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While we're busy contemplating what an awful human being Arnold Schwarzenegger is for fathering a child out of wedlock and lying to his wife about it for 14 years, let's not forget all the other horrible things about America's favorite gay-porn-modeling, serial lady-groping, Nazi politician/statutory rapist. More »
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James Toback is the creepy 65 year-old film director who recently approached a 24 year-old lady and promised to "make her a star", twice. Apparently, his cruising is not limited to the over-18 set. Here are a couple stories! More »
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Someone sent along this side-by-side of Kurt Andersen and John Hughes, two men whose sensibilities came to define the late '80s and early '90s, for better and for worse. Where have we seen this bit before? More »
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Kurt Andersen is, at long last, giving up his column in New York, the magazine he edited 12 years ago. Now he has time for things that are, somehow, even less important. More »
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Kurt Andersen, who invented "snark" in 1986, is now "microblogging" at Twitter, the official web service of imagined pithiness. More »
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All the magazines are dying! It's the Internet's fault. No, actually magazines have always died. Statistically, 80 percent of them fail. Which is what makes the medium such a perfect object for nostalgia. More »
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Jamie Foxx is the poor man's Denzel Washington, so it makes sense that he's set to play Mike Tyson in the boxer's upcoming biopic. Washington's boxer, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter embodied many of the racial tensions of the 1960s. Mike Tyson is just a crazy dude with a thing for pigeons. Good thing Foxx knows how to play crazy. [ShowBiz Spy] More »
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Spy magazine co-founder who didn't make quite as good as the other one Kurt Andersen has been named the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design's "visionary in residence" for the spring semester of 2009. Kurt, admitting that he "should be flattered," admits to actually feeling "embarrassed." Which he should! Because the position is a handy acknowledgment that Andersen has a history of not delivering on his grandiose ideas and has officially wasted his vast potential. That is more or less what "visionary" means, as we understand it. More »
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Spy magazine is to the media set what Sassy is to twentysomething girls: everybody loooves it and reminisces about how good it was even though those days are dead and gone. It was pretty great, although you can barely kick a dog without hearing about it. Now Folio asks, what about Wigwag mag? It launched around the time Spy did, but isn't nearly as well-remembered. Why not, certain media geeks want to know? (It could be noted that these influential magazines, appealing to a fairly small, elite circle, were both financially inviable). More »
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Spy co-founder Kurt Andersen—whose jobs currently include 1. novelist, 2. New York mag monthly columnist, 3. "Studio 360" radio host, 4. IAC's "Very Short List" founder-consultant, 5. sometime blogger, 6. Random House editor at large—has "just inked a one-year deal to write two big articles for [fellow Spy cofounder] Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair estimated to be valued in the mid-five figures." [NY Post] More »
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There's something new in ideas, at last, announces Salon: "First there was Horace. Then there was Juvenal. Now there is David Kamp." My goodness! You see, this fellow has invented the "aspirational satire" with his new book, "The Food Snob's Dictionary." Except then Salon goes on to say he sorta didn't? "By targeting two distinct kinds of readers—those who read one of the Snob's Dictionaries to learn the information it contains, and those who read it to congratulate themselves that they already know it—Kamp is following a trail blazed by his fellow Spy magazine alum Lisa Birnbach. Birnbach's 1980 'The Official Preppy Handbook' is the ur-document of aspirational satire." Mmm, take-backs. More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=308634&view=rss&microfeed=true Michael Moore rips off Spy. To be fair, Spy invented every joke ever, so it's hard sometimes. [Radosh] More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=271447&view=rss&microfeed=true Seen the real estate market lately? Noticed how black people are running for president? Did you enjoy bonus season downtown? Are you thinking endlessly about yourself? Try and tell us it's not the eighties all over again. For the benefit of those of you who, like our dear and dewy co-editor Emily, are too young to remember that decade, we've put together some signs of that terrible era's icons and its current analogues. More »
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Ex-Spy editors give freewheeling interview to ... Bergdorf Goodman magazine. [Michael Gross] More »
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Admittedly, things have been a little bit Spy-heavy around here lately. Spy this, Spy that. Spy invented laughter. Spy invented magazines. Spy invented puppies. Spy raped me. We get it. We're totally down. We love laughing, and puppies, and rape. If Spy was Arrested Development, we would totally be sad that it got cancelled, and we would totally buy the DVD box sets (and we are, and we did!) Which is basically what Spy: The Funny Years is — a book collecting some of the finer moments of the magazine's historical satire, all in one hardcover volume so that people come to your apartment and are like "What's Spy?" and you're like "It was this irreverent magazine published in the mid-80s to early 90s that gained a cult following and has left a lasting imprint on the nature of modern comedy and satire," and they're all like "Wow, you know a lot about ways to bore the shit out of me." More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=213495&view=rss&microfeed=true Above, enjoy one of the more staid events on the Spy revival/anniversary tour — more later this week! — courtesy of videographer Richard Blakeley and Intern Mary. A crowd of 30-something hipsters too young for Bob Dylan but too old for MTV crowded into the New York Public Library (NYPL, or "nipple") to hear former Spy magazine editors chat about everything from Hillary Clinton in bondage gear to the publishing business to pregnant Bruce Willis. "He didn't pose for that," Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter said when the Willis cover was projected. "That was me." Overall, the night was pretty tame, aside from Carter's out-of-control-classical-music-composer hair and the sexual tension between New York Times media columnist David Carr and everyone on stage, from the "powerful" Carter to the "mysterious" Kurt Andersen. George Kalogerakis somehow lurked in the background, as ever, despite being physically present in the foreground. More »
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It's another "how great was Spy" piece, this time from The Observer (Graydon Carter's subsequent gig): More »
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• Maggie Gyllenhaaaaaal and Peter Sarsgaaaaard buy a $1.75 million townhouse in Park Slope, crushing the dreams of one silly civilian who'd been dying for a shot at the property. Alas, famous people always win. [NYO] More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=203726&view=rss&microfeed=true In case you missed the Rake's interview with SPY co-founder and Studio 360 host Kurt Andersen, I'll summarize: More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=12046&view=rss&microfeed=true Radar isn't SPY, but there's definitely a faint resemblance: More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=11958&view=rss&microfeed=true A reader writes: I was at the Harvard Club for a New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA) meeting, co-sponsored by the Canadian Consulate General in New York The name of the CEO of NYSSA is Tom Phillips. (Yes, THAT Tom Phillips, you SPY-stalker girl, you—co-founder of the magazine.) More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=11735&view=rss&microfeed=true A profile of Gawker, and Elizabeth Spiers, in The Observer. "I like Gawker because it's funny and smart, and because it gets out a lot more than I do, so I can live vicariously through it" — Kurt Anderson of Spy, New York Magazine, and Inside.com. More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=11696&view=rss&microfeed=true I have a minor obsession with Spy magazine circa 1988. I don't remember the exact details of my conversation with Kurt Andersen (Spy co-founder with Graydon Carter and Studio 360 host) but I think it may have gone something like this: More »
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Ex-HBO honcho Michael Fuchs has agreed to back Maer Roshan's new mag, Radar, after American Media, which owns The Sun and the National Enquirer, backed out. We're guessing this means Radar will be "Spy meets Vanity Fair meets Harper's with a pinch of the Enquirer thrown in for good taste." More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=10610&view=rss&microfeed=true An oldie, but a goodie—Spy explains the effects of atmospheric re-entry: "Three hundred and fifty-three thousand tons of reindeer and presents are going to create an enormous amount of air resistance especially at 650 miles per second. This air resistance will heat the reindeer in the same way that spaceships are heated up when they re nter the earth s atmosphere. According to our calculations, the lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. This means they will burst into spectacular, multicoloured flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them. As Santa continues on his mission leaving deafening sonic booms in his wake charred reindeer will constantly be sloughed off. All 214,200 reindeer will be dead within 4.36 thousandths of a second." More »
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