A tipster swears he saw a Six Apart employee "at a bar in the Lower Haight today inhaling massive amounts of Nitrous Oxide in the corner and passing it around, no joke. I wonder if he was laid off." Do you know what that stuff costs? It's far more likely that Mr. Whip-It still has a job, and can't show up drunk today.
Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson is continuing to reshape the post-Murdoch version of the paper in his own image. In the wake of an early October reshuffling of editors, Thomson sent another top editor to lead the London bureau a few weeks ago, in a clear push to try to expand the paper's international prestige. And today Thomson told the staff that Gerard Baker is the new Deputy Editor-In-Chief of the WSJ and Dow Jones—and, like Thomson himself, Baker is veteran of the Times of London and the FT. Taste the international flavor. The full memo introducing Baker to the staff is below:
We hear all is not well with Times reporter Alex Kuczynski and her husband of six years, financier Charles Stevenson. Rumor has it the Times journalist and reformed plastic surgery junkie is contemplating a divorce from the billionaire mogul, who is nearly 25 years her senior (and who has been married four times). Although there's been no official word of the split as of yet, Kuczynski has maintained a low profile in recent weeks. While she's probably rather busy these days now that she's a new mom—Kuczynski and Stevenson had a baby boy via a surrogate back in April—friends were surprised when she backed out of a scheduled appearance last week at a Diane von Furstenberg-sponsored spelling bee benefit that she usually attends every year. She's also been noticeably absent from the pages of the Times the last few months. Perhaps fittingly, her most recent article in the paper in early October was a book review of Alec Baldwin's book, A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce. "Divorce is a lonely business," Kuczynski wrote. "Divorce is hell. Lawyers are vultures."
He may require enlightening in matters of gay-community relations, but no one can accuse Mickey Rourke of anything less than slavish devotion to canine-rights causes. We hear the Oscar hopeful took his beloved free-range chihuahua Loki to the Four Seasons last week, where an eagle-eyed, bat-eared Defamer operative caught what may be the tenderest interspecies mating ritual ever witnessed in the Hollywood wild:
Beyoncé gets to keep her Amex card. Yahoo Canada employees have been ordered to turn theirs in. And for transpo, they won't get taxi chits anymore. See you on the bus! Here's the full internal email:
One more thing you can look forward to next year as the economy continues to suffer and companies continue to lay off employees: a big price increase for city subways and buses. The Daily News reports that the MTA may be forced to raise fares to $3 as it grapples with a $600 million budget shortfall. [NYDN]
The rumor mill says Microsoft has offered to pay twice what Google offered to take over as Verizon's default search engine on phones. I'll let Henry Blodget do the business analysis here ("MSFT will really take a bath on this one"). As a Verizon loyalist, my reaction is slow-burning rage. They're going to pocket a billion bucks and make me reconfigure my phone. Amazing what you can do if you truly hate your customers. (Photo by AP/Virginia Mayo)
A bizarre discovery turned up outside America Idol tastemaker Paula Abdul's home last night: a dead body propped over in a car. Even more confusing was that the body belonged not to the klonopin chip brownie-loving singer/choreographer/karoake-feedback-deliverer herself, but rather a rabid Abdul fan, whose car bore a vanity license plate reading "ABL LV," ("4VR URGL" had already been taken) and Paula-scented air-fresheners dangling from the rear-view mirror. More details follow after the jump:
Director Todd Solondz has brilliantly captured the banality, ugliness, sadness, and, ultimately, strange beauty of modern American living in films like Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, and Palindromes. He's weird, but good! But now, we fear, he may just be weird. He's doing a sequel to Happiness, which is about miserable suburbanites who do things like rub semen on walls and rape little boys, and he's casting very erratically. The latest to be enlisted are Charlotte Rampling, the English French film star, and, um, Paris Hilton. Yes the heiress and tabloid magnet blonde lady is joining Rampling, Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle!), Rome actor Ciaran Hinds, and Allison Janney for the film which is "part sequel, part variation" to the 1998 original. I guess it's sort of fitting, given that Hilton herself is banal, ugly, sad, and, ultimately, strangely beautiful. No word yet on who Hilton will be playing, though the production is currently filming in San Juan, Puerto Rico so we hope that maybe she's playing a young tourist who gets sold into white slavery and shipped off somewhere on a boat and she spends most of the time crying but eventually learns to oddly love her captors and then at the end, over a montage of lovely images of sad yet hopeful people, she delivers a haunting closing monologue about the transience of all things.
Your National Enquirer newspaper has published photos purporting to show Cindy McCain, fragile, lonely beer heiress wife to Senator John McCain, kissing some guy who isn't Senator John McCain! "Multiple witnesses" caught Cindy and this mystery man "lip locking on several other occasions." The guy is "a long-haired man who resembles 'a washed-up '80s rock musician,'" apparently. Just read the "stunned reaction of an eyewitness":
You can buy an iPhone at Best Buy, but more likely you won't buy anything at all this Xmas. The company's revised forecast predicts revenue between now and February may drop by 15 percent. CEO Brad Anderson's official statement is blunt: "Since mid-September, rapid, seismic changes in consumer behavior have created the most difficult climate we've ever seen ... Best Buy simply can't adjust fast enough to maintain our earnings momentum for this year." Cool, but seismic changes? Brad, come on out from Minnesota and we'll demo a real earthquake for you. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
Oh Dov Charney, when will you stop being sued for various sexual and financial shenanigans? The pervy, pacing American Apparel boss has been sued yet again. Just last month he was dealing with a sexual harassment case from an old employee; now, another former employee says that Dov tried to get him to inflate the company's books in order to draw in outside investors. Just your average financial fraud allegation, until Dov trotted out his accuser's old "lover":
Kate Bosworth checking in for a flight at JFK with boyfriend James Rousseau ... Natalie Portman eating soup on the set of her new movie ... Hugh Jackman leaving the studios of GMA ... Sarah Jessica Parker walking with son James in the West Village ... Frank Gifford leaving ABC studios ... Kate Winslet shopping at YSL ... Alicia Keys standing outside the Letterman show ... Katie Holmes leaving her East Village apartment ... Seth Green, Enrique Iglesias, and David Archuleta posing for pics outside MTV studios in Times Square ... and Fergie sitting in the backseat of a cab.
The election is over, so bring on last season's political liabilities! Remember Mark Foley? He was the Republican Congressman from Florida who liked steamroom, and also young male congressional pages. Some, uh, inappropriate instant messenger exchanges with one of those young men came to light, and then the Republicans lost the 2006 mid-term elections. Foley said he was an alcoholic who'd been turned gay by a molesting priest as a child, resigned, and checked into rehab, never to be heard from again, until after the 2008 elections were safely over. Now he's opening up to the Associated Press, because he needs to tell his side of the story. His side of the story is sad and creepy.
Nick Denton, who rules over the entire Gawker empire, is the most pessimistic man in the media. In a way, this is comforting, because you know it's very unlikely that things will be worse than he predicts. In another, more visceral way, it is not comforting at all. But nobody said it was supposed to be, so oh well. Today Nick has issued his 2009 Internet Media Plan, which amounts to one big Forecast of Doom. Highlights: The main point:
Booze, religion, and therapy not doing enough to calm you down as the economy implodes? How about hypnotism? New York hypnotherapists report that business has surged in recent weeks, a trend that started following the collapse of Bear Stearns in March. As for what you actually get for $60 to $150 per session, you may be given some tips on how to adjust your "negative thinking," or you may pick up a soothing mantra for these fretful times like "Money is energy that comes and goes." And you don't even have to show up in person either, since some practicioners are more than happy to dispense their wisdom via email or text. Given you don't need any credentials—or even a license—to practice hypotherapy, perhaps the best advice they could give you to get over your financial problems is to set up shop as a hypnotherapist yourself. (Hey, it's more lucrative than turning to bartending.) After the jump, video of a spooky Manhattan hynotherapist named Jacob Bimblic explaining his appeal to the Wall Street crowd.
Yesterday you guys thought that the actor who got brutally rebuffed whilst trying to chat up a dame was Shia LaBeouf. I guess that lady saved herself from being brutally LaBeouf'd! Anyway, today we have a rapper with a very strict health food regimen, a gay basketball star!, an impotent fella, and a cheating husband. "Which hardcore rapper has banned all frozen food from his dressing room before he performs? His band are furious as he insists they stick to a celery and hummous diet." [Mirror] "This NBA star and when I say star, he is definitely All Star caliber is sleeping with this male B list actor from a Top 20 network drama. Yes, they say they are just friends, but it is way beyond that." [CDaN] "He is an actor who has been called one of the hottest men in the world. However, she is less than thrilled with the relationship. He has a problem in the bedroom. Even the little blue pill doesn’t work. She calls him “The Limp Noodle” or “Mr. Noodle” behind his back. Frustrated, but reluctant to leave him because being part of a celebrity couple has its perks, she has resorted to seeing an old boyfriend on the sly to satisfy her carnal needs." [BlindGossip] "Which proud new papa isn’t much of a family guy? The handsome actor, notorious for having a roving eye, was spotted leaving a downtown hot spot with the beautiful bartender." [NYDN] "What reality TV “star” was so desperate to have her barely watched show renewed that she agreed to a 70% pay cut for the second season?" [Sigh... Perez Hilton]
