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Friday
1. Filter Magazine hosts a listening party for the hot-as-really-hot-shit-on-a-farm-during-a-drought soundtrack for Garden State (so hip it includes songs from The Shins' first record, before they totally sold out) at Nacional. Zach Braff/Natalie Portman sightings/PDA not guaranteed.
Saturday
2. The Don't Knock the Rock festival continues with Built to Spill at the El Rey and a full day of films at the ArcLight.
3. Or, if your folks are in town and don't feel like seeing J Mascis and Doug Martsch melt each other's faces off with dueling guitar solos, the mild saxophone stylings of David Sanborn are on display at the Long Beach Jazz Festival.
Sunday
4 and 5. Undo a morning of brunch n' brainwashing at the Scientology Celebrity Centre at "Vermin on the Mount," a night of "irreverent readings" "not directly affiliated" with McSweeney's, at The Mountain in Chinatown.
My tenure here at Gawker draws to a close. We'll have a special double-editor feature sometime before Monday, but for now, I guess I'll say this: I arrived a year ago on this website rather vaguely socialist. After a year contemplating the vagaries of Manhattan's class system, I leave ready to become a bomb-tossing Marxist anarchist. When it comes to Manhattan, I say kill 'em all, let Anna Wintour sort 'em out! And please — let the dirty bomb fall directly in the middle of the Meatpacking District.
· Barbie is running for president. Because a real woman would be too horrifying. [AP]
· Get your geeks hot with the comic-centric SuperHero Guide To Manhattan. [Discovery Travel]
· Gift shopping? May we suggest "Fish and Poop by the Gallon"? [Amazon.com]
· It's not that the collection of T-Shirts featured is offensive, it's that they're poorly designed. Is someone using PrintShop '88? [Nasty Tees]
—Lindsay Lohan's father collapsed in a Long Island courtroom yesterday. Sure, he has a history of heart problems and the drinking probably doesn't help, but if your daughter was fucking Fez, you'd be praying for a heart attack.
—Britain's Channel 4 refuses to meet Warner Bros.' asking price for Joey. Hey, guys, we can still make a deal here. The next time Chandler's goes to rehab, we'll make sure he does it in London. OK, what if we thrown in the Coco baby?
—At her Hollywood book signing, Pamela Anderson demonstrates her estimable powers of literary misdirection with a risqué T-shirt that only seems likes it's about sex.
—Poor former NJ Gov. Jim McGreevey's been through a lot today, but at least there's aren't any fake nude pics of him on the internet. Oops, spoke too soon.
1. Check out PJ Harvey's free in-store show at Amoeba to jump-start the Don't Knock The Rock film and music festival. Harvey's scheduled to start at 6 p.m., so you'd better leave right now if you don't want to claw your way through vinyl collectors who have been fingering records since early this morning. After you've been rocked by Harvey and are satisfied by your "inadvertent" groping by a guy in an ironic Rick Springfield t-shirt, head over to the festival's opening night party at Club Lingerie, where there's probably enough room to avoid your fellow handsy rock fans.
2. The Egyptian hosts the sneak preview of Bush's Brain, a movie that "explores the remarkable political journey of the man who is running the United States of America – a ruthless political mastermind whose name is not George W. Bush." They're talking about Karl Rove, but we're pretty sure George is taking orders from Barbara and Jenna after they've finished a tag-team keg stand.
· Mini-techno man Moby bullshits about his encounter with an aggressive stripper and her cocaine. The audience, we can assume, smiled politely and nodded. [NYDN (2nd item)]
· Rosie O Donnell s inaugural voyage on her new gay-oriented cruise line was a bit of a bust, racking up $250,000 in losses. Apparently the homo seafaring market prefers to cruise the docks rather than depart from them. [Page Six]
· Jennifer Lopez is getting fat, claims the Sun, with a photo of the singer herself, looking thinner then ever. Ergo, she is pregnant! Also: English people like to make things up to amuse themselves. [Sun UK]
—Reps for Jim Caviezel and Brendan Fraser helpfully throw their clients' names into the mix in an article about the difficulty of casting the next Superman. We think they'd better pick Jesus, since he's already familiar with the cool superpowers and helps control access to the afterlife.
—Late-night talk shows as marketing vehicles: "So many great things happen after the show goes off the air," host Jimmy Kimmel said. "Thanks to Sony, everyone can now hear what was once exclusive to our studio audience. This is especially great for viewers who love the music but dislike me." AND Conan goes informercial to hawk his DVDs.
—Desperate E! invites Oscar winners to man Joan Rivers' recently abdicated red carpet throne, Oscar winners incontinent with laughter.
—Brown Bunny blowjob ads invade the East Village, but on an almost quaint scale.
We know that those of you working for "lit" agents probably haven't indulged in anything more literary than writing coverage of an inept script adapted from a horrible novel. Now's your chance to indulge your sophisticated side: At 7 p.m., Book Soup is hosting hardboiled Reservoir Dogs/Kill Bill actor Michael Madsen as he reads from his first book of poetry, 46 Down: A Book of Dreams and Other Ramblings. Sure, you should be wary of actors reading their poetry, especially ones of the B-list variety who refer to their work as "ramblings," but you'll probably be a little more open to the experience if you stop for a happy hour cocktail on the way to the reading.
· Naomi Campbell's fake address (which is used for a legal address by dozens of other celebs as well): the office building at 500 Park Avenue. Naomi's individual address? Apartment HO. Is this a nasty joke on our eyeball-clawing super-woman? Ooo, someone's about to get beat with a phone again. [Page Six]
· Stodgy old news anchor Mike Wallace gets thrown against his limo and slapped with cuffs after asking cops why they were giving his double-parked driver a hard time. Finally! A journalist in cuffs outside of the bedroom! Oh right, sorry Matthew Cooper. [NYDN]
· Reese Witherspoon secured the recent cover of Vanity Fair through some good, old-fashioned legal threats. So now we know Editor Graydon Carter responds to both gifts and growls. [NYO]
· More rapper real estate drama: the purported $10 million spent on P. Diddy's new home in Alpine, NJ, is a bit inflated. Rather, the hip-hop cop-magnet spent a paltry $6.8 million, resulting in some possible IRS problems for the poor schmuck who sold the place. [V.V.]
—Supermodel/help-abuse aficionado Naomi Campbell strikes again, but this time she claims it's the maid's fault she got bitchslapped.
—An article on pro-anorexic websites and the companies that sell them fashion accessories. The red bracelet is going to be huge; pretty soon, you won't know if that skinny girl in your acting class is down with Madonna or Mary-Kate. [via Boing Boing]
—Schedule of Rick James Memorial Activities: Viewing Wednesday at Forest Lawn, with funeral to follow on Thursday.
—"Unless you were a teenager in the 1980s, you might struggle to place the name Christian Slater." Thus begins a vaguely depressing profile of Slater in The Guardian. Have these people never heard of Kuffs or the one where he gets the baboon heart? [via Tagline]
—Anna Nicole Smith "luxurious" style-pusher Bobby Trendy is getting his own reality show. God, save us all from personalized throw pillows.
Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are sent in by our readers. Send yours to tips@defamer.com and let Hollywood's famous know that the guy at the next table with his hand down his pants is going to e-mail Defamer once he's done with his business.
Last week we were concerned that Joyce Wadler, our favorite old biddy over at the New York Times, had lost her touch — perhaps due to an unfortunate stint with sobriety. But fear no more! Auntie Joyce is doing better than ever after an afternoon batting the implanted beach balls with Pamela Anderson:
A Note on Gossip: Could someone on the NY Post tech team fix the sad broken HTML that has plagued Page Six's ad servers for the past week? It's really heinous. Thanks! Moving on:
—Despite a shared interest in public, somewhat risqué sex, Jake Gyllenhaal and Kirsten Dunst just couldn't work it out. There's no mention of the Mile High Club, so maybe they should give that a whirl before really calling it quits. There's nothing like copulating near a stainless steel toilet to rejuvenate a flailing relationship.
—Low Culture has its eye on a puzzling. emerging connection between actor/director Peter Berg and a certain cinematic typeface.
—Fay Wray, legendary King Kong hostage, dies at 96. Clearly, she was asking for it. (Death. She was very old.)
—Gawker alumna Elizabeth Spiers gets fired from The Apprentice tryouts. Trump wouldn't have know what to do with her.
—Don't sit too close to a frustrated writer in a coffee shop (this does severely limit your seating options in LA, but you were warned), especially if that writer has a camphone and a blog. [via la.comfidential]
Sightings are provided by readers; send yours to tips@gawker.com.
An FYI: We haven't taken the day off—even when the shackle chafes and the ball gag starts to taste like copper, Nick Denton gives no quarter. Our umbilical connection to the internet has just returned after the last couple of hours of "vacation." Regular posting will resume immediately.
This will be my last week writing Gawker. I got offered the fancy-schmancy title of Editorial Director of the Gawker Empire, and I just can't say no to a long, vague job description that sounds suspiciously like I don't have to do anything. (Maybe I'll have lunch with Conde Nast Editorial Director James Truman and ask him. That's what management does, right? Sit on their wealthy wide asses and eat 28-dollar Cobb salads? Jackpot!) Also, I'll be working part-time with a regular gig at a print publication, to be announced at a later date.
Who scored the most column inches this week, thereby ensuring our devotion to their media whoredom?
