AP - If he'd had a Lenny's House to go to, Lenny Bruce's daughter says, her father might have lived to celebrate his 84th birthday on Tuesday. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 13 Oct 2009 | 4:21 am
AP - If he'd had a Lenny's House to go to, Lenny Bruce's daughter says, her father might have lived to celebrate his 84th birthday on Tuesday. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 13 Oct 2009 | 4:21 am
AP - Investigators are slated to testify about the more than two years they spent exploring the maze of prescriptions in the drug overdose death of celebrity model Anna Nicole Smith.
Investigators are slated to testify about the more than two years they spent exploring the maze of prescriptions in the drug overdose death of celebrity model Anna Nicole Smith. A... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 13 Oct 2009 | 3:48 am
(AP) AP - Organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair worked for 15 years to secure China as the guest of honor at their five-day showcase of global trends and best sellers. Yet even before the event opens to industry delegates Wednesday, the guests have proven awkward. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 13 Oct 2009 | 1:36 am
Babies are like the fashion world. One day they're in, the next they're out. Just ask Heidi Klum.
Despite denials that the supermodel was even in labor, Klum and hubby Seal...
AP - "In Search of Bacchus: Wanderings in the Wonderful World of Wine Tourism" (Scribner, 287 pages, $30), by George M. Taber: Thirty-three years ago, George M. Taber set the world of wine on fire with a four-paragraph dispatch about a tasting in France that compared the work of French vintners with those of their counterparts in California. The California wines won, and winemaking in the New World has never been the same. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews | 12 Oct 2009 | 10:00 pm
It was any era but ours on Dancing With the Stars tonight.
The 11 remaining celebs were asked to bring it to four new styles of dance—country two-step, lambada, bolero and...
Matthew Perry has a new TV comedy in the works, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The as-yet-unnamed series finds the erstwhile Chandler...
Reuters - Not so much a play as a staged documentary, David Hare's insightful "The Power of Yes" at the National Theater in London is the result of the playwright acting as a journalist in search of the reasons for the world's financial crisis. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews | 12 Oct 2009 | 8:28 pm
Front Page: J.J. Abrams to produce untitled project -- In a deal valued close to $2 million, Paramount has acquired an untitled feature pitch from scribes Aline Brosh McKenna and Simon Kinberg.
Front Page: Project has been in development since 1997 -- Jerry Bruckheimer Films isn't giving up on "Apaches." The company has tapped Sean O'Keefe and Will Staples to take a stab at adapting Lorenzo Carcaterra's novel about a group of renegade cops.
Front Page: Studio in negotiations with Chris Pine, D.J. Caruso -- Paramount Pictures is in negotiations with thesp Chris Pine and director D.J. Caruso to put fact-based drama "The Art of Making Money" on a fast track to begin production early next year.
Front Page: Helmer pats Walden pets -- Walden Media is keeping its focus on the family aud, tapping Mark Dindal to helm live-action family comedy "Housebroken."
Well, check out this gag reel for the recent reboot. We haven't laughed this loud since William Shatner's version...
What is it about Chelsea Handler that gets people to say things you just wouldn't expect them to say?
Like Shayne Lamas, star of E!'s Leave It to Lamas, who revealed...
Hooray for the sexual Petri dish of prime time! Not only is Gossip Girl's much-buzzed-about threesome on the way (and yes, we have scoop on that, too), but sources are buzzing about a new core...
Dr. Miranda Bailey is in the building! Chandra Wilson crosses over from Grey's Anatomy to Private Practice this week, and in town to kick ass and take names.
And in other scandalous...
Julianne Hough is Burlseque-ing with the stars..
The country-music-singing former Dancing With the Stars pro has joined the cast of Burlesque, a musical about a young small-town singer...
AP - "Where the Wild Things Are," the book, is just 339 words long. But in turning it into "Where the Wild Things Are," the movie, director Spike Jonze has expanded the basic story with a breathtaking visual scheme and stirring emotional impact.
Magic mushrooms “take a while to kick in,” we learn — just like this season. As in a French farce, Hank is finding a woman behind every door, but not yet the woman he’s looking for. Or is that just the excuse he uses to keep moving on?
We start with Prof. Moody in a faculty meeting, daydreaming about one of his students topless and working a stripper pole. (This is Eva Amurri, Susan Sarandon’s daughter, and she inherited both her mother’s soulful eyes and her rack circa The Rocky Horror Picture Show.) Called on for an opinion about something related to higher education, Hank deflects the question to a tweedy, bow-tied table mate whom he dubs “Ezra Pound.” That’s cable’s appeal in a nutshell: pole-dancing and obscure ex-pat intellectual references.
Ordered to attend a faculty and grad students fall mixer, Hank decides to make it a night with Becca instead. His new parenting plan boils down to Guitar Hero and “If we never leave the house, nothing bad can ever happen.” She calls her mom in New York: “This man is ruining my life!” she bleats. Defeated, he drives her to her friend’s house, also the site of the faculty fête. “Don’t get too hammered,” she begs. “Don’t put daddy in a corner!” he replies, and then spends the rest of the night cornered by women who want something from him.
The core of the ep — indeed, the season so far — is Hank’s speech to the dean’s wife, Felicia. She says she’d like to fix him up. “That’s a fool’s errand,” he answers, master of understatement. He doesn’t need help to find lovers: “That’s my purgatory, really ... All women are (beautiful) in one way or another. There’s something about every damn one of you — a smile, a curve, a secret. You ladies really are the most amazing creatures. My life’s work.” So what’s so bad about that? The morning after, he explains, he’s hit by “the hangover and the realization that I’m not quite as available as I thought I was the night before.”
Felicia’s so moved by this eloquent “tragic philanderer” argument that she ends up in his arms — only to be interrupted by Jackie, who tells him later that he could have done better, with her. If this wasn’t enough activity for one dull faculty cocktail party, Hank also has sex with his flustered teaching assistant on the dean’s desk. And Becca secretly tries ‘shrooms.
Elsewhere in Hollywood, Rick Springfield, in a guest-star turn, lunches with Sue and Charlie. He’s looking pretty good for age 60. He and Sue talk about their history of sex and doing coke off each other’s asses. Turning profane on Californication is actually a good career move for Springfield, who’s been doing cruise-ship excursions with soap stars and his mother. Charlie lands him as a client with a strategy that consists of finding his The Wrestler. “Get an Oscar nom for playing an addict, a cripple, a retard, whatever,” he pitches, and a deal is struck. Charlie calls Marcy to celebrate, but she declines, then heads to his office anyway with champagne. Behind another door she finds Sue, mid-coitus with an unseen man. “Charlie Runkle, are you inside that woman?!” she cries. It is not a happy reunion.
So, for all the beautiful women in his life, Hank ends the night (adorably) in a Yale-blue snuggie, alone with Charlie, bemoaning the mistakes they’ve made and the two women they miss terribly. “Next year, my Hebrew brother,” he tells Charlie, “next year in Jerusalem.”
Front Page: Top TV dramas draw the most playback -- The rich got richer in DVR playback numbers released Monday, which paint a picture of auds watching more programs on their own timetables.
Last week Condé Nast shuttered four magazines (Gourmet, Elegant Bride, Modern Bride, and Cookie), and gave the ax to sales staffers at Glamour and both edit and sales teams in the digital division. All this bloodletting was to satisfy the McKinsey wolves. Or was it? Fashion Week Daily is posing that the troubled media empire wants to free up enough cash to snatch up Hachette jewel Elle. Citing rumors from earlier this summer that the magazine was up for grabs to potential buyer Hearst, talk around fashion closets is that Elle is up for grabs yet again. But why would Condé, which has its own fashion bibles, need Elle? The article goes on to rub salt in the Condé wounds by pointing out how well Elle is doing exposure-wise and that it can still afford to send all its editors to the European shows. The premise is far-fetched at best. But ...
The Daily also drops the tidbit that W plans on cutting its publishing frequency in half, producing just six issues a year. But don't get in a tizzy — sure, W is pricey to produce and may have to cut budgets, but this reduced-schedule business is just talk, according to W's chairman and editorial director Patrick McCarthy, who tells us that W will not be cutting its frequency to six times a year. So let's just remain calm, people.
AP - In the opening scene of Lemon Andersen's enthralling solo memoir, "County of Kings," the hip-hop poet re-enacts the elation he felt upon reaching the pinnacle of his young career.
• Since we've all had a chance to say good-bye to Miley Cyrus' Twitter, now it's time to get back to good ol' gossip. Like this gem: She went to Outback Steakhouse and...
Attorneys for Jon and Kate Gosselin will meet Tuesday with a court-appointed arbitrator to hammer out the economic issues in their contentious divorce.
Popular Ethiopian pop singer Teddy Afro performs during a concert in Addis Ababa on October 11. When Teddy Afro leaps onto the stage the crowd goes wild, clapping in the air and singing along with the... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 12 Oct 2009 | 4:06 pm
Before there was The Daily Show or South Park, there was Bloom County, Berkeley Breathed’s satirical eighties comic strip that centered around a sensitive penguin named Opus, and ribbed such cultural cartoons as Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, and George H.W. Bush (see the feature in this week's magazine). This month sees the arrival of The Bloom County Library: Volume One: 1980-1982, the first in a five-volume reprint series. Brian Raftery spoke to Breathed (pronounced Breath-ed) about fabulism, fake Uzis, and the life of an accidental cartoonist.
You’ve always been hesitant to revisit Bloom County. So why go back now?
One of my points for not doing it was that the strips were so damn timely. Who the hell remembers who Cap Weinberger is? Or Michael friggin’ Dukakis? But my fans have been asking about it for years. It was a nostalgic blast.
What was it like looking back at nine years’ worth of strips?
One thing any discerning comic reader could tell is that I had almost no experience with comic strips. I didn’t grow up on them. You could see me struggling; I had no idea what Bloom County was supposed to be about, who the main character was going to be. I was moving to Iowa, so I just shoved everything into a rural landscape, and started cartooning totally by the seat of my pants. There was always this constant tension: I don’t even know what this strip is. Sometimes, it was this vicious satire on Michael Jackson, sometimes it was political, and sometimes it was Opus, lying in a dandelion field, musing about life. They didn’t fit easily together, and not always happily, but they fit for a while.
How’d you wind up in a section of the paper you hardly even read?
I’d been fired from all the other positions at the University of Texas’s Daily Texan. Because, though I love newspapers, I had no concept of appreciation of facts or reporting. So I made everything up. As a photographer, I couldn’t hand in a straight news photo of someone at a podium. I had to figure out some screwy way to make it more interesting. I got fired after burning in a halo over a street preacher’s head.
I was also behind a fraudulent story [at a campus magazine] that got me arrested. I wrote that a student had released hundreds of baby alligators into a local swimming lake, as a conservation measure. This made Lake Travis’s property values plummet, and that brought the federal game agents in, looking for this guy; he didn’t exist, but they did find two baby alligators in my apartment. I was arrested for that, but I couldn’t admit that the story was made up, as it would have sacrificed the last tiny shred of credibility that I had left. So I cartooned instead. It was the only safe place for a complete fabulist to go in a newspaper.
When Bloom County launched in 1980, the funny pages were in a creative slog: lots of old franchises like Blondie, and too few new strips.
The only other strips that were being read were Doonesbury and Garfield. And, more importantly, there was no satire happening in pop culture, besides Johnny Carson’s monologue and Saturday Night Live. The topical satire in Doonesbury [was] limited to hardcore fans, and most of the time, he was appearing on the editorial page. So there was no one on the standard comics page that was shaking it up. And I did so not by design, but because I didn’t know any better. I had no idea that, when I drew a fake ad for an Uzi, that it wasn’t what everybody did. Bloom County found the zeitgeist that it was perfectly appropriate for. It wouldn’t work today, and it wouldn’t have worked ten years before.
Speaking of Doonesbury, Garry Trudeau wasn’t known for being a huge Bloom fan.
He understandably took umbrage at my borrowing character details and gags from him, before I realized how to better sift my creative mind from its history. I was unknowingly borrowing way too much from him the first year. He let me know, and he was quite decent about it, and my response was not the most graceful. There’s a regret, because he and I have never actually talked, and it’s too bad.
You announced your retirement in 1989, and within the next few years, both Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) and Gary Larson (The Far Side) were gone, as well.
You get a license to print money if you get in, which is why syndicates couldn’t believe I was doing that. But Bloom County was definitely a creature of the eighties. The humor was very specific, and it was going to get jaded and, I think, musty very quickly. There were too many raw edges to it, and you just can’t keep raw forever. The fact that other guys followed afterward was a wake-up call to the industry that something is amiss, and change is afoot, and maybe the glory days are never going to return.
And they never really did. With the exception of Dilbert and The Boondocks, there hasn’t been a culture-conquering newspaper strip in years.
When the three of us quit, it coincided with bad things happening in newspapers in general, and then the culture was suddenly awash in competitive humor. It siphoned a lot of the talent away. The future great cartoonists aren't sending their stuff anymore. They rightfully are working in graphic novels, or doing something else. It’s funny, you never hear anybody talking about it. People loved the comics over the last 100 years. They were hugely influential in popular culture, and they’re dying. They’re going fast. And nobody talks about it — it’s like they’re not even noticing. Along with newspapers, it’s this huge creative institution just disappearing into the ether behind us.
Kelly Osbourne and Luke Worrall wore coordinating black-and-white outfits at Hollywood Life's sixth annual Hollywood Style Awards in Los Angeles. And for an added bonus, even their hair color is the same.
AP - Celebrity doesn't change. Even 100 years ago, a person could rise swiftly in popularity, only to fall equally fast when the public changed its mind.
The Michael Jackson song just released is apparently not as "brand new" as his record company says. If it sounds familiar, you may be a fan of Latin hip-hop singer Safire, who recorded a song titled "I Never Heard" in 1990 with the same melody and lyrics.
If you're wondering what Sharon Stone has been up to recently, here's your surprising answer: gardening. The actress, who only appeared in two films last year and one this year, apparently has a lot of free time on her hands, and when we caught up with her at the Hamptons International Film Festival, she recommended it as a hobby: "What I am finding is that when you start to really clear old, dead things and really take that time to take away the old stuff and organize a garden and clear out and get in the dirt and weed things out and then see the new stuff that’s coming up and move things around, this time that you take that actually takes some labor and is meditative and organized with nature, you can get yourself in a harmonious place," she explained, and it really did sound like one sentence the way she said it. "It lines your body, mind, and spirit up in a way, particularly when you’re trying to get yourself in your creative work," she added. "It gets you in the right harmonious place." Harmony. Got it.
What do models do between shows? They smoke. They are only human, after all. Jeremy Kost caught Lara Stone lighting up in Paris, and she looks gorgeous even as she puffs away. But kids, remember, don't do this at home.
The show ambles into its most comic territory yet with references to masturbation, obsessions with armpit hair, and vegan mouths. It also continues its streak of surprisingly good female cameos with Parker Posey as an obnoxiously restrictive Brooklyn mother, and Bebe Neuwirth as a chilly book editor.
The masturbation results from Ray’s offer to sire a child for two lesbian acquaintances, one of whom hooks Jonathan up with his next client: a radical vegan whose son had his skateboard stolen. He meets the mother — Parker Posey — and gets the story with a side-dish of make out and carrot juice. George, meanwhile, has met a hottie with tantalizing blond underarm hair; he insists Jonathan accompany him to her "organic game" event at a Greenpoint eatery. The rapscallions Jonathan recovered the skateboard from earlier find him at the restaurant and smash the window, ruining George’s chances, and when Jonathan brings the board back to the mother, she doesn’t invite him in. Another case closed, another door shut.
Not Feeling It
•Though we love how Ray delivers his semen with Chicago-spoof jazz hands, singing "all that jizz," the idea of asking an unkempt, overweight "artist" to father a lesbian couple's child went out with David Crosby and Melissa Etheridge. Minus 3.
•It's a classic complaint for TV realists, but the size of these Brooklyn apartments — especially for artists and single mothers — is pushing it. Or, at least, the number of apartments with eat-in kitchens and/or dining rooms is off. Minus 1.
•Since when did New York City go Dogtown and Z-Boys? Skateboarding may not be a crime in New York, but it definitely isn't as prolific as Jonathan Ames seems to believe. Minus 2.
•Would the radical vegan — the epitome of an overprotective, overly restrictive Brooklyn mother — ever let her baby boy engage in "extreme sports"? No chance. Minus 2.
•As the skateboarders chase Jonathan, he instantaneously warps from the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge to Hoyt Street in Carrol Gardens, and is later caught at the "Greenpoint Pastures" eatery. These kids have skateboards, not teleportation devices. Minus 3.
Marty Markowitz Would Be Proud
•With her choice of live-food "cocktail" and a chiropractic mating ritual, Parker Posey makes a perfect representation of the insufferable New York woman. Plus 3.
•George's line that "Brooklyn is the new Manhattan" is so outdated that it's almost accurate again — particularly from the desperately cool-seeking media man. Plus 2.
•Greenpoint is the perfect locale for a quasi-locavore food emporium — like Marlow & Sons North. Plus 2.
•Stoic Bebe Neuwirth is perfectly cast as the Four-Seasons-lunching book editor who incongruously pursues Jonathan's kama sutra novel. Plus 3.
•The hispanic skate-punk's epithet for Jonathan, "big nose," is an apt representation of New York's intra-minority tension. Plus 2.
•The likely New York stories beat out the implausibles by one point! So the show is making progress, and considering it took place mainly in Carroll Gardens and Greenpoint, we can forgive the paucity of minorities.
HAIR
• Men, it's time to grow out your hair. The trend for men's hair this spring is going to be James Dean and retro-inspired — big, bold, and voluptuous. [WWD]
MAKEUP
• Plum is the color for fall lips and eyes, from mascara to shadow and gloss. [StyleHive]
• Shiseido makeup director Dick Page created the fall 2009 color collection, available now, which includes colors that were previewed on the Michael Kors and Narciso Rodriguez runways. [Butterfly Diary]
FRAGRANCE
• Perfumer Lyn Harris is helping create a Champagne tea menu at a London restaurant because perfumers and wine specialists share the same heightened sense of smell. "Because of my training, I am very comfortable with talking about smells and about complex notes. That it is about wine, rather than fragrance, is almost immaterial," Harris says. [Times UK]
• A 1997 drawing by Ettore Sottsass inspired the limited-edition perfume bottle that Issey Miyake is releasing this week in France. Only 2,000 were made, in handblown glass, and they are selling for $436.40 at the current exchange rate. [WWD]
Vince Vaughn attends the Chicago premiere of "Couples Retreat" at the AMC River East on October 6, in Chicago, Illinois. Relationship comedy "Couples Retreat" shot to the top of the North American box... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 12 Oct 2009 | 2:57 pm
Reuters - At its best, David Mamet's 1992 play "Oleanna" pushes plenty of buttons concerning viewers' attitudes toward sexual politics and political correctness. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews | 12 Oct 2009 | 2:49 pm
The new horror movie "Paranormal Activity" could be filling movie studio marketing departments with fear. The film cost reportedly cost just $11,000, but made more than $7 million last weekend -- using word of mouth.
Mike Britt kicked off the holiday weekend bringing you TV’s best moments, including Conan O’Brien’s latest brush with death in this new episode of Best Day Ever:
We'll admit it: We still have a bit of an icky taste in our mouths as a result of the wildly disappointing season finale of True Blood. What started off as a great season ended on a crushingly lame note; we certainly hope that Alan Ball gets himself re-engaged in the creative process during the show's third season. And, thankfully, there are signs that he's doing just that. Over the weekend, he told TV Guide that "Somebody is going to bite the dust and it's going to be really good to see them get what they deserve." When pressed for details, the only detail he mentioned is that "it's a person we'll be happy to see go." So, who should it be?
Please notice that we said "should" and not "will." Let's evaluate a few of the potential choices of characters that we would LOVE to see offed:
— Bill: At the end of the show's second season, someone or something dragged Bill off into the darkness. We certainly hope that it was long drag off a short pier, because Bill is turning out to be a boring fuddy-duddy of a vamp. His romance with Sookie has gotten stale and we like Eric way better. So let's off Bill!
— Tara: She's been Sookie's best friend since the two were children, but let's face it, she's made a lot of bad decisions of late. We kind of like her character and the actress who portrays her, but having her killed would certainly set off a lot of interesting plot developments. Our hearts would definitely not be broken if Tara met an early demise.
— Deputy Andy Bellefleur: Talk about an annoying, one-note character! Every time we hear his accent we want to cover our ears. He's certainly someone that we'd be happy to see go.
But then again, what do we know? Who do YOU want to see go? Who do you think Alan Ball is most likely to kill off?
Once a week, Daily Intel takes a peek between doors left slightly ajar. This week: The 58-Year-Old Divorced Branding Consultant, Living Out Her Fantasies With an Active Playdate Life: female, 58, West Village, straight, divorced and actively playing.
DAY ONE 5:03 a.m. Drift into regret that "Craigslist Depressed Dad" canceled last night's date. And that the economy's killing me. 5:15 a.m. Fantasy time. Me in a two-man threesome? The spanking I've never had? It's now 30 months since my last long-term relationship, and I'm totally realistic about who I am and what I need. 5:30 a.m. My body shudders long and hard, gasping for more. By the way, I haven't a submissive bone in my body.
2:02 p.m. No word from "Irish Man," but he will show for tonight's playdate. He, too, is self-employed economic trash these days. It'll be him and the Captain, a man twelve years younger than me. 7:07 p.m. Both arrive. The Captain and I hug deliriously, his tongue becoming fat in my mouth. The Irish Man gives me a present: black stockings. I improvise a dinner for us. 9 p.m. Straddling Irish Man, I sit in his lap. Perfect fit. I drive him crazy talking global economics while squirming against the Captain. Unleashed and inspired, I don't hold back, devouring them both. 9:30 p.m. I have somehow slammed the Irish Man and his chair into the wine refrigerator. Photos are falling. I worry about the chair. We are loud, rowdy lovers. 12:36 a.m. We watch a movie, and Irish Man is dead in my bed. Kissing his contented lips in the dark, I whisper "I adore you both."
DAY TWO 6:07 a.m. The Captain wakes us. Lots of kisses and soft touching. Down goes Irish Man. Yes. Yes. Oh God! Another. Yes. 6:29 a.m. Now we have sex ferociously, and I demand every drop. I love this moment, glued to one's eyes, turning him inside out. 8:03 a.m. Blissed, I stir. Irish Man schedules me in for next Sunday, sensing that others are at my door, if not my bed. 10:09 a.m. I write better when sexually satiated. 12:17 p.m. The "Manhattan Designer" calls and says, "You are very hot." I say "ditto." We agree on dinner Wednesday. 1:07 p.m. My accountant sends an apology after canceling lunch. God. Why can't men organize their communications? 2 p.m. Speaking of body, get thee to the gym, femme. 4:47 p.m. Whoa! Craigslist e-mail from a married man. Is he crazy? I know everything but his Social Security Number. He writes: "I don't sleep around and haven't had an affair in over ten years. I want you." I Google him. Jesus. 10:21 p.m. Self-pleasure.
DAY THREE 6:17 a.m. I have lingered in bed for an hour, wandering around my fantasies. 11:37 a.m."Tantra Guy" arrives for coffee, sensitive, sensual, and proud of being a good masseur. I totally believe in sexual energy and touch. Yes, I can see us naked — I think. He performs massage quite often, it seems. 11:08 p.m. Self-pleasure.
DAY FOUR 5:16 a.m. Get dildo out of closet and create seismic O. 11:08 a.m. Watch banned Calvin Klein Jeans commercial on a Dr. Laura Berman segment. I'm irate that Dr. Berman totally misses the sexy, homoerotic undercurrent. 2:17 p.m. Tantra Guy calls, saying Friday-night class on lingam massage is canceled, not enough interest. Men eagerly fill yoni-massage nights. What's wrong with this picture, New York women and gay men? 6:48 p.m. Manhattan Designer's late, so I sit at the bar, without making eye contact. My loverboy plate is full, and I want to be "present" for Manhattan. He finally shows up, and we have dinner. 9:37 p.m. We spill into the wet night. He anchors me against brick building, pressing hardness against my thigh, sending a jolt of hot electricity up me. Maintaining my resolve, I insist "next week." 9:54 p.m. Alone in taxi, I read a message from my ex-husband: "I have been staying at Laura's and haven't had a chance to work on your work project yet. I will try to get it ready by the end of this week. " Damn my ex. One minute he wants to reconnect, then he's off with some Adult Friend Finder chick for a week.
DAY FIVE 4:42 a.m. No dildo this morning. Properly French-roasted, I send a calm response to my ex and start working. 10:42 a.m. The Married Craigslist guy calls. We talk Jung, life journeys. Can't do lunch today but confirm next Tuesday dinner. 11:08 a.m. Manhattan Designer writes: "MMMMMMMMMM Yummy. You are Sooooooooo Yummy." 1:54 p.m. Younger bi-coastal friend e-mails in impulsive, playful mood. He proposes wine, rain, classical music, and sensual touch on Perry Street. Tempting but I keep working. 3:39 p.m. Visions of Irish Man and the Captain cloud my brain. Memorial Day weekend. I was in his lap that night, too, at a bar in Park Slope. No panties. Self-pleasure. 10:48 p.m. Manhattan Designer asks if I'm online. We do sexy digital banter and make plans for next week. I send him a luscious photo and say good-night. 10:52 p.m. Masturbation inspired by the Captain.
DAY SIX 5:51 a.m. No self-pleasure this morning. Work and more work. 12:48 p.m. "Appellate Lawyer" checks in, with the extra spice of roses coming my way. It's just another fantasy come to life, accepting green and delivering a girlfriend experience. Pretty damn racy, if you ask me, but hey, I'm worth it. 1:07 p.m. Appellate writes back: "I love you." In a weird way, he means it. What is love anyway? 6:30 p.m. Tantra Guy arrives, joins my best friend for wine. I'm ambivalent. He's spreading his sensual wings for the first time — which is great — but I've been there for years and want to be regarded as a rarity. 10:37 p.m. Going home, Tantra Guy explained that he's has twelve partners, 50 massages in the last year. I don't see myself as No. 13. I don't feel special enough, I explain, but I support his sensual flowering, especially at his age (60s). 11:45 p.m. Lying in bed, I think such loving thoughts of Irish Man.
DAY SEVEN 6:09 a.m. More f— rain! 7:32 a.m. Married Craigslist guy writes to me. I respond: "Sometimes you just sense that you and the other person are on the same page. That's the case with us. Looking forward." I actually mean it. 10:13 a.m. I confirm an interest in exploring regular tantra sessions with someone who keeps a "quiet place" in the East Village. Perhaps he will lend it to me, because the real me can never face my doormen. The price of a river view can be high for a woman like me. 1:52 p.m. Irish Man texts about tomorrow night's dinner in Park Slope. He tells me that work is promising for him, and I'm so pleased for him. I reschedule Monday morning, deciding that I will be very late leaving his apartment. 2:43 p.m. I'm so productive working that I dismiss my desire at first. Five minutes later, I am naked in an unmade bed. I never use a rabbit or anything that makes industrial noise.
Totals: Nine acts of masturbation; one act of cunnilingus; one act of fellatio; two acts of intercourse; six serious possibilities to deal with next week; one confused ex-husband.
Madonna cut off Tracy Anderson as her personal trainer. The pop star used to spend two hours a day, six days a week with her petite trainer, but confirmed on Ryan Seacrest's radio show last week that Anderson is no longer part of her routine. At least Anderson can console herself by doing squats with Gwyneth Paltrow, her other A-list celebrity client. Maybe now we'll see Madonna with human arms again. [Page Six/NYP]
Paper magazine threw a party in honor of Penélope Cruz’s new Pedro Almodóvar film, Broken Embraces, at the newly opened Casa Lever on Saturday, and Madonna made a surprise appearance. Her Madgesty sat in the center of the room, of course, directly between Cruz and Almodóvar, and made small talk — babies? Beauty? Latin studmuffins? We’ll never know — with Cruz, and she flirted with Almodóvar. “I must confess, I introduced myself to one of her friends’ friends," said Paper’s Mickey Boardman, who co-threw the soirée. "It’s my birthday, so I was joking that I wanted Madonna to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me. When everyone was singing, everyone I had said that to was like, ‘She sang the whole time!’” So how did he get her to come and sing him the birthday song? "She’s a big fan of Pedro’s. One thing I’ve learned — actresses who want to work with him love having an opportunity to have dinner with him."
As a party reporter in the presence of perhaps the most famous woman in the world besides Princess Leia, we had to at least try to talk to her. So when the right moment arose, we shyly said, “Excuse me, Madonna,” on behalf of Intel. There was a real moment where she pretended that this wasn’t happening, but finally she shook our hand — at which point we noticed she was wearing fingerless gloves — and we blurted out that that was very cool. “Thank you,” she said, and she returned to her dessert, which she did seem to be eating.
It was a little moment, an innocent one involving a tiny web journalist and a tiny international superstar, but it caused quite a ruckus. Some person purporting to be Madonna's handler (it was not Liz Rosenberg, whom we love, so we didn't bother to remember his name) immediately swooped in and called us a "liar" and said we "disrespected" him. Even dropping the all-important words "Daily Intel" had no effect, because he said, "I don't have a boss, like you. I own my own company." [Eds: We are hardly Vilensky's bosses. He's more like our affiliate party pixie.] Truthfully, we had tuned out after about nine seconds because we had just touched Madonna. Not even Jesus — the Biblical or Brazilian one — could have distracted us at that moment. Meanwhile, Boardman’s speculation that she may want an in with Almodóvar, lauded Spanish auteur, may be correct: We hear she sat through the screening of his new film the next night.
This week’s episode of Mad Men, “Wee Small Hours”, really got back to its Season 1 and 2 roots: Sex sex sexy sex, and how it will eventually be the downfall of man. Or a man, if you’re Sal. Matthew Weiner said that this episode focuses on “how people deal with their urges.” And considering I ate not one but two Lil’ Drumsticks while watching (and no, I don’t think that’s a euphemism), the man has a point.
First, you have Conrad Hilton — or “Connie Hilty”, as we prefer — waking Don up in the middle of the damn night for advice. We swear, this actor was somehow less annoying as the Ben Gay swilling baseball player in Major League. But hey – Don is like a son to him! But how do you say “Batsh*t Crazy Eccentric Billionaire in Italian? Hilton.”
Then you’ve got Betty and her new Pen 15 Pal Henry. How this woman manages to lure in these masculine works of art is something to truly be in awe of. But even though their quickly scrawled notes to each other (could anyone read his letter?) seemed to be dripping with passion, Henry still sends along Mrs. Doubtfire as a d-replacement to Betty’s impromptu sexy fundraiser. Betty, in turn, throws an adult lady baby fit, driving to Henry’s office, tossing a 48-lb metal safe at his head, and then rebuffing his sexy manvances. She leaves his office, presumably to go pass out on her fainting couch and m-bate to a Hermes catalog.
And Sal. Poor, poor Sal. While we all know he wants to get his G-ness on in the worst way possible, the last place he wants that to happen is at work. Or, should we say:
So when yet another undeniably handsome character by the name of Lee Garner, Jr., heir to the Lucky Strike cigg fortune, makes a late night move on Sal in the editing room, we’re not met with the same passion we saw in the famous “Bellhop reaching for the tip – no – the other tip” scene from earlier this season, instead an embarrassed Sal who would rather not G it up at the workplace. Actor Bryan Batt really outdid himself during this scene. The acting was beyond authentic, and heartbreaking.
And Sal. Poor, poor Sal. Gets f**ked. Not literally, of course. Lee Jr. calls to get Sal fired, and that’s exactly what happens. And as my best gay friend put it “That’s some bull ish right thurr.” Now the show is down two of our favorite characters, Joan and Sal, and the gayest thing we have left Conrad Hilton’s mustache.
Finally, Don bones that teacher. This is probably the only thing about the episode that just didn’t feel right. Overall, though, we loved the episode. It’s setting us up for some major fireworks in the Season 3 finale and for next year.
It’s Columbus Day, and we’re assuming most of you are still in bed spooning spaghetti bolognese. So we’ll leave you with the AMC recap and ask what you thought about last night’s episode.
WWD's Bridget Foley scored a few minutes with Marc Jacobs before the Paris collections hit (we're seething with envy) for an illuminating Q&A that ran the gamut from reality TV to luxury to accessibility. Luxury, per Jacobs, isn't always about exclusivity. In this new world of instant online access, everyone can look at a collection moments after it walks. But the real takeaway? Rachel Zoe is a crazy stylist (his words, not ours).
WWD: This 24 hours a day life on camera … do you think that it just may not be a good thing for fashion, or that fashion can make it a good thing?
M.J.: ... I read this article about the Standard Hotel and how people were lining up all around the Meatpacking District because they could watch people undressing, having sex [through the windows] and all this stuff. And you know what? The hotel is full; people want to stay there. So a voyeur doesn’t mean anything without an exhibitionist. It takes all kinds.
Rachel Zoe is a good friend of mine. The reality show wouldn’t have been renewed for another season if people didn’t want to know that Rachel Zoe was this crazy stylist. So it is what it is.
On the concept of luxury and exclusivity, Jacobs says that luxury, these days, is about "the quality of the design and the quality of the make," instead of about exclusivity. He goes on to say that fashion has become something of a spectacle. "We’re in a period where people are entertained by what they consider to be the real lives of people in different professions, etc. And fashion has also reached this kind of proportion like football or sport, you know — a spectator sport." Not that there's anything wrong with that.
There’s nothing like some time with the family and the neighbors to remind a guy why he’s a lone wolf. Dexter does a good job pretending to play well with others: He didn’t kill the teenage skate hooligan who snubbed him, nor did he off his wife for nagging him and singing off-key to the worst of the eighties. He’s convinced that someone normal would be better at things like knowing what to say to his step-daughter, but, hey, everyone has trouble with that, Dexter. It’s called being human, and it’s something we each have to learn! Just because macho Quinn doesn’t think you’re a real dude doesn’t mean that all is lost.
The block association’s head-lamp-wearing, anti-graffiti vigilantes nearly confront Dexter in what might have been a slapstick tragedy worthy of Laverne & Shirley (but bloodier). It’s a relief to see Dexter scare off the block’s window-breaking bad seed by doing an accidental (and non-fatal) imitation of the Trinity Killer, who subdued his second victim by threatening to go after the kids.
After convincing that mother of two to jump to her death, Trinity cries for his own mommy and leaves a smudge of (her?) cremated ashes at the crime scene. Hopefully he’ll bludgeon his third victim soon so his mother issues can balance out Dexter’s daddy issues. Harry is still dropping by for imaginary conversations to warn Dexter about the dangers of family and the need to fit in so he can keep killing; we’re waiting for a subplot that will take a good look at what a sociopath Harry must have been.
That Grandpa Morgan is at the very least a monomaniacal freak is increasingly clear — he’s just like Trinity and Dexter and Debra that way. But he’s slightly less annoying than Anton, who’s spending way too much time at the house now that he has a gig in town, especially since he won’t even make coffee or cake. Deb might as well just move on to Quinn and get it over with.
Deb’s officially off the hypothetical Trinity murders now that the Vacation Killer case has picked up, if you can call a surprise gunfight amid a whole lot of nothing “picked up.” Is the Vacation person just meant as a contrast to Trinity, or to structure LaGuerta and Batista’s relationship? Or is something interesting about to happen?
Meanwhile, Dexter is going to have to explain to his wife just why he smashed out all the security lights in front of the house. He's probably not going to use the old "I'm a serial killer" excuse, but she's eventually going to start suspecting something.
The L.A. Times has a delightful story today on the beef between Wes Anderson and the crew of his upcoming Fantastic Mr. Fox. That whole thing about Anderson directing the movie via e-mail? Pretty much true! For the two-year period Fox was shooting in London, Anderson was in Paris, not because he needed to be for any project, he just "didn't want to be at Three Mills Studios for two years." "It's not in the least bit normal," says the film's director of photography, Tristan Oliver. "I've never worked on a picture where the director has been anywhere other than the studio floor!" Also, Oliver says more things.
Continues Oliver, sounding not unlike another quotable, director-slamming thing-sayer: "I think [Anderson is] a little sociopathic ... I think he's a little O.C.D. Contact with people disturbs him. This way, he can spend an entire day locked inside an empty room with a computer. He's a bit like the Wizard of Oz. Behind the curtain."
To which a not-incorrect Anderson counters: "I would say that kind of crosses the line for what's appropriate for the director of photography to say behind the director's back while he's working on the movie. So I don't even want to respond to it."
We couldn't find any photos of Oliver, but we'll replace that promo shot from Mr. Fox just as soon as soon as the cinematographer's Maxim spread comes out.
EVENTS
• Check out Aysha Saeed's fall 2009 trunk show. Her fall collection, which includes a wide range of dresses, will be 60 percent off regular retail prices. Butterfly Studio, 149 Fifth Ave, nr. 21st St., second fl. (212-253-2100); 5:30–8.
ENDING TOMORROW
• Flight 001 is hosting a fall sale. Spend $50 and receive $10 off; spend $100 and receive $20 off; spend $150 and receive $35 off; and spend more than $200 and receive $50 off. Through 10/13. Brooklyn: 132 Smith St., nr. Dean St. (718-243-0001); M–S (11–8), Su (11–6). Manhattan: 96 Greenwich Ave., nr. 12th St. (212-989-0001); M–F (11–8:30), S (11–8), Su (noon–6).
• Vintage apparel is 50 to 75 percent off at From Around the World Vintage Archive, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Everything originally $20 to $200 will be priced at $10 to $50, and everything originally more than $200 will be 50 percent off. The spot is open to the public for the first time. Through 10/13. 209 W. 38th St., nr. Seventh Ave., Ste. 1201 (212-354-6536); M–F (3–6), S–Su (closed).
Back in February, as part of Black History Month, an adorable multicultural group of children at New Jersey's B. Bernice Young School were taught a song about Barack Obama, which included lyrics like, "Barack Hussein Obama/He said that all must lend a hand/To make this country strong again." It's an oddly catchy tune, though we can see why some parents and, obviously, the conservative blogosphere, didn't appreciate it, to say the least. Would you want your kids learning songs about George W. Bush's vision for America? We didn't think so. For some reason, the video turned up in September, and after a predictable outcry, faded into memory once more. But not for some people! A conservative group, 912 Project Burlington Group, organized a rally this morning outside the school, which is in session. About 60 people showed up, under a beefed-up police presence, to "rescue our children from the socialist agenda of the [National Education Association] and the Obama administration" and "squelch this trend to politicize our youth," according to the group. Right — don't want to go ahead and politicize the kids, now.
Still trying to convince yourself that Dollhouse is the smartest, headiest televisual meditation on human identity, power, technology, and gender since Battlestar Galactica went off the air? So is Joss Whedon, judging from this show-offy installment in which dueling storylines echo and collide and Chaucer gets his first co-starring role on Fox prime time.
The episode (written by long-time Whedon associate Tim Minear) opens with a pervy-looking guy adjusting clothes on mannequins. As it turns out, those mannequins are actually real women who, like the inhabitants of the Dollhouse, have no control over their bodies. But unlike Echo and friends, these dolls are not being cared for in a spa-like environment by kindly handlers; they have been kidnapped and paralyzed by a serial killer named Terry. (He's using them to stand in for the female members of his family.) After a silly plot twist involving a car accident, Terry arrives at the Dollhouse in a coma. His uncle Brad (played by Michael Hogan, a.k.a. BSG's Colonel Saul Tighe) is a wealthy Rossum Corporation board member who asks Adele to revive Terry so he can tell them the whereabouts of any surviving victims. Sadly, Hogan's appearance is nothing more than a throw-away cameo. Couldn't the writers at least come up with a joke involving an eye patch?
Maybe they thought the main storyline was funny enough. It revolves around a "brain dump": Rather than wake up the serial killer, Topher transfers his twisted mind into Victor's body in order to access Terry's thoughts while maintaining control over him. But as usual, Topher's plans go awry (that wacky genius!) and Terry/Victor ends up on the loose in Hollywood. This is great for the fabulous Enver Gjokaj, who finally gets a chance to break out of Victor's hunky zombie rut and shine as a Silence of the Lambs–style psycho, prissily complaining that the women he abducts always try to spoil his fun.
And what is Echo doing during all of these Terry/Victor scenes? She is slipping into her Body of the Week: an oversexed, air-headed coed named Kiki who has been hired to seduce a college professor whose idea of foreplay is lecturing on the nature of medieval identity. It does provide an opening for a tasty bit of dialogue (in an episode otherwise pretty bereft of witty banter), in which Kiki complains about the F the teacher has given her: "I figured it was mid-evil lit, not advanced evil. How hard could it be?"
The professor gives Kiki a one-on-one tutorial about the Wife of Bath from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, the ancient story of a sexually dominant, self-possessed character who, as the professor describes her, "doesn't allow men to define her." Yes, the irony is deafening: This creepy middle-aged dude is using a meat puppet to fulfill his sexual fantasy, while supposedly teaching her about sexual power via the tale of a heroine who wore out numerous husbands with her voracious desires (all in a series written by middle-aged men who hire nubile young actresses to ... ). The professor is excited by the idea of a sexually overpowering woman using him, but yes, in reality, he holds all the power.
And then there's psycho-killer Terry, so frustrated by his lack of sway over the women in his life that he creates living Barbie dolls to rewrite the power dynamic. The Victor/Terry arc dovetails dramatically with the Echo/Kiki storyline, when Topher realizes that the only way to shut down the serial killer on the prowl is to do a "remote brain wipe." But the attempt to blow Victor's mind somehow turns into Freaky Friday, with Echo now inhabited by Terry, and Victor transformed into the hilariously frisky Kiki. Gjokaj makes a much more convincing Kiki than Dushku. It's delightful to watch him gyrating in a Hollywood club, using Chaucer as a pick-up line: "I laugh when I think how piteously a-night I made them swynke ... how about buying a girl a drink before you swynke?"
No time for swynking now, though! Terry is still on the loose — now in Echo's body — and on his way to finish off his victims, who are still trapped in a warehouse. "We have names. We're human. Not his toys," they explain with embarrassing obviousness, just in case some Kiki-esque idiot has not yet understood the parallels between their situation and the Actives.
Eventually everyone is brought in safely, though it's ever-clearer that Echo has the suckiest job in the world, hosting all of these crazy characters in the living room of her head. We now know definitively that these imprints are leaving trace fragments behind, so it makes us wonder how much control Echo has over her thoughts, and whether Terry is in there somewhere doing yoga with Kiki while Caroline plots an overthrow.
This is a clever (if sometimes clunky) standalone episode. But with the threat of cancellation hanging over the series, it left us itching for more big-picture stuff to push the plot forward. And it dropped in its wake some new questions, like:
If the Dollhouse is such an elite, shadowy organization, how can a college professor afford to rent an Active?
Also, are we supposed to identify with the increasingly icky Paul Ballard, or has he lost his moral compass and permanently wandered into the gray area?
And finally, where the hell are "Dr. Saunders" and Senator Perrin? Eliza Dushku can't do it without you. Really, she can't. Come back Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof, while there's still time!
Jeremy Kost's tour de Paris continued last week with a screen test featuring the one and only Franca Sozzani of Italian Vogue. The editor is adorably self-conscious in the video, as anyone would be while staring into a camera for over a minute. Watch for yourself and just try to fight the urge to say "Awww."
Over the weekend, White House communications director Anita Dunn announced the official beginning of the Obama administration's war with Fox News. Of course, the battle has been openly brewing for months now. Even during the campaign, Obama's team gave up on sending surrogates to the network. "It was beyond diminishing returns," Dunn told the New York Times. "It was no returns." But now the war is out in the open. "We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent," she told the paper. "As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave." Yesterday on CNN, she clarified: "Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party."
The White House's logic seems to be that there's no point in trying to be fairly portrayed on Fox News. Even if they send administration officials to try and reason with its hosts and viewers, the way the information gets presented eliminates any net benefit. (Especially when hosts like Glenn Beck make up facts and present them as sincere truth — the Times cited a moment when even fellow Fox reporters were angered that Beck claimed Fox White House correspondent Major Garrett was "never called on" in the briefing room, when he had in fact been called on that very day.) It's also helpful to have a foil to fight against. In the continuing effort to portray tea partiers and birthers and the like as a sort of faux-patriotic lunatic fringe, the act of isolating Fox is an easy way to draw some lines in the sand. (We think online slideshows are just as effective, frankly.)
But there are plenty of negatives to this take-no-prisoners approach. To begin with, each regular Fox News viewer does not only represent one vote lost to President Obama. There is literally no limit, other than cholesterol-induced high blood pressure, to how angry this constituency can get. And an angrier group — which, we have seen, is easily organized and mobilized by the network — is one that is more likely to try to win over other voters, more likely to donate and raise money, and more likely to engage in the kind of meaningless, but attention-getting, tactics that make their views seem more widely held and genuinely American than they actually are. Yes, this kind of thing alienates some moderates, but in this era of endless, confusing news input, coverage is everything. (Remember the health-care town-hall protests? Suddenly the opinions of this guy were reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers, and not just through Fox.)
So if Team Obama ignores Fox, it just gives the network's talent the chance to further caricature him as a socialist, foreign, effete, America-hating Other. It isn't a racist portrayal, necessarily, but is certainly one that gives actual racists a lot of comfort. Not countering that will help Fox viewers conveniently forget that Obama is intelligent and well spoken. George Bush, who certainly wasn't the latter, came across as human and likable in interviews. It was one of his greatest strengths (and for critics, one of his most confounding attributes).
Recognizing Fox as an enemy worth fighting is an admission of weakness for a president whose appeal has been partly predicated on the promise of unity. Glenn Beck, with his 3 million viewers, has been called a "cultural phenomenon." You know what? So is Glee, a show with well more than twice that many viewers. Hysterical conservative hyperbole isn't America. A showtune-singing multiracial gang of hopeful high-school losers, including a gay kid and a pregnant teen — that's America. Beyond the fact that Fox will use this White House move to boost their ratings (Obama winning the election has always been their golden ticket — they're on track now for their best year ever), it makes it seem as though they're actually wounding the president. When you're winning, acknowledging the enemy isn't necessary. (Remember when Obama wouldn't do those ten town halls with McCain?)
And this will allow mike-toting bullies like Glenn Beck to claim that they've cowed the president. No doubt we will hear in the coming weeks that Obama is "afraid" of Fox News. When he spoke to every network except for Fox last month, host Chris Wallace called his administration "the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington." Glenn Beck would never have the balls to say to Obama's face what he's said on air over the past few months. And now he'll never have to. Bill O'Reilly, at least, during the election, went toe-to-toe with Obama. But he was positively docile, for him, when he did it — distinctly more polite and deferential than he is to almost any other liberal-leaning guest. O'Reilly, whatever you think of him and his opinions, is undoubtedly an intelligent, well-researched guy who is quick on his feet and firm in his convictions, which are largely unhysterical. Glenn Beck doesn't have the wit, the knowledge, or the spine of Bill O'Reilly — but now we'll never get the chance to see that proven.
Barack Obama himself doesn't need to answer all of the insane rhetorical questions asked of him by Glenn Beck and his compatriots. That would obviously be a mistake. But legitimizing Fox News in this manner seems nearly as bad. Either way, he's playing their game.
Are you stuck in your office today, while many of your friends are lying around at home — or worse, taking a three-day vacation somewhere warm? Do you have that giddy feeling of recklessness that comes with a half-empty office and too much caffeine? Is now the time you feel like testing out that one pretty girl who sits near you to see how fun she actually is? Or the chance you've been looking for to figure out if that other guy is actually gay? Then this video, today, is for you.
Hall & Oates can thank a gang fight for getting together -- as they fled a show, they met in an elevator. Forty years later, their legacy seems assured, but a new boxed set makes the argument stronger.
Bill Carter's rundown in today's Times of all the things ruined by Jay Leno's jump to 10 p.m. runs under the generous headline "Debate Over Effects of Leno's Show." The only point of contention, though, seems to be whether NBC's new schedule is a "complete calamity" or an "utter disaster," as it's described in the piece by anonymous TV insiders.
To recap! The Jay Leno Show is now pulling about 5 million viewers a night, which would get a drama canceled at that hour; Law and Order: SVU, which was moved to 9 p.m. on Wednesdays to accommodate Leno, is now finishing last in its time slot; the critically tolerated, Vulture-beloved Southland was canceled; local NBC affiliates are steamed because ratings for their 11 p.m. newscasts are down by 10-30 percent, owing to having Jay as a lead-in; and Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon, too, have smaller lead-in audiences, and both are falling behind their late-night counterparts at CBS. Also not helping matters is the fact that none of NBC's other new shows is a hit. Peacock execs say they're reserving judgment for now and that they'll reassess when they see averages for a full year. We're gonna call this one for "calamity."
US singer Prince performs on October 11, at the Grand Palais in Paris. Prince's Sunday concerts were last-minute affairs, organised in four to five days, after the 51-year-old artist visited and fell in... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 12 Oct 2009 | 11:17 am
Oh, Lindsay. Right before La Lohan's disastrous turn on the catwalk last week at Ungaro, she did a little shopping in Paris. And by shopping, we mean borrowing. Hint Blog reports that the actress turned "adviser" popped into the showroom of accessories label Arielle de Pinto and pulled items for a shoot and a party. As is generally the norm with one-of-a-kind pieces, her credit-card imprint was taken to guarantee the return of the merch. Fast-forward to this week, with the baubles allegedly no longer in Paris and the credit card in question canceled. The moral of the story? Lend at your peril.
Newark Star-Ledger television critic Alan Sepinwall tweeted an interesting question last night: “What is the fame threshold for whether someone on Curb Your Enthusiasm can play a character or has to play him/herself?” This episode certainly added to the confusion. Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, and Christian Slater appear as themselves, but Sherry Stringfield and Philip Baker Hall (whose deadpan grump makes him such a perfect foil to Larry David that it’s amazing he’s never been on Curb before) play characters. We see in the previews for next week that Rosie O’Donnell shows up. She’d have to pass the fame threshold, yes? Anyway, onto the most outrageous moments!
3. Christian Slater’s caviar problem. Larry’s attempt to win Cheryl back by casting her in the Seinfeld reunion takes a week off, so we find the usual shenanigans: At a party for Ted Danson’s and Mary Steenburgen’s anniversary (we don’t find out which one), Larry runs into Christian Slater, who, perhaps not surprisingly (considering his career of late), is greedily scooping as much caviar from the hors d'oeuvres tray as his cracker can handle. Larry lambastes him with an odd metaphor about societal expectations and cancer, and ultimately rats him out to Steenburgen. Slater, of course, remembers the slight.
2. Larry makes out. We can accept Larry as a stage actor in The Producers, and even see him as a guy with friends (though it never fails to surprise us that they seem happy to see him), but we can never quite handle Larry David, Ladies' Man. Regardless, he runs into old girlfriend Mary Jane Porter (played by Stringfield, not this woman), who is oddly delighted to see him. They end up necking on her couch, as Larry awkwardly attempts to unsnap her bra with the hand he burned at the beginning of the episode (and had treated by Philip Baker Hall). It takes him so long that she answers the phone, and, lo and behold, it’s her boyfriend (who Larry hadn’t been told about), and he’s coming over immediately. He soon finds the bandage Larry ripped off in bra-snap frustration, and next thing you know, he’s driving to Larry’s house to beat him up. Bra strap struggles, angry boyfriends looking to fight … this is apparently the Larry-as-13-year-old episode.
1. Screaming at teenage girls, always hilarious. Larry tries to escape the angry boyfriend by running to various neighbor’s houses, including his doctor’s and Ted Danson’s, both of whom are angry with him. He ends up at Jeff’s and Suzie’s house, who let him sleep in the guest room until the next morning, when he wakes up and hears little Sammi Greene singing. The Greenes’s “gift” to Danson and Steenburgen for their anniversary was a solo by the distinctly untalented Sammi, and Larry had ushered her off stage, claiming he “just can’t stand the sound of the human voice.” This time, he wakes up and screams “Shut the FUCK UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!” which gets him kicked out of the house by Suzie. He ends up running into Mary Jane at a restaurant, where her boyfriend sees him and chases him outside — where Christian Slater spots him, points him out, and (presumably) makes sure he is pummeled. It is a unique pleasure that the one time Larry is actually beaten up, it’s for something that wasn’t even his fault. Not that he didn’t have it coming.
My, how little Suri Cruise has grown. A photographer caughtthese candid snaps of Suriacting like any other little girl with a flair for performance: Making faces at local passerby while inside a delicious cupcake shop. Here’s a handy guide to deciphering the many faces of Suri Cruise.
1. The “I Don’t Even Know Who I Am Anymore”
2. The “I’ll F**king Cut You, Bitch. Keep Lookin’ Over Here, keep — What the F**k Did You Just Say? Oh That Is It — (Takes Jacket Off)”>
3. The “Mommy, Daddy, I want to Act!”, also known as the “Jaden Smith”.
John Keatley spent six days following Sarah Palin around the Alaskan wilderness in order to capture just the right shot of her staring at the horizon. Unfortunately, Keatley doesn't reveal any juicy gossip about his time with Palin, but he provides the next-best thing: unintentional disparagement. “She was great to work with,” he told Politico. “She was very kind and I didn’t have any deep or interesting conversations with her." [Politico]
Madonna has reportedly dropped trainer Tracy Anderson, she of the complex dance routines, either because Anderson was dating a member of Madge's Malawi team or because Anderson wouldn't stay on tour with Madonna or because Madonna's arms looked like "gristle," or simply because Anderson wanted to spend more time with her son. Rudy Giuliani doesn't like his new seats behind the Yankees dugout, so he made a scene. Emmy Rossum and Adam Duritz are the most visually upsetting couple in some time, but Emmy doesn't care. A man in a leopard-print suit harassed Donald Trump.
Penélope Cruz sported a large sapphire rock on her ring finger, which may or may not have been put there by Javier Bardem. Jessica Simpson does not appreciate false information being spread about her dead dog, and would like you all to respect the dead dog's memory. Even though The Beautiful Life has been canceled, Mischa Barton will stay in New York, because when life closes a door it opens a window. Anderson Cooper rode his bike without a helmet.
Michael Bubleé has gotten over his breakup with Emily Blunt by hooking up with a 22-year-old Argentine actress from his music video. Jim Belushi jumped fully clothed into the pool at the Hearst Castle, because he's a Belushi. Christina Hendricks got married. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are distant cousins.
Claire and Hurley from Lost (Emile de Ravin and Jorge Garcia) ordered shots at Piano's. British heiress Ghislaine Maxwell has been subpoenaed in the suits brought against Jeffrey Epstein. Metropolitan Opera GM Peter Gelb is under fire again for more rising costs, this time thanks to a finicky Finnish baritone. Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy went out to some London club called Beach Blanket Babylon, which apparently is the "surest sign yet" that the two are back together.
Michelle Obama wore a pleated pink Moschino dress to a service at St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., yesterday. We first saw this dress with a matching jacket during the president's address to Congress back in September, but this time she topped off the look with a pink, brown, and white printed cardigan, brown ribbon belt, and pink flats. See the full look in the Michelle Obama Look Book.
Taping of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" reunion special, scheduled for last week, has been postponed as the cast deals with the death of Kandi Burruss' former fiancé, Ashley "A.J." Jewell, an NBC Universal spokeswoman told CNN Monday.
Penn Badgley and Blake Lively hailing a cab outside Billy's Bakery in Chelsea ... Drew Barrymore walking downtown ... Mickey Rourke smoking a cigarette on the street ... Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiberpushing son Alexander in a stroller ... Hugh Jackman hanging out in the West Village with wife Deborah Lee and daughter Ava ... Julianne Moorewalking downtown ... Matt Damon shooting scenes for The Adjustment Bureau outside the courthouses on Centre Street ... Susan Sarandonleaving Pastis ... Anderson Cooperleaving ABC studios after an appearance on Live with Regis and Kelly ... Penelope Cruz leaving her hotel ...reality TV star Gretchen Rossi and Slade Smiley kissing in the meatpacking district ... Chris Pine leaving the Bowery Hotel ... Hilary Duff going to see A Steady Rain on Broadway with a friend ... and Salma Hayek attempting to get past some paparazzi on the Upper West Side.
By process of elimination, we're obviously referring to Chris Daggett, the independent candidate for governor whom the New Jersey Star-Ledger believes could "send shock waves through New Jersey's ossified political system, and we believe, provide a start in a new direction." Just in time, the Times takes a look at how Daggett's rising candidacy is "causing concern in both parties." As he told a small crowd at a bar recently, "It’s like the '73 Mets. Ya gotta believe!” That might not be the best comparison, since the Mets went on to lose that year, but we get the idea! [CBS2, NYT]
Our friendGabe Liedman brings us this genius piece of online filmography. So what better way to start your week than by indulging in 10 minutes of Oprah Winfrey urinating? No better way. Flush those toxins out, folks, we feel this is gonna be a long one.
Hugh Jackman turns 41 today. Architect Richard Meier is turning 75. Jeweler David Yurman is 67. Novelist Richard Price is turning 60. Fox News' Chris Wallace turns 62. Katherine Farley, the new chairwoman of Lincoln Center and the wife of real estate honcho Jerry Speyer, is 60. Model/actress Irina Pantaeva turns 37. Former track and field star Marion Jones turns 34. Agent/producer Bryan Bantry is 53. Marko Jarić, the basketball player better known as Adriana Lima's baby-daddy, is turning 31. And actor-turned-Christian evangelist Kirk Cameron celebrates his 39th birthday today.
A post-mortem examination will be carried out this week on the body of singer Stephen Gately, who died Saturday while vacationing on the Spanish island of Majorca.
Front Page: 'This Is It' available thru official Web site, radio -- Michael Jackson's posthumous recording career began early Monday as the previously unreleased song "This Is It" began streaming on the Web.
• A flight attendant who worked aboard Oprah Winfrey's private jet says she was falsely accused of having sex with a pilot mid-flight by another flight attendant and the daughter of Gayle King. And even though she passed the polygraph test she was given, she was fired because of it. So now she's filed a lawsuit against Oprah. Naturally. [NYDN] • David Letterman isn't the only late-night comedian who's found romance in the workplace: Jimmy Kimmel, who split up with comedian Sarah Silverman back in March, is now dating one of the writers on his show. [People] • Madonna has reportedly parted ways with her nutty trainer, Tracy Anderson. Explains a source: "Madonna had grown tired of the baggage that Tracy always seemed to be carrying with her. Tracy had grown to be more of a distraction than anything else." [P6]
• A DNA test proves that Jude Law is the father of Samantha Burke's baby. But we really wish Maury Povich could have read that news to us. [TMZ] • Erica Wang, the woman who celebrity chef Todd English left at the altar last week, now says he stiffed her with the final wedding charges and sent security guards to force her to move out of their apartment, too. [NYP] • Heiress Casey Johnson and Courtenay Semel, the daughter of former Warner Bros. and Yahoo! chief Terry Semel, have split up after "a series of explosive fights." They must have been pretty big nasty run-ins. During one such encounter earlier this year, Casey had to go to the hospital after she tried to beat Courtenay up and then Courtenay set her on fire. [P6] • Poor Roman Polanski reports he's depressed in a Swiss prison. [NYDN] • Yankee wives and girlfriends have been told by team management to be nice to Kate Hudson and stop talking behind her back. [P6] • Suri Cruise is wearing heels again... and now the three-year-old is drinking Starbucks, too. Although given "scientologists consider children as a small adults and parents believe there is no reason to treat their offspring differently from anyone else," maybe we shouldn't be surprised. [Daily Mail] • A Richard Avedon photo of Stephanie Seymour showing off her, um, goods, sold for far more than estimated at Sotheby's on Friday, perhaps because of her recent, high-profile divorce with Peter Brant. [P6] • Prince Harry and girlfriend Chelsy Davy are back together. [People] • Subpoenas are going out as more than 24 underage girls pursue a lawsuit against pervy money manager Jeffrey Epstein. The financier's ex-"sex slave," Nadia Marcinkova, and heiress Ghislane Maxwell are on the list. [P6] • Michael Jackson's new single, "This Is It," began streaming on MichaelJackson.com last night. [People] • Mad Men star Christina Hendricks married fiancé Geoffrey Arend at Il Buco on Sunday. [E!, People] • Paris Hilton has adopted a teacup pig, in case you happen to care. [TMZ] • Michael Buble has rebounded from Emily Blunt and is now dating a 22-year-old actress named Luisana Lopilato, who also appears in the video for his new song. [P6] • Taylor Lautner went to Taylor Swift's concert in Chicago, and he sat next to her mom. They're appearing in a movie together, but could they be dating, too? They should be, if only because " Tay-Tay" would be the best celeb-couple-nickname ever. [People] • Katy Perry is reportedly going to introduce Russell Brand to her parents at the end of the month. Did we mention her parents are both pastors who run an evangelical ministry? Good luck, Russell. [The Sun] • Critics weren't impressed by Vince Vaughn's new film Couples Retreat, but it still came in at No. 1 at the box office this weekend with $35 million. [NYDN] • Tara Reid is reportedly posing for Playboy. [The Sun] • Emmy Rossum "can't really say" if she's dating Counting Crow Adam Duritz. But she says she gets why "chicks dig" him, which is nice to hear. [People] • Great news: another Lohan is headed to Hollywood! Youngest brother Michael says he's going to pursue acting. The tabloids are psyched. And Dina has one more child to mooch off of. [The Sun]
"Star Wars In Concert" is built around John Williams' well-known scores from the films, performed by a symphony orchestra and choir, and accompanied by specially edited clips from all six movies. It wasn't George Lucas' idea, but he loves it.
The Wu-Tang Clan -- the New York hip-hop supergroup -- almost never was. Method Man, the group's most recognizable voice, was nearly killed before the band formed, Wu-Tang's chief producer, RZA, writes in his forthcoming memoir.
Two doctors and the lawyer-boyfriend of Anna Nicole Smith are due in court to hear what government witnesses have to say about their alleged roles in supplying drugs that killed the celebrity model. Source: FOXNews.com | 12 Oct 2009 | 3:20 am
Reuters - An illustrated children's book that consists of nine sentences and 20 pages does not immediately suggest a feature film adaptation. Nonetheless, Spike Jonze has fearlessly plunged ahead to weave whimsical movie magic to bring Maurice Sendak's 1963 "Where the Wild Things Are" to the screen. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews | 12 Oct 2009 | 3:13 am
Stephen Gately, a singer with the Irish boy band Boyzone who made headlines when he came out as gay a decade ago, has died while on vacation in Spain, the group said on its Web site. He was 33. Source: FOXNews.com | 12 Oct 2009 | 2:57 am
Babies are like the fashion world. One day they're in, the next they're out. Just ask Heidi Klum.
Despite denials that the supermodel was even in labor, Klum and hubby Seal...
It was any era but ours on Dancing With the Stars tonight.
The 11 remaining celebs were asked to bring it to four new styles of dance—country two-step, lambada, bolero and...
What is it about Chelsea Handler that gets people to say things you just wouldn't expect them to say?
Like Shayne Lamas, star of E!'s Leave It to Lamas, who revealed...
Hooray for the sexual Petri dish of prime time! Not only is Gossip Girl's much-buzzed-about threesome on the way (and yes, we have scoop on that, too), but sources are buzzing about a new core...
Dr. Miranda Bailey is in the building! Chandra Wilson crosses over from Grey's Anatomy to Private Practice this week, and in town to kick ass and take names.
And in other scandalous...
Julianne Hough is Burlseque-ing with the stars..
The country-music-singing former Dancing With the Stars pro has joined the cast of Burlesque, a musical about a young small-town singer...
• Since we've all had a chance to say good-bye to Miley Cyrus' Twitter, now it's time to get back to good ol' gossip. Like this gem: She went to Outback Steakhouse and...
This week’s episode of Mad Men, “Wee Small Hours”, really got back to its Season 1 and 2 roots: Sex sex sexy sex, and how it will eventually be the downfall of man. Or a man, if you’re Sal. Matthew Weiner said that this episode focuses on “how people deal with their urges.” And considering I ate not one but two 
So when yet another undeniably handsome character by the name of Lee Garner, Jr., heir to the Lucky Strike cigg fortune, makes a late night move on Sal in the editing room, we’re not met with the same passion we saw in the famous “Bellhop reaching for the tip – no – the other tip” scene from earlier this season, instead an embarrassed Sal who would rather not G it up at the workplace. Actor Bryan Batt really outdid himself during this scene. The acting was beyond authentic, and heartbreaking.
• A flight attendant who worked aboard Oprah Winfrey's private jet says she was falsely accused of having sex with a pilot mid-flight by another flight attendant and the daughter of Gayle King. And even though she passed the polygraph test she was given, she was fired because of it. So now she's filed a lawsuit against Oprah. Naturally. [
