Silliness

“A classical take on the campaign of Donald Trump, with apologies to Mozart.”

This afternoon, flanked by the First Daughters, President Obama performed one the silliest yet most-loved American traditions, the pardoning of the national turkey. “Abe is now a free bird. He is TOTUS – the turkey of the United States.” Another turkey named Honest, the potential chopping block stand-in for the talkable TOFUS, was also pardoned. The pardoning of the Thanksgiving …

The Hill reports: Among the many duties of the president, the pardoning of a turkey on Thanksgiving stands as perhaps the most important. It is for that reason that conservative online publication IJ.com invited a few Republican presidential candidates to practice their turkey-pardoning skills, thereby making the case to the American people that they are truly Oval Office material. Retired …

On Spike TV’s Lip-Sync Battle, Joseph Gordon-Levitt donned Janet Jackson’s paramilitary drag for a spot-on take on 1989’s Rhythm Nation. JGL stars in the new comedy The Night Before with Anthony Mackie, who opens the clip below with his take on MC Hammer’s 1991 hit 2 Legit To Quit.

It’s a fundraiser for immigrants. Via DNA Info: Call it socially minded sexiness. The 2016 New York City Taxi Drivers Calendar is now out, and features a dozen of the city’s steamiest (and good-humored) yellow cab drivers in provocative positions. A portion of the proceeds from calendar sales will go to the University Settlement Society of New York, a city …

Crawling + running = crunning. Which is really just a renamed exercise that football teams have long called “bear-crawls.” Via Gothamist: It took a minute, but the fires of Hell have at long last forged a new trend in public humiliation-as-exercise, and it is called crunning. “But I already cry when I run!” you say. “How is this new?” No, …

A Massachusetts woman has won the right to wear her Holy Headgear in her driver’s license photo. The Boston Globe reports: Lindsay Miller claims the spaghetti strainer is a sign of her devotion to the “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.” Miller was originally denied by the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles the right to wear the colander, her lawyer …

PBS reports: On Saturday night, hundreds of men competed for the title of best facial hair in the nation. Around 300 men paraded on the Kings Theatre stage in Brooklyn, New York to show off their coiffed beards and mustaches for evaluation in categories like Musketeer (a mustache of the long and slender variety, along with a small, pointed beard) …

Somehow I avoided all of these looks during the era in which I had hair.

The website Influenster polled 40,000 readers on their favorite Halloween candy and somehow candy corn topped the responses from Oregon, Wyoming, Tennessee, Texas, and South Carolina. Blech. More reasonably, the highest total number of votes went to Reese’s Cups. If you can’t make out the logos on the map, hit the link for each state’s result.