Never Piss Off David Letterman
John Michael Higgins isn't a household name, but you've probably seen him acting in Christopher Guest films and/or as Wayne Jarvis on Arrested Development. He also portrayed Letterman in The Late Shift, something he says Letterman still hates him for. The Late Shift, a 1996 HBO movie based on a book by the New York Times' Bill Carter, chronicled the infamous struggle between David Letterman and Jay Leno to replace Johnny Carson as the host of the Tonight Show after his retirement. Higgins, in an interview with Starpulse's Mike Ryan, said that he knew at the time he was offered the role that the film would be controversial and that he risked facing a backlash within the notoriously petty industry for taking the role, but at the time he was a struggling actor who desperately needed $300 to fix his broken-down car. They had a hard time casting it for that reason. And he was very powerful — and is. He didn't like the project from the beginning and didn't make it easy for me — or for anyone doing that project. It was (pauses) it was hard. I took it because I needed to fix the steering column on my Subaru is why I took it. I needed $300 or I wouldn't have a steering wheel. So, I ended up making more than $300 but in the end it's one of those jobs you just can't... I could not turn it down. I may be able to turn it down now, but I couldn't at the time. It would just be completely crazy and irresponsible. You know, it was scary. I was scared of it. No question. Actually, doing the job itself was a tricky acting challenge but I had had harder acting challenges onstage. That part wasn't so bad, it was the appendant hoopla which was difficult for me to navigate and I didn't do it that well because I was so inexperienced. There was a lot of press, there was a lot of interviews and comparing me. And [Letterman] was saying things about me on his television program. It was difficult. I didn't know what I was doing. I had a lot of help from HBO's publicity department who was holding my hand through it because I suddenly was in a rather glaring spotlight. Mostly not because of the project, which was good, but it wouldn't have gotten all that press. It was mostly because of the nature of the project. An inside, big Hollywood story where people were actually getting represented on the screen. People who are alive and well. It was a great opportunity and it was really daunting and scary. It was like, "Should I do this? This could end it all. This could start and end the whole thing." Thankfully, it didn't. Higgins also said that Letterman has refused to speak to him in the years that have passed since, though he was booked to appear on Letterman's show, only to get bumped without explanation. There was a famous incident where he invited me to the show and I got bumped off the show. Everyone sort of tried to figure out what happened there ... it's odd though, it's an interesting job. It's really interesting to industry people. To still be talking... MORE >>
The Birthers: Who Are They and What Do They Want?
Liz Cheney and Lou Dobbs have recently defended the "birthers," the dumb group of internet psychos who think it's impossible that a black man could've been democratically elected president. Where did they come from and what do they actually believe? Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. Here is is birth certificate. Hawaii was and is an American state. When Barack Obama was elected, he was 47 years old and had lived in the US since 1971. According to the Constitution, the president must be a natural-born citizen 35 years old or order who has lived in the US for 14 years. Barack Obama is eligible to be the president. It's that simple. Unless you're in America's fastest-growing group of nuts with modems, the Birthers! Then it is much more complicated, and stupid. Who Are They? Where Did They Come From? It's hard to say who was the first Birther. It was obvious that a segment of the American people would reject the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency, as they rejected Bill Clinton and as others rejected Bush (though Bush actually legit wasn't elected fyi). It is just weird that they all decided on such a lame and easily disproved conspiracy theory. So. Right. First off, a black man named Barack Hussein Obama becomes a Senator and delivers a rousing speech on national television. Certain people are going to assume he is a Muslim, and certain other people are going to try to convince everyone that he's a Muslim. Rumors and smears like this are hard to track back to individuals, as they form and are molded in lengthy chain email forwards and pseudonymous message board posts. But Andy Martin, a crazy and litigious antisemite, is credited with amping up the Muslim rumors mere weeks after the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His "press release" was picked up, of course, by Free Republic, a message board for the nuttiest of the right-wing nuts. Martin's "secret Muslim" theory led to the "Islamic madrassa" story. In October of 2008, Martin filed another of his many, many lawsuits, this one against the state of Hawaii, demanding they "verify" Barack Obama's birth certificate. At this point, though, Martin was claiming that Obama's "real father" was a radical Hawaiian journalist, so it is not entirely clear if he is actually a birther, or just a fucked-up attention-seeker. Jerome Corsi, bizarro all-purpose conspiracy theorist and smear artist, has done more than perhaps anyone else to further the Birther movement. As the superstar co-author of the anti-John Kerry Swift Boat book, he had a platform and an audience of die hard crazies willing to promote anything he wrote. And so he detours into claims that Obama's birth certificate is a forgery while promoting his book of more traditional smears and innuendo. And he writes for World Net Daily, a daily repository of conspiracies, lies, and insanity. The right-wing "news" site publishes a new piece on the Obama birth conspiracy every day. You've got to keep the suckers coming... MORE >>
NYC Prep: Dreams Are Wishes The Heart Makes
Dreams! NYC Prep was all about dreams last night. Not the fitful things that muddy up your mind while you try to get a good sleep. The beautiful faraway things that some people might call Wants. Singing careers! Fashion! Singing careers and fashion are, sadly, the only things that any kid wants anymore. Trade schools are left dusty and empty, doors creaking sadly in cold prairie breezes. Veterinarians stand stethoscope-draped and wondering and alone, no pupils to guide, sick dogs whimpering quietly, forgotten. No one studies history anymore! All the old stories are lost, there is only the bright, loud, metallic future. Mysteries of science will remain forever so, ignored and left to other, imaginary minds. Because singing and fashion! Singing and fashion and maybe acting too, they are all the kids dream of these days. We're a nation of wannas and very few bes. Rich prep school kids are no exception. Well, OK, maybe they are a bit. Cockly Camille wants some sort of Career, sure. But she wants it for all the wrong reasons. Who knows what Sebastian wants. Probably just to minnow his way into as many girls' pants as he can before time marches away and leaves him behind. The other four—furtive PC, demanding Jessi, pointy Kelli, aching Rags—all they're concerned with are lights, bright lights shining only on them. They all want to be noticed, these kids, because the world has become both too small and too large. A terrible equation for this Goldilocks generation. Rambling, is what I'm doing. What I mean to say is this: Last night's episode was all about reaching for things. About going about the work of becoming a grownup. About finding that label that we slap on our chests in this awkward professional conference called life. Let's start over there. Do you see where I'm pointing, to that pile of stones and broken harmonicas? Let's go over there. Follow me. Whatever happened to the old hobo dances? Those lurching, primal, exuberant things that thundered down on the muddy expanses of sagging America? That sang you to sleep in railway hotels. That asked things of Hoover in an ancient, universal language. They're mostly gone now. Mostly. Old Rags McTattershanty, her heart stitched together from bits of cloth and wax paper, still carries a small flickering torch. Yes, she wants to dance. She wants to do gymnastics and date rich boys and maybe study philosophies or train elephants, but for now she's pretty focused on dance. And she seems good at it! Her brother, Mechanical Jim, and her road-mother, Dolores Gingerslacks, went to one of her dance recitals and we got to see some of her chops. Before she started, though, there was sort of an embarrassing incident. See, she was wearing some sort of dance frock, and oof, there was a hole in the crotchal region! Aieeee! How mortifying for an already worried teen. I mean, had she been true to hobo tradition a hole anywhere on a garment would be a badge of honor. A welcome place for worms and dust and... MORE >>
Henry Louis Gates Is Quite the Grown-Up About That Whole Racist Arrest Thing
Henry Louis Gates has given a couple interviews about his arrest at his home in Cambridge last week, and though he's still mad, he seems fairly magnanimous about the whole affair: "I'm glad that this lady called 911." Gates granted an interview to his daughter Elizabeth in the Daily Beast (which—between contributors Meghan McCain and Luke Parker Bowles—is rapidly becoming the outlet of choice for the blood kin of the contemporary aristocracy). His take on his own tour through the criminal justice system is tempered by his role as an educator, which makes him laudably reasonable about something that justifiably pissed him of royally. While some observers—well, OK, this observer—were quick to accuse the white Harvard employee who called the cops after seeing Gates and his driver trying to enter his home of racism, Gates disagrees: We depend on the police-I'm glad that this lady called 911. I hope right now if someone is breaking into my house she's calling 911 and the police will come! I just don't want to be arrested for being black at home! I think this was a bit of an extreme reaction. And he doesn't even accuse the cop who hauled him off to jail of being a racist so much as an angry and vindictive man who looked viewed the incident through a racial lens: If I had been white this incident never would have happened. He would have asked at the door, "Excuse me, are you okay? Because there are two black men around here try'na rob you [laughter] and I think he also violated the rules by not giving his name and badge number, and I think he would have given that to one of my white colleagues or one of my white neighbors. So race definitely played a role. Whether he's an individual racist? I don't know-I don't know him. But I think he stereotyped me. And since Harvard academics already narrate their lives to themselves as an ongoing PBS documentary, Gates figures he might as well turn his arrest into a real one. He told the Root, of which he is the founder: As a college professor, I want to make this a teaching experience. I am going to devote my considerable resources, intellectual and otherwise, to making sure this doesn't happen again. I'm thinking about making a documentary film about racial profiling, and I'm in talks with PBS about that. He similarly told the Boston Globe: If he apologizes sincerely, I am willing to forgive him. And if he admits his error, I am willing to educate him about the history of racism in America and the issue of racial profiling … That's what I do for a living. One weird thing: Gates repeatedly disputed the allegation in the police report that he was behaving in a "loud and tumultuous" manner, claiming that a respiratory infection he'd contracted on a visit to China prevented him from yelling. He told the Root that the claim was "a joke...because I have a severe bronchial infection...for which I was treated and have a doctor's report from the Peninsula hotel in Beijing," and made the... MORE >>
Media Protests Naked Erin Andrews Pics with Photo Galleries
Oh, how the American media wishes that some sex perv had never secretly recorded a nude video of shapely ESPN reporter Erin Andrews! Then the media would not have been forced to discuss this disgusting spectacle. And make photo galleries! Health care reform. Deficits. Astronomy. All subjects that our nation's few remaining reporters had to stop working on, as they turned their attention, reluctantly, to this tawdry spectacle of a much fantasized-about blond lady finally caught on tape by a despicable peeping tom. As is customary in matters of media ethics, the New York Post leads the charge. They fully support Andrews' right to put this "PEEP PERV" behind bars. Here's how you can help: peruse their extensive gallery of Erin Andrews glamor shots, and think about whether you might know who taped her, naked. Respectable media outlets are not so low as to write about Erin Andrews' naked Peephole Perv video; they're simply covering the reaction to the video, by less upstanding media outlets, as well as by slobbering sex-crazed animals such as yourself. "The media were happy to feed the frenzy," reports the Washington Post. "Some in the mainstream TV and print media shamefully disseminated it yesterday," clucks Newsday. [Check out their photo gallery, too!] We won't engorge the media's suffering by going on. Suffice it to say that most reporters forced to swallow this prurient story have erected hard barriers to protect their own emotions. The bright side: Yes, "Erin Andrews video peep" was the #1 Google trend this morning, disgustingly, but "Aaron Andrews peephole" was #11. There's something here for all persuasions! [Pic: Getty] MORE >>
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