Gawker
breakups
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publicity stunts
Suspended Vogue Braggart Just Wanted To Turn You On
It took less than 24 hours for Sean Avery to apologize for saying yesterday that his National Hockey League opponents "fall in love with my sloppy seconds." In fact, he's already flown to New York to grovel before the league commissioner. Although Avery is famous for picking these kinds of fights, it appears the recent Vogue intern's media instincts pushed him way over the line: More » -
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celebrity science
Oh, Plaxico
If we had to list the worst things a celebrity could do in a nightclub in order of ascending dumbness, they would go like this: 1. Bring a gun to a nightclub. 2. Get arrested for bringing a gun to a nightclub. 3. Get shot at a nightclub. 4. Get shot at a nightclub and also arrested. 5. Shoot yourself accidentally with a gun you brought to a nightclub illegally, and then get arrested for it. So New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress truly achieved the pinnacle of nightclub stupidity last weekend by accomplishing #5. And the felony complaint against him shows he damn sure can't claim self-defense: More » -
advertising
Michael Phelps, Jared From Subway Form Goofy Coalition
After he won 84 Olympic gold medals in Beijing and celebrated with a firm grip, Michael Phelps got a little screwy with his endorsement deals. He endorsed McDonald's, which made him seem insensitive to fat Americans who don't spend hours doing swimming drills every day, and he endorsed Frosted Flakes, which, you know, ditto. Some of his other endorsement choices came dangerously close to painting him as a nerd. But he's signed on with Subway now—a healthy choice! Screw McDonald's! But this causes as many problems as it solves for Fish Boy: More » -
Great magazine die-off
NYT Folds Play Magazine
The New York Times is folding Play, its quarterly sports-focused magazine. FishbowlNY spoke to Play editor Mark Bryant, who said that although the mag broke even last year, "The company needs to make some pretty considerable cuts going forward," and his magazine was one of them. This is a bad sign. T, the Times' fashion magazine, turns enough of a profit to prop up a lot of money-sucking newsgathering operations; the NYT doubtless hoped that Play could do the same. Not in this ad market, apparently. Scratch that off the dwindling list of lifelines for the Times. [FBNY; anybody with more info can email us.] -
Crime
Mouthy Mark Cuban Charged With Insider Trading
Tech billionaire, anger-driven blogger, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban has just been charged with insider trading by the SEC. The (civil, not criminal) charges center on an incident in 2004 in which Cuban allegedly got early insider information about a company he had an ownership stake in, and used that info to avoid a loss of $750,000. We have no idea whether the charges are true, but if they are, it's a foolish business move by a guy who's already been fined more than twice that much by the NBA just for running his mouth. Though it is possible to formulate a wild conspiracy theory about this! More » -
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advice
Michael Phelps And The Nerdy Endorsement Trap
Dolphin-like Olympic champ Michael Phelps is like that dude in the poem who has come to two roads that diverge in the woods. Except Michael Phelps has far more money at stake than that guy. Now that Phelps has won the races and gripped the strippers, his full-time job is endorsing products in return for sweet cash, the nectar of life. Even his mom is in on it! But Phelps is already screwing up. Now is when you determine whether you're the next Tiger Woods or the next [obscure swimmer], Mike. We're here to help, for a small cut. More » -
Cable News
Where Is Fox News' Rachel Maddow?
Allow me to construct a sports metaphor (UPDATE: Which I see the NYT also used in its lead sentence, DAMMIT. Oh well, forge ahead) that would sound stale to serious sports fans, but which I believe will sound fresh and insightful here, where we have only seven (7) total sports fan readers: Fox News is the New York Yankees. MSNBC is the Tampa Bay Rays. The Yankees throw huge contracts at aging veteran superstars, trading away their young players for big-name talent that tends to quickly prove to be over-the-hill. Tampa Bay had a string of bad years but stuck to its strategy of focusing on affordable young talent, nurturing them, and building from within. Now, Tampa Bay is in the World Series. The Yankees are sitting at home. My, this metaphor just gets more and more awesome: More » -
Horse Race
Baseball Stat Geek Knows Exactly How Much Obama Will Win By
Nate Silver is the crazy kid who invented PECOTA for Baseball Prospectus and now he's made good in the political prediction world! Can I get a "Woop woop?" Baseball fans? Anybody? Well look, Baseball Prospectus is like The Bible to stat geeks, and PECOTA is like a particularly important passage in that Bible (John 3:16, for example), so the fact that this 30-year-old guy who made it up is suddenly the hottest thing in political polling is unlikely and heartwarming to sports fans and political obsessives alike, to say the least! More » -
marketing
Sarah Palin Inspiring More Women To Kill
Is Sarah Palin merely a pawn for the powerful hunting industry, being used to lure in women to become the newest consumers in the sport's thrill kill cult? Well that would probably be an overstatement. But it is true that hunting interests have been recruiting women hardcore lately, and they're stepping up their big marketing push to ladies now that a fellow bloodthirsty vagina possessor has a shot at the White House. Turns out there's lots of money to be made on female hunters. And also lots of bad poetry! More »
