Mulder and Scully are making The X-Files fans sweat after Tuesday night.

As fans anxiously await the return of their favorite sci-fi conspiracy series, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reunited for a special performance Tuesday night at the Cutting Room in New York. Duchovny performed songs from his new folk-rock album, Hell or Highwater, and invited Anderson to the stage for a rendition of Neil Young’s “Helpless.”

The band was better than I expected. Even a quick listen to Duchovny’s album proved to be better than I had anticipated. In fact, if you told me Hell or Highwater was a new Tom Petty cut, I’d probably believe you.

At the end of the song, Duchovny gave his costar (and once-rumored girlfriend) a hug and a kiss on the lips, as adults do. Naturally, fans of the famous and fictional partnership set the Internet ablaze in speculation and swoons.

But watch the video again. There’s something amiss about the kiss. Notice how Duchovny keeps creeping up on Anderson during the song, singing at her, whispering to her during instrumental breaks. This only happens a couple of times, but if you look carefully it’s there. When Duchovny finally leans in for the kiss, I noticed some hesitation from Anderson. To me, though, Duchovny gives off a creepy uncle vibe, giving new meaning to the name, “Spooky Mulder.”

After rumors of the two actors dating surfaced in 2014, Anderson denied the two were in a relationship in an interview on HuffPost Live. “It’s a nice idea, but it’s never going to happen.” She elaborated that the two became close during the ninth season of X-Files, but they never became that close. Any attraction that exists between the two, Anderson said, “continues to make [the series] interesting.”

It sounds like Anderson and Duchovny are friends to the end, but it doesn’t change the fact that Mulder came off as the overly affectionate friend on Tuesday night.

The X-Files is scheduled to return to FOX for a six-episode run in January.

H/T Buzzfeed |  Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)

Sophie Gustafson has won five tournaments on the LPGA Tour and eight times more on the Ladies European Tour, and in 2012, she was honored with the Ben Hogan Award for a person in golf who has overcome adversity.

Gustafson has a stutter, and though she once hated the idea of public speaking, she does so now with humor and grace. And as reported byGolf Digest last month, Gustafson has been giving back, helping mentor a boy who also has a severe stutter who had tried to take his life because of the bullying he had received.

After Gustafson told her story to Golf Digest's Ron Sirak, he wrote a blog entry about it on April 30, and almost immediately, Tiger Woods decided to get involved and sent the boy named Dillon a letter of support and encouragement.

Seriously, how cool a gesture is that by Woods? The answer: very cool.

As Gustafson told Sirak, "It was real class to get that out so fast."

Right, especially since we now know how serious the boy's pain had been. Here's an email the boy's mother sent to Gustafson:

On the week of April 16th, he had a bad week, he had been teased about his stuttering. That evening, he attempted suicide. He yelled downstairs 'Good bye, I love you.' Me and my husband immediately ran upstairs, his bedroom door was locked, we busted down the door and he was sitting on the window and was getting ready to jump. We were able to grab him and keep him from going head first onto the concrete below ...

It breaks my heart that he is so lonely and continues to get teased about his stuttering. I am writing to ask you, do you have anyone that could help us share his story and help us find something to encourage him and help him see that he has a positive future?

That's when Sirak wrote his post, and soon after, Woods either read or was informed of the story, inspiring him to send the letter. This is what Dillon wrote to Gustafson after receiving Woods' correspondence.

I really appreciate all the support and help you are giving me. My mom and I saw all the support on twitter. I know that I have a lot of support thru this challenging time. I just want to fit in. I just want to find true friends who will accept me and not make fun of me when I talk. It gets so frustrating when you have things to say and people just don't give you a chance to get it out. ...

We are going to frame the letter. We have never seen a golf tournament in person, only on TV. I told my mom that when my leg gets better (he fractured his leg in his suicide attempt) I think that would be a fun thing to do ... I hope that maybe one other person out there that is also having struggles, will hear my story and realize suicide is not the answer and maybe it can help them. I just acted on impulse and now wish that I hadn't. I was just tired of feeling small and like I didn't matter. I know that I do matter with the help of my family and friends like you to support me."

Applause all the way around.

Photo via Keith Allison/Flickr (CC by-SA 2.0) 

Their new series, You're Doing It Wrong, courtesy of PBS Digital Studios, uses science, history, and backstory to show why and how people are doing everyday activities completely incorrectly. In their first episode they tackle fruit storage.

They cite the invention of the fridge as the moment when we began storing fruit wrong. For example, tomatoes should be left out, not put in a fridge. Basil will also wilt quickly in the fridge, when it should be kept out in a cup of water like flowers. They list off other vegetables and fruits that shouldn't be stored in the fridge, and then changes for how to store food that needs to be refrigerated so it keeps better.

Thanks to the Sklars, you no longer have any reason to throw out veggies gone bad.

Screengrab via You're Doing It Wrong/YouTube

Hold on to your hats, Serial fans. A fresh analysis of police interviews with Jay Wilds, key witness in the Serial podcast's case, was released in the most recent episode of the Undisclosed podcast. It could hold the key to one of the case’s biggest mysteries.

A recurring, unanswered question in Serial was why did Wilds constantly change his story? According to the new podcast, evidence suggests he was being coached by the Baltimore police who interviewed him. And if you listen closely, you can actually hear it.

This occurs repeatedly in the recordings, according to lawyer Susan Simpson, whose fascination with Serial led her to expertly break down timelines and cell phone records on her blog.

Simpson is just as meticulous and precise in her most recent analysis. She breaks down each audio clip with razor-sharp clarity. And any skepticism you may have about the significance of “taps” will vanish completely once you give the podcast a listen.

Serial left many fans hanging last year with its less-than-conclusive finale. While some threw in the towel and called the case a dead end, many die-hard fans continued to comb court documents and recorded interviews for clues as to what really happened to Hae Min Lee, the young high schooler whose former boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was convicted of her murder despite a total lack of DNA evidence, and has since been imprisoned for 15 years and counting.

Following Serial’s disappointing conclusion, Rabia Chaudry, Syed’s long-time friend and advocate, teamed up with Simpson and Colin Miller to createUndisclosed. Chaudry promised to reveal new findings that would illuminate the many murky areas of Syed’s case. If the latest episode’s revelation are any indicator, Serial fans may finally get the satisfying ending they were hoping for.

Photo via Scott Schiller/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed

Imagine attending a concert for a band you've never heard of and instead getting one of the biggest bands in the world.

That's what happened last weekend when the Foo Fighters, using the alias Chevy Metal, played a county fair in California. As usual, the Dave Grohl-fronted band rocked it hard, playing covers of The Knack's "My Sharona" and AC/DC's "Let There Be Rock."

OK, it wasn't the full Foo Fighters. Grohl, guitarist Chris Shiflett, and drummer Taylor Hawkins were there, but bassist Nate Mendel was not, replaced by Wiley Hodgden on bass while Rami Jaffee played on keyboards.

But Chevy Metal—Hawkins' semi-regular cover band that he plays in with Hodgden and Jaffee—took its gig at the Conejo Valley Days in Thousand Oaks, Calif., very seriously. The band played 18 songs during its set, and every single one of them was a cover.

Here they are doing Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69."

And just for the heck of it, here's Van Halen's "I'm the One."

Seriously, though, how lucky are the people at this concert? You could buy a fried Twinkie and watch three-quarters of the Foo Fighters play covers of Van Halen, Billy Joel, and the Rolling Stones. What more could you want i life?

H/T Consequence of Sound| Screengrab via Greg Howard/YouTube

Marc Maron is a busy guy these days. Aside from restlessly running his twice-weekly, award-winning podcast WTF With Marc Maron, his hit semi-autobiographical IFC show, Maron, is premiering its third season today. He’s also currently in the middle of his national Maronation Tour… and yet he still finds the time to communicate with fans with weekly 500-word “dispatches from the head” and to take interviews with unknown freelance writers.

We chatted on the phone with Maron to talk a little bit about the creative process (and blurred lines between real-life and fiction) of Maron, how WTF and his standup have influenced each other, how he records his WTF introductions, and what he has coming up for the future (spoiler: he’s going to be even busier).

Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Talking about season 3, I know I probably can’t say too much, but it looked like you’re going in a really interesting arc that’s quite different from the first two seasons.

I definitely think that the direction of this season… it’s me on the precipice of really having success, and pursuing success, and then what happens midway through when that pursuit gets a little gnarly and my weaknesses get the best of me and we really take the character for a ride. And, hopefully… hopefully I’ve worked that stuff fictionally, so I don’t have to go through it in real life.

It’s definitely a departure in the sense that we’re able now, being as comfortable as we are as a crew, with the actors and the writers and the production crew, that this is really the best season we’ve done so far. We’ve just sort pushed the envelope a little bit with what we could do with the character and with what I was willing to do. So, this season becomes, uh, I can’t remember the adage that I’m looking for… sort of a cautionary tale, that’s what it is! A cautionary tale by me, and for me, you know?

How much would you say the show, so far, has been autobiographical, and how much has come from scenarios that you’ve run through your head that haven’t actually happened?

In all the stories, there are moments and bits and pieces of reality in there that sort of ground the thing emotionally. But I would think most of the full arc of each story is fictional. And I think it’s a testament to our writing, and also the nature of what we’ve created, that people think it’s so real. I mean, a lot of it is based on some real events, and the characters are based on real people, but most of the stories are pretty fictionalized.

In this season, I actually do an episode where my ex-wife writes a book, and I get her on the podcast, and that never happened in real life. There’s a lot of unresolved stuff with me and my real ex-wife in my mind, and, yeah, it’s kind of a vehicle to work it through with fiction, and I was able to sort of process some of that stuff, and that was kinda cool, I think. It’s great for me; I don’t know how it’s gonna be for her…

Have you ever found that you’ve worked something through on the show, in a fictional sense, that’s actually led to somebody seeing the episode, and then something getting resolved in real life?

Well, it’s come the other other way. I mean, I’ve had a couple of experiences with it causing some trouble, with old friends and with my dad, but I still believe they’re the only ones that know certain things, and I think they overreacted as well. So… I don’t know if I’ve had an experience where it worked in my favor.

“I think it’s a testament to our writing, and also the nature of what we’ve created, that people think it’s so real.”

So nothing where somebody saw an episode and was like, “Oh, I gotta give Maron a call; I didn’t realize we had this thing to work through”?

People have done that, but not because they were fictionalized on the show. My mother’s pretty happy that Sally Kellerman played her; she’s the only one that’s proud and excited. And my brother’s OK with the guy, with his character, but not thrilled. My father’s definitely not happy, but I believe Judd Hirsch is a better father than him.

Judd Hirsch was absolutely amazing on the show. That must have been a blast to work with him, too.

Yeah, no, he’s a real pro. He did one episode this season.

I caught your show a couple weeks ago in Dallas, and it got me to wondering if you ever record episodes of WTF while you’re on the road, or do you usually take breaks, go back and record, and kind of build some up in the library to release while you’re touring?

No, no, I record some on the road. I was just in New York, and I recorded one with Keenan Thompson and Kurt Metzger, and sometimes I record intros on the road, and I bring my equipment; I’ve done that a lot.

Do you bring pretty much the exact same equipment that’s in the garage setup?

No, no I can’t. Those mics don’t really travel. I leave those mics in the garage, but I use good equipment.

Do you ever find that, whenever you do go on tour and record episodes, does that open up a whole new universe of people that you can interview, who might not otherwise come to L.A. and be available?

Yeah, sometimes I interview on location. Like, I’ve been to Austin and I’ve interviewed Hunt Sales and Curt Kirkwood, and I interview people in New York. … I can do that, but I haven’t done too much of it.

Your 15-minute intros that you do at the beginning of every podcast… Is there a bit of a writing process in coming up with those intros? Or do you just do them as a one-off?

They’re all improvised; I don’t write any of that shit. Sometimes I’ll put some buttons down if I have something I’m thinking about, but generally I just riff those, because it’s actually more pressure than writing them. So I just… I pace around, and I Google around in the garage, I dicker off at the house, so I figure out a place to start that thing, and then I just riff ’em out.

I remember seeing a special that you were on, it was a while ago, but your act was a lot more… it was still very similar, but it was more structured. Do you think the riffing with the intros and the guests has helped to shape your current act a little bit, where you’re a little more free-flowing, and you have the library of stuff in your head to think about?

I’ve always been a little free-flow-y, but I think the reason you saw structure is because I was on television, and generally it’s a little better to plan when you can be on television.

And I guess you have to clear things through people, and it’s edited as well to make it look more structured.

Yeah… it was probably the John Oliver thing, so… was it the bit about being on the airplane and almost dying?

I believe it was, actually.

That was a big bit… I gotta get that back on the stage, really. I’m not sure why I don’t do that bit, because I can get this idea, like… A lot of times, if people are trying to decide whether they want to come see me, they’re going to go online and look for stuff, and that’s out there, so part of me’s like “Well, I don’t them to see what they just saw at home…” But that was such a good bit! It took me like half a year, getting that bit working.

I still work pretty hard on bits, and the idea that I’m loose is kind of an illusion; I just leave a lot of room for things to happen, and I don’t necessarily lock myself into an order, so if things can happen and new parts of the conversation can erupt, I just want to have room for that. I don’t want to get too locked in, but I would say that, most of the time, a lot of the bits that you’re seeing when I do it now, in an hour and a half show, a lot of them are pretty refined.   

I noticed that, just listening to several recent standup routines and stuff, and then seeing the one in Dallas, I think there were maybe three actual bits and punchlines that I recognized from the recent past—like the Captain Billy one was one of them, because I just listened to the Mike Judge podcast where you guys talked about Captain Billy. So I guess I can see how that’s kind of an illusion.

Yeah, I try to stay as present as possible. And also, like, the one way the podcast helps me is that, when I improvise at the beginning of the show, a lot of times things come up, and I’m like, “Well, wow, that would be a good bit,” you know what I mean?

I was going to ask you if any of that stuff ever made it into the show, any of those intros.

Yeah, I mean, you just heard the Captain Billy thing… That was something I actually did on stage in Albuquerque, but that’s in the act now. And it takes a bit of work to get them working on stage, as opposed to in conversation, so I think it’s a different experience, but in that way it’s helped me write. It’s almost like, when I’m improvising and talking at the mic at the beginning, I’m sort of writing and creating out loud in the moment, and some of that stuff from the podcast becomes comedy bits.

How much control did you have over the direction of the show from the start, and—if it wasn’t complete—how much has that changed with the success of the show?

I’ve always had complete control of the show; it all goes through me. I mean, I’m there, and I’m a staff writer and I’m a producer and I’m the main actor, and it’s my life, and nothing’s going to happen without me OKing it. I’m part of the process on all levels, and that’s good and bad… I guess it’s only bad if something goes horribly wrong, because we’re doing exactly the show we want to do.

We make compromises over along the way only around budgetary elements, and whether something is appropriate or not appropriate, in terms of what the network wants… It’s all very diplomatic, but ultimately no one has gotten in the way of the creative process, and everything you see is something we wanted, and if there were any battles we lost there were very few and they were over very minor things.

How many seasons of Maron would you like to see? Is there a top-off?

“I’m part of the process on all levels, and that’s good and bad.”

It’s really one at a time. I do know I need another one, because we left him in pretty bad shape at the end of this one. So… I certainly don’t think I see it going 20 [seasons], but I could use one more.

Do you have any other ideas floating around for any other show you’d like to pursue?

Vice is starting a television network, and I’m under contract with them to do a thing called Vice Portraits. It’s gonna be a longform interview show, out in the world, talking to people and sort of documenting the process of talking to people, and, you know, trying to do what I do in the garage out in the world. And that’s gonna be in the fall.  

That’s a bit like in episode 2 of season 3, when you’re offered the talk show. Was that actually inspired by the Vice thing at all?

No, that came after.

I guess that’s just a case of, uh, creating something fictional and then real life just kind of getting onto it.

Right! It was only a matter of time.

The ol’ “Ask the Universe” philosophy.

Exactly, buddy.

Season 3 of Maron premieres tonight at 10pm ET on IFC. For Maron’s complete list of tour dates, visit his website.

Photo via Dmitri von Klein/WTFpod.com

Dropping cable television subscriptions and switching instead to streaming video services to get your broadcast TV fix is a good idea—until your streaming video service doesn’t work.

The 14th and final episode of Mad Men season 7, which is also the series finale has not been uploaded yet for Amazon Instant Video users, including those with a season pass to the show. Google Play and iTunes are good to go with the finale, but social media is a huge minefield of spoilers today for anyone who depends on Amazon for their Mad Men fix.

Though only a few streaming video services upload an episode on the same day as broadcast, but the morning following broadcast is a safe assumption by viewers. That is not the case on Amazon currently, which has inspired a slew of one-star reviews for the series that of course have nothing to do with the quality of Mad Men, but the quality of Amazon Instant Video.

Illustration by Jason Reed

Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé are both “co-owners” of Tidal, the new streaming service fronted by Jay Z and backed by all of your favorite musicians. So it only makes sense that they’d release the video for their duet “Feelin’ Myself” exclusively on the platform that they share ownership of and not on YouTube or Beyoncé’sTumblr.

But many people were still shocked to find that the video would not be available to stream live.

There’s really nothing more priceless than friends shooting fries into each other’s mouths:

C’mon—what’s better than sharing burgers with your best friend?

At the end of a Saturday speech at Tulane, Rudolph asked the crowd of graduates to rise and take part in the National Anthem. This of course wouldn't be straight take on the song; Rudolph's rendition involves her very elastic face and at least a dozen different vocal affectations, including a nod to Beyoncé. And she dips into "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." 

Drought shaming is state sanctioned after last summer when California instituted water fines of up to $500 a day if someone watered their lawn excessively or hosed down sidewalks.  This has led to lawns in poorer areas to go brown while in California's wealthiest enclaves the grass remains green.

Now, in addition to financial sanctions, the celebrities who are keeping their lawns watered face #DroughtShaming, a hashtag trend that shows their green lawns while the drought continues. Targets include Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Sean Penn, and hotels like the Ritz-Carlton that mist their guests.

The New York Post even got in on the act, with photo-heavy story showing what celebrity lawns look like during the drought. But the ire is not only for celebrities and big brands, it's for anyone with the wealth to waste water. There's apps to track the waste, and even a company, TurfTerminators, that has a water drop mascot going around #DroughtShaming and promoting their lawn-replacement services.

H/T Gizmodo | Screengrab via The Weather Network

Viewers already had good reason to suspect that the contestant, who is the former boyfriend of a previous Bachelor winner Nikki Ferrell, might be going home on tonight's episode. But no one could have predicted that he'd be turning the show political in the worst way—with a crass on-air rape joke.

This is the second of a two-part opener to this season. As we saw in the last episode, the 28-year-old "junkyard specialist" from Kansas City, Mo., spent much of his first outing on the show getting totally trashed. In tonight's episode, we saw him continuing to be what he called "white boy wasted." This included varying degrees of nakedness, annoying his fellow contestants, and, uh, grabbing Bachelorette contender Kaitlyn Bristowe's ass.

You might think that last action would warrant some sort of staff intervention, but instead it wasn't until McDill turned his attention on another male contestant that things got ugly.

When another contestant confronted McDill about his harassment of Bristowe, McDill responded to him with:

"Why am I not raping you right now?" 

The Internet immediately lost its mind.

Photo by Rick Rowell via ABC

The heartfelt tributes to retiring Late Show host David Letterman keep on coming in—even from his direct competition.

Jimmy Kimmel won't be airing a new episode on Wednesday night out of respect for Letterman's farewell, while Jimmy Fallon spent a good chunk of time after his monologue Monday night honoring and thanking Letterman and his utter weirdness. Late-night TV would’ve been a completely different playground without Letterman in the thick of it.

After revealing that one of his teachers predicted that he’d replace Letterman on Late Night, Fallon told his audience the story of his last visit to The Late Show and how kind Letterman was to him.

“I think he taught us how to be, how to do smart and stupid for comedy,” Fallon said.

El-P auditioned real cats last fall, but it seemed like it was going to be a lot of work: Cats don’t just do whatever you want them to. Alas, yesterday El-P teased a clip from the album, leaving many to wonder if we really wanted a hip-hop album full of cat sounds. 

H/T Pitchfork | Photo via SuziJane/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)

Hugh Jackman is set to cause a lot of pirate-themed nightmares in the upcoming film Pan.

The reimagined Peter Pan origin story centers around Pan being a foretold savior of Neverland, set to face off against Blackbeard, not Hook. Jackman plays the fearsome Blackbeard, a terrifying force in the new trailer that’s otherwise filled with magic and wonder.

The film isn’t without its own drama: Rooney Mara plays the Native American character Tiger Lily, although it’s possible that, like the rewrite of Hook into an “Indiana Jones-like figure,” they’ve erased her backstory for this remake. 

H/T Hypable | Screengrab via Warner Brothers/YouTube

Harry Shearer’s exit from The Simpsons last week left the show with more than a dozen characters needing a new voice, unless a last-minute agreement can be worked out between Shearer and the producers. In the meantime, hopeful voice actors all over the country are flexing their vocal cords.

Brock Baker, a Los Angeles-based voice actor, has emerged as a strong candidate for the role of Shearer's replacement. It’s not because he’s formally auditioned, but rather because his latest video shows him doing impressions of 14 of Shearer’s most famous characters. In a world where anything can go viral at any moment, this is basically an audition waiting to reach the right producer's ears.

Baker's impressions range from Ned Flanders and Mr. Burns to Otto and President George H.W. Bush, and while some are more spot-on than others, it’s still worlds better than the alternative proposed on The Simpsons more than 15 years ago. 

Kurt Sutter, creator of FX’s Sons of Anarchy, took to Instagram Tuesday afternoon to address the deadly gang shootout that took place in Waco, Texas, on Sunday, killing nine people.  “I’m not an outlaw biker,” Sutter wrote in the caption. “I just wrote one on TV. #soa.”

“They watch their Sons of Anarchy and their little television shows. These guys all seem likable enough: that they are misunderstood, outlaws from the old days, and they ride motorcycles instead of horses …  And the reality of it is they are long-haired tattooed guys who ride motorcycles and sell a hell of a lot of methamphetamine and murder people and steal motorcycles and extort people and beat people up in bars for no reasons.”

Violence erupted in the parking lot of the Waco Twin Peaks restaurant. Nine people were killed, many more injured, and 170 were reportedly arrested. Five gangs are believed to have been involved, including rival gangs the Bandidos and the Cossacks. Police were already present when the violence broke out.

Kurt Sutter is currently working on a new 14th century series for FX, The Bastard Executioner.

Read Sutter’s statement in full:

“I’ve been getting a lot of texts and emails about the recent shooting in Texas,” Sutter wrote. “I have no opinion to offer. Because I have no facts. Just aftermath data. No one knows the truth but the members involved. Don’t believe the law enforcement rhetoric. Don’t believe the bulls**t media spin. It’s all hype and speculation. I just hope the clubs involved can find a solution that doesn’t lead to more dead brothers.”

Photo via Laineema/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

In the summer of 1948, Ben Stonehill recorded more than 1,000 songs—almost 40 hours of recordings—sung by Holocaust survivors. He recorded them in the lobby of New York’s Hotel Marseilles, where post-war Jewish refugees were being temporarily housed.

Stonehill was not an academic. He owned a New York flooring store but, inspired by Lomax, swung a deal to borrow recording equipment from an electronics store in exchange for promoting it. His goal was to track the sounds of Jewish life, some of which he feared were going to die of the wounds they bore from the war.  

Reflecting the rainbow of nationalities expressed by the Jewish diaspora, and the scope of Nazi evil, the songs were sung in Czech, Hebrew, Russian, and Lithuanian. But as NPR points out, the majority were sung in Yiddish.

Now, thanks to the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, 66 of those recordings have been digitized and are available online, accompanied by English translations. Three-hundred more will become available over the next several months. In the coming years, as funding is secured, the rest of the recordings will be digitized and posted, Peter Rushefsky, the center’s executive director, told the Daily Dot.

In addition to the CTMD site, the songs are also available on the Stonehill Collection’s SoundCloud page.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum secured the recordings in 2006 from the Library of Congress and a host of other institutions where they were scattered. Miriam Isaacs, a sociolinguist who had a fellowship to work on the collection, subsequently approached the Center for Traditional Music and Dance as a partner to make the recordings public.  

For many of the contributors, who had survived the greatest mass murder in history, recording technology was new. They wept, said Stonehill, when they heard their singing voices played back on his bulky wire recorder, knowing that what they had gone through would now be preserved.

Among the songs available are "England zugt tsu eretz Yisrul (England Says to the Land of Israel)," "Oy mame mame shlug mikh nisht (Oh Mom Do Not Hit Me)," "Fin di Varshever ganuvim (Of the Warsaw Thieves)," and "Mir zenen vi feygelekh fraye (We are Like Free Birds)." There are comic songs, songs about sex, God, socialism, and Zionism and a disproportionate number of songs about home and homelessness.

There are a couple of other collections of Jewish songs of more or less the same scale, but not the same scope. What distinguishes this collection is Stonehill’s exhortation to “sing anything you’d like.”

"There has been a lot of excitement over the release of the first 66," said Rushefsky. "And I’ve received a number of emails from professional Yiddish singers from around the world who are eager to perform this repertoire, as well as folks working at universities, synagogues, and other institutions will be using the Stonehill Jewish Song Collection in their teaching and research."

Before the advent of mass media, “folk songs were not just entertainment,” said Rushefsky, “they were used to record historical events, recruit for political movements and poke fun at aristocrats and religious leaders, in addition to expressing the loves, ambitions. and frustrations of everyday life.”

Their historical value is obvious. But so is their spiritual value. The culture of European Jews did not crumble to dust, as Stonehill feared. Like other cultures the world has found value in, some elements survived and time took others. Stonehill and his successors did their part to secure the survival of this part of it. 

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

In his last appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, actor and comedian Bill Murray—Letterman’s first guest and a Late Show regular over the years—had the difficult task of topping himself.

For his grand entrance, Murray went for something big but simple and effective. After Letterman called his name, Murray brought out a giant cake just so he could jump out of it like at a bachelor party.

For nearly anyone else, it would've been completely absurd, but for Murray, it's par for the wacky course. And for these longtime friends, it was a fitting way to say goodbye—even if Murray wasn’t quite ready to do so yet.

While Bill Murraypopped out of a cake for David Letterman Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers took a different approach to honoring the influential late-night host.

A choked-up Kimmel spoke highly of Letterman after his monologue. He’s been a fan of Letterman’s since he was a teenager, when he got a Late Night cake for his birthday, wore Letterman’s jacket, and hosted viewing parties with his friends. He loved Letterman because he didn’t look like he belonged—and he learned everything he knows about hosting a show from him.

“The only reason I have this show is because the executives at ABC saw me on Dave’s show and hired me for this show,” Kimmel said as he held back tears. “So I want thank Dave, his writers and producers. Tomorrow night is Letterman’s farewell show, and I’d like it if you made sure to watch that instead of our show. We’re still going to have a show—it’s going to be a rerun—but please do not watch it, especially if you’re a young person who doesn’t understand what all the fuss it about. Dave is the best, and you should see him.”

He then aired a clip from one of Letterman’s old shows, which might have been a better pick-me-up straight from the horse’s mouth than anything Kimmel or another late-night host could have said.

“He could talk about something very insignificant and make it much more interesting than anyone else could,” Meyers said. “He was a host who brought that out of people.”

Is it possible to totally agree and disagree with something at the same time? If so, that's our reaction to the honest trailer for Jupiter Ascending.

As always, the people behind the Honest Trailers YouTube channel produced a hilariously accurate interpretation of the movie. Jupiter Ascending does indeed have terrible dialogue, a bizarre story concept, and Channing Tatum playing a space wolf-man who rides around on neon hover boots.

However, these are features, not bugs. Jupiter Ascending is a masterpiece of modern cinema, and we refuse to hear a word against it. Including the magnificent scene where Mila Kunis finds out she's an alien clone princess because she can control bees, and "bees can sense royalty."

We hope this isn't the last time a studio gives the Wachowskis a bunch of money to make a ridiculous movie. But if it is, at least we have their Netflix series Sense8 to look forward to next month.

Photo via Jupiter Ascending Lookbook