Against All Odds: Martha Stewart KILLS It Roasting Justin Bieber; Laugh Out Loud

Martha Stewart does maybe the best, and crudest
celebrity roast ever, and it is laugh out loud funny. 

Perhaps my least favorite famous person is Justin Bieber.

When a celebrity roast of Bieber was due on TV the other night, I practically ran screaming out of the room in terror at the thought of it.

Then I learned Martha Stewart was going to be one of the people doing the Bieber roasting. She is also on my Least Favorite List of celebrities. This was going to be grim.

Then, somehow, I caught a clip of Stewart doing the roasting of Bieber, and all the other comics and famous people sitting there on the stage.

It was brilliant! I found myself laughing out loud. Really loud. Enough to scare the dogs out of the room.

Yes, I know somebody wrote the script for Stewart, but she had the gall to deliver it.

Stewart's comedy routine was profane and big time crossed the line past good taste. The video is totally NSFW, and if you're easily offended, the video you'll see below is definitely not for you.

But for those of you who like a bit of crude, wildly funny humor, Martha Stewart absolutely killed it. At let me tell you, at age 73, she certainly seems to have some street cred.

I actually find myself liking her a bit more. Maybe she's off my list of Least Favorite Celebrities.

As for Bieber, well, go away.

But first, watch Martha Stewart be just perfect, but not the brand of perfect you're used to from her:

Guy In Jeep Decides He's NOT Going To Get Towed

A White Jeep was illegally parked outside a Chicago Walgreens. A tow truck dutifully showed up to remove the offender.

The driver was still in the Jeep, though. And he managed to score a victory. Watch:

Incredibly, Helen Mirren Is Even Better With Helium

The always well put together Helen Mirren
on a New York City subway this past winter.  

Helen Mirren is easily one of my favorite celebrities.

What's not to like? She's elegant, an amazing actor, fun, smart, an absolutely joy from what I can see.

Of course, she's quite dignified and proper, but judging from her recent appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, she's not afraid to poke fun at this dignity.

Fallon thought it would be a swell idea to conduct part of their interview while both he and Mirren were inhaling helium.

Mirren, in that helium voice, re-enacted her 2006 Oscars acceptance speech, and mentioned such classic British dishes as turd in the hole and spotted dick. (There's really such dishes, apparently.  Suddenly, I'm not hungry.

Anyway, this clip from The Tonight Show will make your day:

Woman Fired From Crappy Low Paying Job By Crappy Boss For Saying The Pay Was Low

A minimum wage employee at this Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Days Inn says she was fired after telling a reporter
her minimum wage salary doesn't cover her expenses.  

My latest nominee for the worst boss in America is Herry Patel, who manages a Days Inn in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

This all started when Washington Post reporter Chico Harlan stopped at the Days Inn to talk to people about an upcoming 25 cent increase in the Arkansas minimum wage.  He was working on an article about the subject. 

Harlan interviewed Patel, who then suggested the reporter speak with Shanna Tippen, a minimum wage employee, about the paltry pay increase coming her way.

Tippen told Harlan that the increase would help a bit, but wouldn't lift her above the poverty line. Harlan dutifully reported all these facts.

In a column in Monday's Washington Post, Harlan reports he's learned that Patel fired Tippen for talking to him. Remember, Patel was the one who suggested Harlan and Tippen have a conversation.

From Harlan's column Monday:

"'He said I was stupid and dumb for talking to (the Post),' Tippen said. 'He cussed me and asked me why you wrote the article. I said, 'Because he's a reporter; that's what he does.' He said it was wrong for me to talk to you."

At that point, she was summarily fired.

There might be more to the story, of course. Maybe Tippen wasn't totally innocent, but this whole thing looks bad.

On the day in which Harlan talked to Tippen about being fired, Patel called the Post because he objected to having been (accurately) quoted that he objected to that 25 cent minimum wage hike.

To be specific, Patel said the tiny 25 cent minimum wage increase was "bad for Arkansas. Everybody wants free money in Pine Bluff."

Yeah, there's nothing worse than somebody who works 40 hours a week and actually expects to make enough money during those 40 hours to put food on the table and pay the rent. How selfish!

Harlan said he tried calling Patel for comment about his firing Tippen, but Patel sounds like a belligerent scardy cat.

Writes Harlan:

"A man who sounded like Patel, reached recently at the Days Inn, declined to comment in several separate phone calls. On one call, the man said he'd never met Herry Patel and did not know who he was. On another call, he threatened to call the police if 'you keep bothering us.'"

Hours after Harlan's story on Tippen's firing was published, there must have been blowback down in Pine Bluff because Patel called Harlan back, finally.

In an update to his Monday Washington Post piece, Harlan wrote that Patel disputed Tippen's version of events. He said she walked out on the job after a disagreement. Patel said he'd approached Tippen to ask about her past criminal record, which was outlined in the previous Washington Post story.

Tippen stood by her story, and said Patel didn't bring up her criminal history during the hiring, and only spoke heatedly to him after she'd been fired.

The parent company of the Days Inn in Pine Bluff, Wyndham Worldwide, seemed to wash its hands of the situation.

The company said in a statement, "While we do not control or oversee staffing decisions at our franchised locations, we do require that each independently owned and operated hotel comply with all local, state and federal laws, especially as it relates to employment practices."

Way to sidestep things, Wyndham. Labor laws are weak in Arkansas, so Patel probably was complying with Arkansas law. Federal law is pretty hands off in this area, too.

Ever think to look into whether or not this firing was ethically OK, even if it was legal?  

Look, I get it. Raising the minimum wage probably affects prices for all of us. But NOT raising the minimum wage does, too.

I'm not happy with the idea of paying taxes for government assistance so that people who are working 40 or more hours a week can survive.

I'd much rather pay an extra nickel or whatever for a Big Mac or a cheap toy at Walmart so that people can make a livable wage.

I also get it that the CEOs of these big corporations ought to be making much more money than the chambermaids, the hamburger flippers and the gal behind the register at the mini-mart.

Still, I don't think making it a little easier for people to make ends meet without government assistance will ruin the frickin' economy.

With the income gap in this nation putting us into another 1890s Guilded Age, maybe it's time to put a little dignity back into working for a living. That means paying people fairly when they do work, and not kicking them aside if they object to NOT being paid fairly.

I know my little screed here won't make any difference on this topic. But the more we all say it, and the more often, the better off everybody will be.

Including the ultra-rich CEOs. After all, employees who are treated fairly tend to do a better job. And maybe make more money their employer, too. 

Let's Take Happy Selfies At The Site Of A Tragedy, Say Idiots

Awful people having fun with a selfie stick
at the site of the East Village blast and fire
in New York City.   

There they were, seven beaming women crowded together in the middle of  New York Street, sparkling smiles aimed at a camera on a "selfie stick."

You can see they're having a grand old time. Girls night out! What fun!

Behind them, you see lots of emergency vehicle, and a little more in the background, bright lights aimed at smoking rubble as firefighters search for bodies.

Oh, that's grim. Must be make believe, a movie set, right? Why else would these women be smiling?

It turns out, I guess it's fun to have a joyous time at the site of a tragedy.

The seven-women selfie was taken right near the site of that huge explosion and fire in New York City's East Village. You saw it on the news. The one that caused a spectacular fire. The one that leveled three buildings, killed at least two people and injured many more. The one that left dozens of people without a home and/or without a job.

Neighbors who live in the disaster zone say they don't like all the gawkers checking the scene out. I get that, but I also get how people want to see for themselves what happened. But how is this fun?

The selfie popped up the Twitter feed for EventPhotosNYC Friday evening.  I guess EventPhotosNYC on Twitter is meant to capture all the fun and frolic the Big Apple has to offer.

Obviously there was an immediate backlash on EventPhotosNYC to the seven women tragedy/happy selfie, and that spread super fast afterward through New York and beyond.

On the Twitter feed we had reactions like "Everything wrong in NYC summed up in one photo." and "Disaster porn selfies: The new hobby of the soulless."

The New York-focused news and entertainment website Gothamist got ahold of it, and rightly talked about how awful these people are.

Then these seven stupid women hit the big time. The front page of the tabloid New York Post.  The headline: "Village Idiots."

I'll say.

The seven women weren't the only ones taking happy selfies at the disaster site. Apparently a number of people have done it. I have no idea what they're thinking. Or not thinking.

As Gothamist noted, the behavior of these women, and the other people who took happy selfies at the explosion/fire site,  has to be pretty bad if none other than the New York Post is calling the selfies at the blast site "tasteless" and "heartless."

It shouldn't be spelled out like this, but there are apparently an incredible number of stupid people out there. But here goes:

Don't have fun and frolic at a disaster site. If you must go, try to help. And be respectful.

Geez!

Don't Order Through Amazon Because Owners Think Their Employees Are Indentured Servants

Amazon just dropped an odious noncompete
rule on its workers after The Verge exposed
the clause, which technically would
prevent former Amazon employees from
working anywhere else for 18 months after leaving.  

Here's another reason to hate Amazon.

The giant online retailer had a horrible non-compete clause for warehouse workers that, if strictly enforced, would prevent them from working pretty much anywhere else for 18 months after leaving Amazon.

The Verge exposed this horrible work rule last week.

Amazon announced a day after The Verge article  appeared that it would get rid of the non compete clause.

I'm sure that's only because of the bad publicity. They probably would have had that clause forever.

When the publicity dies down they'll probably either reinstate the policy or come up with something more odious.

Here's how the clause worked, according to The Verge. 

Seasonal employees at Amazon warehouses had to promise not to work at any company where they "directly or indirectly" support any good or serve that competes with those they helped support at Amazon, for 18 months after their brief stints at Amazon ended.

Since Amazon sells basically anything, it almost seems like workers after leaving Amazon couldn't work at anyplace that sells anything.

That would be really tough to do, wouldn't it? Given that most businesses exist to sell something.

"It is quite broad in its scope," says Orly Lobel, a professor of labor and employment law at the University of San Diego, who has studied noncompetes extensively and reviewed the Amazon agreement.

Non-compete clauses can be great and totally legit, if focused properly.  If somebody learns specialized insider information at Company A, that corporation doesn't want the employee to quit and immediately go to a competitor and spill all those secret trade beans.

Usually, people who are under such non-compete clauses can go to work right away for another company, as long as they're not a direct competitor in that specialized field.

Amazon, however, takes things much farther than that, and targets a huge class of workers not normally subject to non-compete requirements.

The Verge article, quoting Lobel, said there could well have been more at work with this non-compete language than just trying to protect closely held company data:

"Although companies may push noncompetes on low wage workers to keep trade secrets from leaking, there's also a more cynical explanation: to simply deprive competitors of employees to hire,  according to Lobel.

Noncompetes can also depress workers' wages. Traditionally, a key strategy to keep employees from defecting to a competitor has been simply to offer competitive wages, but a company that uses non-compete agreements can feel less pressure to pay well."

Well, you gotta hand it to Amazon, then. They found a creative way to screw the little guy, again.

Of course, the workers involved in the Amazon non-competes could have declined to take the job in the first place.

But most low income people, desperate for jobs and money, don't read dense legalese they sign. Or they figure they have no other options, or that these noncompete agreements are just the way things are.

Once hired, the workers feel stuck.

Says Lobel in The Verge article:

"People very well might decide that, despite their unhappiness with their job, despite the fact that they think they can do better with another employer, they might decide that it's just not worht the risk and that they should just lay low."

Yep, that's a mild form of indentured servitude in my book.

As I noted near the top of this post, The Guardian newspaper reported that Amazon said it was ditching the non-compete agreement shortly after The Verge publicized it.  Amazon said they didn't apply it to hourly workers, such as those that work in warehouses anyway.

Then why did Amazon make them sign the stupid thing? (See above.)

Of course, I'm suspicious. That Amazon folded on this so quickly suggests to me they have another sneaky way to screw low wage employees up their sleeve.

Besides, this type of non-compete was probably unenforceable anyway. Plus, it's not known to have been actually enforced on Amazon low wage workers

But the warehouse workers didn't know that. They also figured they'd have to hire lawyers to fight it, and who on a near minimum wage job can afford a lawyer?

Besides, courts have sided with Amazon in the past when it comes to screwing over or not screwing over workers.

In warehouses, workers had to go through a security screening before they left their shift for the day to make sure they weren't stealing stuff. That part is fair enough.

But this would often take a half hour or more of waiting in line and such for each worker, and they weren't paid for it.

Last December, the U.S. Supreme Court said this was OK, because the time waiting to be screened wasn't an "integral and indispensable" part of their job.

True, but it should have been free time. Unless Amazon warehouse workers all thought they would like nothing better to do on their time off from work than hanging around warehouses waiting to be checked to see if they were thieves.

I know other major companies don't treat their employees well. (Hello, Walmart!)

But Amazon seems to just have disdain for its rank and file workers.

I don't call for boycotts. Do what you want.

But for me, I will NEVER order anything through Amazon. Unless they start treating their employees with maybe just a little respect.

Leaving Facebook As If Leaving A Party

Watch this guy demonstrate how to melodramatically
leave Facebook. Roll your eyes and laugh.  

Let's face it. Facebook can be frustrating, with its damn algorithms that has the people that run the social media site thinking they know better what you want than you do.  

And there are the trolls, the advertisements, the pointless conversations.

Hey, everything has its drawbacks, right?

Some people get frustrated enough that they leave Facebook, never to post again. That's fine. Take it or leave it. Facebook is fine for some people, and not for others.

Every once in a while, though, somebody leaves Facebook (or worse, leave, come back, leave, come back, etc.) and make a dramatic announcement as to why they're leaving.

Sometimes its for good reason, sometime it's just pretention.

Here's how the worst Facebook departures might look as if it were really somebody leaving a party. Kinda funny, in a cringy way: