Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock is 38 today. Joni Mitchell is 65. Reverend Billy Graham is 90. General David Petraeus is turning 56. Former Brady Bunch star Christopher Knight turns 51. Lost star Yunjin Kim is 35. Interior designer John Barman is 59. And twin actors Jeremy and Jason London are 36. Weekend birthdays after the jump.
Mayor Bloomberg wants to discourage people from using plastic bags when they shop at grocery stores. So he's proposing a 6-cent tax on every bag, a fee that city officials argue could generate as much as $16 million a year. Just wait until the mayor goes food shopping for the first time in years to show off the reusable bags he's suggesting the public use. He won't believe how much milk costs these days! [NYT]
As Barack Obama delivered his presidential acceptance speech, Oprah Winfrey prominently led the nation in a good cry. But when the cameras caught her, she was leaning heavily up against some white guy. Who was that?? Oprah basically owns Chicago, so the Sun-Times promptly deployed an investigative team to find out. The man is Sam Perry of California's Silicon Valley, he is an Obama volunteer and contributor, a former wire-service reporter, and basically one of the nicest guys ever, according to his wife, who should know. Her quote and a clip of the Daily Show making fun of Perry, after the jump.
♦ Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker are apparently incapable of getting along: A day after Kim confirmed that there will be Sex and the City sequel, Parker told fans "not to get their hopes up" and that "Kim is excited, but all the deals are not yet done." [Daily Star, People]
♦ It looks like spending time in court, soup kitchens, and sanitation departments hasn't helped Naomi Campbell much. She infuriated passengers on her flight back from London on Tuesday by cutting in line while going through customs at JFK. She swears it wasn't her fault because it was the airline that offered her an escort. [R&M]
♦ Ian Schrager is getting married next Saturday. The bride-to-be is a ballerina named Tania Wahlstedt. [P6]
The Daily Show weighed in on whether it will face a CRISIS OF COMEDY in a new, much more competent Obama Administration. As host Jon Stewart made clear Wednesday night, the show thinks it'll be fine, and as we predicted, the show will hedge its bets with other targets — namely, Fox News and Democrats not named Barack Obama. Here's what Daily Show writer J. R. Havlan said at the New York Comedy Festival, via the Times:
♦ Employers cut 240,000 jobs in October, bringing the year's total job losses to nearly 1.2 million. The unemployment rate is now 6.5%, up from from 6.1% in September. [CNNMoney]
♦ Why has the market been falling sharply in recent days? One reason is that hedge funds have been selling billions of their holdings to meet demands for cash from their investors and their lenders. [WSJ]
♦ Citigroup is reportedly planning another round of layoffs. [DB]
♦ Ken Griffin's Citadel says his fund lost about 22 percent last month. [NYP]
♦ The evidence is largely anecdotal, but it appears there's been an increase in suicides related to the financial crisis. [NYT]
It's becoming a real hassle to offer sex for money on Craigslist, apparently. At first sex workers just had to think up a euphemism for prostitution, like "FULL EROTIC EXAMINATION" or "naughty sweet treat" or the cryptic "GFE" or the almost sweet "delightful relaxing time." Then, earlier this year, they had to have a working phone number, and listings dropped 80 percent. Now, under pressure from attorneys general in 40 states, Craigslist is going to require "erotic services" providers to pony up $10 for each listing, and pay with a credit card, which the police will be able to subpoena. The sex workers are already complaining, via NSFW ads. Law enforcement authorities say their real targets are pimps:
In some prior election year, the behind-the-scenes footage of a president-elect's first moments might have been captured by a photographer for, say, Life, or at least distributed through a glossy magazine like that. It must have been some small comfort to Barack Obama to be able to rely instead on a longtime photographer of his own, David Katz, at such an intimate moment, and at such a tender one, a day after the death of his grandmother. As for distribution? Photography's bridge to the 21st century, Flickr. The campaign's remarkable set of 82 behind-the-scenes pictures includes the one above, of Obama watching McCain concede, and our other favorites, after the jump.
The Times has new details about Eric Schurenberg's departure from Time Inc.'s Money: It is supposedly related to "talk within the company of a new editorial direction" for the 2 million-circulation title. Yes, the collapse of Western capitalism would seem to pose some, uh, new and unique challenges to a personal finance magazine, and it sounds like Money has already found more than its share of efficiencies on the business side, sharing an ad staff and website with other company brands. Who will be the Neel Kashkari of Money's editorial rescue plan? We hear the new editor might be Ellen McGirt, a former Money columnist and editor-at-large who later wrote for Fortune and Fast Company. (UPDATE: Not her, she says.) You may have seen her on the teevee!
The urge to draw, literally, a link between Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama would have been irresistible to editorial cartoonists even if both men were not Illinois legislators, outspoken against a foreign military adventure and exploitive of their hardscrabble upbringings in the national hinterlands. Who better to juxtapose with the country's first black president than the commander-in-chief who emancipated American slaves (even if Obama's ancestors were not among them)?
· Today on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Will Smith joined Seven Pounds co-star Rosario Dawson to describe losing his movie-sex virginity. Shocker: It sounds like he enjoyed it! · Now this is a protest: Melissa Etheridge said today she'll cease paying state taxes until Proposition 8 is repealed. · Flopz, Guy, Flopz™: Madonna's directorial debut Filth and Wisdom has made only $18,000 since opening Oct. 17 in New York. · A $1,000, Leo DiCaprio-signed VHS copy of Titanic is just one of the many treasures that can be yours in the upcoming backruptcy auction of Dana Giacchetto, disgraced "Financial Adviser to the Stars." · If you had Joe for the win in your "First Jonas Brother to Knock Someone Up" pool, his ex regrets to inform you that you missed it by that much.
Amy Rice and Alicia Sams' documentary on Barack Obama has been filming since summer 2006, before the president-elect was even seeking the Democratic nomination. But the directors were inspired by the Illinois senator's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and thought he'd be worth following. Actor Ed Norton's Class 5 Films put up some money, the Obama camp provided inside access and now the bet is paying off, and not just because the candidate went all the way: HBO, it was just announced, is paying in the low seven-figures for the film, and theatrical rights are still available. Chalk it up as yet another Obama win against the Clintons!
Back when Fox bought Joss Whedon's series pitch Dollhouse, the network bypassed the pilot stage and granted an immediate episode order in an attempt to speed the show onto the air with a minimum of speedbumps. Since then, though, the Eliza Dushku starrer has undergone cast shuffles, vicious network notes, episode reshoots, a set shutdown, and then, finally, a completely thrown-out premiere episode. Now, Fox has announced the latest, biggest setback, and it's one that even the former Faith may not be able to fight her way out of:
T.R. Knight was the first high-profile gay star to contribute to the "No on Prop. 8" cause, and he didn't simply stop there. The Advocate has just published a first-person piece by the actor in which he recounts the sometimes-stormy volunteering he did outside a polling place on Election Day. While holding up signs, Knight was met with a steady stream of Isaiah Washington-style invective, and he details the culprits:
· Madonna! Justin! Britney! Dodger! Stadium! Also: TV on the Radio at the Wiltern. · Hollywood Pin Up Girls present the Super Sexy Burlesque Show show at the El Cid. Va-va-voom! Are we right, fellas? · Judd Apatow Repertory Player Charlene Yi presents Charlyne Yi's Music Box at the UCB Theater, playing new songs she wrote solo or with friends. 9:30 p.m. Stick around for Naked Babies improv at 11.
Change.gov is the Internet President's official, government-funded transition website. You can kick back and read his 2,625-word technology vision. I'm serious: It's amazing how many planks they've shoved into one platform. I was going to 100-word it, then I realized I was being unfair to the 30,000 registered Democrats with journalism jobs who are already fighting over who can do the best rewrite. Go for it, HuffPo! I'll spend the rest of the night poring over the much shorter healthcare section to see if President Change is going to subsidize psychiatric services for those of us who reblog Twitter for a living.
It's time now for everyone's favorite late-afternoon mini-mystery, aka a blind item guessing game. Today's comes to us from EW's Michael Ausiello, who broke the Grey's Anatomy CallicaGate story, and so who knows from TV set histrionics. On this particular "sophomore drama," "all the stars have the disposition of Linda Blair pre-exorcism."
