Month: November 2003

The hard-hitting newsmen and women at CBS News in New York decided to follow last night’s spankin’ Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show (Grambo review, TK) with a report on how unsanitary Victoria’s Secret retail stores are. Here’s a cringe-inducing sample of the report:
John, not his real name, is a disgruntled former employee of two Victoria’s Secret stores. He came to us with the revolting allegation that it was store practice to take back used underwear and then resell it.
“When women would come in, I would be disgusted. I knew they were returning something they wore out to a date or just wore out to a club and it’s like, you want another woman to buy this?” said John.
[Reporter Arnold] Diaz asked John if there were there times that he put back underwear that he was pretty sure was used, “Yeah, all the time, all the time. I don’t even like touching it, I hold it by the tag because I don’t want to put my hands on that.”
What the hell do you call that? An apology? A rebuke? Synergy?

Courtney, we really, really knew ye.
You know that totally narcissistic fantasy you have about being able to attend your own funeral and hear what everyone has to say about you? (You know, like this guy.) Well, the girl with the most cake gets to have that experience without all the messy details of dying first.
This week, The Stranger looks back at the life of Courtney Love from her musical legacy to her amazing Hollywood make-over. There’s also a peak at new Loves and a celebrity humurist/eulogist to crack wise. (David Kamp wasn’t free, so they got this dude.)
It’s sad. She had so much to live for, but I guess she just couldn’t live through this.*
* Please don’t post that Courtney, as of 8AM EST is still alive. I get the joke, okay?

Who knew trash-documentary producer Nick Broomfield was such a history buff? It just has to be the crazy and conspiratorial Broomfield who produced a documentary that aired on the History Channel last night entitled, “The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Guilty Men,” which alleges that Lyndon Johnson was somehow involved in the assassination of President Kennedy 40 years ago.
Wait, sorry. It turns out one “Nigel Turner” produced this edifying film for the History Channel, but LBJ’s presidential foundation is pretty plum pissed off regardless of its origin. Apparently having learned nothing from the conservative task force that set out (and subsequently succeeded) in preventing this month’s airing of CBS’s “controversial” Reagan miniseries, Johnson’s family members and former aides had the temerity to allow this thing to air!
According to an AP story, LBJ Foundation Chairman Tom Johnson stated, “We left the decision on editorial content and accuracy up to the History Channel.” What a nimrod!
“He and Jack Valenti, another former Johnson staff member and current president of the Motion Picture Association of America, issued a joint statement on behalf of the Johnson family and others.
‘Sadly, President Johnson and the staff members who are wrongly smeared by the conspiracy theorists are no longer alive to defend themselves,’ the statement said. ‘In televising this production, The History Channel has distorted history beyond recognition.'”
Tom Johnson, incidentally, is not related to the former president. He is, however, “a former president and CEO of CNN.” This probably has nothing to do with the foundation’s going after the A&E-owned History Channel.
That would be both crazy and conspiratorial.

And in other local alternative press news, I’ve been seeing Jim Knipfel‘s name popping up in The New York Press as a B-movie DVD critic.
Maybe the jokes on me here, but how can Knipfel be a film critic, since he’s, like, blind? Knipfel is a decent writer, but, I mean, can he really be a film critic?

Part of The Village Voice‘s recent redesign is the inclusion of a weekly cultural essay, creatively named The Essay. I’m all for this, since it might give me a chance to one day repurpose some of my old college papers (anyone out there wanna see yet another piece on Muhammad Ali and Norman Mailer?), but this week, The Essay goes over the deep end.
Using Gus Van Sant’s film Elephant and The White Stripes’ album, um, Elephant as a jumping off-point, the impressively-named Leland de la Durantaye treats us to a 1442-word essay on… elephants called “The Cleansing of the Elephants: Trumpeting, flapping, crying: a cultural history, from Ding Yunpeng to Gus Van Sant.”
I skipped it.
This is the sort of thing Entertainment Weekly could’ve done in a 200-word charticle.
Next week, we’ll be treated to 2,000-words on little people using The Station Agent, Elf, and Bad Santa.

It’s you who’s taunting me
Because you’re wanting me
To be the stranger
In the night…
Is that scary for you baby
Am I scary for you oh boy
Is it scary for you big baby
Is it scary for you
You know the stranger is you
Is it scary for you big baby
From “Is This Scary,” by Michael Jackson from Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix
You know this kid is scared.