Isn't the company info page on the main Hardees.com site a better source of intelligence than the Hardee's Cool Kids website? It has the name as "Wilber," as shown at top and on the left. So even the guy's own company can't figure out the right spelling.

UPDATE: But the main company press release has it as "Wilbur." Aghhhhh!

UPDATE2: (The company press release also gives a date of birth one year earlier than that given by the Times.)

Maybe everyone at Hardee's is so used to just selecting hamburger and french fry icons on those touch-screen ordering stations that they've forgotten how to properly write.

The most fascinating possibility comes from the website Dos Factotum, which theorizes that Hardee might have swung both ways, name-wise. Kinky! But is anyone ever, truly, bi? Maybe Wilbur just couldn't accept that he was really "Wilber," because of, you know, society.

[Dos Factotum]

• Processed french-fry inventor JR Simplot, 99, "natural causes," May.
• Baskin-Robbins founder Irvine Robbins, 90, "complications related to old age," May.
• Lovie Yacey, founder of Fatburger, 96, "pneumonia," February.
• Carl's Jr. founder Carl Karcher, 90, "had Parkinson's disease and was being treated for pneumonia," January.

We left out Popeye's Fried Chicken founder Al Copeland, 64, who died of "malignant salivary gland tumor" in March. But he didn't do too badly at all, especially, as our own Hamilton Nolan pointed out, "for a man with a lifetime diet of fried chicken!" (Ahem.)

So there you go — irrefutable, scientific proof that you not only can but probably should load up on cheeseburgers, ice cream, french fries and hot dogs throughout the summer and really for the rest of your life. Hold the guilt!

[Times]

Obama said the actress doesn't have his personal email address. "She sent one email to Reggie, who forwarded it to me," Obama said, referring to his 26-year-old personal assistant, Reggie Love. "I write saying, 'thank you Scarlett for doing what you do,' and suddenly we have this email relationship"

One day, a hot politician is happy to engage in "thoughtful... back-and-forth correspondence," and the next he's denying that it means anything at all. Johansson's heart is so breaking. Oh, sweetie, this little tactic is called "moving to the center," and all powerful men do it once they've gotten what they want from their "base." By the time the inauguration comes, you'll have turned your heartache into a gratuitously overproduced hit record and forgotten all about this sad little e-incident.

[Washington Post via NYM]

Katy has a steady boyfriend, but she doesn't believe in sex before marriage. "I know what it does to people," she says. "One night my boyfriend and I went a little too far and I felt like I'd fallen so far away from God. I doubted myself and my strength. I was so weak at the time in my relationship with Christ."

If someone is going to have sex, however, Katy absolutely believes that person should use a condom: "Some Christians think that if you use a condom, it's premeditated. So nobody uses a condom at all and they have sex and get pregnant the first time."

That's a far cry from lyrics like, "I got so brave, drink in hand / Lost my discretion... I kissed a girl and I liked it... I kissed a girl just to try it."

Devout Christian music fans are now trying to figure out how Perry fell off the path of earnest righteousness, or if she was ever on it. But the preacher's daughter who once said "if people buy the record, that’s all the credibility I need" has probably just been looking for a winning angle of any sort and, after keeping her faith in the power of sex, has finally found it.

Below, the video for "I Kissed A Girl," in which Perry slinks around in lingerie with other women.

[Radosh]

I experienced my life in a very happy way, but, what I want to say to you is, I was alone as a child. My father was dead. My mother left him when I was 2 months old and he died when I was 8 years old. He drank too much and he was a bully and she had the courage to take two boys, one of them two months old and one of them 5 years old and to leave him in 1937 and get back into the business world and get a job and raise us through the end of the Depression and through the Second World War. She did a great job, but she was at work until 7 or 7:30 at night many nights.

...I needed to be—not the center of attention—but I needed to be able to attract attention when I wanted it, through my stunts and my fooling around physically with faces or postures or voices I would do. Then it became funny the things I would say, and I became more of a wit than simply a mimic and a clown...

Q: Can you remember the first joke you ever told?

No. But I do remember the first time I ever made my mother laugh. And unfortunately, it’s lost on me what it was I said. But I noticed the moment, I knew something had happened, this was when I was very young. My mother laughed fairly frequently. But I knew the difference between her social laugh and her really spontaneous laugh when she was caught off guard—which is the key to laugher, being off guard. And I said something to her, and I saw that in her and it registered with me.

[Psychology Today]

(Getty Images photo taken today at a collection of flowers left in memory of Carlin at the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.)

[via Adrants]

Weren't we all more comfortable with euphemisms? What's so bad about the "not-so-fresh feeling?" Clear language, at times, is overrated Here's a list of some of the unfortunate byproducts of this gross, bodily fluid-based advertising trend:

• Cottonelle: "But today consumers are telling us loud and clear that we have more permission to speak to them directly about the category, and more overtly about their behinds and cleaning and care for their bottoms."
• Always: "Have a happy period."
• Charmin: "No one likes bath tissue that leaves pieces behind."
• All Bran: "Personally, I feel better when I let it all out."
• Jamie Lee Curtis for Activia: "Whereas we routinely talk about other uncomfortable topics, such as erectile dysfunction, digestive health is not being addressed — and it's time to change that. I am not afraid to talk about bowel issues — there, I said it."
• Clearblue Easy: "Introducing the most sophisticated piece of technology you will ever pee on."

[Adweek]

In the 1980s and 1990s, Carlin's comedy became both sharper as social commentary and emotionally darker, sounding even, at times, bitter. The comedian was treated for alcohol addiction after a fight with an audience at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 2004.

Below, Carlin's 1990 routine (NSFW) on how euphemisms undermine discourse in America. Post your own favorite routines in the comments.

[AP, Times]

[Times]

The UK does not want Martha Stewart no matter how many lines of crockery she's designed for Wedgwood! The UK Border Agency has barred the felonious lifestyle queen from entering the country, presumably because of her criminal ways here in America. It's admirable consistency for the agency—famous star criminals must be kept out along with the common scum. But it may turn out to be a crippling blow for England's Toad-in-the-hole industry:

Martha Stewart "loves England." Her spokesperson says so! Just look at some of the English businesses that have benefited from mentions on Martha's website:

Toad-in-the-hole

Exceptions to all such general rules exist. Toad-in-the-hole, from England, and pannukakku, from Finland, are baked rather than fried.

'Transferware Cake'

The nineteenth-century English pottery that inspired this cake (top left) was known for intricate scenes and border patterns. Here, a border detail is repeatedly piped in chocolate.

Some kind of plant

Bred in England and introduced by Graham Thomas in 1961, 'Bobbie James' bears small, fragrant, creamy blooms in large clusters

Crumbles

Recipes for these desserts were primarily passed by word of mouth from mother to daughter, not created by and attributed to a particular chef. Many date loosely to colonial America (some, like crumbles, hark back farther to England), where a necessary efficiency prompted home cooks to look in their larders and out their windows into the fields or orchards before whipping up dessert for the family.

Consider the consequences, England.

[Telegraph UK]

Under its editor, Franca Sozzani, Italian Vogue has gained a reputation for being more about art and ideas than commerce. Ms. Sozzani also doesn’t mind controversy.

She said that, as an Italian, she has been intrigued by the American presidential race and Mr. Obama, which was one source of inspiration when she and Mr. Meisel began discussing, in February, the idea of an all-black issue. Also, she was aware of the lack of diversity on the runways in recent years and the debate it fueled last fall in New York, where Bethann Hardison, a former model who ran a successful agency, held two panel discussions on the topic.

Ms. Sozzani said the issue was not a response to criticism that she, too, has under-represented blacks or portrayed them as stereotypes.

It all sounds very progressive, and is enough to make one long for the days when America was known for its optimism, and the Western Europeans, all too often, for xenophobic fear of immigrants, relative religious intolerance, and for being too cynically stuck in their ways to engage in genuine, constructive racial dialog. How the tables have turned.

[Times]

(Steven Meisel photo via Times)

"in the kids videos section lol —Rudes | March 10, 2008 "
"why such a mean pose in a video store?? lol take your cool off. —ahedofmytime | January 28, 2008"

"since everyone seems to be confused....it was WACKY TACKY day at my HS. GEEZ! —FresherThanThou | February 18, 2008"

"I...am your father!!!! luke1 | April 25, 2008"

"still a pimp cobra...representing the patriot missiles v. scuds jaybol | November 2, 2007"

[Kanye West]

[Supertouch via Animal NY]

After reviewing police records and a videotape of the incident last year, Deputy District Attorney Joseph D. Shidler wrote Friday that the "only way the victim's foot could have been where the video indicates it to be was by the victim placing it in that location."

Apparently the video showed enough to place blame on the pap but did not actually show the alleged run-over. It did show a lot of "noise and confusion" surrounding the vehicle, which was going "extremely slow."

Note to paparazzi: If you've been run over by Britney Spears' car, and there's not a single video or photo definitively proving it, it didn't happen, period. No one is going to believe that not a single cameraman in that desperate hive managed to get a shot of your foot being crushed.

[AP]

• George Michael, 75-minute concert on New Year's eve, 2007, for nickel billionaire Vladimir Potanin. Price: $3.5 million
• Rihanna, 40-minute show for billionaire Oleg Deripaska on New Year's eve, 2008. Price: $500,000.
• Jennifer Lopez, 40-minute birthday party show for billionaire Andrei Melnichenko in April, 2007. Price: $1.2 million.
• Christina Aguilera, three songs at Andrei Melnichenko's wedding in September, 2005. Price: $3.6 million.
• And to put it all over the top, Madonna is reportedly considering an offer from "an unnamed Dubai-based tycoon" for a one-night private performance. Price: $10 million.

Fortunately, you can still hire Pat DiNizio of The Smithereens to play in your living room for $2,000.

Conscious rappers touch on this now and then, but are much more interested in telling us that black criminals are victims of the system. A recent example: "Black Thought" on The Roots' new album tells us, "It is what it is, because of what it was, I did what I did, 'cause it does what it does."

OUTRAGEOUS.

So: indeed, it's "not all like that." But if the folks known as the hiphop generation are learning their politics from "conscious" rap, there is little hope for our future.

Oh, John McWhorter, that's where you're wrong. The hip hop generation has a message for you: "I know I can/ Be what I wanna be/ If I work hard at it/ I'll be where I wanna be." Dig it, old man!

[NYS]

Ms. Decker, 27, one of the movie’s directors, seemed a little embarrassed by her own limited experience.

“The sad thing is, I desperately need to get with a girl,” she said, adding that a few stolen kisses was all she could count on the female side of her sexual ledger. “I just didn’t want it to be some random woman.”

At least Decker is honest about her "desperate" attempt to jump on a trend. Given the tenor of the launch party for her documentary, it would have been hard for her to bill the film as a serious examination of female sexuality:

At the after-party for the screening, at Vlada on West 51st Street, the culture seemed to be shifting in several directions simultaneously. A woman in Ziggy Stardust makeup, wearing a prosthesis cast from a man’s penis, participated in a simulated sex act. A while later, the woman, Amy Ouzoonian, a dancer and performance artist, made out on a couch with a mannish woman in a black suit.

The documentary apparently does throw out some mildly interesting facts as it retreads the old idea that women, like men, tend to find women more stimulating to look at.

What really matters to women, Dr. Chivers said, at least in the somewhat artificial setting of watching movies while intimately hooked up to a device called a photoplethysmograph, is not the gender of the actor, but the degree of sensuality. Even more than the naked exercisers, they were aroused by videos of masturbation, and more still by graphic videos of couples making love. Women with women, men with men, men with women: it did not seem to matter much to her female subjects, Dr. Chivers said.

“Women physically don’t seem to differentiate between genders in their sex responses, at least heterosexual women don’t,” she said. “For heterosexual women, gender didn’t matter. They responded to the level of activity.”

So, generally-straight women like watch women masturbating and having lesbian sex. Interesting. Someone should do a study on the sexual appeal of a video of two disingenuous women going through the motions of a lesbian fling and then rushing to exploit the affair for cash and/or bragging rights. Who knows, maybe that'll still be hot! And bankable.

[Times]

Since you can't buy the best headlines, like these, total CNN.com shirt sales are stuck at "north of one thousand" shirts, a CNN spokeswoman told the Times.

Come on, CNN, give in. You're already publishing the headlines, why be so ashamed of some of them that you prevent yourself from making some residual bucks? Besides, if you don't start pandering now, Fox News will beat you to it, then you'll just end up giving in and sinking to their level anyway. Just ask MSNBC.

[Times, NotACNNTShirt.com]

When Lieber first floated his idea in February, the responses were scalding, both on the original article at FiLife.com and at StarbucksGossip.com:

starbucks has created a monster... they deserve the entitled whiners that they get.

...It really makes me sick that anyone could ever expect better service than the person behind them should get.

These are some of the most outlandish and ridiculous ideas I have ever heard.

Ron, many, many people have told you why this won't work. I can't imagine why you still think your "idea" is something remotely workable.

That's the most arrogant article I've ever read on a blog.

Despite this feedback, Lieber somehow managed to get Starbucks to consider his "elite status" idea, so he wrote a Times column Saturday to gloat. This time around, Slate blogger Mickey Kaus is giving him flack, calling him a "creep" and predicting "things could get ugly" if Starbucks goes along with the plans.

On the other hand, Barack Obama may very well be president by January, and if that happens, you just know sipping lattes and acting elite is only going to get hotter.

[Times]

The gym offers classes including "Yogod," its take on yoga, and "Chariots of Fire," a spinning class. Spaghetti-strap tank tops and short shorts are not allowed, and women's tops must cover their bottoms...

"I don't need anything to lead me into temptation," Mr. Heistad said. "I can get there on my own."

"It's a Christian business, a Christian environment," he added. "It's a better feel. You stand a little taller, don't grunt, don't get pumped and yell, 'Daddy's got a new set of pipes.' "

Hey: it keeps the Christians out of our gyms. Daddy's got a new set of pipes, baby, yea!

[NYT]

"Has he ever studied the history?" he asks, in that familiar near-whisper...

"He was complaining when I did Bird [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else." As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, "but they didn't raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate."

Lee shouldn't be demanding African-Americans in Eastwood's next picture, either. Changeling is set in Los Angeles during the Depression, before the city's make-up was changed by the large black influx. "What are you going to do, you gonna tell a fuckin' story about that?" he growls. "Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I'm not in that game. I'm playing it the way I read it historically, and that's the way it is. When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like Bird, I use 90% black people."

Eastwood pauses, deliberately - once it would have provided him with the beat in which to spit out his cheroot before flinging back his poncho - and offers a last word of advice to the most influential black director in American movies. "A guy like him should shut his face."

Knowing Lee and how much he hates confrontation, I'm sure he'll let these comments about "a guy like him" just slide right off, and this whole "controversy" will fizzle out quietly.

[Guardian]

[Flickr via Environmental Graffiti]

[Made in Brazil via Queerty]

“In the big picture, this is not important, but there is a relationship between the entertainment industry and fashion,” Parker said on Thursday evening, adding. “We’ve watched sales dwindle and we’ve watched people be less inclined to spend money on clothes.” To Parker, these are reasons for companies to take particular care with their relationships. “Look, my affection for the dress hasn’t changed,” she said, “but what they did was so short-sighted. It’s just unethical and disappointing that they would allow the dress to be worn again.”

Interesting. But, um, also unethical? Using your biggest fans as unwitting publicity props by giving the worthless tickets, having them line up for hours and then sending them home without the promised movie, all because your production company was too incompetent to secure the thousands of available extra seats.

And they don't have a $56 million, twice-as-good-as-expected opening weekend box office to cushion the slight.

[Times]