Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Tee hee! We're all a-titter over this week's Observer cover, although we can imagine Anna Wintour has an enormous bee buzzing in her bonnet right about now. Oh my! Here is this April's cover of Vogue, featuring LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen. It was shot by Annie Leibovitz: click for what might have been her "inspiration." As you might imagine, its been causing quite the stir!  Weeee! Here's the Observer's silly little spoof, conveniently timed to their magazine-themed issue. Doesn't Si Newhouse look ever so dainty? 
Monday, March 31, 2008
Last week, Slate's video editor Andy Bowers posted a video of his self-nominated "Stupidest Bike Lane in America," a lane in Western Los Angeles that runs a mere 275 feet before disappearing suddenly and completely amidst busy LA traffic - sort of a "Fuck off" to bikers from LA road officials. The video:
Thursday, March 27, 2008
PRESS UNDER FIRE
5 years ago
March 28, 2003 | Dan Kennedy talked to UVA professor Larry Sabato about the drawbacks of embedded reporting during the Iraq War.
" 'I suppose the embedding is useful overall, and occasionally...it has resulted in on-the-spot coverage of hard news,’ says...Sabato...‘But embedding has also resulted in a loss of the big picture during a good bit of the coverage, with loads of soft, human-interest coverage that actually tells the viewers nothing of importance. Seeing a TV reporter riding in the back of a dust-covered jeep with his gas mask on makes for great video. But when he tells us, as one did, ‘We’re on the move, but I can’t say where we are or where we’re heading or what we’re going to do when we get there,’ what’s the point? To prove there are soldiers on the ground moving toward Baghdad? I think we knew that.’ ” Read Full Article
WRESTLING PREJUDICE
10 years ago
March 27, 1998 | Dan Tobin analyzed the bad guys of pro wrestling, concluding the sport to be “a window onto the Zeitgeist.”
“...wrestling villainy is an excellent indicator of what makes average Americans nervous. During the Cold War, Russians were the worst bad guys, and a tag team called the Bolsheviks would sing the National Hymn of the Soviet Union before matches. The Iron Sheik was similarly hated for his Iranian patriotism. Then the Berlin Wall came down and the Iron Sheik turned 50. So the WWF sought new bad guys. Its search for a villain has produced the following:
Accountants: Out of the depths of the 1991 recession crawled Irwin R. Schyster (a/k/a IRS), who announced before his matches how many months were left until taxes were due. He lasted well into the Republican revolution.
Fat people/the Japanese: In the early '90s, Yokozuna weighed in at 589 pounds and defeated Hulk Hogan by distracting him with Eastern fireworks. He was managed by Mr. Fuji, who spoke broken English and threw salt in the eyes of opponents.
Gays: In the past few years, Goldust's look has evolved from two-bit drag to a more sophisticated S&M getup. But the message is still the same: Smear the queer...
Dentists: Dr. Isaac Yankem embodied everyone's fear of drills, Novocain, and gingivitis. Or something like that.
Canadians: The Mountie...was a notorious cheater. And Calgary native Bret "the Hitman" Hart taunted Americans for being bad hockey players. Ouch, Bret. Hit us where it hurts.” Read Full Article
PURSUE THE GURU
20 years ago
March 25, 1988 | Kathy McAfee reported on the Boston-based followers of 15-year old Guru Maharaj-ji.
“The Divine Light Mission of 15-year-old Guru Maharaj-ji may be the fastest growing religion in the west...
“In Boston, there are more than 400 initiates with local headquarters in a sky-blue mansion off Route Two in Concord. The headquarters is actually an ashram, a sort of co-ed monastery...
“The Concord ashram is filled with altars, mass-produced Indian artifacts and photographs of Guru Maharaju-ji.
“Ashram activities are coordinated by a general secretary, who is a man, and the cooking is done entirely by the ‘house’s mother’ and her female assistant. This job, I was told, can be held by a male only in an emergency. ‘As G’rooma Rajee says, ‘How can a mother be a man’? ‘
“Every resident is supposed to be completely celibate. ‘You see, the ashram works just like a family, and there have to be incest taboos. If there are all these other trips going on, all these little intrigues, it’s not going to hold together.’ "
THE BIGGER, THE BETTER
25 years ago
March 29, 1983 | Joyce Millman reviewed Bette Midler’s gaudy sold-out performances in Boston.
“Bette Midler flaunts her bazooms the way Barbara Streisand flaunts her schnoz. For both entertainers, these fruits of nature’s generosity are a stamp of authenticity—physical assurances that, yes, these grand stars are as humanly imperfect as we schleps across the footlights. A week ago, during her five sold-out performances of ‘De Tour’ at the Opera House, Midler was as adorable blowzy as she’d been when she first jiggled her way to fame...nearly bouncing her Jane Russell-sized breasts out of her trashy-but-flashy push-‘em-up brassiere (‘Yes they are fabulous aren’t they?’) Near the end of the first act, Midler and her backing trio, the Harlettes, performed a sublimely vulgar tune called ‘Great Big Knockers’ while holding balloon mammaries in front of their chests; Midler, of course, toted pink ones so huge that they bowled her over, one sailing into the wings while she used the other for a slippery prop in a deliciously unladylike fan dance.”
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
We dont' really want to encourage just any old T-shirt opportunist, but -- totally without endorsement -- we have to share this limited offer. And on an unrelated, but equally exploitive note, our inside informants report that coming soon to a bar in Allston -- it's Obama Beer. Not the Kenyan brand; that's old news; but a domestic brew straight out of Brooklyn. No hype for this alleged (and likely unlicensed) product has been posted that we can find, so our informants are either way ahead of the zeitgeist or they're lying . . . or confused. Tell us what you know. (Just about this, please.)
Monday, March 03, 2008
I'm delighted that the Telegraph decided to feature Crystal Renn, an extraordinarily successful plus-size model, in a feature today. But here's what I don't get. This is how writer Judy Rumbold opens her piece: To be honest, I expected Crystal Renn to be bigger. All right then, fatter. In the mind's eye, the term 'plus-size model' is liberally coated in doughnut batter, and I had her down as a gloriously buxom woman-mountain. Along with a name that sounds as if it's jumped off the embossed-foil cover of a Danielle Steel bodice-ripper, I'm anticipating a formidably blowsy, lipsticky package.That's the lede that she chose to draw the reader in? Which can only mean, of course, that she assumes that we assume that any story about a plus-size model must be discussing an overweight cow who is just talented enough to be the Big Girl poster child for the commercial side of the industry. Shut The Fuck Up, please -- who are you, Rumbold, the fashion scribe version of the Pick-Up Artist? We don't need to be negged into understanding what you're talking about, lady. What a stupid, dim-witted way of getting to the point. After being told to lose 10 inches off her hips or lose out on a modeling contract, Renn became anorexic. Then: She soon became withdrawn and neurotic, lying to her grandmother and friends about the extent to which she was starving herself. While everyone close to her thought she looked like death, the agency was thrilled. 'They were, like, "You look fabulous!"' But not quite fabulous enough. With a swimwear shoot looming, she forced herself to work out for nine hours, two days in a row - 'My body literally felt like it was crumbling' - before seeing her bookers again. 'They looked me up and down and said, "Your legs. You need to bring your legs down."'
Renn switched her contract to Ford. Since gaining back her normal weight -- she is a hot, curvy 20-something who gives ScarJo a run for her money -- she's appeared in Vogue, and, has shot ads for Saks, Nine West, and other assorted editorial campaigns. But how nice that no matter how far she's come, the Telegraph can't simply call her a size 16. They have to call her a "healthy" size 16, with the subtext of "healthy" meaning large. You know, fat. But pretty all the same! This is gross, gross, gross, and terrible, particularly after Ali Michael was shunned over her "fat" legs in Paris last week. Thanks, Telegraph, for feeding the clusterfuck. You know things are right with the world when teenagers are giving themselves body dysmorphic disorders over five pounds.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
 Ellee spread the word over on Slop earlier (complete with a fantastically crafted illustration - Ellee, you are a Photoshop genius), but Pat Lyons*, over at the NYT's Lede blog, considers a entirely different aspect to the story: "The father of the child is variously reported to be 18 or 19 years
of age, and she is 16. We don’t know exactly where they were 12 weeks
ago, and frankly don’t want to — but prosecutors might.
In Louisiana, where they both live, the age of consent is 17, and what
obviously must have gone on between them might qualify as criminal
carnal knowledge of a juvenile in that state — either a felony or
misdemeanor, depending on just how old he is.
In California, where she stays while the show is being shot, the age
of consent is 18, and the relevant charge would be unlawful sexual
intercourse, a misdemeanor." Yikes. We know who we would not like to be right now.
Read Lyons's full blog entry here.
*Apologies to Pat for originally/incorrectly identifying the author of the post as Mike Nizza!
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
This headline was on E! today: Alex
Trebek Jeopardized by Heart Attack Then, to compound matters, here's the first paragraph: The category? Cardiac events. The clue? Alex Trebek. For those wondering, Trebek is okay. But the Phoenix staff was inspired to come up with some other possible future headlines to describe tragic events in the lives of other noteworthy gameshow hosts. Here are the results: "C _ N C E R -- Pat Sajak buys an ‘A’; his 'Wheel' lands on 'prostate' " "Diabetes, or No Diabetes? It’s a bad 'Deal' for Howie Mandel" "The Price Is Rigor Mortis -- Drew Carey dead in car crash" - David Bernstein (for all three of those) "Who Wants To Be A Pallbearer? Regis Philbin’s final answer." - Mike Miliard "No More Physical Challenges: Marc Summers dies in freak slime accident" - Caitlin Curran "Survey Says, Decapitation: Richard Karn’s Final Face Off" - Sharon Steel "Not A Survivor: Jeff Proust Votes Himself Off the Island" - Also Sharon Steel, or, alternately, "No 'Surviving': Annoyed competitors eliminate Jeff Probst" - Caitlin Curran "Newlydead Game: Bob Eubanks Victim of Shotgun Wedding" - Vanessa Czarnecki "The Final Rose: Chris Harrison dies in freak gardening accident" - Ellee Dean "The Weakest Link: World Says 'Goodbye' to Anne Robinson After Fateful Relay Race" - Will Spitz "Back, back, back, gone: The tragic final days of Chris Berman" - Ryan Stewart "Apparently NOT smarter than a 5th grader: All-wet Jeff Foxworthy electrocuted after licking electrical socket" - Lance Gould
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
My favorite blog of the moment, Feministing, reports today on the Bush administration’s national abstinence campaign, which is apparently in full swing, despite heaps of evidence proving that abstinence-only education doesn’t work. From a related entry on ThinkProgress: "...this 'information' is not grounded in science. A recent federal report concluded that abstinence-only programs have had 'no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence.' Yet the latest public service announcement by 4parents.gov 'encourages parents to talk with their kids about waiting to have sex.'" Watch the above video and try to resist the wide-eyed youngsters, pleading: “Tell me what you want from me - an education, a family, happiness,” because apparently those things are only available for the abstinent. Personally, my only proof that abstinence-only teachings don’t work is anecdotal: I attended a strict, all-girls Catholic high school in Baltimore, where they literally tested us on this stuff, i.e. “Sexual intercourse is for (fill in the blank).” The blank, as you might guess, was something along the lines of “a woman and a man who are married.” These tests were administered in religion classes, which nearly every student passed, most with A’s or B’s, and yet none of my friends were abstinent. And, on average from freshman year to senior year, at least two members of my 125-student class became pregnant per year. This week’s This American Life takes a different approach. With the theme “How to Talk to Kids,” host Ira Glass talks to students who write and edit a publication and website called Sex Etc. (with the warning that he’s not going to be sexually explicit, but he is going to acknowledge that kids have sex), a place for teens to find information about safe sex, consult sexual health experts anonymously, find out where to get tested for STD’s, or where to turn in a crisis. Visit the website here (on TAL the students were quick to warn that it’s sexetc.org - other standard URL endings lead to pornography). Download the TAL podcast here, and listen through to the end - there’s a fun little segment by Dan Savage, and it’s (surprisingly) NOT about sex.
10/9/2007 1:22:18 PM by Caitlin | |
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The Weekly World News may be dead -- long live the Weekly World News -- but who needs it when we've got Boston Herald covers like this one? We were reminded today that the WWN -- bless its putrid, beautiful soul -- perished not because its niche shrank, but precisely because the opposite happened: its practice of fabulism, shameless hyperbole, and proud, profound disdain of anything so mundane as "the facts" metastasized into general practice for the mainstream media. The Weekly World News ceased to exist because it was no longer necessary: daily newspapers and weekly glossies out-sensationalized the insatiably sensational.
The first rule of tabloids is, if you can get the words "Vampire," "Killer," and "Blood" above the fold, increase your point size by 20. (Why? So that the rest of the headline -- in this case, the final two words of "Vampire Killer's Blood Money Bid" -- doesn't get in the way.) The Herald dutifully followed this advice to the letter, but that was just the beginning. The real beauty was how they managed to cram not one but three grade-Z bloodsucker puns into its front-page hype. There was the merely awful "Parole Play May Be in 'Vein' " kicker sitting there at the top, decapitating the upper eighth of the page. Then came the treacly, cringe-inducing "Critics say jailhouse art sale bites" in the subhed. And, for good measure, they finished off with a photo caption of the killer that began "LOTS AT STAKE." (Cue crickets chirping.) At this, however, the staff's pun-muscles apparently failed: the page-five inside hed leeched off the front caption's pun, settling for the weak, community-newspaperish " 'Vampire' stakes future on art." Still, only a truly inspired layout staff -- or a deathly bored one -- would follow up by letting the vampire theme bleed across into the top story of the facing page, a wire import headlined "Technology bytes: New controller puts power to run iPods in your mouth."
Nice to see what the moribund Herald staff is capable of when they find something to sink their teeth into.
Inside there was the faintest tidbit of political red meat from Duval Patrick's office -- hedging support in favor of an anti-"murderbilia" bill -- buried under a page's worth of hyperventilation about a 50-year-old diagnosed schizophrenic named James Riva who, as Massachusetts law shamefully permits, has been hawking his jailhouse artwork on a web site. Riva is also hoping, as only paranoid schizos can, that some parole board will actually let him loose after serving 27 years of a life-sentence-plus, which he incurred for shooting his grandmother and, unfortunately for the both of them but fortunately for the ghouls at One Herald Square, drinking her blood.
Here's our favorite excerpt: "A relative [of Riva's] who refused to identify himself wouldn't comment, except to say the media was only out to 'sensationalize'
Riva's story." Gee, wonder where he got that fucking idea? Perhaps the Herald should run a second-day story on the unidentified relative's clairvoyance, since clearly he was able to magically forsee a) the quarter-page reproduction of one of Riva's drawings that ran adjacent to the story; and b) the sentence that immediately preceded his quote, which took the low-road step of giving out the URL at which one can purchase Riva's art. (We're not stupid: we know you're googling it right now, but some news outlets still have a vestigal lizard remnant of something that used to be called "class.")
It's a trick the Herald learned from the WWN: a feigned, winking moral outrage at the shocking -- shocking! -- acts of a debased, fallen society, delivered with a straight face even as it fucks the corpse for all it's worth on Page One. We bet Riva makes less in a year from his art (even with the added publicity boost) than the mailroom boys will make selling today's Herald cover on eBay. Hey guys: we hear "murderbilia" is auctioning big these days! (At least the Weekly World News was honest about it.) We don't begrudge the Herald its hypocrisies: hell, we encourage them -- with the same root-for-the-retards glee we used to reserve for Bat Boy and Ed Anger. Go, Herald!
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Yesterday was a day of triumph for Tom Lehrer. "It just takes a smidgen’ to poison a pigeon," the Harvard-educated comedian gleefully sang in 1959. "When they see us coming, the pigeons all try an’ hide, but they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide." In his strained rhyme, Lehrer satirically worried about the response of the Audubon Society, but, as it turns out, his methods have finally earned the approval of animal-rights activists. Sort of.
In Lehrer’s home state of California, PETA and the Argyle Civic Association have conspired to dispose of the pestilent pigeon population by no less insidious means. "Citizen Pigeon," a rooftop operation launched yesterday in Hollywood, aims to cull flock growth by "humanely" lacing the birds’ food with an oral contraceptive called OvoControl.
According to a recent BBC article, the pigeon population there could dive-bomb to 50% by 2012.
"Citizen Pigeon is a win-win project," said PETA wildlife biologist Stephanie Boyles, in a press release: "Businesses get fewer pigeons roosting on their buildings, and pigeons are spared cruel deaths."
Yes, perhaps: replacing strychnine with birth control may take better care of the birds. But Lehrer (now a renowned lecturer at UC Santa Cruz) might say they were missing the point.
--Caroline Perry
Monday, July 16, 2007
In a way, Crocs and Paris Hilton have a lot in common: both are
plastic-y and make unreasonable amounts of money; people are
obsessed with them (or rather obsessed with talking about them), and no one can really figure out why. The ugly croslite gardening clogs have been
the subject of newspaper trend and business stories for well over a year now -
we first spotted the apparently widespread fad in its early stages, via Allstonian hipster feet in and around the
Harvard Ave area two summers ago - and now they’re experiencing a media resurgence,
due mainly to the facts that business is still booming for the Crocs company,
and, more importantly, George W. Bush donned a pair recently (with shorts and
black socks, no less). Isn’t this something that the Crocs crew would want to
keep quiet? Last time we checked, Bush is no fashion icon, and his approval
ratings are in the gutter - that makes him the opposite of celeb spokesperson
material. In the past month
the Washington
Post, New York Times Magazine Consumed
columnist Rob Walker, Slate, and a smattering
of others (check Google News) have analyzed, experimented, theorized and
otherwise contemplated the ugly-as-beautiful shoe fad. Enough with the Crocs coverage! News outlets
everywhere, we beseech you - put the shoes down and find another trend to
investigate. And don’t cop out and
rehash the Guitar Hero craze... unless it involves some sort of Boston vs. New
York face-off.
7/16/2007 2:18:58 PM by Caitlin | |
Thursday, May 17, 2007
You know shit's fucked when your anti-kidnapping chief is kidnapped. (thanks Ben)
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