Identity crisis.
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17 years ago, these kids got a Nintendo and set the all-time record for Christmas freak-outs.
17 years ago, Brandon and his sister got a Nintendo 64 for Christmas. So did millions of other children, but none of the other kids of 1998, or indeed any other kids ever in history, were as excited as Brandon and his adorable sister in this classic Internet video. It's important to remember that no one else has ever been as excited as—so no matter how your family members react, take comfort in knowing no gift-giver has ever matched the record set by Brandon's parents. This is as good as it gets.
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Christmas mourning.
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Drunk woman who has never seen 'Star Wars' explains how Richard Gere fights evil in it.
Here's the perfect Star Wars refresher for the fair-weather fan. If you saw the movies when you were a kid, but at this point can't remember exactly how Princess Leia got enslaved, let DJ Mark Zabala's drunk girlfriend remind you ("she gets captive by one of the dark, evil forces"). She'll walk you through the adventures of Lucas (played by Richard Gere) and remind you of the dramatic moment Lucas found out Darth Vader is his father and was like "Uh..."
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The 32 funniest tweets about Christmas by people who are definitely on Santa's naughty list.
It's the most humorous time of the year. When reindeer, gifts and outdoor sing-a-longs celebrate a very famous birthday, and holiday festivities bring families together while tearing them apart, take a minute to unwind with some laughs at these, the top 32 Christmas tweets!
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Lunch lady shocks cafeteria full of high school students with her insanely good voice.
Cafeteria worker Becky Alderfer of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, moonlights as a church music director, but the students at Souderton High School didn't know that until this past Tuesday. During a teacher karaoke event (best school ever?), the other cafeteria workers convinced 52-year-old Alderfer to sing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Alderfer was a little nervous, which makes sense since singing to a group of teens eating lunch sounds like a nightmare, but it worked out. At first, the students were noisy and distracted, but when Alderfer hit a high note, they started to take notice and rewarded her with the applause she deserved. Someone get this woman on a televised singing competition, stat.
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Christmas Season
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Pray for us.
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Naughty list.
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Kid instantly goes from nice to naughty when he receives wrong video game for Christmas.
A woman who may be a spy for Santa under the Twitter handle @_mayraduarte_ posted a video of a kid displaying instant disgust, disappointment and rage when he received the wrong video game for Christmas. He had been hoping for "WWE2K16", but instead he received "WWE2K15." Wrong year! The horror! Some kids are quite gracious when they receive presents they didn't want. Not him. He noticed this most outrageous oversight quite quickly:
Sure, some people had to chime in on whether this was funny or the kid is a monster that should be taught a lesson. But better still were people that used it as inspiration to make memes:
And in the end, the good folks at the WWE video game franchise reached out to possibly try and create a Christmas miracle:
Ultimately, he learned a valuable lesson: if you throw a fit, make sure it goes viral so you the toy manufacturer quickly gives you your way. Kids have it so easy now. Back in the day they had to tape their tantrum on VHS and mail it to the company, it took forever.
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New Year's
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Some sexy celebrities wear sweatshirts on Christmas just like everybody else.
Several celebrities with top Instagram accounts and very public personas wear sweatshirts and festive jammies on Christmas like everybody else. Normally they take special care to ensure they have the right lighting and sexy look for every picture they post. Occasionally, they entertain us with embarrassing throwback pictures that reveal their true looks before they were famous. But on Christmas, sometimes they throw on the sweats and get super casual.
Taylor Swift being her true elf.
Serena Williams still looking like a badass when she wears a hoodie.
Ashley Tisdale looking more high school and less musical.
Khloe Kardashian in sweats and screwed up makeup!
It's the most wonderful time of the year when celebrities wear sweatshirts and very little makeup. Sure, Khloe wore too much makeup, but it's a rare occasion to see a Kardashian with intentionally messy lipstick. Maybe next year they'll get brave enough to take selfies while they're eating far too many cookies.
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Steve Harvey tweets perfect Christmas joke following Ms. Universe mistake.
Steve Harvey posted a perfect tweet on Christmas that makes fun of himself for his now infamous mistake at the Ms. Universe pageant. Harvey accidentally announced Miss Colombia as the winner instead of Miss Philippines. It was an extremely awkward moment, and of course resulted in an endless stream of jokes and responses on social media. Now Harvey is owning it and able to laugh at himself too:
That was the best and most hilarious way to acknowledge his mistake now that the smoke has cleared. Steve Harvey can get back to focusing on goofy contestants giving awkward answers on Family Feud.
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Witnessing this grandma use virtual reality for the first time is a total thrill ride.
This grandmother just got what appears to be a Google Cardboard set for Christmas, and her family filmed her trying it out for the first time. It looks like (from the timing of the noises she makes) she's trying out the rollercoaster simulation that's a favorite of pranksters everywhere, but she seems to really like it. When you think of virtual reality, you don't normally think of older people, but you should, because they've been waiting for it longer than anyone else—like this dad who was moved to tears when his son bought him a VR headset that let him finally walk on the Moon.
Related: Seniors try virtual reality porn for the first time, and one guy forgets we can see him.
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How far you live from your mom depends on where you grew up and how rich you are.
Your mom is a topic of frequent conversation, but instead of how dumb, how fat, or how promiscuous she may be, this past week the New York Times decided to focus is on how close she lives to her grown-up children. For generations, Americans were known as a people that loved to pick up and move, but Gen Xers and (especially) Millennials have reversed this trend. In part, this is economic—fewer good manufacturing jobs in America give fewer compelling reasons to move, while jobs requiring lots of education tend to draw wealthy students who grew up in the same metropolitan areas as those education-intensive jobs and universities. Those metropolitan areas also have high rents, so even Millennials with relatively high-paying Internet jobs have a reputation for living at home longer than previous generations—not as long as Italians, who tend to move out sometime in their 30s, but longer than any previous generation. But it also depends a lot on geography, as this map shows.
For the most part, this map reflects population densities in various regions. The most interesting difference is the extreme proximity to mothers in the Mid-Atlantic region (NY, PA, & NJ) and the Ozarks/Deep South region, compared to New England or the coastal Southern states. In general, the authors of the Times article found, adults with lower incomes lived closer to parents because they could help raise grandkids. While this might explain the proximity in Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee, why does it show up in New York, NJ, and Pennsylvania, three of the highest-income states in America?
Related: 22 funny and interesting maps that show how weird America was in 2015.
As mentioned, density is important. New Jersey is the most densely-populated state in America, Pennsylvania is home to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and New York's population is dominated by the 8.5 million people crammed on top of each other in New York City. But the Southern states on the Atlantic coast are pretty dense, too (the Eastern Seaboard, as much as people complain about "coastal elites," does actually contain 36% of America's population). So why the significant difference? Although the article doesn't address this (it addresses much else), one explanation is the strong job market there in not-super-urban areas like North Carolina's "Research Triangle," which draw a lot of Northern workers. Additionally, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of many African-American families who moved to Chicago, New York and other Northern cities have been moving South again in greater numbers. Finally, a lot of older folks from the North move South for the weather, although it's unclear whether that would show up on this map.
Related: How much a "living wage" is in every county, and all the places minimum wage is more.
One thing is for certain, though, and that's that the people of the big, empty West are the exception. In fact, 50% of all adult Americans live 18 miles or less from their parents, and almost 70% live less than 100 miles away. So, on the one hand, US families are losing that dynamic sense of adventure and the open road—and on the other, being able to call Mom is pretty nice.
See the full report over at the New York Times.
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Staring is caring.
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The top 43 non-Christmas tweets of the week, as picked by someone who spends way too much time on Twitter.
Donni Saphire has favorited over 610,000 tweets on Twitter and he loves them all equally. He reads every tweet so you don't have to.
This Friday was Christmas, so the normal end-of-the-week list was replaced by a holiday roundup of all the best Christmas tweets. But these are the best of the rest of the week. Tweeters went off on unseasonable weather, Donald Trump's bizarre vulgar remarks, promising economic news, Making A Murderer marathons, and more! These are the Top 43 (Non-Christmas) tweets of the Week:
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How to impress New Year's guests without killing them by sabering champagne with a spoon.
The good folks at Wine Folly are here to tell you that opening your New Year's champagne in a dangerous and flashy manner can be achieved using a technique slightly less dangerous and flashy. Uncorking champagne is always an exciting event, not just because booze is being opened, but because of the imminent risk of injury from flying cork and possibly glass to everyone waiting to get drunk. If you really want to impress/endanger partygoers, you can make like an 18th Century cavalry leader and remove the cork (and the top part of the glass bottle) with a sword or some other long blade. Of course, using swords to open pressurized glass bottles indoors is a bit risky (but still safer than using a .50 cal rifle). So use a spoon or a butter knife. You'll still be cool—after all, you're opening booze.
Related: New study says Champagne might prevent dementia, so let's drink until we can't remember.
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New exposé on sports doping threatens Peyton Manning, whatever innocence pro sports has left.
A new 50-minute investigatory report on sports doping from Al Jazeera America, "The Dark Side," released on Dec. 26, is tearing its way through the Internet today. The report shines a light on the world of performance-enhancing drugs in a way not seen since Alex Rodriguez and 13 other MLB stars were suspended in 2013 for getting hormones from the Biogenesis clinic in Miami. This new investigation spent months following British track athlete Liam Collins as he travels from the Caribbean to Vancouver to Indiana, telling doctors he wants one last chance at the Olympics in 2016—all while secretly recording his interactions.
The journey includes an arrogant Vancouver pharmacist, Chad Robertson, who claims he could get "f**king, a Russian tank through the border if I wanted" and that he could take "a guy with average genetics and make him world champion." As amusing as Robertson is, the star of the report is a less-bombastic but more bean-spilling pharmacist in Austin, TX named Charlie Sly. Sly, who worked with the Indianapolis-based anti-aging Guyer Institute, is the source of the most explosive allegations uncovered.
In particular, he claims that after his neck surgery that took him out of the 2011 season, Peyton Manning extensively used human growth hormones ordered under the name of his wife, Ashley, to speed up his recovery. Sly's name-dropping tic also implicates Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies, Green Bay Packers players Mike Neal, Julius Peppers and especially Clay Matthews, Pittsburgh Steelers lineman James Harrison, and Ryan Zimmerman of the Washington Nationals.
The response from Manning, seen above, has been swift—although no one has denied that Ashley Manning did receive growth hormone shipments from the Guyer Institute. That was a private medical matter, spokespersons for the Mannings, the Colts and the Broncos have insisted. Whether professional sports leagues should allow athletes to use HGH to recover from injuries—something the drug has shown great promise for—is a topic worth discussing, but if true, Manning's use in 2011 would have certainly been against the rules.
Furthermore, Al Jazeera did verify that Sly worked at the Guyer Institute during the same period. Also, since the NFL banned human growth hormone in 1991 but only started testing for it in 2014, it's hard to see how anyone could have detected Manning's use on this timeline. Charlie Sly has also issued his own rebuttal, although it's received less than stellar reviews.
Happy 2016, everyone. Sorry it's not going to be any more uplifting than 2015.
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Someone recreated 'The Shining' in gingerbread, and it will give you sweet nightmares.
Every year, the family of redditor eudicotyledon creates gingerbread masterpieces based on pop culture, although somehow it never occurred to any of them until this year's sugary version of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining to exploit this family activity for Internet fame. Said eudicotyledon,
It took about 2 weeks with working on it on and off. Most days we only worked a few hours on it (though each of the five interior rooms took a full day each) but in the last 3 days we worked on it basically nonstop. It was a lot of work, but we're happy with how it turned out!
Considering the more than 745,000 views the imgur album has received, it's clear everyone is pretty happy with how it turned out. Every nook and cranny of the building has scenes from the movie, including many of the weirder, smaller details that some viewers don't even notice until the second or third time they see it.
Here's a "making of" album, posted after this all went viral.
Eudicotyledon says that although the building is technically edible (it's not covered in shellac), they use an extra-hard gingerbread and frosting recipe that guarantees biting into it wouldn't be very fun. The family says they leave the sculptures up through the winter before destroying their creations in some spectacular manner.
We make a gingerbread house every year, and for the first few years we used to destroy it in crazy ways after a couple months. One year we dropped it off a balcony and filmed it in slow motion, and another year we stuck fireworks in it and blew it up!
They should be careful before blowing this one up, though—that building sits on top of ancient Native American desserts. Finally, this is as good a time as any to remember The Shining: Recut, the epic movie trailer re-imagining the movie as a romantic comedy:
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