From the "If I Could Turn Back Time" Dept. #
Whoa. Wait a minute. I was just leaving Gawker HQ with two looted bottles of Gawker publisher Nick Denton's best champagne under each arm when something amazing caught my eye.
From today's Post on New Year's resolutions: "Daniel Peres, editor in chief of Details magazine: 'I sincerely hope that this heinous new word, 'metrosexual,' which is banned from the pages of Details, has the cultural longevity of Dolph Lundgren.'"
Mmm, excuse me? Let's turn the clock back just a few months, to August 20th, 2003, when Mr. Peres did an online chat for the Washington Post on the topic of metrosexuality. "Sure, I'm a metrosexual if that means that I have equal interest in how the Knicks are doing and what the new art installation is going to be at the gallery around the corner," said Mr. Peres. And: "Think about the perfect guy. The one your mother has always wanted you to bring home (assuming you're a woman). He's sensitive. He's smart. He can quote Thoreau. He can cook French food. He knows the difference between a daisy and a daffodil and the difference between a Monet and a Manet. This is a metrosexual," said Mr. Peres. And: "Metrosexual is just a word to define a man who has evolved," said Mr. Peres.
(Then, mid-chat, Mr. Peres loses his mind and refuses to renounce pleated pants for men. Horrifying! Whatever, he's under a lot of pressure, we all make mistakes.)
Geez. Back in the carefree days of mid-2003, so many of us were threatened by the powerful metrosexual lobby. First they threw big money at us. Then they made vague yet menacing statements about our families. So naturally Mr. Peres -- and he wasn't alone -- sold his ass to the metrosexual lobby at a deep discount. Thank God he's come out the other side. I'm just so glad he's here now to bravely stand up for the truth, for all that is beautiful and important and honest in magazine-land.
Okay. That's all. Class dismissed. Crap, it's only 4 p.m. and I'm trashed already. Lappy Hew Near every-buddy!
'PROMISING' CELEBS OF 2004 [NY Post]
What Is A Metrosexual? [WaPo]
Let's Get One Thing Straight [Radar]
Letter From The Editor: See Ya Next Year! #
Listen: I'm bailing out of Gawker a little early today. I've got to get an outfit together for tonight that'll shock, horrify, and/or get me laid. (Fine line!) That and I'm dying of this illness that all of you already had and finally coughed up on me. Hey, thanks for that!
Besides, Gawker's publisher Nick Denton is away in Europe or something. What did he say? Reykjavik? Sao Paulo? Where do they have that New Year's Eve internet millionaire playboy convention? Once again, I just wasn't listening. So between y'all and me, I'm taking the afternoon off while he's not here to whip me and Pete and Jonno as we wearily man the oars of his cruel, cruel media galleon.
FYI, Google News returns 581 results for the search "Orange Alert, Times Square." If you pretend I'm not hacking up my lungs when we airkiss at the New Year's Eve party, I'll pretend you don't stand a 50/50 chance of getting blown up in Times Square. Mmm: it's that tension between the need to be a drunken marauding party monster and the need to defy rather Orwellian threats of terrorism that'll always make me think so very fondly of 2003.
Well: that and the scabies.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Remainders #
· The best awards in media are announced: the Pappu-litzers. This year, includes "Biggest narc, non–New York Times scandal category: Whichever Vanity Fair employee called the nicotine police about the smoking that’s been going on there." (Which reminds me: I'm offering a carton of Winston Lights to the double agent who correctly dishes me the name of the VF narc. That goes double for you, Graydon.)
· The ladies of the Black Table make New Year's Resolutions. (Sample from Blaise: "Stop fucking women. They're as bad as men, so stick with the cocks that come naturally." That's sweet.)
· No more late night drunken street-treats? The war on Manhattan's vendors.
· Rich Girls v. Silver Spoons.
· And, of course: with the knighting of her paramour, we must now call her Lady Tina Brown! Shriek!
Predictions: Pop Will Eat Itself #
George Simpson's media-world predictions for 2004 seem crazily on-target to me:
· An eerie silence falls over the magazine industry when Keith Kelly inadvertently writes something nice about someone. "It must be how Neanderthals felt during a solar eclipse," says a stunned magazine PR person.
· At 3:09 (EST) on June 14th, blogging comes to an abrupt end when the last person writes the last thing they can think of. The sun comes up as usual on June 15th. Jeff Jarvis asks his wife if a tree falling in the woods still makes a sound if no one hears it.
· Hearst launches a magazine for men who don't shop, watch sports, buy cars, need a date, or care about their abs. Called "So What!", the monthly is an instant success, building a circulation of 12 million in six months. However, it fails when renewals clock in at .0002%. "They apparently don't care about magazines either," Marty Walker tells the New York Times.
What the New Year Will Bring (or Not) [Mediapost]
The Oscar Campaigns #
Besieged by screening copies and Hollywood propaganda, Bruce Feirstein reports from LA on the Oscar handicaps:
The conventional wisdom out here is that despite the all-out effort from Miramax to promote Cold Mountain, the Best Picture award this year will go to the final installment of The Lord of the Rings. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t put it past the beautiful minds in Hollywood to start an old-fashioned smear campaign—something to the effect that the film producers glossed over the fact that Aragorn was, in actuality, a homophobic bipolar anti-Semite. Not that anybody at Miramax would ever stoop to such a thing, of course.Los Angeles in the Season of Terrorism [NYO]
Free Jackie White #
Now you don't need to forget to wash your hair for weeks or run over your leather jacket with the car. A simple t-shirt can clearly say "I am a cracked-out hiptard."
Eh, well: evidently it worked for Winona and OJ.
Garageland [CafePress]
(See also: No Hipsters [CafePress])
Gossip Roundup #
· NY Post's blind items: Amanda Lepore is a meth-head? John Kerry is a womanizing date-snatching he-whore? [NY Post]
· Tom Cruise loves Kiehl's. NY Post]
· Celebrity parties to crash, and Cameron Diaz resolves to wear a bra more in 2004. [NYDN]
· WWD's Jacob Bernstein says Star publisher David Pecker has shitty reading comprehension. [NY Post]
· Foot- and tooth-loose Chloe Sevigny reportedly sucked Vincent Gallo's dick right out of the William Morris Agency. (Actually, we doubt that Chloe was ditched from William Morris over Brown Bunny: that would be a wildly delayed reaction.) [NY Post]
· Richard Meier to build third ugly tower on Perry Street, obstructing celebrity's views of new ugly towers to be built at the WTC. [NY Post]
The Hilton Family's Holiday Card #
Though this charming Paris and family Christmas-sweater-by-the-mantel scene may take the cake, there are loads of totally delicious holiday cards on "New York Social Diary" today. (Or, as I like to call the site, "White People Love Us.")
Incidentally, I may throw some cash at whoever can identify the most socialite holiday cards. Literally tens of dollars are waiting for you, so get cracking!
[And don't miss Graydon Carter's swimsuit-clad children, dry, on the rocks. (But not carrying daddy's ashtrays.)]
Peace be with us in 2004 [NYSD]
High Maintenance, Party of Two #
Fortune's Mark Gimein suffers through dinner with Tim and Nina Zagat, publishers, obviously, of the Zagat guides. Perhaps they're lovely people -- as lovely as two lawyers can be, of course -- but they don't really come off that way:
Should you have a chance to dine with the Zagats at one of New York City's fancier restaurants, take it. Not only will the chef send your table free raw fish, but after 19 seconds—I timed it—Tim will ask for more. Tim Zagat once asked Sirio Maccioni, the great New York restaurateur, how he recognized the New York Times restaurant critic beneath her wig and dark glasses. "Don't you think," Maccioni said, "that if a tank rolled into my restaurant with a hat and wig and dark glasses, I would still know it was a tank?" Now Zagat himself is the tank, and since the Zagats don't vote in their own surveys ("Caesar's wife ...," Nina says), they don't even need disguises. "It's nice to see what a restaurant can do when they really try," Tim says.
"What is your best fish?" he demands, after we take our table at Esca ("a restaurant to return to again and again"—Zagat 2004). The menu sits unopened by his elbow. "Do you have a branzino? What does the chef say? Is the chef around?"
Table for Mr. Bigfoot [Fortune]
Ephedra Banned! #
Citing "health concerns" -- like baseball pitchers dropping dead and stuff -- the FDA has banned ephedra. Ephedra has been the hippie-crack of the upper family for a while now -- certainly better than coffee, but nowhere near as harsh as meth. Manhattan's law firms and women's magazine publishers are said to be in an emergency meeting with pharmaceutical companies to produce a perk-ifying substance for release in early 2004.
No More OTC Trucker Speed [Night in the Big City]
2004 Trend Alert: Fake Exploding Fruit #
Okay, fuck 2003. It's done. I've been adding a little hootch to my Theraflu all morning, and I'd like a socially acceptable excuse. Can we just close down Manhattan's offices, get someone to invent a cure for this flu that's riding my ass, and start the New Year's Eve festivities now?
Here's an email originating from the offices of a magazine that will go unnamed, proof that everyone else is equally antsy:
Since 2003 is "So Totally Over," and because I want to scoop the recently even-more-coopted Daily Candy, herewith, a Hot New Trend alert. 2004 is going to be all about fake fruit, vegetable, and animal matter that can be thrown against desks, sidewalks, tourists, Black Hawks, etc., which then squish into a glorious fake explosion of goo, only to revert to their original form. It is the new Stress Ball/Trucker Hat/Paris Hilton.
You may scoff, but this Fake Exploding Fruit is hot off the streets of Hong Kong, and mark my words, soon the young hipsters will be hurling FEF while chain-smoking outside Schillers. Tomatoes, unidentifiable citrus fruit, eggs, and rats (which I realize is not fruit, but what Hong Kong street vendors provide, we must take) are some of the options now available. Soon the kids will be trolling Pearl River for the like. So, take that Daily Candy -- the first new trend of 2004 is hereby proclaimed.*
*Disclaimer: this e-mail is the result of someone forced to work during the post/pre-holiday, while tumbleweeds blow through my office. Sorry.
Save Williamsburg From the Artists #
Mike at Satan's Laundromat notes that the hipster backlash in Williamsburg now has a (really questionable) poster campaign. Mike says: "Rough translation, according to a guy I met on the street: 'How long did it take the Twin Towers to fall? 8 seconds. How long will it take to save Williamsburg from the artists???' (He stumbled over the word 'artists,' so I suspect it's a not-so-polite term for hipsters.)"
[Update: comments here suggest possibly more accurate translations.]
Homeland Security [Satan's Laundromat]
Remainders #
· Times Square to be filled with metal detectors borrowed from NYC schools.
· A photographic tour of Williamsburg.
· The Year in Pandering: Havrilesky on 2003's illest TV.
· The AirTrain: Penn Station to JFK in 75 glamorous minutes.
· Neil Morton gives a quick Canadian perspective on American magazines.
The Smoky Glove of Winter #
Blacktable reviews the week that was, and Stephanie gives a D+ to:
GLOVES THAT REEK OF SMOKE: Every year it's the same thing: I buy a brand spankin' new pair of gloves (preferably black leather) to protect my delicate, alabaster-white fingers from the oncoming winter. I tell myself that I will not smoke in these gloves, that the smell will stay in them forever, eventually rendering them the object of my distaste. But when the first ass-freezing day comes along, there I am: puffing away, all care thrown to the wind, cigarette clenched in gloved fingers. And yeah, the gloves fuckin' stink now.
The Black List [Black Table]
52 Magazines a Year #
Jason Kottke's resolution is to read a magazine a week for each week of 2004. How anyone gets through life reading fewer than five magazines a week is beyond me. Without magazines, how does he know what to wear, what to think? How does he know who's pretty and who's popular?
I think I'm gonna resolve to read a book per season next year. I figure I can squeeze in four throughout the year... maybe. Though I hear books are really expensive and hard to find.
52 Magazines or Bust [Kottke]
Paris v. Your Mom #
Music historian Dawn Eden runs into Paris Hilton while out at the Madison Square Garden theater with her mom; muted chaos ensues. Compare and contrast Paris and Dawn's mom:
Most famous home-movie performance— PARIS: Romping like an animal with another woman's husband, 2001. MOM: Sauntering to the zoo with her husband and kids, doing impressions of the gorillas, 1972.
Mom Outwits the Ditz [Dawn Eden]
Gossip Roundup #
· "When I was younger and going through an awkward stage, people used to always tell me I looked like my dad," says Chelsea Clinton. "But now people are telling me that I look more like my mom, which I love because I think she's beautiful." [NY Daily News]
· Related: Chelsea Clinton jumps on table and jumps on new father Mark Wahlberg in front of her boyfriend. [NY Post]
· Michael Jackson's allegations of police misconduct come undone and his spokesperson resigns in the face of the Nation of Islam. [NY Post and NYT]
· Drew Barrymore, desperate to be a Vogue cover girl, gives Us Weekly her two-year old letter of apology to editor Anna Wintour. [NY Daily News]
· Paris Hilton does some "charity" for washout and Backstreet Boy Nick Carter. [NY Post]
· Remembering Glamour's "A day in the life of his penis" article, and other v. v. important glossy moments from the year in magazines. [Wash Post]
· Courtney Love, actress, musician, mother - butt-nekkid? And rambling? No way. Wait, she's in rehab? [IMDB] via [NY Post]
"This Chef Thing Is So Over" #
Anthony Bourdain -- executive chef at New York's Les Halles and "Kitchen Confidential" author -- comes for chefs Rocco Dispirito and Rick Bayless with a really sharp boning knife:
"The Restaurant" was "a shark-jumping moment," said Anthony Bourdain. Although Bourdain was a guest on one "Restaurant" episode, "I felt somehow unclean afterward," he said. "And the irony is DiSpirito is easily one of the most talented chefs in New York. My fear is that show will blow it for all of us. 'Dude, this chef thing is so over.'" ... [And regarding Chicago chef and Mexican food expert Rick Bayless.] "It's like Rob Reiner coming out for the fine, smooth taste of cigarettes. He's shilling for an outfit that we see as the enemy. I think tossing motorists off the West Side Highway would be a better way to make a buck."
Cooks tour in H'wood [Variety, reg req'd]
Rich and Simple Girls #
The NYT's Virginia Heffernan compares and contrasts Rich Girls and The Simple Life and finds the Paris Hilton show fakey. Omg! Well sure: the Simple Life is the ultimate triumph of the preditor. (That's the combined uber-role of producer and editor in reality TV: they make it all happen retroactively. Shocker.)
Well sure: it's clear Jaime and Ally of Rich Girls are a little more real than the blonde she-beasts of Arkansas (as evidenced in particular by Jaime's constant, freakish whining about her forthcoming mental collapse). But you're out on a pretty thin limb if you really think Jaime and Ally "confound expectations and vigorously interact with the world." Maybe "confound the household staff and vigorously interact with their parents' credit cards"?
In the End, 'Rich Girls' Has It All Over 'The Simple Life' [NYT]
Jaime at camp [Gawker]
Simple Life: Two Hour Marathon Tonight [Fox]
Magazine Predictions for 2004 #
According to WWD's Greg Lindsay, 2004 will be about the end of Martha Stewart, the advent of shopping mags, the Sincerity Backlash, the second generation of lad mags, and the death of metrosexuality. Oh, and tiny dogs that hide in your oversize she-bag are out. (Okay, I made that part up. But seriously, ladies: ditch the dogs for 2004. Set them free.)
What to Watch: Media [WWD]
