Never ‘Scrooge McDuck’ in an ATM

The trapped man’s attempts to psychically project his pleas to “cash [him] outside” through a 14-year-old girl on Dr. Phil also failed to get help.
When a locksmith got trapped in the room behind an ATM without his phone or swipe card to get out, he applied critical thinking and passed notes to ATM customers outside. (Well, the first critical thinking since leaving the keycard that would let him out or his phone in his truck.) Unfortunately, it took a few tries to get help because “some customers appeared to dismiss the notes as a gag.”

So, thanks a lot, candid camera prank shows and web feeds. You’ve created a world where nobody trusts a note reading “Please help. I’m stuck in here and I don’t have my phone. Please call my boss” on their ATM receipt.

Don’t worry. Somebody did eventually call the police. But, if we as a society can’t trust a machine that gives us cash and quotes Alice in Chains, who can we trust?

Booze News takes to the skies

Beer is always The Guys’ baggage.

The Guys have two important updates in the world of booze today, and both center around civil aviation.

If you’ve ever waited for your luggage in the airport, then you’ve probably seen a few mushy airport greetings. We never got them, personally. You just went on a trip to get away from someone, and now you both have to pretend to be happy to see each other?

That is, until we saw this airport reunion.

Some lucky bastard can’t wait to lock lips with this beauty in front of Avis and everybody.

An Australian man (of course) checked the beeah (it’s apparently Australian for “beer”) as his sole luggage on a flight from Melbourne to Perth. And, to demonstrate how much more seriously Australia takes both beer and luggage, it arrived in perfect condition. So, that’s two reasons to fly Quantas now.

On the other hand, it doesn’t matter how much you pay for the flight, there’s still a limit to how much you can drink before they’ll let you take off. Former Anheuser-Busch CEO August Busch IV was taken into custody for allegedly appearing too intoxicated to pilot a helicopter, which is weird, because we thought everyone drinks Bud Light to sober up before heading home. But, statistically, it’s still the safest way to travel to Waffle House at 3am.

UK police look to give mystery amputee the finger

London 2010 … does anyone know what these guys ate before the Olympics? Because they’re clearly missing a few fingers.

Every summer is the Summer of Something. 1998 was the Summer of Asteroid Movies. The year before that was the Summer of George. Last summer was the Summer of Thinking 2016 is as Bad as It Will Ever Get … which means we had to find a new theme for this year instead of reheating last summer’s leftovers. So, we’re now at least waist-deep into the Summer of Mystery Amputations.

The odd thing about the Summer of Mystery Amputations, or SoMA, is that none of the amputations happened this year. In fact, many of these extremities were originally removed in previous decades or even millennia. But, today’s is much more recent: a finger found seven years ago in the U.K. that doesn’t match any open cases and was never claimed by anyone.

So, if you’ve lost a finger in London 2010, and can describe it, the police would like to free up a little space in their office fridge for an extra Cornetto.

NASA uses many materials, but not Goop

“Alright, Commander Shephard. This masking tape should realign your sex chakras, which I don’t have to tell you will calm your internal seminal fluid dynamics and help you read better in low light.”

Remember those Memory Foam mattress ads (maybe they’re still on late night television) and how they’d claim they were developed for and approved by “the space agency,” complete with a weird almost, but not quite NASA-y logo? That was because, even though Memory Foam was developed for a NASA mission, you can’t use the NASA name or logo to sell things.

Well, as Gwyneth Paltrow and Body Vibe learned recently, that’s also the case for bullsh*t that NASA did not approve.

NASA issued a statement Friday that they don’t use carbon fiber materials in space suits to monitor — much less heal — astronauts’ vital signs. This was to counter claims made by Body Vibe on Ms. Paltrow’s blog lifestyle site, Goop, that their $5 to $6 body stickers can restore “our internal balance” to an “an ideal energetic frequency.” Well, we don’t have to tell you that this “calming effect” is essential for maintaining energy reserves, strengthening immune systems and alleviating “physical tension and anxiety” — that’s just Science. (And we f*ckin’ love Science.)

So, for now Goop is NASA-free until they verify Body Vibe’s claim. Which should happen any day now, we’re sure …

Walk like an Egyptian amputee

“Wiggle your big t — oh.”

So, this is pretty cool. Archaeologists found a 3,000-year-old fancy prosthetic big toe in the Sheikh ´Abd el-Qurna tomb in Egypt back in 1997. After studying it, they found that it is remarkably advanced, being able to hold up body weight, flex and help the person it was fitted to walk relatively normally.

It also let the ancient one-percenter daughter of a priest continue wearing flip-flops, demonstrating the world’s oldest recorded case of #firstworldproblems. (Technically, this would be a #newkingdomproblem, amiright?)

So, good news if you need to fake your own ransom for money, time-travelling Bunny Lebowski.

Take it from Snee: We got stormtroopers all wrong

NED Talks: because I use my mustache tell you what to think by writing mostly gibberish.

The Internet is awash in “thinkpieces” — posts (sometimes columns, but often blogs that don’t want to be called blogs) that dig deep into some pressing issue that’s on everyone’s mind. Like who’s responsible for the water in Flint. Or how privilege keeps us in the dark when it comes to how life is for people of other backgrounds.

But, most of these are about movies and television, and yet written with the same level of thought and seriousness as what the 2016 election really means for Coal Country.

Regardless of topic, they all follow the model of TED Talks — the famous series of presentations by people passionately speaking on everyday topics to change the way we think about them. Which is great if we’re thinking the wrong way about climate change, but ridiculous if we’re thinking the wrong way about critics’ relationship with the DC Cinematic Universe.

So, in that spirit, I present my very first NED Talk — in which I elucidate on a topic of great importance only in my head and some studio executive counting Yuan in Hollywood.


“Man, this is so much easier in narrower corridors!”

You guys, we all think stormtroopers are terrible shots. But … what if we’re thinking about stormtroopers all wrong?  Continue reading Take it from Snee: We got stormtroopers all wrong

Washington Redskins ‘thrilled’ to win right to slur by proxy

The Washington Redskins: the Aunt Jemima of football — legally protected, but oof.

The Washington Redskins have long been a team of contradictions and frustrations — always trying to have it both ways.

They talk every year about how this is the draft where they take building a defense seriously, and then throw away millions and risk the franchise tag on the latest and (once) greatest wide receivers. They’ve thrown their weight behind 20 different quarterbacks and eight head coaches in 20 years, and it’s only a matter of time before they turn on their latest ones.

And now that the Asian-American punk band, The Slants, won their U.S. Supreme Court case to trademark a racial slur, owner Dan Snyder is “thrilled” that his team’s name — which was previously not a slur, but “an honor” — is now likely a legally protected slur.

While The Guys fully agree that the government should stay out of deciding which speech is offensive and isn’t (well, until the next debate over National Endowment for the Arts funding), it’s probably not great if your name is only kosher because of free speech. Welcome to the same legal defense as the Klan, the Westboro Baptists and every dude with a strong opinion about feminism online.

But, hey, we’re proof positive that you can’t legislate common decency.

Not just mad, *bedbugs* mad

“And if you can’t find bedbugs, even a good foot fungus is hard to get out of municipal carpet. Can you say ‘tinea pedis?'”

Mr. Rogers once famously asked in song, “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” It’s hard for children and even adults to sometimes learn how to manage our intense feelings when simultaneously angry and yet powerless to change our situation.

Some people, as Fred suggested, might channel that energy into something positive — playing tag with their friends. Or organizing a food drive. Maybe even counting to 10, playing with your trolley and moving on.

Others bring a cup of more than 100 bedbugs to their source of frustration, slamming it on a counter top so that they spread all over their office building.

There are just so many options to what to do with that mad you feel. What do you do, neighbor?

Nobody paid us to ask this

“Nobody — believe me — nobody knows better about swamps … let me tell you about swamps … there are many kinds of people — things — that live in them. And I’ve brought only the best, big league, into my administration.”
Let’s assume, for laughs, that there’s such a thing as “paid protesters.” That the only way for more people to protest a president than to attend his inauguration is if all those people were paid. That somebody who (a) had enough money (b) found value in giving it to a bunch of strangers to hold up signs and protest for women. Or for the environment. Or for science. Or to release tax records.

What’s the difference between such critters and a lobbyist?

Answer: The lobbyist gets a job in Donald Trump’s White House administration.

Authorities turn up heat on hot yoga founder

In hindsight, we’re not sure how anyone didn’t assume he’s a date rapist.

Authorities are on the hunt for Bikram Choudhury, the founder and namesake of Bikram or Hot Yoga. You may have heard of this from someone casually dropping into an unrelated conversation that they do yoga. Well, that fitness name drop is ruined forever, because Choudhury is now basically the Bill Cosby of stretching.

A judge in Los Angeles has issued an arrest warrant for Choudhury, who may have fled a $7 million dollar sexual harassment and wrongful termination suit by his former attorney by leaving the country. The lawyer, Minakshi “Miki” Jafa-Bodden, claims that Choudhury fired her after refusing to cover up allegations that Bikram raped and sexually assaulted a yoga student.

Police are now unleashing the dragnet, believing Choudhury fled to Mexico after hiding his assets. But, that was their first mistake: by turning up the heat, they’ve made it easier for Bikram to slip through any traps.