And they also think it'll go great next to the Miro. Well, either that, or the geniuses who sent some New Yorker subscribers this email are the same geniuses who thought you high-minded snobs wanted to go to the Rose Bowl or cared about Suri Cruise . Your call, really. In any case, act now: supplies are extremely limited!
Yesterday we yelled at the seemingly boneheaded marketers who sent an email about a Rose Bowl trip sweepstakes offer to the erudite deep thinkers who subscribe to the New Yorker. "When was the last time you think a New Yorker reader watched the Rose Bowl, let alone wanted to go to it?" We were wrong again, though — and a reader helpfully corrected us.
A tipster forwards an email sent to New Yorker readers—some sort of bastard child cross-promotion with Conde Nast Traveler and HGTV—offering them the chance to win a "VIP Getaway" to the Rose Bowl, including $10,000 in cash. This offer raises several important questions, chief among them being, when was the last time you think a New Yorker reader watched the Rose Bowl, let alone wanted to go to it? Then again, this is the same marketing department that assumed New Yorker readers were dying for the latest Suri Cruise news.
We get letters. Specifically, we get cc'd on letters alleging journalistic shenanigans. Late last month we mentioned a Nick Paumgarten New Yorker article about the db who wrote The 48 Laws of Power. Comes now correspondence from Chris Lee, an L.A. Times reporter who has what the hip hop community calls a "beef" with Paumgarten.
There's a great piece in this week's New Yorker (not online, unfortunately) about Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, an advice manual basically designed to teach you how to get over. The book is full of all sorts of asshatty "laws" ("Crush your enemy totally," "Play a sucker to catch a sucker," etc.), and, not unsurprisingly, has become something of a bible for society's most repellent figures (Dov Charney has Greene "on retainer."), many of them from the hip hop community. Nick Paumgarten does a heck of a job drawing out Greene's douchery, and you should pick up a print copy to get the full flavor, but here's our favorite part, which takes place at a party celebrating the new Ludacris record:
• Meet Priyantha Silva, the drunken leech who feeds off of Manhattan's more exclusive social scene. As a semi-professional gatecrasher, he poses as Conde Nast editors, claims to be a producer, and like a true ass, pulls the "do you know who I am" routine at doors. Maybe he could go work for Page Six? [Radar]
• This weekend's Saturday Night Live featured a parody of "New York Stories," with Fred Armisen and Amy Poehler playing Lou Reed and Patti Smith, respectively. Their moaning about CBGB and the evils of gentrification is disturbingly spot-on. [YouTube]
• A special moment between New Yorker editor David Remnick and Jon Stewart that you missed — because you, like the rest of the world, couldn't get tickets. [Jazz in Strange Places]
• Will James, beloved cartographer and creator of the grid for our Subway Smell Map, had a nasty server crash last week. Drop him a little recovery change if you can. [onNYTurf]
• Radar publisher Katherine Rizzuto ditches Maer Roshan's pet project before the magazine even launches. Apparently things were so bad, she opted to go to Conde Nast's Bridal Media group instead. [FishbowlNY]
• Getting people to sign off on being ridiculed by Borat is easier than you'd think, considering people are stupid. [Newsweek]
"Ride the snake! That's what Seymour Hersh told me to say."
• This three minute, well-disguised "commercial" for Remington might be the most ridiculous display of pubic hair humor we've seen since the 8th grade. [Kontraband via Adrants]
• So everyone loves Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. But there's one real problem: how can you have a show about a show and not have a single Jew on the fictitious writing staff? [Peter Hyman]
• If someone says they have more than enough time to read every word of every issue of the New Yorker, they're lying and should be smacked. For the realists, try a condensed version of articles presented in haiku. [Drunken Volcano]
• Nearly 10% of New York men who say they are "straight" are dipping in the secret shame of assfucking. Of that number, almost 70% are married and 100% are in complete denial. [NYDN]
• It would seem that Anna Nicole Smith's son Daniel died of a fatal drug combination, likely involving prescription drugs. Or not. The crew down in the Bahamas is too busy fighting with the press to take a good look at the body. [TMZ]
• The assistant to the EIC of Architectual Digest starts a video blog, in which she'll tell us how to find good design despite, like her, being 25, on a budget, and living in a shoebox. Solution number one: buy a $6000 storage unit. Sigh. And to think, this poor girl probably isn't getting paid one penny extra for the humiliation. [AD]
• American Apparel sets up camp in the epicenter of retro sexiness and legwarmers, the...Flatiron District. [The Real Estate]
• Are you Middle Eastern or Asian? Do you like movies? Then you're in luck, because the CIA wants to indoctrinate you. [Salon]
• Tara Reid decides to have her breast implants removed, and Time Warner decides to have her latest "film" go direct to download. Hardly a coincidence. Without the boobs, she's just a human boda bag. [Defamer]
• Katie Couric's first week is accompanied by her first blog, a rambling, 10000-word treatment on the importance of being perky, complete with Karen Carpenter lyrics. Congrats, Katie. You're really done something. [Couric & Co.]
• Kazakhastan is now denying that Borat will be a topic during meetings with the U.S. This is just fantastic, isn't it? An international debate on whether or not a fictional character will be discussed at a diplomatic summit. No wonder the terrorists hate us. [The Blotter]
• If JK Rowling has to give up the manuscript for the final Harry Potter book, then the terrorists really have won. [BBC]
• Fashion Week is all about luxurious balls. [Coutorture]
• Lydia Hearst fashion porn: scary, and yet we can't look away. [Bastardly]
• Path to 9/11 producers depict American Airways personnel cheerfully letting Mohammad Atta on the plane; it was actually cheerful US Airways personnel who did so, and it's going to cost ABC some advertising dollars. [Consumerist]
• Jay McInerney has yet to master the art of walking while tipsy. You'd think, but you'd be wrong. [Belle in the Big Apple]
• Sure is hard to make friends in this town. [NYP]
• Watching a blogger get his first death threat is like watching your child take his first steps. He's not our baby, but we're still proud of him. [Goldenfiddle]
• Read the New Yorker and live to be 102. Yay, ancient people! Yay, Conde Nast! [EmDashes]
• Critics still really, RILLY love The Wire. [Test Pattern]
• Drinking = money. No, really. Rejoice! [AP]
'People have forgotten that - and this is not by any means an exaggeration - David was the great newspaper reporter of his generation. And had he never been anything but a newspaper reporter he would be, right now, the best. At the Washington Post there was one day when he had three stories on the front page, which I don't think has ever been repeated. He was in a league by himself. So the idea that he would have a second act where he would outperform his first act is kind of unbelievable.'
New Yorker Festival Tickets are on sale RIGHT NOW! Rush your ass over to Ticketmaster or risk being shut out of Sasha Frere-Jones' dance party! Do you really want to be the only one in your circle who doesn't see Bill Buford discuss pig butchery with Mario Batali? (Try not to shake Batali's hand; it may be catching.) And how could you pass up the opportunity to spend hours on a boat with Paul Goldberger and dozens of bald men wearing Danny Libeskind glasses? Once these tickets are gone, they're gone; hurry up and get them now. Oddly enough, this is not an advertisement. Consider it news you can use.
• The animal kingdom embraces the death penalty, celebrates the demise of Steve Irwin. [Daily Gut]
• OMG KATIE COURIC TONIGHT OMG CBS OMG LEGS.
• John Travolta: gaygaygaygay. [National Post]
• Did Jessica Simpson lip-sync on today's episode of The View? Is that why we were kind of digging it? [BWE]
• Preteen Observer publisher Jared Kushner knows when to pull punches: when advertisers are involved, obviously. Go ahead, son, you can admit it. [The Real Deal]
• The New Yorker gets polybagged, and nary a sideboob to show for it. [Living With Legends]
• The Lower East Side and East Village become sprinkled with random instances of public art. One man projected his video art onto Ludlow Street, where a dickbag might conveniently vomit on said artistic efforts. [Metro]
• After being charged with five counts of posession of just about everything, junkie Brit rocker Pete Doherty dodges the slammer after a judge admits to liking one of his songs. You know, here in the States, at least our justices pretend to be impartial to Snoop Dogg lyrics... [Daily Mail]
• Starbucks: terribly indie, boho. [Copyranter]
• Steely Dan turns towards indier-than-thou director Wes Anderson. Only classic rock can help him. [Steely Dan]
• Meachem, Newsweek, official, newsweeklies, yawn, dentures, blahblahblah. [Reuters]
• Fake hipsters hate on fake hipsters behind web show The Burg. It's the circle of post-post-life. [The Burg]
• R.I.P. Willi Ninja. [Keith Boykin]
One of the vows we took when coming aboard the good ship Gawker was to drastically reduce the coverage of media softball games: Frankly, we couldn't give a shit about a bunch of folks who all went to the same six schools tossing spherical objects around Central Park, and, really, we felt bad about taking material that should rightfully belong to Deadspin. This morning, however, we were forwarded Matt Dellinger's coverage of the recent New Yorker/Harper's outing, and, well, it's just so adorable that we have to share it with you. See, Matt wrote it up Harper's Index Style, which, if not necessarily comedy gold, is certainly comedy silver. After the jump, see what Conde Nast employees do instead of fixing up their website.
Israeli journalist Lisa Goldman reproduces an interesting story regarding the friendship recently established between the respective editors of Time Out Beirut and Time Out Tel Aviv. Though TOB has ceased publication for obvious reasons, TOTA ran a July 20 cover (shortly after the more overt hostilities commenced) that's a variation-homage on the classic "View of New York from Ninth Avenue" cover from the New Yorker. Of course, the view across the river on the TOTA cover is a bit less sanguine than that which inspired it. Full image after the jump. (Bonus: Compare, contrast, and discuss Time Out New York's cover, "The War for Brooklyn.")
• The unthinkable has finally occurred in Dan Radosh's New Yorker anti-caption contest. The seas shall boil with blood, fire will rain from the sky, Mr. Shawn will rise from the dead, etc. [Radosh]
• Is this Sarah Kellen, scheduler of Jeffrey Epstein's "massages"? Either way, kinda cute. [Dealbreaker]
• Speaking of Epstein, Mark Green is returning his $10,000 campaign donation. We're gonna go with, "Think about what kind of action that money can buy." [NYDN]
• Mel Gibson's in recovery. For the alcoholism; don't ask about the other thing. [Star]
• Nancy assaults Sluggo; humorless Brooklyn women unamused. Nobody tell them about Andy Capp. [PWD]
• Wanna be a porn star? Fleshbot can make it happen. And this is a real contest, it's nothing like what happened with that guy you met at Fontana's last weekend. [Fleshbot]
• Anne Hathaway is not a good restaurant patron. [Tip or Tat]
• Bridal shower shopping at Macy's. Just reading this one gives us a headache. [Z. Madison]
• Sulzbergers buying up NYT stock. Insert your own "at least someone's buying The Times" joke here. [Boston Herald]
• Is Portfolio the new Inside.com? Probably not, but it gives us the excuse to mention that Kurt Andersen quote about how getting funding for Inside was as easy "as getting laid in 1969" again. Ha ha, what a douchebag. [Hard, Cutting]
• After last week's piece on Wikipedia, The New Yorker turns once again to the Internet, looking this time at citizen journalists or some such. We liked it better when The New Yorker's web coverage was mainly just Rebecca Mead writing about Meg Hourihan. [NYer]
OCD dreams can come true: blogger Emdashes has managed to score herself the top two cardigan-wearing New Yorker librarians, Jon Michaud and Erin Overbey, to write her new column, Ask the Librarians (see, this is what happens when your gilded publishing house can't get its online ass in gear — the employees give the content to blogs). When we first heard about this, we were under the impression that it was to be an Ask the New Yorker feature, so we had inquisitive readers come up with some pressing issues deserving of an answer. While librarians aren't quite as exciting as le Gopnik, we're sure they can nonetheless entertain. Right?
Emily Gordon of EmDashes has roped two anonymous New Yorker staff members into participating in a Q&A with her readers:
