In your even-keeled Wednesday media column: masthead changes at the NYT, women vs. men in journalism, the WSJ loves video, Shep Smith's pad is for sale, and News Corp paper analyzes James Murdoch's future.
Kids these days should be thankful to even get accepted into a community college, what with the parents of kids these days having so little money to donate to the endowments of Ivy League universities. Unfortunately for kids these days, community colleges these days are way more crappy than expensive colleges these days. Sucks to be poor these days!
Eight long years after Buffy the Vampire Slayer slayed its last, beloved heroine Sarah Michelle Gellar returned to the airwaves last night in The CW's Ringer, a soap opera noir that, in some ways true to its theme, only hit half the right notes.
Amanda Seyfried loves sex scenes, particularly an "extreme close-up" of herself rubbing tongues with Megan Fox. Olivia Wilde says she needs "four vaginas." Lil' Wayne talks Tea Party. Scarlett Johansson faces a naked picture scandal. Wednesday gossip needs a cold shower.
This musical mistress picked a hell of a time to get it on with the limo driver. There's a bunch of juicy Fashion Week blinds, and one about a Disney star having gay cyber sex. Think he's into role playing as a limo driver?
"I don't encourage fighting, it's not the right thing to do," says concerned Long Island mom Daphne Melin, who's just been arrested for allegedly encouraging her tween daughter to fight and for beating on a 12-year-old.
Here's a full-length, at last!, trailer for November's The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, the penultimate installment in the vampyr love story that's really just Mormon allegory. And guys! Look! They fuck!
Meet "Carla," who earned her law degree a decade ago and actually used it, unlike some people we know. In 2009 she was laid off and couldn't find another law job, because they've all been outsourced or backsourced or stolen by the Olds. So she found what her law school's Office of Career Services might call "an alternative career."
On September 11, a Muslim man going by the name "Tarek G." on Yelp ordered a burger from the Houston restaurant Petrol Station and received it in a "Happy September 11" box complete with an airplane crashing into one of the Twin Towers. Now that's personalized customer service.
One day after Anderson Cooper premiered his new daytime talk show with a somber interview of Amy Winehouse's family, Tuesday's episode of Anderson—which featured Jersey Shore star Snooki—showcased his lighter side. Cooper's lightest side also made an appearance when he stripped down for a Snooki supervised spray-on tanning session.
Some (different) people are so convinced that Wi-Fi and mobile phones are making them sick that they're moving to West Virginia's 13,000 square-mile U.S. Radio Quiet Zone, which has no wireless technology so as to avoid interfering with the local telescope. Hey, if Wi-Fi makes trees sick, why not humans?
This two-minute video, taken by Utah State University videographer Chris Garff, provides more thrills, suspense, heroics, and stand-up-and-cheer elation than any movie Hollywood managed to fart out this summer. Watch in real time as a group of bystanders spots Brandon Wright beneath a car, his motorcycle in flames just inches a way. A half-dozen of them try to lift the 4,000 vehicle off of him, but it's too heavy. Then the crowd grows to a dozen, then larger still! Businessmen and businesswomen, construction workers, teenagers in backpacks, first responders, cops — they all just start appearing out of nowhere, and with all their might, they push, push, push! And the car budges! But it might explode at any moment! And then they drag Brandon out! It's absolutely amazing.
Face down, ass up and armed with two big fists on Tuesday's Tonight Show, self-described "wrecking machine" Ellen DeGeneres revealed—and then demonstrated—exactly how she likes to do it as Jay Leno leered over her, stroking his big, long chin in anticipation of... wait, what? Ew, you sicko, I'm talking about push-ups! Now get your mind out of the gutter and watch the video.
Kinde Durkee, a veteran campaign treasurer working for the Democratic Party in California, was arrested on Sept. 2, suspected by federal authorities of having embezzled $1 million. She allegedly ran a kind of campaign-fund Ponzi scheme — funneling money between accounts like a shell game — leading some to call her the "Bernie Madoff of campaign treasurers." (Madoff, who would never be caught dead in a chartreuse smock, would probably bristle at the comparison.) Now several candidates' campaign funds have been completely wiped out, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein's.
Stephen Colbert welcomed former Vice President Al Gore to the Report tonight for a wide-ranging chat—just kidding, it was mostly about global warming because, duh, Al Gore. That notwithstanding, the interview did have two standout moments, including Gore's refusal to reciprocate Rick Perry's 1988 endorsement of him, as well as a conversation about Keith Olbermann that ended with Gore accidentally "outing" Colbert as a character. Here are both of them in one video.
