RefBan

Referral Banners

Monday, March 18, 2013

How to Fit Two Weeks Worth of Luggage Under the Airplane Seat in Front of You

March 18th, 2013Top Story

How to Fit Two Weeks Worth of Luggage Under the Airplane Seat in Front of You

By Adam Dachis

How to Fit Two Weeks Worth of Luggage Under the Airplane Seat in Front of YouBack in the day, checking your bag on a trip only cost you 20 minutes of your time after a flight. Now you're lucky if it only costs you $20. With rampant theft, high bag check costs, and overhead bins filled to the brim, learning how to pack efficiently matters more than ever. With the right strategy, you can fit everything you actually need into the seat in front of you.

I hate checking bags. I really hate checking bags. I've had luggage lost, items stolen, property destroyed, and a myriad of other issues. After an incredibly degrading experience with checked luggage, I decided to approach every future flight as a challenge. I tested new ways to ensure I get my bags on the plane and, more recently, that they can fit underneath the seat in front of me if necessary. After four years of practice, I can pack for a two week week trip and fit everything into a tiny space. In this post, we'll look at how.

Pick the Right Bag(s)

How to Fit Two Weeks Worth of Luggage Under the Airplane Seat in Front of YouMost luggage wastes space in favor of added protection or aesthetics. You'll want that protection when traveling with fragile items, but most of the time your primary bag won't require much padding because you'll fill it with clothing. Clothing serves as a wonderful source of padding on its own, so even if you do have a fragile item or two you can pack it inside of your clothing to avoid damage. When fitting a large number of items underneath the seat in front of you, and still retaining room for a personal item (like a medium-sized backpack or messenger bag), flexibility matters most.

Few bags provide more flexibility than—or cost as little as—the duffel. For around $30, you can get a malleable carrier that houses about as much as a carry-on suitcase. As a result, size isn't paramount because you can fill a portion of the bag and squeeze it under the seat with little effort. You don't have a lot of room under the seat—bags are supposed to measure no larger than 8"x17"x12"—but because a duffel compresses well, the bag's measurements can exceed those limits without causing a problem. This Adidas duffel bag costs $25 and only exceeds standard underseat bag measurements by a few inches in each dimension. It also offers an outer pocket on one side, providing an optimal temporary storage space for liquids you'll need to remove during security screenings. Most any small-to-medium-sized duffel will do the trick, but bags geared towards sports activities tend to be smaller and flex a bit more than their canvas and leather counterparts.

How to Fit Two Weeks Worth of Luggage Under the Airplane Seat in Front of YouWhat you put inside of the bag counts, too. While you can pack arbitrarily with good technique, you lose the advantage of organization. A few inexpensive tools can help solve that problem. First, packing cubes provide structure so you can separate pants from shirts from undergarments. They even work well with technology if you have enough of it. Additionally, mesh bags work well when separating smaller items like toiletries and some travel documents. Utilizing both will keep everything in order and much easier to unpack.

As for your second bag, or "personal item" as the airlines like to call it, read our guide on creating a modular go bag for help with packing a great one.

Learn Efficient Packing and Organization Techniques

Most people fold and pack their clothes into squares, but other packing methods save more space and can even avoid wrinkles. While we could cover a myriad of options, you only need two techniques to fit a lot into your bag: rolling and building a foundation.

How to Fit Two Weeks Worth of Luggage Under the Airplane Seat in Front of YouFirst, the rolling method couldn't be more straightforward. You literally take your clothing and roll it up into a tube. In some cases, rolling multiple shirts into one tube can save space. The image to the right demonstrates how many items you can fit into a suitcase with this approach.

Second, you need to build a foundation by packing heavier items at the bottom and lighter items at the top. Whether you've opted to use packing cubes or just dump everything into your bag, heavier items create a foundation at the bottom to reduce movement and can withstand more weight. Lighter items cannot, so putting them at the top keeps them in good form and aids the rolling method in preventing wrinkles. Perhaps these methods seem almost too easy, but you don't have to trust me—flight attendants pack the same way.

Know What You Need (and What You Don't)

How to Fit Two Weeks Worth of Luggage Under the Airplane Seat in Front of YouMost people don't know what they need to bring on a trip, save packing for the last minute, and end up bringing twice the number of items they actually need. I am, by no means, exempt from this situation. On my last trip, I packed five pairs of pants when I needed only two or three (or, if you're like some crazy people I know, one). Why? They were new and I wanted to wear them. Did I end up wearing them all? Not even close. Packing well allows you a little bit of inefficiency, but many travelers could probably halve the contents of their suitcases. Nobody thinks they can, but a little forethought goes a very long way.

When you pack a bag for a trip, you want the following items:

  • Everyday clothing (e.g. shirts, pants, underwear, socks)
  • Weather-specific clothing (e.g. coats, swimsuits, boots)
  • Toiletries (e.g. toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, cosmetics)
  • Travel documents (e.g. boarding passes, itineraries, your passport)
  • Entertainment items (e.g. computer, tablet, books)

While you won't require every example of every category, you'll certainly want a few items in each. Problems occur when you start thinking of everything you pack as "single use" items. With the exception of undergarments, most clothing can survive at least a second day and retain a clean feeling. Jeans last even longer, especially if you can toss them in a freezer overnight. Because travel often feels boring, we feel the desire to pack too many entertainment items. If you start looking at your belongings as a little more versatile, rather than how you may use them in your everyday life, you can save yourself a lot of room in your suitcase. Here are some examples:

  • Pants: In my book, a pair of pants (or skirts and dresses) have a usage life of 2.5 days. Unless an awful spill occurs, your pants should survive more than one use before washing. If you're traveling for a week, you can wear one pair and pack two. This saves a ton of room in your suitcase and offers three different pant styles for good versatility in your outfit choices.
  • Shirts: While undershirts and t-shirts tend to get dirty after one day of use, overshirts (especially quality button-downs), sweaters, sweatshirts, and hoodies can last about as long as pants. If you're traveling for a week, wear one and pack three. Save room for more undergarments. If you overpack anything, that's what you'll want to have in case of emergency. You can spot clean an overshirt, but undergarments will leave you feeling dirty unless they're washed after one use.

  • How to Fit Two Weeks Worth of Luggage Under the Airplane Seat in Front of You
  • Technology: If you're bringing your laptop, do you need your tablet? If you just want to relax and don't have work to do, will your tablet do the trick instead of your laptop? Figure out how many devices you actually need. Even if they don't take up a lot of space, chargers do. Choose your entertainment sparingly and choose your options based on battery life. The longer the battery lasts, the more use you'll get out of it. If you actually need to pack a handful of USB gadgets, however, consider creating this seven-port fast charger. It travels well, manges your cables automatically, and helps to ensure you (and probably any of your travel mates) always have a place to plug in.
  • Toiletries: Travel-sized options cost more, so people often avoid them in favor or larger items. Instead of paying extra for tiny toiletries, just buy empty bottles and containers (from Target or The Container Store, for example). They cost very little and you can reuse them on future trips.
  • Travel Documents: If you have a smartphone, you can store most of your travel documents there. Obviously you'll still need to carry your passport in some cases, but with an Evernote account you can have fast access to important documents when you need them. For boarding passes, many airlines can text a QR code to your phone. If that's an option, use it. You save paper, a tiny bit of space, and you load up your pass on the way to the gate if you forget.
  • Books: If you're a fan of paperbacks and hardcovers, you probably don't want an ereader. That said, it will save you a lot of space. If you must take a larger, bulkier library, pick your books frugally. If you're traveling with others, share books so everyone can pack fewer options.
  • Coats: You can wear your coat on the plane or just lean it against your seat if you don't want to put it in the overhead bin or shove it underneath the seat in front of you. Packing a coat just wastes space, so don't do it.
  • Suits and formalwear: Apparel of the fancier variety often requires more care and space when packing, and fitting all your luggage into the seat in front of you doesn't really work if you have a lot of it—especially when it comes to suit coats. That said, sometimes you have an alternative option to packing your formalwear: nicely ask a flight attendant when boarding if they can hang it up front for you. Most planes have a place to hang a few items, but they're reserved for first and business class passengers. If you want, you can always fib a little and tell them you need your formal attire for an important job interview and you want to make sure it doesn't wrinkle. If they have room, and you ask them nicely, they may make an exception and store your clothing for you.

  • How to Fit Two Weeks Worth of Luggage Under the Airplane Seat in Front of You
  • Shoes: If you can, pick only one pair of shoes that you can wear throughout the trip. A pair of tennis shoes serve as the most versatile option, but if you need something a little classier you in addition you should pack those. Tennis shoes add the most bulk, so wearing them on the airplane saves space in your bag. If you need to change later you can, but don't pack the bigger shoes even if your tennis shoes aren't a perfect match for your outfit. You'll only wear them on the plane, and nobody will ever see them.

This list doesn't encompass every item you'll ever need or want to pack, but covers the basics. In general, consider what you can use more than once and what items work in multiple situations. You'll find that much of what you want to pack can remain at home.

There Are No Packing Paradigms

You can't have a perfect packing system. You will find yourself in circumstances where everything you need will not fit underneath the seat in front of you. For example, you may move across the country and prefer to take a few items on the plane rather than ship them. You also may not want everything in the seat in front of you because you'd rather put your feet there. The goal of this guide isn't to force as much crap underneath someone else's seat as possible, but rather to provide the option. If you want to avoid checking bags, this is a surefire approach. When you can put a bag in the overhead bin, you should. If you find yourself in a situation where you must pack more, you should do that as well. When you can pack efficiently, however, you'll make your trips much easier. Good preparation makes for better travel.

Images by Vector pro (Shutterstock), Thor Jorgen Udvang (Shutterstock), and me.

Number of comments

The Midwest Is The Regional Of Death; Or, Why Louisville Misses The "S-Curve"

March 18th, 2013Top Story

The Midwest Is The Regional Of Death; Or, Why Louisville Misses The "S-Curve"

By Barry Petchesky

Your 2013 NCAA Tournament bracket is out, and...huh. Forget your bracket pool-that'll be as impossible as always-this year it's tough enough just to predict a winner. Vegas is stumped, and a big part of that uncertainty comes from Louisville, the early favorite, being stuck in the stacked Midwest regional. How did the Cardinals earn this "reward?"

To even make it to Atlanta, Louisville has to escape a quadrant that includes Duke, Michigan State, mid-major power St. Louis, frisky Oklahoma State, and even Pac-12 champs Oregon, who are 21-4 when star point guard Dominic Artis plays. Any one of these teams is capable of a Final Four run, but the real eyebrow-raiser is Duke-to most observers, the third- or fourth-best team in the nation.

Just a few years ago, the tournament selection process would have kept Duke, most likely the committee's highest-rated 2-seed, away from overall No. 1 Louisville. It was called the "S-curve," and it worked kind of like a snake draft. The best No. 1 would tend it find itself with the worst No. 2, the best No. 3, the worst No. 4, and so on, in an attempt to better balance the regional brackets. But the S-curve is dead.

It's been on its way out for a few seasons, as we saw last year when the committee gave an unprecedented peek into the selection process. All four teams with a certain seed-say, the twos-are still ranked, but rather than be distributed by that ranking, geographic rewards and uniform conference distribution take precedence. Committee chair Mike Bobinski confirmed in an ESPN.com interview last night that the S-curve wasn't used at all this year.

This means that the committee may have had Duke at No. 6 overall, but keeping them away from top-seeded Louisville took a backseat to considerations like separating Louisville and Georgetown/Marquette/Syracuse, keeping the various Big Ten powerhouses away from each other, and rewarding the Blue Devils by keeping them fairly close to home.

So the Midwest is stacked, and Las Vegas oddsmakers, who have Louisville as a favorite, aren't convinced they'll even make it to the Georgia Dome. Sitting at 3-1 before the brackets were released, the the Cardinals fell to 9-2 last night, followed by Indiana at 7-1, and three teams-including Duke-at 8-1. It's a far cry from last year's odds, which saw Kentucky as clear 2-1 favorites.

She's Sexy. Now Kill Her?

March 18th, 2013Top Story

She's Sexy. Now Kill Her?

By Stephen Totilo

She's Sexy. Now Kill Her?I like God of War: Ascension. It's a violent video game. I've got nothing against that.

I like a lot of violent video games. I "get" where a lot of in-game violence comes from: games need to feel interactive; letting me control one character and eliminate another from the screen is still the most easily-comprehended—and enjoyed—act of video game interactivity.

I also like seeing images of attractive people. I prefer female figures, but there's capacity for physical beauty in any kind of person. Or place. Or thing. Or Greek deity.

Sometimes beauty is just that: beauty. Sometimes, it's sexualized. That kind of beauty is meant to appeal not just to the eyes or the heart but to the loins, to tap into something primal, to turn us on.

What makes me uneasy, what feels—my opinion!—gross is when these two things combine, when a game sexualizes some of its characters and then lets you bash their heads in the ground and rip them in two. That's when it feels weird. That's when I wonder why I'm being asked to have fun with this. That's when I start wishing that vivid violence and sexualized content wouldn't mix in video games in the manner they do in God of War: Ascension, not when there seems to be no other point than asking me to have fun with it.

Lighten up, you might say.

Or: I don't like it either, you might say.

Let's make sure we're all looking at and talking about the same thing. (There will be God of War: Ascension spoilers below.)

***

God of War games take place in a version of the world described in ancient Greek myths. In these myths the gods are violent. And they are constantly having sex. The gods wreck lives. They sleep with relatives. They seduce. They rape. They don't necessarily wear a lot of clothes. Sex? Violence? They're all about both, often in close proximity.

God of War games are actually mostly about violence. The sex is minimized. The bias toward violence is in the name of the game. We're playing as a human, Kratos, who would be the god of war. His own sexual escapades have been limited to one mostly-offscreen sex scene per game. That's one more mostly-offscreen sex scene than most games have, but it is just the one.

In fact, if there's a sex scene in the new God of War, I never found it in the 10 hours it took me to complete the game's solo campaign. What I did find, early in the game. was a harem scene. It establishes what longtime players have known: God of War games may not have a lot of sex in them, but they have a lot of bare breasts.

Take a look:

What do you get out of this? What I get out of this is that, in Ascension's world, buxom = attractive = alluring. Not a stretch. Much of society is down with that equation. Genitalia isn't a part of it. Not in these games or most others.

As uncommon as breasts are in games, below-the-belt nudity is even rarer. Hence this void between Kratos' legs, as seen in Ascension:

She's Sexy. Now Kill Her?

Or his he wearing underwear? It's hard to tell:

She's Sexy. Now Kill Her?

The harem scene, the game's first heavily-sexualized moment, is a trick. It's an illusion cast by one of the evil Furies in the game. (Yes, the game's bad guys are female; but I wouldn't read much into that. They've been male in the other God of Wars).

Here's what happens next in the harem scene, in a cutscene you don't control:

She's Sexy. Now Kill Her?

Kratos is an angry character. The very first game inflects that anger with the sadness and regret Kratos feels for killing his own family. I've played all of the console and PSP God of War games, and I believe his longing for his family is cited in each of them. In Ascension that longing is at its most tender. Players briefly see a Kratos who has reason to hope for a reunion with his wife—who, I believe, we've always seen clothed in these games. Most of the time, though, Kratos isn't moping. He's murdering.

As God of War players, we're asked to act out that rage. Most of us do it, I would assume, without rancor. We're not mad at the Furies or at the many gods and beasts and enemy soldiers we have Kratos kill. We may well commit these acts of violence as a chess player eliminates a pawn or queen, with our mind on strategy, not fury.

But God of War games, to their credit, remind us with more and more vivid graphical detail, that the violence that occurs when blades meet flesh is not pretty. Its color is mostly red and, in the imagination of the series and in the animations of Ascension, guts spill from opened torsos, brains bulge from uncapped skulls.

The game's violence is brutish and primal. We see gore.

And we see breasts, big breasts similar to what we see in Ascension's harem scene.

Breasts code some enemies as female.

Here's one, as she's killed by the player-controlled Kratos:

Here's another:

One more:

Let's talk about this last one, as it puts all of the game's issues with violence against sexualized female characters in one nutshell:

  • She's a snake-lady—a Gorgon—who is trying to kill Kratos. Killing her, in the context of being a mythological Greek Spartan warrior, feels appropriate.
  • If we accept that godly creatures don't have to wear clothes and that it might be really weird if monsters did, then the the snake-lady being topless is a fair visual design decision.
  • There might be a double-standard in that we never see Kratos' most-sexualized body parts, but it's not like we could see any of the Gorgon's below-the-waist reproductive organs. She's a snake down there. For her part, at least, we only can discuss toplessness.
  • The interactivity of this kill is actually an advance for the series, as the trademark God of War executions are now mapped, more interestingly, to analog sticks and buttons, not just buttons. That enables players to make Kratos dodge this Gorgon's final, desperate counter-attacks, while slashing at her to finish her off.
  • The richness of detail here is partially a byproduct of technology. This game is on a PlayStation 3, which can show details of hero and enemy bodies that simply couldn't be shown in older games. Note that Grand Theft Auto 3, on the PS2, didn't even render characters' fingers separately. In that game, everyone had flesh-colored mittens for hands. With more horsepower comes, simply, more body parts.
  • That finishing move doesn't just split her head. It cuts her breast. Violence against both of those body parts is disturbing. But one's the norm in games; one is not.

As Kratos, you'll kill everyone.

Have a look at Kratos going after some of the enemies who read as male in Ascension:

The male enemies are ripped apart, too. The element of sexualization is absent. No knives to the groin, for example.

What to make of this?

***

For some gamers, I imagine, what we see and do in this game is no big deal. Those Greek myths were this violent, this sexualized. For some, there may well be entertainment in the subjugation or humiliation in sexualized females, though I'd like to think that's not who the game's creators were designing their game for.

When I've discussed the series' violence with them, they've been nuanced, championing the context of the milieu and the aspects of it as a game over simple thrills about gore. I've not spoken to them specifically against the violence against female characters bit, something I hope to do in the future.

For me? I find, in this game, the intersection of two ideas that don't comfortably co-exist. Games have been getting more violent, often as an expression of the interactivity possible in their combat systems. And game characters' bodies have become more and more believably—if not realistically—shaped. The abstract avatars of before are replaced with detailed bodies. Straight lines and polygonal shapes have been replaced with curves and fine details.

So we have a game that presents a form of feminine beauty that associates exposed, large breasts as beautiful. And we have a game that wants us, after many other battles, when we reach the last Fury, to stab the final boss of the game.

That leaves us with a game that literally provides us no good place to stab the game's final boss, no good place to do an action that, of course, should look unpleasant because, hell, it's about killing. We probably should feel something when we pretend to kill. I just don't know if what we've got here is progress. Maybe? Maybe it's gender-balance. Maybe it's a step into a future when simulated violence against virtual men and women is equally nauseating. Maybe we are marching progressively into a moment when of course she could be chainsawable, because we live in a world where women now can serve in combat in the U.S. armed forces.

Where, then, can we stab the game's final, sexy boss?

Spoilers for that end-boss battle.... if you're willing to watch, then, ponder, if this is what progress looks like.

Number of comments

Bill O'Reilly's Divorce Is So Ugly, God Got Involved

March 18th, 2013Top Story

Bill O'Reilly's Divorce Is So Ugly, God Got Involved

By John Cook

Bill O'Reilly's Divorce Is So Ugly, God Got InvolvedBill O'Reilly wants his ex-wife to go to Hell. Literally. As we previously reported, the Fox News falafelist became separated from his former wife Maureen McPhilmy at some point in 2011, and later went on an apparently corrupt crusade to destroy the career of the Nassau County Police detective she was dating. We have now confirmed that O'Reilly and McPhilmy have been formally divorced, that she has since married the detective, and that O'Reilly is in the midst of a scorched-earth custody battle—dubbed, appropriately enough, Anonymous v. Anonymous—over the ex-couple's two children. It involves a surreptitious attempt by O'Reilly to undermine his custody arrangement by hiring, as a member of his household staff, the woman he and his ex had agreed on as a neutral arbiter of their disputes. It also involves O'Reilly's attempts to annul his marriage and have McPhilmy potentially booted from the Catholic Church.

To catch you up: In May 2010, O'Reilly and his wife began living in separate houses less than half a mile from each other on Long Island. In 2011, O'Reilly used his connections with the Nassau County Police Department (and the potential for donations to a nonprofit affiliated with the department) to try to launch an internal affairs investigation into McPhilmy's new boyfriend—a Nassau County detective—for the crime of sleeping with Bill O'Reilly's wife. With the help of the New York Civil Liberties Union, we are currently suing the NCPD for access to public records, including O'Reilly's correspondence with former commissioner Lawrence Mulvey, about the episode. That case is on appeal to the Second Department of New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division.

Which brings us to another case we found rattling around in the Second Department: Anonymous 2011-1 v. Anonymous 2011-2. Family law cases in New York are not a matter of public record. But their existence, in the form of a docket entry with the names of the participants—as in Kramer v. Kramer—generally is. In rare cases, a judge will grant a motion to anonymize the names to protect the interests of the children or the privacy of public citizens. Anonymous 2011-1 v. Anonymous 2011-2 is one of those cases.

The dispute behind Anonymous 2011-1 v. Anonymous 2011-2 has been bitter enough, though, that the case ended up in the appellate division, where decisions are routinely published, often laying bare sensitive details. It's a custody action, commenced in September 2011, and you can read all about it right here, on the web site of the New York state court system. It involves a treacherous father who attempted to maintain control over the children he shared with his ex-wife by buying off and co-opting their purportedly neutral therapist. Anonymous 2011-1 is McPhilmy. Anonymous 2011-2 is O'Reilly.

The dispute was heard by the Second Department in January, after a trial court denied McPhilmy's motion to amend the couple's custody agreement.

Here's what the Second Department opinion reveals:

  • O'Reilly and McPhilmy separated on April 2, 2010.
  • They divorced on September 1, 2011.
  • They agreed to share custody of their two children, aged 13 and 10.
  • The couple's separation agreement included provisions allowing for shared custody—they each got the children on alternating weeks. And it also appointed a "neutral therapist" to, according to the opinion, "act as a neutral mediator to help them resolve any parenting disputes."

And here's where it gets interesting. In October 2011, McPhilmy took O'Reilly to court after learning that the woman she thought had been a neutral therapist serving the needs of her children was in fact a member of her ex-husband's household staff. The therapist, a Long Island licensed social worker named Lynne Kulakowski, was working long days and some evenings in O'Reilly's house, on his payroll, and basically acting as the children's nanny. From the opinion:

The mother claimed that the [father] had repeatedly violated conditions of the agreement. The mother further alleged that, after the execution of the agreement, the father had hired the children's therapist as a full-time employee to perform virtually all of his parental duties.... The mother's affidavit contained specific allegations concerning the father's repeated violations of the custody provisions of the agreement since its inception.... Moreover, the full-time employment of the children's therapist, the person designated in the agreement as a neutral third-party "arbitrator" of custodial disputes, by the father, constitutes a significant change of circumstance which could undermine the integrity of the agreement's custodial provisions.

At a Second Department hearing in January, McPhilmy's attorney claimed—and O'Reilly's attorney did not dispute—that Kulakowski was earning a six-figure salary from O'Reilly. All of this, of course, made a mockery of the custody agreement's appointment of Kulakowski as a neutral arbiter of disputes—O'Reilly rigged the game against his ex-wife. A lower court initially denied McPhilmy's request for a hearing about O'Reilly's co-optation of the therapist, but the appellate court agreed with McPhilmy and sent the case back for a hearing. In a highly unusual step for an appellate court, it also ordered the appointment of an independent attorney for the children, an indication that the dispute has become particularly poisonous.

Another indication that it has become poisonous: the Catholic Church has gotten involved. Gawker has learned that McPhilmy has been formally reprimanded in writing by her church for continuing to take communion in her Long Island parish despite having been divorced and remarried—a no-no according to the Pope. The reprimand also instructed her to stop telling her children that her second marriage, to the Nassau County detective O'Reilly tried to destroy, is valid in the eyes of God. It warned her that if she didn't comply, harsher measures may be in order.

Chad Glendinning, a professor of canon law at Canada's St. Paul University, couldn't say whether the reprimand was a first step on the road to excommunication. But he did say it appeared to be a first step toward barring her from the sacraments if necessary. "Public denial of holy communion is to be avoided as far as possible," he said. "Instead, pastors should take precautionary measures to explain the Church's teaching to concerned persons so that they may be able to understand it or at least respect it. It is possible that the letter you describe is such an attempt."

There presumably aren't too many people besides O'Reilly who know what McPhilmy is saying to her children about how God views her marriage. And O'Reilly, who interviewed Timothy Cardinal Dolan last year and donated more than $65,000 to New York Catholic parishes and schools in 2011, according to the tax return of his nonprofit foundation, carries considerable weight in the archdiocese.

While he's busy harassing McPhilmy for asserting the holiness of her second marriage, O'Reilly is trying to deny the existence of his first: He is, Gawker has learned, seeking an annulment of his 15-year marriage, which produced two children. Null and void. Invalid in the eyes of God. Never happened. This despite his manifest belief in the "stability" that straight marriage brings to the culture and concern at the (purportedly) declining marriage rates in countries that allow gay people to marry one another. If successful, the annulment would presumably render his 2004 escapade with former producer Andrea Mackris, whom he repeatedly and vividly sexually harassed with threats to take "the falafel thing...and put it on your pussy," retroactively kosher with Jesus. (It would also make him even more of an asshole than his familial nemesis Joseph Kennedy, who tried and failed to have his 12-year marriage annulled.)

The bow on this whole package is the matter of McPhilmy's attorney, listed atop the Second Department decision: She has hired a firm called Greenfield Labby, and is represented by one Casey Greenfield. Gawker readers will remember Greenfield as the daughter of network newsman Jeff Greenfield and babymama to CNN's Jeffrey Toobin, whom Greenfield had to sue for support in 2009 after the birth of their son. (Toobin was and remains married to another woman, and insisted for months that the child was not his; a paternity test proved otherwise.) Greenfield went on, according to the New York Times, to form a boutique divorce firm. She has apparently put her familiarity with TV assholes to good use.

We contacted Fox News, O'Reilly's attorney, Kulakowski, and Greenfield for comment; none did.

[Photos via Shutterstock and Getty Images]

Number of comments