race relations
When
Vogue put LeBron James on the cover it was innovative: a black man on the cover of a magazine aimed at rich, white women?
Anna Wintour's still got it. But now, the fallout. Didn't
LeBron James sort of look like King-Kong? And why does that pretty white girl looked so scared? Oh no, racial stereotypes being reinforced on the cover of
Vogue, a place normally dedicated to reinforcing an unattainable ideal of beauty. And it gets worse: James's mouth was agape, just like Jennifer Hudson's was on the March cover. Controversy!
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Gossip Girl Somehow to Become More Miserable
Michelle Trachtenberg, the actress who threatened to destroy
Buffy the Vampire Slayer for three seasons (mission failed, mostly) has just signed on for a role on the Upper East Side rich kids soap
Gossip Girl. She'll play the wicked troublemaker Georgina Sparks, who gives current "bad girl" Blair Waldorf a run for her money in the arbitrary bitchiness department. Trachtenberg, an entirely irritating actress, once again tromps all over a show I watch (though
Gossip Girl has nowhere near as far to fall as
Buffy did.) Either way, I'm the
only one who watches the damn thing, so no one really cares. It'll just be me brooding away in my darkened living room, my cobwebby wedding cake rotting beside me, lamenting things long, long lost. [
TV Guide via
Fimoculous]
things that are obvious to some but not to others
NPR newscaster Jean Cochhran recently described President Bush's trip to Africa as a visit to the "dark continent." Some NPR listeners took the retro phrase the wrong (read: racist) way, and, as they are predisposed to do, wrote in."I had no idea the term would be found offensive," Cochhran said. Yeah, there's a no reason a term that casts
and entire continent of people as the Other should bother anyone. [
NPR]
survivor narratives
We recently received an email with the subject line "
Tyra Banks did not pay ConEd." It recounts the hellish ordeal one viewer endured as an audience member during the taping of "
The Tyra Banks Show." Taut, gripping, and tragic, it almost reads like the
Into Thin Air of talk show audience member tragedy narratives. Particularly if one of the Everest guides from
Into Thin Air had confided to his charges that he was "on the rag." The entire compelling saga follows.
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expectations
This ad has already been deemed too douchey for Craigslist, but it is
still apparently making the rounds at Harvard, from whence it (supposedly) emanated. "My final club has a reunion this fall, and my relationship of two years ended disastrously earlier this summer. I have an invitation for myself plus one, and am willing to show you a great time. It is a private party, in an extremely classy setting. There is no real way to describe how ornate the club is, but I guarantee that it will be the most upscale experience of your life." Oh, sign us up! But not so fast. This gentleman has some pretty stringent requirements.
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exceeding expectations
From the mailbag:
My son's roommate Sheff was working the BFP of the week in the Hamptons on Saturday night. Nobody knows what disease it was for, but anyway, Nicholson was there and at one point he wanders over to a fairly deserted bar being tended by Sheff. (Basically Sheff is pouring wine and fetching kegs and stuff.)
Nicholson says:"Workin' hard kid. I can see."
Sheff nods.
"So, lemme try a glass of that wine."
Sheff pours the wine. Nicholson walks away. Stops. Takes a sip of it. Stands for a moment and turns back to Sheff.
"Listen kid," he begins. "I don't wanna tell you how to do your job or anything, but this is the pussyest glass of wine I ever had."
gawker book club
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." And now, unaided (
her publisher claims) by a ghostwriter, one of America's most beloved television actresses has contributed to that list the following:
"Kate stood frozen in her bathroom doorway, bracing herself for the inevitable, the unavoidable, the potentially painful moment dreaded by women everywhere: the morning weigh-in."
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books
Now, anybody who's ever tried to get a novel published is sure to look scornfully upon yesterday's strip. A debut novel, submitted without an agent, gets a $25,000 offer just like that? Go on, pull the other one, it's got a bell at the end. But what makes this scenario truly unbelievable is that he only finished the first draft last month, then managed to rescue it from a fire that broke out in his home at that very moment . . .
Okay, no one ever tell Galleycat about: the episodes of Sex and the City where Carrie's newspaper editor somehow brokers her book deal, Emily's Reasons Why Not,
Stranger than Fiction, Men in Trees,
A Girl's Guide To Hunting and Fishing,
Wonder Boys . . . ok, or any fictional depiction of the way publishing works, ever.
This Is Not The Way The World Works [Galleycat]
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