My dad sent this joke to me today.
I was walking down the street when I was accosted by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking homeless woman who asked me for a couple of dollars for dinner.
I took out my wallet, got out ten dollars and asked, “If I give you this money, will you buy wine with it instead of dinner?”
“No, I had to stop drinking years ago”, the homeless woman told me.
“Will you use it to go shopping instead of buying food?” I asked.
“No, I don’t waste time shopping,” the homeless woman said. “I need to spend all my time trying to stay alive.”
“Will you spend this on a beauty salon instead of food?” I asked.
“Are you NUTS !” replied the homeless woman. ” I haven’t had my hair done in 20 years!”
“Well,” I said, “I’m not going to give you the money. Instead, I’m going to take you out for dinner with my husband and me tonight.”
The homeless Woman was shocked. “Won’t your husband be furious with you for doing that? I know I’m dirty, and I probably smell pretty disgusting.”
I said, “That’s okay. It’s important for him to see what a woman looks like after she has given up shopping, hair appointments, and wine.”
HAHA
Amazingly, these sorts of postings have not endeared Mary Rambin to readers. Here is a recent thread from comments on a story about Leven Rambin on the LiveJournal site Oh No They Didn't:
montspan
2008-03-05 09:31 pm UTC (link)
i went to high school with her sister, it's so weird that she's famous. her sister was not very nice.
(Reply to this)(Thread)
mhmmm
2008-03-05 10:02 pm UTC (link)
mary? i read her blog and she is SO elitist it's insane.
(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
montspan
2008-03-05 10:18 pm UTC (link)
Yes! Elitist is the perfect word! I saw her last year at some party and she made some disparaging remark as to my haircut and then gave me a card so I could buy one of her handbags. Ugh. I was like, thanks, I haven't seen you in like 7 years, and you insult me? Bitch.
 E Canada Now | First Look: Stiller's new movie Entertainment Weekly - Who's that man between Jack Black and Ben Stiller in this scene from the upcoming comedy? (Hint: he's famous...and white) TROPIC THUNDER How did people react at a test screening to Downey's character? Robert Downey Jr. pretends to be black in Ben Stiller film 'Tropic ... First Look: Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder |
 Calgary Herald | Bai Ling Pleads Guilty to Disturbing the Peace People Magazine - Bai Ling pleaded guilty Wednesday to disturbing the peace in a case stemming from her arrest at LAX for stealing two Star magazines and a package of batteries, totaling $16.22. Bai Ling Pays Up Chinese actress caught stealing at LAX |
It's looking as if Britney Spears' summer vacation is going to be another family affair.
Jamie Spears' coconservatorship over his daughter's estimated $100 million estate has...I come from a wildly literate family. Both of my parents are incredibly well read, and be it genetically or enviornmentally, the habit was passed on to me as well. I knew how to read well before kindergarten, and was fighting my way through chapter books in very early grade school. My personal library at this point numbers close to, if not in excess of, a thousand titles, and ranges everywhere from history texts to cheap fiction. If I had to pin down a favorite genre, it'd likely be sci-fi/fantasy, which I'm sure is what lead me to gaming in the first place. Well that and my high school mentor, a man who has been at various points in my life my track coach, my game master, my computer programming teacher, my stage director, my prayer group advisor, and eventually my father in law.
Anyway, the point is that I love stories. Call it a healthy desire to enhance my mind, call it escapism, call it whatever you want. Since I've been old enough to understand them, I've digested nearly every story I can get my hands on. Novels, comic books, radio dramas, even video games and tv shows -- give me intriguing characters and a halfway interesting plot, and I will soak it up. And that's what gaming is for me; a chance to create a story. Which is why I adopt the term "storyteller" over "dungeon master."
As a storyteller, I'm rather atypical. I don't tend to push my gamers in any direction, and I try very hard not to insert my own will into the adventure. For that reason, I don't tend to run modules or depend heavily on pre-meditated plot devices. As far as I'm concerned it is my responsibility to create a compelling world, introduce a compelling story hook/major plot line, and let my gamers run with it from there. I put them into the world, and let them choose where to go. It takes a bit of effort, largely because you have to create as you go, but it is such a rewarding method. If I create a big enough world, with enough things in it, I'm ready for my gamers wherever they turn. And in that manner, we craft a story together. Numbers are important, but not imperative. The point of my game is never to get to the next level, or to increase your personal stats. I'll flat out lie about dice rolls, or not even make them, if I feel the story is better enhanced by a different result. Because of this, I seek out gamers who are more interested in stories than numbers to sit at my table. It's not me dictating a story upon my gamers so they can hack through it and gain another level; it's a team of creative minds cooperating on a joint storytelling adventure. I'm just the guy who has to keep things spinning.
And to counteract that humanizing story, here's the classic Dungeons and Dragons skit by the Dead Alewives:
(Original clip slightly truncated at the end) [via Crooks and Liars]
When this network tried licensing stories to Yahoo News two years ago, the editors bitched about it (this was before he replaced them with inexperienced, unsure toadies like me), and the stories never did well. Gawker and Yahoo let the contract expire, and while Denton pretended it was because I kept maligning Yahoo execs on our Silicon Valley site Valleywag, it was really because no one was reading Gawker on Yahoo. Their audience just wasn't interested.
Imagine you were running this show. Why sell it and either work under some executive who probably hates you for some five-year-old blog post, or struggle to start another business that becomes this influential? It's easy to say Denton is in this for the money, but only if you've never seen the man revel in his own role. He doesn't want to be rich, he wants to be Rupert Murdoch.
TechCrunch
Before he started Silicon Valley's most influential blog, Michael Arrington (pictured demonstrating caution and humility in Business 2.0) was a successful lawyer, but this didn't make him much of an analyst. Despite frequently getting his story utterly wrong, he built influence by covering every startup that would talk to him. Tech writer Paul Boutin figured it out: TechCrunch wasn't a news source, it was a phone directory, and that's what the Valley wanted. Arrington used his local influence to earn a few scoops, and now he's an unignorable player in tech reporting.
But it's all him. Most press about TechCrunch is actually about Arrington. None of his writers are breakaway talents. And while the blog probably makes over a million a year in ad revenue, TechCrunch also makes plenty from its conferences (and "parties" where startups pay to demo products for liquored up biz-dev guys). As with Gawker, the publisher makes the brand. If Arrington sold but stayed in charge, he might have to stop writing dramatic posts like "When will we have our first Valleywag suicide?" If he left the blog, what's left? A staff of amateurish writers who can't get the scoops Arrington gets?
Boing Boing
Boing Boing is owned by its four idiosyncratic writers, who act like the blog is still the small-time zine it started out as in the 90s. For example, Cory Doctorow always pushes his anti-copyright agenda, and Mark Frauenfelder owns the ukulele news beat. That's why the blog remains popular even when sites like Digg theoretically replaced the its role as a clearinghouse for Internet memes. The blog was getting nearly a million views per day before the team stopped publicly reporting traffic, but at its heart it's a personal blog, and selling it would be like selling a favorite pet: theoretically possible but against the whole point. Besides, they all have other work that they can promote to their Boing Boing fans, and that's more valuable than ad revenue.
Weblogs, Inc.
The network of over thirty blogs made sense for AOL because it was already a non-personality-based news farm that paid under $10 per post (even lower than Gawker Media at that point), churning out consumer-friendly content. Since then, most of its blogs fell behind competitors, except for the still wildly successful Engadget tech blog. Founder Jason Calacanis was indeed in it for the money, and he left the network soon after the sale to try relaunching Netscape as a social news site (the project failed and is now just a section on the Netscape web site). Calacanis's new project, a web directory, is even less personality-based. Maybe a blog network could replicate Weblogs's success, but it would have to focus on a niche, as no one will manage to dominate as many topics as Weblogs did.
Everyone Else
Well all the others are too small, aren't they? If you want to hire a writer, you could buy his blog and immediately dissolve it, but there's no point adding an existing blog to an existing media outlet.
Most magazines, TV networks and newspapers have already launched blogs with current and new staff. It's cheaper and avoids creative conflicts. Plus blogs always have a lower revenue-per-pageview rate than the media sites that could buy them, so any acquired blog would have to be integrated into the buyer's ad inventory.
For the record, Gawker Media doesn't buy blogs, but Denton's hired at least three people who started blogs about Gawker.
Despite talk of a band reunion, Scott Weiland won't cop to being a stoned Temple Pilot.
The alt-rocker pleaded not guilty Wednesday to driving under the influence of drugs with a prior...The problem with buyouts is that you can't choose who leaves. So when New York Times executive editor Bill Keller announced to the staff on February 28 that the paper would be mailing out buyout packages to every non-guild employee in the newsroom, it was hoped that some of the paper’s more redundant staffers might self-select. “There’s so much deadwood at the paper, and everyone knows it,” says one former Times reporter. “There are editors who basically do nothing and writers who write 30 pieces a year.”
Linda Greenhouse, the paper’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Supreme Court reporter, is not one of those. She has been tirelessly covering that beat for three decades, and although she has received her share of criticism (a speech she made at Harvard in 2006 slamming the Bush administration was perceived as crossing the line by the Times’ critics, some of its reporters, and even its public editor), she is widely considered to be in the handful of the paper's elite reporters (“The queen bee of Supreme Court reporters,” the Columbia Journalism Review called her.)
So when she announced that she had accepted the offer, there was some consternation. Could this herald a brain and talent drain at the paper of record? The buyouts were meant to keep Keller from laying off as many as a hundred news staffers, but as one veteran Times reporter says, “If they’re going to give people buyouts, they’re going to lose some Linda Greenhouses."
“I think it’s better to leave a job like this when people say they’ll miss you, instead of when they’re wondering why you’re still here,” says Greenhouse from her office in the paper’s Washington bureau. At 61, she points out that she was already contemplating retirement and the terms of the severance ($300,000, a little more than double her yearly salary of $140,000) were attractive. “The buyout offer came so suddenly that the decision was first to take it, not to worry about what would happen next.”
If Greenhouse was surprised by the offer, she was probably in the minority. Rumors of pending layoffs have been circulating for months, with the recession only adding thunder and lightning to the already grim climate of the newspaper world. “It’s a unique set of circumstances,” says the anonymous reporter, who is not taking the buyout, citing layoffs and downsizing at rival papers including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, to say nothing of the work-in-progress that is Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. “There is no other newspaper that anyone wants to work for anymore.”
There is an inherent danger in losing veterans like Greenhouse, who hints that her “second act” could bring her to academia. “When I started, the TV networks all had a full-time person there,” she recalls. “Now it’s only NBC and CNN. There were many more newspaper reporters assigned to the Court; it was a more popular beat. So it’s a mystery why the Court, which is no less important than it was 30 years ago, is not covered more intensely.” She points to Court sites and other online commentary as proof that readers still care. “It’s the publishers and news directors who don’t seem too interested.”
Deadline for guild members to request a buyout package was March 5; non-guild employees were mailed them. Each had 45 days to follow through, though at press time it was rumored that not enough people had gone for the parachutes and layoffs were imminent.
In the meantime, the Times just lost another prized reporter of an entirely different generation: music critic Kelefa Sanneh will write culture features for The New Yorker. It may be better to be a pop-culture critic than a hard-news reporter in today's unforgiving newspaper world. Or to be ready for your own second act. —Sean Elder
Bai Ling has fessed up.
The 37-year-old actress pleaded guilty Wednesday to disturbing the peace, stemming from her arrest last month at Los Angeles International Airport for swiping batteries...
Ultrafierce future reality-TV host!Photo: Getty Images
A source reveals, 'They want her to visit some boutiques and beauty pageants in real backwater towns and to try to whip them into chic shape.'The proposal reportedly comes on the recommendation of the Spice Girls' many A-list friends, with a source adding, 'A couple of A-listers have recommended her, saying her humour and knowledge has yet to be fully explored.'
We'll say it hasn't. Does anyone recall the brilliance behind the Victoria Beckham: Coming to America special on NBC about her move to L.A.? In which Posh said she never wanted to be photographed eating or smiling? Or when her neighbors offered her chocolate-chip cookies and she didn't know what to do with them? Or perhaps when she went to get a driver's license and asked if her picture could be touched up? Which was after she was pulled over for driving poorly without a permit or license? Soon we'll get 30 to 60 minutes of that every week. We can't wait.
Posh to host fashion TV show [British Marie Claire via Fashionista]
Courtesy of Dark Horse
Buffy Goes Sorta Gay: In this week's issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Season Eight," Buffy winds up in bed with a female fellow slayer. We trust Joss Whedon will handle this in an interesting, nonexploitative fashion, and we trust the New York Times will expend their bimonthly comics coverage on the development. Oh, look! [NYT]
World Saved: With New Line being folded into Warner Bros., no one knows which green-lit projects might get killed. But there's good news! Brett Ratner's Mr. S, in which Chris Tucker plays Frank Sinatra's limo driver, will probably be one of them. [LAT]
Lil Jon Goes Classy: Prefer your Crunk Juice a little more upscale? Lil Jon is opening the (no lie) Little Jonathan Winery, selling Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cab Sauv. Yeaaaah! [AdAge]
Avril Brings Ersatz Punk to Kohl's: In other hilarious brand-extension news, Avril Lavigne is creating a juniors line for Kohl's, a.k.a. the store where our mom used to buy all our school clothes. Adding fingerless gloves to the manga she already pushes means Avril is frighteningly in touch with the disillusioned 12-year-old demographic. [Cut]
Downey in Blackface: "If you don't do it right, we're going to hell," says Robert Downey Jr. about his role in Ben Stiller's comedy Tropic Thunder: a white actor so devoted to his craft that in order to play a character originally written as black, he performs in blackface. Even if they do do it right, we imagine we'll go to hell for watching it. [EW]
Alex Keaton Faces the Present: Gary David Goldberg: Alex P. Keaton would vote for Obama. Michael J. Fox: Alex P. Keaton would be a felon. [Campaign Stops/NYT]
Patrick Swayze is battling pancreatic cancer, E! News has confirmed.
The 55-year-old "Dirty Dancing" star is undergoing aggressive treatment and continuing to work.
Speaking...
Chuck Prince, Barry Diller, John Thain, and Steve Schwarzman: larger than life, but still smaller than the stars.Photo Illustration: Everett Bogue; Photos: istockphoto (space), Patrick McMullan (Prince), Getty Images (remaining)
Barry Diller: With IAC/InterActiveCorp posting large losses and not-great fourth-quarter results last month, Barry Diller's days haven't been so sunshiny lately — and that's before the whole "John Malone is trying to steal my company" thing. But Miller says that Diller's immediate future is looking pretty awesome. As a full-moon-born Aquarius, Diller's about to have a fabulous turn for the better. "His progressed moon is in Aquarius," she says, "and about to conjoin his sun in August 2008." Diller will likely be in the news again this summer, but this time announcing a huge new venture. In fact, Diller's fortunes are going to get better and better between now and 2010. "Career wise, his chart shows steady development. Astrology is not destiny, but the study of cycles, so the choices will be up to him," says Miller.
Stephen Schwarzman: Meanwhile, the Blackstone CEO (and Diller's fellow Aquarian) needs to be conservative with his own fortunes this year and next, says Miller. "Saturn in his solar eighth house of joint financial contracts shows possible problems concerning money being held up because of contractual conflict," while a deal he made around December 11 last year "will take time to fully blossom and will exceed expectations."
Chuck Prince: Despite what you may think, Prince, a Capricorn, is in a perfect position to make a fresh start after parting ways with Citigroup. "This is the perfect year for Prince to get back on his feet again," says Miller, who says that he just last week experienced wonderful aspects and has a further fortnight in late November and early December during which the planets are aligned in his favor. "His chart suggests he is doing all the right networking and he is getting sympathetic help from all the right players," she says. But Prince will have stiff competition for at least one position he goes for, says Miller. "Transitioning Pluto will be in a very hard angle to Prince's Mars," resulting in a "sweaty, intense, difficult fight to finish for the job." However, Prince has three planets in Aquarius, so he will always play fair, and he's no dirty-tricks man. Try telling that to Todd Thompson! But seriously, Mr. Prince, if you're reading this, the best time for you to get a new job is during last days of September and the first week of October. And no Christmas vacations — the holidays will be a key time for Prince to keep abreast of looming developments in business. Good luck, Chuck! There, we said it.
John Thain: The Merrill Lynch CEO's cool troubleshooting at the company looks like it will earn him performance-based compensation (maybe a bonus for his plan to solve the stock-drop debacle?), but the new moon this Friday that links the sun, moon, and a brilliant Uranus, will bring news of sudden changes in relation to Mr. Thain's career path, and he's going to respond in a way no one expects! What could it be? Our money's on guitar teacher, focusing on the back catalog of his totes all-time favorite band, Led Zeppelin. We can practically hear him practicing his "Stairway to Heaven" already. —Fiona Byrne
Photo: Courtesy of Marc Jacobs
Hello - Sorry for the delay. I've inquired about a re-order and at this time we are not planning to order additional quantities.
Well, that's pretty cut-and-dried. Doesn't it seem, given last night's wins, that now would be precisely the time they'd want to reorder? Dammit, Marc. So freaking exclusive, aren't you? Keep an eye out for Obama's people to seize a high-end cotton opportunity here.
Earlier: Is Marc Jacobs Deliberately Depriving Us of a Fitted Hillary Tee?
Marc Jacobs Brings Back the Hillary Tee
Technology can be fabulousPhoto: Courtesy of Bling-My-Thing
Photo: Getty Images
1. Gnarls Barkley, "A Little Better"
As of right now, this is our second-favorite track on the new Gnarls Barkley record (just behind "Surprise," which no blogs have yet posted. For shame, blogosphere!). [Find a Soul]
2. Annie, "Girlfriend"
In this new track, Annie tells some extremely lucky guy that his girlfriend hates her. Said girlfriend would probably change her mind if she heard this song. [Ants in My Trance]
3. Ministry, "Keys to the City"
Industrial music's super-crusty superstar Al Jorgensen pays tribute to the Chicago Blackhawks. Wait, what? [Pitchfork]
4. Diplo feat. Deize Tigrona, "Bandida"
Diplo made M.I.A. famous — can he do the same for Deize Tigrona? We hope so! [Discobelle]
5. The Moulettes, "Cannibal Song"
Some breakups are worse than others, say London's Moulettes. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, especially if she eats people. [Song, by Toad]
Photo: Getty Images
Avril Lavigne is looking to launch the best damn brand.
The 23-year-old pop star has partnered with manufacturer Jerry Leigh to be the face of Abbey Dawn, a new junior's lifestyle brand,...Fronting Pavement — one of the nineties’ most-celebrated, least-rehearsed indie bands — seems like strange preparation for a career in progressive rock, a genre dominated by practiced virtuosos. Give Stephen Malkmus credit, then, for sticking with it. On his last two albums with the Jicks, the songs got buried under ill-advised keyboard solos and amplifier flatulence, but Real Emotional Trash dials down the wankery and lets the hooks float closer to the surface. “Cold Sun” is as stunning as anything he’s ever written, and the title track pulls off the rare feat of being catchy and ten minutes long. Take that, Dream Theater!
Panpuri body butterPhoto: Amazon.com
SKIN
• Party animals, NB: A new skin elixir from stylist Linda Rodin called Olio Lusso promises a nongreasy oil to enhance your glow. Rodin said it works even after "four nights out in a row." [Moment/NYT]
• These pink, blue, and silver soaps smell and look like chocolate truffles. Use them and everyone will want to eat you. Um. [Teen Vogue]
• Panpuri Inner Peace Body Butter is floral-scented, relaxing and goes on smooth, like lotion should. Because inner peace obviously comes bottled in a $28.50 vat of lotion. [Spoiled Pretty]
• Bliss Glamour Gloves will moisturize your hands in twenty minutes. They're lined with hydrating ingredients like grape seed and ceramide gel. Good for a post-winter rehydration. [British Vogue]
Because "Punch Hitch In His Newly Smooth
Testicles" didn't make for as slick of a logo.Photo: Vanity Fair
No V.F. contributing editor arouses more reader ire than our tireless columnist Christopher Hitchens. To accommodate the overflow of outraged letters and e-mails sent to the magazine, VF Daily introduces a new feature: Hitch Bitch.
Though we love Christopher, we think we might contribute a note or two of our own. We might bring up the time he forced his freshly shorn balls upon us or that time he made us unwillingly relive the Christmas awkwardness of our childhood. Or maybe we'll just complain about the fact that he has been showing up on the news as a political commentator this primary season. Dude, you can't be an expert on Hillary's campaign nuance and back waxing. Whom do you think you write for, Us Weekly?
Announcing the Hitch Bitch [VF via Mixed Media/Portfolio]
Paul Kolker’s Protected Speech? (2008).Image courtesy of the artist.
Paul Kolker's heavily pixelated, neo-pointillist (think Seurat, Pissarro from time to time) paintings are evocative of dial-up modems circa AOL 1.0. Or a Lite-Brite. His exhibition of paintings and related photographic works opens next Thursday at Chelsea’s Studio 601. —Rachel Wolff
From left, Christian Lacroix, Isabel Marant, Alexander McQueen.Photos: Imaxtree, Getty Images (McQueen)
From left, Hermès, Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier.Photos: Imaxtree
From left, Isabel Marant, Lanvin, Stella McCartney.Photos: Imaxtree
From left, Viktor & Rolf, Louis Vuitton, Stella McCartney.Photos: Imaxtree
Sorry, the restraining order prevented us from getting any closer.Photo: Dan Patterson
Chelsea: Jack White stopped by the Chelsea Hotel the other day, in full fur-coat regalia, to soak up some of Bob Dylan's residual energy from the place in order to prepare for his upcoming album with the rock hero. [Living With Legends]
Cobble Hill: This neighborhood blog is all excited that Alex McCord is one of the crackpot stars of The Real Housewives of New York City. They've started an open-comments thread. But no one has an opinion yet. Chime in! [Cobble Hill Blog]
Gowanus: A new south Brooklyn neighborhood coalition, which includes residents of Red Hook, Gowanus, and Carroll Gardens, is preparing to fight for your right to gentrify! Or, you know, stop gentrification. As the case may be. [Gowanus Lounge]
Stuyvesant Town: In addition to offering a free month's rent to new lessees these days, the giant living complex is now allowing owners to have pets for the first time ever. Or so they think. Intel editor Chris lives there, and there are totally cats and dogs that already live in his building. [Curbed]
West Bronx: A building's worth of tenants here is banding together for a class-action lawsuit against landlords, who have not gotten rid of the rats "running wild" and giving children asthma, among 400 other complaints. [AMNY]
West Village: There's now video of that West Village sexual assaulter. You can't really see his face, and he's just standing there, but it's kind of scary anyway. [NYP]
Sarabia and his potent potable.Courtesy of I-20 Gallery.
One of the most talked-about exhibits at last night's opening of the Whitney Biennial was Eduardo Sarabia's Salon Aleman, or — as you may have heard it called — "the tequila bar." Sarabia designed the blue and white porcelain bar in the Park Avenue Armory and spent much of the after-party serving his own homemade tequila. According to Sarabia, the project began five years ago when the artist became interested in the process of producing authentic Mexican tequila and was soon smuggling bottles into the United States. At the Armory, his bar will feature glassware and D.J. performances by his friends, "though the most important thing," he noted, "is that people come out and try my tequila."
Sure, it's canny to sidetrack potential critics by getting them hammered, undergraduate style, but we had to ask Sarabia: Is it art? Does he think drinking is an art form? "Drinking responsibly." Responsibly? But he makes tequila! "When I first told people about my tequila," he protested, "everyone had a story from when they were 16 and promised to never drink it again. But I turn them around. My tequila doesn't give a hangover." No hangover? That is an art. —Blythe Sheldon
Hi, Junior!Photo: Patrick McMullan
If ever a clothing line was in danger of being made superfluous by its own designer, surely it's this one.
The shirt- and often shoe-averse Matthew McConaughey is gearing up to launch...I Am Legend arrives on DVD in two weeks, and one of the bonus features is the film's darker original ending, which we think is much better than the reshot one they ultimately went with. In it, Will Smith (playing a virologist, hilariously) fails to find a cure for the disease that's turned the earth's population into people-eating zombies, and when the undead storm his basement laboratory, we finally learn why they're so pissed off: One of his test subjects is the girlfriend of the movie's alpha zombie. Even it's sort of gross, this alternate finale humanizes the bad guys and makes for a much more satisfying conclusion. So, naturally, test audiences hated it and thought it would be cooler if Will Smith (spoiler alert!) saved the planet, talked to Jesus, and blew himself up with a grenade. Nice work, Hollywood!
I Am Legend Alternative Ending [/Film]
Earlier: Before the Devil Knows You're Undead: Why ‘I Am Legend’ Should've Starred Philip Seymour Hoffman
To answer the question posited in their ubiquitous hit, it may make some people crazy. And that's one too many.
Per Billboard, the video for Gnarls Barkley's new single, "Run,"...
Photo Courtesy CW
Readers in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island: Do not forget to vote! [Blogdorf Goodman]
Photo illustration: Andrei Kallaur; Photos: Getty Images
Rami Kashou: 2-1. The presumptive favorite early on, Rami faltered when the judges got impatient with the endless similarity of his draped gowns. Dooming him to a design-off with teddy bear Chris March seemed like they were just making a point — much like how a girl rarely wins Top Model without having once landed in the bottom two for some bogus reason. It apparently worked in this case: Rami’s collection is romantic but not a retread, and it has a nicely balanced color palette punctuated by beautiful shades of blue and red. But let’s face it, we’re cynics, and that’s really why Rami is our choice. Project Runway doesn’t need a commercially successful winner in order to remain a ratings hit, but after Jeffrey, Jay McCarroll, and Chloe Dao faded away, it sure couldn’t hurt. Rami is the show’s chance to anoint a victor equal parts talented and Most Likely to Market Himself for the Red Carpet.
Watch a slideshow of the Rami Kashou collection.
Christian Siriano: 3-1. Before we saw his collection, we thought Christian would win. And frankly, he still might. His work was bolder and braver than most, almost more Chris March–ian than what Chris March showed. But despite the theatricality of his collection — wouldn’t you die to see Posh wearing that giant hat with the beige face-eating neck ruffle? — the largely monochromatic parade felt cohesive to a fault. By the third or fourth black skinny-pants-elaborate-coat combo that sashayed down the runway, we wondered if we were stuck in a temporal loop. And while his chocolate-and-gold cocktail dress is stunning, the final look had a whiff of rare-bird roadkill about it.
Watch a slideshow of the Christian Siriano collection.
Jillian Lewis: 25-1. Jillian is certainly talented, but the problem with her collection is the same problem we had with her as a contestant: SNORE. She’s possibly the first robot ever to make it on to a competitive reality show — seriously, she has no affect in her voice whatsoever — and while her line is totally serviceable, there’s nothing surprising or exciting about it. You’ve seen her do one funky, neatly tailored coat, you’ve seen it all. Also, the jacket with the holes in the crooks of the arms looks as though it was designed for a person who donates a lot of blood, and that kind of makes us queasy. —The Fug Girls
Watch a slideshow of the Jillian Lewis collection.
Check back tomorrow for the Fug Girls' post-finale recap!
Apparently Janet just needed a little discipline to get back on top.
Ms. Jackson's "Discipline" has debuted at number one, becoming her first chart-topping album since her pre-wardrobe-malfunctioning...
Mary-Louise ParkerPhoto: Getty Images
On Monday, Mary-Louise Parker fans were treated to a front-page story on the actress in the Times "Arts" section. Campbell Robertson, reporting at one point on Ms. Parker's relationship with directors, noted that while the actress "thrives on collaboration," some directors can be "wildly stupid" (no surprise here); furthermore, in earlier days, the actress' "rebellious" attitude got her suspended from the North Carolina School of the Arts for "challenging her teachers."
At last night's after-party for the opening night of Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, in which Ms. Parker plays the lead (awesomely), Parker's peers leaped to her defense, even though we didn't think the profile said anything that outrageous. Her director, Anne Bogart, called the article "a waste of space": "I didn't find it very penetrating," she added. We wondered, though, if the piece accurately reflected what it's like to work with Ms. Parker. "She has strong ideas," Ms. Bogart said, "and so do I. But if I'm working with somebody without strong ideas, I feel like [I'm in] a vacuum." Co-star T. Ryder Smith felt Robertson "came down hard on her": "She's very witty and very sweet to be around." Sarah Ruhl also stood up for Parker: "I have just loved working with Mary-Louise, every second; she's such an artist. She's a really pure artist."
Of course, it could be that all of these people we've just mentioned were simply too terrified of Ms. Parker to say a word against her. As Robertson warns, Ms. Parker can be "rather intimidating," and we were indeed intimidated when we chatted with her. It was plainly obvious that the poor woman simply wanted to eat her plate of food and catch up with friends at her own party, not shoot the breeze with some reporter. But we had to know: What did she think of the Times piece? Ms. Parker turned to her publicist: "I don't know. What did I think about it?" "You liked it," the publicist cued. "I liked it, I guess," she said. Any stories about directors who'd made her do something ridiculous? "No one really makes me do stuff," she said. "I don't really play theater games. They have to pay me extra for me to play theater games." "But," we asked, "uh, what about before you were Mary-Louise Parker? Like, in high school?" Ms. Parker looked at us as if she didn't understand, and then blithely offered: "I've always been Mary-Louise Parker, since I was born." —Ben Kawaller
“I don’t know how they do business, but I would think that protocol would have them doing fact-checking,” Cindi Hoffman, Seltzer's sister, who ratted her out to the Times, told the paper, of the publisher. Well, Cindi, maybe it's your fault. "Margaret Jones was turned in by her sister," a blogger at the L.A. Times wrote. "Something was clearly awry in her utter identification with the gang members she wrote about. Something was broken, somewhere. Wait, so maybe it was the mother's fault? Or what about the Times? What's their culpability? Colin McEnroe at the Hartford Courant has suggested that public editor Clark Hoyt sniff around and see why they got so overexcited. "Mr. Hoyt, one thing I would like you to look into is how many times Mr. McGrath slouched into this or that office around the building and suggested that a little more than usual could be done for this book by one of Sarah's authors," he wrote. We're not really buying that the doddering ex–Book Review editor put ideas in the minds of "House & Home" freelancers, but who cares! Someone must burn! And one commenter on the L.A.Times website thinks they know who: "How much double checking is done in the editorial quarters of Fox News ? And, to take it a step further, how much double checking is done in Washington DC? We are still at war in Iraq thanks to the American people buying into a not-so-well fabricated lie." That's right, people. This trail of deception goes all the way to the White House.
Tracking the Fallout of (Another) Literary Fraud [NYT]
Related: No, the 'Times' Coverage of 'Love and Consequences' Is Not Charles McGrath's Fault [Vulture]
From Jabour's capsule collection.Photo: Courtesy of Uniqlo
The capsule collections are part of the Japanese retailer's Young Designer's Invitation Project, which has previously brought in pieces by Lutz & Patmos, Alice Roi, and Phillip Lim. Bonus: All pieces from the project retail for $29 to $79, so we'll hear nothing of this recession nonsense.
WWD has circulated some of the Jabour looks, but we've got a couple more for your perusal.
Photo: Courtesy of Uniqlo
Photo: AFP
"Ronnie is a big mouth. I love him dearly, but he's a flip-flap. I mean, I can never remember Ronnie pulling a gun on me. Some of these stories were so out of the picture that I just gave up and laughed." —Keith Richards on reading bandmate Ronnie Wood's recent autobiography [Pr-Inside]
"I missed the call time by half-hour [due to flight delays from the arrest]. Helen Mirren just came to me, and held my hand, she said, 'Bai Ling, we understand. Use this for the film.'" —Bai Ling on shoplifting, and the inimitable advice of Dame Mirren [PageSix]
"Once you get the past that feeling of absurdity that comes with acting towards a tennis ball in front of 500 people on the crew, it's actually a bit freeing…[plus] I don't want to offend the tennis ball — it's got a huge ego." —Steven Strait on acting on green screen in 10,000 B.C. [Moviehole]
"Directing was a great experience but it's terrifying to have the responsibility of carving up the other actors' performances. I don't want to do that ever again. I want to be the guy who watches." —John Krasinski on directing Brief Interviews With Hideous Men [People]
"People have normal jobs, where they go to work and they're not disemboweling themselves emotionally, so there's something really weird about the fact that actors are drawn to doing that." —Kate Beckinsale on playing a mother whose young daughter goes missing in Snow Angels [Parade]
Photo: Getty Images
That may be where this is headed, but of course we have to decide who is on the top of the ticket.
Of course, we highly doubt that a dual ticket is "where this is headed" if Hillary would be in the veep position — she's mentioned several times that if she doesn't get the nomination she plans to go back to the Senate. (For what it's worth, we can't imagine Barack would go for VP, either.) But for Hillary, it does help to remind everyone that she can be a uniter and that she does have a long history of doing what's right for the party. We're impressed by this tactic. Dropping that kind of nuance into a series of dozens of early-morning interviews the day after kicking some ass? Is this lady never hung over?
Clinton Hints at Sharing Ticket With Obama [WCBS-TV]
Mika Rottenberg's Valkyrian milkmaids.Courtesy of the artist and The Whitney Museum of American Art
It was hip to be squared at the opening of the 2008 Whitney Biennial last night, where a slew of artists in the sculpture-heavy show went for big raw boxy installations. Think the skeletal frame of a house, cubes of cracked glass, a resin block, a pool-size bin of kitty litter, slices of offices and rooms and houses. With its organic materials and echoes of architecture, the show sometimes looked like Janson’s History of Conceptual Art meets Home Depot. We're not sure what it all meant, but don’t miss Mika Rottenberg’s cool ramshackle barn in which you watch videos of Valkyrian milkmaids and baying goats.
As a whole, the hometown show (more than half the artists now live in New York) wasn’t quite wowing the crowd. “It could have used a jolt of sexy painting," Artkrush editor Paul Laster complained. There was not much politics, even less sex. The dominant aesthetic was so tentative and half-done that one rival institution’s curator wondered if artists racing to make deadlines hadn’t finished. Then an SVA professor thoughtfully explained: “It’s what they’re teaching in schools now. It’s non-iconic.”
Buzzy works included the powerhouse lobby office from Jason Rhoades (the gifted L.A. artist who died of heart failure in 2006), Phoebe Washburn’s room-size ecosystem run on Gatorade, and Eduardo Sarabia’s witty storage room of art knockoffs by Koons, etc., which thoughtfully included an order catalog. Said Chelsea dealer Robert Goff: “It’s awesome — because it looked finished.” —Alexandra Peers
Related: The Facebook Biennial [NYM]
MEDIA
• You know how the stories in The Wall Street Journal have gotten punchier and shorter? Yeah, well, apparently it is not the great soft hand of Rupert Murdoch making these changes. The journalists are cleaving to him of their own free will. "Our people are doing this in advance, I think, to make him happy," a reporter told the Washington Post. [WP]
• "Is the Hillary Clinton campaign staffed with morons or do they just not care anymore? It is unbelievable that on the night before the Texas and Ohio (and Vermont and Rhode Island) primaries they would set up an impromptu press room in a freaking men's bathroom, complete with urinals." [HuffPo]
• Fox and CNN to go head-to-head. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
LEGAL
• The skydiver who tried to jump from the top of the Empire State Building in 2006 ruined it for us all: A court ruled that New Yorkers can't leap from the 86th-floor observation deck — even with a parachute. [NYT]
• A judge says that jurors can't be excluded from a jury based on their nationality. [NYT]
• If the Person-Pants Act passes, dry cleaners in the state of Maryland would have to pay customers for clothing they damage. No offense to our neighborhood dry cleaner, but could we perhaps try to make this federal legislation? [WSJ]
FINANCE
• New guidelines for giving bankers bonuses are in the works. Could this mean the end of the huge-paycheck era? The meatpacking district certainly hopes not. Who would pay for bottle service? [DealBook/NYT]
• After yesterday's news that even oil sheikhs might not be able to save Citigroup, the bank's stock plummeted to a nine-year low. [NYP]
• Pete Peterson, Larry Ellison, and the Chandler family all had billion-dollar paydays in 2007, and a bunch of other dudes had windfalls in the high multimillions. Whatever happened to trickle-down theory? [VF]
This outfit is not for tweensPhoto: WireImage
On the bright side, maybe they can take on all the 12-year-old girls dressed in Heidi Montag's clothing line. It could be like the Sharks and Jets invading our nation's junior highs.
Kohl’s Signs Avril Lavigne [WWD]
Earlier: Take That, Lauren: Heidi Montag to Launch Clothing Line
Photo: Getty Images
Diller Expresses Doubt at Event [Variety]
Related: Heavyweights Barry Diller and John Malone Get in the Ring
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