This morning, the Queen of Soul/Surly Auntie of Pop Culture, Aretha Franklin, was beamed via satellite into a dozen or so different local and cable morning shows in a junket to promote her upcoming Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics album (featuring her divisive cover of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep"). As…
LAS VEGAS — It only took 24 hours for the Stockholm Syndrome to set in. It was after the huge, boomerang-sized crab legs had been cleared away and the Wagyu beef had been consumed and all the after-dinner whiskeys had been drained and they'd ushered us past the hundreds of ordinary suckers and through the VIP entrance…
The last time guy-site Thrillist put on a junket—to Jamaica, last fall—it ended up costing a New York Times freelancer his job, and prompting a stern warning to everyone else. But hey, free trip to Miami in June!
The New York Times has travel writing issues; specifically, the accepting of junkets by their writers, and then having to fire them to the public in Clark Hoyt's ombudsman column. It's come to a peak. Special appearance by Mike Albo!
Remember Mike Albo? He's the freelancer who broke The New York Times' convoluted travel writer rules and had his column axed. Now, Mary Tripsas, who pens the Times' "Prototype" column, has made a similar misstep. Will she be fired, too?
And that doesn't include the cost of their military jets. Or domestic trips. They, and their spouses, are not skimping on the mini-bar. Or anything else. Massages! $52 whisky! Three extra hotel rooms for storing sandwiches!
Social network lunch.com is convening "Geeks at the Beach" today and tomorrow in Los Angeles. It's a think tank with "critical thinking... expanding the enlightened mind." So who's there? All the top tech thinkers:
No one has been an Internet microcelebrity longer than Hilary Rowland, who began her Web career in 1995. But her hunger for attention could doom an April ski party for startup founders. Oh no!
Paris is lovely in December. And even lovelier if someone else is footing the bill! Oblivious to the world's economic meltdown, 1,500 self-involved, self-indulgent opinionators have flown to France for Le Web, a meet-and-greet on the tech circuit.
Silicon Valley venture capitalist David Hornik's invite-only dealmaking conference, The Lobby, takes place again next week at a plush resort in Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii. Camp Cyprus was nothing compared to this funeral pyre of cash. Who cares that twentysomethings spent their own money to vacation…
It's bad enough that 500 bloggers are wasting time and energy "covering" the pointless media spectacle of the upcoming political conventions. Can't tightly-orchestrated pageantry and vacant messaging be left for the television networks and political trades while top bloggers find important actual news that would…
Can't a little movie like Tropic Thunder catch a break? The Ben Stiller comedy has thus far managed to survive racism, ratings, "retards," and American Idol — and that's before it's even come out (Wednesday, August 13!). Still, all that was child's play compared to the newest Tropic trouble, instigated by an…
Maybe our boss is being paid off by Jared Paul Stern. Maybe he's trying to score with him. (Ah, those lips.) Either way, we've received orders to continue this ongoing and misguided campaign to suggest that everyone is as corrupt as Page Six is (they're not) and to obfuscate the reality that no matter what other…
