Our advertisers really care what you think, or so they claim. Take this survey, cough up a freshly registered Yahoo Mail address, and you'll be entered into a drawing for a $300 American Express gift card. Standard rules apply. Go on, fill out the form; it should take 5-10 minutes. The contest ends Wednesday, April 23 at 3 p.m. Pacific.
Did the Ivanka Trump/Jared Kushner breakup affect her performance in the Kushner-owned New York Observer "Socialite Slapdown"? Trump had been inexplicably placed in the "brains" bracket, not "birth," but while she fought her way to the Sweet Sixteen, she finally and suddenly lost out to #14 seed Peter Davis. The contests seem to perhaps be based on "internet voting" but there's plenty of room for mischief in that. Recount!
The NYUFF, one of our sponsors, is giving away tickets to two of their events, coming up this weekend.
The devil-may-care punks who sell the ads which fund our lavish salaries have another hare-brained scheme: Take this survey, cough up a freshly registered Gmail dummy account address, and you'll be entered into a drawing for an Amazon Kindle. Standard rules apply. Your privacy is an illusion, but Jeff Bezos's lumpy e-book reader? All too real. Go on, answer the nice man's questions. The contest ends Monday at 2 p.m. Pacific.
One of our delightful sponsors, Rockstar Games, has painted murals around New York City to celebrate (promote) the release of Grand Theft Auto 4, a quiet, peaceful video game about making friends. Want a free copy? All you have to do is a take a photo of yourself in front of one of these murals, then post it here in a comment. The first 20 to do so win a free copy of the game and our undying respect. The locations are:
[It's kocks versus kittens in a special Tsunami Tuesday edition of Jim Behrle's Kreepie Kats! After you clean up the ticker tape, head on down below the jump for a very special offer from the newest addition to the Kat Family. He needs a name! Won't you help?]
We published an artist's impression of the ugliest haircut in Williamsburg, spotted recently at Marlow & Sons in the Brooklyn district. Is this, to the left, the one? Writes a tipster: "I'm thinking this might be the same guy, but before the upwards-spiking began? You can tell he shaves it so that it starts further back. Unless, somehow, there are MORE of them out there!" In which case, get those cameraphones primed. There's a $100 prize for photographic evidence of a sighting. (Thanks, Clarence Rosario, for introducing the word "skullet" to describe the style.)
New York Press editor David Blum has some of the worst instincts we've seen when it comes to sex columnists. While at the Village Voice, he fired popular sex columnist Rachel Kramer Bussel. Then he hired two married women to replace her and they were sucktastic and they all got fired. When he got to the Press, Blum sent the sex columnist packing, replaced her with Kelly Kreth, who he fired two months later and replaced with the experienced Claudia Lonow, whose resignation he accepted yesterday, a day after her first column and one hour after Jezebel pointed out she'd lifted material for her column. Interesting tidbit! Lonow was a consulting producer on the ABC drama 'Cashmere Mafia'-guess who else on the show has the exact same job description? Blum's wife, television writer Terri Minsky. Yeah, we need a nap too. But today Blum may have himself a halfway decent idea.
On Friday we announced a HairMix contest. By that afternoon, we'd received hundreds of entries, our favorite 7 of which were posted and voted on by you. Well, we have a winner!
Congratulations to reader Caleb R. whose James Carville/Queen Elizabeth mash-up won him a $400 Amazon gift certificate. Good show by all, keep an eye out for more time-wasting contests in the future. Better luck next time, Choire Wintour. [HairMixer]
You people are absolutely insane. What we thought was just going to be a fun little Friday afternoon contest ended up practically crashing my Outlook. I've gotten hundreds of HairMix emails and laughed at many of them. But, favorites had to be picked. So, take a look at the choices. Then, after the jump, vote on which one you think should win the $400 Amazon gift certificate. Then go outside. Please.
Hey! There's this really fun website called HairMixer where you can take one celeb's hair and put it on another celeb's head and it looks really, really funny. This is one of Owen Wilson with Pink's hair. It's so fun in fact, that we're going to run a contest! Make your own and send it to me. After we get enough, we'll take some of our favorites and put them up here. Then you can vote. Winner gets a $400 Amazon gift certificate. Go and get their hair did! Be sure to include your name and contact info. Standard contest rules apply. Thanks, CityRag.
Boy, has New York columnist Kurt Andersen got a challenge for you! The multitalented author's epic 2007 novel Heyday contained a factual error or two, he says on his blog. Nothing to be alarmed about, don't fret! They've been corrected in December's paperback version. But Kurt is an audience participation kind of guy, so if, dear reader, you're clever enough to track down the slip-ups, you win a prize! Sadly, it's only another copy of the book you had to buy to take part in the Kurt Andersen Challenge '08 in the first place. But it'll be autographed! Yes, by Kurt Andersen. The lucky winner also gets the unabridged 22-disc audio version, poor thing. But hurry, because Andersen's only giving you until April to play. To be fair, we have absolutely no intention of poring over Heyday's 600-odd pages looking for a mis-typed date, so if you happen across the errors, let us know instead. We will reward you by never giving you the unabridged 22-disc audio version of anything, ever.
After casting my daily vote for The Crunchies awards, I wondered: How does the site stop me from voting more than once a day? Does it just set a cookie, even though that's the first thing any Web 2.0 geek who wants to hack the vote will think of? Can I delete my cookies from vote.crunchies.techcrunch.com and vote again, as many times as I want? Bingo: I can now state with confidence that Digg will sweep this event.
Didn't TechCrunch just run some sort of honors event? They're holding another awards show in two weeks. The contest's Web 2.0 gimmick: The Crunchies' Ajaxified ballot lets everyone vote once a day, every day from sometime before Christmas until the contest closes a week from Saturday — a sort of Persistent People's Choice Awards. I predict Kevin Rose is going to win this one big-time.
Earlier we asked you to send us your whitest. Into our mailbox came belaced souther Goth belles, feisty Koreans and prototypical lummoxes. But the time has come to announce who is the Whitest Kid We Knew. He and a friend (it's a he) win roundtrip airfare to Portland, OR, statistically the whitest city in North America and accommodations at the Ace Hotel in Portland! America, are you ready to meet your best and your Whitest?
Periodically an advertiser gives us (well, someone here!) a lot of money to run a contest. This time around, the advertiser is the sketch comedy show, The Whitest Kids U'Know. Since issues of race are interesting to us anyway, we were happy to create a contest. We're asking you to send a photograph of (wait for it) the whitest kid you know. A couple of things: First, you must actually know this person. We won't accept photographs of, for instance, Sir Harry Evans, unless you actually know Sir Harry Evans! Secondly, the person doesn't have to be white. Race is a social construct. Whiteness can be interpreted in any way you wish. But just like in college, your reading of whiteness must be bolstered by robust argument! Thirdly, you can be the whitest kid you know. Entirely possible, possibly likely! Also, there's a prize and rules.
The Daily News is running a contest to pick New York's Sexiest chef, because it is apparently a blog now. You also enter a contest to win dinner for two. This dinner does not include "wine, beer, liquor or gratuities" and is "subject to availability." Fun! Of the eleven chefs, quite a few lounge in the littoral zone of heteronormative behavior and at least six are either married or in relationships. Also, approximately none of them is actually cute. Except perhaps Sam Mason of Tailor. And he's not only taken but the chef with the most vexed sexual identity.
