Clairol: Girls are purty.

Volkswagen: People look closely at things that are small.

9 Lives Cat Food: People like stuff with animals.

Levy's: All that "we are the world" shit makes people feel good enough to want to buy your thing.

Isuzu: Be funny.

Name: Sumner Redstone
Age: 85
Position: Chairman, National Amusements (Viacom, CBS, MTV, etc.)
What kind of old man is he?: Befuddled
Trick in staving off old age: Fights with daughters.
Key quote: "I'm gonna fight death as long as I can. I like it here. I don't want to go anywhere else"
Health threat: Face of porcelain

Name: Rupert Murdoch
Age: 77
Position: Chairman, News Corp
What kind of old man is he?: Vindictive
Trick in staving off old age: A much younger wife.
Key quote: "You can't be an outsider and be successful over 30 years without leaving a certain amount of scar tissue around the place."
Health threat: Enveloped in skin folds.

Name: Sam Zell
Age: 66
Position: Owner, Tribune Company
What kind of old man is he?: Gnomish
Trick in staving off old age: Fights with his employees.
Key quote: "Fuck you [OLD AGE!]"
Health threat: Balding

Name: Barry Diller
Age: 66
Postion: Chairman and CEO, IAC
What kind of old man is he?: Angry
Trick in staving off old age: Fights with fellow businessmen.
Key quote: "I thought they were talking about eye charts. I don't see anything full-blown." [On being called a "visionary"]
Health threat: Tooth gappage.

Name: Hugh Hefner
Age: 82
Postion: Owner, Playboy Enterprises
What kind of old man is he?: Desperately youthful
Trick in staving off old age: Parties, hordes of women, pajamas.
Key quote: “In many ways, I'm younger than I was 20 years ago."
Health threat: Priapism.

Here are some other instances of Murdoch getting slammed, culled from an exhaustive list at io9 that you should read as well:

• Planet Fred—a movie about a tiny little alien who lives on the head of a media mogul who resembles Murdoch. Hard to believe this one isn't yet a classic.
• Max Headroom—a character named Grossman is an evil network boss who makes people's heads explode from too much advertising. True to life.
• Cold Lazarus—the book by Dennis Potter includes a Murdochian figure named Stiltz, who pushes fake, virtual experiences as a replacement for real ones. Eventually he gets killed. Draw your own conclusions.

Go read the full list at io9! And anyone who reads this book, please submit a report.

[Mixed Media]

Lisa Johnson Mandell had more than 20 years of experience in broadcasting and movie reviewing, but she couldn't get a second look! Here's how she made it work:

• "Create a modern image": One consultant suggests going to a hairstylist for a new 'do!
• Whitewash your resume: Johnson Mandell "removed the 1980 date of her summa-cum-laude college graduation and deleted some early jobs." Sneaky!
• Show you're "hip to new media": She started a video blog site. On the internet! With some guy she found on Craigslist—another internet location!
• The photo thing: Do people really need to include a picture with their job applications? Apparently so! But it has to be a picture with a "contemporary look," like this real one of Johnson Mandell:
  
  
  
  
  

Now Lisa Johnson Mandell has a six-figure salary. Screw you, youngs.

[WSJ]

• Processed french-fry inventor JR Simplot, 99, "natural causes," May.
• Baskin-Robbins founder Irvine Robbins, 90, "complications related to old age," May.
• Lovie Yacey, founder of Fatburger, 96, "pneumonia," February.
• Carl's Jr. founder Carl Karcher, 90, "had Parkinson's disease and was being treated for pneumonia," January.

We left out Popeye's Fried Chicken founder Al Copeland, 64, who died of "malignant salivary gland tumor" in March. But he didn't do too badly at all, especially, as our own Hamilton Nolan pointed out, "for a man with a lifetime diet of fried chicken!" (Ahem.)

So there you go — irrefutable, scientific proof that you not only can but probably should load up on cheeseburgers, ice cream, french fries and hot dogs throughout the summer and really for the rest of your life. Hold the guilt!

[Times]

• Food: Can we get some free food up in here?
• Shut Up: Dude, you are old and we already know how to do this stupid job, so please just shut up.
• Don't Sweat It: Don't sweat it, man. We got it all under control. Don't freak out.
• Money: Pay us more, why don't you?
• Work: It totally sucks. Nothing you can do about it. Sorry.

• 
  Victor Ganzi, Hearst CEO—Ganzi quit this week, in a move that came as a shock to some. Though Hearst is not doing poorly, signs are there that it may be on the decline. Ad page counts at its top magazines are creeping downwards. Ganzi may have seen the writing on the wall.



• 
  Jack Kliger, Hachette CEO—Kliger lasted nearly a decade at Hachette, but stepped down this week. He leaves a company with an unsure future—layoffs, a questionable digital strategy, and stagnant ad growth will go down as big parts of the legacy of the end of his reign.



• 
  Jane Friedman, HarperCollins CEO—Friedman was sent packing from the publishing giant earlier this month, replaced by a man more than 20 years her junior. She spent nearly 30 years at Random House before coming to HarperCollins in 1997, and had a good deal of early success. But she was done in either by corporate infighting, or poor performance.



• 
  Peter Olson, Random House CEO—the book-loving, erudite bean counter was replaced last month by Markus Dohle, a robotic numbers guy who many feel will focus on earnings at the expense of "the romantic idea of literature." Uh, yea.

The Dixie Chicks on Entertainment Weekly:

Tom Ford AND FRIENDS on Vanity Fair:

The Hills on Rolling Stone:

The Pussycat Dolls on crappy Blender:

ScarJo and Natalie Portman on W:

[Numbers via The Big Lead. Pictured: schlock merchant Mitch Albom. Anybody have any additions to/ disputes with this chart? Email us.]

Listicles

Putting things into list format really seems to draw in readers. Nobody knows why this is true.

Creating coherent characters

Julia Allison is the prototypical protoceleb, but you can do this with anybody who's worthy of further examination. The photo of CNBC.com managing editor Allen Wastler on his traffic article shows him gripping a cigar between his teeth. Worthy of a follow up piece? Maybe! But probably not. You have to pick people who are actually interesting somehow.

Diggable Stuff

Digg will drive thousands and thousands of people to your little story. Is this post Diggable? I don't know, why don't you go Digg it! Then you will feel like you were part of something, because we are all on the same team. Gawker video maven Richard Blakeley is very good at this. If you pay him money he'll tell you how to do it.

Sex

Things You Can't Control

This can work against traffic, as in the case of CNBC.com and Tiger Woods. But it can also work in one's favor—usually in the case of death and disaster. A sad fact of news.

Good, Intelligent Content

Quality often does rise to the top, believe it or not!

Cute!

Now forward this list to all your friends!

[Pics via Something Awful, Fark, and Flickr.]

[AskMen via Ad Age]

• George Michael, 75-minute concert on New Year's eve, 2007, for nickel billionaire Vladimir Potanin. Price: $3.5 million
• Rihanna, 40-minute show for billionaire Oleg Deripaska on New Year's eve, 2008. Price: $500,000.
• Jennifer Lopez, 40-minute birthday party show for billionaire Andrei Melnichenko in April, 2007. Price: $1.2 million.
• Christina Aguilera, three songs at Andrei Melnichenko's wedding in September, 2005. Price: $3.6 million.
• And to put it all over the top, Madonna is reportedly considering an offer from "an unnamed Dubai-based tycoon" for a one-night private performance. Price: $10 million.

Fortunately, you can still hire Pat DiNizio of The Smithereens to play in your living room for $2,000.

Perez Hilton for Hot Topic

The various items in Hilton's much-ballyhooed clothing line (for chintzy, Clearasil-smeared clothing chain Hot Topic) were criticized for many by being ugly and ridiculous. Which is not true. They are heinously ugly and ridiculous. But the people who read his blog and care about his personality enough to actually think about buying the clothes are stupid so the line could very easily sell well. Plus, Perez has been doing a tour of Hot Topic stores, where the clothing is sold exclusively, doing autograph signings and posing for photos in front of the crappy clothes hut. Though, apparently the appearances aren't going well so far. No one showed up! Because nobody cares. It's another story of internet fame being not quite the same thing as actual real-life fame. Plus, a commenter on Perez's blog says he was horrible:

Hello- I work at the HOT TOPIC where this piece of shit appearted on friday ( I was not working that day but showed up for shit n giggles ) ONLY 7 people showed up.SEVEN.That's it.Mario was BEYOND upset texting and DEMENDING the right water,food,ETC he was a rude royal pain in the ass and BEYOND crass.Talking about scat porn,fisting some kid and otherbest left unsaid topics.My manager was trying to get people to come in to meet Perez by handing out $5 gift cards NO ONE WANTED TO MEET HIM! His mother and sister were there and he seemed to take it out on them (they are both fat BTW and smelled nasty!) anyways he left around 8:45PM without saying goodbye to anyone & looked like he had been crying like the little bitch he is. We sold a grand total of $6.45 of Perez Hilton items between 6PM - 9PM. My manager has already talked about discounting his "line" !

The credibility of this anonymous commenter is not terribly high, obviously, but if it is true it's funny and a little sad and mostly gross (scat!) But Perez's PR person has a different story! He sent us an email yesterday:

I know you guys will write what you want, with out any research but I wanted to let you know that this article is no true at all.

I'm helping launch (along with Hot Topic) Perez's new line. We were all very pleased with the turn out, over 100 people showed up to meet and purchase Perez's new line at the Hollywood and Highland Hot Topic Store. The pictures shown on your site are not accurate. Perez was excited to meet his fans and sign autographs. Everyone from the manager of Hot Topic to a "first day of work" employee stayed to meet Perez after fans left. Perez (Mario) stayed late to hang out with them all and personally thank them for their support, taking pictures, signing personal autographs and getting to know them better.

Perez at Hot Topic clothing line is selling very well at all Hot Topic stores.

Who to believe?? Well, it's probably somewhere in between the two, but either way it doesn't seem like a terribly auspicious beginning to the endeavor. If the line really was selling well and a good time was being had by all at the meet-and-greets, we doubt this flack would bother trying to correct us. We asked the PR drone to provide some, you know, proof that the event was such a success, but they only meekly pointed to this Perez post, which doesn't exactly show a big crowd. It mostly just shows that people who like Perez Hilton are crazy people.

Perez the Record Executive

Remember when we said, one sentence ago, that people who like Perez Hilton are mostly crazy people? That rings true for those fans who turn to Perez for music advice. But there are, sadly, so many of them that, like a pasty young Oprah, he has turned into a man who can actually break new bands. So Warner Bros. is paying him $100,000 a year to do so. At least he's keeping his ethical code strict:

If Mr. Lavandeira sets up formal ties to a record label, can he still be an objective taste-maker? He seems to think so. In an interview last month, he said he would still have the freedom to rave about artists on rival labels and had no obligation to praise acts on Warner Brothers' roster...

"There's no need to trash them," he added. "Unless they do something stupid."

This is pocket change for Warner Bros., but quite a coup for the legitimacy of Perez. Also a sad statement on sheep-like musical tastes of the masses, but whatever. That's the internet for you.

Perez the Musical

An obnoxious blogger play? An inherently bad idea, but probably the most stunning sign of all of the pudgy man's brand power. Why? Because he didn't actually produce it himself. Three otherwise sane young men who paid good money to attend NYU's Tisch School of the Arts are rolling out the play Perez Hilton Saves the Universe (or at least the greater Los Angeles Area) in New York, off-Broadway. Pretty smart move from a business perspective though, because their appeal to his vanity got posted on his site, which is like a quadrillion dollars worth of free PR for what can only be—at best—a sedating way to spend two hours.

Hot Topic, Warner Bros., some random dudes in New York. Do you see the common theme here? All of these Perez-branded products might end up sucking, but that's not really the point. The point is that he's his own publicity machine, which makes him bankable. Until interest inevitably wanes, and Perez is left alone, in a Hot Topic shirt, listening to club music alone.

From one longtime magazine editor:

Listicles: Back in the 1970s (maybe earlier too), Esquire did occasional
spreads called "The Red-Hot Center," in which they'd map out their hierarchy
of, say, Hollywood, or the publishing industry, etc, in discs of saturated
color at various removes from the aforementioned center. They were
considered definitive and brilliant, though hard to say if that was really
so without seeing one again. I can't give you an exact date, but maybe David
Granger has one on hand.

We'll look into that!

From an anonymous email tipster:

For an early prototype of the approval matrix, check Spin’s front-of-the-book, Exposure, circa 1997-1998, when Michael Hirschorn was editor. The now-familiar dots-on-a-grid concept ran just about every month for a while. Not as pretty as VF’s, but arguably a lot funnier.

#1: Be late with the reviewer's reservation.

He returned at 9:02 with something less than disaster relief. Our table, he said, should be ready in 10 minutes. Never mind that we'd been told at 8:45 that we had five minutes to go. Never mind that Ago has some 110 seats, giving it more flexibility than many restaurants have.

We waited. And waited. One of the hostesses finally fetched us at 9:22. I'll do the math: that's 52 minutes after our reservation.

#2: Spill wine on the reviewer or his friends.

I'm talking about the "Poseidon Adventure" of wine spills. Shelley Winters could have done the backstroke in it. I'm not sure how the bartender set it in motion, and neither was he. He kept marveling at its fury and aftermath: my friend's wine-splashed chin, her wine-soaked skirt, her wine-sopped entirety.

#3: Put the reviewer at the worst table in the house.

She led us to a round table little bigger than a bike wheel. When our four appetizers later arrived and claimed every square millimeter of it, the waiter audibly contemplated balancing a fifth, communal appetizer that we'd ordered on top of our wine glasses.

The table was pressed so close to a column that I couldn't lower my right arm all the way, and if my wine-drenched friend leaned back in her chair, the column obstructed her view of me and mine of her.

#4: Have bad food.

This restaurant isn't in the hospitality business. It's in the attitude business, projecting an aloofness that permeated all of my meals there, nights of wine and poses for swingers on the make, cougars on the prowl and anyone else who values a sort of facile fabulousness over competent service or a breaded veal Milanese with any discernible meat.

The one I had one night was pounded so thin that the breading on top met the breading on the bottom without pausing for much of anything in between. A vegan could have made peace with it.

#5: Have waiters who are jerks.

Then came an entree that perplexed us, a pale slab of meat with one long bone.

"What is this?" asked one of my friends.

"The special veal chop," said the food deliverer.

"But I ordered rack of lamb," my friend said. I had heard him.

"Yes," said the deliverer. "That's rack of lamb."

My friend pressed: which was it?

"It's the special rack-of-lamb veal chop," the deliverer said, at which point we sought deliverance from him and searched for our frequently vanishing waiter, whom I had come to think of as the bucatini Houdini.

[NYT]

Don't engage a heckler unless you have to.

This is the simplest rule of all, which Dane Cook flagrantly ignores. A rude comment on MySpace? Were any entertainer to take the time to personally respond to all of their online hate, they would have little time to do anything else (unless they were Dane Cook, who would just be chilling, regardless). Restrict your energies to those who are heckling you in front of a large audience.

Turn the crowd against the heckler.

This is accomplished by subtly placing yourself and the crowd together as one group, and positioning the heckler as an outsider who is assaulting both of you. This is key. Don't allow the crowd to merely be a neutral observer, refereeing the spat. If that happens, they may well decide the heckler was right, because—let's face it—you are a jerk. The crowd would never indict itself at the same time as you, though, so be buddies with the mob.

Always be funnier than your heckler.

Goes without saying. If your name is Dane Cook, this could be a problem. If your heckler is funnier than you, just call security and sit quietly.

Don't let your mouth write checks your ass can't cash.

That heckler that just called you a pussy: Can you really kick his ass? If not, don't say so. That literary critic who said you can't string a sentence together: Is he a far better writer than you? Then don't call him a hack. That commenter that pointed out your idiotic error: Are you really going to execute him? (Yes, you are). Always be sure you can back up what you say. Humiliation compounds at a geometric rate.

[pic via ohnotheydidnt]

1. Buying crack on the street: Tatum O'Neal—as we mentioned earlier, celebrities should all certainly have private, high-class connections to make discreet deliveries to their door. Buying rocks off the street is for the poors.

2. Calling the police while you do coke: Boy George—the singer made a frantic 911 call saying his home was being burglarized, only to be arrested on a drug charge after the cops found an eight-ball in his apartment when they showed up to investigate. Needless to say: do not call the police while you do coke. Christ.

3. Allowing yourself to be videotaped smoking crack: Amy Winehouse—the crazy British beehive badass got arrested after a tape of her smoking the rock was "passed to Scotland Yard." Shouldn't they be investigating mysterious murders in locked rooms, or something? In any case, if you're going to smoke crack, and you are a very famous person, be sure to do it with no recording devices present. (This goes for regular cameras too, Kate Moss).

4. Annoying your relatives so much they sell you out: Whitney Houston—The singer went so crazy on crack that her sister-in-law Tina Brown, herself a former crackhead, staged an intervention. By selling embarassing photos of Whitney's coke-strewn house to the National Enquirer! Lesson: your relatives are greedy bastards quick to stab you in the back to make a buck, so be sure to take care of them financially before they call the tabloids.

5. Fighting the police: Christian Slater—It's bad enough to be arrested by the police. Getting your ass kicked by them is even more embarrassing. Particularly when you act like a lunatic while doing so. Cue Christian Slater, 1997: the floppy-haired actor, bingeing on coke, beat his girlfriend at a party, bit a man, and then, "When the police arrived, Slater did not go quietly, but hid in a stairwell and fought with officers, reportedly shouting, 'the Germans are coming and they will kill us!'" Don't do that.

Helluva drug.

Hey, at least they didn't include any of the high-profile women on corporate sibling Fox News. Like... uh... hmmm.

Greta lives in DC still? D'oh.

[Post, AdScam]

in september i traveled with bill gates to africa to look at his work fighting aids there. while setting the trip up, it emerged that his initial interest in giving pots of money to fight disease had arisen after he and melinda read a two-part series of articles i did on third world disease in January 1997. until then, their plan had been to give money mainly to get countries wired and full of computers.

bill and melinda recently reread those pieces, and said that it was the second piece in the series, about bad water and diarrhea killing millions of kids a year, that really got them thinking of public health. Great! I was really proud of this impact that my worldwide reporting and 3,500-word article had had. But then bill confessed that actually it wasn’t the article itself that had grabbed him so much—it was the graphic. It was just a two column, inside graphic, very simple, listing third world health problems and how many people they kill. but he remembered it after all those years and said that it was the single thing that got him redirected toward public health.

No graphic in human history has saved so many lives in africa and asia.

Indeed. There really should be prizes for this sort of thing. For runner-up, I nominate Entertainment Weekly's 21 Bad Movie Hairdos, which, through extensive distribution in American salons, has prevented untold suffering from happening in the first place.

One, the Times thinks the magazine has enough brand cachet to get people to take drugs. Laughable, but flattering for Wired. Two, notoriously wrong Wired ("Push" internet will kill the Web browser! Tech's "Long Boom" will continue forever!) has stopped even pretending people take its advice seriously. As the Times noted elsewhere today, the magazine has successfully transitioned from the sterile, fact-based technology reporting it was once at least marginally associated with (day-glo typesetting aside) to the unverifiable buzzmaking at the heart of lifestyle publishing. The result: advertising and circulation are both on the march. See, drugs really do give you a boost!

[Times, Wired]

• Andrea Peyser: It was Billy Ray Cyrus' fault, the unskilled, no good father.
• Bonnie Fuller: These Miley pictures were comparable to the statutory rape and impregnation of teenagers by a polygamist cult. That means bad.
• Rosie O'Donnell: These pictures were beautiful. Plus Annie Liebovitz is a scary photographer who intimidates me. Get off her back, bitches.
• Tila Tequila: OMG she is so sexy! I was like that at 15, except more of a whore.
• Assorted Random Celebrities: Uh, you know, different people do different stuff, and stuff. I wouldn't want to judge a fellow vapid celebrity.
• Germaine Greer: All teenagers are sluts, in reality, and Miley is no different. Leibovitz is cynical, for good reason. "It is the tragedy of Cyrus's life that she has nothing to sell but herself and she is fast approaching her sell-by date. From this time forward her price can only go down."
• Michael Roberts: Stupid Americans can't appreciate beautiful little girls.
• Stephen Colbert: Oh no! (sarcastically)
• Gawker: Annie Leibovitz, you cur! [With an alternate opinion from Ryan Tate: This is nothing new]
• Annie Leibovitz: What? I thought it was pretty.

[pic via Vanity Fair]

Vanity Fair's Miley Cyrus shoot

Calvin Klein's 1980 Brooke Shields Ads, when she was 15

Calvin Klein's 1995 Child Porn-like ad campaign

High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens' 'High School Lolita' spread in GQ

Flat Out Weird Clarica Investment Advisors ad, featuring gratuitous jailbait

2. Paul Krugman. It's called a razor! And why don't you iron your one suit once in a while?

1. Choire Sicha. GET A JOB, HIPPIE.

(The rest of the pundit class looks precisely as well-fed and content as they actually are.)

BIZARRE

SATAN

FLICKS

WEIRD SEX TALES

NATIONAL INFORMER

GASM

OFFICIAL UFO

THE NATIONAL TATTLER

THE REBEL BREED

BLAST OFF!

[Bad Mags]

Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, formerly Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue.

Their Pitch: A coming of age tale of an aspiring journalist who becomes overwhelmed by the glamorous world of women's magazine only to regain her moral footing.
The Real Pitch: A roman a clef about Weisberger's time at Vogue under Anna Wintour. Turns out Anna's a bit of a bitch.
Critical Take: "This reviewer devoured last year's frothy sensation, The Nanny Diaries, and despite the overwrought hype, this season's The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger is no Nanny Diaries." [USA Today]

4% Famous by Deborah Schoeneman, formerly of New York.

Their Pitch: A young, endearingly awkward woman learns the pitfalls of the New York gossip scene while searching for her place in the city.
The Real Pitch: Four-percent is the magic number for enjoying the perks of fame without losing one's moral bearings.
Critical Take: "Schoeneman's occasional attempts at social critique—for instance, the observation that very thin girls may be on Ritalin—come off more like life-style tips, and the novel's many veiled references to actual people make it read something like an extended blind item." [New Yorker]

Tabloid Love: Looking for Mr. Right in All the Wrong Places by Bridget Harrison, formerly of the Post

Their Pitch: British lady-reporter learns that love doesn't come easy in the Big Apple.
The Real Pitch: Bridget Harrison's veiled memoir of her time at the Post. Worth reading for the references to her New York love, Jesse Angelo, now the Post's managing editor.
Critical Take: "Harrison's depictions of her fish-out-of-water hijinks lift this sharp yet tenderhearted memoir above the predictable chick-lit crop." [Elle.com]

Sex and The City, Candace Bushnell, formerly of the New York Observer

Their Pitch: An original book about lives of glamorous and successful single women in New York trying to balance their career and personal lives.
The Real Pitch: This was the original. It has so much to account for.
Critical Take: "In small doses these essays are brain candy that will appeal equally to urban romantics and anti-romantics." [Publisher's Weekly]

Bert Colima

Bobby Pacho

Carmen Barth

Jack Holtz

Jimmy McLarnin

Joe Dundee (right)

Johnny Lamar

Newsboy Brown and actor Tom Mix

Primo Carnera

Tommy O'Brien

1938: Permanents. "Getting a permanent wave is "almost a national pastime" and the price has dropped to a dollar. But beware of shops that cut corners: "The felt pads between the curlers and her head . . . can be excellent carriers of scalp disease."

1945: Pudding and gelatin desserts. "These packaged desserts do enable the busy housewife to whip together a more-or-less tasty dessert in a very few minutes," we say. But that taste doesn't vary much. Anything colored red is equally likely to be called cherry, raspberry, or strawberry. And in a blind(folded) taste test, even some lemons and limes are mistaken for strawberry."

1952: Sunglasses. "We test 38 brands — and find 23 of them Not Acceptable."

1961: Car record players. "The needle of the Norelco Auto Mignon stays in the groove of our 45s, even when we drive over rough roads. But since there's no record changer, we must insert each record we want to play, then remove it when the song is over."

1973: Instant glue. "One drop of this instant glue formed a bond between man and hammer in five seconds. We called it an instant hazard—and rated it Not Acceptable."