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Seems Like Drake Got An Emoji Tattoo

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If Shamrock Social Club tattoo artist Doctor Woo's Instagram post is for real, Drake just got an emoji tattooed on his arm. "Good times, thanks for the visit," Doctor Woo wrote, tagging Drake.

Right there on the rapper's apparent forearm is a delicate prayer hands (or is it a high five?) next to "6" and "Everything happens for a reason sweet thing."

May Drake be #blessed for life.



Drake left -- and then deleted -- a message on the post, but KanyeToThe.com screencapped the comments. Champagne Papi wrote, "It will be a debate until the end of time... high five or praying hands... life is what you make of it haaa." Then he wrote, "I pity the fool who high fives in 2014."

::prayer hands::

All The Crazy Things That Happened On The 'Scandal' Season 4 Premiere

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"Scandal" is back for Season 4 and we finally know where Olivia Pope went on that plane. Here are all the crazy, insane, bonkers, "Scandal"-rific moments from the season premiere. For the record, we're on team Uggs-wearing Mellie.

1. Liv was on a beach 100 miles off the coast of Zanzibar reading "Gone Girl" with Jake.
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2. Liv, now Julia Baker, got five of the best bottles of red wine delivered to the most remote island in the world ... like a BAWSS.

3. Harrison was found dead, which forced Jake and Liv to go back to reality. She put on her trenchcoat, headed to the office and started to clean up D.C.

4. Quinn! It was Quinn who found her via wine shipments. She's also the only one left at Pope & Associates.

5. Huck became Randy, the IT guy who refuses to hope unless Olivia is back for good.

6. Liberal Abby turned into the new White House press secretary.

7. Mellie lost it. She now walks around the White House in pajamas and Uggs, eating cereal, and going bowling.
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8. Portia De Rossi is the RNC chairwoman.
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9. Abby and Quinn hate each other.

10. Jake confronted David Rosen to find out if he took down B613. He did not.

11. Liv had dinner with her dad, who said he had nothing to do with Harrison's murder. He did, however, "take care" of Mama Pope.

12. "Scandal" came in with an incredibly timely sexual assault case: Kate, Senator Vaughn's aide, called Olivia to cover up her boss, who almost killed Senator Sterling after he allegedly attacked her.

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13. Cyrus made David the U.S. Attorney General.

14. Mellie visited her dead son's grave. Yes, she wore Uggs and a bathrobe.

15. Jake basically said he's, uh, bigger than Fitz.

16. Olivia schooled audiences everywhere on rape culture and harassment in the workplace.
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17. Quinn was back on Olivia's side, totally a gladiator in a suit.

18. Olivia figured out that Sterling assaulted Kate, not Vaughn, and Vaughn dangled her aide in front of Sterling because she knew Kate was his type. She wanted to secure an equal pay vote.

19. Harrison's past was finally revealed. He grew up in a group home, and had no family besides Pope & Associates. They were the only people who showed up to his funeral.
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20. "Add it to the list. Dead kid. Missing mistress. Mellie's rape. Fitz's suicide."

21. Mellie stopped waxing and came in with one of the best lines of the show: "It's 1976 down there."
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22. Olivia and Fitz maybe/ barely/ almost touched FINGERS. Shut it down, it's over.
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Everything You Need To Know About The 'How To Get Away With Murder' Premiere

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Welcome to "How To Get Away With Murder," where a law procedural turns into a college murder mystery, which turns into a sexy story of lust and betrayal. All will end disastrously, we hope.

The last show in ABC's highly marketed "TGIT" night was written and created by Pete Nowalk, and executive produced by Shonda Rhimes. Starring Viola Davis, Alfred Enoch, Jack Falahee, Aja Naomi King, Matt McGorry, Karla Souza and Liza Weil, the premiere was a slam dunk for the network.

Davis stars as Annalise Keating, an intimidating rock star of a law professor who recruits students to work at her law firm for the year. Armed with supporting characters who bend at her will (ahem, Olivia Pope) and dark secrets that lay the show's groundwork (hi again, Olivia) she'll break, test and inspire the law students (Enoch, Falahee, King, McGorry and Souza) to bend the rules, win the case and, yep, get away with murder. Here's what we learned in the show's series premiere (spoilers ahead!):

Don't expect answers.
Come on, the show is called "How To Get Away With Murder." As if they'd actually tap that out in the pilot. The premiere puts one murder mystery to bed, only to introduce another one that rolls out dozens of questions. Nowalk seems to be playing the long game, revealing bits of an 1000-piece puzzle slowly and with purpose.

Viola Davis is brilliant. We need more Viola Davis.
"I wanted to be the show." That was the reason Davis gave for wanting to star in "How To Get Away With Murder." She's the face, the promo material, the name brand and the star, but it's easy to fear that she won't be in the show as much as we want her to be. There are so many other moving parts and B-plot questions. Sure, she has a lot to do -- she tries to seduce Wes and manipulates her boyfriend into lying on the witness stand, all before winning a huge trial -- but while everything orbits around Annalise Keating, we still want more.

There are plenty of Shonda-like monologues.
Have no fear, Shondaland devotees. Peter Nowalk learned well from his time as a staff writer on "Private Practice," "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scandal." There are plenty "Gladiators in suits"-type speeches us to remind us of Shonda's greatest hits. Near the end of the premiere, Wes gets an earful from Annalise: "Everything after this moment will not only determine your career, but your life. You can spend it in a corporate office drafting contracts and hitting on chubby paralegals before finally putting a gun in your mouth or you could join my firm and become someone you actually like." Mic. Drop.

"OITNB's" Matt McGorry is more than just a C.O.
Litchfield's favorite correctional officer is now a law student, and, wouldn't you know, he's got pretty great comedic timing. McGorry's character, Asher Millstone, is an entitled, over-prepared, over-educated, blazer-wearing country club bro who Keating totally believes in, for some reason. (For the record, McGorry has said that "How To Get Away With Murder" won't prohibit him from continuing his role in "Orange Is The New Black," so we're all good.)

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SEXY SEX SEX.
Think "Grey's" Season 2 exam room scene but with none of the romance and all of the secrecy. Here, Wes catches Annalise mid-cunnilingus (we assume?) with her boyfriend, Detective Nate Leahy (Billy Brown). Connor Walsh (Falahee) seduces a random IT guy for info on Annalise's case. Bonnie Winterbottom (Liza Weil) elbow nudges Frank Delfino's (Charlie Weber) tendency to sleep with students, and a storm is definitely brewing between Wes and his goth neighbor Rebecca (Katie Findlay). SEXY SEX SEX.

One character is dead before the episode ends.
Duh, maybe, because "Murder" is in the title. In the final moments of the premiere, we see the dead body the students have been lugging around all episode through three-month flash forwards is Sam (Tom Verica), Annalise's husband. At this point, the mystery is laid out. Who killed him? Why are they burning him in the woods? Who is going to get away with murder? How do you get away with murder? Good luck finding out.

"How To Get Away With Murder" airs Thursdays, 10 p.m. ET on ABC.

7 Famous Pop Culture Things You Didn't Know Had Bizarre Origins

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How to be creative? Pay attention to the weird moments.

Brilliant ideas can come from basically anywhere. Whether it's Kurt Cobain not realizing "Teen Spirit" was a female deodorant that his girlfriend used or George Lucas looking at his dog, Indiana, sitting next to him in the car and thinking "Chewbacca," many of the things that are now pop culture institutions have come from seemingly innocuous places. Sometimes, as in the list below, they also come from super bizarre places.

Perhaps you've read countless pieces on how to unleash your creativity, but maybe the best way to do so is to just pay attention to the weird things around you. You never know when a volleyball or an infestation of baby spiders in your apartment is going to lead to the best idea you've ever had ...



1. James Cameron had the idea for "The Terminator" while homeless, in a nightmarish fever dream.

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According to his biographer, Rebecca Keegan, the Terminator came into Cameron's nightmare as a "chrome torso emerging, phoenix-like, from an explosion and dragging itself across the floor with kitchen knives." This was scary enough to wake the director up and he began writing ideas down on the hotel stationary. Apparently, this scary figure with the kitchen knives also already had the now iconic glowing red eyes.

Cameron recalled the incident to Starlog Magazine, "I was sick and dead broke in Rome, Italy, with a fever of 102, doing the final cut of Piranha II. That's when I thought of Terminator. I guess it was a fever dream!" While writing the script, Cameron had to live out of his car and ended up selling the script for one dollar in order to retain the ability to direct the movie himself.



2. Stephen King worked as a high school janitor and was inspired by tampon dispensers in the girl's bathroom to write, "Carrie."

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While working as a janitor in a high school, Stephen King had to clean the girl's bathroom. As he'd never been in a girl's bathroom before, he was surprised that there were tampon dispensers on the walls. This, coupled with recently reading an article in LIFE magazine about how if people were able to have telekinetic power, teenage girls would have the strongest abilities, led to the creation of the beginning of "Carrie." Then he threw this away.

From King's "On Writing" he further explained the origins:

I couldn't see wasting two weeks, maybe even a month, creating a novella I didn't like and wouldn't be able to sell. So I threw it away.

The next night, when I came home from school, Tabby [his wife] had the pages. She'd spied them while emptying my wastebasket, had shaken the cigarette ashes of the crumpled balls of paper, smoothed them out, and sat down to read them. She wanted me to go on with it, she said. She wanted to know the rest of the story. I told her I didn't know jack-sh*t about high school girls. She said she'd help me with that part.

I never got to like Carrie White and I never trusted Sue Snell's motives in sending her boyfriend to the prom with her, but I did have something there. Like a whole career. Tabby somehow knew it, and by the time I had piled up 50 single-spaced pages, I knew it, too.


The writer would end up selling the paperback rights for $400,000.

Image: WikiCommons



3. "Predator" was originally written to be an insane fifth installment of the Rocky Balboa franchise as a sort of joke.

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After "Rocky IV" was released in 1985, it apparently became a popular joke that if a fifth movie were to be made, Rocky would have to fight an alien because all earthly opponents had been defeated. Screenwriters Jim and John Thomas essentially set out to make that joke into a real movie.

The duo churned out a screenplay called "Hunter," which originally featured an alien coming to the Central American jungle to challenge and destroy a worthy opponent. This opponent ended up being Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Image Left: WikiCommons. Image Right: WikiCommons.



4. E.B. White found spider eggs, carried them around New York City with him and then let all the spider babies hatch in his city apartment. This inspired "Charlotte's Web."

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The author of the children's classic had both a farm in rural Maine and an apartment in New York city. At the farm, a pig of his became sick, causing White to spend many hours caring for the dying animal, which led to an attachment. The pig ended up dying; he wrote about in an essay called "Death of a Pig," and the replacement pig had a spider that would hang around it. When the spider laid eggs and died, White became fascinated with saving the babies.

While talking about his book "The Story of Charlotte's Web," author Michael Sims told the story to NPR:

And he cuts the spider - the egg sac down, takes it with him, puts it on his bureau in his apartment in New York and forgets about it, until one day he's combing his hair, and he sees this movement on the desk. And the next thing you know, spiders are coming out of these little holes in a box that he had put the web case in, and - the egg case. And they're beginning to climb out and spill across the bureau. And because he's E.B. White, unlike me, he thinks this is very cool.


White ended up researching the lives of spiders intensely and decided to join the ideas of a pig worth saving and a pig with a spider friend together for "Charlotte's Web."



5. Douglas Adams came up with "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" while drunkenly in a field with a travel book.

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"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" - Arthur in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

Douglas Adams recalled the moment of inspiration where he was a hitchhiker in Austria having a night of failure to catch a ride:

The idea for the title first cropped up while I was lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1971. Not particularly drunk, just the sort of drunk you get when you have a couple of stiff Gassers after not having eaten for two days straight, on account of being a penniless hitchhiker. We are talking of a mild inability to stand up.

I was traveling with a copy of the "Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe" by Ken Walsh, a very battered copy that I had borrowed from someone. In fact, since this was 1971 and I still have the book, it must count as stolen by now...

As it is I went to lie in a field, along with my "Hitch Hikers Guide to Europe," and when the stars came out it occurred to me that if only someone would write a "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" as well, then I for one would be off like a shot. Having had this thought I promptly fell asleep and forgot about it for six years.


The author eventually found a ride and then went off to study English Literature at Cambridge.

Image Left: WikiCommons. Image Right: Amazon.



6. The screenwriter of "Cast Away" stranded himself on an island to do research and had a volleyball wash up on shore.

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William Broyles Jr. spent a week stranded on a beach off the Sea of Cortes, spearing stingray and trying to start fires. While he was there, he came across a Wilson-made vollyeball that he started calling "Wilson," just like the movie.

Describing the Tom Hanks character, Chuck Noland, in the film, Broyles said, "Here's a man whose emotional connections have not been as deep or as simple and honest as they could have been and he is learning to communicate and to form this deep attachment not to another human being but to a volleyball. In a way, to his own projection."



7. Matt Groening wrote "The Simpsons" as a placeholder in minutes to avoid losing the rights to a different idea.

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Talking with NPR, Matt Groening explained how he quickly scribbled "The Simpsons" on to a yellow notepad and "made up these other characters [he] didn't really care about."

The now legendary cartoonist had been given the opportunity to pitch a series of animated shorts to producer James L. Brooks and he originally intended to turn in his "Life in Hell" comic strip. While waiting in the lobby for the meeting, Groening realized he'd lose the rights to his original idea and freaking out about this prospect, he decided to create something new. Pressed for time, he named the characters after his own family -- his father Homer, his mother Margaret, his sister Lisa and the slight variation of his own name into Bart.

It's estimated this rushed idea has ended up making over $12 billion and counting.

Image: Getty



Now go have a fever dream and become a writer's block terminator.

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Banned Books Week: How One Person With A Pen Taught Me All About Censorship

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When I was a college student, I majored in English literature, which meant that I got to read a lot of novels for class -- and my course reading could be purchased for a song. Unlike my STEM classmates, most of my class syllabuses were filled with paperback novels and epic poems I could buy used for five bucks apiece at the campus bookstore.

When I bought a copy of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides for a Contemporary Fiction class one semester, I applied my usual procedure: I grabbed a relatively clean-looking copy from the stack, flipped through the pages to check for excessive scribbling, and dropped it in my basket along with the 20-odd other books I was purchasing. A successful prelude to future learning, or so I thought.

When it came time to dig into the novel several weeks later, however, something went awry. As I read through the first few pages, my vision was suddenly assaulted by several dark, black scribbles covering lines of text. I was as viscerally shocked as if the book had, unaided, leapt out of my hands and whacked me over the head. I read on -- and it happened again. More words covered by heavily, thoroughly crosshatched ballpoint pen. Having purchased many used student copies of novels before, no intrusive notes in the margin, underlining or aggressive highlighting would have been new to me -- but this, this was new. I strained to see what words lay beneath the pen marks, but in vain; the scribbles were so firm and uniform that the pen had also imprinted bumpy, wide furrows into the page.

There was no getting around it: Someone, perhaps even one of my classmates at college, hadn’t wanted the future owners of this volume to read those few snippets of text.

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Unfortunately for that person, the year was not 1807 -- it was 2009, and I had a way to find out those obliterated words right at my fingertips: Google. So it was only a few minutes before I found myself facing the revelation that the words my book’s defacer had objected to were: "'Fuck the Holy Mother' [...] 'Fuck God'" and "telling God to fuck Himself all over again." I couldn’t resist a bit of a chuckle -- though I understood not everyone was comfortable with such language, even coming from the mouth of a fictional character, this was apparently the only thing the amateur censor had objected to in a book about the sexual objectification and gruesome suicides of five young girls.

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In fact, only a few paragraphs before the first pen marks, Eugenides gently tweaks such unthinking primness, characterized in the staidly faithful Mr. Buell, who blames a girl's suicide attempt on the lack of a picture of Jesus in her home: “Otherwise he persevered, and always gently corrected us when we took the Lord’s name in vain.” Mr. Buell’s faith, Eugenides reveals, hasn’t cured his shoulder injury, and his fixation on faith leads to unthinking cruelty in the form of blaming a family for their suffering. His focus on the town boys not taking the Lord’s name in vain seems to be a superficial effort toward their betterment at best. But only a page later, a reader had mimicked his blanket silencing of curse words, as if the complexities of Eugenides's narrative hadn’t registered at all. The threads of religious propriety and faith continue to weave through the text, making those words part of a greater tapestry that the previous reader had chosen to partly obscure.

Thanks to the efforts of organizations like the American Library Association, I’d grown up with fairly free access to reading materials -- including, yes, sometimes books that were somewhat too old for me or that weren’t worth reading (which, fortunately, never caused any damage, lasting or otherwise). This incident, as minor and absurd as it was, reminded me of how fortunate I had been to learn in such a free environment, but also that censorship, even for a rule-following, straight-laced type like myself, only stokes the desire to read the controversial material.

The ballpoint expurgation of my Virgin Suicides served less to shield me from its obscenities than to highlight them, perversely. I may have skipped lightly over those words had they not been scribbled out, barely noticing them; instead, I dedicated 10 minutes just to finding and reading them, as well as thinking about what could have compelled someone to blot them out, and as a result I can remember them easily years later. The scribbler took those despised words and made them the most visible elements of the book by deeming them unfit to be read.

Though I don't believe those words should have been the most memorable in such a searing, stunningly crafted novel, which contained so much meant to provoke thought, I do think it's right that we pay closer attention to those words and ideas people try to hide from view. Though some words may seem dangerous and worthy of hiding, confronting them is the only way of effectively combating them. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that." Sometimes, the light merely shows us that our fear was always misplaced.

This Banned Books Week, here at HuffPost Books, we’re grateful for all the books that have startled us, unnerved us, and even angered us -- and we’re glad that the ALA and others are working to ensure that readers in America will continue to be able to engage with groundbreaking, if sometimes upsetting and even offensive, texts that will keep people engaged with the difficult work of learning and growing.

QUIZ: How Long Would It Take You To Read The Entire 'Game Of Thrones' Series?

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In case you were thinking of diving into Game of Thrones sometime soon, you may want to consider this: It would take the average person -- regardless of his or her allegiance to Westeros -- well over a year to read the entire series. Of course, variables include how much time said reader was able to devote to reading each day. To find out how you stack up against other George R.R. Martin fanatics, Blinkbox Books has assembled a reading speed quiz.

The results include a slew of other classics and popular books, including War and Peace and the Twilight saga. (For the record, Ethan Frome is as big of a commitment time-wise as Diary of a Wimpy Kid.) The concept of selecting a title based on duration may run counter to our commitment to the slow reading movement, but the results are fun and intriguing. Check it out!

'How to Get Away With Murder' Episode 1 Recap: The Body Count Starts At Two

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“How to Get Away With Murder” opens with a murder. No one is surprised.

After a dark and mysterious flash forward that features four 20-somethings whining about having killed someone, we get to the central force of the show: Professor Annalise Keating. Played by the magnificent Viola Davis, Annalise is fierce, authoritative, and yet shockingly vulnerable as a brilliant Criminal Law professor who is also one incredible defense lawyer. The show lives for her scenes, the physicality of her acting and the brilliance of her intonation.

A minute into Annalise’s first classroom appearance, it’s clear she’s ready to chew up and spit out Philadelphia University law student Wes Gibbins (Alfred Enoch from "Harry Potter"). Fresh off the wait list and doe-eyed, Wes shows up to the first day of class without doing his homework. The kid obviously never saw “Legally Blonde.”

Wes and his fellow students are tasked with helping Annalise with her latest case, defending a CEO's mistress from charges of attempted murder. The four students with the best defense ideas will get coveted spots at Annalise’s practice. And the top student gets what turns out to be the future murder weapon -- a miniature statue of Lady Justice.

Flash forward three months and four students (Wes, Connor Walsh, Michaela Pratt, and Laurel Castillo), are attempting to move a body across campus in a massive rug. They sweet talk a campus cop into thinking moving such a large rug in the middle of the night is normal, which accurately depicts the investigative abilities of most campus police.

Back in the classroom months earlier, Annalise lays out her fundamentals to winning her cases, which she puts into practice for the trial of the week. Through various deceptive means, Michaela helps discredit the witness, Connor illegally gets an email that introduces a new suspect, and Annalise herself buries the evidence by putting her love interest, Detective Nate Lahey, on the stand. Connor ends up winning the top student slot and Lady Justice, which is ironic considering it’s pretty clear the accused he helped set free is guilty as sin.

And as for that love interest, who Wes caught -- ahem -- servicing Annalise: he’s not her psychology professor husband, Sam. Because it wouldn’t be Shondaland if the main characters weren’t being unfaithful.

Due to their assistance in the courtroom or prowess in the classroom (or in Wes’s case, what he saw), Wes, Connor, Michaela, Laurel and C.O. John Bennett Asher Millstone land the (now) five spots at Annalise’s practice. They’ll be working with associates Paris Gellar/Amanda Tanner Bonnie Winterbottom and Frank Delfino. Annalise’s associates have plenty secrets of their own: Bonnie has the hots for Sam Keating, and Frank appears to be making moves on every coed who walks by (and eventually, Laurel).

While the premiere opened with a murder, the body count gets upped to two when a missing sorority girl, Lila Stangard, is found floating in her chapter’s water tank. Wes’s emo bartender neighbor, Rebecca, who we see fighting with the dead girl’s boyfriend, seems to have a few secrets to hide. But based on the final sequence, Annalise’s husband was most likely sleeping with the deceased. No one can keep their pants on in this show.

And as for that dead body the kids lugged into the wood and lit on fire? The ending shot of the episode reveals it’s Sam, Annalise’s husband. And all of this happened in the first episode.

Best line of the night goes to Annalise, as she’s pushing Wes to take the job at her practice: “You can spend [your life] in a corporate office drafting contracts and hitting on chubby paralegals before finally putting a gun in your mouth, or you can join my firm and become somebody you actually like.”

Three months into working at her firm, Wes and his partners in crime appear to have committed murder. That didn’t turn out quite as expected.

Odds and Ends:
  • According to the National Association for Law Placement, “Prospective employers and first year law students should not initiate contact with one another and employers should not interview or make offers to first year students before December 1.” Awkward. (h/t @carolynshanahan)

  • Does no law student wear their hair in a ponytail? Everyone has perfect hair for class?

  • So many Harry Potter Dean Thomas feels.

  • Did all four of them bludgeon Sam Keating to death? What, they took turns hitting him on the head with the statue?

  • No law professor has that good of a wardrobe.

  • And Asher is angling to be the Chuck Bass of 2014 -- who else rocks an ascot?


"How to Get Away With Murder" airs on Thursdays at 10 p.m. EDT on ABC.

'Maps To The Stars' Has A Lot Of Ideas, But Does It Actually Say Anything? Let's Discuss

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We've entered the three-week haze of New York Film Festival screenings. One of the first we caught this week was "Maps to the Stars," David Cronenberg's drama about a circle of interconnected Hollywood denizens who are maniacal about fame. An outlandish couple's (John Cusack and Olivia Williams) young daughter (Mia Wasikowska), an unstable burn victim, lands a gig as the personal assistant to an aging actress (Julianne Moore) while her urchin of a brother (Evan Bird) relishes his child-star spotlight. In between, a lot of odd, creepy things happen.

While "Map to the Stars" seemingly lacked a cohesive message, two editors for HuffPost Entertainment, Matthew Jacobs and Erin Whitney, had plenty of thoughts about the film. There are plenty of spoilers ahead.


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Jacobs: Wow. Leaving the Walter Reade Theatre after our "Maps to the Stars" press screening on Wednesday, I could have sworn I'd swallowed the cocktail of prescription meds that Mia Wasikowska's schizophrenic burn victim gobbles up. The movie tries to be a symposium of ideas about fame and reconciling one's stormy past, but instead its pretentious nonsense left my head swimming. Brimming with Cronenberg's signature closeups, the actors and agents and wannabe screenwriters and momagers and Carrie Fishers in "Maps to the Stars" think they're saying a lot even though the opaque plot unfurls with the same maddening vacancy that made me dislike "Vanilla Sky" years ago.

That said, the movie boasts some great performances (namely Julianne Moore) and does offer, for better or worse, Things To Think About. Mostly I just enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek references to gunning for Oscars, converting to Scientology as a "career move" and finding a personal assistant as reliable as Nicole Kidman's or Halle Berry's. What do you think, Erin?

Whitney: My thoughts are still scrambled and probably will be for a few days. Once the credits began rolling I had the same overwhelming what-the-hell feeling that I did when I saw Jonathan Glazer's "Under the Skin" earlier this year -- an equally bizarre and uncomfortable film that sends your mind reeling. Yet I still don't find myself disliking Cronenberg's latest mesh of Hollywood cynicism and (spoiler alert!) incestuous entanglements. There's just something about a movie that leaves me in a frazzled, somewhat disturbed mindset that I kind of love, and now the more I think about "Maps to the Stars," the more I'm fascinated by it.

Now, by no means is this a particularly pleasurable film to watch or one that I think can even fit onto the spectrum of good or bad. It's like a giant nasty puzzle of a perturbed therapy patient's worst thoughts all blended up in a Vitamix on the granite countertops of a Hollywood Hills home. It gives you the frightful, unsettling story you'd imagine in some eerie small town filled with nobodies, and places it in the glamorous lives of actors. Cronenberg's symbolism of, and commentary on, the nature of the film industry: it's incestuousness and nepotism; it's pompous, desperate cries for fame and recognition -- these are the most compelling aspects of the film for me. Though I admit, it does have its handful of structural problems and incoherence. There were a lot of ridiculous moments though and I'm curious, Matt, which ones pushed you over the edge?

Jacobs: My main qualm is that Cronenberg and screenwriter Bruce Wagner reach for bizarro ways to interconnect these characters. It's hard to describe exactly what I mean without giving away too much, but it involves two instances of incest, multiple incidents of arson and/or battery, ghosts relaying rudderless wisdom from beyond the grave and one Paul Éluard poem, of which the significance I can't even pretend to grasp. But I'm also put off by the environment they're drawing from, which you allude to as well, Erin. I love a good biting portrait of Hollywood. Robert Altman's satire "The Player," to draw from a more classic example, captured the world of film development marvelously in 1992, and another NYFF flick I saw this week, the Juliette Binoche-Kristen Stewart vehicle "Clouds of Sils Maria," handles the pangs of fame's identity issues much more poignantly than this. But there's a serious lack of humor in "Maps to the Stars," so all the coldness of the Hollywood Hills is folded into a tale of messy ideas that aren't especially entertaining or penetrating.

Back to Julianne Moore, though: She really is wonderful here. Moore is best when depicting extremes: buttoned-up housewives (as in "Far From Heaven" and "The Hours") and manic obsessives (as in "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia"). She's in the latter camp here, with every plastic smile that spreads across her fame-hungry character's face revealing a sense of desperation. As much I found the rest of the film dismissible, it might be worth seeing just to watch her. Moore's character is certainly better than the Bieber-esque little brat who somehow gathered his sense of entitlement from starring in a movie called "Bad Babysitter." Again, what world are we living in? I'm just not sure this film, for all its intriguing ideas, has much to say.

Whitney: I have no idea what kind of world we're in for the 111 minutes of the film, but I can't help wanting to figure it out. It has that surreal, foggy atmosphere reminiscent of "Mullholland Drive," where lines between dream and reality are so blurred that every moment feels like a disguised nightmare. Cronenberg and Wagner manage to crawl under your skin with their repulsive characters and the former's signature instances of body mutilation -- said arson/battery, incest (so trendy lately) and also a rather grotesque use of the now-extinct Genie Award (another moment of industry humor). Those are some of the most outrageous parts in the film, which also features a threesome-turned-"Shining"-ghost-make-out moment.

Damn, Matt, I feel like we've spoiled this movie for everyone! But then again, if you're into creepy, chills-inducing cinema, then "Maps to the Stars" is worth a visit. It at least gets you thinking in ways that few movies have managed to in this year's absence of thought-provoking films. And sometimes, for me, struggling to understand a film's odd obscurities is more entertaining than much of the hackneyed storyline and reboots that fill theaters of late.

"Maps to the Stars" screens at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 27 and 28. It opens early 2015.

Someone's Making A Vincent Van Gogh Musical, So We Wrote The Playbill For Them

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To the delight of many diehard Impressionist fans, and the chagrin of those opposed entirely to the genre of musical theater, someone in Amsterdam is making a musical about Vincent van Gogh.

Yes! screams the type of people who named their cat Grizabella. Noooooooooo! bemoans literally everyone else.

The theatrical travesty quirky production is meant to honor the 125th anniversary of van Gogh's death (next year). Because what better way to commemorate the possible suicide of one of art history's most well known figures than a rousing song-and-dance adaption of "Van Gogh in the Borinage"?

"It's perhaps a little odd to celebrate his death," Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum director Axel Rueger told the Dutch news agency ANP.

...Yes.

The show, poignantly dubbed "Vincent," is planned for the fall of 2015. We know little about it other than Albert Verlinde and the Van Gogh Europe Foundation are masterminding the bonanza. The musical -- set to tour to France and Belgium -- will serve as a finale to "the Van Gogh Year," which will include exhibitions at the Kröller-Müller Museum, Het Noordbrabants Museum and Van Gogh Museum.

No word yet on who will play the lead, though we'd love to be a fly on the wall of that casting call. While we wait on pins and needles for composers to transform "The Potato Eaters" into a high-flying good time, we decided to give the people what they want. A playbill*:

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Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette, 1885–1886, oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum


Act One: From Groot-Zundert To Zevenbergen, And Other Unpronounceable Dutch Names

1. "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Or, a Redhead at Boarding School)" .. Vincent
2. "My Youth Was Gloomy and Cold and Sterile" ................................ Townspeople Chorus
3. "Coal Mining Interlude" "Borinage, More Like Bori-Nope" ............ Vincent, Theo
4. "I Had a Breakdown and Became an Artist #GoodIdea" ................. Vincent, Henry Luyten
5. "All the Potato Eaters, All the Potato Eaters" ................................... Cassandra, Mistoffolees, Bombalurina
6. "At Eternity's Gate: I Woke Up Like This" ........................................ Vincent
7. "Give Me All Of The Straw Hats" ....................................................... Vincent, Straw Hats
8. "Frightening Clarity: I'm Obsessed with Sunflowers" ...................... Vincent

Intermission

Act Two: Great Things Are Done By A Series Of Small Things Brought Together This Is Neither Of Those Things.

1. "Twas a Super Starry Night" .............................................................. Townspeople Chorus
2. "Crazy in Arles" "Adorable Brothels" ................................................. Vincent, Theo
3. "Goodbye, Ear-l" ............................................................................... The Dixie Chicks
4. "Defying Gravity" .............................................................................. Paul Gauguin
5. "Skimbleshanks: The Life and Times of Someone Who Would Later Be Referred To As A 'Rock Star'" .................................................................................... The Ghost of Vincent van Gogh



*Note: This is not the real playbill. This is the product of arts editors biding time on a rainy weekday. Carry on.

Twitter Had A Lot Of Feelings About Cyrus' 'Scandal' Hair

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The fourth season of "Scandal" premiered on Thursday night, and while many fans were obsessing over where Olivia had spent the summer (100 miles off the coast of Zanzibar, obviously), others were a little distracted by one main cast addition: Cyrus Beene's hair. It was fluffy and big, different than Jeff Perry's previous head of hair. Whatever happened to Cyrus took over Twitter.

For the record, here's a side-by-side of Cyrus from Season 3 (left) and Season 4 (right).
scandal cyrus season three

Did Cyrus get plugs?






Is he channeling Thatcher Grey?



scandal hair

Or Nene Leakes?






Fans saw a resemblance between Cyrus and Portia De Rossi's new character...



scandal

It was ... distracting.









Most people were just confused.









Whatever, haters. Cyrus will see you out.
mellie uggs

Watching This School's Song Performance Will Basically Give You An Out-Of-Body Experience

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This is the definition of music that moves you.

At Maluafou College in Apia, Samoa, a room full of students in uniforms sitting in perfect rows busts out into powerful song, featured in the video above.

The students sing a beautifully harmonized hymn, clapping and stomping perfectly on beat. They're directed by a leader whose own performance feels nothing short of electrically charged -- starting at the 0:35 mark.

According to a YouTube commenter the hymn is translated as, "I came to praise The Lord, what about you? Hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah."

And with that, we declare that there is nothing like music to feed the soul.

Hat tip: Reddit

Brooklyn-Centric Exhibition Aims To Illuminate The Art World's New Capital In A Single Show

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At some point in recent history, the borough of Brooklyn transformed from Manhattan's affordable second fiddle to a creative capital in its own right. Like the city that never sleeps, Brooklyn's acquired its own artistic mythology as of late -- one rife with bohemian warehouses, communal studios, Dionysian nightlife, trendy coffee shops and their appropriate cult followings. But when you look beneath the hype, what does Brooklyn art actually look like today?

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Deana Lawson, As Above, So Below, 2013


The Brooklyn Museum's upcoming group show "Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond" features 35 artists and collectives living and working in the borough. The exhibition spans media including drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations, videos, and performances as well as subject matters encompassing memory, geography, community, nostalgia and politics.

The works on view capture a range of perspectives and practices as diverse as the stories from which they come. Deana Lawson's confrontational yet strangely personal photographs, channeling African portraits, transform strangers into something familiar, while Duke Riley's multimedia pigeon coops are reassembled from the remains of a rooftop where individuals spent eight months breeding and training homing pigeons to transport illicit cigars from Cuba to Florida. Nina Katchadourian's "Topiary" comes from an ongoing project made by the artist entirely on airplanes.

Despite Brooklyn's freshly amplified presence in the cultural conversation, "Crossing Brooklyn" aims to capture a multigenerational view of the geographical space, revealing Brooklyn was a cultural powerhouse long before its reputation caught up to it. We reached out to curators Eugenie Tsai and Rujeko Hockley to discuss the challenge of portraying Brooklyn in a single art show and how exactly they set about doing so.

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Duke Riley, Pigeon Loft, 2012-13


Why a show about Brooklyn artists now?

Eugenie Tsai: We've always had a longterm commitment to showcasing the work of Brooklyn artists, recently with artists like Fred Tomaselli, Mickalene Thomas and Swoon. We also did a "Raw/Cooked" series of under the radar Brooklyn artists. Back in 1855, the first contemporary piece was purchased, by artist Asher B. Durand.

Rujeko Hockley: Durand was a contemporary living artist at that time. In the 1930s that became the Gallery of Living Artists, which in the 1980s became the Working in Brooklyn series. So this is really continuing something that's been around for a very long time.

How did you go about finding the artists?

RH: In June, the summer of 2013, we started doing studio visits, which were initially a selection of artists we were interested in, works we had seen, people that our colleagues and friends recommended. We started very organically and kept going from there, throughout the summer and into the fall. We ended up seeing more than a hundred artists.

Do you consider the exhibition a semi-cohesive portrait of Brooklyn -- or is it something else?

ET: We decided to take a particular take. It's not a comprehensive show -- it's impossible to do a comprehensive show. When we were making studio visits we found ourselves drawn to a particular kind of work, what we call an impulse, and that was artists whose work reached beyond the walls of the studio. Work that was expansive, not a kind of hermetic studio practice but a work that was engaged with the world. Now, there are many ways in which artists engage with the world, so we thought it might be nice to show a spectrum of possibilities. It doesn't pretend to be comprehensive, and it's a multigenerational show so it's not about the new, new, new or the young, young, young. It includes older Brooklyn and newer Brooklyn.

cynthia
Cynthia Daignault, I love you more than one more day


Does the exhibition address any misconceptions about Brooklyn or Brooklyn art?

RH: I don't know if there are any misconceptions that we're addressing, but I think what really comes out is the breadth of Brooklyn, both literally in terms of geography -- how spread out across the borough they are in terms of their homes and studios -- but also the breadth of their output. There is a real spectrum of possibilities -- types of media, types of artists, types of interests. I guess the misconception that there would be one kind of Brooklyn artist.

Is there anything you can pinpoint as being fundamentally Brooklyn in comparison to Manhattan's artistic output, or is that too simplistic?

ET: Is there an essentialist Brooklyn art is like asking: is there essential women's art -- or an essential any kind of art. There is no essential Brooklyn-ness but Brooklyn happens to be a place where there is a lot of creative energy of all kinds. If anything, I think there is a spirit of experimentation and adventure. Artists know each other from all of these different connections. There are a lot of different creative people who live here and know each other, talk to each other, hang out with each other. But it's not about Brooklyn-ness.

RH: And that was true of Brooklyn for many years, even before the current vogue for all things Brooklyn. This is not a new phenomenon, per se. So many of the reasons artists came to Brooklyn was because it was affordable. It wasn't because Brooklyn offered something specific beyond studio space and the ability to do what you want to do. It's become a place of creativity because that was the set of conditions at one time.

ET: For quite some time, Brooklyn has been a kind of second best. You left Manhattan unwillingly to find affordable space in Brooklyn. And now Brooklyn has become an aspirational destination. It will be interesting to see how that affects artists and other producers of culture. The prices rise, people get priced out of where they are, where are they going to go? It's the issue of gentrification.

"Crossing Brooklyn" runs from October 3, 2014 until January 4, 2015 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. A robust schedule of programming begins in conjunction with the exhibition, in an effort "to work with different entities outside of the museum to bring things into the gallery, to bring things outside of the gallery, to activate pieces that are in the gallery as objects," Hockley explained. See more work from the exhibition below.

A Female Artist Paints Female Nudes Without The Erotic Undertones (NSFW)

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Thing about the history of nude portraiture. Which paintings come to mind? Manet's "Olympia," Goya's "Nude Maja" or perhaps Courbet's "Origin of the World" if you're getting real? Whatever impromptu string of scantily clad portraits spring to mind, odds are most were painted by men.

German-based artist Susannah Martin is doing her best to uproot this rather uniform trajectory, painting the female body from a -- wait for it -- female point of view. Her contemporary takes on the classical nude imbues female forms with an independent spirit removed from male judgment or approval. These women aren't on display; they're simply doing their thing in the great outdoors.

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"The Gatherers" Oil on Canvas, 44" x 76"


"For me, the female gaze, has always been missing from the available stock of nudes in art," Martin explained in an email to The Huffington Post. "There are a few notable exceptions like Alice Neel, Jenny Saville or more recently Ellen Altfest, but for the most part it is the male gaze that has defined the boundaries of what a nude can be."

Martin paints bodies, both male and female, adult and child, stripped of possessions (and clothing) and swallowed up by unbridled wilderness. The subjects climb trees, wade through streams and frolic in fields, at once at home in their naked bodies and yet seemingly unaware of them. Clearly uninterested in the erotic implications of a naked state, Martin explores other, more subtle, effects of existing in the nude.

"I am interested in exploring the potential that the nude has to speak from a socio-anthropological position. I would like to give the nude a little time 'off-duty' as an object for virtual sexual consumption or even aesthetic criticism... My mind wants to contemplate man in his undisguised, independent and natural form and consider the source of his dislocation. I am interested in our relationship to our bodies which for me mirrors our relationship to nature as a whole. Our increasing desire to manipulate and 'improve' the body is simply a continuation of what we have been doing to all of nature for hundreds of years, with devastating consequences."

hyper
"River" Pastel on Paper, 47" x 28"


Although Martin's portraits are idyllic as can be, they still communicate in the hyper-realistic visual language often associated with virtual imagery. The combination of meticulously rendered details and humans in such a blissful and elemental natural state creates an interesting juxtaposition between contemporary and classic.

"I am like a scientist in her lab; proposing one hypothesis after another, testing it and seeing what (if any) element of truth it holds," Martin continued. "The audience is testing along with me and discovering their own hidden truths. What they discover may be similar to what I discover, but not necessarily, we all have our own unique experience of the world. I am always trying to grasp and describe a moment of pure being because that is where we all meet and understand one another and what is essential."

What do you think of Martin's take on the nude form? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Photographer Gives Glimpse Inside The Barges Floating Across Our Planet's Oceans

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Barges crawl across our oceans like dark, anonymous sea monsters, hiding their contents behind mammoth walls. From a distance, we can only wonder what's contained inside, making its way from one land mass to another. Meanwhile, the birds -- and perhaps eagle-eyed plane passengers -- have a clear line of sight into the uncovered watercrafts.

Hungarian photographer Gyula Sopronyi must have been envious of the birds' views, or just plain curious as to what lies behind the barges' walls. His anxiety-inducing photographers peer inside the slow-moving boats, capturing the mesmerizing loads of people and objects that dwell upon their decks.

barges abstract

Titled "Floating Aspect," the series frames vantage points from the Danube River's bridges, snapping shots of moving vessels as they reveal their innards to anyone paying attention.

"Floating, towed timelessness. Sluggish giants. Barges might be generally described by these words," Sopronyi explains in a project statement. "Once a very familiar sight of the riverside, even time has forgotten them. Their shapes remain as they used to be, moving slowly with their long, flat bodies up and down river with their heavy loads, just as they have for centuries. A mundane but, sometimes, romantic world it has many faces to reveal to the careful observer."

From trash to crushed stone, kids' toys to lounging strangers, Sopronyi's series offers a hypnotic and alternative way of viewing our planet's sprawling seas. Take a look for yourself, and may you ponder every barge and its visual potential from here on out.

Chris Pratt Explains The Scary Story Behind That Headshot

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Chris Pratt's headshot from 2000 quickly went viral when he tweeted it earlier this month. On a visit to "The Tonight Show," Pratt told Jimmy Fallon the story of how "Douchemaster McChest" -- his words, not ours! -- came to be, and how it got Pratt his first big role on "Everwood."

Turns out, Pratt was 20 years old, living out of his car in Los Angeles and trying to become an actor. While at the post office, a photographer spotted him, asked him to come back to his apartment, shower and change so he could take his picture for free. Luckily, this did not turn into the opening scene of a "Law & Order: SVU" episode.


Female Farmers Make Nude Calendar To Raise Money For New Land

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Two Florida women hope that by selling a pin-up calendar featuring naked female farmers and strategically placed produce, they can raise enough money for a down payment on some new land.

That's the pitch behind an Indiegogo campaign from Ten-Speed Greens Urban Farm. The company's owners, Claire Mitchell and Danielle Krasniqi, are currently farm-less; the landlord of their previous farm wanted to build homes there instead. So the ladies and their friends decided to strip down -- tastefully -- and rally folks to donate to their cause.

(Story continues below.)
ten speed farms

There was a time when Ten Speed Greens Urban Farm, in Tallahassee, totally cranked. With only a six-person staff, it produced about 90 pounds of salad greens -- arugula, red mustard, kale, broccoli shoots and more -- every week for restaurants, local markets and their community-supported agriculture program. The farm produced more than a ton of tomatoes in its first year.

But they were just renting their land. Now, Krasniqi and Mitchell have decided they wanted a more permanent arrangement. "We wanted it to be an urban farm," Krasniqi told The Huffington Post, "but land is more expensive in the city." Being close enough to the city to deliver their produce by bike is important to them (hence their name, Ten-Speed Greens), so they started brainstorming ways to fund the dream.

According to their Indiegogo page, they "looked around one day and realized, 'All our friends are babes! Let's put them in a calendar with our vegetables, and raise money for our future urban farm.'"

tenspeed watermelon

Their "Farmer Tans Calendar" will feature 12 months of women wearing nothing but fruits, vegetables and their farmer tans.

The photos were snapped by a volunteer at the farm who is also a professional photographer, Jess Drawhorn.

"For most of the photos, not only were we completely naked but we were at the farm on a busy street without a lot of personal coverage," Krasniqi (Miss January and November) said. "It resulted in a lot of funny moments because people like to stop by randomly to see if we’re open. We’d be in the tomatoes and someone would say, 'Hello?' So there was a lot of laughter in every single shoot that we did."

Krasniqi said she's already thinking about next year's calendar. "I'm also a massage therapist, so I love bodies and the human figure. I think celebrating that and being able to celebrate it with the other job that I love so much, farming, is awesome." Next year, she says, she wants to do a "work-oriented calendar, so tools, tractors, that kind of aspect." And, of course, naked ladies.

Ten-Speed Greens has reached its Indigogo goal of $4,000, but the fund drive doesn't end until Oct. 16, if you still want to contribute.

Watch their campaign video (NSFW, because butts) below:



tenspeed apples

tenspeed strawberries 2

tenspeed fig

Here Are The Top 10 Unseen TV Characters You Couldn't Live Without

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Hidey-ho, neighbor! From Wilson on "Home Improvement" to Howard's mom on "The Big Bang Theory," it's clear that some of the greatest characters on television are sometimes best left unseen. In order to commemorate these characters that we seldom see, but actually know very well, WatchMojo.com put together a list of "The Top 10 Unseen TV Characters."

Did your favorite make the cut?

TGIT Ratings Prove Thursday Really is Shonda Rhimes' Night

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Shonda Rimes owns Thursday nights. ABC marketed Thursday's new lineup as #TGIT, airing Rhimes' three shows, "Grey's Anatomy," "Scandal" and newcomer "How to Get Away with Murder." The grouping paid off.

The Season 11 premiere of "Grey's Anatomy" opened the night at 8:00 p.m. with 9.8 million viewers and a 3.0 rating in the desirable 18-49 demographic. The Season 4 premiere of "Scandal," starting at 9:00 p.m., garnered 11.9 million viewers and a 3.8 rating. But the big surprise was "How to Get Away with Murder," starring Viola Davis as a law professor. The freshman drama captured an outstanding 14 million viewers and the same in-demo rating as "Scandal."

Rhimes' new show -- written and created by Pete Nowalk -- is up 33 percent from last year's "Scandal" season opener, then in the 10:00 p.m. time slot. According to reports, Sept. 25 was ABC's biggest Thursday night in five years. All hail Shondaland.

Here's The Vibrant Detroit Neighborhood A New York Times Columnist Considers An 'Urban Wasteland'

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If you're from Detroit, you learn to get used to people talking about your beloved city as if it's in a post-apocalyptic dystopian movie. But the misconception still stings, especially when it comes from The New York Times.

"Even Detroit has restaurants like Slows Bar-B-Q, which are destination restaurants in the middle of urban wastelands," Times columnist David Brooks said in a conversation published Wednesday. It seems like an off-the-cuff remark meant to highlight how cities are becoming better and better places to live, but instead just came out patronizing and plain offensive.

Worse, it's false.

"The man clearly needs to visit before popping off," Deadline Detroit's Alan Stamm retorted.

To be fair, there are pockets of Detroit where there are far more vacant buildings than lived-in ones, and it's one of the city's biggest challenges. And what makes a "wasteland" could be in the eye of the beholder -- to people used to the glitz and crowded streets of New York, an underpopulated rustbelt city is always going to look a little desolate. Across the street from the barbecue restaurant Brooks mentions is the hulking, abandoned train station that often appears alongside stories about Detroit's hardships.

michigan central station
Photo By Raymond Boyd/Getty Images.



But if you dig a little deeper than the popular urban decay photos of Detroit, you'll see a different picture, particularly in the area Brooks seems to have been speaking about. Slows is in Corktown, a neighborhood with a long history and lots of new development. If only the columnist had read his own paper -- in another article, the Times called Corktown a "bright example" of neighborhood rebuilding and a "serious hotbed of new restaurants, bars, hotels and more," not to mention the engaged residents and community organizations.

Here are a few of the reasons Corktown is a vibrant community, and absolutely anything but a wasteland.

Corktown residents live in Detroit's oldest surviving neighborhood, dating back to the mid-1800s.

The area was primarily settled by Irish immigrants, and it still has many of the Victorian homes, painted in bright colors, built in following years.

corktown historic homes
Photo of Corktown homes by Flickr user Diane Piper.






There's a lot more to the Corktown dining scene than Slows.

Though Slows, a barbecue restaurant, deserves the good press it's received over the years, it's far from the only dining and drinking spot on the block, literally, like Astro Coffee a couple doors down. Some of the mainstays in Corktown, like Nemo's or Nancy Whiskey, have been around for decades -- the latter first opened in 1902.

astro
Photo of Astro Coffee by Flickr user Sam Beebe.



And in recent years, new watering holes, from a bagel shop to a late-night Middle Eastern joint, have popped up at a surprising clip for Detroit. Since summer of last year, at least eight new bars and restaurants have opened in a fairly small stretch, so fast that an increasingly walkable entertainment district seemed to appear in the blink of an eye.

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Photo by Nick Azzaro courtesy Two James Spirits.


One of those newish spots is Two James Spirits, where they make their own liquors like the Grass Widow Bourbon and serve them in a tasting room adorned with work from local artists. It's the first distillery in the city since Prohibition, they say.

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Head distiller Erik Peterson. Photo by Andrea Claire Maio courtesy Two James Spirits.



Where some see decay, others see potential and opportunity for a better Detroit.

Corktown is home to Ponyride, a formerly abandoned warehouse where "socially-conscious artists and entrepreneurs" receive studio space, at intentionally cheap rents, to build, design and create. One of those tenants is the Empowerment Plan, a project started to create sleeping-bag-coat hybrids designed for homeless people. The Empowerment Plan trains and employees homeless women to produce the coats with donated materials -- including byproducts from General Motors that would otherwise be trashed, like former car door insulation.

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Courtesy The Empowerment Plan.



A new generation of artisans are building on the city's manufacturing legacy, rather than mourning its decline.

Nearby in the building, small firms are making furniture, jewelry, letterpress prints, jeans and more.

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An employee uses a hammer and an anvil to hammer in copper rivets on a pair of denim jeans at Detroit Denim on Wednesday, June 12, 2013. Photo by Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images.


Corktown is brimming with culture.


Detroit's musical heritage keeps evolving with neighborhood spots like PJ's Lager House, which hosts local and traveling bands most nights of the week; Hello Records, a used record shop where gems are easy to find; and Beehive Recording Company, which records singles for Detroit artists for free.

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Photo of Detroit Party Marching Band at PJ's Lager House by Flickr user Karen Majewski.



It's not just music -- the neighborhood is also home to John K. King Used & Rare Books, a former glove factory turned into a sprawling, labyrinthine shop and noted as one of the must-see bookstores worldwide.

john k king books detroit
Photo of John K. King Books by Flickr user Dan Epstein.



Over at DittoDitto, the small, curated bookshop is fostering the literary scene in its own way, hosting more than a dozen readings and events, including organizing a citywide art book fair, in the few short months it's been open.

dittoditto
Photo of reading at DittoDitto by Alejandra Salinas.



Local history is preserved -- and vacant land given life -- by a dedicated crew of volunteers.

Corktown used to be home to Tiger Stadium, where the Detroit baseball team would play and fans would fill the nearby bars since the stadium opened in the early 1900s. A decade after the Tigers left for the new Comerica Park, the empty stadium was completely razed in 2008 and 2009, despite a bitter fight by preservationists. The land has been left vacant as the city continually makes and changes plans for development.

Before..

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This is a July 6, 1951 photo of Briggs Stadium in Detroit, Mich. AP Photo.



After.

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In this July 16, 2008, file photo, Demolition continues on Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Wednesday, July 16, 2008. AP Photo by Paul Sancya.



But, in true Detroit spirit, a group of baseball enthusiasts took it upon themselves to clean up the overgrown and littered site, and the all-volunteer community group Navin Field Grounds Crew has been maintaining the baseball diamond ever since. Kids play catch, historic baseball teams face each other in 1800s gear, and a couple has even gotten married there.

navin
Photo courtesy Navin Field Grounds Crew.



In a struggling city, organizations step up to help out the community.

One nonprofit in Corktown is working to combat one of the biggest problems in Detroit: lack of education. At Mercy Education Project, volunteers tutor girls from grade school through high school to keep them on the path to graduation and later success. Program staff members also advocate for the girls at school when necessary, do college prep, hold sessions on everything from self-esteem to health, and give the girls the chance to meet professional women in the fields that interest them. At the same time, MEP offers a GED program for women, often single mothers, and sometimes the mothers of the same children being tutored -- multiple generations striving to make better lives for themselves.

mercy ed project
Photo of tutoring courtesy Mercy Education Project.



And in a close-knit community, one individual makes a difference.

Greg Mudge is mostly known around town for the enormous, and delicious, sandwiches he concocts at Mudgie's Deli. But he also quietly adopted the park across the street from his restaurant, mowing the grass and doing general maintenance so the playground can be used by neighborhood kids and students at a nearby school.

greg mudge
Photo by Ashley Woods/HuffPost.



Corktown draws crowds from across the city and suburbs.

The pictures you see of the abandoned train station always seem to be taken when the streets are empty. But Corktown can be bustling: baseball fans fill the bars on game days, spectators crowd the streets during the St. Patrick's parade and amateur sports teams practice on nearby fields. Recently, bands with blaring brass instruments took over for a new street music and art festival. And each fall, thousands of people meet in front of the train station for a long bike ride around the city.

detroit
Courtesy Trevor D'Silva/Tour de Troit.



In Detroit's oldest neighborhood, you can sip a pour over coffee or drink booze distilled on-site; check out a gallery show or stumble upon street art; dine on Italian or sliders; belt out karaoke or listen to live music any night of the week; jog on neighborly residential streets or hit the gym; shop vintage or check out handmade jeans; play old-timey baseball or let your pets make friends at the new dog park; take a metal-working class or tutor struggling high school students. Corktown represents some of the best of Detroit, as the city retools and works to emerge from bankruptcy while making life better for residents. The next time David Brooks writes about how cities are changing, maybe he should make a visit to Corktown.

corktown busineses
Photo of Corktown block by Flickr user David Schalliol.











A Guide To Not Being Ignorant When Talking About Amazon's 'Transparent'

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Amazon's new original series, "Transparent," will likely generate some important conversations about identity, but starting that discourse requires some knowledge of how we should talk about the transgender -- and larger LGBTQ -- community. The reality is that there is no "right" way, though there are most certainly wrong ones.

The series, which premiered its first 10 episodes on Friday, follows Mort's transition to Maura (Jeffrey Tambor) as she comes out to her family and learns to be comfortable with her identity.

HuffPost Entertainment spoke with Jeffrey Tambor, co-star Gaby Hoffmann and creator Jill Soloway earlier this month about the project. In order to better understand how to discuss topics of gender and sexuality in "Transparent," begin with a glossary (of sorts), along with the cast and creator's thoughts:


Transgender -- "Transgender" or "trans" should be used as an adjective. That means you need a noun for it to modify. Calling someone "a transgender" or "transgendered" would be incorrect usage. Correct sample sentence: "Maura is a trans woman."

Cisgender -- This refers to people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Sexual Orientation -- Someone's sexual orientation is completely separate from whether they identify as cis- or transgender. It should not be assumed that transitioning means anything about a person's sexuality.

Genderqueer -- Genderqueer refers to an identity that does not follow the male-female binary. It's an umbrella term that refers to a fluid spectrum outside of those labels. Gaby Hoffmann's character from "Transparent," Ali, is an example of a character who is questioning her identity and most closely aligns with this term. Soloway said:

Ali is on a journey about her gender. When I think about where everybody would be in five years, my gut feeling is Ali could potentially be identifying as genderqueer at the end of five seasons.


He vs. She -- Once Mort has come out as Maura, it makes most sense to use feminine pronouns. Although, the best way to decide how to refer to a person is to ask in a respectful way which pronouns they prefer.

Gender Neutral Pronouns or Non-Binary/Non-Gendered Pronouns -- "They" or "them" are gender neutral pronouns that you can use if you're not sure whether masculine or feminine ones are preferred. Some trans people prefer other pronouns like "ze," "hir," "v" or even "it." Again, respectfully asking someone what term they use and prefer you to use is the best course of action.

Transitioning -- "Transition" refers to the process, either medically or socially. It is not defined by surgery or any specific method. As Jill Soloway told HuffPost Entertainment about what she learned while making the show:

That a lot of people ask about surgery first. They want to know about Maura, when is she going to get “the” surgery, as if there’s "a" surgery or one surgery that matters. I learned that there are hundreds and hundreds of ways of being trans.


Surgery -- Surgery can be part of transitioning, but focusing on specific body parts loses sight of the reality of the trans experience. Or as Hoffmann so helpfully put it:

Everybody is so obsessed with other people’s pussies and dicks and what they do with theirs. I hope [the show] just torpedoes us further into the future where these kinds of questions aren’t necessary.


Plurality -- It's important to remember that "Transparent" as a television series is not meant to define a universal trans experience as a whole, but one experience in particular. As Soloway said:

It’s not meant to represent every trans person. It’s meant to represent somebody who’s very, very early in their transition. I really look forward to trans people watching the show and giving it a chance to all that is transparent.


The first full season of "Transparent" is now available on Amazon Prime.
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