If ever there was a grim picture of the current financial clusterfuck, it's the once artsy (Björk! sigur rós!), hip, and rich island nation wonderland of Iceland, which fell into cataclysmic economic failure earlier this month. And it happened pretty much overnight. Since the three major banks collapsed under crippling debt and a plummeting currency, job loss has been widespread—the architecture industry, for example, has seen some 75% of its work force laid off in the past few weeks. Now the seemingly peaceful population has devolved into an angry, violent mob, with a gay "troubadour" named Hordur Torfason leading the charge against the government.
Torfason, a playwright/actor/folk musician who was the first Icelander to publicly come out about thirty years ago, says of the wayward parliament: "They don't have our trust and they are no longer legitimate." That the singer of charming little ditties could become the face of a nation of newly desperate and (for now) hopeless anti-government rioters kind of scares the hell out of us, because if it could happen in that seemingly idyllic country, what surreal end-of-days scenarios await us? Will John Waters take up the reins of the new American hobo class, rioting against police until our government is overthrown?
As for Iceland's demise, unemployment is estimated to reach 10% by next year. It's a microcosm of a much bigger disaster, that could "put [the country] back 40 or 50 years," according to Sarah Lyall of the New York Times. There is a silver lining though! Reykjavik, with its loungey up-all-night bar scene, used to be one of Europe's most tantalizing but prohibitively expensive nightlife cities. Not anymore! These days we can go there cheap and dance in the ashes of their once gloriously idyllic Norse city, ably forgetting our looming penury back here Stateside.
Then we'll come home and leave them to their own devices. The long forever-night will set in, and there they'll stay.
A frozen reminder of a wintry paradise, lost.
More good layoffs! Shortly after 
At the Las Vegas rally for Proposition 8 yesterday, comedian and Adventures of New Christine ingenue Wanda Sykes told a massive crowd of onlookers that she'd gotten married on October 25...to a woman. After divorcing her husband in 1998, many had hoped Sykes would break up Larry David's marriage and claim him for her own. While it looks like that hilarious coupling will never come to pass, we wish the brilliant Sykes all the happiness in the world. Here's what she told the crowd:
Do you feel that tingly spark in the air today, especially as you near Times Square? It's because Total Request Live, MTV's long-running afterschool music video special is coming to an end after ten years, signing off on Sunday 
Today marks the first time older-lady (and oddly capitalized) website wowOwow has actually 
Ashley Todd, a crazy woman who carved a backwards 'B' on her face for some reason that almost made some sort of sense a few weeks ago, is apparently bumming around Pittsburgh hanging out at the Barnes & Noble. She's presumably stuck in Pittsburgh—perhaps the wrong side of Pittsburgh!—because she's still 
Writer John Leonard has died, according to 
After a long battle with cancer, science fiction's biggest crossover novelist Michael Crichton died today. Though the lanky Harvard graduate was most well known for his 1990 novel Jurassic Park, he leaves behind a sometimes controversial legacy of investigation into the most prominent scientific issues of our time. We review the highlights of his storied career:
Studs Terkel, Chicago's beloved author, interviewer, activist, radio host, and historian, died today at 96. Terkel's books Hard Times, Working, and The Good War are essential reading for students of American history in the first half of the 20th Century. He was a legendary storyteller and interviewer, and it's amazing to remember that not only did he publish his first book when he was already 55, but he then lived on to publish a dozen more, including one, P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening, set to be released next month. "Take it easy, but take it." [
Fred Baron, the attorney who rebuilt the Texas Democratic party and became famous, late in life, for his unfortunate help in covering up the extramarital affair of former Senator John Edwards, died Thursday of cancer. He was 61. Baron made a fortune in asbestos litigation, and used the funds to found the Texas Democratic Trust in 2005, among countless other philanthropic causes. In the Edwards affair, Baron was revealed as the source of the supposed "hush money" keeping mistress Rielle Hunter 
Guillaume Depardieu, the estranged son of renowned actor Gérard, died today from complications relating to pneumonia at a hospital outside Paris. He was 37. An actor himself, Depardieu received acclaim early in his career for the 1995 film The Apprentices. He costarred with his father in several films, most notably Aime ton père (A Loving Father) in 2002. Though, dark clouds seemed to often occlude his successes. 
Joerg Haider, the extreme right wing Austrian politician who once said the Nazis had "an orderly employment policy" and referred to the concentration camps as "the punishment camps of National Socialism," died in a car crash last night. He was 58. "Haider was pronounced dead in a hospital shortly after his Volkswagen Phaeton veered off the road outside Klagenfurt in southern Austria and overturned several times after he successfully passed another car, police said. Authorities said an initial investigation showed no signs of foul play. At the time of his death, Haider was governor of the province of Carinthia and leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria—a party he formed after breaking away from the far right Freedom Party in 2005."
When we 
Longtime ultimate fighter and former UFC middleweight champion Evan Tanner was 
G Spa—the tiny, dank club in the basement of the Meatpacking District's Hotel Gansevoort—is closing on Saturday. It was a celeb-magnet and a dreadful place. It will not be missed. (We voted it the 
Jerry Ford,* the (dapper!) fellow pictured here, is dead at 83.** Ford founded Ford Models, one of the leading agencies in the seventies and eighties that legitimized the industry and gained renown for discovering Lauren Hutton, Christie Brinkley, 
Someday, everyone reading this is going to die! And we should all get started on whatever we really want to do now, because the Grim Reaper could come to collect us at any minute. He's already come for Dave Freeman, co-author of 
You might be wondering what Alternadad author Neal Pollack has been writing about lately. Oh, the same thing he's been writing about for years now—quotidian life with his five-year-old son, Elijah. (We've been 
As you stumble home drunkenly this evening, trundling down Stuart St. in Boston, or off of some semi-major highway in the greater Chicagoland area, don't plan on getting your faux-Irish crapbag food fix the way you've gotten it for years. Tonight, everything goes away. After three hundred and twenty-two devoted years of deep frying sandwiches (seriously, one bite and you died... in a good way) Bennigan's Grill & Tavern, known to some as Not-Applebee's, is 
Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University professor whose last lecture after being diagnosed with terminal cancer became a YouTube hit last year, has died at 47. (That turned into the bestselling book The Last Lecture.) Pausch, an award-winning computer science professor, had pancreatic cancer. After the jump, his famed lecture, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams."
Estelle Getty, actress and adorable little old shrunken lady, 
Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki, the wrestler and restaurateur who essentially introduced America to Japanese food with his Benihaha chain, died today in New York. He was 69. Aoki raised the money to start his first Benihana by driving an ice cream truck in Harlem, which is awesome. More recently, he's been known to New Yorkers through his children, model Devon and annoying scenester DJ Steve. He faced deportation in 2006, and you could do worse for an introduction to his colorful life than 
Stand-up comedian George Carlin, whose routine about forbidden words on the airwaves led to a key Supreme Court decision on government broadcast oversight, died of heart failure near Los Angeles. He was 71. Carlin had been admitted to the hospital earlier in the day with chest pains. He launched to fame in the 1960s as a straightlaced, suit-and-tie comedian appearing on programs like the Ed Sullivan Show as characters like the "hippie-dippie weatherman." By the 1970s, he was doing more risque material in long hair and jeans, and his performance of the routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" prompted an obscenity trial in Milwaukee, plus the Supreme Court fight, which arose from the airing of a similar routine on the radio in New York and an FCC fine. 
Everybody has dysfunctional relationships—even those young marrieds who refer to themselves as "we." With that in mind, Gawker alum Doree Shafrir 
Florent, the long-standing neighborhood 24-hour bistro that's welcomed 7a.m. clubbers and regular folk alike since 1985, has been warning of its demise for months now. The owner, Florent Morellet, vowed to stay open for as long as he could. Now it's official: the last day of business will be June 29th—the rent went up to over $30,000 a month. Frank Bruni eulogizes the restaurant