Bee Season!

Guess what happens at 8PM Eastern on ABC this Thursday! No, I'm not going to tell you--I want you to guess. Anyone? Okay, fine: the Scripps National Spelling Bee! Yay! Some intriguing background on these dorky little munchkins:

- This year we welcome 293 spellers— the greatest number in the history of the event.
- The spellers range in age from 9 to 15 years old, but two-thirds are either 13 or 14 years old.
- The spellers' favorite words include Weissnichtwo and humuhumunukunukuapuaa.

The best is the looks on the kids faces when they got words they don't know, like "parfleche" (a rawhide with the hair removed by soaking it in water and lye). They are like "wtf, how am I supposed to know what a parfleche is?" So cute.

For a little background, I suggest watching this video of my personal favorite speller, Rebecca Sealfon.

Khloe Kardashian has lost of a lot of weight

It seems that Khloe has taken stepfather Bruce's advice to "lose a little weight". Below, find a photo of her (via the Superficial) looking like she has dropped a good 10-15 lbs.


Why is this news, you ask? Um, it's not, clearly. Who said that it was? It's the Tuesday after a holiday weekend, give me a break.

Grant Study results interesting, good way to kill time at work

This new essay, recently published in the Atlantic, is absolutely fantastic. David Brooks' column in the Times tipped me off to it, and fortunately I don't do shit at work anymore so I had the time to read it.

"What Makes Us Happy?" reports on some of the results of the Grant Study, a 70+ year-old longitudinal survey of nearly 300 former Harvard students and their lives and circumstances. Many of its results are paradoxical. For example: did you know that positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones? Or that most of us can't "tolerate being loved"? Huh. Fancy that!

Anyway, I highly recommend it for anyone who has twenty minutes to kill. Its description of the Grant Study is super-interesting (JFK was one of the participants!), as is its profile of the study's current administrator, George Valliant. Go! Read it!!

Escaped cow gets new home!

Molly (pictured above), whom you may remember as the escaped cow from the Queens slaughterhouse, was transported to her new home in Suffolk County today amid much fanfare and hay-tossing. City Room blog has the inside scoop on her new life from her adoptive parents:

“She can eat some good organic hay and hang around with a lot of her friends,” Mr. Farr said. “She can eat and sleep for the rest of her life. She is not going anywhere. The bottom line is she will have a very good home.”

Normally I'm a little skeptical when I hear of a beloved animal being sent to a "farm upstate" where it can "run and play", but the article included a picture and lots of official-sounding quotes from city representatives, so it sounded pretty legit. Good for you, Molly! Awwwww.

The most celebrities, EVER

Holy muffins, it's the Met Gala! This annual event is the most celebrity-filled get-together in probably the entire universe and has a purpose about which I have absolutely no clue. Check out the Cut's slideshow of just a few of the famous people who attended.

Look at all of 'em! What master of the universe could have brought all of these minor and not-so-minor celebrities together under the same roof? God? Allah? Diddy? All I know is that I must attend next year; I just must. Get on it, people!

Developing: Sean Hannity's adventures in Waterworld

The problem with never watching Fox News is that you occassionally miss out on some really quality ridiculousness, like this clip, in which Sean Hannity offers to be waterboarded "for charity". Hmmm.



Wow, Charles Grodin is a total ballbreaker! Good for him! I guess I should've known, what with how he beat down that evil veterinarian in Beethoven and all. But Grodin's ballsiness aside, the real story here is Sean Hannity's faux-offer to be waterboarded. I'm going to go ahead and assume he wouldn't really do it, since Keith Olbermann immediately offered him $1,000 a second to go through with it and that was six days ago, but I'm glad this was caught on tape. Hopefully this story will get enough coverage that Hannity is forced to either apologize or at least participate in some sort of dunk tank. I've heard they melt if they get wet.

When MSNBC makes dick jokes, it sounds intellectual

But when I do it, it's immature? Unfair. Anyway, this video of MSNBC's David Shuster is freaking hilarious. Pay close attention; these are some of the best teabagging-related double entendres ever made on cable news:



Ahahaha. That last line is classic. I'm very impressed with MSNBC and Countdown; I thought the burden of making these obvious jokes would inevitably fall on Comedy Central and The Daily Show. Kudos to MSNBC execs for having a sense of humor!