In True Psycho Fashion, Phillip Garrido Had Blog, Heard God
Oh, look! Phillip Garrido, the maniac who kidnapped Jaycee Dugard 18 year ago and then impregnated her, has a blog! And it's scary! Not satisfied with being a kidnapping rapist, Garrido shot for the stars and took it upon himself to be a religious fanatic who believes "the Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order to provide a wake-up call that will in time include the salvation of the entire world." Or that's what he writes on Voices Revealed, a blog associated with God's Desire, a "church" Garrido registered in June of 2008. It's on this blog that Garrido posted a "declaration of affirmation" that insists he can control sound with his mind: This document is to affirm that I Phillip Garrido have clearly demonstrated the ability to control sound with my mind and have developed a device for others to witness this phenomena. by using a sound generator to provide the sound, and a headphone amplification system, ( a device to focuc your hearing so as to increase the sensitivity of what one is listening to) I have produced a set of voices by effectively controlling the sound to pronounce words through my own mental powers. He insists that he's been sent to earth to convey "the Creator's" message. It all began, he rambles, when God removed "a problem from my shoulders that behavioral scientist [sic] believe is not possible to remove." Well, that makes sense. Though he was hellbent on spreading his message, Garrido — who goes by the handle "themanwhospokehismind" — insists he sought no controversy. CONTROVERSY IS NOT WELCOME FOR I CHALLENGE NO ONES PERSONAL BELIEFS CONCERNING GOD. THIS IS TO PROVIDE A WAKE UP CALL THAT WILL BEGIN SAVING LIVES AND OPEN THE NEXT CHAPTER OF DEVELOPING HIS PURPOSE. THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXAMINE HAS COME IN PEACE THROUGH SOUND REASONING TO MATURELY ADDRESS HIS WISDOM IN AN ORDERLY AND KNOWLEDGEABLE MANNER. If Garrido proves anything, it's that Americans do crazy just as good, if not better, than the rest of the world. So, thank you, Mr. G, for helping chip away our illusions of national sanity. MORE >>
The Plight of Print's Lucky Ones
Lest they offend their many laid off friends, anyone who's kept their job in print media will tell you the're one of "the lucky ones." But privately, survivors talk of the malaise sweeping medialand. This is one of them. Our correspondent, who's bounced between magazines and newspapers for about five years now, is glad to have a job, obviously — and is staying anonymous in hopes of keeping it. Please don't turn the comments into a blind item guessing game. The other night, at one of those standard-issue media cocktail parties at a bar on the Lower East Side—the type of casual post-work affair that was a dime a dozen in 2005, back when people had both work and the desire to congregate at a geographically convenient watering hole after it—I ran into Q, a former colleague of mine. We'd worked together for 18 months at the same magazine a couple of years back, after which he left to take a gig at a fashion rag and I went to work at a newspaper. I hadn't talked to him in a while, so I asked him how his job was going. "My job?" he scoffed, almost laughing at the question. "Dude, it is fucking terrible." "Well at least you have a job!" I offered up. And one that pays pretty well. Look at the bright side! It turns out the bright side for Q is still pretty dim. "Basically," he goes—and Q was being totally serious when he said this—"I'm 31 and at a professional dead end. And so are most people in here." We both surveyed the scene, about two dozen veteran Media Professionals posted up by the bar, with a smattering of others smoking cigarettes and chatting in enclosed circles outside. "I mean, think about it. What actual skill do I possess?" He took a gulp of beer. "I edit quips about Marc Jacobs' boyfriend for a living. 'Editing' is not really a job. Not anymore, at least. There are about a million younger, cheaper people who can do what I do, who also happen to know a thousand times more about the internet than I do. Eventually, I'll either die of boredom or get replaced. And then, what? I'll be 35. What the hell am I gonna do with the rest of my life?" Admittedly, complaining about your well-paying job at a time when a lot of very capable people are out of work altogether won't engender any sympathy. But Q's little booze-soaked soliloquy does raise a question that seems to weigh heavily on the minds of media folk of a certain demographic these days (those over the age of, say, 27, who have already spent 5-plus years toiling in the trenches at publications that are vastly different in scope and size than when they started). Namely: Where do we go from here? Because right now, as the Summer of 2009 gives way to fall, the answer is pretty damn unclear. When I graduated from college several years ago, the boilerplate career arc in publishing went a little something like this: pay your dues as an editorial assistant for a couple years, biding your time until you either 1) got promoted and became an associate, or 2) jumped ship to... MORE >>
The TV Reunion Career Success Index
There is a simple formula to determine how successful the stars of hit television shows go on to become: how long it takes before the reunion special. Seinfeld held out for 11 years, how long did everyone else last? The assumption when any television show hit ends its run is that the stars will go on to fame and fortune and other projects. Sometimes that happens and we never hear from them again (see Friends and inexplicably Full House) but when it doesn't, they all rush back to familiar territory to jump start their careers. Here's are scale from the worst to best. Dynasty Final Episode: May 1989 Breakout Stars: Heather Locklear, Emma Samms (just kidding) Reunion: Dynasty: The Reunion aired in August 1991. The came back for another go-round Dynasty Reunion: Catfights and Caviar in 2006. Cause: There were some cliffhanger plotlines to tie up, and really, nobody was doing anything else. Also, shoulder pads were about to go out of style, so they had to do it to save on the wardrobe budget. Held Out: 2 years Respectibility: So bad it's campy. Firefly Final Episode: August 2003 Breakout Stars: Does anyone beside us and hardcore Joss Whedon fans even remember this? Reunion: Serenity hit movie theaters in September, 2005 Cause: To try to get someone, anyone, to finally watch this thing. It failed. Held Out: 2 years Respectibility: Did it have any to start with? Sex and the City Final Episode: February 2004 Breakout Stars: Sarah Jessica Parker, who was the biggest show when the series started. Everyone else found out there really aren't any roles for women over 30. Reunion: Sex and the City: The Movie came out in May 2008 and broke box office records. A sequel is planned Cause: These ladies needed a way to make some money. And, obviously, cosmo-swilling Midwestern "fashionistas" demanded it. Held Out: 4 years. Respectibility: Shameless. The X-Files Final Episode: May 2002 Breakout Stars: David Duchovny, who was only a recurring character on the show's final two seasons, is doing quite well on Californication. Reunion: X-Files: I Want to Believe, the second movie based on the show, failed at the box office in July of 2008. Cause: We still haven't figured this one out. Held Out: 6 years. Respectibility: Pretty lame. Seinfeld Final Episode: May 1998 Breakout Stars: All of them, but the biggest has been Larry David, now of Curb Your Enthusiasm who wasn't even an actor on the show. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is still holding down The Adventures of Old Christine. Jerry Seinfeld sits in his house and counts his money, only leaving occassionally to do stand-up, American Express commercials, and The Bee Movie. Jason Alexander had a few failed sitcoms and KFC commercials. Michael Richards had a racist rant that ruined his career. Reunion: On the cover of Entertainment Weekly August 2009. Cause: They'll all guest on Curb Your Enthusiasm this year, where a Seinfeld reunion becomes a meta plot point. For a giggle. They're all still rolling in residuals. Held Out: 11... MORE >>
The Night Top Chef Became Big Brother
Hello. My name is Joshua David Stein. I tuned in last night to the second episode of Top Chef Las Vegas, a show on Bravo and now, I see, a Gawker advertiser. Uh oh. I suppose it's all fitting in the end. Top Chef like Gawker seems to have made a concerted effort to appeal to the mainstream. In our case—meaning Gawker's—this meant decentralizing the content from its Manhattan-based obsession. I like to think, however, that we haven't assumed that our new national audience isn't an army of fools. We've simply broadened the focus. Bravo, however, has premised its national appeal on the supposition that everybody is an idiot asshole. They may not all use Axe products, but they are all in need of the sort of oversimplified grande geste aesthetic that presupposes a lack of not only basic motor skills but any capacity for subtle discerning thought. How else could one explain the elimination challenge, as essentialist and retrograde a premise as Robert Bly's Iron John? A boys and girls team for a bachelor and bachelorette party, really, producers, this is what you came up with? What are we, in summer camp again? Bring on the Gaga, let's make gimp bracelets, I'll fingerbang you on the bunk before lights out. Though I find the outvictiming of the cast disheartening, in this case, the lesbians had a point. Not only is the challenge degrading to both women and men by using an entirely irrelevant biological difference to separate the chefs but also forcing them to cook for an even more insulting event, the bachelor/bachelorette party, nights that usually end with the groom being sucked off by a cheap hooker while his friends slap at her tits or with the bride-to-be wandering around First Avenue with a dildo stuck on her forehead, tit hanging out of a novelty t-shirt, shit-faced and smeary and probably crying. I kept waiting for there to be some twist that would save the nominally gay friendly network from the mire of hegemonic reinforcement. Maybe the groom was really a lady? Maybe the lady was really a groom? Both seemed possible. But no. There would be no twist when the twist urgently was needed. But the real condescension wasn't even in the challenge. It extended to the editing. For instance, the battle of the brothers. Was it really necessary to cut to Kevin Bryan every time Mike spoke and vice versa? Must you, oh Ghouls of the Cutting Room, force your narrative down our throats thusly!?!? We get it. They are brothers and are competitive and sometimes compete and use hair gel but not sun screen. And no, showing us a lez table bitching about your insulting challenge does not constitute a "framing of the issue in a way that is accessible to our viewers." It's more of asking the ADF's Special Events committee to plan a "Auschwitz Banquet" called "It's a Gas" and then filming the tears. Now if I don't seem to mention much of the cooking it's because in this episode at least, it was mostly irrelevant. Eve went home, which almost redeemed the... MORE >>
Wall Street Journal Unbelievably Keeping Mark Penn as Columnist
Yesterday we reported that Microtrend-spouting flack Mark Penn's PR firm was using his Wall Street Journal column to drum up PR business. Penn is ethically compromised. But today, the WSJ tells us they're keeping Penn on as a columnist. Cowards. This was the Wall Street Journal's first real test of journalism ethics under Rupert Murdoch's ownership. And, surprisingly, they've fucking failed, big time. The story broke yesterday afternoon—complete with a leaked email showing top execs at Burson-Marsteller suggesting how to use the latest column by Penn, their CEO, as a tool to recruit clients from the industry he wrote about. The paper assured us yesterday they were "looking into it," and cited their clear conflict of interest policy. That policy, they assured us, was the Dow Jones Code of Conduct that we excerpted in our own post yesterday, which demands that the company ensure that: * Our analyses represent our best independent judgments rather than our preferences, or those of our sources, advertisers or information providers; * Our opinions represent only our own editorial philosophies; or * There are no hidden agendas in any of our journalistic undertakings. Well. Didn't take long to throw that away! Today, WSJ spokesman Robert Christie explained the results of the paper's thorough investigation like so: "Mark has assured us that through our conversations that he's complied with his conflict of interest policy. He does not have any glamping clients nor did they target them before the column appeared." That's right: The WSJ's investigation consisted of calling Mark Penn and asking him, "Hey, did you comply with that conflict of interest policy?" The world-famous investigative skills of the WSJ in action, ladies and gentlemen. As a follow-up, we asked Christie if he was implying that it's fine for a columnist to go recruiting clients from a column he just wrote after it's published. His reply: Obviously when you have a contributor, they use a column to market themselves. Clearly what was done is not something that we liked. But we're pretty sure that it's going to stop. The Wall Street Journal is "pretty sure" that Mark Penn's PR firm will stop using its CEO's purportedly unbiased column as a business recruitment tool! Why are they "pretty sure?" Because Mark Penn said so! Fuck that published email evidence, anyhow! It was on a "blog," and "blogging" hasn't been a Microtrend for like two years. Here's what this means for you, the reader of the WSJ: You should assume, when you read a Mark Penn column, that Burson-Marsteller will run to the leading companies in any industry mentioned in that column and set up meetings for them with Mark Penn, who will try to use that column as a tool to recruit them as PR clients. If you really want to be safe, intellectually, it only makes sense to also assume that Mark Penn may decide what to write his columns about based on the business needs of Burson-Marsteller—which are, after all, his... MORE >>
Who Will Be The Next Kennedy Idol?
In the wake of Ted Kennedy's death, many people are assuming the age of Camelot has come to an end. These people have obviously forgotten the family's fecundity, for there are plenty of Kennedy's to take the helm. While certainly many of the Kennedy clan are in no position to keep the dream alive, there are quite a few who could, if given the chance, maintain the imaginary castle. We've picked out six finalists, all of whom have pros and cons. Who, oh who, has the chops, scandal, ambition and all-around gumption to take Teddy's place at the top of the sprawling dynasty? MORE >>
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