in an interview with bild zeitung robert pattinson, in munich promoting the second twilight film, new moon, is asked by the editor-in-chief (who one would think had better things to do than to interview an actor. but whatever) if he was in love with kristin stewart. and if he was with kstew as in ‘together – together.’
Sind Sie verliebt? (are you in love)
Er lacht durch den Rauch: „Ich bin Single!“ (he laughs through the smoke: i am single)
yesterday evening the german national football team, including oliver bierhoff and michael ballack, along with robert enke’s widow, attended a memorial for robert enke, the goal keeper of the german national team who committed suicide on november 10. enke, who suffered from depression had driven his car onto train tracks. earlier in the day he had left a suicide note for his wife. you can watch video of the memorial here which includes images of the 35,000 people who attended a memorial march in hannover.
robert enke, goal keeper for germany’s football team (that’s soccer to north americans) committed suicide on november 10. oliver bierhoff, manager of the the team, shed more than a few tears during the press conference. more information with photos and video can be found on the berliner zeitung website.
the bbc reports that some hackers have figured out a way to take over some iPhones and have created a risk astley worm which takes over your phone and creates a rick astley wallpaper on your phone. you’ve been rick roll’d:
there are those in the united states who are excited about the possibility of universal healthcare. but have any of these people examined the fine print, a 1900 page document? the government doesn’t bring healthcare to the masses, it brings the masses to healthcare. healthcare is half way to being mandatory in the united states.
the bill that’s just passed the house of representatives, headed by nancy (i’m a rich radical from northern california) will require REQUIRE all americans (and residents) to have health insurance. that means, you have to pay for it. the same way you’re required to have auto insurance if you have a car. the difference is, if you can’t afford car insurance, then you just don’t get a car. but you can’t just decide to not get health insurance. because come april 2013 (conveniently just 5 months after the presidential elections), you will be slapped with a fine of 2.5% of income. that will be attached to your IRS bill. what say you now?
these fines raise around $33 billion (yes, billion) windfall for the government –paid by you, the tax payer.
is the twilight franchise swiftly aging kristen stewart and robert pattinson? here’ kristen’s got dark circles under her eyes and while she’s only slightly speaking as if she’s jonesing for some seeed (here’s kristin stewart smoking a bong), she definitely looks about 30 or 31. or barely younger than gwyneth paltrow.
u2 has erected a wall around the brandenburg gate for their so-called, free concert in berlin. well, it is free. but either u2 or mtv or a combination of the 2 decided that they would only make tickets available online and only issue 10K tickets. some people mistakenly believed they could hang out on unter den linden and catch a glimpse of the show. but the brandenburg gate, one of the most popular landmarks in the city has been walled off for tonight’s concert.
the rumor mill starts. which one. actor bill burke has betrayed that he was actually (perhaps) a goth in his youth. as he says one of the members of his favorite bands in the 80s makes a cameo appearance in twilight 3 (eclipse) directed by david slade. is it peter murphy? you can watch the video billy burke goth child
of the trio that is accused of killing the british university student meredith kercher, rudy guede, who had a fast-track trial last year in italy, has been convicted. in court a taped telephone call was produced in which guede is heard saying that amanda knox had nothing to do with the murder. but during the same conversation, he also said he was not guilty. if you’ve got babel fish, you can try to translate this article on bild zeitung.
according to the times –not that times, the real times. you know, the one in london, called the times. anyway this newspaper reports that versace is letting go a whole lotta folks.
it never occured to a blog about whatever that malcolm gladwell was half black or just not some geekie white guy with a squeaky voice who would be better off giving workshops at a star trek convention as opposed to being a well-paid editor with the new yorker. but since barack obama became president, it seems that he has made tentative steps to prove that he’s only just sort of another geekie white guy writing for the new yorker.
is the editor-in-chief of wired smoking crack? this is an old article. but let’s quote from the german magazine der spiegel ‘the vast majority of people online write for free. We’ve tried paying some of our bloggers and they thought it was insulting. They’re not doing it for the money, they’re doing it for attention and reputation, or just for fun.’
did they try to pay them. or like too many publications, the check took forever to arrive?
karl lagerfeld, in today’s guardian newspaper declares that the only women who hate thin models are moms who hang out in front of their television set pigging out on crisps. this in response to germany’s brigitte magazine’s declaration that in the january issue, they’re planning on not using professional models but women with ‘normal bodies.’
now it is not clear that this is only for the january issue or this will go on forever. could this have something to do with the financial crisis and germany’s financial problems that this teutonic read for all women great and tiny now wants to focus more on bavarian beauties rather than the likes of heid klum–pre-pregnacies. the price per day is probably infinitely more reasonable.
today, we find out that he’s put his LA house on the market.last week there was the report on eonline that james franco had signed up for a role on general hospital. that’s right. that guy from the spiderman movies who co-eds are all a twitter about franco who according to a quick search on google may be enrolled in a queer cinema course at nyu. or is that columbia? does this mean he’s gay? he was in that sean penn movie, right? he’s as gay as hugh jackman, one might say. but we digress. usually actors are willing to beg, steal, or borrow to get out of daytime TV. well, if franco’s at brown, for instance, maybe he could hang out and become emma watson’s new best friendthat
roman polanski is a client of the u.s. based talent agency icm. in this piece in the new york times, his agent is quoted as saying:
‘“He has traveled openly and transparently,” said Jeff Berg, the chairman of International Creative Management and Mr. Polanski’s agent. ‘
anyone in the entertainment industry knows how hard it is to get an agent in the u.s.. but apparently, it’s no problem for some like polanski who confessed to commiting a crime and then run away from justice.
their song p**sy enters the charts in germany at number 1. neither mtv nor viva will play the clip. more information here.
seems like glamour has put nude images of bridget jones and betty sanchez (aka ugly betty) in it’s new issue.
IMO, it is perfectly okay to use thin models in photoshoots. the designers are actually selling a dream. we all know MODE the zine for plus-sized people(not the ugly betty MODE), did not work out the first time around plz don’t morph glamour into something else.
one reality is, that catawalks shows are for showing off clothes. not showcasing the female body. and it’s probably cheaper to create something for naomi campbell as opposed to betty sanchez or someone like nikki reed.
another reality is, americans are the fattest people (on average) on the planet. the british and the germans continuously duke it out for the number 1 spot. and the french and the italians essentially (at the moment) get off scott free. america’s new surgeon general –the one whose supposed to tell kids to eat a nutrious breakfast everyday, work on fighting growing childhood obesity in the u.s. and keep americans from toking on cigarettes, isn’t exactly a role model for healthy living.
this addition to the original ’save roman polanski’ petiton list appears on breitbart.com. perhaps the below listed people might take time to pause and read the original court case on the smoking gun.
Isabelle Adjani
Antoine Aronin
Paul Auster
Morgane Beauverger
Candice Belaisch-Goldchmit
Yamina Benguigui
Pascal Bruckner
Jessika Cohen
Philippe Corbé
Jean-Paul Dayan
Katarina De Meulder
Arielle Dombasle
Nathalie Faucheux
Corinne Figuet
Pierre Forciniti
Louis Garrel
Albert Gauvin
Johanna Gozlan
Davide Homitsu Riboli
Taylor Hackford
Isabelle Huppert
Neil Jordan
Thierry Kamami
Milan Kundera
Gaelle Lancien
Claude Lanzmann
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Sam Mendes
Camille Meyer
Patrick Mimouni
Yann Moix
Mike Nichols
Sandra Nicolier
Marie Nieves Perez Neël
Salman Rushdie
Carine Sarna
Ysabelle Saura Del Pan
William Shawcross
Olivier Soares Barbosa
Steven Soderbergh
Nil Symchowicz
Danièle Thompson
Eugenia Varela Navarro
Diane von Furstenberg
Scott Foundas
Margaret Walker
Elsa Zylberstein
according to this article budget airlines and organized pub crawls are one of the culprits that have changed the italian culture of drinking only with food to one of binge drinking, especially for young people. ‘For Italians, becoming drunk in public was once a social taboo – a cause for shame, particularly for women. But now, neighbourhood enoteca bars, where a glass of wine is often accompanied by a plate of cured meat and bits of cheese, are being crowded out by British-style pubs with names like The Drunken Ship and Sloppy Sam’s.’
joseph fiennes, the last time we saw him was at a gq party in los angeles during which he displayed something we would call, beyond male pattern baldness. but we gave him the big thumbs up for not doing a sweep over and just going with the flow.
but guess the glat look doesn’t work well on the small screen. joseph fiennes, who used nepotism (we would imagine) to claw his way into hollywood and ’shakespeare in love’ almost 10 years ago has now been reduced to acting on television. he stars in the sci-fi television series flash forward. thank goodness it’s not called flash gordon.
is this the new list? this list is unverified. the list below consists of people in hollywood who want roman (i admitted to raping a 13 year old child and skipped out on the u.s. authorities to avoid sentencing and have been living in the lap of luxury for 30 years on the lam in france) polanski freed from his squat swiss prison cell. someone was kind enough to post it in the comment section of nikki finke’s deadline hollywood daily blog. some noteworthy signers have been highlighted:
Erika Abrams, Fatih Akin, Yves Alberty, Stephane Allagnon, Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Gianni Amelio, Wes Anderson, Michel Andrieu, Roger Andrieux, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Frédéric Aranzueque-Arrieta, Alexandre Arcady, Fanny Ardant, Asia Argento, Marie-Hélène Arnau, Darren Aronofsky, Olivier Assayas, Alexander Astruc, Gabriel Auer, Zdzicho Augustyniak, Alexandre Babel, Fausto Nicolás Balbi, Eleonor Baldwin, Jean-François Balmer, Alberto Barbera Museo nazionale de Torino, Luc Barnier, Christophe Barratier, Carmen Bartl, Pascal Batigne, Anne Baudry, Juan Antonio Bayona, Xavier Beauvois, Liria Begeja, Gilles Behat, Jean-Jacques Beineix, Marco Bellochio, Yannick Bellon, Monica Bellucci, Véra Belmont, Jean-Marc Benguigui, Djamel Bennecib, Luc Béraud, Jacob Berger, Alain Berliner, Gael Garcia Bernal, Pascal Berney, Bernardo Bertolucci, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Marlène Bisson, Arnstein Bjørkly, Lucien Blacher, Catherine Boissière, Olivier Bonnet, Thierry Boscheron, Freddy Bossy, Patrick Bouchitey, Cédric Bouchoucha, Paul Boujenah, Frédéric Bourboulon, Katia Boutin (Membre de l’équipe du dernier film de Roman Polanski “The Ghost”), Jacques Bral, Sophie Bramly, Paulo Branco, Patrick Braoudé, Guila Braoudé, Isabelle Broué, Merima Bruncevic, Anne Burki, André Buytaers, Anthony Byrne, Marco Cacioppo, Gerald Calderon, Monica Cannizzaro, Christian Carion, Henning Carlsen, Jean-Michel Carré, Lionel Cassan (Membre de l’équipe du dernier film de Roman Polanski “The Ghost”), Mathieu Celary, Teco Celio, Muriel Cerf, Chagi, Daniel Champagnon, Christophe Champclaux, Fabienne Chauveau, Claire Chazal, Patrice Chéreau, Brigitte Chesneau, Mishka Cheyko, Catherine Chiono, Catherine Chouchan, Elie Chouraqui, Souleymane Cissé, Jean-Pierre Clech, Henri Codenie, Ethan Coen, Robert Cohen, Jean-Paul Commin, Anne Consigny, Alain Cophignon, Alain Corneau, Jérôme Cornuau, Guy Courtecuisse (Membre de l’équipe du dernier film de Roman Polanski “The Ghost”), Miguel Courtois, Guillaume Cousin, Morgan Crestel, Dominique Crevecoeur, Penelope Cruz, Alfonso Cuaron, Estelle Cywje, Frédéric Damien, Sophie Danon, Olivier Dard, Luc et Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Hervé de Luze (Membre de l’équipe du dernier film de Roman Polanski “The Ghost”), Valérie de Saint-Do, Guillermo del Toro, Benoît Delmas, Jonathan Demme, Ruud den Dryver, Dante Desarthe, Romain Desbiens, Thomas Desjonquères (Membre de l’équipe du dernier film de Roman Polanski “The Ghost”), Alexandre Desplat, Chris Devi, Rosalinde et Michel Deville, Guillaume D’Ham (Membre de l’équipe du dernier film de Roman Polanski “The Ghost”), Christelle Didier (Membre de l’équipe du dernier film de Roman Polanski “The Ghost”), Kathrin DiPaola, Claire Dixsaut, Ariel Dorfman, Jean Douchet, Fabrice du Welz, Marina Duarte Nunes Ferreira, Georges Dybman, Daniel Edinger, Elrem, Sam Enoch, Ernest, Jacques Fansten, Joël Farges, Gianluca Farinelli (Cinémathèque de de Bologne), Etienne Faure, Michel Ferry, Jean Teddy Filippe (Membre de l’équipe du dernier film de Roman Polanski “The Ghost”), Aurélie Fiorentino, Alan Fischer, Martine Fitoussi, Sebastian Fleischhacker, Joy Fleury, Scott Foundas, Werner Fraai, Stephen Frears, Thierry Frémaux, Marc Freycon, Sam Gabarski, René Gainville, Matteo Garone, Yves Gasser, Tony Gatlif, Catherine Gaudin-Montalto, Jean-Marc Gauthier, Costa Gavras, Nathalie Geiser, Lizi Gelber, Isabelle Gély, Jean-Marc Ghanassia, Alain Gil, Véronique Gillet, Terry Gilliam, Christian Gion, François Girault, Stéphane Gizard, Carlos Miguel Bernardo González, Christophe Goumand, Eric Gravereau, Philippe Gruss, Marc Guidoni, Mikael Håfström, Ronald Harwood, Dimitri Haulet, Buck Henry (thought he was dead), David Heyman, Laurent Heynemann, Dominique Hollier, Isabelle Hontebeyrie, Frédéric Horiszny, Robert Hossein, Jean-Loup Hubert, Wendy Hudson Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (explains the children’s films), Gilles Jacob, Eric et Veronique et Nicolas Jacquelin, Just Jaeckin, Thomas Jahn, Olivia Janik, Jean-Baptiste Jay, Anne Jeandet, Alain Jessua, Sébastien Jimenez, Arthur Joffé, Pierre Jolivet, Kent Jones (World Cinema Foundation), Alexandra Julen, Paola Jullian, Roger Kahane, Pierre Kalfon, Reena Kanji, Nelly Kaplan, Wong Kar Waï, Darius Khondji, Ladislas Kijno, Richard Klebinder, Jonathan Klein, Harmony Korinne, Jan Kounen, Sylvia Kristel, Diane Kurys, Emir Kusturica, Jean Labadie, Eliane Lacroux, Michel Laigle, Stéphane Lam, John Landis, Claude Lanzmann, David Lanzmann, André Larquié, Pauline Larrieu, Jacques et Françoise Lassalle, Carole Laure, Christine Laurent-Blixen, Emilien Lazaron (Membre de l’équipe du dernier film de Roman Polanski “The Ghost”), Eric Le Roy, Fábio Leal, Vinciane Lecocq, Patrice Leconte, Linda Lefebvre, Claude Lelouch, Alain Lenglet, Gérard Lenne, Larry Levine, Lorraine Lévy, Pierre et Renée Lhomme, Marceline Loridan-Ivens, catalina Lozano, Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski, Laurence Lustyk, David Lynch, Bania Madjbar, Laurent Malet, Tim Malieckal, Guy Malugani, Michael Mann, Yvon Marciano, François Margolin, Jean-Pierre Marois, Tonie Marshall, Alain Martin, Sandrine Martin, Didier Martiny, Mario Martone, Christine Mathis, Esmeralda Mattei, Nicolas Mauvernay, Yannick Mazet, Christopher, Spencer et Claire Mc Andrew, Guillermo Menaldi, Frédéric Mermoud, Allison Michel, Radu Mihaileanu, Jean-Louis Milesi, Claude Miller, Lionel Miniato, Nelly Moaligou, Jean-Marc Modeste, Mario Monicelli, Jeanne Moreau, Gael Morel, Omayra Muñiz Fernández, Stephanie Murat, Christian Mvogo Mbarga, Anna N.Levine, Charles Nemes, Juliette Nicolas-Donnard, Sandra Nicolier, Rachel Noël, Rui Nogueira, Olivier Nolin, Michel Ocelot, David Ogando, Mariana Oliveira Santos, Szentgyörgyi Ottó, Martine Pagès, Eric Pape, Abner Pastoll, Alexander Payne, Richard Pena (Directeur Festival de NY), Olivier Père, Suzana Peric (Membre de l’équipe du dernier film de Roman Polanski “The Ghost”), Jacques Perrin, Thomas Pibarot, Arnaud Pierrichon, Stéphane Pietri, Anne Pigeon Bormans, Claude Pinoteau, Michele Placido, Sabrina Poidevin, Agnès Catherine Poirier, Stéphane Pozderec, Harry Prenger, Gilbert Primet, Marie-Hélène Raby, Philippe Radault, Tristan Rain, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Brett Ratner, Raphael Rebibo, Jo Reymen, Laurence Reymond, Yasmina Reza, Christiane Rhein, Jacques Richard, Dominique Robert, Jean-Jacques Rochut, Yannick Rolandeau, Paul Rondags, Avital Ronell, Graciela Rosato, Kontochristopoulou Roula, Laurence Roulet, Joshua Rout, Florence Rphael, Isabelle Ruh, Martin Ruhe, Sonia Rykiel, Anita S. Chang, Esteban S. Goffin, Marc Saffar, Gabriela Salazar Scherman, Walter Salles, Jean-Paul Salomé, Jean-Frédéric Samie, Marc Sandberg, Léo Scalpel, Jerry Schatzberg, Georg Schmithüsen, Julian Schnabel, Barbet Schroeder, J. Neil Schulman, Pierre Schumacher, Ettore Scola, Luis Gustavo Sconza Zaratin Soares, Martin Scorsese, Andrea Sedlackova, Frank Segier, Guy Seligmann, Lorenzo Semple Jr, Julien Seri, Boris Shlafer, Antoine Silber, Pierre Silvant, Charlotte Silvera, Noel Simsolo, Christophe Sirodeau, Abderrahmane Sissako, Beatrice Sisul Petter Skavlan, Paolo Sorrentino, Roch Stephanik, Karen Stetler, Guillaume Stirn, Jean-Marc Surcin, Tilda Swinton, Jean-Charles Tacchella, Radovan Tadic, Danis Tanovic, Bertrand Tavernier, André Techiné, Cécile Telerman, Harold Alvarado Tenorio, Alain Terzian, Valentine Theret, Virginie Thévenet, Pascal Thomas, Jeremy Thomas, Marc Thomas Charley, Giuseppe Tornatore, Serge Toubiana, Nadine Trintignant, Julie Turcas, Mitja Tušek, Tom Tykwer, Alexandre Tylski, Stephen Ujlaki, Jaques Vallotton, Phil van der Linden, Betrand Van Effenterre, Leopold Van Genechten, Christophe van Rompaey, Dorna van Rouveroy, Vangelis, Christian Verdu, Jean-Pierre Vergne, Sarah Vermande, Marc Villemain, Jean-François Villemer, Daria Vinault, Thomas Vossart, Gilles Walusinski, Eric Watton, Wim Wenders, Anaïse Wittmann, A Wolanin, Arnaud Xainte, Serge Youbiana, Paule Zajdermann, Christian Zeender.
a bbc reporter tried to ask guido westerwelle, head of germany’s pro-business FDP party and the man poised to become the first gay vice chancellor and foreign minster of germany, if he could ask him a question in english. westerwelle replied, ‘if you would be so kind, because this is a press conference in germany…. (bbc reporter speaks). please understand when we are in the uk, it is customary there that you, naturally, speak english, when we are in germany, here it is customary that we speak german.’ westerwelle does speak some english. aside from germany’s ex-foreign minister joschka fischer, who famously gave his anti-iraq speech at the UN in near flawless english, most german politicans shy away from speaking english on camera.
this is a cute video of kristen (bella swan) twilight. as she’s able to almost tie together entire sentences, we’ve concluded that these are from her pre-bong days. here’s kristen stewart smoking a bong.
this is unverified. but according to a commentor on the deadline hollywood daily blog, the list of petition signers (hollywood supporters of polanski) just keeps growing. this is a cut and past job. perhaps a few of these people forgot to read the court case. the smoking gun has reposted the original documents and the victim’s testimony.
so forgive us for duplicating names from the previous post:
Woody Allen, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodóvar, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Julian Schnabel, the Dardenne brothers, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Wong Kar-Wai, Walter Salles, Jonathan Demme, Tilda Swinton, Monica Bellucci, Asia Argento and Harvey Weinstein
americans love to slam the french, but in this case he’s in agreement with the country the french love to hate. the german newspaper, bild reports that luc besson stated on the french television station , RTL, that he knows and likes roman polanski, but that justice should be the same for everyone. and mentions that he has a 13 year old girl.
the newspaper article points out that a free polanski petition has been signed by: woody allen (73), wim wenders (64), martin scorsese (66) und tom tykwer (44). all of these directors may end up on a short-list for a movie boycott.
roman polanski admitted to statutory rape. he confesed to druging and having sex with a 13 year old. could anything be clearer?
a man who has spent 30 years on the run –hiding in public in france, has accumulated mounds and mounds of cash, continued to direct films which were released in the u.s., one of which won an oscar. the question is not whether or not ‘rosemary’s baby’ is a classic, the question is why he was allowed to continue working in hollywood while still running from american authorities.
if the question is, ‘why now?’ perhaps the answer is, ‘why not?’
this video brings back memories of the episode of ‘lone gunmen’ when melvin frohike did the tango in miami. except tom almost drops his dancing partner. which is too bad. click here to see delay’s moves.
andrew breitbart from breitbart.com (and formerly of the drudge report) recently said that conservatives should never have abandoned popular culture to the liberals. –wonder if he thinks this is the way to reclaim it by putting tom delay on ‘dancing with the stars.’ hopefully he won’t get voted off. despite his slip-up, which was partially due to his having injured his foot a few weeks ago while dancing (apparently), he still managed to tie for last place.
in prevention magazine, michelle obama, the first lady of the united states is quoted as saying ‘I love French fries, I like a good burger, and I like pie.’.
perhaps harvey weinstein, founder of miramax and co-owner of the weinstein company should’ve read this salon editorial prior to writing this screed. in the independent. in salon, and a previous article in the independent, they point out that 1.) roman polanski pled guity to drugging and raping a 13 year old girl.
is that headline unfriendly? it’s sort of an unfortunate but true statement. well, now we know why he’s been hiding them. his poor children, not only do they have all the unfortunate physical characeristics of their parents –who individually are quite an attractive man and woman. but apparently this dna probably should’ve stayed separate.
barack and michelle obama with spain's prime minister jose luis rodriguez zapatero and family
the pro-filesharing, anti-copyright pirate party has won 2% of the vote in the german national elections. according to der spiegel 13% of first time male voters voted for the pirate party.
in the federal election in germany, the center left-party, the spd, lost 14 percentage points in the country’s capital, berlin. what does this mena for klaus wowereit, mayor of berlin, who had hoped to take over the party? last night, during his speech, frank walter-steinmeier asserted that he wanted to be the head of spd. according to germany’s bild zeitung, this will be determined during the december elections. the huge loss for the spd nationally is a legacy of the schroeder-fischer years when the spd and the green parties pushed through highly unpopular reforms. such as raising the retirement age from 65 to 67 and reforming the social welfare system. in berlin (which incidentally, is both a city and a state), the SPD is tied for second with the anti-capitalist party, die linke (the left party) and is 2 percentage points behind the CDU.
it would be a grave mistake for the spd to make wowereit, the partying mayor, head of their party. if you look at the numbers, it doesn’t really make any sense. considering the state of the capital, which has the highest unemployment of any city in germany and the biggest debt and that the party is now basically number 3 in the city wowereit heads. but perhaps his pending grab for party leadership is part of his attempt to become germany’s first gay head of state.
should this be a headline? nobody else seems to be writing it. guido westerwelle, PhD, the head of the FDP party in germany will form a government with angela merkel’s CDU (which always partners with its sister party the bavaria based CSU party). the government will be a majority minority government, with the parties having won only 48% of the vote.
the FDP is essentially a pro-business, center-right, non-ideological party. which might be why many gay publications or the mainstream international media have not taken notice of him. he’s a pretty low-key guy whose primary focus is cutting taxes and bureaucracy and through that. making germany more business friendly. if all goes as usual, westerwelle will be vice chancellor and possibly also foreign minister of germany.
but what does this election mean? the center-right will form a government, the center-left party, the SPD is out and the election also saw the left party (die linke) led by gregor gysi and oskar lafontaine (aka, red oskar) put in their best showing since their formation in 2005, by soring past the 10% mark. the SPD had its worst showing since world war 2, having lost 11% of their voters since the 2005 election.
edit: we have found one paper, the financial times, which provides more detailed information (in english) about westerwelle.
hippie music has always made us sick but now we can no longer listen to ‘california dreamin’ without puking. mackenzie phillips has singlehandedly shut off her stepmom’s cash cow (read royalties). and now it’s mick jagger’s turn. think goodness he waited until she was 18. but the best quote about her one night stand with mick jagger is: ‘I’d known Mick since I was a kid, and maybe most people think their parents’ friends are old and gross…’ we’ll leave out the rest. yes, most kids do think their parents’ friends _are_icky. and most of their friends are you know, old old old. this gets filed under fritzel, incest, icky dippy hippy freaky mamas and the papas, and old-old-old.
today is seemingly harper’s bazaar day. how did that happen? msn in germany reports that according to in touch magazine (did you get that?) that robert pattinson and kristen stewart will dish on their relationship in the december issue of harper’s bazaar. translation. the zine hits the newsstands in november. so what will they say?
well, thats what it looks like to us in this fashion shoot of the british diva. can we say casting shows have contributed to the demise of the music industry. if only ‘you’ve got talent,’ ‘deutschland sucht dem superstar’ and ‘american idol’ would all implode, the music world would be so much better off. what say you guildenstern
talent is sort of a bizarre syn for actor. i mean, not all actors have talent –look at brad pitt. or matt damon. but i guess one would rather be referred to as a talent agent as opposed to an actor agent, right?
but as this year is showing, by the endless stream of flops by so-called a-list ‘movie stars’ such as matt damon, julia roberts, denzel washington, and megan fox, is that, well basically, perception is not _everything_. especially in the case of megan fox and her new flop called something ‘body.’
so what’s happening this year. the new york times recently touched on this phenomenon of endless flops by a-list stars. but sort of came up dry. deadline hollywood covers this this weekend with questions about steven soderbergh and his matt damon vehicle which might just eek out $11M this weekend.
is the real reason that julia roberts can no longer open a film because she took too much time off? or is it all that plastic surgery she had at an unnecessarily young age? she does not look good. but we digress.
the real reason is what pat kingsley pointed out as she exited her own p.r. agency, is that the p.r. landscape has changed. information moves at lightening speed. overexposure sets in quickly. but underexposure is the kiss of death. in the age of the internet, the publicity guru needs to feed a steady stream of information. not on a daily basis. but days seem like weeks and weeks are more like months and months are more like years. and vaccums need to be filled.
that’s entertainment public relations which is primarily geared towards publicity. while what about other areas such as books? what if we replace the word ‘talen’ with the word ‘book’ or ‘product?’
for books, there’s generally no such thing as overexposure. although it would be a good idea for series authors like martin amis or will self to turn down any offer to appear on the oprah winfrey show (popular in the uk as well as the us) as jonathan franzen did in the early naughties. one wouldn’t always want to deal with the lowest common denominator.
it used to be that most mainstream books in the u.s. lived and died by whether or not they get reviewed in the new york times. now this is no longer true. the new york times certain has some bearing on success in the u.s.. but no one could attribute the success of j.k. rowling or stephenie meyer to the new york times. it’s the harry potter series which caused the newspaper to create a whole separate section for children’s books since the publishers were complaining that they could no longer get their wares on the list.
isn’t it ironic that the money losing book review section of the nytimes.com actually creates revenue for booksellers and book publishers? funny how the media industry works.
the internet is the natural friend of book publishers, although many are still quite wary of google. but as it is hard on the eyes to read 795 pages of text online, this has saved book publishers from biting the big one. and though seniors love kindle (not really), it’s merely a placeholder for something more substantial.
plastic logic has a collapsible screen coming out next year which may either start a revolution or end up in the dumpster as previous ebooks have. as people around the world are wrapping up their summer holidays, we ask ourselves, would we have liked to have spent time on the bach reading a computer screen? would it have melted in the heat or merely exploded. i have failed to find one person rocking out to his ipod (or iphone) on the beaches on any side of the mediterranean i’ve visited over the past few summers.
the wall street journal used to be 100% behind an inclosed online wall. even in the initial phase of internet craziness, the wsj opted for a subscriber model. sometime in either the late 90s or early naughties, this model changed and now only a select number of articles are subscriber only. but surprise. if you google any random headline, you can read the article through the back door. the new york times used to have this same problem. whether or not the publishers were ever aware of it, who knows.
so what will happen of rupert murdoch gets his way and the drudge report won’t have any more of his high-quality newspapers to link to like <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk or the sun? is this what this emerging online war is about? putting matt drudge out of business? it was drudge who made murdoch’s uk rags internationally known. perhaps he should embrace this, as the daily telegraph has, and learn to use it to his advantage. if american newspapers opt for a cross the board subscriber only business model for their digital versions, american readers will continue reading the bbc, which provides superior coverage (usally) of american politics and social issues. and there’s always the newspapers in india, where a considerable number of newspapers (online) are published in english.
just speculation. but this would be the only reason why she named her child ’sparrow’ after the johnny depp character in the film, jack sparrow. what do you think?
can’t really tell if it was a fan or a photographer who yelled the B word. but twilight fans seem to be a bit confused. perhaps its because most are tweens. they seemingly think that kristen stewart is dating that guy ole what’s his name who plays edward cullens. we’ll let’s check some kstew boxes: 1. pick up truck. check 2. mullet. check 3. jeans and converse tennis shoes. check check. 4. jody foster favorite actress. check check check. 5. best friend nikki reed. check check check check check.
and that guy who plays edward. 1. runway and print model. check 2. no past girl friends babbling to the daily mail. check 3. little ashes. check check.
9.9.9. is the doomsday number for annie leibovitz. the moment in which she (perhaps) reportedly will lose the rights to things like past and future copyright, houses around the world including the home of whom the simpsons refer to as the cheese eatting surrender monkeys, if the rumours are correct. or did darkness set one day prior? guess we’ll have to look for the moving vans to find out.
almost every kid goes through a moment when they’re a bit embarassed by a family member. levi johnston has his mom, who reportedly got caught selling prescription medicine. or even his son, who may one day have to deal with johnston’s reoccuring mullet. speaking of mullets and embarassing parents. this stuff even happens with super famous folks. here’s kristen stewart’s dad who wears the stringy beyond mullet look. but this is old. so maybe he’s cut his hair.
when one speaks about the film ‘welcome to the rileys’ one can only think of three things to say. ‘what was bellla –i mean, kristen stewart, thinking,’ ‘nepotism’ and who snatched the apostrophe from that title?
let’s start with nepotism. welcome to the riley’s is produced by ridley scott and tony scott and directed by jake scott who is either ridley or tony’s son. who really cares, right? one of my friends who had to endure this boy during his days at usc once handed me this news ages ago. scott the younger has made videos for the cranberries, u2, radiohead and he directed a gawd awful movie called plunkett and maclean.
okay. and now onto ‘what was kristen stewart thinking?’ you can read various articles online where it is clear that kristen stewart thinks the character she plays in the twilight series is kinda lame and not a good role model for girls. yeah, bella might be clingie and clutzie but at least she’s good in math and biology. anyway. yet kristen (twilight) stewart decides to continue down that path by signing up to play the role of (drum roll please) the 16 year old prostitute who does lapdances for a former cast member of the sopranos. that’s a character any teen should look up to.
not that entertainers should become role models. i mean, look at chris brown. up until the middle of the 20th centuries, a profession as an actor was considered barely a step above that of a prostitute. apparently now the only difference is that they are both better compensated.
mark steyn in the orange county register loosely compares ted kennedy’s misadvetures in chappaquiddick and his leaving mary jo kopechne 40 years ago locked in a car below a river (–a car he somehow escaped from) for 5 hours to die alone to peter denying jesus. thus far the editorial has more than 300 comments, having jumped by 100 within the past 2 hours.
jenna bush, now known by her married name, hager, will join the broadcasting network nbc as an occassional correspondent.
this is sort of a non review. vanessa friedman, fashion editor of the financial times, basically aknowledges that the film exists, it has opened and that other fashion films have opened recently too. is she tight with the anna in wintour? or does she genuinely have no opinion on the documentary? read the ft review here.
this article appears in the copenhagen post. according to the article, ‘medical experts fear that chemicals found in food and cosmetics are contributing to early signs of puberty in pre-teen girls.’
fox news reports that both abc and nbc aren’t gonna run an ad nationally that picks apart democrats proposed healthcare overhaul. guess that thing called the recession and lack of advertisers is working out just well for nbc and abc.
have you ever really understood why americans love love love sweats with rude things etched on the ass? like ‘juicy’ ‘tri delt’ or ‘kappa alpha something or other?’
last january, while visiting the bread and butter streetwear tradeshow in barcelona, i was told by a representative from the fab french label faith connexion that one side of their exhibit was stuff they made for american retailers. the other side was for the rest of the world.
the american side consisted of sweats and hoodies. well here’s what the rest of the world was buying, 80s goth jeans with pointy metal pieces and flowing twilight dresses a la rachelle lefevre’s victoria character.
and this brings us to juicy couture. would you dare let anyone catch you in a velour track suit or carrying a terry cloth handbag?
and what’s with the middle-aged hide your ass look being thrusted up on tweenagers and twenty-somethings?
no real journalist would ever put the words ‘mercedes benz e550′ and ‘cash for clunkers’ in the same sentence.
dominick dunne has died. his b-listed through d-listed celebrity coverage in vanity fair published by conde nastie, will be missed by some –primarily his loyal new england readership. that this article appears on the drudgereport, might imply that now graydon carter, head honcho at vanity fair, who apparently now eats in the conde nast cafeteria, now ‘gets’ the web.
well, more than just a few pounds. viele viele kilos. keeley shaye smith shows off her new bod on a yacht in italy. we can only think of anna wintours comment (a paraphase here) upon visiting the midwest, ‘they all look like little houses.’
the bild zeitung based in germany writes Mama Mia! Pierce Brosnan (56) und seine pfundige Frau urlauben in Italien und zeigen – diese Liebe ist richtig dicke! loose translation. ‘pierce brosnan and his great (as in large) wife vacation in itlay and show that this love is really like a house.
we can only think that maybe pierce, who looked great earlier this summer, decided to let it all hang upon falling into a depression after having spent 6 weeks filming in new york with robert pattinson.
40 years ago in 1969, edward kennedy drove a car (or the car drove itself) into a river. teddy swam to safety. as he once did to mary jo kopechne, teddy kennedy has stranded barack obama, leaving him on his own to deal with the death star that in this case is healthcare reform and the democratic party.
over the next few hours we’ll scan the obits to see how many msm newspapers fail to mention this 40th anniversary.
my college roommate whose father was an economist in the reagan administration once said, edward kennedy might be a drunk and a coward, but he votes the right way on key issues.
mike huckabee, darling of fox (is his show still on?) and the man who could give oprah a few pointers on how to lose weight and keep it off, turns 54 today.
defamer calls it the anna wintour p.r. tour. is her job on the line? probably not. although it would probably be easier for si newhouse to fire her if he got mckinsey to do it for him.
is it a coincidence that, according to gawker –or was it the observer, that vogue editor anna wintour has supposedly proclaimed that she now ‘gets the web’ about the same time that perez hilton has launched cocoperez.com? one would hope not.
but what would ‘getting the web’ entail for a magazine editor or publishing company ? AOL/Time Warner (remember them) got the web back in the 90s, but that still didn’t stop them from launching PathFinder as an umbrealla portal for all it’s titles. thank goodness now time.com exists, right?
well as mckinsey actively bleeds si newhouse dry of his money while simultaneously saving him money, one might be excused for wondering out loud how a publishing company that purchased wired (but initially forgot to buy the accompanying website –a bit like eBay buying skype but not the underlying technology) 10 years ago could ever really grasp the complexities of the internet.
gawker and new york magazine have been constantly a-twitter since it was announced last month that mckinsey would be combing the conde nast books.
would you like to know what an mba student thinks? well, basically initially mckinsey will most likely comb the accounting books of each individual book within conde nast from details magazine to gourmet to vogue. then they will search for efficiencies. which doesn’t mean ‘who can we fire.’ at least, not initially. but they will look for overlaps. and question why one executive needs multiple assistants and ask what’s the difference between editor, managing editor, associate editor, and assistant editor and so on.
then they will ask questions like, why do you need one person to book your covers. doesn’t the editor make this decision? couldn’t the assistant handle this?
or, as what happened with anheuser busch when inbev took over (see the wall street journal). and inbev decided that no one needed an assitant by asking the question, can’t you answer your own phones and use your own computer?
this is not an argument for getting rid of assistants. they are actually an intrigal part to the smooth running of any magazine. –see ‘ugly betty.’ but the real question is, how many people do you need in the art department and what does a top editor really do?
but this could be an argument against anna (edit: initially spelt with ‘e’ for shame!) wintour making the rounds of fashion week in europe and racking up 250K in expenses. does one need multiple stylists when one has been wearing the same hairstyle fot the past half century? is the ritz really necessary? why not stay at a 5 star boutique hotel that would be so grateful to have you occupy the whole building for a week that they would offer you an incredible discount. or maybe even give you half the rooms for free in exchange for a half page ad or an advertorial.
one could argue what a bunch of guys (and they will be mostly guys) in brooks brothers suits and thomas pink ties might know about fashion and the fashion industry and the unique way that magazine publishing works. and anyone who would offer this up at conde nast would definitely have a point.
but then the question is is overspending ever justified? yes, in fashion, perception trumps reality. one would rather stay at the ritz than the hilton. or god forbid, days inn, but when there’s a financial crunch, reality trumps everything.
this blog is all in fun, for the most part. does anyone care that the first lady sports shorts, a baseball cap and likes to wear j. crew. what would jackie o think? what does nancy reagan think? nancy wore loads of outrageous outfits in the 80s. some of which could’ve gotten her on an episode of the x-files during the 90s.
brad pitt, the man who has made a career out of piggy-backing on the backs of women who had bigger careers hit the skids years ago, but nobody noticed. the only hit brad pitt has had since ’seven’ was ‘mr. and mrs. smith.’
to gage his level of popularity, we’ll go back to eariler this year when he and angelina (finally) gave money to an american institution, some hospital in his hometown of springfield, missouri. and guess what, nobody noticed. and missourites didn’t even care.
is it true that white women don’t age very well? or is this a myth? exhibit ‘a’ kate moss. 35. exhibit ‘b’ halle berry. 42. conversely (generally speaking) men tend to age better than women. it could also be that moss, who is blond and presumably has spent loads of time in the sun drinking alcohol and snorting goodness knows what, is a way bad example. but lighter skin tends to not such a grad relationship with the sun.
it could also have something to do with at which age a woman starts using cosmetics. up until recently (like perhaps this century), brown and black women have hard a challenging time finding make up that works with their skin. if you look at candid photos of halle berry on the street, it generally looks like she’s not wearing make up.
all skin must age. that’s the natural course of events. it is how god intended things to be. and fighting the process in a brooke astor way really isn’t a good idea. better to accept change and age gracefully. remove that short short skirt and be happy with a-lengths. and don’t do an anna wintour. dare to change your hairstyle from time to time. a signature style is okay, but jennifer aniston shouldn’t hold onto variations of her ‘friends’ haircut for the rest of her life.
squeaky ‘fromme’ from the manson family has been freed after more than 30 years in prison.
one of the few kennedys who did not succumb to the kennedy curse died this week. teddy, as we all know is next on the list. unless something unforseen happens to the rest of the clan. and this being the kennedys, that’s bound to happen. flying lessons anyone? ski football? how about a labotomy?
we don’t ever link to perez hilton here. but hats off to him for finding every random thing in every celeb’s closet. he is righ though. one should never 1.) make a sex tape or 2.) pose nude for anyone not even your husband because you never know when divorce might be around the corner.
but how have the nude pictures played out for alice cullen. we mean, ashley greene? one would imagine that stephenie meyer with her mormon values is probably not too pleased. the twilight quadrilogy (is this a word?) is as wholesome as that apple pie your mom would bake you if she actually had time to do it. but the second book which is actually infinitely more innocent than the first book has been all screwed up and transformed into a beefcake movie. the wolfpack. taylor lautner. and the list goes on. new moon will be all about shirtless man whores. and we know how 12 year olds love that (feel the sarcasm).
the allure of the books and the first film was that well, you know, there’s only one kiss in the film. it’s all about innuendo and unrequited love and you know holding open doors and romance. but i guess that’s just so old fashioned.
but getting back to ashley greene’s money shots. well. basically, it will only raise her profile. maybe to a much higher level than that of kristen stewart, whose the star of the franchise. which makes one wonder whether or not this was planned. i mean, she doesn’t want to be alice cullen for the rest of her life, does she?
this is being posted late due to shock. john hughes. hadn’t thought about him since 1991. doesn’t he look a little bit like jonathan franzen, who was also born in suburban chicago? what is up with that?
the great thing about john hughes’ films are that they are unapologetically suburban. nothing bad ever happens. nobody gets shot and no drug dealers ever show up. –although coke (and not the beverage) briefly made an appearance in ‘pretty in pink’ –but he didn’t direct that one. anyway. it’s all just like how the majority of americans grow up.
someone recently gave me a book on 80s films. while thumbing through it (after hearing of hughes’ death), i suddenly realized that all his stuff had been left out. but rambo and sly stallone and flashdance were all well represented. where was molly ringwold? –the girl whose hipster style captured the imagination of suburban teens across suburban u.s.? yeah, his films were seemingly fluffy. but what’s the harm in that?
or maybe dealer. who knows. the bbc reports that cameron douglas, the son of michael douglas and the grandson of kirk (is he dead yet) douglas is facing 10 years to life on possibly being a crystal meth dealer. more information can be found on the bbc website.
maybe it was a gift from summit or his agent. but doesn’t he (the twilight star) know that the whole world is in a huge financial crisis of near depression proportion –still. so what’s robert pattinson doing tooling around LA in a porsche convertible?
this 80K convertible is absolutely amazing. but still. even orlando bloom drives a prius.
this is the question posed by the german newspaper bild. there’s a photo attached to the article.
will comment more later on annie leibovitz and her 24M dollar debt. who knew conde nast paid her 2M/year. who knew si gives (some) employees low interest mortgages.
hats off to the new york post for being basically one of the only newsgathering organizations that includes that these female 2 journalists, laura ling and euna leenabbed, who were nabbed by the north korean army and thrown into prison, work for al gore’s TV studio, current TV.
why didn’t al gore go to meet kim jong il? afraid? looks like bill clinton is still hard at work trying to rescue his badly worn image.
in order to really appreciate this spoof on the twilight 2 (aka new moon) trailer, you first have to view the original. the spoof, called guniew moon features guinea pigs. but that’s not giving anything away. it pretty much highlights (although in this case, one might say lowlights) all the ridiculous stuff in the first one, after a fairly akward start.
here’s another version:
and presumably go home to barf everything up.
hugo boss berlin has developed a special mailing list for their more and/or most valuable customers. the label, which has 2 free standing stores in the mitte district of berlin, at the top of the summer had a pre-sale for these particular shoppers. most everything was 30% off and both hugo boss and hugo boss orange were mad houses as the label (s) ushered in their summer line.
how does one get on this list? how much do you have to purchase and is this based on lifetime purchases, quarterly, or monthly purchases. and how much would one need to purchase to get on ‘the list.’ you know, the one where you are automatically invited to their catwalk shows if this were a possibility.
anna wintour, editor of american vogue was raked over the coals this week for offering that perhaps a committe should be set up to essentially not let people engage in too much discounting.
is discounting hurting the luxury industry? remember when prada never had a sale. or hugo boss for that matter. abercrombie and fitch tried to hold to this ideal during this ongoing recession–that premium labels should never discount. but caved in a few months ago after looking at their balance sheet, inventory, and lack of customers who had all headed off to old navy and ross.
is it even possible to diss a ‘person’ who, beyond the written page, doesn’t exist? it seems pattinson is a bit weary of playing or being identified as edward (the vampire) cullen, a character in the highly popular twilight book series created by mormon extraordinarie, stephenie meyer.
just about any male actor would love to be in a room filled with thousands of hormonal females screaming ‘we love you.’ that is, unless the actor’s not into women.
but robert pattinson has gone on record as calling edward cullen a weirdo. what a revelation. i mean, not only is he a ficticous character, but edward cullen’s a teenage vampire who sucks the blood of animals instead of humans. what’s so weird about that?
pattinson thinks the tweenaged girls are confusing him with edward who he thinks, if he really existed in real life, would most likely be an axe murderer.
not really sure how he picked this up from the books. maybe he’s not really read them and his assistant has only given him the notes. meyers wrote the cullen coven as being ‘good vampires.’ or rather ones that try to be good. and talks about how they feel that everyone has a choice in life.
the great thing about reuters, the original news outlet that ran this article, is at the end, the journalist wrote: ‘cullen told OK magazine.’ he/she later corrected this error after this was pointed out in the comment section.
despite the books being, you know, poorly written guilty pleasures that are undeniably poor mistakes for authentic fantasy fiction, the books have found a humongous audience so much that they have evoled into a huge cultural phenomenon on par with the velveta cheezieness that made the original star trek popular. as stated in the comment section of reuters, these moments are rare. but i’d also like to add that they are fleeting. the whole thing could disappear as quickly as it started. just ask ex-vampire rachelle lefevre.
that headline is no revelation. but if you read reuter’s criteria for moderating comments in their blog area, you will see the following: that blog comments are only posted if they further the conversation.
what does that mean? so if you repeatedly write you know, robert pattinson sucks or bryce dallas howard gets all her acting jobs through nepotism and 10 people post ‘yeah, you’re right:’ then reuters will probably decide to only let one ‘yeah, you’re right.’ get through.
chris weitz, the director of the testosterone driven ‘american pie’ and ‘about a boy’ films and the absolutely useless ‘golden compass’ was hired for some inexplicable reason to direct the sequel to ‘twilight’ (called ‘new moon’).
in this interview with time magazine he admits that he forgot to put the author of the wildly successful book series in the film. ‘But I had kind of forgotten that she had a cameo in the first one, and she never asked, she’s very quiet and gracious about it. I don’t know if she wanted to or not. I probably should have.’ that is what some women would say is a typical guy response ’she never asked.’ i guess those tween-aged girls are wondering what sort of stuff david (i wouldn’t know how a girl thinks if she was feeding me the info on a plate) slade will forget in this next film.
it seems he’s already made his first mistake by throwing rachelle lefevre under the bus.
fiesty candian redhead rachelle lefevre was lured to comic con last weekend to promote the twilight series. the vampiress the tween-agers love to hate was abruptly replaced by a real red head yesterday. bryce dallas howard, aka ron howard’s daughter (nepotism, yes.) known more for dragging productions down (see terminator: salv and that weird m. night shyamalan mermaid movie) than bringing anything remotely similar to star power to one.
lefevre just released a statement. it’s on e! and we know how the studios like to twist their arms and force them to delete stuff. so i’ll highlight a few things in rachelle lefevre’s official statement.
“”I was stunned by Summit’s decision to recast the role of Victoria for Eclipse. I was fully committed to the Twilight saga, and to the portrayal of Victoria. I turned down several other film opportunities and, in accordance with my contractual rights, accepted only roles that would involve very short shooting schedules.” the link above has the full statement.ation
this is hilarious. it’s kevin smith’s take on tweens and their twilight obsession. gotta go seek out ‘clerks’ again. what ever happened to kevin smith?
here’s footage of peter (lord of the rings/i got screwed by new line cinema) jackson and james (i haven’t made a film since that sucky underwater movie ‘titanic’) cameron on a panel at comic con.
the tabloids have been having a field day with kristen stewart and her unfortunate joan jett mullet haircut. in this photo, kristen stewart stirkes a pose with a mid-drift revealing minor threat t-shirt as if to see, not only, ian mackaye i love you but also, f-you people magazine, i’m neither pregnant nor fat.
but the real question is, where did she get the minor threat t-shirt and does she even know what it means? does she wear it because she’s still sort of a minor. well, not really, isn’t she 18? or is she a minor threat/fugazi straight edge kinda gal?
but it’s good to see that she apparently has got better taste in music than her vampire co-star, robert pattinson ,whose been known to way poetically about the greatness of van (gag gag) morrison. we won’t even include a tag for van morrison here as that would be far too painful.
but the real story at comic-con is that ashley greene told e! that chris weitz was great and there was no screaming on the set. was she alluding to catherine hardwicke? was she a screamer? well, what about MICHAEL BAY? guess greene won’t be getting cast in hardwicke’s next movie.
if you look at the youtube comic con page for hall h, you’ll notice that stephenie meyer is not there. she was there in 2008 to push her baby twilight. so what’s happened?
has chris weitz destroyed new moon to the point at which stephenie meyer has gone underground? she’s probably not interested in pulling an anne rice and thereby destroying the rest of the franchise. so better to keep her lips zipped, right?
but this new film looks like the lost boys on steroids minus corey feldman and kiefer sutherland. the successful gothic fairy tale has been replaced by a rock n’ roll movie minus robert pattinson crooning on the soundtrack.
will the film stay true to the books? well, the books sort of suck on an artistic level. so if the film sucks too, then maybe that’s okay. but the books suck you in like a lollipop. then afterwards you feel all guilty for eatting a tofu-frutty lollipop.
does chris (i destroyed the golden compass) weitz get what makes 12 year old girls love these books? because you know, some girls don’t hit puberty until 16 or 17. so they might be into the romantic jane austen love thing with holding hands and stuff but they don’t hang out at home having masturbatory dreams about ripped muscles. me thinks those screams in hall h at comic con on thursday were those of twilight moms who should know better than to lust after such young things.
has the whole underlying religious theme been squeezed out of the film? chris weitz did an outstanding job of reducing the golden compass to absolutely nothing to the point in which it no longer even resembled a kid’s book. of course it’s sort of a good thing that people avoided that film like the plague.
but the beauty of twilight is that it’s not really a vampire/werewolf/shape shifting book. it’s a lyrical allegory grounded in traditional morals and values in the judeo-christian sense. and that kids are responding to this. if you’re an atheist/agnostic like brad pitt who recently declared this in bild zeitung, then that sentence probably just made you wretch.
but everyone has to admit that the most fascinating aspect of the twilight phenomenon is that it goes against everything that the mainstream media has been feeding tweens since the 80s. you know. sex.sex.and more sex. and perhaps that’s why zines like teen people, cosmo girl, and sassy have all closed down within the past few years.
comic con coverage on youtube. hall c. the clips up now are primarily for new moon. when i find stuff on avatar, alice in wonderland, james cameron or tim burton, will post asap. this is a super cheesie clip from new moon. it just smells terrible. chris weitz has turned this into a beefcake movie. and the whole gothic look and feel of the original is gone. whats with all the warm tones and earth colors. this is a frickin vampire and shape changer (not werewolf) movie.
gosh. can you believe that the bush twins are almost 30?
looks like new moon director chris weitz couldn’t keep ashley green from the cheetos. or she’s been making loads of mcdonald’s runs with taylor lautner. in ‘twilight’ she looked petite and angelic, despite portraying a vampire. now she looks more like stephenie meyer’s.
here kristen stewart is talking to e! at comic con along with taylor lautner and she just can’t stand still. is she jonesingn for a fag or a bong (here’s kristen stewart smoking a bong)? who knows. but whenever you see the 3 main actors from twilight it’s always amazing that the young’un, taylor lautner who is like what 17 or something like that, is totally composed and unphased and never says stuff like ‘that’s a trip’ or ‘um’ ‘uh-huh.’ his parents must’ve raised him well. or he’s got the better publicist.
comic con kicks off today. james cameron unveils bits of his ‘avatar’ 3-d (snooze) movie. his first film since (snooze) ‘titanic. tweens are out in force to support the new twilight movie new moon. here’s a look at the press conference with robert (i couldn’t act my way out of a paper bag) pattinson, kristen (i’m a little fat ‘cuz i’m playing joan jet) stewart, and taylor (the adventures of sharkboy) lautner.
we’ve got about 20 or 25 years until black gold runs out. what’s next? the european union is looking to africa for answers. the last time this happened we had this thing called colonialism.
this time around one might call it economic colonialism. the european union has a plan. they want to harness the energy of the sun above and below the sahara and transport it to the 27 member countries. more details to come in a later posting about the sahara energy project. but the long and the short of it is, this could become economic colonialism.
unlike the chinese government, which is willing to invest in african countries and assist in building infrastructure (like roads, etc.) in exchange for locking in reasonable rates on natural resources, the european countries look set to just you know do like they’ve done for the last 300 years. set up shop, bring their own people in to do all the work, rape the countries of their natural resources and hire random locals to do work of ‘driving miss daisy’ proportion. let’s just hope that’s not the case this time around.
this article appeared the day before michael jackson bit the big one (or started hiding out in his mom’s basement). it’s from the guardian newspaper and it talks about the brad pitt/angelina jolie/jennifer aniston industry. apparently these 3 have been keeping the weekly rags afloat for the past what 6 years. or how ever long ago that pitt dumped aniston to hang out with his own blood sucking bisexual vampiress. aka billy bob thornton’s ex-wife.
apparently reese whiterspoon and jake gyllenhaal (or however the world you spell his name. at the moment i’m too tired to check it in bing or google). don’t sell newspapers. neither does (surprise! surprise!) kate winslet.
but it seems as the box office numbers for the trio continue to tank (–i mean, when was the last time pitt/aniston/jolie were in a successful film?and we know quintin tarantino’s ‘inglorious basterds’ will sink the weinstein company the way ‘heaven’s gate’ sunk united artists.) they’re days as tabloid fodder are soon over. jen is now in her 40s and brad pitt is pushing 50 and angelina is almost middle-age as well. the trioka has been replaced by a much younger and plastic surgery free (so far) duo (see present cover of OK, us weekly, people, ew, and so on and so on).
is it the anit-smoking laws that’s killing business or the recession? or combination of the two? why go out with friends when you could invite them over, by a 6 pack that costs as much as 1 pint in a pub and hey, you can even smoke away.
in part 3 we’ll discuss how to reverse overexposure without going MIA, which leads to underexposure of jared leto and colin farrell proportion –which is basically career ending.
would this entail avoiding all publicity for one’s films except for junkets? should robert pattinson turn down the looming ‘vanity fair’ cover? should his publicist actively lobby for him to NOT be declared people’s ’sexist man alive.’ should he avoid the teen choice awards and all comic book related conventions let alone the ‘twilight’ fan conventions and the upcoming ‘twilight’ cruise? we say pattinson should let someone else play edward cullen in the third ‘twilight’ film, ‘eclipse.’ like that’s ever gonna happen.
what would public relations expert recommend? well, if you look at actors as brands (which they are) anyone studying brand management would tell you that you have to reclaim your brand. like mcdonalds forgot who they were, but now they’re back on track.
at the moment, if we speak in terms of robert pattinson, who is ever so overexposed, we might have to take a more specific approach. because he’s not been on the market for too long.
if we go to imdb and take a look at his filmography, we can see that he’s got a short one. he was sort of a blip on the screen in two harry potter films, but every tawanda, doreen, and hermione remembers that he’s the one who DIED. beyond that, he’s got one gay film under his belt (little ashes, aka little asses) which perez hilton totally loves, then there’s this quirkly little indie british film called how to bethat is still rolling out around the world. and there’s at least one other. and we know that he was briefly a teen model.
well, if you look at his films, they’re a bit all over the place. gay. quirky. fantasy flicks. so we can see that maybe he’s not headed in a jean claude van damme direction. looks like pure action flicks won’t be coming his way.
then we have the endless stream of interviews he’s done. which with a quick look through E!, entertainment weekly, us weekly, and any random twilight fan site by any random 12 year old girl, all his interviews seem to have come out around the build up to the opening of ‘twilight’ last year. and he has seemingly only done one or two interviews (TV or print) since the. during that time, he mentioned things like ‘rarely washing’ ‘not washing his hair for 6 weeks’ (which is okay if you have a fro, but not for white folks b/c little things tend to grow), having problems getting dates, and basically coming across as a shy sensitive guy.
we would tell him to stop. stop. if you want the kiddies to quit chasing you down madison avenue and hanging out in front of the chambers hotel or the soho grand (or wherever the ‘h’ ‘e’ double hockey sticks) he’s been staying. it seems that 21st century hormonal pre-teen american girls love their guys dirty, shy and with a british accent.
keanu reeves was a heart throb for years as was the late john f. kenndy jr. i can’t recall ever having seen footage of keanu reeves being hounded by fans. but maybe that’s because he’s canadian. i recall an article i once read when john john was still kicking. and he said that the paparazzi and ‘fan girls’ (aka stalkers) never bothered him (and he used to ride his bicycle around manhattan) because he didn’t run away from them. once you start running, you’ll be running for the rest of your life.
pattinson could of course pluck his bushy unibrow and see either bruce jenner’s or michael jackson’s plastic surgeon. becuz when they’re finished, _nobody_ will be able to recognize him. so we’ll frame this directly to r-patz.
1.) don’t run when the paparazzi run after you
2.) try to come across as being as boring as possible
3.) follow jude law’s lead and do an endless string of bad movies followed by a stint on broadway where you bear all. (daniel radcliff did the same) then nobody will have anything else to say (especially if there’s nothing worth seeing). did we mention that you’ll also have to marrie sadie frost and somehow become linked to sienna miller? sorry to mention that. and just make sure the ushers confiscate all those mobile phones at the door.
4.) find a girlfriend –or a boyfriend. preferably from russia with an unpronouncable name. make sure she’s the daughter of an oil tycoon, then when your career goes belly up, you can crash at her pad with the solid gold bathroom in londistan.
5.) record an album. put it out on interscope. or better yet, warner brothers. that will simultaneously end your singing career and put a nail in the coffin of your acting one.
6.) only do ‘r’ rated movies. then the tweens can’t see them, but make sure there’s no nudity, or perez hilton will post it on the internet.
7.) don’t do ‘breaking dawn’ unless you’re hard up for cash
8.) go to all the twilight fan conventions and speak with an american accent. those girls will get bored with you quick.
9.) come out of the closet. even if you’re not in the closet. even if you’re not gay. men will never ever chase you down the street begging for your autograph. then you can have anonymous sex for the rest of your life.
10.) limit the number of interviews. don’t let people do one-on-ones with video cameras like this one. they will be edited and re-edited and respliced for the rest of your life.
we all feel sorry for beckham for having (volunatarily) banished himself to the hinterlands of football (aka soccer) also known as north america (yeah, we include canada in the mix too). he tried to get back to playing ball with _real_ football players by figuring out of getting himself loaned out to ac milan. but apparently, now he’s back. and not feeling warm and fuzzy about heckers in los angeles.
loads of people disliked george w. bush and his approval rating hovered around 36 percent or less when he left office. but despite starting 2 wars of epic proportions, there’s one thing the bush administration somehow managed to avoid. and that’s getting a GI kidnapped in afghanistan or iraq. you can bing ‘g.i. kidnapped afghanistany new york post’ if you want to watch it. we won’t link to it here because it’s an AP story.
here’s part 2.
so currently who are the most overexposed actors in hollywood? well, tom cruise and katie holmes were at the top of that list, but now it seems they’ve gone into hiding. or they’re careers have taken a u-turn of ben affleck proportions.
when tom cruise was with his boyhood publicist pat kingsley, she kept him on a tight leash and forbad journalists from asking him about his, um ‘religion.’ or so the story goes. his image was carefully managed. then he tossed his p.r. person under the bus and hired his sister, whose also a member of his, um ‘church.’ that’s when we got the image of tom cruise jumping on oprah’s couch declaring his ‘love’ for katie holmes as he did a michael jackson and found a ‘host’ –um , surrogate mother for his alien love child.
now this brings us to robert pattinson. can you not enter a supermarket or pass by a kiosk without seeing his fangs and uni-brow? this goes to show actors– be careful with those tween films. and prior to agreeing to be in an adaptation of a novel, do your frickin’ homework. tom cruise didn’t prior to bullying his way onto another vampire film, ‘interview with a vampire,’ and this most likely left lasting damage on his career.
but anne rice fans are far less intense than ‘twilight’ ones. perhaps because after 10 or 15 years of having read her books they had come to the realisation that well, vampires just don’t exist.
or perhaps this is due to the writing style. any tom dick or harry –or basically, tina, doreen or hermione can pick up a 500 page stephenie meyer novel and read it on a flight between london and berlin, except perhaps for dakota fanning. this in turn leads to perhaps a form of rabid fandome and screaming hormonal teens not seen since duran duran and wham (before george michael came out of the closet).
in part 3 we’ll discuss how to reverse overexposure without going MIA, which leads to underexposure of jared leto and colin farrell proportion –which is basically career ending. would this entail avoiding all publicity for your films except for junkets? should robert pattinson turn down the looming ‘vanity fair’ cover? should his publicist actively lobby for him to NOT be declared people’s ’sexist man alive.’ should he avoid the teen choice awards and all comic book related conventions let alone the ‘twilight’ fan conventions and the upcoming ‘twilight’ cruise? we say pattinson should let someone else play edward cullen in the third ‘twilight’ film, ‘eclipse.’ like that’s ever gonna happen.
bella swan –we mean kristen stewart, is a tad overexposed too. but since she’s been acting since at least ‘panic room,’ and guys tend not to chase girls down the street seeking autographs and she hasn’t got big boobs (so the male contingency of the paparazzi aren’t interested), she’s probably okay for the moment.
there is a huge disconnect between the music and the film industry in terms of how the publicity machine helps or hurts as we can see by contrasting the death of michael jackson with that of farrah fawcett. while fawcett’s was a drawn out ‘is she dead yet’ affair that included a well watched made for tv documentary and michael jackson’s death happened pretty suddenly, both died on the same day.
since the death of MJ, he’s sold (collectively) more than 9 million albums wordwide. and that’s just solo albums. he’s continued to capture the cover of newspaper after newspaper and magazine after magazine around the world. his family organized a public memorial so fans could get a look at his 25K gold platted casket and sunkissed kids and the albums keep selling and the family continues to court the fans.
on the other hand, actors actively hide from their fans and would never have a funeral of princess diana proportion. people haven’t run out to buy old fawcett films like ‘the burning bed.’ and even if someone could find it, would anyone be interested in a poster circa 1976 of farrah fawcett with feathered hair?
why the disconnect. because in the music industry, there’s no such thing as overexposure. because you’re selling a product. yeah, there’s a person attached to the product but in the end every t.v. appearance or mention helps a label to move more units.
it sort of doesn’t work that way with film. maybe because the actors themselves are products. we see angelina jolie everywhere. but this hasn’t helped her put more bodies into chairs at her films. her opening numbers get dismally worse. but she and brad pitt, which the guardian newspaper recently labeled the jolie/pitt/aniston industry, help sell newspapers and magazines.
but since the dynamic duo are everywhere 24-7, why shell out $12 to see their mediocre films when you can spend (in some countries) 50 cents for the ‘privilege’ of getting saucy inside information of princess diana proportion. and there in lies the problem.
how much is too much? when does overexposure set in? is it a good thing or a bad thing to be written about and talked about dailyon on E! and Eonline and perezhilton.com? it helped j.lo get down with ralph (i’ve lost my looks with male pattern baldness) fiennes in ‘maid in manhattan’ –the last j.lo film anyone bothered to see. her being on the cover 24-7 of u.s. weekly with ben affleck –spawning the bennifer industry sure helped her get more money for her acting roles (at the time) and got her a number 1 album, but it snatched ben affleck’s film career from him while he wasn’t even looking.
but hiding out doesn’t help. now affleck is totally MIA when it comes to the press and the paparazzi. nobody cares. and when nobody cares and you’re not like a character actor like dennis hopper, that’s even worse than people caring too much.
back in the 90s, i had a friend who worked with michael jackson’s publicist and she said that he actually liked being in newspapers like the national enquirer, weekly world news, and so on. he didn’t really care what was being written. he knew that that meant he still mattered.
end of part 1.
the red prada shoes, cartier watch and the gorgeous personal secretary nickenamed gorgeous george have had the italian press twittering (pre-twitter) and teetering for the past couple of years about whether or not pope benedict the something or other is gay or merely sparkley. well it seems that now that he’s broken his wrist, this rumor has most certainly been cleared up.
you know an actor is overexposed when magazines like OK start coaxing information about tips from restaurant workers and asking movie crew members about an actor’s personal hygiene. although the ‘fact’ that robert pattinson is hygienically challenged actually originated with him. shall we rerun the film? as heidi klum, who is blond, but wise, told him at the time ‘that story will follow you for the rest of your life.’ but shouldn’t the media be reporting on other things. you know, like the iraq war? or perhaps even the afghanistan war, which actually isn’t going very well. we know ‘e’ isn’t concerned with any of that. but what about michael jackson’s kids. and whose gonna pay latoya’s rent? that stuff is you know, important too.
it seems quite obvious that the jackson family and the promoter of the michael jackson memorial had final approval on which photos made their way out of the staples center event. because that’s the way things work in the entertainment industry. control access.
that the family tossed paris michael jackson –or whatever her name is, to tear up at the end of the service not only broke some people’s hearts, but confirmed that the jackson clans are masters of media manipulation. that image was sent around the globe and made the cover of 99% of most major (and minor) newspapers. to veil the kids for the first few years and then push them out on the world stage. but also (temporarily) squashed the, what nancy pelosi might call, ‘the contrary views’ of michael jackson.
but the jackson family must’ve set the kids out by the pool for a bit or used lindsey lohan’s spray tan prior to the event. cuz the kids on stage didn’t really resemble these kids.
i was born the son of a black man (well, sort of) and a donor egg. i grew up in the lap of luxury. my father unveiled me to the world with a blanket about my head. it’s okay that he nearly dropped me from the balcony, because at least we were holed up in a 5 star hotel in the ‘bestest’ city in europe. he was the best father a kid could’ve ever had.
when he spoke to me –which was only after having watched loads of hours of disney movies on our monstrous flatscreen TV in his bedroom (and just prior to his loading up on jesus juice), he never ever talked down to me. he wasn’t like those dads on TV. no. you see, he was just like me.
*this post is copyright ‘a blog about whatever’ 2009.* but plz by all means, send it around.
kristen stewart, aka isabella (just call me bella) swan should fire her agent immediately. what is up with her wearing hip hugging jeans with a kelly osbourne body? and one has to wonder how any actor could be tricked by a movie studio (see summit entertainment) into signing on for 3 sequels prior to seeing the screenplays and before the second sequel has even opened. and plz kristen, don’t let dakota fanning and her washed up career hitch herself to your star. you’ll end up like the teen versions of nicole ritchie and paris hilton.
but this post isn’t really a critique of kristen stewart’s figure, relationship with dakota fanning, or even stewart’s fashion disaster. no, it’s about young actors with clueless agents. did the first contract she signed for ‘twilight’ tie her to the sequels? many questions. lots of rambling. if stewart wants to smoke up and chow down, that’s her business, isn’t it? but it could only lead to a bod of peaches geldof proportion.
one story feeds into the michael jackson/2pac/elvis conspiracy theory. the other into the robert pattinson coverup.
we know michael is alive and well and hanging out at graceland. gotta wonder about that closed golden casket. we know his brain was removed for tests not to preserve. yes yes. but maybe other tests could be a good idea. a tragic life. but well, should the u.s. congress be considering passing any sort of motion honoring you know, the man who really really loved children?
will the twilight duo of kristen stewart and robert pattinson give birth to a baby vampire. there are photos of stewart everywhere with her belly hanging out due to those super tight joan jets pants she’s been forced to fight her way into for the movie she’s currently filming. or maybe she’s just phat. but me thinks this is a rock hudson cover up scenario with stewart as pattinson’s doris day. what say you guildenstern? put out as many unsubstantiated-able (not a word, i know) rumors just to keep the tweens and teenage girls happy and clueless until pattinson gets pushed out of the closet. don’t you wonder why summit films is rushing all 3 sequels out?? it’s not just because these bloody vampires in real life actually age pretty quickly considering the caucasian love of sunbathing with and without suntan lotion (oh the wrinkles). kristen stewart already looks like she’s at least 30 sometimes. and if pattinson doesn’t wash his hair soon, it’ll all fall out before ‘breaking dawn’ starts filming.
berlin fashion week has ended. highlights rom the saturday runway shows include kaviar gauche and scherer gonzalez.
the summer 2010. the collection was solidly elegant yet vibrant in a subdued way. nine of the outfits, including most of the highly ornamental formal gowns included swarovski crystalized elements.
a more complete roundup will be added later one of the highlights of the event was the ‘green showroom’ event at the adlon hotel.
berlin fashion week scherer gonzalez
yesterday was an eventful day at berlin fashion week what with the gala magazine bruch, the esther perbrandt drinks/drums/ice cream event in which media wonks gathered in front of the designer’s store to watch models wearing the designer’s outfits sauntered down almstadt strasse accompanied by a mini brass band and drummers. it was a compelling way to show case the designer’s new collection. her handbags (in general) got a big thumbs from a WWD writer. photos will be added later as well as information on the scherer gonzalez summer 2010 collection, which was absolutely fabulous.
the death of michael jackson has caused strange people to resurface like corey feldman to give statements on the king of pop. but the real question is where is macaulay culkin. who michael jackson presumably wanted to portray him in a movie about his life (when back in the 90s he suggested a white kid play him in a film).
news of the world (yes, that newspaper) has a interview with michael from 1996 in which he is interviewed about his relationship with kids. one of whom reportedly slept in his room for 1 year.
so let us deconstruct the michael jackson media cycle. first there was the shock of his death. so the journalists report the facts. ‘michael jackson. dead at 50.’ then the story becomes a little sentimental. ‘michael jackson. king of pop. dead at 50.’ then the music blares on the street and the little shrines begin to pop up around the world in places like london, berlin, and of course los angeles. the celebrities who knew him (liza minelli, liz taylor, diana ross) give statements about what a great talent he was. that is the end of the first news cycel.
then the weekend papers hit. and publications like ‘the guardian’ do stories about ‘michael jackson the self-loathing black man.’ and magazines like ‘us weekly’ and ‘people’ in the u.s. begin running photos of michael jackson through the ages san commentary. because you know, one wouldn’t want to bring up the fact that he went from being a cute little brown skinned boy with a cute button nose to a caucasian man without one. and janet jackson cries at the BET awards which is one long tribute to a musical genius. that is the end of the second news cycle.
then ‘news of the world’ runs an interview with debbie rowe (or whatever her name is) the former dermatology assistant jackson allegedly paid 750K to stay away from the children she gave birth to who may or may not have actually been hers but who definitely weren’t his. then there’s talk about who would get the kids. why debbie hasn’t seen them in how many years. and what would michael’s 79 year old mother and his 80 year old father do with 3 young kids. meaning you know, those people are old and michael didn’t like his father. that’s the end of the third news cycle.
and so on. then the cross-examination of his strange life begins. and the speculation about his debts. and now the conspiracy theories have started, because you know, michael jackson is alive and well (well as well as he ever was) and hiding out with elvis (who must be pushing 100 by now) and tupac in tupelo mississippi eatting fried banana sandwiches and taking copious amounts of drugs. and that would have newscycles four, five, and six.
was the soon to be former governor of alaska run out of office? was the woman, who at one point last year had an approval rating of 80% and presently leads one of the few states in the u.s. that’s not bleeding from the economic recession, totally trashed by the right coast (meaning left of course) media?
what with david letterman basically encouraging baseball player (you know, the game nobody else in the world understands) alex rodriguez to accost her 14 year old daughter followed close on the heels by levi johnston (father of bristol palin’s kid) getting himself inserted into as many tabloid zines as possible, and then there’s of course the vanity fair article (the u.s. one, remember, the german one closed this year) questioning her mental states and suggesting she was suffering from you know, post baby depression during the 2008 elections.
this is sort of a trend. tends to happy to successful women. look at carly fiorina from HP and well, the list is short because of you know, that glass ceiling thing. but are the dems so afraid of sarah palin that they have continued thrashing her despite the presidential election being almost 1 year old. and despite the fact that um, barack obama, whose got less experience than palin (who was incidentally only running for vp) is now president of the united states running the country in the middle of a depression that some believe is the result of the democratic party having talked the economy down for 2 years in order to win the white house in 2008 so that they could you know install a charismatic dictator and push the country into the 21st century version of socialism (given that the 20th century version failed). but enough with the run on sentences.
will write an overall review later. this streetwear tradeshow, after a few seasons in barcelona has moved (back) to berlin. as their logo is ‘BBB’ it’s assumed they could only relocate to cities that begin with ‘B’ otherwise their whole corporate identity would have to be changed. these cities would presumably include bangkok, birmingham, boston, beijing, or something like that.
bread and butter finishes up the week in berlin
the event takes place in templehof, an old airport hanger originally designed by albert speer. funny that albert speer jr. is also a famous architect in germany. well, we hope it’s not all ‘like father like son.’
during bbb in barcelona, the whole 3 days felt incredibly intense. but berlin is a far more laidback city. which is ironic since barcelona is a beach city.
it seems the fashion labels are still quite married to aligning themselves with music and the music industry. the whole lifestyle thing seems to scream music and skateboarding to them. but hasn’t it been screaming this to them for the past 10 years? isn’t there something else out there? of course there is. there is a plethora of other outlets but sometimes people (especially those who tend to work in marketing) are limited by their utter lack of creativity. mind you, this doesn’t include _all_ marketing people. but loads of people are more interested in picking up a paycheck as opposed to making a difference.
is it just me or does kristen stewart, who is barely 18 solidly look like she’s pushing pushing 32? the photo in the link was taken on the set of the joan jet film she’s starring in. who like actually cares about joan jet. yeah, ‘i love rock n’ roll’ was an 80s anthem for mtv. but that song is for beer chugging frat boys. kristen stewart and her agent must really know her audience.
but this brings us to the question. why do teens cake on so much make up and try to look you know 25 or 30. and when these same people turn 30 they start trying to look you know 18.
this post is coming a bit late. –24 june, caught an updated version of ‘a doll’s house’ at the donmar theatre (warehouse) in central london. the henrik ibsen play had been somewhat updated and is now set in the uk. nora is the wife of a politican whose a member of parliament. the cast includes tobey stevens, christopher eccleston, and gillian anderson as nora. more details about the play later. the donmar warehouse is an intimate, relaxed place to catch a play. ‘a doll’s house’ has gotten good reviews which are highly deserved. even tobey stevens, whose sort of a terrible film actor (emphasis on film) was good.
gillian anderson signs autographs following her performance at the donmar theatre in london
for the 5th year in a row, mississippi ranks as the fattest state in america. 30% of kids in america are overweight.
the lac et mel show at the ellington hotel was a total surprise. incredibly different from designer gregor clemens’ previous collections. the colors were completely alive and geometric with lots of bright and exciting tones. the barbecue (grill auf Deutsch) after the catwalk show was well attended. –will post images later.
berlin fashion week day 1
with no less than 14 films in pre-production, including ‘the lone ranger,’ one film coming out this summer (public enemies), one film in production (sin city 3), and three films in post production (including alice in wonderland) looks like (at least at a glance) that either johnny depp has michael jackson proportion debt or he’s trying to cash in before he hits 50 and may no longer be able to carry a film.
this article from the saturday edition of the guardian talks about michael and the seeds that led to his self-loathing. the article also asks us why people had been willing (and now even still) to excuse michael jackson everything, from his bleached out skin to his love of a monkey and the endless trail of little kids and his ‘jesus juice.’ the article also points out that michael jackson paid debbie rowe, the mother of his first 2 children whom he briefly married, $750K per year to stay away from her own children. that she did it is even more bizarre.
isn’t it disturbing that in endless newsreports that this woman, debbie rowe is referred to as ‘the birth mother’ or ‘the biological mother’ but never ‘the mother’ of her own kids? these kids who are whiter than white? if you know anything about biology and how the male has the dominate genes, one has to wonder. if we look at halle berry or barack obama, both of whom had a black father and a white mother, we gotta wonder who is the father of michael jacksons ‘kids.’ did he merely marry debbie rowe so that he could lay claim to the kids knowing that no court in the u.s. (or the world) would allow him to adopt a child. not even malawi? and how in the world did madonna end up with black kids and michael jackson with white ones? the endless questions don’t just stop here.
update: according to an article in the new york post, quoting an interview from the weekly world news, the kids were not fathered by michael jackson.
today’s daily mail goes into details about unconfirmed and confirmed speculations and facts about michael jackson’s life and final days. gay. anorexic. bulimic. pill poper. suicidal. and supposedly, according to the article, michael jackson was diagnosed as schizophrenic as a child. the man whom paul mccartney is quoted as calling a ‘boy-man’ in the saturday edition of the guardian newspaper had a life as colorful if not more so than phil spector. but at least he never shot anybody.
yesterday, the 70s and 80s simultaneously ended upon the death of michael jackson (heart attack) and farrah fawcett (anal cancer).
last year, when john mccain was passed over for president in favor of barack obama, the 60s officially ended. now can we get rid of the 90s?
photos of the self-proclaimed ‘king of pop’ with paramedics can be seen here.
til schweiger, arguably the most popular actor in germany was part of a small panel of judges charged with finding an extra cast member for ‘eclipse,’ the third installment of summit entertainment’s ‘twilight’ saga.
the whole thing looked like a marketer’s wet dream. a t.v. show that would air weekly giving stephanie meyer and summit entertainment basically one hour of free commercial time in the biggest media market in germany. but after only a handful of shows, the ‘mission hollywood’ casting show has been cancelled after garnering only a 11.5% audience.
this seems to be a ‘twilight’ week for ‘a blog about whatever.’ but although stephenie meyer’s ‘twilight’ and ‘new moon’ books currently hold the first and second place on the bestseller list in germany, could the cancellation of this ‘twilight’ special be the beginning of the end of edward cullen burnout?
this blog tends to venture off in various directions exploring different themes. sometimes this stuff is seemingly somewhat assinine, other times somewhat substantial. but never 100% serious. everything should be read with a sense of humour.
at ‘a blog about whatever’ we haven’t been overly concerned with whose in and whose out in terms of film or music. about a year ago there was talk about how it seemed that the only teen and tween idol out there was shira la-whats his name. who isn’t actually that attractive. of course zac efron has been around for a whole 3 films. but he’s like gay male fantasy fodder.
since vampire robert pattinson got hit by a taxi a few days ago trying to escape his tween-aged fans. this blogger has decided to invest more thought and time into this whole teen idol thing.
if you think about it. johnny depp is pushing 50 and isn’t tom cruise almost right there too. forever i’ve been wondering, where are the male actors to make women swoon? and as stated, zac efron, with his perfectly waxed body, doesn’t count. daniel radcliff just is not attractive (with or without the HP glasses). there are loads of young actresses who make the grade. but when it comes to teenage girls…well just look at titanic. they weren’t lined up to see kate winslet’s robost bod. they were all drooling over leo.
but what happened to leo. well various films he’d signed up for pre-titantic release suddenly came out all in the row. the worse of which was ‘the man in the iron mask’ in which dicaprio famously declares ‘i wear the mask, it doesn’t wear me!’
he then proceeded to diss his female fans by ignoring them. he wallowed in his 10 million a film pay day and went out and got all bloated and fat from booze and whatever. the he got all PC on the world and started tooling around in a toyota prius and yapping about the environment. which on one level is okay. but tweens don’t really give a s**t.
then he got himself together and started working again. but by then the damage had been done. he may be 35 but johnny depp looks way younger than him.
robert pattinson just might be the first teen idol since duran duran who has the ‘power’ to make girls cry. or maybe that should be revised to ‘new kids on the block.’ although as legend has it, donnie wahlberg only made them scream. the same with ‘nsynch’ –but that’s because the girls already knew lance was gay. pattinson is at least the first actor that the bbc has deamed important enough to show running his fingers through his hair.
does any of this stuff matter. yes it does. at least for selling film tickets and dvds and blue ray discs, and advertising on youtube and so on.
but will pattinson’s instant success come back to (dare we say) haunt him? with this ‘little ashes’ movie in which apparently he shows more than a little ass, he’s having more than a leonardo dicaprio ‘man in the iron mask’ moment. the question is, is there a publicist in hollywood who could take this gay film and couple it with robert pattinson’s ‘because i’m gay’ comment made on mtv news and spin it in a way that will convince female tweens that you know, he’s straight? even if he is. which he probably is. what gay man would be caught dead with bead head and and b.o.?
i would assume that he might be considering that he has already signed up for all 3 sequels to the ‘twilight’ movies. we know why kirsten stewart has, because you know, female leads are always expendable. but any straight guy would’ve waited for each successive film to come out then sign on for the next. that’s how you make money in hollywood, isn’t it?
if a man had made a film with a $30M budget and it went on to gross almost $400M worldwide, he would’ve been able to choose his asking price for the next film. but catherine harwicke got pushed out while doing press in europe for ‘twilight’ last december. guess summit pictures is hoping that since kristen stewart and robert pattinson are in the film, NOBODY will notice that the direction is totally different.
and to bring in the director who did that piece of s**t film, ‘the golden compass’ just adds insult to injury. or that he directed the massive guy wank films ‘american pie’ and ‘about a boy.’ the ‘twilight’ films are told from bella’s perspective. can a male director capture this? even if the script has been written by a woman?
after viewing the trailer and looking at the photos on ew. it seems the whole gothic feeling of the book and the first film have been banished beyond the pacific northwest.
initially, it was reported, last december, that the stars of the film were really upset that catherine hardwick had been booted from the new moon film and that the film studio was rushing out the second movie.
oh a movie without preparation. we will see what will transpire.
here’s a tip for anyone making websites these days. loads of people are looking at this stuff now on netbooks and pocket computers. meaning, you know, contraptions with small screens. the website for the ‘twilight’ sequel, ‘new moon‘ is a particular problem. there’s no way to scroll up or down. so when you click on ‘about the movie’ you can only read the first 6 lines.
there are many sites like this. the worst offenders are the flash sites. no way for users to enlarge type. just a few words that should be passed along to webmasters.
the bbc reports that robert pattison, while trying to get by fans was hit by a taxi, but not injured.
pattison became a household name last year due to the success of the ‘twilight’ film. apparently he will appear in the remaining 3. if i remember correctly, in the harry potter films his character dies right? good thing for pattison otherwise he would’ve languished in obscurity forever.
i don’t think that daniel radcliff generates such excitement amongst the teenies and tweens.
the italian newspaper corriere della sera responded to the ridiculous ‘innocent abroad’ blog post from timothy egan posted on the new york times website from a couple of days ago. in the post egan bascially called the italian prosecutor inept and declared that knox is innocent because well she’s a white girl from seattle washington and attended a jesuit school. you can read the italian article here. mind you, it’s in italian.
it seems that heroin chic is officially over. peaches and pixie geldolf –the scene girls as they’re called in this london times article calls them.
alexandra shulman, editor of the highly influential vogue magazine has had the fortune (or misfortune) of having one of her memos to leading fashion houses leaked to the press.
in the memo she talks about models being sent over with jutting bones and no breasts. one model booker in the article talks about how she’s been required to find five foot ten inch women with size twenty-three waists. if one could imagine.
there is absolutely nothing wrong with thin models. and as many have noted, obesity is a much greater health issue in the developed world than anorexia. and that retailers/designers in the uk and the u.s. and most assuredly other countries continuously alter their sizes to make people feel good about themselves. various women have commented that at 18 they wore a size 5/6 in the u.s. and are now a size 0 at aged 30 when they in fact have gained weight –not a dramatic amount, mind you.
is amanda knox, the alleged killer of meredith kercher, and her boyfriend raffaelle sollecito as well as the third guy whose already been convicted, symbols of the moral decay of society. are young people, the entitled generation (gen-y) only obsessed with pleasure and what they can get in the short-term? could we tie this narrative to that of the financial crisis and investment bankers who only thought in terms of immediate profit and not long term losses and the disaster the world currently faces?
it’s interesting that none of the reports in the u.s. press really mention meredith kercher. well, her name is mentioned as a victim. but there seems to be thin reporting about her family. and no mention that she, (like barack obama) was black/mixed race. although in this case with a black mother and a white father. was the killing racially motivated? has this possibility been explored?
accussed murderess amanda knox is scheduled to take the standtoday as her and her lawyer mount their defense against charges that she (and her boyfriend at the time raffaelle sollecito) murdered meredith kercher.
update: you can read more about what she said in court here and watch a video.
for some people the answer is ‘of course’ foxy knoxy and her italian boyfriend did it. for this timothy egan who has written the worst editorializing blog entry ever for the new york timeshe believes, ‘of course she didn’t do it, because she has the face of an angle.’ well, 2 words might clear things up for this writer, ted bundy. he didn’t look like a killer either. google his last video interview on youtube and make the comparison. the american college student (knox) who had been spending a year abroad in a small village in italy dominated by college students is caught up in what some might call a show trial, in italy with sollecito, her boyfriend (who according to vanity fair always carried a penknife), over the murder of her roommate the brit meredith kercher.
carrie prejean, now the ex-miss california, and the ex-runner up to miss usa has been fired by donald trump and friends. here’s an audio reaction of prejean. apparently the press release went out from the organization prior to them actually ringing her. that’s america for ya.
should thai rath, the thailand based tabloid, have run this photo of david carradine? the man who made a living imitating an asian man in the kung fu TV show because hollywood couldn’t bring itself to cast a real asian man, seems to have had a secret alternative life.
the question is, do fans of kill bill 1 and kill bill 2 really need to know that david carradine was into drag and kinky sex. or will they now view these films and his other b-movie romps from a whole new perspecitve?
well, it gives people a whole different perspective about hollywood stars. remember bob crane? don’t you wonder what stuff will surface after billy bob thornton or angelina jolie kick the bucket. or perhaps this is an infomercial waiting to happen about the perils and pitfalls of viagra.
update: david carradine autopsy photos are making their way around the internet. one might asked, ‘can’t the celeb get a break.’ he’s getting the same treatment as the aforementioned bob crane, as well as elvis presley, and river phoenix. the later two were shown in their funeral caskets.
note the headline doesn’t say heather graham gets fat. since she was going from a weight of zero. not a dress size. now she seems to be in the positive digits. although we have to wonder a bit about this flash blue dress with the double slit up top and below.
the race for the governorships in virgina has begun. state senator r. creigh deeds upset the carpet bagger terry macauliffe, former chairman of the democratic national committee for the democratic primary.
maybe she shouldn’t hide out in the white house eatting doughnuts. or spend so much time at dennys. or maybe she’s been hanging out too much with oprah winfrey. although the bright colours chosen to wander about the set of harry potter with her girls is somewhat refereshing the vibrant colours do have the affect of over emphasising her alleged addiction to doughnuts. but at least she’s ditched the j. crew mass produced clothing for now.
carrie prejean, who seems to have anticpated the california supreme court ruling regarding homosexual marriage in that western state has been fired as miss california. donald trump, who weeks ago assured her of keeping her crown reportedly gave his blessings. why is donald trump running a beauty pagent? could someone please get him a barber?
nigel farage, head of the ukip party, claims they are libertarians. this could be true. since the european parliamentary elections, they are now the number 2 party in the uk. their platform is like ‘a vote for Ukip, is a vote for flat income tax (and no tax for those earning less than the minimum wage averaged over a year), grammar schools, smoking, small government, and two fat fingers to Europe.’.
with malta clocking in at a turnout near 90%. center right political parties have been the biggest winner in the european parliamentary election. but it is the european commission which plays the primary role when it comes to the 27 member states in the european union. the lowest turnout was in slovakia at just under 20%.
according to der spiegel, with germany being one of the few exceptions, far right parties entered the parliament for the first time from member states such as the uk and the netherlands. with countries such as denmark and austria seeing their nationalist parties gaining a huge percentage.
what does this mean for the eu? is the european union moving to the right while the u.s. moves to the left? or is this the result of a low turnout.
the center right parties such as the tories in the uk and the cdu/csu combo in germany, led by angela merkel, are not troubling. it’s more parties like geert wilder’s freedom party in holland, the dvp in denmark, and the british national party (which won’t allow non-whites to join) which has won seats for the first time.
sounds like socialism to some americans. u.s. senator, ted kennedy, of the cursed kennedy clan, is proposing to force employers pay for health insurance and force individuals to pay penalties if they don’t get it. the penalties would be added to their tax bill. sounds like time for a tea partay.
i kid you not. there was a campaign to get james franco, aka the other guy in spiderman, pulled from speaking at UCLA, a school he took something like 12 years to graduate from. but apparently he hasn’t really accomplished as much and isn’t as much of a role model as the member of linkin park whose replaced him. go figure. but who the hell cares anyway? but maybe this is a sign that the entitled generation also known as generation y are no longer obsessed with celebrity.
revived by that hack quentin tarantino. now grasshopper has died. well, he’s got about 6 films in post production. so guess he’ll live on for a while. there are questions asking whether or not this was a suicide or a sex game gone bad. kinda like the whole amanda knox/foxy knoxy murder sex game situation in italy. but we digress. perhaps the family needs the life insurance money, like heath ledger’s. but um. whether it is or isn’t the facts are, ‘he’s dead, jim.’
this is the first entry in our new ‘recently dead celebrities’ section. so just so people can find this story in the tags we include ‘did david carradine commit suicide’ and ‘david carradine commits suicide’ so we’ve got all the bases covered.
andrew breitbart appears on the national review’s online video program (whatever its called) and said that he was angry that conservatives gave up pop culture to the liberals in the united states. well perhaps with this young con anthem, some people are trying to take it back:
this young con anthem is apparently by a bunch of dartmouth students.
jacqui smith, the home secretary who became famous outside the uk in a little area known as the u.s. last month when it was revealed that the host of the number 3 talk radio show in the united states, michael savage, had been placed on a no fly list for the united kingdom. london mayor boris johnson lashed out at the labour government and jacqui smith last month in an editorial. the tory politican somewhat defended michael savage.
now it seems jacqui smith has been caught up in the parliament expense scandal and is resigning
an airfrance plane has gone missing after taking off from brazil, on its way to paris. it has disappeared from the radar. let the conspiracy theories begin. sounds like an episode from the now defunct t.v. show, the lone gunmen.
90 years following the murder of rosa luxemburg, a german doctor has found what he believes to be the real body of communist revolutionary rosa luxemburg deep in the cellar of charite hospital in berlin, germany ohne kopf.
101 years ago an unexplained event that would make fox mulder and the lone gunmen (r.i.p.) take notice occured over siberia. there was a bright light and many trees were destroyed. a russian scientist now claims that a ufo crashed into a meteorite to save planet earth.
by eleven women. gotta wonder what’s going through his head.
men in power is a new student group at the university of chicago. the article, in the chicago tribune could be a companion piece to the book ‘trouble with boys,’ detailing their problems in school. you can read about the book on amazon.com.
perhaps such a group might get feminists and other identity groups’ panties in a bunch. but there is a sort of crisis brewing in the u.s. and it’s all about men. they are beingin disproportionately hit by the recession. and education hasn’t been so nice to them. the majority of bachelor degrees in the u.s. go to women. and apparently (need to look the exact figure up) only 46% of undergraduates at u.s. universities are male.according to the tribune article, in the states, women get 135 bachelor degrees for every 100 males.
perhaps this is an ‘iron john moment,’ in the early 90s the book ‘iron job’ moved men to go into the wilderness and re-connect with their inner id. or something like that. but there are endless books like boys adrift that are being written at the moment concerning the woosification of men with some blaming public grammar school educators for not acknowleding the obvious. that testosterone works differently than estrogen. and just because sally can sit down nicely and do her homework doesn’t mean that johnny can. or something like that.
well, she didn’t exactly say loser. but this just underscores how bad teachers are in california.
isn’t it great that fringe has been picked up for a second season? and that leonard nimoy will now have a reoccuring role? but now what? is there anyway to get the show out of the CSI/miami vice loop. you know, where every episode is essentially the same.
the beauty of the x-files was not only its quirkiness was that every episode was a bit of a surprise. there was the alien mythology episodes that came and went. there were the horror inspired ones and the drug inspired ones. then there were the humorous ones. hell, even in the 6th season, we discovered that an episode could be written without mulder in it and still be quirky and good.
what is the solution for fringe? what would you tell j.j. abrams. plz give walter bishop more airtime. plz figure out what massive dynamics really is. give the blond chick less airtime and make her more rounded. hell, we even met scully’s brother and bits of her family over the years. don’t these people even have friends?
has kirk acevedo, one of the weakest links in the j.j. abrams produced series ‘fringe,’ may be on the outs.
love ‘fringe’ because its the only remotely sci-fi/x-files-esque show on tv at the moment. ‘fringe’ has great potential.one problem with the first season is that in virtually every single episode someone ends up in a chair with a thing strapped to his head, a la dr. frankenstein. the show could do better than that and move further into the abstract nether. the blond chick gets too much air-time. joshua jackson’s character needs to be more developed. he’s quite flat at the moment. and the show should be given to walter bishop. he’s the only actor that makes the camera dance. the head of the agency could stand to be let go to. and aren’t you tired of hearing about massive dynamic? is it code for general dynamics?
but maybe the move to canada will free up some funds so the producers and writers can add an additional dimension to the show.
you know. once the whole gay marriage thing goes through more u.s. states, here’s what you’re probably gonna see happen.
a lot of businesses will cease to offer healthcare coverage that covers the entire family. statistically speaking, 33% of gay men are HIV positive, and the medication needed to keep AIDs suffers alive is really expensive.
if a small business, for example (this example is based on first hand knowledge) has a family with a severly handicapped child, for instance, medical insurance companies tend to drop these companies because of the prohibitive expense in caring for such a child. from a value perspective, it is unfortunate. it doesn’t always happen, but it can. in the end, everyone in the company ends up with really marginal health insurance with a super high deductible that doesn’t really cover diddiley squat.
additionally, loads of people will claim to be in these ‘relations’ with their friends so that their best friend dying of cancer will be able to get healthcare coverage as well. this may already be the case with heterosexuals, but the level of fraud will increase exponentially.
companies are not obligated to provide healthcare coverage to entire families. in business school, we call this negative hygiene factors, meaning, this has been available for so long and people just accept that it is part of the package and don’t think about it, but when taken away people will really feel it.
american companies are always looking for ways to cut costs. this can be done by laying people off, slashing benefits, and cutting out perks. as these things are neither mandated nor regulated by the u.s. government, and every state has a different set of laws on the books, companies will do what they feel is best for the bottom line.
arguably, this might call for better oversight and more regulation. but as the u.s. is essentially 50 different fifedoms, if a business does not love the business client in one state, it will relocate to another state. which is what has happened to california over the past 20 or 25 years. it’s an un-userfriendly state when it comes to big business. and colorado and states in the hinterlands (read mountain time) have benefitted substantially because of the unfriendly business climate in california.
wonder what the nwife and children of citigroup’s chairman think.
not a big fan of these casting shows. but it seems worth noting that 100 million votes were cast for the american edition of this highly annoying variety show (yes, IT IS). the clean cut guy whose active in his church won out. what could this mean? are americans just not into guyliner. teens and tween girls probably aren’t. but kris allen is adorable. in a safe kinda way. he sings just fine and can actually play a guitar and piano, unlike many of the idol contestants. and in times like these (read finance crisis) people are all about safety and security. but the real question is when did the every day guy lose his southern accent?
forty percent of children are born out of wedlock in the united states. that number is 66% in iceland but only 2% in japan. along with the financial crisis that has devastated iceland, what has become of the family unit? could the low rate in japan explain why, despite 10 years of financial meltdown in the 90s, during it’s own banking crisis, there was no social unrest?
research has shown that kids raised in 2 parent homes tend to go on to have more stable lives. single parent families, at least in the united states, tend to be poorer and the children and families have more social problems.
this story is thought provoking. according to the article, ‘baneberry heights has the very worst that money can buy.’
the original boston tea party took place 236 years ago on dec 16, 1773. the naughties versions began trickling in in march culmulating to a large national event on tax day. the u.s. republican party is planning next month.
the original boston tea party was one of a series of events that triggered the american revolution, coined the phrase ‘no taxation without representation,’ and cummulated in the u.s. breaking ties with its colonial oppressor, the united kingdom. this could conceivably be why americans drink tea with lemon and honey as opposed to with milk and sugar.
in the u.s., the new j.j. abrams directed star trek extravaganza opened to 24M dollars on friday. with the saturday numbers rising slightly. this 2 million increase would indicate that the word-of-mouth on the film is excellent.for film, the trend is, when word-of-mouth is bad, the saturday numbers fall.
if the u.s. government hadn’t hired 66,000 people last month, april unemployment numbers would’ve looked similar to those of preceding months. so why are people excited that the u.s. has ‘only’ lost 539,000 jobs? unemployment is just below 9% –which isn’t the true unemployment number. this number only applies to those still collecting checks from the government and doesn’t take into account people formerly working full-time who are now only in part-time jobs.
the cs monitor reports amazon told one newspaper executive that it wanted 70 percent of kindle subscription revenue and the right to license the content elsewhere. and what’s in it for the news guys? well, they have the opportunity to be available on kindle.
christopher caldwell, in the latest issue of the weekly standard writes about the origins of the current woes of ireland. it’s worth reading.
in honor of the april 15 tea parties. and as comic relief to swine flu (–you know, what some conceivably believe to be the 3rd of 7 plagues –following SARS and bird flu, which is leading us to the apocalpse. actually, if this is true, swine flu is arguably the 4th of the 7. although the 3rd of the 21st century.) and to take our minds off the financial crisis. here’s a blast from the past.
jonathan franzen gave a reading last night at temporaer kunsthalle in berlin. as he studied german in school and spent at least one semester in germany, he attempted to do the reading in german. he read from the german edition of ‘the discomfort zone,’ which was originally released in the united states in 2006 or so.
although we might give franzen a pointer. it could be a good idea to sometimes remember that in german the action comes at the end of the sentence rather than at the beginning. there is a funny joke about the european union and simultaneous translations. basically, someone is telling a joke and the translators tell the germans and scandinavians Someone is telling a joke. Laugh at the beginning of the sentence or they will think that you’re stupid.
this story is so old. but oh well. so perez hilton blogged that carrie prejean is a ‘bitch’ on perezhilton.com (we won’t link to that site here). then he got on msnbc and said he made a mistake and should have called prejean, miss california (and miss u.s.a runner-up) the c word. the comments beneath this l.a. times blog post are pretty pro-carrie prejean for standing up for her personal principles at a moment in time when many people (some high profile ministers) are not. the great thing about america is it’s free speech laws. and the constitution doesn’t limit free speech only to the people who agree with one’s own beliefs. many western countries have imposed limited free speech on their citizens, americans should be thankful.
but one might ask why the mysoginist perez hilton would be judging a beauty pageant? wouldn’t it have made more sense for donald trump to have hired paris hilton instead? although one might ask why donald trump should be overseeing a beauty pageant as well given that he’s got some major style problems.
this is hardly news. but the problem is many organizations are trying to hold onto their precious business models by trying to monetize linking to content. apparently, there is talk of lawsuits from a notable wireservice. would it be possible to force the courts to rule that if anyone wants to link to anything that he would need the permission of the linkee. on the one hand, this could be interesting. as it would probably also extend to photos. and think of all the random stuff people from your high school and college days have been posting without your permission. and your personal blogs. but then one could say. well, if you are against people linking to your articles, then why not have your webmaster write a program that finds these incoming links and when the person clicks through he or she would be prompted to register or pay.
it is quite bad that some bloggers are just cutting and pasting content and posting whole articles. but this was more of a problem 8 or 9 years ago with bloggers who never wrote a paper in school and thus never learned about citation rules and giving credit and not plagarizing.
but the newspaper industry shouldn’t wall itself off. it should continue looking for a new business model. the new issue of vanity fair has a pretty good story about arthur o. schulzberg, jr., chairman of the new york times and the man the new york post (or was it another paper) alleged was having an affair with caroline (orange hair) kennedy. he talks about how he is platform agnostic.
and yeah, the nytimes.com website is quite informative. but why aren’t these guys (and they are mostly guys) really thinking about shaking their tree a bit. and opening up their elite institutions to well, people under 40. these newspaper conventions are thick with geriatric types. with age comes knowledge. but in the post information age (the one we’re presently living in) with age also comes a sort of backwardness. everyone needs to constantly update our skills and re-invent ourselves and re-examine our own personal business model. it sucks eggs for some, but it will keep you young and agile. it’s like the grandmother who lives well into her 90s who spends her time cultivating younger friends. as you get older, if you don’t want to be alone, you’ve got to cultivate younger friends. and a more user-friendly business model.
yesterday, had a chance to see the new porsche museum. amazing. whether or not one is into big muscle cars, everyone can appreciate the slopping architecture of the white and glass building.
entrance fee is 8 euros with a special price for students and children up-to 14 are free. anyone can pick up a pair of the co-branded seinheiser-porsche personal audio guide with head phones. after exiting the escalator, you have the option of heading for the pre-1948 displays to discover the origins of of the 911, 586 and the boxster as well as just porsche in general and the evolution of the engineering and design. most of the auto displays also have a small t.v. screen. you can select the code next to the car and the auto synchs up with the images.
needless to say the museum was wall-to-wall men. a great place to hang out if a woman is looking to meet her future husband. but the question is how to encourage more females to study engineering?
2009 isn’t turning out to be a great year for caroline kennedy. first she was snubbed by david paterson, governor of new york, for hillary clinton’s open senate seat. then she was lambasted by the financial times for the audacity of coloring her own hair what looks like putrid orange with roots. and now supposedly she’s been passed over by the vatican to be and an envoy to vatican city.
a lot of people are wondering why pastor rick warren, author of the bestseller, ‘a purpose drive life’ has begun to back pedal on his stance regarding california’s proposition 8. town hall has compared his performance to that of the disciple peter. a jump to youtube and a viewing of warren’s interview on ‘larry king live’ will probably clear that up in a few minutes. which will happen on this end once we take the time to google this. although generally speaking, watching larry king live should only be forced upon someone while he is on the treadmill.
a viewpoint can generally be respected even if it it is not accepted by a small minority, if there is consistency in the way it is presented. everchanging viewpoints generally are not.
even before saddleback church broke off from calvary ministries, warren had caught quite a bit of flack from more traditional ministries for his so-called ‘feel good’ church and sermons which don’t necessarily align themselves with a whole lot of biblical dogma/orthodox teaching. so perhaps this just gets tossed into the ever growing pile of rick warren gripes.
that the headline screams ‘A More Simple LIfe for Bush,’ can be interpreted as a play-on-words alluding to the reality show, ‘the simple life,’ that made paris hilton and nicole ritchie household names.
george w. bush is not the worst u.s. president. that distinction goes to ulysses s. grant, as most historians know. with herbert hoover falling in the top 5. bush’s one big mistake was iraq. yet he did manage to make americans feel safe after the twin towers incident and the meltdown of the u.s. economy. people seem to have forgotten the two previous nosedives the stockmarket took in the early 21st century. the first was following the indecision that was the 2000 election and the dithering about hanging chads and divining the intention of low income and elderly voters. this managed to shake world confidence in the u.s. political system. the second nose dive happened following nine eleven. manhattan was a ghost town for about 3 months.
maybe ecouraging americans to continue spending and the car companies practically giving autos away and further encouraging people to live beyond their means, from an ethical perspective, wasn’t necessarily a good idea. but given that the u.s. GDP is made up of almost 70% of consumer spending, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. you can’t really reverse such dynamics overnight. but perhaps someone could’ve considered the long-term implications of such prolifigate spending. and teaching americans not to live beyond their needs. could this be the lesson of the 2009 recession? and the 21st century. happy easter.
5 days and counting. since wednesday, u.s. president barack obama has thus far refused to comment regarding the capture of american hostage, captain richard phillips, by a group of pirates off the somali coast during a failed hijacking attempt. who would’ve thought this would be his first international incident. is obama having a jimmy carter impotency moment along the lines of the iran hostage crisis? what would ronald reagan have done?
perhaps the real question is, are disney, johnny depp, orlando bloom, keira knightly, and pirates of the caribbean 1 through 3 (and counting) to blame for making piracy sexy? because you know, whenever there is a world crisis, hollywood must be behind the whole thing. apparently the pirates have successfully been paid over 80 million dollars in ransoms over the past few years.
following on the heels of the success of germany’s 2500 euro rebate to scrap old cars and upgrade to more environmentally, friendly one, the uk government is looking to enact a similar plan in the united kingdom. the program has essentially revived the german car industry. not just for german cars but also for japanese and american brands. with additional incentives given by the various brands, in germany, it is possible to save up to almost 5,000 euros on a new automobile. more information can be found on the german rebate program on Bild and on the UK programhere.
update. from may in the uk you can get 2000 pounds off a new car if you scrap one that’s 10 years or older. the cost apparently will be evenly split between the car company and the government. more details about gordon brown’s new proposals on the independent website.
apparently canadian are hopping mad at billy bob thornton for calling them mashed potatoes without the gravy. the man whose ex-wife used to run around with a vial of his blood around his neck, apparently has had to cancel the remainder of his european tour. who know billy bob thornton had a band? who knew candians could get angry.
yesterday, took a look at the sony viao p series laptop. it’s a pocket laptop that could conceivably fit in one’s back pocket if one wears baggy jeans and is a guy. at 999 euros (1200 dollars), it is definitely a vanity piece. and comes in an abundance of colors and a simple carrying pouch.
the big problem with the system, and this is addressed in the cnet review as well, is that it is virtually impossible to use the mouse. it’s one of these blackberry type contraptions that is bound to break. but the keyboard is nice and the screen is of surprising high quality. it comes pre-loaded with windows vista, which some people claim eats up 33GB of the 60GB memory.
is the vaio p the bridge between the convergence of the mobile phone and the computer? and should these 2 devices converge? nokia seems to think so, as they’re getting into the computer business. but as we can see, the problem is really all about the mouse and navigation. and how small can one go and still give users control. perhaps the only solution is a touchscreen. and this is by far not a plug for apple, but for the LG prada 2 950 which is a touch phone that also comes with a keyboard that easily slides beneath the phone. the latest version comes with gps and wifi.
germany’s version of the u.s. moviefone website, kino has had the wrong release date posted on its homepage for ‘fast and furiouss,’ the vin diesel-paul walker-michelle rodriguez-jordana brewster film since march. the film, which was released in germany on april 2, still managed to land in the number 1 position with over 600K people attending. but in germany, films with this kinda star quality (however fallen) tend to pull in 1M bodies during opening weekend which in deutschland runs from thursday to sunday.
the 72 million dollar weekend debut in the u.s., leading to a 100 million international weekend, defies the theory that sequels have got no legs.
but the real questions are: can ‘fast and furious’ revive the u.s. car industry? was vin diesel’s career ever really dead? is michelle rodriguez just a piece of meat? is paul walker’s perpetual tan in the film aging him unnecessarily? is paul walker just a piece of meat? and why are all the cops white or asian and the deliquents and drug dealers black or brown?
innovative mobile technology never comes from the u.s. the rule of thumb is that everything starts in japan, then two years later, the europeans follow. japanese mobile customers have spent the past 3 years reading novellas on their mobile phones, having long ago grown accustomed to watching videos. while americans are just experimenting with the small screen and are excited by amazon’s kindle reader for some inexplicable reason.
india is of course, a different area. as it is east and has a lot of western influences. it is also, according to business week not a market that is smitten with the iPhone.
quentin tarantino, after the debacle that was death proof/grindhouse, tries to revive his dying career with a nazi film 75 years after the austrian man with the fuller-brush type moustache added the title ‘president’ just to give him the double-barrel name of chancellor-president (of germany, that is). the film stars brad (i can’t carry a movie) pitt, diane kruger, daniel bruehl (goodbye lenin) and some other folk not worth mentioning.
i guess the recession is in full swing. first we find out that starlets like scarlett are getting offered peanuts you know like 400K for a role in iron men. now we find that rosario dawson shops at ross. the dress for less chain basically buys overstock from name stores and sells it at less than half price. guess those royalty checks from ‘kids’ and ‘men n black 2′ aren’t really cutting it.
the link from yesterday of michelle obama walking around in her j.crew outfit showed the obvious lines of a woman squeezed into a girdle. the link from april 1 has been switched and we are in the process of hunting this picture down.we think oprah winfrey’s people pulled a favor, given that the big ‘o’ (in this case, the other BIG ‘o’) is quite popular in the uk.
the economist mistakenly believes michelle obama has disappeared because the white house is hiding her, for fear she could become a lighting rod as hillary clinton did during bill clinton’s administration. but judging by these photos in london, the real reason is that michelle has been enjoying the down home cooking in the white house. laura bush packed on a few pounds during bush the second’s administration, but those quickly melted away as the international incidents kept rolling through the white house. hopefully that won’t be necessary for michelle obama to lose weight. the best thing about the daily mail photos is the picture at the bottom. the caption muses as to whether or not michelle is wearing a girdle. does any of this stuff really matter. in the grand scheme of things no. but during this credit crunch/financial crisis if we can’t find one or two things to snicker about regarding this very unfunny first family, this is gonna be a really long recession.
facebook, the unprofitable company with 265 million users and the flimiest of business plans is in search of $100 million dollar to finance it’s growth over revenue business strategy. apparently the 100 million dollar infusion it got last year wasn’t enough. the company run by a 24 year old with zero business experience is looking at bank of america (which has borrowed money from the federal government) for assistance, according to business week.
do americans think their money is being tossed down one big black hole? you betcha.
this was originally posted spetember 2008.
the glass steagall act passed during the depression era, tightly regulated the u.s. banking system. it stood the country in good stead for about 70 years –until bill clinton signed the bill in 1999 which repealed the glass steagall act.
according to an article in the new york times, from 1995, robert rubin, treasury secretary at the time, is on record as saying the clinton ‘administration continues to favor allowing banks to merge with insurance companies as well as securitites firms.’
the 1999 financial services modernization act, written by phil gramm, who had been advising john mccain up until this past july, was passed by both houses of congress and signed by bill clinton in the same year, the new law effectively repealed glass steagall and the bank holding act of 1956 which prohibited financial companies from owning banks and insurance companies.
glass steagall prohibited the merging of banks, securities firms, and insurance companies, while the financial services modernization act allowed for huge financial conglomerates.
both nancy pelosi and joe biden voted yes on repealling glass stegall on november 4, 1999 as did chris dodd and and bill clinton signed the bill into law one week later. barack obama was in the state senate at the time, so his hands are clean. and john mccain abstained from voting.
the gramm-leach-bliley act, also known as the financial services modernization act of 1999, passed the senate 90-8 and the house 362-57 on november 4, 1999.
i will continue to post variations of this post every few days or at least every few weeks. it is important for people to know where the blame lies. and it is squarely on the shoulders of congressional members from the 90s and especially bill clinton.
twitter is all about expressing oneself in 140 characters or less. it’s like the motorola pagers that americans (and nobody else around the globe) embraced during the 1990s. this online version of the pager at least doesn’t charge you by the character. celebs like 50 cent, who doesn’t even know how to spell his own name, confess to using ghost writers to compose their tweets.
president luiz inácio lula da silva apparently failed to clarify the role of green-eyed white people. but it is believed that his message got across to uk prime minister gordon brown, who was standing next to the brazil president when he made his comments in portugese. although he did not directly agree with the president it should be noted that prime minister brown did not 100% dismiss this assertion. the financial times quotes the president of the largest country (population-wise) in south america, and an economic powerhouse in its own right, as saying, ‘This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.’
in honor of ‘quantum of solce’ (aka, the worst james bond film ever) having been released on dvd worldwide this month. we would like to post some of the reviews of this film and refer you to the comment sections where time and time again fans say, that this is by far the worst james bond film ever, with ‘casino royale’ (the daniel craig version) being the second worst and daniel craig himself being the worst.
about a decade ago, there was a documentary on the bond films that was basically about the late cubby broccoli. and his offspring who took over from him said the only instructions he ever gave them was, “don’t fuck it up.” and well, it looks like they have.
the last two films have abandoned all that made bond the film that bond fans loved to see opening weekend. bond is like a rugged wolverine type. there’s no ’shaken not stirred’ martini, Q is gone, money penny ist weg, the gadgets have disappeared, and bond no longer utters the phrase ‘bond, james bond.’ all the fun has been completely sucked out of the films as the producers go in search of the jason bourne fans.
the independent says it best. “macho bond is fun free.” the daily mail calls this sad excuse for a bond film, the quantum of nonesense. this london times interview actually is an okay interview. but you need to scroll down to the bottom to read the scathing fan reviews.
generally rich’s opinion pieces in the new york times are pro-democrat left-tilting screeds. today he seems a little like an angry democrat given to populism. impressively, he takes a page from this blog and goes out of the way to point out that timothy geithner, while at the fed, was one of 3 people who let lehman brothers fail yet saved bears stern and so on and so forth. that he was president of the new york federal reserve means that geithner deserve a considerable bit of blame.
it’s also great that someone with a major newspaper has finally fingered the clinton administration (bill clinton, larry summers, and robert rubin) as haven been complicit in deregulating the banking industry in the 1990s. but what about all the others who voted for it including joe (i live in delaware where most corporations are incorporated to avoid paying state taxes) biden, and nancy pelosi.
there’s a lot of stories about this uk reality t.v. star turned celebutante who died today. she was the much despised ’star’ of the uk version of big brother. and then celebrity big brother.
in the endless reams of articles that have poured out over the past few months since jade goody was diagnosed with cervical cancer, there seem to be a big hole in the coverage. yes, her situation has pushed the NHS in the uk to consider screening women under 20 for this disease. this disease as seen, can be fatal, and is generally contacted by highly sexually active women. if you read this bit in the guardian, it explains how the disease is contacted. with the most important lines being “The evidence shows, however, that the more often somebody picks up the virus (picked up via a sexually transmitted disease that causes cervical cancer), particularly if they have many sexual partners, the higher their risk that HPV will trigger cervical cancer.” there’s no conversation about abstinence. or questions about teen sex. how many sex partners did ms. goody have? is it unfeeling to ask? could be good information. as she lived and died in public, it doesn’t seem to be a question that should be put off limits. we know that the whole abstinence thing didn’t really work with bristol palin. but for someone to die at 27, it could’ve been a good question for the british media to have asked.
according to a news report on fox news. meredith kercher, the british coed who was murdered almost 2 years ago while studying in italy. may have tried to ring her mothere while she was being attacked. american, amanda knox (aka, foxy knoxy) and her boyfriend italian raffaele sollecito, are on trial for murder. a third suspect was found guilty last year and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
does one need an mfa to write? and how uncouth are columbia students that they feel the need to stalk a minor celebrity.
apparently the plug was pulled on natascha richardson, the wife of liam neesen aka the voice of the lion in the chronicles of narnia, died yesterday. and an autopsy is to be performed. the women fell during a ski instruction on a baby slope in canada. who knew canada had ski slopes. no ma
