Federal District Judge Denny Chin's ruling—which denied much of Cosby's request for summary judgment in her favor—is notable for many things, including its decision that it's not defamatory per se to call someone a homosexual anymore (Cosby wrote that Stern gave Larry Birkhead a blowjob). Progress! But who knew that federal judges are now adding artwork to their decisions? The image above is from the ruling as it appeared on PACER, the federal court system's electronic filing system. Weird, huh?

Cosby wrote Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith's Death as a quickie for Hachette's Grand Central Publishing in 2007, and basically blamed everything on Howard K. Stern, reporting that he was blamed by Smith's friends for her death and that he was gay for Birkhead. Stern is suing her for $60 million, and to judge from Chin's opinion, he's got a case:

Among the facts that will go before a jury: After Stern filed his lawsuit, Cosby went to the Bahamas to attempt to gather evidence for her claim that, according to Smith's former nannies, Smith used to sit and watch a tape of Birkhead and Stern having sex. Seems she actually didn't do that before publishing the book, and the nannies denied it. According to depositions quoted in the rulling, Cosby offered to pay two of them to file affidavits supporting the story, which they refused. Chin says that is "extremely troubling" and looks like Cosby was "attempting to obstruct justice by tampering with witnesses."

In other revolting lowlife-libel news, Joey Buttafuoco plans to sue his ex-wife Mary Jo Buttafuoco over allegations in her new horribly titled book, Getting It Through My Thick Skull. How do we know? Mary Jo Buttafuoco's publicist issued a press release trumpeting the threat. If Joey Buttafuoco is suing over it, it must be good! Actually no, it's not. It's awful.

WWD has a bizarre round-up of memories from a lot of people who weren't there, including Anna Sui—"I did read about it and definitely knew about it"— and some people who were there, like Courtney Love (?):

"Because I'm old, I was there. I remember mom and pop there, a woman screaming, and there's a guy - this woman with watermelon, watermelon on my body and this woman with pink on her face. And a black guy, with his guitar on fire - so that was one of them. And this woman screaming. And that is all. And I, you know, searched."

We're sure Love is confusing the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, which took place in August 1969, with Woodstock 1999, which took place in July 1999. There was a fire, but it was an audio tower being burned to the ground by vandals, not Jimi Hendrix. And there were lots of women screaming, because they were being raped.

In addition to WWD, just about everyone from CBS News to the BBC to Ang Lee—whose historical film about Woodstock starring Demitri Martin opens in two weeks—is pausing to consider the significance of the gathering.

This is the fourth navel-gazing retrospective spasm devoted to the event that we can recall in our lifetimes. There was the 20th anniversary in 1989, when a half-assed gathering of not-particularly-interesting bands attracted 30,000 people to the concert's original site in upstate New York. Coming as it did on the heels of an orgy of boomer greed throughout the '80s, it had a dazed feel to it, as ex-hippies pondered the distance between the all-consuming ideas of their youth and the mid-life crises they were trying to avoid by revisiting them. From the New York Times' coverage:

Now the Woodstock Generation has credit cards and dares not leave home without them. It used to be that they did not trust anyone over 30. Now they are over 30, and the big four-oh has come and gone, too. And they have different ways of getting around now.

''The last time they came in Volkswagen buses; this time they'll come in Mercedeses,'' said Bob O'Keefe, an ice cream vendor. ''Here comes a Volvo.''

But the 20th anniversary was just a dress rehearsal for Woodstock '94, when Pepsi bought the festival and helped turn it into something actually marketable: A three-day festival featuring Metallica, Bob Dylan, Blind Melon, James, and a rogue's gallery of other band from the '90s you had forgotten about (Arrested Development! The Spin Doctors! Peter Gabriel headlined!). The rampant commercialism—it was chopped up and sold on Pay-per-View—sparked handwringing about whether a seat-of-the-pants, commercial-free, crazy happening like the original Woodstock was even possible in the '90s without the intervention and support of multinational corporations. It wasn't. And Trent Reznor stole the show with horrible teenage music, so the torch was passed from the Boomers and their hazy memories of hanging out naked in the grass to "Generation X," a nihilistic and mopy cohort raised by divorced parents and wholly without ambition.

Woodstock 1999 was an MTV production, forbodingly staged on a former Air Force base and Superfund site 200 miles from the site of the original festival. Rage Against the Machine played, bottles of water were $4, and ATMs were stationed everywhere. At 30 years on, whatever remained of the spirit of Woodstock had curdled into a rage and senseless violence as pissed-off concertgoers torched the place. Four women were raped while MTV's cameras scanned the crowds.

Mercifully there was no Woodstock '04. Who needs a festival that traces its roots to the activism and culture of a generation that stopped a war, when there's a war in Iraq to be fought?

Nor is there a Woodstock '09. There was going to be a concert in Brooklyn's Prospect Park—which would have killed your blogger's summer—but it proved too expensive. Instead there's a VH1 special on Friday night, and we're left to mull the meaning of those 40 years that have elapsed without the benefit of a hollow re-enactment sponsored by Facebook (which you know it would have been). So what does it mean? What tectonic cultural shifts are we to identify on this anniversary? We don't know, but each Woodstock remembrance takes on the character of the age in which it occurs, and the one thing that struck us looking back over the coverage of the original concert was this: Tickets—which no one even paid for anyway—were $15 $18. Jesus.

But while SpongeBob and Dora may rank higher, has any other show done so much for kids than Sesame Street? According to Guernsey, "Independent research found that children who regularly watch Sesame Street gained more than nonviewers on tests of letter and number recognition, vocabulary and early math skills. One study, in 2001, revealed that the show's positive effects on reading and achievement lasted through high school."

Plus, unlike some other offerings in 1969, the show tapped into the social activism of the era. "From the start," writes Guernsey, "Sesame targeted lower-income, urban kids-the ones who lived on streets with garbage cans sitting in front of their rowhouse apartments." And there were other moments — like when Snuffleupagus taught us how to communicate with the deaf — which showed that the program attempted to include to all kinds of people.

Singing, cultural diversity and huggable puppets: What's not to love? (How many of these albums did you have?) Next: Some favorite moments from Sesame Street!

"Me And My Llama." It's probably best not to wonder why a little girl is walking a llama through the streets of Manhattan and instead think of this as a way to teach kids that the dentist isn't scary. Question: Does that llama also see an orthodontist?

"Ladybug Picnic" It's not just a counting song: It mentions knock-knock jokes! And when they roast marshmallows, it seems like the most fun thing in the world.

"School Pageant: Flower" Prairie Dawn plays piano in this hilariously crappy school play, where monsters are bad actors who forget their lines.

"Pinball 12" The voices you hear are the Pointer Sisters. Enough said.

"Ernie Can't Sleep" Since Ernie has insomnia, he clearly has to keep Bert awake as well.

"I Love Trash" Did you know that Oscar used to be ORANGE?

"Somebody Come And Play" Mommy! We have to hurry and visit the zoo! All the animals are so sad and lonely without us!!!

"C Is for Cookie" A classic. Simple and to the point.

"Near And Far" Grover — voiced by Frank Oz, who later played a cop in the Eddie Murphy/Dan Akroyd flick Trading Places, explains "near" and "far" here, but was also amazing in his segments with John-John.

"Fairy Alphabet" Some really gorgeous illustration/animation; super '70s tune!

Other awesome moments: The Alligator King; the Typewriter Guy; Rubber Ducky; It's Not Easy Being Green and the Yip Yip Aliens… What have I missed? [Ed note: This. ]


‘Sesame Street' [Newsweek]

New York's Intelligencer ponders this question today, and the answer is sorta... depressing.

We're left with (see above) the starkness of the gaudy-seeming Time Warner Center, the rented-out New York Times, soon-crumbling Condé Nast, and forever embarrassed Lehman Brothers buildings that already feel like modernist ruins. They're like the monolith in 2001. Scary and functional and Now, but now that Now is over, it's OK to just come out to say it: In their own way, they're all kinda ugly. And that's too bad.

Compare them to the classically elegant Woolworth, Chrysler, Standard Oil, and Cunard edifices (below) that were crafted for beauty's sake, pure and simple:

The Beatrice itself was born many, many years ago. It was once a speakeasy, back in those ratty days of prohibition. But its current incarnation—the cokey, smokey, fuck den—sprang to life in 2006, when Paul Sevigny, the brother of actress Chloë, masterminded, along with his partners, a bar/restaurant that would return some classic bar elements to New York. Italian-food specials and jacket-and-tie nights. Old New York, Carrie Bradshaw might neighingly call it.

But, you know, instead it mostly catered to those who could slink past a velvet rope, those who, giddy with abandon because New York was rich and everyone was young all the way back in 2006, wanted to sit in its dark, low-ceiling'd recesses and chain smoke, sneaking away every so often for a quickie or a bump in the bathroom. And there was dancing. Oh was there dancing. So you could say, in some sideways measure, an aura of Old New York did surround the Bea. It was a bit dangerous, a bit wild, and it was definitely mean, in that fashionable kind of way.

And then the celebrities came. Oh boy did they come. Sometimes literally!—actor Shia LaBeouf was heard once loudly begging for sex at the club, as if it was some loud, boorish frat party for the coolest frat kids in the world.

These celebrities set the standards for smoking and held court like it was no big deal. "Here we all are, under this ceiling, just relaxing," they seemed to say. While Hud Morgan, a notorious Bea dancer, thundered a drunken tarantella across the room. Well, he was dancing, but he was also fighting.

The former Men's Voguer 'famously' exchanged fisticuffs with his media colleague Spencer Morgan at the club last year, all over a girl. And so the glitz and glamor of the club, coupled with the constant crowing by some New York-centric blogosphere blogs, began bringing negative attention. Not really just from the crackdown authorities, who meekly tried to curb the drugs and smoking, but from losers and poseurs and people who cast the seething milieu in too-bright, unfavorable light. When all-too-willing media punching bag Julia Allison is seen weeping at your club, its must-go-to days may be numbered.

The whole thing started to wind down about a year ago. People still flocked, people still danced, people threw caution to the wind and did rails in the loo. But some luster was lost. The whole thing just became too top heavy, as any hotspot is wont to do. Remember Butter? Exactly.

A club whose thesis was all about that hard-but-warm New York edge became just another stared-at phenomenon. Sure it was (and still is) sorta tough to get into, but the harder it became, the more it started to look like trying. And as we all know, trying is definitely not cool.

So then we come to that temporary end. On one hand, maybe it'll be the shot the club needs. You know, if a "Free Beatrice" party ends up coalescing in some other dark corner this week, if the place suddenly seems gutter-glittery again.

Or, more likely, it'll just continue its soft decline. You know, there's a recession on and all and New York is changing. Some small few of us might still need those dull thumps and furtive bumps, but for most the whole thing will probably soon just seem silly and indulgent and wrong, joining the embarrassing annals of the city's pop history, like leg warmers or beanies, like Ms. Allison or the short reign of Peaches Geldof. And most bitterly, like all of our money. Our long lost money.

As a former Gawker editor just said to us over IM: "the ceilings were so low it gave me a sad."

Indeed.

One of our foodiest friends, erstwhile Gawker Joshua David Stein, recently spoke with Ed Sorel, the fellow who crafted the large, backroom mural. Per Carter's request, Sorel created an olio of various 1920's and 30's notables—society scenesters, publishing demigods, and showbiz types. He told JDS:

we decided essentially on a who's who of who is in New York between the wars. We have Fred Astaire, this is the Fred Astaire who appeared on Broadway with his sister. There's also Henry Luce, Herb Ross, Conde Nast, Blanche and Adolph Ochs, the Fitzgeralds—Zelda and F Scott, Billie Rose, Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber.

So basically the type of people who just won't ever exist anymore because instead of somehow (knew a guy!) getting a table at Monkey Bar and sitting in proximal awe of these storied people, we can just lie on our couches in Brooklyn and type incessantly about them, thus rendering them kinda unfabulous, so why would we want to stare at them at Monkey Bar in the first place? It's kind of a Lost-style time loop sorta thing.

The ancient school has been a-buzz with rumors that there are vampires lurking the building, causing something of a frenzy among the student body. Eventually the new, hip headmistress Lynne Van Helsing Mooney Teta intervened, sending out a memo to faculty, students, and parents essentially saying 'cool it with the Twilight shit'. Reports the Boston Globe:

"I seek your cooperation in redirecting your energy toward the learning objectives of the day. Please do not sensationalize or discuss these rumors," she said.

She also said she was concerned that some students' safety might be jeopardized because of the rumors, and asked students to report if any student is being harassed.

"At no time was anyone's safety in jeopardy," she said.

For their part, the Boston Police department is befuddled by the whole debacle. A spokesman told the Globe:

I'm not sure whether [the supposed vampires] were among the student body or whether they were inhabiting the old corners and crevices of the building,

So, very silly. Though, if Ms. Walter hadn't retired, I'd be more likely to believe the rumors.

Go (Were)Wolf Pack!

Boston Latin Seeks to Quash 'Vampire' Rumors [Boston Globe]

We're trying to keep this series alive. So if you have or spot any old photos of media type friends, send them over. Hopefully we'll be able to compile something of a yearbook at some point.

Here are some actual New York-in-the-80's scenes (well, not so much the first one):

The cover of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, the definitive 1980's pop novel.

Sammiches.

Chinatown.



Times Square, feat. Burt Reynolds

Rock club of yesteryear, CBGB's.

Before Giuliani personally took a toothbrush to the subways. via Runs with Scissors' Flickr.

Times Square again.

via Runs with Scissors' Flickr.



Compare to these Watchmen one-sheet and stills:

There are two pictures, just posted on Facebook. One is a portrait of the gloriously becoiffed future media queen (sans boa, in these days), the other a cross section of college dorm life. Two shirtless, lean young men, louche on a bed. Two permed, and fully clothed women sit upright. The girl on the inside is Touby, we believe. These were taken at Smith college in Northampton, MA sometime around 1981.

This is something of a Part Two to our The Way We Were series. We'd like to keep it going! Have any old media heyday photos lying around? Send them over! We'd like to compile something of yearbook, to remember how the world used to be before the internet, like a mad and glowing Pied Piper, led us all to ruin.

The caption on this is both priceless and sad: "After slumber party in Laurel and I's room. Don't ask me what happened that night. I spent the night in a friend's room. Anne Laufe was going to nearby Mt. Holyoke at the time. I can't remember the guy's names, Laurel?"

As owner of the storied supper-club haunt of characters on Mad Men, and of people from the real-life 1950's!, Billingsley employed his elaborate system to make it seem as if things at the Stork just happened like magic, be they good—champagne! perfume!—or bad—get out and never come back! In the photos, Billingsley demonstrates each move, along with his regular drink, a Coke.

A tug on the pocket square meant that he liked a table and wanted his assistant to "Get them a bottle of perfume." Could be a cheap bottle for $7.50, or Chanel for $150. LIFE © Time Inc.

A hand out on the table also meant that he liked the customers, and wanted his assistant to "Bring a bottle of champagne." LIFE © Time Inc.

If he pointed his finger down, he liked a table and wanted his assistant to "Bring a round of drinks," but I guess he didn't like them enough for the champagne. LIFE © Time Inc.

When Billingsley fiddled with his tie, it meant "No check for this table." Congrats. You win. Free dinner. LIFE © Time Inc.

A hand on the nose meant "Not important people" or "Their check is no good." You didn't want a hand on the nose. LIFE © Time Inc.

You definitely didn't want this thumbs up signal, which told his assistants to "Get them out & don't let them in again." LIFE © Time Inc.

The ever-hungry Nothing is gathering around the property, with Kathleen Kennedy/Frank Marshall and Leo DiCaprio's Appian Way pecking at its peacefully resting corpse. Of course the potential producers hope to put a "modern spin" on the fantasy tale (based on a German children's book), which means CGI wizard fights and snappy dialogue or something.

If you're not familiar with the film—or its weirder, more Jonathan Brandis-y sequel—you should smoke a fat bowl and check it out. Basically a lonely, friendless kid (is there any other kind in movies?) is reading a book about a fantasy land called, um, Fantasia. In hte tale, a mighty Injun named Atreyu is trying to defend the Childlike Empress from The Nothing, a dark and evil force that's eating everything. As the lonely little bugger, Bastian, continues to read the story, he becomes an integral part of it. It's directed, bizarrely, by Wolfgang Peterson and there are lots of puppets and it's the kind of strange, vaguely menacing kids movie that they don't really make anymore—because kids are dumb and coddled and have no imagination or attention span anymore.

Now, before we get too doom and gloom, it's important to note that this cabal of producers has only secured the puppet rights thus far. So maybe they're just trying to build their very own luckdragon for personal reasons. Which I would have no problem with.

Atreyyyyuuuuuuuu!

You remember how software-maker Microsoft bizarrely enlisted the sitcom star to promote its deeply troubled Vista operating system? The response was, uh, overwhelming . So overwhelming that Microsoft cancelled the campaign.

Now Silverman hopes Seinfeld can reverse NBC's fortunes. Silverman's past glorious successes include two cancelled shows, handing five hours of primetime to Jay Leno and not getting fired, yet. So it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that Silverman is stoked Seinfeld is going to riff on how insane married life is. I mean seriously, what's the deal with men and not putting down the toilet seat?? And ladies, what's with the bathroom hogging? What are you doing in there?

"Some of the greatest comedies in the history of television have been around marriages," Silverman said. "The concept is so universal and accessible, and obviously it works so well when it comes from somebody with a point of view — and nobody has a stronger point of view on this subject than Seinfeld."

That's right: No one feels more strongly about marriage than Seinfeld. Not Chris Rock, not the late Sam Kinison — no one.

Now NBC just has to learn how strongly America feels about its divorce from the comedian 11 years ago.

For a taste of how Seinfeld's humor has aged, take a look at the clip above, culled from Conan O'Brien's second-to-last Late Night. The comedian riffs on furniture. (Silverman would have been impressed; he's quite the laugher.)

(UPDATE: Added Late Night video.)

The embattled editor would presumably make short work of these "Save Anne" t-shirts, if she deigned to offer her opinion on then. But creator Chris Sauve (pictured, right, with friend Jose), recently of Diane von Furstenberg and the Times design staff, found a shop in SoHo through which to sell them, and is no doubt cognizant of the importance of a nest egg to an itinerant graphic designer in these trying economic times.

Who will buy? Don't designers and editorial underlings alike relish the chance to escape the Prada-wearing "Devil's" clutches? Never underestimate the power of Stockholm Syndrome — or the nostalgia of enthralled dead-enders.

Hentoff wrote about jazz and then a civil liberties column. Former Voicer Tricia Romano reports he's been laid off along with Lynn Yaeger,a fashion writer at the paper for more than three decades.

A tipster tells us a third layoff, Chloe Hillard, was the Voice's last black writer. Hired by current editor Tony Ortega in 2007, she has written about Brooklyn lesbians and rappers Remy Ma and Fabolous [sic].

At least everyone made it through Christmas in blissful ignorance before getting fired. Oh wait, Hentoff is Jewish. Well, at least he made it off the sinking Voice before the New Year. Will it even be around by New Year's Day, 2010?

As Wolfe later remembered,

New York lost every high-end retailer on Madison Avenue and beyond. This precipitated a crisis. The board, made up of the big investors, summoned Clay to a meeting... They were hopping mad over this “Viva” business. They could see their investment sinking without a bubble after only four issues. They were ready to can Clay then and there and probably would have, had not the elder statesman and maximum art collector, [Armand ] Erpf, exercised moral suasion.

Later New York owners could not be talked down from this sort of intervention. The present one at least gets credit for voluntarily sharing (as indicated by a sidebar credit) its library trove with the rest of the world. (The Warhol article, "La Dolce Viva," is here.)

Are there any bosses anywhere as demanding as Ms. Slowey pretends to be? Not really, and maybe on some level we miss them. Part of the appeal of a show like “Stylista” is that it resurrects a long-vanished way of office life, one filled with rules and regulations, distinct hierarchies and dress codes and nothing as fuzzy as flex time. As Ms. Slowey succinctly explains to the contestants at the outset: “To be in my world you either get it or you don’t.” No one has to spend a lot of time figuring out a manager like this.

The same sort of nostalgia fuels fans of Mad Men, whose womanizing, emotionally-distant leading man Don Draper is beloved by women not only for his smoldering good looks, but also because they long "for an era they never knew and a type of man to whom they definitely aren’t married. Who, in fact, may no longer exist." Or at least that's what the Observer would have you believe.

It's all kind of sick, isn't it? Tapping into our worst impulses toward emotional self-immolation while rebuking decades of progress in our professional and emotional lives? Yes, yes, we can agree.

What's that? Oh, yes, Stylista debuts tonight at 9. What? Oh, CW, I think. Tivoing. For your friend. Gotcha.