New Jersey Governor James McGreevey plays rugby.
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Author: matt
Al Goldstein, during his salad—okay, double cheeseburger and fries—days
I usually leave these sorts of high/low literary parodies to the professional, but something about this piece in The New York Times today made me think of a poem I read in high school. (Insert your own “deep romantic chasm” joke here, pervert.)
[Al Goldstein’s] company, Milky Way Productions, home of Screw and his long-running cable show, “Midnight Blue,” went into bankruptcy last year. His mansion in Pompano Beach, Fla., with the 11-foot statue of a raised middle finger out back, was sold in June to pay debts.
68 and Sleeping on Floor, Ex-Publisher Seeks Work, by Andy Newman, Aug. 12, 2004.
The saddest part is the photo, which doesn’t appear online. Goldstein is literally half a man: he must’ve lost 200 pounds from his stately plump frame. It’s like watching Orson Welles turn into Don Knotts in the end. Actually, maybe the “colossal wreck” of Al Goldstein reminds me of another high school-era poem.
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Scott Peterson, the New Playboy Advisor?
Or at least a Maxim advice columnist. This guy has moves straight out of The Ladies Man:
“Peterson first took her to an intimate dinner at a fancy sushi bar, where he paid extra for a private room, she said. He then asked her to come back to his room at the Radisson Hotel so he could change. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, Frey said.
“Once in the room, he suddenly produced a bottle of champagne and box of strawberries from his leather bag.
“‘[He] put one [strawberry] in each of our glasses,’ Frey said. ‘I remember eating one. They were a little bit sour.’
“The pair then went to a karaoke bar, where they slow-danced, nuzzled affectionately and then shared a single, passionate kiss.”
— MY CHAMPAGNE CASANOVA SCOTT SEDUCED ME INTO 1ST-DATE SEX: AMBER, by Howard Breur, The New York Post, Aug. 10, 2004
According to MSNBC News, Colin Powell will not be attending the Republican National Convention at the end of August.
What will he be doing instead?
-Washing his hair.
-Organizing Top Secret Files either in chronological order or from “best to worst” depending on his mood.
-Spending a little ‘me time.’
-Four words: “Calgon, take me away!”
-Scowling.
-Crying, interrupted by scowling, then more crying.
-Calling friends in ‘old Europe’ and apologizing.
-Working on his Monster.com resume.
-Baking pies, mostly apple, but some cherry.
-Practicing guitar: He’s almost got the first half of “Wooly-Booly” down.
-Scowling. Did we mention scowling?
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Funny Money
Perception: KING OF BLING? . . . Reality: Trump Hotels Planning Bankruptcy [click cover(s) for detail]
Related: Ten (or 13) Years Ago in SPY:
“In the history of finance, Donald Trump will be known for one brilliant innovation. No one before Trump has used the press so cunningly to give himself legitimacy with creditors. Trump made the media his balance sheet. Reports of Trump’s wealth in newspapers and especially in sober business magazines such as Fortune and Forbes were the basis upon which banks lent him money and public bought his bonds.”
— ALL OF THE PEOPLE, ALL OF THE TIME (How Donald Trump Fooled the Media, Used the Media to Fool the Banks, Used the Banks to Fool the Bondholders and Used the Bondholders to Pay for the Yachts and Mansions and Mistresses) A Special SPY Investigation by John Connolly, April 1991, p. 50
The board reads: “AIM: Get Famous By Selling Own Hand-me-Down Neuroses.”
Coming soon to JTV: Straight Frum My Heart, a new reality dating show hosted by Keith Black, future relationships columnist for HEEB, and inspiration for a posable action figure (with tefillan grip!) from McFarlane Toys.
You know Keith Black, the new Woody Allen, right? He’s everywhere, except on Friday nights and Saturday mornings. He’s even in the papers:
“As a neurotic, bespectacled, highly therapized Jewish filmmaker from New York, Keith Black has more than a few things in common with his idol Woody Allen—except for one.
“‘I’m looking for my Annie Hall,’ says the lovelorn 35-year-old, whose new short film, ‘Get the Script to Woody Allen,’ is as concerned with his dating mishaps than his desire to be famous….”
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE WOODY, by Maureen Callahan, The New York Post, Aug. 10, 2004
Too bad his dream girl‘s taken.
Oh well, you certainly can’t buy publicity like that, right?
Or this:
Following in Woody’s Footsteps
Or this:
Today Malverne, Tomorrow Cannes?
Or these:
A Woody Wannabe Mines His Neuroses
Allen Encounter Adds Up to Black’s ‘Woody Short’
Woody Wannabe Plays Many Roles with ‘Script’
[Links via Keith Black’s website]
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It’s Raining Men!
TIME, Aug. 9, 2004… The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 8, 2004
Update, Aug. 8, 2004:
Parade, Aug. 8, 2004
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HOT Literary Accessory: Axes
“Hot Trouble,” Abigail Vona from Rolling Stone… Hatchet-Man Dale Peck
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Gloria Emerson, 1929-2004
Gloria Emerson
Speaking of the fall of Saigon…
If female journalists were as lionized as their male counterparts, Gloria Emerson would’ve already gotten the full All The President’s Men treatment by now. I see a young Ali MacGraw or Diane Keaton circa Looking For Mr. Goodbar, or, if it were made today, Parker Posey as the compassionate, fearless Vietnam war reporter for The New York Times who died this week.
Of course, we’ll probably never see such a movie, since female journalists only get the biopic treatment if they’re martyred or the “based on a true story” treatment if they’re beautiful and tragic. Meanwhile, this asshole has a film about him, and this schmuck is about to, despite the fact that neither of them has half the talent, bravery, or impact as Emerson had.
Unlike those pishers, Emerson actually reported her stories, even going so far as to risk her life in war-zones like Vietnam and Gaza. But while Emerson’s male colleagues seem to have had a jones for the danger, the rugged manhood and camaraderie in the theater of war, Emerson brought uncommon compassion to her reporting. As Craig R. Whitney’s Times obit pointed out:
War as she wrote about it was not ennobling but debasing, a misery that inflicted physical suffering and psychic damage on civilians, children and soldiers on both sides.
Emerson wasn’t merely the war’s reporter, she was its conscience. She probably wouldn’t say that about herself, but she almost did when she said:
Vietnam is just a confirmation of everything we feared might happen in life. And it has happened. You know, a lot of people in Vietnam—and I might be one of them—could be mourners as a profession. Morticians and mourners.
She was such an important figure of that era, Richard Avedon gave her the full icon treatment with one of his myth-making portraits, which caught her mid-word, mid-thought, and mid-smoke, looking very much the model of forthright intelligence and intense focus.
As it turns out, there sort of is a movie about Gloria Emerson, or, at the very least, a movie that features her in her prime. In the 1988 documentary Imagine: John Lennon, Emerson pops up in a hilariously confrontational interview with the ex-Beatle who was then embarking on his anti-war “give peace a chance”/bed-in phase. Emerson chastises Lennon for his attention-grabbing antics and his Rolls Royce, repeatedly calling him “my dear boy,” and cutting him off again and again. Lennon, knowing he’s up against his rhetorical better, can only roll his chewing gum in his hand, make jokes about “the moptops” and act like a petulant child.
The only other person who got up in John and Yoko’s shit more in that film was cartoonist Al Capp, but he came off like a crotchety oldster, Bob Dylan’s out-of-touch Mr. Jones, whereas Emerson came off like someone who told it like she saw it, and knew exactly whereof she spoke. She stole the scene in John Lennon’s very own film. I guess she got her movie after all.
Gloria Emerson was 75.
