April302004

Remainders: Martha Gets Paid

1. Michael Jackson's indictment for molesting Cancer-Boy last year is unsealed by the judge.
2. Dormsday! Advice on separating the residents of the forthcoming Avenue B dorm -- keep the New Jersey Jews and the Long Island Jews apart.
3. Rock show hotspot Maxwell's offers after-show USB keychain music downloads. What will the kids think of next?
4. Martha Stewart got a half-mil bonus in 2003. Reportedly it's being delivered in loose cigarette form for easy jailhouse trading.

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Media Bubble: "I Was A Killer For Si Newhouse"

Randomly, it's an all-NY mag media roundup. We'll ban mention of the mag next week, I promise.

· In Monday's New York mag, Jay McInerney goes deep inside Conde Nastiness with a mega-profile of Mr. Big, Ron Galotti, headlined "The Ultimate Rat Quits the Race." Choice quote: "I was a killer for Si Newhouse." [Jon Fine]
· Also in New York mag on Monday: diggings into the departure of NYT film critic Elvis Mitchell. Hello!
· A little redesign and a shuffling of freelancers at NY mag's gossip column makes a WWD reporter paranoid. [Jeff Bercovici]

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Where To Keep Your Awards, Part 2

A reader gives even better advice than the Ethicist on where to keep your awards statuettes in your cramped New York apartment:

After reading about Randy Cohen s answer to the where to put an Emmy issue, I just had to share this. Ethan Coen keeps (or kept it s been a few years since I was there) his Oscar for "Fargo" in the master bathroom, on a little ledge above the door, so that the only way you d notice it is if you were sitting on the toilet. I think this is a brilliant idea and would encourage all other Hollywood types to follow suit.

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To Do: May Day Is Jay Day

FRIDAY

· "America's first supermodel" Janice Dickinson reads from "her" new book Everything About Me Is Fake... And I'm Perfect at Borders.
· Sluts from Spence, hos from Horace Mann, dum-dums from Dalton and other vile NYC private schoolers read their poetry this evening at Barnes & Noble.
·Happy 2nd birthday Aktion! Put on your party hat, head to Lit, and help Justine D celebrate this momentous occasion with free Red Bull and vodka from 11:30 p.m. - 12:30 a.m.

SATURDAY
·Someone told us Janice Dickinson was performing at Warsaw tonight? What?!? Ohhh... they must have gotten her confused with Patti Smith.
· Finally meet i_heart_rareLPz69 in person at the WFMU Record Fair.
· As they say, "May Day is Jay Day." Holla. Blow some endo and join in the annual Marijuana March.


SUNDAY
· From the offensive little brain of Avenue Q's Jeff Whitty -- we're still humming along to "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" -- comes Suicide Weather, a dark comedy about a dysfunctional family. Catch a reading/preview at Makor.
· Hear on the up and up electropunk white guy/Asian girl duo Mommy and Daddy scare it up tonight at Sin-e.
· Fling in honor of spring as the Blackkat Collective throws its annual May Day celebration in Tompkins Square Park. After the show is the after-party at Guernica. And after the party...is the hotel lobby. Whooo!!

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Advertiser Love Fest

Put your money where my mouth is: advertise on Gawker.

Special thanks this week to: Brooklyn Academy of Music: Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul.

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Jack Shafer: Joining Ranks With Mussolini, Hitler, and Judith Miller

We couldn't go see Slate critic Jack Shafer speak last night at the Columbia Journalism School -- we break out in hives every time we come within five blocks of a journalism epicenter. (They're always talking about "multiple sourcing" and other stupid crap. Drop out and start plagiarizing at newspapers already, my young friends.) But, of course, our spies were front and center as Shafer fumbled with this new-fangled thing called "Powerpoint."

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The Ethicist: How To Display Your Emmy

From time to time you'll enter someone's apartment and realize that, with horror, they've over-stated the importance of their Emmy or Golden Globe statuette. (You can never overemphasize an Oscar, it turns out.) In an interview with Claire Zulkey, the writer of the NYT's Ethicist column has advice for proper installation of Emmy awards in your home:

It's very tricky, deciding where to put them in your apartment in a way that says you attach no importance to them. But it also has to be a place where no one coming in can miss it. Were you to enter my apartment (call first), there are bookshelves in the foyer, and the foyer is only four feet deep, so that you're quite close to the bookshelves so if you passed by them and turned your head up, you'd see them. And the other one is at my mother's house in the country.

The Randy Cohen Conversation [Zulkey]

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The Tabloid Wars, Part 38: Daily News Picks Up Prostitutes

There's so much staff going back and forth between the Two Towers, I mean, the Two Tabloids, that there might as well be an express shuttle running between the Post and Daily News headquarters.

Over at the Daily News, we hear that a bunch of editors and staffers are about to get axed. But the best rumor of all, from a spy with an axe to grind, is that the News is out digging for stories the old-fashioned way:

Martin Dunn, editorial director at the Daily News, is taking the unsavory tactic of sending reporters to the Four Seasons to see if the prostitutes that tend to hang around in the hotel (and service plenty of its patrons) will take the bait. Reporters go undercover as johns. It's not been very successful, as none of the reporters have been picked up. Dunn's really stretching.

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Krucoff's Data Dump: LES vs. Williamsburg on Craigslist

This week, Gawker resident statistician Andrew Krucoff (and his graphics helper, Chris Gage) take on the important issues: what does Craigslist teach us about the Lower East Side and Williamsburg?

LES_vs_BB.jpg

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The Times: Come Into The Light, Carol Anne

They're not just printing a paper -- they must be printing money, too! The Times is building a prototype building in Queens to study the way light will work in their new headquarters to be built in Manhattan -- ostensibly so that they can study the light. Says Metropolis magazine: "The mock-up is the culmination of a meticulous, near maniacal two-year effort by the newspaper and its consulting designers to thoroughly trouble-shoot any and all building issues prior to construction."

Yes! They're going to expose the trolls of the Metro desk to natural sunlight! Next thing you know, the Escapes desk will be hosting morning yoga classes and there'll be a midwife's natural-water-birthing pool installed on the roof.
A Day In The Light [Metropolis, via Lockhart]

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Letter From The Editor: High Times

Whew, sorry for the tardiness this morning. I think Marilyn Manson put it best when he said, "I don't like the drugs, but the drugs like me." So true, Marilyn. So true.

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April292004

Ivana Trump Wants In On Reality

ivanatrump150.jpgOh, no. Michael Musto just smuggled out a little online update to his column from this week: "Ivana Trump is about to announce the launch of her own reality show, called The Girl on Top." We're not sure exactly what she's "on top" of these days, but I'm sure she'll let us know. Many thanks for all the coming months of lewd puns by lonely headline writers, Ivana.
Michael Musto [Village Voice]

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Apprentice Casting: Mini-Trump


Casting agents for The Apprentice are looking to immediately hire a "little person" who can impersonate Donald Trump. They're also seeking an actor -- presumably full-size -- who can impersonate CBS Chairman Les Moonves. Will mini-Trump and faux-Moonves end up in that zig-zag backwards-time room from Twin Peaks? Will Omarosa guest-star as dead Laura Palmer? Will anyone please explain what's going on and why this is a good idea? [Click image for larger version.]

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Remainders: DIY NYT

1. Create your own Thomas Friedman Op-Ed Column.
2. Who's to blame for reporters who make stuff up? You are! Why weren't you paying attention, lazy reader?
3. Did you know that Manhattanites live in daily terror of street electrocution? Related: New Yorkers still cower in presence of C.H.U.D.s.
4. Jay-Z: No rappers were harmed in the making of his new video.
5. The daily Avenue B Starbucks rumor-laundering.
6. Math actually does have uses: Mathematical Patterns in African-American Hairstyles. [via Boing Boing]

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Will and Grace Season Finale Spoilers

This doesn't have jack-all to do with our regular obsessions, but we just can't resist spoilers. From our favorite ellipsis-obsessed correspondent, a smattering of info (and potential spoilers) regarding tonight's Will and Grace season finale (and much about J.Lo's ass).

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To Do: I Think She's Alone Now

· Catch Slate's resident know-it-all Jack Shafer at 7:30 at the Columbia Journalism School (2950 Broadway) discussing "The Good News About the Second Generation of Web Journalism," a topic we're sure he can b.s. his way through quite admirably.
· Profess your love to comic-makers David Rees, Tom Tomorrow, and Ruben Bolling, among others tonight at the book release party for Attitude 2: The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists.
· While you're feeling subversive, pink-o it up and catch a screening of the 2003 documentary The Weather Underground.
· Better than all that fancy crap, give it up for the "poor man's Debbie Gibson," Tiffany, tonight at the Cutting Room.

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Most Despicable Gossip Columnists

The nasty gays on Data Lounge are running a contest today: who's the most hated gossip columnist? This is at least interesting from an anthropological perspective, as it's unusual to see The Gay turn on Liz Smith and Cindy Adams -- it's like homos getting mad at Bea Arthur and Betty White! Unheard of. Excerpts from the anonymously-written list:

Cindy Adams - D-list social climber who writes like she learned diction from Al Capone.
Liz Smith - sell out in every sense of the term who dresses like Barbara Stanwyck in Big Valley.
Ted Casablanca - has no gossip to speak of and writes like one of the Olson twins after a lobotomy.

Despicable Gossip Columnists [Data Lounge]

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Howard Stern: Weblogging Internet Geek?

gstern.gifAmerica's public enemy #1, radio-dude Howard Stern, made an off-hand remark on this morning's show -- he claims he writes a secret weblog. Stern said he writes as "another character" and that only "about 4 people are in on the joke." OK, he's almost certainly not Rance, who repeatedly claims to be an actor and not a fat guy eating Twinkies in his basement, laughing at a credulous, gossip-starved public.

If anyone out there has candidates for what might be Stern's secret blog, let us know -- if the blogger brags about hurling prosciutto at a stripper's ass, that might be a tip-off.

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