I met and became cool with Kirsten Ott Palladino at media events, back when I was the editor of Thrillist Atlanta and she was Life & Food editor for the alternative weekly Sunday Paper. Beyond cool, she is a dedicated professional and genuine good-hearted person. But also, not really. Let me explain...

There is more than one scene in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave that's not easy to watch, but like many movies about some of humanity's most historically evil times, there's one that will stand out for most people. Without giving it away, I'll say that it's something that also happened in D'jango Unchained but not quite to the same degree, although I say that while taking nothing away from Quentin Tarantino's film.

People will immediately compare D'jango and 12, and for good reason. Both seem to be opposite sides of the same cursed coin minted from the blood/cotton money that is still owed to the descendants of slaves to this day. However, in one of these films, a character that is not based on any known historical figure kills almost every person involved in his bondage. In the other film, which is based on a true story (reportedly fact checked for historical accuracy by none other than Beer Summit attendee/Harvard professor/pseudo Obama friend Henry Louis "Skip" Gates), the hero receives no such satisfaction. No spoiler alert necessary--all one has to do is look up the story of Solomon Northup.

Photo Credit: Lisa Jack for Time

Today's POTUS press conference is below, pulled from The Blaze.

Thank you and much respect due to President Barack Obama for answering the call. May the national conversation continue until cultural understanding, tolerance, and respect are achieved. That probably means forever, but that just makes it ongoing change we can believe in.

Or actually, if we're going to use correct English, "change in which we can believe."

Hire me, Obama. You'll not only keep doing good things under my critical advisement, you'll also never have a grammatical error in a campaign slogan again, ever. Not that you're running for anything again anyway, but still, hire me anyway.  Just sayin'.