Bourdain has a show on the Travel Chanel where he goes to parts of the world less explored by food networks (like the Congo, and Ted Nugent's ranch). David Chang is a mouthy, hyper-critically-acclaimed New York chef who admits to being overexposed and isn't exactly family friendly. Good example: when Foie Gras activists protested his restaurant, he promised to put a Foie Gras dish on the menu every night, and donate the proceeds to charity. Also, at one of his restaurants, it says in very plain language on the menu: We do not serve vegetarian-friendly items here. I'd go as far to say the items are aggressively vegetarian-hostile. Crispy Pig's Head Torchon? Mm. Tasty traif. So! When these two get together, sparks will fly. And did they. Besides taking on (fucking) cupcakes, (fucking) San Fransisco, and the (no bullshit) honesty of Top Chef results, Mr. Chang decided to speak on the issue of television chef Guy Fieri.

There are plenty of reasons one could dislike Mr. Fieri, chief among them: he's a spokesperson for T.G.I. Fridays, which is invading Union Square, which brings downtown Manhattan one business closer to being a shameless strip mall. So he hates New York. He talks LOUD like all the other TV chefs who feel they have to SCREAM THINGS very EXCITEDLY about rather lowbrow FOOD like BUFFALO WINGS, BRAH! And also, maybe, that he represents the American food community globally. He's like John Bolton, but armed with a cheeseburger.

But David Chang has his own issues with him:

Cooking is not about "fuckin' sunglasses and that stupid fuckin' armband." If he ever does that, "throw me down the stairs," Chang said.

Notably, this is not one of David Chang's meat tenderizing tricks. Yet. That we know of.

Ten Things Anthony Bourdain and David Chang Hate [NYM]

So! Megan Fox was promoting Jennifer's Body, the new Diablo Cody monster whatever movie. Wonderland magazine asks her about Transformers 2, and she goes off the reservation on Michael Bay:

God, I really wish I could go loose on this one. He's like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he's a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he's not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he's so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it's endearing to watch him.

Now, while Megan Fox is trying to cement her reputation as a ridiculously inaccessible super rad badass post-femme hottie goddess rockbitch (or whatever Diablo Cody would call it) by basically calling Michael Bay a small-dicked boy with big explosive toys, a bunch of Michael Bay crewmembers—Or fanboys! Or both!—posted a letter on a Michael Bay message board. They write:

Megan has the press fooled...we have never understood why Megan was always such – the grump of the set?

...When facing the press, Megan is the queen of talking trailer trash and posing like a porn star. And yes we've had the unbearable time of watching her try to act on set, and yes, it's very cringe-able. So maybe, being a porn star in the future might be a good career option. But make-up beware, she has a paragraph tattooed to her backside (probably due her rotten childhood) easily another 45 minutes in the chair

Yes! Written like true techies. She's got a tat? Call her trailer trash! And again:

Megan says that Transformers was an unsafe set? Come on Megan, we know it is a bit more strenuous then the playground at the trailer park, but you don't insult one of the very best stunt and physical effects teams in the business! Not one person got hurt!

And who is the real Megan Fox? She is very different than the academy nominee and winning actors we've all worked around. She's as about ungracious a person as you can ever fathom.

Yeah, well, we imagine that's the case with everyone. What say you of franchise star Shia LaDouche? Exactly. Furthermore!

The press certainly doesn't know her most famous line. On our first day in Egypt, the Egyptian government wouldn't let us shoot because of a permit problem as the actors got ready in make up at the Four Seasons Hotel. Michael tried to make the best of it; he wanted to take the cast and crew on a private tour of the famous Giza pyramids. God hold us witness, Megan said, "I can't believe Michael is fucking forcing us to go to the fucking pyramids!" I guess this is the "Hitler guy" she is referring to.

Okay, that's just funny. So! Word of the letter leaks out. Sister Jez gets to it, Michael K at D-Listed gets to it with his own analysis:

The letter is supposed to make you want to run for president of the I HATE MEGAN FOX fan club, but it actually makes me kind of like her stupid ass for a quick minute. I mean, she's dumb, she's a slut and she's a bitch. The dumb slutty bitch is my kind! It's like we were separated at the free clinic!

God, he's a poet. And for a moment, this struggle of two work cultures—the "talent" culture, and the "techie" culture, this ages-long Hollywood battle over the value of diva actors and the work they do and the class struggles that exist between them—it hung in the air, dangling over the edge of becoming an all-out war, like an Autobot teetering on the precipice of a cliff, about to fall into the Grand Canyon, when Michael Bay, the great negotiator, stepped in. The letter was removed from the site! Forget for a moment that D Listed has it up, Just Jared still has it, and Google has it cached, and read into the great peacemaking the Michael Bay doth purport, on his site:

I don't condone the crew letter to Megan. And I don't condone Megan's outlandish quotes. But her crazy quips are part of her crazy charm. The fact of the matter I still love working with her, and I know we still get along. I even expect more crazy quotes from her on Transformers 3.

Michael

Genius. This is the man who brought us Armegeddon; he's a natrual crowdpleaser and one hell of a moneymaker, at heart. You think he'd do anything but leave open the possibility of more cast and crew infighting and insanity?

Winner: Michael Bay.
Losers: Classless Tech Crew Who Can't Write A Letter Very Well, With Exception To The Egypt Anecdote.
Push: Megan Fox. Yes, probably an asshole, but an honest, funny one. Like, sometimes, you're in Egypt, you just don't want to see the fuckin' pyramids, you know? Someone get me a mango lassi while we wait for these robots to get gassed. I've got my wonderful freaky thumbs to look at.

Well! Oxfeld's attempt to break through the threshold from the mere peasantry of a walk-in right to a prime time table was chronicled by Eater:

I feel Oxfeld's pain, as someone who has both been through the intense process of trying to get a goddamn steak and as someone who used to take reservations for Keith McNally's restaurants. Full disclosure!

Without revealing any of the top secret, Pandora's Box-esque Black Voodoo BloodMagik that goes into getting a table at one of his places, know that it can be done. But Oxfeld, who—Mazel Tov!—was recently named the new theater critic at the New York Observer, wasn't getting one. And he wasn't about to take that shit lying down, or past 10PM.

It sounds like he tried to get a reservation exchanged, and was a little too aggro in dealing with the reservationist on the other line. Note to all New York Diners: be nice to your reservationists. Otherwise, you might end up getting it blogged, and the owner of the restaurant will consequently call you out for being an asshole. Like this:

I just investigated the Jesse Oxfeld claim and discovered that most of what he said is quite true. However, according to Hannan, the reservationist who took his call, Mr. Oxfeld was so pushy and aggressive on the telephone that she took it upon herself to distort the reservation policy to ensure that someone as unpleasant-sounding as Mr. Oxfeld would not be eating at Minetta Tavern.

I'm personally so upset not to have someone as unpleasant and aggressive on the telephone not eat at Minetta Tavern that I'd like to now take this opportunity to offer my sincere and heartfelt apologies to Mr Oxfeld.

Sincerely,
Keith McNally

Zing! For those of you outside New York who are still wondering what the everloving fuck is so important or amazing to deal with the trouble of getting a reservation at a place like Minetta, well, departed New York Times dining critic Frank Bruni, in a review noting Minetta as "the best steakhouse in the city," also wrote:

Where Mr. McNally goes, models, movie honchos and magazine scribes follow, because they're sure to find themselves among other members of their slavishly fashionable tribe, coddled in an environment that's as much stage set as mess hall.

Also, the french fries are cooked in Lorenzo's Oil and the salads are topped with Weapons-Grade plutonium flakes: it's the new Foie Gras. Mind you, this is a city that will wait for hours for a goddamn hamburger, rain or shine.

New York, New York. It's a hell of a town. If you need any further explanation, this should help.

Go to any function where advertising "creatives" gather, and you will see that guy: the one wearing some old Converse, or crazy purple-yellow-red-green Adidas he designed himself, online. The average old person would not think such a cool guy could be such a corporate hack, but they would be wrong! We're not here to give you list of facts about Alex Bogusky's career (he's the chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the supercool ad agency that brought you the weird Burger King ads, Microsoft's current ad campaign, and many others—basically the EDGY agency that's not too edgy for corporate behemoths)—we're just here to demonstrate to you that, yes, Alex Bogusky is that ad guy. Okay:

• "You get a sense of Alex Bogusky's droll perspective when he hands you his business card. It has one rounded corner and reads, '25% safer than most other business cards.'"
• "'Conventional branding tends to piggyback on pop culture,' says Bogusky, 41, whose sneakers and long mane befit the college-dorm ambiance of CP&B's Coconut Grove offices."
• "'He looked like Jesus,' confesses a blushing 27-year-old hipster in gray New Balance sneakers and a zip-up hoodie."
• 
  The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
• "Bogusky works on a raised platform in Crispin's 70,000-square-foot space, which once housed an indoor soccer field."
• "As a rule we get off more on the culture jamming aspect of what we do for clients than the actual advertising aspects."
• He wrote a dieting book. God.

To recap: Sklar sent New York's media set abuzz after going wide with an email soliciting writers for a new "Drudge Meets Huffington Post" media blog she's running called Mediaite, which will be funded by former MSNBC journalist Dan Abrams. Abrams also owns a much kvetched-over corporate consulting company, Abrams Research, that aims to employ journalists and bloggers in advising Abrams clients how the media will react to issues clients are involved in. In case you didn't notice, that premise could be perceived as more than a little conflict-of-interest-y and scandalous.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Sklar's email was a request for submissions with a 12-point list of somewhat patronizing and legalese-heavy guidelines. One of the email's more interesting points was that payment and "compensation issues are still being hammered out." She sent out the email at about 4PM on Thursday. By 6:06 PM, Jarvis had a full-scale retort to Sklar's email posted to his blog. Some of the juicer parts:

This is the same Dan Abrams - lawyer, thus the legalese, and failed MSNBC host and executive - who is starting a PR company - oh, excuse me, media strategy firm - to advise companies on media while promising access to media people - the same media people, one imagines, he is getting to write about media for his media site. Gawd, it's positive hermaphroditic: A bunch of worms who can't figure out who's fucking whom how. I think I'll stay away. Don't want any of that on me...I don't need any lawyers-turned-flacks-turned-media-commentators-turned-publishers. I can publish on my own...If [Dan Abrams] had just started a blog or a group blog about media, cool. But announcing that he's also starting a PR company offering access to media people makes it stink. And then trying to throw on the cloak of legalese does nothing to relieve the stench.

Burn. The rest of it's mostly crunchy media arguing. But Sklar - an notoriously cheeky, ubiquitous New York media character - had been laid into on a very public forum by someone she counted as a friend. So she emailed Jarvis her retort, and then posted the email to her blog after Jarvis provoked her again. And now, folks, we've got a ballgame.

First, Sklar asks why her friend Jarvis didn't just email her with his issues before going live with them:

You know exactly who sent you that email - me, not Dan - and you know how easy it is to get it touch with me.

Then she goes on her toes to defend her credentials:

...don't call me a "fellow lawyer turned media person" like it's a pejorative (I'm going to ignore the imprecise "lawyers-turned-flacks-turned-media-commentators-turned-publishers"). I graduated in the top 5% of the top law school in Canada, was Valedictorian, and got the top public service award. When I bring my legal training to bear on my work it is to be precise and nuanced and detailed and meticulously fair.

After which she gets in the shotgun formation to attack Jarvis as a writer, noting that she wouldn't pay nothin' for his work:

I wouldn't recommend paying you for your contributions to HuffPo over the past year - for example, this one was over 1700 words - I definitely would have sent it back to you with a deep edit. This one was a repurpose from your blog, which is fine, but I [sic] there are a few holes...In this one, I would have pointed out that "Craigslist" needs to be capitalized...The one berating newspaper-people for losing their jobs was maybe a tad unkind; at the very least, I would have asked you to move your semi-mea-culpa up a bit...

She makes a spirited - if somewhat insubstantial - defense of her employer...

I couldn't help but notice that you totally don't seem to get the difference between Abrams Research and Mediate, and you didn't really care to check, either. "But announcing that he's also starting a PR company offering access to media people…" - um, Abrams Research launched in November. Mediaite is a separate site, and Dan won't have any editorial role. They are two separate concerns.

And closes it out with a solid kicker, like any good journalist blogger media consultant would:

You can write what you want - you're Jeff Jarvis! Who cares if it's not your best work - or even if it's not the best work it could be? That's fine for those sites, it's part of the process. Mediaite has a different process: we want to address the stuff above before we publish. (And also it shouldn't be racist of sexist or homophobic! I know, how inconvenient!) But anyway, all of the above - all of it! - is beside the point: That blog post was easily one of the biggest dick moves I've ever seen.

Best,
Rachel

As crunchy, old, and kvetchy as Jarvis comes off, we're going to have to award this round to him. Sklar stooped to his level, took this thing personally (which, maybe she should have, but still!), and also, made a weak, roundabout argument regarding Abrams' conflict-of-interest issues without actually addressing them, though if Sklar does count old media fogey Jarvis as a friend, she's right: he was being kind of a dick. But hopefully, like two other friends-turned-foes, neither party in this "violent" "battle" of "epic" proportions won't turn to violence.

Meanwhile, while Mediaite clearly still has yet to launch, their Twitter is up and running, and one of the crew decided to launch a little fire Jarvis's way:

Except they forgot to disclose within that 140-character limit that they're as "independent" in so much as Mediaite and Abrams Research ("AR") are owned by the same guy. They're gonna have this problem a lot, aren't they?

No Thanks [Buzz Machine]
Bloggers Do It In Public [Chartini]

*Full Abrams Research-esque disclosure: I know Sklar socially/personally - like everyone in New York media - and have emailed with her over her responsibilities at Abrams Research. "Dan Abrams' Henchwoman" is not her official title.

Lagerfeld called out Heidi Klum back in February, piling on the remarks of some German designer, the nonsensically-named Wolfgang Joop (no relation to Agustus Gloop, har), who told German GQ:

"Heidi Klum is no runway model. She is simply too heavy and has too big a bust. And she always grins so stupidly. That is not avant-garde - that is commercial!"

This sounds infinitely better if you scream it at a young child and substitute the r's for v's. Anyway: dick, right? Karl Lagerfeld piped in: "I don't know Heidi Klum. She was never known in France. Claudia Schiffer also doesn't know who she is."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Ah, yes: once Claudia Schiffer doesn't know who you are, you're finished. Either way, Lagerfeld apparently enjoyed the attention he got for talking smack on Heidi Klum so much, he did it again, according to the Sun. Lagerfeld went after Klum's husband, Seal, this time, noting that he's a monstah. Or something along those lines:

"I am no dermatologist but I wouldn't want his skin. Mine looks better than his. He is covered in craters."

Which is ridiculously mean! Everyone knows Seal has skin problems because of this thing called discoid lupus erythematosus, which you can read more about on Wikipedia. Now, the unfortunate thing about UK tabloid The Sun's reports on Lagerfeld's remarks is that they don't attribute them to any particular event in either instance, which makes me wonder if there's some reporter at The Sun who can just call up an angry German guy to get him to go on the record about hating someone nicer than him. But what have Heidi Klum or Seal ever done to anyone? She's having her fourth kid. He makes nice music for my parents. They both incredibly attractive people.

The Klum/Seal camp has yet to respond, and they probably won't, because their lives are filled with happy things that don't involve sadist German designers. Honestly, this just feels like a cry for attention from Lagerfeld, who would probably welcome the warm, motherly embrace of Klum, husband Seal, and their three Baby Seals (with the fourth to come).

Anyway: BEEF! The first shots have been fired. What say you, Seal?

Karl Lagerfeld, Nasty Boy [Cityfile]

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Lola Ogunnaike used to be an entertainment and trend story reporter for the NYT, but she left for the glam world of CNN in 2007 (she also once guest-hosted The View, thoroughly pissing off her own paper!). Now she's out at CNN. Her contract isn't being renewed. Lola, there's always room back at the NYT for a good fake trend story writer. Also Alex Clark, the first female editor of Granta, has resigned after less than a year on the job. Must have been really bad.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.New York Times Co. chairman Michael Golden was at the secret newspaper conspiracy meeting outside of Chicago yesterday, and he can assure you that it was not, in fact, a secret. Not at all. Then when E&P asked him what they talked about there he wouldn't say, nor would the head of the AP nor would the head of Advance papers. Not a secret at all.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Ha, the guy who used to run the LA Times' website is now running the official website of the LA County Supervisor. Which hopefully pays more?

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.For no particular reason, a dude named Sam Schulman wrote an op-ed in the WSJ today calling Edmund Andrews, Jeff Goldberg, and David Denby a bunch of pussies. We admire his spunk.

Limbaugh is the spiritual leader of a Republican party that has basically resigned itself to representing only aging white males. There are enough aging white males to make Rush still a very, very successful broadcast, but there are not enough of them to win the presidency. Michael Steele grasps this, sort of, but he is not smart enough to do anything about it besides make claims about "urban/suburban hip-hop settings" and then pick a fight with a man who is much brighter and more beloved by his party's base than he, Mr. Limbaugh.

Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in an interview with CNN that he, rather than Limbaugh, is "the de facto leader of the Republican Party."

And Steele described Limbaugh as a performer.

"Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh's whole thing is entertainment," Steele said. "Yes, it is incendiary. Yes, it is ugly."

And the obvious response came quickly:

"I'm not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don't want to be," Rush said. "I would be embarrassed to say that I'm in charge of the Republican Party in a sad-sack state that it's in. If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it's in, I would quit."
[...]
"So send those fundraising requests out," Rush said in a sneering tone, in an apparent reference to Steele, adding: "Make sure you say, `We want Obama to succeed.' So people understand your compassion."

"Republicans and conservatives are sick and tired of being talked down to, they're sick and tired of being lectured to," Rush continued. "And until you show some understanding and respect for who they are, you're gonna have a tough time rebuilding your party."

Yaaay! It's like Christmas! Now either this will escalate further (we're sure noted hip-hop aficionado Michael Steele is studying up on his Jay-Z and Nas) or Steele will be forced to grovel for forgiveness. And that's win-win. (Update: Steele went for Door No. 2: "There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.")

[video by Molly McAleer]

• Beef, It's What's For Dinner