Hey Hip-hop, Fashion, and Marathon fans*:
Do you want to share an intimate dinner with P-Diddy and 12-15 members of his personal entourage? Would you like a dinner companion who changes the location four times, shows up late, answers an endless succession of cell phone calls, talks about how much money he makes, drops the names of his more famous friends, doesn’t ask you so much as what you do for a living, ducks out before the check comes, and probably won’t acknowledge your existence if you should run into him again? Yeah? Then sign up for The New York Post‘s Win Dinner with P. Diddy plus autographed gear Sweepstakes. (Never the innovator, His Diddiness is merely sampling My Dinner with Andre.)
Topics to discuss: The war in Iraq; Will he wear tape on his nipples during the New York City Marathon? What he thinks of the brutality of the African diamond trade. Does he know that Gatsby was shot execution-style at the end of the book? Where the hell is Mase? Also, try not to blush when you see Farnsworth Bentley patting the edges of Diddy’s mouth with a napkin between bites.
*Also fans of really bad Flash openers on Web sites
Month: October 2003
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Disney’s Ad’ed Value
Apparently inappropriate ad placement isn’t only endemic online.
This week, Frank Rich (AKA, “The Butcher of Broadway”) takes his cleaver to that bloody hunk of wurst, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his weekly Times Arts & Leisure column. Rich uses the ersatz aesthetic of Disneyland (and Disney generally) to critique the image-over-substance election results in California. Some classic Rich vitriol (richtriol?) follows:
It’s Disneyland, not Colonial Williamsburg, that prefigures our future, the action-packed recall ride was nothing if not the apotheosis of the Magic Kingdom. It was fun, it was instructive, it was expensive, it was hawked relentlessly on television, it starred an Audio-Animatronic action figure…
Walt Disney had long despised the rowdiness that up until then defined amusement parks as ‘dirty, phony places run by rough-looking people,’ as he characterized them. He wanted to build instead a beautiful, phony place run by nice-looking people: an alternative America that he could script and control down to the tiniest detail of its idyllic Main Street U.S.A. and whose sovereignty no citizen could challenge…
The original notion of Disneyland lives today not only in the first park, its satellites, and its many imitators; its influence can be found in planned and gated communities, in Rouse-developed downtowns, in the carefully-scripted ‘reality’ programs of network television, in the faux-urban ambience of a shopping mall near you.
And what ad shares the page with this excoriating critique? Why, an ad for Disney’s Brother Bear (“Featuring original songs from Academy Award-Winner Phil Collins”). Whoops! Guess that wall between church and state isn’t quite so impenetrable.
On a related note, Rich’s Disneyland analysis owes everything to Jean Baudrillard’s “Precession of Simulacra” (though, oddly, he never mentions the text in his essay: Rich must have missed The Matrix). Here’s what Mean Jean (Theory Machine) had to say 20 years ago: “Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the ‘real’ country, all of ‘real’ America, which is Disneyland… Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real…”
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The perfect comeback, far too late
As the field of 2004 Democratic Presidential hopefuls continues to combatively whittle itself down to a final result of what will probably be one forlorn, battered candidate, the contenders kept at it in last night’s debate, paying particular attention to their dogged pursuit of General Wesley Clark, the supposed pseudo-frontrunner.
Clark’s rivals were primed to attack the man who jumped to a lead in some national polls within days of his entry into the race last month. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards took turns criticizing Clark, attacking him as a late convert to the party who can’t make up his mind on the war.
“Wes Clark, welcome to the Democratic presidential campaign,” Lieberman said sarcastically.
Next time, Wes, we suggest you shoot back with some rejoinder akin to, “Well, Joe, I’m still waiting to welcome you to the Democratic party, myself.”
Zing! Time to pile up on the “centrist” Dems!
[via Fark]
Okay, last one: Is Dick Gephardt the scary old dude from Poltergeist II: The Other Side?
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Dancin’ Fool and Radical Shnook
Howard Dean does the Running Man ten years late while Joe Lieberman throws up a Black Power salute 35 years late.
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He loves you (Iraq), yeah, yeah, yeah
Schoolgirls swoon as Bremermania sweeps Iraq.
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Ties and the tying tiers who tie them
Crikey! Does Col Allan, the Australian-born New York Post editor, even speak English? (I know that Australians in general don’t speak English: for example, in Australia, they don’t say “beer,” they say “Foster’s,” mate.)
How else to explain this totally inappropriate headline on the cover of today’s paper? According the online Phrase Finder, to tie one on means to get drunk. (All roads lead back to Foster’s, mate.) Does that even make sense in this context? And don’t even get me started on KNOT TO WORRY…
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has filed another excellent dispatch from the Bush frontlines, documenting the president’s two speeches to businessmen and military reservists in New Hampshire today.
The subject matter (“Bush Says Iraq Is ‘Better Than You Probably Think'”) is fairly amusing in and of itself, using the classic Bush methodology of lowering his audience’s expectations (anyone remember that tactic as used in the October 2000 Presidential debates?). But the real kicker is the unfortunate double entendre spoken by our commander-in-chief this afternoon (paying special attention to the word in bold type):
President Bush told Americans today that the situation in Iraq is “a lot better than you probably think,” as he sought to rally the flagging support for the U.S. occupation.
In twin speeches here in New Hampshire, the president kicked off an effort to revive determination to remain in Iraq, saying “Americans are not the running kind.”
Now, is that “running” as in “to run away from something,” or “running” as in “running or governing a nation which we conquered”?
Forgetting everything we all know about crabs in a barrel, David Poland has picked a fight with his fellow online movie and celebrity bottom feeder, Roger Friedman. Here’s the tale of the tape:
Battle of the Online Junket All Stars
In the Left Coast corner, weighing in at 155 lbs.: David “Hot Button” Poland.
And in the Right Coast corner, weighing in somewhere north of 225 lbs., Roger “Fox 411” Friedman.
Poland comes out swinging at Roger the Dodger, throwing the first punch:
There are lies, damned lies and statistics. And then there are lies posing as statistics, brought to life by stunning professional ignorance, whether intentional or coincidental. Such is the province of Roger Friedman, internet gossip and a suck-up of the highest order.
In rapid succession, he lands the second:
Friedman goes to town with his unsubstantiated, but “there is no question” analysis of the wins of Oscar screeners past. He starts with Sony Classics, citing Talk To Her, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Winged Migration. Can you spot the spin?
And then, he hits below the belt with a phantom punch:
What were the other fat, bloated studio films that dominated the Oscars before Friedman’s indie heroes saved the world?
Did he just call Friedman fat and bloated? Tune in tomorrow for Roger’s rejoinder.