The Jay Leno Show: As Bad As You Thought It Would Be
We tuned into Leno's first hour hoping that the comedian might be able to pull out a stellar performance. Instead, what we got was a slap-dash version of The Tonight Show, but with even less funny jokes. The monologue was horrific, and included a joke about how men like to control the remote while watching TV. Thanks for that original observation, Jay. A follow up segment with Dan Finnerty of The Dan Band singing to a girl in a car wash was tremendously unfunny. This show has been in the planning stages for months, and with the world watching for his first episode, this was the best that Leno could do? His interview with Jerry Seinfeld was the highlight of the hour, with Seinfeld firing jokes off about the show, not knowing when it was on, and how when he quit his show he really quit the show. Jay should have taken his lead. Having Oprah do a taped segment and not even once acknowledge Jay is about as close to genius as the show got. Speaking of Oprah, Leno then trotted out Kanye West, in the midst of the brou-ha-ha concerning his bad behavior at the Video Music Awards. Unfortunately, the scandal means that this clip will be show all across the internet for the next day to hear what Kanye had to say. It was something about how his mother's death and too much touring made him act like a dick. We're saving our reaction for a different blog post. This one concerns the quality of Jay's broadcast, and other than Seinfeld, Oprah, Jay Z, and Rhianna, it wasn't very high. Even the familiar Headlines segment at the end of the show contained far too many penis, poop, and vagina jokes to make anyone other than a 14 year-old boy and your crazy uncle Mort chuckle. This first episode was Leno's chance to shine, when he should have gotten out his best material and the funniest segments that he's been compiling for months. Instead, the best thing about it was another comedian and an apology that he lucked into. We don't know how this experiment is going to last through the month, nonetheless another year. MORE >>
Even Obama Thinks Kanye's a 'Jackass'
Basically the entire nation has rallied around the idea that Kanye West is an entire asshole for ruining Taylor Swift's big moment last night. So, too, has Barack Obama, our president. But he won't do it on the record. ABC News' Terry Moran interviewed Mr. Obama today and, during an off-the-record exchange, Obama called West a "jackass" for interrupting Swift's big moment last night. And, as an intrepid reporter, Moran posted the verbal bitch slap on Twitter. Whoops! The White House totally smacked Moran down and ABC News was forced to release this statement: In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview. This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again. Um, whatever. The President should be able to have an opinion on such a pop cultural happening. He's made no secret that he's hip. And, as an American, he should be able to speak out on West's utter stupidity. In fact, it's his duty. If you're not against West, you're a terrorist. Obama, are you a terrorist? MORE >>
Was the Kanye West-Taylor Swift Moment Staged?
When Guest of a Guest speculated that last night's Kanye West-Taylor Swift incident at the VMAs was scripted it sent a shockwave through Gawker HQ. Brian Moylan thinks it's fake and Richard Rushfield thinks it's real. Punches are being thrown! Well, we're a little more civilized than that, but we're up for some spirited debate. Moylan: As Guest of Guest points out, the whole things seems too good to be true, and too many people benefit. Everyone has sympathy for Swift, everyone loves Beyoncé (more), everyone thinks Kayne is (more of) a dick, and everyone is talking about MTV for the first time in a long time. Sure, it wasn't as obviously planned and Madonna kissing Britney Spears, but with a little bit of acting and canny planning, this is a publicity masterpiece. Rushfield: Well that is the most half-baked argument I have ever heard. As any scientist or detective can tell you, motive alone is not enough to convict for a crime. Yes, MTV likes controversy, but their fake controversies in the past—eg. Bruno falling on Eminem—ham-handedly telegraph "this is a stunt" a mile off. Last night, you saw a moment of genuine awkwardness production-wise after Kanye took the mic when the booth seemed to stumble and be unsure about cutting away—not the hallmark of a pre-planned, pre-coreographed stunt. Moylan: But why Swift so readily give up the mic? And how did Kanye get such easy access to the stage? I think it all started on the red carpet, where Kanye was conspicuously drinking from a bottle of booze and Beyoncé was talking up how she hoped that Swift would "get her moment" at the awards. It all just seems like foreshadowing for the unfortunate event. As for the production, well, WWE has been pulling stunts like this and making them look real(ish) for years. Rushfield: Brian Moylan, your conspiratorial mind is seeing shadows everywhere. Why did she give up the mic so readily? First, she's a teenage girl, probably in a daze at the greatest moment of her life. Suddenly, there is Kanye West in her face grabbing her at hand, would you put up a fight? If that were me and I was a teenage Taylor I would just be shocked and think he was about to do some tribute to me or make a speech about Michael Jackson or something. The conspicuously drinking—well, its not the first time Kanye has done that either. Beyoncé wishing Taylor well does create a very neat circle, but a bit too neat to be planned. If you were going to set this up as a stunt, would you really throw in a foreshadow like that? And why shouldn't she wish Taylor well. Just because your heart is filled with a hate for a young Southern girl who is the first non-tramp role model America's teenage girls have had in a decade, doesn't mean Beyoncé's heart is also made of coal. What needs to be examined here, Brian Moylan, is why you are so committed to locking the sunlight out of your life. To paraphrase Kelly Clarkson, in her letter to Kanye, What happened to you as a child Brian... MORE >>
Photo Evidence Steve Jobs Misled the New York Times
It's going to take more than six months medical leave to reform Steve Jobs. On his very first day back before the media, the Apple CEO apparently told a whopper to the New York Times. Hoodwinking the press is an old tradition for Jobs, and reporters were immediately suspicious when Jobs told Times columnist David Pogue he decided to omit a much-anticipated camera from the iPod Touch in order to keep the cost down. Jobs said "we were focused on... reducing the price to $199. We don't need to add new stuff." But an Apple rumor site then heard that the camera was delayed because it was too buggy, leading Fortune to ask if Jobs had been lying. Now comes tangible evidence he probably was: Hardware website iFixIt took apart the new iPod Touch Jobs was talking about, only to discover a conspicuous gap at the top of the device just large enough for the camera Apple is using on its other new iPod, the Nano: It took months for the facts to catch up with Jobs' misleading spin about his health; in this case, the turnaround has been reduced to just five days. If Jobs has no moral qualms about dissembling in the press, this acceleration should at least instill some practical concern. MORE >>
MisShapes' Leigh Lezark: The Gawker Interview
Superstar MisShapes DJ and lovably icy ingénue Leigh Lezark may be the Anna Wintour of the downtown scenester set. Does that mean we can't be friends? When I heard Leigh Lezark was hosting a party at the Tribeca Grand Hotel to hype her new Dossier magazine cover, I thought it would be a great opportunity to help rehab her frosty image. Leigh, as many of you know, is the Queen of the MisShapes, which for several years has been New York's most in-demand deejay trio. Gawker famously nicknamed her "Princess Coldstare," and has been pretty relentless in tweaking both Leigh's haughty 'tude and the MisShapes' coolest-kids-in-the-room status. As I made my way to the Tribeca Grand on a drizzly Friday night, I wondered if Leigh had gotten a bum rap. Maybe she had become the target of so much mean-spirited internet bile because, well, she was kind of a big deal, and people were jealous. I imagined getting her to open up about what was really going on inside that pretty little head. We'd talk about music and fashion, love and life, and by the end of the night we'd be sharing iPod playlists, clinking Champagne flutes and perhaps even planning a nice, long vacation together. Preferably somewhere warm, and without an extradition treaty! I was still considering all of this when I saw Leigh holding court at a table near the Tribeca Grand's crowded bar. She went outside to smoke with two pals, and well, I guess I needed one, too. I followed them outside and bummed a light from one of her friends. "Aren't you Leigh?" I asked. "Yeah," she said with a big smile. And then I dropped the rancid stink bomb that I was writing about Fashion Week parties for Gawker and wanted to do a quick interview that would make everyone love her. "Nope. No thank you." she said, pulling up her jacket's hood and looking away from me, her cigarette hand trembling. I started explaining how I just wanted to talk to her for a minute, but it was too late. Her male friend, a delicate-looking man in a red sweater, hissed, "It's not going to happen." I rambled for a few more seconds. Then a brunette in a black dress, said, wearily, "She said no nicely, so...." Feeling like a pedophile who had just been turned away from a petting zoo, I apologized for bothering them and and finished my smoke on the other side of the crowd in front of the hotel. Back inside I was nursing my bruised ego with a drink when I was approached by the party's publicist, Krista Freibaum. I said that Leigh had just shot me down. Krista offered to talk to Leigh and vouch for my good intentions. I thanked her, and watched her walk over to Leigh's table. Pretty soon, both women were arguing and gesturing wildly. Clearly, this wasn't going well. "I told her you were a nice guy and you were trying to change the way she was represented on Gawker," Krista told me when she returned. "And she said, 'I don't care about Gawker. They're just gonna spin it in a way that makes me look bad.'" I really couldn't argue with Leigh's... MORE >>
Yale University, Murdertown of the Ivies
The grisly killing of Yale student Annie Le, whose body was discovered stuffed inside the wall of a campus lab yesterday, is just the latest in a string of high-profile crimes long enough to support a Law & Order spinoff. Le had been missing since last Tuesday; in addition to a body believed to be hers, authorities found bloody clothes believed to belong to the killer hidden above a ceiling tile in a Yale lab. According to the New York Times, local police have begin searching a nearby waste-processing facility for more evidence. Le was to have been married yesterday. The discovery has set the Yale campus on edge. "I'm freaked," one doctoral student told a Times reporter as he fumbled nervously for a cigarette. He should be: Yale students have demonstrated a disconcerting tendency for turning up dead over the years, often in circumstances that implicate race, class, and sex in a potent Bonfire-of-the-Vanities concoction and usually after some sort of bungling by an incompetent police department and university administration. Suzanne Jovin Jovin, a 21-year-old senior from Germany, was found stabbed to death on an off-campus street corner in 1998—she'd been stabbed 17 times and her throat was slit. Within days, Yale identified her thesis adviser James Van de Velde, who had also served as dean of Saybrook, one of Yale's residential colleges, as "one of a pool of suspects" and canceled his classes. The New Haven Police Department confirmed that Van de Velde was a suspect and his career was destroyed, but he was never charged. The murder remains unsolved. Bonnie Garland In 1977, Garland, a 20-year-old daughter of a wealthy lawyer, was bludgeoned to death with a claw hammer by her boyfriend and fellow student Richard Herrin at her parents' Scarsdale, N.Y. home. Garland had recently told Herrin she wanted to begin seeing other people. Herrin, a Mexican-American who grew up in the L.A. barrio, fled to a local church to confess. Yale's Catholic community rallied around him and raised funds for his legal defense, arguing for leniency and appealing to Herrin's impoverished background. With the help of a high-priced lawyer, Herrin was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 8 to 25 years; he was paroled in 1995. Christian Prince Prince was what his name sounds like: A white 19-year-old fourth-generation Yalie from a privileged family. He was allegedly killed by James Fleming, a 17-year-old African-American child of poverty in 1991 under circumstances that couldn't have been plotted better by Tom Wolfe. Fleming and a friend, looking for money to attend a rap concert, robbed Prince at gunpoint at 1 a.m. in front of St. Mary's Church. After Prince handed over his wallet, Fleming allegedly said, "I ought to shoot this cracker," and did. Prince's body was found laying on the church stairs, his arms outstretched. After two trials suffused with racial recrimination and publicity, Fleming was convicted of armed robbery but acquitted on the murder... MORE >>
Mad Men: The Night Betty Had a Dream
The creepiest thing about Betty Draper giving birth was not knowing that she was birthing what will inevitably become another messed up human, but that the whole ordeal looked like an alien abduction. Oh, and there was racism too! Unlike more recent episodes, last night featured several divergent plot treads not intertwining to become a greater whole, but each reverberating on it's own, like the strings of the cello all echoing together to make the saddest note you've ever heard. Of course, the biggest event was Betty giving birth and her subsequent drug-induced hallucination, as well as Don's short-lived relationship with the prison guard in the waiting room. As events of the day start seeping into Sterling Cooper, the specter of the civil rights and women's liberation movements start to haunt the reactionary offices before they can scare them into modernity. Pete tries to start integration in the means of capitalism and Peggy tries to fight for a fair wage while the company is hemorrhaging money. Racism, sexism, and economic uncertainty—looks like some things never change. Betty's Special Delivery: After the death of her father and Sally acting out in school, Mrs. Draper was not in the best of mental spaces, even for her, which is reflected in her surreal experience at the hospital. Even before she gets the happy drugs, she's seeing her father's face on the janitor in the eerily glowing hallways. Her steward through this psychedelic hell isn't even a doctor, but a nurse who is equal parts doting and authoritarian. Even though the pens don't work and her regular doctor is out for the night, Betty finally relents, thanks to the drugs. In her first vision, we see her walking down her manicured block in a fierce yellow and purple dress (the prettiest thing in the episode) while a caterpillar falls into her hand. Her face fills with awe, surprise, and something close to the malice of the female Disney villain variety as she closes her hand around the tiny creature. She's not protecting it; she's capturing it. Next, we see Betty from the outside, where it looks like she's being tortured. She has a moment of clarity and starts asking for Don before saying, "He's never where you want him to be." Oh, that is so true. After a little struggle she whimpers, "I don't want to be here." Of course you don't, Betty, but this is the life you are stuck with. That little girl mentality returns as we see her walking down the hospital hallway before ending up in her own kitchen where she is faced with her father as janitor, but instead of cleaning up a mess, he's spreading one on the floor. "Am I dying?" she asks. No, but like any Greek hero, she must confront her parents in her personal hell. Her mother is standing over the figure of murdered civil rights pioneer Medgar Evers (killed June 12, 1963) who was brought up earlier in the day by Sally's teacher. "This is what you get for speaking your mind," her mother schools her. Her father tells her that she... MORE >>
Ashley Dupre's Tabloid Symbiosis
Ashley Dupre and the New York Post have finalized their deal: Ashley will give the Post exclusive interviews and sexxxy exclusive photo shoots in hooker heels. In return, they'll play like they're on her side. Everybody wins, except Ashley Dupre! Over the weekend, the Post's magical resurrection of the Spitzer hooker scandal hit its peak. Instead of taking our advice and either disappearing or becoming a self-sustaining business mogul via pornography (either one of which would make her the master of her own fate and Money$$), Ashley foolishly chose to "get into bed," HEH, so to speak, with the dirty tabloid, in exchange for some "publicity" for her "musical career." It is a trick, Ashley! Give up this "musical" "career" at once and get as far away from the Post as possible! The paper extracted the following things from the empowered young woman over the weekend: 1. Sexxxy photos. 2. Exclusive debut and video for her craptastic new pop song. In return they gave her a puff piece calling her a "poster child for redemption." LOL! Oh and an explanatory piece on her tattoos. That too. And the Post's most painful concession (if you're a music critic): A positive review of her new single, "I Feel So Alive Without You." It's in the paper, but not online. That may have been a concession to Dan Aquilante, the critic forced to write this: Unlike her first single, "Inside Out," a molasses-tempo ballad, this new tune has youth appeal in its complex melody that segues from a rock opening to a poppy chorus and ultimately plays with an unplugged acoustic bridge. Dupre should consider weaving in a quick rap for good measure. Yes, weaving in a quick rap usually gives these things a touch of class. Aquilante didn't let this mandatory positive review go through without exacting his revenge in the kicker: Ask any rock star and they'll tell you it's all about hooks, looks and the smarts to know how to take advantage of an opportunity when it falls into your lap — Miss Dupre has an abundance of all three qualities. References to hookers and lap dances. You see Ashley, this is just the nature of the game. It was actually impressive when you turned down multimillion-dollar porn offers in the wake of the Spitzer scandal and went quiet for a while. What you don't realize, Ashley: the New York tabloid industry is shadier than the porn industry. And the tabloids don't even pay you. MORE >>
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