Gawker, Manhattan Media News and Gossip

Nachas 2.0

Bloggers Are the New Doctors and Lawyers

I'm a blogger (see the sidebar) but my sister is in medical school. She is actually much smarter than I am but, according to this improbably enjoyable Styles piece on Sunday, I am the one who my mom should be bragging about. You hear that Marcia! ME! Why? "In a culture that prizes risk and outsize reward — where professional heroes are college dropouts with billion-dollar Web sites — some doctors and lawyers feel they have slipped a notch in social status, drifting toward the safe-and-staid realm of dentists and accountants. It’s not just because the professions have changed, but also because the standards of what makes a prestigious career have changed." My sister just delivered an infant! My last post got 13 page views! Who's the winner now!?!?!?

1:48 AM ON MON JAN 7 2008
BY JOSHUA STEIN
109 views, 1 comment

Latest by mattychicago: got to bed more »

Nauseating rumors

Lou Dobbs Ponders A Presidential Bid

Immigrant-hating/loving CNN goblin Lou Dobbs isn't not pondering entering the 2008 Presidential Elections as an independent. From the WSJ: "Mr. Dobbs says he isn't planning to run. "I haven't got the personality or nature to be a politician," he said in an interview Thursday. But he makes clear he hasn't ruled out the idea. "I cannot say never," he said." Sure you can! Just say it please and stop giving us agita!

1:38 AM ON MON JAN 7 2008
BY JOSHUA STEIN
20 views, Comment

Baby Steps

The New Britney Spears Starts Drinking at 10 AM In A Desert

As you may or may not have heard, Britney Spears has been having some "sanity issues" of late. Thankfully, on Saturday ">Dr. Phil swooped his hairless head in to Cedars Sinai and rescued the once upon a pop star, securing her release and whisking her away to parts unknown. "Parts unknown" of course only if you have no idea where Palm Desert is. It's 120 miles east of Los Angeles. It used to be a training ground for General Patton's troops! It's the cradle for the stoner rock movement! It's also where Spears was spotted Sunday morning with her Afghani-born (OMG!!) BF Adnan Ghalib. According to abnormally eye-patched Vegas gossip columnist Norm!, "Spears was celebrating her release with a mimosa champagne drink during breakfast at the Daily Grill on El Paseo....During breakfast, she went to the restroom with her champagne flute, while her friend stood outside the door." [Struggling not to make "2 Girls 1 Flute" joke!] [Photo: Page Six]

1:27 AM ON MON JAN 7 2008
BY JOSHUA STEIN
179 views, 1 comment

Latest by mattychicago: Hey Josh I will be in london in early February. I will think of your beard. more »

Citizen Journalism

Let's See Your Strike Beards

In solidarity with the Writers Guild of America, with Conan and Letterman and with Katie Holmes we're growing a strike beard. Our Solzhenitsyn-like beard has been growing since November 5th, the first day of the strike. Let's see your strike beards. Send them to tips@gawker.com

1:07 AM ON MON JAN 7 2008
BY JOSHUA STEIN
178 views, Comment

Funny haha/funny sad

Tracy Morgan, Still Hilarious After All These Beers

American thespian and unrepentant drunk Tracy Morgan continues to be a personal hero. All the shitty Queens shooting articles that Times outer borough Metro reporter Michael Wilson had to write finally paid off when he got to spend a night out with Mr. Morgan at Benihana's and write it up in the high-paying Styles section (as opposed to the penurious word rates of Metro) Best nugget from a long night of Sake bombs? “I’m walking around my family with an ankle bracelet,” he said. “For me, that was rock bottom.” Then he poured sake for my bomb — “It’s bad luck to pour your own,” he said — and plop! Into the beer it dropped, and the night began." more »

12:39 AM ON MON JAN 7 2008
BY JOSHUA STEIN
353 views, 2 comments

Latest by mattychicago: "We don't call it 30 rock we call it dirty rock" also he rolls on to the desk with his belly out and says "this is my impression of a pregnant woman" stay classy tracy! more »

2 Papers 1 site

CNBC And New York Times Announce Online Content Swap

CNBC and the New York Times have decided to share material on their respective websites. in a move to try to stave off competition from Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and recently-launched massively-failing Fox Business News. Basically, CNBC (a General Electric company) gets Times articles that will show up on CNBC.com while the Times gets CNBC videos. We're not so sure if having Jim Cramer screaming at you from the bottom of NYtimes.com is going to boost anything other than annoyance. They should take a page from Murdoch's own playbook and only have hot staffers in front of the camera. . That means a lot more Melena "Urban Eye" Ryzik and David "Dork Hot" Pogue and much much less of David "Scary" Carr and A.O. "Suburban Dad" Scott.

12:04 AM ON MON JAN 7 2008
BY JOSHUA STEIN
44 views, Comment

He's back

The Triumphant Return of Aleksey Vayner!

While no one thought he would fully disappear, for a while in late 2007 it seemed Aleksey Vayner had faded away. Earlier in the year, the inaugural inductee into the Gawker Hall of Fame had been severely mocked for his fabulist and fabulously hubristic video resume. And then he went deep underground. But 2008 smoked him out whatever anonymous labyrinth in which he sought refuge. And now, on his new website he's flying dangerously close to the sun once again. Though he admits he "received his share of mockery from kids in the bloggosphere," he still wants you to know he can bench press 520 lbs. more »

12:00 AM ON MON JAN 7 2008
BY JOSHUA STEIN
1,257 views, 30 comments

Latest by mattychicago: you people should catapult your success into the castle of your life. more »

Conan O'brien

Conan O'Brien Is Actually A Very Funny Man

I was just getting depressed about how unfunny professional comedians are and how the strike lays that bare and how sad that is. Then came across this video of Conan O'Brien singing the Beastie Boys' Sabotage as Edith Bunker from All In The Family. It made Kottke laugh. It made us laugh. It will make you laugh. Also: check out O'Brien's 2003 TimesTalk interview with snowy-haired TV reporter Bill Carter. It's great.

11:17 PM ON SUN JAN 6 2008
BY JOSHUA STEIN
225 views, 3 comments

GAWKER STALKER

Latest Gawker Stalker Sightings

Submit your Sightings: tips@gawker.com

Josh Hartnett
1998 Broadway
Spotted standing in a nook, goateed and talking indiscreetly into his cell phone, as "There Will Be Blood" let out of the Lincoln Center AMC at 11 PM.
John Cusack
24 W 55th St
Saw John Cusack having lunch at Michael's around 1:00 with a cute chick. They were both laughing a lot and tasted each other's dishes a few times.
Tim Gunn
575 Fashion Ave
Just saw Tim Gunn walking on 7th Ave from 42nd toward Parsons. Maybe reporting for work in the design studio? Although I don't think PR is filming right now. He was, of course, impeccably dressed in a tailored suit and tie. Lookin' good, Tim!
Jimmy Fallon
2 W 32nd St
Saw Jimmy Fallon while eating dinner at Mandoo (2 W 32nd) in Koreatown. He came in with an overly tan blond woman, her toddler and another friend.

MORE »

there goes the neighborhood

BREAKING: Hostages, Bomb Squads In Park Slope

It's not just babies and lesbians anymore in Park Slope. There are hostages too. Gridskipper's Hunter Walker lives there and files this report, "The yuppified Sunday evening calm in Park Slope has been shattered by what is reportedly a hostage situation in a brownstone on 9th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Neighbors heard gunshots and say that a man inside the home has taken hostages. The block has been roped off and the area is swarming with police personnel including a hostage negotiation team and a bomb squad robot." [Gridskipper]

10:34 PM ON SUN JAN 6 2008
BY JOSH
623 views, 2 comments

Latest by mattychicago: I have. more »

scabby assholes

Jimmy Kimmel and Jay Leno Host/Guest Each Other

Like an ouroboros of unfunny talk show hosts or that kid from Miranda July's movie pooping back and forth, with the same poop, forever, on Thursday Jimmy Kimmel will appear on the Tonight Show with scabby Jay Leno's and then Jay Leno will appear on Jimmy Kimmel's show! Please writers, cease your demands! No one should have to watch this. Same poop. Back and forth. Forever.

10:15 PM ON SUN JAN 6 2008
BY JOSH
223 views, 5 comments

brilliant

The Wire's final season

In Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Berlin Johnson showed how television drama had become more complex over the decades, and made the contrarian claim that popular culture was making us smarter. The Wire, which returns tonight, ought to clinch the argument. The HBO drama, about crime and politics in Baltimore, is so convoluted that it takes several episodes, and sometimes several viewings, to make sense of the plot. And that's what's so engrossing: the show is a puzzle as much as it's entertainment. Bonus for media junkies: much of the action in this, the last season, takes place at the newsroom of the city's dying newspaper, the Baltimore Sun. One of the characters is a familiar figure in American publishing, the corporate executive who tells his dispirited reporters to do "less with more." 9pm, Sunday nights, HBO. Trailer after the jump. more »

4:39 PM ON SUN JAN 6 2008
BY NICK DENTON
1,029 views, 10 comments

Latest by moff: @Chaim Gnadelstein: In fairness, though, it's an hour long, with no commercials, you have to have HBO or DVDs to watch it, and if you miss one episode, you're completely lost. I've been a casual viewer for the past year more »

Virtual Worlds

The last man on the Lower East Side

Rarely has an inhabitant of Manhattan's most hipster-ridden neighborhood ever wished for more bustle. In MTV's virtual recreation of the Lower East Side, however, the emptiness can be disturbing. "My earliest explorations were like starring in my own personal version of I Am Legend," writes a Times reporter. "The streets were mostly empty and I found myself wandering cavernous, depopulated simulacra of the Dark Room and the Mercury Lounge." Pictured here, a view of Houston Street, outside Katz's Deli. Last year, Gawker sent its own correspondent to explore the online hipster playground.

4:09 PM ON SUN JAN 6 2008
BY NICK DENTON
527 views, 1 comment

Latest by ambitious heckler: Wow - maybe send one of your reporters to investigate further? more »

THE UNDERMINER

No one so smug as a returning expat

It's humiliating enough that European tourists, marveling at the decline of the dollar, treat a visit to New York like a trip to the factory outlet. Mike Albo, in the latest installment of his occasional column, channels an even more annoying type: the returning expat. more »

11:23 AM ON SUN JAN 6 2008
BY MALBO
5,026 views, 25 comments

from the archives

The lost art of flattery

The best nugget from Norman Mailer's personal correspondence: Tina Brown, the English editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, asked him to provide a reference for her green card bid. (It couldn't have hurt to have an endorsement from America's best writer, or someone who considered himself that.) For someone with such a reputation for pugilism, Mailer's letters are masterpieces of flattery. The writer, who died last year, produced the requisitely over-the-top letter to include in Tina Brown's immigration application, and appended an even more cloying cover note: “Don’t believe a word of this. You are too attractive ever to let your head swell.”

7:13 PM ON SAT JAN 5 2008
BY NICK DENTON
960 views, 10 comments

Latest by elijahpollack: Here's a link to Tionna's latest, if anyone is interested. more »

Anchors

Bill O'Reilly on the wrong side of the rope line

The gall of it! An aide to Barack Obama dared get in the way of Fox News' camera on a rope line in New Hampshire. Bill O'Reilly, the cable network's irascible star, was so incensed that he ended up in a shoving match with an aide to the Democratic presidential candidate, stopped only when the Secret Service told the right-wing news anchor to restrain himself. Bill O'Reilly's used to being treated with more respect, at least by the current administration. Welcome to life on the wrong side of the rope line! (After the jump, O'Reilly spins the incident on Fox News.) more »

6:38 PM ON SAT JAN 5 2008
BY NICK DENTON
3,118 views, 18 comments

Latest by check please: i wonder how many US soldiers got blown up in Iraq in the time it took for them to cover that hard hitting news story at Fox more »

breaking out

Britney Spears Succeeds In Daring Escape From Cedars Sinai With Help From Dr. Phil!

FROM DEFAMER.COM: As it turns out, the 72-Hour Strapped To A Gurney While Being Monitored By Five Burly Orderlies Super Mental Breakdown Watch under which Britney Spears was being detained at Cedars Sinai's vaunted Celebrity Meltdown Ward is not quite as restrictive in its patient-retention policies as we'd assumed,... more »

3:26 PM ON SAT JAN 5 2008
BY MARK
12,237 views, 32 comments

Gawker Stalker

Chronicles of clueless tourists

"Jan. 4 Parker Posey, 33rd and 3rd ave, 1pm,-- I was eating lunch at 2nd Ave Deli when a horrible gawker pointed out that Parker Posey was sitting at the bar having lunch. The tourist proceeded to stand up and stare at Parker for five minutes. He obviously didn't know that she is the most common celeb sighting in the city." [Thanks, Joshua.]

12:16 PM ON SAT JAN 5 2008
BY NICK DENTON
3,840 views, 25 comments

strikewatch

Breaking! Golden Globes Show Further Imperiled By Stubborn Refusal Of Actors To Hand Out, Pick Up Shiny Statuettes!

FROM DEFAMER.COM: According to an announcement made by Screen Actors Guild president Alan Rosenberg this afternoon, the members of his union refuse to undermine their striking WGA brethren by crossing the WGA picket line at the Golden Globes: "After considerable outreach to Golden Globe actor nominees and their... more »

7:20 PM ON FRI JAN 4 2008
BY MARK
4,236 views, 23 comments

twin peaked

David Lynch hates your iPhone

David Lynch is disgusted that anyone would watch a movie on a phone. "You will never in a trillion years experience the film...you'll be cheated," he says in this clip from the special edition of Inland Empire. While it's obvious that films like Eraserhead demand something better than 480x320 pixels, is Lynch honestly that horrified that someone might want to watch "Failure to Launch" on the subway? more »

6:29 PM ON FRI JAN 4 2008
BY NICK DOUGLAS
4,550 views, 54 comments

dead can blog

2008: The Year of Spooky Posthumous Blogging

Andrew Olmstead just updated his blog to announce that he's been killed in Iraq. He seems mostly good-natured about the whole ordeal, unlike suicidal blogger Theresa Duncan. No mournful poems or ghost stories here, just straight talk and, well, a Team America quote. And seven Babylon 5 quotes. Let us forgive the dead their taste. [Andrew Olmsted via Metafilter]

5:30 PM ON FRI JAN 4 2008
BY PAREENE
1,670 views, 14 comments

The Commies

Things Were Said...

Everyone is always talking! Or, typing! Comments and questions and jokes and things! And some of it is really great. So this is where greatness is recognized. Join me, LolCait/Richard Lawson, as I bestow honors upon a lucky few. more »

5:30 PM ON FRI JAN 4 2008
BY RICHARD LAWSON
2,573 views, 28 comments

2 girls 1 cup

Descriptions of goatse, 2 girls 1 cup, and other gross-outs that hopefully you'll never watch

We've all heard about "2 girls 1 cup," and a shocking amount of us have actually watched it. But for those who want to preserve their dignity while still pretending they watched this filth, here are spoilers for the Internet's top gross-outs. Under no circumstances do I recommend you actually view these videos, no matter how many other people do. more »

5:20 PM ON FRI JAN 4 2008
BY NICK DOUGLAS
18,807 views, 144 comments

fox4Anyone

Lonely (But Hot!) Fox Biz Network Anchor Seeks "Wicked Smart" Male Viewers

'Extra' host Mark McGrath has said that 27-year-old Fox Business Network anchor Jenna Lee "puts the babe in business news." But it seems that even she's not babe enough to score viewers, let alone a date. Fox's fledgling biz network is off to a meager start with an average of 6,000 weekday viewers in its first two months. Maybe Jenna's requirements for would-be suitors are just too stringent! "My perfect man has to be wicked smart," she tells 'Extra'. "A good sense of humor doesn't hurt, but at the end of the day you want a smart man." Presumably you wouldn't mind if he were also a well-educated 18-35-year-old influencer with a high household income and a weakness for luxury goods? Ladies, next time one of you FBN pinup-newswomen talks to Sugar Ray about what you're looking for in an audience, be more specific! more »

5:02 PM ON FRI JAN 4 2008
BY MAGGIE
2,295 views, 36 comments

Latest by TheBigDoggy: A decade from now, she'll be just another frazzled and faded school ma'am, fingering the avocados at Whole Foods. more »

Ripoff

Happiness Publishers Run Out of New Ideas

Life, and finding happiness, is like a bowl of cherries! Or a box of... damn, why is it so hard to come up with any other ideas? That's what publishers are wondering, as they appear to be having problems coming up with designs (other than cherries) for new books on happiness. Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert, came out in March of 2007. It was a best-seller! The topic was optimistic, and the simple, pretty cover featured a nice font and an overturned bowl of cherries. Now, we won't beat up on the latest two authors to write books on happiness, Alexanda Stoddard and Sonja Lyobomirsky. But did their publishers' design departments have to choose the same imagery (cherries!), font, and soothing color scheme? Take a look for yourselves! more »

4:58 PM ON FRI JAN 4 2008
BY SHEILA
1,932 views, 22 comments

Latest by hiredgoons: Won't somebody think of the trees!? more »