Eek! What Have They Done to the 'New' Zombie Radar?
Everybody knows what happened to the third iteration of "pop and politics and pop culture and scandal and pop" Radar last Friday: they fired everyone, locked them out of their offices, folded the magazine, and sold off the website to AMI (home of Star and other quality publications.) The website is now a reanimated carcass of its old self, picked clean by corporate carrion. The new ed is David Perel of the National Enquirer, and he already let it be known that the website is "hiring now." So what are these anonymous blogbots churning out for Zombie Radar?For now, some of the new items are bylined as the mysterious "FI staff." Posts since the takeover include heroin king Frank Lucas's lawsuit, the alleged non-promotion of new Sean Penn movie about Harvey Milk, the delay in the Harry Potter movie, something about a James Bond movie, the gossip about married rock star Bono hanging out with a girl, and the death of the hairdresser for seminal porn movie Deep Throat. We're noticing a theme: is it movies, along with the run-of-the-mill celeb gossip that can be found anywhere else on the web? Writing style: one-sentence paras with lots of exclamation points! Kind of like Perez Hilton! Or Page Six, if it was written by monkeys! Maybe we're wrong though. Maybe Zombie Radar is actually meant to be a parody of a gossip site. Or a comment on the state of gossip-blogging today. If so, it's the most sophisticated take we've seen. Best headline yet: "Somebody's Lion about Siegfried and Roy!" Anyway, we're sure they're very busy! As AMI chairman David Pecker said, "If it's on your radar, it's on Radar Online, and if it's not on your radar, we'll put it there." We're not so sure we want him to put it there. It's like watching an old friend get mauled to death by vampirezombies, and all you can do is watch.