The Academy Awards are more than just a night to honor film. The show represents a chance for Hollywood to come together and celebrate the best storytelling of the year. While there are many remarkable tales in contention for Oscar gold, including Bradley Cooper’s turn as Chris Kyle in American Sniper, there’s one snub that can’t go unmentioned.

Canadian Sniper, starring Fake Bradley Cooper, might not have the gritty war and violence of its American cousin, but we'll be damned if it doesn't have the same heart.

This spoof of the Clint Eastwood film tells the tale of one of Canada’s bravest sons, a man who put service to his country and the defeat of those moose scoundrels before his own family.

Full of denim, maple syrup, Tim Hortons references, and plenty of fake babies, Canadian Sniper is so good that it's a crying shame it was snubbed for a Best Foreign Film nod.

Photo via cannibalmilkshake/YouTube

The musician Joseph Edgar Foreman, popularly known as Afroman, seems like a chill dude. His biggest hit, “Because I Got High,” is an anthem for stoners who’d more likely hit the couch than another human being. But I suppose we all have our breaking points.

During a set in Biloxi, Miss., on Tuesday, as Afroman noodled soulfully on guitar, a woman hopped onto the stage to dance right behind him. Either out of shock, anger, or scorn for her moves, Afroman wheeled around and knocked her flat with a devastating haymaker.

Photo via Chris Gilmore/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)

Unretouched photos of Beyoncé surfaced on a fan site Wednesday, and the Internet is having a meltdown.

The photos are from a 2013 L'Oréal beauty campaign and reveal that Beyoncé, like all humans, has less than perfect skin. But, as several have already pointed out on Twitter, she’s still her gorgeous self, just without the neat glossy finish we’re so used to.

As YouTube continues to grow as big business, the lawsuits keep coming.

Freeplay, a music licensing service, has been locked in litigation with several mutlichannel networks over the rights and use of its music on YouTube channels in recent weeks. First, Machinima and Collective Digital Studio filed federal lawsuits against Freeplay for what they call a "bait and switch tactic." According to their complaint, they allege that Freeplay woos creators with "free" music, then adds licensing fees after music has already been included in a video. Using TuneStat, an audio fingerprint technology, Freeplay then threatens copyright action when fees are not paid.

"Both Machinima and Collective Digital Studio are honored to be a part of a vibrant and new creative community that produces incredible content and shares it with the world,” a spokesperson for both companies told Deadline. “We take our commitment to that community, both to the creators and the legitimate rights holders out there, very seriously. When unscrupulous parties refuse to play by the rules and seek to take advantage of creators, we have and will fight for the community’s ability to entertain audiences. Beyond this sentiment, we will not be commenting on this pending litigation.”

This week Freeplay fired back against other multichannel networks, filing lawsuits in New York federal court against Disney'sMaker Studios, DreamWorks Animation's AwesomenessTV, Big Frame, and BroadbandTV Corp. Its suits allege that creators under these networks are using music without paying the proper fees.

There are two licenses required by video products, a "synchronization license" that matches music to visuals, as well as a second license that covers public performance. Freeplay grants free synch licenses, notably through a deal with Apple that allows DVD Studio Pro and Final Cut Pro users access to a music library for personal videos. Creators who either accessed the free synch license music via that program, or from Freeplay's Web offering, allegedly did not obtain the correct performance licenses to display the videos on YouTube.

“Freeplay Music was forced to bring these lawsuits in order to protect its rights, just as any other copyright owner in any other industry would do,” reads a press release from the company. “The systemic misappropriation of its copyrights without authorization has harmed our client. And if this conduct continues unchecked, it will continue to harm Freeplay Music and the hundreds of composers it represents. We seek to right that wrong through this action.”

The multichannel networks are bearing the brunt of this litigation since YouTube placed the onus for determining if copyright infringement is happening with member channels on the networks that control them. This means that Freeplay isn't automatically notified if its music is used incorrectly, and it's why it took to TuneStat to analyze and determine alleged infringement.

In total Freeplay has noted 200 cases of infringement, and is asking $150,000 per instance, equaling a hefty bill if successful. This is not the first copyright claim facing YouTube creators in recent years, from beauty vlogger Michelle Planin disputes with a Grammy-nominated DJ, to a collective of musicians taking issue with Google's Music Key application infringing on their rights.

The defendants declined to comment on ongoing litigation.

H/T Hollywood Reporter | Illustration by Fernando Alfonso III

Hulu may have recognized the fact that its viewers need help organizing their streaming entertainment lives, but its new Watchlist feature offers little to improve the general jumble of consumer video clutter.

What the streaming service has done with Watchlist is create a mashup of three standard categories: "Stuff You Watch," "Queue," and "Favorites." Hulu’s intention is to give priority to the programs you will most likely want to watch upon signing in. The company claims that by monitoring viewing habits (which it does, like it or not), it can understand which shows I most enjoy.

Say what?

The most obvious point here is that I know what I am watching—tell me what gems I am missing that match my interests (and viewing history). Amazon, Netflix, and (to some degree) YouTube do this. They may often be off in their picks, but I appreciate the effort, and am delighted when they occasionally serve up something delightful that I had overlooked. Amazon Prime’s suggestion of Romantics Anonymous—a wonderfully quirky foreign film—proved that my Prime subscription was worth the price of admission.

After Watchlisting my personal Hulu Plus queue (it is gradually rolling it out, but you can click to instantly add it to your account), the results were... bewildering.

At the top (and presumably the show Hulu thinks I want to watch most) was Family Guy. I have never watched a full episode of the show, but recently went online to see part of the episode that caused an uproar over its treatment of statutory rape.

Next up is Blue Bloods. Yes, I started watching that oldie series a few months ago to pass the time during exercise. Why Hulu shows me the next four episodes when I have watched each one in specific order (call me OCD if you want) escapes logic.

Batting third is Jane the Virgin, easily the best new TV show of the ‘14-’15 season. I cannot blame Hulu for not knowing I watched the last two episodes in real time. But it can’t be too difficult to source that data in there—and if it is, Watchlist is fundamentally flawed.

Shark Tank and About A  Boy are below the fold. I have not watched About A Boy live or streaming in a year. Is Hulu trying to tell me the show is better than when I gave up on it?

The rest of my Watchlist is sheer gibberish with Quick Draw—a Hulu Original I viewed two years ago—and something called Manhattan Love Story, a sitcom I never heard of. If it is a recommendation, I suggest Hulu tweak its algorithm as it relates to my viewing habits.

Moving away from sheet sarcasm to an optimal solution, the only solution that benefits streaming viewers would be for a third party to aggregate all of my streaming services, analyze what I collectively watch, and let me know what I am missing. While you’re at it, push it to my cable DVR, tablet, and smartphone.

H/T Android Police | Illustration by Max Fleishman

YouTubersRhett and Link use their platform of 5.9 million subscribers to ask the really important questions. Like will random food items make acceptable pizza toppings? Put more simply: "Will it pizza?"

Fair warning, there's some puking. But that's what you get when you try to make a pizza out of brains. Some things don't need to desecrate the sacred space of dough and tomato sauce.  

Screengrab via Good Mythical Morning/YouTube

There are a lot of shows that feature awful people doing awful things, but new webseries Pretty Awful offers two new entries for the title of Worst Person. 

The three-episode series was created by Austin comedian Amber Bixby and Dustin Svehlak, who runs production company Voltaic Video. Fellow Austin comedian Katie Pengra plays the expletive-spewing alpha dog Gwenifer, and Bixby is Natashley, a hair-twirling spaceball who punctuates sentences with Whip-It hits. We’re never sure where they live or what they do; Gwenifer and Natashley are “frenemies,” existing in a bubble of self-made chaos.

In episode 1, the ladies hide in the closet during a rainstorm, agonizing over a missing hair straightener and whether a sharknado is real. In episode 2, which will debut next week, Gwenifer reads a poem about her muse, Kim Kardashian. 

“I think the whole idea of it [is] being a Beavis and Butt-head-type thing,” Svehlak said. “And what types of situations do we want to put these guys in because they’re just so stupid. What could we force them into and what would be funny?" 

“They’re very Beavis and Butt-head meets Mean Girls,” Bixby added. I was definitely trying to think outside the box of what I usually see. There’s a lot of antihero stuff these days.”

Gwenifer and Natashley's self-obsessed bickering moves each episode along, and their wardrobe sort of defines their characters: Bixby says she went out and found Apple Bottom jeans, and Pengra spotted her fur coat at a garage sale. 

Bixby wrote the characters so they understand the world around them less and less and cause more and more chaos. There’s never much resolve, which will be frustrating if you’re looking for a neat ending. (Spoiler alert: They stay awful.)

Bixby says in season 2, they’ll experience a little character growth, courtesy of a nemesis.

“We grow up with a lot of characters who are the hero,” Bixby explained. “And as you get older, you start watching stuff with antiheroes, these awful characters. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is one of my favorite shows and they’re awful, but they put themselves in situations where they’re not the worst people. You see people worse than them.”

As for Pretty Awful, however, no one's worse than Gwenifer and Natashley. 

Screengrab via Voltaic Video/Vimeo 

The Saturday Night Live40th anniversary special was a surreal and nostalgic night, hiccups and creative choices aside. But the anniversary show existed on a completely different level for those involved with it.

Jimmy Fallon touched on it a little as he told his audience about the afterparty, but it was Norm Macdonald who gave people a firsthand look at what it was like to put the show together.

Macdonald's length Wednesday night Twitter narrative began with a simple statement that soon expanded in to so much more.

Things got interesting when Macdonald began discussing the expectations for the show's Celebrity Jeopardy sketch. In case you forgot what that looked like, here it is.

But Celebrity Jeopardy wasn't about impressions, Macdonald tweeted. It was about hope.

Macdonald and Higgins struggled with how to make it work, until finally it hit them. With the special being Eddie Murphy’s first SNL appearance in 30 years, they wanted to get him involved. During the five years that Lorne Michaels left SNL, Murphy held the entire show together. His triumphant return came to them in a bout of pure genius.

Meanwhile, Macdonald tried helping Mike Myers and Dana Carvey write the “Wayne’s World” sketch, and during that time Rolling Stone’s ultimate SNL ranking article came out. Macdonald kept asking who was writing “Weekend Update” and worried about the possibility of Bill Murray not showing up. On Twitter, he noted that “it was just like the old days.”

In the hours leading up to the show, Macdonald and his son ended up in the middle of a jam session with Sir Paul McCartney when Murphy showed up. He needed no introduction.

Screengrab via Norm Macdonald/YouTube

BY BREE BROUWER

Back in October 2014, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki explained how she didn’t want to let the online video site’s business concerns replace YouTube’s unique offerings for creators. But now, the site has clarified a policy that restricts some types of branded videos. According to Digiday, YouTube has revised its paid product placements documentation, which prohibits graphical title cards from appearing on creators’ videos.

The policy states that creators working with brands to make sponsored content are not allowed to put video overlays of those brands’ logos or other marketing materials on the videos in question. However, if brands agree to pay Google to advertise on that particular creator’s channel, then video overlays are allowed. For example, this recent “Bubble Wrap Battle” video from Dude Perfect cannot show Bubble Wrap’s logo unless the packaging company paid for a “full Google media buyout.”

Additionally, Paul Kontonis, Executive Director of the Global Online Video Association, reports YouTube is implementing a new ad unit dubbed a “product card.” This ad format is a six-second pre-roll spot will allows brands to insert a quick sponsorship or endorsement message before the main video begins. YouTube did not comment on Digiday’s request for more information on the proposed “product cards.”

This new ad unit and YouTube’s updated paid product policy serve as ways for YouTube to clarify what content creators can and cannot do when working with brands. While the restriction on brand messages is not new, those messages still occasionally ended up in videos, such as in the Dude Perfect example above.

Still, brands that wish to add graphical title cards to videos must give a cut of revenue to Google, and that point has made some execs wary. “YouTube needs to do it, because in their minds they are losing money to product integration and sponsorships within video,” said Kontonis. “But this industry is still in the first inning, so to be putting all these constructs into place that take more revenue away from the networks that are helping build the quality of the content, audience, and monetization opportunities is shortsighted.”

A YouTube representative said the revised paid product policy is just a clarification of terms implemented in late 2014. Technically, creators can still add “text-only title cards where there is Paid Product Placement for the purpose of paid product disclosure only.” It’s always been a good practice for creators to put disclaimers on their sponsored videos, though YouTube’s policy restricts those disclaimers to text.

Jan Dawson, founder and chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, calls YouTube’s paid product policy revision “especially poor timing on YouTube’s part” considering the recent introduction of fellow online video competitor Vessel. “That [platform] is specifically targeted toward content creators earning more revenue,” he said. “If YouTube is cracking down on ways of monetizing on YouTube itself, that will just drive people into the arms of Vessel and some of those newer video platforms.”

Screengrab via Dude Perfect/YouTube

Fed up with haters, Iggy Azalea has decided to take time away from Twitter. The artist took to her account late Wednesday night to address the backlash she’s received since paparazzi photos of her vacationing in a bikini emerged.

The photos, taken while Azalea believed she was relaxing in private, triggered an onslaught of Twitter commentary from body-shaming Internet trolls.

Azalea initially responded lightheartedly:

Azalea’s account finally signed off with this last thought on the state of the Internet:

BY KAT GEORGE

The other night a male friend asked me about the appeal of Taylor Swift. “It’s not like she’s sexy like any of the other pop stars,” he said. “So why is she so popular?” I didn’t even flinch in my response, “It’s because she’s everyone’s BFF.” I don’t think I’d ever thought about it before, because I’ve never really thought of Taylor Swift as an “image” until very recently. For everything up until Red, Taylor Swift was just a talented young woman with country leanings who represented a generic kind of accessible star, nothing that Disney hadn’t provided before.

Taylor Swift’s talents as an actual songwriter were probably underestimated in the beginning, which is why it took so long for her machine to formulate a proper image for her. Unlike most pop stars, Taylor Swift began with the raw talent, and is only now rounding it out with a definable persona. Most start the other way around, because they don’t have the ground-up ability to actually participate in the creation of their music the way Swift does (Rihanna, Britney, even Beyoncé, who might be a genius creative director, but who hasn’t proven yet that she has the talent to write alone). Even pop stars that can write, like Katy Perry and Ke$ha, still began with the big personalities. Audiences pay attention to big personalities (and boobs, you know I really mean boobs).

By comparison, Taylor Swift practically wrote her entire second album, Fearless, which put her on the map with “Love Story” (her highest selling single to date, which she wrote alone) at age nineteen. Two years later she penned the entirety of Speak Now (she also had a hand in its production), which promptly went quadruple platinum. And Taylor Swift, for the most part, was just a girl. In this beginning part of her career, she was vaguely marketed as an all-American good girl, but that image was always secondary to her songs, which sold her without her having to do very much other than play them. But in the aftermath of Speak Now’s phenomenal success, which secured Taylor’s spot as a chart-topping woman in pop next to the Beyoncés and Katy Perrys of the world, it clearly became pertinent to the Taylor Swift machine that the girl needed a definable persona in order to exist in this portion of the pop stratosphere. Because as we all know by now, you can’t rest on the laurels of talent alone to be an enduring pop presence—whether male or female, you have to BE someone as well. And it’s best if that someone is easily described with three or less words (look, I’m not saying a good pop personality has to be dynamic or complex!).

It’s not necessarily reductive or sexist to think of female pop stars as having sex appeal. Every current chart-topping female performer bases their character on some kind of attractive/hot/provocative/sexy prototype. Even someone like Meghan Trainor who is “all about that bass” wields her voluptuousness in a boringly infantilized sexy way. So Taylor Swift, who is not the cool girl at the party, who dances like your whiter than white aunt from the Mid-West after two glasses of rosé at Christmas, who is all elbows and knees and angles, who is smarter than you and always looks like she just showered, and who is taller than you and flat in the front and the back, but still intimidatingly statuesque, didn’t even try to make sexy her thing. That’s not to say Taylor Swift isn’t sexy—she’s just not selling herself that way. Bar Lorde she might be the only woman in pop who’s putting sex appeal on the back burner.

Taylor Swift was always very bland, in part because she began her career as a white, middle class teenage girl. She wasn’t controversial, and she didn’t really have much interesting to say, that is, her songs were all about things white, middle class teenage girls care about, such as the boys they like, fitting in with the boys they like, and bitching about the girls the boys they like like. But Taylor Swift isn’t so bland any more. She’s gone from teenager with privileged problems to a young woman with a point, who recognizes her privilege, and is happy to be goofy about it. She still cares about love, and that’s alright, because if there wasn’t music about love there wouldn’t be all that much music. The wonderful thing about Taylor Swift having been a dorky teen and now an articulate woman is that she’s invited her fans along on the journey. She’s admitted her faults, learned from her mistakes, and rather than be known as the girl who dates all the cute, rich, flop-haired boys, she’s transformed herself into an independent woman who’s more concerned with surrounding herself with other independent women. Writing diary-esque sob songs for John Mayer is so very 2010.

Essentially Taylor Swift is selling herself as something we’ve been led to believe that women don’t want, or can’t handle: a best friend. Beyoncé is twerking and telling us to “bow down,” while Katy Perry is kissing girls, and Nicki Minaj is telling “skinny bitches” to fuck off as she parades her giant ass around in a g-string. When I wrote about pop music feminism in 2014, I noticed the trend of women beginning to partner up in pop—something that in some instances might be PR tokenism (Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj) and other cases seems borne out of a purer, more female-centric agenda (like Charli XCX and Rita Ora). But for the most part, women in pop act as though they’re better than you, and they know it (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I love the attitude, and I think right now it’s necessary to really break down power structures in such a male driven industry). They’re intimidatingly cool and sexy and big-rumped and ample-bosomed. They’re male fantasies masquerading as near-nude messages of empowerment. They’re reclaiming their bodies and telling us how to see their sexuality and it’s marvelous and confrontational and sometimes annoying, but we’ll look back and tell our daughters that this era in pop was revolutionary for women’s bodies.

Read the full article on Noisey.

Photo via Taylor Swift RED tour 2013/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Tina is eventually joined by her brother and sister for a brief psychedelic adventure that shakes the restaurant's ceiling. Poor Linda missed the whole thing.

Screengrab via SubPop/YouTube

When Daniel Tosh gets it right, look out; there are no survivors.

Tosh, the host of Comedy Central’s usually funny, often cringe-worthy Tosh.0, is known for finding and promptly ignoring the line between good clean fun and grab-’em-by-the-nads rants. In one of his more clever, acerbic, and spot-on diatribes, delivered during last night's show, Tosh went helmet-to-helmet with the 2015 Super Bowl champion, the New England Patriots.

Showing more than a passing familiarity with the Pats and football, Tosh tore into the owner, star players, and the unproven-but-assumed notion that the team cheated by underinflating game footballs. A self-proclaimed Miami Dolphins fan, the comic had this to say about Deflategate:

If football is a game of inches, then anyone in your organization cheating even a single time taints everything from that point on.

Tosh jokingly (we think) added that he’s not afraid of spreading his Pats-hating nastiness in person to New Englanders in his alleged Nor'easter 2015 Tour “From Halifax to Hershey.”

When tickets go on sale, let us know. As a fellow Pats hater, I’ll be first in line.

Photo via redfriday/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

WWE has posted a video message from Stewart in which he calls out tag-team wrestling champion Seth Rollins and says Rollins has "stepped into a world of hurt."

Rollins started the beef on Monday Night Raw by saying he could replace Stewart and make The Daily Show "watchable."

"You're gonna see it," Stewart said menacingly of the "hurt" that Rollins could expect. "160 pounds of dynamite."

He then checked himself. "Obviously not dynamite," he corrected. "My bone density isn't what it used to be. 160 pounds of wood, a soft wood, like a pine. Still, splinters, you know? That's gonna hurt."

Ouch.

Photo via U.S. Navy/Wikimedia Commons (PD)

If you're like most die-hard Friends fans, you've probably wondered exactly how much Joey's friendship was worth to Chandler. Now, thanks to an enterprising fan who did the math, we have a pretty good idea.

Spoiler alert: Joey must have been one hell of a friend, based on the size of Chandler's investment in him.

At various points, the show itself made cheeky reference to this phenomenon, most notably in episode 8x22, "The One Where Rachel Is Late." 

Chandler essentially served as Joey’s sugar daddy in one of the world’s most expensive neighborhoods for three years straight. 

In it, we learn that the well-off Chandler has paid for basically all of Joey's living expenses since he moved to the city—everything from rent to acting lessons. Though we're never told how much the figure comes out to, it's enough to make Joey decide to forgive Chandler for falling asleep during the debut of the movie that (hopefully) signifies Joey's big break.

So redditor lincoln9659 posed the question: How much did Joey owe Chandler? 

Reddit's r/theydidthemath is a forum devoted to solving various math problems posed but left unanswered in pop culture, like "How much would it actually cost to produce a real-life Truman Show?" and "How fast would you have to swing your dick for it to catch fire?" Thanks to a number of enterprising redditors with extremely good memories (or access to the Friends Wikia), we have a good idea of the total debt Joey incurred. 

• We can calculate that Chandler's Manhattan rent was about $3,500 a month. (To compare, Monica's grandmother's apartment, rent-controlled since the '40s, could have been about $200.) Split two ways between Chandler and Joey for three years, as stated in the episode, the total is: $63,000
• We know utilities weren't included in their rent, so we'll follow user ASmileThatKills' lead and calculate Joey's half at $1,000.

Total so far: $64,000

Now for food. ASmileThatKills tries to guesstimate the amount Joey, known for his love of eating, spends on food every week—or rather the amount Chandler spends covering him. ASmileThatKills speculates the total is "$100 a week on groceries + $100 a week on pizza/takeout/coffee + $50 a week for Joey's dates, every week for 3 years."

So that's $5,200 annually for groceries. Joey went on a lot of dates, and this is Manhattan. Let's bump it up to $75, so $3,900 yearly. And since we all saw how much coffee those poor kids drank, let's tack an extra $15/week onto the takeout total, or $5,980. That brings the three-year total for food costs up to $45,240.

Total so far: $109,240

But wait, there's a lot more:

• Two sets of acting resume head shots, $500 each: $1,000
• Discounting inflation, Joey's half of the phone and cable bills would have been around $35/month. Plus, if we assume that Chandler didn't want to have to fight Joey for the phone when Joey was using their dial-up Internet, then they probably had another separate phone line for their computers, so an additional $10 for Joey: $1,620
• In season 4, episode 2, Joey is responsible for all of their apartment furniture getting stolen. Yikes! The roundup of valuables Chandler loses in this ep includes "a TV, a stereo system, a CD collection, 2 Lazy boy chairs, a full-size couch, a few different seating chairs, and an early laptop, which was pretty expensive at the time, as the technology was new." ASmileThatKills estimates this total cost at roughly $5,500.

•  In season 6, episode 18, Chandler mentions that Joey owes him $3,400. Presumably, this could be for some of the costs mentioned in this list—except we already know that after two years living together, that total would be a lot higher than that, so we can probably assume it's for services unknown: $3,400.
• While Joey temporarily lost his health insurance prior to an expensive surgery that Chandler otherwise would have had to pay for, he got it back by the end of "The One Where Joey Loses His Insurance." $0.

The grand total: $120,760

Yowza. As numerous redditors pointed out, Chandler essentially served as Joey's sugar daddy in one of the world's most expensive neighborhoods for three years straight. 

"Joey essentially served as a high-class 'companion,'" joked griffer00, to which the immediate joinder from ThePedanticCynic sums up the appeal of this iconic friendship: "We're playing fast and loose with the term high-class here."

How you doin', Chandler?

Photo via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY SA 3.0)

A new lyric video from Blur insures you can learn the band's newest song—and how to make homemade ice cream at the same time.

After announcing The Magic Whip, the band's first album in 12 years, via a livestream, Blur also released a lyric video for "Go Out." The video is a Chinese instructional cooking video that, aside from a psychedelic lyric break in the middle, teaches you in a straightforward manner how to prepare "magic whip" at home.

Screengrab via Blur/YouTube

No one is crying at this BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge cover.

Scottish electronic band Chrvches took to the studio to pay tribute to everyone's favorite grown-up mouseketeer and NSYNC member, Justin Timberlake. While "Cry Me A River," Timberlake's thinly veiled musical message to ex Britney Spears, rocked the charts in 2002, this Chrvches take brings it straight to the modern musical moment.

Screengrab via BBC Radio 1/YouTube

Everyone has his or her Waterloo—even the critically acclaimed AMC period drama Mad Men.

When we last saw Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and company in May 2014, in an episode titled “Waterloo,” it was 1969, and humans were landing on the moon. At the same time as we took one small step forward, Sterling Cooper founder Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) passed on, only to appear as a dancing apparition in Don’s dream.

Cooper’s homage to his legendary Broadway role in How to Success in Business may or may not signal a major change for the troubled Draper. In the first half of season 7, our hero was shown to have feet of clay, reduced to being paid not to show up in the office. In AMC's first teaser for the half of the season, clues about future Mad Men plot twists abound. 

(video goes here)

Given that this clip bears the title "The Party’s Over," it's possible we're headed into a seven-episode stretch where each cast member meets a fate commensurate with his or her past deeds. If that’s the case, we could be headed for a bloodbath on May 17, when the series airs its final episode.

Screengrab via JoBlo TV Show Trailers/YouTube

Harris Wittels, a comedian, writer, and executive producer for Parks and Recreation, was found dead in his Los Angeles home on Thursday afternoon. He was 30. The suspected cause is a drug overdose.

On Thursday evening, comedians shared their remembrances on Twitter and retweeted some of their favorite Wittels tweets. 

Before Parks and Recreation, he was a writer for Eastbound & Down and The Sarah Silverman Show. Silverman's tweets were particularly heartbreaking.

H/T Variety | Photo via Daniela/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

BY BREE BROUWER

The Huffington Post is expanding its video content beyond its live streams on HuffPost Live. The Hollywood Reporter reports the AOL-owned online media company will premiere the primetime satirical news and entertainment segment The HuffPost Show on March 27, 2015.

The hour-long The HuffPost Show will be filmed in Los Angeles and aired weekly on Friday nights at 9pm EST on Huffington’s home page, as well as across the HuffPost Live network. The news show will be hosted by HuffPost Live’s president and co-founder Roy Sekoff, along with Live’s veteran host Marc Lamont Hill. Sekoff said Huffington Post’s first foray into primetime programming will cover a range of topics, but will often infuse comedy into controversial stories to alleviate tension.

“Huffington Post has always had a dual mission: to entertain and inform,” he said. “Humor can’t say everything, but it can say some things better.” Through The HuffPost Show, Sekoff wants to “join the party” of satirical news television programming previously dominated by the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Sekoff also explained The HuffPost Show will be created with shorter video segments in mind, which can then be distributed across The Huffington Post and AOL properties. Additionally, Sekoff said The HuffPost Show will have a “rapid response” team that will prepare Vines, tweets, and YouTube videos related to news items from throughout the week. This digital content will help TheHuffPost Show stay on top of breaking stories outside of its weekly live segment.

“[The digital initiative] creates a two-way interaction with our audience that I don’t think others in the space have,” Sekoff said. “It creates this pinwheel of content that feeds into the mothership on Friday night.”

The HuffPost Show is only one of many new digital news shows to pop up in the last few months. Others, however, are much shorter than HuffPo’s hour-long program. ABC News, for example, debuted the one-minute, Facebook-exclusive newscast The One Thing in December 2014. More recently, The Huffington Post’s parent company AOL launched its own two-minute morning news segment called Rise.

You can catch the first episode of The HuffPost Show on March 27 at 9 PM EST via The Huffington Post and HuffPost Live sites.