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Taking to the red carpet, Gillian Anderson attended the premiere of her new film, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People,” in London on Wednesday night (September 24).
According to AP reports, the heavily pregnant “X-Files” actress’ new movie is “based on the best-selling book of the same name by British journalist Toby Young, chronicling Young’s ignominious period as a journalist at New York’s prestigious Vanity Fair magazine.”
Pop quiz: are you moderating a presidential debate this fall? (Hint: are you old, white, and male?) You may be wondering what you're supposed to ask about! Sure, you could just ask them to talk about their positions on various issues, politely step back as they lay out policy proposals and debate the merits of said proposals, but then everyone will get bored. Your job is to stir shit up and force them both into making gaffes! That is how we decide what to talk about when we talk about campaigns. So. Because we dislike John McCain, personally, we will now explain how best to cause him to say or do something stupid during a debate. But don't worry, Republicans: we have a trick to trip up Obama too!
Foreign Policy
This one's a gimme, because John McCain doesn't know a goddamn thing about the rest of the world except that he wants to bomb it. There was the "Iraq/Pakistan border" thing, which could maybe be explained by him saying Iraq instead of Afghanistan, and the Czechoslovakia thing, which is pretty much just explained by him being lol old, and mistaking Sunnis with Shiites constantly and also thinking al-Qaeda was training in Iran, which can really only be explained by not giving a shit about minor details like who we're "fighting" besides Muslims in general.
But now that his confusion has spread to Western Europe, his handlers should be worried. "John McCain doesn't know where Spain is" is basically a gift to the Democrats. Of course McCain can and will play off any debate question about his gaffes with a condescending "of course I know [blank]" statement, followed by a carefully coached recitation of lessons his handlers drilled into him, which defuses the issue, but it's a clear sign that he'll be tripped up by a different lame gotcha question about world leaders or geography. Do people actually care when a candidate doesn't know "trivia"? Not really, but if he plays further into the "confused old man" routine it'll hurt him way more than idiocy did Bush.
The Economy
Ask him just about anything about the current Wall Street crisis. Wait for weird disjointed pseudo-Democrat talk about regulation. Followup with any serious statement John McCain has made on the economy during his 100 years as an anti-regulation Republican. Watch him forced to either sell out his Capitalist base or deliver some decidedly not-populist rhetoric.
Torture
Ask him, Andrew Sullivan style, if he believes the CIA should be allowed to use "interrogation techniques" similar and in some cases worse than the torture inflicted on him by the North Vietnamese. Offer to demonstrate! (Though, of course, 24 viewers definitely think the CIA should be allowed to torture, and McCain is maybe helped by any mention of his POW years, but still, this shit was indefensible.)
His Commercials, Campaign, and Surrogates
Just ask him if he "stands by" or can defend almost any number of questionable things his campaign has done. As we saw on The View, he will not apologize, but he will look pissed off as he half-heartedly defends shit he used to hate. Which is way worse than apologizing would be.
Bonus: How to Trip Up Barack Obama
Ask a serious question about a complex and important issue. Make it one that requires Obama to speak extemporaneously. He'll answer, as he thinks through it, with something pretty reasonable, but complex, and he will say "Uh," and then McCain will say "shut up, Brainiac! Babies are tiny angels, why do you want to kill them?" THE END.
Remember when Vice magazine forced that intern to make and eat twelve flavored popsicles from this own semen to see how long it would take him to puke? Well you can't just do that sort of thing at Slate. You need a news peg, and some sort of underlying cultural criticism and/or geopolitical argument, a few riffs on the cognitive science of stoking consumer desire, maybe a reference to The Pentagon Papers. And most importantly you need a guy like Justin Peters here. Justin is the 27-year-old editor of a "print journal of arcana, deadpannery, and cultural criticism, nominally dedicated to the examination and deconstruction of that which vulgarians dub 'the American Dream'" you have obviously never heard of. Today on the internet you will find this vulgarian reviewing adult diapers for Slate…
NEWS PEG? It is the "Geezers Issue" at Slate! Old people may be the only group whose failing eyeballs are actually less coveted by advertisers than politically engaged public sector-employed poors, but John McCain is old! And he is about to be elected president, holy fuck.
OH GOOD FOR THEM! SO WILL I LEARN STUFF LIKE HOW THE DEMENTIA THAT GENERALLY SETS IN DURING ONE'S MID-SEVENTIES COULD EFFECT JOHN MCCAIN'S ABILITY TO GRASP COMPLEX ISSUES SUCH AS SOCIAL SECURITY PRIVATIZATION? Hm, don't think so! But they had this Brooklyn 27-year-old get drunk and feign incontinence in six brands of disposable "undergarments" and that is the point of this post.
EW! WHAT HAPPENED? Nothing, duh. You know how dudes piss in the streets when they are drunk? Maybe they even got cited for it once, and everyone found it highly amusing that the one day Mr. Highbrow Literary Elite shows up to the office in a suit it is because he urinated on the wall of a police station, sort of like how it's kind of amusing that this guy's literary journal is called Polite. Not LOL-funny, obvs, but "all the female assistants at Slate who are busy researching the mortgage meltdown or whatever get to roll their eyes" funny.
SO HOW DID THIS GET INTO SLATE? Glad you asked! For starters, young Peters came to the task armed with a cultural-economic theory:
Like chocolate, beer, and jewel thieves, the best adult diapers come from Europe. This is not coincidental. European manufacturers don't have to cater to institutional purchasers' demands, so they're more likely to sell on quality rather than cost.
That makes no sense at all, considering that we are the ones who are supposed to be coveting their nationalized health care system not least for its ability to cut costs by purchasing "institutionally!" But nevermind.
Then you throw in a little pathos:
The diaper swelled until it could swell no more, at which point streams of urine began running down the sides of my legs. Even though I had locked myself in a bathroom to perform the test, I still feel unaccountably ashamed, as if God were laughing at me—a feeling made worse by my inability to exit the diaper.
And a few quippy little "hit grafs" such as:
The word Attends sounds a lot like the word Depend, and, indeed, the two brands are similar—similar in their mediocrity, that is.
OK almost done! All we need now is the elusive killer wonk-cred-displaying simile.
They were about as absorbent as a drainpipe, sagging under the weight of the water and leaking like Daniel Ellsberg.
See what he did there, kids? A less-Slate-appropriate Slate contributor might have written "Scooter Libby."
I probably would have Googled the name of some sort of infamous hydroelectric power plant built by Bechtel in the seventies as part of a CIA strategy to prop up some murderous but Soviet-hating dictator. And that = why it has taken an hour and a half to write this damn thing.
[Slate]
Tired? Poor? Starting to wonder if you'll be a creative underclassman forever? Sick of feeling like the answer to the question "What do you?" is "Self-loathingly ask 'What do you do' at increasingly low-budget social events I used to think were the 'fun' part of doing this job?" Break the cycle! India, law school, teaching yoga… don't think it couldn't happen to you!
In this inaugural installment of "How To Sell Out," we learn a lesson in highbrow high finance from unsuccessful American Apparel shoplifter and weird novelist Tao Lin, who just successfully took a page from the financial engineering books of his favorite clothing store and launched an initial public offering for shares in a book he hasn't written. A lesson in the lifestyle of the poor but microfamous after the jump!
TAO LIN, 25
Who he is: I'm not really sure, because he lies about a lot of things, but I know he wrote a book that Emily really hated (but Miranda July liked) and that he once commented on Keith Gessen's blog that he identified with the Jeff Daniels character in The Squid And The Whale. Also, last summer I read a story in a "literary deathmatch" with Tao Lin during which he read this poem for the allotted eight minutes. Do not click on that last thing if you are easily annoyed.
What he did: He posted a blog entry offering 10% shares in a hypothetical "linear" novel "about a relationship" he has not yet written for $2,000 apiece, promising prospective investors "more meaning in life" if they bought shares and boasting his track record of trustworthiness as established by the 100% feedback rating he had earned selling 31 items in the past 12 months on eBay. He also stated a desire to eat healthier foods so as to avoid "feeling like I have eating problems" which may lead him to hang out beside toilets.
Did it work? Yes! Within a matter of days Tao Lin was sold out of shares in his would-be enterprise. A nineteen-year-old intern and neurotic blogger named Soffi bought ponied up two grand, as did a popular University of Houston philosophy professor Tao did not even know. His parents also purchased a share. And Matt Schwartz, the writer of that Times Magazine piece on internet trolls also bought 10%, although Matt is my ex-boyfriend so he may have done that to personally antagonize me. (Kidding XO!)
What can we learn from this? A controlling stake in a hypothetical major work by a minor possessor of literary microfame is worth $12,000. That might not sound like much, but it's $12,000 more than it was two weeks ago! And I am pretty sure no one is going to be paying taxes on any of it.
MTV just sent a PR pitch about their new Model Makers show to the wrong person. Socialite-publishing heiress and professional unpaid blogger Emily Brill used to be chubby, slimmed down, and is pissed about the show's message. It does sound annoying—we never thought we'd say this, but we agree with Emily Brill's objections! “Have you always wanted to model but don’t know where to start? Maybe you don’t know the right people. Maybe you are not thin enough…”
You, too, could be America's Next Top Whatever.
[via Essentially Emily]
Hey, did you know that actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt welcomed two more strangely named children into the world over the weekend? Of course you did. It's been reported so many times, by so many news agencies and television programs that its signal has actually shot out into space to wrestle with the broadcast of the 1936 Berlin Olympics to instantly become outer space's most lingering evidence of humanity. But the important thing about the story (if there is an "important thing") is how desperately the tabloids scrambled for details and scoops and how epically, for the most part, they failed.
I mean sure, some outlets could claim to have guessed the sexes of the babies, but they had a 25% 33% chance of getting that right if their "inside source" was a goat. Otherwise they were just taking blind and dramatic stabs, each so desperate to report the news of the holiest birth first. Jolie and Pitt and their myriad "people" played the thing pretty smartly (if sadly), as Jossip assesses, deciding to birth in France where the privacy laws are stricter and placing some kind of covering on the hospital window. They're just like sexed-up and better-as-a-pair-than-alone super spies Mr. & Mrs. Smith! Except doing, you know, the opposite of killing people. Whether they'll go the new, trendy route and hawk off Babies' First Photo Op to the highest tabloid bidder remains to be seen. But you can bet it's likely. They might, actually, need the money.
Who will be America's next top big thing? No, seriously, who? Everyone likes to guess. We recently speculated about future tabloid fixtures, and now Vanity Fair has put together a list of the new princes and princesses of Hollywood. Look! There, of course, are the Jonas Brothers, the sexy smooth kids of Gossip Girl and promising hottie boombalotties like Hunter Parrish from Weeds and Kristen Stewart. We synced up on a couple of people, Emma Stone and the GG kids, but VF took its typical turn toward the misguided in several of its Young Hollywood predictions.
Can someone explain Emma Roberts to me? She starred in the failed Nancy Drew movie and in a film about a mermaid alongside something called JoJo (not a monkey.) And yet, everyone keeps hooting and hollering about how she's going to be the next movie star to eat the planet. She must have the best PR people in the business.
Another misstep is the inclusion of Christopher Mintz-Plasse, the squiggly McLovin' nerd from the bawdy teen sex fest Superbad. Sure his character was funny in the movie, but the kid wasn't really acting. He's kinda like Michael Cera—awkward in real life and on screen—in that he's probably not really acting. Mintz-Plasse is a one trick pony, and once everyone wises up and stops casting the abominable Jon Heder in movies, they'll get rid of ol' McLovin' too.
So yeah, look at the article and ogle the pretty pictures. Youth certainly fades, but maybe these photos won't, as long as they kick around the internet. Hopefully these colts will be able to look at these photos many, many years from now and smile and wistfully remember a time when the world patted their heads and, however briefly, told them they were special.
Oh, and thanks for the Gawker shout-out, VF! "Celebrity garbage-disposal unit," eh? Hell, we'll take it.
Musical relic of mid-nineties 'Rent' is finally closing. Last performance on June 1, 2008. I know I'll be pissing off legions of "Rentheads" when I say this but good fucking riddance. I'm as big a fan of Mimi and her unlit candle and of creator Jonathan Larson's compelling narrative both onstage and off as anyone else BUT the musical has spawned a whole crusading brigades of annoying musical theatre queens who crowd Marie's Crisis Cafe and other piano bars to demand the pianist play "La Vie Boheme," They never shut up about how 'Rent' changed their lives. They have 'Rent' sheets and 'Rent' towels and compulsively shout 'Rent' lyrics. These are the same people who are really good at singing and barge in to karaoke and sing 'It's Raining Men' with ample melisma to the annoyance of the general karaoking population who just want to get wasted and sing delightfully inept versions of "Love Will Keep Us Together." But not all is lost, "Rentheads." In other words, don't rend your garments quite yet.According to the Times, 'Rent' isn't completely dissappearing. It's only vacating New York. In an interview from his home in Los Angeles, Mr. Larson [Jonathan's father] said the ending of the show’s Broadway run would mean more shows in high schools and small theaters, a development he embraces.A contagion of 'Rent' in community theaters nationwide! A play about AIDS and drugs and poverty being sung by privileged suburban white kids at their high school! La Vie Boheme lives!