Gay Times magazine in the UK got a bunch of ad agencies to make up ads that persuade straight guys to Go Gay. Now there is an idea that is sure to draw greatly varying reactions! Large versions of the three most interesting ones are below. The winner is last. Will this campaign work? Well that's a great setup for a joke, which I am not going to pursue. Here they are:
This round of layoff tales are dedicated to those fired from Wired, Time Inc.'s European contingent, and Michigan's autoworker retirees who have just had their promised lifetime healthcare stolen. Has Twittering your after-work activities like museums and park strollers instigated jealousy amongst higher-ups? Are you the only one left in your family with a job—only to be laid-off? Have you quit and tried to get your job back? Read on. (And send your stories to tips@gawker.com.)Fired for Twittering Enjoyable Life:
♦ Tonight is the night for Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz's 20-course, $1,500 dinner at Per Se, and despite the bad economy, it's completely sold out. [NYT, NYT]
♦ A Q&A with chef Seamus Mullen, whose long-awaited Boqueria Soho finally opened last night. [Metromix, Eater]
♦ Christopher Lee will depart Gilt at the end of the year to take over as Auerole's executive chef. [NYT]
Gary Kremen founded Match.com as a labor of love, but his personal fortune comes from buying the sex.com domain early. Now, Kremen has invested "an undisclosed amount" in CrowdSifter, a collaborative smut filter. You can read about it in our compliant mainstream media on November 13. Or you can read the press release CrowdSifter's publicist sent us this morning:
We've already expressed to you how American Idol runner-up David Archuleta could literally save the world. How big an Archie fan are we? Let's put it this way: You see that video above us? We're the one in the orange shirt and glasses. Well, we've just downloaded his debut CD on iTunes, made available today, and have jotted down our thoughts on every track. Our occasionally tear-smudged first impressions follow:1. "Crush"
Two weeks before Australia's Nov. 26 release date, Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann, who's worked four years on the $130 million dollar production set in the Outback, still doesn't know what movie he's making. After a rough cut was recently screened for critics who hated the film's downer ending, the studio reacted by putting pressure on Luhrmann to alter Australia. Fox is more keen on recouping the film's massive budget with what it hopes is a traditional crowd-pleaser. It appears Luhrmann has already complied with their demands, but is Australia destined to die even if its lead characters don't?Reports from the Australian Sunday Telegraph were that critics blanched at the unhappy ending of the 3-hour epic, and overall reaction in the film's native country has been harsh. The film has already been plagued by the idea its nationalist angle will hurt foreign box office. Scrutiny about the film's ending aside, when you don't have a cut everyone is satisfied with this late in the process, how can you expect audiences to buy into it?
Ashley Todd, a crazy woman who carved a backwards 'B' on her face for some reason that almost made some sort of sense a few weeks ago, is apparently bumming around Pittsburgh hanging out at the Barnes & Noble. She's presumably stuck in Pittsburgh—perhaps the wrong side of Pittsburgh!—because she's still undergoing that mental health treatment the judge sentenced her to. [Wonkette]
We've been chronicling the drugs of the creative underclass—from the "I love my orange pills" Adderall to benzos to psychotropics. How the hell is everybody getting through their workday? It depends on your personality. For those with wandering attention spans, Adderall usually does the trick. For anxiety-prone neurotics, Adderall feels like a hit of crack combined with a bucket of Dunkin' Donuts coffee. I've relied on Xanax for special occasions and party reporting (all that excitement sends me straight to the wall), but recently-after totally casual anecdotal investigation on this website suggested that Klonopin was the current drug of choice for the creative underclass—I procured a prescription for Klonopin. (After all, they love it at downtown fashion mag Nylon!)Kloni is better than Xanax, my friends. Why? First of all, they're both benzos, with similar molecular structure. But: Klonopin gives you less of a buzz, is much longer lasting (sometimes it seems like Xanax only lasts two or three hours), and is less habit-forming. (Those who take Xanax and Kloni regularly and don't taper off can put themselves at risk for seizures, however. R&B singer Sean Levert, who recently died in jail, wasn't allowed to take the Xanax he brought in jail. According to UPI, "prison staff allegedly took the bottle away and didn't give him his medication during the six days he was there, even though he asked for it numerous times and suffered terrifying delusions due to withdrawal from the medication.") I experimented with Klonopin recently while doing some freelance work; I found its effect smoother and less buzzy than Xanax. And that was just half a milligram! It also increased concentration: words flowed freely onto my keyboard, absent the usual wrenching procrastination which we all know comes from fear of failure. Had I taken I Xanax, I imagine I would have slept for the next nine hours instead. Which is the best for you: Adderall or benzos like Klonopin? It all comes down to your personality type. For anxiety-prone people, benzos quiet the mind, shushing the paralyzing background noise and leaving you to do your work unmolested. Of these, Klonopin gives the smoother ride. As the departed Gawker/Jezebel editor Moe so succinctly put it: "Writing on drugs is my drug."
While we're over here getting our little heads upset about the pending Obama-inspired CRISIS OF COMEDY, fretting that there's only one extant Black President joke and desperately enlisting comedians to offer advice on humorous lines of attack on our hopey new leader, The Daily Show is going about its business as usual, being funny! Now I just feel dumb. Comedy Central Insider puts this crisis in perspective:
An Abu Dhabi-based developer, Hydra Properties, has reportedly offered Paris Hilton $2 million to lend her name to a set of apartment buildings in Dubai. (Naturally, the buildings will be named "Paris Hilton Towers" if she agrees to the deal.) This is the same company, we should point out, that tapped Antonio Banderas as a company pitchman a few months ago, which suggests either real estate developers in the Gulf are getting very desperate or there's a rich sheikh out there looking to get lucky. [Gulf News via Curbed]
The only thing more stunning to us than learning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button screened last night for the first time, like, ever, was that Brad Pitt himself dropped by to have a look at the Bruin Theater. It wasn't much of a secret to the hundred or so paparazzi to 24/7 Pitt detail, but a security guard working the screening did not get that memo, accosting the star and his pap trail in the theater lobby. Would peace prevail, or would the War of Westwood be the first of many bitter obstacles to befall Button's path to Oscar? The pictures tell the story after the jump.
It's Alive! Last week, we brought you word that Pushing Daisies was closing up shop after finishing the 13th episode of its second season. Now, Save Daisies has word that while that's true, the series is still expected to be revived for a third season. That whole "renewal after a truncated second season" gambit didn't end up saving Arrested Development in the end, but given Daisies's subject matter, we suppose that constant teetering between ratings life and cancellation death is rather apropos. [Save Daisies]
Current, the cable channel and user-generated-video website backed by Joel Hyatt and Al Gore, is laying people off. "My wife works in the LA office (at least for now!)," emails a tipster. "At least 10 gone from there...." No word from Current's San Francisco headquarters yet, but you know where to send it. Update: A tipster says 32 have been cut from the San Francisco office. "'Bloodbath' is the word being used!" he adds.
It was another down day on Wall Street. The Dow fell 176 points, or 2 percent, and both the S&P and Nasdaq shed 2.2 percent. Naturally, a handful of companies announced a round of fresh layoffs: As many as 60 employees of Condé Nast's Internet division were reportedly let go; an estimated 20 percent of CurrentTV's staff were given notice; the law firm of White & Case announced plans to shed 3 percent of its staff; and Time Inc. bosses in New York are now reportedly planning to lay off lots of European staffers, too. Oh, and don't bother looking for a job if you've already lost yours: Online job sites are reporting that new listings have hit a new low.
"Sounds like they are preparing for a sale, not saving costs,” says the pullquoted analyst in the Wall Street Journal today. Nortel's 1,300 layoffs, at 18 percent of headcount, would seem pro forma if they didn't include CTO John Roese, whose blog documented the company's efforts to turn itself around. Roese typed up "My Final Blog Post" yesterday. As a going-away present, I've 100-worded his weepy-but-brave essay. His point becomes much more obvious:
Ted Turner: simultaneously a crazy old coot and a totally awesome and admirable ex-media mogul! The CNN founder is out promoting his new autobiography, which gives him a chance to go on and on and on about his pet grudge, the scalawags at Time Warner who blew up his fortune by merging with AOL. Dude, it was only seven billion. Let it go! Here he is on David Letterman talking about how CNN sucks these days, without him, Ted Turner, around. Ted, we sincerely want you to come back, you crazy, crazy wild man. It would be great for us. He was also interviewed at the Time/Life building today, where he talked about nothing but how much Time Warner sucks (and prairie dogs):
Oh Emily Brill. The blogging (she's Hamilton's favorite New York writer, for serious) media heiress has stooped to our level. Last night she decided to swallow the horse pill of her pride and watch an episode of bitchy Upper East Side teen soap opera The McLaughlin Group Gossip Girl, and then wrote about it! It could be seen as direct competition for our swatting-at-a-bug-zapper ramblings about the show, except it's much better and, like, informed. You see, unlike us, she's from the world of dough-headed Upper East Side kids, so she can totes relate (or not) to all the interesting characters. She took notes, with her hands!, last night, weighing in on important matters like "is Blair wearing Juicy?" and "did you know that most girls I know... do not like 1Oak??" I did not know! She's posted the chicken scratch on her little website and we've put the pages down below for you too, in case you're lazy (you are). David Mamet scribbles on napkins too, Emily! See what you can parse. It's kinda hard. I think she insults the Bronx in some capacity.
Sirius XM Radio's third quarter results are in: a stupefying $4.88 billion loss. The biggest chunk of that is an impairment charge due to a drop in stock price. Slow auto sales have reduced the number of new customers. This is worse news for me than AAPL taking a dive — I'm not a shareholder, but XM Highway 16 is one of Valleywag's raw ingredients. If satellite radio dies, it'll be like those dark years when the government barred Detroit from building convertibles.
The news just gets worse and worse for AIG. A day after the insurance giant asked for another $40 billion in government aid, it was revealed that the company sent execs on yet another lavish trip to a Phoenix resort last week and tried to conceal its role in sponsoring the event. Resist the urge to get angry: Most of the attendees will probably be unemployed in a few weeks. As for senior management, they'd be well-advised to get in as much pool and spa time now, since as far as we know even the most luxurious minimum-security prisons don't have them. [ABC News]
