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In June, something odd happened regarding Donald Trump and 2012’s Superstorm Sandy. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told the press how Trump generously offered an open-ended amount of money to the relief fund established by Christie’s wife. The Washington Post quickly revealed how Christie “misspoke,” and there was no record of Trump donating to the fund. Now, a related story comes from the Daily Beast, which reports that Trump required his staff to work through the turmoil of the so-called Frankenstorm that killed 53 people. (And naturally, he tweeted a bunch of junk about President Obama and made more unsubstantiated charitable claims too.)

The Beast reveals that Trump privately told all mid-level Apprentice staffers to report to Trump Tower because the show must go on, despite a state of emergency where much of the city was shut down. Staffers were told to report on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 — the day after the storm struck New York. During the chaos, the Trump family was safely ensconced in apartments within the building, whereas staffers had to choose between risking their own well being or their jobs:

“We all had to come in right after Sandy,” a former staffer said. “We were in his building, and we fought with [a] manager, who said, ‘It’s not from me, it’s from [Donald Trump] himself’ … Ivanka [Trump] did very nicely [come down] and thank us for coming in,” the ex-staffer said. “She really was very nice but we were all [thinking], ‘Well, it was easy for you Trumps to simply come downstairs, why are we here?'”

The staffer, who spoke to the Beast on condition of anonymity, also referred to Trump as running a “dictatorship” on the Apprentice set. And there’s more:

“We all worked the day after,” another former employee told The Daily Beast. “The whole city was shut down. It was really irresponsible and selfish … Like, no one was under the illusion that we were making fine art here, that it had to be pushed that hard. It was crazy. Business in the city had basically shut down.”

“We had to work straight through it,” [a different] staffer said. “The city was shut down, no traffic lights, etc. I would bike from bk [Brooklyn] to [Trump] Tower,” he said of his first days back at work during the storm’s aftermath.

Meanwhile, Trump was tweeting about providing refuge to those seeking shelter from the storm (which an employee says didn’t happen): “We are taking care of hundreds of people in the Trump Tower atrium — they are seeking refuge. Free coffee and food.”

The Beast notes that Trump increased his boasting the next day to claim that “thousands” of people sought refuge in the Trump Tower atrium, which can only comfortably hold about 350 people. He also tweeted that Obama would use the disaster for political gain.

And of course, Trump used the opportunity to reference his birther conspiracy theory about Obama (which he recently tried to erase with one sentence) during the storm’s aftermath. Trump tweeted about extending his $5 million charity offer (in exchange for Obama’s birth certificate) in light of the storm.

The Trump campaign didn’t respond to The Beast’s requests for comment.

(Via The Daily Beast, NorthJersey.com & Washington Post)

Happy Hurricane Sandy — aka “Frankenstorm” — week, everyone! Welcome to the suck! On the bright side, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have decided that paywalls are a problem in the middle of a potentially very serious storm, and are taking them down. Granted, very few people are browsing the Style section in the middle of a potentially serious storm, but hey, sometimes you’ve got time to kill. Regardless, it’s all free until the storm passes.

According to its third quarter earnings report released this past week, the Times has about 566,000 digital subscribers to nytimes.com and the International Herald Tribune. But thousands more will be closely following the storm as severe weather typically brings traffic surges to news websites.

Wall Street Journal Digital Network Managing Editor Raju Narisetti tweeted Sunday afternoon that all of wsj.com would be freely available starting Monday.

Essentially, you’ll be able to get up to the minute information about the hurricane as it progresses.

If you’re in Sandy’s path, stay safe. It’s fun to joke about vodka and cigarettes, but look no further than what Hurricane Irene did to Vermont, so get a flashlight, get some food you can eat without electricity, and pay attention to the warnings. Also, leave some vodka at the liquor store, for God’s sake, we’ve been three times and came away with nothing.

Overheard in the bedroom of some dude’s suburban Maryland apartment earlier today, probably…

Oh man. So nice to sleep in a little. Thanks for closing my office today, Hurricane Sandy! (Gets up, looks out the window.) Well this doesn’t look so bad. A little wind, a little rain. NBD. I should go for a jog. Shirtless. The breeze will feel good pounding against my flesh. I should protect me eyes though — so much stuff floating around in the air out there. Hmmmm…Where’d I put my horse head mask?

Hero.

(Via Alex Ogle)

A shirtless man in a horse mask jogs in defiance of Hurricane Sandy — right through a live newscast — in Washington, D.C.

Well here you have it, folks: the shirtless, horse head mask-wearing jogger who captivated a nation this morning has been identified and his name is Jimmy Kruyne, aka @howtoJimmyK on Twitter. And FYI, he’s still winning Hurricane Sandy after posting a pic of himself in the victory formation next to a screengrab of himself on his home computer.

Reports DCist:

Jimmy Kruyne, who bared his chest and donned that headpiece, tells DCist he just wanted to brighten people’s moods on a dark, doom-filled day. “Little spontaneous jogging hopefully put a smile on people’s face before this awful storm,” he says.

A storm-weary nation has turned its eyes to you, Jimmy, and you have delivered. Thanks.

In the meantime, UGH…

(Via DCist)

According to CNN and others, two crewman are missing from a replica ship used in Mutiny on the Bounty, Treasure Island, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, after it was battered by Hurricane Sandy off the coast of North Carolina.

Two crew members are missing Monday amid 18-foot-tall waves and 40-mph winds after they and their team abandoned the three-masted HMS Bounty for two lifeboats, the U.S. Coast Guard reported.
Coast Guard helicopters plucked 14 people out of the chilly Atlantic Ocean around 6:30 a.m., Petty Officer Brandyn Hill said. But so far, there’s no word on the missing.
After fighting waves towering 18 feet high and winds of 40 mph, the 16 crew members fled the HMS Bounty, which appeared in some classic adventure films, hoping for rescue as soon as possible.
The Coast Guard was bringing all 14 people it saved to the Coast Guard air station in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, according to Hill.
A C-130 aircraft is still looking for the two missing crew members, and a third Jayhawk crew is en route to help the search-and-rescue effort, the Coast Guard said.
Initial reports said 17 crew members were aboard the HMS Bounty, but the Coast Guard corrected that number in its most recent statement.
Wearing special cold-weather survival suits, crew members abandoned ship Monday into lifeboats designed to hold 25 people. The boats also have canopies to help shelter them somewhat from Sandy’s pelting rain and winds.
The Coast Guard received an emergency call from the ship’s owner Sunday after the 80-foot, three-masted vessel lost power and started taking on water, the Coast Guard said. Rescuers picked up an emergency locator beacon from the vessel, and an HC-130 aircraft was dispatched to the area, where the plane made contact with the crew. [CNN]

In an interview on ABC about an hour ago, Coast Guard Vice Admiral Robert Parker said “We currently have either two or three people still unaccounted for and the vessel has completely sunk.”

Which obviously makes you wonder… what the f*ck were people doing on a pirate ship from a movie with a giant storm approaching? A giant storm we’ve been hearing about for a week. When I think of places I’d want to be when a storm hits, “on a sailboat from the 1700s” is pretty far down the list. That’s quite an oversight. I just hope they remembered to evacuate Tom Hanks’ raft from Castaway.

From Weather.com:

“History is being written as an extreme weather event continues to unfold, one which will occupy a place in the annals of weather history as one of the most extraordinary to have affected the United States.” ( )

LET’S GO CRUSH SOME WAVES, BROS. Hurricane Sandy, Frankenstorm, Holy Sh*t That Thing Is Terrifying, whatever you want to call it, is bad news. People here on the east coast are expecting the worst, so much so that every last bag of Loaded Chili and Cheese Ruffles has been snagged from my local grocery store. NO ONE buys Loaded Chili and Cheese Ruffles, unless they know they’re going to be stranded inside for the next three days. But before the power goes out and we’re reduced to *shudder* talking, let’s take a look at some of the best Hurricane Sandy memes that have popped up so far. Somewhere out there, Stockard Channing is smiling.
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As I write this I’m sitting in an NYC apartment and the wind outside is rattling the windows and the front door. On TV NY1 is showing live images of is a giant crane that has been toppled over by the wind and may come crashing down to the ground 70-something stories below at any moment. SEE…

As you can imagine, I’m a little hesitant to go outside right now, but my natural human curiosity makes me want to see what’s going on out there. Thankfully, there’s Instacane — a collection of Instagram photos of Hurricane Sandy that I have no idea who’s curating.

Now here’s an important Hurricane Sandy update…

(GIF Via Topher Chris)

Back in August, we put together a post of 12 clearly fake photos that had gone viral at some point. I’ll never forget you, bad ass helicopter shark. The peg for that article was Hurricane Isaac, which was mere child’s play compared to what Hurricane Sandy has already done and will likely do to the east coast.

A new batch of Photoshopped and/or old photos of unrelated events are being passed around on Facebook and Twitter now for Frankenstorm, so as a public service announcement, we’ve put together a collection of pictures that could be for real real, unlike these, but are most definitely for play play.

(Via)

(Via)

(Via)

This is a real photo, but it was taken in September, not during Sandy. (Via)

OK. That one’s genuine… (Via)

…And this one’s just annoying, as are all #preparednesskit photos. WE GET IT. YOU’RE A DRUNK. (Via)

Someone took their jet ski through the shore town of Manasquan, NJ right in middle of Hurricane Sandy.

Nine Ways To Make Your Cell Battery Last Through Hurricane Sandy [Quartz]

Texas Billboards Claims Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Was A Republican [HHW]

Barclays Banks On Jay-Z, Brooklyn Nets [The Australian]

Should A Person Be Jailed For Swearing In Court? [Time]

Where Have All The Black Pitchers In Baseball Gone? [The Urban Daily]

Watch Will Smith Freestyle at Gabrielle Union’s Birthday Party [Broken Cool]

The 10 Impulse Buys I’m Blaming On Hurricane Sandy [Four-Pins]

The Air Sex Championships Returned To Austin [With Leather]

Jessica Biel’s Best GIF Ever [Brobible]

The Best Fan-Made Halloween Costumes From 12 Of TV’s Finest Shows [Warming Glow]

Science Says Women Taking Control Leads To Better, Safer, Sex (NSFW) [Peeperz]

Ultimate Assassin’s Creed Song |Smosh|

36 Funny And Adorable Halloween Costumes For Pets |UPROXX|

Here’s A Collection Of Extremely Fake Hurricane Sandy Photos Foolish People Are Falling For |UPROXX|

Christina Aguilera’s Halloween Costume Is Very Confusing |Warming Glow|

Wellington Airport’s Gollum sculpture celebrates New Zealand’s first-ever contribution to culture |Film Drunk|

The Cheesehead Bed, For Packers Fans Who Never Want To Get Laid Again |With Leather|

Could A New Eminem Album Be On The Way? |Smoking Section|

The Best Moments From Week 8 Sunday |Kissing Suzy Kolber|

Banned iPad Mini Promo |High Definite|

Best Baby Costume Ever |HuffPost Comedy|

The Halloween Candy Trading Guide |Daily What|

The Most Terrifying Thing In The World |College Humor|

An Awesome Steampunk Nintendo Transformation |Unreality|

16 International Idioms That Describe Heavy Rain |Mental Floss|

9 Beloved TV Actors That You May Not Realize Are Still Employed |Pajiba|

Emma Roberts Dressed Up As Her Aunt Julia From “Pretty Woman” |Buzzfeed|

The ten creepiest episodes of The X-Files. You can almost hear the theme song in your head. |Fark|

Paulina Gretzky Dressed Up As a Sexy Cop, Sexy Pirate, and Sexy deadmau5 for Halloween |Brobible|

A fully-playable version of Tetris built into a pumpkin, with 128 LEDs for the display and the stem serving as a controller. |Gorilla Mask|

VIDEO BELOW: Cat sits like a person, enthralled while watching Madagascar 2 on a laptop. |via Buzzfeed|

Like us on Facebook | Follow us on Twitter | Kickstart this.

[Pictures via Pleated-Jeans and The Clearly Dope.]

Sean Price transmitting live from Brooklyn to deliver his version of a first-hand glimpse at Hurricane Sandy…and to remind buyers that Mic Tyson’s still dropping today. Stores closed? Go digital and pick it up on iTunes.

To all our folks on the East, stay dry and keep your heads held high.

Before 66 million of you lose power and contemplate the wreckage Auntie Sandra might wreck upon your homestead, give careful consideration to the tunes you’ll soon include on your Spotify Christmas playlist. Inopportune moment aside, The Shins just released a fairly great cover of Paul McCartney’s iconic “Wonderful Christmastime” for Starbucks’ Holidays Rule, a compilation of yuletide covers which also features Andrew Bird and fun. The updated track doesn’t stray much from the 1979 classic, sounding just as poppy and cheery. However, The Shins’ sounds bigger, bubblier and includes James Mercer actually sounding happy, which is always a win.

Despite Mother Nature’s swallowing the eastern half of the United States, splurge on some electricity and give Mercer and company a listen. Then hunker down and spike some cider for the season’s sake. Holidays Rule comes to a Starbucks near you on October 30.

New York City is a mess this morning. More so than usual. Subways and buses are temporarily obsolete, trees are down, power stations have exploded, the entirety of the East Village is underwater, the poop-filled Gowanus Canal is flooding, and at least 10 people have died. This is the kind of event that usually brings the awful residents, myself included (did I bitch about losing Internet for an hour? Yes, I did), of this awful city together. Even Rex Ryan’s obese brother Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, which was hit as bad as NY, if not worse, had nice things to say about President Obama, his political enemy.

But leave it to the New York Post to say something utterly confounding in its stupidity.

I mean, come on, New York Post — that’s not even Wall Street. That photo was CLEARLY taken in the East Village. Oh, also that whole wishing a watery death for a member of a peaceful protest thing isn’t cool, either.

Hope everything out there’s safe.

(Banner via) (Via The Awl)

Yesterday Josh put together this PSA of supposed Hurricane Sandy photos that at the time were going viral and taking the web by, um, storm (sorry) despite the fact that all the images in question were either photoshops or taken at a different date.
After the devastation that has occurred across the East Coast over the last twenty-four hours there are plenty of incredible real photos for the internet to pass along. So to provide some balance here are a handful of images (like the one above from Ground Zero) that are currently making their way across the web and accurately capture the event. I’m 90% sure these are 100% not fake.

Hoboken ( ).
Before and After Funtown Pier ( ).
Parking garage in NYC’s Financial District ( ).
Hoboken Train Station ( ).
Brooklyn Battery Tunnel ( ).
Ossining, NY ( ).
Breezy Point, Queens ( ).
Jane’s Carousel

Hey, remember that time Donald Trump followed up his massively huge world-changing “major announcement” hype with a self-promoting offer to the President and we all collectively made a wanking motion? If it’s as clear as if it happened last week that’s because it did happen last week, before Sandy turned our attention to things that actually matter as opposed to ginormous gasbags.

Now thanks to VH1’s Kate Spencer he of the frightening hair is back in the internet mix. And it’s glorious.

.@realdonaldtrump Hey dude, I hear you have $5 million you could donate to New Yorkers in need tonight? #sandy

— katespencer (@katespencer) October 30, 2012

Ms. Spencer planted the above seed on Twitter last night and former Onion writer Jason Roeder soon followed and before anyone knew it #ThanksDonald trending with preemptive gratitude for a charitable act that will almost certainly never happen because Donald Trump is an a-hole.

Excited that @realdonaldtrump has decided to donate $5 million to Sandy clean-up efforts, no-strings. I think everyone should thank him.

— Jason Roeder (@jasonroeder) October 30, 2012

I refuse to follow anything Trump does on Twitter so I don’t know if he’s responded (let me know if he says yes). I just really enjoy the troll train running full bore at the guy, the only outcomes being a victory of some sort.

#ThanksDonald via The Huffington Post

Hurricane Sandy, like that bully who picked on you at school, has largely come and gone on the East Coast. But also like that bully who picked on you at school, the damage she’s caused will linger well after much else of what she’s done is just a memory.

Mostly because every time you try to make a call, it’ll drop, and you’ll curse the winds that gave birth to her. This is because among other things, Sandy has trashed pretty much the entire cellular infrastructure of the East Coast. Oh, and as an extra screw-you, she also trashed your cable.

We know all this because the FCC just released some outage data and it’s pretty much garbage up and down the East Coast:

[FCC Chairman Julius] Genachowski said that as of 10 a.m. ET today, 25 percent of the nation’s wireless companies’ cell sites were not operational in 158 counties in 10 states from Virginia to Massachusetts. This information comes from the carriers themselves, which report outages to the FCC as part of the agency’s Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS).
Cable operators in that same area also reported that about 25 percent of consumers were without broadband and other services this morning. The agency said outages for landline phones are much less widespread.

So, yes, your grandpa can still make phone calls, and will probably never let you hear the end of it. If you’re wondering why landlines are up while cellular networks are down, the short answer is power. In areas where power is out, cell towers are having a much bigger problem. And it’s not done yet, either. As Sandy works her way towards Michigan, she’ll keep knocking over cell towers and yanking down power lines.

If you want to do your part, don’t call people: Send texts or let people know on Facebook you’re all right. Also, Yankees fans, it’s tasteless to root for Sandy to destroy Michigan. Just a warning.

Here is my hurricane story, briefly. I live in Eastern Pennsylvania. We didn’t get hit quite the way New York or the Jersey Shore did, but we definitely took some body blows, as evidenced by the handful of trees laying on the ground outside my apartment, and the whole area’s sporadic-at-best access to electricity over the past 36 hours. After the power went out on Monday night I huddled under some blankets in my bedroom and listened for hours as the wind whipped around the corner of my building with enough force that it sounded like a low-flying 747 was circling the immediate area, shaking the windows with every gust. It’s not a particularly unique story, and I know plenty of people dealt with far, far worse, but the point of it is this: I am a fully-grown adult male who got off relatively easy in the whole thing, and it was still some really disquieting sh-t. I can’t even imagine how terrifying it must have been for young children, especially those in areas that took a more direct hit.

That is why this story is awesome. Tuesday morning, Kevin Clash (the voice of Elmo) went on Brian Lehrer’s WNYC radio show in character and tried to comfort his young audience by talking about the time a hurricane hit Sesame Street:

“Well, the wind started blowing really bad, and we had to put tape on windows and stuff,” he explained of the episode. He even had to help his pal Big Bird put his nest back together after the storm destroyed it.

Joining Elmo and host Lehrer was Dr. Rosemarie Truglio, the vice president of education and research for Sesame Workshop. She explained that the episode was created long before Sandy or even Hurricane Katrina. It was meant to help parents if their kids should ever face a similar storm. […]

As for Elmo, he took a question from a fan who wanted to know if he was scared on Monday night, as Hurricane Sandy hit his hometown.

“Yeah, but Elmo was with his mommy and daddy, so Elmo asked a lot of questions and learned a lot about what was happening,” he assured.[The Clicker]

The full audio is below. Elmo is a national treasure.

Jimmy Kimmel is taping his shows all this week in Brooklyn — last night was his first after Hurricane Sandy foiled Monday’s taping — and he had two of the best talk show guests in the history of talk shows, Howard Stern and Tracy Morgan, booked for the first show. Needless to say, there were LOLs to be had, especially when Tracy got to talking about his Hurricane Sandy experiences and who he thinks is to blame for the storm.

“New York ain’t never had no hurricanes. This has got Republicans written all over it. This has got Romney written all over it,” Morgan said emphatically. “As we get closer to the election, they trying to suppress the Latino vote!”

Sure, none of this makes any sense at all, but it’s Tracy Morgan — and it’s funny.

Enjoy…

I smell a buddy cop movie!

(Via Gotcha)