Entertainment
How Charisma Carpenter's Horrific Childhood Accident Led Buffy The Vampire Slayer To Nearly Kill Her
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
One of the earliest events in The Empire Strikes Back is Luke Skywalker being attacked by a Wampa on Hoth. It’s a sobering moment signaling a more serious sequel. Even though Luke saved the entire galaxy in the first Star Wars movie, he got nearly taken out by some local wildlife in the second.
However, that sudden Wampa attack also had an important purpose: it helped provide an in-universe explanation for why our hero’s face looked different. You see, Mark Hamill had gotten into a car accident, and the onscreen attack helped cover up the fact that the Luke Skywalker actor had facial reconstruction surgery.
Using an onscreen incident to explain an actor’s real-life scars is a pretty clever trick. It’s also one that was used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though most fans never noticed.
In the episode “Lovers Walk,” Cordelia falls onto a piece of rebar, leaving the character with a nasty scar. A few years back, Cordelia actor Charisma Carpenter revealed that this was a case of art imitating life, as she was impaled by rebar (and subsequently gained her own gnarly scar) at the tender age of five years old!
A Girl Walks Into A Rebar
“Lovers Walk” was a Season 3 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that focused on wacky romantic drama. Spike is trying to use a love spell on Drusilla to make his old girlfriend love him again. Resident witch Willow, meanwhile, is having an emotional affair with Xander, despite the fact that she’s dating Oz and he’s dating Cordelia. After they are kidnapped and believe they will die, Willow and Xander share their first kiss; a horrified Cordelia sees this and runs up some stairs in disgust. Unfortunately, the stairs collapse, and she is impaled on some rebar. She survives, but Sunnydale’s ultimate mean girl is left with a major scar.
When “Lovers Walk” first aired, this seemed like nothing more than a classic case of misdirection. The audience is worried about Willow and Xander dying, and the last thing they expect is for would-be rescuer Cordelia to nearly get killed. But in 2019, Charisma Carpenter revealed that she had suffered a very similar injury when she was a small child. In retrospect, it seems that this very specific event may have happened to Cordelia to explain away Carpenter’s real-life scar in case it ever appears onscreen again.
Giving The Fans What They Want
On X, Carpenter responded to a fan who felt bad about scars on their body. “Hey Kiddo, late 2 this tweet but I want U 2 know I get scar shame. I have a thick, wide scar about 4″ on my belly. I was 5 when I was impaled by a rebar,” she wrote. “My scar is a part of my story, but it’s not who I am. It doesn’t define me. It makes me unique. Just like urs makes U unique.”
It’s a fairly touching response, one that shows just how much this Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor cares about her fans. But it also provided us with an answer to a decades-old fan question: in a show filled with vampires, werewolves, and other nasty demons, why the heck was Cordelia injured by something as simple as some rebar? Now we know that, for whatever reason, the Buffy producers wanted to give the character a scar that corresponded to Carpenter’s own injury.
Even though Charisma Carpenter’s scar didn’t make many more prominent appearances onscreen, the producers were likely thinking ahead. Soon, the actor would be one of the leads in the popular Buffy spinoff Angel, and they had no way of knowing if future episodes would require her to show where she is scarred.
Thanks to the rebar incident in “Lovers Walk,” they didn’t have to worry about covering that old injury up. But they might never have thought to do this if nearly two decades earlier, George Lucas hadn’t thought to explain Mark Hamill’s own scars by having his Luke Skywalker character get injured onscreen!
Entertainment
Raunchy Cameron Diaz Comedy Now On Netflix Reminds Us How Good We Used To Have It
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Cameron Diaz rode the romantic comedy train until the very end. She was the breakout star of There’s Something About Mary and then kept cranking out romantic comedies for over a decade, ending with 2014’s Sex Tape opposite her Bad Teacher co-star Jason Segel. Now on Netflix, the comedy isn’t the best she’s ever done, but it does stand out as ever since, Hollywood has become allergic to the thought of a mid-budget sex romp comedy. No one’s approached YouPorn for product placement ever since.
Cameron Diaz And Jason Segel Have No Idea How The Cloud Works
Sex Tape is a different type of romantic comedy. Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel play Annie and Jay, a married couple who still love each other, but the days of spontaneous sex marathons are behind them. That leads to the idea of filming a sex tape with the goal of hitting every single position from the Joy of Sex. It works, except Jay isn’t able to delete the video afterwards. Every iPad he’s given away for Christmas has synced to the Cloud and since he set them up, his videos are accessible from each and every one of them.
That kicks off a race against time to remove the video from all of the iPads, though they admit what happened to their friends, Robby and Tess (Rob Corddry and Elle Kemper), who decide to tag along since they have nothing better to do. Sex Tape rapidly devolves from there into doing cocaine with Annie’s boss (Rob Lowe) and breaking into the YouPorn headquarters complete with a cameo from Jack Black. Despite the premise, if you enjoyed Game Night, Sex Tape hits similar beats and jokes.
The Last Comedy Diaz Made Before Her Hiatus
The outlandish plot and the audience’s waning appetite for comedy didn’t hurt Sex Tape at the box office. A production budget of $40 million was tripled during its run, and that’s not including the DVD/Blu-Ray sales of over $7 million, both of which were pushed with an “Unrated” cut of the movie. Coming in fourth in its opening weekend meant losing to Planes: Fire and Rescue, which likely stung a little. Diaz and Segel’s second outing together has been a streaming staple ever since ensuring that they’ve had the last laugh.
Sex Tape was one of Cameron Diaz’s last projects before a nearly decade-long hiatus from Hollywood. From 2015 to 2022, Diaz focused on other projects, including her businesses, raising children, and writing a book. She came back alongside Jamie Foxx in the Netflix original Back in Action, followed by the AppleTV original Outcome with Keanu Reeves in 2026. In 2027, Diaz returns to her most successful role: Princess Fiona in Shrek 5.
Romantic Comedies Have Gone Extinct
Her bread and butter, the romantic comedy, no longer exists on the big screen. It used to be that a great comedy would permeate the culture and be quoted nonstop for months, if not years. Social media has shortened the lifespan of every movie. Movies aren’t quoted as often, they don’t stick around as long with all of their best scenes and moments being spoiled all over our feeds as soon as they hit theaters. Hollywood needs to redesign the romantic comedy and the more action focus of Sex Tape combined with Diaz’s nudity was the last gasp of relevancy for the genre.
Anyone who wants a throwback to Hollywood comedies can check out Sex Tape on Netflix. Maybe someday studios will take another crack at them.
Entertainment
I found the best robot vacuums for every floor, budget, and level of laziness
Read my full review of the Narwal Flow 2.
The Narwal Flow 2 is the robot vacuum to splurge on if you take the cleanliness of your hard floors seriously — it takes a certain confidence in cleanliness to walk around in bare feet at home. Between the sturdy XL roller and hot water mopping, the Flow 2 has the elbow grease to soak up large liquid spills and melt away sticky or greasy droplets without smearing.
If your household is prone to spills, perhaps from kids, pets, or frequent guests, the Flow 2’s accurate obstacle and mess detection technology will come to the rescue for those big in-the-moment messes.
If you’ve sworn off mopping robot vacuums after a cheap one streaked your floor with dirty water, a roller mop robot vacuum should be your next move. The Narwal Flow 2 is my top recommendation halfway through 2026, mostly because it never really missed a spot in the several months that I was testing it.
Roller mop robot vacuums mitigate smearing in a few ways. The bath towel-like material is already thick and absorbent, and constantly rinses itself to keep the spill from being dragged across a clean floor. If the roller gets too soiled during a bigger cleanup, the Flow 2 automatically returns to the dock mid-cleaning to wash the mop with hot water. The Flow 2’s roller actually has flat sides like a conveyor belt, which Narwal says gets more direct surface coverage than the sliver of a cylindrical roller mop hitting the floor at any given point.
In my testing, the Flow 2 consistently mopped up spills of various consistencies, from true liquids like red wine and milk to sludgier splatters like pancake batter, chunky pasta sauce, and most impressively, globs of dried syrup. The Flow 2 is one of just a few robot vacuums that mop with hot water, making it able to dissolve the syrup without leaving the floor sticky. Hot water loosens the bonds that make grease slimy and hard to lift off hard surfaces with force alone, so the Flow 2 handles oily or greasy liquids better than robots mopping with room temperature water. During dry vacuuming, the Flow 2 did a commendable job with cat hair and small debris on rugs and kibble, cat litter, dirt, and crushed dried flowers on hard floors. I appreciate that the app allows up to three cleaning passes in the same session.
The Flow 2 is also such a thorough cleaner simply because it knows what kind of mess it’s dealing with — its AI spill detection is the most intuitive I’ve seen in 2026. The Flow 2 snaps a “before” photo when it approaches a mess that’s bigger than a few crumbs or a single droplet. After cleaning the rest of the area, the Flow 2 comes back to the dirty area for intensive zone cleaning. My Narwal app was also full of photos of extension cords, phone chargers, shoes, and random cat toys that the Flow 2 saw in my apartment while cleaning, even if the object wasn’t directly in the way. No one has time to tidy up before sending their robot vacuum out every single day, so it’s comforting to see such direct proof that the Flow 2 is, in fact, reacting to obstacles in real time.
Entertainment
July 4th fireworks livestreams: See the best Fourth of July fireworks live
Happy 4th of July, America. This year’s Independence Day celebrations are a little extra special as we celebrate the United States of America’s 250th birthday.
Across the country, many people will spend the day at the beach or at a barbecue, capping the night off with a fireworks display. But, if you’re spending the night indoors, there are still plenty of ways to celebrate with an array of July 4th fireworks livestreams.
Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks
Perhaps the most well-known of the Independence Day celebrations is the Macy’s 4th of July fireworks. If you live in NYC, you can catch them live. Otherwise, you can tune into NBC or Peacock at 8 p.m. on July 4th to watch the show.
While the U.S. is celebrating its 250th, Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks is also celebrating a milestone with its 50th anniversary this year.
PBS’s America Made in Virginia: 250 Years Together
While many of the livestream options on this list will require a paid subscription to a particular streaming platform, PBS is airing its 4th of July special on YouTube for absolutely free.
America Made in Virginia: 250 Years Together will start at 8 p.m. on July 4th and culminate in a fireworks and pyrotechnics display from Colonial Williamsburg.
Mashable Top Stories
Disney Celebrates America
Disney is also getting in on the 250th anniversary of the United States celebrations with its own event.
Disney+, Hulu, and the ESPN app will stream a 24-hour broadcast called “Disney Celebrates America” that checks in on 4th of July celebrations around the country, which will ostensibly include at least a few fireworks displays. The grand finale, Star-Spangled Bash in Nashville, will also be hosted by ABC and deliver one of the country’s largest fireworks and drone shows.
The broadcast kicks off at 10 p.m. on Friday, July 3rd, with the main event out of Nashville starting at 8 p.m. on July 4th.
Freedom 250 fireworks display
There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding President Donald Trump’s own Freedom 250 group, set up to lead Trump’s 250th anniversary celebrations. You’ve probably seen the memes about the lackluster attendance for Trump’s Great American State Fair all week.
With that said, Freedom 250 is claiming they’re about to have a record-breaking 40 minute long firework display on the 4th of July with more than 850,000 fireworks. And, according to the group, the MonumentCam atop the Washington Monument will be the premier free-to-watch livestream to watch it all.
The Great American Block Party 250
Paramount+ and CBS are hosting their own 3-hour Independence Day special at 8 p.m. on July 4th.
Like Disney’s, the show will check in on 4th of July celebrations and firework displays from around the country. The broadcast will also culminate in their own feed of Freedom 250’s Washington, DC, fireworks display.
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