A conversation with Liz Smith, a gossip columnist, and Jess Cagle, editorial director of People magazine about celebrity, ambition and the difference between gossip and news.
Mediatakeout.com, a celebrity gossip Web site, moves up in the ranks as its staff hunt down scoops.
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Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood, feared in the industry for having the best gossip, was said by a longtime competitor to have been fired — a blog report that turned out to be false.
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So, a little birdie sent me an email forward which showed Bogusky and Sherpa talking, about The Israeli submissions to Cannes 2008 which have their own little place on the web at “creativevalley”.
Now, forgive me if I don’t for a nano-second believe that Sherpa and Bogusky were talking about this, or even at all. And I really really doubt that Bogusky would say things like “Say, you don’t think it’s too innovative?” There are no headers in the forwarded email so I can’t pick it apart and see where the supposed forwarded chat really did come from. But OK, fine, so someone likely connected to creativevalley thought up that little conversation just so that we’d talk about it too. Consider me suckered, then.
100 reporters got the pink slip from the Washington Post today. So how do they bid their adieus? Linton Weeks coded his farewell in his last review published today. Read the upper case letter that starts each paragraph – yes, it spells out “Goodbye readers”. Now that’s a writers way of making an grand exit. One reader replied “and a goodbye to you Linton”
Tip Ministry of art.
Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh so hard at that, but really, what the fuck is he doing? Thanks Robblink for the tip.
A little birdie told me that David Beckham has recently wrapped up a global television and print advertising shoot in Los Angeles for Sharpie markers.
The TV spot, set to air in select markets around the world beginning July 15, shows Beckham using a Sharpie to autograph a variety of unusual items for fans, but when the time comes to return the Sharpie to its owner, Beckham resists. Dum dum DUM! Reminds me of our T-shirts in the shop “not without my sharpie!” Once you go Sharpie, you never go back you know. 😉
Here’s a shot from the shoot (say that ten times fast) where Beckham high fives another actor.
Cute, this bus-shelter poster in Stockholm reads “Don’t advertise here!” and much like tabloid headlines they explain it with a quick “new research shows that twice as many people would read ads in the morning newspaper”. But hang on a second, since I noticed the ad… It worked, didn’t it? I read a lot more into it since I spotted this ad in the poshest of posh hoods on my way to DjurgÃ¥rden and read it as if it was a small protest from all the rich folks in the hood “get your damn ads out of my hood – unless it’s for Mercedes”. Oh yeah, that’ll be the day. Doubly odd is the fact that this is an ad for GP – the Gothenburg Post, a local paper… In Stockholm. Hmmmm.
Last Exit To Nowhere is “home to a collection of unique shirt designs which are inspired and pay homage to some of the most memorable places, corporations and companies in modern fiction – from the sunny shores of Amity Island (Jaws) to the frozen climes of Outpost #31 (The Thing).”
That’s right, show your movie-geekdom on your chest kids. My fave T-shirt depicted on the left. What kind of movies do I like? 🙂 Oh yeah! Zombie films!
Over at a blog called Cajunboy there’s an email from a guy who was in a focusgroup which he deducted was for Microsoft. Seems they might be testing out a new hero for their next ad campaign… Namely Johnny Knoxville a.k.a that Jackass guy.
But what struck me as the funniest thing out of all of this was that it appears as though Johnny Knoxville might be their answer to Justin Long. We were shown some marketing material featuring Knoxville, including one commercial in which he falls and drops his PC in Jackass type stunt, but then a “don’t worry about losing your data if your computer becomes destroyed because you’re a jackass because the new Windows automatically backs up to files for you” message was delivered.
Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Too easy for apple fans to knock them down with a thousand jackass jokes. I’ll start with the easy one: “Don’t be a jackass, buy a mac.”
On the internet, people might now know that you’re a dog but they sure as hell know that you are an idiot.
The owners of asdf get all sorts of sign-up passwords and crazy emails because people are in the habit of filling in forms with a quick lefthanded typing of asdf atsign asdf dot com because those letters are so neatly arranged right there on the keyboard. So the owners of asdf.com shut down that amusing email. Shame.
On the same train of thought, someone else has registered DONOTREPLY.com and guess what, people reply anyway, so now they publish everything they get. They told you not to reply! So companies like Merryl Lynch are emailing out possibly sensitive information to their customers, and said customers reply – leaving this guy to post everything he gets on his weblog. Yardville National Bank is also this insecure with their information, and would ya believe it so is the The Department of Homeland Security. Holy shit. You know that I’m *kicking* myself for not registering that domain right now.
As for all of you that sign up here with ddddddd@yahoo or asdf@gmail – the email addy you use to sign up here with will receive the password to get in here. So stop trying to be clever, if you have no password you can’t get in smartass. Which reminds me, I need to write a module that automatically deletes accounts created with bouncing email addies, there’s at least ten a day. Yeah I know, silly isn’t it?
Over at Flickr a user called mr carl has scanned what seems to be the entire book “World of Logotypes” by Al Cooper and put every page up here – which is total logo porn for us fans of such things. Al Cooper’s book can actually still be bought used, even on Amazon but has been out of print for many years, it was first published in the mid-seventies. Still, the flickr images carry the “© All rights reserved” bit, which means mr carl just copyrighted someone elses copyrighted work, ballsy! But we’ve learned by now that when it comes to copyrights, the big guys like Yahoo (flickr), Google (youtube) and even more recently the Associated Press play by their own rules don’t they? It seems to go a little like this: “don’t infringe our stuff but we’ll infringe yours and blame it on our users, nyah nyah”.
Techcrunch explains why Charlie Rose was sporting a huge black eye and sporting a bandage over part of his forehead while doing his show last night. No, he hasn’t been in a barfight – he tripped on a pothole while walking on 59th Street in Manhattan. At the time though, he was carrying his shiny new MacBook Air, so he had a decision to make, catch himself or the Macbook Air? He chose the Air.
“In doing so, he pretty much hit the pavement face first, unfortunately,†the producers said “The Macbook Air is fine, he showed us the blood stains on it this morning.â€
All hail Rose the gadgetgeek with the right priorities.
Updating the earlier story on AP distributing “Spitzer Call Girl” myspace photos – they’ve already been busted. Ashley Dupré’s court-appointed attorney Don D. Buchwald has not only defended his clients right to privacy, but also called the thorny copyright issue into question in an emailed press release. 
“some publications, in violation of journalistic norms, have used the occasion of Governor Spitzer’s political misfortunes as an excuse to exploit Ms. Dupré’s persona for commercial purposes by, among other things, displaying a montage of suggestive photographs of Ms. Dupré that has nothing to do with the Spitzer story,â€
….
“violation of her privacy rights and federal copyright law.â€
Full letter inside.
The SUN has a video of the side-stepping gnome that’s reportedly scaring the bejesus out of the residents in General Guemes in Argentina.
The midget – which wears a pointy hat and has a distinctive sideways walk – was caught on video last week by a terrified group of youngsters.
How cynical am I who first thought “It’s a viral for something, fer sure”. Should I seek help?
Via Metafilter
At extensis typecaster you can mix and match your fonts to see who might hit it off in a little TV show thingie – and try and suss out which font you are. No matter how many times I took the quiz, I ended up stencil. Ack! This thing would have been so much better if there was a choice of non-insulting fonts as the characters. Ok, fess up, who here got Comic Sans as their type? Anyone? Bueller? Hahaha *points and laughs* I’m only doing that to make me feel better. I mean, sheesh, I got STENCIL man!
Coming later tonight – AdLand’s favorite North Dakotan advertising agent* heads to Miami for a production that blows, but in a good way.
*Well, ok, he’s also our only North Dakotan advertising agent, but we don’t hold that against him.
PETA will reveal a new ad pushing the use of pleather instead of leather using ex porn-star Jenna Jameson as spokesperson. In the ad which will be available March 10, Jenna Jameson is dressed in a black pleather bikini and black wig doing her best Bettie Page impression.
Inside sources reveal that PETA contacted Jenna Jameson because she’s a huge animal lover, who even went so far as to have her plastic surgeon make her look like a duck. True story!
Design Observer have been having a bit of fun with trying to suss out which actor should play which designer when designers get hep enough to warrant full length movies about their lives.
I can’t stop laughing, some of the actor+designer pairings are not only spot on physically but also a great fit for how these designers (and actors) are reputed to be (or typecast as). Benicio del Toro playing Neville Brody is too good to be true, please won’t someone make that film right now? Let it involve lots of cocaine, anarchy at Arena, someone sporting the original outrageous London wedge hairdo, clubkids that look like this and College of Communication students having sex parties, also, of course an all Depeche Mode soundtrack. I’d go watch that for the visuals alone.
Now, which actor would play you dear adgrunt, in a film about us?
I love this stuff, suspect and fugitive is “a year long project where i make an item a day out of suspect (questionable) and fugitive (nonarchival) materials.” the creator explains. Yep, like painting a Cherry Nyquil bottle with Cherry Nyquil. Or the hilarious Britney portrait done in Cheez doodles since “she’s pretty much their unofficial spokesperson at this point, isn’t she?”
The image here shows a sweat stain logo for Secret antiperspirant drawn with secret antiperspirant in the armpit of a t-shirt.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
