At the turn of the millennium, NYC installed two pay toilets near hellish 34th street, which had the odd ability to lock themselves for two minutes when you left and clean themselves through some magical robotic means. Alas, over the years, the New York Times reports, visits to the toilets have plummeted, with New Yorkers choosing to just go piss in a phone booth rather than shell out 25 cents for what was—admittedly&mdas; a less-than-stellar excretory environment.

"It wasn't a bad experience," [34th Street Partnership President Daniel] Biederman said. "It just wasn't a great experience, and we wanted it to be great."

Perhaps Europeans are willing to part with their heathen coins in exchange for a tepid, neutral bladder evacuation, but here in America we know the value of a quarter, which is: One stunningly satisfactory pee and/ or poop. The robot toilets have now been replaced with "a quality deluxe manual restroom experience," which is what you'd expect around here.
[Pic via]

Yeah. He went there.

He starts opining about how he wishes he had a different strategy—like to start in one city, as Paranormal Activity did—thus ironically echoing the same ethos of The Man Running Hollywood that he later rallies against: find the thing that just performed really, really well, and try to capitalize on its success. Which, whoops, too late.

See, but Max doesn't think he's The Man. He thinks he's The Artist. He's one of The People Who Create. And the people who fucked up his movie chance to become the next E.T. are not. No, really:

Look, here's what people who don't create don't understand, is that once you take money from the machine, the machine owns you. And I was just never ever going to let that happen.

Kinda wish I were an artist, so my art could be 'relevant,' bro. He goes on: he doesn't hate on Big Movies because he's an Indie Movie Guy, because, you know, Transformers would make a stupid indie movie, right? So he's an indie guy. And there's no way he could've sold this movie out to be funny, no way. He just didn't let it go down like this, man. He would've had to stab someone if they put Seth Rogen in his movie. Not happening, no way.

This movie, if we had sold it to [FOX] Searchlight, they would've put Seth Rogen and Dane Cook in it, and they would've cut all the f*cking balls out of the jokes, and they would've brought in some sh*t bird to rewrite the script who would've had Tucker have a girlfriend and this and that, and then it's like they own everything, they may have fired me… I would've stabbed somebody if they had done that. They would've fired me off the movie because they own it — I don't own sh*t anymore, but then I'm the one who has to live with all their creative decisions.

Creative decisions! Like where to put the balls in the movie. Spielberg had the same problem with the girl in the red coat in Schindler's List, which he originally wanted to call Nazis Are Fucked Up, Yo. When you make a Big Studio Movie, you only get so much creative control over the ball jokes, you know? Max goes on to cite another problem as the opening of the film in small cities liek Carbondale, Illinois, a memory that provokes him to rage: "They just don't know the f*cking movies!" But he saves the best for the people of Darko Entertainment, Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly's production company, who produced the movie.

Now, come on. Donnie Darko's a great movie and say what you will of Southland Tales, but at least there's more to say about it besides "it sucks," something many movies (like Tucker's) can't move past. Why, Richard Kelly, did you let this guy into your house?

Well, hopefully, lesson learned. Especially after this bullshit:

Darko [Entertainment] gave us all the creative freedom we could've ever wanted with the budget we had, but once the movie was done, they made a lot of decisions distribution-wise that I would not have made. A lot of things.

How about: your movie is poop, the original product is started out as was poop, you are poop, and if anybody ever lets you work in Hollywood again, they, too, are poop? Nope. Because Tucker's got dreams, man. Big ones:

Another book, Assholes Finish First is coming out next year and then English release [of the film] is New Year's — UK release. Those are the next two big things.

1. Because the British don't think we're doltish enough.
2. Because, lesson learned, Assholes Definitely Finish First. In the race to the bargain bin. Which is where all Tucker Max material will continue to land.

Meta. Bro.

Politico brought Huckabee's newly filed campaign finance report to our attention with an item about how deadbeat news outlets CNN and ABC News owe the campaign $2,906 and $833, respectively, for "Press Travel Reimbursement." We checked, and it does. But the eye-popping figure to us was $23,570 owed by the campaign to Top Kick Productions of Houston, Texas for "travel - charter." Hmmmm—what is Top Kick Productions, and what films has it produced? Why, Lone Wolf McQuade, Deadly Reunion, and Silent Rage! Certainly looks like Chuck Norris' production company. Indeed, Norris listed Top Kick as his employer in a donation to Huckabee's PAC last year.

Huckabee and Norris were famously inseparable on the trail last year, but why would Huckabee be more than $23,000 in the hole to a white ninja/Texas Ranger for travel expenses? An accountant for the Huckabee campaign confirmed the debt to us, but hasn't gotten back to us about why the campaign owed Norris for travel—it looks like Huckabee flew around on a jet either owned or chartered by Norris, and so is obligated to repay him at market rates. But who knew Chuck Norris had a jet?

Representatives for ABC News and CNN had no immediate comment about the fact that they're deadbeats.

No indication of the moon wobbling dangerously off its axis, starting an inexorable descent towards earth. No huge chunks of the moon breaking off, starting an inexorable descent towards earth. No angry aliens rising out of the moon's core in their battle crafts, starting an inexorable descent towards earth. No reason to call out the Army's top secret interstellar fighting force. In contrast to this direct quote from NASA's director of nerd propaganda, yesterday:

''This is going to be pretty cool,'' LCROSS project manager Dan Andrews told The Associated Press. ''We'll be going right down into it. Seeing the moon come up at you is pretty spectacular.''

Well. There was a helluva momentary gray shift. One area of the picture became a somewhat different shade of gray. So...it must have been crazy, if you were standing on the moon. In one of those known extraterrestrial civilizations.

Let's just shut down NASA and stick with Hollywood.

The immediate reason this... thing got killed is the uproar over Milbank's joke about Hilary Clinton drinking "Mad Bitch" beer, which really should not be controversial because it is not funny enough to be controversial.

But the larger reason it got killed is that its very existence rested upon a flawed premise: Namely, the premise that one can be both a Serious Journalist at the Washington Post and an internet funnyman. The more tightly you cling to one, the more you suck at the other. I have not watched and will not watch any episodes of "Mouthpiece Theater," but I can tell you that they were doomed from the start. I can tell you this because Dana Milbank—who actually does write funny things from time to time—is such a smarmy-looking bastard that the notion of watching him, for pleasure and entertainment, by choice, is a non-starter. I can also tell you this because, as a mere blogger/thief, I need not put on any pretentious airs insinuating to you, the reader, that I'm giving you some stolid institutional wisdom above and beyond my worthless opinion. But Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza are bound, by the very fact of their employment at the Washington Post, to do so! Why if Milbank could ease back and just be another smart-ass DC nerd cracking jokes, he might be quite bearable. But because he exists in the weird netherland of "news columnist" writing "humorous journalistic impressions" or whatever tripe descriptor the WaPo has currently placed on him besides the proper "Humor writer," he is sunk from the beginning. And Cillizza is even more of a guy on a Serious Beat, meaning he's even more screwed by the impossible premise of this failed comedic attempt, even if his actual face is not as smarmy-looking as Milbank's.

Is it worth it, Dana Milbank? Is your platform there, at the Washington Post, worth never, ever being able to say that Hillary Clinton is a bitch (it hasn't been fresh for like 15 joke-generations, yet you still can't say it), or that George Bush is a stupid, stupid simian, or that you frequently daydream about hate-fucking Michelle Malkin? You are a comedian in handcuffs, Dana Milbank! You must allow the very institutional halo effect that the outside world so reveres to slip away before you can truly say "Fuck this shit," and be heard.

In short, stop stealing our bit, Washington Post. We make the jokes around here. Or we steal them from Wonkette. Whatever.

Rupert Murdoch's son James personally authorized a $1.1 million our-of-court settlement payment to Gordon Taylor, the CEO of the Professional Footballers' Association, after Taylor found out last year his phone had been illegally hacked by the Murdoch tabloid News of the World. Rupert Murdoch himself has said he had no idea this whole phone-tapping business, or the associated payoffs, were going on. Hmm. That seems to appear ever less likely.

The latest volley in the gentlemanly WSJ vs. NYT newspaper wars:

New York Times bonds, like many these days, are signaling substantial risk. The March 2015 notes are yielding 11%, or more than four times as much as "risk-free" bonds issued by the U.S. government. Anyone confident the Times can avoid bankruptcy within the next six years can simply borrow against their home at around 5.5%, invest the money at 11% and make themselves rich.
I wish them luck.

Oh yea? Well watch how you eat your words, WSJ, when...somebody else tries this. Anybody?

Everybody was worried that NBC's show "The Wanted," a laughable version of "To Catch a Predator" focused on catching terrorists or some shit, would irrevocably blur the lines of journalistic ethics and hurt NBC's "credibility," etc. Well, its premiere last night "was the least watched program on broadcast TV," so it's a moot point.

Here's an amusing little thing: Incisive Media boss Bill Pollak has a blog. The bureau chief from GlobeSt.com got called to active military duty in Afghanistan, so Pollak interviewed him, for the blog. His finest question: "I also couldn't help asking if he had anything to report about commercial real estate in Kabul for the benefit of his GlobeSt colleagues." Uhh. The response: "Well, I guess you could say that the occupancy could use some growth. It's at about 0%." Heh.

It's not that Clear is bankrupt; according to a FAQ on the company website, it's not seeking legal protection from creditors. It's just that right now "Verified Identity Pass, Inc. cannot issue refunds due to the company's financial condition."

Translation: If you think you're legally owed a refund, we're going to make you sue, as we have a "senior creditor" to worry about.

Of course, Clear customers were already used to poor treatment from the company; as software entrepreneur Joel Spolsky points out, Clear required customers undergo detailed background checks, even though this was a pointless waste of time, since the customers ended up having to go through the same security inspection as everyone else (after they cut to the front of the line, the reward for paying $200/year).

Right about now the customers are wishing they had run some background checks of their own. Brill, who left the company in February, says customer data submitted to the company is safe. Probably.

Brill's latest company, "Clear," which was supposed to save rich people a half hour standing in security lines at airports in exchange for $128 a year, is shutting down. Let's do a quick and dirty balance sheet of Brill's successes and failures—keeping in mind that to do your best is all your mom really asks.

Successes

The American Lawyer: Brill launched what would become the nation's leading legal magazine in 1979. This is not an unqualified success, though, since American Lawyer Media (now Incisive Media) is having problems right now.

Court TV: Brill created the network (now truTV) in 1991. After receiving a huge popularity boost from the OJ Simpson trial, it was sold it to Time Warner in 1997. For which Brill got a tidy sum.

Emily Brill: Steven's daughter, the ultimate narrator.

Failures

Brill's Content: Launched in 1998, this mediacentric mag was supposed to capitalize on America's insatiable thirst for news about the news! Turned out not that many people really care about the news about the news. Not enough to pay money, at least. Stopped publishing in 2001.

Contentville.com: A website selling "a variety of content ranging from thesis papers to ebooks." Closed in 2001.

Inside.com: The legendary media site that launched the careers of many top media reporters and also failed to make any money. The magazine version of Inside was merged with Brill's Content, and the website was part of a convoluted plan with Primedia to corner the market on media trade publications, but the whole thing was shuttered in 2001.

Clear: In the post-9/11 world, Brill noticed, airport security sure was a hassle. People would pay to be "verified" beforehand so they could breeze right through! Right? 165,000 people did, reportedly, and Clear raised more than $100 million from investors, but now it's dead, unable to afford to keep going.

Brill also wrote a couple books which didn't sell all that well and a column for Newsweek, but you can judge those on their own merits. He's not out of the game, though—his other ongoing venture is Journalism Online, a company that plans to help various magazines and newspapers charge readers for online access. Bet on it!
[Pic via]

Highlights of Sam Zell's tenure as America's most horrific newspaper company owner:

• Zell, who knows nothing about newspapers, buys the Tribune for $8 billion in 2007, at the very very last moment anybody could semi-plausibly argue that maybe, somehow, a newspaper company could do well again, one day. Good start.
• Everybody's kind of enthusiastic about this crazy bearded upstart, at first!
• Zell tells a journalist he employs: "Fuck you."
• Lee Abrams.
• Mid-2008: Things at the Tribune papers are going... not so well.
• Tribune Co's most coveted asset: Its parking lot.
• Zell sued by his own employees at the LA Times. Employee relations are...not so good.
• In December, Tribune goes bankrupt.
• And now, the reorganization plan indicates that Zell might be getting out of the game:

  Bankruptcy experts said the plan's outline raises questions about whether the senior lender group would want to retain Zell and his management team or seek new leadership for the company. It also poses the question of whether Zell would want to stay without a large ongoing stake in the company.

Bill Gates and Microsoft have been desperately trying to come up with some way to challenge Google in search and Bing is their latest sure to go down in flames attempt. It's basically revamped version of Live Search, which was a revamped version of MSN Search, and both were epic failures in just about every possible way. But this time they're banking that they can brainwash the masses into thinking they're cooler than Google with their clever little name.

Microsoft's marketing gurus hope that Bing will evoke neither a type of cherry nor a strip club on "The Sopranos" but rather a sound - the ringing of a bell that signals the "aha" moment when a search leads to an answer.

The name is meant to conjure "the sound of found" as Bing helps people with complex tasks like shopping for a camera, said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft's online audience business group.

And if Bing turns into a verb like, say, Xerox, TiVo or, well, Google, that would be nice too. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, said Thursday that he liked Bing's potential to "verb up." Plus, he said, "it works globally, and doesn't have negative, unusual connotations."

But some outsiders think that the name Bing, well, sucks.

Peter Sealey, a former chief marketing officer at the Coca-Cola Company, said Microsoft should have picked a name that more directly connotes search.

"Bing has no equity; it signals nothing," Mr. Sealey said. "It is going to be an enormous expense to create an image for this thing called Bing."

Meanwhile, some tech people were already noting that Bing is also an unfortunate acronym: "But It's Not Google."

HA! How could they have not noticed that? And yeah, we're still all grossed out by the Bing connection to Sopranos strippers and Elizabeth Hurley's knocker-upper. Bing just screams social disease in our minds. And now this guy is probably going to sue them! You have failed AGAIN Microsoft.

Microsoft's Search For A Name Ends With a Bing [New York Times]

Neel, a bald preppy jerk with a couple years of experience as a Goldman I-banker, was Hank Paulson's choice to head the bailout operations because... well, no one is sure, even now. But he worked very, very hard, we are told (he slept in his office!), and we all felt so bad for him when congress yelled at him. Well, Friday is his last day at Treasury. And he'd like you to know that everyone who yelled at him for not keeping any sort of track of what what actually happenening to the goddamn money he handed out like Halloween candy or even deigning to explain the rationale behind any of his actions secretly thought he is a hero! Even Dennis Kucinich, who yelled at him for four hours.

"Don't take it personally," Kucinich (D-Ohio) told Kashkari behind closed doors after grilling him during a separate marathon session on Capitol Hill, according to people who were present. "I think you're doing a great job."

Dennis is a really nice guy, so we don't necessarily doubt this happened, but the thing is Neel was not doing a great job. But hey, look who else is proud of Neel!

"I deeply admire the guy," Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in an interview. "I think he's a person of integrity. He's creative, pragmatic and gets stuff done. I think he's an A-plus public servant."

We are all so proud of him for doing an incredibly tough job not very well. Go away.

Right now Clinton owes $2.3 million for making those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, which earned her the traditional ladies' job in the White House. Every dollar is owed to Mark Penn, the fat bald man who micro-polled her campaign into oblivion and just discovered blogs.

So she's holding a contest. For as little as $10, you can win one of the following prizes—which would you choose?

Spend a day with President Clinton in New York City
"A truly once in a lifetime chance: you and a guest will spend a day with President Clinton and a weekend of fun filled adventure in New York."
"A day with President Clinton" is sex slang for something, right?

Attend the American Idol season finale
"You and a guest will watch live as the American Idol judges make their final comments and decisions on this year's most anticipated season finale!"
Fox is still in the tank for Hillary.

Spend a weekend in Washington, D.C. with James Carville and Paul Begala
"We'll fly you to our nation's capital for a politically filled weekend to see the nation's capitol and spend time with James Carville and Paul Begala—two of this city's best political gurus."
Yes, your weekend will be "politically filled." Also, tediously filled, self-importantly filled, and hideously filled.

Take your pick, losers!

NBC Universal—which runs, among other things, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Universal Studios, and a bunch of theme parks—pulled in a profit of $391 million in the first quarter of 2009, versus $712 million in the first quarter of the previous year.

It's yet another colossal failure in Zucker's cap: He single-handedly engineered the demise of NBC from first place to fourth; he spent insane amounts of money on the Olympics in Athens and Beijing, which netted great ratings but not enough ad revenue to keep profits growing; he hired a club-kid to run NBC; and he acknowledged defeat last month. But he keeps on keeping his job, maybe because he dazzles and confuses his General Electric boss Jeffrey Immelt with reflections from his exceedingly bald head.

NBC Universal blames the profit drop squarely on the broadcast television unit, which lets it mask poor executive decisions behind the general advertising recession. Yes, local TV advertising is down because nobody is buying cars. But NBC also says that the Super Bowl was a drag on profits:

While NBC aired Super Bowl XLIII to great ratings success, there were significant production costs to air the big game, combined with rights fees paid to the NFL. Those expenses added up to $45 million in the quarter.

"Ratings success" understates it: Super Bowl 43 was the most-watched Super Bowl game in history, and the second-most watched program in the history of television. That's right: NBC Universal is explaining it's poor performance last quarter by saying that it got stuck with broadcasting the No. 2 television broadcast since the medium was invented. Tough luck guys!

Also dragging down profits were expenses relating to the Beijing Olympics, another huge ratings success that, in the normal course of business, ought to mean more money, not less. DVD sales were also down significantly.

On the upside, NBC Universal's cable networks were up 19%, which explains why executives were describing boring old USA this week as the company's "single biggest asset."

What is the Semantic Web? Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, came up with the notion in 2001 as a followup to his hypertext creation. After "Web 2.0" became synonymous with cool kids hanging out at Mission Wi-Fi cafes putting rounded corners on websites, people adopted "Web 3.0" as a name for the Semantic Web movement. Business 2.0 attempted an explanation a few years ago:

[The Web is] basically a compendium of billions of text documents designed to be read by humans. You can search it for keywords, but the results aren't much use until you sort through them to find the page that has the info you want.

To take the Web to the next level — to move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 — the information in those documents will have to be turned into data that a machine can read and evaluate on its own. Only then will computers be able to take over tasks we now do by hand: find the nearest restaurant, book the best flight, buy the cheapest CD.

What does this have to do with Alan Meckler, you ask? Absolutely nothing! But we're sure he will come up with some cheaply produced website staffed by talentless hacks to write drivel about it.

(Video still via Beet.tv)

Light bulbs have been a pretty solid and cheap technology for more than 100 years, but General Electric decided to screw it up by making a new kind that lights rooms and offers its users a feeling of smugness. But they are very expensive, kind of like when the record companies made you stop buying $5.99 LPs and start buying $25 CDs. But everyone who bought them is an idiot because:

Irritation seems to be rising as more consumers try compact fluorescent bulbs, which now occupy 11 percent of the nation's eligible sockets, with 330 million bulbs sold every year. Consumers are posting vociferous complaints on the Internet after trying the bulbs and finding them lacking.

Ha! Also: Electric cars give you cancer and organic food tastes bad. We know there are some good light-bulb jokes in here somewhere, but we couldn't think of any, so have at it in comments.

Saltsman is a big loser just like his old boss, Mike "Failuretown" Huckabee, who once made a Barack Obama joke so distasteful it couldn't get a laugh at an NRA convention.

Saltsman has likewise completely overshot with his demagoguery, alienating a group of Republican party leaders by handing out, as part of his campaign for chairman, a CD by political satirist Paul Shankman, which includes the "Magic Negro" song.

Shankman, who is white, sings in an imitation of Al Sharpton, who in the song puts down Obama as an inauthentic sell out. The tune is supposed to be a parody, or something, of this LA Times op-ed, in which Obama is descirbed as a fantasy figure for whites, who vote for him out of guilt. Here is the stupid thing, via Wonkette:

The song is, at best, an awkward, unfunny example of political blackface, embraced by bigots who could care less about parody or academic op-eds in the LA Times.

The song already stirred up controversy months ago, when Rush Limbaugh played it over and over.  

Why would someone put the tune in the vanguard of his campaign for chairman of the Republican National Committee, guaranteeing a pointless intra-party war over race? It makes no sense. Unless that person is the political wizard behind Huckabee '08. Chip Saltsman clearly intends to squander all hope of victory as quickly as possible before persisting in a pointless, grinding campaign that gets him nowhere.

Today's made-up microgroup that Penn tenuously connects to current events: "Impressionable Elites." These are the types of rich folks who lost all their money to Bernie Madoff—the guy who's been in the news lately. Here are several outrageous things about this column's content and very existence:

• By Mark Penn, "With E. Kinney Zalesne." Is this column really more than a one-man job?
• This column is just a dressed up ad for Penn's ridiculous book. Seriously! He puts the full, overlong title of it right up front in the third graf. And he uses this technique, which should never be allowed in a newspaper:
  

  ...but rather the Impressionable Elites* of country clubs...

  * "Impressionable Elites" is the term we used for educated, affluent people who focus more on personality than issues when it comes to evaluating political decisions. For more, please see pages 131 to 135 in "Microtrends."

  AN ASTERISK. Which jumps to, essentially, another ad for his crappy book! There are many other qualified columnist candidates in the world, WSJ!

• "At a recent meeting of my condo..." Shut up.
• You know who is really an "Impressionable Elite?" Anybody who hires Mark Penn.

[WSJ]

The opening of the farewell editorial sets the scene:

What a run. A newspaper founded by a company that was scheduled to be created on September 11, 2001, announces its last issue on September 29, 2008, the day of the largest one-day point drop in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It's easy to forget the boom years in between that were bracketed by the terrorist attacks and the financial crisis.

Who can forget the glorious boom years of fear, war, torture, scandal and ignorance that have led us to this miserable wheezing end of our second gilded age? Thanks, Sun!

Their official history of the paper similarly ignores the things we loved about the scrappy daily in favor of reminding us of things like their idiotic call for the privatization of the New York subways in the very first editorial (followed by one announcing that some Washington Mall hippie demonstration was part of "The War Against the Jews"). The paper's founder and brainchild continues to impress:

When the paper was launched, a reporter of the Washington Post had asked its editor, Seth Lipsky, how the Sun would be able to compete against the New York Times, which had "eighty reporters" on its metropolitan desk. The Times might have 80 reporters, he replied, but they missed the story that taxes are too high, that the reason there is an apartment shortage is rent control, and that vouchers are a movement to rescue minority children from failing schools.

Yes, the Times missed that all-important local story on how taxes are too high, much as they missed the breaking national "hippies smell" scandal. We are trying to root for you here, Seth!

But it's hard. It's oh-so-hard. It is sad to see a daily broadsheet with smart writing fail, but honestly it didn't have to. The paper "burned through an estimated $80 million in its six and a half years of operation," according to the Post (which is gloating about the failure, yes, but still). If they'd began, back in 2001, as the tiny modest paper Lipsky originally intended, and built a strong internet presence, they'd be the Politico of the Intellectual Zionist New York Right Wing right now. Do you know what we could do with $80 million???

But no. They launched their paper just as their world-view reached its peak influence (post-9/11!), not when it was still a burgeoning, growing movement. So then they were stuck with it as it failed and lost favor. They launched a newspaper—a daily broadsheet!—as the newspaper industry collapsed and the internet took off again. It's hard not to see this as yet another example of "the smartest guys in the room" coming out looking like suckers.

Situations change of course, and added to the mix has been the great debate over foreign policy and the war. We are struck with each crisis — including the one that has beset our markets, when the temptation is running strong for so many to take the statist bait, though not once did we consider asking Washington to bail out the Sun — of the importance of guiding principles.

If that bit about not asking for a bailout is a joke, it's a lousy, un-self-aware one. Their glorious market, like their generation-defining war, was built on lies and misplaced faith, sold to us by hucksters like them (but more successful ones), and the cleanup for both mistakes will take years. Good riddance. See you on the internet.

How you suddenly went from a cute, perky blonde ingénue to a shrill, talentless flop is puzzling, but we have a feeling the downward spiral began when you took on the gem that was Fool's Gold, in which you reprised your stale dynamic with co-star Matthew McConaughey. Okay, so the film did decently, pulling in $70 million stateside. But it was the film that officially marked you as a romantic foil. You've made a habit out of banking on your hunky co-stars - even doubling up with the Wilson brothers by taking Owen in You, Me, and Dupree, and Luke in Alex and Emma. No longer are you the enticing, independent Penny Lane we once knew who wanted to establish her own identity as an actress. Instead, you seem more interested in raising your dating profile by serving as Lance Armstrong's last blonde-of-the-month.

And we're not the only ones who are upset. Your poor career choices have also angered film blogger Jeffrey Wells, who has some harsh words for you:

When was the last time you saw a trailer for a Hudson movie and said to yourself, "Hey, wow...that one looks good." I've been saying the exact opposite for about five years now. ... It can be assumed she's not Albert Einstein. And it's just a shame. ... Her name is synonymous with mediocrity and ditziness. What are the odds of a director of serious calibre ever offering Hudson a role as good as Penny Lane again? Next to nil at this point.

Ouch, girlfriend. And now comes news that you were acting holier-than-thou towards Anne Hathaway on the set of your latest project Bride Wars? If we may, perhaps copping an attitude with the girl who might save your next film isn't your best move.

• Lady Has No Taste [Hollywood Elsewhere]