Have Björk and Matthew Barney Split Up?
Oh, the art world! Like any insular set of people, it's always swirling with the best rumors. The mystery that arty people are currently exploring: has Matthew Barney left his hipster elf wife Björk for sometimes-lesbian painter Elizabeth Peyton? When we first heard the tale, the first thing we thought of was, of course, real estate. Mr. and Mrs. Barney just purchased a house in Brooklyn Heights. However, they still haven't gotten rid of their West Houston Street apartment or their house in Snedens Landing, N.Y. Either they bought the Brooklyn house so that one of them could live their with their daughter, or they just wanted more room and can't get rid of either property in the shitty real estate market. Maybe Barney's relationship with Peyton holds the key. The two worked together in June at the Diest Foundation for Contemporary Art on the Greek island of Hydra. Peyton, who is well known for painting and photographing her friends and lovers, displayed images of Barney during an exhibit last year. But how intimate are the two? After divorcing her husband Rirkrit Tiravanija in 2004, Peyton lived with artist Tony Just for several years but early this year, an article in Frieze magazine states that curator Pati Hertling is her partner. In February a pair of lesbian aritsts tried to throw a "welcome back Elizabeth Peyton as gay party before being hit with what they said was a "cease-and-desist letter." So, what do all these rumors mean for Björk and Barney? We don't know, but if you have any scoop, please fill us in. MORE >>
After Cera, Who Is America's Next Hoodie Hearthtrob?
With the fall of Michael Cera, the hipsters who run the world have gone into overdrive searching for the sexiest Man/Boy Alive. The landscape is littered with contenders but no clear frontrunner has yet emerged. Below we evaluate the field and try to make sense of this all-important contest. Whose name are tomorrow's independent book store clerks going to scribble with little hearts around on in their mock-elementary school notepads? The critical attributes: anemic complexion and disposition; fixed expression of terror at the big, scary world; credible devotion to obscure bands; still owns and fits into his childhood summer camp warddrobe. Past work with Kristen Stewart or Zooey Deschanel vital. Stutter strongly encouraged. Candidates who were initially child stars have the strong advantage of being raised in hothouse environment which enforces stunted emotional development, like Catalina Island buffalo. The Contenders: Joseph Gordon Levitt Strengths: Looks as though he has been protected from sunlight since birth. Had small role in hipster ironic landmark Family Ties. Appeared in two classics of hoodie cinema — Brick and 500 Days of Summer. In the latter, had a relationship with a girl based on their common love of The Smiths. Went to Columbia University where he studied French Poetry. Maintains a website on which he features short films. Weaknesses: Also appeared in 3rd Rock From the Sun which is decidedly not part of the ironic canon. Didn't ever wear a hoodie in 500 Days. Kristen or Zooey: Zooey in 500 Days. The Morning Line: On paper, this kid has it all. Would be a serious contender for the title even if Cera were still at his height. The only question is has he peaked and revealed too many hipster credentials too fast? Jesse Eisenberg Strengths: Has perfected world class look of terror and befuddled amazement. Mother was a clown. Did entire film in 80's garb. Appeared in indie films while still very young. Weaknesses: Despite perpetually adolescent jew-fro, mature range of expression is upsettingly evocative of burgeoning adulthood. Kristen or Zooey: Kristen in Adventureland. The Morning Line: A strong contender; making an 80's period piece was an inspired play to the hoodie base the importance of which can not be underestimated. However, outbreaks of adulthood can not be ignored and ultimately may prove crippling. Emile Hirsch Strengths: Mother designed pop-up books. Specializes in playing intense and offbeat dreamers. Learned how to skateboard for Lords of Dogtown. Weaknesses: Cleans up a bit too well, as demonstrated in Speed Racer. Conventionally not quirkily handsome. Tends towards athletic, active characters. Kristen or Zooey: Kristin in Into the Wild. The Morning Line; Has some strong off-beat appeal but ultimately might have soaked up a bit too much California sunshine in his Malibu youth to effectively represent Hoodie Nation. Jon Foster Strengths: Hippie parents. Steady run of indie films. Broke into public view in... MORE >>
Who Is Van Jones?
The story of how the President's Special Advisor for Green Jobs became the biggest, scariest villain of the right wing (this week, anyway) is also the story of how the right wing information delivery process works now. Here's the biography of Van Jones: he was a bookish black kid from Tennessee who went to Yale Law and moved to San Francisco and became a radical. Then he decided to use his law degree and smarts to clean up and make things better from inside the establishment. He was, he openly acknowledges, a "full-on Marxist" in early '90s California. He joined a revolutionary Marxist group and protested police brutality. Then he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which combats over-incarceration, police brutality, and urban poverty and violence. Running a civil rights group dedicated to producing real and immediate improvements in urban life will make a revolutionary Marxist a bit more pragmatic. Jones began focusing on job creation, and, with a bit of prognostic intuition that ought to put Thomas Friedman to shame, he decided, in the late-'90s, to focus on "Green Jobs." This is, you know, capitalism—he wants to create wealth, and use market forces to make the world and black communities better places! And in 2008 he wrote a book called The Green Collar Economy, and it made the Times best-seller list, making him as much of a figure of the mainstream as Sean Hannity or Malcolm Gladwell. So here we have a radical youth turned respectable liberal. Respectable enough to be on Time magazine listicles and win World Economic Forum prizes and everything. Respectable enough for Tom Friedman to profile him. And The New Yorker. Respectable enough for Meg Whitman, as in former eBay CEO and wealthy Republican California gubernatorial candidate and John McCain advisor Meg Whitman, to proclaim herself "a huge fan of Van Jones." And for both his activism and his charm he was rewarded with a White House job with the Council on Environmental Quality. He was tasked with making sure stimulus money for green jobs actually went to green jobs. And he's a great person to have in this administration—he is a genuine environmentalist and the only special interest he's beholden to is poor people. He is the sort of person we were all praying Obama would bring with him to DC, instead of Larry Summers. And that is one of the reasons he is now being ritually and savagely demonized. To understand why and how he's being demonized, we have to look at the way information and misinformation makes it way from crazy blogs to crazy pundits to crazy citizens to, suddenly, the non-crazy regular media. The "why" is simple: he is a genuine left-wing liberal with a White House job. He is black. He used to be radical, and probably still has radical sympathies (you know, caring about poor black people and all that). He is, in other words, fucking terrifying, if you frame his story right. World Net Daily is an old and hugely popular far-right conspiracy "news"... MORE >>
Эй, вы можете прочитать запрещенную статью GQ про Путина здесь
In an act of publishing cowardice, Condé Nast has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent Russians from reading a GQ article criticizing Vladimir Putin. As a public service, we're running it here and ask for your help in translating it. [Second Update: Here's a convincing example of the power of crowdsourcing. A few hours later and we have a good chunk of the first half of the story translated. We've posted what we've received so far from volunteer translators. To fill in the gaps, I ran some of the original story through Google Translate and the garbled Russian it kicked out is in red text. We'd be very grateful for someone to do an actual translation. Please email me if you have some time tonight or tomorrow. Same goes for the pages where we have no text. Thank you to everyone who has pitched in.] The article, "Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power" by veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson, quotes a former KGB official on the record and at length implicating Russia's shadow leader in a string of Moscow apartment bombings that killed hundreds in 1999 and were officially blamed on Chechen terrorists. The wave of fear created by the attacks played a critical role in launching Putin to power. NPR's David Folkenflik's jaw-dropping report explains the extreme measures Condé Nast lawyers have taken to bury the magazine piece: Conde Nast owns Vanity Fair and GQ as well as other publications, including Russian versions of GQ, Glamour, Tatler and Vogue. On July 23, Jerry S. Birenz, one of the company's top lawyers, sent an e-mail memo to more than a dozen corporate executives and GQ editors. "Conde Nast management has decided that the September issue of U.S. GQ magazine containing Scott Anderson's article 'Vladimir Putin's Dark Rise to Power' should not be distributed in Russia," Birenz wrote. He ordered that the article could not be posted to the magazine's Web site. No copies of the American edition of the magazine could be sent to Russia or shown in any country to Russian government officials, journalists or advertisers. Additionally, the piece could not be published in other Conde Nast magazines abroad, nor publicized in any way. It wasn't just that there was no reference to Anderson's piece on the cover of this month's GQ, which featured a picture of Michael Jackson, a reference to tennis star Andy Roddick's wife and a ranking of obnoxious colleges and top drinking cities. At this writing, I cannot find any reference to Anderson's piece on the Internet. We are working to get a Russian translation of the story posted here. Russian-speaking readers have already helped us get through the bulk of it, but the more eyes the better. If you'd like to help out, please email me directly. We've also included a scan of the complete story is included. You can click any of the images of the original pages to see larger, legible versions. Никто не осмелится назвать это тайнмым заговором. Десять лет... MORE >>
Project Runway: Smells Like Low Tide
Project Runway is all about vision and delusion. The vision to craft an episode around surf wear, the delusion it won't be the worst episode ever. The vision of picking a strong teammate , the delusion that it will save you. Yes, that's right, last night's episode might have been the worst single episode in Project Runway history. Yes, that's right, even worse than season four menswear debacle. Nothing about this episode made sense, from the challenge to the judging to the way teams were picked. It's almost like new team Bunim/Murray Productions is a first year teacher in an inner city school: the new season starts and everyone's fresh and full of ideas, but around three weeks in, they realize they're in an impossible situation and they just start doing anything they can just to make it through the day. Wait until episode nine! Anyway, because we're now in California, we had to go to the beach. Not a bad idea, but calling in the extras from Blue Crush to give a half ass tutorial on surf wear just wasn't cutting it. And then the big twist! A second look! Oh, we've never seen that trick before. And the look has to be avant-garde. What the fuck does the cutting edge have to do with clothes that are usually found at Pacific Sunwear in the mall. Absolutely nothing. When they did a couture/wearable challenge in season four, at least the two made sense together. Also, the picking of the teams was totally ludicrous. A "team leader" was selected arbitrarily and then each designer picked a mate. Stupid! So you had "leaders" like Mitchell, perhaps the most ill-equipped designer in Runway history as a "leader" for no good reason. It makes no sense. And we just used scare quotes. We hate this fucking challenge. What We Hate: The challenge: See above. Ms. Kors MIA: Where is the great orange lady? Does he have some more important work designing dress shirts that are going to end up at Marshalls? Max Azria was a good replacement though, but he could have ratcheted up the bitchy a little. Rachel Bilson: Thanks for your whole two line contribution to the episode. And what was she even doing there. She has nothing to do with surfing or fashion and she's not even that famous. Come on, Runway. If you're just going to pick people at random, have Heidi haul Seal in. He's just as qualified. Getting Ready Montages: Only one shot of Logan shirtless and his back is to the camera? What a waste. Models of the Runway: While we promised to never mention this show again, we realized that it is totally fucking up the way they do challenges. In past seasons, they would have had a team and they would have made one outfit and the model not being used would just cool her heels back stage. Now, we have to make sure that every model gets used every week, hence why every pair had to make two looks rather than focus on one. Now we hate the show even more. What We Love: Heidi's Outfit at Judging: The navy-and-black-striped knit dress was a stunner. So nice to see her pull off some... MORE >>
Dov Charney's Tear-Stained Letter to His 1,500 Laid-off Employees
Earlier this summer, American Apparel got nailed for having nearly 2,000 illegal factory workers in L.A.. Now 1,500 of those workers have been fired. Dov Charney is even sadder about it than they are. Weepy, yes. But oh well. This is definitely Dov Charney's best side. Click to enlarge: MORE >>
Womankind's Imaginary Feud With Ashley Dupre
Uh oh, do you know who in make-believe land is now upset with soul singer Ashley Dupre? All the women of New Jersey and also New York! And also Andrea Peyser! This is what happens when you don't listen to us, Ashley. We told you not to play footsies with the New York Post. We told you to take the money and run! Or do whatever you like, as long as it does not involve speaking publicly, or singing. You disregarded us and wrote your fancy "blog" about ladies in NY hooking up with rich guys for the luv of money and how is that very much different from being a hooker? That's all the angle the Post needed to go stand on a random NYC street corner speaking to ladies for maybe 20 minutes and turning their idle comments into a citywide hate feud: "I don't agree with what she said — I would totally never do anything like that," sniffed Justyna Cichon, 29, of Long Island City. And on top of that the Real Housewives of New Jersey were asked to comment on you, of course, and Andrea Peyser was brought in to provide the sexxxy outrage. Tell us, Andrea—how do Ashley Dupre and Eliot Spitzer go together? Like Eliot's pasty, white legs and those kinky, black knee socks he couldn't quite lose before doing the nasty. Thanks, Andrea. So you see, Ashley: You need us. We can be there for you. U no we just want 2 luv U, gurl. MORE >>
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