Remember When Sorority Girls Could Not Buy True Religions Without Leaving Campus? [Higher Education] .
Remember the days when every college campus was not a giant mall? Extra credit: remember when the average college campus had nary an Abercrombie & Fitch? Today's Wall Street Journal's story on that ubiquitous flip-flop brand's "buzz"-generating bonanza at five lucky college campuses* just gave us rush of nostalgia for the olden days. Remember how mercifully impossible it used to be for the average communications major to procure a pair of Tory Burch flats without leaving the Green Zone representing the 500 yard radius of the Theta house? Because college campuses were the rare tracts of land in America where the demand for dumb consumer goods and belogoed status branded articles of clothing seemed totally out of whack with the supply? Yeah well, those days = over!
Once upon a time retailers shied away from college campuses because they didn't know how to deal with the four months of the year business would be totally dead. Mercifully, sometime in the nineties many enterprising college presidents pinpointed "detestable materialism" and "abiding love for conspicuous consumption" as two of the primary traits in the psychological profiles of the average overprivileged young high school students they coveted or at the very least wanted to apply to their institutions for the sake of pushing down the acceptance rate, and they forked over some of their endowment zillions to offering kickbacks to companies like Urban Outfitters and Barnes & Noble. My old campus even has an American Apparel now!
Still, some retail chains found the whole "summer" thing to be a problem. So for them, the nation's institutes of higher education worked out a deal: open a "pop-up" store! Kiehl's and Havaianas and Victoria's Secret Pink are all doing it. They open mini-stores or stands for a day or a month and then pick up and leave! For some reason, according to the Wall Street Journal this is causing controversy. "We don't want our faculty and students overrun with commercialization," says University of Florida school spokesman Steve Orlando. Oh Steve.
*WHICH lucky campuses? Good question. The story doesn't say and I am going to pass on researching this one, but Google away!
Disclosure: I worked retail in college.Image via APIAS
Retailers Give It The Old College Try [WSJ]
Katie Holmes's Jeans Slammed [Gossip Roundup] .
- Tim Gunn of Project Runway thinks Katie Holmes is regressing, fashionwise, with the baggy jeans and overall tomboy look. But maybe husband Tom Cruise likes the tomboy look. Or, better still, hates it! Maybe she's regressing to more independent days. [People]
- Meanwhile, Cruise phoned up ole Liz Smith at the Post for some friendly chatter about how he doesn't "run United Artists, I just own it" and how his ousted business partner Paula Wagner "wants to produce elsewhere and in her own venue, and I don't intend to stand in her way." [Post]
- Lindsay Lohan posted to her MySpace account a blog entry about her dad, who lashed out at her girlfriend Samantha Ronson for supposedly trying to exploit Lindsay's fame. "He has become a public embarrassment and a bully - to my family, my co-workers, my friends, and a girl that means the world to me... His recent attack on my life and my loved ones is simply for an ADDICTION THAT HE HAS - FAME." [Myspace via Sun]
- Maybe Eliot Spitzer's hooker Ashley Dupre ratted the then-governor out on behalf of her mob buddies? This idea was written by a private eye in an epilogue in the paperback edition of a book by an editor at CNBC. So it must be true. [P6]
- Magazine editors really like appearing on Gossip Girl. The next one is from Gotham. [P6]
- Onetime teen star McKenzie Phillips was arrested at LAX airpot trying to bring bags of cocaine and heroin through a security checkpoint. That's actually a useful trick for checking into rehab super quick. [National Enquirer]
- Naomi Campbell's Russian billionaire boyfriend bought her a $19 million apartment in a fancy part of Sao Paolo, Brazil. It comes with a complete staff of servants for her to brutalize. And extra cell phones! [P6]
[Moderately successful Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps on CBS' The Early Show this morning; image via WENN]
SidAndFinancy's new line beats the original, "Medically Speaking, I Shouldn't Use My Crotch For Six Weeks. That's What the Olympic Village Doctor Told Me On My Last Day There."
Righteous Pirates Rob Celebrity Yacht [The Rich] .
Movie-like occurrence of the day: Pirates, for fuck's sake, have robbed a posh 178-foot party yacht moored off Corsica, making off with a freaking fortune. In the past the boat has hosted Jack Nicholson, Armani, and Puff Daddy, among others. Will the publicity surrounding this daring act of Robin Hood-style crime, minus the "give to the poor" part, lead to a rash of similar hijackings in the near future? You better believe it. Do you have any idea how lucrative yacht piracy is?:
The buccaneers made off with a booty of $183,180 in cash in the attack on the craft, which was anchored off the French island.
Jewelry and artwork were also swiped in the daring raid that took only 10 minutes before the buccaneers sped away with their loot.
There was no immediate estimate of art and jewelry loss, but it could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
No word on who the faaabulous, now-poorer guests on board were, each of whom reportedly paid almost $250k for a week on the boat. The yacht is owned by NY real estate mogul Jonathan Leitersdorf, so any readers who work for him, please get us some names. And cash. Thx.
[NYP]
Meet New York's Latest "Celebrity" Cokehead! [Peaches Geldof] .
So Peaches Geldof is moving to New York! And who praytell is Peaches Geldof? Besides the obvious spawn of that Irish new wave guy who might have faded into obscurity had he not gotten enormously rich helping starving African children or something. Well she is an avid cocaine consumer of course. And a socialite with a reality show of some sort in the UK. She missed being born in the nineties by about 200 days, which would make her nineteen, meaning she is off the market right now because she is married to some heretofore unknown "musician" with floppy hair (this happened in Las Vegas of course). She has a sister who is even younger and dumber. And now in the grand tradition she is planning on getting her "fresh start" living in "anonymity" and attending the "educational institution" NYU. Oh yes, and also, "working" at a "pop culture" magazine. Ooooh oooh which one??
Nylon, duh. They also gave a column to Cory Kennedy, remember?
Anyway, congrats on the gig, Peaches, and welcome to New York. When you find yourself stepping a little livelier and being unfriendly to people that's when you'll know you're home.
Press Release Subject Line Of The Day [Public Relations] .
"Actor/entertainer Ben Vereen announces his bout with serious illness, also available to discuss upcoming movies."
What a Plastic Surgery-Free Michael Jackson Might Look Like [On Beauty] .
Accompanying an astoundingly sad-on-all-accounts article about former pop singer Michael Jackson (on forgetting that he's turning 50 years old, not 40: "It all went by so fast, didn't it? I wish I could do it all over again, I really do." Devastating) is an image of what the King of Pop may have looked like had he not had alllll that plastic surgery. It's a well done imagining, a believable cross between Usher and Billy Dee Williams, rather than the ghost of Joan Crawford that you see on the left. A rare vision of one's life had a different turn in the road been taken. Unfortunately, Mr. Jackson, I've not seen your childhood, perhaps it's collecting dust somewhere up in that crumbling personal theme park of yours. But an alternate adulthood? Yes, that's right here. [Mail via LA Rag Mag] Click through for larger image.
American Media Will Pay Later [Publishing] .
American Media, the publisher of Star and the National Enquirer, has come to an agreement with its creditors to "refinance" $570 million of its more than $1 billion in total debt. That's code for going to the people you owe money to and saying, "Funniest thing—I just can't pay you. Wanna change our deal a little bit? Or would you prefer I just declare bankruptcy and we both get screwed?" As savvy financial types like to say, if you owe the bank $1 million, they own you; if you owe the bank $1 billion, you own them.
Although AMI squandered millions needlessly on things like, you know, the services of Bonnie Fuller, the Enquirer's upsurge from the John Edwards scoop may be just the thing to push them back towards profitability. If they can figure out how to sell some extra ads on it, that is. AMI's ad sales were down slightly in the first half, though not as much as the rest of the industry. So chin up. Remember, down is the new flat!
[WSJ]
Jail Threatened for Yet Another Rogue Library Borrower [Books] .
Last week, cops in Wisconsin apprehended a 20-year-old girl who worked two jobs, cuffed her, and hauled her into jail for the failure to return two library books—one of which was an Oprah Book Club selection. This week, a Maine old lady is being threatened with jail time for refusing to return a library book:
It's about sex and puberty, and she deems it dangerous for kids: "I'm going to hang on to the book, your honor."
Reports the Sun Journal:
JoAn Karkos, 64, was confined to a courtroom at 8th District Court for about an hour after she was ordered by a judge to hand over the borrowed book: It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health. Karkos said she had no intention of giving up the book she claims violates the city's obscenity ordinance... She called her actions "civil disobedience."She has Friday to hand it over, or else she'll totally be arrested.
[Photo: Sun Journal]
The book in question:
Samantha Ronson's Blog Entry May Be the Future of PR [Celebrity-industrial Complex] .
Oh look, the celebrity PR flack continues to die. Well, for some. Actress Lindsay Lohan's shiftless mook of a father recently lashed out at Linds' bff (or gf), deejay Samantha Ronson, who was rumored to be writing some kind of tell-all book. He called her fame hungry and accused her of using Lindsay and blah blah blah pot kettle blah blah. Both LiLo and SamRo publicly reacted to the news, pioneering into relatively uncharted territory.
Lindsay ran squealing to gossip show Access Hollywood, calling her father "out of control" and just sorta, you know, defeating the purpose of telling someone else to rein it in. But later on, Lindsay decided to close the barn door herself and write a "sensible" and thorough blog post, perhaps not realizing that a whole Assateague Island's worth of horses had already escaped. Samantha demurely (as far as "demurely" goes in this festering hellhole of a world) circumvented all the conventional channels and went right to the people first. Via her MySpace blog of course! Lindsay and Sam are not the first people of note to do this, but they are embroiled in some pretty high profile antics, unlike other MySpace celebrity bloggers like the low-profile, dim and withered Courtney Love. Which is to say, right now these girls are pretty famous and wouldn't it be interesting to see someone huge like, say, Katie Holmes, respond to scandal with a humble blog entry?
While it's debatable just how modest and un-self-possessed a blog entry, aimed at the public, about oneself, really is, it's certainly less middlemany and corporate and hungry than going on a television show to air one's delicates. Plus you have control over your own words! (Though, you do run the risk of drunk-blogging.) It may seem suicidal, but it would be fascinating to watch the celebrity-to-civilian relationship develop into a one-on-one internet relationship, completely strangling the gossip industry, which would be forced to just repurpose blog entries that everyone had already read.
I mean cause that's totes not what we do already.
In Denver When You're Dead [Pic Of The Day] .
There are supposed to be 15,000 journalists covering the Democratic Convention in Denver, a good proportion at newspapers. But the time-pressed and laptop-lugging reporters have largely abandoned their own medium, print: the New York Observer's John Koblin snapped this neglected pile of newspapers yesterday afternoon at the stand of Sam Zell's beleaguered Tribune Company.
Denied! Anon AA Ad Artist Slams Faux-Bam Culture Jam [Fake Fake Ads] .
So yesterday we posted what seemed to be a new work by the anonymous American Apparel ad spoofer—this one featuring Obama being menaced by a big dick, with the familiar slogan "The Assassination of Barack Obama" and an American Apparel logo. Then we heard that it might not be a work by the actual spoofer, which was confirmed by the spoofer's own blog, then confirmed again by Copyranter, who thinks the Obama piece is a Photoshop fake. Now the spoofer himself has sent us a statement, of sorts, saying he welcomes copycats as long as it's clear they're different copycats (and he's not a Dov Charney employee, thank you):
Hi Hamilton,
I am the "aa ads spoofer."
I am not the creator of the Obama poster you posted yesterday, and don't deserve the little fame it temporarily got. I never mix art and politics, the billboards in Tribeca have never inspired me, and I don't do use the Photoshop posterization filter. I gladly welcome copycats though, as long as people don't think it's my doing.
Also, to answer a floating question, my fake AA campaign is a personal project. American Apparel isn't behind this campaign, I don't work for them, I don't know them, and all I ever got from them is a pleasant mute tolerance...
I picked up AA essentially because their ads were sex-oriented, which was a good place to start. This work is about inspiration in art and advertising, and manipulation, if I get it right...
i'll be wrapping up the project in sept w/ a little showdown on stereohell.
[Disclaimer: To the extent we were able to check around, we're pretty sure this is the real spoofer. Although you never really know when it comes to spoofers.]
Way To Get Us In The Mood, Lifeskills@Nytimes! [Memos] .
Employee benefits are perking decidedly down all over medialand, as we found out last night Conde Nast sent out that memo limiting employees to five (5!) expensed lunches a month. So we were soothed to hear that the New York Times, whose ad sales have in the words of one analyst "fallen off a cliff" this year,* remains committed to the healing power of complimentary backrubs. Massages on the house in the two days leading up to September 11! But then we got the memo announcing said benefit. And it was sort of the opposite of a "happy ending"â¦
They will be "tracking" No Shows! So Alberto Gonzales of you, New York Times!
*July ad revenue was down 15.3% percent at the newspaper (and that is not even including the Boston Globe that has been dragging them down all these years) and far be it from me to judge a company by its stock price but this is not a pretty chart.
Related: In Tough Economic Times, Bankers Long For Intimacy With Their Happy Endings [Jezebel]
Bill Clinton's Speech: Best Ever Or BESTEST Ever? [Conventional Wisdom] .
Bill Clinton got rave reviews for his speech last night. Five-minute standing ovation! He looked so fucking thrilled to be there. Chuck Todd and Keith Olbermann loved it! If you listen to the pundits, Bill basically rehabilitated his entire miserable public image in one nice speech. Here's avowed Clinton-hater Andrew Sullivan:
Tonight, I think, was one of the best speeches he has ever given. It was a direct, personal and powerful endorsement of Obama. But much, much more than that: it was a statesman-like assessment of where this country is and how desperately it needs a real change toward reform and retrenchment at home and restoration of diplomacy, wisdom and prudence abroad.
Way to go Bill, for lowering the expectations so much (just the other day he was giving more terrible ill-advised quotes) that the sudden reappearance of President Clinton the Master Speaker was an amazing flashback. Remember when our President spoke like this? Christ.
Even Peggy Noonan—who's been hating Bill and Hillary for years!—was impressed:
This was Deft Political Pro Bill doing what no one had been able to do up to this point at the convention, and that is make the case for Barack Obama. He lambasted the foe, asserted Obama's growth on the trail, argued that he was the right man for the job and did that as a man who once held that job and is remembered, at least in terms of domestic policy and at least by half the country, as having done it pretty darn well. He gave his full imprimatur to a crowd that believes he has an imprimatur to give. As Clinton spoke a friend IM'd, "What is this, the Clinton convention?" The fact is, until both Clintons spoke, it was. Now oddly enough it isn't. Now eyes turn, and finally, to Obama. This was one of the great tee-ups.
And, you know, the speech was generous and good and amazingly well-delivered. But two nights of Clintons? It is the Clinton convention, bookmarked by the Obamas only on the first and last days. Which can go either way—if it makes audiences fondly remember the happy 1990s, when Democrats ran things fairly well and we all bought things from Pets.com while listening to that "Da da da" song in our VWs, than yes, brilliant work, Obama's a sure thing.
But if it just reminds people of the Clintons, with all their strengths and baggage, then that does absolutely nothing to help Obama get elected. Bill did good. Really good. And now it will be like three days until he says something insane and undermining about Obama again.
(Which is maybe another positive for Obama! Angry red-faced Bill just makes Barack Obama look fresh and good in comparison. Who knows, it's all just pissing in the winds of public opinion.)
Here's the speech!
Do We Smell A Hatecrush? [New York Times] .
"Certain writers have a style that can be best likened to body odor: irresistible to some, obnoxious to many and apparently imperceptible to the writer himself." That is the overeducated overyoung* novelist Robert MacFarlane on the new book out by Paul Theroux. [Times]
*He is also overhot, but Nick thought his photo was taking up too much space. He is right about everything about Theroux except the parts about Turkmenistan and China. And also, I probably don't need to point this out but Naipaul is a huge twat.
Whose Heads Will Roll At Bloomberg? [Predictions] .
Bloomberg News' rather embarrassing faux pas—posting Apple chief Steve Jobs' obituary before he's actually dead—has now been chuckled at by just about everyone. It's not the sort of publicity that Bloomberg's bow-tied editorial boss Matthew Winkler, a notorious tyrant, wanker, and stickler for detail, is fond of. This is a man who threw a legendary tantrum (listen to it here!) while firing a reporter for making a far less egregious error. So the immediate reaction among those familiar with him to news of the Jobs obit was, "Heads will roll." Our question: whose heads? Email us if you have any information on the fallout. Though we personally encourage restraint and forgiveness.
New '90210', Old Tricks [Is It Nat?] .
Two stars of the original teen soap on the upcoming remake... Shannen Doherty: "All I know is there's a girl giving a guy a blow job in the first episode." Jennie Garth: "When they told me that, I thought, Aaron Spelling is rolling over in his grave right now." [EW]
"Everything Is Lava Except For This Paint Strip!!! Carolyn, You're In the Lava!!!!!" [Open Caption] .
[Lauren Conrad, star of the Frontline special series "The Hills" out and about in the city of strip malls last night; image via INF]
ColonelMustard's new line beats the original, Reality Star Ignores Signs About Her Chosen Profession.
The most Onion-like real news story of all time has been found. [Sioux City Journal via James Wilkerson]
Americans Select Girl-Dog for Obama [Dog Days] .
Barack Obama promised his adorable daughters that he would get them a puppy if he won the presidency (they would surely mention this fact more often if they really wanted to win). The American Kennel Club had a poll to decide what sort of dog Obama should get. (Of course, Obama should rescue a dog from a shelter and not select an expensive purebred, but whatevs.) The winner? A poodle. A little fucking girly elitist poodle! Who's responsible for this?
The fatcats at the AKC won't say!
In a national poll of 42,000 people, the Poodle narrowly edged past the Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier as the top dog for the Obamas, the American Kennel Club (AKC) said.
"It is no surprise the American public chose a Poodle for Obama," said spokeswoman Lisa Peterson, adding the breed is the eighth most popular nationally and the third most common type of dog in Washington, D.C.
You can read this as a worrying indicator that GOP (and Maureen Dowd) attacks on Obama's perceived "elitism" are working, or you can blame OPERATION CHAOS!
[Image from here, we think.]
Hipster God A Homophobe? [Taavo Somer] .
"It's stupid to be homophobic," mused a guy working in a downtown bar last night. "And it's really stupid to be homophobic if you're in the restaurant business. And it's really stupid to be homophobic if you're in the fashion business." The subject of his rant: Taavo Somer, the 35-year-old owner of faux-rustic LES hipster haven Freemans and faux-nautical bar The Rusty Knot and proprietor of his own fashion line of $88 t-shirts. Somer was anointed by New York magazine this year as "the next groovy thing," the embodiment of forward-thinking hipster cool. But this ex-employee was of the opinion that Taavo is an ass:
According to this guy—who worked at one of Somers' places for an extended period of time—Somer is not just a homophobe; he is dumb. I believe the approximate descriptor was, "big, idiotic bigot." He described Somer as an "idiot savant," able to build successful restaurants while being, simultaneously, "one of the stupidest people I ever met."
He also said just about everyone who's worked in Somers' establishments can't stand him. The conversations, he said, go like this: "Oh, you used to work at Freemans?" (*Shakes head in dismay*).
Of course, Taavo can always escape to his upstate estate if things get too negative in the city.
Just one ex-employee's opinion! Feel free to email us a rebuttal, Taavo.
[Pic via NYO]
Leaked Gossip Girl Script! Sad Young Literary Men [Exclusive] .
Found at the Gossip Girl studios: a script for what appears to be the fifth episode of the teen soap's highly-anticipated second season. And what do the selected pages reveal? Mostly the tortured (and torturous) relationship between sad young literary man Brooklyn Dan and his crusty old mentor, Noah Shapiro. Amusingly, the Shapiro character is introduced by Jay McInerney, in a cameo role, who was once a sad young New York literary fellow himself. His 1984 novel Bright Lights, Big City was a smash hit about "you" (the novel was written entirely in the second person) young ambitious writerly types in the big bad city. It's all come full circle! Enjoy some scans of the script after the jump.
Live Nude McCain Ad During Obama Speech Tonight [Bad Ideas] .
John McCain is playing dirty! Tonight, after Barack Obama's speech, McCain bought airtime for a rebuttal ad. There are no details on which markets and channels the ad will air on ("battleground states" does not mean much!) but it will surely end up repeated on every channel in the name of "news" a couple million times. What will McCain do in this mysterious and unprecedented ad? We're not sure, but this is a terrible sign:
Aides would give few details beyond the fact that McCain will speak directly to the camera, addressing Obama.
The strip-tease on the ad is one of several moves by the McCain campaign that could distract attention from Obama's big night.
Ok, John, that's a really bad idea.
Also his Vice Presidential pick will be announced either right before Obama's speech, which is a brilliant way of getting it no publicity until tomorrow, or after the speech, when we are drunk or asleep. It will be either internationally beloved sanctimonious baby mole-rat Joe Lierberman or reviled phony rich prick Wilbur "Mitt" Romney And His Totally Not Gay Sons.
Or Pawlenty or Kay Bailey Hutchison, who are boring, or Rudy Giuliani, who is not boring.
We Are All Whores, So Save Your Outraged Blogging for the War or Whatever [Sex Wars] .
You know what's boring? Feminist outrage. But it's so easy to be strident, especially in the blogosphere. Especially when a gal writes an article like Jessica Pilot's now-infamous profile on Manhattan's so-called "Hipster Hookers" in Radar. In the piece, she profiled high-end working girls, and even met with a madam herself—although she chickened out on actually going through with a call. Fine, whatever! The members of the blogosphere—you know, when they were not busy watching porn and having casual sex—had a field day with Pilot. She's been reduced to defending herself on her Facebook page: "I AM NOT A HIPSTER WHORE."
In short: Pilot wrote an article about a topic that interested her, which was obviously just a huge mistake, due to the nature of the blogosphere. She was attacked in various on-line arenas—I mean, we're all desperate for content these days. We all need to chime in with an opinion, and then commenters can have their opinion, and thus—the status quo is upheld. (The status quo—"whore!"; "Feminism: Is It Being Set Back 30 Years?"—is just so incredibly boring.) Plus, there's a bit of bitchy media-jealousy thrown in—"she only did this article to make a name for herself, etc." Yeah, so?
From Pilot's Facebook page:
"After I wrote a first-person exploratory expose, an independent report I spent a year on profiling high-end call girls, and posing as one myself, for the love of the "gonzo" form. The reactions, once published were beyond my expectations. Though there were plenty of readers and editors who support me, those who chose to question my journalistic intent did so, quite viciously....Here's an excerpt from one well-known blogger, who met me on a Sunday, and interviewed me for over an hour about my experience, reporting on call-girls, and to discuss my thoughts on the mixed reactions from readers who read my piece:
Blogger Babe 1: "How important to you is it to have this interview published? Honestly i dont think it's going to do much in the blogosphere, and i'm not sure it's right for my blog — although of course i respect you and think you discuss your topics and work intelligently but, i've been doing this for a while, and I'm pretty sure the only way this material would attract attention— if it does — would be in a negative way. if they find something to make fun of again, or just use it as a platform to go on the same old rants. I dont think we're going to change anyone's opinion I'm tired and don't have time (sorry — it's the truth!) 2. it's not quite the right content for us 3. if it was really critical to you, i'd do it, but i dont think it is."
The other blogger acknowledged that I am not in fact, a "desperate, young aspiring journalist", who wrote a story about the oldest, still most taboo profession, just to make a name for herself", but all told—-said she couldn't publicly acknowledge this."
Honestly, I don't know who the blog editors she's referring to are, but if her re-telling is accurate, you all sound like a bunch of little old ladies. Also: doesn't anyone here ever want to read about worlds they have no access to and know little to nothing of? That's basically what the piece was about.
Oh, you know who wrote a really great investigative book about prostitution—from low-end street girls to the highest levels of prostitution and pimping? (At the highest levels, it was explained, very little money changes hands.) Gail Sheehy—wife of the late New York magazine founder Clay Felker and successful writer in her own right. I'm pretty sure she did not have to deal with this bullshit when her investigation about the landlords of the prostitution hotels in Hell's Kitchen was published—but only because blogs weren't invented yet in the 1975.
Hologram Ushers You Into Best Buy [Advertising] .
Hm, how to grab shoppers' attention in the cavernous Mall of America, without having to pay some kid $7 an hour to stand there passing out fliers? A hologram man, sent from the future! It's only a matter of time now until Terminator-like robots patrol our nation's food courts, gesturing menacingly with their whirring appendages, their fixed gaze wordlessly urging you to check out the new Sears bathmat sale at the price of your life. For now, though: Best Buy employee holograms. Watch the ghostly salesman give his ever-repeating spiel, below:
Find more videos like this on AdGabber[via Adrants]
The Mock Cover [Advertising] .
The spoof cover is an increasingly popular way to establish a character. Witness the fake issue of Wired flashed on the screen during a video tribute to Iron Man's arms manufacturer, Robert Downey's character, Tony Stark. HBO rival Showtime has borrowed the technique to advertise the new season of their tentpole show, the serial-killer drama Dexter, sacrificing a little authenticity for branding impact: Dexter's name is rendered in the style of the Wired and Rolling Stone logos, but replaces the magazines' names. (One assumes these fake covers will run on the back pages of the respective magazines.) But our current favorite is the mini-issue at the back of the latest Advertising Age, a 16-page 1960s version of the ad trade mag designed to promote AMC's critically-acclaimed show Mad Menâand Initiative, the agency that organized the innovative campaign. A scan after the jump:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Real Men Eat Brains [Advertising] .
Ha, Wendy's is being humorous with its new "Meatatarians" ad campaign, cause it's like, fuck vegetables, eat cows! "Our goal is to continue our dominance atop the food chain," reads the website, which has no content except a box for Meatatarians to sign up for mass emails from Wendy's. You won't see any cows signing up. Now who's smart?
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Seriously, who isn't returning their library books? The failure to return borrowed books is a very real, very pressing problem these days. We've brought you two jail-time examples of rogue library borrowers this week alone. Now we've received a list of various offenders from the fuzz—a Southern library is being robbed of their possession of something called The Amazing Panda Adventure! Don't worry: the police department is on the case.
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Art Or Dumb, Or Both? [Banksy] .
This particular new Banksy piece in New Orleans that we posted earlier today is a statement on the city's aggressive art-buffing practices, so of course it has already been painted over. But in the most head-scratching way possible. Idiotic example of the power structure missing the point, or the work of a sympathetic city worker? Or just more art? Click through for before and after pics:
Retailer Pulls Catalogs With Death Camp-Thin Models—Can We Get Some Pictures? [Body Issues] .
The president of a venerable Montreal retailer is pulling some 450,000 of the the store's catalogs because he decided the models were too thin. Says Peter Simons of La Maison Simons, who claims he was on vacation when the catalogs were printed: "We are into social responsibility here.... I'm fully aware of what it is and I'm taking full responsibility⦠It's my job to ensure that we are a constructive actor in the community. I should have done better. I should have seen it." Well, holy overblown contrition, Pete, it's not like you asked the models to watch you masturbate like I hear is the retailing executive custom up there in Montreal! In any case, this is the most emaciated-looking picture I could find on the internet from the La Maison Simons catalog — its private label is called "Twik" — so for good measure thought I'd go back and upload my favorite pic from the pages of that other great publication and crusader against eating disorders, Teen Vogue.
That's more like it!
"I Didn't Do It" [Michael Phelps] .
Fleeting fame continues! Michael Phelps, the richly be-medaled Olympian and Ariel the mermaid's half brother, will be making a cameo on HBO's Entourage this season. He could teach Vincent Chase a few things about pulling chicks, I'm sure. You know, when in the confines of a little village in a foreign country.
The Only 90 Seconds of Convention Coverage You Need to Watch [Conventional Wisdom] .
Missed the convention so far? Want to know what all the fuss is about? Truthfully it's a series of mediocre-to-decent speeches and then hours and hours and HOURS of utter bullshit. The speeches are too long anyway, so our video department cut the whole thing down to 90 seconds. You got your Michelle Obama, your Ted Kennedy, your Clintons, and, of course, the next President of the United States, Dennis Kucinich. Enjoy!
Chris Matthews's Groundbaking Speech [Freudian Slips] .
The appearance of a giant pot-leaf poster and an "IMPEACH BUSH" skull behind Chris Matthews must have flustered him, given what he said next...
BREAKING NEWS! [Conventional Wisdom] .
Rafael Smith, 4, is believed by his mother and numerous Olan Mills employees to resemble the Democratic presidential candidate. No seriously that is a story.
Obama Speech Media Hierarchy: Losers And Winners [Working 'with' The Press] .
Not all reporters are created equal at Invesco Field, where Barack Obama is about to close out the Democratic National Convention. John Koblin at the Observer printed a seating chart (left) and gave a rundown on the winners and losers. It looks like the Obama campaign continues to snub the New Yorker for its controversial parody cover, sitting the magazine's correspondents in worse seats than Jezebel/Glamour (team Megan!), the Nation and the New Republic. More delightfully, the campaign totally dissed those conssumate insiders at Vanity Fair, "which is stuck in the back row in Section J" behind basically everyone except the Gotham tabloids. Ha ha, I guess the entire free world is not actually obsessed with getting into the Waverly or your damned Oscar party, Graydon Carter! After the jump, early chatter among reporters, plus a list of seating winners.
Winners:
- The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post — they get 50-yard-line seats. It's noteworthy the Journal wasn't made to pay for its rabidly right-wing editorial page. Likely explanation: Murdoch is an "Obahh-mer" booster these days.
- Megan Carpentier, at the convention on behalf of Glamour and Jezebel (and formerly of Wonkette!). "One very pleased writer, Carpentier... couldn't be happier to be a few seats closer to the front of the podium than Mother Jones' David Corn and Portfolio's Matt Cooper, both writers sitting to her left... 'This is amazing! It's so completely random."
- Politico. Parity with Time and ahead of the New Yorker and New Republic is not at all bad for an 18-month-old publication.
From the press box, via Jezebel's liveblog:
9:00 ET: Michael McDonald is killing the crowd, and not in a good way. Most common journalist question: "Who the hell is that guy?" The New York Times David Carr comes in with the assist from down the row: Doobie brothers.[Observer]
Obama's Elegant Dance ['Something Is Stirring'] .
It was a tricky rhetorical path before Barack Obama at the close of the Democratic National Convention Thursday and he walked it artfully. The official Democratic presidential nominee bashed John McCain hard, including rather boldly on McCain's core issue of Iraq, where the Republican opponent feels strong. The tens of thousands of hard-core Democrats at Invesco Field in Denver, all worked up into a frenzy, ate it up. Then there were The Bitters watching on their non-flat-screen TVs at home in swing states, who were reminded that McCain called them all "whiners" (so much worse than "bitter!"), that McCain wants to tax their benefits for healthcare, that Obama supports corporate welfare to teach GM how to make hybrids and that Obama's not going to coddle all these illegal Mexicans "undercutting" their wages. But the heart of the performance came toward the end.
Obama, having attacked McCain forcefully and thus corrected a key failing of his predecessor John Kerry, and having done a little careful pandering, still managed to make a signature call for something big and noble and important and post-partisan, a change of the terms for debate and thus HOPEful. He promised not to chalk McCain's positions up to ulterior political motives (over/under on how soon he regrets this?). Then he threaded the needle with the impressive "something is stirring" section of his speech, in the video below (the highlight of the speech, really).
THEN Obama managed to tie everything in to the anniversary or Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech without making himself sound sappy and exploitive, probably because he never used the routinely co-opted words "I Have A Dream:"
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UPDATE: Here's the part where Obama tells a story about his grandmother and then amoothly converts it into an emotionally-powerful slap back at McCain's line that Obama is like a "celebrity."
Will MSNBC anchors still draw massive ratings gains yelling at each other in Obama's post-partisan world, or is everyone so tired of the viciousness (as Obama seems to be betting) that CNN will OWN the Obama years in the event he wins the presidency? Unclear. But it in the meantime it's a refreshing change to watch a speech from a national politician that sounds so darn earnest, nuanced and (once again) just reasonable.
Enough With The Sweet Talk [Marketing] .
So this is what Barack meant by "it's about you." I feel so used!
The Perks Of Magazine Ownership [Dead Trees] .
The magazine industry is facing one of "its worst beatings in years" amid the economic downturn, circulation declines and general print media weakness. The smart, aspiring media mogul heads straight for the internet rather than try to recreate Spy or some other once-esteemed dead-trees publication, as he might have 20 years ago. But that's not to say running a magazine is without its privileges, particularly for an aggressive owner like BlackBook's Ari Horowitz. Horowitz recently made the tabloids for hosting "shoots" and "casting calls" (ahem) for hot young models at his apartment. And now, says an insider, BlackBook staff snickering at Horowitz's Facebook profile were surprised to discover his shameless conquest of a 22-year-old NYU coed. Horowitz, pictured at left with his young flame, is just about 40. Does she do any work for BlackBook? And are there more pictures of her? Find out after the jump!
Her name, Laurel Cummings, doesn't seem to appear on the BlackBook website, but under "contact information" on her Facebook, she does list that same site. Odd.
A couple more pictures, via Horowitz and Cummings' Facebook profiles:
As once-hot novelist Jay McInerney once said, sometimes BlackBook "enjoys frolicking in the shallows." As does its owner!
(Photos via Laurel Cummings and Ari Horowitz on Facebook)
Mildly Amusing Page Six Attack On Keith Olbermann Of The Day [Feuds] .
"Olbermann 'announced that his bosses [had] better find a more secure location for him to broadcast from at the Republican National Convention or he's not going,' one insider said. 'He thinks someone will assassinate him.'" [Post]
Obama's Posse Heads Out For The Weekend [Party Unity Made Animated] .
Apparently Barack Obama left Invesco Field in a Jeep, and is now just cruising the streets of downtown Denver with his new political buddies, and they're all shopping and going to Starbucks like elitist gay fashion models. It's all in the animation after the jump, which might be some kind of Republican smear on Obama being a vapid celebrity but which also is definitely mesmerizing. A tipster found it on a message board somewhere. Enjoy!
(It might flicker at first but should smooth out after a few seconds.)
Bitchy NBC Newsers Now Jealous Of Luke Russert [Gossip Roundup] .
- Luke Russert golf-carted around the Democratic convention like some kind of boy king while his bitter coworkers had to hoof it. Obviously this rumor is made up, because everyone knows NBC correspondents air their bitter grievances only on camera. [P6]
- Jennifer Aniston will apparently guest star on an episode of 30 Rock. Then she'll start pressuring the show for commitment, dropping hints about babies and planting marriage rumors in the press until 30 Rock runs screaming out of its apartment, breaks up with her via text message and spills the whole sordid tale to the paparazzi. [Star]
- We finally got an answer to the question, "David Duchovny Why Won't You Love Me:" Because he's a sex addict. [Us]
- Michael Jackson told Good Morning America he plans to have a totally normal 50th birthday party, watching cartoons with children. He's getting so media savvy in his later years! [ABC]
- Oprah saw Obama on stage and just instantly cried so hard. "It changed my life." [ET]
- Dick Cheney lost 40 pounds. He said the workouts were torture. No, literally, he tortured people. It keeps him very limber. [P6]
- The crucial Sean Penn endorsement has gone to Barack Obama. Also, Penn totally called that Biden thing. [P6]
- Lindsay Lohan's grandfather died, and her press-hungry Dad promptly issued a statement bitching out his ex-wife for not having called him yet and wondering if she would bring Lindsay to the funeral. This was by way of saying he's not a fame-addicted media whore. The full letter is truly insane. [OK!]
Missed the convention so far? Want to know what all the fuss is about? Truthfully it's a series of mediocre-to-decent speeches and then hours and hours and HOURS of utter bullshit. The speeches are too long anyway, so our video department cut the whole thing down to 90 seconds. You got your Michelle Obama, your Ted Kennedy, your Clintons, and, of course, the next President of the United States, Dennis Kucinich. Enjoy!
The appearance of a giant pot-leaf poster and an "IMPEACH BUSH" skull behind Chris Matthews must have flustered him, given what he said next...
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