Well, today, I have no such humility. I just received a special MTV ticket offer in my email that I just can’t help but brag about, and if it makes all you unfortunate people without super-special amazing-ticket-offer jobs jealous, it ain’t my problem:

Subject: Black Eyed Peas

There are tickets available to BEP at MSG on Feb. 24.
Section 221, Row E, Seats 10-11
$119/ea

First come, first served.
No single tickets – must be purchased in pairs.
If you don’t get a reply, tickets have been sold.

Yyyyyyep. Read it and weep. Because of my cushy profession and untold amounts of personal connections with industry higher-ups (James Cameron and I are literally brothers), your faithful blogger has the option of purchasing Third-Tier, Row-E seats in the 18,000-seat Madison Square Garden to see Black Eyed Peas (or the BEPs as us superfans call them) for just $119. $119!!!!! That’s barely even way too much money!

JEAAAAAALLLLLLLOOOOOUSSSS?????? Extreeeeemely jealous???? Yeah, I know you are. Sadly, there’s no way for you to tell me whether or not you are, so I’ll just assume every single one of you is extremely jealous right now.

Er, wait, I guess you could tell me in the comments if you weren’t. NO NEED TO DO THAT. I know you’re extremely jealous so no need to say that you aren’t in the comments because I’ll know it’s sarcastic so I can go on reveling in my amazing ticket privileges.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a phone call…WITH BONO. Sonny Bono. It’s this weird new thing, where you can call–ah never mind, not worth explaining.

Model Diary: Marcel Castenmiller Gets Stage Fright

Male model Marcel Castenmiller documented his Fashion Week experience for us. In his first installment, he played with a dog and ate meatballs. In part two, he rides the J train, falls in the snow, and shares the one thing he would save from a burning building.

Read more posts by Beth Stebner

Filed Under: model diary, fall 2010 fashion week, marcel castenmiller, models, new york fashion week

JW and Blaze’s ‘Palance’ Is the Happiest Music Video Ever Set in an Office

Please enjoy this video! It is very easy to enjoy!

[MadDecent]

Read more posts by Edith Zimmerman

Filed Under: music, clickables, jw and blaze, palance, soca 2010 video, trinidad and tobago, video

Life's tough times don't do in 'Good Ol' Girls' (AP)

AP - You won't find a more entertaining 90 minutes of first-rate country music, mixed with stories of gals who've been done wrong but keep right on going, than the exuberant off-Broadway revue, "Good Ol' Girls."

Kourtney's Mom on "Boyfriend From Hell": "When You Date One of My Kids, You Date All of Us"

Michelle Obama Has a Velvet Blazer on Today

The First Lady was in Philadelphia today to speak at Fairhill Elementary School about her childhood-obesity initiative. Her outfit consisted of the same thing as that cake she doesn't want kids eating: many layers. She wore a white shirt under a gray sweater under a blue velvet blazer, all cinched with a blue waist belt. See the full look in the Michelle Obama Look Book.

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Filed Under: mobama watch, michelle obama

Tiger Mistress Jamie Jungers: "That Apology Is Crap"

Late Deadliest Catch Skipper's Son Dinghy'd for DUI

Link Party: Let's Watch the New Justin Bieber Video

If Tamara Mellon’s Dress Doesn’t Stand Out, Her Handbag Sure Will

Jimmy Choo co-founder and president Tamara Mellon attended Lancôme and Harper's Bazaar's BAFTA Party in London this evening wearing all black save her neon and spotted handbag. The materials don't seem to go together, but maybe they do in that mismatched, funky chic kind of way. Or not.

What say you?

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Filed Under: look of the day, tamara mellon

Fluff Up Your Footwear With Furry Shoes

Fur may have coated our bodies in outerwear on the fall runways, but designers didn't forget about using it to keep our feet cozy as well. Halston and Reed Krakoff utilized the soft stuff to convert strappy sandals into winter-friendly footwear. Michael Kors and Ralph Lauren showed classic boots in plush browns, black, and camel tones. J. Mendel went for a biker-chic look, using the fur to coat a pair of black Louboutin stiletto boots. Zac Posen topped them by covering pumps in long, fluffy fur that engulfed feet and morphed them into little animal paws. And Phillip Lim is already ahead of the trend, wearing his own menswear pair to his fall 2010 runway show. Click ahead to see these looks and more.

Read more posts by Sharon Clott and Liat Kalikow

Filed Under: three's a trend, fall 2010, fashion week fall 2010, new york fashion week, new york fashion week fall 2010, slideshow, trends, zac posen

Life & Times of Tim Creator Steve Dildarian: ‘I Have Illustrators Who’ve Never Done Animation, Editors Who Haven’t Done TV’

In the HBO animated series Life & Times of Tim, which comes back for its second season tonight, Steve Dildarian voices the character of Tim, a hapless New York twentysomething whose misadventures always seem to get him arrested and/or dumped by his girlfriend. Dildarian, a former ad man who had a hand in creating the Budweiser lizard, is also the creator and writer of Life & Times, which HBO re-upped after a promising (but not highly rated) debut last year. On the phone, Dildarian sounds just like Tim — he doesn’t change his voice for the show — and it’s hard not to notice the similarities between the man and the character. Vulture spoke with him about crude animation, HBO’s faith in a little show, and how Tim is different than Larry David.

How did you transition from advertising to animation?
I started out in New York, working on a lot of Staples and Little Caesar’s commercials. Then when I moved to San Francisco, I started working on Budweiser, and that sort of turned into my main recurring gig, and I did a lot of Super Bowl commercials, mostly the Budweiser lizards. Once a year I would send different pilot scripts to different networks. Through a long kind of low in my work and creativity, I started learning how to draw, I started doing voice-overs — I started doing a lot of things I never had done and taught myself how to animate.

It’s certainly not Pixar — your show is really basic animation, right?
Absolutely. And HBO’s not really throwing the money at it to do that anyway, but even if they were, I don’t think I’d want to. When I hired a staff, I kind of went out of my way to get a group of people who equally don’t know what they're doing. I have illustrators who’ve never done animation, editors who haven’t done TV. Everyone’s great at their job, they just haven’t made a TV show, so that spirit is good and bad. It shows on the screen — it looks like we’re having fun, and it has unpolished edges that people like.

How much is Tim like you?
It’s autobiographical in the core elements of the writing, which is the point of view on life. An idea for an episode won’t come from sitting around a table with writers saying, "Here’s what happened to me, here’s what happened to me." People think priests are screwed up, people think cops are hypocritical, and people think their boss is weird. Usually I start with one day saying, "You know, pharmaceutical reps are kind of weird, I think they’re kind of funny, so let’s put that in the show."

Tim is sort of a sad sack.
The kind of characters I’m drawn to are very relatable, underdog types. The universal view is that life can be tough and unfair and the wrong people can win. I think these are all themes that have a pretty broad appeal.

What’s the difference between Tim and Larry David?
I’m a Larry David fan and that was a big inspiration for this show, but the characters are different. Larry David feels like he’s got the definitive opinion on everything, whereas Tim is much more easily swayed. He’s not passing judgment or forcing an opinion on anyone.

How did your first season go?
It did well enough to come back. If it was really low rated, I think it would’ve been a problem — it’s not like the ratings that Curb Your Enthusiasm gets. But I think our renewal was more based on the critics and the reviews we got, and the emphasis of the die-hard fans that were outspoken. If it was a ratings game, I don’t know if we would’ve come back.

That’s nice of HBO.
Absolutely. They don’t care too much, as long as enough people like it. And then the bigger thing tends to be reviews; they want to make sure they have the smartest, coolest programming out there. Some of them are moneymakers, some of them are marquee big-name shows, and I think our show is toward a different, younger demographic in some degree.

Read more posts by Emma Rosenblum

Filed Under: chat room, hbo, life and times of tim, steve dildarian, tv

Watch the Trailer for Waking Sleeping Beauty, a Documentary About Disney

It's a behind-the-scenes look at Disney between the years 1984 and 1994 — the golden years when The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King, and other classics came to be — and it's made almost entirely with archival footage. Cooler looking than that likely sounds! (Out in New York City, Chicago, L.A., and San Francisco on March 26.)
[Apple]

Read more posts by Edith Zimmerman

Filed Under: movies, clickables, trailers, waking sleeping beauty

Hilary Duff Engaged!

'Real Housewives' drama: The ladies confront Vicki

Eye Shimmer Returns With a Vengeance for Fall

Eye shimmer is a tough part of the makeup world to tackle. Usually when you wear it, you risk looking like an eighth-grader who got gussied up for a middle-school dance. But this season's runways proved that a grown-up girl could use some sparkle and still look divine. The peepers at Carolina Herrera were saturated in a glistening purple and bronze combination. Elie Tahari and Ports 1961 both coated lids in gold hues, while Adam and Badgley Mischka stayed with the metallic family and opted for copper tones. Sophie Theallet lined her lids with white. And pastels also showed up — in blue at Jason Wu and pink at Preen — for perfectly primped Winter Wonderland looks. Shimmer has grown up — it's for the everywoman this fall. Click ahead to see all these looks and more.

Read more posts by Sharon Clott

Filed Under: three's a trend, fall 2010, fashion week fall 2010, lavender d gorgeous single eyeshadow was blended on eyelids and made slightly messy by smudging Black Moon Eyeliner under and over the lash lineFranois Nars, new york fashion week, new york fashion week fall 2010, slideshow, trends

Alice Cooper Knows Exactly What Susan Boyle Should Do Now

Alice Cooper may have retired the eye shadow and fake blood years ago, but the heavy-metal legend still has plenty to say about the music industry. We caught up with Cooper — who hosts a radio show, “Nights With Alice Cooper,” five nights a week — at the launch party for Guvera, a new online music-download service, where he was the event’s keynote speaker. “I love the fact that bands are going back to the garage,” Cooper told us excitedly. “Those are the bands now that sound like we did when we were 16 or 17 years old. I’m a little disappointed when I see bands that give you a great name like Vampire Weekend and then they make the Dave Clark Five sound heavy.” (The Dave Clark Five, by the way, were a British rock band active between the years of 1959 and 1970.)

And Cooper has an idea of his own for the music industry. “Susan Boyle could be the lead singer of Queen easily. She could actually dress like the Queen and she could sing any note that Freddie Mercury could sing. She’d be the perfect choice.” Cooper laughed, turning to his manager as if he was waiting for him to start making calls. “That would be great. If they don’t do that, there’s something wrong. Queen and Susan Boyle doing ‘Fat Bottomed Girl’ with her dressed as the Queen. It’s the song of the year.” We agree. Now somebody just needs to make that happen.

Read more posts by Cooper Marshall

Filed Under: party chat, alice cooper, music

Is Shakira dating Rafael Nadal?

Minority vs. Minority Racism in Chinatown

Graffiti reading “Black Workers Go Home” has appeared several times in the last month near a building on 70 Mulberry Street, where two African-Americans are employed. [NYDN]

Read more posts by Ben Mathis-Lilley

Filed Under: neighborhood news, chinatown, racism

Tommy Hilfiger Brings Bryant Park Fashion Shows to a Sappy End

Amidst clinking Champagne glasses backstage after his show last night — the last fashion show in Bryant Park before Fashion Week moves to Lincoln Center — Tommy Hilfiger described the evening as "bittersweet." He added that his closing speech — for which he had to shush the crowd, who wouldn’t stop applauding as he strode down the runway with a microphone — was a matter of decorum. “I just thought it was appropriate, being the last show, to say something and give congratulations to Fern Mallis, IMG, and Stan Herman, who really made Bryant Park’s tents come to life,” he explained. “Fern Mallis opened the doors for me eighteen years ago, when I was not quite as organized as I am today, and I’m very grateful to her.”

A grinning Mallis was equally laudatory of Hilfiger: “This whole place was built to put American designers on the map, and Tommy is Mr. America. It was a fitting show, and a fitting scale of show. It wasn’t, you know, a little show in the Salon — it was a big, beautiful show, and everyone was there. It was a beautiful collection, too, which is even more important. Ending it that way and acknowledging us all, it was really poignant and lovely and it made me feel good.” Aw.

Read more posts by Charlotte Cowles

Filed Under: designers, fall 2010, fern mallis, new york fashion week, tommy hilfiger

Jackie Collins Returns With 27th Novel

The legendary writer is back with another hit with more than 400 million books sold worldwide.

Sean Penn charged in paparazzo run-in

London opens fashion week with silence for McQueen (AFP)

AFP - London Fashion Week opened Friday with a minute's silence for Alexander McQueen, as it mourned one of Britain's most daring and innovative designers who hanged himself earlier this month.

Gordon Lightfoot and the ‘I Saw My Own Obituary’ Society

Gordon Lightfoot is not dead! Never mind this week's obituary on the website of Canada’s National Post, or the many tweets spreading the news thereafter. He’s fine — “I feel fine” was the quote he gave a Toronto TV-news reporter. He’s just the latest to join the "I Saw My Own Obituary Society." (It’s sort of a companion group to the Eclipsed Celebrity Death Club.)

It’s a surprisingly big club, even aside from Mark “Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” Twain. Bob Hope and Fidel Castro. Steve Jobs and Joe DiMaggio. Alfred Nobel and Marcus Garvey (who is said to have collapsed and died when he read his own obit). A couple of popes, too. And, of course, there’s Abe Vigoda. The co-star of The Godfather and Barney Miller was erroneously killed off by People magazine in 1982, and his quasi-death is practically a comedy meme. To this day, you can check in anytime at abevigoda.com, which has only one function: indicating whether Abe is dead or alive. As of a few minutes ago, he was still ticking, at 88.

Most false obits are caused by a simple screwup: As media people know (but many readers do not), major obituaries are pre-written, to hedge against a deadline crisis. That’s how the New York Times could plop a multi-thousand-word eulogy for J.D. Salinger onto its website an hour after the writer’s death became public. And once in a while, someone accidentally releases a story ahead of schedule. This especially tends to happen on the web. (Also, did anyone besides us spot the sentence “Quote TK from Salinger’s agent about surviving manuscripts” in the first few minutes after the Times posted its story?)

Like most false obituaries, Abe Vigoda’s was an honest mistake. Gordon Lightfoot’s, by contrast, appears at this early stage to have been an ugly prank, and hoaxes along those lines have nearly become a Twitter staple. Natalie Portman and Jeff Goldblum both got counterfactually offed this summer. Neither rumor stuck, because death hoaxes are most effective when one’s response is “I didn’t know he’s still alive.” Gordon Lightfoot is a celebrity in Canada, but most Americans haven’t heard from him since the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, a million times over, on top 40 radio in 1976.

Twitter and other fast-moving media make these hoaxes far easier to execute — but, neatly, they also make them far easier to undo. In 1982, hundreds of thousands of readers saw that People article about Abe Vigoda; barely a few hundred probably read the correction the next week. By contrast, a corrective tweet carries nearly as much weight as its flawed predecessor. The imprecise, semi-disposable aspect of web news becomes its saving grace: The cloud of collective intelligence is quick to heal itself, spreading the word: I feel fine. Glad to hear it, Gordon.

Read more posts by Chris Bonanos

Filed Under: nobit, gordon lightfoot

A Sign Your Hedge-Fund Manager May Be Committing Fraud

He purchases a custom-designed Lamborghini with a pink leather interior, pink accents, and a rhinestone-bedazzled logo. (Alternately, he might just be flamboyant.)

This Is The Kind Of Lamborghini Hedge Fund Fraud Buys [Jalopnik]

Read more posts by Jessica Pressler

Filed Under: ballsy crime, cars, ferraris, lamborghini

Scaffolding Off of Village East Movie Theater

The façade has been refurbished to look quite lovely, actually. Note: This is a great date place, because it's charming and uncrowded. But if you go there and someone insists upon massaging your leg while feeding you Sour Patch Kids directly into your mouth on your first date, take that as a bad sign. Not that this happened to us, or anything. [Curbed]

Read more posts by Chris Rovzar

Filed Under: neighborhood news, east village, movie theaters, village east cinema

Fashion Week gets serious with less glitz, glam (AP)

AP - There was more serious fashion and less glitzy show at New York Fashion Week, the designer runway previews that begin to shape the trends for fall.

By Any Chance Is Senator John Kerry Moonlighting As Alice Cooper?

I happened upon some photos from an event last night celebrating the launch of a new music service called Guvera whose guests included Mos Def, Jim Jones, and legendary rocker Alice Cooper. Perhaps it was because I had politics on the brain thanks to Mitt Romney’s new hip hop gang war, but I couldn’t help but think Mr. Cooper looked exactly like another former Presidential hopeful: Senator John Kerry.

Could Alice Cooper actually be Senator Kerry in a wig and leather jacket? Think about it. When have you ever seen these two in the same place? NEVER! In the interest of political fairness, I will turn to you, the discerning readers, to decide.

I would ask Alice myself next time we have one of our many pickup roller lacrosse games, but I’m afraid he’ll do this to me (after the jump):

On the blog, Bohner writes about Schmidt, dubbing him "Dr. Strangelove" and disclosing that he gave her a prototype iPhone. She also calls Steve Jobs a "stoned Jesuit preist" (more below). That aside, the intricate online memoir-in-progress primarily details Bohner's recovery from cocaine and alcohol addiction via 12-step programs and yoga.

It's not clear how Bohner is funding the project, which has seen the former CNBC correspondent hire an art director, webmaster and editor, all prominently credited here and at the bottom of this post in what might just be the most crowded masthead ever assembled for a personal Blogspot.

What Bohner has so far detailed of her personal autobiography is certainly rattling stuff of the sort that would pull a caring lover's heartstrings. She writes about snorting cocaine in Hyde Park, London; bingeing on tequila in Los Angeles; sipping brandy at age eight; quitting booze and then relapsing; shaking and heaving at a friend's house when trying to go dry; and getting checked in to a detox center. (It is a "Colonel Stevenson" who introduces Bohner to brandy as a child in Southern Spain. That this same Colonel Stevenson appears on Bohner's more public blog is, along with a pointer from our tipster, how we know the former Donald Trump ghostwriter is also responsible for the Recovery Girl 007 blog.)

We assume Bohner will also eventually give the backstory behind her criminal record. Using her birth day and year, gleaned from her blog, and a public records search, we found she'd been sentenced to just under three years (of probation?) in South Florida (where she now resides) for aggressive assault with a weapon, no intent to kill, in a 2005 Florida incident. In New Jersey she got three years probation for a crime we've not yet determined.

Then there were Bohner's landlord issues in New York City. After two civil filings from a building management company in late 2005 and early 2006, Bohner was forcibly evicted in May 2006, according to a public records search.

Despite repeated attempts, we were not able to elicit any quote or rebuttal from Bohner on her project or background.

On her website, Bohner writes about turning her life around with help from a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, where she worked, and from a popular Los Angeles yoga instructor, Keith Fox.

During a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands (emphasis added):

I haven't thought about Dr. Strangelove in such a long time-I try to sweep all of that data completely under the Persian carpet. That's a lie. I think about him every so often in these fleeting cinematic flashes...I have completely stopped sleeping. My friend Jason is so worried about it that he confiscates my Blackberry... I've been sleeping with my Blackberry just in case Strangelove might send an e-mail. If I was really smart I ditch the Blackberry for the iPhone he gave me – the prototype version. But I have yet to arrive. Stephen Jobs is not St. Stephen. He's just a stoned Jesuit priest lost in his garden. Strangelove still has his stranglehold on me and nothing is new under the sun.

Later in the same post:

The dream is always the same... strolling through winding paths at a government insane asylum in northern Massachusetts.I've been committed-against my will. It is Strangelove, my genuinely caring, concerned boyfriend. He has convinced me, or, he has convinced me that I've convinced him, that I am suicidal. The dream always begins with me walking the grounds of the campus. I look for the cafeterias with the free food. I can't find the line for the free bus back to Santa Monica. I keep pulling on the locked doors.

At the Buddhist temple in Thailand:

How did I get here? There was the phone call. There was the betrayal. Dr. Strangelove had lied about his involvement in it all. And then there were a couple of conversations that followed. And all I remember feeling was that I had to get out of L.A.

After detox in South Florida:

You see I wasn't going to go back to Los Angeles. That part was clear. The L.A . experiment hadn't worked. Game over. Case closed. The work thing had ended when I went to the monastery in Thailand. And the relationship was officially over; Dr. Strangelove was dead. Next chapter.

We'll certainly be reading Bohner's future installments closely. And we're sure Schmidt will, too.

(AP)

AP - The opening of London Fashion Week on Friday was darkened by the giant shadow cast by the death of Alexander McQueen, long the enigmatic toast of the London fashion world.

Source: Yahoo! News: Fashion News | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:44 pm

Bernie Kerik Has a Special Project to Keep Him Occupied in Prison

Bernie Kerik had a little heart-to-heart with Cindy Adams recently, wherein he explained that he was sorry about all of the bad things he did, not really so much because they were wrong but because none of his famous friends are calling him anymore (what about Caroline Manzo? Cindy didn't ask), his wife is pissy at him, and mostly, because he is broke. "Nobody understands the magnitude of what happens," he said. "Anyone who goes this road had better be prepared financially." Good to know!

Also, emboldened, perhaps, by a few glasses of his favorite Zinfandel, Bernie confided to Cindy that he had a special project to keep him occupied in prison:

"A few months ago, I started writing a novel. I have a literary agent and I'm speaking to a writer who'll work with me. It's about a group of feds hunting homegrown terror cells. Basically kids born here, sent abroad to return as teenagers indoctrinated with radical Islamic ideology and planning US targets."

'I got involved in my own celebrity. It's arrogance. You think above the law.' - Kerik [Page Six/NYP]

Read more posts by Jessica Pressler

Filed Under: jerks, ballsy crime, bernard kerik, bernie kerik, no tie, prison, zinfandel

Richard "Dazzling Copy Superhuman" Lawson:

My advice to Gabriel Snyder is to give his brain a rest for a few weeks. His oft-wild hair and beard are sort of the external physical manifestation of what I imagine the inside of his head must feel like. The man knows basically everything about everything. We'd have edit meetings and I'd marvel at how he can hold forth on pretty much any topic put before him, recognize any name, recall an unending amount of interesting little anecdotes that played on a theme. I've honestly never seen anything like it. I think I've bested him only on knowledge of Gossip Girl, which says far worse about me than it does about him. Gabe's mega-brain is a tremendous asset for this kind of work, but it must get *exhausting* sometimes, just knowing all that stuff. So my advice is to just turn it off, if possible, for a few weeks. Just turn the notch down to our level for a bit and watch reruns of Friends or something.

This is probably not going to happen, because Gabe is a tireless and eager thinking machine — one I'd follow to the ends of the internet — but I thought I'd say it anyway.

Doree "Gimlet-Eyed Appraiser" Shafrir:

Everyone knows that when God closes a door, He opens a window. I'd like you to think of this as a window not in cold, dark, wintry New York City, but a window into God's heart. That's right—I think you should become a missionary. You could take the wicked ways you learned at this "website" and turn them into forces for good. Just because Denton and the rest of us are going to burn in hell doesn't mean you have to. SAVE YOURSELF WHILE YOU STILL CAN. And think of the children, etc. Love, Doree

Brian "Conversation-Starting Enunciator" Moylan:

My suggestion is to get out of the game altogether. Don't you read this fucking site? Media is dying! Instead, become a high school guidance counselor. It's basically what you've been doing anyway: corralling a bunch of ungrateful brats to do their best work, making their ideas better with your skill and experience, and letting them know when they have really bad ideas and sharing some great ideas of your own. There is also a British headmaster involved. Like a guidance counselor did long ago, you took a shot on me and hired me out of nowhere, and I will forever be thankful. So, yes, eduction! Might I suggest a tony UES institution with lots of asshole parents you can tips us off about. And one with a lax dress code, because you only own one pair of shoes.

Hamilton "Humorous Workhorse" Nolan:

With the caveat that my own career knowledge has only landed me here, my important career advice to Gabe is this:

1. Print is dead, unless you can get a sweet per word rate.
2. Don't take any wooden nickels.
3. Never work for the British.

Outside of that I'm sure you'll do great. Working here has given you more than enough skills to bullshit your way through any situation you'll face. Twenty years from now we'll all get together and laugh about this, because of wet brain. So have fun now!

Alex "Incisive Political Commenter" Pareene:

While it's tempting, during any period of uncertainty, to jump at the first opportunity that presents itself, it's wise to be as patient as you can afford to be. I took a questionable job shortly after dropping out of college, and now I've been working for Nick Denton for five years. With that in mind, I offer a brief list of jobs I'm sure you've been offered, Gabriel, that you should definitely turn down.

• Printout collator, Daily Beast
• Managing editor, Guest of a Guest
• Communications director, office of the Governor of New York
• Location scout, Real Housewives of New York
• Stylist, NonSociety
• Fact checker, BigGovernment.com
• Host, Tonight Show

That about covers it. Be careful out there.

"Dog Reporter" John Cook:

Gabriel:

Here are some lessons for your future endeavors I think we've learned together:

3) Try to avoid generating any plaudits or recognition from the press commenting on the quality of work you're producing.

6) Don't feel like you have to be so nice, or friendly, all the time! Try to be more of a dick.

7) If you end up running a blog-type thing, maybe make it really self-involved and navel-gazing and insidery?

8) In all seriousness, stay away from British people.

Sorry for all the mean things I muttered under my breath about you, that's just the way I am with bosses. Thanks for everything.

Ryan "Cliche-Free Coverer" Tate:

Go West, young man, and I don't mean Tinseltown again. I'm talking
Silicon Valley. You'll still be living out your professional life in
public, because tech dons respect privacy even less than the New York
media. You'll still have to buffer your all-too-human staff against
unpredictably manic, sometimes lethal robotic overlords. And certain
Valley wags (ahem) will continue to accumulate credit for your ideas
and hard work. But out here when your generate massive growth and big
buzz, you can actually get rich in the process. Or at least have
enough to buy a fancy car to use for sitting in traffic.

Also, never accept a big story assignment from your editor on Friday
night at 5 p.m. after the end of your shift, because you will probably
up literally all night interviewing, transcribing, rearranging,
writing and editing and cutting audio. In fact, it's probably best to
just not pick up the phone. Unless, you know, you want to have another
awesome story to tell people over beers for years to come.

The rapper pleaded not guilty, however, to contempt of court for failing to pay the judge-ordered amount of $51,000 per month in...

WHEN LAST WE LEFT, all of the Wivery Wives were gathered in Sam Flamenco, a beautiful rocky city full of degenerate old Europeans, because their friend Cynthia Swann had thrown herself off the Golden Gate Bridge and they had to fish the body out before the pelicans ate it. They were a little late because Vicki had to stop and get her face re-skewered, so the pelicans had already done a number on her. Vicki stood there in her waders and big yellow fisherman's hat, staring at the beak-mangled body of Stockard Channing, and she said "Hey, who wants lunch?" So it was off to lunch!

Lunch for these ladies is mostly just sitting around and bitching (another brilliant zinnggggerrrr...) There is so much to bitch about. Their husbands aren't rich enough, their girls aren't pretty enough, their boys aren't in and out of jail for stupid misdemeanors enough. These are what my grandmother, Stockard Channing, used to call "high class problems." (Hurling yourself off a bridge in California while wearing a 1989 Talbot's suit is also something of a high class problem, but I guess Grandma Channing didn't really care about that.) Mostly though, the ladies like to bitch about each other. And these days their favorite target is Vicki. Because, see, Vicki threatens them. Vicki makes her own money and her husband hasn't implanted a Warren Jeffs-designed microchip in her brain that triggers her pain receptors every time she has an independent thought. They don't trust that, they don't like it, and when they are lying in bed at night, listening to the house and their hearts settle, they are jealous of it. Plus, Vicki's kinda a bitch. So, they attack her.

Reeoowwrrrr!, they go, flashing their orange talons at her. Galllloooooooooo!, Vicki goes, scared as a water buffalo, jabbing her horns at them to protect herself. They struggle like this for some time until Vicki stomps away. Vicki always stomps away. When she was giving birth to Briana it hurt so much she just took off her girl parts and stomped away. "No, I'm not doing that anymore, I don't need to sit here and take that." Have you ever seen someone stomp out of a restaurant? I think I maybe have once, but maybe not. Anyway, it's not a common occurrence. Unless you're on this show, and then it happens every time you have a meal. So all the ladies weren't surprised, but the producers had taped a $100 bill to the back of Vicki's dress in the hopes that at least one of the girls would go out and follow her and try to get her back. It worked! Greedy Gretchen bounded out first and squeezed Vicki's shoulders and told her that everything was OK, especially with Alexis.

Alexis had been the main lunchtime antagonizer, because she really doesn't like it when Vicki tells her things about how to do things. And then Alexis has the gall to act like she's better friends with Tamara than Vicki is and Vicki doesn't like that, so they just bicker like two old sea snakes while Gretchen replays Baby's Day Out in her head and Tamara quietly enjoys being fought over. Yeah, that had been the big restaurant brawl and Vicki stormed out and Gretchen followed and then so too did Alexis. They stood on the curb and the Rice-A-Roni trolleys rolled on by and the men on rollerblades pointed and said "Look, Gideon" and "I know, I see it, Lance" and high above them all the pelicans fixed their horrid black beady eyes on the scene and waited. But, sadly for them, there was no bloodshed. A dribbling Vicki agreed to go back in, even if Alexis is a total bee's natch.

Back inside the girls sat down and then there was a loud sound of a conch shell being blown and a shattering of dishes and Lynne came tumbling out of a large vase. "What's goin' on," she asked lazily, her voice the timbre of waffle batter. "I was in the bathroom..." Ha. Hahahah. Ha. Lynne was just in the bathroom, missed the whole damn fight. God I love that batty bitch. She's just such a wackadoo. "I was playing cat's cradle with myself. What'd I miss..."

Briana, Vicki's maybe-sick daughter was there and was trying to mediate and felt awful and yelled at all the women and they were shamed by someone half their age. As means to a peace offering, Alexis decided to lay hands on everyone and say a Jesus prayer to Space Jesus so Briana wouldn't get sick anymore. The prayer was... fantastic. It went something like this:

"Dear Space Jesus, in your name we trust, heavenly Father. For you are our Father and Uncle Art is in heaven, and you are our leader, Shepherd, please lead us and father us, Father, because blessed be the Space in which you are Jesus, Space Jesus, and you guide us every day, Guider, because you live in Space and wear a big brown wig, and please don't let Briana be sick, and may all of our boobs be forever perky and beautiful, and please Father, look down upon us and make this crab salad have a little less salt in it, and tell the waiter we'd like some lemons for our water, Heavenly Father, in all that I've done wrong, I must have done something right to deserve your love every morning and butterfly kisses at night, ohhhh butterfly kisses after bedtime prayer, sticking little white flowers all up in my hair, dear Heavenly Jesus Father In Space, please fix Briana's broken leg or whatever her illness is, and in conclusion please bless Jim, O Terrestrial Earth Jesus that he is, for teaching me to love the Gospel of the Sex Basement with all my heart, every anguished wail that comes roaring up from that dank dark place is going straight up to you, dear Space Father."

When the ethereal light had died down and Alexis' hair had stopped billowing in a strange holy breeze, all the girls unclasped their hands and they looked at her and they knew that she was a holywoman, a true shaman. A priestess of the highest religious order. And they knew, with sudden supernatural force, that they had all been instilled with a deep, religious, sexual lust for the leathery fireplace bellows made animate by the Holy Spirit that is Jim. It is how he spreads his love seed. Our God is an awesome God indeed.

NEXXXXT. Next Lynne. Oh Lynne. She sputtered by in her jalopy autogyro made of paper towel tubes and the dried husks of stink-beetles and finally alit on the roof of her soon to be not-house. Yes the Swam Manchego trip was over and it was back to stupid old Orange County, a place where problems grow like weeds. The problem is this: Her hubby, named Hubby, didn't pay her automo bills, didn't pay her telephone bills and, most importantly, he didn't pay their rental bills. And he lied about it, because trying to discuss numbers and money with Lynne is like trying to describe the plot of The Manchurian Candidate to a pile of flan. So he feels like she should have done more and she feels like he should have just kept doing everything forever and so they are fighting and so Lynne isn't staying with him anymore. As an even worse punishment, Lynne took the two gorgeous, precious daughters with her. Oh what torment!!! To be away from the sonorous and lovely Alex and her sister, Miguel Ferrer. He just couldn't take it. He missed them so. To get them back, he summoned them to the crumbling Eviction House and presented them with a plan.

So they're broke, right? They ain't got no funds, no cash, no dough, no doughlars, no simoleons, no spacebucks, no clams, no bones, no millionaires' matches. Straight nerfin. And what's the best thing to do when you're in such a fiduciary pickle? Take the whole family on a vacation! Seriously. In the saddest and most telling and just like... sigh... economic moment of this economically-tinged season, Hubby said with stupid, blurry, teary American Cheesehead optimism: "You know what? Let's take a trip. C'mon. We haven't been on a trip together in ages."

And isn't that just the saddest thing you ever heard? Just the most wonderful, O Beautiful For Spacious Falling Skies thing that anyone facing eviction could ever say to their dumb, overly tanned family. Let's go on a fun trip. Meanwhile the housing authority is breaking down the door and the kids are being taken away and, oh biscuits, the dog is dead and Lynne has wandered into the air ducts again and is rattling around up there. But sure. Let's go to Atlantis.

SIGH.

What else. What else. Oh. Um, Tamra and Simon went to dinner. They went to sexy romantic dinner and I'm told via email that there was some issue occurring with Simon's toes and that's all I know about that. When you're itching to get through an episode of Real Housewives so you can go watch Olympics, you miss some things.

Here's something I didn't miss: Gretchen and Doug Smiley are in lurrrrve. Or they are in TV love. Whatever it is, it involves meeting the folks. Obviously, because of his age, Doug's parents have long since passed. But Gretchen's parents are still bravely soldiering on in their early 40s, those feisty old coots. Gretch and Doug met them at a big house in the middle of the desert that they were renting. You know whose house it used to be? Merv Griffin's. Yes. Merv Griffin. Why... Oh, forget it. It's not worth asking. Just go with it. Gretchen and Doug rented Merv Griffin's house so Doug could meet her parents, as is custom in California. It's not the best tradition though. As it was Merv Griffin's house, confused rent boys kept showing up for their "three o'clock" and Doug kept wondering why all the chairs had these weird things sticking up from the middle. "It's like you're... supposed to sit on it or something..."

Basically Gretchen's dad thinks Doug is a fine guy, even though he is not a fine guy with children he never sees and no job and he calls himself "Slade." But, he does like to ride bikes fast, so he's a winner in papa Rossi's eyes. Mom does not care for him, sees right through him like that nice glass rolling pin she found in Merv's bedside drawer. The Rossis both seemed like normal people, which pretty much always seems to be the case on this show. Most of the moms and dads are just regular folks who seem a bit, or a lot, out of place in this faux-fabulous world of horrors. I feel bad for them. I'm sure they feel bad for themselves. Being the parent of a Real Housewife must mean a lot of Thursday nights spent crying yourself to sleep.

Doug kept dropping hints that he was going to propose, because his and Grechen's is a special kind of love in which he enjoys being on TV with her and sometimes putting his penis into her fagina. That's a really rare sort of passion there. So he basically told Dad that he wants to propose and Dad's like "The fuck do I care? Do you think she'd be on this TV show if I managed my daughter's life for her? Enn Ohh my friend. Ennnn Oh." But just as he was about to pop the biggest, juiciest question since he proposed to Jo all those several years ago, Gretchen went on some drunken tirade about how marriage is horrible and awful and should be a "lease" because a playa's gotta play and freedom ain't free and you're not gonna pay a lot for a muffler and other hackneyed catchphrases about relationships. Doug looked crestfallen. He frowned his face and farted with his eyes and Gretchen's mom cackled and screeched and laughed and laughed and laughed into the night, the sound shooting up into the satin sky like wails from a holy Sex Basement.

Speaking of that Sex Basement, over at Alexis and Jim's temple they were having the preacher and his wife over for dinner. No it wasn't Courtney B. Vance and some shivering crackhead. It was actual religious people. You know, white people. They were a square little pair (with dark brown hair and they live in a lair and the wife uses Nair and the husband loves Fred Astaire and her sexual cupboards are bare and life isn't fair) from some Southern part of the electric-cord bible belt and Alexis really wanted to impress them with her healthy, sunshiny California Christianness. This meant presenting a beautiful dish full of various granolas ("This one has raisins, this one does not have raisins. This one is considering having raisins but it feels it's a big step, and this one voted for a constitutional amendment banning raisins. I like that one best.") and slops of yogurts and fresh squeezed tequila worm juice. The pastor and his sharp-featured wife were all tight smiles and nervous shoulders. Clearly they were uncomfortable in front of the cameras. So mostly it was Alexis who did the talking. See this juggy fuck is so wrapped up in her stupid self image that all she can really do is think and talk about how things relate to her. What does Christianity look like when framed by her? What does friendship mean when she is one of the friends? Etc. Etc. It's awful.

So the pastor listened and nodded his head and eventually the quiet wife swallowed a bunch of pills and was dead and the conversation meandered to where Alexis had wanted it to meander all along: Why are women jealous of Alexis? Ohhhhhh why are they jealous of her big fake tits and her tunafish-belching husband and her three little angels who are all ready ruined. It's not Alexis's fault that she's perfect. Plus, God wanted her to get new boobs. At least that's what Earth Jesus told her, and she believes him unconditionally. Alexis is just a good Christian woman, she believes in good Christian things. Christian this and Christian that. She has a Christian dog and a Christian spatula. She takes Christian poops and finds Christian schadenfreude in watching other women fail. Christian, Christian, Christian. You know what Alexis? Your man Christian's a cake boy. If there really was a real magical space angel named Jesus Christ who lived a million years ago (there was not), I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want you using his hippie philosophy as a fucking business card, you hack. You wanna be religious, fine. But don't fucking brag about being a grown ass adult who believes in magic. That is the height of frustration for me. That is my letter to a Christian nation. Hey Christian Nation, kindly shut the hell up. Nobody else wants to listen to you drone on smugly about your myth cycle. Show don't tell, please.

You know what guys? I'm gonna have to end this thing here. No lame poetics or anything today, because I am hungover as a mother and it's my boss's last day and he's letting us post anything, so I don't want to spend all my time writing a boring old recap. I LOVE YOU GUYS. Not like Christian love. Like real love. Like Doug and Gretchen love.

OK, that's it. Goodbye goodbye goodbye. Have great weekends. Have fun at church. Have fun not going to church. Just have fun. And be safe. Girls, if you're at a bar this weekend and some man who looks like a walking version of the heap of triceratops poop that Ellie Sattler digs through in Jurassic Park sidles up to you and starts slurring about God and his sex basement, you run. You just run and run and run and never look back. Just make sure you're heading east. Nothing good lies west. Nothing but a hot sandy place full of lost souls. Which, come to think of it, sounds a lot like hell.

UPDATE: I totally forgot that there was this part where Breastuhses and her Pizza the Hut go to a fancy dinner and she asked for "Surf & Turf" and thought it was lobster, but then Pizza the Hut was like "you thought there was lobster in that, do you even know what you're ordering? huh huh huh" in his steak-filled voice, trying to embarrass her. And Tits just smiled and thought about other things while Pizza sat there chuckling horribly, Big Mac special sauce pouring out every orifice, the waiter quietly crying and wishing he'd never broken up with Darren and left Pittsburgh.

[BestWeekEver]

Read more posts by Edith Zimmerman

Filed Under: tv, advertising, clickables, hung, hung billboard

Source: Vulture | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:22 pm

Gay Complex on West 42nd Will Be a Friendly ‘Urban Resort,’ Not an Exclusive Bathhouse

In January, news of Hell's Kitchen's first gay boutique hotel started trickling onto the Internet, first as a collaboration with Spain's gay-but-"hetero-friendly" Axel Hotels and then as a $20 million renovation of a former motel/Red Cross homeless shelter at 510 West 42nd Street. We now know that the (unfortunately named) Out NYC will be a moderately sized 'mo complex with 123 rooms, plus a spa, gym, 24-hour restaurant, and gay club. The project is headed by a troupe of power gays, including real-estate investors Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass (business and life partners behind Parkview Developers) and club impresario John Blair.

Naturally, our first question was whether this whole thing was going to be an elaborate, maid-serviced bathhouse. "The answer is no," says John Blair, who is tasked with planning and operating the hotel's 10,000-square-foot, 650-capacity ground-floor dance club. "No one is going to risk this kind of investment unless it is a legit long-term business venture." The rooms will run from an inexpensive $99 to $399 a night — par for the course in the neighborhood. "Axel is a very sophisticated, attractive, appealing, upscale experience at affordable prices," a rep for the developers said. "That's what they do in Barcelona, Berlin, and Buenos Aires, and that's what they're going to do here in the Big Apple." (There's some conflicting information about whether the project is officially an "Axel Hotel." Although a story in On Top magazine reports that Axel's "development director," Renate Siebenhofer, has confirmed their involvement with this project, marketing manager Silvia Pérez said the following in an e-mail: "We would love to say that we have a new Axel Hotel in NYC but unfortunately we still are not able to confirm it.")

The building's existing façade spans about 133 feet on the south side of 42nd Street, which sounds like a tight squeeze, until you realize that the length of the building stretches through the whole block to 41st Street. Paul Dominguez, the architect and a vested partner, imagines the space as an "Urban Resort." The structure was built in the early sixties as a Palm Springs–style motel, with a number of breezy courtyards in the center of the building for Dominguez to play with and for the guests, eventually, to play in.

"The ground floor is a huge, cavernous space that works well as a club," said Dominguez. There will be one-foot-thick soundproofed wall between the "XL dance bar" and the rest of the building. Also on the ground floor is Kitchen, a 3,500-square-foot, 24-hour restaurant run by the operators of gay-friendly joints Eatery, Whym, and Vynl. On the second floor will be the spa (run by the Parisian transplant Nickel) and a conference room. The renovation calls for an additional two floors to be added to the three-story structure, with floors three through five dedicated exclusively for guest accommodations.

Within the hotel, Dominguez said, there are no real hallways. "Everything will wrap around three glassed-in courtyards, which means there's always something to see — people in the pool or Jacuzzi in the spa at one, people eating in the restaurant at another, and people at the reception bar space at another."

Will this element of voyeurism end up like the meatpacking district's controversial Standard Hotel, where guests were encouraged to have sex on display to the High Line passersby? "The community element is very important," says Dominguez, "and we actually set out to do the reverse of that idea of looking without being seen. We wanted to create an environment where guests can meet each other very easily." To that end, there's a large communal table at the restaurant, continuity between the different elements on the complex, and the curious concept of "heterofriendliness" (Axel's existing slogan). "It's almost like a little village," says Dominguez. "There are all these activities you can do to meet other people."

The next step will be to gain the approval of the full Community Board 4 on March 3, after which they tackle getting licenses from the State Liquor Authority and the support of the city's Department of Consumer Affairs. The developers' rep saw no problems going forward: "We already have the unanimous support of a committee dedicated to new projects in the neighborhood, as well as a lot of enthusiasm from community members, both gay and straight." Now they just need a new name for the complex, as Out NYC just sounds, well, boring. The Prancing Pony? The Mommie Dear-Rest? Phyllis Nefler's? The Blazing Saddle? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

Read more posts by Evan Mulvihill

Filed Under: gayborhood news, gayborhoods, hell's kitchen, neighborhod news, night life, openings, so yeah it's going to be a bathhouse, the gays are taking over everything these days, the out hotel, xl

MGM, once the shiniest studio in the Hollywood galaxy, has fallen on hard times. Last October it failed to making the interest payment due on its $3.7 billion debt, and even with the six month forbearance granted by its creditors, it is hovering the threshold of bankruptcy. Its equity investors — including three big hedge funds — have been all but wiped out. The 140 banks that financed the leveraged part of the leveraged buyout deal are in danger of losing over $3 billion. With the creditors demanding their money, and the clock running on its forbearance, MGM had put itself up for sale, retaining investment bankers Moelis & Company to solicit offers from potential buyers that were due in mid January 2010. For a movie studio that was bought for $4.85 billion in 2004 (which is over $5 billion in 2010 dollars), the bids that have come in so far are shockingly low. Time Warner, for example, is offering under $2 billion and the bid from Lionsgate, once the leading contender, is worth even less.

The secret numbers in the confidential information memorandum sent out by Moelis explain the problem, which goes to the root of what is happening to the movie business today. MGM's main asset, as is true in the case of all Hollywood studios, is its library comprised of 4,100 film titles, including all the James Bond movies, and 10,600 television episodes. The money that comes in through this library comes from DVD sales — mainly older titles sold in discount bins at Wal-Mart and other retailers -– and television licensing packages to Pay TV, cable networks, and television stations around the world.

The bet that the hedge funds made when they put up most of the equity for the $4.85 billion LBO in 2004 was that DVD revenue from the library would hugely increase when people replaced their standard DVDs with the Blu-Ray high-definition format that was just being introduced. But their projections proved to be pipe dreams. Instead of expanding, MGM's DVD revenue plummeted, according to the confidential memo. MGM's DVD revenues fell from $394.7 million in 2008 to just $69.8 million in the 2010 fiscal year (which ends March 31).

This huge drop was attributed to a host of factors, ranging from the worldwide downtown in DVD sales to fewer new MGM releases. What turned out to be the real killer for MGM's library was what the memo termed "significant price erosion." Wal-Mart, pressured by competition from Netflix, Red Box, and video downloading, drastically reduced the "price point" that it would buy older (or so-called "catalogue") DVDs, driving prices down to less than $5 a copy. So studios' saw the stream of profits from older DVDs wither away.

As with other studios, the larger part of MGM's library's money comes from television licensing. At first glance, these revenues appear remarkably stable, declining a mere one percent from $535.1 million in 2008 to $529 million in 2010. But like other phenomena in Hollywood, appearances can be deceptive. MGM had structured its long-term licensing contracts structured so the cable networks wind up underpaying for the early years and overpaying for the later ones, which is a common practice at studio libraries. As a result, even as properties lose value over the course of the contract (old films are worth less than newer ones), the illusion of stability is maintained . Of course, when MGM renews these multi-year contracts, the money it will get drops precipitously.

And as impressive as $529 million in revenues may seem, it is not the amount MGM actually gets to keep since it splits most of these proceeds with various "third parties," including producers, stars, directors, writers and Hollywood guilds. For example, the revenues from the 24 James Bond movies — which are the library's most valuable asset generating nearly 30% of its revenue — have to be split 50-50 with Danjaq LLC, the holding company for the Broccoli family that originally created the franchise. These participations and residuals (which is what the guilds get for their pension funds) totaled $235.2 million in 2010. In addition, there were $33.2 million in other expenses for handling these complex rights, including calculating and issuing more than 15,000 different checks per quarter to participants.

MGM also had to pay Fox a fee of $22.2 million for distributing its DVDs. What MGM kept turned out to be not enough to pay its overhead — $135.9 million in 2010 — and other costs, leaving it with a negative operating cash flow of $52.4 million. The bottom line here is that MGM cannot pay off its $3.7 billion in debt. And even if a white knight gallops in to carry off the library, the investors and creditors will take a loss.

Edward Jay Epstein is the author of 14 books, including two examining the movie business: The Hollywood Economist: The Reality Behind The Movie Business will be published by Melville House later this month, which follows his 2005 book The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood.

Source: CNN.com - Entertainment | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:14 pm

A detail of painting by Italian master Caravaggio is seen on the screen of a camera

A detail of painting by Italian master Caravaggio is seen on the screen of a camera at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome. The exhibition is a tribute to the unique quality of Caravaggio's work in this...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:13 pm

Visitors look at paintings by Italian master Caravaggio

Visitors look at paintings by Italian master Caravaggio. Rome will host the largest number of Caravaggio paintings ever collected in one city with an exhibit set to open Saturday to celebrate the 400th...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:13 pm

Sean Penn Charged With Battery in Brawl With Photographer

The actor will be arraigned on March 22 for battery and vandalism stemming from a 2009 brawl.

Source: FOXNews.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:11 pm

Fashion Week: The consumer is king

New York Fashion Week began on a somber note as the first day of shows was marred by news of the tragic death of beloved British designer Alexander McQueen.

Source: CNN.com - Entertainment | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:09 pm

Elvis back in Vegas with Cirque du Soleil

Cirque Du Soleil successfully tackled the Beatles with its "Love" show, so it seems fitting for it to take on another legendary name in rock 'n' roll: Elvis Presley.

Tracy Morgan found a way to toe the line between being funny, and being bat-poop insane. He'll give a perfectly timed zinger, then will promptly ramble-off incoherently. This week, he was everywhere promoting Cop Out, and he wore his crazypants.

Does the world need Superman? He's probably the most iconic comic book hero ever created, but it seems his invulnerability has a cost. There is buzz about another attempt at rebooting the franchise, but is there any point?

The latest Vampire Weekend track has quite the cameo list: Joe Jonas, RZA, and Lil Jon. "Giving Up the Gun" is so catchy that it will surely infect pop music for the next year. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Naked Science's experts asserted Earth will end via asteroid impact, and seemed pretty excited about the news. How can we avoid the eschaton? Launch nukes into space and put lasers on the moon to blast rogue rocks and intergalactic hamsters.

Edwards has a sterling "serious old conservative" resume: Republican congressman, former American Conservative Union chairman, stints at the Kennedy School and Princeton's Woodrow Wilson school, VP of the Aspen Institute, hundreds of task forces, and, of course, something involving Brookings.

Edwards' essay, posted at The Atlantic, is ostensibly an answer to the (unasked?) question of why he's skipping this year's Conservative Political Action Conference. Of course, it is because Conservatives today are not like the Good Conservatives of His Day!

There are like five completely incompatible and contradictory different arguments in this column. Like, Edwards certainly has a point about the contempt Bush-era conservatives have for Civil Liberties! He is certainly right to be put off by Limbaugh and Beck and find defenses of torture to be incredibly unconservative! But he can't quite diagnose the source of the problem, here:

I don't begrudge these activists their views and they are entitled to use the term "conservative" to describe themselves if they so choose. But the views many of them profess have little in common with the distinctly American kind of conservatism that gave birth to CPAC and the modern American conservative movement. Instead, what many of today's self-proclaimed "conservatives" proclaim is an ideology borrowed from what Donald Rumsfeld famously dismissed as "old Europe."

The Conservative Movement of Teabaggers and Torture and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh is too European? The god-and-guns fundies who make up almost the entirety of the GOP base is apparently a bit French for Edwards' tastes. It gets weirder:

What distinguished modern American conservatism was that it had its roots not in the British kings, but in John Locke and Adam Smith and other champions of individual liberties and individual empowerment.

Ok, but... Smith was a Scot and Locke was a Brit. I mean, Mickey... what the hell are you talking about?

According to Mickey, the Conservatism he served for so many years was about Liberty and Limited Government. Of course the modern conservative movement that apparently scares him so much is just the logical end point of the real philosophy of 20th Century Republicans. This is conservatism of Jim Crow and the Southern Strategy and States Rights, and the people in charge of the movement now are the exact same people who were in charge of the movement when Edwards was chairing task forces in the Reagan era.

But, yeah—too European! That's the problem with Birchers and Brietbart.

]Actual real-life photo of the leaders of the modern conservative movement, Cthullu and an Eagle Furry, courtesy Wonkette.]

This strategy has always seemed especially idiotic to me. The logic goes, "If we can convince people that admired historical figures were gay, then they will like living gay people more." Sorry, guys, but you're going about this all wrong, so stop dragging historical figures out of their closets graves like so many weak-wristed zombies.

The people that you need to convince—the conservative homophobic Americans who live in places that burn down the Sally Beauty Supply in the strip mall because "homos are hairdessers"—are just going to think that you're a bunch of crack pots. And really, you are. Yes, there are plenty of people who were outed after they died (J. Edgar Hoover for instance), but that doesn't mean that there were all these closet cases hiding out in history books. In many cases, there is little historical evidence to support the claims. And even if there are detailed records of same-sex action, our modern notion of "gay" has only been around since the middle of last century. What these people lived is as different from modern gay life is as an outhouse is from your Church Personal Cleansing Spa Bidet Seat Washlet.

But yet, Larry Kramer persists, calling Lincoln gay as a five dollar bill and citing historical evidence that may or may not exist, and the only thing he has managed to do is piss off the very people who we need to vote for our civil rights. However, working those people into a froth for sport sure is a lot of fun, and if that is what Elton was doing by saying Jesus was "a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man," then we applaud him. There is nothing these people hold dearer than Jesus and saying this shit is like the gay equivalent of when Jerry Falwell goes on CNN and accuses us of causing 9/11. It's not helping the cause, but it's fun.

[Image via JP Puerta's Flickr]

Will he ever learn?

[via Best Week Ever]

Read more posts by Jessica Pressler

Filed Under: caption contest, intel incest friday, photo op, tiger catches tail, tiger woods, woods hole

Source: Daily Intel | 19 Feb 2010 | 1:32 pm

National Enquirer Now Eligible To Sully The Good Name Of The Pulitzer Prize

The National Enquirer, the number one source of news for people waiting to check out in the grocery store and not interested in the gum selection, is now eligible for journalism’s top honor: The Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times reports (very begrudgingly, I assume):

The Pulitzer Prize administrators have decided that The National Enquirer is eligible to compete for the awards, a person briefed on the matter said Thursday.

Enquirer editors said they had submitted an entry before the Feb. 1 deadline for their work on the John Edwards scandal, but it was not clear whether the publication qualified for the Pulitzers, widely considered the most coveted honor for American newspapers.

I know the Enquirer broke the whole Edwards affair story, but it took forever for anyone to actually believe them. That is their own fault. They fire out fake stories left and right about who is cheating on who with another fat celebrity getting plastic surgery on their death bed, so it was hard to take them seriously when they did have a real story.

Now that they are Pulitzer eligible, “legitimate” news organizations have to be fuming. This is like the news equivalent of some goth in high school trying out for the football team to the behest of all the real jocks, and then turning out to be really good at one winning play. It gives hope to me though. Perhaps one day one of my posts here will somehow be eligible for a Peabody or a Grammy or some kind of prestigious unnecessary lengthy metaphor award. A guy can dream.

Source: Best Week Ever | 19 Feb 2010 | 1:29 pm

'Hard Times' gets a streamlined stage version (AP)

AP - They were hard times, indeed, as industrialization swept across 19th-century England, where formerly self-sufficient craftsmen and women were forced to become low-paid factory workers in soul-deadening conditions.

Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews | 19 Feb 2010 | 12:44 pm

A Thought on Evan Lysacek’s Win

When New York's Emma Rosenblum profiled Evan Lysacek last month, she noted an air about him which she described as "spidery masculinity." Last night, watching him skate to gold, that description seemed so apt. The other skaters were birds: sparrows, ravens, doves — Johnny Weir, as always, was a swan. But Lysacek was a giant, black, herky-jerky arachnid — all straight limbs and joints and no curves and swoops. He doesn't have their inherent grace, nor does he have the naturally petite body that is so perfect for the sport. Instead, he almost seemed at war with his six-foot-two-inch frame. His mastery of his program seems to have come from brute force of will and practice, rather than any kind of inherent gift. This speaks to what many commentators have noted is an incredible determination and focus.

It's almost as if Lysacek is, well, a regular guy. That's part of his appeal, isn't it? He wasn't born a skating, feathered pixie. He's a dude who practiced a lot, and sometimes practice does indeed make perfect.

But as viewers, that throws us off. We're used to thinking of figure skaters as ethereal, otherworldly creatures who are capable of things we could never get our bodies to do. (Forget the triple axel — how do they spin around so many times on the ground without falling over?) And these people have built into their programs maneuvers that, much of the time, they can't even pull off! We're used to thinking that triple combinations are nigh impossible because even people with invisible fairy wings can't usually land them.

And then here struts in Evan Lysacek, normal athletic dude, without birdlike elegance, whose only magical feathers were sewn on by Vera Wang, pulling off a near-perfect routine. What does this mean? Could we — normal people, sitting on our couches watching dazedly as we gnaw on whatever cheese happens to be lying, slightly crispy, in a drawer at the bottom of the fridge — actually do that? If we practiced hard enough, that is? Is there really no magic required?

The thought is enough to make you want to switch back to the snowboard half-pipe race. Because that guy Shaun White definitely has invisible wings.

Related: How Evan Lysacek Got Ready to Win Gold [Vulture]

Read more posts by Chris Rovzar

Filed Under: evan lysacek, figure skating, intel, olympics, sports, the sports section

Source: Daily Intel | 19 Feb 2010 | 12:40 pm

Tommy Hilfiger Bids Good-Bye to Bryant Park (Fashion Wire Daily)

Fashion Wire Daily - Tommy Hilfiger's brand of preppy, all-American classics with a twist closed New York's fall 2010 fashion week - as well as the Bryant Park venue, on Thursday, Feb. 18.

Source: Yahoo! News: Fashion News | 19 Feb 2010 | 12:37 pm

Moms Differ Over What Behaviors MTV Shows 'Teen Mom' and '16 and Pregnant' Promote

Some think the programs are positive teaching tools, while other believe they promote risky sexual behavior and abortion.

Source: FOXNews.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 12:16 pm

EXCLUSIVE: The Alternate Ending To Jay Leno’s New Tonight Show Promo

As reports surface that Conan O’Brien may be doing some live stage shows this summer, NBC has rolled out a pants-wettingly hilarious new promo for Jay Leno’s return to The Tonight Show, seen below:

I actually got my hands on the original, longer version of the promo (I have a guy inside NBC. He lives in the air conditioning ducts). This is how the spot should have ended:

Good thing Kevin Eubanks didn’t ride shotgun.

Source: Best Week Ever | 19 Feb 2010 | 12:07 pm

Gossip Girl: Nate Is Serena’s Fairy Prince

Did you guys know that the Greatest Show of Our Time is returning soon? (That was a joke, we know you've almost killed yourselves by holding your breath for two months.) It's back on Monday, March 8, as will be our recaps. But until then, some hints about what's been in store have been trickling in. On the CWTV website, a trailer clip shows that Nate and Serena, who had been delicately dancing around one another when we last saw them, are finally going to get together — at least for a little while. Executive producer Stephanie Savage talked to People about it:

“We last saw Nate sleeping on a chair in Serena’s hospital room. Gossip Girl called Serena 'Sleeping Beauty' and referred to Nate as her 'prince.' Now we get to see this fairy tale for real — Serena and Nate, the golden couple, finally together."

"It was the reveal of S and N’s fateful coupling that night at the Shepherd wedding that set in motion the dynamics of our entire series, so it’s a big deal to finally have these two pair up. Blake [Lively] and Chace [Crawford] have amazing on-screen chemistry. Their scenes are some of the most fun and sexy we have ever shot.”

Oh HELL no. There is only one "golden couple" on Gossip Girl, and that is Chuck and Blair (Chair, to you commenters). Thankfully, it appears that there will be some meaty material for those two, also. Savage says that Chuck's hunt for more information about his mysterious mother will kick off "a big emotional Chuck story that brings him and Blair closer than ever. Ed [Westwick] and Leighton [Meester] are at the top of their game in this arc." Yessss. The only thing better than "fun and sexy" scenes are "dark, brooding, and sexy" scenes!

Secrets From the Gossip Girl Set [TV Watch/People]

Read more posts by Chris Rovzar

Filed Under: the greatest show of our time, blake lively, chace crawford, ed westwick, gossip girl, leighton meester

Source: Daily Intel | 19 Feb 2010 | 11:50 am

Ewan McGregor fleshes out 'Ghost Writer' - San Francisco Chronicle

New York Daily News

Ewan McGregor fleshes out 'Ghost Writer' San Francisco Chronicle Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer" is a taut thriller that addresses one of the central concerns of any democracy, the accountability of its leaders, dangling as its central political piñata a thinly veiled Tony Blair - as thinly veiled as a T-shirt ... Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan Talk Roman Polanski 'Horror Stories'MTV.com The Ghost Writer: Polanski Escapes into His Cinema NightmaresTIME Pierce Brosnan reveals the character actor withinReading Eagle Los Angeles Times -USA Today -ABC News all 407 news articles »

Source: Entertainment - Google News | 19 Feb 2010 | 11:25 am

Domestic Terrorism Is Hilarious at CPAC

"And let me just say, I'm really happy to see [anti-tax crusader] Grover [Norquist] today. He was getting a little testy in the past couple of weeks. And I was just really, really glad that it was not him identified as flying that airplane into the IRS building." —Jed Babbin, editor of conservative magazine Human Events, at CPAC today, to laughter from the audience [TPM DC]

Read more posts by Dan Amira

Filed Under: cpac, bons mots, domestic terrorism, jed babbin

Source: Daily Intel | 19 Feb 2010 | 11:25 am

A Disturbingly Romantic Photo Of Tiger Woods And His Mother

It’s not helping Tiger Woods’ case that even when he embraces his mother, it inevitably looks like a precursor to another lengthy apology:

Kind of resembles the poster to an iconic Clark Gable movie of yesteryear. (He was in that, right?)

Source: Best Week Ever | 19 Feb 2010 | 11:21 am

VIDEO: OH NOOOOO — RUN You Stop-Motion Danish Bunnies!!!

This Danish stop-motion animated short “Out Of A Forest” starts out adorable, then becomes waaaaay more tense than any animated bunny tea party video has the right to be, before ultimately resuming its place firmly in the realm of adorable again (adoraspoiler!)

I may or may not have just yelled “Why aren’t you running??? RUNNN!!!” out loud at my desk. People just assumed I was watching Legends of the Hidden Temple, as usual.

Out Of A Forest from Tobias Gundorff Boesen on Vimeo.

Source: Best Week Ever | 19 Feb 2010 | 11:11 am

Here Is Vampire Weekend’s “Giving Up The Gun” Video And/Or MTV’s Rock N’ Jock Tennis

Vampire Weekend just premiered the video for their new single “Giving Up The Gun,” and it features some big name celebrities playing tennis (which I guess is a real life version of that game in Wii Sports) on the set of Michael Jackson’s “Scream” video. See Joe Jonas and Jake Gyllenhaal get schooled by A GIRL while the RZA plays Morpheus the Line Judge. Meanwhile Lil John does what he does best: give advice in French (or maybe Portuguese? I only know Esperanto).

Check it out right here:

Source: Best Week Ever | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:39 am

Japanese actor and director Takeshi Kitano

Japanese actor and director Takeshi Kitano gives an interview to Agence France-Presse in Tokyo in January 2010. Kitano, who brought the yakuza gangster genre to a global public, says he could have made...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:23 am

Japanese actor and director Takeshi Kitano speaks during an interview with Agence France-Presse

Japanese actor and director Takeshi Kitano speaks during an interview with Agence France-Presse in Tokyo in January 2010. Kitano, who brought the yakuza gangster genre to a global public, says he could...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:23 am

VIDEO: The Full Tiger Woods Apology

Here’s the Tiger Woods apology in its entirety.

I assumed it was gonna be a long, deliberate, predictable prepared statement of attrition, so I was surprised by how many times he yelled “Back off, motherf***ers!”

Thoughts? Personally, I believe he’s being sincere when he says he had a bunch of affairs.

Source: Best Week Ever | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:20 am

Mitt Romney In Best Politician-Rapper Dust Up Since Gingrich v. Skee-Lo

Mitt Romney has been many things: A governor, a Presidential hopeful, a Cylon (alleged). Now he can add “that irritable guy on the airplane” to his resume. TMZ is reporting that former Presidential candidate found himself in a heated argument with Grammy Nominee Sky Blu of the group LMFAO while on an airplane:

According to a video confessional from LMFAO’s Sky Blu, it all started when he leaned his seat back while the plane was still on the tarmac … and Romney, who was sitting behind him, started yelling at him to put his seat back up.

Sky Blu claims Romney then reached forward and grabbed his shoulder … so he slapped the Presidential wannabeen’s hand away. Shortly after, authorities boarded the plane and escorted Sky Blu off the flight … and the other member of LMFAO got it all on tape.

The irony in all this is that LMFAO’s hit “Shots” is the campaign theme for Romney’s 2012 White House run. Boy is his face going to be freakishly tan when he learns this.

Source: Best Week Ever | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:13 am

TRANSCRIPT: Tiger Woods' Statement

PGA transcript of this morning's statement by Tiger Woods at the TPC Sawgrass clubhouse in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

Source: FOXNews.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 10:06 am

At Calvin Klein, Costa's Modernist Mode Still Reigns (Fashion Wire Daily)

Fashion Wire Daily - New York fashion's torchbearer for sculptural chic, Francisco Costa, stayed the brand's course with his fall 2010 collection for Calvin Klein on Thursday, Feb. 18.

Source: Yahoo! News: Fashion News | 19 Feb 2010 | 9:54 am

Veteran Costelloe slams celebrity fashion designers (Reuters)

Reuters - Veteran Irish designer Paul Costelloe told celebrities trying their hand at fashion to pack up and content themselves with their luxury lifestyles, accusing them Friday of stealing his thunder on the catwalk.

Source: Yahoo! News: Fashion News | 19 Feb 2010 | 9:01 am

'The Bachelor's' Ali: I still miss Jake

Jake Pavelka and fans alike were bummed when frontrunner Ali Fedotowsky, 25, "pulled an Ed," prematurely leaving "The Bachelor" when duty called at her job as an advertising account manager in San Francisco, California.

Source: CNN.com - Entertainment | 19 Feb 2010 | 8:56 am

Pam Anderson Left Nearly Naked in the Cold After Fashion Week Show

It seems the blonde bombshell couldn't find her dress after Richie Rich's fashion show.

Source: FOXNews.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am

Veterans kick off London fashion with eye on buyers (Reuters)

Reuters - Two of London's veteran designers kicked off a week of fashion on Friday with an eye on the industry's still-wary buyers, offering a twist on classic tweeds but also a taste of glamour with rich brocades and gold lame.

Source: Yahoo! News: Fashion News | 19 Feb 2010 | 7:16 am

Review: 'Shutter Island' is creepy

Could insanity be contagious? Marooned on an island with only the criminally insane for company, how long before you doubted yourself?

Source: CNN.com - Entertainment | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:14 am

JWOWW Dissed by Jealous Kim Kardashian?

Sources say the reality stars shared an uncomfortable moment when JWOWW stole some of Kim K's thunder at her New York Fashion Week show.

Source: FOXNews.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:11 am

Simon Cowell Looking for New Taylor Swift in 'American Idol's' Top 24

Lady Gaga is his top pick for a potential music industry mentor to guide this season's contestants.

Source: FOXNews.com | 19 Feb 2010 | 6:05 am

This undated handout picture shows the "Vic" pub from the BBC soap opera "Eastenders"

This undated handout picture shows the "Vic" pub from the BBC soap opera "Eastenders." EastEnders, one of Britain's longest-running soap operas, celebrates its 25th anniversary with a live edition promising...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 19 Feb 2010 | 5:12 am

Stars: Polanski edited movie in jail

You could call "The Ghost Writer" the Polanski film that almost wasn't.

Source: CNN.com - Entertainment | 19 Feb 2010 | 5:09 am

Muted luxury reigns supreme at NY Fashion Week (AFP)

AFP - As fashionistas headed across the Atlantic to London's Fashion Week on Friday, the takeaway theme of New York's Autumn-Winter presentation was clear -- toned down luxury.

Source: Yahoo! News: Fashion News | 19 Feb 2010 | 2:30 am

Disclaimer | About

World : News Archives | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Technology | Science | Marketplace Audio

India : News | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Telugu |

Blogs : Humor pages | Norkay's Blog | Kids Stories | Indian Recipes | Database Tech Blog

Sundries : World Video Clips | Songs Clips | Indian Video Clips |