A memo from Simon & Schuster president Carolyn Reidy: "Earlier today we enacted a reduction in staff in which 35 positions across the company were eliminated, from areas including our publishing divisions and international, operations and sales."
Hasn't YouTube always seemed too good to be true — all those video clips, for free? We must be getting away with something. That's why rumors about a new YouTube virus have spread so far, so fast.
The New York iteration of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame celebrated its opening last night with a party in the new SoHo space. Attendees like Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and Theodora Richards (left) mingled with Taylor Momsen, Molly Sims, Matthew Modine, Ciara, David Foote, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Liz Lange, and Ryan Locke, listened to performances by Debbie Harry and Dave Mason, and inked their names on a plywood wall. [Paper, Wireimage, PMc, GoaG]
To become one of Bravo's Real Housewives, a woman typically needs two things: a fabulous mansion, and a crippling, trainwreck-tastic case of vapid self-absorption. Atlanta breakout NeNe Leakes managed to get by without the latter, telling it like it is (even when standing up to friends who contracted fake cancer at a Chili's) in a down-to-earth manner than won the heart of Anderson Cooper. Now, it looks like NeNe may be about to do without the former, too: she's been evicted! The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called to find out what happened, and NeNe gave them a typically mouthy piece of her mind:
Random House has a new CEO, Markus Dohle (who previously worked for a printing company owned by corporate owner Bertelsmann AG), and he's finally made the big changes people have been expecting for months, reports Leon Neyfakh at the New York Observer. Dohle just released a "jaw-dropping memo" that was decidedly un-cheery—as well as "effective immediately." The memo is too hard to read in its corporatespeak ("created a plan for our future that aligns existing strengths and publishing affinities and fosters teamwork throughout the company") so we will translate:
Looking at the night sky in Florida last week, I remarked at a tall radio tower's two steady lights. My mom informed me that they were, in fact, the planets Jupiter and Venus (and that I was an idiot), brightly shining in conjunction for the first time in three years, and the last time for the next five. Our tech fellow Ian Van Ness snapped this photo of the occurrence from Gawker HQ's roof deck in New York City last night. Supposedly these two celestial bodies are good luck planets (especially for you Capricorns, Virgos, and Tauruses), so this alignment is auspicious. In Asia it looks like a smiley face, with the moon! These are some bad luck times, but maybe the swirling heavens can confer upon us some measure of good fortune. At the very least, they're pretty to look at. Click through for larger.
Having endured Che in its 257-minute entirety, at least one of us at Defamer HQ can attest to its new trailer's elegance in condensing the Che Guevara biopic to a lean two minutes, 31 seconds. From Benicio Del Toro's brooding monochrome gaze to the minimalist grit of revolutionary battle, its comprehensive compression renders the theatrical experience virtually irrelevant. Still, we sort of would have preferred more of the Bollywoodesque "Che You, Che Me" set piece that bridges Guevara's time between Cuba and Bolivia, but! You can't have everything. There will be plenty of time for show tunes when Soderbergh gets busy with Cleo, anyway. [IFC Films]
Back in September, we reported rumors that deluxe listings magazine Time Out New York was having trouble paying its bills. There was speculation that the magazine "won't make it to the end of the year." TONY dismissed the rumors and assured its staff: "Happily, our New York investors, who understand the value of the brand you have all built and have been entirely supportive over the past 14 years, remain fully committed to us." Can you guess what happened today? Yes, those investors are putting the magazine up for sale:
Ever wonder what Jocelyne Wildenstein would look like without the browlifts, facelifts, blepharoplasty, canthopexy, and Botox? Or if it were possible to turn undo all the work that has paid for more than a few East Hampton homes for plastic surgeons on the Upper East Side? Now you can! [YouTube via APS]
History has show us that, when faced with adversity, less-fabulous civilizations' first response is force; more fully evolved, showtune-revering peoples, meanwhile, respond by PUTTING ON A MUSICAL!!! And so it goes with the ongoing battle for gay marriage acceptance in California, with Hairspray and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut composer Marc Shaiman, in association with The Sacramento Community College Players, mounting Prop 8 - The Musical. It might be an exercise in literal choir-preaching written "six weeks later than he shoulda," but that doesn't make it any less of a heartwarming experience—at moments capable of sending jolts of pure theatrical electricity up your spine (we expect that to be hanging from a placard if this ever makes it to Broadway). And, let's face it, it's cheaper than tickets to the Celine Dion Taking Chances World Tour. Turn it into a game by trying to identify famous faces in the cast, then checking the credits at Funny or Die to see how many you got right.
Remember when absurdist Brit novelist Martin Amis said a Racist Thing in the London Times Magazine back in 2006? "There's a definite urge—don't you have it?—to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not let them travel. Deportation, further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or Pakistan... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children." Now he's given an "Exclsuive [sic] interview" post-debacle to the Huffington Post (why them? It's as puzzling as his poorly-chosen remarks). His excuse?
Hey Michael Phelps, America is transfixed by your endorsement deals for some reason! The golden fishboy should, by all rights, have fallen out of the spotlight by now. It's been what, like, four months since he won any Olympic medals? Old news. But by god people just love this goofy ass-grasper, so we and the rest of the media will continue to tell you exactly what he is formally recommending for public consumption. Today, the story of how one tiny company swindled the unsophisticated manchild into ongoing indentured servitude:
♦ Time Out New York is now up for sale for $40 million. [Times UK]
♦ A major reorganization at Random House was announced today by the company's new CEO, Markus Dohle. [NYO]
♦ Simon & Schuster is laying off 35 people. [Gawker]
♦ NBC appears to have settled on David Gregory as the new host of Meet the Press, but the network has yet to finalize the deal. [NYT]
♦ Tina Fey didn't get a $5 million book deal. It was $6.9 million. [NYP]
♦ Are you an unemployed writer? Get in touch with Tina Brown! [NYO]
♦ Miles O'Brien is departing CNN. [TVN]
The documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired wasn't impressive enough for the Oscars or even a decent theatrical release, but its fugitive subject is confident the film at least has the legal power to exonerate him. And now, three decades after his conviction for having sex with a 13-year-old, Polanski is taking it back to court.
Our first black president might appoint our first openly gay cabinet member! Or, you know, maybe not. And the job is really one of the most toothless and sadly irrelevant in the cabinet. That's right: Secretary of Labor! As if there was even any of that "labor" stuff left, in this country. Anyways, please say hello to Mary Beth Maxwell.
So there won't be so many wealthy bankers as usual at the Miami Art Basel this week. But people can at least expect to see lots of top execs and clients of the fair's sponsor, Swiss banking giant UBS, right? Sadly for already-despondent artists and dealers, it looks like a few of them may be well-advised to stay away, too: The FBI is reportedly heading down to Miami to mount a sting operation to ensnare a certain breed of tax-evader: Those for whom art collecting is a convenient method of surreptitiously moving vast sums of cash around, and if you have an anonymous Swiss bank account, even better!
The trundling disaster that is the Today Show's fourth hour—in which Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford pick nits out of each other's hair and talk about hot flashes—rumbled into Horny Town Station this morning. Crooner Harry Connick Jr. was on, promoting something or other, and the ladies just could not get enough of him. Flanking him on two sides they made awkward sex sandwich jokes, prompting Kathie Lee to call the Egyptian Kotb "rye bread." Oy. Then Kathie made a joke about Connick's man business and somewhere Jeanie Linders cackled with delight and I had a flashback to my first year out of college, spent old lady wrangling. Clip is above.
