• Jon Gosselin was the guest of honor at a pool party in Vegas. Whereas a pool party would sound like an enjoyable experience anywhere else, in Vegas, it's the sixth circle of hell. It looks something like this:

  Upon arriving on the red carpet, Gosselin told reporters, "It looks like we'll have a good time" – as 2,000 people danced and drank alcohol to the sounds of rock, hip hop and house music. Not everyone was necessarily happy to see him, though. As he walked on the red carpet, one bikinied woman stood on a railing and shouted, "Team Kate".

  Come on. Just, like, amazing. Note the detail of how she's in a bikini. Anyway, he got a bunch of numbers and apparently brought his mom there, too? This guy's just, yeah. The verdict's in. Team Kate, indeed. Oh, and MGM Hotel and Casino: Classy. [People]
  
  

• Meanwhile, Kate—even though her hair could use some, uh, toning down—put the rumors about her being with the family's bodyguard to rest. They had their own pool party with the bodyguard and his wife, and E! helpfully points out that he patrolled the perimeter on an ATV, playing watchdog over the family. Since Jon was, you know, in Vegas. [E!]
  
  
• Joe Francis says Brody Jenner has a small dick. First off: takes one to know one, BRAH. Second: the New York Times has some helpful news for Jenner! If he can't get it big, he might still be able to keep it up. Really, though, there's so much homoerotic tension between these guys. I've always secretly thought Girls Gone Wild is the kind of overcompensating shit someone deeply insecure about their sexuality would produce. Then again, who doesn't want a free hat, right? Community service. [D Listed]
  
  
• Kelly Preston pulled out of a "grief panel" where she was going to discuss the death of her son, Jett. Nope. No more. Maybe because she'd get asked a question about the sketchy circumstances surrounding it, including (but not limited to!) the Scientology cover-up of Jett's autism. Unfortunately, you can only get so many Roger Friedmans fired, and once you run out, there are no heads to be put on corporate platters! And that happened. [NYDN]
  
  
• Serena Williams and Common are hooking up? Did not know. There is, indeed, a light in celebrity gossip, sometimes. [Page Six]
  
  
• See this plastic bag? It's the most beautiful thing in the world. And it costs too much for me to ever have. Name the movie! American Beauty star Wes Bentley is defaulting on his AmEx for $90K. Maybe he can sell some weed to pay the bill? [TMZ]
  
  
• The first lady of oil-rich Gabon is in California living on food stamps? (A) Africa is crazy and (B) of course Page Six would pick this up. Love it. [Page Six]
  
  
• The guy from Sum 41 and Avril Lavigne are "headed for splitsville" according to the Daily News. They get Gabon and you get this? Weak, Daily News. Sorry, but you just can't compete with geopolitical scandelousness with Canadian pop-punksters. [NYDN]
  
  
• Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson don't talk about Twilight, like, ever. Dare not say they sacred name! Just like how media people never talk about the media. Really, though: I wonder if they're bigger Harry Potter fans. Don't forget, folks, Pattinson was Cedric Diggory waybackwhen. There's a distinct air of truth to this. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Tina Fey takes her FeyCay on Fire Island. Everyone there is apparently resisting the urge to make the Sarah Palin joke about Fire Island/Manhattan and Alaska/Russia. Which makes me concerned that the people in the Hamptons might be funnier. [Page Six]
  
  
• Albert Hammond Jr. of The Strokes sold his East Village pad for less than $1M (ouch?) and him an Agyness Deyn are gonna move into a hotel for a while. 3:1 on the Bowery Hotel, 8:1 on the Cooper Square, but if they drop into The Hotel on Rivington, every last remaining shred of indie cred: gone. [Page Six]
  
  
• Maybe I'm amazed that Paul McCartney still has the power to deal with all of these women coming in and out of his life. Then again, maybe I'm not, and he probably doesn't need your New York Times penile resuscitation squad to do so, thank you. His current lady, Nancy Shevell, is avoiding his last lady, Heather Mills, who's been stalking around his Amaganssett house. Which, I mean, pretty impressive, Heather Mills. Must get tiring, though, right? [Page Six]

And, on that note: happy Sunday. We'll leave it to the Walrus himself to take us out. Paul?

Swiss-based Low Cost IVF Foundation plans to open three new clinics on the African continent that will help infertile mothers reproduce for about $300, a mere sliver of the cost rich, spoiled Westerners pay. Meanwhile, another organization's hatching a similar scheme in Egypt.

Not only will the process help child-longing women fulfill their reproductive dreams, but it will help ward off ostracization, for many people in various African counties associate infertility with witchcraft. (That's fair, right?)

Anyway, the article was posted at New Scientist and the reaction has been, well, confusing. Take, for example, this over-the-top feminist remark:

As if the world wasn't already overpopulated, why is there any need to turn women into breeding sows using technology that has such a high rate of problems in the offspring? Come on now, this is beyond insane, this is misogyny at its worst, perpetuating the myth that women are just ambulatory incubators.

You said it, sister! And then there's this, entitled "Just what we need — more people:"

Rather than trying to solve that fertility issue, we should be trying to shift those Sudanese cultural beliefs from 'witchcraft' to having a big heart and having a family there adopt one of the many african orphans.

Hey, buddy: the Sudanese have the smallest tatters of a government, little hope and even less food. Let them have their babies. Sure, it will only compound their woes, but babies are so cute! And, really, no amount of hardship can take that away...

Image via bdinphoenix's flickr.

This past New Year's Eve, 6-year-old Mika decided that he wanted to tie the knot with his ladyfriend, 5-year-old Anna-Bell, so much that he'd run away to Africa with her if he had to. Well, OK, it wasn't quite so dramatic. Mostly they're funny little kids who thought it would be nice to marry someplace warm, so they figured Africa was a good bet. They packed swimsuits and water-wings and brought Mika's 7-year-old sister Anna-Lea along as a witness.

Mika, a romantic if ever there was one, told the press:

We wanted to take the train to the airport, then we wanted to get on a plane and when we arrived we wanted to unpack the summer things and then we wanted to go for a bit of a stroll in the sun.

Which, aw. Unfortunately the kids were nabbed while on an express train headed out of Hanover, bound for the airport. An official got suspicious once he noticed, you know, three "little ones ... completely on their own ... [with] lots of swimming gear with them." Their parents, who were apparently asleep when the children stole into the early morning, came to retrieve them at the police station, which the kids got a tour of by way of a consolation prize/engagement present.

But don't worry, they'll get their opportunity someday... soon, maybe. Said a police spokesman: "They'll have the chance to put their plan into action at a later date." Cute! And, when considering the idea of small children roaming the streets of Germany unattended, sort of ominous!

And let's think of this in media terms! Why are kids the only people doing interesting adult things? Remember that fanciful little mini-Bruni? And how kids like him are the only people getting book and movie deals in this shitriffic economy? Well then how long will it be before these wee ones, as precocious—albeit more adorable and foreign—as the little Upper West Side foodie, sell their life rights to some producer? I mean whatever movie they make about the story (a tale of impossible love as allegory for gay marriage?) will probably be dark and soulful (like Let the Right One In) rather than cloyingly twee, because it's European, but still. Damn kids.

Photo, L-R: the blushing would-be bride Anna-Bell (look at that hair! that adorable hair!), the doting older sister Anna-Lea, and the dashing bridegroom Mika.

"Oil futures spiked Monday morning just as news broke that Somali pirates had nabbed a Saudi Aramco-owned super tanker named Sirius Star off the coast of Kenya. The huge ship can carry up to 2 million barrels of oil.

Just before 9 a.m., oil futures stood at $56 a barrel. By 10 a.m., they rose $3 to nearly $59."

The article goes on to say blah blah many other factors blah blah, but really what we're talking about here is a merry band of African buccaneers who can move world oil prices with one single heist. A $3 increase per barrel means that they would have raised the value of the very ship they jacked by $6 million just by stealing it. If that is not the best job ever then you don't know what you're talking about. Are we "glamorizing" a dangerous lifestyle? Shut up. [NYT]

It's hard to understand and describe the situation in the country; the Tutsis — the tribe slaughtered in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994 — are leading an army against the government. 5.4 million people have died from war-related causes in the Congo since 1998, which one organization calls "the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WW II." And the majority of deaths were from "secondary" causes: malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. Preventable, and treatable, under different circumstances. But Ashley Judd says that women and children "tend to be the most vulnerable and the most exploited and the most underserved and so there is probably a gender inequality factor that contributes to the lack of attention that's being given."

Judd's experiences in the Congo — especially when she met with the many, many women who had been brutally raped — had a real impact on her. "I was flat on my back for three weeks after," she says. (She went to a doctor and then a psychologist, who diagnosed her with "plain old straight-up grief.")

Judd is extremely articulate about the horrors she witnessed:

"[I sat with] a woman, who, through word of mouth, heard there was a clinic which could help a woman who had been raped. She had to figure out—in the midst of being stigmatized, in the midst of her physical agony, in the midst of incontinence and starvation—how to get herself walking, crawling to this clinic, only to find that it's overcrowded, because there are so many women, hundreds, if not thousands, just like her. And just imagine, this is a clinic that does nothing but genital reconstruction; […] The vagina will tear when being forced to accommodate either a rapist's anatomy or objects that are introduced: wood, rock, sticks, guns, bayonets. There will be perforation of the vaginal walls, perforation and ripping of the cervix, potentially, based on the extent of the penetration into the uterus. The wall between the rectum and vagina is ripped apart. The urethra, which goes to the bladder, is damaged. There is incontinence. The urine is constantly seeping out, because the muscles and mechanisms that hold the bladder intact are ruined; there is faecal incontinency, which of course can introduce faecal matter into the gut, which results in horrific infections."

Christopher Dickey says: "Inevitably, there are people who say that you are a voyeur." Responds Judd: "Let them come with me—Come 'voyeur' with me."

Ashley Judd’s Heart Of Darkness [Newsweek]
Ashley Judd's Congo Diary [TheCommunity]
Population Services International [Official Site]

[via EV Grieve]

"..."

"What is the What?"

"What?"

And so began my amazing night with Dave Eggers.

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a candlelit dinner (if ONLY), but I did get a front row seat last night when he spoke at NYU's Center for Global Affairs.

He was plugging "What is the What," his last-year's novel about the Lost Boys of Sudan. I knew his velocity. He was heartbreaking, staggering and yes, genius (or penis).

Apparently—you may be surprised—the news from Africa sucks. And we still suck for not doing enough. You may click here for more info.

Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose was on hand to interview Eggers and one of the Lost Boys (but not the one featured in the book) named Abraham. Eggers and Abraham were far more eloquent than Rose, who wouldn't shut up about his opinions of Judaism and also was really into rereading passages of Eggers' books when we all knew that Eggers' velvet voice would do it more justice. Rose even read the last paragraph of the book when he knew that nearly half of the audience hadn't finished it. Okay, so that's clearly not as bad as ethnic cleansing, but he's still a dick.

Genocide aside, here are the unsurprising details about Eggers that I could gather:

• He's a Mac user (hipsterous maximus).
• His password has 8 or 9 characters (any guesses on what it could be???).
• He totes a Moleskine, which undoubtedly is packed with pictures of staplers, witty reinventions of dialogue and unintelligible footnotes.
• He was wearing brown shoes, the heel of the right shoe was held together with what looked like black electrical tape.
• He had a few gray hairs, but totally in that hot George Clooney way.
• He fiddled with a Uniball pen for over an hour, but it was ultimately endearing.
• To write dialogue in his books, he has to have it on tape.
• He signed books FOREVER and spoke cheerfully with his hordes of oh-so-worldlytrendyinterestingwellread fans. He seemed—!!!—genuinely interested in what they had to say.
• 
  I know he's poor, married with a kid, blah blah blah, but he knows where to find me.

[U of C Irvine's Center for Virus Research director Luis P.] Villarreal predicts that, without an effective AIDS vaccine, nearly the entire population of Africa will eventually perish. "We can also expect at least a few humans to survive,'' he wrote. They would be people who have been infected with H.I.V. yet, for some reason, do not get sick. "These survivors would thus be left to repopulate the continent. However, the resulting human population would be distinct" from those whom H.I.V. makes sick.

Our foreign friend writes:

The entire issue is based on Africa - raising awareness and tolerance and all of those good things. However, bundled with the mag was a whole other magazine devoted to diamonds. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't diamonds a major cause of trouble in Africa?

Ali joins Queen Rania of Jordan, Queen Rania is paired with Bono, Bono stares at the back of Condoleezza Rice's neck, Condi is almost edged out of the picture by George W. Bush, Bush observes Bishop Desmond Tutu at prayer, Tutu stands behind a seated Brad Pitt (you'd think the dude would have offered the elderly bishop the chair), Pitt bros it up with Djimon Hounsou, who scopes out Madonna's rack. Madonna whispers something in Maya Angelou's ear, Angelou looks disapprovingly at Chris Rock, Rock tweaks Warren Buffett's ear (Africa=ears, apparently), Warren puts a calm hand on Bill and Melinda Gates, the Gateses flank Oprah, who whispers something to George Clooney (seriously, there's some kind of ear fetish here, because Clooney does the same thing to Jay-Z). Hova stands next to Alicia Keys, Keys poses with Iman, and Iman whispers to Don Cheadle, who you'll remember from his earlier appearance with Barack Obama. Whew! Caring about another continent takes a lot out of you!

Vanity Fair

Bono can be somewhat humorless about using his celebrity to promote a cause, while Carter sees an opportunity to engage in all sorts of cover gimmickry. Bono, a co-owner of Forbes magazine, (but don't ask him about it, he gets kind of testy) has edited before, and he plans to wield a sharp scythe on the issue's stories. Carr provides one of the more helpful explanations we've experienced recently:

"I want this issue to be a best-selling issue of Vanity Fair, I want to make a hit record. These are the best writers in America, but I am a devotee of the 45," he said, referring to the predigital single that required economy and precision.

Citizen Bono Brings Africa to Idle Rich [NYT]
Earlier: Bono Writes and Edits Newspaper: Can't Be Any Worse Than "Million Dollar Hotel"
'Forbes', The Pensions Stripped Bare, What Does Bono Care?
[Image: Annie Leibovitz]

Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of Kaavya Viswanathan