Humans, we could learn a thing or ten from this.
Via youtube.com
Via youtube.com
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Via youtube.com
For those times you want to leave without interrupting.
When to use this: when you already made it clear you agree with your friend, but said friend keeps talking anyway. First nod your head and then eventually your entire body.
Nathan W. Pyle / Via buzzfeed.com
When to use this: when you didn't mean to enter into this conversation in the first place. Check your mirrors and back on out.
Nathan W. Pyle / Via buzzfeed.com
When to use this: When you've stood and listened so long you're not sure if your limbs work anymore. Make sure they do then kickstart to freedom.
Nathan W. Pyle / Via buzzfeed.com
Talk about “Liquid Dreams.” (sorry)
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“Those looking for reasonable wages and general overtime need not apply.”
Feed all the kids first and then it's 1 p.m. and time for your next activity... hope your acid reflux doesn't mind!
youtube.com / Via gifsec.com
You voted — here are the results!
With 277 "FAB" votes.
FAMEFLYNET PICTURES / Via buzzfeed.com
With 297 "FAB" votes.
FAMEFLYNET PICTURES / Via buzzfeed.com
With 325 "FAB" votes.
FameFlynetUK/FAMEFLYNET PICTURES / Via buzzfeed.com
That is one lucky pup.
But since they didn't have a baby on hand, they had to use the next best thing: Their dog, Snuggles.
Courtesy of Jamie Clauss
"She said, 'Oh, I wish I had a baby to do a newborn shoot with you,'" Clauss recalled to BuzzFeed.
Courtesy of Jamie Clauss
You enjoy your latté. I’ll be over here stuffing my face with ice cream cake.
Aloha! Get the recipe.
Valentina Maria Kenney Wein / cookingontheweekends.com
Yeah, you heard me. BACON. SPRINKLES. Get the recipe.
Paper & Stitch / papernstitchblog.com
Infusing heavy cream with coffee makes for a very powerful chocolate ganache. Get the recipe.
Ditte Isager / bonappetit.com
Avada Ka-drake-va.
Warner Bros. Television / Via solo-mentes-perdidas.tumblr.com
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Ronald Martinez / Getty Images / Warner Bros. / Via harrypotter.wikia.com
Do you know your Yellowstones from your Yosemites and your Arches from your Acadias?
Not to be confused with being lazy.
And that's the way you like it.
Warner Bros. Television / Via real-hiphophead.tumblr.com
Procter & Gamble / Unilever / Procter & Gamble
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The NBC Nightly News anchor’s relentless desire to be funny has reached the point of diminishing returns.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon / Via youtube.com
There was a point, not too long ago, when I found Brian Williams funny and endearing. I don't feel that way anymore, though. Now, I find the anchor of NBC's marquee evening newscast and, arguably, the face of the entire network's news operation, irritating and decidedly one-note. I just want him to shut up.
Based on recent ratings trends, I may not be the only one tuning out Williams. As my colleague Dorsey Shaw recently noted, ABC's World News has beaten out or tied Williams's Nightly News in the adults 25-54 demo, the money demo for news broadcasts, over the last month. On the year, Nightly News is down 6% among that group.
At first blush, the data seems like a blip — after all, Williams's newscast has been tops in total viewers for 254 consecutive weeks and 301 of the last 302 weeks. Nightly News is averaging 9 million total viewers on the season, its biggest audience since 2005-06, a gain of 6% and besting ABC's World News by just under one million viewers. (CBS's Evening News, hosted by Scott Pelley, rates a distant third.)
But in news, viewer behavior changes slowly and then all at once. NBC executives have firsthand experience with this phenomena in the recent past with the Today show. In mid-April 2012, ABC's Good Morning America finally beat Today in the ratings after 852 straight weeks, more than 16 years, of losses. Since then GMA has regularly beaten Today in the ratings.
Today was toppled, in part, by viewer unhappiness with the network's firing of Ann Curry and the role in it played by lead anchor Matt Lauer. And though nothing nearly as Machiavellian is happening at Nightly News, the Today episode serves as an uncomfortable reminder that news audiences can turn on an anchor as fast as they can turn the channel.
NBC / Via interactive.nbcnews.com
The cause for my tuning out Williams is directly related to his relentless desire to prove to the world he's funny. At first, back in 2007 when he agreed to host Saturday Night Live, becoming the first news anchor ever to host the show, I was firmly in his corner. Why couldn't a serious newsman show his comedic side, let loose a little, be more than a wooden word regurgitator for the silver-haired broadcast viewing masses? "No one will declare that the death of journalism will date to this night in 2007," Williams told The New York Times ahead of his appearance, a comment with which I absolutely agreed. Indeed, his hosting was admirable, encouraging even. It was something of a small television miracle to allow a serious newsman to bring the funny.
Fast-forward seven years later, however, and Williams's funny bone has reached the point of diminishing returns. The inner comic the Times said he had "steadfastly submerged" for much of his career has been in full, indiscriminate bloom for quite some time now. And it's exhausting. The anchor's desperate need for laughs is reminiscent of the late-night talk show appearances of another Williams — Robin — who has been doing the same frenzied schtick for years to less and less effect. In the past, for instance, when an event was big enough to warrant watching one of the broadcast network's evening news shows, I would almost be compelled to tune into Williams. Now, however, if I am moved to watch TV news at all, I go out of my way to avoid watching Williams because I've seen enough of him elsewhere. Put another way, his omnipresence across NBC's network portfolio and social media leaves me too fatigued to further listen to him.
The first cracks in the granite-jawed anchor's act emerged around this time last year, when NBC cancelled his heavily-hyped Rock Center after just eight months on the air. The newsmagazine was not just a huge show of faith in NBC's news division after the company's takeover by Comcast, but also designed to be a creative outlet to showcase Williams's multitude of talents to a larger audience in primetime.
It didn't work, and not just because increased competition from cable news networks and digital outlets have splintered the audience for news. Rock Center also failed, as the Times noted in its report on the show's demise, because of its "sometimes confusing mix of high and low, serious and silly." The audience didn't know which Williams they were getting and, more importantly, which one was the real him. We still don't.
In fact, it could be fairly argued that Williams's frequent appearances on Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show are beginning to inflict damage on his credibility, confusing his audience to the betterment of Fallon's. Can't Matt Lauer or David Gregory "Slow Jam the News" for once?
Or consider the ultra-viral supercuts of Williams's newscasts that Fallon's crew sets to classic hip-hop songs such as Snoop Dogg's "Gin & Juice" and Dr Dre's "Nuthin But A 'G' Thang." The most recent one, set to Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back," has viewer metrics that rival Williams's last marquee hard news interview with Edward Snowden in May.
As of last Friday afternoon, the "Baby Got Back" supercut had garnered more than 5.6 million views on YouTube on top of the roughly 3.5 million viewers — the Tonight Show's average nightly audience — who watched it live when it aired a little over a month ago. That compares to the 5.9 million viewers who watched Williams's heavily-hyped primetime exclusive interview with Snowden, which placed it behind a repeat of CSI on CBS in that evening's 10 p.m. time period and tied for second in the demo with a rerun of Modern Family on ABC.
It would be one thing if Williams's Tonight Show appearances and viral clips — which, it should be noted, are made independently by Fallon's team and don't involve Williams or his team — increased his appeal among the 18-49 year old demographic. But they seem to be having the opposite effect. For the April-June quarter, Nightly News was down 6% in that demographic, and so far this quarter it is down 8.1%. ABC's World News has narrowed the gap among 18-49 year old viewers so far in the third quarter to just 7,000 and has won two of the past four weeks in that demographic. This despite the fact that Fallon dominates his late-night brethren among 18-49 year olds, averaging more than one million viewers in the demographic per night for the week of July 21-25.
To quote Williams himself in a June Tonight Show appearance regarding the success of his hip-hop supercuts, "It's all anyone mentions to me anymore."
That's probably not a good thing, and it should be a cause for concern among NBC News brass and Nightly News's executive producers before Williams loses more fans. He just lost one.
I dare you to try and resist watching this cuteness more than once.
You SHOULD try these at home.
BuzzFeedBlue / Via youtu.be
Because Shark Week comes but once a year!
We had volunteers try geometric treats. Here’s what they had to say.
Candy of the future, or trendy novelty item? Only one way to find out: have a mystery taste test.
Victor Tatum / BuzzFeed
Initial reactions varied:
"Sour Patch/SweeTarts/Kool-Aid powder mashed in my mouth."
"Reminiscent of diner mints."
"The size was deceiving. I expected to have more candy in my mouth."
"I started frowning pretty much the second it went in my mouth. Whatever that was, it's on a short list of things I don't plan to eat again."
Victor Tatum / BuzzFeed
The candy was unanimously voted as looking incredibly cool:
"It was beautiful."
"I liked it. 10/10 would eat the sour one again."
"It was one of the coolest-looking candies I've eaten, though I needed confirmation that it was candy."
"I liked how it looked, not so much how it tasted."
Victor Tatum / BuzzFeed
Everyone guessed sugar correctly, with some interesting variations:
"Pixie Dust."
"A Lifesaver that — somehow — went stale."
"Sugar, maybe with some paper plates mixed in."
(The real ingredients: Sugar, starch, water, natural and artificial flavor and colorants, alcohol [<1% by weight].)
Victor Tatum / BuzzFeed
Makeup can be your best friend… or your worst enemy.
youtube.com / Via youtube.com
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The most recent episode of The Leftovers has some critics quitting the show. But here’s why two BuzzFeed staffers are still riveted.
Justin Theroux as Kevin Garvey on The Leftovers.
Paul Schiraldi / HBO
The most recent episode of HBO's The Leftovers began with a particularly horrific murder. It was so brutal, in fact, it lead Entertainment Weekly's Melissa Maerz to pen a piece titled "Enough, already: Why I'm quitting 'The Leftovers.'"
"I don't mean to complain that The Leftovers is too sad. My favorite shows of last year were all fairly dark. But The Leftovers doesn't earn its sadness," she wrote of the series' fifth episode, which centers on the inhabitants of a small town three years after the world experiences a rapture in which 2% of the population disappears. "Brutally killing characters who haven't earned our grief can feel borderline exploitative. It turns your attention away from the human being, and allows you to be dazzled by the sheer salaciousness of the murder." Eventually, she concluded, "For me, The Leftovers is too much of an endurance test."
The series — co-created by former Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta, the author of the book upon which the series is based — has gotten similar feedback since it screened for critics in January. "The Leftovers is all bleakness all the time," Vulture's Matt Zoller Seitz wrote. "Parts of it feel as though the show is emotionally blackmailing you into watching: What, don't you care about these poor, miserable people? Well, go ahead and change the channel then, you monster." John Lopez at Grantland called the series the "prestige television equivalent of a cilice" and Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club said it was "some of the most desolate, despairing television on air."
But the physical brutality of The Leftovers' fifth episode seems on par with the violence we've seen on similar cable fare, from Game of Thrones to Breaking Bad, and it's not even the show's speciality. Instead, The Leftovers offers emotional torture and that's perhaps what some critics and audience members have most struggled with.
Below, BuzzFeed's deputy entertainment editor, Jaimie Etkin, and film critic, Alison Willmore — who was previously IndieWire's television critic — both fans of The Leftovers, discuss why the series has been shunned for capturing the pain of loss and mourning, while other television brutality gets a pass.
The Guilty Remnants in The Leftovers.
HBO
Alison Willmore: So I'll confess — when The Leftovers premiered, I was actually taken by surprise by the apparent consensus that it's a gruelingly depressing show. I sure as hell wouldn't describe it as cheerful, though it's sometimes darkly funny, but watching the first few episodes handed out to the press, I honestly didn't think it was any grimmer than so many other series, cable or otherwise, that are currently on TV.
"Bleak" has pretty much become the default mode of the quality drama, from Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead's repeated killing off of major characters to the loneliness and quietly self-destructive tendencies of the folks on Mad Men. Then there are all those shows that use murder as their narrative engine — like True Detective, The Bridge, and The Killing. Death or thoughts about it are a constant in so much of our critically acclaimed TV, to the point where it can feel numbing, all those corpses like so much sad set dressing.
One of the things I like about The Leftovers is that it tries to do something that most of those shows, despite their body counts, don't have time for. It deals with grief and what life is like in the wake of something terrible instead of as it's happening. The Leftovers is set three years after The Sudden Departure, and everyone's dealing with it in different ways, at different paces. Jaimie, do you think this process is somehow harder for people to watch than actual violence?
Jaimie Etkin: I absolutely do. This week's episode aside (RIP Gladys), The Leftovers is largely not a violent show — save for the dogs, and I'm not discounting those scenes, because my heart is actually aching as I merely type about them.
But when we watch a graphically violent scene on one of the shows you previously mentioned, we can cringe or partially shield our eyes until it's over. And we have the assurance that it will be over soon. But with The Leftovers, we don't know when (or if) there will be relief for us as viewers and for those suffering in Mapleton.
I think it's more challenging to watch someone grapple with emotional pain rather than the physical, and with many cable dramas, the most violent scenes come at the end of the episode (oh hai, Red Wedding), and then when the series picks up the following week, we've missed most of the grieving that comes along with those scenes.
On The Leftovers, we have no choice but to sit along with the Garveys and the rest of the Mapleton folk as they struggle years later to come to terms with the loss that resulted from this supernatural-y event that wasn't exactly violent, but was certainly horrific. What's so interesting to me about the show is that the entire series is based on this rapture that we, as the audience, much like the people of Mapleton, will probably never get an explanation about. And I'm OK with that, because that's not what this show is about. It's actually the anti-Lost in that regard. We're not waiting for answers because we know we'll never get them. And that's reality.
Country, EDM, rock, rap, and folk for August, in no particular order.
Sophie Harris-Taylor / Shura / Via Facebook: shuramusic
1. Jason Aldean's smoldering "Burnin' It Down" is like country's response to 2004 Usher, in a good way.
2. U.K. folk singer George Ezra flexes his strong and clear blues voice on "Budapest."
3. EDM's great 22-year-old hope Porter Robinson duets with a synthesizer-produced human on "Sad Machine."
4. London singer and producer Shura's infectious "Just Once," laughing-but-crying pop about when love ends.
5. Ariana Grande and Zedd update "Since U Been Gone" for the festival tent crowd with "Break Free."
6. U.K. producer SOPHIE redefines the gum-smacking Summer anthem with bipolar "Lemonade."
7. Brooding singer BANKS' radio-friendly builder "Beggin for Thread."
8. Sia lends her pipes and fear-killing lyrics to Dutch dance act Bingo Players' "Knock You Out."
9. Meghan Trainor's cheeky "every inch of you is perfect" anthem, "All About That Bass."
10. Spoon return to form with introspective whistle-along "Do You."
11. Hilary Duff reps for twentysomethings who hate their desk jobs on comeback single "Chasing the Sun."
RCA
