Here is astounding footage from yesterday’s weather event in Pennsylvania, a place apparently as excitable as Brooklyn. There is follow-up video here, if you are so inclined. The videographer later died of shame.

In an attempt to unmake Britain’s terrible culture of knife crime, police on that benighted island are now giving small children licenses for shotguns.

by Phoebe Connelly

Elizabeth Taylor turned 49 in 1981, and she had behind her six marriages and 55 feature films. In November of that year, she would appear on daytime soap “General Hospital” as a mysterious widow. She was also in the final year of her marriage to Republican Congressman John Warner of Virginia. “The Republican women told me, ‘You simply cannot wear the purple pantsuit you’ve been campaigning in anymore,’” she told Michael Kors, later, in Harpers Bazaar. “I ended up in a tweed suit. Me. Little tweed suits. What I won’t do for love.”

By 1985, after a divorce and a stint in rehab, the actress had fashioned herself into the most vocal mainstream champion for AIDS awareness and prevention. She was the founding chair of the first mainstream (read: straight) AIDS foundation, convinced then-president Ronald Reagan to speak at the foundation’s 1987 gala dinner (his second public speech on the disease): in it, he opened with some jokes and then quoted Auden. She regularly raised millions of dollars for AIDS education and treatment until her death. “She redefined the role of the celebrity by daring to talk about AIDS way back in the ’80s, when no one else wanted to touch it,” wrote Michael Musto yesterday at the Village Voice. “If you have fame,” Taylor told Dominick Dunne at a 1985 AIDS charity gala, “this is the way to use it.”

The precipitating event for Taylor’s activism was 1950s movie heartthrob Rock Hudson’s announcement from Paris, in July of 1985, that he had AIDS. Taylor starred opposite Hudson in the 1956 Texas ranch melodrama Giant. Hudson’s announcement made waves, as did his death three months later.

Taylor’s involvement also marked the beginning of the disease becoming an acceptable straight charity cause. This was greeted with mixed feelings by the gay community, which had spent more than half a decade trying to gain recognition for a disease that was sickening and killing thousands. Taylor was recruited by Dr. Mathilde Krim, a professor of public health at Columbia University, to co-found the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). Like many of Krim’s fundraising connections, this one likely came through Krim’s husband, who was president of Orion Pictures.

In September of that year, Taylor and amfAR held a Hollywood bash for AIDS research. The benefit had to move locations after Hudson went public with his diagnosis, because stars suddenly lined up to purchase tickets at $500 a head. “Everyone of any consequence in the film industry went to that party,” Dunne wrote in Vanity Fair. “Friends started calling me,” Taylor told Newsweek in 2001, “’Don’t go near this one, Elizabeth. It’s not a sympathetic charity.’ Then a couple of months before the dinner it came out that Rock [Hudson] had AIDS. All of a sudden the city did a total spin. It was like, ‘Oh, one of us got it, it’s not just bums in the gutter.’” Among the 2,500 attendees were Betty Ford, Rod Stewart, Carol Burnett, Shirley MacLaine and Burt Lancaster; Rod Stewart and Cyndi Lauper performed. According to the Times, “The Los Angeles homosexual community has also strongly backed the benefit.” Three Andy Warhol paintings were auctioned off.

“How we behave at this moment we’re going to remember for the rest of lives, long after this disease has passed,” MacLaine said at the event. Taylor continued to fundraise for the organization, at one point, editing a telegram sent to 94 potential patrons asking them to contribute to a cabaret benefit. Joan Kroc, heir to the McDonald’s fortune, responded, and arrived at the event to present Taylor with a $1 million check.

Making AIDS mainstream, even as it continued to predominately affect the gay community, gave fundraisers access to money, even as it marginalized the voices of those closest to the suffering. Susan Maizel Chambre, in her history of AIDS and New York, notes an interview Krim gave to Newsweek in 1987 about the role she and Taylor were able to play. “We had to have credibility; we had to be seen as a mainstream group and not a gay organization.”

* * *

What was most unusual about Taylor was how her fundraising was ongoing. In 1991, she donated the proceeds from the sale of photographs of her 8th wedding (to construction worker Larry Fortensky) to her newly created Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. At this point, the actress had significantly scaled back her work with amfAR due to illness and personal clashes with the staff. For her 65th birthday in 1997, the violet-eyed star threw a televised birthday bash complete with a new song performed by Michael Jackson. The event raised over $1 million for AIDS research. Taylor checked in to the hospital that same week for high-risk surgery to remove a brain tumor.

It’s easy, 30 years in now, to take Taylor as yet another pretty face getting her bonifides via charity work. It’s difficult to express the stigma that accompanied AIDS in the 1980s. The Canadian magazine Maclean’s ran a rather nasty column addressed to Taylor, deriding the actress for championing “the trendiest of all diseases. Trendy people die of it and trendy people go onstage and emote about it.” Adweek reported that Taylor was rumored to have lost her advertising contract with Coca Cola because of her AIDS work.

In 1992, a reporter implied that Taylor cared more about AIDS fundraising than her mother, who had been ill. “Are you saying I don’t care about my mother?” she asked. “That’s a really shitty thing to say.”

And if you were a straight, high-profile beauty willing to talk publicly about a disease that even today predominately affects minority populations, then the assumption is that you must suffer from AIDS yourself. When the actress was hospitalized for pneumonia in 1990, she was plagued with rumors that it was AIDS.

None of this is to say that Taylor was a saint. She is, after all, the woman who wrote a book titled My Love Affair With Jewelry. But she used her very public persona to transform mainstream American and political opinion on AIDS. The woman who polished her sapphire on the hem of her dress in the middle of a 1969 interview with Roger Ebert raised more than $100 million for the fight against AIDS over the course of her lifetime.

Phoebe Connelly is a writer in D.C.

Lucky fans at Fenway Park can now get inebriated more efficiently, thanks to a new dispenser that fills beer cups from the bottom up. I’m not gonna lie: this thing looks pretty cool, and I say that not just as an alcoholic but as someone who appreciate innovation in all its forms. (But yes, also as an alcoholic.)

What with the constant clamor to deny the existence of the chupacabra, it’s nice to know that at least people still believe in the sasquatch, and are making every effort to capture the creature’s peregrinations on film.

A hundred-thousand screams were heard last night, when it was announced that a startup called Color had gotten $41 million in investment money — pre-launch. It has seven founders! It’s a social photography iPhone app! They paid $350,000 for the url “color dot com”! (Which is just a “click-here for the app store!) And it is now live.

Basically, Color finds people around you, and so you can see (and have) everyone’s photos from around you. (Everyone who is also using Color, that is.) The tech sounds wildly impressive! (And high-bandwidth — it samples audio around you to match up devices that are “hearing” the same things? Whoa.) The case can be made quite well that this tech, if not this specific implementation, is huge. Also, it has $41 million in pre-launch funding! That’s a lot of millions to spend on something that has a high chance of becoming the straight version of Grindr. In the right venue, it’ll become nonconsensual Chatroulette on the go! In the best, non-pornographic case, it’s a live, interacting group photo Tumblr.

One thing that seems unexplored: is this the end of copyright? Here’s what Color says about using the app: “I can see photos and videos being taken by all people using Color on their smartphone nearby me. The photos and videos I see here will be mine to keep.” So it’s an app that gives away your personal photos to everyone who happens to be within a hundred yards.

Are you in a happy mood this morning? Then you might want to skip right over these essays by Awl pals Doree Shafrir and Anna Holmes about the death of pets. Both dogs and cats are represented, so there’s something to cry about here for everyone.

“’If Mayor Bloomberg wants to name something, he can name Bloomberg L.P. Koch L.P.,’” said Councilman Jumaane D. Williams of Brooklyn, referring to the mayor’s media conglomerate.”
 — Some people really don’t want the Queensboro Bridge renamed for Ed Koch. It’s a fair point that the Brooklyn Bridge wouldn’t get renamed for a Mayor, certainly not a living one — but then the Queensboro Bridge isn’t exactly the Brooklyn Bridge now, is it? In other news, maybe by noon we’ll come up with the right joke about Koch and Queens.

I love everything about this new song and video from the Mississippian rapper Big Krit. I love the echoes of Biggie’s “Juicy,” and of Aretha’s “Daydreaming.” I love Krit rhyming into the handle of a mop on the stage in the auditorium of the high school he’s janitoring at. I love that terrific soul sample — I wish I knew what it is, but I don’t. Big Krit is one of the rappers currently on the cover of XXL’s annual “Freshman Class” issue. Here he is rhyming over the classic breakbeat from Billy Squier’s “Big Beat,” with fellow freshman Meek Mill and Fred Da Godson in an attendant video the magazine made.

It starts innocently enough. A dude gets a free sandwich from seemingly nowhere. On a plate. He hasn’t even asked for a plate but he gets one anyway. Then his pals abduct a housepants’ed neighbor. Well, the viewer might raise an eyebrow but she herself doesn’t seem that bothered by it, this Girl from 4E. She even gives a pleased smile to the gent next to her. I mean, the power to be summoned and transported between apartments of a building must be frightening, but perhaps it leaves you a little giddy too. A sort of teleportation brand of Stockholm Syndrome. Like whoa, I’m euphoric from all that instantaneous movement. Headrush! Which might explain why 4E seems to like the attention. Then a Hot Tub crashes into a Dinner Table. Summoned like the woman and the sandwich, it nonetheless crashes violently, whereas both sandwich and woman landed gently. Do these magic teleportation powers deteriorate over the course of the commercial? Apparently the State Farm people are trafficking in some kind of difficult to master dark magick which is let loose upon our realm by the singing of their “magic jingle.” Do the singers of the so-called “Magic Jingle” lose control over the effects of singing the jingle as the commercial progresses? Who exactly is granting these powers? The State Farm claims inspectors? The Universe? And what on earth are those guys saying at the start of the commercial, anyway?: “…Snatching stuff takes…” Are these guys a room full of scruffy thieves? Should we really be granting wishes to rogue elements?

At this point with the world being pretty much a war-and-death-filled taco, shouldn’t we be using the powers of the Magical State Farm Jingle for a greater good? “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There… With an End to the War in Afghanistan! And to Feed Everyone!”

Why if these powers exist are they being wasted — as they are in this commercial — on turning a hot guy into a sensitive guy into a hot guy with a “Dark Side.”

By the way, that dude doesn’t have a Dark Side. He’s just a terrible person. And do ladies really call each other “dude”? Because I don’t know. I use “dude” way too much. It needs to be banished from all vocabularies except those of cowboys and surfers.

What I’ve been able to glean from the commercials is that the powers of the State Farm “Magic Jingle” include: Teleportation, Reading Minds, Instant Creation of Any Object, Sudden Appearance of Somewhat Famous People. If a Superhero had these powers, they’d be Unstoppable. Superman would be turned instantly into a hot guy. Or Bob Barker would summon a new car on his head. These are worrisome powers that should not be granted to Insurance Companies to dole out willy nilly. Genies are Monsters! Not our friends! They grant our wishes to destroy us! And revel in the ironic payback our deepest desires inflict upon our lives.

But the most disturbing of all the “Magic Jingle” commercials may be the one where Buffaloes Attack! Are the guys in the car eating buffalo burgers and watching buffaloes at the same time? Well, of course buffaloes will react angrily to that! And attack your car! You’re eating their mom! You callous jerks.

So the first singing of the jingle summons the State Farm guy. The second singing makes him all-powerful enough to transport everyone in the car hundreds of miles in a second. Later will they have to sing the jingle to retrieve their car? And turn their Buffalo burger into a live buffalo?

I really do want to believe that State Farm will be there when their customers need them. And not only to make somewhat attractive people supermodel attractive. But really help. Having your car messed up is rough. I’ve never owned a car, and don’t have a driver’s license — I just imagine it’s terrible. I mean, the whole endeavor is terrible. But State Farm has decided to not just give great customer support: now they’re dabbling in the arcane arts. Dangerous business. With complicated consequences for all beings in our dimension. LeBron is not just playing the world’s tiniest violin for his friend, he might as well be playing it for all who are attached to the status quo of our reality.

Insurance commercials are 95% of the ads on TV. It is important that we buy insurance and never switch to another insurance company. I’ve always been uncomfortable with Omniscience and Omnipotence. It’s kind of like trying to imagine Heaven and being like, it’s Forever and Ever? That seems scarier than Death being forever and ever. Like how much golf can one play? Every Day, forever and ever? And will I always have to play with my grandfather, his grandfather, his grandfather, Elvis and Marie Antonette? What limits are there on the powers of the State Farm jingle? At some point will someone sing the jingle and say “With four-foot genitalia!” And there will be a big “Survey Says XXX” buzzer noise and the State Farm insurance lady will be like, “Sorry, we just can’t do that.” And then we will know the outer edges of this awesome power! Be careful out there, America! Don’t get into accidents in your cars. And if you do, be careful what you wish for.

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.