One way to know Christmas season has officially started is to check if you’re crying. Every year, the UK department store John Lewis releases a Christmas advertising campaign that pulls at heartstrings and announces the holiday’s craze has begun.
The advertisement has become somewhat of a popular tradition overseas that has breached our shores thanks to the power of the internet (and hyper-aggressive marketing agencies). This year, to up the ante, John Lewis shelled out £7m campaign featuring Moz the Monster and hired Oscar-winning director Michel Gondry to film the spot.
But it wasn’t the most devastating Christmas ad this year. Heck, it wasn’t even the best Christmas ad from the United Kingdom.
That honor instead goes to BBC One and the media organization’s “Christmas Together” ad. Using a combination of stop motion and CGI technologies, it tells the story of a hard-pressed father and daughter struggling during the Christmas season. Eventually the pair erupt in a kaleidoscopic dance routine that unites dad with daughter and is sure to moisten the eyes.
Social media users loved it and crowned the advertisement as the winner of the Christmas season.
This might surprise you, but it turns out people love Beyoncé. You probably already knew this if you’re a human alive in 2017, but thanks to these new Instagram numbers that fact is now provable.
This year has had its share of viral moments—too many viral moments in fact (please chill on viral stuff until 2018, thanks)—and Instagram emerged as the preferred platform for celebrities to instigate events and airing out drama. Not than any of it was a publicity stunt.
But the most liked Instagram photos and videos this year generated from three stalwarts of the platform—Beyoncé, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Selena Gomez. Each captured the zeitgeist in ways personal, vulnerable, and flexing.
The best traditions are steeped in history. So are the worst ones. Thanks to economic hardship and the Temperance Movement, the 1920s were an incredibly difficult time in the USA. Silent film star Mary Pickford was a Canadian who swept onto the American silver screen, and she was the first actress to be called “America’s Sweetheart”. Mary Pickford was also known for her love of booze, and like many Americans in the throes of prohibition, she jetted off to sunny Cuba to the cultural hotspot that was 1920s Havana. It was there that the Mary Pickford cocktail was created, by legendary expat bartender Eddie Woelke.
Photo by Danielle Guerico
Prohibition of alcohol ended a few years before the full prohibition of marijuana picked up speed, so let’s toast Repeal Day by imbibing in both!
Prohibition of alcohol ended a few years before the full prohibition of marijuana picked up speed, but it’s little known that ‘hashish houses’ were prevalent in coastal cities. ust like alcohol, during the Jazz-Age weed was just part of the culture. During prohibition, it was illegal to drink and marginally legal to smoke and consume cannabis, which sounds inconceivable today.
Movie stars like Mary Pickford were one prescription away from accessing medically legal cannabis tinctures and preparations. One wonders if they were also used in cocktails before Harry J. “Asswipe” Anslinger got his hands on l’herba legislation.
In the spirit of American puritanism, the prohibition classic cocktail is presented here with a hint of rebellion: The Mary Jane Pickford, with a shot of cannabis infused Cuban rum.
Mary Jane Pickford
(adapted from traditional recipe by Eddie Woelke)
Photo by Danielle Guerico
1.5 oz Cuban Rum
.25 oz Infused Cuban Rum*
.5 oz Maraschino Liqueur
Juice of ½ lemon
1 Tbs. Demerara sugar
2 Pineapple Rings
¼ cup of Pomegranate seeds
Using a two-piece tin shaker, drop fruit in the bottom and muddle with lemon and sugar. Add maraschino liqueur and rum to small tin with the fruit. Pour over ice in large tin, lock tins together and vigorously shake until the outside is frosty. Crack open the seal and strain the contents into the small tin, dump the pulp and ice in the large tin.
Photo by Danielle Guerico
Add the infused rum, shake again with just two cubes of ice (this prevents the fruit pulp from absorbing any of the tincture). Using a fine sieve, strain once more into a coupe or champagne glass. Garnish with a pineapple leaf and if you’re feeling cheeky, a joint or rolling paper flower.
Photo by Danielle Guerico
Savor slowly, the more you allow the tincture to enter your sublingual and buccal glands, the faster the effects will take hold.
This tasty drink is slightly altered from the original, by using fresh fruit and no grenadine syrup, as well as adding lemon juice. The lemon is full of terpenes that can help mitigate any anxiety that some people experience with edible cannabis, this also accents the herbal taste instead of trying to mask it too much.
Photo by Danielle Guerico
Who knows if Mary Pickford liked weed, but she definitely did not approve of alcohol prohibition. When you consider the context and consequences of prohibition, it makes the restricted access to cannabis look even sillier. Drinking a spot of tincture is a really excellent way to partake, as it works quicker than edibles and requires no combustion. Make this to score a mild buzz and to tip your hat at two of the silliest laws in American history, the Volstead Act and the Marijuana Stamp Tax.
To make a cannabis infusion, add 7 grams—or the dosage recommended by your caregiver—of ground, decarbed cannabis to 250 ml (about 1 cup) of a liquor of your choice in a heat-proof mason jar. Do not seal the jar, it could burst. Place the jar in the top of a double boiler on a hot plate or electric stove top.
(Never, ever use a gas stove or an open flame.) Fill the top of the double boiler with enough water to cover the mason jar halfway.
Simmer lightly at around 160ºF (71°C) for 30 to 60 minutes. Use a digital thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature. Alcohol flames just over 170ºF (77°C), so pay close attention to the job at hand, and don’t go running out for a pizza. Plus, a low heat will keep evaporation to a minimum.
Let the mixture cool, strain it through a fine-mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth, then funnel it back into the empty liquor bottle. Top up the bottle with the remaining un-infused liquor until it’s back to a volume of 750 ml. This ensures that the THC will be dispersed throughout the infusion. Your infusion is now ready to use in your handcrafted cocktails.
Priddy was Meghan’s maid of honor at her first wedding, to Trevor Engelson (the same guy who recently sold a TV pilot about an ex-wife who marries a prince).
Ninaki Priddy on Meghan’s wedding day: ‘Meg literally shone with happiness. We’d been like sisters since we were two years old, so I knew she’d always wanted to get married. To see her finally doing that was . . . well, it was a big deal. It was such a moving wedding. I started crying the moment I saw her in her dress. We had the ceremony on the beach. It was so beautiful to watch, beautiful to be a part of. They each wrote their own vows. They loved each other so much…. It was an exciting time. This was the man she wanted to have children with.’
What she says as she looks through the old photos which she sold to the DM: ‘The person I knew is not there any more. Meg used to tell me she couldn’t imagine a life without Trevor. She said if anything were to happen to him she wouldn’t be able to go on. He cherished her, too. You should have seen the way he used to hold her face in his hands. We all felt he was her eternal love. It was such a shock when she told me they were getting divorced. After about three seasons of Suits, she called me and said she wanted me to know because it was going to come out in the papers. I knew they fought sometimes, but it wasn’t anything huge. The only obstacle was the distance because she was living in Toronto and Trevor was based in LA. But I thought that they were manoeuvring through it as best they could. Trevor would take his work to Canada to be with her and run his office remotely. I wasn’t aware there were any problems in the marriage.’
Priddy took Trevor’s side: ‘I had to accept what she said, but then . . .’ Ninaki hesitates. She has loved Meghan dearly for most of her life and is not the sort of person to easily betray somebody. Choosing her words carefully, Ninaki says she no longer recognises the girl with whom she shared her childhood. More to the point, she feels desperately for Trevor, for whom the ignominy of seeing his former wife now lovestruck with her very own Prince Charming is almost too much to bear. He truly believed they would grow old together. ‘A month after the divorce, I wanted to see how Trevor was doing. We met and talked. It’s not up to me to speak for Trevor, but I know he was travelling to Toronto every few weeks and would have walked the earth to make their marriage work. I don’t believe she gave him enough of an opportunity. I think there was an element of “out of sight, out of mind” for Meghan. The way she handled it, Trevor definitely had the rug pulled out from under him. He was hurt.’
The friendship breakup: ‘I tried to get details from her, but she wouldn’t tell me. What came to light after Trevor and I spoke ended my friendship with Meghan. I think everybody who knew them both was in shock. All I can say now is that I think Meghan was calculated — very calculated — in the way she handled people and relationships. She is very strategic in the way she cultivates circles of friends. Once she decides you’re not part of her life, she can be very cold. It’s this shutdown mechanism she has. There’s nothing to negotiate. She’s made her decision and that’s it…Meg always wanted to be famous. She just loved to be the centre of attention. We used to imagine her receiving an Oscar. She used to practise announcing herself.’ [From The Daily Mail]
Beyoncé And Kim Kardashian Still Do Not Like Each Other
At some point in your life, if you smoke weed daily, you are probably going to get to a point where the highs start to lag, where euphoria starts to feel sluggish and and hard to conquer. If that’s you, here are five tricks you can try to help get you where you want to be.
Change Your Environment
Try smoking in a new place. It might not get you higher, but a change of scenery might help inject a different kind of high. So instead of smoking in your room or on you couch, take a walk. Find a new spot. And light up. Shaking things up is usually not a bad thing, regardless of outcome.
Smoke It Slow
Take nice slow hits. Instead of filling your entire lung capacity with smoke, try filling it about one-third of the way. Fill the rest with fresh air. You’ll make that joint last longer, if nothing else.
Take A Tolerance Break
Perhaps the reason you’re not feeling the high these days is because you’ve been smoking too much and you just. can’t. get. there. This is basically your body adapting to being high all the time.
Try giving up the hits for a few days or a couple of weeks — enough time for your cannabinoid receptors to replenish. Afterwards, you might just return to those highs you remember having when you first started smoking.
Ghost Hits
The pros know this trick. Just hold the smoke in your lungs until it’s gone. When you breathe out, hardly any smoke, if any, should be released.
Drink Alcohol
A study in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence showed that alcohol (ethanol) increased the rate of marijuana effects, citing: “For many of the drug combinations, when subjects consumed ethanol they detected marijuana effects more quickly, reported more episodes of euphoria and had higher plasma THC levels than when they consumed placebo ethanol.
These data suggest that ethanol may increase the absorption of THC resulting in an increase in the positive subjective mood effects of smoked marihuana and contributing to the popularity of this drug combination.” Just be careful and know your tolerance!
A new study suggests that alcohol sales go down when marijuana legalization is enacted.
Three researchers set out to find the numbers using a scanning method to record alcohol sales both pre- and post-legalization. The authors wrote of their findings:
“We find that marijuana and alcohol are strong substitutes. Counties located in MML states reduced monthly alcohol sales by 15 percent, which is a consistent finding across several empirical specifications. When disaggregating by beer and wine we find that legalization of medical marijuana had a negative effect on corresponding sales by as much as 13.8 and 16.2 percent, respectively.”
It’s no wonder that the alcohol industry has paid so much into anti-marijuana campaigns.
There’s a lot to be thankful for in this study, for one, it shows that cannabis is a substitute to alcohol, not a complement to it. This makes for safer roads and safer people. While alcohol users tend to get drunk and rowdy, oft times reckless or even aggressive, cannabis imbibers really want to chill, talk a bit deeply, maybe watch something funny and eat the free bar nuts.
According to Mother Jones, there are still some caveats in the study’s findings. It’s based on scanner data, while not all alcohol is sold in stores. Also, there were a wide range of controls, like, “county economic conditions such as unemployment rate and median household income…total population, percentage of male and Hispanic population, and the share of population by age groups.”
All in all, the results are a good thing. Cannabis is far less harmful than alcohol on many levels, from physical to mental to the safety of others. Alcohol kills one’s liver, can be quite addictive and can be very dangerous when there are cars or fists involved. On the other hand, marijuana helps build new neural connections, heals the body, is not difficult to quit and, though one should never drive stoned, fists are not likely to be raised. If they are, giggles may ensue.
Alcohol and cannabis may both be great ways to unwind after a long day, but it’s clear that cannabis is the safer alternative. And according to this study, if you live in a legal state, you may already have dusty shot glasses in your cupboard.
The GOP tax bill, passed hastily Friday night in the Senate, may wind up giving states a huge incentive to legalize recreational marijuana. That’s the analysis of Bradley Tusk, a New York political strategist and venture capitalist.
Ironically, in getting revenge on blue states by eliminating the state and local tax deduction (SALT) in the new federal tax bill, the Republican Congress and Donald Trump may be giving all of those states every incentive to legalize recreational marijuana today – and eventually legalize other drugs too.
Take New Jersey and New York. Both are very high tax states where eliminating the SALT deduction will hit residents and local governments especially hard. Now that New Yorkers and New Jerseyites are going to see their federal taxes rise by as much as 7 to 8 percent, they’re going to have to find savings somewhere.
As Tusk points out, this is the same path states took when legalizing casino gambling and lotteries:
One state, looking for new revenue without wanting to pass unpopular tax increases, authorizes licenses for riverboat casinos or poker rooms or tracks with slot machines.
The state next door sees its residents cross the border to gamble and they inevitably say to themselves, “Why are we losing all of this revenue to Indiana/ New Jersey/ Arizona?” Then they authorize their own casinos to try to recapture the revenue (and it’s far easier to justify the decision when the state next door is already doing it).
Tusk ends his story saying the most obvious way for the GOP to prevent this possibility is to Just Say No. To tax reform:
As someone who strongly believes that the War on Drugs is immoral, ineffective and idiotic, I’d be thrilled to see this happen. But when Trump, Mike Pence Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Orin Hatch, Kevin Brady and their colleagues were sitting around laughing about how they could finance tax cuts and punish blue states at the same time, you can bet they didn’t think they were also creating an express lane to legalize a host of recreational drugs.
Currently, eight states allow retail sales of recreational marijuana and 29 states have some form of medical marijuana.
The holiday season is meant for celebrating; hanging out with your closest friends and family members, and giving and receiving a whole lot of presents. Subscription boxes are the best, because even though they offer special discounts on holiday season, they’re also a year long deal. It’s the definition of a gift that keeps on giving. In a good way.
There are subscription boxes for all things, for your pets, for a book lover, for people who love clothes, etc. Let’s talk about the sexy ones because SEX.
Check out these 5 sexy subscription boxes that are so worth your time:
These subscription boxes are advertised as the ultimate companion for a date night, providing you with all the fun and sexy elements you may need. They come with themes and instructions, so that each box ends up pushing you a little bit out of your comfort zone and making the night very special.
Unbound has developed some really cool Naughty & Nice boxes that are perfect for some holiday themed sex, providing the best supplies and sex toys you can think of, including lingerie, lubricants and more.
This subscription box includes lingerie that’s perfectly designed for your body, making you look and feel super sexy. By taking a quiz, you can explain what you like and the website will provide the option that suits you best.
The Pleasure Pantry relies on your input to send you especially tailored Pleasure Packages every month, including different items that are guaranteed to surprise you each time.
Samsung’s always had a head start when it comes to the battery life of their smartphones. While iPhones are the general population’s phone of choice, Samsung has managed to stay in business and provide a sizable competition, being the second smartphone option for people from all over the world.
One of the main differences between Samsung and Apple is the fact that Samsung, aside from developing phones, computers and tablets, is also known for developing technology and small parts that can be sold and used by other companies, including Apple.
Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology recently announced that their latest battery will be able to charge faster than any of their previous batteries, an impressive development considering that Samsung’s fast charging ability was one of the main perks of the device. These batteries will completely charge devices in just 12 minutes. Their previous smartphone models were able to have full batteries with an hour of charge.
This new battery technology will not be only limited to phones; the company is planning on using it on electric cars and mobile devices, laptops and tablets. Samsung announced that these batteries will all have affordable prices but no one knows if the company is planning on sharing the technology with their competition, or on selling parts for them, like they’ve done in the past.
When it comes to Apple, the company just launched the iPhone X that, although beautiful and impressive, is worth 1000 dollars. We’ll have to wait and see if Samsung launches a phone that can compete with that price range.
Press junkets tend to be boring affairs. But every once in a while, the mass interview mechanism does deliver funny and revealing tidbits about our biggest stars. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson sat down with the film critic Kevin McCarthy on the Jumanji set. McCarthy apparently loved the original film enough that he brought his Jumanji ticket stub from 1995. (Who knew there were real Jumanji heads out there?) Johnson was impressed that “his friend” McCarthy and it spurred Johnson to tell a story of his own fandom over Hulk Hogan.
This is an amazing story!
When I interviewed @TheRock for JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE, I brought him my original JUMANJI ticket from when I saw it in January of 1996.
“When Hulk Hogan came into the WWF in 1983 or ’84, I can’t remember … And this was when getting ready to blow up. Vince McMahon said, ‘You’re going to be my guy, I’m giving you the ball. I’m giving you the baton, and I want you to go.’ Hulkamania running wild, right?
“Right there, right when he came in … he was wrestling at Madison Square Garden, and he had a white headband that said ‘HULKSTER.’ Do you remember that? He came in the ring, and I was at Madison Square Garden. I was sitting there front row with my mom, I was watching the matches. And he came out. And I’ll never forget, he was wrestling Paul Orndorff, Mr. Wonderful. And he takes the thing off, and he throws it to the crowd. And I caught it. And it was a big nerd-out moment. … It was amazing.
“My dad was wrestling on the card that night … I was so happy that I caught this thing from Hulk Hogan. I go in the back of the dressing room when the matches were over. I go to my dad and I said, ‘Look. I caught Hulk Hogan’s headband.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. That’s awesome,’ you know”
‘Take it home.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay.’
“But then Hulk Hogan was right over there taking off his wrestling boots, getting ready to shower. And I’m like damn, I want to go over and just say hello to him. So I went over to him, and I was like, ‘Mr. Hogan … I caught your headband.’ And he goes, ‘Oh man! That was my last one! I didn’t want to throw it out! Thank you so much! … Thanks man!’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, okay. You’re welcome, Hulk.’ …
“He did [take it back], but he didn’t know how bad I wanted it. But here’s how cool Hulk Hogan was. Two or three weeks later, he had thousands [of headbands] made. Went to my dad, he goes, ‘Hey, I signed this for your son. He gave me my only one back, and I needed that one, as one to make a thousand other copies. Give this back. Give this to him.’
“And I have one of those. Isn’t that the coolest thing. So Hogan, if you’re watching, I appreciate it, brother. I still have it.”
The moral of the story here kids: Keeping pieces of paper for more than 20 years does incur some value, even if that value is just inspiring wrestling stars/actors to tell wild stories about their idols.
It’s also heartwarming to see The Rock reach out on social media to thank Hulk Hogan once again for the memory. Hogan even replied, saying he learned the gracious attitudes from Johnson’s fathers.
Check it out below.
Amazing vid below on two fronts.
#1. My good bud Kev here brings me his ORIGINAL movie ticket stub from #JUMANJI.
#2. Thank you to the “brother” @HulkHogan for being so cool to me when I was a 12yr old nerdy, awkward huge Hulkster fan backstage at Madison Square Garden. 🤙🏾 https://t.co/xkQ4mDXfAu
