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Freaks

trials

R. Kelly Acquitted: Jury Says It Wasn't Him In Sex Video

R&B singer R. Kelly has been acquitted of everything. Specifically, the 14 counts of child pornography that he's been on trial for in Chicago for the last month, stemming from a video allegedly showing him having sex with a 13-year-old girl. The jury repeatedly viewed the video during their deliberations, and have now let him walk. Everybody else in the world thought he was guilty. The entire case may have hinged on a single mole: More »

campaigns

Freaks Behind the Candidates: A Video Retrospective

Remember Barack Obama's mysterious Abercrombie posse? The sticker cultists behind the Clintons? Doesn't anyone screen the people who sit behind candidates anymore? Our esteemed videographers put together this collection of all the loonies mugging for the camera and distracting from the candidate. Just one more thing we'll miss about the primary season, until it begins again in 2010. (If this one actually ends. Kentucky and Oregon were last night. Obama won Oregon, as predicted. Clinton scored a ridiculously large victory in tiny Kentucky, as predicted. Clinton didn't drop out, as predicted. John McCain did something quasi-unethical with some lobbyists too, probably.)

freaks

No One In Chicago Fit To Serve On R. Kelly Jury

Freaky deaky swinger singer R. Kelly is about to go on trial in his hometown of Chicago for the crime of child pornography. But first, they have to find a jury. And that seems to be more difficult that you would think, because, judging strictly by media coverage, Chicago is full of weasels, crazy people, and child porn supporters. After the jump, the five best reasons [from a longer list at the Chicago Tribune] that people have given to get out of serving on the jury in this case of the century: More »

internets

The Freaks Of The Internet Interviewed On Video

Lately I've been watching Web Drifter, an online show that takes the Daily Show's practice of interviewing yokels and crackpots with a straight face, and applies it to the weirdest people on the Internet. Host Martin Sargent visits people like the infamous Peter Pan cosplayer, Hollow Earth believers, and a wizard. There's little of the cloying deadpan voice-over that weakened some Daily Show segments; the show just relies on the subjects' relentless weirdness. By not wrapping up the show in flashy gimmicks, Web Drifter deeply satisfies my need for a freak show. Below, Sargent interviews a man who plans to sail to the North Pole into the Hollow Earth. More »

social studies

Who Actually Reads The Drudge Report?

Yesterday I was having lunch with a pal who was schooling me on the real business of the web—did you know some people are really making a killing on the internet? I did know that, but only like, as a concept—and we wondered: Who reads Drudge? Who keeps it such a monster traffic site? So! Variety columnist Brian Lowry writes about what happens when you get a link on Drudge (everyone writes in to say they hope you get cancer you liberal for fellating Tim Robbins). That column—which isn't handled very well, he's way too snippy and classist, but hey—gets linked on Drudge! The comments from Drudge readers include: "You're fat"; "And remember when you are celebrating the Holidays JESUS is the reason for the season"; "Your a supposed journalist....take the heat for the dung you write and shut it!"; "You sure are fat"; "Why do jews always and I mean ALWAYS call people they disagree with anti-semitic? Its getting old already ok sons of abraham"; "I hope you get HIV and die from AIDS at one of your Hollywood butt plugging homo orgies"; "Most of us have jobs and families, instead of life 'partners,' granola, and burkenstocks."

freaks and geeks

How To Make It As A Model In New York

Do you ever wonder if that homeless guy in that MTA ad that says, "Give to the homeless. Just not here," is really homeless or is he some disheveled sad-looking old man playing the part? Turns out, the answer could be both. Welcome to the world of real-person modeling, where sad-looking old men are the next Giseles. In this week's (strangely alluring!) Times Style section, Bernice Yeung took a look at Ugly NY, a real-people modeling agency. Guess who's a model? Frightening concoction Amanda Lepore! A night technical director at Fox TV! A woman named Messy Stench and some really really ugly dudes. And guess where Ugly NY founder scouts for new talent? On the uptown-bound No. 1 train—the ugliest line in all of the transit system! More »

exercising demons

Are You The Crazy Person At Your Gym?

There's a middle-aged woman that I always see at the Printing House Gym. She spends somewhere between 4 and 5 hours on the Stairmaster every day. Her shirt is way too small for her body and sometimes her entire chest becomes unrestrained. She sings to herself loudly and does Fosse-like jazz hands. It's frightening! But, as the Times notes, gyms are now just nut huts for the fitness-conscious rich. More »

a little too real

Bostonian Sad That Boston Movie Makes Bostonians Look Like Freaks

There's long been a dearth of good movies set in (and especially filmed in) poor Boston (a.k.a. "Philly On the Charles"). Except The Departed and Mystic River but both of those were by dudes from real places (New York and California, specifically). So Slate's Patrick Radden Keefe is kinda excited about this new movie from Ben "Almost From Boston" Affleck, We Own the Gone Baby Gangster Clayton. Marky Mark and Russell Crowe are in it probably? But it was filmed in the real-life Boston with real-life Bostonians! Except the Bostonians were a little too "real life" and they make Boston look bad. More »

green freaks

'No Impact Man' Is Amazingly Still Married

Remember Colin Beavan, the 40-something Brooklyn writer who forswore toilet paper and showers in pursuit of a book deal about being green? To us it seemed that his wife, a kindly Business Week editor by the name of Michelle Conlin, was only hanging on by a thread. We're surprised to find that, months later, it seems she's still hanging on by that very same thread. Who knew organic shade-grown raffia was so sturdy? More »