This week in her guide to the Times' Book Review, Intern Alexis fights the pleasure-delaying effects of poor page design to report that writing can get you laid, Tina Brown's hubby Harold Evans does indeed write books, and Pepperidge Farm's legal team is no fun. After the jump, her insight on these very important matters, plus some magical trivia to make any Times geek love you to death.
Aside from making Manhattan resemble a soundstage from The Day After Tomorrow, this weekend's lovely snowstorm also prevented Henry the Intern from returning to his dorm room for the new semester. Lucky bastard. Cozied up with a mug of hot cocoa and a cancerous electric blanket, Henry instead got his warmth from the fiery soul of Tina Brown. This week, the Saint Bernard of media interviewed Baghdad Bureau Chief John Burns, radio host Ed Schultz, Blink author Malcolm Gladwell, and still managed to squeeze in some time for obligatory pop critic Tour . After the jump, Henry's weekly report.
We admit that we've sort of begged out of the whole "Gay Abe Lincoln" controversy that's been raging (har har) in the media ever since the release of historian C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.
When pimptastic Bishop Don Magic Juan was confronted by eager Times reporter-cum-rapper David Jay Lansky, he responded, "It's going on, but it's dropping like it's hot. You know what I mean? Step your game down." Because we've suddenly become old and out of touch around here, we had no idea what the Bishop was talking about. We put it to you, the readers, to translate, and one response was particularly lucid:
We really can't imagine anything more amusing than Boldface Names lackey David Jay Lansky proving his urban authenticity to Bishop Don Magic Juan, the man best known for being the pimplike hanger-on to rapper Snoop Dogg. The nonsensical exchange:
Great news for Dennis Quaid, his wife, and the rest of New York's strip club patronage: a new place is coming to town for beautiful (yet slightly misshapen) breasts to be bared. Rick's Cabaret, a chain of "classy" pole-dancing havens in New Orleans and Houston, will be opening in a 33rd street location formerly housing the Paradise, courtesy of Texas businessman Eric S. Langan.
FCC chairman Michael Powell's Super-Bowl-titty-fueled reign of Puritan terror is coming to an end, as Powell will step down from his post today. While this may signal a reduction in the indecency fines that Powell hurled at Hollywood like bolts of lightning from atop Mount Olympus (the Greek mythology one, not the neighborhood above Hollywood Blvd.), we probably shouldn't hold our breath for a more fun-loving successor. And Fox should probably hold off on airing the two hour premiere of My Big Fat Obnoxious Show of Fucking and Godlessness, where Satanists with Tourette's repeatedly copulate with a King James Bible, while simultaneously trying to determine which preschooler was the product of a sperm donation made for rent money. We're not out of the woods yet.
Never wanting to undermine the importance of educating our youth about the tragic tsunami, we're suggesting this morbid—but fun!—learning game from our federal government:
It's still only January, but we think we've found the magazine/newspaper Cover of the Year: The Stranger, Jan. 20-26, 2005.
No one benefits from a break-up. Except when it's a celebrity break-up and the weekly press is involved, apparently.
· The new edition of cryptic restaurant guide She Loves NY is out with a special RESY guide to securing a hot table for February 14th. Slim pickings out there; you'd best be making a reservation somewhere this very minute. [She Loves NY]
· Drinking makes you smart. No, really. [MJS]
· By popular request, it's the homepage of Zoe Alexander, founder of Divas Who Dine, former US Weekly writer and new Editor-at-Large of Life and Style magazine. [Zoe Alexander]
· The darling nihilists at Manhattan User's Guide run their list of what they dread about 2005. Included: more Star Jones, more David Brooks, and more Hilton sisters. [MUG]
A guardian angel with an advance copy of Anna Wintour's biography Front Row alerts us to something inside the forthcoming book (besides mass quantities of Northern Lights): the often-overlooked index feature. If one takes the time, this handy-dandy tool can quickly reveal who is NOT mentioned in the the book, including former Wintour prot
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Kate Betts. That seems sort of unusual, don't you think? Other names ignored by the biography include:
Oh, how we adore the dizzy-headed photo editors over at the Post! They often give us such a jolly chuckle, especially when they totally fuck up pithy items in the hard copy of the paper. Today they've made the fatal mistake of identifying the lady at right as The O.C. star Mischa Barton, when anyone with a bad teen-drama-habit would know that the picture is of Rachel Bilson. Like, duh. We can only imagine how many pimple-faced, adolescent boys are wrought with confusion over this issue; are they masturbating to Mischa or Rachel? And, more importantly, can we ever trust the mainstream press to get the crucial facts right?
