Category: Shallow

Meet the new face of “poking fun”.
The noted socially-responsible, orphan-adopting, AIDS-research financing, poverty-reducing, and Chilli-fucking R&B musician Usher on Kanye West’s “outburst” last week:

“And the R+B star, who will be among performers appearing on an MTV telethon tonight (10SEP05), states, ‘I wasn’t mad at Kanye’s statement – that’s his opinion – but it’s obviously not the opportunity or the time to poke fun or appoint blame.'”

Emphasis added, because, of course, you can’t speak in boldface. Well, you can, but then you’d be a liar, as opposed to an idiot.

From Wired News‘ “Queer Blog for the Straight Web”, September 1, 2005:

There are blogs for just about every hobby, interest and persuasion, but why don’t any cover gay lifestyle?
[…]
I can’t claim to have come up with the idea, though. David Hauslaib, 21, who operates gossip blog Jossip, did. Next week he is planning to launch Queerty (a play on Qwerty, the keyboard standard), which will feature the blogging of Bradford Shellhammer (yes, his real name: I checked his driver’s license). Shellhammer, 29, spots fashion trends for JC Report, the online fashion magazine published by Flavorpill Productions, and has written for Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly, The Baltimore Sun and Gay.com.
Recently I interviewed the two of them at a cafe in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, where they talked about their plans for Queerty.

SCENE: A small brick-walled cafe, colorfully–yet tastefully–adorned with the most masculine of motifs, including Robert Mapplethorpe photographs and rich, transcendently phallic iron sculptures. An isolated table with three chairs stands in the center of the room, at which is seated BRADFORD, a sleek and stylized prototype of homosexuality, and DAVID, a young and cherubically aspirational “gay bloke” who is wiping his face with stock certificates.
DAVID (sighing): Must reporters always be so fucking late? I swear…it’s scandalous how delicate the nature of time is to these people. And time, of course, is money. Gay money!
BRADFORD: Oh, relax. This is his big piece. I’m sure he’ll be here any moment. Give the fellow a break, eh?
DAVID: But we don’t even know if he’s cute!
BRADFORD: David, relax. I am so, so off the market. And he’s just a writer! Hardly big-money-man material. Truly, while a little plug-and-play here and there has never hurt anyone, I am not willing to betray Gus’ confidence in my behavior after that last fiasco in July.
A trim young bespectacled gentleman, ADAM, enters from STAGE LEFT. He smiles confidently at DAVID and BRADFORD and seats himself between the two.

“The Pat O’Brien’s motto is “Have fun!” and visitors to this cornerstone New Orleans establishment have been doing so since 1933. With roots that extend into the Prohibition Era, Pat O’Brien’s has been serving signature drinks for more than 60 years and is best known for the Hurricane, its original invention.”
-from the AOL City Guide

(courtesy Blender Magazine)
…or as Kayne Kanye put it, “It’s Kanye, but some of my plaques, they still say ‘Kayne.'”

Available now on Salon’s elite newsfeed for premium subscribers, your questions about “why guys do those things they do”, finally answered:

Killer instincts
What inspires young men and women to become suicide bombers? Religious fanaticism? Nationalism? Alienation? Or some toxic mix of all three? (by Laura Miller, July 26, 2005)
Divine secrets of the comb-over brotherhood
What makes powerful men embrace the world’s lamest do? Twang those glistening strands and you’ll hear a strange song about virility, status and even death. (by Melena Z. Ryzik, July 27, 2005)

Ladies, sleep soundly. Successfully unlock the secrets of either of these famous cults of masculinity, and this War on Terror™ will be over justlikethat, we’re sure of it.

“How many years have I got? She’s mine, too“: Above: 74 year-old Rupert and three year-old Grace Murdoch, Sun Valley, Idaho (via The Age); Below: Noah and Katherine Cross in Chinatown.

Earlier: At Risk Kids

A.B.C. (Anybody But Cowell): Let the record show, Paula Abdul already has an affinity for ruffles.
O’Connor, First Woman on High Court, Resigns After 24 Years, by Richard W. Stevenson, The New York Times, July 1, 2005.

So Fresh and So Clean: Via The New York Times/Victor Lopes
Are Men Ready for the 5-Step, 10-Minute Shave?, by Nick Burns, The New York Times, June 30, 2005.
Apparently Silky Smooth was on assignment covering the “last throes” of the Iraqi insurgency.
Earlier: Beard Hacker: The low culture Guide to Shaving