From left to right we’ve got whoever the fuck these people are, Daria Werbowy, Natalia Vodianova, Gisele Bundchen, Isabeli Fontana, Karolina Kurkova, Liya Kebede, Hana Soukupova, Gemma Ward, and Karen Elson. (AP Photo/Courtesy Vogue, Steven Meisel)
September approacheth! The all-important ninth month of the year, the introduction to the fall fashion season, when Vogue annually releases their most important issue ever, with all its concomitant power to make or break fashionistas everywhere. And now, here it is: the cover image for their much-anticipated September 2004 issue, and, hold on a minute and put away your excitement stick, because there are fucking models on the cover. Quelle surprise! I, personally, was at least hoping for a shake-up of sorts, maybe some Vanity Fair-esque “celebrities”, but, alas, photographer Steven Meisel is notoriously stronger behind the camera when dealing with your everyday stellar-looking pretty faces than those who are famous for being famous.
Thankfully, we can bear verbal witness to Master Meisel in action due to the release of these exclusive, in-no-way-fictionalized on-set transcripts from the magazine’s cover shoot. All 25 inches thereof.
“Daria, darling, move left more…more…more. Don’t you worry about being obscured by the barcode. I hardly know who you are anyway, but you’re lucky to be on the cover in any form, and we absolutely need to fit more of Gisele in the shot here. Yes, of course. Ms. Bundchen is our star! Yes, my angel. This is the September issue…a triple-gatefold, honies, and there are nine of you, and as I’m sure you’re well aware, you calculus-laden vixens, you, we need an evenly divisible increment of nine, or three ladies per panel. Believe me, if I could chop one of you in half and do a two-paneled 4.5er, I would. But it’s Lancome’s mathematics, ladies! And, if anything, I’m quite nearly positive that Lancome is the guy who discovered the constant ratio of a circle’s radius to its circumference. How many times does pi go into a triple gatefold September cover, I wonder?
And stylists! Stylists! Snap to attention. I need more pink! Rich, vibrant pink! Reds, reds, pinks, whites. Layer gorgeously, ladies, layer it. Shades of pink abound. Bathe in its glorious glow. Wrap yourselves, honies, wrap yourselves. Let these gowns absorb you, cherish you, encapsulate you…And stay on the tape line. Focus, ladies, focus. Gisele, put your mobile away. You can call that little man of yours when you are not on my clock. On, I say, as opposed to over, which is what he is.
Who is that colored woman? Liya? Get her out of the first panel. This is Vogue, not National Geographic. OK, I’m sorry, you’re right. Sorry. Ha ha, I joke! But I am serious nonetheless. This is September, after all, when I am most prone to racist humor. But you ladies knew that already. Now, move her. No, Karolina, you’re in the second panel. No, no, scoot over. Your agency and I agreed to this. I don’t care what she told you. No, I DO NOT CARE about Sports Illustrated. I swear, honey, you need to look more passionate as you clutch Isabeli’s arm. It’s passion, that’s all. Keywords: Desire. Sensuality. Fabric. Threadbare. Discomfit. Petulant. Oblique. Garage. I would hope that each of you can simply clutch a goddamned arm for a few minutes, and continue to look gloriously still and inanimate in the process. I’m a modern-day Vermeer.
Good gracious, where is Karen? Number nine? Anyone? Todd, go check her dressing room. Right now. Go, go, go. Gogogogogogo! Oh, she’s still at Bing’s pad, huh…Goddamn that rascal, I’ve had more of my shoots befouled by that man, directly or indirectly, than Gregory Crewdson’s got issues with his F-stop! Ha, ha, ha! A little joke. September is also the month when I feel free to “dis” my photographic peers, because, yes, I am shooting Vogue magazine. All right, then, we’ll put her in afterwards. How I abhor working digitally, but it’s got to be done.
My, how you lot infuriate me. I’m Steven fucking Meisel, and I’m almost of the mind to subject you to a delicious Meisel-brand ass-raping, but alas, I’ve got another E! network taping to attend at 3 o’clock this afternoon. Bon-bon!”
Category: Shallow
Today, every unemployed New York freelancer’s favorite website, Mediabistro (okay, second favorite after this), interviews renaissance man Neil Strauss about his latest as-told-to book, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, by New York Magazine zeitgeist girl Jenna Jameson.
Since the interview is sort of boring, I thought I’d help spice it up by selecting the hottest bits and excerpting them for you. So, herewith are the choice cuts sure to excite even the most passive reader:
Tongues wagging… hard time… deviant… comes… oral… atop… mouth… came… came together… comes… Judith Regan asked me if I wanted to do it… hanging out… How did you get her to open up… we were both totally shaken… She couldn’t even sleep that night… very intense… stripper… pimps… get in touch with the female… told Jenna to tweak anything she wanted… David Laskin, took me… mature… Britney Spears… I got started so young… opened… climbing into bed with Jewel… tangled… I’m stuck… restrictive… fucking as an art…
Since we consider ourselves humanitarians at heart, we’re thoughtfully putting forth this helpful list of activities in which you may want to consider engaging, in lieu of seeing the recently-released hokum that is Open Water. Seriously. Any of these options serve as good, worthwhile alternatives. Hell, exhaust the list if you have to.
1. Bask outside near a neighbor’s pool, or a city pool, or whatever. It hardly matters. Study the people flailing about in the water and try and pick out who you think might be the worst actors if you were to go into a career producing community theater workshops and needed to hire these people. While engaging in this impromptu casting session, it could be fucking raining or hailing and you’d still be better off.
2. Oh, and before you go to the pool, or beach, or whatever, take at least twenty to thirty minutes too long to get there, until you’ve bored your mates to death with some asinine and wholly irrelevant setup about how “you need your vacation time to escape this crazy job.” Even if you’re not on vacation, because remember, the only possible goal for this entire exercise is to annoy your audience, unless maybe you’re merely padding the trip’s length, in which case, it’s still not OK, and you, my friend, are an asshole. And when you eventually arrive at the pool, sit around for a good while longer doing nothing more than engaging in some worthless exposition about how nice it is to not be working.
3. Stare at the pool longingly, and mull over the fact that maybe, just maybe, the water is well-heated, and if you were to slit your wrists and just lay there awhile, you might be put out of your misery.
4. Eh, fuck the pool. Throw a dinner/discussion party, and set the evening’s topic to “Examples of Films Being Produced on DV Because They Don’t Deserve a Real Film’s Budget”. If anyone brings up Anniversary Party as an example, come to its defense, and explain how you’d rather watch that film ten consecutive times than have to endure Open Water.
5. As dinner approaches, keep devising stalling tactics to fill up time. For instance, exclaim loudly that you think your leg is getting cramped. Oh, wait, look at that, that cleared up! Phew! Now, however, you’re falling prey to motion sickness, even though you’re seated at a table. Oh, that, too, passed. Wait! Hey, look, I think I saw a car drive by outside this window over here, oh, wait, it turned the corner and is gone now. Shit, I’m getting a cramp again. If your dinner guests start beating you about the face mercilessly, it’s entirely forgivable because they clearly have some understanding of a bad narrative structure.
6. Think about that episode of Magnum, P.I. that was comprised solely of Tom Selleck being stranded in the ocean, having to tread water for hours on end while he endured a torrent of waves and other oceanic dangers for the duration of the entire episode. Make note that this particular episode of what would otherwise be bad network television comes off like fucking Antonioni or Kieslowski compared to Open Water.
7. Check out Maria Full of Grace or Code 46 and marvel at the injustice of studios’ marketing initiatives.
San Francisco Giants manager Felipe Alou, after yesterday’s win over the Philadelphia Phillies kept his team in playoff contention, whips out his copy of Edith Hamilton and waxes rhapsodic on classic Greek mythology:
“The wild card is the purgatory of the lost,” Alou said. “It’s a place souls go and wait millions of years until redemption. We have had a tough time, but there was always the possibility of the wild card. There are so many teams in this purgatory.”
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.
Categories
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
Categories
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]
Categories
Harold and Kumar Go On Friendster
For those interested in learning more about America’s greatest civil rights triumph since the march from Selma, aka Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, you might want to check out co-writer Jon Hurwitz’s Friendster profile.
Among his nine testimonials, there is the Asian Harold who offers:
Jon writes about and enjoys life by chronicling what he knows best: things that are really, ridiculously funny and amusing. He draws much of his material from his own experiences and friends.
And then there’s his Indian Friendster Raza who writes:
I remember this one magical summer Jon and I spent in Nora Ephron’s Manhattan, where we watched animated features and romantic comedies, ate dim sum and rode the subway. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. There was also the incident at [a certain movie studio where I took really long lunches … I mean worked], but I’m not allowed to talk about that.
Is it possible that we have located the ur-Harold and Kumar? Could this prove the Rosetta Stone to unlocking the secrets of this milestone film? Yeah, whatever.
[Thanks Carone!]