Animal New York ran Matt Drudge's montage of horrifying Hillary Clinton pics through something called the Warhol Art Maker, and the result is the glorious piece of art above. Not bad, eh? Or at least, you know, something that won't haunt your nightmares for eternity, which is an improvement. Even Obama supporters might like to frame and hang this, assuming Clinton drops out as the punditocracy near-unanimously says she will soon do, to fondly remember the good old days. [Animal]
Kooky libertarian Ron Paul has already lost the Republican presidential nomination to John McCain, but he's technically still in the race and even picked up 16 percent of the no-doubt-minimal Republican voting in Pennsylvania. And Paul apparently still commands an army of internet zealots who spam online comment boards in between World of Warcraft guild quests, because his troops just pushed Paul's new book Revolution to the top of the May 18 Times bestseller list for nonfiction. Vanity Fair took a look at some of their shady tactics, happily confirmed by Paul's publisher Grand Central:
Paul loyalists have been responsible for much of Revolution’s success, with more than 7,000 supporters pledging to buy copies at ronpaulbookbomb.com, a site affiliated with neither the publisher nor the Paul campaign, and individual Paulheads buying as many as “five, ten, fifteen” copies at a time at signings. “A big email blast” from Paul’s presidential campaign to its list of supporters has also helped. “It’s been its own sort of phenomenon,” [a publisher spokeswoman] says.
Revolution currently has a level of reader-review praise rarely seen on Amazon, with 236 reviews out of 245 giving it a perfect five stars.
The Times put a dagger next to the book's ranking because of all the bulk orders.
But of course Paul supporters could care less about that, they just want to influence the Republican platform at the nominating convention. Which is why we'll soon be allowing deportation of native-born Mexicans, paying for lattes with gold coins and banning abortion. Yay Ron Paul!
Do you hate everyone around you? If so, you may wish to download one of Slate's political ringtones. No, seriously. This is what they're doing. Ringtones made of soundbytes taken from the never-ending 2008 primary elections. Like Hillary's odd laugh, John McCain calling someone a jerk, and "Yes We Can!" If you download these to your phone, you will get beaten up. But! They forgot a couple! Like, all the good ones, basically. Allow us:
We'd link to downloadable mp3s of those classic moments, but we really don't want anyone to actually have "political ringtones." Except "God DAMN America," that one's awesome.
Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, two of the more invested stars of MTV reality smash The Hills, know that you know that they know that you know that they're fake. Phew. They don't bother with the pretense of being discreet in the way the pose for paparazzi photographs, cause fake "drama," and desperately ingratiate themselves to monsters like TMZ warlock Harvey Levin. "We're entertainers," Heidi tells the LA Times in a new story on the couple. Hm. Fair enough. I can actually, uh, sort of respect that. At least they're honest! And it works. According to Spencer, they get $50,000 each for a two hour club appearance. I don't know what's more disheartening, that they make more in two hours than I do in a year, or that a club can afford to pay such a ridiculous lump of sweaty cash, because business will in fact boom after a "Speidi" visit. I just can't believe that people actually want to drink with these fools. But aparently they do, and that's all Heidi and Spencer's doing. Which is kind of brilliant. It's one of the reasons why they're besties with Us Weekly editor Janice Min, I'm sure.
They won over Min when she saw Speidi-related web traffic rise and rise. "That's when I thought, 'You know what? Let's just take a risk on these people,'" she says. And it's done wonders for Us. Janice must love them! And they love her too:
"Janice Min at Us Weekly is like a family member to us," Spencer said. "We love her. If my mom and her are e-mailing me at the same time, I'm like, 'Uh, Janice or my mom?' "
It's a real romance. Or parasitic relationship. One of those things.
And the couple just keeps dreaming bigger and bigger. Heidi would like to keep pursuing her music, hoping to be "as big as Britney Spears and Madonna" one day. Spencer just wants to make money and be famous and maybe have his own reality show. And they both feel they deserve it. After all, what they do is hard work. Sort of:
"No celebrity does anything, really," Spencer said. "Unless you're a famous athlete who actually physically does something, like, how much work is reading lines from a script? We're improv TV personalities. That's way harder."
Remember the famous "West Bushwick" item from last year? It started as a post by Doree Shafrir in response to a story Cornell student Erin Geld wrote for the Daily Sun, the littlest Ivy college's student paper. Geld stayed with friends in a nonexistant neighborhood she referred to as "West Bushwick" for the weekend and was overwhelmed and intimidated by her perceived coolness of it all. She marveled at the big lofts, the "spooky lots and the occasional shady passerby," and the fashion parade of Bedford Avenue. She came to the conclusion that she wasn't sure if she would be able to handle living in such a crazy place after graduation! Well, guess what: now you've gone and done it. In Newsweek, the same writer blogs that because of the response to the "rather neutral" item on this website, her column was "TORN apart" in our commenting section, a "New York hipster club." This "hipster attack" from commenters "managed to chase me to California."
The day my Brooklyn column ran, it was picked up by the notoriously nasty Gawker.com, where it was TORN apart in its commenting section, a New York hipster hub. (You have to be pre-approved just for the right to comment, making it a bizarre online club.)
A brief, rather neutral note about my piece was followed by an explosion of scathing retorts, such as: "Gag. Please DON'T move to BK. We don't want you either." It hurt. I took every mean comment to heart. In two years of writing easygoing columns about local demolition derbies and ratty old hotels, I had received a steady stream of sweet e-mails but never really made any waves. This tsunami of attention was utterly insane.
I recently reviewed the comments, and as far as I can tell, what pissed these readers off was: 1) "West Bushwick," as I had called my friends' neighborhood, is apparently just some real-estate/hipster-neighborhood-renaming conspiracy that Insiders otherwise know as "East Williamsburg," which, according to said Insiders, sucks. 2) I had, without a smidgen of irony, announced I was moving to Brooklyn because it was cool. Which is, obviously, a very uncool thing to do.
Anyway, she moved to San Francisco, and it's so much better! Screw you, Williamsburg, Gawker commenters, and hipsters:
"I eschewed the Ithaca-to-Williamsburg trend and went west to San Francisco. It is, surprisingly, almost more packed with bandanna babies than Brooklyn. They lounge in Dolores Park with organic sandwiches and two-buck Chuck as if it were stale bagels and PBR on Bedford Avenue.
They are similar: name-dropping obscure bands, writing novels "secretly" and being endearingly vain. But in the Mission's sweet-smelling cloud of tolerance, hipsters are relaxed and just a bit more lovable. Being from somewhere else is a good thing. It's expected, interesting. There's no convenient Internet venue through which to pick on people, as they lick their own outsider wounds. Instead, people comment on restaurants and farmers' markets. They're usually nice. Helpful. Memories of 1967 still linger in the Bay Area, and people are a little goofy for my East Coast taste. But, thank God, they don't take themselves very seriously—they're way cool with being cool.
"Two men and a juvenile are accused of digging up a corpse, decapitating the body and using the head to smoke marijuana, according to court documents." [Houston Chronicle via DRUDGE]
When Jack Kliger took over Elle and Hachette's other US titles in 1999, he established himself as one of the magazine industry's few multimedia visionaries. The former Conde Nast publisher pushed Hachette's content onto EchoStar's interactive TV platform; Hachette's Car and Driver teamed up with the USA Network to produce a reality show spin-off of Cannonball Run, the cross-country car-race movie. And, when Hachette closed Elle Girl and Premiere magazines but kept their websites going, Kliger the charmer spun the cost-cutting exercise as an embrace of online media. So how's that going? Try utter disaster. We've been getting reports all day that the group has laid off almost its entire online staff. And here's one good reason: even Hachette's most successful online properties have the reach of a mid-sized blog, according to previously undisclosed web stats. (Oh, yes, and Hachette's Elle is about to lose its cherished role on Project Runway, the fashion-industry reality show.) If the future of magazines is some multimedia magic, as Kliger has been saying for a decade, Hachette has not much of a future; nor the Hachette boss himself.
First of all, the layoffs. There is no official word yet, but we're hearing from inside that up to 20 people have gone, including executive Matthew Rosenberg; Joyann King, fashion editor at ElleGirl.com; Holly Seigal, senior editor of Ellegirl.com; and Dei Lewison, producer of the Elle websites. (There's no word on the former store salesman boyfriend whom insiders said Elle's self-promoting creative director, Joe Zee, installed at the fashion magazine's website.) The casualties were called to a meeting at 10.30 and then left to stew for quarter of an hour before digital boss Todd Anderman breezed in to fire them.
Another casualty is Glenn Kenny, whom Kliger talked up so much when he shut down the US edition of Premiere, the entertainment magazine. When the title was shuttered, Kliger said Kenny—the magazine's "most recognizable name"—would remain as an online movie critic and blogger. Kliger told the Wall Street Journal: "We saw trend lines for both ELLEgirl.com and Premiere.com moving in very positive, healthy directions, and we didn't necessarily feel that the print versions, which were not trending in a reasonable timeline toward profitability, enhanced what the digital versions were providing." So, why the cutbacks at a division which Kliger said would provide Hachette with over 20% of its revenues and most of its advertising growth?
First of all, Hachette has always been an abortion of a magazine company. It was a rag-tag collection of also-ran titles put together by David Pecker, now busy losing money at American Media. The company is owned by a dysfunctional French conglomerate, which never gave Kliger the resources or authority he needed to make the group a significant player. Much of Kliger's talk—about grand web plans—was just designed to bamboozle credulous journalists who might otherwise see a marginal magazine group in decline. Earlier in his tenure, Kliger was said to be much loved by his French bosses. More recently, we heard the relationship had broken down. "I'd heard the French were rats," he's known to complain. "But now I know."
Second, it's experiencing the same pressure to cut costs that is affecting other print publishing groups—except more so. Lagardere, the French company which owns Hachette, recently disclosed its US revenues were flat—and that was not even counting the revenues sacrificed when Premiere folded. The firm is moving out of the 40th floor of its Manhattan headquarters to save on rent; business trips have been curtailed; and editors are forced to print stories from inventory because editorial budgets do not allow new commissions.
Third, the grand multimedia experiment has been an utter failure. The early experiments with interactive TV were dismal, predictably. But nor have Kliger's more recent investments in branded web titles such as Premiere.com fulfilled the promise he saw for them. Hachette recently allowed Quantcast, a web measurement firm, to monitor traffic. Those numbers are not protected by a password. All the Hachette website put together garner no more than 200-250,ooo unique visitors per day; one of the biggest, Elle's website, only attracts of the order of 60,000. Embarrassing.
Hachette hasn't said whether it will be replacing any of the staff let go today. "There is no stability here, no one knows what's going on or what is happening," says a tipster. Elle, Car and Driver and various other titles certainly have some sort of following, even if exaggerated by pay-for-praise public relations interns. Their economic value may be better realized in some other media group, if anyone is still buying. As for Kliger himself, the tittle-tattle is that his contract is coming up for renewal—and it won't be.
Jackie Warner, the personal trainer star of Bravo's reality show Workout and popular fantasy girlfriend of straight women, is facing a fan backlash for acting rude on the show. They're calling for a boycott! Apparently she fired a guy named Peeler (rudely), and now she's being branded as a "negative icon to the gay community." Harsh! Shouldn't that type of forceful condemnation be reserved for, you know, Perez Hilton? [LA Rag Mag]
What's the word on the street these days? "Word on the street is that Brian Anthony is also fighting hard to open for Madonna on her upcoming "Hard Candy" tour." This Brian Anthony, who is some type of music maker, did a mashup of his music with Madonna's and put it on his Myspace page. Now, "The 'Worked Up!' mash-up is being passed around the Madonna camp and the buzz is BIG on it." How can we be so sure? Because we got the information firsthand, in a hilariously inept press release from Jim Strzalkowski, fantabulous PR man—and fan—to the D-list stars!
Some PR people like to stick with very formal public statements; others prefer to pass around tips in whisper campaigns, as if they were your friend. But Strzalkowski's M.O. is to write his press releases in the format of a letter from this little-known celebrity's hugest fan, as if he was just so overcome with his admiration for their brilliance he couldn't help but to send out email blasts telling every last detail of their miserable careers. Clients be damned—Jim Strzalkowski just wants to see these talented artists succeed.
Now, he's keeping gossip sites like us on the cutting edge of Brian Anthony's doomed attempt to work his way onto Madonna's tour, somehow. "As Reported at GENO'S WORLD." Let us at it! Hey Jim, don't get so excited about it that you go and put your own job in jeopardy—we need you!:
If you are a Madonna fan or a fan of dance music in general, you MUST visit Brian Anthony's MySpace page to check out his "Worked Up! Brian Anthony Vs. Madonna" megamix! What a treat! It's great to hear one of our favorite early Madge songs, "Everybody," sampled throughout. I made the mistake of bouncing to it at work and made a big scene dancing with my co-workers!
...
With this Latin lover's "mucho caliente" looks and his steamy lyrics you know the girls across the pond are salivating for him. Wait until Madonna gets her hands on this one!
The New Yorker's Joan Acocella explains in May's Smithsonian what effect living in close quarters, often in public, has on the behavior of New Yorker. "They act on the street as they do in private. In the United States today, public behavior is ruled by a kind of compulsory cheer that people probably picked up from television and advertising that coats their transactions in a smooth, shiny glaze. New Yorkers have not yet gotten the knack of this." She also totally knows why we ignore celebrities when we see them in the street (no, it's not 'cause we're jaded):
"Another curious form of cooperation one sees in New York is the unspoken ban on staring at celebrities. When you get into an elevator in an office building and find that you are riding with Paul McCartney—this happened to me—you are not supposed to look at him. You can peek for a second, but then you must avert your eyes.
The idea is that Paul McCartney has to be given his space like anyone else. A limousine can bring him to the building he wants to go to, but it can't take him to the 12th floor. To get there, he has to ride in an elevator with the rest of us, and we shouldn't take advantage of that. This logic is self-flattering. It's nice to think that Paul McCartney needs us to do him a favor..."
Well, we may not stare at celebs, but we do excitedly Blackberry their sightings almost instantly to the Gawker Stalker tip line! (Keep up the good work.)
Internet nerds became terribly excited recently when Twitter sprung a man from jail, but it's worth noting that in most of the world, blogging is much, much more likely to send you to to clink. While there are a number of bloggers whose eternal imprisonment—possibly in the Phantom Zone—we fantasize about daily, we grudgingly admit that throwing bloggers in jail for blogging is probably bad. So as a public service, we're here to tell you where not to blog if you value your freedom. China and Iran probably get the most press for their blogger crack-downs, and Malaysia just arrested a blogger this week, but if there's anything we learned from skimming the site of the Committee to Protect Bloggers, it's this: don't Tumblr in Egypt.
Egypt
Egypt really takes the cake, arresting, detaining, harassing, and beating bloggers that span the entire ideological spectrum, from the ultra-conservative Muslim Brotherhood to Coptic Christian minorities to socialists.
Kareem Amer. Site: Karam903.blogspot.com. Result of arrest? Not good. "The trial was adjourned to February 22, 2007 where the judge said Nabil was guilty and would serve three years for insulting Islam and inciting sedition, and one year for insulting Mr Mubarak."
Esraa Abdel Fattah Ahmed Site: A now-deleted Facebook group urging protests against food price hikes. Result of arrest? Released!
Another blogger/protester, Mahamed El Sharkawi, was also released.
Not so lucky: fellow protester Kareem El Beheiri. Site: egyworkers.blogspot.com. Still in custody after reported beatings and electric shocks.
Back in November of 2007, Egyptian authorities arrested blogger El-Hendy (Site: Eshreen) for a protest. He too was eventually released.
Muslim Brotherhood member Abd El-Rahman Faras was arrested in 2007 for anti-government threats on his site. He was released on the condition that he'd erase the offending post.
Saudi Arabia
Fouad al Farhan is known as the Father of Saudi Blogging—sort of the Instapundit of Saudi Arabia except actually dedicated to reforming and improving his nation. He was arrested in December for an anti-government listicle and finally released in April.
China
Jamyang Kyi is a Tibetan blogger who was arrested just a month ago by the Chinese. The charges are unknown, though an arrest basically guarantees a conviction. We probably won't be hearing from her again for a little while. But hey, who's got Olympic Fever!
They don't always jail bloggers in China, of course. Sometimes they throw them in mental hospitals! He Weihua was guilty of blogging about human rights, which you probably could've guessed.
Iran Reza Valizadeh was arrested last November for, uh, revealing that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's guard dogs were overpriced. Seriously. Ahmadinejad is a blogger himself, but that hasn't stopped his nation from arrested dozens of web scribblers. Including:
Soheil Asafy
Sina Motellebi
Arah Sigarchi
Mojtabal Saminejad
Omid Sheikhan
Nadme Omid-Parvar—who was pregnant at the time of her arrest.
Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton has revealed his inevitable-in-hindsight line of t-shirts and bags and shit. It's no surprise that he likes pink. Oh, and look! Edgy things like pistols and the words "Gossip Gangster" emblazoned on hoodies and t-shirts! Also, some sort of death kitten rainbow. Plus, of course, his name. Who doesn't want to tell the world, loud and proud, that they read Perez Hilton?? The line, to be sold at upscale Hot Topic stores across the nation, will surely be popular among angry anime girls and flood victims. Click after the jump for close-ups of some of the precious garments.
Dali's "Death Kitty Gossip Gun"
The Max has exploded.
"I'm sorry m'am, but you can't bring that on the plane." "Why, because of the gun?" "No, because it's ugly."
Bushwick, Brooklyn. Hope to working-class and poor folks, a large Hispanic population, white college-grad hipsters and their holy grail of communal living, the McKibbin lofts. (1 month of free bedbugs included.) Rents are cheap, for now. Expectations, however, are high. Bushwick, the lifestyle! Bushwick, the brand—it's all there on BushwickBK.com. And these young people would like to explain their clothes to you!
Actually, the middle couple looks fairly normal. The white guy on the right, however, is in a rap group and "love[s] the ghetto."
#1: Ariel, 21
Work: At a library
Shops: Got t-shirt at a pharmacy, jacket for $3 in Ventura, CA "b/c they don't use jackets in CA." He isn't wearing socks.
Shot him: Corner of Knickerbocker and Stockholm
Misc: Sarah: "How did you get dressed?" — Ariel: "I just picked something up off the floor."
#2: Amy, 17 and Ace, 18
Work: Both are students
Shop: On Knickerbocker and Myrtle
Shot them: Corner of Himrod and Wyckoff
Misc: Amy says, "This is how I dress everyday. I like sneakers, not real shoes", Ace says he chose to mix those prints to match his new sneakers
#3: Royal, 22
Work: Freelance writer, in a rap group
Shops: Levis, buys "odds and ends"
Shot him: Corner of Greene and Wyckoff
Misc: Headed to watch The Ruins with a friend; "I love the ghetto"
"In the meantime, I hoped on the computer and googled Preston. Oh you best believe I checked him out. I mean what person wouldn't? Normally I would not have done it, but I wanted to know more about this talented basketball player. I had to find out his stats - height (Preston is a tall dude. I am tall, standing at 6'2, but I felt short next to his long lean muscular body). I checked his weight, rebounds, average points per game, how long he's been playing, and other vital information.
I was impressed. Preston was on top of his game. The press liked him and he was hometown favorite. In high school and college he was an all-around favorite, traveling across the country showcasing his talented ball-handling skills. The more I discovered, the more I liked. So, I was looking forward to spending more time with this amazing basketball player."
Later, they hook up again. Then "Preston" gets an urgent phone call. What happens next?
Check back tomorrow when Preston introduces Terrance to some important people.
Meet Colin Leahy. He was once an American Idol contestant! He was featured during season three's Parade of Misery, saying on the show that he was just like Clay Aiken because "I'm also a camp counselor." Well, salute your shorts and fast forward a few years and Counselor Colin has been arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child after he, um, sent sexually provocative text messages to a twelve year old boy and propositioned a ten year old lad for sexy time. And! He had been volunteering at a Brooklyn elementary school! Oh dear. It's just like that Scott Bairstow fiasco. [NYM]
Is ABC trying its hand at subliminal advertising? Check out this network lead-in for The View, with its brief flash of a teaser ad for another show. It may not be quick enough to qualify as "subliminal" technically (if you know the formal threshold, please comment), but it makes ABC's point: be prepared for an ad to flash unexpectedly in front of your eyes at any moment! Click to watch.
Wouldn't it be exciting to be on Broadway? Even if only for a day? Well, if you were in the cast of Glory Days you now know what that feels like! Following miserable reviews and terrible box office during previews, the musical about young folks has closed after one day.
It's over! The most consistently funny comedy site on the Internet is getting folded into AdultSwim.com. Turner is shutting down Super Deluxe and laying off most of its staff, according to paidContent.org. Now the original web content will get stuck with clips from Family Guy and Adult Swim's increasingly weird-without-payoff lineup. The good news: The guy below gets a TV deal.
As with Arrested Development, Super Deluxe was a cult hit that just didn't get huge mainstream attention — like pretty much every video content site besides College Humor. But also like the show, it introduced some great talent who are going on to better deals. Well, at least one of them.
Brad Neely, creator of the classic "Washington, Washington" cartoon, got a TV deal for his two Super Deluxe series "Baby Cakes" and "Professor Brothers." Super Deluxe has a preview:
But if the site drops shows like Chasing Donovan and Derek and Simon (which already looks dead), I hope to god they get a deal somewhere else. Because I ain't watching "Tim and Eric" again.
Do you really like the grownups on Gossip Girl? Specifically, the soon-to-be-wed Bart Bass and Lily van der Woodsen (she of the murderous daughter and sodomite son)? Then check out their wedding website. It's bizarrely thorough for a website about non-major characters from a little-watched television show.
An ad copywriter named Yutaka Tsujino was looking for a new job. So he made himself a website called YutakaSucks.com, full of imaginary testimonials about how much he sucks at his work. And it got him a job! "We think he's hilarious," says his new agency. Consider using this tactic to land your next position. (Note: does not work if you actually suck.) [Adrants]
So Alec Baldwin would like run for office some day, maybe. Possibly soon! After all, he's almost 50. And 50 is when you are allowed to "run the world," he says. "There's no age limit on running for office, to a degree. [It is] something I might do one day," the amusingly intense actor tells 60 Minutes this Sunday. Ha ha ha let's all laugh at him! He'll never win any elections, because of how insane he is and how we all know terrible things about his family and his life and his temper and how he yelled at his daughter that one time. But hey, the actual reason he'll never win an election has nothing to do with his sordid past. It's his unrepentant liberalism. Because California will happily elect drug-abusing unqualified actors with histories of gross sexual misconduct and harassment governor, as long as they're business-friendly Republicans. Seriously, Baldwin's past is way less gross than Schwarzenegger's, plus he's never done anything as embarrassing as this. [CBS]
Word is that 15 people have been laid off from Elle.com and other websites at French-owned magazine group, Hachette. We're working on a longer story about the travails of Elle and the other Hachette titles. Backstory to nick@gawker.com.
How many times does astute political analyst Whoopi Goldberg need to tell you, and her cohorts on The View, that they're going to have to raise taxes? "Whoever gets in there [as President] is gonna have to raise taxes. It's B.S. We don't have any money! ... Shit," she mutters at the end of the clip, as the rest of the ladies wisely ignore her. (Click to watch.)
Everybody listen: Scarlett Johansson is saying stuff. About men. Heroic men! Iconic men! Men she would like to honor! The blonde actress, who insists on putting out an unwanted record,reveals the five guys she considers her "dads": Woody Allen, Bill Murray, Tom Waits, Barack Obama, and Bob Dylan. Suck it, actual dad! While a waggish type might be tempted to point out that none of these "dads" saved her from looking like an alien albino on the cover of Paste, a wiser person would examine her dad choices and ponder the question: Aren't these just a bunch of random old guys that probably don't even know her that well?
Bill Murray: She was in the movie Lost In Translation with him. "I don't even remember what I did off screen, I was so jetlagged," she says. Profound.
Woody Allen: She just finished shooting her third movie with him. "I'm always kind of weirded out when I'm interviewed by people who say, 'Gosh! Woody must be in love with you.' It's like, 'fucking expand your mind,'" she says. Revelatory.
Tom Waits: She is doing a cover album of his music. "I was this little blonde girl with a baritone singing voice, which at nine was freakish, I'm sure," she says. Epic.
Barack Obama: She supports his campaign. "He's confronting health-care issues that affect young people. You know, most of my friends don't have insurance," She says. Heartwarming.
Bob Dylan: She was in a video for his song. "I've been fortunate enough to never be the biggest media sensation," she says. Intense.
[BONUS: Her real father: She is his child. "My dad's Danish. That would be the first adjective I'd use to describe my father," she says. Specific.]
There's a beefcake explosion on old Broadway. Dimple-cheeked, well-muscled actor Mario Lopez (Saved By the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas) danced his way into America's hearts while on that show about shiny lights and things moving around for an hour, Dancing With the Stars. Now he's nancing—uh, I mean dancing— up a storm again in A Chorus Line on Broadway as, um, the director who's barely ever on stage. But those muscles! They're the best marketing tool a dying art form has got! Plus, as a friendly tipster points out, Mario's got competition. (And Mario's not happy about it.) A young fellow named Nick Adams (after the Hemingway character?), who plays Larry the Dance Captain in the show, has a body to rival Lopez's and, blessedly, the online photo album to prove it. Couple this with Cry-Baby chorus member Spencer Liff getting cited on New York's "Approval Matrix" this week for having "the hottest abs on Broadway," and I think we have a Broadway Beefcake Boom. Now that's theatre. Suck it, Pinter! After the jump find photo evidence of the beefiness.
Intern Mary started a blog! It's brilliant, it's simple: roommate stories! It's called We Share a Toilet and she's seeking submissions. Also, probably, an agent. [We Share a Toilet]
John McCain's primary qualifications for the presidency are that he's old, he was tortured, and he's been a corrupt Senator for hundreds of years. Also he'd like you to know that he has a sense of humor, which is why he's The Daily Show's most-invited guest ever. On the show last night, McCain once again demonstrated how "hip" and "with it" he is by naming a character on a popular sitcom. One that is currently on-air, even! Not, like, Maynard G. Krebs or something. Jon Stewart desperately tried to get him to appear more presidential by making a joke he knew McCain wouldn't play along with.
Steampunk! According to the NYT's Thursgay Styles, it's a "subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives." They describe steampunkers as fusspots with a taste for gaslight-era style: "he owns a flat-screen television, but he has modified it with a burlap frame. He uses an iPhone, but it is encased in burnished brass." But steampunk's been around for a while, of course. Despite the length of the piece, glossed over is the fact that this hot new movement started with a book called the Difference Engine—in 1990!
Steampunk isn't completely about clothes and accessories; it's an offshoot of the science fiction genre cyberpunk. Author of cyberpunk novel Neuromancer William Gibson (coiner of the word "cyberspace") collaborated with Bruce Sterling for the classic steampunk alternate history novel The Difference Engine, set in Victorian Britain. Just saying!
Anyway, it must be reaching a critical mass: the recent 24th Chaos Communications Congress, a hacker event, had steampunk as the theme for their ball. And a steampunk store? Open soon in Manhattan. You'll be able to finally buy a brass case for your iPhone.
I just realized: our new offices are totally steampunk—check out the vintage reception desk!
"The Resistance," which describes itself as a "Christian Group" but, judging by its website, is more of a "Wacko Conspiracy Theory Group," has just launched a boycott of Starbucks. They object to the coffee chain's new retro-style logo, which features a mermaid who wantonly possesses boobies. They "might as well call themselves Slutbucks"! In the past, The Resistance has lobbied celebrities like Paris Hilton and Tom Cruise to change their "ridiculous" behavior. So their calls for action have clearly been huge failures thus far. The full, weird press release is below.
Christian Group Denounces Starbucks
Over New Logo of Naked Mermaid
(San Diego, CA) Starbucks has recently introduced a new version of their logo which features a topless mermaid with her legs spread, which has caused outrage from a nation wide Christian media watchdog organization. The Resistance, with has over 3000 members nationwide, is boycotting Starbucks across the country saying their new logo is inappropriate.
The Starbucks logo has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute, explains Mark Dice, founder of the group. Need I say more? It's extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves, Slutbucks.
The all-brown logo is a replica of the one the chain used when it opened its first store in Pike Place in Seattle in 1971. The woman is actually a siren, not a mermaid, which in Greek mythology lures people to them with their beautiful songs, and then kills them, explains Dice.
The Resistance has made international news for rebuking various Hollywood celebrities for their ridiculous behavior, including Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, 50 Cent, Tom Cruise and others. They also demanded that Duke University change the name of their Blue Devils sports team to something not offensive to the Christian community.
Continuing the grand tradition of completely useless people having clothing lines, Perez Hilton will soon be rolling out his own collection of women's t-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, and other bric-a-brac. The corpulent celebrity blogger says that because he covers fashion disasters on his website, he has "a good eye for what's hot and what's not" (right) and that he's trying to expand the "Perez Brand." Can Perez Hilton wine be far behind? (Please click that link). Click through for some Guanabee inspired examples of Perez's fashion savvy.
Animal New York ran 
Do you hate everyone around you? If so, you may wish to download one of 
Remember the famous 
When 
First of all, the layoffs. There is no official word yet, but we're hearing from inside that up to 20 people have gone, including executive Matthew Rosenberg; Joyann King, fashion editor at ElleGirl.com; Holly Seigal, senior editor of Ellegirl.com; and Dei Lewison, producer of the Elle websites. (There's no word on the former store salesman boyfriend whom insiders said Elle's self-promoting creative director, Joe Zee, installed at the fashion magazine's website.) The casualties were called to a meeting at 10.30 and then left to stew for quarter of an hour before digital boss Todd Anderman breezed in to fire them.
Third, the grand multimedia experiment has been an utter failure. The early experiments with interactive TV were dismal, predictably. But nor have Kliger's more recent investments in branded web titles such as Premiere.com fulfilled the promise he saw for them. Hachette recently allowed Quantcast, a web measurement firm, to monitor traffic. Those numbers are not protected by a password. All the Hachette website put together garner 
Hachette hasn't said whether it will be replacing any of the staff let go today. "There is no stability here, no one knows what's going on or what is happening," says a tipster. Elle, 
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The New Yorker's Joan Acocella explains in May's Smithsonian what effect living in close quarters, often in public, has on the behavior of New Yorker. "They act on the street as they do in private. In the United States today, public behavior is ruled by a kind of compulsory cheer that people probably picked up from television and advertising that coats their transactions in a smooth, shiny glaze. New Yorkers have not yet gotten the knack of this." She also totally knows why we ignore celebrities when we see them in the street (no, it's not 'cause we're jaded):
Internet nerds became terribly excited recently when 
Celebrity blogger 
Bushwick, Brooklyn. Hope to working-class and poor folks, a large Hispanic population, white college-grad hipsters and their holy grail of communal living, the McKibbin lofts. (1 month of free bedbugs included.) Rents are cheap, for now. Expectations, however, are high. Bushwick, the lifestyle! Bushwick, the brand—it's all there on 
Is ABC trying its hand at subliminal advertising? Check out this network lead-in for The View, with its brief flash of a teaser ad for another show. It may not be quick enough to qualify as "subliminal" technically (if you know the formal threshold, please comment), but it makes ABC's point: be prepared for an ad to flash unexpectedly in front of your eyes at any moment! Click to watch.
It's over! The most consistently funny comedy site on the Internet is getting folded into 
So 
How many times does astute political analyst 
There's a beefcake explosion on old Broadway. Dimple-cheeked, well-muscled actor 
Steampunk! According to the 
Continuing the grand tradition of 
