Tuesday May 31, 2005
Three Little Dots
Did you hear that Tom Cruise is making Katie Holmes refer to herself as “Tania?” Stay clear of the Hibernia Bank. … Where was I when Sofia Coppola was allowed to film a biopic of Marie-Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst? Do you think there’s still time to stop it? (I hear that Robespierre is totally based on Spike Jonze.) … As a big fan of crying, I’m bummed I didn’t think of this.
Posted by jim at 11:44 AM ||
Wednesday May 25, 2005
You Know You’re Famous When …
… even retractions refer to you by your first names.
Besides, everyone knows it’s completely tacky to file for divorce within seven business days of exploiting the troops for personal gain. That would be so Britney. In any case, I’m confident that the Redbook curse will win in the end.
Posted by jim at 11:08 AM ||
Tuesday May 24, 2005
The Last of the Underground Blogs
It may be a hoax, but everyone (who has a certain kind of blog) is still talking about Blogebrity. In particular, they’re talking about The List, a sorting of bloggers into the A-, B-, and C-Lists. I am not on any of the lists, although B-Lister Daniel does do me the honor of citing my exclusion as one of many reasons that the list eats it. I, however, think the list is totally accurate and understand why I’m not on it.
It’s because I’m totally punk rock.
So when you get tired of all those bloated, mainstream, sellout bloggers with their lists and iPods and little West Village bar parties, stop by and smell the authenticity, posers—if you think you can handle it.
Posted by jim at 05:46 PM ||
Monday May 23, 2005
The Worst Gossip Column in the World
Notes toward such a column, composed after a weekend spent reading current issues of Star, Us, People and that other one:
Paris Hilton may be working it in her naughty new commercial for Carl’s Jr., but sources close to the bombshell tell us that she doesn’t have to work at all. She’s heir to the Hilton Hotel fortune. … A spy, who attended this weekend’s SNL broadcast at Studio 8H, says host Lindsay Lohan appears to have lost some weight. And she may have dyed her hair! … According to insiders, a certain bearded director/producer—who just released the sixth part of his celebrated sci-fi epic last week—is known in Hollywood circles to be “pretty well off.” … Tom Cruise is a gay, gay man.
Posted by jim at 01:04 PM ||
Friday May 20, 2005
Three Little Dots
Here is a beautiful campaign for Portuguese magazine Grande Reportagem, in which world flags are treated like pie charts. … Stay Free! magazine has started running fiction, and the first featured story was written by my nPRm, Alexandra. It’s called “The Professional.” She’s already gotten fan mail. … Now they tell me. If I’d quit and gotten free patches, I could have quit my job. … If Gawker and Radar merged—and how can they not at this point; they are so Sam and Diane—would the result be called “Rawker” or “Gadar”? And which would draw more ad pages? … This is saddest story I have ever read. Aside from The Good Soldier.
Posted by jim at 04:04 PM ||
Thursday May 19, 2005
Look Who’s Talking Now
A question. How did it come to pass that a media trade organization, in this case the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), decided to endorse an anti-Constitutional statement like this—as a public service announcement, no less—at a time when the political right is threatening the very idea of an independent court, and why are their democracy-loving customers standing for it? And, furthermore, why aren’t folks like StopSinclair.org all over it?
Much detail after the jump.
Back in 1998, you might recall, billboards started cropping up bearing pithy messages from God. They said things like “We Need To Talk” and “I Love You. I Love You. I Love You.” The story goes that they were sponsored by an anonymous donor in South Florida, who hired a nothing firm called The Smith Agency to develop the campaign. Being the freewheeling theist that I am, none of this seemed terribly offensive to me—anonymous donors can sponsor whatever they want, and at least it wasn’t overtly hateful—and lots of people, myself included, wrote light media pieces about it. I talked to Smith Agency president Andy Smith, who is Jewish, about the campaign, and he stressed its nondenominational focus and the fact that his agency was just a workaday shop that happened to have this donor as a client. Clinton was still in office and theocratic dominionism wasn’t on anyone’s mind.
The campaign was picked up as public service effort by the OAAA, which posted the billboards all over the country. Since then, the GodSpeaks campaign, as it became known, has had a strange history. In 2000, The Smith Agency sued Andy Smith and creative director Charles Robb for shopping the idea of a book of God’s sayings to Random House. Robb’s book God Speaks appeared in 2000 and is currently only available as a hard-to-find title. The Smith Agency then went out of business—although not before it was able to unleash the wretched, urban-flavored WuzupGod campaign—and thus far I have had no luck tracking down Smith or Robb.
The billboards made another unusual appearance in 2003, when Hurricane Charlie damaged a billboard face, revealing a message from God underneath. In the Bush era this was naturally interpreted by some as an actual sign from the actual God. It was not.
Now, this spring, the GodSpeaks campaign is making a comeback, again backed by the OAAA. This time, however, it isn’t even pretending to be nondenominational. Not only does it parrot the right’s antagonistic position toward the judiciary, but it’s being run by The DeMoss Group, a Georgia-based PR firm that specializes in work for evangelical clients like Billy Graham. A picture of President Bush even appears in the slideshow on the firm’s homepage.
So, who is this anonymous donor, assuming it is the same donor as the first go round as The DeMoss Group claims? The Winston-Salem Journal did the only real reporting on this I could find, back in 2002. According to tax-return documents, it looks like the money for the original campaign came from the Festus and Helen Stacy Foundation, a foundation set up by Pennsylvania gas station baron Festus Stacy “to enhance the lives of others and to spread Christianity throughout the world.” And to hate on the Supreme Court?
While the right’s contempt for the judiciary may or may not make political sense, there’s something I just don’t get about the Christian right’s antagonism toward the courts. Allegedly, God wrote—or, at the very least, participated liberally in the writing of—the Constitution. That’s why, according to the right, we shouldn’t have separation of church and state or (apparently) separation of powers. But the Constitution, which God wrote or helped write, has both of those things. So, either God was wrong when he put them in there or he likes them. Why not assume the best and leave the courts (and God) alone?
Posted by jim at 10:31 PM ||
Mmm, Patchy
Alright. My quit smoking counter is quickly becoming, um, misleading. First I asked you to subtract one, for that lone cigarette under the desk. Now I must ask that you subtract 40 for my activities on Tuesday, when I suddenly realized that whole packs of cigarettes are openly for sale at the deli near my home, and then for later that afternoon when I realized Rite Aid also carries them. (I’m still in great smoking shape, as you can see.) But that’s all. Well, except for the one I had last night at the Radar launch party. They were smoking inside, for Chrissakes! In Manhattan! So fascinated was I by this radical smoking concept that I missed this entirely. Who says smoking is bad for you?
To review: That’s the ticker minus one, minus 40, minus one. And now I’m wearing the patch. A big one normally reserved for higher mammals involved in medical experiments. Yummy.
And to clarify: My new program of contempt for smokers will continue unabated, except when I am a) actually in the act of smoking or b) trying to bum potentially heart-attack-inducing cigarettes from them.
Posted by jim at 11:35 AM ||
‘Arrested’ to be Allowed to Jump Shark
It’s official. As I earlier hoped—and Andrew recently foretold—Arrested Development will be back for another season. It will move to Mondays at 8, followed by some new crap. We’ll all hate it in a year. That’ll teach Peter Liguori to choose quality.
Sad to say, Life on a Stick didn’t make it.
Posted by jim at 11:19 AM ||
Wednesday May 18, 2005
Fiction Hacks
Having trouble coming up with appropriately whimsical, portentous, or “quirky” names for your fictional characters, especially now that phonebooks have gone the way of the answering machine? BabyNames.com’s Random Name Generator is a perfectly serviceable substitute for naming literary personae. The “Personality Trait” selector doesn’t seem to be of much use—what’s so “philosophical” about “Paniz Dore Jones?”—but it’s still a good way to churn through a lot of possibilities.
And if you’re having trouble putting a face with a name, get a free registration at a stock photo site like iStockPhoto.com (that’s the one I use) and browse around for inspiration. For a couple bucks, you can download a copy for future reference. Also good for Friendster profiles and fake IDs.
Posted by jim at 12:33 PM ||
Thursday May 12, 2005
A Blogger for One Year
It’s hard to believe, but this blog turns one year old tomorrow. So I’m going to take the day off, just like I do most days. Meanwhile, here is the official highlight reel from the past year.
5.24.04
Shiny, Point & Tall
The industry-leading source for pictures of people taking pictures of the Chrysler Building debuts.
6.3.04
Nielsen TV Research Activity Book
Too ridiculous to make up.
6.4.04
An Open Letter to Maritime Hotel Cabbies
This is later quoted in the NYT’s “Sunday Styles” section, where it is attributed to Gawker. No one is fired.
8.27.04
Guest Blogging at MoorishGirl
I am never invited to guest blog there, or anywhere else, again. Understandably.
11.2.04
I Vote
But it does no good.
3.1.05
Kurt Andersen Writes in About “Hobbesian Choice”
I take pity on him and offer him a job editing a magalog. He says he already has one.
3.5.05
McDonald’s and Child
Tomorrow also happens to be Alexandra’s birthday, so wish her well.
4.1.05
Boring Boring: A Directory of Dull Things
Encyclopedia Hanasiana logs its first non-Kurt Andersen visitor and promptly crashes.
4.4.05
‘Toothing’ Accidentally Revealed to Be a Hoax
I find this out by cleverly asking the source of all the toothing stories if he made the whole thing up. He says he did. Wired News recants, wins Ellie award.
4.10.05
We Resort to Poop Jokes
You know why? Because they work, that’s why.
Posted by jim at 02:46 PM ||
Auletta’s Duck Soup
When Ken Auletta went in search of the future of advertising in The New Yorker and could do no better than the Aflac duck, I said nothing. Surely, I thought, some clever young letter writer will set the poor guy straight about what’s really going on out there, where VW sponsors short films and Audi creates elaborate alternative realities and Mini perpetrates online hoaxes, etc.
Instead, the May 9 issue arrived with two letters about Auletta’s article. One finds the Aflac duck fishy—a little too radical, perhaps—when measured against the antique theories of Rosser Reeves, circa 1961. The other, written by the woman who sang McDonald’s “You Deserve a Break Today” song, laments the death of the jingle as the ad industry’s dominant marketing tool.
Apparent median age of New Yorker letter writers? 132.
Posted by jim at 09:03 AM ||
Tuesday May 10, 2005
And Your Little Dog, Too
For those of you who, like myself, are addicted to Showdog Moms & Dads—rolling your eyes and saying you’ve never heard of it will not impress me, so don’t bother—here’s something new and annoying about Kyra Sundance and Chalcy. Yes, something aside from the fact that their names are Kyra Sundance and Chalcy and that lifelong vegetarian Kyra took up hunting because she thought Chalcy wanted to. Chalcy, for those who haven’t seen the show, is a dog.
Apparently Kyra and her long-suffering husband Randy, who run an internet company, are good at what they do—like better than whoever runs Bravo’s site. Under the correct spelling of the show, the offical site comes up first in Google. But type in “Showdogs Moms and Dads” and Chalcy.com comes up third, two slots ahead of the offical site. There you will find Kyra’s explanation of why she’s not really an idiot. I remain skeptical.
Posted by jim at 03:42 PM ||
Monday May 09, 2005
Minus One
In the interest of accuracy and full disclosure—which, as is customary with such disclosures, means I’m about to reveal something of interest only to me—I should let readers know that they should subtract one from my missed-cigarette counter to get an accurate reading of how many cigarettes I have not smoked since April 18. Why?
Well, some people believe that God is bringing about the end of the world. Others believe that God helped put George Bush in the White House. I happen to believe that God put a perfectly pristine cigarette under my desk last Thursday around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Here’s how I recorded the ensuing events in my top secret journal:
I could see it from where I was sitting, tangled amid the wires under my computer desk. As soon as I saw it, I knew that I would smoke it. And I did. Standing in the bathroom.
Pitiful.
Posted by jim at 02:34 PM ||
Wednesday May 04, 2005
No Webby, No Cry
Ah well. AdCritic.com didn’t win any Webbys—despite two noms and an early lead in People’s Voice voting in the Broadband category. But a lot of really good sites did, including WordCount, 10X10—both of which are the work of Jonathan J. Harris, who is apparently a genius—Boing Boing, and i love bees. The last, in particular, makes me wish I’d been born just a little later so I could be writing ARGs rather than laboring over archaic forms of storytelling.
Posted by jim at 04:49 PM ||
