In case you weren't sure, old guys proudly purchasing young girlfriends for many thousands of dollars with the help of the internet is a totally mainstream phenomenon, now. A Manhattan "mixer" for SeekingArrangement.com (ticket price: $80 for daddies, $40 for babies) drew 400 people on Monday night, the New York Post reports:
Saying you follow the Moorish Science faith has become the new "I'm 1/16th Cherokee," at least among financial fraudsters. All across our great, greedy nation, people are falsely claiming Moorish Scientist status in order to file phony legal documents, avoid paying taxes, and declare one's self above the law, among other illegal things.
Classy American racist Donald Trump is enjoying his post-almost-presidency repose the way any exceedingly wealthy titan of industry would: By trying to peddle cheesy photos of himself and his family to tabloids for $20,000.
No sooner does a team of anonymous American heroes risk their lives in pursuit of a solemn oath of justice than a multinational cartoon corporation seeks to profit from it with shitty tchochkes. Two days after members of the Navy's SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden, Disney trademarked the name for use in, among other things, "Christmas tree ornaments."
Twitter, the lavishly funded microblogging service, is bullying its hometown of San Francisco into $22 million in tax breaks even as the city cuts health, police, transit and virtually all other city services. So much for Twitter's bleeding heart pretensions.
All Madonna wanted was her own private school for impoverished African girls, just like Oprah has (minus the molesty stuff). What she got is a PR nightmare. Her mismanaged charitable foundation, Raising Malawi, is on the verge of collapse, and $3.8 million designated for the school have all but vanished into thin air.
"Greed, greed, and more fucking greed." We've all heard the schpiel about how we got into this economic mess plenty of times (maybe not enough), but have you heard it from a true Irishman, accent and all? Now you have.
The Way We Live Now: stocking up on outrage. You can't blow all your outrage at once during this long and protracted class war. You have to parcel it out. Like budgeting for food, or cable, or your upcoming funeral.
Mercury levels emitted from three Ohio power plants have more than doubled over the past few years. Why, you might ask? So the power company can save money, of course. We're in a recession, people!
Because Congress is populated by venal idiots, the estate tax expires on January 1, 2010 only to rise again on January 1, 2011. So rich old people everywhere are deliberately engineering their lives to end during the next calendar year.
Did you hear about that little scandal over at AIG? Yea, well, someone's been stealing Vikram Pandit's copy of the Journal from his doorstep the past few mornings because Bloomberg just dropped the bombshell that Citigroup plans to spend "about $10 million" building out new offices for Pandit and his top lieutenants. According to affidavits filed with New York's Department of Buildings, the bank that has collected $45 billion from the U.S. government will spend at least $3.2 million constructing 17 offices. But when you account for the architect's fees—and add in the cost of furniture—"the tally for the offices at the bank's Park Avenue headquarters will be at least three times as high." But it sure sounds like it will be lovely: The plans "specify the installation of at least one Sub-Zero refrigerator and icemaker in the renovated space, along with 'premium grade' millwork and Madico Inc. 'Safety Shield 800' blast-proof window film." Too bad by the time construction work is done, Pandit will be out of a job.
The trailer above is just a sampling of the vaguely lesbionic tussling that can be found in Polanski's short film Greed, which is exclusively showing over at Dazed Digital. The project is the latest work from artist Francesco Vezzoli, who's known for creating trailers, premieres, and now a perfume ad for products that don't actually exist (you may remember his fake coming attraction for a Caligula remake starring Courtney Love, Benicio del Toro, and Helen Mirren). Finally, we've found a plausible explanation of the trailer for Crank 2: High Voltage!
