Out-of-towners might be out of luck if they visit New York over the holidays hoping to take a double-decker bus tour of the city. The union that represents guides at Gray Line is threatening a strike when its contract expires this month, according to New York. The guides' chief complaint? Pay, naturally (they make $16.73 an hour; they want it raised to $20). But the guides are also concerned with the harsh working conditions, like having to give tours from the top of a double-decker when it's two degrees outside, and the wind chill makes it even colder since they're standing on top of a bus moving at 30 MPH. But their unhappiness about the frosty work environment doesn't seem to have had an effect on Gray Line's promotional plans. The company is now offering tourists the option to eat a "delectable" meal aboard the bus.
Yesterday you guys thought that the secretly gay hunk who would devastate all his lady fans if they knew was Robert Pattison from that new Twilight movie. Which, ha ha ha, I hope that's true and just want to watch everyone's faces at a Twilight convention when it's announced. Anyway! Today we have a supposedly virtuous singer whose stepping out on her husband, a writer with a bad gambling problem, and a pill popping young actress. 1) "Which sexy singer, who pretends to be whiter than snow, was caught holding hands with another man? It will be the end of the married babe once her fella finds out." [Mirror] 2) "This female best selling author got into some serious debt because she is addicted to gambling. With casinos hounding her for payment, she turned to a "friend" to help her out. The friend gladly paid off the entire debt to the casinos, but in return got our author to sign over any and all future rights from her books. This author has always been reluctant to have her books appear as films because of some bad previous experiences, but now, she really has no choice because she gave up all the rights. I would predict a flood of made for tv type fare over the next few years all based on her books. Oh, and she is still gambling." [CDaN] 3) "Which young actress is heading off to rehab for the first time? This one will come as a surprise to many, because unlike others of her generation, she does not have a reputation for being a party girl. However, her addiction to prescription drugs has escalated beyond control. She has disappeared for days at a time, returned home with mysterious bruises, and bailed from auditions and meetings at the last minute. She finally and reluctantly agreed to go to rehab when she was caught stealing a prescription pad from her doctor’s office." [BlindGossip] 4) "Which celebrity is publicly photographed hanging all over her boyfriend, but is secretly seeing others on the side? Being part of a celebrity couple doubles her exposure, so she likes being photographed with and being interviewed about her current beau. The truth is that, despite her very public declarations of love, their relationship is not going well, so she flees into the arms of old boyfriends on a regular basis. One of them has nicknamed her “Tweety” because she Twitters him constantly during the day." [BlindGossip]
The atheist War on Christmas looks to be hotter than ever this season! Emboldened by the victory of Barack Obama—a self-proclaimed Christian, but not the type who looks like he would handle serpents recreationally—nonbelievers are running ad campaigns all over the place telling everyone about god, and how he doesn't exist. The heathens have already plastered ads all over our nation's capital. They even have some semi-celebrities on their side. But the forces of Jesus are fighting back! It's an all-out battle for the soul of America's billboards:
The recurrent bitchiness between Michael Wolff and NBC's Ben Silverman usually lapsed back into polite chatter at the Monaco Media Summit, judging from the lengthy YouTube video of a panel discussion at the Monte Carlo event. But one can't help but wonder if would-be internet mogul Wolff was more personally invested in his reference to television networks as the scapegoated "trash heap of everybody's expectations" than he let on. And calling Silverman "functionally digitally illerate" was just plain mean, as was using a vulgar expletive to refer to old media. But then sublimated envy and resentment are kind of Wolff's calling cards, so no harm, no foul! Click the video icon to watch the fireworks.
Just when it looked as though viewers were going to be cruelly deprived of their weekly life-affirming glimpse into the lives of three mistresses of the universe who always drop everything to be supportive to one other (or to engage in the most idealized cougar-cub relationship ever likely to grace our screens), Lipstick Jungle has won an eleventh-hour reprieve.
♦ Two months after buying a townhouse in Brooklyn, Barbara Corcoran has reportedly purchased two more multiple-residence brownstones in the borough. [Page Six]
♦ Highside Capital principal David Thomas and his wife, Economist correspondent Joanne Ramos, have paid $5.59 million for a four-bedroom condo in the Fischer Mills Building in Tribeca. [Cityfile]
♦ Gramercy Capital COO Bob Foley paid $3.5 million for an two-bedroom loft on the 18th-floor of 15 Madison Square North. [Cityfile]
The board of the MTA will meet today to unveil a set of cutbacks designed to address next year's estimated $1.2 billion budget shortfall. What can you look forward to? Among other things, the end of the W and Z lines, 1,500 fewer MTA employees, and longer gaps between trains at midday and between two and five in the morning. [NYDN, NYT]
Fox News would like you to get to know its angry shouting heads a little bit better. Perhaps you'd like to know what sort of pants Sean Hannity doesn't wear on camera? Or the worst of Greta Van Susteren's college grades? Or who Bill O'Reilly has beaten to death with his bare hands? The name of Shep Smith's favorite piano bar? As TVNewser discovered, you can answer a disconcertingly high percentage of these questions on the"Fun Facts" section of Fox News' new Facebook page. All the disturbing profiles are after the jump. (Actually, Shep's is more immaculate than disturbing, but then that's about what you'd expect from the anchor, right?)
Chloe Sevigny turns 34 today. Project Runway winner Christian Siriano is 23. Owen Wilson is 40. Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly turns 38. Weeds actress Elizabeth Perkins is 48. Singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik is turning 39. The rapper Fabolous is 31. Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett is 46. Former Dynasty star Linda Evans is 66 years old. And scandal-plagued Alaska Senator Ted Stevens can look forward to celebrating his 85th today in the company of his lawyers.
Well, this will certainly soften the blow of a certain Gossip Girl actor thinking he was Vera Wang's husband: Last night, Alexander Wang won the $200,000 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund prize, awarded by a panel of judges including Diane von Furstenberg, Vogue's Anna Wintour and Sally Singer, Coach's Reed Krakoff, Jeffrey Kalinsky, Theory's Andrew Rosen, and Barneys' Julie Gilhart. At the 5th anniversary ceremony held at Skylight Studios, a crowd including André Leon Talley, Tommy Hilfiger, Vera Wang, John Galliano, Charlize Theron, and Juliette Lewis saw the 24-year-old New Yorker beat out the competition, including runners-up Lisa Mayock and Sophie Buhai of Vena Cava and Albertus Quartus designer Albertus Q Swanepoel. [WWD, Vogue UK]
Before Devil Wears Prada was filmed, before Project Runway made its reality television debut, before fashion grew beyond even the prominent role she had envisioned for it, Anna Wintour was compared in the Times to George W. Bush. It was one of Maureen Dowd's absurdly tortured analogies, but one of the rare ones that today sounds less ridiculous: If Page Six's source is to be believed, the Vogue editor is, like Bush, about to step away from the monster she's created, leaving to a more glamorous successor the job of revival. There is plenty to be done:
♦ Although her life looks like it's finally back on track, a new documentary suggests Britney Spears thinks her new life is like prison and lacks "excitement" or "passion." Hopefully she'll be in a better mood in two weeks when she makes an appearance at the Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony. [The Sun, OK!]
♦ Could Anna Wintour be planning to retire? Page Six says the Vogue editor is thinking about leaving the mag once her contract is up, and she's even been recommending possible replacements to Si Newhouse. [P6]
♦ Kiefer Sutherland may be planning to move to NYC so he can be closer to his girlfriend, Allure style director Siobhan Bonnouvrier. [Daily Star]
♦ Madonna is reportedly making $10 million to appear in her new Louis Vuitton ad campaign. [P6]
♦ Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says Citigroup should follow Goldman's lead and forgo bonuses for senior execs. [NYP]
♦ Embattled Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang has announced he will step down as soon as the board finds a replacement. [NYT, WSJ]
♦ Mark Cuban's attorney on the insider trading charges leveled against his client: "The case has no merit, and is a product of gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion." [WSJ]
♦ Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is unlikely to use the rest of the $700 billion bailout fund on any new initiatives, preferring to hand over the remaining pennies—and very big problems—to his successor in the Obama administration. [WSJ]
♦ Andrew Ross Sorkin on extending the bailout to GM: "Taxpayers shouldn't fork over a cent, at least until shareholders are wiped out, management is tossed out and the industry is completely reorganized." [NYT]
Larry King's interview with "pregnant man" Thomas Beatie, now expecting his second child, was a new landmark in uncomfortable television. The CNN host asked if Beatie (formerly a woman) "felt gay," if his wife "felt gay," if the pregnancy might violate the U.S. Constitution and then he gave this sort of dissatisfied grunt when wife Nancy tried to say she knew her husband was a man in his heart. Maybe King, having wed seven times, was just jealous that someone has had a more diverse marriage experience than he has. Click the video icon to watch.
If Barack Obama appoints Hillary Clinton Secretary of State, as the Guardian claims he soon will, his cabinet would be awesome like Lincoln's! The Times' Gail Collins has already said so, and, what do you know, Obama in January read a book called "Team Of Rivals," about Lincoln's oppositional cabinet. But you know who else read and admired that book ahead of the primaries? Hillary Clinton! It's supposedly one of her favorite works, and yet her "Team of Rivals" resulted only in a humiliatingly inept bumbling of Clinton's presumed lead in the Democratic primaries. Everyone is starting to realize that "no-drama" Obama's plan could backfire too, because:
Arianna Huffington's thick Greek accent is usually a social asset. It adds spice to a televised panel discussion, and on the party circuit encourages a conversation partner to lean in intimately to understand the former socialite's words. But give the internet publisher her own hourlong TV show, as with her guest-hosting stint tonight on the Rachel Maddow Show, and the accent becomes a liability, like a single seasoning taking over a dish. "You can't understand a word she says and she even makes my cat get irritated," one tipster wrote 20 minutes into the program.
Dan Lyons is shocked, shocked that Yahoo's PR team lied to him about how long CEO Jerry Yang would stay in the job. PR people routinely lie; it's part of the job description. But the good ones don't get caught. Lyons, Newsweek's tech columnist, interviewed Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock less than a month before Monday's announcement that Yang would step down, and Bostock loudly declared Yang was here to stay. One would think no one would be more cynical about the world of tech PR than the man who savaged Apple's spinmeister when he impersonated CEO Steve Jobs in a satirical blog. Lyons is no longer writing as Fake Steve Jobs, but as the real Dan Lyons, he occasionally summons up the old savagery. Here's what he says about the flacks who deceived him about Yang's employment status, as well as a now-scotched advertising deal with Google:
