News reports on the SiPort triple murder Friday afternoon seemed to imply that alleged killer Jing Wu had been laid off from the company. But a spokesperson for Morganthaler Ventures, one of SiPort's investors, emailed GigaOm writer Om Malik. The anonymized mouthpiece claims SiPort had no layoffs — Jing Wu was personally terminated.
Ad Age ran the numbers and found magazines eliminated 3,200 jobs between June and the end of September. And that was before the Great Magazine Die-Off! Here's what to do before your severance checks run out, former magazine people: Don't put off looking for a job; call up those contacts you thoughtfully cultivated before you were laid off and be an insane, annoying optimist. Do so and you just might be among the lucky few to snag one of the jobs on the following list, which depressingly represents the sum total of what Ad Age found to be still available, sometimes:
Tonight's 60 Minutes sit-down with President-Elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle was the media equivalent of a fluffernutter sandwich, and it tasted good. Here the couple were relaxed and clearly happy to have ended the long campaign. Giggling with big smiles, the two won over the newsmagazine's senior-aged audience with feel-good family stuff and little in the way of substantial announcements. In the following clip, Barack relates his presidential way of dealing with Michelle's mom Marian Robinson. Click for the video.Thanks to Blakeley for the CBS footage. You could hear Michelle Obama's exuberance as she discussed scouting her new digs:
In the excitement following last year's Hollywood writer's strike, a lot of projects got restarted or greenlit. The fruits of those labors are now unfolding in movie theaters across the country, and some of them are too weird to live, and too rare to die. Whether it was studio enthusiasm to get any project going, any at all, or a desire to repeat the same old formulas and see if they could still make money (or do so for the first time), these upcoming films seem particularly unlikely to succeed:
Are the executives who put together these projects high, or just crazy enough to be billionaires?
For those of you who don't watch The Sarah Silverman Program, you missed a tender one this week. Assuming she was bloated, Sarah didn't notice she was pregnant until about 8 months into the ordeal. She begged her doctor to abort the baby by writing "Please?" on a piece of paper, but in the end she was forced to create a new life. At the end of the episode, Sarah gives birth to a stop-animation thing. What came out of her? Click to find out.
We understand the insatiable need for the media to compare Obama to Lincoln, we really do. There's no need to rehash the potential similarities all over again, because Newsweek is devoting their cover story this week to doing exactly that. On one hand, comparing a president-elect to a another guy from Illinois who did the job well makes all the sense in the world. And above all else, Lincoln was a good man. On the other hand, there are elements of this comparison that are wildly not suggestive of BO:
With the full onset of consistently declining revenues and mass layoffs, newspapers have now finally accepted the depth of their plight. Now the war wages on as to how — and whether — print can become more commercially viable through innovation. In an article discussing how industries rework themselves to stay relevant, the NYT blissfully throws doubt on her ability to survive in this economic climate. Is there at least some solution that could save the local paper?The bitter feud between Slate's Ron Rosenbaum and new media simpleton Jeff Jarvis aside, both do agree that newspapers are in deep shit. The Times' Catherine Rampell dismisses the clamor over copies of the NYT's election issue, and doesn't see the newspaper becoming "a luxury product." Newspapers are just another industry, and as currently constituted, papers are way behind the curve in ensuring their survival:
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman readied his offer to free agent pitcher CC Sabathia over the past few days, and the proposal will sit in the $140-$150 million dollar range for the portly lefthander. How can the Yankees possibly afford such a luxury in these tough times? Well, unlike most companies, they have plenty of cash reserves between the lucrative YES television network, record attendance, and two insane brothers who hate each other running the whole thing. The lavish new Stadium won't open until it hosts one of Sabathia's former teams, the Cleveland Indians on April 16th, but here's a look at the glitzy excess of the $1.6 billion dollar new structure well in advance:
Every morning when he wakes up and stares out of the window of his ritzy New York apartment, Eliot Spitzer sighs and tells himself, not today. The former governor is still atoning for wearing socks during his affair with prostitute Ashley Dupre, but he has so much to say about what's happening in our country right now. Since we broke the news that Dupre's interview with Diane Sawyer would air this Friday, Spitzer evidently decided to poke his head out of his apartment. In his sermon from hell in this morning's Washington Post, he provides a naughty prescription for restoring America:If he had just waited a year or so, Spitzer could have gotten a lower price on his fun jaunts with paid women. As his one-time paramour Dupre chose ABC for her "consulting" fee and first televised interview since the scandal, Spitzer has followed up a bland interview with Time Out New York with an editorial in today's Post.
We already alluded to the Paul Rudd-Andy Samberg nude debut on the New York art scene, but now the gracious gods at NBC have released the clip for our repeat viewing pleasure. Plus: in the show's first sketch after the monologue, Saturday Night Live took on family closeness, as Fred Armisen and Kristen Wiig played Rudd's overly affectionate parents. There could be...there might be...yes, there are still jokes to be made A.O. (After Obama), even if the big guy himself didn't show up to say hello.
We've praised the show's digital shorts before, and while this one kinda petered out near the end, it was worth just for the amount of fake blood they had to use. Click to view
Before he comes to office, a president has to give up his e-mail account. For the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, that wasn't much of an issue, but for our recent presidents, it's an anguishing and terrible thought. As president-elect Obama parts with his BlackBerry, he'll have to learn how to deal with not being able to rag on other players in his fantasy basketball league. Jeff Zeleny's NYT story about president e-mail e-mail today also contains George W. Bush's sad 2000 shout-out to his electronic homeboys.
On last night's Saturday Night Live, host Paul Rudd spent a lot of time bottomless. Somehow, he also managed to choreograph the finest Beyoncé /Sasha Fierce video we have ever seen. Musical guest Beyoncé's more aggressive and sensual alter-ego needs a powerful partner, and Rudd's impressive creative vision for the singer involved being violently flanked by his stepsons, Justin Timberlake, Bobby Moynihan, and Samberg. Beyoncé must have taken the bottomless digital short to heart, as her second musical number ensured we will never criticize the bottomless pop star for anything, ever again. Click for the clips.
Beyoncé's sketch with Paul Rudd brought back fond memories:
At the Las Vegas rally for Proposition 8 yesterday, comedian and Adventures of New Christine ingenue Wanda Sykes told a massive crowd of onlookers that she'd gotten married on October 25...to a woman. After divorcing her husband in 1998, many had hoped Sykes would break up Larry David's marriage and claim him for her own. While it looks like that hilarious coupling will never come to pass, we wish the brilliant Sykes all the happiness in the world. Here's what she told the crowd:
The New York Times reports that as President, Barry O may not be allowed to use a smartphone. Not even an iPhone. Worse: "A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful." Twitter is right out. Did I miss a memo on this roadblock before I voted? (Photo by the New York Times/Ozier Muhammad)
Jing Wu, accused of shooting three coworkers to death after a layoff, was arrested this morning at the intersection of El Camino Real and Grant Road in Mountain View. His third victim has been identified as SiPort HR head Marilyn Lewis. The Chronicle has more details. (Photo by San Francisco Chronicle/Lance Iversen)
If there ever was a case of the right actor in the wrong part, it was when the NBC overlords cast Paul Rudd as the boyfriend of Phoebe Buffet, Lisa Kudrow's character on Friends. By then the once-hilarious cash cow Friends had turned into a brightly colored satire of the original show, and Rudd's vast comedic skills were tragically under-utilized. Rudd will try to avenge that travesty on tonight's Saturday Night Live. Fortunately, the star of David Wain's surprise hit Role Models has plenty of sketch expertise to fall back on. In clips from the early days of Wain's Comedy Central series Stella, HBO's Little Britain USA, and the classic Michael Showalter parody of director David O. Russell, Rudd brings it the way he should live tonight:Unlike most of the actors in the Apatow milieu, Rudd didn't start out in sketch comedy or stand-up, as he explains in an interview:
Like so many teenage girls before me, I decided to read the Twilight books. Was it the series of insane interviews from Mormon author Stephenie Meyer that convinced me? Was it the recent news that Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg will adapt for the screen the next two books in the series, New Moon and Eclipse? Was it because of Entertainment Weekly's obsession with the film? Was it the recent report that kids are asking the film's vampiric star Robert Pattinson to bite them? All of the above qualify in part, but really, I just wanted to see if a vampire romance with little to no sex could captivate someone squarely outside of the book's desired audience. My startling conclusion after the jump.As you no doubt already know by now, the basic plot of Twilight is incredibly simple, and that's why it works. Girl meets vampire, falls in love with vampire...and meditatively observes vampire's ornate good looks from across the cab of her dilapidated red truck for next 300 pages. As the romance evolves over the course of the series (and I'm in the middle of the third one, Eclipse, now), Meyer is forced to separate the two characters fairly often, partly to create more tension, and partly to prevent us from asking why exactly no one is throwing on a little Marvin Gaye.
Across America today people are protesting the passage of California's Prop 8. The blame is flying as to who exactly caused Prop 8 to pass — African-Americans, Mormons, gay blacklash, Barney Frank, seniors, Barack Obama — but this movement is still united around the idea that homosexual couples deserve to get married just like the rest of us. Today's protests happened in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, among other cities. After the jump, a few great signs from the day.
The above pic was taken at the New York City protest, and is by Amelie McDonell-Parry. So was this one, and it's our truly joyous winner. Congratulations New York.
The Hollywood Reporter has info on the HBO biopic of longtime WaPo publisher Katharine Graham, who took over the paper in 1963 after her husband committed suicide. The desired casting is Laura Linney as the lead, and Joan Didion has agreed to write her first solo screenplay. The project's still in its early stage, but it could focus on Graham's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1995 memoir Personal History or any number of recollections from the period. Here's why this could be incredible.Director of The Human Stain Robert Benton is currently penciled in as the film's director. His last movie, 2007's Charles Baxter adaptation Feast of Love was the most depressing movie since Atom Egoyan killed a bus full of schoolchildren in The Sweet Hereafter, so he'll be able to deal with the sadder aspects of Graham's life. Before she died in 2001, Graham weathered a turbulent relationship with her bipolar philandering husband, and her decades in the newspaper business brought the Washington Post to heights it had never before experienced.
