Gawker
interviews
-
peeling the apple
In Which I Try To Explain Twilight
I know that you will probably stab me in the heart with a wooden stake for doing this, but I'm going to write another post about Twilight. You there, under the rock? Twilight is: spectacularly shitty book series by Stephanie Meyer and now a movie (out today! it's bad!) about a dimensionless girl named Bella and the suave sex vampire that she loves, named Edward. It's swoony moony goony shit, and, again, is terribly, monstrously, embarrassing-for-the-whole-of-the-craftly bad. So why on earth is it so popular, and what is Twilight, I mean really what is it? I will attempt to answer those IMPORTANT questions after the jump. Then you can elucidate (please! please!) in the comments. More » -
treading on me
While America Lies In Ruins, Selfish Celebrities Party In Dubai
Are you a horrible camera flash-stained, fraying-at-the-edges tabloid media darling who mourns the loss of the recent American rococo decade? Is everyone being poor and complaining all the time just too much for you? Well worry not, dear inexplicably financed friend, because Dubai is waiting for you! Oh you know about crazy Dubai, don't you? Unlike this ailing and needy nation, the Arab Emirate is flush with sandy money and crazy man-made islands and, ooo, brand-new gaudy hotels! Like a beacon or a lighthouse calling to them out of the icky dark, American celebrities who had it better when the world was gold showed up in droves for the huge, $20 million dollar opening gala for the new Atlantis Palms megaresort in Dubai this week. Look who was there partying while we back here in the home country hopped boxcars and ate cold soup thickened with sawdust: More » -
Field guide
How To Make Fun Of College Kids
As I was journalistically perusing the internet last night, I came upon an entry in a web log ("blog") that tickled my ol' funny bone. It seems that well-off Ivy League students at Princeton University are participating in short role-playing games in order to "experience the virtual realities of poverty." "Quite unlikely!" I scoffed. Do I detect a prime opportunity to make fun of college kids? Why, this one is straight from the textbook!: More » -
-
celebrity science
Twilight Star's Letterman Disaster: Funniest Moments
Starlets, you never learn, probably because you're not paying attention, probably because you're always as strung out as Twilight star Kristen Stewart looked last night on the Late Show: You must come on David Letterman's program caffeinated and at least attempt to say several interesting things. Mary-Kate Olsen's "so tired" complaint bombed; Lauren Conrad got entertainingly insulted for being otherwise boring. This is the price from promoting (usually vapid) movies from the Late Show couch. Stewart's appearance is one for the protocelebrity textbooks; an epic trainwreck progressing (in the clip after the jump) from severe awkwardness into mild nastiness and, at the very end, a devastating cut spun from precious, precious terrible awful comedy gold. More » -
the panic of '08
The Lost Decade
The S&P 500 closed down today, again, at 752, the lowest level since 1997. That was a long time ago. We've seen two booms pass by — first dot-com stocks and now the real estate bubble. In 1997, I was still in college, Bill Clinton was still president, no one had heard of Monica Lewinsky, and Rudy Giuliani hadn't yet cleaned out the open-air heroin markets in the East Village. So, let's remember what's passed in between, now that the last eleven years have been, financially speaking, wiped clean. All those corporate-sponsored parties, those condominiums, the blinged-out phones, the Maybachs. It may as well have never happened.
-
-
hard time jobs
Now That You've Been Laid-Off, What Will Your New Job Be?
Everyone's getting laid-off these days, what with the economy and all, and now we want to know what you'll be doing for money while the dust settles. There aren't any media jobs left and desperate times call for desperate measures. Depressing stories have already been trickling in, like the two longtime Jersey Star-Ledger newsroom employees who, after refusing a buyout, were banished to the mailroom! Or the Longmont, CO, Times Call staff who were invited to be valet parking attendants for their (probably soon-to-be ex) boss's fancy Christmas party. And, perhaps worst, a Hachette memo to staff inviting them to participate in the saddest thing of all, a holiday crafts fair. You know, so they can practice a trade before they inevitably get canned! "You will have the opportunity to show or sell your craft such as jewelry, accessories, chocolates, knitting and crocheting," it says. Sigh. Send us your post-axing, new job tales (depressing or not!) and we'll publish some of our favorites in the coming dark days. In the meantime, read the full dismaying Hachette memo after the jump. More » -
Bad Ideas
Ashley Dupre, Your MySpace Friends Will Lead You To Ruin
After we went to all the trouble of offering Spitzer hooker Ashley Dupre seven—seven!—different career choices yesterday, what does she do? She goes and tells Diane Sawyer, "I want to go after my music and do what I love. And not lose track of who I am on the way. I'm trying to pursue my music. I'm still living for it. I'm not gonna give up my dream. I'm not going to change. I'm not going to let this change who I am. And what I love." All of those short declarative sentences do not change the fact that your song "All We Want" is just the sort of generic R&B bullshit blathering that has already largely destroyed our nation's airwaves. We say this as a friend! Regrettably, Ashley is listening to her other friends: her MySpace friends. Like Whitney Houston, and "Fin" from Williamsburg: More » -
top chef
Padma Gags On Sweet Load
Good morning. My name is Joshua David Stein. Please join me in a discussion of the most important (reality television competitive culinary) show of our time (between 10 and 11 pm on Wednesdays), Bravo's Top Chef Like a bunch of drunken bums we've stumbled into Week Two of Season Five, full of giddy apprehension, eager to feel and having to pee. What would await us? What could possibly surprise us? Why is Padma still single? Has Tom lost weight? Why does Gail Simmons looks like a train wreck? Soon enough, the annoying shhhhhSHHHHHP knife sound signaled that all our questions would be answered. More » -
journalismism
Couric Wonders: Why Didn't Anyone Ask Palin About Me?
Greta Van Susteren and Matt Lauer were first out of the gate with lengthy Sarah Palin interviews after the election. The chats were slammed as softball jobs by some critics, and you can now add Katie Couric to that group, at least in one regard: She wishes someone had asked the former Republican vice presidential nominee why she didn't answer Couric's simple and ultimately devastating question about what newspapers and magazines Palin reads. Hopefully Lauer, who hosted Today with Couric for nine years, doesn't take the critique personally, particularly since Couric may very well end up back at NBC. Click the video icon to watch Couric explain her thoughts on David Letterman's Late Show.
