Let’s see which leading lady you’re most like.

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Watch out for the showers.

Every night's a party.

Since everyone around you is on holiday, you can fool yourself into thinking you're a free agent on your free hours too. Plus part of your job is showing people a good time, right?

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So you always go to bed crazy late.

If you're not partying with the guests and your colleagues/roommates, you're on the late shift.

Disney

And then start work insanely early.

Somebody's got to set up breakfast, change the beds, and clean the toilets before check-in.

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But the beds aren't very comfortable anyway.

You get what you pay for, though.

pixabay.com-182964/?no_redirect / Creative Commons

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Andrew Dalton

“They’re the island’s cats,” Kathy Carroll says as I literally trip over Shelby, a gray tabby who won’t stop rubbing my leg. We’re standing among 399 formerly stray and feral cats in a 15,000-square-foot, open-air enclosure on a sparse hillside that slopes down toward the cliffs above Kaumalapau Harbor on Lana’i, Hawaii’s sixth-largest island. In 2012, as Jon Mooallem reported for the New York Times Magazine, Oracle founder, billionaire playboy, and Marvel movie cameo Larry Ellison bought this patch of red dirt — along with about 97% of the island and everything on it, nearly everything except the airstrip, the harbor, the public school, some playing fields, and a few private homes — for a price reportedly between $300 and $600 million.

Like a cat, an island is a funny thing to own. But Ellison is far from the first person to have this much control over the well-being and employment of the people who made their homes on Lana'i. The island has, at times, served as King Kamehameha I’s favorite fishing village, ranch lands for a cattle company, a pineapple plantation for what eventually became Dole foods, and a quaint resort town in service of two Four Seasons hotels.

Lana'i has the sort of worn-in, authentic-feeling vibe that would make developers in the Florida Keys or North Carolina's Outer Banks flip out. In Lana'i City, the 3,100-resident town that serves as the island's commercial and cultural center, nearly every one of the single-story, plantation-style houses has a porch. You can tell who’s a tourist because they all drive the same late-model Jeep Wrangler rented from the local gas station. Down on the beach at Hulopo'e, next to the pristine luau grounds at the Four Seasons, there’s a boarded-up snack bar where packs of local teens like to vape. There are two golf courses and no stoplights. There’s a pizza place with a bar in the back and a bustling takeout business.

And there are cats, hundreds and hundreds of them — many in the sanctuary, many still roaming free around the island. They, like the deer and sheep that still attract hunters to Lana'i today, were originally brought here for someone's amusement, before they were eventually abandoned and left to fend for themselves. Mooallem was concerned with how Ellison would take care of an island that has a long history of booms and busts at the hands of foreign entrepreneurs. I want to know who's taking care of all these cats.

Andrew Dalton

In 2001, Kathy Carroll and her husband, Mike, an artist, moved from Chicago to open the Mike Carroll Gallery in a green row house along Lana'i City's central Dole Park. Trained as a medical illustrator, Mike Carroll designed the original label for the Goose Island Beer Company before opening his gallery, which now sells original paintings celebrating the island and its many majestic golf holes. One work he is particularly proud of is a portrait of his wife sitting on a bench, surrounded by cats.

Andrew Dalton

In 2004, Kathy Carroll started rounding up Lana’i’s feral cats long enough to have them spayed or neutered. She estimates she has serviced around 1,300 cats to date, but at this point, her real accomplishment is the Lana’i Animal Rescue Center, a sanctuary she built for them on the scrubby west side of the island, out near the airport. Officially founded in 2008, the center operated in a converted horse stable before moving to its current home in 2009. It now works off of a six-figure yearly budget made up of donations and adoption programs. There are 425 cats here in total — 399 in the main sanctuary, and the other 26 in kitty quarantine or special needs areas. About 60 of them are adopted-in-place, meaning a benevolent cat person somewhere is covering the cost of a particular cat’s island lifestyle for $240 per year. The majority of the feline residents appear to be of one breed, which the staff of four lovingly refers to as “the Lana’i tabby,” and most of them were rescued from the island’s dump or near one of the two Four Seasons hotels. Kathy calls them Lana’i lions, and they are her joy.

Kathy Carroll’s cat farm is not solely for the comfort of the island’s feline population, however. Near the beachfront Four Seasons at Manele Bay — the most dramatic of Ellison’s local hotel properties, with room rates starting at $1,000 a night — the cats like to hunt the wedge-tailed Shearwater, a protected species of native shorebird that nests in small ground burrows on the far end of the beach from the hotel. “Every cat should have a lap, and every bird should be protected from cats,” reads the somewhat awkwardly phrased mission statement printed on a sign inside the enclosure. It looks like something you might read at a zoo or a scenic lookout.

The center’s 3.5 acres of land are now leased from Pulama Lana’i, the development company Ellison installed to execute his vision of the island as — in his words — a “laboratory of sustainability,” complete with solar power, organic farms exporting produce around the Pacific, and electric cars shuttling guests around a quaint town square to Ellison’s own modern and eco-friendly hotels. That vision is a stark contrast to the quietude of the island now, where the only cab company is a group of three Chevy Suburbans dispatched with a call to the owner's cell phone — after all, with only three main destinations (the beach, the airport, and Lana'i City), any ride is likely to include a couple people who also happen to be heading your way.

Still, Pulama Lana’i has been winning over skeptics by putting on a charm offensive, as Honolulu Magazine put it, immediately upgrading shared resources such as the long-closed community pool and the movie theater on the edge of Dole Park. When I walked by on a Sunday morning in June, the pool looked pristine and there was a full yoga class going on in the attached studio. The theater was showing Jurassic World in 3D.

Mike Carroll

Pulama Lana’i’s logo shows up everywhere in town: It’s on the banners hung around the park advertising an outdoor movie series with a lineup of Pixar favorites and '80s blockbusters. It’s stamped at the bottom of the spin class schedule. It’s on the side of the Mercedes shuttle van that comes to pick up the only other tourists on the island. (Later, I learned this was their second time on Lana’i. They came back to adopt a cat.) Even a trip to Richard’s Market, the small grocery store on the corner, always ends with Pulama Lana’i’s logo at the top of the receipt. The masthead of Lana’i Today, the island’s misnamed monthly newspaper, lists “Four Seasons Resorts Lana’i” as a contributor and a source. A small billboard a few blocks off the park advertises new plantation-style homes coming soon — built, of course, by Pulama Lana’i. In the window of the Lana’i Culture and Heritage Center (a space provided by Pulama Lana’i in the old Dole administration building), there’s a blown-up version of a Dole pay ledger. It’s an artifact from when the island economy revolved around the pineapple plantation. The handwritten spreadsheet logs each employee’s hours, along with their daily pay and any deductions from what they spent at Dole’s own general store. Up the hill behind the Heritage Center, in a neighborhood named “haole camp,” after the plantation foremen who used to live there, Pulama Lana’i is building a house for a Maui County Police lieutenant.

It may have existed before Pulama Lana’i, but the Lana’i Animal Rescue Center now shares more with Larry Ellison than just the land it leases from him. The center currently receives staffing support from the Burlingame, California-based Peninsula Humane Society in the form of veterinary expertise and accounting. The center is also finalizing a deal with Pacific Animal Initiatives, another nonprofit that works with Peninsula Humane Society, that will offset salary costs for the staff and allow them to focus on raising funds directly for the cats. On the mainland, PHS has recently earned a reputation for similarly open-minded cat sanctuaries. In 2011, the society opened a three-story “Center for Compassion” where the cats are housed in what the opening press release called "spacious cat condos." That facility was made possible through “a major gift” from Larry and Melanie Craft Ellison, his wife at the time. Earlier this year, PHS announced plans to build a state-of-the-art wildlife care facility, also founded by Ellison, on 170 acres of former quarry and logging land in the Santa Cruz Mountains overlooking the heart of Silicon Valley. The center will focus on species with less personality and appeal than the Lana’i tabby, like the Lange’s metalmark butterfly, whose double-digit population is only found in the unglamorous Bay Area suburb of Antioch.

Although he has yet to visit the sanctuary himself, Ellison's relationship with his own cats was remarkable enough to deserve two mentions in his 1997 biography The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison (subtitle: “God Doesn’t Think He’s Larry Ellison”). Ellison’s biographer, journalist Mike Wilson, relays a story told to him by Ellison’s first wife, Adda Quinn. When Ellison’s cat Yitzhak died, Quinn said, he "took off two weeks in mourning. He was nonfunctional.” In another anecdote, Ellison tells Wilson he once returned home to find out his cat Clio died while he was out of town on business. Ellison had the cat’s body exhumed so she could be buried under her favorite tree. When BuzzFeed News reached out to Ellison for comment about his feelings towards felines, especially those on Lana’i, an Oracle rep declined to comment.

America changed irrevocably the day that Japan’s idea of serving tea and coffee in a room full of cats hit our shores. In the past year alone, two coffee shop–adoption center hybrids have opened in the Bay Area. In New York, #brands pounced on the idea before anyone else could, and a cat food company beat everyone to market by opening a heavily sponsored pop-up version on Bowery. Here on Lana’i, where the human population is around 3,200 people, the sanctuary looks less like an indoor cat playground with tea and more like a zoological exhibit from a near-future, post-apocalyptic scenario. Inside a perimeter fence made of black plastic deer netting, the cats live among a few shady trees and salvaged wood structures painted red to match the martian dirt showing through in bare spots. Shipping pallets have been reconfigured into feline-friendly cubbyholes and fuzzy little ears poke out of a row of wicker baskets. On a high shelf, a long-haired black cat named Karma arches her back and glares at me with piercing yellow eyes like a living Halloween decoration. In the center of the enclosure, underneath a corrugated metal roof salvaged from one of the plantation-era homes in Lana’i City, is the kitchen and feeding zone. “The cat-fur-teria,” Kathy calls it. “We’re big on puns here.”

The entire matrix of feline emotion is on display: from tooth-and-nail attention seeking to calculated indifference, from lazily mischievous to openly hostile. Mostly, they just seem aloof. When someone new enters, at least three dozen pairs of curious eyes immediately turn toward the gate. If you’re here to adopt a cat, the first moments are crucial, Kathy says, echoing countless clichés about cat ownership, because you never really choose a cat — cats choose you. She can recall almost every cat’s name and their particular quirks or ailments on sight. She says things like “he’s got a little hitch in his giddyup” when talking about Watermelon, a particularly fat tabby who probably has arthritis. She’s not above slipping into a cutesy cat voice when someone rolls over for a belly rub.

Last year, around 1,000 people visited the Lana’i Animal Rescue Center. It was named the No. 1 most recommended thing to do on Lana’i, according to TripAdvisor, where it also enjoys a five-star rating (the No. 2 recommendation was the Mike Carroll Gallery). The daily open houses are free, but for sale are a new batch of T-shirts, illustrated by Mr. Carroll, featuring a Hawaiian cat playing a ukulele. For a while, the Four Seasons was running shuttles to the shelter as part of its voluntourism offerings, and the shelter’s own handout invites tourists who are longing for their cats at home to “Visit a Cat Lover’s Paradise." One Japanese ailurophile did just that and flew straight to Lana’i from Tokyo, stopping only to change planes in Honolulu. Another visitor proposed to his girlfriend underneath the “Cattic” — a three-walled porch with Adirondack chairs and a cat-sized loft where some of the more skittish cats like to hide out. He’d been carrying around the ring waiting for the right moment.

Since litter training is the only thing separating the sanctuary’s residents from their feral cousins, one might wonder about logistics of supplying all that kitty litter. Where do all these cats go to shit?

Here, Ellison’s predecessors have unknowingly left behind a solution: the common but non-native Cook Island pines, which were imported to the island in 1911 by naturalist and rancher George Munro after he noticed the fog condensing on the stubby needles of the lone pine outside his cabin and saw an opportunity to solve the island’s fresh-water problem. Fast-forward a hundred years and it turns out those needles, once dried out and mulched in a woodchipper, are also great for soaking up cat piss.

Pulama Lana’i now collects the branches at its nursery and delivers them by the truckload to the shelter. The mulched pine litter is spread across six large cat boxes, each about the size of a sandbox at a respectable daycare. While Kathy is showing me the most trafficked of the six, Musashi, a calico who happens to share her name with Ellison's 290-foot yacht, hikes up her tail, and takes a dump right in front of us. She has irritable bowel syndrome.

Andrew Dalton

Across the dirt parking lot from the main enclosure, a donated shipping container serves as a field clinic for Dr. Ako, the visiting veterinarian, who travels over from Maui twice a month to do routine checkups, spay or neuter any new arrivals, and perform final examinations before signing off on adoption paperwork. On the day I visit, Kathy meets me in front of the Lana’i Culture and Heritage Center in her weathered Jeep Grand Cherokee. She's excited to show me a binder full of forms for Butterfinger, an orange tabby with the feline equivalent of HIV who will soon be headed to a new suburban life in Southern California.

Andrew Dalton

NEW ORLEANS — “This is where I'm from, this is me, right here,” Domonique Meyers, 28, says as we walk up to his family’s home in the 5th Ward.

Rows of slender, single-story shotgun houses crowd together along the narrow streets of the neighborhood, with only a few feet separating them. But the Meyers family’s massive two-story home on the corner of Dumaine and North White dominates the block. As we approach, Meyers — tall and whip thin — is quick to flash a smile, a manifestation of a personality that takes up far more space than his frame would suggest. “We called it the White House,” he jokes. His home once felt like the center of his neighborhood.

It was here that the up-and-coming MC and community activist used to gather his friends to hang out and hone their rap skills on the corner, knocking out beats on the side of the house. Growing up in the New Orleans of the ’90s and early 2000s, they had plenty of inspiration. Second lines, the boisterous brass band parades that have long been a symbol of New Orleans culture, started in the Tremé neighborhood, just across the highway. “Bounce,” a genre of music that blends brass beats and hip-hop into a uniquely New Orleans sound, has roots in the 5th Ward, too. “I started doing hip-hop, being on this corner right here, bebopping,” he remembers fondly. “Beating on the house with a battery, and coming up with a rhyme.”

No one lives in the White House now.

Though the house still towers above its low-slung neighbors, its split facade has become a symbol of the struggles the neighborhood has faced in rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005. A sturdy new foundation and joists have lifted the building several feet, a requirement for insurance since the storm. New windows have been installed, and Meyers and his younger brother have mostly finished painting the first floor’s exterior. But the second floor still shows damage, the aging paint almost completely wiped, exposing the weathered, gray boards underneath.

Amy K. Nelson for BuzzFeed News

Like many families in New Orleans, the Meyers heeded the last-minute warnings from city officials to evacuate the day before Katrina hit and decamped to Baton Rouge. But rather than being gone for a few days or a week like evacuations past, this time they were stuck. The White House was badly damaged, and delays in receiving recovery money meant the family wouldn’t be able to move in for years. When Meyers returned to New Orleans in 2011, he found his neighborhood had changed in more ways than he could have imagined.

In the years since Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans, thousands of people have poured into the city, drawn by economic opportunity and the city’s music and food scenes, as well as the laid-back, almost European pace of life in the Crescent City. The transplants, many of whom first fell in love with New Orleans as volunteers in the post-hurricane cleanup process, have brought with them new small businesses and an infusion of private capital, which combined with billions in federal, state, and city spending have begun to transform huge sections of the city.

New bike lanes have been built, massive redevelopment projects are underway, and commercial areas like Broad Street in Mid-City — an area of the city that includes the part of the 5th Ward where Meyers lives — which once were home to liquor stores and check cashing joints, now have boutique tea shops, gourmet restaurants, and upscale grocery stores. Mayor Mitch Landrieu has trumpeted the changing face of New Orleans, saying the city is “ascending” in an interview with BuzzFeed News last month. But is this bright future happening at the expense of the city's rich past?

Tension surrounding gentrification is hardly unique to New Orleans. Over the last two decades, major cities across the country have seen dramatic shifts in their demographics as young, typically white professionals have sought out neighborhoods with cheap housing that are close to their jobs and cultural hubs. City governments hungry for new tax revenues have encouraged these shifts, and areas like Washington, D.C.’s U Street Corridor have seen massive redevelopment efforts tailored specifically for these new young professionals — which, thanks to rising rents and property taxes, force out the existing poorer, minority communities.

But while in most cities gentrification is caused by a simple desire for prime real estate, in New Orleans the draw is the very culture that the resulting changes to the city is eroding. Like many natives of the city, Domonique Meyers thinks New Orleans is already in danger: “It’s ’bout to be extinct.”

Meyers was born in New Orleans in 1986 and grew up a few doors down from the White House with his parents and three younger siblings. For years, his grandparents lived in that house, anchoring a block made up almost entirely of their children, grandchildren, and other relatives. “My uncle stayed next door, we stayed next door to my uncle, my aunt stayed in the other house," he says. "It’s like one big family, you know?”

Like many of the black sections of Mid-City, his neighborhood was relatively poor and saw its fair share of violence. But it was also a tight-knit community, he says, as even unrelated neighbors became de facto extended family, with parents watching out for one another’s children as if they were their own. “I used to be able to get lost in this community and my parents would know where I was at. Because the parents down the street would be like, ‘Domonique’s down here,’” he says.

With a mother who was in the church choir and a father who’d once had dreams of an R&B career, music was a natural interest for Meyers. “I was born doing something with music,” he says. But it was the sounds of the neighborhood that compelled him to pursue it as a passion. At McDonogh 28, the elementary school down the street, he joined the marching band after watching second lines parade through his neighborhood. “I was like, how you can march and play a tune and be on rhythm at the same time?”

Amy K. Nelson for BuzzFeed News

Pride in your neighborhood and ward is also an integral part of being a New Orleanian, and brass bands were often named after their neighborhoods. Early bounce artists like DJ Jimi and DJ Jubilee made local pride a central part of their music, calling “Where ya at?” at the raucous crowds of sweaty, dancing black youths who would respond loudly with the name of their ward or neighborhood.

“You reppin’ 5th Ward, in the club, in school, you rep your ward," Meyers explains. "So it was like, y’all got a small hood. So we always had a big chip on our shoulder."

Eventually, his aspirations turned to hip-hop, and he became an MC in New Orleans’ thriving underground scene under the name Dinero. Early on, his lyrics took a decidedly socially conscious bent. Although Meyers says his parents raised him to stay out of trouble, it was still all around him in the 5th Ward. “Just comin’ home from getting a snack at the store, I’d see a dead body in the street,” he explains. “I was able to be in it, without being in it, you know what I mean? That’s why my lyrics are that way.”

On Aug. 28, 2005, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit the city, Meyers was 18 and just beginning to make a name for himself in the hip-hop scene — including, he says, a spot on the 2004 From Da Block to Da Booth mixtape hosted by Tony Yayo, a member of 50 Cent’s G Unit. At the time, his family was finishing preparations to move into the White House, which his father had come to own, but they quickly changed course and packed instead to go to Baton Rouge, where Meyers’ uncle lived.

His neighborhood would be spared the worst of the flooding after a series of levee breaks engulfed the city in the days following the storm — “We got, like, 3, 4 feet of water here,” Meyers says — but the consequences were still devastating.

The floodwaters had done significant damage to the White House. The roof was destroyed, and, as it sat for months, mold began to grow in the walls, all of which would have to be gutted. Meyers enrolled in Southern University, and the family stayed in Baton Rouge as they struggled to rebuild the house from afar.

There was state and federal assistance to be had, including $150,000 from the Road Home Program, but the program was plagued by corruption and delays, and the family didn’t receive the funds until three or four years ago. Then, Meyers’ father, who worked in hotels in the city and made the hour-plus commute every day from Baton Rouge, had a heart attack and was subsequently fired from his job in the hotel industry. With his father unable to work and his younger brother still in high school, Meyers — who was in and out of college — and his mother labored to keep the family afloat in Baton Rouge. But while they were away, more changes were happening in the neighborhood than Meyers had anticipated.

As Meyers’ family was struggling to come home, city officials were intent on making Mid-City a core part of their reconstruction plans. A sprawling section of New Orleans that stretches across multiple smaller neighborhoods and wards — including the bottom portion of the 5th Ward, where Meyers lives — Mid-City constitutes the closest thing to a geographic heart of the city.

The centerpiece of those efforts is a 70-acre, multibillion-dollar hospital complex that will begin opening this year and will include a new veterans hospital, a public hospital, medical research facilities, and gleaming new office buildings.

But other changes have come to the area as well, as Landrieu has used millions in federal transportation dollars to rehabilitate roads, install bike lanes, and build a “greenway” — essentially a park designed to link different neighborhoods together — that will run through the heart of Mid-City. A new charter school has opened, featuring state-of-the-art equipment, and the city has used tax credits and other inducements to lure small businesses into the area.

Domonique Meyers

Amy K. Nelson for BuzzFeed News

On the residential side, the redevelopment has attracted hundreds of people. On virtually every block there’s construction going on at one house or another.

“I interviewed this neighborhood for two months before I bought this house. Just talking to people, hanging out,” says Eddie McDonald, a 45-year-old IT professional who moved to New Orleans a year and a half ago from the Dallas suburbs, initially living in the Garden District section of town before eventually settling into the house across the street from the White House.

McDonald, who has roots in New Orleans and went to college here, is like many of the new residents. He has a well-paying job and disposable income, and, when he moved in, he was able to qualify for the type of loans needed to buy — and refurbish — a home. He was drawn not only by the economic opportunities of New Orleans, but also the cultural ones. “I got to handpick a city because I work remotely,” he says. “I picked New Orleans because I had the fondest of memories of living here. It’s just everything. It’s the community, it’s the crawfish boils.”

McDonald ultimately settled on Meyers’ neighborhood when his house, which was still being remodeled by the previous owner, finally came on the market. “I wanted a double [duplex], and I wanted off-street parking. There’s not a lot of neighborhoods that have these doubles,” McDonald says.

But he also chose the neighborhood because he’d like to expose his son to a socioeconomically diverse group of people, which he hopes the 5th Ward will provide. Although his son was in one of the country’s best school districts back in Dallas, McDonald worried about the lack of diversity in their suburb. “Where we lived was predominantly white … I couldn’t in good conscience raise him in that environment in the world we live in, and set him up for success,” he says. “It was a conscious effort … to put him in an area where at 10 years old, race, economic status, none of that matters.”

He quickly bristles, however, at mention of the word “gentrification.”

“The mix in this neighborhood isn’t about any one race coming in and another leaving; it’s just everyone lifting it collectively,” he says. “When you say ‘gentrification,’ it has a negative overtone.”

But the racial makeup of Mid-City has indeed changed since 2000. According to The Data Center, which tracks population information in Southern Louisiana, in 2000 black residents accounted for 64.3% of Mid-City’s population, while whites accounted for 23.2%. In 2010, the last year that official census data is available, blacks accounted for 55% of the neighborhood’s population, while white residents had risen to 27.3%. And while hard data isn’t available for the last five years, residents say the shift has accelerated as the city’s efforts to redevelop the neighborhood have ramped up.

McDonald, however, argues that changes to the neighborhood are inevitable, regardless of the new residents’ race. “Let’s say you’ve got a group of 100 young black professionals [and] you’ve got a bunch of houses on this block that are ready to be remodeled. Now you’ve got these young black men, who are making 80, 90 thousand dollars a year, they’re starting out … they come in. Do you not think that would change the vibe of this neighborhood? It doesn’t matter who’s moving in. What they’re saying is, 'Unless we keep it exactly what it is, it’s going to change [for worse].' And that’s not realistic."

McDonald isn’t alone in feeling defensive when the word “gentrification” comes up. In his interview, Landrieu also pushed back against the idea that the term is often synonymous with a sense of cultural erosion.

“There’s some people who have this sick mentality that all the bad things kind of help make the good things,” Landrieu says. “That’s wrong. I think that’s wrong. I don’t believe you need poverty to make culture. … Lots of people conflate good things and bad things.“

“I’m not obtuse, I can understand, people don’t like change. You know, they’re comfortable. But it’s also life. Life happens,” McDonald also says. “It’s going to change. The fact that somebody is concerned with the color of skin of somebody moving in? That’s their issue. Because that might be an issue in another town, but that’s not an issue in New Orleans.”

Sitting one morning with him on his family’s stoop, it’s easy to see Meyers’ connections to his neighborhood — and the disconnect between longtime and new residents. Every few minutes, a car ambles past, slowing when the driver sees him. Windows roll down, horns honk, and greetings are hollered. Meyers responds in kind, a smile on his face. “She lives down the block from here,” he says of one young black woman. “Yeah, he just got out [of prison],” he says of a twentysomething black man who circles the block twice.

Meyers’ new white neighbors are also friendly: One young mother pushing a stroller waves hello as she hurries past, and others smile as they go about their lives. But there’s a distance to their interactions, and they feel more perfunctory than his almost familial exchanges with people who grew up here.

“When Katrina happened, I knew something was gonna change — I just didn’t know how,” Meyers says. “But now I see it. It’s a lot of people who are not from here who stay right next door to us. People from South Carolina, all over the world, New York, California. So you felt a sense of well, my neighborhood’s ’bout to be gone.”

He hops off the stoop and looks down the street into the sun, eyeing the houses. “I probably know 2 out of 15 who stay here right now. And everybody knew everybody before that. We the first ones here and ’bout to be the last ones left. And we on the verge of getting kicked off our own block.”

A woman pulls her car over just down the street. “Oh, you should talk to her,” he says. “She knows everything about this block.”

Deborah Chapman steps out of her car onto the broken sidewalk, smiling as the bright sun gleams off her sunglasses. Impeccably dressed, even for a Saturday, she is the classic neighborhood matriarch, commanding the attention — and respect — of anyone she turns her gaze upon.

Deborah Chapman

Amy K. Nelson for BuzzFeed News

Julie Chen

CBS

Two words have come to define Julie Chen’s career: “But first.”

Overtly, it’s her oft-used transition between Big Brother segments. A viral video highlighting her nearly identical delivery of the line and accompanying movements over many seasons earned her the nickname “The Chenbot.” But over the course of the series' 17 seasons, she’s learned to embrace the expression and even turned it into a cheeky catchphrase.

More significantly though, “but first” is essentially what Chen heard at every turn as she embarked on a career in television news.

Yes, you can be an assignment reporter, but first you have to do it at half the salary.

OK, you can be an on-camera anchor, but first you have to look less Asian.

Sure, you can have this high-profile job, but first you have to agree to take on an additional, less prominent job as well.

That constant barrage of caveats would be enough to deter most people from continuing to reach for their dream job in their dream profession. But for Chen, every single “but first” fueled her relentless drive to become the multihyphenate of the highest order that she is today: The host of CBS’s long-running Big Brother, the co-host of CBS’s The Talk, mother to 5-year-old Charlie, wife to CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves, and object of infatuation for the millions of viewers who tweet about her perfectly coiffed hair, impeccably styled ensembles, lavish lifestyle, and all the other ineffable elements that have turned her into one of the most beguiling and beloved figures in television today.

But for a very long time, Chen was unsure if there truly was a place for her on television — no matter how hard she tried to carve one out for herself. “My whole life I’ve been told, ‘No. No. No. No. No. You can’t do this. OK, maybe we’ll let you slide in here but don’t expect to be treated equally to the others,'” Chen told BuzzFeed News while seated at a table in her dressing room at The Talk. “But every negative thing that’s happened to me along my career path has ended up being a blessing in disguise and gotten me exactly where I am today.”

The Talk hosts in Season 1.

CBS

Julie Suzanne Chen was born in January 1970 in Queens, New York, the third of three girls. A self-described “teacher’s pet,” Chen said she was never cool enough to hang out with her older sisters, Gladys and Victoria, who were “thick as thieves.” Instead, most of her childhood was spent clinging to her mother, Wan Ling Chen. “My mom was my best friend,” she said. “To this day, whatever my mom says is law. I have so much respect for her. She’s the wisest, most level-headed person I know.”

Education was always of utmost importance in the Chen household — both formal and informal, which meant that the nightly news was a constant in her life from a young age. And one night in the early 1980s, the Chens experienced a local news broadcast that changed young Julie's life forever. “There was a broadcaster by the name of Kaity Tong on ABC back then doing the 5 o'clock news. And back then, any time you saw any Asian face — I'm Chinese, but it didn't matter if the person was Korean or Japanese or whatever — it was a very big deal. It was a special moment,” she recalled. “My father started shouting, [Chen shouts in Chinese]. Which means, ‘Hurry up! Hurry up! Everyone get down here, there's an Asian face on television!’”

“My mom was like, You know, you could do that, and I was like, I can?” Chen continued. “It was like she planted that seed and I watered it myself. From that point forward, I just didn't know any other path.”

Chen before and after her surgery, in images she showed on The Talk in 2013.

CBS

After Chen graduated from high school, she set out to become a television reporter. The first step was applying to colleges “far away from home … so I could grow into my own person,” she said, smoothing a stray hair that escaped her off-air ponytail. “There were always a lot of people telling me what to do.” In the end, the distance and celebrated journalism program at the University of Southern California proved to be the perfect fit. “From day one of my freshman year, I was committed to my path,” she said.

By the time Chen graduated, she had had a few low-level assistant positions that earned her a job as a general assignment reporter in Dayton, Ohio. It was her first major job in news, and it was also the first time she would hear “but first” in her career.

“When I got that job, they said to me, ‘You don't have experience and we're a medium-size market. We'll give you a job, but first we're going to start you at a much lower pay than everyone else,’” she recalled, the frustration still lingering decades later. “They were like, We're doing you a favor.”

Professionally speaking, the job provided invaluable training ground; but on a personal level, it was hell — she found herself dealing with the kind of ingrained racism she hadn’t experienced since childhood. “In grammar school, you're getting on the school bus and someone goes, ‘Oh, ching chong,’ and they'd pull their eyes to the side,” Chen said, growing uncharacteristically quiet. That taunting became nonexistent in junior high school, high school, and college, but things changed for Chen in Dayton. “I grew up in New York City, I came out to Los Angeles — two hugely diverse cities — and then I go to Dayton and I’m the only Asian person in the entire town,” she said. “It was so weird. … It was not the world I knew. It was eye-opening and shocking, but a lesson to me.”

Chen before and after her surgery, in images she showed on The Talk in 2013.

CBS

But Chen tried to make the best of a bad situation in Dayton by clocking some time on the anchor desk during holidays. Her boss, however, let her know it would not turn into a more permanent position — and he didn’t mince words. "'You will never be on this anchor desk, because you’re Chinese,'" she recalled him saying on an episode of The Talk in 2013.

"'On top of that, because of your heritage, because of your Asian eyes, sometimes I've noticed when you're on camera and you're interviewing someone, you look disinterested, you look bored.'"

At the time, Chen spoke openly about how that statement — coupled with similar sentiments from a "big-time agent" — led her to have plastic surgery in an effort to appear less Asian. And that conversation with her boss in Dayton marked the beginning of the end for Chen living and working in Ohio. "As soon as my news director told me I would never see the anchor desk as long as he was news director in Dayton … it told me, 'Don't think of building a life in Ohio — or a future,'" she said. "It motivated me to go where I would be welcomed."

After coming up with an unfortunately short list of cities that might be more open to the idea of an Asian-American news anchor, Chen moved back to the East Coast and began working as a general assignment reporter at WCBS in New York City. But again, she found herself in a “but first” scenario.

A collegiate Chen in 1989.

Julie Chen / Via instagram.com

“Normally they paid $125,000 for entry-level general assignment reporters in New York City, but they said, ‘You're lucky we're giving you this shot,’” she recalled of being offered substantially less money to do the same job as her colleagues. Still, Chen accepted the job. After all, she wanted out of Ohio and WCBS was offering more money than she was making at the time.

It was 1997 when Chen joined the network, which was simultaneously working to launch a revamped version of The Early Show that would eventually replace CBS This Morning. The new series centered around Bryant Gumbel, the beloved host of NBC’s the Today show, who had been lured away to headline the new program at CBS. Because Gumbel was bringing in an entirely new team for his show, the existing CBS This Morning crew was let go. For Chen, that meant pulling double duty: In addition to her job as a general assignment reporter at WCBS, she was to asked to act as the newsreader on CBS This Morning until the revamped Early Show launched. It was a lot of work, but it was exactly the opportunity she had been waiting for — to prove exactly what she was capable of doing.

But again, she found that opportunity diminished by others before she even had the chance to begin. “I remember my news director saying, ‘Don’t get your hopes up. They just need someone to keep the seat warm,’” Chen said. The Early Show was scheduled to launch in November 1999 and Chen was initially filling in as the newsreader for the month of June, but after being informed that she “didn't totally screw up,” CBS This Morning extended her informal deal through Labor Day.

And that single move, unbeknownst to the then 29-year-old burgeoning reporter, set Chen on a path that would lead to Big Brother, The Talk, and Les Moonves.

Chen at 17.

instagram.com

The powers that be at CBS were so preoccupied trying to find Gumbel’s female co-host for The Early Show that they completely overlooked the fact they were supposed to hire someone for the newsreader position Chen had been filling in for. “They gave me the job simply because I had been doing it,” she said, with a laugh, of how she came to be staffed on one of the network’s flagship programs.

Although, once again, that “but first” reared its ugly head. “Because I was already in the family, they looked at my contract and said, ‘Oh, great, she's only making $75,000 a year, we'll get her for $125,000. So, again, they were like, ‘The starting salary is normally around $350,000 a year, but we'll pay you $125,000.’”

“I thought, When is this shit going to end?!?,” Chen shouted, looking up, arms outstretched. “Like, Haven't I proved that I earned my spot here? Now can you tell me what's fair? But it made me work harder to prove myself.”

Financial frustrations notwithstanding, Chen found herself exactly where she had long dreamed of being before she even turned 30: working alongside a professional idol on a respected newscast that was nationally syndicated. “It felt like I had been invited to the grown-ups table,” she said. “I remember Bryant Gumbel calling to congratulate me on getting the job. He was just like, Congratulations, Chen! And I was like, Oh my god, Bryant Gumbel knows my name!’”

Chen on the WCBS News

CBS

The success of The Early Show (which aired for over a decade) gave Chen her first high-profile, steady job and — more important — put her on the radar of Leslie Moonves, CBS’s president and chief executive officer.

After her impressive start on the program, Chen’s bosses approached her in June 2000 about hosting a new reality show called Big Brother, the American version of an insanely popular Dutch series of the same name that had already spawned several other incarnations in Europe. While Chen was flattered, she was worried Big Brother would be the nail in her hard news career coffin. “When I went into news, my career goal was to be a foreign correspondent on 60 Minutes,” Chen said. “So I asked the head of news, point blank, 'If I take this job, am I forever closing the door on ever becoming a 60 Minutes correspondent?' And to his credit, he was honest with me and said, ‘Probably yes.’ So I said, 'I'm not going to do it.'"

Besides, Chen already had a job — one that, incidentally, was based out of New York City, which would make it difficult to host a show based out of Los Angeles. “They said, 'We worked out your schedule and the minute you get off the air in New York, you’ll fly to L.A.,'" Chen remembered. “I was like, What if I say no? And they said, 'That would be considered insubordination because we could technically assign this to you.' … So I was like, ‘OK…let me go home and cry and then I'll give you my answer.'"

CBS

In the past, Chen felt like she “kind of just had to say, ‘Thank you for the chance.’” But this time, she realized she had a bargaining advantage. Not only was she gaining recognition for her work on The Early Show, but some crafty calculation revealed a weakness in CBS’s armor. “I was holding the cards because I realized they boxed themselves into a launch date of July 4 and they came to me on June 4,” Chen said of Big Brother. “I knew they only had one month, so I told them to go with their Plan B.”

But there was no Plan B. In fact, Chen believes she was technically the network’s third choice — a fact that is, to this day, a sticking point between her and Moonves; then solely her boss, now also her husband.

“When we were putting together Big Brother, I said, ‘If we could find somebody who has a real credibility, like a newsperson, that suddenly gives the show much more cache,’” Moonves told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. “I did say, ‘How about Julie Chen? She's young, she's pretty, she's hip, and she's a newsperson. I don't know if she wants to do it’ — because I didn't even know her at the time. I just knew her as somebody working at CBS News.”

Chen countered, “I have read articles where Carson Daly said they offered [Big Brother] to him and it's so funny because … if I bring it up: ‘You could have been married to Carson Daly!’ [Moonves] says, ‘It's not true.’ All I know is that I read it in Variety." And eventually, years later, Moonves confirmed Chen’s suspicions. “My husband did say that the person they did want was Meredith Vieira, but she turned it down,” she said, before adding with total sincerity, “That would have been good if they could have gotten her.”

Chen on the first season of Big Brother.

CBS

Chen started her tenure as the host of Big Brother on July 5, 2000, and immediately experienced a kind of backlash she never expected, thanks to CBS’s Survivor, which had premiered less than two months earlier to rave reviews and insane ratings, setting a tough precedent for Big Brother. "Because we weren't Survivor, but it was similar — with people forced to live together, getting voted off, and the last person standing getting a whole chunk of money — people hated us," Chen said. "They didn't like me, they didn't like the show, they thought the furniture and the lighting in the house was cheap, they thought I should go back to news and how could I do news and a reality show?”

The first few seasons of Big Brother continued to be just as rough for Chen. She struggled with the criticism that viewers lobbed directly in her direction as she flew coast to coast every single week to film the series. “I read what was written about me and — surprise, surprise — the majority wasn’t kind,” she said. “It's a scary, dark, lonely place. Part of me thought there would always be haters, but sometimes you read a comment and realize there's a grain of truth to it: I could see why they think that of me.”

In retrospect, Chen readily acknowledged that she struggled at first to present herself in a relatable and natural way, thus earning the Chenbot moniker. (“I’m Asian, I’m not supposed to have personality,” she joked of the criticism to Larry King in 2013.) And though she’s greatly softened over the course of Big Brother’s 17 seasons, Chen contends that being likable is not technically what she’s there to do. “My job is the facilitator because the stars of the show are the houseguests. I'm just there to interview them in their three minutes of final fame before they get kicked out,” she said. Then, she smiled coyly. “But, I am the Chenbot.”

CBS

Imagine our potential if we didn’t have to unscrew bottle caps.

Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed

This toaster that toasts your bread and piles it up for you, neatly.

George Watson / Via designboom.com

Or this toast launcher, because using hands is overrated.

Ivo Vos / Via ivovos.com

This toothbrush that turns into a fountain that'll rinse your mouth.

David Ponce / Via ohgizmo.com

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Scott Olson / Getty Images

At a recent Bernie Sanders event, Dave, a white fiftysomething in a Grateful Dead hat, offered an explanation for Black Lives Matter, the activist group that had interrupted Sanders just hours earlier in Seattle.

They weren’t activists. They were “agent provocateurs,” Dave said, sent by the Democratic establishment to quash the Vermont socialist’s message.

His mother, who was standing next to him across the temporary fence separating the press from the crowd at a large Sanders rally on the University of Washington campus, interrupted. “He’s a conspiracy theorist,” she said.

He’s not the only one. The conspiracy theories are hiding in plain sight at Sanders’ giant rallies. The crowds are mostly white and mostly frustrated by the confrontations with black activists some Sanders supporters say are doing nothing but tearing down the only candidate who truly believes in the Black Lives Matter cause. But some of Sanders’ backers even take it a step further. Online and in person, this set of white Sanders fans wonder aloud if there’s some outside force causing the protest movement to target the senator.

The basic mythology is that someone — maybe frontrunner Hillary Clinton, maybe the Republicans, maybe her billionaire backers, maybe even the FBI — is using Black Lives Matter to tear Sanders down, to diminish an insurgent candidacy that, the supporters say, is viewed as a real threat by the establishment.

On a flight from San Francisco to Phoenix recently, for instance, a young, white, male Sanders supporter noticed the reporter sitting next to him was writing about Sanders and, unprompted, started talking about information dug up on Marissa Johnson, one of the young black women who took the stage at the Seattle Social Security event. He noted online sleuths on Reddit had discovered the woman had posted about being an evangelical Christian and a Sarah Palin supporter on Facebook years earlier. Subterfuge, he said. She’s not the real deal. Something’s afoot.

Black activists like Johnson who have interrupted Sanders on stage have been doxxed, digitally harassed, and shouted at by Sanders backers, they say. Online there is the vibrant talk about who is really, secretly, responsible. The activists laugh off specific conspiracy charges but say that the continued incredulity from Sanders’ white supporters toward their cause proves their point that “white progressivism” isn’t interested in the issues Black Lives Matter is trying to bring to the fore. The lasting conspiracy narrative is all the proof they need, the activists say.

Hours after the first reports of the Seattle action — in which a small group of activists took over an event where Sanders was set to speak — the internet lit up with people claiming there was something amiss.

“I swear they were paid to do that,” one commenter wrote in the comments of an Imgur post featuring a picture of the Seattle protesters.

“Clintons did it,” wrote another.

“It this a legitimate group? Have their official media accounts said anything concerning this? Could be paid subversion,” wrote another.

The doxxing began.

“Apparently one of the women, Marissa Johnson, was a Sarah Palin supporter some time back. You can probably draw your own conclusions…” wrote one.

It’s not everyone. On Reddit, it’s easy to find hundreds of comments discussing how best to understand, respond to, or support the activists. And it’s hard to tell the allegiances of online conspiracy theorists — and impossible to underestimate the penchant for mischief online. But many of the comments were similar to those heard in person at Sanders events over the last month.

Other online chatter claimed the protesters were paid for by George Soros, the left-wing billionaire who has helped fund efforts supporting Clinton’s run for the White House. Some even suggested the FBI was involved.

Left out is much of the context. Sanders and Martin O'Malley (unlike Clinton) attended Netroots Nation in June, where both were shut down by protesters during a candidate forum — a moment that changed the Democratic landscape this summer, and particularly for Sanders.

Since then, the protesters shut down the Seattle event, the only stop on his recent West Coast tour that his campaign did not manage or coordinate. But Sanders has had plenty of events in other locations — from New Hampshire to Iowa to New Orleans — without interruption from activists who are part of the large, dispersed, and decentralized movement called Black Lives Matter. And unlike Clinton (who has also had her own somewhat contentious interaction with activists), Sanders often speaks at large, open rallies that are free from the Secret Service security requirements that accompany Clinton. In interviews and online, Black Lives Matter activists have said Clinton’s unique security cordon versus Sanders’ relatively wide-open access has a lot to do with why he’s been protested more than she has.

His campaign is extremely sensitive to the black protest movement. Campaign officials have made efforts to reach out to the activists, and altered the Sanders stump speech to ensure “Black Lives Matter” is said more than once each time Sanders speaks.

The Sanders campaign did not respond to two requests for comment on supporters and the conspiracy issue.

The ugliness began almost immediately after the Netroots action. While Sanders’ campaign attempted to mitigate the damage and reach out to the civil movement through listening sessions and meetings that go on to this day, many supporters were upset and began trashing the protest and doubting its legitimacy in online forums.

“It was definitely from a Sanders-supporting camp of people specifically treating the action as targeting Bernie Sanders, which it wasn’t, and specifically orchestrated by somebody else — as though we don’t have the autonomy,” Tia Oso, one of the protesters who interrupted the Netroots candidate forum, told BuzzFeed News on Thursday. “Almost like Black Lives Matter is not a real movement.”

“It’s very insulting and completely tone deaf and really indicative of the level of vitriol and derision that very specific Bernie Sanders supporters are exhibiting and began to exhibit right away — which is 100% racist, it’s discriminatory, it’s very anti-black,” she said.

Oso said the Netroots action sprung up organically among people in attendance at the conference and would have occurred had Clinton chose to attend. Sanders wasn’t the target, and neither was the other man onstage, O’Malley. But many Sanders supporters in Phoenix felt their man had been unfairly targeted, Oso said. She was confronted in person at the conference, she said, and within a couple weeks the first conspiracists began to appear online.

“It’s odd that none of them have showed up to any of Hillary’s speeches,” wrote Bernie subreddit user LoveIsABernieThing in late July. “Something does seem very, very fishy.”

“Hillary wouldn’t be below paying them,” Margoer replied. “We know the history of mercenary protesters.”

A few days later, other Sanders supporters explained how Soros and Clinton could be behind the whole thing. “It’s not tinfoil,” one redditor wrote.

To Oso, the conspiracy claims belittle her movement and its supporters, suggesting white Sanders supporters aren’t as progressive as they make themselves out to be. Sanders and his campaign team, she said, have made genuine attempts to understand and advocate for Black Lives Matter after Netroots. Sanders’ grassroots army has not always followed suit.

“Some of the things that he’s said has still been a little bit tone deaf, but you know, nobody’s perfect,” she said. “Overall, his commitment to making a correction and listening and being receptive has been very genuine and you are seeing a responsiveness from him — as a campaign and as an individual.”

“His supporters, again, their attitude is still condescending, disrespectful, racist, anti-black. Some stuff is even sexist, it has a hint of misogyny to it,” she went on. “There’s a huge disconnect.”

Often mixed in with the online theories is racist, misogynistic, and other common and distasteful internet flotsam. It’s important to note: Online, it can’t really be determined whether that vitriol comes from true Sanders supporters.

When Sanders was interrupted at the Social Security rally in Seattle, though, there was plenty of ugliness. Microphones caught members of the audience yelling angrily as the two women took the stage. Protesters said they heard calls for police to use their tasers and calling for their arrest. The protesters allege a water bottle was thrown at them and they were told to “shut up” because “Bernie does so much for you.”

Online, a moderator on the SandersforPresident subreddit wrote, “Seriously. It really shouldn't have to be said, but the fact of the matter is: it doesn't matter if you disagree with the movement or the actions taken by those two women yesterday. Stop brigading other subreddits. Stop going to /r/BlackLivesMatters. Stop posting racist vitriol in /r/BlackLadies.”

On the BlackLivesMatter subreddit — which claims not to be directly connected with the movement’s leaders — moderate added a two-step barrier to entry to prevent what moderators wrote were “pitchforks and torches” from Sanders supporters.

The women who took the stage in Seattle, Marissa Johnson and Mara Willaford, say they’re very aware many Sanders supporters think they were sent to harass Bernie by one of his opponents.

“My first response to this was, ‘Bitch better have my money!’” Johnson joked, when asked about the conspiracy theories swirling that Clinton was behind the protests, to the hosts of the This Week In Blackness podcast the day after the Seattle action. “Yes, please, give me that money, I’ll expropriate those funds back to the ‘hood, let’s do it. Hillary, this is a call out: If Hillary wants to give me some money, please do.”

Johnson, the protester doxxed the most online, said her parents were “tea partyers.” She doesn’t share their politics, but she remains a “very devout, evangelical Christian.”

“I did run up there and confront Bernie Sanders because of my religious convictions. Are they right-wing religious convictions? No,” Johnson said of the accusation she is a conservative plant. “My religion says you lay down your life for other people. And so that’s why I do what I do.”

Willaford told the podcast’s hosts that the protesters — who were known in Seattle protest circles before the Sanders interruption, though other Black Lives Matter organizers in the city were not aware of the planned Sanders action — that she and Johnson were inundated with email after they interrupted Sanders, much of it nasty.

“The day of, we got emails that were like, ‘You should have been arrested, what you did was so rude and outrageous and undemocratic to take up space like that and you’re a bitch and a gorilla and whatever whatever,’” she said. “And then a couple of days later we would get an email, same person, being like, ‘So I read a couple of articles about the action and I thought about it and I was just really emotional when I sent that email I sent.’ We’ve got several emails from people apologizing for their very emotional, entitled-ass reactions to the action.”

She also heard a lot of the conspiracy talk from Sanders supporters.

“I’m really excited, you know, 50 years from now to read about this black femme power front within the FBI,” Willaford joked.

Oso, the activist who protested at Netroots, said the Black Lives Matter movement intends to stay a part of presidential politics for the foreseeable future. That means the potential for more actions, more protests, and, Oso said, more chances for Sanders supporters to show where their blind spots are.

“To decide that not only is what we did is not valid, but it was actually orchestrated by a white person with money? As though Black Lives Matter is for sale, under the corporate control of somebody else?” she said. “That is disgusting and insulting. And this is why the Netroots action, I will stand behind it 100%. It revealed and is continuing to reveal so much about what’s wrong on the left.”

Darren Sands contributed reporting.

Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in American Ultra.

Lionsgate

When it comes to playing potheads, some actors are naturals. Jesse Eisenberg, for all his talents, is not one of them, as exemplified by American Ultra, a sort of stoner answer to The Bourne Identity. The movie sees someone get killed with a spoon and the CIA running a program to turn criminals and people with mental illness into highly proficient killers, and yet somehow the least believable element is that the neurotic, high-strung, intent Eisenberg is perpetually baked. The only aspect of his actorly high that feels genuine is the paranoia, which, within the auspices of the comedic action movie, is totally earned.

Eisenberg and his co-star Kristen Stewart are a lot more famous now than when they were first paired in Greg Mottola's nostalgic 2009 coming-of-age romance Adventureland. Stewart has weathered the insanity of the Twilight franchise and has been redefining her career with some ambitious, interesting choices. Eisenberg got an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg as the quintessential millennial in The Social Network, and he'll next play Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice baddie Lex Luthor. But together, their charms remain rooted in their abiding unaffectedness. Some people come across as larger than life onscreen, but Eisenberg and Stewart don't. They're most eloquent in the beats between lines of dialogue, and they never seem sure what to do with their hair.

Connie Britton in American Ultra.

Lionsgate

Eisenberg's innate twitchiness may run counter to the pleasant haze in which his character Mike Howell prefers to stay, but his scenes with Stewart have a pleasant solidity that just manages to hold American Ultra together. It's a very August sort of movie, the kind that benefits from low, lax expectations in the same way that last week's similarly secret agent–themed bit of fluff The Man from U.N.C.L.E. did, for the few who saw it. Mike is the product of a canceled CIA program intended to train super soldiers. His memory was wiped and he was parked in a rundown West Virginia town where he's been living a low-key life employed at a convenience store while trying to work his way up to proposing to his infinitely patient girlfriend Phoebe (Stewart).

Mike and Phoebe look more like slacker twins than a couple, uncombed and T-shirted, their biggest shared ambition to go to Hawaii for a vacation. Mike's the spacier of the two, even after he's been reactivated by Victoria Lasseter (Connie Britton), his old boss. When one of the assassins sent to eliminate Mike by agency go-getter Adrian Yates (Topher Grace, perpetually smarmy) yells, mid-chase, "Wait!" Mike...stops and turns around.

The movie, which was directed by Project X's Nima Nourizadeh and written by Chronicle's Max Landis, never really gets the timing of bits like this, which should be funnier, down right, though they certainly get bloodier, carnage unfolding in the town jail, the den of the local drug dealer (John Leguizamo), and the supermarket. The action's just fine, building up to one flashy long take featuring Walton Goggins as a killer named Laugher, but the sight of Britton primly wielding an assault rifle is ultimately more rewarding than the choreography.

John Leguizamo and Eisenberg.

Lionsgate

American Ultra is loose and lazy, even for comedy so deliberately wacky. Leguizamo's character is a caricature, the CIA plot is haphazardly explained and nonsensical, and the pacing overall is herky-jerky. But as a love story, the movie has a shabby but striking sweetness.

What initially looks like a typical setup for a couple in a comedy like this — as one character puts it, Phoebe seems to serve as Mike's girlfriend, mother, and landlord — is revealed to have a history and dynamic that goes much deeper. The two have little to their lives, but they've carved out a space of matching tattoos, records, omelets, comic book ideas, and cannabis for themselves that's a tangible, touching oasis. The film may not aim for much, but it's further evidence that Eisenberg and Stewart are two actors who work very well together, something no government plot or stoner gags can obscure.

Who’s gonna get in your Bikini Bottom?

Let’s see which class clown will touch your heart.

You got it dude! But which one?

Putting the “aww” in border.

For India's and Pakistan's Independence Days, Rahul Ram of the band Indian Ocean, lyricist Varun Grover, and satirist Sanjay Rajoura composed a beautiful song called "Mere Saamnewali Sarhad Pe".

The song, which was about how similar people and situations on both sides of the border are, won over Pakistanis and Indians who strive and hope for peace between the two countries.

Being Indian / Via youtube.com

In response to this gesture, Pakistani Army officer Muhammad Hassan Miraj, wrote a song.

View Video ›

It was performed by singer Mujtaba, and musicians Ali and Haider.

dailymotion.com

It is Pakistan's rendition of "Mere Saamnewali Sarhad Pe".

AisiTaisiHypocrisy / Via dailymotion.com

And it responds to all the quips in the original song, and extends hope for more peaceful relations between the two countries.

Aisi Taisi Hypocrisy / Via dailymotion.com

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How does this two-hour show take six hours to film?

You have to arrive at 4 p.m.

That seems a little early, no? Considering the show airs at 7 p.m.?

Logo TV

There's a lot of standing around in lines, waiting to be ushered to your seat.

^^ You, when you finally get to sit down.

TBS

Once you sit down, that is basically your home for the next six hours.

And we're not going to lie, they're not the comfiest of seats.

Channel 9

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All they want to do is be your love.

It’s in the stars, mate!

Literary gifts to squeal over.

Jarry Lee / BuzzFeed / Etsy

Bookworm plush

"Hi, I am Marco the Bookworm and I love books. I was made with felt, stuffed, and then hand sewn with matching embroidery thread. I am the perfect gift for a word nerd."

Buy here.

etsy.com

Watermelon slice felt corner bookmark

"A juicy watermelon slice fits the book's corner perfectly and becomes a very funny and summery bookmark!"

Buy here. More bookmarks from the same shop can be found here.

etsy.com

Book Lover's knitting needles

Buy here.

etsy.com

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Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been welcomed to the Torres Strait Islands.

Tony Abbott spent much of his first day in the Torres Straits on Murray Island, traditionally known as Mer, where he was welcomed to country with traditional dance by the Meriam people.

Mr Abbott visited the grave of land rights campaigner Eddie Mabo, whose legal action gave Indigenous people native title rights and extinguished the idea of terra nullius.

Accompanied by Mabo's daughter Gail, Mr Abbott laid a wreath on Mabo's grave and said he was moved by his legacy, "This was a warrior, not simply a strong man physically, but a strong man culturally and spiritually, who decided that he would take on the legal establishment".

"He would take on the previously settled view of Australian law, and good on him for having a go, and ultimately good on our system for being able to accommodate Eddie Mabo and the other plaintiffs' cry for justice," Abbott said.

Tracey Nearmy / AAPIMAGE

The trip fulfils one of Mr Abbott's election promises to run the country for one week every year from an Indigenous community.

Tony Abbott is the first Prime Minister to visit the region in 18 years and said he wanted to focus on measures to ensure higher school attendance rates, employment opportunities and safer communities.

Speaking on Murray Island Mr Abbott said the Torres Strait Islanders were a good example of a functional Indigenous community, "We all know that there is high levels of dysfunction in some remote places but when it comes to things like sending the kids to school, trying to ensure that there is a strong sense of community spirit and community pride, the people of the Torres Strait really are an exemplar."

Tracey Nearmy / AAPIMAGE

The fight for The Block may end in police intervention.

Residents of Redfern's famous Block face being forcibly removed from their campsite as early as this week.

The Supreme Court will decide on Thursday whether to issue an order to have members of the Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy (RATE) removed from the The Block.

The ongoing fight between two Aboriginal groups for control of the area looks increasingly as though it will end with police intervention after a judgement by Justice Hulme in the Supreme Court in Sydney on Monday found that the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) has legal possession of The Block.

The AHC plans to develop The Block, turning it into student housing and retail space, but local Aboriginal activists have refused to budge until guarantees are made that any future developments will include affordable housing.

Elder Jenny Munro, the defendant representing RATE, was issued with an eviction notice in February.

While Justice Hulme found that the AHC had rightful possession of the land he failed to deliver a writ which would give the sheriff and police the authority to forcibly evict protestors at the site, setting a hearing for Thursday.

"There could have been an opportunity for the Aboriginal Housing Company to work with the community over 12 months ago and they chose not to and they still choose not to be transparent with our community," Munro said outside court.

The Block has been occupied for the past 15 months by protesters who refuse to leave until the AHC commits to building affordable Aboriginal housing before allowing commercial enterprises to be built there.

Jenny Munro (R) speaks with her legal counsel (Allan Clarke / BuzzFeed)

Today's hearing marks another chapter in the fractured and acrimonious struggle for The Block.

Last week it was revealed that the federal government had been working with both groups to mediate. Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion had committed five million dollars in seed funding to ensure Aboriginal housing was built alongside any commercial developments.

A six-hour meeting between both groups and Scullion failed to break the impasse, with members of the AHC refusing to sign an agreement and baulking at a stipulation to allow a member of RATE to sit on the board.

Senator Scullion told BuzzFeed News at the last court hearing that forcibly removing people was unfathomable.

"The notion that somehow on some morning in the future that police, security or whoever would visit upon the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and forcibly remove them is something that is unconscionable and I think we should do everything to avoid it. So I am doing everything in my power."

Munro believes that hopes of future mediation are unlikely, saying that any relationship between the two parties is beyond repair.

"Under any terms they just want us off the land and to proceed with their plans and they don’t want to be interrupted by anyone or anything. That plan (The Pemulwuy Project) doesn’t give Aboriginal people any guarantee of housing and that’s a problem," Munro said.

Jenny Munro speaks with the Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion (Allan Clarke / BuzzFeed)

In the 1970's the then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam granted funds to the AHC to purchase houses and land for the Aboriginal community.

In 2011 houses on The Block were demolished to make way for the Pemulwuy Project, a multi-million dollar redevelopment.

The AHC says in order to build affordable Aboriginal houses it needs money from private development. RATE moved onto the block demanding Aboriginal homes were built first. Since then the project has remained stagnant.

Michael Mundine, Chief Executive Officer of the AHC, declined to comment on the legal proceedings outside the court.

If a writ is issued on Thursday for the eviction to go ahead, Munro's legal team has requested that the court allow 28 days for RATE to leave.

The Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy (Cole Bennetts / Getty)

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