According to several reports coming out of Philadelphia, a former “hero cop” who was once rewarded for his bravery in the line of duty with a seat next First Lady Michelle Obama during a presidential speech is being held on $60 million bail (apparently one of the highest in Philadelphia history) for allegedly raping two women at gunpoint, among some other pretty terrible things.

Richard DeCoatsworth, a 27-year-old former police officer who attended President Obama’s first congressional address in 2009, has been charged with more than 32 crimes in three cases, including a domestic violence incident back on May 9 when he allegedly assaulted his live-in girlfriend. The most recent reports of stomach-churning violence from the ex-cop, however, claim that DeCoatsworth forced two women to take drugs and perform sexual acts on him.

NBC10’s account of DeCoatsworth’s misdeeds is fairly brutal, so be prepared:

A source tells NBC10 former officer Richard DeCoatsworth, 27, met one of the women at a bar on North Front Street two weeks ago, then forced her into prostitution at a Days Inn hotel along Roosevelt Boulevard.

Between 2 a.m. Thursday and Friday evening, DeCoatsworth went to the woman’s home along North Howard Street in the Fishtown-Kensington.

Once he arrived, DeCoatsworth forced that woman and a second woman, both in their 20s, to use drugs and perform oral sex on him at gunpoint, according to the source. The alleged victims reported the assault Friday only after DeCoatsworth went home, according to police.

Police raided DeCoatsworth’s house on the 2700 block of Salmon Street in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday. He was charged with rape, sexual assault, terroristic threats and related offenses. Police also confiscated drugs and guns from the home, according to a source. No word yet on what kind of drugs were removed from the home.

Bail has been set at $25 million for each of the victims in the rape cases. Another $10 million in bail was added for the May 9 domestic abuse, bringing DeCoatsworth’s grand bail total to a staggering $60 million, reportedly one of the largest in the long, sordid history of Philadelphia crime.

News of DeCoatsworth’s arrest didn’t come as a surprise to at least one of his neighbors, who, on the condition of anonymity, described him to NBC10 as “a thorn in the side of the neighborhood for so long.” Since his 2007 hero-making incident when (as a rookie officer) he chased after a suspect who shot him in the face, DeCoatsworth has had what one might charitably call a history of violence: in April 2009, his gun reportedly “went off” while he was assaulted trying to disperse a crowd, killing the suspect who assaulted him, and in September 2009, after stopping a motorcyclist, DeCoastworth and a fellow officer shot and wounded a second man who jumped on the motorcycle and allegedly drove at them (local witnesses claimed that the two suspects did nothing wrong).

In 2011, Internal Affairs investigated an alleged physical confrontation between DeCoatsworth and another officer. Later that year, DeCoatsworth retired from the police force on disability.

Former Hero Officer Charged With Raping Women, Held on $60m Bail [NBC10]

Image via AP, Evan Vucci

Last week, the Cannes Film Festival was the site of several movie-worthy crimes of its own, as both a a million dollar jewel heist and a shooting caught on camera reportedly took place on the same day. And on Sunday, news broke that another high-profile burglary hit the French Riviera during the prestigious festival.

The rented apartment of China Film Group vice president Zhang Qiang was reportedly ransacked on Wednesday. According to Zhang, who announced the robbery on Weibo (a Chinese social networking tool similar to Twitter), the thieves made off with all of his possessions, including his luggage and travel documents.

Zhang wrote (Weibo'd?) that the experience not only ruined his trip – “This film festival is not worth mentioning” – but that it also confirmed his suspicions about the French. “Security in France is so bad, and the [people] are so arrogant,” he wrote.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Zhang's tweet/Weibo struck a chord with Francophobic Chinese travelers:

Zhang’s post was widely retweeted by Chinese film fans, with many weighing in to respond with their own travel horror stories and experiences with “impolite” French people in the past.

Eventually, French authorities, officials from the film festival, and even staff from the hotel contacted Zhang to apologize. And the whole incident apparently taught Zhang a lesson about the power of social media.

“We can see how China’s Weibo service now has influence outside the country,” [Zhang] added. “I’d like to remind compatriots to take note of how to protect their own rights when travelling abroad for business and leisure.”

[Hollywood Reporter/Image via Getty]

First hot coffee, now broken glass. A Brooklyn gospel singer is suing McDonalds after she allegedly bit into a shard of glass "bigger than a penny" in her chicken sandwich, which she claims ruined her singing voice.

Jacqueline Simpson is a 52-year-old singer and clerk in the Attorney General's office. She filed suit in Brooklyn Supreme Court this week after biting the glass at a Broadway McDonalds in 2010.

“Now when I sing, I have a hoarse, rattly voice,” Simpson said. “I still sing alto, but I can’t sing soprano like I used to.”

“I have to make a lot of calls for work, and I have to tell people that I’m not a man,’’ she added. “Before, that never happened.”

[via, photo via Getty]

New research on the health of immigrants has found that they live longer than their children, mostly because the American way of life is a horribly unhealthy one.

The Times explains how the longer an immigrant lives in the United States, the higher their rate of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes (and no, it's not because they're getting older, dummy. It's because they're becoming more American!).

“There’s something about life in the United States that is not conducive to good health across generations,” Robert A. Hummer, a social demographer at the University of Texas at Austin told the Times.

On average, Foreign-born Americans live three years longer than their American-born peers. Why? Because people born in the United States smoke more, drink more, eat worse, and kinda just laze about.

But there is some hope for the descendants of immigrants: social mobility! Scientists believe that the longer a family is in the United States, the more prosperous it might be, and once you get to that vaunted middle-class status, you stop buying huge hamburgers and instead start jogging.

Great! So we just need Americans to start moving up in class and, err, oh no, okay, maybe that won't work right just now. How about we just start by moving? One step at a time.

There we go — let's just go for a little walk around the block. Wasn't that nice? We're having an asthma attack? We're wheezing? Okay, right. I agree. This was silly. We'll stop. This does feel like a perfect time for a nap.

[Shutterstock]

We've already reported on the legions of adoring fans who post about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Tumblr and Twitter, but now the nurses who cared for him at Beth Israel Hospital are putting in their two cents.

The Boston nurses spoke out about treating the accused bomber to the Boston Globe, saying that they found it hard to reconcile Tsarnaev as a patient with the bombings.

“You see a hurt 19-year-old and you can’t help but feel sorry for him,’’ one nurse told reporters. She said she and another nurse had to form a pact after she accidentally called Tsarnaev "Hon," and they agreed to alert each other if they used a term of endearment with him again.

The nurses also declined to use their names in the interviews, fearing judgment from the public. Others said they felt guilty for doing a good job treating him.

"When you’re in the room, it’s just a patient. You’re here to . . . make sure they're feeling better," a 29-year-old nurse who initially treated Tsarnaev said. "When you step away, you take it in. I am compassionate, that’s what we do. But should I be? The rest of the world hates him right now. The emotions are like one big salad, all tossed around."

Hospital staff also struggled with treating the bomber at the same time that they were treating his victims. When Tsarnaev was brought in, there were 24 bombing victims in the hospital, some being treated on the same floor, and some family members had to walk by his heavily guarded room to reach their loved ones.

"Many of the support staff, the cleaners, and families of other patients will say, ‘Why are you giving him pain medication?’ They might be angry at us for turning him and washing him and for doing what we are really supposed to do,’’ a director of trauma at an Israeli hospital recounted from previous experiences treating accused terrorists. “After about a half-hour, I don’t see him as a terrorist anymore."

[via, photo via Getty]

The derailment has knocked out train traffic between New York and New Haven (cutting New York off from Boston along that corridor as well). Officials are saying that service will not be restored for weeks. While no fatalities resulted from the collision, several passengers broke bones or suffered significant lacerations.

Last year Aimee Copeland was ziplining across the Little Tallapoosa River in Georgia, when her homemade line broke and she sliced open her leg, requiring 22 stitches to close. And then the nightmare began.

Her accident quickly turned into a debilitating case of necrotizing fasciitis — flesh-eating bacteria. Despite heavy odds, including multiple amputations and a temporary inability to remember what had happened to her, the 24-year-old graduate student eventually overcame her illness, but lost her hands, a leg, and a foot in the process.

Necrotizing fasciitis is a rare illness, affecting about 750 people a year, and Copeland's strain was even rarer. The perky masters student quickly drew national attention, also due in part to her upbeat attitude. A student of holistic pain management techniques, Copeland regularly refused morphine during the amputation and skin graft procedures that were necessary to save her life, saying the pain medications went against her convictions.

Now, Copeland has regained much of her autonomy thanks to a pair of bionic hands. The "i-limb ultra revolution" hands can cost as much as $120,000 a hand, and can be remotely set by an iPad application.

Copeland's new hands allow her to pick up small items and brush her own hair, but she says that she is most excited about regaining the ability to cook vegetarian meals. Before the hands, Copeland was only able to prepare microwavable foods.

"It just mimics so well a natural hand that it really just reminds me of before the accident, how I would have done things," Copeland told reporters. "I never thought I would actually be able to hold a knife and cut something. That's just incredible."

Copeland also hopes to receive a prosthetic leg later this year. She plans to work with amputee children in a wilderness camp this summer.

[via, image via AP]

Cash! The WSJ says "the Yahoo board has approved a deal" to make this happen, and it's hard to imagine Tumblr turning this down. One of the most unpopular companies in the world will soon own one of the most popular in history, and we'll all find out if you really can buy cool.

A billion dollars for a company with a massive, young, ad-averse, GIF-swapping user base and an open disdain for revenue—Yahoo's shareholders are probably a little puzzled, if they aren't prima facie dazzled by how often Tumblr is characterized as "cool" and "young"—that demographic elixer Yahoo will now try to vampire-suck out of Tumblr. Cool, cool, cool, young, young, so young.

Tumblr's investors won't be so dazzled, as they were hoping for a hell of a lot more than a billion dollars. Then again, these same investors poured millions into a company that, as mentioned, never made making money a priority—Tumblr should consider itself lucky to have this deus ex Marissa Mayer, the ultimate bail-out.

So, it's not ideal for either party, but that's Yahoo in 2013. It's a little sad and a little confusing, but the two deserve each other—and as AllThingsD's Kara Swisher reports, "There were no other competing bids." This is the internet acquisition equivalent of two tired, slightly desperate lovers exchanging leers from opposite sides of the bar, shrugging, and going home together. This is a Sure, why not, deal.

Still, no clues for the following questions:

A) What is Yahoo going to do with Tumblr in a way that justifies that giant price tag?

B) Will Tumblr have to start making money now?

C) What will Yahoo do with all of the porn and cutting?

D) Is this the end of the road for unpopular boy king David Karp, who for the first time in his career will have to be accountable to grownups? If not now, then perhaps soon—we've heard nothing good of him from inside Tumblr. He's been alienating his peers for years, gaining distrust instead of revenue, and earning a reputation as a startup headache. Of course, at the very same time, Karp was constructing one of the most beloved services on the internet—but these managerial quirks don't go down well with the WWW old guard.

We'll be at Yahoo's Manhattan announcement on Monday, but don't expect any big answers to the above—we don't suspect Yahoo even has them. The last we heard, Tumblr's employees will be called to hastily scheduled meetings Monday morning—rooms filled with dread and relief.

A 14-year-old girl was shot and killed last night while boarding a city bus in Queens. Police are still looking for the gunman, who they say opened fire on the Q6 bus around 9 p.m. on Saturday.

Police say that the teenaged victim, Daja Robinson, had just left a Sweet Sixteen event at Onyx Lounge in Jamaica. She was boarding the bus with a group of girls from the party when the shots were fired. The Post is reporting that the gunman, who police say fired about 10 shots at the bus, was targeting the group. The shooter's motives are still unknown, and police are not sure if Robinson was the intended victim.

One witness told the Post, "It sounded like Iraq out here."

Robinson was shot at least once in the head and was pronounced dead at Jamaica Hospital.

[via, photo via Getty]

Kanye West's new album, which is coming out June 18th, will be called "Yeezus" and feature two new songs that Kanye premiered on Saturday Night Live last night.

Yeezus himself walked in front of a projection of barking dogs for the song "Black Skinhead," which samples Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People."

He also premiered another new song, "New Slaves,"

Kanye has had it with your attempts to get him to sell things!

Update:

Here's the cover art via Nahright:

Yeezus.

A 21-year-old Hofstra student was killed early Friday morning by a shot fired by a Nassau County policeman. Andrea Rebello was being held at gunpoint by an intruder, when she was shot once in the head by the unidentified police officer, who also killed the home intruder.

Nassau County police informed Rebello's parents on Saturday that it had been a policeman's bullet, and not the intruder's that killed their daughter. Rebello was being held by Dalton Smith, who was shot seven times by the policeman. Smith did not fire a shot.

Rebello was living off-campus from Hofstra with her twin sister and tow other roommates, when Smith entered the home in the early hours of Friday. After a roommate was able to contact auhtorities, police entered the home and found Smith holding Rebello at gunpoint, telling police he was going to kill her. When Smith turned his gun towards the police officer, the police officer opened fire."

“At that point, the police officer fires several rounds,” Detective Lt. John Azzata said at a Saturday news conference. “Seven of those rounds struck our subject; one of those rounds struck the victim.”

Thomas Dale, the Nassau County police commissioner, personally went to the home of Rebello's parents to tell them it was a police officer's gun that killed their daughter.

New York City's luxury housing boom, which has been a trademark of the Bloomberg administration's distaste for building substantial housing for anyone but the superrich, has reached its astounding conclusion: massive condos owned by people so rich, they don't actually live there.

The New York Times lists the demographics of the new New Yorkers who have been lucky enough to find housing they can afford: "While their identities are not known, it is likely that many are the rootless superrich: Russian metals barons, Latin American tycoons, Arab sheiks and Asian billionaires."

Manhattan used to be a difficult place to build luxury housing, with zoning codes that discouraged skyscrapers outside of certain neighborhoods, as well as taxes that tried to keep the playing field at least somewhat level. But with two successive rabidly pro-development mayors, New York has now joined London and Hong Kong as a great place to buy an apartment, high in the sky, that you will hardly ever use. Only a quarter of new apartments will actually be occupied. Developers are also selling separate, smaller apartments that range from $1.5 million to $3.9 million, simply for the maids of the larger apartments.

“Manhattan’s superluxury condo boom, along with rocketing foreclosures in Queens and record homelessness, present an unobstructed view of accelerating polarization in this recovery,” said James Parrott, chief economist for the Fiscal Policy Institute (which the Times decided to point out is " supported by unions," because er, unions hate building booms?).

Are these people so rich, New Yorkers won't even know who their absentee neighbors will be?

Determining who is buying many of these properties is a challenge. The superrich often go to great lengths to shield their identities, requiring confidentiality agreements with builders and brokers and using anonymous corporate entities for purchases.

But this will give the city more money overall, and make building affordable housing easier, right? Not so quick. These buildings are so profitable, that they have completely distorted the local real estate market. This leaves developers with incredibly little incentive to build affordable housing anywhere near the city core, especially with a mayoral administration that seems satisfied to build completely un-affordable "affordable" housing.

These superrich, during the week or two when they actually are in their 68th story apartment, will be looking out on a horribly unequal city, but from way up there, will probably only be able to make out the faintest glimpse of their neighbors.

A 32-year-old man was fatally shot last night in what police are saying is the fourth local hate crime targeting gay men in the last two weeks.

Police say that the victim, Marc Carson, was walking with a friend down Sixth Avenue around midnight, when three Hispanic men began harassing him with anti-gay remarks. One or two of those three men then evidently recrossed paths with Carson a short while later, gunning Carson down at point-blank range outside of Gray's Papaya at West 8th Street and Sixth Avenue.

Police Commissione Ray Kelly told reporters that police are investigating the shooting as a hate crime.

According to police, the suspected shooter was seen urinating on the street outside Annisa, a West Village restaurant, earlier that evening. The man then went inside, made homophobic comments to the bartender, and showed the bartender his gun, telling employees that he was behind Sandy Hook and would shoot them too.

Upon leaving the restaurant, the suspect then apparently encountered Carson and his friend, asking them if they were "gay wrestlers."

"There was no words that would aggravate the situation spoken by the victims here. They were confronted," Kelly told reporters. "They did not know the perpetrators, no previous relationship."

A short while later, the gunman again confronted Carson, asking him, "Do you want to die here?" Carson was then shot once in the cheek with a .38 revolver at point-blank range. He was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Hospital.

"It was a quickie. He shot him and he went straight to the ground," a bouncer at a nearby club told the Daily Mail.

Police caught the suspected shooter about five blocks away from the crime scene and arrested him and two other men in connection with the shooting. Police say he appeared crazed and confessed to the shooting. But, according to reports, the suspect was carrying multiple fake IDs and police have not yet been able to identify him.

[via, photo via newyorkdailyphoto]

James Franco is trying his hand at the visual arts again, this time working in the time-honored medium of mural on the beaten streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The title of his new work, "This is The End," which is a meditation on the new film,"This is The End," is a tribute to all his good friends, and all the fun they had while making their new film, which looks... pretty great.

What does James Franco listen to on his headphones as he paints a picture of James Franco? James Franco, probably.

The mural can now be seen on Bedford and Grand. Franco was apparently working with Sky High Murals. James Franco enjoys marijuana/jokes about marijuana.

[Photos by Clare Thigpen]

North Korea, strangely quiet as of late in terms of threatening to destroy other countries, launched three short-range missiles today into the sea. Its intent was unclear.

South Korea confirmed the missile launch, which were not in their direction, but rather towards the east. South Korea does believe that North Korea is working on its short-range missile capabilities, for possible further attacks on them and Japan.

North Korea had backed away from its April terror threats, where it laid out sketchy plans to bomb Washington D.C., and Austin, Texas, in a bid to get more aid from both the United States and China.

This new missile test comes after a series of diplomatic talks had helped stabilize relations with the secretive nation.

"We continue to urge the North Korean leadership to heed President Obama's call to choose the path of peace and come into compliance with its international obligations," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told reporters.

Still, launching short-range missiles into the middle of the sea isn't the easiest way to put your neighbors at ease. The launch could have also been part of the introduction of a new defense minister, Jang Jong Nam, who was little-known before he was named to replace the hard-liner (as if there is any other kind of North Korean army official) Kim Kyok Sik. Not much is known about Jang, although the missile test might have been to show that he's serious about a possible attack on South Korea.

Last year, my boyfriend and I went to West Virginia to visit my mother while she was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. It was the second time she’d been diagnosed in three years, and the side effects from these treatments were much worse. My previous understanding of cancer had come pretty exclusively from pastel paperbacks, all dignified vomiting and heads shaved in solidarity, but the reality seems more Dante than Nicolas Sparks. A half-joke about supplemental painkillers was soon brought, tentatively, to the table.

Dave pulled me into the hallway. “She obviously wants it and doesn’t want to say,” he said, head cocked to a bullshit-cutting angle. We agreed she had been “bringing it up”— earlier that day she told me a story about her “wild” high school friend, Kim. After sharing a moment of pitying head shaking—isn’t our culture fucked up?—I sent my ex-boyfriend’s roommate a text message; he insists he’s not a dealer, despite the combination-locked safe containing a rotating stock of varietals under his bed. We arranged to “pick up” the next evening. I skipped into my mother’s room to tell her.

“But I don’t have any of that stuff to smoke it with!” I made a confused face to signify that a hip young person would not know what she was talking about. “You know, those big pipe things,” she explained. “Kim has them.”

Once, before I believed pot could be anything besides “the gateway drug” to more serious, skin-crawling-with-imaginary-maggots-substance abuse, I asked my mom if she’d ever smoked weed. She said only once, in an attic when she was in high school. I’d imagined a circle of bell-bottomed bowl cuts passing around a cartoonish joint reminiscent of the one on the cover of Because I Got High, which was soundtracking my friends’ older brothers’ cars at the time. Hearing this implied preconception, I replaced the imaginary jay with a psychedelic bowl and felt sympathetic to her discomfort; I still don’t know how to use them.

My first time was with the aforementioned ex-boyfriend around my eighteenth birthday. I spent that summer working as a cashier at Kmart, while he had weightier responsibilities at the service desk. He was mock-scandalized to hear I had never smoked. Thus, when my pre-birthday shift came to a close, he beckoned me outdoors and presented me with a small jewelry box wrapped in newspaper.

“Is this a joint?” Head cocked to bullshit-cutting angle. I opened it as soon as I hit a red light; it was accompanied by a note with instructions to make sure it went all the way down if I decided to flush it.

That night we met to listen to music in his red Hyundai Elantra, but I was afraid to smoke, so we didn’t. We didn’t kiss, either, which I thought peculiar, given several moments of sexual tension and poignancy. He later told me that what he considered my flippant attitude towards kissing ("I just like to kiss people") was analogous to his approach to pot smoking: he didn’t want to give it up so easily if I wasn’t willing to lend him the same trust.

Although we met and eventually smoked atop several other secluded hilltop locales before I left for college, I was instructed to save the birthday joint for a special occasion. Something to remember him by. I don’t think I could have predicted that, almost four years later, I would be four outfits deep trying to decide what I should wear to buy weed off his roommate.

I wanted to convey a worldly pot-buying nonchalance, that I had come a long way since the days of begging, through hysterical tears, to be taken to the hospital before my tingling right arm fell off. I settled on an obviously vintage dress and ripped tights, which I felt harkened to times and locations when and where marijuana usage was accepted and celebrated.

I showed up on their doorstep smug—he apparently still hadn’t demanded his landlord get rid of the cat-piss smell—but nervous; I’d always been gifted joints in jewelry boxes wrapped in newspaper or been offered hits gratis. I’d never bought weed myself. What if I got ripped off? Should I have brought something smell-proof to transport it in, or is it customary for the not-dealer to provide receptacles? How illegal is this, exactly?

I walked into the haze and videogame explosions one expects of this kind of interaction, with the added tension of my ex-boyfriend suggesting I should pay nothing, explicitly because of the product’s intended recipient and implicitly, I like to think, because of his residual guilt for the messy failure of our relationship; the not-dealer being visibly uncomfortable with this but not knowing how to delicately handle the cancer issue while objecting to free samples; and me insisting on paying fairly, mostly.

Back in the car, Dave assessed the quantity, took a whiff, and assured me I had scored not just a deal but a sweet deal. This was ostensibly because this weed was for my twice-cancer-stricken mother, though I would later find out not-dealer believed I had been using her as a decoy to get high myself.

Imagining potency wafting from the glove compartment, Dave and I went home and made known our intentions to bake brownies. We believed they’d be easier on a mouth and throat full of chemotherapy sores. My mom was clearly pleased, or at least not displeased, that we had ignored her "Oh, you really shouldn't!"s and gotten “the stuff," but she was vehemently opposed to cooking with it. My younger brother, age 13 but "sensitive," would be "so upset" if he came home from school and smelled his mother cooking something the acid-washed youths in a Just Say No video had told him was bad.

“I’m his mom,” said my mom.

Let it be known that this is the same mom who maintained a “secret” (cigarette) smoking habit for, as far as I know, my entire childhood and adolescence. I appreciate that she tried to protect my innocence, but I was maybe eight years old when I woke up to find a scattering of cigarette butts on the grass beside our front porch. Having recently seen, "Harriet the Spy," I mounted an investigation. Checking all my neighbors’ mailboxes and jotting damning opinions on my loved ones in a small notebook (to later be left, “accidentally,” in a location where those loved ones were likely to discover it) led me nowhere, so I turned to questioning potential witnesses.

“Oh, your mom’s smoked since she was sixteen,” my dad told me in the car, loyalties to his ex-wife’s self-cultivated status as the “good” parent apparently nonexistent. “It was probably her.” Years later, I drove past her going in the opposite direction. She was smoking a cigarette out the window of her ice blue Honda-CRV.

The chance of brownies disappointingly slim, Dave began rolling a spliff on my kitchen counter. After instructing her on the proper techniques for maximum enjoyment—inhale twice, hold it in for a few seconds, make sure it goes all the way down if you decide to flush it—he prepared several more, to last after we would leave. We were confident she would have many, many days of restful calm and alleviated pain and warned her not to smoke very much at once, first because the not-dealer had raised his eyebrows and told me it was medical-grade and from Vancouver, and then because after we smoked some fraction of a spliff ourselves—to make sure it wasn’t poisoned—we couldn’t get out of bed.

***

Three months later, I was back in West Virginia, spending a few weeks at home between graduating from college and moving to Berlin. Since purchasing a one-way ticket to bohemian Europe, I had affected a kind of overcompensatory swagger regarding minor illegal drug use, as if marijuana were the head cheerleader and I a scrawny, second-string kicker she had acknowledged in the hallway.

“Everyone!” I shouted. “Come and see how cool I am!” My mother and I were sharing Subway sandwiches at a TV dinner tray table when I inquired after the spliffs.

“Did you have fun with the drugs?”—the tonal equivalent of a guy pulling the yawn-and-stretch at the movies. The answer, it turns out, was no: My mother had smoked none of what Dave prepared for her. She had kept the remainder of the first spliff in a sealed Ziploc bag in her sock drawer and gifted the rest to Kim.

Disappointed, I decided to make the best of it and Googled “smoking old joint bad.” After reading the grasscity.com community’s thoughts on the subject, I finished off the sock drawer spliff on my front porch when my family went to sleep.

I had never smoked weed alone, but doing it on a floral-cushioned wicker rocking chair while watching the peaceful suburban fireflies in front of my childhood home proved something of a gateway. It was nice! Nicer than when doing it with of circle of potentially judgmental acquaintances, certainly. I had been having anxiety attacks since I came home—I imagine this is true of many young adults, as well as regular adults—so I arranged another trip to see my friendly not-dealer, who was happy to assemble me a sampler of four color-appellated varieties. Despite this being only the second time I had purchased marijuana—and the first time I had purchased it for my own recreation—I felt cool.

I felt significantly less cool, however, a week later, when I had a hunk of it in my hands and little idea what to do with it.

As a female, one can smoke fairly often without ever having to purchase or prepare the stuff one is smoking. Even if you do know, deep down, in a visualizable way, because you have seen your tousle-haired European boyfriend roll many joints and many more cigarettes wide-eyed American strangers have mistaken for joints, how paper and plant and small rolled up piece of cardboard come together to create jay, the dexterity required for this particular skill is not of the watch-and-learn variety. This life lesson will only become embarrassingly clear after you have purchased a not insignificant quantity of marijuana and made known your stash to a group of similarly cautiously experienced friends at a small gathering one sticky summer evening.

I realized quickly that simply having $40 worth of marijuana would not get me high. Not owning “one of those big pipe things”—and unwilling to scour headshopfinder.com to source one—I thought initially that I could use the Google to teach me how to roll a joint, even going so far as to pick up papers along with my weirdly flavored iced coffee at the gas station.

When push came to roll, however, I just couldn’t do it. The online cannabis community offers many resources to the doobie newbie, but that didn’t matter; after I shut my bedroom door, gathered my supplies, laid them out neatly on my carpet, and prepared for minor frustration but ultimate success (I’m reminded of my collage phase), I just sat there.

I don’t know why, really; the only thing I can think of now is fear of failure mixed with the sense that I was being a poseur, but at the time I just remember thinking, “I can’t do this!” I could not imagine breaking that marijuana into small pieces, placing them evenly inside a rolling paper, and licking it closed. I was no longer the independent woman smoking weed in a rocking chair on the front porch.

Apparently seeming a poseur only mattered in the privacy of my bedroom, though, because I began carrying a bud in my purse at all times, should the dual opportunity to get some of it off my hands and seem like a cosmopolitan buyer-of-drugs arise. At said small gathering, I thought it had, but that evening ended with the four of us driving to a Speedway to buy papers, coming back to a shed behind my girlfriend’s parents’ house, rolling a loose, limp joint that fell apart and spilled half its weed on the ground, and eventually trying to smoke out of an apple.

Weeks passed. Despite continuing to make faux-casual mention of having marijuana in my possession—the part of the weed-smoking process most indicative of coolness, I think—I eventually found myself days away from transatlantic travel with almost an entire summer’s stash of weed. That I had wasted my money was not so much a concern to me as the fact that I would be wasting the pot; I didn’t know when I’d be back in the States, so I felt like I needed to get rid of it.

Many of my friends try to distance themselves from stoner culture by trying weed and feeling relieved to dislike it. The line between smoking a hip amount and smoking too much seems blurry, literally and figuratively, a-ha, and some people want to avoid it altogether. “I just don’t feel anything when I do it! Really!” asserts the otherwise hard-partying Hannah, smiling at how special is her snowflake. “I get really paranoid,” affirms two-time Tony, with a weary headshake denoting some mild past trauma. “I had a bad experience,” says your roommate Ryan, referring to the basement party at which he ate an ill-advised number of brownies, cried, and vomited in an inappropriate receptacle.

These stories seem fundamentally different from first-time-I-got-drunk stories, which are generally understood as rites of passage into young adulthood and told with the self-deprecating understanding that one’s former naïveté has been replaced with happy-hour-hardened experience. Alcohol is allowed, expected, legal; marijuana is subversive, for experimentation, the chief characterization of “a phase.” Drink too much and you’re part of the club; smoke too much and you might as well hang up a glow-in-the-dark Grateful Dead poster. That’s a club, too, of course, but not one you want to be in.

Often, there’s a need for weed and no one wants to ask the guy they know, hoping to distance themselves from the kind of people with guys they know, but this was a different symptom of the same illness: I couldn’t stand having it in my possession.

Not much had changed then, actually, in the four years since I’d received patient inhalation instructions in the passenger seat of a red Hyundai Elantra. After making the eleven-hour drive from West Virginia to Connecticut and surviving freshman orientation, my birthday joint remained inside its jewelry box in the top drawer of my standard-issue dorm-room desk. Weeks passed, as they do, but I never offered to share it with any potential new friends or busted it out when life as a tall person on the top bunk became too stressful.

I was scared.

Eventually, I found myself hanging out with three people who would not go on to be lifelong friends, or even merit nod-based acknowledgment in passing on the sidewalk, when one of them mentioned wanting to smoke. (If I remember correctly, they had been talking about humanism and ancient Greece, subjects about which I still know very little but can imagine are made more lucid by marijuana.) I mentioned I had a joint and said they could smoke it. Free weed not being particularly commonplace, ringleader was skeptical. “Really?” he asked. What kind of person goes to the moderate lengths required to obtain marijuana and then gives it away to someone they’ve just met? “Really,” I said, keeping the box for myself. “I really don’t want it.”

A few days before my flight to Berlin, I went to lunch at a place called Taste of Asia with my father and stepmother. Conversation turned to my sex-writing, drug-taking dark side, and at some point during the crab rangoons, my dad asked if I smoked weed. Well, he asked if I smoked “weeeed,” in the jeering, nasal voice parents use to convey that they’re “cool with” whatever bad things we youths are up to.

I said, truthfully, sometimes, then thought it pertinent to ask, casually, "Do you want some?" Look at me, I'm moving to Europe, I’m so progressive, I offer drugs to my elders. My stepmother burst into laughter and flushed cheekedness, and my father chuckled before saying: "Well, be honest!"

She was happy to take some of it off my hands, and I was happy to entertain an image of myself as a kind of visiting weed fairy, bestowing the gift of “Chill out, it’s fun!” upon loved ones who, because of preconceived notions about location or age or logistics, couldn’t give it to themselves. Still, she didn’t want it all, and by my last day in West Virginia, I had resigned myself to the fact that my medical-grade Agent Orange might have to go to waste. I could have given it back to not-dealer, sure, but that would expose my progressive bohemianism as an act. If I wasn’t going to reap any medicinal benefits, I at least wanted to look cool.

My mother was undergoing radiation at that point, so she’d been welcoming casserole-toting visitors all summer. It was fated, then, that on the eve of my departure I would return home from some sad-but-excited good-bye session to see an old white Chevy Conversion van parked in the driveway. Could it be?

I opened the front door to vicious air-conditioning and a raspy, familiar voice. “Well, hi Lauren!”

“Hey, Kim,” I said. “Do you want any weed?”

In Berlin, Dave lives across the street from Görlitzer Park, a former railway station that was bombed out during World War II and which we sometimes call “the weed store.” At all hours of the day and night, conspicuous persons loiter in clusters spaced about eight feet apart and ask passersby—including elderly in sensible windbreakers and parents accompanied by children being transported in/on various wagons, strollers, sleighs, tricycles, miniature horses, etc.—if they want any weed. I’ve seen both accept.

It’s not particularly good weed, but buying illegal drugs in the middle of a busy footpath in broad daylight as rosy-cheeked babes skip past singing German nursery rhymes is infinitely better than having to ask six different friends if they, ahem, “know a guy.” Also nice is the dealer-to-dealer dynamic; when an interested party approaches a seller, he defects to the dealer who has gone longest without a score. I think there are peaceful borders between groups of dealers based on country of origin, and there are definitely problematic racial and immigration issues at play, but here that’s not the point. Rather, take away: 1. Except for periodic “raids” done presumably to help the Polizei maintain an air of legitimacy, it’s very relaxed, and 2. The drug dealers take turns!

After following my mother’s orders to make sure my younger brother was busy “gaming” in his room, I took Kim onto our front porch. It was a beautiful early-August afternoon: suburban lawns a resplendent green, giant oak tree casting long shadows over flowerbeds, the sound of an adolescent basketball game thumping rhythmically down the street. A quick glance towards the neighbors’ houses told me the coast was clear, and I was able to cut her a deal.

Lauren Oyler is a writer based in Germany.

In a project overseen by contributing editor Kiese Laymon, Gawker is running a personal essay every weekend. Please send suggestions to saturdays@gawker.com.

It's not everyday you see a naked man riding a scooter with giant cross.

Warning: This article has content some readers might find objectionable.

Last month, Kotaku brought word of a Beijing man who ran through the streets nude while carrying a sex doll. Online in China, the images soon went viral, and one Chinese blogger compared the incident to a real-life Temple Run.

This month, the same gentleman returned; however, this time he was carrying a huge crucifix. According to Chinese social networking sites, he was once again spotted in Beijing's Wangjing area, which is known as the city's Koreatown and which also houses many tech companies.

The Chinese media even reported this latest incident by the "Wingjing Streaker". Besides the dash, there was also a buck-naked moped ride. Both with a giant crucifix.

Last night on social networking site Sina Weibo, a man Li Binyuan admitted that he was the Wingjing Streaker. "I've done this about ten times," Li admitted. "So far, only six times have been recorded and put online by spectators."

Photos of the Wangjing Streaker started to go viral in China last month.

Li, a graduate of the prestigious China Central Academy of Fine Arts, works as an artist in China. He's still young and is still trying to make a name for himself. But this isn't necessarily an art project per se—though, it certainly does have elements of performance art.

"At first, it all started because I was bored and this seemed fun," said Li. "Later, it just became something to do." Li said that he had hit a wall with his work and was frustrated. He needed a release, and for him, streaking fulfilled that.

"Every time I finish a run, I always check online to see what people online are saying about me," said Li. "The internet creates such a wonderful way to interact, and I really want to see what others think of this thing I'm doing. It makes conversation online."

Li's art can break the public and private spaces in arresting ways. For example, in 2010, Li had himself filmed on the subway in China as he brushed his teeth, washed his face, and then lathered up to shave his face with a razor. He even brought a bottle of water, a cup, and a bowl so he could gargle and wash up after he finished. All this occurred on a crowded subway. Onlookers either ignored Li or took digipics.

While there's probably no law against brushing your teeth or shaving on a train, public nudity is a crime in China. Li doesn't think what he did was wrong, adding that when people are stressed out, they need to cut loose. A Beijing lawyer named Liu Xiaoyuan is quoted as saying this is illegal, but added that since the incidents occurred at night (and perhaps didn't disturb the peace), criminal charges are unlikely.

After admitting he was the Wangjing Streaker, Li wrote online this was the last time he will run naked in public, saying, "I'm done. Bye-bye."

北京の韓国人街に「十字架を担いだ全裸の男」、深夜街を駆け回る姿が目撃される―中国報道 [新华网]

望京再现男子扛十字架裸奔 [组图]

一号线上 [东方视觉]

Eric Jou contributed to this article.

To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond.

By now, you've probably heard about New York's latest sex-scandal-of-a-politician, Assemblyman Vito "Gropez" Lopez.

While Lopez's pervy predilections have been public since at least 2012, the Assemblyman's luck has appeared to have run out, and the New York Post is reporting that Lopez will finally step down on Monday before 10 a.m. The 71-year-old politician had originally hoped to close out the legislative session in June but now wants to retire before an expulsion vote can be arranged.

How did we get here? Well here's what we know.

Lopez has a lot of political clout. He controls a nonprofit agency in Brooklyn that serves as a "de facto political machine" for him and allies, and was chairman of the Housing Committee in the Assembly. But Lopez has also long been known for his inappropriate behavior. These issues first came to light last June, when two women quietly settled a sexual harassment complaint, receiving taxpayer settlements of $103,000. The settlement also drew Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who gave the go-ahead and helped keep it quiet, into the scandal.

In August, 2012, the New York Times published a scathing expose on Lopez's inappropriate behavior. According to the article, Lopez told women not to wear bras to work, requested they wear short skirts and high heels, gave them cash to buy jewelry, complimented them on their figures, urged women to break up with their boyfriends, berated women who did not compliment him "effusively enough," invited women on overnight trips, told women they were "well-endowed," and, of course, made overt sexual advances.

But even after the news became public, and even after the Assembly censured him, Lopez easily won reelection this past fall.

Recently, Lopez was stripped of all party leadership positions after he commented on how he thought a 14-year-old intern was sexy, saying that he wished he lived in a state where he could sleep with underaged girls. That intern was also the daughter of a Brooklyn judge who helped Lopez get elected.

His comments became public after he asked another 24-year-old employee, Chloe Rivera, to "dress sexier," more like the 14-year-old intern. Rivera's mother notified police and filed an ethics complaint with the New York Assembly, and Rivera also filed a sexual harassment complaint with the Assembly Ethics Committee.

Now, at least eight women who worked for Lopez have told stories of sexual harassment to investigators from the New York Joint Commission on Public Ethics, although four of those women did not file a formal complaint.

According to the report issued by the Joint Commission, Lopez routinely groped staffers, sought to stay in hotel rooms with them, and gave one staffer pink eye after forcing her to put drops in his eyes. According to the New York Times, two women were so repulsed, they began secretly taping their interactions.

One woman secretly recording Lopez "began to cry after he pressured her to massage his hand," because she was uncomfortable because she had been raped in college. He told her, "Stop crying... Alright, rub my hand, do my hand."

Another woman complained Lopez tried to make her stay in a hotel room with him in Atlantic City. When she refused, he grabbed her face and tried to kiss her, and later pressured her to massage his hand and forced his right hand between her legs.

Why did it go on for so long? Well, at least one of the women believes that he was "oblivious" to the situation he created with his female staff. She reports that although he touched her, leered at her, and came on to her on an overnight trip, she doesn't "think he realizes or understands that what he was doing was bad."

Furthermore, Lopez's formidable political clout appears to have discouraged female staffers, many of whom had nominal experience in politics, from reporting anything. According to the Times, one Assembly member is quoted in the report saying, "You can’t get a dog license in Brooklyn without Lopez’s blessing."

Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver is also accused of shielding Mr. Lopez from public scrutiny by "failing to investigate and refer the initial harassment allegations to an Assembly ethics committee," making statements that "were not candid" and encouraging staffers to keep the matter a secret. The report itself was only released under pressure and after a failed politically-motivated campaign to have extensive sections edited out of the report.

Lopez's girlfriend, a co-chair of his Brooklyn nonprofit, appears to be standing by his side.

[via, photo via AP]