Who knew Back To The Future and Doctor Who would blend together so perfectly? This adorable mash-up cartoon from James Farr casts Rory as Marty, Amy as Jennifer, The Doctor as The Doc (obviously), and River Song as Clara (from BttF 3, not the new Who series). It's just all too perfect for words. Get this on the Saturday Morning roster fast!
[via The Mary Sue]
It makes sense that teachers, students and parents would all be on high alert following the school shooting tragedy of Newtown, CT, but what is the best way to be aware and prepared without being paranoid or further ostracizing at-risk or troubled kids? Well, here's how you shouldn't do it: A 16-year-old boy from Egg Harbor, New Jersey was arrested at his high school early last week after a teacher spotted one of his notebook doodles that supposedly looked vaguely like a gun. Following his removal from school, police searched his home and discovered disassembled electronic parts and chemicals that, when put together, could possibly make a bomb. The student was then taken to a juvenile detention facility despite the fact that he had never issued any threats and, in the words of the police chief, "there was no indication he was making a bomb, or using a bomb or detonating a bomb."
Dr. Steven Ciccariello, superintendent of the Greater Egg Harbor Regional High School District, said this in a statement to Eye Witness News:
"This is a perfect example of a teacher implementing her training. She saw drawings that appeared disturbing to her and alerted school officials."
Yes, the teacher was doing her job. She saw something that concerned her — she thought it was a drawing of a gun, the boy's mother is claiming that it was a superhero-esque flaming glove — and alerted the higher-ups. But this is where things really fall apart. Rather than talk to the student or have him speak to a school counselor to find out if he was indeed troubled and in need of help or intervention, the school officials had him publicly arrested for something that no one knows he intended to do. If the kid wasn't isolated or ostracized by his classmates before, he certainly will be now.
The actions of the Greater Egg Harbor Regional High School District, coupled with the "guns don't kill people, people kill people mentality," sets a dangerous precedent for how we deal with youth we perceive as troubled. According to the his mother, the student who was arrested likes to rebuild electronics as a fun hobby, not because he's interested in bombs. Maybe that's true or maybe that's just the excuses of a parent who doesn't want to admit that her child could be dangerous. Either way, turning this into a witch hunt won't help anyone. It's always been the American way to avoid endemic problems by sweeping them under the rug (the rug often being the prison system) as opposed to confronting them at the roots (gun control, mental healthcare, mental healthcare in schools and the support provided to parents), but, unfortunately, that mode of prevention isn't working. Instead, it just leads to reactionary incidences like this one. I'm not entirely sure what the best response in this particular situation would be, but I'm fairly certain that this wasn't it.
Superintendent: Drawings Of Weapons Led To New Jersey Student's Arrest [CBS Philly]
Police Arrest Teenager for Doodling [HyperAllergic]
Image via topform/Shutterstock.
This short video reveals how the carnivorous pitcher plant Heliamphora nutans traps its prey with an ingenious two-step method — even if the ants in the video are able to get a grip on the plant's dangerously smooth pelt, some well-placed water means the ants have almost no chance of getting out alive.
Heliamphora nutans is a lot less well-known than the granddaddy of carnivorous plants — the good old Venus flytrap — in part because of its location. The plant is only found atop an isolated plateau in Venezuela, an area so remote and weird that it's commonly known as "The Lost World." As ScienceNOW reports, that means the Cambridge researchers responsible for the video up top haven't even been able to discover with certainty what the plant's preferred prey is, though they do know that the plant really enjoys its ants:
The throat of the little-known Heliamphora nutans, new research shows, is covered with a pelt of tiny, precisely oriented hairs that prey can't easily ascend. The hairs also help to create a slippery, wet film on the pitcher's inner walls, making it nearly impossible for the plant's victims to get a grip. Instead, they plunge into the bottom of the pitcher, where they drown in a pool of water... When the researchers examined H. nutans with a scanning electron microscope, they saw that the pitcher's throat is densely carpeted with more than 100,000 tiny hairs, all pointing downward.
When they allowed an Asian ant species, Camponotus rufifemur, to stroll into a dry pitcher, only 29% fell into the abyss, as shown in the first section of the accompanying video. The bolder ants that ventured onto the longer hairs toward the bottom were most likely to fall, for reasons that are unclear. But when the ants were released into a wet pitcher, 88% went down the slippery slope to oblivion, as seen in the second section of the video. The scientists call it "insect aquaplaning."
For a bunch more on this fascinating creature, check out the full story over at ScienceNOW.
Will 2013 be the year when the student debt bubble pops, raining havoc down upon us all in the form of economic destruction? Eh, who knows. What we do know is that college prices, which have been shooting skyward for many years as institutions reaped every last dollar they could from the public's hope and ignorance, are now slowly—ever so slowly—calming down.
Which is not to say the prices are going down. That's crazy. Not at all. But they are not going up quite so fast. The WSJ reports today:
Average tuition this past year rose by the smallest percentage in at least 40 years among the 960 private schools that belong to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which collectively enroll 90% of the students in private colleges. It climbed 3.9% to $29,305.
Perhaps $29,999.99 is as high as the American college student is prepared to go. No matter—it's already too late.
Georgia Tech cornerback Rod Sweeting dominated a USC offense uninterested in making the Sun Bowl competitive, earning his way to the bowl's MVP honors. The televised trophy presentation led to CBS's Tracy Wolfson demanding a few words from Sweeting, but his first one—left to reverberate against the Sun Bowl's empty concrete seating areas—was one she wished he hadn't said. [CBS]
I love Scarlett Johansson because she speaks her mind, and it seems she's very savvy about the Hollywood machine. Plus, like every woman around my age ever, I feel like she and Thora Birch embodied teenage me in Ghost World. I don't care that they were cuter or much more clever, they were me, and I know you feel the same way!
In the February issue of Elle UK, the 28-year-old ScarJo dishes on marriage and babies, as that is what women are asked about*.
"I got married when I was young and it was incredibly romantic and I liked being married, actually," she recalls. "But it is different. It's hard to put into words. To me, being in a functioning relationship doesn't mean you have to be married."
Revolutionary!
She continues, "I never think about marriage. Is that weird? The only time I ever think about it is when people ask me, ‘Would I get married again?'"
As far as popping out some Bebe's Kids, Johansson says she's "not having kids any time soon" and the idea of starting a family right now is "not important to me."
"I feel you, girl!" says many other 28-year-old women. Maybe it's because I'm from San Francisco, but I don't know many 28-year-olds who have kids. In fact, my first close friend to get pregnant did so when she was 32 years old and I was like, "BABIES HAVING BABIES."
Point is, I relate.
*No mention is made in the Gossip Cop recap about how she maintains her bod and what it's like to be sexxxy in sex scenes, we'll probably have to wait for the full interview to read about that!
It's New Years. Balls will be dropped. Kisses will be kissed. Bubbly will be drunk drank drunken dranked consumed. But that's all normal. This year there's something different: a message from Mars, apparently.
Will it be about aliens? Probably not. Will it be Curiosity mocking Time Square revelers about how much better it is to be on Mars as opposed to in that throbbing mass of humans? Maybe that's just slightly more likely. Keep your eye on the ball and you're sure to find out. Hopefully it's something fun. [Twitter]
Well, it's that time of year again—time to say RIP to gross, rickety Old-Man-Baby New Year 2012 and mop up the afterbirth of red, slippery, mewling little new Baby New Year 2013. And with the flip-flapping of the calendar comes your weird superstitious notion that you're suddenly going to have the fortitude to do all the stuff you've never in your life been able to do. Be nicer to Nana! Eat more kale! Put batteries in the pedometer! Go through all the piles! (LOL @ ALL OF THE PILES YEAH RIGHT.) Let's face it: That shit is never going to happen—or, at least, it's not going to happen 100%. So why set yourself up for disappointment? The only foolproof way to meet your goals is to actually set meetable goals. Aim lower, tiger! Mediocrity is your oyster! Here's our guide to scaling back your New Year's resolutions so you might actually get some of your shit done—and so you won't feel like such a rancid failure-sack one year from now.
What This Resolution Says About You: You're feeling bad because you spent a lot of time in 2012 doing no-pants SVU/Totino's Party Pizza marathons instead of having boring-ass guilt-brunch with Nana. (It is possible—but unconfirmed!—that I will be doing A GREAT DEAL of projecting in these analyses.) Plus, you've noticed the cold hand of death lingering near the throat of everyone you love, because, statistically speaking, the entire earth should be dead from falling down the stairs and/or choking on food by now (IT COULD HAPPEN AT ANY TIME), and you want to make sure you aren't one of those assholes who didn't care until it was too late. A noble sentiment. Once people you love start dying, it's almost impossible to escape the knowledge that everyone you love is going to die. Life is shit that way. (But don't sell yourself short on SVU time! It's your medicine! Also, Nana is kind of a judgmental dick!)
How Likely You Are to Follow Through: THREE stupid New Year's number-glasses-thingies.
This one isn't so hard to follow through on, because spending time with family and friends can actually be enjoyable—unlike kettle-bell swings and sand loaf spelt toast (see #3)—but the potential for "fun" isn't always enough to get you out of your bed. Because you know what's always "fun"? Fucking doing whatever you want!
More Realistic Version: "I resolve to always text Mom back within two hours of her texting me—unless, you know, I don't, because I'm busy. Also I will host a dinner party once in a while. Also, I understand that my friends are not going to die in a car accident just because I didn't tell them to 'Drive safe' enough times. That is some witchcrafty shit and I will stop it."
What This Resolution Says About You: Literally nothing. You are everyone in the entire goddamn country.
How Likely You Are to Follow Through: ONE stupid New Year's number-glasses-thingies.
Come on, bro. How many years in a row has this been your thing? And in how many of those years have you actually kettle-bell-swunged your way to a perf bikini boday? Zero many, that's how. There's nothing wrong with striving for fitness—it feels great! We should all do it! If we want!—but don't bankrupt yourself on gym memberships you're never going to use and then shame yourself to death for never using those expensive gym memberships. That's not helpful, little fitness muffin! If you like going to the gym, kudos. If you don't, just try walking a little bit more! Also, you guys should try and convince my boyfriend to leave me and date you instead, because he makes hella good lentils. Like, to the point where you'll see a Totino's and be like, "Not today, garbage pizza."
More Realistic Version: "I will go for a walk sometimes."
What This Resolution Says About You: You are addicted to cigarettes and you realized that you are not Elrond Half-Elven and you are going to fucking diiiiiiiiiiie the shit out of being alive one of these days. Also, you are basically spending hella bucks on maintaining a mild state of pointless nausea. So maybe this is the year that you're finaly like, "wait whut."
How Likely You Are to Follow Through: ONE stupid New Year's number-glasses-thingies.
Come on, man. You're addicted to it! That's why they call it an a-DICK-shun. Because it's a fucking dick to shun. (I'M SORRY, OKAY!?!? THEY CAN'T ALL BE WINNERS.)
More Realistic Version: Ehh, this one's kind of all-or-nothing, so if you want to quit you should try to quit. Anyway, I don't even know you. Maybe you will quit smoking! I believe in you!
What This Resolution Says About You: You're stressed and you don't like it. But that's okay! Life is stressful! This just means that you are normal human with stuff to do.
How Likely You Are to Follow Through: TWO stupid New Year's number-glasses-thingies.
Not super likely. I mean, it's so vague and unattainable that you might as well be like, "Get better at transfiguration!" or "Stop conjuring such a shitty patronus!" There are approximately gwelve-cotillion-banana-fana-fo-frillion things that contribute to a person's stress, and trying to "fix" them all is just the world's most demoralizing game of Whack-a-Mole. Exercising can help for some people, and therapy, and a clean house, and a solid social structure, but the sooner you come to terms with the fact that you're always going to be a little bit miserable, the sooner you can start celebrating all the fun stuffed in the cracks of the misery.
More Realistic Version: "I resolve to have some tea and a nap."
What This Resolution Says About You: You are embarrassed about being such a drunk.
How Likely You Are to Follow Through:ONE stupid New Year's number-glasses-thingies.
Haha yeah right. You're drunk right now!
More Realistic Version: "I resolve to drink a glass of water for every three gin and tonics. Also I will shut up sometimes and stop making out with Craig just because I feel fat that day."
What This Resolution Says About You: You are kind of on the verge of being a grown-up! You are tired of living paycheck-to-paycheck and your newfound obsession with mortality (see #1) has you thinking about the fact that you're almost (or more than) halfway to retirement. WTF is "retirement," though!?!? Well, it's not some magical automatic severance package from Barack Obama with an engraved pen that says, "Thx 4 bein' a cool dude! Enjoy these relaxation buck$$$!"—you have to actually figure this shit out for YOURSELF. Which means that you have to save some money. Like, starting now.
How Likely You Are to Follow Through: TWO stupid New Year's number-glasses-thingies.
Ugh, this shit is hard. Because there's this thing you can do with money where you exchange it for goods and services such as pasta, vacuum sealers, Footsys, and plane tickets. But no? You're just supposed to not buy this bacon scarf because of some abstract notion about "needing" to buy "medicine" 40 years from now? Please. But yes. That is exactly what you are supposed to do.
More Realistic Version: "I will cook more food at home instead of eating at restaurants all the time. I will turn off the space heater when I leave the room. I will save $20. Sometimes."
What This Resolution Says About You: You are me.
How Likely You Are to Follow Through: TWO stupid New Year's number-glasses-thingies.
If you were the kind of person who was capable of going through all the piles and then not having any piles anymore, you wouldn't have any piles. So obviously you are always going to have piles. But you can have fewer piles! And you can strive to not create too many new piles on top of the old piles! Also, pro tip: If you do a quick once-over and make sure there's nothing super-important (like your passport—high five, self!) in any of the piles, you can just throw all of the piles away. Yes, I know Saddam Hussein is making a funny face, but realistically you are never going to do anything with those "hilarious" newspaper clippings. Toss. Dump. Shred.
More Realistic Version: "I resolve to go through one of the piles. I am an accomplisher!"
What This Resolution Says About You: You are probably going to fulfill your New Year's resolution. Congratulations!
How Likely You Are to Follow Through: FIVE stupid New Year's number-glasses-thingies.
Life is really really hard and surprising. Here's what has happened to me over (approximately) the past year: I moved to a different state and then back again; I quit a beloved longterm job and started a bigger, scarier job; I went through a soul-shredding break-up and a complicated make-up; I got check-frauded for $800,000 (lol—flattering!); I turned 30; I acquired children; my dad died; my aunt died; my dog died; my tooth died; and every day, during all of that, a bunch of anonymous dickheads told me I was a fat bitch on the internet. So, sure, maybe in January of 2012 I promised myself I was going to run a 10k this year or whatever, but at this point, WHOOOOO FUUUUUCKING CAAAAARES. Sometimes life gets in the way of our life goals. Sometimes the worst year is also the best year. And that's hard enough to process without beating ourselves up over some artificial standards we imposed when we had no clue what was about to happen.
More Realistic Version: "I have no idea what will happen to me this year, but I will try my best to be a really good version of me. And if I fail, no big. There's always Baby New Year 2014."
Image by Jim Cooke.
Royal boobs, sex tapes, tragedies, gay rights, creepy stories about the underbelly of the internet, Jay-Z being sweet to an old lady: this is how we made the dog hug the cow. Here's to 2013.
French magazine Closer just published some photos of Kate Middleton sunbathing topless while "staying at the French chateau of the Queen's nephew, Lord Linley - making it now two royal nudie picture scandals in three weeks. More »
I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me. More »
Because the internet has made it easier for all of us to be shameless voyeurs and deviants, we love to watch famous people have sex. More »
Rev. Snider goes on to invoke the bible and morality and the end of days a few more times before suddenly appearing to lose his train of thought. And then something pretty amazing happens. More »
One highlight of Where I'm From occurs when Jay takes the subway en route to his last show and sits next to a kind-faced older woman named Ellen who has no idea who she's talking to. More »
If you're an American you're used to most network television being squeaky clean, but this is Argentina so this is only safe for work if you work at a Nevada brothel. More »
This morning a tipster forwarded us an email from a future bride laying out some ground rules for her prospective bridesmaids. More »
Why did Jay-Z and Beyoncé name their daughter Blue Ivy? Possibly because "Blue Ivy" is a secret code revealing her membership in an ancient and all-powerful occult secret society. More »
These two really, unbelievably gruesome photos, allegedly of the Miami man whose face was partially eaten off over Memorial Day weekend, have been circulating around the internet. More »
Let's talk about Olivia's NSFW nudes, which are basically the filthiest celebrity nudes to date.More »
If only we could have sat in on the meeting where the marketing team for this Osaka department store came up with the idea for their "Fuckin' Sale." More »
Michael Brutsch is more than a monster. Online, Violentacrez has been one of Reddit's most reviled characters but also one of its most beloved users. More »
This so-called prank starts out normally enough, but soon the elevator lights start to flicker and out pops a little girl reminiscent of Samara from The Ring. More »
According to screen shots of his profile taken by former classmates, this Ryan Lanza is alive, well, emphatically not the shooter, and freaking out about the fact that his face is on cable news. More »
HBO's Game of Thrones has a lot of nudity in it, sometimes that nudity seems completely gratuitous and unnecessary. Last night, Saturday Night Live proposed a theory as to why that is. More »
Actress Alison Pill has taken a more direct approach to nude celebrity photo leaks by posting her own topless photo to Twitter herself. More »
Here is the best video you will see from an entire weekend of Olympic sports: U.S. gymnast Aly Raisman's parents reacting to her bar routine during today's team qualifiers. More »
If you've been sitting around for the past 27 years waiting to witness the greatest moment in television history, I've got some bad news: You missed it. More »
In what appears to be a direct response to the failed boycott campaign of anti-gay group One Million Moms, JCPenney unveiled a new Father's Day ad featuring a same-sex couple playing with their children. More »
Kyle Kaplan and Nick Braun star as every single person on Earth when Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" suddenly comes on the radio. More »
In this edition of Tweet Beat, Dr. Ruth recommends a slap happy New Year's Eve, Twitter responds to Kimye and Mariah Carey is sparkling down under.
Our nation's high-speed internet is in the hands of just a few private companies that act, in many regions, like monopolies. That's indisputable. But while it's easy to attack the monopoly part, should we be focusing on private? Is the internet such an ingrained part of existence at this point that it should be considered—and regulated as—a public utility?
That question is raised convincingly in a Bloomberg piece last week detailing how, as a modern day internet customer, you invariably end up paying more for less. And before you dismiss the notion of redefining how the internet is distributed, remember that electricity was once seen as a luxury, in the hands of private businesses and accessible only to the wealthy. You shouldn't have to use dial-up any more than you should light your house with candles.
So what do you think? Make high-speed internet every bit as universally accessible and affordable as water, gas and electricity? Or is the need to check your Facebook status nowhere near the same ballpark as the need to flush your toilet?
Gollum/Smeagol are both actually quite clever. If the [minor The Hobbit spoilers] riddle scene in The Hobbit tells us anything, it's certainly at least that much.
So it stands to reason that the split-personality hobbit could also string a few clever rap verses together. And just wait until Smeagol starts dropping the bass.
But I'm not so sure I wanted to see his gnarly, toothy grin while he licks down an ice cream cone. Oh, the horror.
Happy last-Dirt-Bag-of-the-year!!! Let's talk about death. There's no rhyme or reason—or significance, really—to grouping people together based on the year in which they died. It's pretty arbitrary, if you think about it. Tony Scott's suicide doesn't have anything to do with Michael Clarke Duncan's heart disease. But we do it anyway—for instance, I will forever associate Michael Jackson's death with the hardcore stealing of Farrah Fawcett's thunder. And anyway, in these melancholy final hours of 2012, it's sobering and weirdly fortifying to take a look at the way our culture grows and dies. Also it's totally fun to think about all of these people having a kegger in heaven.
Here's just a sampling:
January – Etta James Dies at 73
February – Whitney Houston Dead at 48
February – Monkees Singer Davy Jones Dead at 66
April – Painter Thomas Kinkade Dead At 54
April – 60 Minutes Reporter Mike Wallace Dead At 93
April – Dick Clark Dies at 82
May – Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch Dies at 47
May – Donna Summer Dies at 63
May – Robin Gibb Dies at 62
June – Author Ray Bradbury Dies at 91
June – Nora Ephron Dead at 71
July – Television Icon Andy Griffith Dead at 86
July – Oscar Winning Actor Ernest Borgnine Dead at 95
July – The Jeffersons‘ Sherman Hemsley Dead at 74
August – Oscar-Winning Composer Marvin Hamlisch Dead at 68
August – Director Tony Scott Dead at 68
August – Legendary Comedian Phyllis Diller Dead at 95
August – Neil Armstrong: First Man On The Moon Dead
September – Michael Clarke Duncan Dead at 54
November – Dallas Actor Larry Hagman Dead at 81
December – Jenni Rivera Confirmed Dead After Plane Crash
December – Norah Jones‘ Father, Sitarist Ravi Shankar, Dead at 92
December – The Odd Couple Actor Jack Klugman Dead at 90
December – Charles Durning Dead At 89
There are plenty more. Anyone you were particularly devastated to lose in 2012? Emote/commiserate in the comments. <3 [JustJared]
Paris Hilton is hella pumped about Kim Kardashian's pregnancy:
Our sources in Miami — where Paris is getting ready to celebrate NYE — tell us P was shopping when a friend walked up and broke the news about Kim and Kanye West having a baby.
We're told Paris simply smiled and said, "So happy for her, they are perfect for each other."
Paris and Kim were on the outs for years until a few months ago when they reunited and danced up a storm at a friend's party — and then met up again at a recent event in Miami.
Certainly. This all sounds super-sincere and above-board. [TMZ]
If you're looking for Anne Hathaway tonight, she's hanging out with Madonna at Valentino's party in Switzerland:
Valentino is throwing a New Year's Eve (NYE) party tonight at the members-only Eagle Ski Club.
"Rumors are flying that both Madonna and Anne Hathaway will take turns serenading the legendary designer, and they might even do a duet at midnight," said the source.
"Valentino's NYE bash is the hottest ticket in Europe, and people are flying in from all over the world for it. Valentino is reportedly spending 500,000 euros on caviar, champagne, music, food, décor and fireworks at Wasserngrat Mountain."
The theme of the party is "LOLOLOLOLLLOLOOOLOLOLOLOLOL@POORZ." [ShowbizSpy]
New Years Day means it's the time to start afresh, and that includes in the kitchen. You'll most likely start your day (read: 4pm, Jan 1) with something to curb your horrendous hangover — so please share what that recipe might be, bonus points for creative names like "Grandma Pappy's Head Hurt No No Cream Souffle". Also, can I get that recipe?
And then, once the hangover is at bay, what's next on your plate? I personally will be eating all the collards (dollars) and black eyes peas (cents) that I can stuff down my gullet (good thing I'm fat!) because mama needs some cha-ching in 2013 (rhyme?). Hoppin John, here I come!
And, of course, plenty of champagne with everything because hair of the beast, drunk all day, honorary Sunday, etc. Happy New Year!!
[photo courtesy of the extremely delicious Isa Chandra Moskowitz and the ever tasty PPK]
New Year's Eve is one of a handful of holidays that expects, nay, demands its celebrants get blackout drunk. Of course we're all going to drink on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Independence Day, but we'll be drinking serenely as we slip away glass by glass of drugstore Merlot into a restorative stupor in front of a holiday TV special. New Year's Eve is much more like a drinking contest, an evening-long 800-meter race to midnight, when you'll cross the finish line of the old year with one final glass of Cook's Brut before you projectile vomit all over your newfound soulmate, who you found earlier that evening calmly perusing the cubed cheeses and playing it oh so cool.
There's plenty to worry about if you're drinking lots of booze in a relatively short span of time, but the number one prosaic concern that people seem to fret over most is the dreaded New Year's Day hangover. Fear not, bourgeois partygoers! Media outlets are here to save you from yourself. A quick perusal of the internets today will yield a slew of well-meaning articles and video tutorials from bonafide mixologists, like the boozepert who was on Fox & Friends this morning, or any of the bartenders offering breakfast cocktails to keep your stomach from folding in on itself like a masterfully-played accordion. The bottom line is, of course, keep yourself hydrated because, in keeping with our conceit, drinking your face off is just like being a humiliated, short-short-wearing member of your high school track team. Feel the shame wash over you as the other kids snicker at your chicken legs and be sure to drink plenty of coach's syrupy Gatorade.
If you don't know how not to avoid a hangover at this point in your drinking career, you're either new to drinking or you're a stupid person. Maybe you don't give a shit about hangovers because you're a real badass, or you want a legitimate excuse for watching The Princess Bride four times in a row tomorrow. Maybe you're just looking for an efficient new hangover cure because drinking water straight from the garden hose didn't go over well at the last New Year's party you attended.
The point is, if you're trying to avoid a hangover, you have plenty of options, like dubious herbal cures or a six-egg omelet sprinkled with crushed-up Ibuprofen. You might also disavow all your friends so that you have no holiday party to go to and you can just sit in your apartment all alone, lamenting your solitary existence, sure, but, most importantly, headache-free. Unless you go in for drinking champagne alone, in which case please stop depressing us with your sad life, jeez.
Going in for hangover remedies, however, is a sure way to sap the fun out of your holiday. I mean, fuck it, right? Just drink real hard and then fall into a queasy, dry-mouth stupor on your bed, feeling like the mattress is spinning up, up, up into space so you can spend tomorrow rollerblading on Saturn's rings and making your dreams for the new year come true. January 1st is a fresh start, after all, so you might as well not start 2013 like a water-chugging coward who can't handle a little headache and some epic dry heaving.
Three New York City bars provide hangover relief in the form of hair-of-the-dog cocktails [NYDN]
Image via Dimj/Shutterstock.
A lot of things have changed in the past 56 years, but some things will always be pretty much the same. Take a look at this footage of Times Square on New Years Eve from 1957, for example. No one is carrying portable, cellular phones or updating their statuses on any so-called "networks of sociability", but they're still tightly packed into a public place (and sauced, no doubt), waiting for a clock to hit a number so they can scream. And that's what the New Year is all about, right? [YouTube]
Female college students party harder than their male peers, according to a new study of nearly 1,000 Spanish university students: 56.1 percent of women were binge drinkers compared to 41.3 percent of men.
Well, that's what LiveScience implies with the headline "Gals Down Alcohol Faster Than Guys," but is that really fair? Binge drinking typically = five or more drinks in two hours for men and four or more drinks for women, and this article doesn't specify what constitutes a "drink."
Women were also found to be "more sedentary" than men, although "surprisingly high" proportions of both sexes were into illegal drugs. Hah, who was surprised, exactly?
Anyway, it's New Year's Eve! Pop that champagne! Chuuuuuggggg!!!*
*No, don't.
Image via Boule/Shutterstock.
As we charge into the future (at least here on the East Coast), maybe take a few minutes to travel back to the past for a spectacular version of that classic New Years song that's playing practically everywhere tonight. There's not much to be said about Jimi Hendrix's Auld Lang Syne that isn't summed up in the phrase "Jimi Hendrix's Auld Lang Syne" so let's just leave it at that. Happy New Year! [Spotify, Amazon, iTunes]
Traffic sucks, so why not start your morning off with some music? You provide the toast and we'll provide the jams.
It's Rose Bowl time, suckas! So to choose the fight song I would choose to play, I used the utterly non-sports-oriented method of picking the one that sounded more fight song-ey. Sorry Stanford, ripping off classic rock songs isn't as cool as cranking out old school (see what I did there?!) songs that recall the days when players wore leather helmets.
Of course, if you don't give a rat's ass about football, you're probably watching Vienna's New Year's Day Concert, you cultured thing, you.
Most New Year's revellers are happy to celebrate the occasion by watching the ball drop in Times Square—or just getting completely blotto. But as we've discovered time and time again, Joerg Sprave isn't your average Joe. And to welcome 2013 with a bang—literally—he's created a special slingshot capable of launching firecrackers with gusto.
Designed to accomodate the largest and most powerful legal firecrackers in Germany, the slingshot-style crossbow even includes a built-in waterproof storm lighter for igniting the fuse before the trigger's pulled. Does it sound dangerous? Absolutely, but ironically launching a firecracker so it explodes high in the air is probably the safest way to enjoy a homemade pyrotechnics show. [YouTube]
