Category: Shallow

Hilton at the premiere of The Simple Life; Diddy shynes in white.
One last Hilton post (we all hope): Let’s say you’ve just done something you feel really bad about, like appearing in a homemade porn video or allowing your protege to shoot up a New York nightclub. How do you tell the world you feel remorse but that you’re untouchable, above the charges, and so fresh and so clean?
The white suit, of course! Long favored by plantation owners and Southern law men, the white suit is your best option for conveying, you know, innocence.

What more can you say about Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie’s sojourn to Altus, AR on The Simple Life? They’re possibly the most malignant thing to hit a heartland family since Dick Hickock and Perry Smith visited the Clutter family in Holcomb, KA in 1959. (In this context, FOX becomes not unlike that other alternately priggish and obsequious society chronicler, Truman Capote, except that Tru cleaned up his act and got serious to bring us In Cold Blood, while FOX only gets serious when it’s chasing America’s Most Wanted.)
I’ll leave it to others to deconstruct Paris and Nicole’s every utterance—as we speak, somewhere high atop Rockefeller Plaza Amy Poehler is practicing saying “I’ll puke” while Maya Rudolph is being fitted for a blond wig—but I do have a bone to pick with one of Hilton’s favorite epithets: ghetto.

It’s no secret that Tracy Morgan is something of a folk hero around here at low culture. It may be too much to ask that Morgan be awarded the The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Humor, but I guess he is still at the start of his career, right? Maybe we can somehow get today declared National Tracy Morgan Day? Or is that overkill?
His show premieres tonight at 8PM EST on NBC. I know I’ll be watching.
Good luck, Tracy. And don’t forget us when you’re a superstar.
Sidebar: What’s with the logo NBC is using for this show? Kind of a bit Brady Bunch for my taste.

Last week, The Onion AV Club introduced a new weekly feature called Say Something Funny, “in which comedians submit an e-mailed response to the query, ‘Make people laugh. You have 250 words.'” First unfunny victim, Mike Birbiglia.
Seems awfully similar to early-’90s hate-zine ANSWER Me!‘s Make Me Laugh, You Impish Bastard!, in which Jim and Debbie Goad (R.I.P.), the Ronald and Nancy Reagan of misanthropy called up clowns listed in the phonebook and said “I’ve heard you’re a clown. Make me laugh.” Here’s a quick (offline) sample:

Xuxa the Clown: I am a clown. That is true. Make you laugh immediately?… Wow! I’m sorry, I don’t know if I can do that. You caught me off guard. But I really know how to make the kids laugh a lot. I do a magic show, face-painting, animal balloons, and games. And I am pretty silly.

Shudder. No wonder kids hate clowns.

From this week’s New Yorker, ‘Talk of the Town’:
“The Reverend William Sloane Coffin, now seventy-nine and suffering from terminal heart disease…” The Light Of Sunday by Ben McGrath
“Tobin grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and still lives there, in a four-bedroom house on a quiet tree-lined street. Seventy-nine years old, he works most days at his law firm, a few minutes away.” Times Warp by Alicia DeSantis
“Omar Sharif—Cairo Fred to his friends—has played a bandit and a Catholic priest and Khalil Gibran and Tsar Nicholas II and the British agent Cedric, who gets trash-compacted in “Top Secret!” He is seventy-one.” Cairo Fred by Dana Goodyear
Of course, this guy makes them all seem like pishers:
“Richard Walter, who is eighty-one, and his wife, Linda, who is a little younger than that (they’ve been married for thirty-five years), sleep in separate bedrooms in apartment 6D at 1016 Fifth Avenue, an elegant limestone-and-brick prewar building that faces the Metropolitan Museum of Art, along one of the most expensive strips of real estate in New York.” The Noises by Nick Paumgarten

In a low culture breaking news exclusive, the Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly, scandal sheet-cum-catalogue has been pulled from the countless college outfitters dotting our nation’s malls. While these actions will deprive sporty-types of saucy interviews with Paris Hilton, requisite profiles of the O.C. cast, and all the homoerotica that’s fit to print, the move represents a victory of sorts for New York Post columnist Michelle Malkin, Catholic League malcontent William Donohue and the countless National Coalitions that seek to protect people from themselves. Campuses everywhere are reeling.

Gregg Easterbook has found a new home for his football blog: NFL.com. Good thing, too, since it’s been a few minutes since anyone mentioned his dumb ass. Too bad Radosh is so busy changing diapers, ’cause I’m sure he has what to say on this matter.
Good luck, Gregg: I’m sure you’ll fuck this gig up, too.
Earlier thoughts on Gregg Easterbrook from low culture: What Easterbrook Could Learn from Rousseau
[via Romenesko]

On Sunday you’re photographed in The New York Times Magazine in your ‘castle in the sky,’ your “1958 eight-seater De Havilland Beaver DH-2 restored to [your] specifications.” On Monday, you’re on page A9 of the same publication with a sign that reads Will Work For Food.
Won’t you please remember the neediest and rent Hollywood Homicide this holiday weekend?
Seriously, though: despite what our ‘friends’ say, we here at low culture aren’t complete fucking assholes. Please go to CityHarvest.org and make a donation this year.

This week, New York Magazine took a break from passing the Grey Poupon and traveled uptown—way, way uptown—to write about something called rap ‘music.’
But more amazing than having the Towncar take you across 110th Street, is the fact that New York also went back in time for their headline, “Got Beef?”
“Got Beef?” Not a bad hed. Where’d they come up with that?
Hey, New York, next time try to Think Different, won’t you?
Earlier thoughts on New York Magazine from low culture: New York‘s Amazing Feet; I Call Bullshit on New York Magazine

Were you aware that online dating is all the rage? If you missed last year’s big story, this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is happy to provide all the anonymous profiles you need to understand “how Internet dating is re-engineering flirtation…” As if that’s not exciting enough, in a low culture exclusive, we’re previewing feature pieces from future issues of the Times Magazine.
Las Nuevas Sonidas: Why Ricky Martin represents a seismic shift in popular music.
Dave Eggers: Remember the name. This low-key moptop is about to revolutionize the publishing industry.
Swinging from a Star: Does swing dancing portend a sea change in the bar scene?
Napster This!: How one little computer program will profoundly change the music industry.