You spin my reconciliation bill right round

Good afternoon, lovelies. Imagine, if you will, walking into a 6 a.m. spin class to find Kyrsten Sinema in the brightest sports bra and legging set, screaming at the top of her lungs. Even scarier, imagine how much her eventual memoir will sell for. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Good afternoon, lovelies. Imagine, if you will, walking into a 6 a.m. spin class to find Kyrsten Sinema in the brightest sports bra and legging set, screaming at the top of her lungs. Even scarier, imagine how much her eventual memoir will sell for. Like death for all of us, such is the inevitability of the worst person you’ve ever heard of getting a million dollars for a vanity book.

Spinning With Kyrsten Sinema

By Frank Wisswell

When she's not fucking over the American people, she’s making them exercise

Perched on the spin bike, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema looked completely unrecognizable. Without her fashion glasses and various kitschy, faux-vintage accessories straight out of a Scooby Doo porn parody, she looked like any of the generically attractive 40-year-old women you see around Washington, D.C. Her pink-and-black workout gear was an acceptable uniform anywhere in the city; for once, she chose not to stand out in one of the most boring fashion cities in the world.

It was summer 2016, a simpler time in D.C. We were months away from our first female president, the phrases “QAnon” and “Dirtbag Left” might as well have been from Game of Thrones, and no one knew who Sinema was. Years away from being possessed by the ghost of John McCain and committing to an unpopular series of centrist viewpoints as to appeal to nobody except for some reason the people of Arizona, she was just another Congresswoman.

I was there because it was two doors down from my house, and I had learned to actually enjoy a morning workout. I was also there as a bit. Perpetually single, I had somehow started joking with my friends about my “crush” on Sinema.

Who Got These Amazing Book Deals?

By Tarpley Hitt

The DOJ's lawsuit against Penguin Random House mentions a Grammy-winning singer who scored $8 million for her memoir

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Penguin Random House on Tuesday — the first major antitrust lawsuit under the Biden Administration and an apparent attempt to stop the publisher from acquiring its rival, Simon & Schuster. The 26-page civil complaint, filed in Washington D.C. District Court, lays out the Department’s case for why the merger “should be blocked.”

The main reason is that PRH is the largest publisher in the country, operating in a market with only four other true competitors — HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishing Group, and Simon & Schuster — which even its own parent company described as an “oligopoly.”

The case against PRH includes several incredible details, one of which is that the Simon & Schuster CEO more or less confessed in an email that he believed the deal to be illegal. “I’m pretty sure that the Department of Justice wouldn’t allow Penguin Random House to buy us,” he wrote to one of the firm’s “best-selling authors” in May of 2020, “but that’s assuming we still have a Department of Justice.” Likewise, though PRH has publicly suggested the merger was necessary to compete with Amazon, another executive privately admitted that he “never, never bought into that argument.”

The New York City Marathon Is New York’s Best Holiday

By Olivia Craighead

It’s like the Olympics without the jingoism

There’s something romantic about the holidays in New York. Miracle on 34th Street makes Christmastime in Midtown seem more appealing than it has any right to be; When Harry Met Sally would have you believe New Year’s Eve in the Big Apple is wholesome rather than an alarming display or moral depravity; Hell, even Pieces of April uses Thanksgiving charm to reconcile an estranged mother and daughter on the Lower East Side. This is all fine and good, but what culture has long ignored is that none of these days are actually the best holiday in New York. That, of course, is the New York City Marathon, and it’s making its triumphant return this Sunday after being postponed in 2020.

For New Yorkers who have never ventured outside of their apartments on Marathon Sunday to watch thousands of runners trek through the city on a cool November day, let me paint a picture for you. Early in the morning, you will see the professionals. They run in a tight pack, moving their legs so quickly and gracefully that it looks inhuman. These are what the Boston Dynamics robots wished they looked like.

Later, you will begin to see the throng of regular runners. I say regular only to differentiate them from the professionals, but it is by no means a regular feat to run a marathon. These people have had to put in more work and effort into qualifying for this race than I ever have for anything in my life.

Bats Collect ‘Bird of the Year 2021’ Prize, Laugh in the Face of Furious Birders

By Kelly Conaboy

New Zealand has given bats, which are not birds, their biggest bird prize.

The best bird is a bat now, baby, and you better get used to it. New Zealand’s annual “Bird of the Year” competition, which allows residents to rank their favorite birds from the country’s over-200 native species, has found its winner in the pekapeka-tou-roa, or long-tailed bat, despite the fact that the small mammal is, in fact, not a bird. And we do love the bat for his unlikely triumph, and we take inspiration from his fearless pursuit of all that he desires.

The 2021 competition raked in a total of 58,000 votes, the most ever received in its 16-year-long history, according to the Independent. Among those votes, 7,000 ranked the bat as their favorite bird. The organizers decided to include the bat in the competition to raise awareness of its status as a critically endangered native species, which is due largely to deforestation and invasive predators. “They face a lot of the same threats that our native birds do,” said Lissy Fehnker-Heather, member of the environmental group Forest and Bird, which organizes the competition. “So this year, we thought we’ll try and get more people aware of that.”

Many have noted the bat has also had a bad bout of PR lately, with its potential link the the initial COVID-19 outbreak. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a new trailer for the upcoming Marvel film Morbius was released on November 2, and it features Jared Leto being attacked by, yes, bats. Then he becomes a vampire. Oh, our poor friend the bat. We love him, and we’re glad he is able to rise above his bad press.

Whose Fault Was the <em>Rust</em> Shooting? Not Me, Says Everyone Involved

Whose Fault Was the Rust Shooting? Not Me, Says Everyone Involved

By Jenny G. Zhang

Some people at the center of the debacle are now alleging sabotage

I’m not going to lie, things are looking bad over at the ongoing Rust shooting debacle. This week, the production’s armorer, assistant director, and actor/producer Alec Baldwin — all people at the center of the mystery of how a live round ended up in a gun that Baldwin discharged during rehearsal of a scene, accidentally killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza — have started reaching for various defenses that I’m not sure are doing them much favor in the court of public opinion.

Assistant director Dave Halls, who — according to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office’s affidavit for a search warrant — was the one to hand the weapon to Baldwin and announce that it was a “cold gun” (meaning there wasn’t supposed to be any live ammunition loaded inside) without checking it, is now claiming that he did not handle the gun. “This idea my client grabbed the gun and handed it to Baldwin absolutely did not happen,” his attorney Lisa Torraco said on a Fox News appearance on Monday, suggesting that another crew member (whom Torraco did not identify) had “checked” the weapon.

TODAY IN GAWKER HISTORY:

11/03/14

Final Destination: The Worst Halloween Costumes of 2014

By Allie Jones

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You spin my reconciliation bill right round

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