Funny, That's What Those Thai Hooker Said, Too

"This matter has caused enormous pain... This brutal ordeal is now officially over, and I will never speak of it again."
—Bill O'Reilly

The Who... Well, You Know

I know that pointing out the "irony" of The Who releasing an album called The Who Sell Out in 1967 and then selling out their every song to Madison Avenue and Hollywood is about as clever as suggesting that Alanis Morissette misunderstood the meaning of the word "Ironic." But The Who-ification of commercials, TV, movies, and trailers is starting to get out of control and it's time to put a stop to it.

Is there a single commercial in production that's not considering using a Who song? Will we see these song/product synergies in the near future?

"Fiddle About" to promote Pampers?

"Behind Blue Eyes" to promote Fresh Look color contacts? (Or does "Eyesight to the Blind" work better?)

"You Better You Bet" to promote Atlantic City tourism?

"Tommy Can You Hear Me?" to promote hearing aids?

"Squeeze Box" to promote laser vaginal rejuvenation surgery?

Really, Pete and Roger: We've all just "Had Enough."

Balloon Man

Rhys Ifans in Enduring Love and its prequel Danny Deckchair

Rhys Ifans' new film, Enduring Love, is a charming sequel to his even charminger Danny Deckchair, in which Mr. Ifans' relationship with ballooning is further explored. Up next for Mr. Ifans? Maria Full of Grace 2.

Man Underwhelmed

Gentle Ben: Man, you don't look so good.

You survived Christmas... You collected your Paycheck... But are you ready for Ben Affleck's next cinematic blast of explosive diarrhea, Man About Town?

Currently filming in lovely Vancouver, Man also stars Oscar and Nobel Prize nominees Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Amber Valletta, and Gina Gershon, and, oddly, Air America Radio's own Sam Seder. (Sam, Sam, Sam. Well, I guess you and Ben are having some good talks about John Kerry.)

But if these names—and BEN AFFLECK—aren't enough to pump you up for this film, maybe its writer, director, and co-star will: Mike Binder!

You know, he of the sub-sub-sub-Woody Allen knock-offs The Sex Monster and Londinium (straight to cable and straight to your funny bone!), and HBO's second funniest show (after Arli$$, natch) The Mind of the Married Man! (Why only one season, HBO? Now we'll never know if Binder's character Micky Barnes ever followed through on that apt metaphor for the entire show and got that full-release massage or not.)

I for one cannot wait to see the one-two comedy punch of Binder and Affleck. Oh, and did I mention that it also stars the coolest teacher at "Manhattan High School," Howard Hesseman? Well it does!

Truly, this will be a Man in full!

Sure, The Red Sox Won. But Can Jimmy Fallon Break the SNL Movie Career Curse?

Roger "I Don't Just Flack for Harvey" Friedman reports:

"[Y]es, that was Fallon caught live on Fox extravagantly kissing a blonde who looked a lot like Drew Barrymore on the field right after the Red Sox won the World Series...The reason for their appearance: Jimmy and Drew are filming a new movie called 'Fever Pitch' about an obsessed Red Sox fan and the girl he loves."

Directed by the Farrelly brothers from a script adapted by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. Heart, prepare to be warmed!

The Scariest Part Is the Con-Ed Bill

"Candy? We spent all our money on lights. Lights are like candy for your eyes."

Related: "...sweet crude oil down $2.71 a barrel to $52.46." Mmmm.... Sweet crude oil.

I am Jack's dated movie tie-in

Coming soon to your pretentious "anti-establishment" best friend's smoke-filled rec room: Fight Club: The Game from that bastion of anti-authoritianism, Vivendi Universal Games. (FOX must've passed on it since it destroyed Bill Mechanic's career.)

So put down that dog-eared Hunter S. Thompson book and pick up your PS2 controller, you rebel. It's time to tear this whole fucking system down: from your couch!

Yes, in fully-pixelated glory, it's a recreation of the dilapidated yard you grew to love so much with your repeated DVD viewings of David Fincher's Fight Club...you remember the film, right? It came out in, ummm, 1999?

And there's that beautifully grimy, dimly-lit basement! It's almost as if Chuck Palahniuk himself is getting all up in your face, ready to pummel it into oblivion.

God. There's Meat Loaf, in what surely has to be his first-ever appearance on an X-Box or PS2.

And in the vein of a good self-help group session, video game fans are congregating and clamoring for changes to the way in which this particular one is played. From the manufacturer's forums:

"Wouldn't it have been awesome if, after the fight, both fighters, completely covered in bruises and blood would hug each other? That would have been so much funnier and different than all the other crappy fighting gmes target to pre-adolescent rap-boys with Girls, Money and Power on their minds.

VU, you missed your shot to create something truely [sic.] special.

Hey, man! The first rule of Fight Club is you do not reveal the queer subtext of Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is you DO NOT reveal the queer subtext of Fight Club. The third rule of Fight Club is take off your shirt and let's grapple.

Eh, Not So Much

Is this another prank from those tricky Canadians at Vice?

If it is, it's not so funny, but it's better than the whole "We're white supremacists" thing.

If it's not... I guess that's why it's not funny at all.

Notes Towards an Election Week Mix Tape

"The Final Countdown," Europe

"Political World," Bob Dylan

"Power to the People," John Lennon

"It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," REM

"Welcome to the Terrordome," Public Enemy

"Help!," The Beatles

"The Power," Snap

"I Started a Joke," The Bee Gees

"Whistle When You're Low," Cancer Boy

"Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind," Lovin' Spoonful

"Manic Depression," Jimi Hendrix

"Heroes," David Bowie

"A Change is Gonna Come," Sam Cooke

"Authority Song," John Mellencamp

"You're a Big Girl Now," The Stylistics (for Dubya)

Question: What's on yours?

Despite This, You Should Still Vote

Green Party: Punks Dead and Your Next [sic.]

Earlier: Another counterculture icon for participatory democracy

It's Been A Long Campaign Season

July 29, 2004... October 21, 2004

We're all sagging a bit, but we can pull through, people!

Chomsky Shrugged

Bipartisancurious Andrew Sullivan seems to strain credulity a bit with this passage in his endorsement of John Kerry:

Does Kerry believe in this war? Skeptics say he doesn't. They don't believe he has understood the significance of September 11. They rightly point to the antiwar and anti-Western attitudes of some in his base--the Michael Moores and Noam Chomskys who will celebrate a Kerry victory.

Frankly, we find it somewhat difficult to imagine the dour MIT linguist celebrating anything, especially the election of John Kerry, whom Chomsky endorsed, if anything, more reservedly and reluctantly than Sullivan did.

New Scandal Rocks Washington!

Canadian receives prestigious Mark Twain Prize!

Earlier: 3 out of 4 Canadians are criminally insane

My Big Fat Ancient Greek Word

How does a writer make himself or herself sound real smart? Use big words!

"Lonnie Hanover, the club's publicist, began talking to the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and the New York Observer about the calls from Republican delegations and the “big name entertainers” who would be specially imported for their ecdysiastic needs," Live Nude Girls: Undercover at the RNC, by Mara Hvistendahl, The Philadelphia Independent, Oct. 2004. [via Gawker]
* * *
"GINA Gershon really threw herself into her latest role in 'Prey for Rock & Roll,' portraying a sexy songbird who frequents ecdysiastic establishments. The brunette beauty had no problem getting into character, reports our spy who sighted her at Scores. In "Prey," she fronts the not-so-subtly named all-girl group Clamdandy and reprises some of the sapphic shenanigans she last performed in 'Bound' and 'Showgirls,' Page Six, by Richard Johnson, et. al, The New York Post, Aug. 26, 2003.

Thanks for making us all sound a little more literate, Mr. Mencken

Suggested:: callipygous.

Related: Ecdysiastic.com.

Dino's List

Dino Stamatopoulos: He puts the grrrrr in Totally Obscure Comedy Cult Figure

The best part of the new Mr. Show with Bob and David season 4 DVD? The obligatory blooper reel of course.

But more specifically, the really best part is the fetishy tribute to show writer, producer, and sometime actor Dino Stamatopoulos that shows him riding his chopper, mucking around in a lake, and flubbing his one line in the excellent Amadeus parody "Philouza." ("There's Philouza!")

If Bob and David are the Lennon/McCartney of sketch comedy, Dino's the Frank Zappa: weird, obscure, beloved by a legion of creepy fans who obsess over his ouvre like members of a secret society— and then there are Dino's questionable Zappa-esque grooming choices. He's probably the funniest person you've never heard of.

If a show was funny, Dino has probably had his grubby hands in it: The Ben Stiller Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, TV Funhouse. (Memo to Comedy Central: Put that show on DVD post haste!) He's even had his hands in some not so funny shows: Take MAD TV. Please, take it.

Listen to the commentary tracks for Ben Stiller or Mr. Show and you'll see: It's Dino's world, we just laugh at it.

"There's Philouza!": He finally nails it.

Related: Fun Bunch Comedy

John Peel's a Dead Cunt

John Ravenscroft, aka John Peel, legendary Radio One DJ, is dead of a heart attack. Pirate radio DJ, punk patron and OBE, Peel, according to legend, was the first DJ to play a record twice in a row. Download mp3's of recent Peel Sessions here.

Peel on Peel Sessions:

Over the years we've had almost everybody, except the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, of the kind of big bands of the past. More recently Oasis, I never really thought Oasis were much good to be honest, so they didn't do one. Whereas Blur did a couple of times. My favourites would be fairly obscure things - the two sessions the Slits did during the punk era which were just magical, I thought, were just terrific. Oh, there have been so many. There have been so few that have been bad, it’s amazing, really, when you consider how many have been done. Many thousands now. Very few of them have been disappointing. The Clash did half one, and then amazingly said that the equipment in the studio wasn't up to the standards that they'd expected so they couldn't complete the session. Which seemed to me to be unbearably pretentious of them.

Lies, Falsehoods, and Total Fabrications, vol. 2

The lies will out...

At least six real-life crimes have been solved by actors from CSI.

There are four yoga poses that cause instant death: powerful members of the yoga community will not release the names of which ones.

If left in a bottle of Snapple overnight, a penny will completely dissolve.

In 1973, General Motors patented an engine that runs on ground up kittens: The ASPCA has prevented them from ever releasing it.

3 out of 4 Canadians are criminally insane.

Earlier: Lies, Falsehoods, and Total Fabrications, vol. 1

'Perf' Post Piece Sends Circ Soaring

Gays, Dogs, Scissors: You just can't make this shit up!

Today's a red letter day for The New York Post. They finally printed the Platonic ideal of Post stories.

No, I'm not talking about Steve Dunleavy's heartfelt tribute to his Iraq-bound son/critique of John Kerry. (Though, that piece is pretty close to ideal for The Post.)

I'm talking about Chris Wilson's 'Gay' Dogfight, which manages to set-off almost all of the paper's hot-buttons and embody everything we look for in a 25-cent birdcage liner. To wit:

¶Violence: Nothing gets the morning blood flowing like some violence in the paper. The New York Times has some story about some crap in Iraq, but the post has this: "He just kept stabbing me. At first I thought he was punching me, until I felt all the blood dripping down. He kept saying, 'I want to kill you! Why don't you just die already?'...The scissors were open, so every time he stabbed me, it was like getting stabbed twice."

¶Celebrities: "They regularly groomed J.Lo's cocker spaniel, Boots, and Janet Jackson's Rottweiler, Reilly. They also primped P. Diddy's canine posse: Sofie, the Maltese terrier; Honey, the Shar-Pei; and Lady, the Shih Tzu." J.Lo and P. Diddy? And their dogs? Wow, wow, and bow-wow!

¶Hilarious Homos: "The former partners — considered to be among the city's top pet groomers — penned the 'Queer Eye for the Scruffy Dog' column for The New York Dog magazine." These guys are like real-life versions of Scott Donlan and Stefan Vanderhoof from Best in Show!

¶Puns: Not only does Wilson get to use puns like "the fur flew" and "animal attraction," but the alleged attacker and victim ran a company called Doggie-Doo and Pussycats, Too!. C'mon! You can't make up puns like that. Actually, I guess you can.

¶Quotation Marks: We get a 'double dose' of patented Post quote marks: Gay 'Dogfight' (hed) and Celeb groomer 'stabs' his lover (sub-hed). Why the quotes around 'stab'? I guess it's not a real stabbing if it's gay dudes.

While this is a Platonically ideal Post piece, I sort of wish they could've fit in a slam at The New York Daily News circ numbers, John Kerry, and a trendspotting exposé about something six months old. Luckily, the rest of the paper comes to the rescue.

So, kudos to Chris Wilson and the editors of The New York Post for this story: Keep up the great work and our 25-cents will be yours every single day, except Saturday when the paper's thinner than a fax sheet. And Sundays, when it's 50-cents, and twice as worthless.

Fan, Meet Shit

TIME, Nov. 1, 2004... The Day After, 1983

Related: Anyone else out there get sent home with a note from your elementary school principal warning your parents not to let kids watch The Day After when it aired on TV?

Question for The New York Post Photo Department

Did you use this picture of the Olsen twins' Saturday Night Live parody of The Swan:

a) To be funny?
b) To piss off your corporate sister network?
c) Totally and completely by mistake?
d) All of the above.
e) None of the above.

Is Ashlee Wired?

SNL Moderator Jude Law introduces the second address from Ashlee [sic] Simpson.

Fun pose has been struck, appealing to "security moms" and suggesting Ashlee's [sic] opening statement is about to begin.

Pre-recorded vocal track neglects to kick in, sending Ashlee [sic] into a series of uncomfortable smirks and horrifying dance moves.

As Ashlee [sic] leaves the stage a bulge is clearly visible from the rear. Could this be the result of a puckering in her Lucky Brand jeans, a wireless mic, or an especially large mole?

Marshall stacks and audio cables are evident. Ashlee's [sic] shadowy backers attempt to maintain the facade that they are playing live.

Previous thoughts on Ashlee Simpson.

But That's the Name of Scott Ritter's Book

Lizz Winstead's advice to Jon Stewart, from If You Interview Kissinger, Are You Still a Comedian?, by Damian Cave, The New York Times, Oct. 24, 2004:

"Jon should be the guy who asks the satirical questions... He wouldn't have to nail someone and make them uncomfortable, but since Jon is so brilliant at being satirical, why not say to Richard Perle on the show, 'Did you ever think of calling your book 'Confessions of a Chicken Hawk?' "

Related: One more Kissinger mention and my next coffee's free!

Really Related: Winstead chatted with Kurt Andersen about this very topic in Mother Jones in May/June (it was a long chat):

KA: Speaking of The Daily Show, I'm always impressed by how comfortably Jon Stewart interviews Kissinger or even Richard Perle.

LW: Jon's tremendous. I feel, though, when you are interviewing a Richard Perle or a Kissinger, if you give them a pass, then you become what you are satirizing. You have a war criminal sitting on your couch—to just let him be a war criminal sitting on your couch means you are having to respect some kind of boundary.
[...]
KA: But Vietnam happened longer ago. Cambodia happened longer ago.

LW: I think that illegal bombings and massacres have more weight.

KA: So did that disappoint you, when Jon Stewart was nice to Kissinger?

LW: I don't mean that you would necessarily need to grill Kissinger. But to let it go.…

KA: So you should jokingly say, "Say, Dr. Kissinger, what about those 2 million dead Cambodians…?"

LW: Exactly! As a way to say something. To me, it seems like the elephant in the room.

Yay! Free coffee time!

Dubya the Dread

What happened to you, Christopher? You used to be cool.

Why I'm (Slightly) for Bush, by Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, Oct. 21, 2004.

Related: Well, Comrade Hitchens has endorsed worse.

[via Jimmy "Dyno-mite! Wolcott]

Actually, You Can Just Skip That First Step

low culture Exclusive: Bill O'Reilly's Internet Bookmarks

Foxnews.com>O'Reilly Factor
The Weekly Standard
The National Review>The Corner
ABCNews>The Note
Chemistry Store>Loofahs
Peabody Award>Definition
Lucy Liu Pictures high resolution
Boycottliberalism.com>Top Ten Liberal Lies
Funny Stuff>Racist Jokes
The Minor Fall, The Major Lift
Famous Idiot>Alec Baldwin
Barbrastreisand.com
AlFrankenWeb.com>Fox vs. Franken Transcript
Amazon.com>Books>The New Sensual Massage
Dictionary>Bloviate
Opinionjournal.com
Amazon.com>Books>Those Who Trespass
Spectator.net>Chasing the Dream Girls of Bangkok

Best. Google. Search String. Ever.

Ann+Coulter+Creampie

My favorite part is the little survey NBC41.com saw fit to include: Should these men have been arrested?
No, it was just pie.
Yes, they attacked her.

Survey said?! No, they should be beatified.
[via Gawker]

Well, That's Like 40 Votes Right There

The Polyphonic Spree endorse Bush/Cheney.

Unintended Irony Alert

From imdb's Movie & TV News:

Ricky Martin Blasts Child Sex Tourism
Martin says, "This is slavery and this is the year 2004 and we are still dealing with it. There is a lot of denial. I want to see abolition of this slavery. I need to see the world step out of denial and see this happening here."

From Kidzworld.com's Ricky Martin Bio Page:

Ricky Martin's first real glimpse of the spotlight came when he landed a spot in the teen Latin pop group Menudo. Ricky Martin tried out when he was 10, but didn't make the group 'til he was 12 cuz they thought he was too young. Ricky Martin spent five years with the band and left in 1989, feeling burnt out and wanting a change.

Move Over, Tragedy. Hello, Farce!

"I'm sure the gift shop's right around here somewhere."

Perhaps the worst trip idea I've ever heard of: a 16 day Apocalypse Now-theme vacation in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Really, which is a worse experience to retrace: The fictional journey (random shooting, freak-outs, beheadings, explosions) or the cinematic journey (typhoons, heart attacks, bankruptcy)? Have fun! Don't forget to write!

As creepy as this is, I guess it's better than The Sorrow and the Pity Parisian Excursion, The Silkwood Seniors' Weekend, or The Alive Andes Adventure.

[via Green Cine Daily]

Beyond the Valley of the Pols

Reaching for votes in Iowa

Reaching for pills in Valley of the Dolls.

"Query": Gayest low culture entry ever? Nope and noper.

Worst Choke Ever

I'm not surprised, but now that it's actually happening, it's worse than I thought it would be. This is the worst choke since the drummer from Spinal Tap choked on someone else's vomit.

EARLIER: Post-Imperial Melancholy

2BR, 1.5 BTH, WBFP, NO CLOSETS

McGreevey's Wife, Going Her Own Way, Buys a Home of Her Own

Thank you! We'll be here all week!

You Know, From Hookers or Kissinger or Whomever

"[C]alling me a d- -k or making fun of my bow tie is not gonna rattle my cage. It's not like I haven't heard that before." — Tucker Carlson, quoted in Page Six.

Post-Imperial Melancholy

It is clear that the Red Sox will soon delight their long-suffering fans by reaching the World Series for the first time since 1986. We applaud them for their historic comeback, as much as it irks us to lose to them, of all teams.

Undoubtedly, there are many readers who have no sympathy for the Yankee fan, and not merely the joyous citizens of the so-called Red Sox Nation. To fans of all other baseball teams, the Yankees and their fans appear much as Americans appear to the citizens of all other nations -- spoiled with obscene prosperity that they then, adding insult to injury, proceed not merely to enjoy, but to expect, at all costs. To the rest of the baseball world, the Yankees are the hyperpower, led by a boasting, undiplomatic, bloviating madman named George, using their tremendously disproportionate wealth to tilt the playing field in their favor and to insidiously appropriate the resources of the less fortunate.

When the Yankees are humbled, it is a time to rejoice -- not merely for the partisans of the side that has bested them, but also for all those who feel that the Yankees' extraordinary success has led, in one way or another, to their own failure, in the same way that many in the world rejoice when the United States fails. Recall the reaction of the French(y) intellectual Jean Baudrillard to the attacks of September 11th:

[W]e have dreamed of this event, ... everybody without exception has dreamt of it, because everybody must dream of the destruction of any power hegemonic to that degree.... It is almost they who did it, but we who wanted it.

Could this not express the reaction of all the Yankee-haters in the land this day?

Of course, this analogy has limits -- I don't want to take this too far into the absurd and suggest that the Red Sox and their fans hate freedom in quite the same way that terrorists or Frenchmen (quelle est la différence?) do. And in contradistinction to the ruler of the United States, the autocrat of the Yankees demands accountability from those to whom he entrusts the pursuit of his goals -- he's even been known to fire people from time to time.

But as New Yorkers discovered in the fall of 2001 -- in September, and once again, in November -- as much success as you may have had, as pleasant as your life may have been compared to the suffering of others, when you are hurt, you feel the pain all the same.

EARLIER: Rooting for the Overdog

An All-Star Cast

"Gary goes through the usual three-act gamut of rivalry (with a puppet whose resemblance to Seann William Scott is surely intentional), romance (with a puppet whose resemblance to Elisabeth Shue is probably not), self-doubt and redemption, much of it set to music."
—A.O. Scott, The New York Times.

"[H]is performance as John, the actor-phobic Team member is the best of Aaron Eckhart's career."
—Greg Allen, Greg.org.

"The team's control-room chief, Spottswoode, a white-haired bureaucrat in the James Mason mold, never loses his stentorian cool, even when he's commanding Gary to, uh, go down for his country."
—Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly.

"What's different is that, yes, the hero is a puppet, and you can see his strings. And he's not a fighter pilot, he's a Broadway actor, recruited by a Charlton Heston-like figure with an omnipresent highball to save the world with his ACTING by infiltrating an Islamic terrorist group."
—David Edelstein, Slate.

Yes, But He Was Still Funnier That Night Than Jimmy Fallon Was in Taxi

Astronaut Jones: Blast off! For fun and adventure.

According to the (criminally Pulitzer Prize-free) reporters at Page Six:

FORMER Saturday Night Live star Tracy Morgan had an embarrassing episode at Suede last Thursday night. A spywitness tells us the highly intoxicated comic stripped off his shirt, crawled around on all fours and vomited on the floor before concerned friends eventually carried him out of the club. It wasn't the first time Morgan melted down during a night on the town — he's still banned from Madame X after a drunken debacle there a few years back. Morgan's manager did not return calls.

Confidential to Tracy: Pull it together, man. Your destiny is not here.

When Life Sort of (But Not Quite) Imitates Satire

low culture, January 22, 2004:

The Believer, October 2004:

For our younger readers, the man on the right is Howard Dean.

Why Are These Men Smiling?

Rakes' Progress: Jude Law and Mick Jagger (and Jude Law, background)

You'd be smiling too if you slept with half the women in the world and your buddy slept with the other half.

Hack Writers, Start Your Puns

Tomorrow, NBC premieres the latest entry in the decline of Western Civilization Reality TV genre, The Biggest Loser in which some people do something to win some money or maybe something else. It's gonna be awesome—or something.

Since most TV critics are filing their reviews with their editors right about now, I thought I'd offer them some help with their inevitable shitty puns and fat jokes. Feel free to use any of the following phrases in your articles or headlines, or um, become a better writer:

·Fat Tuesday
·Weighty Matter
·Light-Weight Entertainment
·Thick as Thieves
·Chubby-Hubby
·The Weight Is Over
·Big Men and Women on Campus
·Fat of the Land
·Big, Fat Obnoxious [Anything]
·Big, Fat Hit
·Weighed Down
·Heavy/Meta
·Well-Rounded Cast
·Fatty Ass-heads
·Must Eat TV
·Hungry for Ratings
·Fat Chance
·Battle of the Bulge
·Thin Premise
·Fat Sells
·Big Competition
·Chubby Reign
·Waist of Airtime
·Devouring the Competition
·Chewing the Scenery
·Broad Humor
·The Thickest Link
·Livin' Large
·Large and in Charge
·Wide Margin
·Fat of the Land
·Meaty
·Morbidly [Anything]
·Gut-Busting
·Phat

When Oscar Met Jesus

"Hollywood, with its Jewish roots, did not experience The Passion as a transcendent religious and emotional event, as so many other viewers did. Some haven't forgiven Gibson for even making the film, let alone forgotten his father, Hutton, and his inflammatory statements about the history of the Jews. 'I'll tell you why The Passion won't be nominated,' snaps one industry executive. 'Happily, there are too many people in the Academy who believe the Holocaust actually happened.'"

Will Oscar Listen?, Sean Smith, Newsweek, Oct. 25, 2004.

A Woman Without Qualities

These titles were already taken, but are just as good:

Fuck You Too

Bitch

Skinny Women Are Evil

If I'm So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Single?

Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash

The Ultimate Book of Useless Information

Sleaze

Please Kill Me

It's a Simple Formula, Really

'World Police' Creators Say Anger = Publicity

Easy as ABC!

Last Derrida Post Ever

We couldn't help but notice that since we issued our "modest defense" of Jacques Derrida, various arms of the media empire seem to have rethought their initial scorn towards the late French philosopher and his work. This critical reappraisal is most apparent in the New York Times, which offers this panegyric, revealing, among other things, that Derrida gave carnival masks to young children of American academics.

The Guardian has a more diverse sampling of opinion from across the pond, some pro and some con.

Less hagiographically sympathetic (and somewhat saucier) than the Times op-ed is Marco Roth's piece in the upstart literary journal n+1, which has the virtue of describing a hot chick with whom the author attended Derrida's lectures in Paris:

...I watched the raven haired girl who always wore a miniskirt and a fur coat, the sort of Parisienne I fantasized about meeting before my trip. She filled line after line of graph paper in a neat miniscule hand, never stopping. She seemed to be able to take him down verbatim. At the end, she would dash out of the hall. Where?

To sum up, the new media consensus seems to be "Derrida: Not Necessarily A Pernicious Nihilist Who Threatened The Very Foundation Of Western Society And Cutlture." And, as always, dear reader, you heard it here first.

EARLIER: Confessions of a Teenage Deconstructionist

EVEN EARLIER: Jacques Derrida, 1930-2004

Why... Is Michelle Malkin the New Jadakiss?

Malkin and Kiss... Why?

The many questions of Michelle Malkin:

How... many hate crime anecdotes does it take before the mainstream media spot a trend?

But what... happens when the targets are the wrong kind of victim?

What... happens when conservatives and Republicans are on the receiving end of discriminatory threats or harassment or worse?

Hello..., reporters?

Is... anybody home?

Is... it my imagination or do I hear pins dropping in the grievance corners of America's otherwise victim-friendly newsrooms?

Can... I get a hair appointment and pedicure before appearing on Scarborough Country on Friday?

Will... The pedicurist be an immigrant?

Should... I cancel it if she is?

Why... is my Amazon rank so low?

Holy Shit, We Need to Get Ourselves One of These Blog Things

The Internets are on fire today, man. As they say in Latin, ¡en fuego, hombre!

First comes this excellent article from a newspaper called The New York Sun that not only tells us about blogs, but finally—finally!—explains that "jumping the shark" phrase our 15 year-old cousin always uses. (It has something to do with Happy Days.) There's also an excellent little primer about a show called Oz, which we're definitely gonna watch this week.

The article, by a writer named Eric Wolff (remember that name!), is all about a website called Gawker, which we plan to check out after we have our morning coffee! It also answers the age old question: Who gives the best soundbites, Condé Nast editorial assistants, or 'cyber-hostesses'? (It's a draw! They both bring the noise and the bite!)

Then there's this Tom Scocca piece from The New York Observer about a guy who runs a site called The Minor Fall, The Major Lift (definitely gotta check his stuff out) who was once annonymous but is now going by his real name, Alex Balk! Plus, he's now writing for The New York Times! Like other bloggers! (Memo to self: Pick up the Times this weekend on the way to brunch!)

What's exciting about this (and warrants all these exclamation points!!!) is that we can now see that far from being an annonymous wag, this Balk fellow was actually hiding in plain site all along, submitting to a website called McSweeneys and playing along on the Slate News Quiz with Emmy-winning TV writers and producers! Next Major Lift, Hollywood!?!

Phew! This entry has fairly knocked us out (we topped off our exclamation point quota in the second paragraph!), and now we're off to go figure out how to get one of these blogs set up. Our 15 year-old cousin is great with computers, and we think the "domain" JackieHarvey.com is still available!

As they say in Latin, Excelsior!

Rooting for the Overdog

As gratifying as it is to win these games, they have become so excessively fraught that to watch them is emotionally taxing in the extreme. I thought I'd be able to relax and get some work done when the Yankees opened up an eight run lead, but the Red Sox regrouped, metastasized, and emerged with a deadlier-than-ever assault. Clearly, they pose a threat that requires constant vigilance. Some day, they will win -- perhaps tomorrow. It's not a question of if, but when.

It may be unpopular and controversial to put it this way, but I think we have to get back to the place we were, where the Red Sox are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. We're never going to end this rivalry. But we've got to reduce it to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and it's not threatening the fabric of your life.

We Love Disney, We Love It Not...

Can a mindless paper be of two minds on a given subject? This is an ontological question worthy of the world's best existential detectives.

But when it comes to a force as polarizing as the mighty mouse, who can blame them for being a bit schizo in their coverage? That, or the editors don't even read their own rag. Either way, Michael Eisner is going to be very angry... Then very happy... But then angry again... Followed by happy.

Love 'Em	Hate 'Em
THE ROLE OF A WIFE-TIME, by Don Kaplan. "The hottest star of fall's hottest show is no longer desperate — or a housewife. "'Desperate Housewives' sexpot Eva Longoria, recently divorced from her actor hubby, Tyler Christopher, is having trouble realizing she's catapulted from unknown soap-opera actress to bona fide star. "'I haven't gotten my head around it,' Longoria, 29, told The Post yesterday as a private jet whisked her and the rest of the series' cast to a taping of 'Oprah.' "'It's all a little overwhelming, and it's really new for me, so I'm just trying to enjoy every moment,' she said."	SMOKING GUN "Conservatives are up in arms about the memo written by the chief politics producer at ABC News, which leaked out on Friday. They shouldn't be. Mark Halperin's memo is very useful: It reveals as no other document ever has the existence of a deeply ingrained double standard in the way political news is reported in the United States. "Simply put, Republicans and conservatives are subject to exacting scrutiny of their actions, while Democrats and liberals are treated with far greater leniency..."
FEELING THE LOVE, by Don Kaplan (again). "'Desperate Housewives' has done what only a handful of TV shows have ever done - debuted as the No. 1 show in the country and kept right on going. "Some 20 million viewers tuned in Sunday night for the series second episode - down just slightly from the nearly 22 million who saw the show's record-setting debut last week."	SICK KIDS VS. DISNEY IN 'PETER PAN' DUSTUP, by Holly M. Sanders. "It's a story that would make Peter Pan glad that he never grew up. "Walt Disney Co. is caught in a feud with a U.K. children's hospital over the copyright to J. M. Barrie's classic novel, 'Peter Pan.' "London's Great Ormond Street Hospital is talking with its lawyers about whether a book published in August by Disney and billed as a prequel to the original infringes on the hospital's ownership rights to the fairy tale. "The hospital has earned millions in royalty fees from Pan, thanks to Barrie's decision to donate the rights to the hospital's charity before his death in 1937. "The hospital uses that money to support the hospital and treat sick children."

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Confessions of a Teenage Deconstructionist

We all have our youthful indiscretions, those young and irresponsible things that we did when we were young and irresponsible. Senator Robert Byrd, for example, was in the Klan, while George W. Bush was a cheerleader at Andover, and, most seriously of course, John Kerry was a war hero.

My own modest indiscretion is that I Was A Teenage Derridian. Yes, as a literature major in the early 90's, I was inundated with the "critical theory" associated with various continentals from Adorno to Deleuze to Foucault and most of all, Jacques Derrida. And let me make it clear that I was not merely the victim of all this theory; in fact, I eagerly sought it out. Indeed, some witnesses even report that I had Derrida's famous statement "il n'ya pas de hors-text" ["there is nothing outside the text"] stencilled upon my cap at graduation.

[Long, boring article follows below the break.]

Now, I suppose that I harbor some regrets about this period -- I wish that I had been a little less dogmatic and that I'd explored a somewhat more diverse set of ideas about literature and culture rather than clinging to the bandwagon with such tenacity. I guess I wish I'd taken some more classes that involved reading, you know, actual literature, rather than only fancy french theory. And I suspect that many others who were involved in that cultural moment share similar regrets; there was a kind of irrational exuberance surrounding Derrida et al. at the time, and when the theory bubble burst, there was, inevitably, some shamefaced backpetalling by those who had been the fiercest advocates of theory, and no small amount of crowing by those who had always dismissed it as claptrap.

But did Derrida really deserve the harsh reactions that met him in life and even in the wake of his death last weekend? From the dismissive headline of the Times's Sunday obituary "Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74," to a sly swipe from that nice young whippersnapper Matthew Yglesias, to a downright mean appraisal from philosopher-blogger Brian Leiter, it seems that Derrida died at a time when his intellectual stock was rather low. I will readily admit that I never really understood Derrida very well, and I will also stipulate without hesitation that I don't really know much about philosophy in general. Having made that clear, however, I would like to offer a modest defense of the late JD.

My (most likely erroneous) reading of Derrida is that he was concerned with the systems that we create in order to represent the unrepresentable. One example is language; language represents our experience of things in the world, but only imperfectly. Something is always lost in the reduction from experience (which is too complex to be "fully" represented) into language. Derrida used the term "trace" to describe what gets lost, what is missing or absent, and he proposed the method of deconstruction as a way to try and understand the implications of the trace. It wasn't so much about destruction as much as unraveling, or analyzing (which, as Barbara Johnson pointed out, is etymologically derived from "undoing"). Since enlightenment thought was based on the assumption that reason (through language) could fully and accurately describe experience, deconstruction questioned that assumption, and sought to reveal the denials and the leaps of faith that supported Western thought.

Like Freud, Derrida was concerned with that which was hidden, ignored, or repressed. But Freud thought that the repressed could be positively located in the unconscious; for Derrida, what was absent was really absent. As he wrote in Of Grammatology:

"Writing is one of the representatives of the trace in general, it is not the trace itself. The trace itself does not exist."

Writing about something that does not exist is hard work; taking care not to commit the errors that he was trying to diagnose often led to a writing style that could be, yes, abstruse. But I don't think it was without value.

Plus, he had such great hair. And, in the end, I think that accounts for at least some of the spite that he inspired. Rest in peace, JD.

Three years and zero washes later...

Where do you live, Jimmy Fallon? From left to right, the SNL wunderkind on the cover of Paper's November 2001 issue; and the star of Taxi featured as "Man of the Week" in the October 18, 2004 issue of Us

With the Sports Illustrated cover curse, you merely lose games, but not friends and supporters

Presidential candidate John Kerry gracing the cover of this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, an appearance which inevitably subjected him to the magazine's notorious cover curse

From Sen. John Kerry's remarks at the Second Presidential Debate, Washington University, St. Louis, Friday, October 8, 2004:

Chris Reeve is a friend of mine. Chris Reeve exercises every single day to keep those muscles alive for the day when he believes he can walk again, and I want him to walk again.

I think we can save lives.

From "'Superman' Star Christopher Reeve Dies at 52," The Associated Press, Monday, October 11, 2004:

Christopher Reeve, the star of the "Superman" movies whose near-fatal riding accident nine years ago turned him into a worldwide advocate for spinal cord research, died Sunday of heart failure, his publicist said. He was 52.

Reeve fell into a coma Saturday after going into cardiac arrest while at his New York home, his publicist, Wesley Combs told The Associated Press by phone from Washington, D.C., on Sunday night. His family was at his side at the time of death.

Jacques Derrida, 1930-2004

"My death, is it possible?" asked the late philosopher Jacques Derrida in his book Aporias.
As one wag put it yesterday upon hearing of Derrida's death, "I guess that answers THAT question." (Thanks, Sarah)

What next, an NEA grant for Mapplethorpe?

Once, years before a hyperbole-prone Graydon Carter pronounced "the end of the age of irony", the more astute Tom Lehrer remarked that Henry Kissinger's 1973 Nobel Peace prize rendered political satire obsolete.

One wonders what Tom Lehrer thinks of today's announcement that the the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the perverted Austrian novelist Elfriede Jelinek. While not an act of cosmic irony on par with Kissinger's Peace Prize, it is, if nothing else, the last nail in the coffin for kinky books. Even if you are inclined to enjoy nauseating, degenerate art-smut like this (and if you are, you should be ashamed), you have to acknowledge that the authors of these nasty things should not be rewarded for writing and promulgating them. Most of Sade's horrid output was written in prison, and rightly so. Georges Bataille published the shockingly perverse "Story of the Eye" under a pseudonym and spent his wretched life as a creepy librarian, unwilling to face the well-deserved umbrage that even his fellow Frenchmen would have unleased upon him had he taken responsibility for his "work."

Of course, we here at low culture regard this kind of cultural output as not merely beneath contempt, but in fact a danger to our American way of life and values, the sort of pernicious decadence that leads to the downfall of great civilizations. But even if we did care for this kind of thing, isn't it a fundamental element of these naughty books that they and their authors are "transgressive", that they are breaking the rules of society? And shouldn't society respond to transgression with censure and condemnation, not fancy medals and prizes? Indeed, in a year in which the world was appalled by images of grotesquely sadistic acts, is it not poor timing -- if not a bit perverse -- for the Swedish Academy to award its Literature prize to a pornographic writer who celebrates perversity?

More Notes Towards the October low culture Index

From the New York Times:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who donned a tan cowboy hat, joked that he was working on a song called "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Mayors."

Number of jokes made by Mayor Bloomberg about writing country songs: at least 1.

Additional number of such jokes desired by New Yorkers: 0.

Total number of such jokes desired by New Yorkers: 0.

The Most Embarrassing New York Post pop culture mistake since Jam Master Jay Spotted

"Fallon, who has zero screen presence, flounders around, dribbling forth what can only be improvised dialogue in the most embarrassing SNL vehicle since Pootie Tang."

'TAXI' DRIVEL, by Megan Lehmann, Oct. 6, 2004

Notes Towards the October low culture Index

Age under which commercial composer and tea salesman Moby says every celebrity seems like a "half-wit": 23

Year Harvard educated action figure model Natalie Portman was born: 1981

Rodney Dangerfield, RIP

I had the pleasure of interviewing Rodney Dangerfield two years ago. He was a great guy, a little out of it, but still as funny and nasty as you could hope for.

I met Rodney in his Westwood apartment, where he lounged in a loosely held bathrobe – that night I saw more of Rodney Dangerfield than I expected, a softer, more fleshy, less circumcised side. I also met his wife, who was beautiful, blonde and half his age (placing her somewhere around fifty), but she was surprisingly sharp and impossibly nice.

Rodney was in show business for more than sixty years and worked every gig imaginable, from singing waiter to The Dean Martin Show. He discovered Kinison and Hicks and countless others. In many ways Back to School is to blame for my own sub-par performance in college. And how many times can you wring your collar and declare “No respect,” before it gets tired? Never.

What follows are excerpts from the interview or the transcript.

On Overcoming Depression:

“When you're smart,” Rodney says, “you've got no one to talk to. I've done everything for it, including forty-eight Austrians, OK? It’s not easy.”
“I have no idea what that means,” is the best I can come up with.
“I keep myself dumb, I make plenty of friends that way. It's easier to get a chick when you're dumb.”
OK, but there’s there’s got to be more. Does he take anti-depressants?
“Nothing.”
What about the alcohol cure?
“No, I hardly touch it. I smoke pot,” he says, “I smoke a lot of pot.”

On Romance:

“Listen man,” he offers, “You can always find a chick with a nice ass. You find a chick who'll actually listen to you, and you can bring yourself to listen to? That's what you hold on to. If she has a nice ass too, that's not so bad either.”

I like Rodney's advice – it seems honest – but this comes only minutes after he's said, “I told my wife she's awful in bed. So she went out and got a second opinion. And then she got a third opinion, and a fourth opinion...”

And the inevitable follow-up, “My wife, she likes to talk during sex. The other night she called me from a motel.”

On Self-Confidence:

A: Babylon. Strange town, population never changes. You know? Every time a kid is born some guy leaves town.

Q: That’s a good line.

A: They’re all good. Put these in if you want.

On Lack of Self-Confidence:

A: Are we getting stuck here?

Q: Do you feel like we’re not saying anything?

A: I don’t know. Is it alright? There’s nothing funny here. There’s not too much funny here.

Q: It’s cool.

A: Alright. We’ll do that later, I’ll tell you some jokes later.

On Writing His Autobiography:

Q: Did you actually write it or was it a ghost-writer?

A: No I wrote it.

Q: You did? Was it a pain in the ass?

A: It was a pain. I had such a terrible childhood. What I went through as a kid and I’m constantly as I’m writing it being reminded of it. Especially a friend of mine who just died is in there, Joe Anthony his name was. And so he just died so he was 75. I’m 81 now. So it’s a funny thing when you come to the end of your life. But it’s not that bad.

The New York Times Redesign: Skewing Younger, Much Younger

Little Jackson Pollocks, Exploring in Oil Paints
New York Times 10/4/04

Which Was Painted By a Child?
New York Times 10/3/04

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl
New York Times 9/28/04

Love and a Village Charmer w/ WOOD BRNING FRPLC

Before I moved to Manhattan, spent far too much time in graduate school learning to be erudite about le cinema and became the Cinecultist, I used to just be a movie fan. I loved certain films unabashedly and a tad obsessively — particularly ones about the life of young, single New Yorkers — watching them over and over again until the VHS tapes (remember those?) almost gave out. Nearly at the top of the list was, and still is, Warren Leight's The Night We Never Met (1993) starring Matthew Broderick and Annabella Sciorra.

The premise is three strangers share an illegal time share in a West Village brown stone walk-up. The lease holder's a Wall Street type about to get married who's moved into his girlfriend's co-op but doesn't want to permanently give up the locale of his boy's club debauchery and so, rents out the space for four other nights a week.

In this pre-Craig's List era, a broken-hearted struggling chef (Broderick) and dental hygienist from Queens (Sciorra) answer his assistant's ad and take the space for cooking/dating and painting, respectively. They only know one another from the names on a posted schedule of assigned days, but with a predictable switch of Tuesday for Wednesday, Ellen the hygienist begins to fall for Sam the chef, but thinks he's called Brian, who's actually the trader. Ah, the vicissitudes of love.

Like the Nina Simone track "My Baby Just Cares For Me" playing in the background on the record player, The Night We Never Met harkens back to a filmic structure abandoned by most recent high concept productions or teenie bopper star-driven rom com vehicles, the character-based drawing room farce.

The tropes may be clichéd, but they don't seem dated now 11 years after their original release. The struggling artistic type who craves privacy while living in an apartment with far too many roommates, the middle class woman's fear of her encroaching suburban future, aging frat boy idiots, gourmet food snobs in Dean and Deluca, too nosey neighbors who lurk behind half-opened doors and watch from stoops, all look like people from my neighborhood.

I used to think the movie's happy ending, wherein our happy couple move into the apartment together full time, once they resolve all of the mistaken identities, was a little too tidy and unbelievable. Though now I understand that if you find true love and good real estate in the Village, no moving in scenario could honestly be deemed too hasty. Add The Night We Never Met to your local video store queue for a slow weeknight very soon, and I promise you won't be disappointed.

Shabbat Shalom, from your friends at the New York Post

Oy, we're kvelling over here about how many mentions of Jews there are in today's New York Post! Nu, it gives us such nachas to see that this city's true paper of record is finally recognizing Jews' valuable contribution to the city!

First, there's an article on Jews in reality TV shows sensitively headlined Jew-Insult 'Apprentice' Fired Twice by Don Kaplan and Braden Keil (two nice Jewish boys, yes?). Strangely, this piece about Apprentice contestant Jennifer Crisafulli's anti-semitic comments ("It was those two old Jewish fat ladies!") is not on the Post website (conspiracy?), but you can read all about it here. (Why isn't this article online? Such a shande!)

Then the Post saw fit to run a press release article by Suzanne Kapner (a nice Jewish girl, maybe?) about a hip [sic.] Jewish clothing company called Jewcy.

From the hilarious headline (New Jewcy.com Web Site's Offerings Are Strictly Kosher) to the article's pitch-perfect lede ("Call it knish kitsch."), this has to be one of the best, most spot-on pieces about Jews I've ever encountered! And I've read tons of Jewy crap!

Since the very headline was a plug for Jewcy junk, you just gotta check out their website for hilarious T-shirts emblazoned with such clever, easily accessible Yiddishisms as Yenta, Kvetch, and Meshuggenah! It's shtetl fabulous—even for your shagetz boyfriend who gives your mother such tsuris and makes her want to plotz!

Feh, it's enough to make you chaloshes! I just wish I could remember Jewcy's URL and help them make some more gelt. Oh, well, guess they get bubkis.

Presidential Debate Highlights, as selected by Benji Harmon, 8 year-old pundit
(Or: The Debate was so fucking painful, I reverted to early childhood)

"This nation of ours has got a solemn duty... We have a duty to defeat this enemy. We have a duty..."

"Now, we're doing our duty..."

"...active duty..."

"We're being challenged like never before, and we have a duty..."

" It will help change the world. That we can look back and say we did our duty..."

"...the enemy attacked us, Jim, and I have a solemn duty..."

"...active duty..."

"I add two active-duty divisions..."

And, the Sentence of the Day Award Goes to...

Joe Hagan of The New York Observer:

"By the time Mr. O’Brien came to the program, the sensibility had developed from comedy to irony, past self-awareness in a trilling triplicate, approximating the absorptive sophistication of a media-glutted viewership, having steamed past the grizzled Mr. Letterman who has more and more developed the aspect of an aging, crotchety pioneer—old Davy Crockett in the U.S. Congress."

From, Jay Leno Deferred To Culture Quake As Conan Gets It, Sept. 29, 2004

Unfortunately, we've run out of time for Hagan's acceptance speech.

Who Writes Your Material?

Where on earth does hard-hitting editorial cartoonist Sean Delonas come up with his ideas?

Oh, right.

At least they agree it was Central California

"Powerful Quake Strikes Central California"
Associated Press

"Moderate Earthquake Shakes Central California"
Voice of America

♥

That's a heart. And it's for you. Well, it's for you if you plan to blog about I ♥ Huckabees this week.

But be careful. It's easy to mess up this special tag and wind up with the wrong title, like:

I ♣ Huckabees (Way too violent.)
I ♠ Huckabees (The ASPCA does advocate the spaying and neutering of Huckabees, but only by a trained veterinarian.)
I ® Huckabees (Only David O. Russell can say that!)
I ‾ Huckabees (Only Jon Brion can say that, and he doesn't tend to over-score the movies he works on. Well, other than Magnolia, that is.)

And, finally, a title that seems unlikely since Huckabees is opening in limited release against Ladder 49 and Shark Tale this Friday:
I $ Huckabees.

I'd ♥ that, but I doubt we'll see it.

Meet Ivan: not the hurricane, but the weary dog lingering outside your gas station

"Weakened Ivan circles Gulf; expected to die", The Advertiser, Lafayette, Louisiana

New & Improved, Tastes Better, 33% More Tabloidy

You see this exciting, bold, vibrant graphic peeled from the cover of the most recent issue of Us Weekly (October 4, 2004), the issue that insouciantly proclaims that Britney Spears' much-hyped marriage last weekend to Kevin What-the-Fuckshisname was "staged" and "faux"?

The circle, which appears alongside the magazine's logo in the topmost corner of the cover, boasts about there being "12 bonus pages" to the issue, which, I guess, is a worthwile, valuable component, except the "bonus" factor is somewhat diluted by the fact that each and every issue of Us has borne this same tagline since, ummmm...bear with me, here...the May 24, 2004 issue. May. Spring. We're talking flowers, not fall foliage.

Or, for a better sense of perspective, the cover feature for the very first appearance of this "New! 12 Bonus Pages" promotional graphic was a large portrait of a beaming Jennifer Lopez and the headline, "New Ring, Big Trouble: Jen's flashing an 8-carat rock from married Marc Anthony. As his wife fumes, is Lopez headed for more heartache?"

Well, we all know how that worked out. She got married. And what's new is old again.

Hipsters vs. G-d

Harper's Magazine has kindly translated from Hebrew a Hasidic Jew petition/prayer distributed during a January protest in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Jewish group was particularly distraught with the rising costs of housing in the neighborhood, a trend that they have affiliated with the trendy young people now populating that area of Brooklyn.

This prayer goes a step beyond playa-hatin', it likens the hipsters to the plague:

Master of the Universe, have mercy upon us and upon the borders of our village and do not allow the persecution to come inside our home; please remove from upon us the plague of the artists, so that we shall not drown in evil waters, and so that they shall not come to our residence to ruin it.

The New Newspeak

For those who care to remember, HBO’s Not Necessarily the News was a kind of embryonic Daily Show with John Stewart, offering its own “skewed” take on Nancy Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Noid. While the show appears horribly dated from here, one segment is apparently timeless – Rich Hall’s Sniglets, in which ordinary people (i.e. just like you and me) invented words that don’t appear in the dictionary but should. Mostly this amounts to amusing portmanteaus that concern the refrigerator lightbulb or frayed shoelaces.

But leave it to the original cats from McSweeney’s to find a whole new application for Sniglets. It’s called The Future Dictionary of America (not to be confused with Faith Popcorn’s incisive Dictionary of the Future) in which cute, non-threatening writers like Jonathan Safran Foer and Sarah Vowell present new vocabulary words for the dystopic future that awaits us all.

See if you can distinguish between the Sniglets and the works of capital L Literature. (Answers below.)

Dopeler effect: the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Idiolocator: the symbol on a mall or amusement park map representing "You Are Here"

Giraffiti: vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

Fictate: to inform a television or screen character of impending danger under the assumption they can hear you.

Zzzunday: national holiday occurring once every 28 years, when a Leap Year coincides with a Sunday.

Jukejitters: fear that everyone thinks that you picked the awful tune emanating from the jukebox when it was actually the person before you.

Gertatious: having the adolescent fear that hanging one's arm over the bed at night will mean being dragged under.

Answer Key: Except for Zzzunday, they’re all Sniglets – I’m not about to shell out 28 bucks for a fake fucking dictionary.

Emmy 2004: Adventures in the Skin Trade

Next issue, "The Apprentice vs. The Benefactor: The Commodification of the Capitalists"

Pointing out cliches is so...cliche

Let it be known that we adore, nay, cherish the pearls of wisdom put forth by columnist Frank Rich each and every Sunday in the New York Times. Yes, in the past, we may have thrown the gauntlet on occasion and gotten all up in his business, but we're willing to let bygones be bygones. And, like our new hero Frank Rich, we're willing to overuse and abuse a slew of conversational cliches in our writing.

In Rich's latest missive, "This Time Bill O'Reilly Got It Right," (which appeared in the September 19, 2004 edition of the Times) readers are treated to a feast of such verbal banalities. To wit:

"If a stopped clock is right twice a day, why shouldn't Bill O'Reilly be right at least once in a blue moon?"

"This was G.O.P. TV raised to not-ready-for-prime time self-parody, lacking only the studio audience to yuk it up."

"CNN, the inventor of 24/7 news, once prided itself on being a straight shooter."

"Now it and Mr. Carville have argued that the line wasn't blurred here..."

"At some point after 9/11, the news business jumped the shark..."

"Should network news ride into the sunset..."

"The only hope for a successful alternative is not to fight Fox's fire with imitation Fox fire in the form of another partisan network but to reinvent the wheel with a network that prizes news over endless left/right crossfire..."

Nothing's Sacred

Hey, world: Stop Playa-Hatin', okay?

First, you piss in our PBR by telling us that the batteries in our iPods have about as much lifespan as a potato clock.

Now, you rain on our dodgeball game by telling us that our bikes would be safer secured with a diary lock! Goddamnit! Why must you hate on our hipster lifestyles*? Are you jealous or something?

What's next? Onion T-shirts cause cancer? Are you gonna tell us that The Killers abuse child labor laws? Oh, is blogging going to be characterized by the DSM V as a mental illness? Then I bet you'll tell us that PBR is already 70 percent piss! Thanks for sharing, you goddamn haters.

* Yes, your middle-aged boss has an iPod and your mom has a bike. Maybe your boss and your mom are hipsters, ever think of that, jackass? (I guarantee your boss has a Member's Only jacket in his closet and your mom wears those flat nurse's shoes.) Next you're gonna tell me that making fun of old people and squares makes you look like an immature, bitter, Urban Outfitters-shopping monkey-boy! Goddamn haters!

This fall, bad ideas just got a little...worse.

While it's long been held that Hollywood's best and brightest go to work in the studio system's various marketing departments, never before has this been more apparent than with the onslaught of this fall's round of catchy advertising taglines for upcoming entertainment productions. Incredibly, the folks in Burbank and Culver City and west Los Angeles are breaking radical new ground here with their ability to reduce the elaborate plotlines of, say, a thriller about a woman calling a cell phone to a simple, high-concept notion that even a third grader can comprehend. And in the wake of far too many two- and three-hour films coming forth from this town, that shows some skillful concision.

What follows is a round-up of some of these slogans and, quite simply, a resulting assessment of the perceived quality of each film or television series...

Cellular: "If the signal dies, so does she."

Seriously? A movie this bad surely deserves a tagline this reductivistly imbecilic.

The Mountain: "Conditions are about to get nasty."

OK, judging solely from the one-sheet and various ads, there seem to be a bunch of twenty-somethings doing something adventurous in, umm, the mountains. But this tagline? Does this imply that, in addition to action and adventure and tumult, the show features its bitches getting it on with the dudes in a skanktastic style? Or maybe the characters have some sort of personality problems akin to the castmembers of "Real World Las Vegas"? Fuck if I know, because I'm never going to watch this show.

Wimbledon: "She's the golden girl. He's the longshot. It's a match made in..."

Oh! Oh! Oh! I know this one! Wimbledon! And – I'm totally guessing here – the tennis superstar played by Kirsten Dunst falls in love with the wizened underdog fleshed out by Paul Bettany. Or vice versa. One certainty: this seems to be a fairly conventional tagline structure for what must be a fairly conventional film. Syd Field would love this shit.

Head in the Clouds: "In a city of glamour at a time of decadence they met. An aristocrat, a soldier of conscience, and an entertainer. Together they shared a deep passion."

Thank you for the summary. Now I don't need to see this film, and neither does anyone else who read this little novella you pieced together here, Mr. Tolstoy.

The Motorcycle Diaries: "Let the world change you... and you can change the world."

The story of a young Che Guevara and his youthful travels throughout South America. See, by virtue of his traveling, the world changed him...and he became a leftist rebel. Because, presumably, he saw all the various turmoil caused by economic injustice and military coups and secretive interventions by the U.S. government. Not to mention, it stars that totally hot guy from Amores Perros who looks a hell of a lot like an even handsomer Tobey Maguire. So there.

Shaun of the Dead: "A romantic comedy. With zombies."

Short and punchy, but sort of...askew, right? Just like this film, I reckon! Well, if Moriarty liked this flick, then that's good enough for me.

Mr. 3000: "He's putting the 'I' back in team."

See, star Bernie Mac is a loudmouthed fellow, and he's arrogant, too. Also, sports are somehow involved in the storyline.

Shark Tale: "The story of what happens when one little fish tells a great white lie..."

So Dreamworks' animation division decides to rip off Finding Nemo. The very first Shrek had all those adult-oriented digs at Disney at Jeffrey Katzenberg's insistence. Jeffrey Katzenberg hates Michael Ovitz. And Michael Eisner, meanwhile, is slated to leave Disney by 2006. The two Michaels have historically argued over who prefers flounder and who likes trout, a schism which purportedly lead to the dissolution of their business relationship in the mid-90s.

The Last Shot: "The true story of the greatest movie never made."

Forgive the Horatio-Sanz-as-Gene-Shalit routine, but...I only wish Alec Baldwin and Matthew Broderick hadn't made this movie. Ha, ha, ha!

First Daughter: "The girl who always stood out is finally getting the chance to fit in."

Hmmm...the President's daughter finally gets to live a normal life? Because her dimwitted, lying, inept father was voted out of office this November? Or is that just wishful thinking?

The Forgotten: "On September 24th everything you've experienced, everything you've known, never happened."

How very metaphysical! It's like I never saw The Butterfly Effect! (Which I didn't, for what it's worth.)

Poster Boys

A Dirty Shame, feat. Waters (lower right)...Jersey Girl, feat. Smith (upper left)

Designing movie posters isn't easy.

Believe me, we've done enough parody movie posters around here to know. Trying to sum up a two hour film in one image while tapping into various mutually exclusive market forces—Teenage boys! Adult Women! Down-Low Homosexuals!—is hard work. And even though it's essentially a marketing medium, there are enough iconic examples of the form to make designers want to aim for the rafters.

But listen up movie poster designers, there are some things that are beyond lame. Like squeezing the movie's past-his-prime director into the poster like an apparition: These eerie, out-of-context photos are like Banquo's ghost crashing an otherwise fine party.

Take the poster for John Waters' latest, A Dirty Shame. What does Waters' creepy visage (the director himself is fond of pointing out how closely he resembles a child molester) add to the poster that Selma Blair's pneumatic prostheses or Johnny Knoxville's Gene Simmons-esque fake tongue don't? If anything, most young filmgoers have no idea who John Waters is and probably assume he's just another cartoon pervert in a cartoonishly perverted movie.

And then we have Jersey Girl, the DVD and video box for which shows Kevin Smith looking as surprised as we are that he'd be involved in this sub-PAX daddy-daughter cutie-patootie 'comedy.' (The masked bandit over at Defamer already deconstructed this box to great effect in two recent entries.)

It's only natural to make some connection between the quality of these films ("crammed with wince-inducing contrivances, false notes and fizzled jokes," The Times Stephen Holden wrote with noble restraint) and the desperate attempt to remind potential filmgoers of the directors' alleged marks of quality. Does the movie suck?, goes this line of thinking. Then let's slot in the creator and hope that at least the hardcore fans come out to see it. (And hardcore fans don't come much harder core than those of Mr. Smith's: someone somewhere bought this. He—certainly he—may have even watched part of it.)

But what about the early example of Wong Kar Wai's excellent Chungking Express, the box for which is marked by the stubbled face of Quentin Tarantino who served as the film's "executive producer"? (Read: the cool director who convinced Harvey to distribute the film in America.) Adding QT to the design was bad, but hardly a red flag for the film, which ten years after its release is still enjoyable. (Faye Wong dancing around to her own cover of The Cranberries' "Dreams" and Tony Leung talking to his forlorn bar of soap are still great.)

I just hope we've seen the last of this trend. God forbid this chump's carb face starts popping up on the posters for his next couple affronts to cinema.

Coming soon, unless LAX is DOA

Posting today's gonna be lax. "LAX", in fact! In honor of tonight's premiere episode of NBC's hour-long drama starring the forever-relevant Heather Locklear and the forever-handsome Blair Underwood, we're throwing aside creativity and getting a bit—you guess it!—lax!

According to the press clippings for the show, it "explores the behind-the-scenes dramas and conflicts of both travelers and staff transpiring daily at the bustling Los Angeles International Airport." The show's characters are jockeying "to be named the new director of the airport while working together to solve everything from bomb scares, to VIP arrivals, drunken pilots and roaming pets—all beneath the din of a frantic "hub" with spokes that touch all corners of the world."

We have such high hopes for this show we're already holding our breath for the inevitable Law & Order/C.S.I.-esque spin-offs. To wit:

"SJC": Slated for a mid-season replacement slot. Covers the trials and tribulations of customs agents working at San Jose International Airport, in Northern California's little-known but most-populous city, as shady foreign businessmen try to steal trade secrets from Silicon Valley's bustling computer and technology industry. This series, incidentally, is set in 1996.

"EWR": Another mid-season filler. For those of you not well-versed in our nation's many lesser-known airports, EWR refers to New Jersey's Newark International Airport. This gripping boardroom drama concerns the NY/NJ Port Authority's efforts to bring the consumer-class convenience of budget carriers such as JetBlue to little ol' Newark. "You know how much traffic we're losing to goddamned LaGuardia? We've got fucking Song and that's it," series lead Eric Roberts repeatedly barks to his underlings in the well-received pilot, which is, somewhat notably, the first drama about airports to feature heavily-excised language.

"EYW": Air travel doesn't come easy when you're located amidst miles and miles of waterfront property with docks and piers extending as far as the eye can see...and the staff at Key West International Airport knows this firsthand. For years, a battle has been raging between local boat-rental companies and the cozy airport's ringmasters, but that battle just got a little more even with the arrival of drug baron Raoul Mendoza and his posse of depth-charge-dropping small-bodied Sandpiper aircraft.

"IND": If there's one thing flight mechanics don't like, its a nasty labor dispute. And when the fictitious USAirlineways, which is in no way related to the real-life USAirways, files for bankruptcy and threatens to reduce its nonstop service between the titular Indianapolis International Airport and Boston, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, N.C., and Philadelphia, these laborers get mad. But what they don't know is that USAirlineways' chief labor negotiator is from Baltimore, and has carried a nasty Eric Dickerson-related grudge since that fateful day in 1984 when the Colts left his city to head to Indiana. (This pilot currently only exists in script format and has yet to be filmed.)

...And we threw this entire post together without using the word "tasteless"

In today's New York Times, writers Kevin Flynn and Jim Dwyer have assembled one of those contemplative think pieces about the events of September 11, 2001 that will presumably continue to be annual media occurrences for at least the next few years. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but in their "Falling Bodies, a 9/11 Image Etched in Pain", the authors engage in a multi-page examination of the cultural impact (or lack thereof) of those people who specifically perished by leaping to their deaths from the intimidating heights of the two towers of the World Trade Center. And it is a suitably sad and moving tale, though presented rather analytically.

From a syntax standpoint, however, we have to ask: how did the word "defenestrate" not make one single appearance in this article?

Perfect Set... Bumping Uglies... Volley Girls!

Yes, we're reusing this picture. How could we not?

And now, the easiest spec script sale in the history of man (from Done Deal):

Title: Untitled Addario-Syracuse Pitch
Log line: Two intensely competitive rivals on the women's beach volleyball tour must learn to combine their vastly different playing styles to win back their honor.
Writer: Lisa Addario and Joey Syracuse
Agent: Sandra Lucchesi of The Gersh Agency
Buyer: Paramount Pictures
Price: Mid-six figures
Genre: Sports Drama
Logged: 9/9/04
More: Pitch. Preemptive buy. Vincent Newman Entertainment will produce.

No title, stars, or director? I know I've bought my ticket already!

Adjust the 'Ph' Balance, please

Hell just got a little bit more crowded, according to today's New York Times.

Richard G. Butler, founder of Aryan Nations, died at age 86. (Not to be mistaken with Richard Butler, the former UNSCOM chairman who warned us about Saddam's phantom W.M.D.'s.)

According to the Times's Daniel Wakin (Richard G. Butler, 86, Founder of the Aryan Nations, Dies), Butler, who had congestive heart failture, died in his sleep in Hayden, Idaho. No word on how much drawn-out, agonizing pain the old man endured or his karmic fate as a furrier's mink in his next life.

The reason I point towards this piece is to address one of my biggest pet peeves: the misspelling of Adolf Hilter's Hitler's [Thanks, Matt!] name. According to Wakin, Butler, "lived out his final years in a house adorned with crosses, relics and books about Adolph Hitler and Holocaust denial."

Sure, we all make mistakes, but this is one that seems to occur so often in publications it's like a strange, unshakable tick. One possible excuse may be Microsoft Word's spell-check preference for "Adolph" over "Adolf": Can anyone explain that?

When "Adolph Hitler" appears on the web or squeaks through at an alt-weekly, you can almost overlook it, but because of its status as "the paper of record" a mistake like this in the Times makes it almost canonical, especially for copy editors who'll frantically Nexis/Lexis the spelling during hellish, late night closes for their jobs and make the same error. So, hypothetical, overworked copy editors: use The New Yorker, and ignore MS Word, okay?

So, once and for all: It's Adolf Hitler. 'F' 'im—please.

Darling, you must tell me where you got that wonderful outfit!

Teresa Heinz Kerry, New York Observer, Sept. 9, 2004... Hillary Rodham Clinton, SPY, Feb. 1993

Coming Out Soon: The Defense of Prancing Act

This is Bushworld*

*This guy just lives in it.

A Bush supporter in Albuquerque, NM... Maureen Dowd's books, Bushworld

Retards & Reporters

"Hey, what's goin' on over here?"

HAYSEEDS & HASIDS
—Headline from The New York Post, Sept. 1, 2004

Hayseed
SYLLABICATION: hay·seed
NOUN: 1. Grass seed shaken out of hay. 2. Pieces of chaff or straw that fall from hay. 3. Slang A bumpkin; a yokel.
—The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition, 2000. Category: Offensive

Conventionist: The Governator Speaks

From our perch in the upper balcony, Conventionist was able to get a strong feel for the enthusiasm with which California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's speech was greeted tonight – and this is in New York! Conventionist – while we don't generally get involved in political matters – is excited by the idea of the star of Kindergarten Cop taking the stage someday in the near future to run for national office.

And while his accent proved to be a handful to some of the delegates from the so-called "Red States", they still whooped and hollored as the star of Red Sonja spoke of his support for President Bush's getting re-elected.

(UPDATE: Gov. Schwarzenegger did not star in Red Sonja, that was Brigitte Nielsen. And readers have written in to tell us that there is an amendment preventing a foreign-born citizen from running for our nation's highest office. Conventionist still holds out hope that this can be worked out...are you listening, Mayor Bloomberg?)

Conventionist: The Nominations are IN

The Republican Party delegates, as expected, have made it official: President Bush is the party's official nominee for the election. While Conventionist shies away from political matters, as an unofficial rule, we still hope that the race for the White House will be as exciting as it was for us to see the congregation of delegates from Pennsylvania gleefully cheer as their votes were cast, which officially gave the President the count he needed.

Conventionist hasn't been this excited since our on-set visit to Aaron Sorkin's "West Wing", where we had the opportunity to have our photos taken with Allison Janney. (More photos available at BlueJake.)

Conventionist: Laura Bush and the Floor Report

As expected, Conventionist toured the floor in full force tonight, and, lo and behold, not a single panda was in sight. You can imagine Conventionist's disappointment at this unexpected development...but Laura Bush's keynote address more than made up for this lack of Grand Ol' Pandas.

Conventionist would like to think that, politics aside, all New Yorkers, and, for that matter, all Americans, would be able to rally behind what sounded like a real tour de force to these ears. And while some readers may have problems with Mrs. Bush's husband, it's important to bear in mind that she showed her true colors tonight, and they are red, white, and blue.

Also, Conventionist recommends that all delegates see Radio 4 perform tonight at the Knitting Factory. Doors open at 9:00pm.

The definitive hot new cover pose for September 2004 magazines

If It's Brown...

Dear Newspaper and Magazine Headline Writers,
Hi. How are you? (I know you can't answer questions posed in a letter, but I want you to know I'm wondering how you are.)

We gotta talk (er, 'write,' whatever). I know I've made fun of you guys in the past, and I know that's totally uncool. I was, like, in a bad place then, guys. I was just lashing at you for problems I was having with myself. Can you forgive me?

But, listen up. You gotta stop using GALLO'S HUMOR as a headline for Brown Bunny reviews, okay? I'm talking to you, New York Post, and whoever the hell you are, Zap2it.com. And, this sort of hurts me to say it, but you too, New York Times Magazine: I loved you the most.

Oh, come on. Don't cry. Please, please. Stop. I'm not just here to criticize, I'm here to offer help. If Vincent Gallo ever convinces international financiers to fund another film for him, you can use these headlines, okay?

Earnest Gallo Whines
Heaven Vincent
Gallo Blows
Vincent, Man, Go!
A Vince Among Men
A Gallo Down Dirty Shame
Vincentient Being
My Gallo Friday
Lather, Vince, Repeat

They might not be perfect, but who is, right? (Pobody's Nerfect!) I still think you guys are great. BFF?

Yours,
Matt Haber

Shul of Rock

According to ScriptSales, Tina Fey and her agency, Endeavor, have just sold Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill for mid-six against seven. (Which anyone who's seen Adaptation. knows is 'industry speak' for "I know industry speak.") The story of "[a] Hasidic Jew and a grizzled rock musician [who] form a band," was inspired by a report on NPR and will inevitably star Adrien Brody (in a furry hat) and Colin Firth (in a name tag, since no one knows who the fuck he is). And the best part? While delivering some scripts upstairs, we heard that Brett Ratner might direct it!

As that last sentence hinted, we just started our new day jobs in the mailroom of the mailroom at Endeavor. (We couldn't get into the mailroom proper without M.B.A.'s.) It's a little thing called workin' your way up the old fashioned way, by being abused, and humiliated – and urinated upon – for years. It's awesome, and a great use of our combined $245,000 educations. (How's that for a mid-six against seven, huh, boss?). And, we actually managed to scoop a copy of Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill's first-act outline from the main fax machine before Hector, one of the senior mailroom guys, busted us. We're gonna do our best to score the other two acts when Hector goes on his 3 PM Jamba Juice run, and, yes, that's Pacific Standard Time, for all of you who think anything of note happens in New York.

In the meantime, check out this exclusive Tina Fey comedic buzz...

MEAN JEWS
THE ADVENTURES OF CURLY OXIDE AND VIC THRILL
by
Tina Fey

ACT II, SCEN-
(TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED)

And now, of course, we're going to have to stay late until midnight. Fucking Hector.

Settings > Repeat > On

In today's excitingly fresh edition of the New York Times' Circuits section, reporter Rachel Dodes has put together a charming little piece about iPods and the way in which they've begun changing music fans' listening habits. In "Tunes, a Hard Drive and (Just Maybe) a Brain", she presents a cute anecdote about a Columbia University grad student who threw a delightful dinner party while entertaining his guests with music played in a random order from his library of digitized music files, only to have the partiers erupt into laughter when the Shuffle-Button-as-DJ transitioned from Guns N' Roses into Elton John, which was apparently quite embarrassing.

"Such are the perils of using Shuffle, a genre-defying option that has transformed the way people listen to their music in a digital age. The problem is, now that people are rigging up their iPods to stereos at home and in their cars, they may have to think twice about what they have casually added to their music library.

Shuffle commands have been around since the dawn of the CD player. But the sheer quantity of music on an MP3 player like the iPod - and in its desktop application, iTunes - has enabled the function to take on an entirely new sense of scale and scope. It also heightens the risk that a long-forgotten favorite song will pop up, for better or for worse, in mixed company."

Well, it certainly hasn't heightened the risk that a not-so-long-forgotten article from the Times' family of newspapers might be repurposed by the parent company. Writing for the Boston Globe on April 7, 2004 – a whopping four months ago – writer Joseph P. Kahn entertained readers with his "iPod Shuffle revolutionizing listening habits", which, you guessed it, discusses iPods and the ways in which they've begun to change music fans' listening habits. Or, in his own words, since the "Circuits" section's editors felt a literal transcription to be unnecessary,

"Even more wondrous than its sophisticated technology, though, is how the iPods and their ilk are changing the way music is being experienced, or reexperienced, by all sorts of audiophiles in all sorts of settings, from health clubs and school cafeterias to malls and subway cars.

...

When thousands of titles are transferred onto the machine's hard drive and in rotation, users say, what happens on the listening end can be aesthetically stimulating, even liberating. This is not necessarily because the tracks are unfamiliar, but because the software's shuffle-play capability juxtaposes them in intriguing ways, not only across an entire 5,000-track collection but within, say, a compilation of blues tunes or Broadway melodies, or even shuffling through only the tracks played in the past 90 days."

For what it's worth, we, too, are guilty of repurposing our own content, in the sense that we've already made light in the past of the Times' short institutional memory.

Swift Boat Veterans Against Borgnine

What exactly happened on that PT Boat? Only Lt. Cmdr. McHale knows for sure.

Is there even a market for televising women's sports? I mean, why would beer-swilling, loutish men ever want to watch these events?

"USA's Kerri Walsh, bottom, and teammate Misty May celebrate after beating Brazil in the gold medal beach volleyball finals during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games at Faliro Beach Volleyball Stadium in Athens, Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2004. (AP Photo/Adam Butler)"

(Thanks to Jessica B.)

Your Ultimate Movie Guide for the Week of August 27

As Friday approaches, discriminating moviegoers across the nation (or at least in New York and Los Angeles, which technically spans the nation) will have to opt between some stellar choices when they head out to see some of the various new releases that the studios are unleashing this weekend. In the interest of simplicity, we've reduced the available films to a concise list of two, both of which will realistically be of keen interest to this site's loyal readers.

SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2	The Brown Bunny
REASONS TO SEE IT:	REASONS TO SEE IT:
The first Baby Geniuses, to the best of my recollection, had a standout performance by Kathleen Turner, who was also in Academy-darling Sofia Coppola's debut film. Sofia Coppola next went on to direct Lost in Translation, which peripherally dealt with issues of cultural differentiation, that is, when it wasn't sucking. And this round of Geniuses, meanwhile, will most definitely be about the generation gap between babies and their parents, and will almost inevitably feature sucking, as well (be it of the thumb, or teat, or bottle-top variety).	Right off the bat, everyone's going on and on about the fucking blowjob scene. Well, this is art, my friends, and writer-director Vincent Gallo will be sure to beat that point home through the usage of his long single-take shots of "the road ahead", which, as any cinephile knows, is as heavy a metaphor as one can find. On that note, pay attention to the anticipated slew of references and winks to director Chantal Akerman's notorious Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which was probably the last film to be released that featured equal amounts of skull-crushing existential boredom alongside loose-lipped whoredom. And that was 1976.
Upon deciding to see this film, you'll finally feel comfortable going up to that irksome woman in Human Resources with that fucking Anne Geddes calendar and asking her out. You'll be able to assure her that it'll be "our special night, just you, me and lots of babies, just like we may someday make together." If she doesn't swoon, it means she's likely fucking that guy in the COO's office.	In keeping with this date motif, expect lots of sweet bonding opportunities as you and your partner in Gallo-fandom exchange humorous eye rolls during the long, long, long scenes of nothingness. And then prepare for some total discomfort when Chloe Sevigny begins sucking on Vincent Gallo's penis. I mean, seriously, that's almost funny, how awkward that'll be for the two of you. At least with the Anne Geddes chick you know you'll be going straight for the baby-making.
The characters (due to their age) are primarily played by twins and triplets, which, under the right circumstances, could be seen as referencing Luis Buñuel's work. That might be an overly generous interpretation, however.	There is but one Vincent Gallo, and he is a prime specimen of bohemian conservativism, as well as a compelling songwriter who penned what I believe to be the first-ever song about Paris Hilton, way back in, like, 2001.
It's distributed by Sony, which means you're indirectly supporting their proprietary "Connect" digital download music service, whose songs you won't be able to play on your iPod, which you probably don't own, because you're seeing a film called fucking Superbabies.	It's distributed by Wellspring, who has a rather annoyingly low-budget production-credit intro sequence that appears before their films. But, more to the point, by seeing Vincent Gallo's film, you're supporting the Republican Party. Well, maybe just "sort of", but, still.

A brief summary of the 2004 Olympics thus far, from the perspective of someone who has not been following the Summer Games

1. The U.S. basketball team lost in the first round to Puerto Rico, which is apparently some sort of American colony. This was very humiliating.

2. The American softball team took the gold. Softball is played by women. I have no idea what is happening in the baseball realm.

3. I think I saw something about some tremors or an earthquake of sorts striking Athens. That, or I might have been having flashbacks to The Day After Tomorrow.

4. The newly-sovereign state of Iraq sent a team of soccer players to the games this year, alongside one swimmer. I like to imagine that this waterbound fellow is the ultimate Pixies fan and is known to pump himself up before meets by singing "Ride a tire, down the River Euphrates..." He has not stated for the record, however, his opinion on Trompe Le Monde, though I'm fairly sure he would agree that "Alec Eiffel" is a great track.

5. I miss Greg Louganis. That was a human interest story that I could really wrap my head around.

Oh Yeahhhh! I've fallen prey to outsourcing

From L to R, the iconographically cute representation of China's anti-AIDS/clean blood initiative, and America's favorite sugar warrior, the Kool-Aid Man

David LaChapelle can go saturate himself

From left to right we've got whoever the fuck these people are, Daria Werbowy, Natalia Vodianova, Gisele Bundchen, Isabeli Fontana, Karolina Kurkova, Liya Kebede, Hana Soukupova, Gemma Ward, and Karen Elson. (AP Photo/Courtesy Vogue, Steven Meisel)

September approacheth! The all-important ninth month of the year, the introduction to the fall fashion season, when Vogue annually releases their most important issue ever, with all its concomitant power to make or break fashionistas everywhere. And now, here it is: the cover image for their much-anticipated September 2004 issue, and, hold on a minute and put away your excitement stick, because there are fucking models on the cover. Quelle surprise! I, personally, was at least hoping for a shake-up of sorts, maybe some Vanity Fair-esque "celebrities", but, alas, photographer Steven Meisel is notoriously stronger behind the camera when dealing with your everyday stellar-looking pretty faces than those who are famous for being famous.

Thankfully, we can bear verbal witness to Master Meisel in action due to the release of these exclusive, in-no-way-fictionalized on-set transcripts from the magazine's cover shoot. All 25 inches thereof.

"Daria, darling, move left more...more...more. Don't you worry about being obscured by the barcode. I hardly know who you are anyway, but you're lucky to be on the cover in any form, and we absolutely need to fit more of Gisele in the shot here. Yes, of course. Ms. Bundchen is our star! Yes, my angel. This is the September issue...a triple-gatefold, honies, and there are nine of you, and as I'm sure you're well aware, you calculus-laden vixens, you, we need an evenly divisible increment of nine, or three ladies per panel. Believe me, if I could chop one of you in half and do a two-paneled 4.5er, I would. But it's Lancome's mathematics, ladies! And, if anything, I'm quite nearly positive that Lancome is the guy who discovered the constant ratio of a circle's radius to its circumference. How many times does pi go into a triple gatefold September cover, I wonder?

And stylists! Stylists! Snap to attention. I need more pink! Rich, vibrant pink! Reds, reds, pinks, whites. Layer gorgeously, ladies, layer it. Shades of pink abound. Bathe in its glorious glow. Wrap yourselves, honies, wrap yourselves. Let these gowns absorb you, cherish you, encapsulate you...And stay on the tape line. Focus, ladies, focus. Gisele, put your mobile away. You can call that little man of yours when you are not on my clock. On, I say, as opposed to over, which is what he is.

Who is that colored woman? Liya? Get her out of the first panel. This is Vogue, not National Geographic. OK, I'm sorry, you're right. Sorry. Ha ha, I joke! But I am serious nonetheless. This is September, after all, when I am most prone to racist humor. But you ladies knew that already. Now, move her. No, Karolina, you're in the second panel. No, no, scoot over. Your agency and I agreed to this. I don't care what she told you. No, I DO NOT CARE about Sports Illustrated. I swear, honey, you need to look more passionate as you clutch Isabeli's arm. It's passion, that's all. Keywords: Desire. Sensuality. Fabric. Threadbare. Discomfit. Petulant. Oblique. Garage. I would hope that each of you can simply clutch a goddamned arm for a few minutes, and continue to look gloriously still and inanimate in the process. I'm a modern-day Vermeer.

Good gracious, where is Karen? Number nine? Anyone? Todd, go check her dressing room. Right now. Go, go, go. Gogogogogogo! Oh, she's still at Bing's pad, huh...Goddamn that rascal, I've had more of my shoots befouled by that man, directly or indirectly, than Gregory Crewdson's got issues with his F-stop! Ha, ha, ha! A little joke. September is also the month when I feel free to "dis" my photographic peers, because, yes, I am shooting Vogue magazine. All right, then, we'll put her in afterwards. How I abhor working digitally, but it's got to be done.

My, how you lot infuriate me. I'm Steven fucking Meisel, and I'm almost of the mind to subject you to a delicious Meisel-brand ass-raping, but alas, I've got another E! network taping to attend at 3 o'clock this afternoon. Bon-bon!"

So, What Do You Do, Neil Strauss's Dirty Subtext?

Today, every unemployed New York freelancer's favorite website, Mediabistro (okay, second favorite after this), interviews renaissance man Neil Strauss about his latest as-told-to book, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, by New York Magazine zeitgeist girl Jenna Jameson.

Since the interview is sort of boring, I thought I'd help spice it up by selecting the hottest bits and excerpting them for you. So, herewith are the choice cuts sure to excite even the most passive reader:

Tongues wagging... hard time... deviant... comes... oral... atop... mouth... came... came together... comes... Judith Regan asked me if I wanted to do it... hanging out... How did you get her to open up... we were both totally shaken... She couldn't even sleep that night... very intense... stripper... pimps... get in touch with the female... told Jenna to tweak anything she wanted... David Laskin, took me... mature... Britney Spears... I got started so young... opened... climbing into bed with Jewel... tangled... I'm stuck... restrictive... fucking as an art...

This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours

Last week the literary-minded blog world (the mind reels) got bent out of shape by Leon Wieseltier’s review of Checkpoint in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. This week, however, those same watchdogs seem to have missed a more legitimate target – the Times’ apparent inability to distinguish fiction from non-.

This week’s non-fiction Books in Brief section featured the presumably non-fiction title Borges’ Travel, Hemingway’s Garage. Per the Times, Mark Axelrod’s book recounts some of literature’s secret histories:

…as Mark Axelrod tells it, Hemingway opened a garage in Santa Ana, Calif., a venture that inspired his short story “A Clean, Well-Lit Pit Stop.”

Axelrod reports on the philosophical quarrels between Leibniz and Newton that fueled the competition between dueling cookie franchises Choco Leibniz and Fig Newtons…

Rembrandt invented the toothpaste that bears his name not only to avoid financial crisis, but, according to Axelrod, because he was tired of painting portraits of unsmiling subjects afraid to display their bad teeth.

While the average cultural illiterate/Times editor might reasonably take Axelrod’s stories for truth, perhaps the name of Axelrod’s publisher – Fiction Collective Two – should have tipped someone off.

Seven ways to mend Open Water's open wounds

Since we consider ourselves humanitarians at heart, we're thoughtfully putting forth this helpful list of activities in which you may want to consider engaging, in lieu of seeing the recently-released hokum that is Open Water. Seriously. Any of these options serve as good, worthwhile alternatives. Hell, exhaust the list if you have to.

1. Bask outside near a neighbor's pool, or a city pool, or whatever. It hardly matters. Study the people flailing about in the water and try and pick out who you think might be the worst actors if you were to go into a career producing community theater workshops and needed to hire these people. While engaging in this impromptu casting session, it could be fucking raining or hailing and you'd still be better off.

2. Oh, and before you go to the pool, or beach, or whatever, take at least twenty to thirty minutes too long to get there, until you've bored your mates to death with some asinine and wholly irrelevant setup about how "you need your vacation time to escape this crazy job." Even if you're not on vacation, because remember, the only possible goal for this entire exercise is to annoy your audience, unless maybe you're merely padding the trip's length, in which case, it's still not OK, and you, my friend, are an asshole. And when you eventually arrive at the pool, sit around for a good while longer doing nothing more than engaging in some worthless exposition about how nice it is to not be working.

3. Stare at the pool longingly, and mull over the fact that maybe, just maybe, the water is well-heated, and if you were to slit your wrists and just lay there awhile, you might be put out of your misery.

4. Eh, fuck the pool. Throw a dinner/discussion party, and set the evening's topic to "Examples of Films Being Produced on DV Because They Don't Deserve a Real Film's Budget". If anyone brings up Anniversary Party as an example, come to its defense, and explain how you'd rather watch that film ten consecutive times than have to endure Open Water.

5. As dinner approaches, keep devising stalling tactics to fill up time. For instance, exclaim loudly that you think your leg is getting cramped. Oh, wait, look at that, that cleared up! Phew! Now, however, you're falling prey to motion sickness, even though you're seated at a table. Oh, that, too, passed. Wait! Hey, look, I think I saw a car drive by outside this window over here, oh, wait, it turned the corner and is gone now. Shit, I'm getting a cramp again. If your dinner guests start beating you about the face mercilessly, it's entirely forgivable because they clearly have some understanding of a bad narrative structure.

6. Think about that episode of Magnum, P.I. that was comprised solely of Tom Selleck being stranded in the ocean, having to tread water for hours on end while he endured a torrent of waves and other oceanic dangers for the duration of the entire episode. Make note that this particular episode of what would otherwise be bad network television comes off like fucking Antonioni or Kieslowski compared to Open Water.

7. Check out Maria Full of Grace or Code 46 and marvel at the injustice of studios' marketing initiatives.

And fallen idol Pete Rose? He's just like the river Styx. No, wait, maybe Icarus?

San Francisco Giants manager Felipe Alou, after yesterday's win over the Philadelphia Phillies kept his team in playoff contention, whips out his copy of Edith Hamilton and waxes rhapsodic on classic Greek mythology:

"The wild card is the purgatory of the lost," Alou said. "It's a place souls go and wait millions of years until redemption. We have had a tough time, but there was always the possibility of the wild card. There are so many teams in this purgatory."

The Continued Importance of Adult Literacy

You Shall Know Our Inspiration!

Without a Paddle, starts Aug. 20....You Shall Know Our Velocity!, now in paperback

"In You Shall Know Our Velocity!, his first novel, Eggers tells another story of loss and its aftermath. After their childhood friend Jack is killed in a highway accident, Will and Hand decide to fly around the world, giving away the windfall money Will has recently received. And while their travels take them from Chicago to Dakar, Morocco, Estonia, and Latvia, the real journey is an interior one, into Will's tormented consciousness. He can give away his money—and the occasions for doing so range from the hilarious to the awkward to the poignant—but the voices in his mind are another matter."— You Shall Know Our Velocity!, summarized on ReadingGroupGuides.com

"This is the story of three friends (Green, Lillard, Shepard) from the big city of Philadelphia who go canoeing together out in the woods and mountains of Washington State after the death of a friend, Billy. Billy was obsessed with going there to search for the unaccounted-for $194,200 out of the $200,000 that famed airliner highjacker D.B. Cooper parachuted with quite possibly to his death in 1971 $5,800 of his marked ransom loot was found in 1980. Canoeing down the Columbia River, the trio soon finds that their canoeing experience goes wrong..., both horribly and hilariously wrong, as the river turns dangerous, and they have encounters with the crazy mountain men (Burt Reynolds) plays who live near the river..." —Without a Paddle, summarized on us.imdb.com

In Pompano did Publa Porn, a Portly Pleasure-Dome Decree

Al Goldstein, during his salad—okay, double cheeseburger and fries—days

I usually leave these sorts of high/low literary parodies to the professional, but something about this piece in The New York Times today made me think of a poem I read in high school. (Insert your own "deep romantic chasm" joke here, pervert.)

[Al Goldstein's] company, Milky Way Productions, home of Screw and his long-running cable show, "Midnight Blue," went into bankruptcy last year. His mansion in Pompano Beach, Fla., with the 11-foot statue of a raised middle finger out back, was sold in June to pay debts.

68 and Sleeping on Floor, Ex-Publisher Seeks Work, by Andy Newman, Aug. 12, 2004.

The saddest part is the photo, which doesn't appear online. Goldstein is literally half a man: he must've lost 200 pounds from his stately plump frame. It's like watching Orson Welles turn into Don Knotts in the end. Actually, maybe the "colossal wreck" of Al Goldstein reminds me of another high school-era poem.

Scott Peterson, the New Playboy Advisor?

Or at least a Maxim advice columnist. This guy has moves straight out of The Ladies Man:

"Peterson first took her to an intimate dinner at a fancy sushi bar, where he paid extra for a private room, she said. He then asked her to come back to his room at the Radisson Hotel so he could change. He wasn't wearing a wedding ring, Frey said.

"Once in the room, he suddenly produced a bottle of champagne and box of strawberries from his leather bag.

"'[He] put one [strawberry] in each of our glasses,' Frey said. 'I remember eating one. They were a little bit sour.'

"The pair then went to a karaoke bar, where they slow-danced, nuzzled affectionately and then shared a single, passionate kiss."
— MY CHAMPAGNE CASANOVA SCOTT SEDUCED ME INTO 1ST-DATE SEX: AMBER, by Howard Breur, The New York Post, Aug. 10, 2004

Funny Money

Perception: KING OF BLING? . . . Reality: Trump Hotels Planning Bankruptcy [click cover(s) for detail]

Related: Ten (or 13) Years Ago in SPY:
"In the history of finance, Donald Trump will be known for one brilliant innovation. No one before Trump has used the press so cunningly to give himself legitimacy with creditors. Trump made the media his balance sheet. Reports of Trump's wealth in newspapers and especially in sober business magazines such as Fortune and Forbes were the basis upon which banks lent him money and public bought his bonds."
— ALL OF THE PEOPLE, ALL OF THE TIME (How Donald Trump Fooled the Media, Used the Media to Fool the Banks, Used the Banks to Fool the Bondholders and Used the Bondholders to Pay for the Yachts and Mansions and Mistresses) A Special SPY Investigation by John Connolly, April 1991, p. 50

"Man Who Would Be Woody" Has publicist who would be Rubenstein

The board reads: "AIM: Get Famous By Selling Own Hand-me-Down Neuroses."

Coming soon to JTV: Straight Frum My Heart, a new reality dating show hosted by Keith Black, future relationships columnist for HEEB, and inspiration for a posable action figure (with tefillan grip!) from McFarlane Toys.

You know Keith Black, the new Woody Allen, right? He's everywhere, except on Friday nights and Saturday mornings. He's even in the papers:

"As a neurotic, bespectacled, highly therapized Jewish filmmaker from New York, Keith Black has more than a few things in common with his idol Woody Allen—except for one.

"'I'm looking for my Annie Hall,' says the lovelorn 35-year-old, whose new short film, 'Get the Script to Woody Allen,' is as concerned with his dating mishaps than his desire to be famous...."

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE WOODY, by Maureen Callahan, The New York Post, Aug. 10, 2004

Too bad his dream girl's taken.

Oh well, you certainly can't buy publicity like that, right?

Or this:
Following in Woody's Footsteps

Or this:
Today Malverne, Tomorrow Cannes?

Or these:
A Woody Wannabe Mines His Neuroses

Allen Encounter Adds Up to Black's 'Woody Short'

Woody Wannabe Plays Many Roles with 'Script'

[Links via Keith Black's website]

Harold and Kumar Go On Friendster

For those interested in learning more about America’s greatest civil rights triumph since the march from Selma, aka Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, you might want to check out co-writer Jon Hurwitz’s Friendster profile.

Among his nine testimonials, there is the Asian Harold who offers:

Jon writes about and enjoys life by chronicling what he knows best: things that are really, ridiculously funny and amusing. He draws much of his material from his own experiences and friends.

And then there’s his Indian Friendster Raza who writes:

I remember this one magical summer Jon and I spent in Nora Ephron's Manhattan, where we watched animated features and romantic comedies, ate dim sum and rode the subway. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There was also the incident at [a certain movie studio where I took really long lunches ... I mean worked], but I'm not allowed to talk about that.

Is it possible that we have located the ur-Harold and Kumar? Could this prove the Rosetta Stone to unlocking the secrets of this milestone film? Yeah, whatever.
[Thanks Carone!]

I Want My Oy TV

Hoping to Build Network for 'Nice Jewish Boyz', by Jacques Steinberg, The New York Times, Aug. 9, 2004

Some jokes are just too easy to make—even for us.

A Berg type film

Friday Night Lights

Collateral

Witness an emerging trend in Hollywood marketing: if your film in some way involves Peter Berg (perhaps best known as the actor-turned-Very Bad Director of Very Bad Things), we can be sure that the trailer's typographic design will feature a simple sans-serif font (in the vein of Helvetica Neue) partially obscured by blurry type in the background.

We'll wait to see Berg's imaginatively-titled Hip-Hop Cops in 2005 to see if the trailer adheres to the Good 'n Berg (Style) Bible.

It's Raining Men!

TIME, Aug. 9, 2004... The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 8, 2004

Update, Aug. 8, 2004:

Parade, Aug. 8, 2004

As 'Wicker Park' approaches, we present this definitive and comprehensive list of good, quality films starring Josh Hartnett

HOT Literary Accessory: Axes

"Hot Trouble," Abigail Vona from Rolling Stone... Hatchet-Man Dale Peck

No Way, Boss. Everyone likes you. 'Cause you're great!

The chairman

Guys, you know when your girlfriend asks you if you she 'looks fat in this' and you have to be like, "No way! You look fantastic!" But sometimes she does kinda look fat in that and maybe a guy on the street will say something like "thick" as she passes and you have to be like, "That guy is insane! You do not look fat at all!" But you're sort of relieved that someone else got to say it and not you? (Gals, this is probably like when your boyfriend asks about his endowment and you have to spin like Ari Fleischer at Equinox.)

Anyway, that's what it must be like to review a film critical of your boss for the newspaper your boss owns and operates.

Poor Meghan Lehman drew the short straw and had to review Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism for The New York Post, while her colleague Lou Lumenick got to see Code 46. (Mysteriously, Outfoxed's website is down! Coincidence?... Probably.)

With a headline like FAIR AND BALANCED, THIS DOC'S NOT, you can kind of guess what the critic is going to say without even reading the review. Lehman's conclusion? "Unbalanced." But my favorite part is this little rah-rah nut graph towards the end:

Fox News Channel consistently beats CNN and MSNBC, yet Greenwald approaches not a single viewer to probe the reasons for its popularity, nor a single current employee.

Yay! (I'll leave it to this guy to confirm or refute that claim.)

Related, in today's Post: BIZ LEADERS HAILED AS HARLEM HEROES "Post Publisher Lachlan Murdoch received an Excellence in Journalism Award..." As his father would say, "Excellent."

Prattling, ranting, and shopping: these are things women do.

Thursday. Some say it's the new Friday, and Friday is the new Saturday, and so on and so forth, but I say Thursday is still yesterday.

Yesterday, my friends, was quite a day. From the FEMALE PERSPECTIVE, of course. You want the grit and gristle of womanhood? Here it comes:

What would give you insight? Um, how about a trip to that affordable mecca of disposable fashion, H&M? Yes! That's right: females like to shop. And when you're this particular female, you shop on a budget. The Swedish superstore is the solution! Retail therapy is a cheaper version of Klonopin, after all.

Unfortunately, H&M was doused in pink. Yep -- pink shirts, pink pants, pink fucking socks from floor to ceiling. Suffice to say, Peptowhatever is in.

Not that I have a problem with pink.

I just don't like looking like a precious, vomitous mess. At least not on Thursday. Instead, I bought a brown shirt. And I bought it to look "hot" for you "men" so I don't have to "buy" my "own drinks."

Until the pay scale is completely equal, this is how it will be. At least it's all out on the table.

This is not my beautiful wife

So, in some strange twist of fate, my internet "presence" has landed over here at the lovely low culture where, I suppose, I am expected to lend a female voice. Meanwhile, JP will be launching diatribes of undetermined nature over at my old and neglected site, The Blueprint.

Female voice. Interesting. Inevitably, such a directive will lead to talk of menstruation -- and I'm not sure I'm ready to confess to you all that I'm two weeks late.

That being said, I'll be here and there today but more present tomorrow, at which point I'll have a better understanding of what it means to be a woman, thanks to some handy lessons from Matt and JP.

Mann at Work

Mann's man, Tom Cruise: "Getting hurt, giving hurt… I got no illusions."

As everyone knows, Tom Cruise goes 'dark' in Michael Mann's Collateral tomorrow. Paradoxically, his hair went 'light' to do so. (Shades—light shades—of Leland Palmer?) Cruise plays Vincent, a hitman destined to be described by lazy critics as "cooly efficient," who dragoons Jamie Foxx's Max into being his wheelman during a long night of Los Angeles mayhem. Most of the hits appear to take place in LA's East Side, preventing Mann from bringing us any more death in Venice. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Cruise is the most dapper, put-together hitman you're likely to see this year. (Generally, it's a bad idea to wear $400 shoes when you're killing people for a living.) Violating Pat Kingsley's embargo against any and all innuendo around her star client, Mann described Cruise's character to Lynn Hirschberg in The New York Times Magazine as "rough trade in a good suit." Watch out for that word trade: in Mann's world, it's everything.

Having not seen it, I can't tell you if Cruise pulls it off. But I can tell you I have all the faith in the world in Collateral's actual cooly efficient hitman: Michael Mann. Mann is the auteur of professionalism, a focused, precise observer of focused, precise men at work. Think of Robert De Niro in Heat, reading metallurgy textbooks to further his knowledge of impact-resistant safes, or Will Smith as the most intuitive, innately intelligent sweet scientist in Ali.

I always think of the eighties when I see Michael Mann's films. Maybe it's because of Miami Vice (a show I watched so obsessively as a kid that I think I believed I'd grow up to wear white pants with espadrilles to work as an adult). You can practically hear the sax solo from Glen Frey's "You Belong to the City" as the actors—usually men, but sometimes the criminally under-employed Diane Venora—smolder in the foreground and neon lights blur behind them in Mann's films. (Mann used the song in Miami Vice, but it wouldn't be out of place in Collateral, especially the part that goes "Nobody knows where you're goin',/ Nobody cares where you've been/ 'Cause you belong to the city/ You belong to the night/ Livin' in a river of darkness/ Beneath the neon lights.") Even The Insider, which was about corporate intrigue and journalistic ethics, not crime and brutality, looked and felt like a fresh police procedural, another Mann against the world epic.

Nick James, who literally wrote the book on Mann's Heat, pointed out the visual rhyme between that movie's black suited gentlemen bank robbers and ur-eighties artist Robert Longo's Men in the Cities series of drawings. Men in suits; men in the zone.

It's not Longo I'm reminded of when watching Mann at work, it's another eighties icon of cold masculine artistry: Mike Tyson. Before he turned into a circus sideshow act, Tyson was also seen as a technician, a man who did his job with ruthless precision. As artist/writer Keith Piper tells it in his Step Into the Arena monograph, "The story of the latter half of the 1980’s is the story of the ascendancy of the specialist, and within this ascendancy Tyson has come to represent the supreme professional." Kobena Mercer, an art theorist and sometime Piper collaborator went so far as to describe Tyson as "a Reaganite cyborg, a fighting machine indifferent to anything outside the corporeal elimination of his opponent." (Tyson himself called his sport "the hurt business," rationalizing his passionless brutality as a job in which he's "Getting hurt, giving hurt… I got [sic.] no illusions about boxing—none. This is a brutal business," according to Donald McRae in Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing.)

A 'brutal business.' Sounds a lot like Vincent's gig in Collateral. Perhaps by pairing this character with an actor of similarly focused, cobalt ambition (Cruise is nothing if not a Reaganite cyborg, an acting machine), Mann has finally found an on-screen embodiment of his aesthetic and r'aison d'etre.

Well, maybe that's the explanation for Cruise's gray blow-out.

Someone Got a New Publicist

Mickey Dolenz: Where is he not now?

"MICKEY [(page) sic.] Dolenz, the ex-Monkee now starring in 'Aida,' celebrating at Un Deux Trois with co-author Mark Bego on the second printing of 'I'm a Believer: My Life of Monkees, Music, and Madness.'"

–Page Six, 4/5/04

"I told ex-Monkee MICKY DOLENZ that just coming to Brooklyn was scary enough for me—and I'm from there. 'They don't even have to show the movie,' he said, nicely going along with the joke..."

–Michael Musto, La Dolce Musto, 4/3/04

Have you heard this much about this guy in the last three decades? Frankly, we'd rather hear more about his once and still hot daughter, Ami, because she's out of control.

Yet Another iPod Parody

Actually, no. It's a highly stylized riot in South Korea.

Earlier iPod parodies: Here, here, and here.

DNC and Out in Beverly Hills

Eric Alterman's Radical Pique: Mmmmmmmmm. These are nice.

As any first year journalism student worth his or her Bartlett's knows, someone once said, "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." What's usually left off from that quote is the second part: "Attend lavish parties thrown by the comfortable, enjoy the free drinks and delicious appetizers, then stab your hosts in the back with the little stick on the chicken satay."

Take Eric Alterman's September Atlantic article, "The Hollywood Campaign." Alterman seems to have spent most of spring lingering on the periphery of every industry party in Bel Air, Malibu, and Beverly Hills, visiting the sets of shows like The West Wing, and generally acting like a quiet, very judgemental member of every lefty stars' entourage, taking notes between sips of vintage wines.

It certainly reads like a fun assignment, much better than William Langweische's last few reports for the magazine. But the east coast red meat-loving lefty's time among the west coast lotus eaters seems to have bred some contempt in Alterman, the liberal liberals love to hate. His piece, replete with one of those oh-so-Grosz Steven Brodner caricatures of stars like Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, is one of the most condescending portraits of Hollywood values since Nick Nolte plunged into Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler's pool in Paul Mazursky's Down and Out in Beverly Hills.

The comparison to Mazursky's film is especially apt, since Alterman draws similarly broad and contemptuous portraits of the people he encountered out in La-La-Land. Here's Alterman on Laurie David, environmental activist and wife of Larry David:

A pretty, brassy Jewish girl from Merrick, Long Island, whose close friends describe her as "pushy," David is one of those people who carry energy as if it were a communicable disease.

So, she's a hypocritical JAP? Add to that, cheap:

Before joining ACT's finance committee, David sought entrée with a donation of $100,000. A number of Hollywood activists think she is taking a larger than warranted role, given that her wealth would allow her to be far more generous. These people, none of whom are willing to be named, told me that David tried to get away with giving ACT a mere $10,000, but was told that ten times that amount would be the minimum for the role she planned to play.

I'm sure Laurie's famously press-averse husband (squirm through Scott Raab's Esquire profile or James Kaplan's New Yorker piece to see just how little he likes being interviewed) is pleased he granted Alterman all that face time now.

Here's Alterman's description of political consultant Marge Tabankin:

In a town known for its obsession with thinness, Tabankin looks not unlike a kinder, gentler Bella Abzug, with warm green eyes and an inviting smile.

It's not just women who come in for a bashing for their unpleasant adherence to ethnic stereotypes or their weight. Alterman has some things to say about Hollywood's liberal men, too. Take screenwriter/checkwriter Steve Bing, who gets the old compliment followed by insult treatment:

And then there is the dashing Steve Bing, who manages to maintain his boyish, almost adolescent good looks despite a few lines on his face and a head of closely cropped gray hair. A film producer and real-estate heir, he has been nicknamed "Bing Laden" and called a "spermicidal maniac" by London tabloids, owing to his various romantic entanglements. (When the actress Elizabeth Hurley announced that she was pregnant with Bing's child, he issued a news release claiming that she had chosen "to be a single mother" and stating that their relationship was a non-exclusive one. He began proceedings to force a DNA test, which resulted in his accepting responsibility for the child. Bing also sued the billionaire corporate raider Kirk Kerkorian for invasion of privacy after Kerkorian had an employee grab some dental floss out of Bing's garbage in an attempt to prove that Bing was the father of his ex-wife's daughter.)

Wait, did I drop my copy of The Atlantic and pick up Vanity Fair (circa July 2002)?

With its sprawling scope and condescending tone, Alterman's piece evokes another, far superior, critique of wealthy liberals: Tom Wolfe's oft-referenced (but, based on the references, little read) Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. Both pieces portray the wealthy as guilty, eager to please, easily fleeced babies swaddled by all that money.

Yes, it's fun to mock these people (South Park made great sport of Rob Reiner last year and has also bashed Barbra and ripped Redford), but it's too facile, too laden with envy and aspiration to hit the mark. Here's what Alterman concludes about the incongruity of millionaires and billionaires feeling disenfranchised in Bush's America:

On occasions when I've mentioned such contradictions and blind spots to smart Hollywood fundraisers, the response has been not so much explanation or excuse as a plea for indulgence—as if one were, after all, dealing with children, children who are very good at sharing.

Harsh, to be sure. Hopefully these "children" will forgive their mean new friend Eric, who came to their parties, behaved politely, and then said such hurtful things about them in the schoolyard the next week. As any parent will tell you, some kids play nice, and others never will.

After fifteen pages of Alterman's letter from Los Angeles (homeboy should change his title from 'senior fellow at the Center for American Progress' to senior longfellow!), I was reminded of another famous quote about journalism that every first year student can recite by heart as well. It's from Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer, and it's so succinct, so canonical, it should be written in calligraphy on every J-school diploma:

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full himself to notice what is going on knows what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up on day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns—when the article or book appears—his hard lesson. Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and 'the public's right to know'; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.

And let's not forget that delicious chicken satay. Mmmmmmm. Those are nice.

Young Men of Respect

First off, let me start by saying that I mean no disrespect by this post. I hope that the young Gotti boys—"The Hotti Gottis," as their website calls them—understand that this is a joke and don't get too upset. I watched your mom's show last night and thought it was great: like The Osbournes, but with fewer dogs and no satanic home decor. But you fellas reminded me of some brothers from another mother, and I just wanted to point it out.

John (school V.P., honor roll)... and Joseph (Gimme A Break, Blossom

Frank (honor roll, seventh in his class)... and Andrew (Jack Frost, Oliver Beene)

Carmine (honor roll)... and Matthew (Mrs. Doubtfire, The Hot Chick)

Whoa! I don't know whose wallpaper I should download, the Gottis' or the Lawrences'.

An Open Epistle to One Night Shyamalan: 'Tis true, thine Village is but a mess, and rightly so

Ah, neighbor! Fear not that I shall spoil the contents of this tale, this Village, by Mr. M. Night Shyamalan, who is of the East Indian Colony descent. To spoil this particular collection of moving images would be to sully and tarnish what may, in other circumstances, be considered the very first adult-oriented dramatic work by Mr. Night (but, wait, shall I refer to him as Mr. Night? Or Mr. Shyamalan? Do tell....where has my Manual of Victorian Protocols and Civilised Behaviors gone?).

Alas, it's already been predestined that this work has been sullied and tarnished by prior hands...the hands, in fact, of The Village's very creator. For what was, during the course of its first two acts—and, dare I say, well into its third—a fairly well-tailored, though not strikingly philosophical, manifestation of an adult morality tale conveying the struggles of a responsible people moving towards the 20th century, rapidly descended into ill-suited pablum of the worst bearing. It's the twist, you see, that did this so. The twist. A common gimmick, a device of unscrupulous origins, better served by carnival barkers and those who peddle ill-advised medicinal herbs and the like (and others of such questionable ilk and lower standing).

A truly gifted story-teller should, nay, would know when not to wield such gimmickry. I put forth these opinions not because I believe that this or any other thing was so because I thought so, but only because I did think so and I want to be quite candid about all I thought and did. These were my thoughts about The Village. I thought I often observed besides how right our story's guide was in what he had said (and what he had drawn for us onscreen), and that the uncertainties and fears on my part, that he would behave as he had in the past, and undermine my newly-restored faith in his skills as a narrator, would cheapen this current work so...

And then, his twist. His cursed twist, brought forth unto his audience like a wanton harlot, ravaged by storytellers of lesser merits, and thrown to the pack of judicious scoundrels who perhaps feared having to sit through two hours (by my pocket watch) of well-considered ideological narrative.

I've imparted to his nature this bit of ill-gotten reliance on commonplace conventionality, and I thus entreat him to explain his motives. And I may render a new line of consideration, as well: Where were the Negroes amongst the townspeople of this Covington Village? Pray tell, why would this assembled gathering of families and individuals take flight from the ravages of urban life, with its concomitant looting and violence and savage rapes and murders aplenty, and not one of those hailing from this Philadelphia region of the Pennsylvanian state would not be of the peach-hued variety?

(In my many travels, I have heard the rhymes of that city's great Roots band, and they are not of the peach-hued variety.)

Who, then, goes into the woods and hides from "hordes of destruction" but those with fear and prejudice coarsing through their hearts? Why, White Supremacists, they might be called, and rightly so! And should the dusky-hued venture into such a town, would they not find themselves dangling from trees, cheeks bulging forth like overripened fruit? Strange fruit, indeed.

I ask of you, in the absence of modern lighting, do not flaming crosses illuminate a town such as this?

Mr. Shyamalan, you have some explaining to do. I should hope to receive your rejoinder, post marked with the utmost haste, delivered upon my doorstep and stamped with your signet within the fortnight.

If not, I can only conclude one thing: not only do twists you bring about, but you be twisted yourself.

It's uncanny how much her experience mirrors my last breakup

From "Suddenly single: Paris Hilton: Why I Split with Nick," an interview in the August 9, 2004 issue of Us:

"I was getting my makeup done [for a photo shoot for an upcoming cover of YM magazine], and it just hit me: I love Nick, but I need time alone. I called my psychic [L.A.-based Cipora Rekrut], and I asked her opinion. She thought I should be alone, and I agreed with her...I went straight to the Kabbalah Centre [in L.A.] and told everyone about the breakup and got a new [red string kabbalah] bracelet."

A Vast Literary Conspiracy

What's that in Denzel Washington's hand? Why, it's a book.

Jonathan Demme's updated version of The Manchurian Candidate opened to $20M at the box office this weekend. The film was preceded by much conspiracy-mongering about what sort of left-leaning hobbyhorse Demme and Paramount chief Sherry Lansing rode in on and if their film about the country's first "corporate owned V.P." bears any resemblance to anyone in real life.

Well, it turns out there is a covert agenda floated forth in The Manchurian Candidate, but it's not what you think: It's a vast conspiracy aimed at making freedom-loving American people do something we are constitutionally averse to do: read.

Demme's film is lousy with literary cameos. Check it out:

Walter Mosley (Bill Clinton's favorite author) plays a congressman

Edwidge Danticat plays Rosie's sister (seen in a photo)

Roy Blount, Jr. plays a pundit (who, along with actress/playwright Anna Deavere Smith, hip-hop pioneer Fab Five Freddy, monologist Reno, Def poet Beau Sia, and director Sidney Lumet seem to have fallen to the cutting-room floor)

E. Jean Carroll plays a reporter

Al Franken also plays a reporter

August Wilson appears (sort of) in a lingering shot of a Playbill for his show Jitney on Rosie's wall.

Of course, this being a Demme film, there are tons of other cameos from friends and colleagues: Roger Corman (also an author!) appears as a former president, a promotion from FBI Director in Demme's Silence of the Lambs. Artist/professor/fellow Lambs cameo-maker Jim Roche pops up, as do rocker Robyn Hitchcock, and the dude who plays Fuse TV's own presidential candidate, Haymish Fuse.

None dare call it conspiracy! We are through the looking glass, people. Who will stop the reverse vampires?

As any David Lynch fan will tell you, it really stands for "Beware of Bob"

From "Sick Bag Note Caused United Flight To Turn Back", July 28, 2004:

...An air sickness bag with the letters "B O B" scrawled on it had been found in a toilet on board.

The pilot decided the note could have meant "bomb on board" and returned to Sydney, dumping almost a full load of fuel before the Boeing 747-400 landed safely.

Several other possibilities were being investigated, including that the note could have been a popular flight crew acronym for a good looking passenger, or simply a man named Bob.

One suggestion: aviation officials ought to have paid closer attention to the phrase "FIRE WALK WITH ME" that was scrawled on the bag's flipside.

43, 42 Years Later

Last week, the reliably over-reactive Matt Drudge posted an urgent news flash for his legions of readers:

"RICH: 'MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE' MORE PARTISAN THAN 'FAHRENHEIT 911' Thu Jul 22 2004 20:56:59 ET"

THAT MORE OR LESS TURNED OUT (whoa, sorry, was momentarily stuck in all-caps/shouting mode) to be the news item in its entirety, in that Drudge's pithy exclamation consisted solely of a handful of quotes from "Pop culture takes on the fear game," an article by the New York Times' Frank Rich (whom we absolutely adore, by the way) that appeared in Friday's International Herald Tribune. Here's the particular passage that got Drudge so worked up:

"[The act of turning the Bush-Cheney administration into an object of fear] can be seen at full throttle in Jonathan Demme's remake of the classic cold war thriller 'The Manchurian Candidate,' which opens in the United States the morning after the Democratic convention ends. This movie could pass for the de facto fifth day of the convention itself.

I cannot recall when Hollywood last released a big-budget mainstream feature film as partisan as this one at the height of a presidential campaign. That it has slipped into action largely under the media's radar, as discreetly as the sleeper agents in its plot, is an achievement in itself. Freed from any obligations to fact, 'The Manchurian Candidate' can play far dirtier than 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' Not being a documentary, it can also open on far more screens - some 2,800, which is more than three times what Michael Moore could command on his opening weekend (or any weekend to date).

Aw, Frank, Matt...you guys needn't get so riled up about the undercurrent of hostility towards this year's race for the presidency that has apparently surfaced in Demme's remake. In fact, there were already a slew of winks and nods to the current 2004 campaign running throughout John Frankenheimer's original 1962 film. Prescient, indeed.

You've got Texas versus Massachusetts...

And the convention held at Madison Square Garden in New York...

Featuring a first-class imbecile on the presidential ticket...

And, finally, the minor-yet-significant role of Heinz ketchup in the race for the presidency.

Let's hope the real convention ends better than the one in the film!

Hilary, darling, that look is sooo Sofia's last film

Hilary Duff stars in A Cinderella Story, 2004

Scarlett Johansson promoting Lost in Translation at the Venice Film Festival, 2004

(With thanks to Kristina Dalberg.)

Look out, Sasha Frere-Jones and Simon Reynolds...here comes Victoria Murphy of Forbes Magazine

Following in the wake of the "controversy" surrounding Jadakiss' provocative lyrics ("Why did Bush knock down the towers?") in his hit single, "Why?", Fox News' irascible hip-hop maestro Bill O'Reilly invited Forbes Magazine's senior reporter Victoria Murphy on to his Monday, July 19, 2004 edition of the O'Reilly Factor to discuss a tangentially-related matter, Microsoft's usage of the rapper in an X-Box promotion.

But when you're a 23-year-old reporter, why confine yourself to talking about boring, adult-oriented things like "marketing initiatives" and "public relations controversies" when you can wax rhapsodic on pop music and its performers?

MURPHY: This rapper's probably a one-hit wonder anyway, and it turns out it probably wasn't such a smart decision, but Microsoft is a smart company and what they want to do is sell more software, not promote some rapper's political ideas...

O'REILLY: Yeah, I mean we understand what their marketing is, to get kids to play this X-Box with Jadakiss, but you know, July 5th, Jadakiss is arrested in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for, uh...

MURPHY: Right, but that's what rappers do right, they get arrested?

O'REILLY: Yeah, I guess that's what they do...

RELATED: One random fan's Amazon selection of Jadakiss and the LOX's various platinum- and gold-selling records.

(Gotta Get) Back in Time

TIME Magazine's July 26, 2004 issue, Vol. 164, Number 4

...in which the cover-story editors draw from the ten-year-old script for Jon Favreau and Doug Liman's Swingers, liberally quoting Vince Vaughn's Trent character.

...in which the "The Arts" section profiles Clara Peller, noted for her catchy quip, "Where's the beef?"

...in which we learn about Ms. Pac-Man, the surprisingly successful spinoff to everyone's favorite coin-operated arcade game

...in which the movement to impeach the President for his knowledge of an illegal break-in at the Watergate Hotel is examined

...in which the "Nation" section document's the cultural obsession with the Lindbergh baby trial

NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE:

...in which the "Science" section profiles Gumma, the universe's very first single-celled organism, and noted neurotic, in an article headlined "Mitochondriac"

That's not reverb, that's delay you're hearing from the mic

Today's New York Times Metro section runs a piece about the city's night spots and the hipster embrace of—get this, kids—karaoke. In "'Sweet Caroline' Never Seemed So Good: So Uncool That It's Hip, Karaoke Enjoys a Comeback", Times readers commuting via the downtown 1/9 trains had the opportunity to learn about this thriving new subculture amongst the city's ironic set:

"Clearly, given the demographics, this is not the karaoke of crazy drunken uncles who worship Neil Diamond, nor is it the more studied karaoke first pioneered by Japanese businessmen. Instead, it is more akin to the swing-dancing craze of the 90's - a form of urban group expression that satisfies a longing for community."

While an instinctive critique of the paper may be expected to run along the lines of, "Why doesn't this paper cover these phenomena when they're more relevant, and hire younger, more plugged-in writers and reporters," it turns out that a better and more applicable critique may be along the lines of, "What the hell happened to their older staff, those people who actually remember what the paper has published in the past?" To wit, observations from "Noticed; Karaoke: Once More, With Irony" in the paper's Style section (a mere six years earlier, on July 5, 1998), which noted

"a reawakened interest among New York hipsters in the sing-along pastime imported from Japan. ...Just when it seemed the loose-tie recreation of the 1980's had been safely put to rest in church basements and suburban strip-mall bars, karaoke is being revived by young downtown scene-makers, along with so many other retro relics of the Reagan era. They are frequenting new karaoke clubs, as well as infiltrating traditional ones with a largely Asian clientele."

Well, be it 1998 or 2004, one thing is certain: it must be cool if the Bush twins are doing it.

Blonde, and bigger than ever before

Blonde Items:

WHAT hairy havoc have Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce Knowles, et al wreaked upon the world of up-and-coming black and Latina starlets? WHEN did Christina Milian, brunette teen songstress and star of last year's Love Don't Cost a Thing, have her handlers reconstruct her image and give her a post-Beyonce blonde re-do? WHY did no one realize that "Dip it Low" is a strong enough pop single on its own merits that its vocalist did not need this egregious white-person-accessibility reinvention? WHEN did we forget about that scene at the beginning of Spike Lee's Malcolm X where the young leader of the Black Power movement becomes embarrassed by his usage of hair-straightening products? WHY has Angela Davis never fronted a pop group?

Father Figure: The Origin of Ron Burgundy

After Will Ferrell's Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy took in an estimated $28 million and landed in second place at the weekend box office, we took it upon ourselves to help flush out the work of producers for esteemed shows such as ET and Access Hollywood and get to the bottom of things: just who is Ron Burgundy, Anchorman?

After flipping through a copy of the June, 1979 issue of National Lampoon (or, to be honest, the version archived on the Lampoon's website, since we don't actually collect old magazines like a goddamned packrat), realization set in that we were gazing upon the Genesis of an Institution, and the Dawn of Buffoonery. The following images are taken from a feature entitled "Emergency Fathering", written by John Hughes, Tom Corcoran, Gerrald Sussman, and Judy Corcoran.

Are we looking at illustrated archival documentation of the Ron Burgundy's baby years, which might in some way explain the character's later behavior as an adult? But wouldn't that make Ron a youthful 25 years old today? And, wait, isn't the film itself set in the 1970s? Oh my god, I totally cannot process all of this. Maybe it's merely cinematic inspiration?

Only John Hughes knows for sure. I, meanwhile, am off to go watch Wonderland and then Boogie Nights. Or vice versa.

Clearly it's this pun that's the tramp

ON NEWSSTANDS NOW: i-D Magazine's July 2004 issue, left, and V Magazine's Summer 2004 issue, right

Post Pile-on, Continued

Greetings, New York Post reporters! You've got a sympathetic ear here, and we'd like to remind you that when your peers decide to ridicule you for your constant butchering of the facts, remind them that any and all errors and inaccuracies can and should be blamed on the Islamist Web sites of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna that tipped you off to the (non)-beheading of an American hostage this weekend, and, presumably, also let you know that Dick Gephardt would be joining the Kerry ticket.

Those goddamned terrorists, sullying and tarnishing your respected brand like that!

From the very restrained and downright reserved article entitled "NO END TO EVIL: CREEPS BOAST OF MARINE MURDER", which was garishly splashed across the cover of this weekend's New York Post, July 4, 2004:

Bloodthirsty Iraqi terrorists yesterday claimed to have beheaded captive American soldier Wassef Ali Hassoun — and vowed to release a videotape of the savage slaying — in the first decapitation of an American Muslim hostage.

And from today's decidedly trashy and sensationalistic New York Times, "Abducted Marine Is Free, His Brother Says", July 6, 2004:

A United States marine held by an Iraqi militant group is alive and has been released, the marine's brother said today.

Well, guys, you lose some, and you lose some.

Do we defeat true men?

Yes, it's an easy target. And yes, we've already harped on for some time about how the New York Post is very, very error-prone. But today's Post has three egregious errors, and we thought it pertinent to point them out, in fulfillment of our duties here at low culture as Honorary Ombudsmen of the Paper of Disrepute.

1. From STERN'S LADY IN LAD MAG: "Almost as good is a celebration of the enduring comedy "Nerds," which this year turns 20." Let's see: either they're reporting on an obscure, under-appreciated documentary depiction of the creation of the Willy Wonka-themed candy of that name, or they left off a key "Revenge of the" preceding modifer. But, hey, everyone loves a good shorthand now and then, right?

2. While not an error, per se, the paper's HARVEY SET TO BOLT MIRAMAX on Page Six seems a bit, erm, unlikely. "Under the plan being considered, Weinstein would leave to start his own movie company and Miramax would distribute his films, sources say. Harvey's brother and Miramax co-founder Bob Weinstein is expected to stay at the company, where he runs Dimension Films, a Miramax division that focuses on medium-budget action and horror films." Fans of studio politics everywhere understand that while Harvey's a boor, Bob is merely churlish, and boors hardly ever stand down for churls.

3. Oh, and there's also some big hullabaloo about some error they may have made regarding the cover story above...Something about a cabinet pick, or an election or something? DEVELOPING...

That leaves about five percent of them who can reasonably lust after Lindsay Lohan or Orlando Bloom

While fans of lawsuits and/or insipidly lowest-common-denominator clothing chains may best know about West Virginia from its run-in with Abercrombie & Fitch last year over the company's sale of T-shirts with the mocking phrase, "It's All Relative in West Virginia," it may be time to update your repertoire of insults for the 35th state in the union.

Mull over this disturbing factoid from the Associated Press, which comes via President Bush's visit to the southern state on the fourth of July this past weekend.

Making a pitch for votes in a state where 200,000 veterans comprise 15 percent of the population, Bush praised veterans for "setting a good example for those who have followed ... in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Bush. Thirty-six percent of all male West Virginians fought in World War II, 16 percent in Korea and 20 percent in Vietnam.

Now, that last line seems ridiculously erroneous, and most probably involves some sort of grammatical error in relation to the first sentence of the paragraph sampled above. Because, otherwise, that means roughly 70 percent of West Virginian men are approaching retirement age.

And if that is in fact true, be on the lookout for next week's hard-hitting TimeOut New York cover story, "WV to NY: Young and single West Virginians hit big on the New York bar scene!"

Woolf in Fred Segal's Clothing

From left to right, Nicole Kidman and her Oscar-winning prosthetic nose, and the egregiously untalented Ashlee Simpson. Poor, poor girl. Check her pockets for rocks before she goes to the MTV Beach House.

Mini DV's mobility, on the other hand, caused Chelsea Walls to seem poorly framed

Photo of Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, and Richard Linklater peering at an Apple laptop computer, taken from Dennis Lim's piece about Linklater's Before Sunset in this week's Village Voice

And then there's this, below, taken from New York magazine's current profile of Ethan Hawke as leading man/single man/bohemian:

There’s a manual typewriter on his desk; he wrote both his books on it. “The computer has destroyed fiction,” he declares. “Paragraphs get so perfectly sculpted they lose all their juice.”

I think I recognize that actress...and her gamine-faced expression, too!

Three years ago, indie film fans across America saw Amélie and, apparently, fell in love with the film's lead actress Audrey Tautou...or at least that distinctively peculiar facial expression of hers. How else to explain the marketing of her subsequent films and the rash of look-alike film posters and DVD slipcases for movies in which she appears?

Anyway, you may also want to check out He Loves Me...He Loves Me Not, and if you're wondering how on earth you'll find this dark gem of a film in your local video store, fear not. Just look for Mlle. Tautou's inquisitive visage. Or, better yet, take a practice run below...You'll have to wade through films in which she merely plays a cameo, but that should be obvious by examining the ratio of Tautou-Face™ to the package's Total Surface Area:

The book was written by Yale University's honorary "Christopher Pike Professor of English"

From the case's promotional copy for the current DVD (re-)release of Disney's 1993 film A Far Off Place, which is noteworthy only in that it stars a younger, pre-Election, Reese Witherspoon:

"A classic adventure in the literary tradition of Holes"

Ray Charles, in turn, clearly inspired underground hip-hop artists such as Louis Logic and Prince Po

An actual letter to the editor which appeared in The Nation's July 12, 2004 issue, amidst readers' comments on the magazine's "tribute" to the many under-reported negative aspects of Reagan's presidency:

Boston - You omitted one salient fact: Ronald Reagan was responsible for creating the best marijuana in the world! When Reagan initiated his "war on drugs," the marijuana growers were hard pressed to beat the Feds. They had to re-engineer their plant, and they did so in one of the greatest breeding undertakings ever--no recombinant DNA, just conventional breeding technology. In a few years the marijuana plant was a dwarf plant that lacked the typical acrid odor, thereby allowing it to be grown indoors. Along with these changes came additional benefits--the best and most potent sinsemilla marijuana in the world. Bravo, Mr. President.

STEVEN ACKERMAN

It's Must Repent TV!

In yesterday's New York Times, the paper's Hollywood scribe Sharon Waxman shows how the success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has given the former action star a newfound ability to effectively greenlight and produce a number of his own projects. (In addition to turning water into wine on cue.) Waxman writes that "Mr. Gibson's Icon Productions will have no fewer than three prime-time television series on the networks' fall schedule: 'Clubhouse' on CBS, 'Savages' on ABC and 'Kevin Hill' on UPN."

When detailing the nature of these projects, however, Ms. Waxman, regrettably, left out specifics regarding the shows' content, save for a few bullet points here and there.

What follows, then, is our exclusive insider guide to Icon Productions' fall television lineup, praise be He:

CLUBHOUSE
Airing this fall on CBS

Marc Donato portrays a New York teenager who becomes a batboy for the Yankees. Sounds sort of tedious and Wonder Years-ish, right? Wrong...this tale's been Gibsonized! Herod, or "Harry", as he's better known in the clubhouse, first acquired fame in the New York tabloids as the product of an immaculate conception at North Central Bronx Hospital fifteen years earlier. The adolescent Harry, who now notoriously has quasi-biblical powers, comes to the attention of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who, in the series opener, is embroiled in a payroll accounting scandal, and in an effort to redeem himself in the eyes of God (and the New York media), hires young Harry to provide redemption for not just "this tired old Jew," but the entire team of sinners, as well.

And, thankfully, things shape up for the team pretty fast under Harry's guidance. When not providing the home plate umpire with new baseballs, or making sure Alex Rodriguez's batting gloves are well-oiled, Harry has the opportunity to counsel Jason Giambi on the perils of ingesting "Satan's Unnatural Poisons" in his effort to hit more home runs, and coaxing team captain Derek Jeter into giving up his womanizing ways after a nasty encounter with Satan's Temptress, played by the enchanting Rebecca Romijn. And when the Subway Series reprises itself during sweeps week, Mets catcher (and notorious homosexual) Mike Piazza learns that a good man is, indeed, hard to find, and subsequently falls in love with Harry's aunt, Seraphia, a former lesbian also cured by God's love.

SAVAGES
Airing this fall on ABC

Keith Carradine plays a single, working-class dad raising five sons. Pretty straightforward, huh? Well, need we remind you that this, too, has been Gibsonized? Keith plays Papa Barabbas, a former missionary in Peru, who has adopted five Incan boys as his own and now must go about raising them in the suburbs of Chicago, all alone. Diehard missionaries and men of God, after all, can't take a wife, which wreaks havoc on his blue-collar neighborhood after Barabbas forcefully renounces the advances of special guest star Bonnie Hunt.

And on the homefront, despite Barabbas' background in converting South Americans to Christianity, things are both difficult and hilarious for him as he tries to get his boys to stop speaking to each other in their native Quechua dialect. His sons, however, grow more and more flustered as they struggle with urban colloquialisms such as "What's up?" and "True, dat."

KEVIN HILL
Airing this fall on UPN

Former up-and-coming actor Taye Diggs settles into the role of a high-powered lawyer forced to become a father figure overnight when his cousin tragically perishes, leaving him with custody of a baby girl. Mel Gibson, a noted misogynist, initially balked at the idea of adapting the films Mostly Martha and Raising Helen into a television series, until the newfound mini-mogul realized he could retain the central character's ineptitude and inherent feminine dishonesty by transposing her character traits onto a whole new sort of "other," a black male protagonist. (On-set reports indicated that the Lethal Weapon star actually had trouble distinguishing Taye from his former co-star Danny Glover, until a representative for Mr. Diggs courteously stepped in and insisted that Gibson please stop calling his lead "Danny".)

Regardless, hilarity ensues when papa Taye, in the course of changing diapers, erroneously runs out of Pampers and has to "make do" with a copy of the Ten Commandments. God bless that baby's bottom!

White Chicks, feat. Lil Kim

We hear...

From the New York Post's Page Six, June 22, 2004: ". . . THAT Vince Vaughn, Wyclef Jean and Lauren Bush were among the well-heeled celebs who accepted a goodie bag worth $35,000 at Entertainment Weekly's "Must List" bash the other night . . ."

That's great, because we hear. . . THAT a starting salary for Entertainment Weekly's editorial assistants is in the neighborhood of $27,000.

All the way from Velvet Goldmine to Napoleon Dynamite

Dynamite, get it?

Existing screenwriters/directors to whom Napoleon Dynamite writer/director Jared Hess owes a debt:

Alexander Payne, for his usage of the "everyday", contemporary America as a cinematic template.

Wes Anderson, for imbuing the quirkiness of characters with a celebratory yet sentimental quality—though not going nearly as overboard as Anderson ultimately does in this regard.

Todd Solondz, for nastily ridiculing the above notions of "the everyday" and "those who are quirky", as well as "those who are lunkheads", "jocks", or otherwise boring as all fuck; knocking them all down a peg or two, and somehow giving an anti-hero hailing from the geeky dregs of mundane life a reason for the filmgoer to actually empathize with them.

Chris Smith (of American Movie and Home Movie fame), for successfully (and effectively) conflating such ridicule and empathy.

Todd Haynes, for utterly nailing the ability to appropriate for appropriation's sake.

Adam Shankman (of Bringing Down the House infamy), for relying on some really regrettable racial stereotypes. Wow...whites, blacks and latinos are different, get it? Haha!

Airing all this weekend on the USA Network...

	The Terminal Starring Yes, Dear's Anthony Clark and Kyra Sedgwick
	The Stepford Wives Starring Brooke Shields
	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Starring Quintuplet's Ryan Pinkston, as Harry
	The Day After Tomorrow Starring 7th Heaven's Jeremy London, and featuring Tony Danza as his concerned father
	The Chronicles of Riddick Starring Charlie Sheen and pop/R&B star Brandy
	Before Sunset Starring Sean Astin and Neve Campbell as lovers reunited
	Troy Starring Ryan Seacrest as Achilles, and Eric Bana

Pseudo Imaginary Trend, Continued: Fictional Characters Named after Writers

Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorski.... Victor Navasky as, well, Victor Navasky

As reported here earlier, using the names of writers for movie characters is a growing pseudo imaginary trend in Hollywood. The creeping influence of literature is probably unavoidable, since screenwriters, as a group, are such a well-read lot. (A West Coast friend of ours actually called us once from Book Soup to tell us Brett Ratner was buying the collected works of Isaac Bashevis Singer—and this was way before that writer's centennial! And, presuming the books were in Hebrew, the director even attempted to read them from back-to-front!)

Anyway, the trend continues with the release of Steven Spielberg's The Terminal, in which pink-cheeked national treasure Tom Hanks plays a character named after pinko Nation editorial director and publisher, Victor Navasky. (This is not the first time Navasky has seen his name named on film: he's also the nomenclatural inspiration for Greg Kinnear's character in You've Got Mail.)

Tomorrow's Corrections Today, vol. 4

Slated to appear on the New York Times' Corrections page, June 18, 2004:

Because of an editing error, an op-ed by Maureen Dowd in yesterday's Opinion section, "Smack That Cheney-Bot!", accidentally revealed that the Vice President is a robot. The corrected article should have merely implied this fact. The Times regrets the error.

Here it is, in black and white

While sports fans everywhere are abuzz with news of the Detroit Pistons's more-or-less unanticipated victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals, we here at low culture readily acknowledge that the only thing we love more than sports are drugs, and, in the beloved tradition of Darryl Strawberry, preferably both at the same time.

Lance Armstrong	Barry Bonds
Pre-eminent cyclist...the greatest ever?	Pre-eminent baseball player...the greatest ever?
5 Tour de France titles over the past 5 years	6 MVP awards, including the past 3 years
Highly-respected and liked by the general public; has "a good attitude"	Highly-respected, though disliked by the general public; has "a bad attitude"
Publicly battled cancer	Publicly battled the death of his father from cancer
Currently embroiled in a steroid/doping scandal that threatens his legacy	Currently embroiled in a steroid/doping scandal that threatens his legacy
The big issue, according to the Independent Online: "Emma O'Reilly, an Irish woman who worked for several years as Armstrong's "soigneur" - a combination masseur, physical therapist and personal assistant...claims Armstrong asked O'Reilly to dispose of a black bag containing used syringes after the Tour of the Netherlands in 1998...A year later, the book claims, Armstrong asked O'Reilly for makeup to conceal syringe marks on his arm at the Tour de France medical checkup, an event closely followed by reporters and photographers."	The big issue, according to the San Francisco Chronicle: "Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal weight trainer and longtime friend...allegedly obtained a so-called designer steroid known as "the clear" and a testosterone-based steroid known as "the cream" from BALCO and supplied the substances to all six baseball players, the government was told. In addition, Bonds was said to have received human growth hormone, a powerful substance that legally cannot be distributed without a prescription, investigators were told."
A possible explanation: "O'Reilly acknowledged she did not know what was in the syringes...Armstrong said he had used a skin cream for his saddle sores that contained glucocorticoid, an anti-inflammatory steroid commonly used to treat rashes."	A possible explanation: "The information shared with The Chronicle did not explicitly state that the athletes had used the drugs they were said to have obtained. Bonds, who is baseball's single-season home-run king...[has] publicly denied using steroids...Last week, attorneys for Anderson and Conte quoted their clients as saying Bonds had never used illegal drugs."
Fan and media response? Supportive of Armstrong, and incredulous towards accusers.	Fan and media response? Suspicious of Bonds, and wary of his exploits.
Caucasian, but that has nothing to do with it, right?	African-American, but that has nothing to do with it, right?

"My Life" by Bill Clinton: Exclusive Extract!!!

Finally, the real story! What follows is an exclusive, embargo-shattering leaked excerpt from our 42nd president's memoirs, including, hopefully, the inside dirt on everything you ever wanted to know about the Clinton presidency but were afraid to ask Ken Starr!!!!

From Chapter XXVII: "1995: A Hope for European Renewal":

In the wake of Finland's accession to the European Union in 1995, I recall spending an entire afternoon with President Martti Ahtisaari, sitting there for hours on end in the White House's State Room. There were the usual interruptions, of course, as Betty would scurry in and out of the chamber with information on the progress of our normalization efforts with Vietnam, but for the most part, we were left undisturbed.

President Ahtisaari spoke with me at great length about the way in which his Social Democratic Party hoped to push forth progressive goals for not just the nation of Finland, with its population of roughly 5 million people, but the entire Baltic region. The son of a Norwegian, Martti had been raised with a great appreciation for cold weather, and despite my upbringing in the hot, rural south, we bonded that afternoon over some of his nation's exquisite glögi, which is an exceptional mulled red wine.

It was served hot, and had been mixed with the most savory, delicious spices I had had the opportunity to sample. Martti explained that it was the Scandinavian version of vin chaud, which lead me to recall my experiences in the mid-1970s visiting southern France with Hillary. But the primary distinction between the glögi we sampled that afternoon, and the vin chaud I had consumed in my travels with Hillary during her leave from Yale so many years prior, was the noteworthy addition of cinnamon and other herbs to the well-heated fluid. Bear in mind, this was wine that was heated, but never boiled; the Finns have truly mastered the manner in which one approaches a wine's boiling point without transgressing that fine line.

The glögi, I fondly recall, was served with White House Chef Walter Scheib's delicious assortment of raisins and almonds, a delightful sample of American fruits and nuts which had been culled from states as diverse as California and my very own Arkansas. I explained in great detail to Martti the pan-global nature of our magnificent snacking experience, and he nodded, and said that this very meal could serve as a symbol of American-Finnish relations for years to come.

The Strange Time of our Times

Dubious claims made in Sunday's New York Times Magazine:

Lest you jump to the conclusion that they attend a finishing-school where ladylike deportmant is instilled along with a wobbly grasp of the 3 R's, both girls are ninth graders at Brearley, a Manhattan girls' school that prides itself on its high academic standards and is renowned for producing independent-minded young women...
The Machines Men Still Want? by Daphne Merkin

Q: You're the daughter of the novelist Alice Walker. Why did you decide to take her name instead of your father's, who is a lawyer?
A: It's not that important for me right now. Can we talk about something else?
Questions for Rebecca Walker by Deborah Solomon

"Andrea's work has been about exposing the mechanism of the whole art system," explained Dan Cameron, senior curator at the New Museum... "It underscores the paradox of ownership and pushes it into a realm that hasn't been so pointed before."
Sex, Art and Videotape by Guy Trebay

Now he's releasing his first solo album, "The Slow Wonder," under the name A.C. Newman - his initials "sound more rock, like AC/DC," he explains - having received a grant from a Canadian foundation to record it.
Page Turner by Chris Norris

Carl Nelkin, a 43-year-old Dublin-born Jewish aviation-law consultant, has been trying to improve the situation by "marketing Ireland as a destination for Jewish people to move to."
The Fading World of Leopold Bloom by Jonathan Wilson

"Golf is the new rock 'n' roll," says Tim Southwell, editor of a new magazine called Golf Punk.
Dressed to the 9-Irons by Horacio Silva

Hit over the head(line)

We couldn't get 'rid' of the nagging suspicion that there was a film opening this weekend that we were 'racing' to see, until it hit us at perfect 'pitch': The Chronicles of Riddick is in theaters today! Since it's almost the weekend, headline writers from the AP to USA Today have, apparently, taken the day off, leaving us scratching our, well, 'heads'.

As such, here's a quickie instamatic guide to the headlines of the film's various reviews.

1. Use puns which reference the lead actor's surname, which just happens to be a specific form of fuel. Bear in mind that many engines run on fuel, and incorporate this secondary idea as well:

Diesel fuels sci-fi action
Diesel fuels futuristic farce
Diesel-fueled 'Riddick' chokes on its exhausting action
'Chronicles' benefits from Diesel power
Vin Diesel, driving on a tankful of cool
In the driver's seat

2. Engage in wordplay with the lead character's name:

Riddick Riddled With Silliness
"Riddick" riddled with sci-fi mumbo jumbo
Riddick-ulous

3. Pare your entire review down to one declarative sentence for your headline:

'Riddick' delivers sci-fi fun
‘Chronicles' will leave you muddled and in the dark
'Riddick' is a computerized mess
The script is terrible but the set looks neat
This sci-fi sequel fades from 'Black'

4. Go the laziest route possible:

Review: 'Riddick' big, boomy, bad

5. Or, finally, write for the New York Times and dazzle us with your mystically opaque headline, existing somewhere between Judith Butler and Carl Sagan:

Signs of Testosterone Are All Over the Universe

I don't like Pepsi, either

Britney Spears, from her upcoming Outrageous video, via Stereogum, and borrowing a look or two from...

Shakira, from her Rolling Stone cover appearance

Twentieth Century Fox, meet award-winning director Chris Cunningham

From L to R: Chris Cunningham's 1998 music video for Bjork's "All is Full of Love," and Alex Proyas' 2004 full-length I, Robot.

If found, please alert P.T. Anderson

Have You C.'n This Man?

Girls Gone Anti-Bush!!!!

Following up on our earlier post that asked, "What is the deal with photographers only shooting pretty girls at protests and rallies?", here are the latest images from the G8 rallies.

Available here: one and two.

The Rich (and the Fantanas) Are Different From You and Me

Are you confused by the seemingly endless onslaught of boldface names? Who are all these Binky’s, Basso’s and Baron’s, and how do they keep busy when not being photographed at the kind of lavish society galas you could only dream of attending? Fret no more, social upstart, our friends at New York Social Diary have premiered a new feature that promises to answer all these questions and more, The NYSD List. Not to be confused with the Quest 400, David Patrick Columbia’a other New York social circuit resource, "The NYSD List" is generous enough to provide brief bios of these beautiful and/or rich people.

Try to figure out if the insipid copy below is a high-society profile from the "List" or if it’s actually from the brief bios provided for the (fictional) Fantanas, those saucy spokegirls from the Fanta campaign. Answers below.

A. [A’s] parents made her study ballet from the age of three. She has appeared in countless versions of the Nutcracker Suite…Although she still loves ballet, her heart is really into modern dance…

B. [B,] who is tall, blonde and royal looking, often visits New York where she is at present preparing for the publication of her book, The Serpent and the Moon…

C. She loves a good time too, (natch) and is the possessor of that irresistable smoky-voiced laughter that can get anyone talking…

D. If there’s such a thing a femme fatale, or even if there’s not, the closest thing to it is the beautiful [D]…

E. Her passion for life is infectious. She is upbeat, sunny and a little daring – it’s no wonder that people want to be around her.

F. [F. has] lots of friends and like a lot of the Brits she mixes ‘em up with lots of Euros thrown in...party boys and girls, slackers, yakkers, and of course, the aristos…

G. [G] is always amused that the [man/woman] in [her/his] life is named after a vegetable.
Hint: It's not Claus von Bülow.

Answer Key
A. Sophia (Fantana who loves Grape!)
B. Princess Michael of Kent (NYSD)
C. Nina Griscom (NYSD)
D. Nina Griscom (NYSD)
E. Kiki (Fantana who loves Orange!)
F. Euan Rellie and Lucy Sykes (NYSD)
G. Boykin Curry and Celerie Kemble (NYSD)

Because Bowfinger was such a biting satire of Hollywood...

Paramount, the studio that cruelly brought us Tomb Raider 2 and The Italian Job, has released yet another teaser trailer for their ill-advised remake of The Stepford Wives, only this one has apparently rubbed a handful of prudes the wrong way. Or rather, one particular woman, which in turn lead to a report on this mini-phenomenon by her local television station, which lead to this post, which lead to your being reminded that a film entitled The Stepford Wives is being released soon, hey, this weekend in fact, and hey, maybe I'll go see that, huh? Hmm, unless I'm going out with my neighbor. I really ought to check my Blackberry.

Anyway, here's hoping the studio's P.R. executives are thanking the uninspired marketers who, in this latest teaser, decided to convey the nightmarish prospect of a nation of "Stepford Wives" by including a brief shot depicting President Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice as a Grace Jones-esque topless model and Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton as an everyday homemaker (which really isn't that far removed from Laura Bush, though, right?).

"It's just inappropriate, and it needs to be stopped," said the Kansas City woman who brought up the initial complaint. And in hopes of gauging the reaction of a wider audience than just this one woman, the news report mentioned above solicited additional quotes on the matter, like any good entertainment reporter working for a local news outlet should be doing.

Pat Gray, who works with Northstar Marketing Group, said the ad shows bad taste toward Rice and Clinton.

"In today's media environment, I don't know whether it's unacceptable morally or not -- distasteful, for sure," Gray said. "If I were them, I'd probably sue."

Gray also said the ad wouldn't drive him to the theater.

"That certainly wouldn't stimulate me to go see the movie," he said.

OK, fair enough. But, realistically, people are reacting negatively to the wrong shot in this wannabe-notorious trailer. In fact, it's the very last shot, which we excerpted below, that really should be serving as discouragement:

(Thanks to Rory MacDonald.)

low culture Gossip Alert Vol. 2

While it may not prove to be the flashpoint issue of Julian's happy news, low culture is happy to report that Nikolai Stroke is similarly engaged to be married. And could a baby also be on the way? Developing...

Entertainment (So Last) Weekly

Entertainment Weekly, in its continuing commitment to bring you news you've already read elsewhere, outdoes itself in this week's "Secrets of Harry Potter" spectacular. To get an idea of just how warmed-over this shit gets, let's flip through EW's front of book together:

First up we've got EW's interview with Dick Wolf, "Making the Brand" by Allison Hope Weiner:

Q: If cast members on your show had banded together for raises, like on Friends or The West Wing, what would you have done?

We won't even trouble you with the A as you probably know what Wolf has to say already. That's because his answer appeared in the March 4, 2002 New Yorker, "TV on the Cheap" by James Surowiecki, and even then it was old news:

Six years ago, the cast members of the sitcom "Friends" threatened to walk out unless NBC agreed to renegotiate their contracts. Each of them was earning forty thousand dollars per episode, and they were now demanding six-figure deals. When Dick Wolf, the executive producer and creator of "Law & Order," heard the news, he called Warren Littlefield, then the president of NBC Entertainment, and told him that he should start firing the young stars, one by one. "I guarantee you that Warren would not have had to get rid of more than two of them before they caved," Wolf said recently.

Or how about "The Sopranos Pop Quiz" in which EW's Alynda Wheat wonders if The Sopranos' Little Carmine is meant to parody George W.'s various malapropisms.

…with his Texas-size belt buckles and curious turns of phrase, [he] bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain Commander-in-Chief. Can you tell the difference between George W. Bush's presidential parlance and that of the Mob malapropster?

[…]

B. "Of course no one wants all-out conflict, but historically, historic changes have come out of war."

[…]

E. "The fundamental question is, Will I be as effective as a boss like my dad was?…Until I am, it's gonna be hard to verify that I think I'll be more effective."

But then what of weblog The Bonassus which took note of the very same (and not quite self-evident) parallel over a month ago?

Is Little Carmine George Bush?
I noticed this exchange on last night's (brilliant) episode of the Sopranos:

Little Carmine: The point I'm trying to illustrate is that of course no one wants all-out conflict, but, historically, historical changes have come out of war.
Carmine's Advisor: As far as I'm concerned it's a new day. All old treaties and ways of doing things are null and void.
Little Carmine: Exactly.
Angelo Garepe: And the Joe Peeps thing: where does that leave us?
Carmine's Advisor: When you've had a quadruple bypass like I did, it gives you a lot of time to think. The only thing Johnny understands is force.
Angelo G: But the fact is, we've pissed on a bee's nest.
Unknown Character: So what's the other option: roll over?
Angelo G: We could've had a sit-down...the other captains maybe.
Little Carmine: This isn't the UN, Angelo. I won't let what happened to my father happen to me.
Carmine's Advisor: God forgive me, but you may be a stronger man than your dad was.
Little Carmine: The fundamental question is, will I be as effective as a boss like my dad was, and I will be. Even more so. But until I am, it's gonna be hard to verify that I think I'll be more effective.

The tortured syntax. The stupidity. The belief that the father's successes were in fact failures. The eminence grise with heart trouble and a belief that multilateral institutions are for the weak. I'm telling you, man, it's George Bush, man.

And it continues. There's EW's piece/graph about Kate Hudson's falling fortunes that appeared nearly verbatim in USA Today's Life section on May 25. And there's "Weather, or Not" EW's hard-hitting two-column-inches look at the reality of The Day After Tomorrow's portrayal of climate change – we could likely provide several hundred pieces "investigating" the same issue.

While imitation may be the sincerest form of etc., when it's EW doing the "imitating," it just feels dirty.

A personal remembrance from Ronald Reagan's costar, Bonzo

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RELATED: Other monkeys' thoughts.

Y Tu Muggle, Tambien

Worst Blog-Related Headline Ever

"Sex-driven society won't let sleeping blogs lie"

Next time, consider whipping Mandy Moore for two-plus hours

How not to mobilize your base during an introductory roll-out:

Weekend box office, May 28-30, 2004:

Saved!
$345,000 (studio estimate)
20 screens

Weekend box office, February 27-29, 2004:

The Passion of the Christ
$83,848,082
3,043 screens

Jake Gyllenhaal's So Hot, He Melted the Ice Caps!

From US Weekly's review of The Day After Tomorrow, appearing in the June 7, 2004 issue:

"Global warming has never looked so cool!"

Former low culture executive editor Matt Haber sent this e-mail to Santa Monica Daily Press gardening columnist Stu Moran with a copy to Poynter

Dear Mr. Moran,

Since the Editors' Note in low culture yesterday cited stories published while I was executive editor, I understand your interest in my thoughts on the subject. First and foremost, I agree with the editors' statement that the stories were published in a reasonable effort to share with our readers the best knowledge that we had at the time. We relied in that period on a group of music and style reporters who worked tirelessly to keep up with developments in the search for Julian Casablancas’ fiancée. It is inevitable that blog entries of this kind -- usually based on information from interested parties in the Lower East Side and elsewhere -- are incomplete and in some cases reflect the agenda of the sources. Follow-up, as the editors' note correctly observed, is always in order.

Personally, I do not agree with the contention in the editors' note that problems in the Julian Casablancas engagement stories came about because some editors felt pressured to get scoops into the website before the necessary checking had taken place. I cannot read the minds of others in this regard. My feeling is that no editor did this kind of reckless rushing while I was present. Any of the 30 or so people who sat in our site meetings during the run-up to the Casablancas proposal and the first phase of his new relationship can attest to the seriousness with which everyone took this story. As for my part, I can tell you positively that in 25 years at low culture and in 21 months as executive editor, I never put anything into the site before I thought it was ready.

Somewhat to my surprise, I was not contacted by anyone at low culture prior to yesterday's commentary. Had I been I would have repeated my concern that editors' notes do not give readers the facts, analysis and context they need about disputed stories. I found this editors' note as vague and incomplete as some that have preceded it.

I believe low culture remains an indispensable Web site because of the values it stands for. I continue to believe that the site also needs to be sharper competitively. The performance of Gawker and Lindsayism on the Casablancas stories shows that this need continues, and I was heartened to see the comment in a letter to the staff from Mr. Cimbalo and Mr. Tremblay about the continuing need for hard reporting and for setting the record straight.

All best regards,
Matt Haber

P.S. How can I keep squirrels from digging up my bulbs? Do I need to put jars over them, or what? (The squirrels, I mean.)

From the Editors: low culture and The Strokes

Over the past several months this website has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led Julian Casablancas into Juliet Joslin. We have examined the failings of gossip and music industry intelligence, especially on the issue of the Strokes' aural charms and possible connections to international women. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so — reviewing hundreds of posts, or rather, one, written during the prelude to Julian Casablancas' engagement and into the early stages of the co-occupation of an apartment — we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from gossip sources that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those posts (or, well, that one post) included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops onto the website. Accounts of other suitors were not always weighed against our strong desire to have Julian Casablancas taken off the singles' market. Articles based on dire claims about the Strokes tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.

We consider the story of Julian's engagement, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

On an unrelated note, Judith Miller has been fired from her position as low culture's Satire-but-Not-Credited-as-Such reporter.

In Movie News

Highly anticipated disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow opens the day after tomorrow.

On Friday, the day after tomorrow, when The Day After Tomorrow opens, the day after tomorrow will be Sunday.

Hanoi Madge

Madonna ReInvention Tour (left) and Jane Fonda Aerobics (right)

Madonna ReInvention Tour (left) and Jane Fonda Aerobics (right)

Both come complete with anti-war rhetoric and thigh-toning exercise!

Nice cover, but this one is more tweaked

Left to right, "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" by David Sedaris, and "White Guys: Studies in Postmodern Domination and Difference" by Fred Pfeil.

Make of that what you will.

Carlos D. is ripped!

But, realistically, Michael Moore would, no, could have never made this film

From a sampling of reviews for Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me":

Portland Oregonian, Karen Karbo:

In the tradition of the contemporary muckraking documentary -- of which director Michael Moore is the most recent accomplished practitioner -- "Super Size Me" entertains serious sociological and political questions.

Boston Globe, Ty Burr:

Morgan Spurlock's outrageously amusing "Super Size Me" is the redheaded stepchild of Michael Moore and "Jackass," a low-budget nonfiction stunt with a sharp point of view, a sheaf of alarming statistics, and the willingness to entertain us until we cry uncle. Like "Bowling for Columbine," it's less a documentary than a provocumentary, and, like Moore, Spurlock is a born showman.

Chicago Tribune, Mark Caro:

Spurlock is a lanky thirtysomething Manhattanite taking a Michael Moore-type approach to a subject previously surveyed in Eric Schlosser's non-fiction bestseller "Fast Food Nation."

USA Today, Claudia Puig:

Riveting and darkly comic Super Size Me is a whip-smart documentary in the tradition of Michael Moore's Roger & Me.

Dallas Observer, Robert Wilonsky:

The movie was a big hit at Sundance and beyond; it's turned Spurlock, an aspiring filmmaker and graphic designer, into Michael Moore, an agit-prop star proselytizing about the greed of a company that doesn't care about the content or impact of its unhealthy and potentially deadly product. Like Moore, he tries repeatedly to talk to someone at McDonald's corporate headquarters about the nutritional value of its food, and of the results a monthlong diet has taken on his body. But he's given the brush-off in a game of never-ending phone tag, and it feels like a page lifted from the Moore playbook of how to make a company look decidedly evil.

The Onion (A.V. Club), Nathan Rabin:

An irresistible combination of muckraking activism and populist entertainment, Super Size Me takes a page out of the Michael Moore playbook by using a David-vs.-Goliath-style personal quest as a starting point for an irreverent and impassioned critique of a pressing social issue.

Village Voice, Dennis Lim:

Indeed, Spurlock, whose affable-doofus persona is somewhere between Johnny Knoxville and Michael Moore, was responsible for MTV's cash-for-stunts series I Bet You Will, and is preparing an SSM-modeled show called 30 Days.

Washington Post, Michael O'Sullivan:

A gonzo documentary in the Michael Moore mold -- but without Moore's grating presence -- "Super Size Me" is an anti-junk-food screed that manages to entertain even as it informs and alarms.

New York Times, A.O. Scott:

Mr. Spurlock, originally from West Virginia, works in the good-natured, regular-guy populist style of documentary rabble-rousing pioneered by Michael Moore. He is a bit less confrontational than Mr. Moore (as well as thinner), but he similarly relishes letting polite, well-scrubbed corporate flacks entangle themselves in bureaucratic doublespeak.

No, write your own column

"Write your own Thomas Friedman column!"
Michael Kubin, The New York Observer, May 19, 2004

"CREATE YOUR OWN THOMAS FRIEDMAN OP-ED COLUMN: DISORDER AND DREAMS IN [COUNTRY IN THE NEWS]"
Michael Ward, McSweeney's, April 28, 2004

Pal Joey

Joey, NBC's answer to the scheduling hole left by "Friends," was screened at the network upfronts on Monday, and low culture was there. We've provided a brief synopsis below, and we're certain you'll agree – "Joey" is a hit.

Cold Open
We find Joey moving into his new apartment complex – think "Melrose Place." While Joey should be directing the movers, he's too busy ogling his hot neighbors. By the time Joey gets into his new place, he discovers that the movers have placed everything upside down – even the TV!

Act One
Joey auditions for various agents but doesn’t find any success. When his brainy cousin Michael (Paulo Costanzo) suggests Joey Tribbiani might sound "too Italian," Joey considers changing his name to Joey French.

Joey insists that his sister Gina (Drea de Matteo) not show off her large breasts. When Gina asks why it’s OK for her friend (Ashley Scott) to wear the same top, Joey explains that when her friend wears the top "It's sexy," but when Gina wears the top, "it's just, ewwww."

Joey finally lands a big audition with the "big-time director Frank Draco," for a big action movie. But when Gina's son loses the script, all hell breaks loose.

Act Two
It's an hour before the big audition and Joey still can't find his script. And when he goes to enjoy the meatball sub that Gina made, he discovers his cousin Michael has eaten it. "I can't audition on an empty stomach," Joey laments, "that would be like doing… anything on an empty stomach."

Joey, still without his script, tries to ad-lib for "big-time director Frank Draco" – but the audition descends into a monologue about meatball subs. Needless to say, it doesn't go very well. As Joey leaves the audition, "big-time director Frank Draco" asks his assistant to get him a meatball sub.

Joey returns to his sister's apartment in poor spirits, and not even Gina's bosomly friends can cheer him up. When his nephew (who lost the script) returns home from school, Joey begins to violently beat him. Gina, infuriated, throws Joey out.

Act Three
Joey sits in his apartment, dismayed. Turning on the TV to cheer himself up, Joey discovers that it's still upside down. He watches the TV anyway, craning his head around to figure out what's on.

When Gina won't return Joey's calls, he decides to go out on the town to cheer himself up. At a flash Hollywood bar, Joey meets a woman he recognizes from "adult films." Joey is reduced to Jerry Lewis-like inanities, but she takes a liking to him anyway.

Joey returns to the adult actress' Canoga Park track housing, where she turns him onto crystal meth. "Whoa," he opines, "for the first time in my life, I don't want to eat!"

Joey quickly descends into a haze of meth addiction – his sister and cousin want nothing to do with him. It isn’t long before Joey begins sucking dick for cash. "Just pretend it's a meatball sub," he tells himself, before descending on the crotch of a particularly unsavory man.

Credit Roll
Joey is hustling on Melrose with the transvestites and rent-boys when a limo pulls to the curb. The rear window rolls down to reveal – "big-time director Frank Draco!" Spotting Joey, Draco yells, "Hey meatball sub, you into the rough trade?" Joey has no idea what Draco's talking about – "Is that like trading baseball cards?" Draco laughs and waves him into the limo.

"Cannes-Do" Marketing

In preparation for the film's July release date, Paramount has begun to reveal its marketing materials for Jonathan Demme's upcoming "The Manchurian Candidate", which is, of course, an oh-so-necessary remake of the John Frankenheimer-directed Cold War original.

Their campaign includes the release of teaser ads for the film appearing at the currently-in-progress 2004 Cannes Film Festival, as shown here and re-created above.

Advertising for a summer blockbuster at the Cannes Film Festival, alongside what was once ostensibly a gathering for artsy films...something seemed very "off" about this particular marketing ploy, until we stumbled upon the solution, below.

Idol hands, frenetic fingers

This week's issue of Broadcasting & Cable breaks a scandal that most assuredly affects America's core values of fairness, equality, and democracy. (NB: if that lead sentence had been published in the entertainment section of some mid-level newspaper reaching a metropolitan audience of about 50,000 people, you might have seen a greater effort to unimaginatively give the impression that this "scandal" is in some way connected to recent events in the Abu Ghraib prison, but alas, you've instead been subjected to this awful, self-reflexive introduction. Sorry.)

Deborah Starr Seibel's "American Idol Outrage: Your Vote Doesn't Count" offers a fair share of anecdotal evidence that, contrary to the seemingly democratic voting process promoted by the producers of the beloved show, millions of fans' votes are disappearing into the ether. And speaking of vacuousness, the article, subtitled "An in-depth look at America's most popular show reveals a seriously flawed voting system," might have better read, "An in-depth look at America's most popular show reveals a seriously flawed America."

How else to explain some of the quotes and actions attributed to one Dee Law?

But as the show speeds toward its May 26 conclusion with three songbirds left, the 40-year-old Pennsylvania homemaker couldn't care less about the outcome. A Clay Aiken fan, she lost faith in the process after making a shocking discovery last year: No matter how often she tried, she couldn't place her vote.

Law says she tried to dial "five or six hundred times" on the final night of competition but hasn't tried since. "I'm not gonna get suckered into voting again," she says. "Why should we sit here and waste two hours of our time when our votes aren't going to be counted?"

Shudder.

Anyway, putting aside a range of misanthropic feelings for the moment, we at low culture would like to take this moment to actually assist (yes, help) those poor sad-sack losers who have chosen to devote two nights of their week to feverishly clutching their handset while shrieking inconsolably as Diana Degarmo erupts into so-called "song".

Below, we've coordinated (all in one place, and sorted by manufacturer or service provider) a series of links to speed-dialing instructions at various telephone manufacturers' websites, such that hardcore Jasmine Trias devotees (or fans of Fantasia Barrino, or Diana Degarmo, or Crystal MacAzure, or Jacinta DuPres, or who-the-fuck-ever) can learn to get more votes in during those precious two hours.

Brother
Cavalier Telephone
Cisco
Z-tel
Meridian Digital
AT&T
Nokia
Panasonic
SBC Communications

Oh, fuck it. However immoral this may be:

Cool Ways to Kill Yourself

Unfortunate Irony Alert

From Reuters, "Shrek Finds More Beauty in Being Ugly in 'Shrek 2'":

"Shrek 2" zeros in on a cultural obsession with image, and there's no better place to do that than in Hollywood.

From The Sun, "Diaz Sends for Zit Squad":

Beauty Cameron Diaz sent an SOS after bursting out in zits before the Cannes premiere of Shrek 2.

Re-Doubled Trouble

In our typically paranoid and narcissistic state, we couldn’t help but notice that a May 14 "Entertainment Weekly" piece detailing New York Minute’s various “appropriations” bore a striking resemblance to our own New York Minute piece from a month earlier. Of course our take on the Olsens’ film did lack that trademark EW snark, but still, Amy Feitelberg’s piece echoes low culture’s a bit too close for comfort.

Decide for yourself. From EW:

Why ''New York Minute'' audiences are doing a double take - The Olsen girls' movie pays homage to movies past - a lot.
by Amy Feitelberg

Is this deja vu, or do the Olsen twins have us seeing double? Their new New York Minute is littered with scenes from cinema past. ''I stuffed it full of every fun reference I could imagine,'' says director Dennie Gordon. ''Because when parents take their kids to see a movie, they still want to have as much of a giggle as the kids do.'' Let the laugh riot begin.

There's Something About Mary
In Minute, there's something about a microchip-swallowing mutt going out a window.

The First Wives Club
Middle-aged women plunging down the side of a building? How 'bout minors in towels!

The Matrix
One of the twins (who knows which?) kicks butt Matrix-style. How does she know how to fight in slo-mo?

Legally Blonde
Beauty salons just make you wanna dance. The girls do their own take on the ''bend-and-snap.''

Moonstruck
One of the twins (don't ask us which) calms the other with a Cher-like slap and a ''Snap out of it!''

Ferris Bueller's Day Off
A habitual hooky player on the lam? Can anyone say ''Bueller?'' ''Bueller?'' ''Bueller?''

Now read our original piece - it describes the film's allusions to Ferris Bueller, Moonstruck, The First Wives Club and There's Something About Mary. We missed The Matrix (it wasn't in the trailer) and described the Legally Blonde scene as a Beauty Shop ripoff.

Perhaps Ms. Feitelberg was paying homage to our homage to New York Minute's homages. Or maybe she's just a lousy plagiarist (who should really choose to copy better material).

Introducing: the low culture Subtext Finder

We live in a world full of sneaky journalists and duplicitous editors who hide the subtexts just below the, um... well, the text. How is a reader supposed to understand what an article is actually about if everything is all coded and coy?

That's where The low culture Subtext Finder comes in! Using our patented formula, we unearth a given article's subtext and bring it to you, the reader. Today's sample: A Mobile Link for 90 Mutual Friends from The New York Times' Circuits section. Using our formula, this article would be renamed Cool New Tool to Get You Laid. Now, read the new article with the subtext in the text (and in bold):

Gone are the nights when Brian Battjer left barhopping in New York to chance.

He took control of his social fate when he signed up for Dodgeball.com, a free social-networking service that is becoming popular with young singles. The site uses cellphone text-messaging to wirelessly connect thousands of friends, and friends of friends, to get laid.

Just hours after he subscribed, Mr. Battjer, 27, received his first Dodgeball message: Alyssa, a friend of his friend Greg, it read, was at Luna Lounge, only two blocks away. Mr. Battjer had never met Alyssa, but inspired by the thumbnail-size picture sent with the message, he decided to find her and get laid.

[...]

"Dodgeball has changed the social fabric of everything," he said. "The technology augments [getting laid] in a way that has never been done before."

[...]

Based on the mutual-friends model popularized by Web sites like Friendster, Dodgeball helps users meet up with their friends or new acquaintances - but while they're out on the town instead of sitting in front of their computers, where it's harder to get laid.

[...]

"It's like a shortcut," said Alexander Clemens, 36, a political consultant and Dodgeball user in San Francisco. "All it takes is one quick note to tell my friends where the party's at so we can all get laid."

[...]
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor of communications at N.Y.U., predicts that with a little time and fine tuning, software that "caters to users' geography rather than their affinities" will [help you get laid] with the same force Friendster did two years ago.

"It has already been successful [getting people laid]," Mr. Shirky said. "But eventually, Dennis and Alex are going to figure out uses and applications they hadn't even thought of before."

Like, um, totally getting your ass laid!

Related: This article is like a Gothamist Interview Reunion: Brian Battjer, Dennis Crowley, Clay Shirky. Someone needs to cut Andrew Krucoff a check.

Candy Flipping

Either Dany Levy’s minions are easily fascinated or they should think about changing their meds. Daily Candy, Levy's digest of overpriced baubles and prime evidence of why Americans deserve to be hated, has charted endless novelty items over its three years of existence, but few of them seem deserving of the intense interest with which Candy invests them. Indeed, available evidence would suggest that Candy’s writers suffer from OCD with a side-order of ADD. A sampling of their various “obsessions”:

Failed Half-Hour The Oblongs
Suffice it to say, we're obsessed.
The Oblongs

Brownies
Golly, you'd think we were obsessed.
Oh, Fudge!

Tee Shirts
We know, we're obsessed.
Sweet Tees

Gems
Annabel Clark has been obsessed with gems as long as she can remember.
Pretty Hung Things

Frozen Yogurt
"People at my office are obsessed."
Moo!

Style
Or-sigh-have you finally owned up to the fact that you'll never be anything more than a hopeless, highly consumptive style-obsessed creature?
Free to Be...

Pizza
Jeff Reiss, the former general manager at 60 Thompson, is so obsessed with the stuff he decided to open a mod pizza shop near Union Square.
American Pie

Different Tee Shirts
In fact, they're obsessed with making the perfect T-shirt, in every color, every shape, every size.
American: To a Tee

Video Game
Before long you'll be obsessed with topping your own high score.
Penguin Smack-Down '04!!!!!!

Coitus
They're the self-admitted "original hopeless lover(s)"--complicated, sex-obsessed, and pathetic.
Summer Reading 101

Jeans
Who says men aren't as obsessed as women are about their blue jeans (and, presumably, with how their asses look in them)?
Gene Mapping

Pedicure Technique
We recently spotted a great new look and we're obsessed.
The New Frenchie

Bread
Bar-B-Quing with My Honey and Red Hot Cheddar potato chips are not for carb-obsessed lightweights…
Dope Wrappers

India
Not every culture can survive monsoons, British rule, and constant co-opting by fashion-obsessed pop icons.
The Pleasure's All Yours. . .

Domesticated Animals
You're pet obsessed.
Creature Feature

Famous People
Obsessed with celebrity?
Zookeepers

Automobiles
…so you can impress your car-obsessed friends with the history of your tote.
Drive You Wild

Interactive Toy
Obsessed? Get pet profiles, games, tips, and more online at micro-pets.com .
Best of Breed

Postmodern Nostalgia
Only in this country do you find a culture obsessed with a past in which it was obsessed with the future.
Playing It Cool

Trendy Gift Shop
But for Miss Hollywood-obsessed trend addict?
Someone's in the Kitson With ...

Oral Report

The Guardian reports that encouraging teenagers to engage in oral sex could prove the most effective means of curbing teen pregnancy. Not only does low culture applaud such bold initiatives, but we would like to provide a few of our own. Teenagers need never be "troubled" again.

First the problem, then the solution:

Gang Violence – Encourage your teen to become a sulky loner
Bulimia – Encourage your teen to develop other insecurities. Acne, lack of popularity, and athletic inability are all excellent alternatives.
Secret Cutting – While secret cutting affects untold numbers of teens, public cutting never hurt anyone. Even successful, well-adjusted rock stars like Iggy Pop, Britney Spears and Richey Manic are doing it.
Huffing Glue – Move out of the trailer park.
Underage Drinking – Although alcohol is an omnipresent danger for teens, Ecstasy users typically drink water instead of liquor. Try to give your teen a roll before he goes out for the night.
Oral Sex – If your teen is engaging in oral sex to avoid pregnancy, encourage him or her to experiment with anal sex.
Anal Sex – Do you suspect that your teen is having anal sex to avoid having oral sex to avoid getting pregnant? Try turning your teen onto pregnancy-safe alternatives such as foot fetishism, bdsm or homosexuality.
Social Difficulties – Does your teen have trouble fitting in at school? Teach him or her to give a really good hummer. Everyone loves a slut.

As Lots of Time Goes By

From the Associated Press, May 8, 2004:

In homage to the movie Casablanca, a former U.S. diplomat has opened a Rick's Cafe in this bustling port city…"Because there has never been a Rick's Cafe here, I could be reasonably assured that it would succeed," she said. "It was already an institution, and it never even existed. It's not often you get a chance to turn myth into reality."

Is it possible that no one thought to open a Rick’s Café in Casablanca before? Now if only we could do something with that Lawrence of Arabia movie.

With Friends like these...

low culture exclusive: must credit low culture (or not):

On Thursday, May 6, 2004, while fifty million Americans tuned in to see the end of Friends on NBC, what were Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld doing? Eating hotdogs and watching the Mets battle Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants from behind the visitors' dugout at Shea Stadium.

Finally, an explanation for that whole sitcom-star subplot of Larry David's "Sour Grapes".

So Cute!

What does Jack Black's gut have to say for itself?

Though moviegoers were most likely spending last weekend at the multiplex watching writer Tina Fey's monstrously mediocre "Mean Girls", odds are at least a small handful of devoted Ben Stiller and Jack Black loyalists turned out to see director Barry Levinson's latest debacle, "Envy", as $6 million dollars were somehow channeled to the film's producers by way of the box office.

An even smaller handful of internet enthusiasts subsequently posted reviews of the film on the IMDB, including this gem, which was apparently written by Ben Stiller's conscience:

"This is the worst movie I have seen in several years. Very dumb story, dumb humor, painful acting, hard to watch. This is the type of movie that should be destroyed instead of inflicting it upon audiences. Ben Stiller has proved himself to choose very bad movies and I thought perhaps Jack Black would have made it a good movie but he did not. I am making it a policy that I will boycott movies that have Ben Stiller in it. If Ben Stiller is in the movie it is likely a bad movie and this is probably the worst movie he has been in. Movie stars do a diservice to the audience by working on junk like this and perhaps if they don't care about their reputation and put out junk like this the audience should boycott movies they are in. There is absolutely no excuse for a piece of junk like this movie. They should pay me for waisting my time on this."

Chan On Fire

Has Steve Coogan’s young and promising film career already jumped the shark? After turning in a near-perfect performance in the near-perfect 24 Hour Party People, what is Coogan’s next move? Appearing opposite Jackie Chan, of course, in Disney’s summer release Around the World in 80 Days.

Coogan will star as the eccentric Phileas Fogg and Chan will play his French manservant Passepartout (at least if the film remains true to Verne). In other words, it’s the same surefire comic dyad that has served us so well in Rush Hours 1, 2, and yes, 3; Shanghai Noon and Knights; The Medallion; and The Tuxedo.

Before managing to effectively raze Clare Forlani’s and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s careers into the ground, Jackie Chan transformed the occasionally funny (and occasionally irritating) Chris Tucker into an unfathomably execrable onscreen presence. But not content to stop there, Chan went on to reveal that the potentially annoying Owen Wilson is, in fact, the intolerable wet blanket we suspected all along.

And so we beg you Mr. Chan, don’t take Steve Coogan down with you. What about David Cross or Hank Azaria? You can have them, they’re all yours – just not Coogan.

Twenty Years Ago in low culture

"Although Harrison Ford is ostensibly the film’s star, there is little doubt that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom belongs to Ke Huy Quan, aka Short Round. Only thirteen years old, Quan brings a complexity and passion to the role that is sure to stand him well in future years. Ladies and gentleman, meet the next Marlon Brando…"
Short Round, Big Future, May 5, 1984

Too Rich or Too Thin?

Where have all the destitute skinny people gone? There was a time, not long ago, when poverty at least ensured a reasonable Body Mass Index, but as today’s USA Today reports, that golden era of weight loss is over.

In an interview with self-proclaimed “grocery guru” Phil Lempert, USA Today breaks down just how expensive all those fad weight loss trends can be.

The Atkins diet's ongoing weight-loss phase (45 grams of carbs a day) averaged $14.27 a day, ranging from $11.04 to $15.97.

South Beach diet's Phase 2 averaged $12.78 a day, ranging from $11.16 to $14.90.

The Thrifty Food Plan from the USDA averaged $6.22 a day, ranging from $6 to $6.61. (The government's calculation is slightly lower.)

The answer is clear – until the government begins to subsidize Atkins and South Beach dieters, we may never see another factory waif again.

Where Are My Feet?

Alternately: U Bulbous Mass, Gorge Away, Gigantic.

It's Legally Blonde Meets the Bell Jar!

That Courtney Love of the lit world, Elizabeth Wurtzel tells Fox 411’s Roger Friedman that she plans to attend Yale Law School come September. In a low culture exclusive, we have obtained Wurtzel’s successful application essay. Enjoy.

Question #10: Please add to this application whatever additional material you believe will enable admissions readers to make a fully informed judgment on your application…The admissions file readers especially welcome statements that enable them to understand the contribution your personal background would make to the student body at Yale Law School.

Extremely Personal Essay
by Elizabeth Wurtzel

The joke's on me, but it's gonna be okay
If I can just get through this lonesome day
It's alright, it's alright, it's alright
It's alright, it's alright, it's alright
"Lonesome Day" – Bruce Springsteen

It’s been hard, I won’t deny it. And no, it’s not alright.

I must have been eleven, maybe twelve, possibly thirteen, when it struck me: I had never been molested, never raped, barely even made the object of a lascivious gaze. Indeed, I had been victimized by my own lack of victimization. Where was my victimhood? It was then that it struck me, at age eleven, maybe twelve – I would have to victimize myself.

It hasn’t been easy, I won’t deny it. I have suffered Job-like indignities in my relentless self-persecution.

I have survived dark nights of the soul when I forced myself to do drugs so that I might wake up the next morning suffering from the depression that excessive cocaine use often induces. Do you know what it’s like when you have to do an eight-ball of prime Colombian just to feel shitty? Really great at first, but then, not very good at all.

There were my desperate prayers for cancer. You cannot understand the compulsive, hopeful search for a lump until you’ve been there – standing in the shower, madly palpating each of your breasts as you murmur the word "melanoma." I have been there.

It got to the point where I began spinning in circles for hours a day, if only to mimic the dizzy spells of a tertiary syphilitic.

I have been portrayed by Christina Ricci in a feature film that will never see the light of day. I mean, Christina Ricci? What about Scarlett Johansson or Kirsten Dunst or even Charlize Theron? No, Liz, we’re going to have you played by a fat, whiny actress who can’t even open a film. You can imagine what that’s done to my self-esteem.

But through the suicide attempts, accusations of plagiarism, and flagging book sales, I have relied on one certainty – my love of the law. Through all my whining, mewling, and caterwauls of privileged desperation, there has been only one constant – my desire to attend Yale University Law School.

Ultimately, I am a woman, a bitch, a lover, a sinner and a saint. Thank you India, thank you terror, thank you, thank you silence. Pity me, poke me, admit me to Yale – just don’t bother with goodbyes come morning. I can get through this lonesome day after all.

(N.B. I don’t recommend assigning me any roommates.)

[Matt, big ups for the heads up]

Today's Journalism Lesson from the New York Post

Turning a press release into an article or caption is easy and fun. First, take a press release, say, for example, Gretchen Mol to Play the Title Role in Killer Films' THE BALLAD OF BETTIE PAGE; Financed by HBO, Film is Directed by Mary Harron, and Written by Harron and Guinivere Turner (from March 31, 2004).

Now, using your mouse, select the portion of the text you want to use and select 'Cut' from your 'File' menu. (There is a shortcut for this, but we only recommend that seasoned writers attempt to use that.)

Using the example press release, select the following text:

The most successful pin-up model of the 1950s, Page's legendary bondage photographs made her the target of a Senate investigation into pornography, and turned her into one of the first American sex icons.

You may also want to scroll down in the press release and copy this portion:

The cast also includes Lili Taylor ("Casa de los babys"), David Strathairn ("Twisted"), Jonathan M. Woodward ("Pipe Dream"), Cara Seymour ("Gangs of New York"), Tara Subkoff ("The Cell") and Kevin Carroll ("The Secret Lives of Dentists").

Open a text-editing document and select 'Paste' from the 'File' menu. Now comes the hard part: editing. You'll want to add the name "Bettie Page" in that first sentence. You'll also want to shorten the second paragraph a bit. Also, you might want to write your own topical hook in the beginning, since this press release is a bit old.

Congratulations, you have an article or caption. To see the fruits of your labor, check out GORGEOUS GRETCHEN A CONEY EYEFUL in today's New York Post:

Actress Gretchen Mol dazzles yesterday as she struts her stuff while on location shooting "The Ballad of Bettie Page" in Coney Island.

In the film, the 31-year-old stunner plays the 1950s pinup girl whose legendary bondage photos made her the target of a Senate investigation into pornography.

Dubbed the "Girl with the Perfect Figure," Page was one of America's first sex sirens.

She graced the pages of hundreds of magazines, including Playboy.

The flick also stars Lili Taylor and David Strathairn.

Earlier: How to Write An Obituary Without Breaking a Sweat

Dying Young

Alright, this posting is a few days late (in the blog world an eternity), but Toby Young’s Slate diary was too infuriating to go ignored. For those of you unaware, Slate’s diary is kind of like MTV’s Diary for old people who are nowhere near as famous, and Toby Young is a bald media gadfly who has made a name for himself by being obnoxious. Based on Young’s entries, however, he’s taking his trademarks – contrived spite and pseudo-impudence – up a notch.

There’s Monday’s diary in which Young very nearly asks Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to sue him. That’s because Young’s novel-in-progress, Starmageddon, actually uses the duo as characters! And from the sound of Young’s new novel, it’s pretty clear he’s designed the plot to hit as many media flashpoints as possible – the Holocaust, celebrity culture, post-Apocalyptic America, and right-wing demagoguery. Young is practically daring you to ignore this book.

And then Tuesday’s diary, in which Young offers this remarkable insight into L.A. (he’s been there a little over a week):

In the same way that other cities have been ravaged by certain drugs, L.A. is in the grip of a fame epidemic. Like cocaine, it used to be the drug of choice for a privileged few, but now it's gone mainstream, often in a very adulterated form. The kind of notoriety that comes from appearing on a reality show, for instance, is the equivalent of crack.

Among other revelations Young dishes up: celebrities get big trailers; these celebrities also receive other big perks; Young used to live with Euan Rellie, aka Mr. Lucy Sykes (he also used to live with Sophie Dahl – presumably he didn’t find these apartments on Craig’s List).

Onto Wednesday’s diary entry and more juicy L.A. dirt! Apparently, people in Los Angeles like to drive S.U.V.’s. And somehow Young gets even more repellant – he and his wife honeymooned in Los Angeles.

Thursday’s entry – comparing L.A. restaurants with London restaurants – actually isn’t so bad, so let’s just ignore this one entirely.

I’m not sure what happens in Friday’s installment. I got through the first paragraph before the bile – the product of disgust and, yes, low-level envy – started to choke me.

Years ago, I met Mr. Young several times at MaryLou’s – insofar as you met anyone at MaryLou’s – and he seemed pleasant, if a bit self-promoting. Who would have thought the guy would get sober (relatively) and then turn into an asshole?

The Right Address, Parents, Education, et al.

From the Times' Sunday Styles:

And this week will bring the publication of "The Right Address," by Carrie Karasyov and Jill Kargman. Their novel skewers a certain kind of woman found on the Upper East Side whose only ambition is to preside over benefit dinners (even if she goes to so many she cannot remember from night to night if she is at the Irritable Bowel Syndrome Ball or the Food Allergy Ball), and to have her tiny, shiny-face photograph appear in the party pages of any magazine.

# of photos of Carrie Karasyov, nee Doyle, featured in New York Social Diary: 14

# of photos of Jill Kargman, nee Kopelman, featured in New York Social Diary: 18

# of photos of Jill Kargman, nee Kopelman, featured in Wire Image: 4

While we could mutter at some length about how satire is traditionally used to skewer those more powerful than you, we will refrain from commenting on making fun of those who dare to aspire toward one's own lofty perch.

[Oddly, Jill Kargman’s apartment was also featured in Sunday’s Real Estate section.]

Tru(deau) Life: I Want a Famous Face

Although some voices have deemed this week’s Doonesbury too violent for the comics page, others have praised its realistic (though cartoonish) depiction of wartime Iraq. But where discord is sown, low culture offers peace. What follows is a revised Doonesbury for the week of April 19-23, 2004, designed to appeal to more popular tastes and delicate, war-resistant sensibilities.

It’s sure to please everyone, and unlike the war itself, offend no one.

MONDAY's revised strip (click thumbnails to enlarge):

TUESDAY's revised strip:

WEDNESDAY's revised strip:

THURSDAY's revised strip:

FRIDAY's revised strip:

Separated at Pitching Meeting

James Brown: Funny, times two.

Ah, Spring, when a young humor writer's thoughts turn towards... James Brown? Don't ask us why, but for whatever reason, The Godfather of Soul, the Hardest Working Man in Showbiz inspires some of April's best humor writing.

Take for example, this item from this week's Onion, Why Can't This Family Ever Have A Funky Good Time by one "Tomi Rae Brown":

Maceo! I said Maceo! Uh, Maceo! Don't just keep saying "what," boy. Go get that pecan pie out the kitchen. Take it into the living room. We gonna have a funky good time, and I don't want you starting off before everyone. Bring the pie here. Right here. Everybody grab a piece—don't be greedy now. We family, after all. There's enough of this pie to go around. That's right, y'all. Enough pie for all! Pecan pie! Mother-made pie! Good pie! Damn good!

Funny shit, right?

We were laughing so hard, we almost forgot about Papa's Got a Brand New Play that ran in Spy Magazine back in April 1995. That was funny, too:

Steve: Oh Baby, Don't You Weep. I Can't Help It (I Just Do-Do-Do). (1964, 1965)

Caldonia: There Must Be a Reason -- What Kind of Man ... Keep On Doin' What You're Doin'? (1959, 1968, 1971)

Steve: Got No Excuse. I'm a Greedy Man. And I Do Just What I Want. [looks off wistfully into the distance] Sometimes That's All There Is. (1965, 1971, 1960, 1980)

Caldonia: I'll Never Let You Break My Heart Again. [she gets up, goes inside the house, and comes back out, carrying a suitcase.] I Won't Be Back. (1972, 1964)

Steve: Baby Baby Baby. Hold It. [jumps to his feet and takes her arm.] You Don't Have to Go. Stay with Me. I've Got to Change. I'll Work It Out. Stop and Think It Over. (1964, 1961, 1962, 1981, 1963, 1968, 1965)

Caldonia: Tell Me What You're Gonna Do. (1964)

Steve: I Need Your Love So Bad. [caresses her cheek.] I'll Be Sweeter Tomorrow. (1975, 1969)

Yes, the Godfather giveth. And giveth. But only in April, apparently.

Page Six's union sympathies: International Brotherhood of Typo Writers

From the New York Post, Page Six, April 22, 2004:

The union has set a May 2 deadline for reaching a new contract. "I came out of the meeting thinking there could be a strike," said one writer.

The A-list participants at the closed-door powwow were David Kepp, who just got $3.5 million for penning "Zathura," the sequel to "Jumanji"; Richard LaGravenese, whose credits include "The Fisher King" and "Bridges of Madison County"; Tom Gilroy, "The Bourne Identity"; Stephen Schiff, "Lolita"; Brian Kopelman and David Levien, the partners behind "Rounders" and "Runaway Jury"; Robert Benton, "Kramer vs. Kramer"; Nora ("Sleepless in Seattle") Ephron and her husband Nick ("Goodfellas") Pileggi; and James Shamus, the head of the Writers Guild East who wrote "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "The Hulk."

Four typos in one sentence! Nice work, guys. In a non-union shop, the Post would have substituted "David Koepp" for their "David Kepp," "Tony Gilroy" for their "Tom Gilroy," "Brian Koppelman" for their "Brian Kopelman," and "James Schamus" for their "James Shamus."

Sloganeering

Pottery Barn claimed yesterday that its stores in fact do not use the “You break it, you buy it” policy. While this should prove adequate to blow the lid off that lying buffoon Bob Woodward, what will become of Colin Powell’s catchy slogan for geopolitical strife? low culture provides some alternatives:

Ikea Rule: Some assembly is required
Olive Garden Rule: When you’re here, you’re family
Starbucks Rule: Contents may be extremely hot
Dominos Rule: Delivered in thirty minutes or it’s free
Outback Steakhouse Rule: No rules, just right
Burger King Rule: Your way, right away
Pringles Rule: Once you pop, you can't stop
Visa Rule: And they don't take American Express
Ja Rule Rule: Holla Holla
Crunch Rule: No handjobs in the steam room

low culture's Only American Idol Post Ever

For American Idol contestants, the competition has officially turned cruel – and we’re not talking about Simon’s poorly scripted barbs. No, the indignities these kids suffer is the result of Idol’s “Theme Weeks,” in which songs are culled from one songwriter’s oeuvre.

Could it get more sadistic than forcing Idol finalists to sing music from Neil Sedaka and Barry Manilow? Aside from the obvious fact that the music’s as bland as gets, six of the seven remaining Idol finalists are nowhere near white. And no one is going to mistake Week 12 songstress Elton John for a black man anytime soon.

Making George Huff sing country music, as Idol did on Week 10, doesn’t help anyone. Sure, there might be some entertainment to be gleaned from watching a Southern black man singing about redneck America, but American Idol sure as hell isn’t the venue.

low culture Gossip Alert

In vaguely substantiated news, low culture has learned that Julian Casablancas, dreamy lead Stroke is engaged to be married. To a civilian, no less. Developing?

Girly-Boys Gone Wild

It is clear -- the time has come for the MetroSexual Anti-Defamation League. As this casting call should reveal, those simpering, moisturizing girly-boys are about to be subjected to the sadistic imaginations of reality show producers. Have we learned nothing from Playing It Straight?

We're looking for guys, 21-35, to star in an upcoming reality series for a major cable network. He just needs to be for adventure -- and extremely UN-manly.

WHAT KINDS OF GUYS ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

We want to hear about any guy you'd consider extremely UN-manly -- the guy who needs to get in touch with his more primal side (and has a sense of humor). It could be a mamma's boy, metrosexual, or minivan-driving carpool dad. Think George Costanza, Frasier Crane or Raymond without the whole everyone loving him part. Any version of modern emasculated man will be more than welcome. Be creative and have fun with it! To spark your imagination, here are a few examples:

Ladies, it could be your
...husband who's painted NASCAR stripes on the minivan.
...new-age vegan ex who's been so busy trying to save the world, he's never experienced it.
...metrosexual boyfriend who thinks he's prettier than you.

Guys, it could be
...the one guy that you and your buddies all think needs to grow a set.
...your old friend who's serving time as a middle manager in a suburban office park.
...your trust fund college roommate who's never had to work a day in his life.
...the guy in the office who's over 30, still lives at home and has his clothes laid out for him. He may or may not be a virgin.

Interested applicants or angry wimps can find more information here. We're assuming the show will air on FX.

Whack Attack

Ever since Sylvia Plath tortured Esther in The Bell Jar, female magazine editors (FMEs) have been a favorite staple of television and film alike. Perhaps inspired by Tina Brown’s previous incarnation as a success, screenwriters have turned to the FME with increasing frequency in recent years. And with Friday’s release of 13 Going On 30, featuring yet another FME, only one question remains – what have they named the fake magazine where Jennifer Garner is fake employed? If history is any indication, we can be certain of one thing – it will have an awful title. Confer:

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days – Composure Magazine
High Art – Frame Magazine
Office Killer – Constant Consumer
Six Days, Seven Nights – Dazzle Magazine
Just Shoot Me – Blush Magazine
Central Park West – Communique

Unfortunately, the best fake magazine title ever committed to celluloid doesn’t make the FME cut. That honor goes to the Three Stooges short-lived gig as photographers for Whack Magazine. “Whack’s” slogan? “If it’s a good picture, it’s out of Whack.”

Tina Brown's worst dinner party ever

"Would you please pass the apocalypse?"

Artwork taken from the April 19, 2004 issue of the TIME 100 ("our list of the 100 most influential people in the world today").

And sitting next to Hillary Clinton in the foreground...what the hell did Jeff Jarvis do to get invited?

Tomorrow's Corrections Today, vol. 3

Slated to appear on the New York Times' Corrections page, April 20, 2004:

Because of an editing error, an article by Julie Flaherty in yesterday's Business section, "Many Started Web Logs for Fun, But Bloggers Need Money, Too," accidentally misstated the number of internet users who read Web logs, or blogs. The article claimed that blogs "are frequented by only about 10 percent of people who use the Internet." The corrected sentence should have said, "are frequented by only about 10 people who use the internet." The Times regrets the error.

Dorff on Britney

If you were dating Dorff, you'd kill yourself too.

[Click on Dorff for the full video.]

I'm Lovin' Shit

In a major press conference yesterday, McDonald’s, alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, unveiled a new line of "Go Active" meals – the fast-food giant’s response to having created a nation of fatties. Not only will these adult "Happy Meals" contain bottled water, McDonald’s will also include a brochure encouraging adults to walk more. With this bold move McDonald’s has made it clear – the obesity epidemic ends here. Or as Secretary Tom Tom put it, "It's important to recognize companies doing the right thing."

If McDonald’s adult campaign is anywhere near as exhaustive or successful as their children’s crusade, we may be certain that "Go Active" will have absolutely no impact at all. The What’s On Your Plate program encourages kids to stay fit through a variety of techniques intended to teach them "how to maintain a balanced diet and enjoy a healthy lifestyle. By talking to kids in their language, [it] tackles important questions such as, 'Is it ok to eat cake everyday?' and 'Why does mom want me to eat all different foods?'" That’s right, the important questions.

"What’s On Your Plate's" mascot is Willie Munchright, who looks more like he should feature in an animated version of Super Size Me than any anti-obesity campaign. Pasty and pale Master Munchright has dark bags under his eyes; he also appears to be losing his hair. He’s a kind of Edward Gorey vision of the average McDonald’s consumer. But with answers like these appearing on the McDonald’s website, who could be surprised that little Willie’s HDL might be a little high?

Q: Can McDonald's food be part of a healthy, balanced diet?
A: Yes. Many nutrition professionals agree that McDonald's food can be part of a healthy diet based on the sound nutrition principles of balance, variety and moderation.

Q: What role does fast food play in obesity?
A: Health experts the world over - including the World Health Organization, the U.S. Surgeon General and the American Dietetic Association - agree that no single factor is responsible for obesity.

On May 6, "Go Active" meals will be available in McDonald’s nationwide. And if these exciting steps forward really do change America’s eating habits, we can all look forward to a summer filled with even more toned hardbodies than usual.

As Seen on Cinemax After Dark...

From an interview with Alexandra Robbins, author of Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities:

[The sorority] had a tradition called boob ranking where pledges had just a limited amount of time to strip off their shirt and bras to examine each other topless so that by the time the clock was up, they were basically lined up in order of chest size in order of [sic] the sisters to inspect. Some sororities hold what they call "naked parties," during which after a few drinks sisters and pledges strip off their clothes and basically run around the house naked, some of them hooking up with each other before they let the boys in.

Banking on the West Bank

From Ad Age, April 12, 2004:

Commercial messages have seeped into the plots of movies, the very fabric of TV shows and video games, and even into the plots of novels. But that may have been just the beachhead. Now a growing number of marketers want to persuade the nation’s print magazines to open the text of their editorial pages to product placements.

From The New York Review of Books, April 29, 2004:

The Disintegration of Palestine
By Edward R.F. Sheehan

Nablus is a pleasing city, the most populous in the West Bank. A visitor is struck by the limestone dwellings on verdant mountainsides that surround the ancient town. These limestone bricks, as smooth as Norah Jones’ new album “Feels Like Home,” glimmer under the inescapable sun of the West Bank. The city is now inhabited by nearly 200,000 Palestinians, suffering badly from the Israeli occupation and the growing disintegration of their society.

Since mid-December 2003, the Israeli army has intensified its incursions, seeking suspected terrorists, militants of Hamas, and munitions makers. In a campaign as curiously powerful as an Altoids mint, the Israelis have destroyed or badly damaged two mosques, three churches, and hundreds of other buildings and homes.

Walking through the old city I saw shops, insecticide factories, and pharmaceutical factories, all turned into heaps of rubble. An entire city block that housed a soap factory has been leveled. It is a landscape that only a Range Rover could handle – its Dynamic Stability Control and Electronic Air Suspension offering the driver a smooth and stable ride over the leveled homes that once sheltered militants and innocent families alike.

This is drama as powerful as the WB’s breakout hit One Tree Hill – but Nablus’ drama doesn’t feature that show’s hunky Chad Michael Murray. On a street in the Balata refugee camp, where I met many undernourished children, a boy of six was eating a sandwich – perhaps one of Quizno’s deliciously toasted subs – on his doorstep when a soldier shot him dead for no reason. The Israeli army promised to investigate the killing, but so far has issued no findings.

Like Visa Cards, the Israeli Army is everywhere you want to be. I left Nablus on the road to Qalandiya, about twenty miles to the south. At a junction, soldiers at a mobile checkpoint suddenly appeared, and my shuttle taxi was ordered to stop. An Israeli soldier with a pistol advanced on us, ordering us out of the car, followed by another soldier with an assault rifle pointed at our heads. Clearly, the Israeli army attempts to offer the kind of protection that only Soft & Dri’s Cool Gel could provide. When our group set out again for Qalandiya, the Palestinians with me were silent. Were they resigned to such humiliation, or was their anger so deep that they could no longer express it? The only certainty on which I could rely was the knowledge that Clinique’s Repairware Day SPF 30 Intensive Cream would protect my complexion from the cruel sun of Israel.

Abed Rabbo is not optimistic. "I don't know whether the initiative will succeed," he told me in Ramallah. “We'll keep trying. I want the United States to be involved under the ‘road map’ and consider the Geneva Accord to be the embodiment of the third phase of the road map—a final Palestinian state. [As I shaved this morning, using the glorious Mach 3 razors offered by the great and glorious Gillette, I realized that] I'm against any provisional borders. We want to go straight to the final phase. [Do you have any of those Cool Ranch Doritos left? Truly they are delicious.] We think that interim solutions cannot succeed. [You have the Guacamole Doritos? I didn’t even know they made those. Oh, it is as if Allah himself resides in my mouth!] The chief virtue of our plan is its clarity—it's comprehensive and without ambiguity.”

Al-Omari and his associates argue that the accord signifies a new and realistic approach for the Palestinians to follow. Chappelle’s Show – still Dave, still Dangerous – Wednesdays 10:30 pm, only on Comedy Central. Many Palestinians had clung to the old fantasy of liberating all of Palestine, eliminating Israel, and allowing a huge return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland. Unleash your style with Garnier Fructis Super Stiff Gel! The new plan looks not backward but forward, relinquishing absolute justice (a large-scale return) in favor of self-determination and independence in a state that would constitute 22 percent of historic Palestine. Al-Omari said, "There is no going back to Haifa."

Is it inconceivable to make real the language of the Geneva Accord—that Israelis and Palestinians will "establish relations based on cooperation and the commitment to live side by side as good neighbors, ENLARGE YOUR PENIS NOW!!! aiming both separately and jointly to contribute to the well being of their peoples"? Nearly everything one sees in the Occupied Territories casts doubt on this Carb Blocker is THE ONLY All-in-One Carb/Fat Blocker vision. Only the fact of the accord itself having been negotiated and signed offers a glimpse of hope.

Frankly, baffling

From "Rage Inside the Machine: MTV News star Gideon Yago incites young voters" by Joy Press, in the April 13, 2004 issue of the Village Voice:

"Suddenly I was reading Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Jack Kerouac, H.L. Mencken—all these writers who saw America as half monster, half angel."

When asked if he's able to put any of those influences into his current job, Yago shrugs. "I try to. But I work for MTV; I know what our role is. We're doing Civics 101." He says his own taste runs more toward cultural critics like Baffler editor Thomas Frank, and claims that The Baffler's 1997 book Commodify Your Dissent "was a big reason I went to work at MTV in the first place."

Incidentally, Carson Daly's favorite book was "Boob Jubilee", at least until he tried to read it.

He might be a "problem child" if he's 30 feet tall and made of plastic

The cover of New York magazine's April 19, 2004 issue, alongside this snippet from Yahoo! News:

Danish Crown Prince Frederik and his fiancee Mary Donaldson look at the Ron Mueck sculpture 'Boy' at The Aros Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark Wednesday April 7, 2004.

AP Writer is Unimaginative

Completely, totally, the worst headline ever run over a wire service, from an article by Christy Lemire, AP Entertainment Writer:

Review: 'Kill Bill - Vol. 2' Is Stylized

Note: Yes, writers rarely come up with their own headlines. You're so damn insider.

She Must Have Meant a Different Russia

From Russian Fashion Week:

From the Times Sunday Styles, “In Russia, Class for the Masses”:

…the models working the catwalks during Russian Fashion Week showed off collections that left behind the avant-garde, often downright odd designs that have long dominated Russian high fashion…Increasingly, subtle is in.

Subtle, like Amanda Lapore.

New York Second

At last, the trailer for the upcoming Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen feature, New York Minute, has been released on the web. In keeping with the whole Two of a Kind theme, the trailer reveals, in stunning detail, just how frighteningly secondhand these gags are. Keeping in mind these are just from the trailer, here are a few examples.

Eugene Levy announces himself as a Nassau County Truancy Officer, drives a light blue Plymouth, and obsesses over his own white whale of a wayward student. Aside from the obvious Ferris Bueller ripoff, how did Eugene Levy become the de rigueur wacky old guy in teen movies?

A dog flies through an open window – a scene that might be familiar to any one of millions who have seen There’s Something About Mary.

There is a fairly offensive looking Beauty Shop sequence, although New York Minute does manage to beat the Queen Latifah project to theatres by a couple months.

Eugene Levy crashes to the ground while attempting to stage dive. Presumably this is different from School of Rock’s opening because Jack Black is fat and Eugene Levy is not.

While standing on scaffolding, Mary-Kate and Ashley drop precipitously down the side of a building, an almost shot-by-shot ripoff of The First Wives Club. Insult to injury, as the girls plummet to earth, the Olsens' towels remain suspiciously in place, certain to disappoint some.

MaryKateAshley slaps AshleyMaryKate, declaring, “Snap out of it!” -- more than recalling Moonstruck’s big moment. Admittedly this scene appears to be more “reference” than “theft,” though who in the fuck among the teen demo is going get that?

The trailer ends with Levy singing the theme from Cops, a la Bad Boys II.

And the best part of all this “appropriation”? One of the screenwriters is actually named Bill Collage.

Gibson Resurrects Passion B.O.; Hair Next

See, if Mel Gibson were Jewish, he could fix that whole situation "up there" with a nice Yarmulka.

Mel's got it covered—the box office, that is.

This past Sunday, The Passion of the Christ's box office benefited not only from some great timing, but nimrods like this:

"I waited until today because today is the day that Jesus rose from the dead," said Linda Brown, 40, of The Bronx as she headed into the AMC Theatres Empire 25 in Times Square. "I thought it was appropriate to see this film instead of going to church."

And all we can say is, Thank god! Our screening of The Whole Ten Yards was wonderfully—blessedly—empty. And with the lack of laughs, it was quiet as a church.

Queer Eye for an Eye

The Bible is the new bible of the self-help movement. In yesterday’s Times Magazine, Rob Walker examined the phenomenal success of The Purpose-Driven Life, a Christianity-based guide to improving yourself. In turn, Sunday’s New York Post gave readers a first look at The Maker’s Diet, a weight-loss tome based on rules set forth in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. And for those religious gym bunnies, there’s always The Lord’s Gym (via Slate), a fitness center founded on Christian principles.

Indeed the influence of the Bible can be found in the unlikeliest places -- the new self-helper from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, for example. Surely those godless sodomites don’t find inspiration in the Bible, right? Wrong. Just compare the two:

On grooming:

Then Moses said..."Do not let your hair become unkempt, and do not tear your clothes, or you will die and the LORD will be angry with the whole community.”
Leviticus 10: 6

Hair is the most visible thing we can play with to change our appearance, so start on top. It’s crucial to find a stylist you trust – not only will they help you with a cool new haircut, they can also be a great source of expertise on how to style and care for it.
Kyan 92

Wine tasting:

There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it.
Matthew 27: 34

If it’s corked, it will smell moldy, or taste like vinegar, or be revolting in some other fairly obvious fashion. if you think there’s something terribly wrong with it, ask the wine steward to taste it.
Ted 45

On skin care:

After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the LORD.
2 Samuel 12: 20

Look for a moisturizer that’s free of fragrance and hypoallergenic if you have sensitive skin that’s easily irritated. Lotion is the most common form of moisturizer, good for normal or combination skin.
Kyan 108

On lighting:

They are to take a blue cloth and cover the lampstand that is for light…
Numbers 4: 9

I’d be happy with a dimmer on every light in the house – they’re crucial to modulating the mood of a space.
Thom 126

On decorating:

In your marketplace they traded with you beautiful garments, blue fabric, embroidered work and multicolored rugs with cords twisted and tightly knotted.
Ezekiel 27: 24

Go window-shopping – wherever furniture is sold, just walk around and browse.
Thom 130

On belts:

This is what the LORD said to me: "Go and buy a linen belt and put it around your waist, but do not let it touch water."
Jeremiah 13: 1

Personality starts in the crotch region. But you knew that. Get a vintage leather strap and find a belt buckle that says something about your personality.
Carson 179

On the thank you:

Then he will thank you, and it will be regarded as a righteous act in the sight of the LORD your God.
Deuteronomy 24: 13

If someone holds the door open for you, say thank you…No one will ever say that being too polite is rude, so when in doubt, express your appreciation.
Jai 216

On despair:

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"-- which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Mark 15: 34

In the last year, American men have come to know and expect that the dramatic arrival of five impeccably dressed gay men at their door can mean only one thing: Their life is about to get more fabulous.
Introduction 11

Now put him to sleep

From the New York Daily News' Daily Dish, April 9, 2004:

Carson Daly is getting long in the tooth - old, that is - for the MTV crowd.

How old is he? So old, that at 31, he's going to get a Lifetime Achievement award at MTV's upcoming TRL Awards.

Tomorrow's Corrections Today, vol. 1

Slated to appear on the New York Times' Corrections page, April 9, 2004:

Because of an editing error, we misidentified the author of an op-ed which appeared in Thursday's paper about Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and the growth of alternative rock music. The article was written by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, not Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore. The Times regrets the error.

Basic math for Observer reporters

In this week's Observer, author Jake Brooks reveals his close reading of Mark Ebner and Andrew Breitbart's recent trash-tome Hollywood Interrupted, as he rehashes one of that book's chapters for a follow-up piece entitled "You’ve Got Chutzpah! E-Girl Mines AOL Data for Hollywood Gold" about "an America Online customer-service representative named Heather Robinson who allegedly mined her employer’s database for the e-mail addresses of numerous actors, producers and movie-industry operatives." The article goes on to examine the ways in which she flouted her online persona to sexually titillate and seduce these selfsame operatives.

But a close reading of Brooks' close reading reveals some room for, shall we say, "inaccuracies" on the part of Ms. Robinson and her story.

"It’s going to be more a take on how these celebrities and politicians helped me. Mark [Ebner]’s chapter was more of a darker version," said the 25-year-old Ms. Robinson with a staccato laugh. "This one is going to be more lighthearted," she added, "showing how I went from a customer-service rep at AOL to selling a screenplay and now producing my first screenplay."

Fair enough. It's 2004, right, and she's 25 years old. Continuing, we learn that

According to Ms. Robinson, for the period of roughly a year and a half in 1997 and 1998, she used her position at AOL to gain access to private information regarding celebrities, then sought them out.

Hmmm. OK, so in 1997, at the tender and inexperienced age of 18, she was a customer-service representative for AOL. Sounds like a bit of a stretch, potentially, if, in fact, AOL, the largest internet service provider at that point in time, was hiring recent high-school graduates to talk customers through installation issues and dial-up problems.

Oh, but we learn more:

She went by the screen name HooterR. Her member profile, which can still be found on AOL, identifies her as a single wine-lover splitting her time between Tucson, Ariz., and Santa Monica, Calif. And her personal quote—of her own making—sounds like the slogan from an old 70’s T-shirt: "God Created Women with Breasts to Hold Beer."

Again, this is an 18-year-old. Old enough for agents to sleep with, certainly, but not to be pouring champagne all over her bosom before they climb on top of her. Though she was still apparently old enough to sell her first script, The Perfect Man, which

is scheduled to start production on April 26, with Hilary Duff in the starring role. It’s about a teenager who lies and steals to create a fictitious suitor for her single mother. The movie is loosely based on another of Ms. Robinson’s adventures in the virtual world—this one with real legal consequences. When she was 16, Ms. Robinson was arrested, along with a high-school friend, for purchasing a diamond ring for her mother that cost close to $4,000 with stolen credit cards. Because her friend lifted the plastic and doctored the ID herself, Ms. Robinson was charged only as an accomplice. And since she didn’t have a prior record, the charge was reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, and she was sentenced to 120 hours of community service.

So she was arrested and charged as an accomplice to stealing credit cards at the age of 16...all the way back in 1995, a mere two years before being hired as a customer-service rep for AOL. This alone is almost enough to cause one to become a proponent of outsourcing these sorts of tech-service jobs to India, right?

Meanwhile, with Hilary Duff slated to star as Ms. Robinson in the former AOL employee's first upcoming autobiographical film, we have the perfect suggestion for the role of Observer writer Jake Brooks in the eventual first-person adaptation of the events following the production of this film: Hayden Christensen.

No Nose Jobs

Gisele Bundchen, bridging the years

The New A&F

Abercrombie & Fitch has released its Summer catalogue, their first since the execrable National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families managed to have the magalog shuttered. After the Christmas Issue was pulled, the “Spring Break” issue never even made it to the stores. But in good news for the corporation, it looks like the reinvented, post-boycott A&F catalogue isn’t going to ruffle any religious-right feathers. Below, a brief comparison between the two.

exposed female breasts in “Spring Break”: 19
exposed female breasts in “Summer”: 0

homoerotic embraces in “Spring Break”: 7
homoerotic embraces in “Summer”: 0

body hair visible in “Spring Break”: negligible
body hair visible in “Summer”: negligible

male buttocks in “Spring Break”: 10
male buttocks in “Summer”: 0

black models visible in “Spring Break”: negligible
black models visible in “Summer”: negligible

dolphins pictured in “Spring Break”: 0
dolphins pictured in “Summer”: 9

Miserable Scripts Love Company

Hollywood, it would seem, has caught spring fever. Both of these "Honeymoon with..." movies were logged today on Done Deal.

Title: Honeymoon With Harry
Log line: A man loses his fiancée two days before their wedding and must go on his honeymoon with his fiancee's father, who hates him, in order to scatter her ashes.
Writer: Bart Baker (author)
Agent: Mngr. Bob Sobhani at Zide/Perry Entertainment and atty. Mitch Smelkinson of Stone, Meyer, and Genow
Buyer: New Line Cinema
Price: Mid-six against low-seven figures
Genre: Drama-Comedy
Logged: 4/6/04
More: Unpublished first novel. Karz Entertainment's Mike Karz will produce. Karz’s Russell Hollander will executive produce.

And…

Title: Honeymoon With My Brother
Log Line: In the course of a month, a man is demoted from his executive job and dumped by his fiancee days before they are to walk down the aisle. He decides to hold the wedding anyway, followed by a honeymoon with his estranged brother, Kurt. The two men end up on a two-year adventure that takes them around the world.
Writer: Kevin Bisch
Agent: ICM
Buyer: Sony Pictures
Price: High six against low seven-figure
Genre: Comedy Adventure
Logged: 4/6/04
More: To be adapted from Franz Wisner's upcoming memoir. Gold/Miller's Eric Gold and Jimmy Miller to produce. Gold/Miller manager Julie Darmody brought the property to the company.

Truly, love is in the air.

You must mean "Red"

Quickly: what color is Hellboy?

"...skin the inflamed, velvety hue of a baked ham,"
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

"...red as sin,"
Elvis Mitchell, New York Times

"...big order of tandoori chicken,"
J. Hoberman, Village Voice

Hard Boiled Eggers

As part of low culture’s continuing commitment to you, the reader, we hoped that a summary of Dave Eggers’ newest novel might come in handy. Taking our cue from The Guardian’s Digested Reads and inspired by our dedication to you, the reader, we intended to provide brief summaries of the untitled novel as it is serialized in Salon. We at low culture, however, never quite anticipated how boring that task would prove.

Enter Microsoft Word’s “AutoSummarize” feature. After plugging Episodes 1 through 18 into a Word doc, we simply let our PowerBook do the reading for us. What follows is the 275 word AutoSummary – it’s not entirely coherent, but perhaps it will be of service to someone, somewhere.

"Bastards!" said Sergei.

Sergei said, as it took shape. Poor Little Nicky. Nicky whistled.

Sergei and Nicky had no blimp. "Fucking internet," Sergei muttered. Sergei turned to Nicky. "See if there's another blimp."

Sergei sighed. Man, she was a hard woman. Stuart had started to speak. Stuart couldn't find a word. "Have you seen Sergei?" Stuart asked.

Stuart demurred.

Neither Jeannie knew exactly where Sergei was.

Each time Stuart caught someone's eye, he would extend his hand and smile. "Look who's here," Sergei said.

Little Nicky smiled like it hurt. Truth be told, Nicky didn't much like Stuart.

Stuart stopped looking impressed.

"That blimp is our enemy," Sergei said.

Stuart nodded. If Sergei used one exclamation point, he used three. Nicky said. "For state representative."

Sergei wondered. Stuart was running low on Wet Wipes.

Sergei feigned disinterest.

"Right, right," Sergei said, "he plays cards." Sergei grimaced. Sergei pleaded. Sergei asked.

Sergei asked.

Nicky whispered to Sergei. Nicky asked.

"I'm not calling Olongapo a boob," Stuart said.

Stuart stepped back. "Yikes," said Nicky.

Sergei thought Stuart's ease with people was amazing and wondered whence it came. Had Stuart run for office before, ever, even in high school? Stuart asked.

Rebecca Romaine was 45. Never. "Church," Rebecca said.

"Rebecca, you have to run."

"What?"

Senate. Rebecca tried not to sputter. Rebecca said. Rebecca glanced down at his name tag: George Papadolopsolous.

Giacomo asked.

Rebecca considered the question rhetorical, but the young man was waiting for an answer.

Rebecca asked.

"I'm sorry," Rebecca said. Rebecca said.

"I'm intrigued," said a voice behind Rebecca. "I'm Giacomo. I'm running this campaign."

"Oh?" Rebecca smiled and then felt sick.

Rebecca checked her watch: 8:06. Rebecca thought. Giacomo sighed. "Rebecca, no! "Rebecca," said Giacomo.

Separated At Birth? Vol. 2

Ripley-esque George W. and Weirdo-esque John Malkovich

Quest Love

Quest Magazine (not to be confused with the bimonthly about living with neuromuscular disease) features in its April issue The Quest 400, their annual list of Manhattan’s social elite. The 400, like all of Quest Magazine, does not concern itself with the sordid worlds of show business or pro sports (too many minorities, presumably). No, we are offered only an alphabetized list of Manhattan’s Botox-Boomers, old-money layabouts and John Jacob Astor descendants.

The list was compiled by Quest editor David Patrick Columbia, also known for the dangerously compelling New York Social Diary. Unfortunately the good Mr. Columbia finds no need to explain why or how he determined who gets on the list and who’s left out. In fact, all we get is a White Pages of people with last names like Biddle, Hearst and Pulitzer. Its complete lack of context recalls The Spy List -- Spy Magazine’s mysterious column listing only a series of proper names.

As tribute to both of these formidable publications, we are proud to present

Montgomery Clift
Tatianna von Furstenberg
J.P. Getty
Brad Renfro
Horatio Sanz
Bijou Phillips
James Murdoch
Nia Vardalos

I Hate Him and Want Him To Die

The endlessly irritating James Frey is at it again. Today's issue of Black Table asks some writers for their thoughts on Kurt Cobain -- he killed himself (or did he?) ten years ago today. Frey's contribution is a little three-act about his ever-shifting opinion of Nirvana. From Act III:

On the first anniversary of his death, I went with a friend to a house in Wicker Park, Chicago. An altar had been set-up with Cobain's picture, some candles, a hypodermic, a bindle of dope and a small pile of letters addressed to him. A Nirvana disc was in the stereo. There were 10 or 12 people, several were crying...

My nausea had become unbearable, so I skimmed ahead. Spotting "lame," I felt some relief. But it was not to last:

At that moment, I stopped thinking Nirvana was lame. I stopped thinking Nirvana was a creation of MTV. I realized Cobain spoke for a lot of people, changed a lot of lives, touched an untold number. I bought In Utero the next day, listened to it. I realized maybe Cobain spoke for me as well.

Frey's little sampler of idiocy brings to mind Martin Amis' essay on John Lennon from Vising Mrs. Nabokov. Amazon won't let me "Search Inside The Book" and I can't find my copy, so I've got to paraphrase here. Speaking of the maudlin vigil held after Lennon's death, Amis writes that if Lennon were still alive, he'd probably be the first person making fun of these people.

Metaphorically Piquing

In "Conan's Late Start", which appeared in the April 4, 2004 New York Times Arts & Leisure section, author Bill Carter examined Conan O'Brien's as-yet-unfulfilled late night legacy, particularly his concerns and those of his agents in regards to his 11:30PM time-slot destiny. Not much is revealed, however, save for the fact that comedians and their agents confine themselves to describing their lives exclusively in the context of a torrent of metaphors. Documentation of a funnyman's feelings is best kept to a minimum, apparently, unless filtered through the detached voice of an analogous narrative. To wit:

Conan on returning to Rockefeller Center after taping in Toronto: "It's like when you go back to third grade and suddenly you notice the water fountain is like 4 inches off the ground."

Conan on his future: "It's the elephant in the room that no one is talking about."

Conan on comparisons to Letterman's circumstances a decade ago: "With me at 12:30, you can still feel there's order in the heavens somewhat."

Conan on late night as his true passion: "I've got the bit in my teeth with this show and I'm very determined to take it as far as it will go."

Conan on easing out Leno: "My agents can say that — and they do. But I have no control over them. They're Rottweilers that I bought. Their job is to attack."

Conan on the NBC executive who nearly cancelled his show: "But if John Agoglia somehow fell to the bottom of a coal mine and I was the only one who knew about it, I'm not saying I wouldn't alert the authorities, but I might take my time about it, maybe wait a week or two — provided he had plenty of fresh water."

Conan on his legacy with American youth: "You make an emotional connection, sort of the way Led Zeppelin made an emotional connection with people at a certain age, and for the rest of their lives all they want to do is put on a Led Zepplin record."

Gavin Polone, Conan's manager, on the crowded late night marketplace (while indirectly indicating why he's a manager and not a writer): "You might have three companies that need new jetliners at the same time, and we'll be the only company actually building a jet," Mr. Polone concludes. "Other people may be building washing machines. But why go to a company offering washing machines when you need a jet?"

The Prince & Me & not Us

After due diligence on the part of our friend Sharon in the P.R. department at Paramount Pictures, we at low culture were once again given access to the media goodie bag and allowed to see a pre-release screening of Julia Stiles' latest film, "The Prince & Me."

It's a good thing, too, because we were part of the flock of fans who showed that we "could do it, put your back into it" when we watched this beautiful young Columbia University undergrad take on the mantle of interracial love –– and interracial dancing –– when she charmingly swept America off its feet in 2001's "Save the Last Dance." Well, she's back, and this time, she's traded in Ice Cube's lyricism and the concomitant "street cred" for Freddie Prinze, Jr.'s cool, calm, and collected flirtation with royalty.

First-time helmer Martha Coolidge's compelling narrative loosely concerns the trials and tribulations of an average American girl's behavior when she's forced to choose between her deeply-embedded principles and that most elusive of sentiments, true love. Of course, this is all "fancy-talk" for saying that she has to choose between a crush on her favorite boy, and the fact that he lied to her by not letting her in on the fact that he was an heir to the throne of Denmark (and yes, there are more than enough self-referential Hamlet jokes sprinkled throughout the film for all you fans of both classic Shakespeare and youth-oriented films).

Stiles takes on the role of college student Paige Morgan with much aplomb, and her experience as an actress shines through on her initial scenes with the young Prinze (who far outshines Eddie Murphy's rendition in the original film) when they meet at a Greenpeace rally on the steps of the school's library. It turns out that the Prinze has more than just a passing interest in environmental regulation, though, because he sweeps Paige off her feet with his passionate rhetoric regarding the damage caused by oil spills in the Baltic Sea. Paige, of course, passes off this worldliness as a part of his exchange-student persona, but quickly falls in love with his debonair presence and the humanizingly endearing way he quirkily drops the T's and W's from his words when speaking aloud, as all Danes are wont to do.

But, as with all instances of true love, there's a catch: the Prinze, through a series of escalating misunderstandings exacerbated by his two roommates' miscommunication, had neglected to inform Paige that he was, in fact, royalty, before taking her virginity. This understandably upsets Paige a great deal, and she calls him a Danish imperialist, which only complicates things further, because the Prinze's father is in court at the ICC at that very moment for war crimes committed against the neighboring Swedes. The Prinze is crestfallen, as he has spent his entire life modeling himself on becoming all that his father (deftly played by James Caan in a stirring cameo) stood against, including a value system that apparently rules out sleeping with girls with misshapen faces that haven't aged well as they've exited their teenaged years.

The film's winsome examination of collegiate love-with-princes strikes a heartwarming note when the audience realizes that things will, of course, work out...such is the nature of fairy tales, and such is the nature of true love.

Jennifer '98 Lee

Jennifer 8. Lee is the New York Times comer known for her networking skills – the New York Sun has gone so far as to suggest that Lee is the second coming of Katharine Graham. And though the comparison may be apposite, it’s unlikely the legendary Washington Post editrix ever used Yahoo Groups to help report her stories.

While the Harvard98 Yahoo Group typically traffics in less-than-rousing political banter and questions about housing in Dallas, subscribers are occasionally met with queries from Jenny 8. herself.

Most recently Jenny inquired about people scared to eat fish because of mercury levels; it’s fair to assume we can expect a Times article on that very topic in the near future.

Don’t believe it? Well consider the following email sent to the Harvard98 group on April 12, 2003:

From: "Jennifer 8. Lee"
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 08:06:03 -0700 (PDT)
To: harvard98@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [harvard98] SARS: affected by sars in seattle (SF/LA)

this has to be one of the stranger requests i have made to this list

does anyone know of people in seattle (most likely with links to asia) who is thinking of/affected by SARS. that is (not in parallel structure), family there, school exchanges that were cancelled, business trips that have been cancelled, local tourist business that is down, quarantined etc.

and if not seattle, people in San Fran and Los Angeles would be good too.

thanks,
jenny

And then treat yourself to her article in the New York Times four days later, “In U.S., Fear Is Spreading Faster Than SARS,” datelined April 16, 2003 and reported by Jennifer 8. Lee. From the article: “Back in Seattle, though, concerns among co-workers led several employers to ask the participants to work from home…”

Still don’t believe it? Well screw you.

This is not the first time Jenny 8.’s Harvard cronies have assisted her. Wonkette has bravely exposed the shadowy cabal of former classmates who have helped make Jennifer 8. Lee the heir to D.C. royalty. The master’s house continues to burn.

April Fool's "Hipster Fuck-for-all"

Things we gleaned from various comments, here and elsewhere, after posting our super-special, super-personal, and perhaps all-too-misguided, April Fool's Day edition:

"i was getting kinda up in arms at the vacuousness of the posts"

"when did this delicious blog turn into a hipster fuck-for-all, replete with cat blogging and musical faves?"

And then there was an exquisitely enjoyable comment, which we're paraphrasing here, after its having been apparently deleted from the relevant Gothamist post, explaining the author's thesis that

"April Fools jokes, by their very nature, need to be funny, and unfortunately, Low Culture is not funny."

Seriously, though, "hipster fuck-for-all" is the best-ever grouping of words we've ever come across.

Boring Stiffs

The New York Post this week reveals the stunning excerpts from model turned D-lister Michael Bergin’s forthcoming memoir The Other Man, in which he details his romantic dalliances with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, aka Mrs. JFK Jr. Perhaps the most shocking detail of all, however, is just how boring this stuff is.

Typically extramarital affairs are racy material, cf. Unfaithful, or even Fatal Attraction. An extramarital affair with a Kennedy (through marriage or not) should be explosive. But instead of Marilyn Monroe sex romps or Chappaquidic debauchery, all we get are passages bordering on the obscenely banal:

But suddenly, none of that mattered; suddenly we were making love. Carolyn and I were locked in each other’s arms, and it was everything I remembered it to be and more. It brought back all the craziness.

Or this erotic gem:

All we needed was the red futon.

And then...

We walked through the door, straight into my room, and began kissing and taking off each other’s clothes…And we made love. It wasn’t about sex with us. It was lovemaking as I had never experienced it before.

Sure, it might not be fair to expect de Sade from a “Baywatch” alum, but Bergin doesn’t even hint at the issues that truly matter – did the cuffs match collar? Any odd sexual predilictions? And where is the much rumored white sheik? None of it’s there; instead all we get are soft-focus embraces and tortured syntax. For a memoir as patently indiscreet as Bergin’s, he’s chosen discretion in all the wrong places.

Sex and the Sunday Comics

Are Sundays just not the same without that Sex and the City fix? Well, for those modern gals who count SATC, Tasti D-Lite and Sunday Styles among their desert island picks, low culture has the remedy.

Ladies, treat yourself to a lo-cal binge on the comic strip Cathy. In many ways our Cathy is the original Carrie Bradshaw – perpetually whining, pathologically self-aware, and ultimately interested in only the four c’s of diamond buying (that’s cut, color, carat, and clarity if you didn't know). But Cathy is more than just ur-SATC – she’s newly engaged.

Indeed that Mr. Big of the comics page, Irving, has finally proposed. And Cathy said yes! Although she might not have the fantastic support group that Carrie did, her ever kvetching mother is sure to provide all the doubt and dialogue that the three viragos of SATC managed to shriek. And while you can’t buy Cathy’s clothing, wouldn’t a collectible print of Cathy’s journey to wedded bliss prove the perfect alternative?

With this record-length will they/won’t they finally resolved, we can finally shift our concerns to other comics: will Heart of the City ever play doctor with sci-fi geek/sidekick Dean? Will Mallard Fillmore ever agree with those liberal professors? And can the Lockhorns ever get along?

Indeed the mewling, man-hungry women of SATC may have retired, but the comics page is here to save the day.

We Will Never Forget

How many high-concept romantic comedies can one moviegoer take? Two, apparently – 50 First Dates and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – although we’ll just have to wait until Friday for The Prince & Me. Clip and go with low culture’s handy guide to all those heady laughers and never get confused again.

Island setting:
50FD - Oahu, Hawaii
ESSM - Rockville Centre, Long Island

Former comedian turned serious actor in lead:
50FD - Adam Sandler
ESSM - Jim Carrey

Female lead with body issues (chubby):
50FD - Drew Barrymore
ESSM - Kate Winslet

Unattractive, humorous male sidekick:
50FD - Rob Schneider
ESSM - David Cross

Former Hobbit in supporting role:
50FD - Sean Astin
ESSM - Elijah Wood

Long-term or short-term memory loss?
50FD - Short-term
ESSM - Long-term

Literary aspirations:
50FD - Lead character named for writer Henry Roth
ESSM - Title taken from Alexander Pope poem

Piece of crap?
50FD - Yes
ESSM – No, mostly

Ass Backward

Did anyone else assume this cover story would be about forced sodomy among little leaguers?

Lars Von Trier: His own worst critic

(Click the pseudo-Dogville thumbnail image to enlarge)

Ear-ly Itchy and Scratchy

From CNN, March 26, 2004:

GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (Reuters) -- A four-eared German kitten has been given a new home after a German animal shelter was deluged with requests to adopt the animal born six months ago with the genetic defect.

From CNN, nine years earlier, October 25, 1995:

MASSACHUSETTS (CNN) -- Researchers in Massachusetts have created something that sounds more like science fiction than science fact. They've taken a prototype human ear made of polyester fabric and human cartilage cells, and implanted it on the back of a hairless mouse.

Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Sight Unseen

ABOVE: a mirror image of the expressions you and your well-tailored friends will sport as you sit on your couch watching this film on HBO this fall

This may come as a surprise to some of low culture's readers who expect us to hide behind our patented cool and ironic stance, but we were huge fans of Scooby-Doo. Well, guess what, Jack: We were lucky enough to be invited to an early screening of the film, and ta da: we're even bigger fans of Scooby-Doo 2, which has to be director Kinka Usher's finest film since, well, Mystery Men.

Fans of the cartoon series' bizarre juxtaposition of guest stars will love the pre-credits teaser. In a hilarious yet timely scenario, Shaggy, Fred, Daphne, and Velma are testifying at a congressional hearing about the mass brain-washings on Monster Island (from the series' first film). Scooby's there, too, but he's forced to dress up like a bedraggled Vietnam vet (shades of Born on the Fourth of July?) in an army jacket and wheelchair. (It's funnier than it sounds--especially when Scooby barks "Yooooooou can't hannnnnnndle the truuuuuuuuuf!") After several probing, incisive questions from the unseen congressmen (that make Fred and Shaggy sweat and brings out Velma's brainy side and Daphne's flirty side), we see exactly who is asking these questions: The Harlem Globetrotters, the living members of the "Addam's Family," Joyce DeWitt from "Three's Company," boxer "Sugar" Shane Mosley, and the ubiquitous Steve Buscemi (in his black Reservoir Dogs suit).

Of course, with a film this fun, the soundtrack couldn't be more of a gas! Featuring the pop stylings of Hilary Duff, Willa Ford, and Warner Music's promising young siren Bonnie McKee (not to be confused with Sony's lesser songstress Nellie McKay), the movie's raucous tunes had the youngsters who accompanied us to the screening dancing in the aisles.

Other highlights include Sarah Michelle Gellar's star-making turn as Daphne (I'm telling you, if Harvard-educated director James Toback hasn't heard of this ingenue yet, he will have by now!). Imbuing a character of such heretofore-renowned vapidity with an emotional resonance not seen since Emily Watson's perfomance in Breaking the Waves, we're left to wonder how other, less-experienced actresses considered for this same role (read: Elisha Cuthbert) might have fouled up a particularly tense scene in the film's climactic lighthouse sequence, which combines the thrills of So, I Married an Ax Murderer with the laughs of Hitchcock's Vertigo.

But what really makes this scene a cinematic classic is its heart: when Daphne fights the ghost of the monster's computer virus, she's doing so to avenge the death of her beloved Fred, who was killed (there's even a suggestion he may have been raped!) by the ghost of the monster's computer virus's creator (Whoopi Goldberg, almost unrecognizable under pounds of latex and make-up). When Gellar's Daphne busts into a Matrix-type 'bullet time' roundhouse kick, the audience not only cheers, they weep. Including, again, those youngsters seated next to us. Of course, we'll miss Fred in any sequels, but there's a suggestion that the wizard (deftly played by The Sweet Hereafter's Ian Holm) might be able to reanimate him using the sacred stones.

We'll be waiting for Scooby-Doo 3: Space is the Place to see if the geniuses behind this awesome series can "doo" it again. Scooby-Doo it again, that is!

(Confidential to Sharon at Warner Brothers' PR: Thanks!)

The Web of Babel

Like a website designed by Borges with OCD, Slate has taken its organizational impulse to a new level. Increasingly minute divisions in Slate’s content are filtered into increasingly nebulous departments – presumably someone thinks this is useful. Just a cursory look at some of these headers strongly suggests that someone on the masthead has lost the plot. Decide for yourself:

The Boxes:
press box
chatterbox
ballot box
culturebox
moneybox
music box
sandbox

Categories Suggesting Daily Content:
day to day
diary
dispatches

Content from Somewhere Else:
today’s papers
in other magazines
summary judgment
cartoon index
Doonesbury

Slate Knows Best:
explainer
history lesson
dear prudence
everyday economics

Redundancies:
jurisprudence
supreme court dispatches

And a Fraction of the Rest:
war stories
architecture
kausfiles
readme
poem
shopping
fighting words
brave new world
ad report card
tv club
politics
fraywatch
foreigners
movies
slate fare
corrections
assessment
damned spot
left field
gaming
webhead
gizmos
well-traveled

Separated at Birth?

Deceased Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Sauron pawn Saruman the White

Rosemary's Baby

Actually, his name's Seamus. But he's still creepy-looking.

Boo-Ya

While Boohbah, PBS’s newest toddler TV/marketing juggernaut, should prove a valuable resource for indolent parents everywhere, Boohbah’s online component definitely demands a more vigilant adult supervision. The website itself is harmless fare – offering children, stoned collegians, or the easily entertained endless hours of good Flash fun. But it’s that url, specifically the “Boohb” of “Boohbah,” that could prove a thornier proposition.

low culture has researched the possible misspellings that any otherwise well-intentioned six-year-old might encounter while searching for his foreskinned cartoon buddies. Some of our results:

Boohbah.com -- A “charming website for kids that fosters creative thinking.”
Boobe.com -- “Free Adult Web Hosting!”
Boobs.com -- “Big tits, huge boobs, large hooters, juggs, knockers and all sizes of titties!”
Booby.com -- “Helpful links for writers”
Boob.com -- “Welcome to Pornville.net!”
Booba.com -- Features a link to the “Young Black Stallion Web Site”

Al Franken: (Great) Liberal Ass

SNL castmember Laraine Newman on Al Franken's butt:

"He had this very defined musculature. His butt was like a cut basketball. Which, you know, you don't normally see in comedy writers.''

How to get a head (or two) in Hollywood

The worst movie job ever: Cydney Cornell, hair stylist to Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

The week of our discontent

...was not spent reading John Steinbeck, but rather, sorting out a whole slew of nasty technical troubles that arose with the lovely low culture database. Regardless, it's all better now, like a world without first-run episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm that do a ghastly job of tying in painfully long segments from The Producers and an overacting (or is it underacting) husband-and-wife duo in the form of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. But that's all behind us, now.

Oh, and confidential to MovableType: Fuck you, buddy.

Naming names

Spartan is the name of David Mamet's new movie. It's called Spartan, this movie. It's out Friday. This David Mamet movie, it's got stars like Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, and William H. Macy. He's no first-timer, William H. Macy.

The story, well, the plot, is about a kidnapping. This plot is intense. The story, too. The plot and the story, they're both very intense, they're very fucking intense.

And the title. Spartan. This title got us thinking. It's a play on words, this title. A description of the main character, right? But also Mamet's style, the style everyone calls Mametian. Which is easy to make fun of, right? But at least he's being honest about it. What if other directors did the same? These other guys, see, they'd put it all out there, honest to the world.

Brett Ratner: Base
Michael Bay: Epileptic
Mel Gibson: Intense
Peter Jackson: Long
Martin Scorsese: Rote
Michael Mann: Remote
Robert Altman: Old
Steven Spielberg: Employed
Nora Ephron: Palatable
Coen Brothers: Sinking
Spike Lee: Declining, but still shot-through with vitality and inventiveness despite annoying public persona and occasional lapses into self-parody
Peyton Reed: Candy
Steven Soderbergh: Fluctuating
David Fincher: Dark
David O. Russell: Difficult
Terrence Malick: Slow
David Gordon Green: Green
Alexander Payne: Nebraskan
Kevin Smith: Insipid
Wes Anderson: Precious
Paul Thomas Anderson: Florid
Lars von Trier: Rigid
Lynne Ramsay: Oblique
Vincent Gallo: Narcissistic
Rose Troche: Lesbian
Lisa Cholodenko: Experimental
Michel Gondry: Dreamy
Spike Jonze: Hip
Sofia Coppola: Coached
Roman Coppola: Bitter

Our last-ever post on matters concerning the Grey Album, we promise

This, despite the fact that the latest Rolling Stone rehashes the EMI-versus-artistic freedom issue yet again. That's roughly three consecutive issues of America's most revered rock, er, lad, er, rock magazine that have documented DJ Danger Mouse's travails of late (isn't there some expression about "beating a dead mouse" or somesuch cliche?).

Nope, this particular post is for those obsessive souls who took their LPs of the Beatles' White Album and played John Lennon's incoherent utterances backwards, until they were able to discern that Paul was, in fact, dead.

Get out your copy of Danger Mouse's Grey Album or, if you downloaded it, work with the MP3 files directly. Acquire a freeware audio editor. Take the eleventh track, "Interlude," and reverse it. Sit back and pray as you listen to the track which follows, whose lyrics we've helpfully transcribed for you:

"6...6...6...Murder, murder Jesus...6...6...6...

Leave ni**as on death's door.

Murder, murder Jesus...6...6...6."

Of course, we all know that "asterisk" sounds awfully garbled when spoken either forward or in reverse, so you may want to substitute those asterisks mentioned above for the letter G. Just a su**estion.

Water-cooler thoughts on the return of the Sopranos

"I had forgotten some of the story, but it was good to get back into it again." —Employee #1

"Well, I have the DVDs, so I remembered the plots. I don't really watch the DVDs much, though." —Employee #2

"Yeah, I forgot to watch it." —Employee #3

"I think they purposely made it boring to scare off non-fans." —Employee #4

"You know, it was good, it was a first episode...laying the groundwork for a new season. But hey, did you see Curb Your Enthusiasm? Do you watch that? So fucking hilarious!" —Employee #2

Identical Spins

All too often, we witness debates about who's cooler, the Hilton sisters or the Olsen twins: it's a perennial (and perenially boring) topic of debate by pop pundits, which unfortunately usually breaks down to which set of sisters are hotter. (Frankly, we here at low culture feel that the Hiltons are hotter: no, not Paris and the one with the boring name. We mean Daisy and Violet Hilton, from Tod Browning's Freaks: talk about two hot, well-connected chicks!)

What's more interesting, however, is intra-sibling competition, the kind of squabbling and scrapping that those of us with brothers and sisters know very well. (What, you were an only child? No wonder you have so many issues and so few friends.)

Now, imagine if that competition began before you were even born—like, in the womb! Imagine fighting for space, air, and nutrients before you even knew you were competing: that's some intense rivalry, right? It's the sort of thing that might even continue into your 'tween years when your mom and dad set up your vanity Web site so all the world can decide which one of their kids is better. (What, your parents didn't set up a vanity web site for you? They probably also neglected to get you immunized, because, let's face it, they clearly hated your sorry ass.)

Take the Web site devoted to Dylan and Cole Sprouse, the Italian-born but now very all-American young actors who starred in Big Daddy, and play Ross Geller's son Ben on Friends. (Hey, these guys also have indie cred: they're in The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, Asia Argento's adaptation of JT Leroy's short story collection.)

Judging by the "versus-themed" graphics sampled above, which Dylan and Cole's parents have incorporated into DC Sprouse.com, brotherhood is even more competitive when the brothers are budding stars.

With that in mind, we're settling this debate once and for all. Like the Civil War, this is brother versus brother: who will win, Dylan, or Cole?

As a benefit to our readers, we've broken the pageant, er, contest down into several themes, with the first being artistic ability:

DYLAN	COLE

Notice Dylan's confident usage of form to convey meaning and, more importantly, personality, and the manner in which Cole's formless drawings belie his skills as an actor. The Kiss Army, or an indeterminately-shaped force of three monsters lacking depth and perspective? Hands down, the victor is Dylan.

Moving on, then...what about favorite movies?

Oh, God, no contest. John Cameron Mitchell and his character's transgender identity crisis set to an anthemic rock music score, versus Frank Oz and a giant talking plant, and tepid songs about dentists? Dylan, natch.

Next round: language skills. Here they are first discussing their favorite author, R.L. Stine, and then their favorite video games:

OK, not quite as open-and-shut as before, but we'll credit Dylan for his increased usage of multi-syllabic words, when possible (not to mention his buoyantly enthusiastic "multi-exclamation point" usage, too — that's sibling revelry!).

Finally, let's assess the twins' analytical ability. Here they are in response to being asked about their favorite sports:

Well, that about clinches it. Basketball and football? Both viable answers, in that they are in fact sports, pursuant to the original line of questioning. But "silly string" and "cleaning up"?

Dylan with the clean sweep.

Mustang Viggo

Beautiful Beasts: Viggo Mortensen and his costars

Hidalgo opens tomorrow in theaters everywhere. Based on the trailer, the film appears to be about the passionate bond between scruffy Viggo Mortensen and his strikingly beautiful horse.

Haven't we seen this movie already? Wasn't it called A Perfect Murder?

What's the deal with Viggo and ungulates? It's not just the Spence-educated variety, it's the real ones, too.

The director's edition DVD of The Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers restores several scenes that show the deep bond between Aragorn and his horse, Brego. This is no mere directorial indulgence, it's apparently vital to the Rings trilogy.

According to the copy on the back of the Aragorn and Brego collector's toy:

Aragorn found a kinship with Brego, the wild horse of Rohan's late Prince Theodred, who had been cut down by orcs at the Fords of Isen. Brego was traumatized by the loss of his lord, but Aragorn's gentle hand stayed the beast's fear, and in time he came to bear the king in exile as faithfully as he had once borne the Prince of Rohan.

Ladies, if you love Viggo (that means you, Alex K.!), be sure to wash your hair with some Kiehl's Equine Shampoo before galloping off to see Hidalgo. At least one person in the relationship should have clean, shiny hair.

Related: Hidalgo also features C. Thomas Howell. It's been a long while, gentle friend, beloved soul man.

Return of the King

The Real Messiah: Tony Soprano and His disciples, (photo by Annie Leibovitz)

The Sopranos returns to HBO this Sunday. The show's been on hiatus for fifteen months, but returns just in time to save the world.

Maybe you've heard about the little culture war going on in America right now: frightening religious evangelism at the muliplexes, a bigoted election year proposal for a new Constitutional amendment , Clear Channel pulling Howard Stern from radio stations under pressure from the FCC, seemingly endless debate about a pop singer's exposed breast. What we need right now is something to unify us, something we can all get behind. The Sopranos may just be the thing.

What we also need is a strong leader, someone who understands the moral ambiguities of this world but has the clear(ish) vision to (mostly) know the difference between right and wrong and who even occasionally does the right thing. Someone who has a leadership philosophy personally cobbled together from Sun Tzu and "that book Prince Matchabelli," rather than handed to him by Karl Rove and Hop on Pop.

Re-enter Tony Soprano, and not a minute too soon.

Tony may seem like an unlikely hero, but who else do we have? (Superman? Guy's a total fuckin' square.) In Tony, we get a hero these times deserve: He's powerful, but gentle, decisive, but racked by insecurities. Tony's complicated, off-center sense of morality is the perfect antidote to the simplistic manichean world views of our elected officials and the supercilious 'talking heads' who attempt to contextualize them for us on TV.

Tony knows this world is fucked, which is why he feels it's up to each of us to define our own destinies. As he told his shrink in the first episode of the series "It's good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, I know. But lately I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over."

If that's not a "God is dead" for our century, what is? (Ask Anthony, Jr. who said "God is dead" and he'll tell you "Nitsch".) Through his actions and the ways he deals with their consequences, Tony shows us that we all in our own ways upset the moral ecology: if there's a shit storm all around you, you better look in the mirror before you shake your fist at the sky.

With the return of The Sopranos, we'll all finally have something to talk about besides the election, terrorism, the economy, and conflicting interpretations of family values. (Well, those of us willing and able to pay for HBO, at least.) And Slate will bring back its panel of shrinks to analyze the show for us, instead of relying on pundits to read the entrails of the body politic. Soon, Tony and Carmela will return to magazine covers and supplant that other power-hungry dynastic clan. And what a great day that will be.

Besides, this culture war's gone on long enough, hasn't it? Let's bring on the entertainment. It's gotten to the point where no one can even remember why the war started in the first place. As Tony once said, "This whole war could have been averted. Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this."

That's almost a little kinda true, right?

The Sopranos airs Sunday at 9PM EST on HBO.

Exclusive: low culture blogs the Oscars®!

low culture asked Matt Haber's dog to blog the 76th Academy Awards ("The Oscars®," to those in the industry) in real time. Here's her report from the biggest night in show biz:

8:30: I wonder if there's anything left in my bowl. Sometimes I go back into the kitchen and there's still a couple of pieces of food in my bowl for me. Maybe I should check.

8:32: Nothing in the bowl. Do I want water? Okay, a little sip.

8:33: Uch, I'm so itchy.

8:33: Ahhhhhhh... Scratching feels so good.

8:35: I wonder if there's anything left in my bowl.

8:35: Damnit. Do I want water?

9:00: I'm not sleeping, just resting my eyes. I'm not even tired—

9:52: Itchy ear, itchy ear! Okay, that's better. Maybe I should rest my eyes some more...

10:10: This chair is so uncomfortable. Maybe I should just turn around a bit. Damn, I moved the cushion a little. Let me just paw at it to get it right.

10:11: Still not right. Let me push it this way.

10:12: Fuckin' hell. It's still not right. Oh, wait. It's perfect.

10:46: I wonder if there's anything left in my bowl. Eh, forget it.

11:00: Why the hell is that guy still on the couch? What is he watching on TV? We're usually walking by now. I gotta take a leak. Maybe I should get his attention by stretching a bit.

11:01: Do I want some water?

11:01: I shouldn't have had all that water. Oh god, I have to pee so bad now.

11:10: What the fuck? He hasn't moved in three fucking hours.

11:15: What happened to my life? When I was a kid, I used to have fun all the time. There were always tennis balls and squeaky things everywhere. I'd grab onto one of those things and just shake it all around with my head. Then my tail would start waving and I'd chase it for, like, hours. Now look at me. I just sit here all the time, staring at the floor. Nothing's fun at all. Even going outside sucks. I wonder if I could kill myself using that leash thing. If I could just loop it over something, I might be able to hang myself.

11:16: I wonder if there's anything left in my bowl.

11:16: Damnit. And there isn't even any water.

11:20: The floor's nice and cool. That idiot hasn't moved from the couch for hours. I don't know whose life is more depressing, mine or his. At least I'm getting old at a quicker pace. I'll be dead sooner. Unless he's dead already. He's not laughing or anything.

11:25: Squirrels are weird.

11:30: Oh, right. My crotch. I haven't licked it in, like, two hours.

11:40: Man, this feels good. If god hadn't intended for me to lick my own vagina, he wouldn't have given me this soft, flat tongue. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

11;41: This is almost a distraction from how much I hate my life. I still have to pee so bad.

11:50: Okay, he fucking died. The guy's been on that couch since 8:30. Do you realize that's like 24 hours in dog years?

11:51 If he did die, I'm gonna eat his face.

12:01: Finally, he moves. Look at him stretching like that. He's so stupid. Why couldn't that family with the farm have adopted me? I'd be so much happier right now. I fucking hate New York and I hate this guy.

12:02: I wonder if there's anything left in my bowl. Oh—walk time!

12:05: Ahhhhhhhhhh.... Pissing is so great. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I could piss forever. Seriously: forever and ever.

Related: Hucksters Forbidden, Sameness Welcome, by A.O. Scott, The New York Times, March 1, 2004.

Slipped Right Through His Fingers

Mike Tyson, London, July 21, 1989, Courtesy: The Ring Magazine. (From Boxer)

"Bankrupt boxer Mike Tyson is financially down for the count, saying things have gotten so bad that he's struggling just to put food on the table."
BROKE TYSON: I'LL FIGHT FOR FOOD, by Adam Miller, The New York Post, Feb. 27, 2004

Whenever I read about Mike Tyson's travails—rape convictions, ear-biting, arguments with reporters, acrimonious divorces, fist-fights in a Brooklyn hotel, facial tattoos, bankruptcy—I always think of the scene in Barbara Kopple's phenomenal, empathic 1993 documentary Fallen Champ in which Tyson, age 15, has a breakdown between bouts at the 1982 National Junior Olympics in Colorado and sobs to his trainer Teddy Atlas:

"It’s all right now… I’m Mike Tyson… everybody likes me, yes, everybody likes me… I’ve come a long way, I’m a fighter now, I’m Mike Tyson."

Just beneath the tabloid spectacle of Tyson's public decline is a very real tragedy. Unfortunately, Tyson is such an unsympathetic figure that it's hard to feel bad for the guy. Sadly, his story's gonna get a lot worse before it ends.

I disliked Big Fish, too, but I wouldn't call it 'crud' (Or 'Enthralling,' actually)

"Billy Crudup, who starred in Big Fish, has managed to make crud enthralling."

Unabashed Stars Break the Shackles of the Name Game, by Virginia (insert your own lame joke about my last name) Heffernan, The New York Times, Feb. 27, 2004.

Absolutely Our Last Passion-Related Post (Today)

The early reviews are in:

'Jews Killed Jesus' Sign Causing Controversy: Pastor Refuses To Remove Or Change Saying On Outdoor Marquee, ABC News, Denver

[Thanks, Krusty!]

"Huzzah," He Lied

How do you know a publicist is lying? His lips are moving.

Check out this hilariously deluded comment from Mel Gibson's PR man, Alan Nierob (whom we're told is "himself the child of Holocaust survivors"), in Sharon Waxman's New Film May Harm Gibson's Career (The New York Times, Feb. 26, 2004):

"I think Hollywood appreciates good art and will embrace the talent of a filmmaker."

C'mon, Alan! Even you can't believe that.

Lewis Black Can't Lose (Actually, he has. And he's still pissed.)

If you thought Lewis Black was just that overly-caffeinated, disheveled comedian who does Back in Black on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, swing on by The LA Weekly to learn about his early career as a playwright. (In Love, Pissed, by David Shulman).

Like any writer, Black's got a little creation myth about the moment he was first prompted to put pen to paper. Like his comedy, it's half bitter, half funny as hell:

“I’d been living with an actress... And she went over and did a major motion picture in England. We’d been together three years, and now we were in Skid Mode. So she goes over there [England], and I don’t hear from her until she calls me up and tells me she’s met the man she’s going to marry. And I’m like, Are you out of your fucking mind? Because this is a girl without a mainstream romantic bone in her body. Less than a year later, she’s marrying the guy. All my friends went to the wedding. And I didn’t... I really loved her family. We got along really well, and I heard that all the family talked about at the wedding was me, and how they couldn’t believe she was marrying this other guy. So all I did was go, Wow — what if I had shown up? And that was really what the play became about.”

His lose is the audience's gain, I guess.

Black's show, One Slight Hitch, is playing now at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank.

S-I-T-C-O-M Men

Method Man and Redman: The New Face of FOX?

The mainstreaming of Method Man and Redman continues with the announcement that the rappers will star in a new sitcom for FOX. (Fox Parties with Boyz N' the Gated Hood, Hollywood Reporter, Cynthia Littleton and Nellie Andreeva).

Setting aside for the moment the awful, dated headline, here's the story of the show's premise:

The untitled Method Man/Redman project, now in production in New Jersey, is one of the heat-seekers on Fox's comedy development slate this year... The project, described as a kind of edgier take on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme, was the brainchild of Method Man, the Wu-Tang Clan member who figured that his idea for a TV series couldn't be any worse than a lot of the stuff he has seen in primetime in recent years.

I'll withhold my judgment until I see it, mostly because Method Man is so fucking awesome. I still listen to Tical all the time and whenever I hear Meph's growling, blunt-smoking frogman voice on a Wu-Tang album or side project (his verse on Raekwon's "Ice Cream" is a classic), I marvel at just what an amazing MC he is.

Redman's pretty great, too: Dare Iz A Darkside is the rare CD that holds up ten years after its release. And Redman's sense of humor is evident in some of his more playful rhymes.

I've never seen How High, but I know from their videos and their short-lived Right Guard commercials that Method Man and Redman have great comic chemistry. (Maybe not the best taste in material, as a series of deodorant commercials suggests, but hey, they've got kids and college is expensive.)

It's also interesting to see how the mainstream uses—and is used—by edgy rappers. Snoop Dogg set the template for transforming a frightening rap persona into a cuddly pose. (Even your mom says "Fo' Shizzle" nowadays.) Ice Cube is following suit with Barbershop and Barbershop 2: Back in Business. By this time next year, Method Man and Redman may be trading small talk with Regis and Kelly: time will only tell.

It'll be interesting to see how this show is positioned by FOX. Can they make it into another Bernie Mac Show or will they drop the ball like they did with Cedric the Entertainer?

[via TV Tattle]

Kael, Kael, Spin, Spin

Pauline Kael and Shane Black: The Beautiful and the Damned

Shane Black, the poster boy for overpaid Hollywood hacks, is set to write and direct his first film for producer Joel Silver. According to Done Deal, the specifics are as follows:
Title: Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang
Log line: A thief posing as an actor teams up with a tough-guy private eye and a frustrated actress. The three stumble upon a murder.
Writer: Shane Black
Agent: David Greenblatt at the Endeavor Agency
Buyer: Warner Bros. Pictures
Price: n/a
Genre: Action Comedy
Logged: 2/25/04
More: Joel Silver’s Silver Pictures will produce. Shane Black will make his feature directing debut. Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan will star.

Sounds like another classic Black film, fitting somewhere between The Last Boy Scout (a tough-guy private eye and a frustrated ex-quarterback try to solve a murder) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (a tough-broad former secret agent turned amnesiac mom and a frustrated detective try to solve the mystery of her past).

What bothers me is the title, which is boosted Pauline Kael's second book of movie reviews. Kael explained her title this way:

The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this.

One of Hollywood's highest paid, most notoriously mediocre screenwriters lifting a title from the most respected film critic of all time? Not cool. Not even a little ironic.

Also, done, done, done, and done before.

Since she was smarter than I'll ever be, I'll give Pauline the last word, with this sideswipe at Black and Silver's Lethal Weapon, by way of complimenting Jonathan Demme:

"Sometimes movies which you would think would be big box-office successes just don't attract the wide audiences, either because of the way they're promoted or because the audience is just drawn to Terminator and Lethal Weapon and doesn't relate to the nuances of something like Married to the Mob or The Fabulous Baker Boys."

Man on the Cross Street (Passion Survey #1)

We interviewed a completely random selection of movie goers exiting the 12PM screening of The Passion of the Christ at the Jerusalem Multiplex 16 to get their opinions on this controversial film.

	"I found it hard to watch... for obvious reasons. What did I ever do to Mel Gibson?"
	"Um, it didn't end that way. I came back, you know."
	"Me? I don't really remember much of the film. I tried to buy a diet Coke before it started, and they were all charging $4.50, and I'm all, 'Fuck that!' and got this free cup of tap water instead, which I immediately turned into el vino and promptly got wasted off my ass, sitting in the back of the theater...Jerusalem in the hoooouuuuuse!"
	"The third act...was excruciating. It was painful to watch, outright unbearable."
	"I liked the first half hour. The rest reminded me of stuff I'd rather forget."
	"I hate to quibble since he got so much right. But Roman Soldier #6 wasn't such a jerk to me. He actually gave me a stick of gum, which was nice."
	"Pshaw! Like I ever knew a girl as hot as Monica Bellucci!"
	"I didn't get to see the film...they had a 'No Pets' policy in the theater. They wanted me to sacrifice my lamb's movie going experience, and I said, 'No!...C'mon, he's not so baaaaaaaaaaaad.' Ha! Get it? I make jokes sometimes, you know."

Mensch on the Street (Passion Survey #2)

We interviewed a completely random selection of movie goers exiting the 12PM screening of The Passion of the Christ in Brooklyn to get their opinions on this controversial film.

	"I didn't see it. I was here to see Welcome to Mooseport, which, incidentally, is a little anti-Semitic. But I still love Raymond!"
	"If I could say just one thing to Mr. Gibson, it would be 'Can you read my comedy script about a Hasidic Jewish crime fighter?' What? Someone already made that movie? Well, there goes my last six months."
	"I'm shocked. Disgusted. This place charges $4.50 for a small Diet Coke. I brought my four young children and it cost me $85 dollars. Very offensive. Very."
	"You'd think with everyone in Hollywood studying the Kabbalah, they'd be a little more sensitive. Mel should spend more time with Madonna and Paris Hilton: he might learn some wisdom and compassion. Ha! I'm joking. Some of us have senses of humor, you know."
	"Well, it was a lot less offensive to the Jews than the last Woody Allen film. Anything Else? I called it 'From Hunger'."
	"Yes, it was extremely anti-Semitic. But what movie is perfect, right?"
	"Critics need to lay off Mel Gibson. This was just one man's opinion. One man with $25 million to spend on production and another $25 million for promotions to tell it. Like I said, just one man and his opinion."
	"Loved it. Loved, loved, loved it! My name is Self-Hater I. Jewman, by the way."

They Found It At the Movies

Esquire, August 1970

"In his prerelease screenings, Mr. Gibson invited mostly conservative evangelical clergy. They in turn responded by reserving huge blocks of movie tickets for their congregations. When the film opens today, expect theaters around the country to be turned into temporary churches."
— Kenneth L. Woodward, Do You Recognize This Jesus?, The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2004

Co-opting the Friedman

The pissing contest between FOX 411 gossip columnist Roger Friedman and The New York Times' Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman has spilled over into Cynthia Cotts' Press Clips column in this week's Village Voice.

To be honest, Friedman's doing most of the pissing, complaining that Waxman is boosting his exclusives without attribution. He complained to Times Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, who decided that Waxman had done nothing wrong.

Buried at the bottom of Cotts' story is this nugget:

Sometimes Friedman gets it right. But anyone who starts crowing about inaccurate and unethical reporting will eventually have the spotlight turned on himself. Other scribes express varying degrees of affection and pity for Friedman. One calls him "marginal, with delusions of grandeur"; another says he wants "to be respected."
[...]
The worst rap on Friedman is that he shills for Miramax, a charge he denies. He edited an Oscar supplement for Talk magazine in 2000, and Miramax backed the 2003 r&b documentary Only the Strong Survive, which Friedman co-produced. Colleagues say his column often repeats Miramax spin.

Reminds me of this passage from Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures:

"The most notorious example [of Harvey Weinstein manipulating the press] is Roger Friedman, who often uses his Internet gossip column, 411, to tout (and very occasionally knock) Miramax films. Says [former Miramax publicist Dennis] Higgins, 'There's no one in the pocket like Roger. It's almost, "Whaddya want him to write?" We [even] got him to say The Shipping News is great.'" (p. 410)

Perhaps fittingly, Waxman writes today about factual inaccuracies in Capturing the Friedmans.

Doll (Private) Parts

"With Karen's face obscured, it became hard to tell whether she was real or not."

Disclaimer: The link to this story is absolutely not safe for work! (Especially if you work at a toy store.)

Grant Stoddard, Nerve's jolly human guinea pig, makes love to a Real Doll in his "I Did it For Science" column month.

The photos are way disturbing, especially the fact that the doll looks so much like Britney Spears.

Can't they make a doll whose eyes close when it's horizontal, like those dolls kids play with?

Dirty Dancing: Rewrites

A riddle for the ages: How many screenwriters does it take to make a hit?

Apparently eight. Coming this Friday, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, written by:

1. Victoria Arch
2. Ronald Bass (writer of every movie, ever; cf. Tad Friend's "The Two-Billion Dollar Man," in Lost in Mongolia)
3. Jonathan Bernstein (former SPIN writer and author)
4. Mark Blackwell (former SPIN editor)
5. Pamela Gray
6. James Greer (former SPIN editor and author)
7. Christina Wayne (writer, Dominique Dunne - An American Tragedy: The E! True Hollywood Story)
8. Boaz Yakin (once promising writer/director of Fresh, more recently, director of Uptown Girls)

Can't you just see them all in one big room, laptops networked together, ideas flying left and right? Teamwork: it's a beautiful thing.

Of course, all of them combined couldn't come up with a line as quotable as "Nobody puts Baby in a corner!"

Collect 'Em All!

The New York Post's The Passion of The Christ Collector's Edition Covers:

Related: Coming soon, Mad Max: Fury Road, to be produced by Mel Gibson's Icon Productions and released by 20th Century Fox.

Brett Ratner, Character Witness

Brett Ratner talking about Michael Jackson's underage accuser:

"[The boy] would sit in my director's chair. When I told him to get up, he'd tell me to go to hell... He used to tell me, 'Brett, I don't like the last shot' while he was watching us make the movie. He's telling me how to make my movie! He's more street smart than I was at that age. If someone tried to fondle him, he'd punch them in the face. He's an adult. I think the jury will see that." (From Roger Friedman's FOX 411 column, Feb. 24, 2004)

So the kid thought Ratner couldn't make a movie? He's obviously a child prodigy. From this point forth, I believe everything he has to say.

Drive, He Spanked

Driver nabbed while watching porn movie

ALBANY, N.Y., Feb 20 (Reuters) — Andre Gainey found out the hard way that in the state of New York it's illegal to drive while watching porn.

Police said the 35-year old man from Clifton Park, New York, was watching a adult movie called "Chocolate Foam" on Tuesday night while driving his Mercedes Benz in the town of Schenectady when he was spotted by an officer at a stop light...

[Courtesy of the brilliant Javier, who very rightly wondered why we needed to know the video's title.]

"Why Are You So Awesome?"

Chris Farley and Martin Scorsese

Remember the old SNL skit where Chris Farley (R.I.P.) had his own talk show? If Chris had had a better vocabulary, it might've been a lot like this: The Business: Kevin Smith interviews Tom Cruise. (Arena, Feb. 2004)

[via GreenCine Daily]

Another slow news week

"Since we know you're wondering, let the record show that every weirdly combed follicle you see is his. Trump swoops up his bangs to prove it. "I don't say my hair is my greatest strength in the world, but it's not terrible," he says, though perhaps it would look better if someone other than his girlfriend cut it," The World According to Trump, by Keith Naughton and Marc Peyser, Newsweek, Feb. 23, 2004

Related: "The numbers are stark and staggering. In the past three years, 232,400 jobs have been lost in the city. Every employment category except health care and teaching and educational services has taken a brutal hit... And the jobs could be gone forever," Where Have All The Jobs Gone?, by William Sherman, New York Daily News, Feb. 23, 2004.

We've Met Before, Right? You looked different then.

"'The Zippies Are Here,' declared the Indian weekly magazine Outlook. Zippies are this huge cohort of Indian youth who are the first to come of age since India shifted away from socialism and dived headfirst into global trade, the information revolution and turning itself into the world's service center." — Thomas L. Friedman, Meet the Zippies, The New York Times, Feb. 22, 2004.

"What we have here is a major player in the premillennial cultural meme pool, and a loose-knit movement of folks who aim to change the world—while having the best time of their lives. Cyber-crusties, techno-hippies, post-ravers—the British media have tried pinning various compound names to its members... But one name stands out, maybe because it was designed to. And for the moment it's sticking: zippies. It stands for Zen-inspired professional pagans..." — Zippies!, by Jules Marshall, Wired, May 1994.

Related: Zippy the Pinhead

The big difference between foreign and American films

Good Bye, Lenin! (2003)... The Battle of Shaker Heights (2003)

Jean Rouch, 1918-2004

Jean Rouch, an Ethnologist and Filmmaker, Dies at 86, by Alan Riding, The New York Times, Feb. 20, 2004:

"Jean Rouch, a French explorer, ethnologist and film director who played a significant role in forging the cinéma-vérité style, died on Wednesday night in a car crash in the west central African nation of Niger, the French Embassy there said. He was 86.

"Mr. Rouch (pronounced roosh) was attending a film festival in Niger, where he first worked as a civil engineer more than 60 years ago. Reuters reported from Niamey, the Niger capital, that Mr. Rouch's wife, Jocylene Lamothe, the Niger filmmaker Moustapha Alassane and a Niger actor, Damouré Zika, were also injured in the accident."

I still remember how uncomfortable I felt watching Les Maîtres fous (The Mad Masters, 1955) in college. The images of Hauka priests undergoing spirit possession were terrifying but also sort of funny and strange. The film provoked a heated discussion: Was it racist? Was it anti-Colonialist?

The participants in the ritual were imitating—parodying, actually—the personalities of their colonial occupiers. According to Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell's Film History: An Introduction, "By day the cultists are dockers and cattle herders, but at the ritual, one becomes an army captain, another the governor, a third an elegant French lady. Rouch's doctoral thesis argued that in parodying their rulers, the Hauka release their feelings of imperialist oppression. 'The violent play,' the film's commentary warns, is only the reflection of our civilization.'"

This is very different from most depictions of Africa during that era in documentaries like Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi's Africa Addio (Goodbye, Africa, 1966), which I wrote about last year. Jacopetti and Prosperi used shock and terror to frame Africans: their sympathies are clearly not with their subjects or Africa.

Rouch was different. As Daniel Pinchbeck (Out of Africa, Art Forum International, Oct. 2000) writes:

"Les Maîtres fous has been called the greatest anticolonialist movie ever made, yet when Rouch first showed a silent version of it in Paris, Griaule, among others, asked that he destroy it. They feared the film would confirm every stereotype held by Westerners about 'savages.' In response to their criticisms, Rouch recorded a voice-over narration that adds humor and humanity to the spectacle. To this day, fearing misunderstandings, he does not allow the film to be shown to the general public unless he is in attendance. Perhaps because of such fears, his works are largely unavailable on videotape."

(A slightly more contemporary American analog would be Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning (1990) in which gay African American and Latino men perform in voguing competitions by vamping down the runway parodying the businessmen and rich people the world will never let them be.)

Rouch is one of those influential filmmakers who's slipped through the cracks. His films—particularly Moi un noir (Me, a Black Man, 1959)—influenced the French New Wave and the cinéma vérité movements. Unfortunately, his work is hard to come by outside of academic conferences, but perhaps they will find their way to DVD in the future.

Also worth seeing is Manthia Diawara's Rouch in Reverse, which takes on the filmmaker's work from an African's standpoint.

They're so cute when they're little

I know what you're thinking: How will you live without Sex and the City?

Better, probably. And with more laughs, too. But for those of you who can't get enough of SaTC and want more than the easy to swallow (har har) half-hour doses you get on cable, you can start waiting on line now for the big screen version. (As if each episode didn't already feel two hours long.)

In the meantime, print out these photos and place them in your wallet if you love the show so much.

Sarah Jessica Parker on Square Pegs

Cynthia Nixon in Little Darlings

Kim Cattrall in Porky's

Not Pictured: Kristin Davis, who was born fully-grown.

Pink: Road Warrior

Pink kicks off her European tour... Wez kicks ass in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

Lords of the Bling

I'm just as surprised as you are that one of the most incisive critiques of hip hop capitalism would come from MAD Magazine, but it's a crazy world, right?

On newsstands this month, The Lords of the Bling movie poster. I was sad that there wasn't room for Farnsworth Bentley as Samwise Gamgee ("Mr. Diddy, look out for that giant spider!"), but it's pretty perfect as it is.

Related: Black Book has Jay-Z on the cover of it's special "Bourgeois" issue, also out this month. (Coincidentally, Hova's upcoming MTV books/Pocket Books memoir is also titled Black Book.)

Slow News Week