to soften you up for his much grander message: appreciate life's little joys. That's something we say to ourselves when we're feeling down or trying to annoy a friend who is feeling down. But this guy is leading by example and seeing is believing.
He'll never catch those birds and he doesn't even want to. Sometimes the chase, the jump, the hop, the little side-skip is the journey. Sometimes we have to take what's in front of us and make it a game. Thank you baby elephant for giving me a new direction, for today at least. You even make bath time look fun.
I had to take Plan B, and it turned me into an emotional disaster.
"Look at that cute dog." (via Thinkstock)
Plan B is what you take when your primary method of birth control fails, which we all know means BREAKS. It's when you put your trust in a piece of latex, and that trust is SHATTERED. That being said, I am very glad Plan B exists, and I know how lucky our generation is to have this critical medication so readily available. So I took it, and within 16 hours I was crying about literally everything. And I kept crying for a whole week.
Here's the thing: I'm already an emotional person (one time I cried at an Inside Amy Schumer sketch whose truthful comedy hit too close to home), so crying a couple times a week isn't out of the ordinary, but crying five times a day is out of the ordinary. I had to assume it was a side effect of the medicine I had just taken to ensure I didn't get pregnant with a baby fathered by a man with multiple Lord of the Rings tattoos.
Possible side effects of Plan B are as follows: menstrual changes, nausea, lower stomach pain, tiredness, headache, dizziness, breast pain, and vomiting. Here they are, straight from the back of the box:
Where is "uncontrollable crying"? How did they leave that one out? I knew my emotions had to be out of whack because I had just filled my body with a shitload of hormones, so they really should add "insanely emotional" as one of the side effects, right?
I was crying so often that I decided to start documenting what made me cry. And the list got so long that I began to categorize them. So here they are, all the instances I cried the week after taking Plan B:
Category A: Crying at Animals
1. Seeing a tiny bird land next to a puddle and begin drinking from it.
2. Meeting a golden retriever puppy named Doris who was very sweet.
3. Looking at a photo of my sister's dog, who I haven't seen in a couple weeks (pictured below).
1. Holding a distant cousin's baby for 30 seconds while at a restaurant.
2. Running into a pregnant friend I hadn't seen in a while and didn't know was pregnant.
3. For some strange reason, watching this video of a kid dropping a baby at a wedding. Here is the gif because it is so funny:
Category C: Crying at Work
1. When my boss nicely asked me, "How are you doing this week?" in the break room.
2. When I was sitting on the toilet and realized I forgot to do an assignment.
3,4,5,6. When the guy I was dating told me he wanted to be "just friends." This one is actually a justifiable reason to cry, but I cried in four different location in my office about it. That is too many times.
Category D: Crying at Miscellaneous
1. When I couldn't find the necklace I wanted to wear.
2. Right after I found the necklace I wanted to wear, hours later.
3. Looking at a wedding invitation.
4. Looking at an Alanis Morissette-themed 30th birthday invitation.
5. When I couldn't figure out what shoes to wear.
6. When I couldn't figure out what to get for lunch.
7-1,000. More stuff I forgot about because I was too busy crying.
FINAL TALLY
I cried approximately 1,018 times, only one of which was a real reason for crying. I think that is enough times to put it on the box as a side effect.
Even if you're not a huge Cara Delevingne fan, which makes sense since she is mostly eyebrows, saying she's being "awkward" in this is pretty condescending. Not as condescending as the anchors on Good Day Sacramento, who are really having their second in the limelight for being totally unprofessional on live TV.
Most people can't respond to the false cheer and intense over-articulation of a morning news anchor with anything close to matching enthusiasm. In this interview, Cara Delevingne seems subdued, but certainly not sullen or rude. It's 9AM the morning after her movie Paper Town's final premiere, for pete's sake! But her interviewers must have thought they deserved more, because they soon start to bait her, asking why she isn't as lively as she was in other interviews. Wow, needy much?
As their questions get more invasive she looks visibly annoyed, then frustrated. They talk over her and it looks like she's about to lose her temper and SURPRISE:
Our technical difficulties are that we're assholes.(via Good Day Sacramento)
There you go. If you're ever going to be on Good Day Sacramento, remember to take a fistful of uppers and have a little soft-shoe routine in your back pocket.
Actress Kerry Ingram played Princess Shireen on Game of Thrones until she was literally burned alive by her parents, who were just doing their best. She tweeted this photo of herself reenacting the notorious moment that made many viewers grieve and/or stop watching the show. (Not me, though...I guess I just like my TV to leave me feeling destroyed and helpless.) It looks like Ingram is at some kind of cookout or perhaps campfire, or even a s'mores night. Was that in the books???
While vigilante Internet justice can be very satisfying, it's also a dark cesspool. You can stir it, but there's a chance you might get sucked deep down into the depths. This week many people have thrown themselves into the muck for what they consider a good cause: destroying the life of Walter Palmer, dentist and endangered wildlife hunter.
After Palmer was exposed as the murderer of beloved Zimbabwean lion Cecil, the hordes set their comments to kill, not stun. His Facebook page is down, his Twitter is down, his website is sunk and his Yelp review page is completely nuts. In the clip above, Jimmy Kimmel doesn't hesitate to advertise his identity further and also takes some very well deserved shots at the creep, like, "Is it that difficult for you to get an erection?"
But he also reminds us that we can take a second to do something good in all this and put our money where our mouths are. After running Walter Palmer off the face of the earth, maybe the Internet could try doing something positive for once, and donate a few bucks to the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, the organization who had tagged Cecil with a GPS device that allowed his body to be found. Here's what they say about their work, and Cecil's death, on their website:
"...We are studying lions in various parts of Africa to uncover the science that will inform and underpin their conservation. This is urgent, because lion numbers are precariously low, estimated at fewer than 30,000 across the continent and we have evidence that there are actually fewer... Cecil was one of our study lions. We had followed his movements in minute detail since 2008 – these are remarkable data. Of course, as people devoted to wildlife, and having known Cecil personally, we are deeply saddened by his death, and insofar as this happened illegally we consider it deeply reprehensible (and we are working closely with the National Parks authorities to support their meticulous work in prosecuting this case)."
There you go. If you want to honor Cecil, contribute to the preservation of free lions in Africa. It's what Cecil would have wanted, if he were a person capable of understanding the complexities of environmental devastation.
Hope you're chasing zebras in lion heaven, which is also zebra hell.(via Wild CRU)
One Instagram post featuring both Taylor Swift and a newborn? Please only look upon this photograph if you feel like you've really done something to earn it.
Taylor Swift got to meet her squad-son for the first time. Her pal, Jaime King, recently birthed the above baby and accompanying Instagram post. The baby's name is Leo Thames, and thankfully, he's one of the cute ones. What filter did King use on that photo? Because everything looks perfectly bathed in a golden light of motherhood.
Congratulations to the Internet on the beautiful new addition! Everything is going to be different now, and you'll change in ways you didn't know possible, but it will all be worth it.
Have selfies finally gone too far? No, they went too far years ago. But consider this further proof.
Todd Fassler was trying to get a selfie with a rattlesnake he found in some brush when the reptile did something peculiar: it bit him. Next thing he knew, he was in the hospital, nursing a grotesquely swollen arm and making weird homemade Pepsi ads from his bed.
Doctors had to deplete the antivenom reserves of two hospitals to save his life, and that stuff doesn't come cheap. Days after his story ran on the local news, he sent this picture of his bill to the ABC10 reporter who covered it:
Remember the Rattlesnake bite story I did Monday? Guy just sent me this pic of his bill. Uhhhhhhh..... pic.twitter.com/ahK2W9KxVg — Dan Haggerty (@10NewsHaggerty) July 16, 2015
Ouch. $150,000 is a high cost for a selfie he didn't even manage to get. In case you think Fassler should have known better, you don't know how right you are. It turns out he's owned a pet rattlesnake in the past. He sent ABC10 this video of him releasing the critter into the wild:
Snake guy. Back at it. What's another $150K, right? Snake almost killed him 2 weeks ago. The rest on @10News at 11. pic.twitter.com/kkL25LUY0z — Dan Haggerty (@10NewsHaggerty) July 17, 2015
It's not entirely clear whether he released his "baby" before or after the biting incident. It's also not clear how he plans to pay his $150,000 bill. Or why he keeps sending clips to the local news like they're his pen pals. There are a lot of mysteries in this story, and I'm not holding my breath for answers.
Actor and sobbing Emmy nominee Tituss Burgess posted this Instagram featuring his Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt coworkers Jane Krakowski and Tina Fey slogging through another day at the jet office. The three are mouthing the words to "Flawless" by Beyoncé, and they're as good at lip syncing as Tom Cruise without making me feel uncomfortable.
Burgess uses the caption to state some strong opinions in hashtags. He implores Jane Krakowski to get on Twitter, and then acknowledges the sad fate that Tina Fey never will. At least Beyoncé has an account so somebody can actually be tagged.
Hopefully we'll get another lip sync video on the jet ride back. Maybe "Bills, Bills, Bills"?
Finally talking about something that actually matters.(via YouTube)
Key & Peele have dropped quite a sketch comedy bomb. They take on the issues of overpaid athletes and underpaid teachers by mocking Sports Center with a show called Teaching Center. This show takes place in a world where teachers are millionaires, lauded for their difficult jobs and superior skills, and are traded and drafted like pro athletes. It begins with a flash to a teacher announcing her decision to move to another city, complete with pay stats and contract details:
The price of shaping tomorrow's leaders.(via YouTube)
Next, there's a draft, where the school with the worst test scores gets to make the first pick for a teacher. Of the newly drafted teacher, the hosts say, "and just like that, you're a millionaire... His father living paycheck to paycheck as a humble pro football player... You know he's gonna buy his mom a house!"
The coverage of a teacher in her classroom is treated like a play-by-play of a basketball or football game (I don't know which one, I hate sports).
The sketch ends with a car commercial ad, which is somehow the best part (I'm just warning you so you don't think it's over):
The only thing I hate more than babies is bad diction. (via 
