It was once such a heartwarming story. New Jersey local girl Ashley Alexandra Dupré goes to the big city, meets a few friends, records a hit song, and makes good. Now, posting the above video to the Web, an alleged rapist will profit off all her hard work, one $29.95 subscription at a time. Must the Internet turn everything tawdry?
Leave it to skeevy softcore baron Joe Francis to prove, irrefutably the commercial merits of digital video and online distribution. Until the advent of cheap cameras, storage and a timely way to get the footage to the masses with little fear of censorship, Francis's Girls Gone Wild cameramen would never have shot seven hours of a then-unknown Ashley Alexandra Dupré shaking her rump, gettin' nekkid and kissing other teens. The Internet makes everything cheaper: Francis had offered Dupré $1 million to appear in a video, until he discovered she was already in his archives. Which means he's getting her for the price of beer and a bus ticket.
· The beauty of Jewno is in its attention to detail. To wit: a bagels, lox, & cream cheese phone. [YouTube]
· Prince at Coachella! [LAT]
· Today in sci-fi: First glimpses of the Starfleet Nerdcademy. Arthur C. Clarke dies in Sri Lanka at age 90. [aintitcool.com, Reuters]
· Watch Adam Carolla call Carrie Ann Inaba a "bitch" on last night's Dancing with the Stars premiere. [TMZ]
· CBS's godawful sitcoms post higher ratings than ever since returning from the strike. Seriously, though. Just the pits. That Christine one? And the Big Bang one? Ugh. [THR]
· Kirstie Alley has signed a deal with Harpo to develop "future television projects, including a possible daily strip format." We hope that just means a five-episode-per-week syndie, and not that Alley will be prancing around again on the Oprah stage in a bathing suit with any regularity. [ETOnline]
Is switching off the Internet for 1.3 billion people the ultimate demonstration of power since the Atomic Age? The Chinese government has blocked YouTube across the country since this weekend. The censorship campaign is blocking reporters (both foreign and domestic) from covering the story and blocking Chinese residents from hearing about it, apparently trying to kill the story at both ends. Below are the videos that allegedly made the government ban YouTube.
"I Can Make You Yawn"
Julia Allison sings us a love song from SXSW. Is this for former beau Kevin Rose, we wonder — or for the Internet at large? She's got a point: Why do we build her up, just to let her down? Why?
Saintly Craig Newmark, whose Craigslist website is a friend to the apartmentless and lovelorn, has a confession to make: As we reported last year, his company helped broker eBay's purchase of a 25 percent stake in Craigslist — a transaction which made him millions of dollars. Newmark made this admission to Sarah Lacy in a Yahoo Tech Ticker interview, excerpted above. This is notable only because Newmark has long peddled the line to gullible journalists that eBay bought the stake out from under his nose without his consent, casting aspersions on the ex-employee who sold the stake along the way. Note how he dodges the key question — did he profit from the sale? According to Valleywag's sources, he did. But we'll give Newmark a pass on coughing up that fact until the next interview.
If you're looking to get wasted on national television, look no further than cocktail expert Martha Stewart. On last night's Conan, sweet-as-sugar Stewart instructed Conan on how to mix his own cocktails as a nod to O'Brien's Irish heritage. Though the very highbrow (and very femme) clover-adorned fruity drinks looked just scrumptious, Conan preferred chugging some gold old-fashioned Guinness instead. While it takes more than a few beers to eradicate all of that loveable trademark nervous energy that he brings to the Late Night set five nights a week, Martha tried her best to get Conan tipsy.
It's startling to us that after the last iteration of ABC's perennial romance sweepstakes—in which Hunkiest Bachelor of Them All Brad Womack cruelly withheld a suspiciously oversized engagement ring from last-standing-soulmate Deanna, choosing instead to slip the sparkling keepsake over his own member as a gesture of narcissistic fidelity—that producers of The Bachelor would find another 25 women desperate, lonesome, and fame-whorey enough to subject themselves to similar, nationally televised humiliation.
You'd be forgiven if a visit to Tropic Thunder's website—where the trailer premiered today—led you to believe the movie featured billed stars STILLER and BLACK DOWNEY, as the preview ballsily features a good deal of Robert Downey Jr.'s white-Method-actor in blackface (and muttering stereotypical, The Jefferson's-theme-inspired dialogue in blackvoice). That said, there's lots to enjoy here, including the movie star archetypes that inhabit this Platoon-set-turned-real scenario—particularly Stiller's "Action Guy," whose previous roles required him to deliver catchphrase, "Who left the fridge open?" while BabyBjörning two tiny pandas.
Not to be outdone by the swift, shaky-cam destruction of its transcontinental nemeses in Cloverfield, Los Angeles is getting its own taste of catastrophe in the latest viral sensation to hit YouTube. At least we think it's L.A.; some have suggested that Case 1017 — the grainy home video of HazMat-suited CDC officials and semi-automatic weapons fire that has attracted 1.1 million views since Saturday — is a tease for Cloverfield 2 or M. Night Shyamalan's forthcoming Philly disaster epic The Happening. Follow the jump, however, for what turns out to be a much simpler explanation.
My favorite Internet tradition is mocking earlier versions of the net, so I loved this video fifteen seconds in, when to demonstrate the power of the Internet an invisible hand typed "coffee" into a search engine called "The Internet Mall(tm)" and a video of JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you" speech popped up. Blogger Andy Baio just uploaded the first in a two-part series from 1995 called "Internet Power!" As Baio notes, it's a look at parts of the net that haven't even been saved on the Internet Archive, which started in 1996. Here it is, ripped this weekend from VHS.
· If Jonah Hill's movie career doesn't pan out, he can always headline mid-sized Vegas showrooms as Andy Milonakis: Insult Comic. [SNL]
· Mischa Barton's next project, the straight-to-video Closing the Ring, features the actress crying in an attic bedroom, wearing a period hairstyle, and completely naked. If that's something you might be interested in, here's an image gallery. [Egotastic]
· Heather Mills is awarded $48.7 million of Paul McCartney's $800 million fortune. We pray this is the last we'll hear of this, but suspect it is not. [Fox News]
· And finally, ladies, we ask now that you remain composed. Please keep your screaming to a minimum. Oh, fine—we give up! The men of Flight of the Conchords, almost naked in the pages of Maxim! [conchords.net]
Really, we didn't think it was possible, but CNET editor Natali Del Conte is even more adorable en español. The bilingual TV personality is anchoring a deal between CNET and Univision, the Hispanic TV channel. "My Spanish-speaking family is WAY more impressed with this than anything else I've ever done," Del Conte told me. "Univision is all they've got so it's a big deal. My mom called me all weepy after she saw it and went, 'Oh my baby! She's speaking Spanish on TV!' My sister said, 'You would think we don't have English-speaking parents!' :)" 32 million U.S. residents speak Spanish at home. Somehow, I don't think they're tuning in to Michael Arrington for the latest on technology.
Though we hope Britney had been called to a meeting with Mel to fill in the cast of his upcoming Under And Alone, which stars Gibson as an undercover agent infiltrating motorcycle gangs in Southern California, the film is already in production. Still, Spears would be a cameo natural; looking rougher than ever and sounding like she's come to embrace misery as a primary emotion, stepping in as some kind of abused, washed-up rider's girlfriend, all while dressed in ripped leather (and with no need for a knotty, tar-colored wig!) would be a better comeback choice than her infamous Lip Syncing On Valium appearance.
If you've yet to catch an episode of E!'s Pap Smear Pop Fiction, yet another stroke of punking genius from ascending media tycoon and noted cougar-hunter Ashton Kutcher, we've included a clip above. In it, Eva Longoria, for whom fame has quickly turned into a serious drag (please, God, just return her to a life of anonymity, where she can carry out her various, regular-person functions in peace!), and a think-tank consisting of Kutcher and his staff of ingratiating "producers" concoct a deliciously devious plan to "rekindle the non-relationship" with Longoria's longtime platonic friend, Mario Lopez.
Preternaturally grandiose iContact founder Ryan Allis should probably stick to selling email marketing tools, as his toprock is nonexistent and his power moves cheesier than Ricky Schroder's. That wack mess may play in Denver, where the 23-year-old Allis was visiting a college on an "extreme entrepreneurship tour," but he should think twice before trying to bring it in the Yay Area, lest he get served.
