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Sorry for not getting to this earlier: Sean Penn's placed a 4,000 word ad in the NYT today, blasting our prez, et al. Don't forget that Penn's dad was blacklisted during the McCarthy era.
Here is the full text of the ad as a PDF, or as an HTML document which I made, but haven't proofread.
Is this interesting/already known? The National Enquirer has an old picture of the intern JFK had an affair with. The issue on the newstands also has a picture of her now, but I didn't see it online.
Remember in the movie Heat there was that big shoot-out and people were like, "That would never happen" and then like a little over a year later, it really did? Well, FX has turned the event into a made-for-TV movie called "44 Minutes". It's on Sunday. Michael Madsen is in it.
If you like "Birth of a Nation" and you like DJ Spooky, you'll love "Rebirth of a Nation", his visual remix. Here's what Spooky has to say about it.
According to this op-ed in the Washington Times, Fairfax County, VA is considering arming its citizens with radar guns, so they can help issue speeding tickets.
Related to the links in ADM's post below, I just wanted to make sure everyone is aware of Whitney Houston's recent visit to Israel, a place that she apparently feels some personal connection to. Liz Smith from the Post quotes her as repeatedly claiming "This is MY land!" while there (scroll down). Watch out, Sharon. -amy
Celebrities and their hairstylists have failed to support the Concorde, and it's going out of business [via Agent 0019]. Last chance to join the supersonic mile-high club.
Following up a thread we started a million years ago, absinthe is in the news again, as it's being added to a lager in England. Oscar Wilde said of the drink, "You see things as they really are -- and that is the most horrible thing in the world."
A British soldier took pictures of Iraqi POWs, bound and hanging from forklift in a net. He was arrested, but it's unclear whether he's in trouble for taking the pictures or staging them, or what. More from CNN.
NYT on Hummer camp. Go be a man, even if you're a woman.
Says one attendee, neatly summarizing the whole paradox of luxury SUVs: "This is too nice a truck to do this to."
More evidence of Jewel's image problems: performing in Vegas with Beyonce (who pulls off the super-short dress look a little better than Jewel does) and with some other nasty ho's, who are impressive if only because they look trashier than Jewel.
Surely the most exciting of the summer premieres: Meow TV starts tomorrow on the Oxygen network: A new show for cats, based entirely on a consumer product, in this case, Meow Mix. Here's the NY Times' reaction. [Word doc] [via Whiskas]
Andrew McCarthy, last seen in Pretty in Pink Weekend at Bernie's, has been fired from his guest stint on Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Producers say he was "fractious", he says my boy Vincent D'Onofrio "threatened him" and tried to direct him. Ok, Andrew: Unlike you, Vincent has been working steadily in decent projects since you were sucking your momma's teat, so maybe you should listen to him.
Never thought this would happen: George Will on 50 years of Playboy. The column is interesting only in that it exists.
Just to finish a thread from the last week, North Pole solo trekker Pen Hadow has been picked up/rescued.
Report from the Amy's Robot Movies Viewed on Airplanes desk: The worst movie we have ever watched on an airplane with no sound is The Emperor's Club (or, as this clever review called it, Goodbye Mr. Holland's Dead Poets Society), even if it did feature our pal, and regular at our neighborhood branch of Zen Palate, Harris Yulin, who got tortured so mercilessly on 24 this season.
You know that band Eve 6? The lead singer got busted for indecent exposure in a hotel. Say cops: "He didn't seem to care that he was naked." [via obscurestore]
Did you further know that Eve 6 is named after a character in an X-Files episode?
A study to be published tomorrow in Nature proves a claim we've all been making to our moms since we were 10: video games are good for you. A researcher at the University of Rochester found that subjects who played Medal of Honor or GTA3 three times per week performed better on tests of visual perception skills than those who didn't. (The complete study is available, if you're a subscriber.)
They caught the soccer-mom bank robber we mentioned last week. She's a 43-year-old riding instructor who fell on hard times.
Coming to London, Lord of the Rings: the musical.
Latest criminal defense by the insane: the Matrix made me do it.
24 has insinuated itself into comic strips. [thanks Mar-Z]
Is this for real? I think it is. hektor: a graffiti-painting robot that looks like a can of spraypaint hooked to some ropes, pulleys, and a PowerBook. It's controlled by scripting Illustrator. Amazing. [via this guy]
Remember, Homicide: Life on the Street is out on DVD today.
The guys behind the "Girls Gone Wild" tapes have been busted for filming under-aged girls. Hope Snoop Dogg isn't on the hook for this one.
Who's that on the cover of FHM? It looks like -- could it be?? --- it is....it's WILLOW.
Gross.
Excerpt from Lucky Wander Boy, about old videogames, at Salon. [click through all the ads]
NYT:
The latest issue of AdBusters has a good CD inside: tracks by DJ Spooky, Negativland, and El-P, among others. [via our foafs at randomwalks]
Madonna has bought a house in London for 3.5 million pounds. So what, you say? Well, it's not for her. It's for a new center for the study of Kabbalah! [link fixed]
You know who can study there? Other celebrity followers of Kabbalah: Liz Taylor, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, Demi Moore and Mick Jagger. Please. I love the idea of all these people hovering over their Torahs trying to make sense of it all.
I think she should have donated the money to a center for studying phony British accents.
LAT on the new alternative to the vasectomy: the VasClip. Clip instead of snip! Here's the official site.
NYT has an interesting profile of Henry Grimes, a jazz bassist from the old days who played with everybody, and then disappeared for 30 years. A determined social worker found him living in in a one-room apartment in LA, and now, he's playing in NYC tonight for the first time since 1968.
Atlantic Monthly has an interview with author Alston Chase, who says modernism has lead to a culture of despair and alienation, and violent acts against each other reflect that.
Chase wrote that book about how Harvard led to the Unabomber's rage, and the interview spends a lot of time on Unabomber in particular. [via plastic]
Ebert discussed Brown Bunny on Thursday, but apparently felt a need to add an update today. His original summary:
Imagine 90 tedious minutes of a man driving across America in a van. Imagine long shots through a windshield as it collects bug splats. Imagine not one but two scenes in which he stops for gas. Imagine a long shot on the Bonneville Salt Flats where he races his motorcycle until it disappears as a speck in the distance, followed by another shot in which a speck in the distance becomes his motorcycle. Imagine a film so unendurably boring that at one point, when he gets out of his van to change his shirt, there is applause.
NYT:
Salon on Catwoman, who is, by nature, hot. Includes this great exchange from the tv show:
LAT:
Great item over on Defense Tech about the administration's hard backtracking on claims of Iraq's WMD capability:
It doesn't matter whether or not Iraq actually had any of the toxins in their possession, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John Bolton said today. What counts is that Iraq had the "intellectual capacity" to build these unconventional weapons.
Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer winner for the NYT has been suspended, apparently because of "dateline integrity" issues, but it makes me think they want to look into some other stuff, too.
Some NYT stuff:
Still more on the Vince Gallo fiasco Brown Bunny: NYT critic AO Scott files an audio report from Cannes in this interactive feature. Click on the button for Brown Bunny to hear his analysis. He quotes Roger Ebert as saying it's the worst film ever in the Cannes competition.
And, according to the Guardian, Chloe Sevigny (his co-star and ex-girlfriend) broke down and wept at the premiere. The consolation? The French liked it, and Chloe suggests the BJ was for real.
Hang in there, Vince.
Update on Pen Hadow, who finished his solo trek to North Pole this week: he's still waiting to be rescued. His phone is broken, and his wife is getting worried.
As ADM says, I may be on vacay, but there is one thing about 24 that just can't wait: MIA KIRSHNER. Remember, my sisters and brothers in Kiefer, you heard it here first. Finally, the mind games, the emotional manipulation, the non-lesbian assassin characters, and everything else unpromising from last season is over. Maybe next year the continuity people will even remember that Kiefer had back tattoos during the first season. -amy
I cribbed this from Salon, but here's the NYT delicately explaining the meaning of the word "cameltoe", in the context of an article about Fannypack, Brooklyn's up-and-coming hip-hop girl group with a hit single named after the fashion mistake:
Cameltoe is slang for a fashion faux pas caused by women wearing snug pants; the term suggests a visual analogy. The song is a cautionary tale, intended to help victims -- help them, that is, by ridiculing them -- into recovery.Turns out the song is a product of the guys who ran NYC's underground hip-hop label Indie 5000, which I'm not sure is still active.
According to the NY Post, a beautiful blonde is robbing banks in New York and Connecticut: six heists in two days.
It's probably Brittany Murphy.
Update: Interestingly, the Daily News describes her as looking like "a soccer mom". They have a picture, too.
LA Times has a look at Fog of War, the new Errol Morris documentary about Vietnam-era figure Robert McNamara.
More on the Vincent Gallo movie: it's really a disaster. Vince says this is the worst week of his life, and critics say it's the worst movie ever at Cannes. Says one: Vincent Gallo's monumental folly has already become a defining moment in Cannes history. Awestruck future generations will ask: "Were you there the night they screened The Brown Bunny?"
This almost-scary picture of him says a lot.
I never thought I'd say this, but I feel a little sorry for him.
Maybe somebody can explain this to me. It seems like massivec*cks.com [definitely not safe for work] has somehow spammed/messed with some blogs -- We're getting referrals from there, and it's showing up in Blogdex. Any ideas? I don't have enough evidence to even guess at what's going on, but it's something strange.
Remember Vincent D'Onofrio in The Cell with the hooks through his skin? Yeah, well, here's the real thing. (Part of Body Craze, an event somehow associated with a London department store.)
Here's a jacket with a taser-effect built-in. Designed by Advanced Research Apparel: "A pair of slits in the outer lining shows the electric arcs that course across the entire middle layer. It's an impressive display of the jacket's power." Wow. I want a jacket that has power. Here's a video of someone getting zapped by the jacket.
Who said this, our prez or monkeys on typewriters? "All up and down the different aspects of our society, we had meaningful discussions. Not only in the Cabinet Room, but prior to this and after this day, our secretaries, respective secretaries, will continue to interact to create the conditions necessary for prosperity to reign."é‚‘ashington, D.C., May 19, 2003
Since Amy's on vacay, here's Salon's wrap-up of 24. [click thru ads]
And here's TwoP's recaplet.
Jon Stewart has angered prickly Catholics by joking about the Pope's hat: "He's a hat choice away from being Grand Wizard of the KKK", joked Stewart. William Donahue, the president of the Catholic league called him "an anti-Catholic bigot." Give me a break. As a Catholic, I'm more offended by Donahue's comments than Stewart's. Here's the story. [scroll down]
Vincent Gallo's new movie Brown Bunny has stirred some controversy at Cannes, apparently for two reasons: (1) it has a graphic depiction of fellatio, and (2) it isn't any good.
VG definitely marches to the beat of his own drummer, and Buffalo 66 was the beneficiary of that. Can you sustain it if you're almost crazy? We'll see.
Worse than Pee Wee: Do you remember Scott Bairstow ("Ned Grayson") from Party of Five? He got busted for having sex with a 12-year-old girl. [via obscurestore].
Now it's going to be Party of Five to Ten.
Follow-up on milk crate ticketing story from yesterday: Mayor Mike says it's a great idea.
Longing for Buffy already? Head over to Yahoo where they have some of the extras from the DVD online. It appears to be free.
Meanwhile, Salon has posted their recap. [click through ads]
I guess it'll be blogged everywhere, but here's the big one: Jayson Blair interview in the New York Observer. Doesn't sound very contrite. Sounds a little scary: "So Jayson Blair the human being could live," he said, "Jayson Blair the journalist had to die."
While the whole rest of the world was watching either Hitler or American Bachelor on Sunday night, I was dutifully watching the two-part season finale of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. That show is the most subtle unsubtle show on television: as soon as you start groaning about how blunt all the supposedly nuanced character development is, they do something reasonably clever with the plot that you could almost but not quite foresee. Summary: Seems people connected to the blackmarket anthr*x trade keep dying, but not because of the anthr*x itself. Vincent has to chase everybody down, dragging Blonde Scully along with him, coming across exhibitionists, voyeurs, the sickly, the rich, and the psychotic.
The show takes an almost explicitly Sherlockian twist when it turns out that his Australian female nemesis (Olivia D'Abo) from earlier this season was maybe behind the whole thing. The original episode where she was introduced was maybe the best ever. Her most recent ep suffers from trying too hard, but it's still engaging.
I bring all this up now because one of characters in the show is a hyperbolization of Steven H*tfill, the scientist who was a "person of interest" to the FBI during the Anthr*x investigation. As in reality, the character is a marginal, angry researcher who stages a fiery press conference to lash out at the people investigating him. In the ep, Vincent does something that indirectly leads to the scientist's death. Well, coincidentally, a car ran over H*tfill's foot the other day. The twist: the car belonged to the FBI team surveilling him.
CNN has a review of Batman: Child of Dreams, the new Batman graphic novel by Kia Asamiya, a manga artist. (He also did that manga-looking Phantom Menace novel which you may have seen around, and has an X-Men book on the way.)
It's no secret that the Star Wars kid was mentioned in the NYT the other day, but did anyone notice the uncalled for rudeness of the URL?
Maybe somebody should say something.
Pen Hadow, a British outdoorsman and guide, has become the first person to reach the North Pole alone and unaided. [nyt]
Movie news from the Post:
Is this 2003 or 1997? Scott Weiland was arrested for drugs. Again x infinity. Is it the curse of GNR?
Everybody's getting their Buffy tributes ready. Here's Salon's. [click through ads]
Cornell West talks about the Matrix. (Don't forget: he's in it.)
Interesting things heard on 1010 WINS this morning:
Update on "the Star Wars Kid", the kid who was videotaped practicing his lightsaber skills on the school camcorder. A couple of bloggers, feeling bad for him, are raising some money to buy him an iPod and some other stuff. We purposely skipped blogging this a while ago, but I like the twist the story has taken.
The article also mentions The Terrible Mr. G., the most obscene song ever. (Related video.)
Long Day's Journey Into Night delivers on all the best-show-on-Broadway hype it's getting. Some reviews suggest that our old friend Philip Seymour Hoffman is a relatively weak link in the 4-person cast, but I strongly disagree: it was his big scene in Act III that made the people in my row get misty. Also, the show runs 4 hours, not 4-1/2, in case that makes a difference.
The most amazing thing about this play is the intense sense of foreboding and anxiety it produces in anticipation of the gut-wrenching things you know are coming, even in the lighter opening scenes. I felt like I was watching a scary, creepy movie instead of a study of familial dysfunction. This play also inspired a new round of Who's Older:
Slate has a short piece about nostalgia for 80s, which is really about nostalgia for the period in the 90s when people acted fond of the 80s. The link is worth following just for the fantastic pic of Diamond Dave.
The end of Smarmy? So Ari Fleischer has announced he will resign in July. Great news. I've been sick of him since even before Gore was elected. His smug half-smile, opacity, and smart-ass answers to good questions will not be missed. My favorite Ari moment: "Americans should watch what they say."
Interview with Salam Pax, Iraqi blogger. [via fimoculous]
LA Times reviews the made-for-tv movie about Martha Stewart. They say it accomplishes the impossible: it's boring (and riddled with cliche). Who plays Martha? Cybill Shepherd. The review is funny and well-written, if a little mean to Cybill.
Today's NYT:
I missed this in my review of the networks' fall line-ups: ABC is going to have a new show called "Karen Sisco". That name ring any bells? It's the character Jennifer Lopez played in Out of Sight. Remember? The lady marshal? And guess who's going to play her on the show. This is weird, but great: CARLA GUGINO, the mom in Spy Kids! I am going to watch this show, even though it will be dumb and probably short-lived.
I found out about this from Media Yenta.
Ok, now this is truly a wonderful opportunity for another round of Who's Older?™
Usually we like to give a three-year difference between the two candidates, but I'm ignoring the rule this time, because it's interesting. To see something even more interesting, check out how old the daughter on Spy Kids is, and do the math.
LA Times attempts to calculate the number of civilian casualties in Baghdad in Gulf War 2. Their estimate: 1,700 killed, 8,000 injured, plus maybe 1,000 more in undocumented deaths. The Times says not all the deaths were at American hands. [reg req'd, probably]
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