Nearly 17 years to the day that his breakthrough sitcom went off the air, Smith surprised fans by reuniting with Alfonso "Carlton Banks" Ribeiro and erstwhile collaborator DJ Jazzy Jeff for a moment of pure televised greatness.

Dare you not to smile forever.

[H/T: Pop Culture Blog]

Our pen pals had a one-track mind this week, and their collective mind was set on Rob Ford, crack, Canada, and the crackstarter. Their thoughts below:

SUBJECT: Rob Ford

BODY: You are really a piece of shit

We are the world.

SUBJECT: Rob Ford, (Canadian) History

BODY: I noticed that you wrote, "Be a part of (Canadian) history!" with the word "Canadian" in brackets, this sounds dismissive, as if Canadian history is not "real" history. Why not instead write "Be a part of Canadian history", or even "Be a part of history." Do you think that certain countries, their history is more important than others? Canada entered World War 2 long before the United Stated did, don't you think that is historically signifigant regardless of the nationality?

I agree with your writing about the video of Rob Ford. I just disagree about the other aspect.

Respect the fabric.

SUBJECT: Crackstarter and signed Canadian flag...

BODY: Hi, I just wanted to make sure you are aware that there is specific flag etiquette that governs the use and dignity of the Canadian flag. I'm sure you would not want to disrespect the Canadian flag given all the publicity this story is getting.

The flag should not be signed anywhere on the flag itself. (The portions that alone would make up the flag.) It's acceptable to buy a flag that has a border/sleeve to attach it to a flag pole, and then sign the border/sleeve. On most flags this border or sleeve will be about one inch wide on the left side of the flag. It would be acceptable to sign that border, but NOT the flag itself.

You can see the Government of Canada's 'rules for flying the flag' at this link here. The section you want is 'dignity of the flag'. I know it may not even get this far, but if it does, please keep the above in mind so the Canadian flag is respected. Thanks.

Regards.

Oh, would you like me to look that up for you?

SUBJECT: FORD VIDEO

BODY: Hello,

My name is Giulia Frisina from Global News. Wondering if you can please email me the latest number raised for the Ford Video.

Much appreciated.

Oo hold on, I'm getting really good at this.

SUBJECT: Rob Ford Crackstarter

BODY: Hi, the news here in Toronto (CP24) is playing all sorts of stuff regarding the gawker "crackstarter" for Rob Ford; however they obviously do not provide a link to it and when you visit the gawker page it's nearly impossible to find as the news story buried. Also the search button is minimalistic and uneasy to find for the average computer user.

I believe the crowdfunding campaign would receive many more hits and donations if it was easily visible on the gawker website.

Yes, it's your money, dude, your choices. Have a wonderful day.

SUBJECT: how dare you re: rob Ford

BODY: I don't like Rob Ford. Don't make that mistake. i have no desire to see him stay in office longer than need be

but I have even less desire to see YOU GIVE $200 000 to people for a video of him smoking crack, because you have no idea who those people are. They could be random people, they could be lower class, but they could also be dealers, or gangsters, and giving them $200k is, quite frankly, despicable. You have reached a low, which is saying a lot for a gossip site. But you have stuck your nose into the affairs of a city that does not want you here. Remove it. Think about the repercussions of what you are doing and remove your crowd sourcing.

I for one will not be visiting the websites of Gawker media anymore until such happens. Which is just as well; your sites have been in slow decay for years anyway.

actions have consequences, and you are fools.

article: http://www.diycouturier.com/post/507490022...

And a happy weekend to you all!

Veep

A respectable number of people watch Veep and HBO was like, cool you get a third season. But I think people should be mooning over Veep. I want to see a plethora of review recaps every Monday and instantaneously created gifs. I want people to dress as Veep characters for Halloween so I can tell them how much I love their costume. Here's why you should be watching:

• You will learn a fantastic array of insults like: "Quaker in a titty bar" or "gold-plated shit gibbon."
• It's Buster goes to the White House. Tony Hale continues to play a gaffe-prone minion whose main character trait is he is simultaneously terrified of and enraptured with a matriarch. His life is devoted to following her about, doing her bidding.
• It's also kinda Elaine goes to the White House. It's not My Girl goes to the White House, but Anna Chulmsky is wonderful and hilarious.
• Bullshitzus. It's a dog that you pretend to own, so that you have an excuse to go home to walk it or not spend weekends at work.
• Veep apparently has all sorts of stuff to say about the difference between British and American communication. Creator Armando Iannucci is the man behind the brilliantly profane English television show The Thick of It as well as In the Loop.
• The clothes are gorgeous. Similar to another television show about DC politics, Veep features implausibly fashionable outfits worn by a town that invented frumpiness. Whatever guys, embrace your frumpy, it's Simon Doonan approved.
• The writers have trickily and annoyingly refused to choose a political party for the Vice President, but this means donkeys and elephants alike are invited to this zoo.
• You will receive guidance on how to reject phone calls efficiently from Sue. For example: "Hello. What do you want? You can't have it. Goodbye."
• This show is not a flimsy excuse to discuss political issues. Veep is a comical exaggeration about how people interact in high pressure situations—from carefully crafted manipulations to petty ego trips. It's mostly about people stepping on toes and grabbing for little handholds of power, which is likely a more accurate portrait of DC politicking than Aaron Sorkin's moralizing rants.
• It's got all the things you love to hate about Girls: nepotism, sex, race, voices of generations. We liked it from the beginning.

In one of the more bizarre Twitter beefs of late, Frances Bean Cobain, the 20-year-old daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, tore into Kendall Jenner, the 17-year-old half-sister of Kim Kardashian, for complaining on Twitter that her life was too hard.

"Just wish things could be easier sometimes mann," Jenner said in a since-deleted tweet.

Nearly all the responses from Jenner's followers were unfavorable, but the most high-profile of them all was from Cobain.

"oh shh," she responded. "There are kids on earth abandoned&homeless who forcibly drink contaminated water because clean water isn't accessible. oh ya, not to mention, CANCER, famine, poverty, draught, disease, natural disasters, Death. Fuck, Humans are so self involved."

Cobain wasn't quite done.

"I'd like to thank my parents for providing me with a high IQ & I'd like to thank my grams for encouraging me not to be a self absorbed idiot," she later subtweeted.

Leaving it at that would have been wise, but, well.

"[A]n individuals feelings are relative to their environment," Jenner tweeted last night. "[Y]ou don’t know me, you don’t even know what i was referring to."

She went on to point out that she is "aware" of her privilege and is "thankful for that everyday."

"[I] know there are greater problems in the world," Kendall continued, "I pray for those people every night and give back as much as i can. So who are u to judge me?"

Those tweets were also deleted.

No retort so far from Cobain, but her father is reportedly turning in his grave.

[photos via Twitter, tweets via Dlisted]

Welcome to Annotate This, where we gather reviews, trailers, and annotate the posters for movies heading to your local cineplex or art house theater this week. Click on the image above to add your comments to the mix. Enjoy the Summer of Sequels starting with:

The Hangover Part III

The outlandish adventures of three men who can't stop talking how much fun they once had continues. As you know, they're capturing new zoo animals, interacting with Mike Tyson, and ravaging cities of excess. Though this is the third installment, it manages to keep its original "sense of creative dehydration." Read Rich Juzwiak's review here.

Before Midnight (Limited)

While Before Midnight is also a tertiary installment, this film ages and matures in ways that justify a follow-up to the two previous films. Actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as well as director Richard Linklater wrote the script together—thus giving the movie a feeling that it is a "distillation of three lives' worth of real-world meltdowns." Mostly, the film involves them fighting intimately, paradoxically, painfully, cathartically, and impeccably.

Epic

This animated riff on Honey, I Shrunk the Kids has an astounding voice cast, including Beyoncé Knowles as Queen of an visually exquisite and enchanted land, as well as Christoph Waltz playing someone evil named Mandrake. Aziz Ansari and Chris O’Dowd play best friends called snug and snail.

Fast & Furious 6

While the driving force of Fast & Furious 6 is the goal of saving the world from a dirty bomb, the more likely culprit is the profits from Fast & Furious 5. But don't worry—even if there's no emotion, you can read these drag races as literature: "Here at last is the Proustian car chase, the gearbox the talismanic madeleine, the racers in search of lost time"

Fill the Void (Limited)

Centering on questions of honor and duty surrounding a wedding in a Orthodox Hassidic family, this movie is Jane Austen by way of Tel Aviv.

We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks (Limited)

Alex Gibney, the documentary filmmaker with a "gift for un-mashing political hot potatoes," has taken on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in his latest documentary. Through good old-fashioned research, Gibney captures a fascinating "Icarus-like plunge."

Behind the Candelabra (Premieres May 26 on HBO, in Theaters in Europe)

For Steven Soderbergh's last film (for the meantime), he depicts Liberace and his longtime lover Scott Thorson, in what one critic calls a "gay Pygmalion myth." Reviewers say it is glamorous, garish, great, as well fabulous, empathetic in addition to being lavish and eye-popping.

Penguins 3D

This is a story about the penguin who would be king, falling in love, showing seals who's boss, and protecting his tribe. David Attenborough will tell you all about it.

Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself (Limited)

George Plimpton is a dude who did it all—he was a writer, editor, boxer, baseball player, aviator, friend to Presidents, party-thrower, photographer of Playboy models, and New York philharmonic triangle player. Though the story writes itself, the documentary pays excellent tribute to the modern Renaissance/Everyman.

A Green Story (Limited)

This is a highly-produced, feature-length promotional video for ECOS laundry detergent. It's also a drama about the apparently vicious world of laundry detergent competition and fighting large corporations to live the American dream.

To contact the author of this post, email maggie@gawker.com.

And so it turns out that the biggest gift would actually be from Jimmy Kimmel.

According to a photo the comedian Jeffrey Ross tweeted out this afternoon, Ross was gifted today with John Currin's 1991 nude Bea Arthur portrait, which was sold at auction last week. At the time people only knew that an anonymous buyer had acquired the painting for a hefty $1.9 million, but Ross' tweet claims to reveal that buyer's identity: Kimmel, who was apparently willing to part with a couple million bucks so that his friend could forever stare at a half-naked Golden Girl.

Ross tweeted this today:

Biggest surprise of my life. Thank you @jimmykimmel - the most generous guy in the world!#BeaArthur ❤ moby.to/ohh9xo

— Jeffrey Ross (@realjeffreyross) May 24, 2013

To which Kimmel replied:

@realjeffreyross Bea is watching over all of us, but especially you

— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) May 24, 2013

Stars: They're just like us.

We've emailed Kimmel's press contact to check the veracity of the portrait and will update if we hear back.

It is completely unthinkable that the gentleman above, a kindly Massachusetts fellow wearing a TEABAG THE RAGS shirt with the New York Rangers logo shaped like a pair of testicles, would ever remove his genitals from his pants and show them to strangers. Especially not mere hours after last Sunday's Bruins-Rangers playoff game.

Boston's MBTA Transit police, however, suspect him of doing just that:

On Sunday, 05/19/13, at approximately 9:50 p.m., the male subject depicted below, exposed himself, while making lewd comments to the passengers onboard a Red Line train between North Quincy MBTA Station and Wollaston MBTA Station.

Just because he's a hockey fan, wearing balls on his shirt, does not, in any way, mean that he would show his penis to other passengers on a Sunday-night train. It just wouldn't happen.

[MBTA Transit Police]

Hi, y'all. Do you detect the scent of warm buttery toast, wafting in on a humid breeze from way down South? What you're smelling is the glorious butter-birth of the Official Paula Deen Museum, a tourist attraction recently proposed for Deen's hometown of Albany, Georgia. Just kidding. You're smelling toast because you're having a stroke.

Earlier this month, the Albany Herald revealed that local restauranteur B.J. Fletcher was working alongside Paula Deen's ex-husband Jimmy (Jimmy Deen) to establish a museum dedicated to the Food Network megastar. According to the Herald, tentative plans for a museum have been in the works for over a year now; they recently picked up speed with the acquisition of Deen's childhood home.

Deen, who now lives in Savannah, has already given her blessing to the project, calling it an "incredible honor." She's even offered to outfit the museum with the original furniture her parents kept in her childhood home.

"I still have mama's living room set and daddy's — they had separate rooms later on because daddy had to sleep with a night light on and mama couldn't."

Hmm. That's a little dark. We'll leave it up to the museum docents to explore Paula's father's tortured late-in-life relationship with darkness.

Until the museum is built, devotees can continue to pray to Deen at her altars, located in the "Husky" boys' departments of chain retail establishments.

[Albany Herald // Image via Getty]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who has smoked crack cocaine, read a statement to the press this afternoon purporting to respond to claims published in Gawker, and followed on by the Toronto Star, that a video of him smoking crack cocaine was being offered for sale by people involved in the Toronto crack trade.

Ford, who—aside from briefly referring to the charges as "ridiculous"—has remained silent in the eight days since we published our story about his crack tape, made two claims in his remarks this afternoon:

1) "I do not use crack cocaine."

2) "Nor am I an addict of crack cocaine."

Neither of those statements is inconsistent with Rob Ford having been caught on tape smoking crack cocaine within the past six months. The fact that Rob Ford says he does not currently use crack cocaine has no bearing on his past behavior. He did not say, as one who has never smoked crack cocaine might say, "I have never smoked crack cocaine." He said he does not smoke crack cocaine, which is the sort of thing that someone who woke up this morning and decided to stop smoking crack cocaine might say, on the grounds that it's not presently untrue.

Since we know that Rob Ford used to smoke crack cocaine, and in fact most certainly did smoke crack cocaine at some point within the last six months, we can only interpret his statement claiming not to currently smoke crack cocaine as an announcement that he has decided to kick the habit.

As for his second statement: No one here has accused him of being addicted to crack cocaine. As far as we are aware, the main point of controversy in Toronto has centered on that fact of his use of crack cocaine, not on whether that use was compulsive or recreational.

But what about the video? Here's what Ford—who does not smoke crack cocaine—had to say about that: "I can't comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist."

So, to recap: Rob Ford, who was caught on video smoking crack cocaine within the last six months, says he is not a current user of crack cocaine, is not an addict of crack cocaine, and has no comment on the video that shows him smoking crack cocaine.

I've never dispatched a wrathful bird to destroy a pig. Sometime around 2010, I blocked FarmVille et al. from my Facebook News Feed and never looked back. But last week I stayed up an hour past my bedtime because I thought I had the Dots "hot hand."

A good fifth or sixth of the rainy weekend was also spent with rictus of the forearm trying, unsuccessfully, to beat another tech blogger's high score.

The game is the Platonic ideal of retro-futurism—a clean, candy-colored interface that demands Tetris-style spatial reasoning inside the tech world's newfound obsession with flat design. The object of the game is to connect dots of the same color and eliminate them from the board. It makes old school bleep-bloops when you swipe your finger to connect them. And, oh oh, is it pretty. Pretty, pretty, so pretty.

Dots makes you want to put on a pair of mint-colored jeans and upload yourself into an iPhone like it was Tron. The interface is so sweet, it makes bratty teenage millionaires wax idiotic about art.

The game was created by Patrick Moberg, who once captivated a city with his fameball-era search for a manic pixie dream girl he spotted aboard the 5 train. Moberg is now a hacker-in-residence at Betaworks, a New York City-based studio responsible for resurrecting Digg and soon Google Reader. Dots launched at the start of the month and, as of last week, already had 2 million downloads and a super fan in blogging-capitalist Michael Arrington.

The best strategy is to just try to make squares. Once you make a square, all dots of the same color disappear from the board with a reaffirming vibration (good dog, you get a bone) of your phone. I ignored Quartz's excellent, comprehensive guide on the topic for a week, swiping around like a noob making fanciful Little Dippers and rectangles, being an independent woman, and refusing to spend the 30,000 "dots" I had accumulated on "power-ups" because I thought it was cheating.

But my desire to beat all the braggy fuckers tweeting their Dots trophies made me cave. (If you're prone to competitiveness, ignore the in-app leaderboard that shows you how you rank against your Twitter and Facebook friends.)

It worked. I adopted a monomania for manufacturing squares, started using "shrinkers" to zap unwanted dots, and got my high score up by 100 points. But I missed the carefree, losing spirit with which I had once approached Dots.

"How can an app game be sustainable and not just peak and die?" asked a friend recently, after quitting Dots because it gave him too much anxiety. In the hits-driven mobile gaming industry, he said, "You can't franchise a game without a storyline."

I think the absence of narrative is what will keep Dots alive, a little longer at least, than the hivemind's attention span. Playing the game evokes the same taut mindlessness as being on the Internet all day. It lets you trick yourself into thinking you can multitask or watch subtitled Danish political dramas while playing. (You cannot.) You start hearing faint, phantom bleeps when your phone is buried under the covers.

On the other hand, maybe Zynga will acquire the whole shebang and find a way to make everyone stop caring before you can say update 3.0.

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

Earlier this week, Toledo resident Chad Lesko was walking around a local park when an angry stranger approached the 23-year-old and told him he had to leave. “He just walks up to me and says, ‘You’re not allowed in this park because you’re a rapist,’” Lesko recalled yesterday over the phone. “I’m like, ‘No, I’m not!’”

What Lesko didn’t know was that a Facebook post accusing him of being a wanted child molester had gone viral:

Except the allegations weren't true. Lesko was not wanted by the Toledo Police for anything.

A Juggalo who started attending church about eight months ago, Lesko went to a meeting there and someone called the authorities. "The church people had seen my picture on Facebook, so then the cops showed up and ran my name, but I had nothing come up," he told me. "When I was on the way home, I had another cop stop me and actually slam me to the ground because he thought I was wanted."

The Nicole McCarthy profile, a dummy page created by Lesko's ex-girlfriend and the mother of his son (who confessed to posting the slanderous accusation on a local radio show), came down on Wednesday, but only after the false accusation had more than 30,000 shares.

“It really pisses me off because I would never do that," Lesko said. "I was abused as a child and beaten as a child and I’m really against that. If you have to put your hands on a child, that’s the lowest way to go.”

[image via Toledo News Now]

David Foster Wallace's 2006 Times Magazine profile of Roger Federer is one of sports journalism's most famous write-arounds. Or, as Wallace wrote himself, the piece was "a spectator’s experience of Federer, and its context." But the Times flew Wallace out to Wimbledon, so surely he got to spend some time with Federer, right? Federer was asked today during an AMA on Reddit if he ever read it:

I have read it. The thing that struck me is that I only spent 20min with him in the ATP office at Wimbledon, and he was able to produce such a comprehensive piece.

Even David Foster Wallace got screwed on interviews.

[Reddit]

Photo: Getty

Jake Davidson's first choice for prom date, Kate Upton, initially said yes after he asked her out via YouTube video, but was forced to cancel due to a "scheduling conflict." So he took a different Sports Illustrated swimsuit model instead.

Nina Agdal, the 21-year-old 2012 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Rookie of the Year, agreed to take Upton's place by the 17-year-old Milken Community High School senior's side as he made a splash at last night's prom.

SwimDaily asked Davidson how he ended up on a date with the Danish beauty.

"I was told that Nina Agdal wanted to go to prom with me, and I didn’t have a date anyways, so I thought why not!" Davidson replied.

Calling the night "incredible," Davidson said there were plenty of rubbernecking among attendees as the two walked in. "They were excited to meet her and take pictures," he said.

You'd think being a teenager with a supermodel around his arm would make prom night the best night of his life. You don't know Jake.

"It was a pretty incredible night and I enjoyed it a lot, but I don’t think it was the high point of my life," he told SwimDaily. "It is certainly up there though!"

An amazing sport, Agdal tweeted at Davidson, telling him she had a great time and thanked him "for being an awesome date."

Meanwhile, Davidson was already moving on:

SD: You’ve admitted you have a crush on Kate. You’ve been on a date with Nina. Which model is next?
JD: I would never have expected this date, so I can only hope my lucky streak continues. I think as a 17 year old boy, I would love to go on a date with any model, so I am really not picky! It would be great if they were as cool and fun as Nina.

[H/T: LAist, photos via Twitter, Instagram, video via Inside Edition]

Operation Uphold Democracy: Haiti, 1994-95.

Lebanese Civil War: Lebanon, 1982-1984.

Cold War: Everywhere, 1947-1991.

Boxer Rebellion: China, 1899-1900.

Chilean Civil War: Chile, 1891.

Sheepeater Indian War: North America (present day Idaho), 1879.

War On Terror: Everywhere, 2001-present.

Puget Sound War: North American nations of the Nisqually, Muckleshoot, Puyallup, Klickitat, Haida and Tlingit, 1855-1856.

Second Liberian Civil War: Liberia, 2003.

Philippine Insurrection: Philippines, 1899-1902.

Occupation of Nicaragua: Nicaragua, 1912-1933.

Occupation of Haiti: Haiti, 1915-1934.

Great Sioux War: North America, present day Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, 1876-1877.

Moro Rebellion: Sultanate of Sulu, 1899-1913.

Occupation of the Dominican Republic: Dominican Republic, 1916-1924.

Mexican Revolution: Mexico, 1914-1919.

World War I: Everywhere, 1917-1918.

Russian Civil War: Russia, 1918-1920.

World War II: Everywhere, 1941-1945.

Quasi War: Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, 1798-1800.

Persian Gulf War, 1991.

Red River War: North American Great Plains, 1874-1875.

Operation Blue Bat: Lebanon, 1958.

Vietnam War: Vietnam, 1953-1975.

War Between the States/War of Northern Aggression ("Civil War"): America, 1861-1865.

Korean War: Korea, 1950-1953.

Second Samoan Civil War: Samoa, 1898-1899.

First Sumatran Expedition: Chiefdom of Kuala Batee, 1832.

Tecumseh's War: North American Great Lakes, 1811.

Ghost War Dance: North America, present day South Dakota, 1890-1891.

Spanish-American War: Cuba, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, etc., 1898.

Second Sumatran Expedition: Chiefdom of Quallah Battoo, 1838-1839.

Lava Beds War: Northern California, 1872-1873.

Korean Expedition: Korea, 1871.

Revolutionary War: United States, Canada, Great Britain, Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean, etc., 1774-1783.

Winnebago War: North America, present day Illinois and Michigan, 1827.

Battle of Kororareka: Māori Kororareka, New Zealand, 1845.

War of 1812: United States, Canada, indigenous North America, Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean, etc., 1812-1815.

Little Turtle's War: Indigenous North America, Canada, 1785-1795.

First Barbary War: North Africa, Mediterranean Sea, 1801-1805.

Second Barbary War: North Africa, Mediterranean Sea, 1815.

Aegean War On Pirates: Aegean Sea, 1825-1828.

Years are of American military involvement.

[Photo by Getty Images.]

How much would you pay for an interview with Julian Assange, Wikileaks' founder and current undisputed world record-holder for Most Consecutive Days Spent In London's Ecuadorian Embassy? $58 seems fair. But Assange asked filmmaker Alex Gibney for $1 million to be interviewed for his new Wikileaks documentary We Steal Secrets, according to Gibney.

Gibney detailed the ordeal of trying to get Assange on camera in an interview with The Nation

Jon Wiener: Any film about Wikileaks has to make interviewing Julian Assange task number one. You worked hard on that, and finally you met with him to discuss an interview. How did that go?

Alex Gibney: Not so well. I tried over the course of a year and a half to get the interview. He’d already been interviewed by practically everyone on the planet. Finally we had a six hour meeting. He told me that the market rate for an interview was a million dollars. I told him I don’t pay for interviews. He said “That’s too bad, in that case you might do something else for me.” He wanted me to spy on our other interview subjects—which I found a rather odd request from someone concerned about source protection. So I never did get the interview with Julian Assange.

This absurd request can probably be explained by the fact that Wikileaks desperately needs the cash. Donations to Wikileaks have slowed to a trickle, thanks in part to a blockade by U.S.. financial institutions against the organization and also the fact the organization has basically been reduced to a popular Twitter account as Julian Assange languishes in Ecuador's London Embassy in an attempt to avoid rape charges in Sweden.

Since no interviews with Julian Assange look forthcoming until he lowers his price to around $58, you may as well revisit Gawker's interview with Assange in November, for which we paid $0.

Update: Wikileaks' official twitter account points to Wikileaks' extensive annotation of the We Steal Secrets transcript, in which Wikileaks denies that Assange asked Gibney for $1 million for an interview. From the annotation:

Julian Assange did not say the market rate for an interview with him was $1 million dollars and Alex Gibney did not decline. This section deliberately distorts the final, lengthy negotiation between Julian Assange and Alex Gibney regarding his and WikiLeaks' possible participation in the documentary, which at the time was unnamed.

The privileged son of a disgraced former aide to President George W. Bush has been charged with killing a man with a hatchet at his father's home in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

According to police, 20-year-old Claude Alexander Allen III called in an attempted burglary shortly after midnight this morning. Allen claimed that he'd killed a burglar, 25-year-old Michael Phillip Harvey, with a hatchet after finding him trying to break into the property on the 7200 block of Cliff Pine Drive. Police say they discovered upon arrival that Allen knew Harvey and that Harvey's death was not the result of a burglary.

Reports the Washington Post, "Harvey was found dead in a wooded area about 75 yards behind the suspect’s home, but police believe the attack began in the two-car garage."

Allen's father, Claude A. Allen, owns the Gaithersburg home with his wife, and was the lawyer turned Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy under President Bush. He eventually resigned from that position in shame after being caught repeatedly stealing from Target and Hecht's stores in 2006.

Despite losing his cushy White House job, Allen, an evangelical Christian, is apparently still doing very well for himself: Houses on Cliff Pine Drive tend to sell for $750,000 and up.

Police say they currently have no motive in Claude Alexander Allen III's murder case.

[Image via AP]

A father-of-three from Virginia who is married to a woman of color was accused by a Walmart security guard of kidnapping his own mixed-race children.

Joseph, of Prince William County, went to Walmart last week with his 4-year-old daughter and two 2-year-old twins.

After leaving the store without incident he drove to pick up Keana, his wife of 10 years, and the entire family returned home together.

Upon arrival, however, the couple was greeted by an officer from the local police department.

"He asks us very sincerely, ‘Hey, I was sent here by Walmart security. I just need to make sure that the children that you have are your own,'" Joseph recalled.

Keana was dumbfounded.

"He took my ID and asked my 4-year-old to point out who her mother and father were," she said.

The officer later explained that a Walmart security guard called the cops to report seeing Joseph with the three children in the parking lot, and thought it was "strange."

Keana says she called Walmart to complain, and was told that it was a customer who brought the matter to the guard's attention.

"Well, the customer was concerned because they saw the children with your husband and he didn't think that they fit," Walmart customer service reportedly told Keana.

The couple says this is sadly not the first time they've encountered such "ignorance," and are speaking out to let others know it still exists.

Walmart has issued a non-statement saying they are "looking into the situation," but Joseph and Keana have already decided never to shop there again.

[H/T: Boing Boing, screengrabs via MyFoxDC]

What a difference a coast can make — Mariah Carey's spotty performance on Good Morning America was scrubbed clean when the show aired on the West Coast. The first clip of the video above shows her struggling with adlibbing when her performance aired live; the second clip is the sanitized way it aired three hours later. They also, of course, removed was her S-bomb. So basically, they took out much of what made her appearance fun.

I'll take illusion-shattering errors over boring canned perfection any day.

Memorial Day means many things to many people. It is almost summer, it is a time to drink, there are sales in the hellish big box stores, etc. But mostly, it is a time to solemnly remember military personnel who died while on active duty. Sorry, veterans!

Stop interviewing old veterans, lamestream media. It's not their day.

Here, we have a very nice story about America's oldest living veteran, who plans to "spend a quiet Memorial Day at home." That is good, because that's what all living veterans should do on Memorial Day. Unless you are currently in the ground, it's not for you. Celebrate, sure! Buy something, by all means! But please don't divert attention from the honored dead.

And if you survive to see another Veterans Day—wouldn't that be great, for you and your loved ones?—we'll be there on November 11, Veterans Day 2013, with flags waving! Hang in there. Even Santa Claus needs to keep a low profile in the summer.

Gawker's military affairs desk is angry because year after year, the lamestream media puts out a bunch of pictures of 100-year-old veterans having a BBQ or wearing their old war hats. This is not the reason for Memorial Day. Memorial Day is to remember the dead, and to open the swimming pools for the summer, and to get a new mattress if necessary.

How did Memorial Day start, you may wonder. I will tell you. Long ago, in the hollers and mountains and swamps of the Deep South, the same morbid southerners who gave us country music and blues music and William Faulkner gave us a tradition known as "Decoration Day."

The Civil War was horrific. No amount of Ken Burns atmospheric banjo plucking can begin to illustrate the gruesome four-year-long living nightmare of the War Between the States. No visit to a manicured cannonball lawn can return us to that time, and that's for the best. The whole country, from New England to California, was technically at war. But the battles were concentrated in the South, a place so hot and humid and malarial and miserable for much of the year that people didn't start living there in large numbers until the wide availability of air conditioning in the 1950s. (The first air conditioner was invented in Brooklyn in 1902, to keep factory workers from collapsing in the summer months. But it was another half century before the AC-equipped home made life in the South bearable for anybody who wasn't born there and didn't know better.)

Between 620,000 and 850,000 American and Confederate soldiers died, two-thirds of them from disease. The Southern economy, built on the backs of slaves, was obliterated. Tradition and gloomy tales told on broiling summer nights were about all the defeated Confederacy had left. Southerners are unparalleled practitioners of grief. Jazz funerals, three-day "wakes," a special menu of regional foods prepared especially for the wailing relations, burial with feet facing east for easy plucking on Judgment Day ... in a southern town, it can sometimes feel like nobody's really alive until somebody drops dead.

They invented Decoration Day, when the survivors and later the descendants of the war dead went to the family plot, adorned the gravestone with flowers, and had a "dinner on the ground" over the rotting remains of the Civil War soldiers.

Just as the nation eventually embraced such southern traditions as The Dukes of Hazzard and eating too much fried foods, the victorious United States also claimed Decoration Day as its own. It was not until after World War II that the Memorial Day celebrations became common and widespread, and not until 1967 that Memorial Day became a federal holiday—a year later, Memorial Day was legally set as a three-day weekend at the end of May, making it a convenient time for backyard parties and the purchase of furnishings and automobiles. Only then did it become truly American.

Still, it's Memorial Day, not Alive Veterans Day.

Unless the veterans profiled around this weekend's special advertising sections by America's Media are zombies, this practice is unpatriotic and morally wrong. It is Memorial Day.

Celebrate this day with the proper solemnity. It is "okay" to exclude living veterans from your parties and trips to Mattress Land.

[Photo from GettyPremium]

In February, rap magazine The Source reported that 46-year-old Bronx rapper Tim Dog had died from "a seizure following a long bout with diabetes." But now a warrant for his arrest has been issued, following increasing evidence that Tim "Tim Dog" Blair faked his own death to escape thousands of dollars in debt.

Before maybe faking his own death, Balir was best known for his 1991 song "Fuck Compton," dissing the West Coast hip-hop scene. But since then he's been undertaking a series of cons, where he meets women on dating sites and swindles them out of money. So many that, according to VICE's Drew Millard, there is an "international network/support system of women who have had their lives ruined because they met Tim Dog on the internet."

According to VICE, Blair scammed one Dutch woman into investing in a fake European tour of black male strippers called the Chocolate Fantasy Tour. He convinced a Mississippi woman to invest $32,000 in a box CD set, which never came out. In 2011 was ordered by a judge to pay her $20,000, and that, says the woman, is why he faked his own death in February. A death certificate has yet to be produced, even though Tim Dog's family apparently held a funeral for Blair. The Mississippi prosecutor handling the case told the AP he wasn't able to find any proof of Blair's death, thus prompting the warrant.

You can tell it's summer, because we're getting into fake death season. First Andy Kaufman was spotted in New Mexico, now Tim Dog.