Australia, land of runway fatties and denim nymphettes, now brings you the Wonderbra for men — "Wondercup" underwear that "lifts, separates and extends" to "stop squashing." The "Patriot" designs come in nationally appropriate colors, as "Your country has never been prouder and neither have you." Your date, however, may be disappointed when his or her personal search in your underwear for an apparent WMD turns up empty.
Perhaps some of our Brit-sensitive readers can make sense of this ad for Monkey "magazine" — apparently an online lad mag that pushes the basement of quality even for that genre. There is a monkey in the commercial, and apparently it's causing some distress by interrupting a feat of soccer prowess. But is it funny? Tragic? The sort of thing that makes you want to check out an online lad mag? Explain.
Serial beatdown artist Naomi Campbell was relaxing in her native London while trying to get her work visa renewed, when apparently the blood-rage took hold of her once again. Rumor has it that Campbell attacked her own drug counselor, inflicting "scratches all over her face." Campbell was arrested, then released on bail; she "rebailed" for an appearance later in October, but then rebailed again for a December appearance (good luck getting her to show up in court). No charges have yet been filed, and the unfortunate drug counselor hasn't been publicly identified. But she'd damn well keep her mouth shut, if she knows what's good for her. And next time, she'll fill that prescription a little more quickly.
Europeans seem to be cultivating an emerging talent for oddly surreal AIDS awareness campaigns (see the tarantula and scorpion from last year). A new German series runs with the motto of "It's easy to lose your head when you're horny," in the sense of not using prophylactics in the heat of passion. Hence you have a disturbing gallery of headless copulation, complete with video version as well. The only thing that would make this better is a morning-after shot of the couples reattaching their heads and suddenly experiencing all their attendant regrets.
The onetime fluffer of New York Sun column "Lunch at the Four Seasons," Pranay Gupte, was last seen on his way to Dubai to take over as business editor at the Khaleej Times (he was to give the paper his "Gupte touch"). Last Friday he returned to New York, bounced out of the job after 13 days. Gupte's extended explanation points the finger ultimately at a government takeover of the Khaleej Times causing his ouster. It's hard to tell where Gupte really places the blame though, since he trashes the paper's old owner, one of the editors, the paper's overall quality, and its new status as a "government organ," all the while singing the praises of Dubai's autocratic ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. As anyone familiar with Dubai knows, Khaleej Times has generally sucked for some time, and the press there has only ever been just as free as the government has seen fit to allow. Anyway, though Gupte mentions the same incidents dismissively, a tipster claims Gupte was booted for more personal reasons.
The endlessly parodied and nevertheless nifty Sony ad from last year that featured thousands of superballs bouncing down a San Francisco hill gets yet another go-round with the above clip. This bouncefest takes place in London's Portobello Road and is sadly and obviously a mere animation. The twist — it's for the "Sphere" sex toy by luxury eroticist Myla. A ripoff it may be, but the image of a horde of cootchie-balls tumbling blissfully through a public space makes it all worthwhile. Perhaps they'll do a follow-up tribute to the new, more phallic Sony ad.
A Swede by the name of Jonathan Lundqvist returned from Iran last month with a bundle of National Geographics, Economists, and Wallpapers purchased from a newsstand near Tehran University. Though these and other Western mags are permitted, they're heavily censored — moreover, they're manually censored, by government readers who go through each copy and cover forbidden ladyparts with white stickers or black ink. Interestingly, news stories that show women with bare arms, knees, or cleavage generally just get a blocky white sticker, while fashion ads (like Uma Thurman above) get ink jobs that keep the clothes unobscured. Some ink gets more artfully applied than others; Uma almost looks like she's wearing a black top of some kind. After the jump, less fortunate girls just get slapped with chastity-protecting boob blobs. Lundqvist noted that the newsstand stocked several mag issues that were quite old (these photos are from Wallpaper, September 2005); one wonders what the turnaround is on hand-censoring. (The newsstand owner was also shocked that Lundqvist declined to purchase some un-censored fashion mags from "under the counter.")
Just when fashion twigs thought they'd successfully fended off anti-skinny assaults, London mayor Ken Livingstone has declared he'll terminate the city's financial support of London Fashion Week if the fest doesn't ban anorexically thin girls (as Madrid did for their fashion week). It's a significant threat, as London has forked over 620,000 to Fashion Week during the last three years. No official response yet from LFW organizer British Fashion Council, but one commenter on the Daily Mail story adopts a variation on the Lagerfeld line: "These models only stand out because most people are overweight and eat far more than the body needs. There is a lot of jealousy involved." If only everyone else wasn't so goddamn fat, these tiny girls wouldn't look so weird, you see?
Despite initial denials from Madonna's publicist, various Malawian relatives of the alleged newest addition to the Ciccone-Ritchie household claim that the adoption of one-year-old David Banda is proceeding apace. Madonna's publicist, Liz Rosenberg, earlier tried to finesse the adoption thing as Madonna's metaphorical adoption of Malawi in general. But Banda's father says his son will be "very well looked after in America," though he will make "regular" trips back to Malawi so as to "know his roots." (Apparently the little tyke won't be welcome in Madonna and Guy Ritchie's London home.) In response to the Bandas' joy, Rosenberg robotically intoned, "I am unable to make any official statement at this time," before self-destructing in a shower of sparks. Expect wee David and family to manifest a well-financed public silence very, very shortly.
From a Paris bus shelter. Those stylish French ... even their graffiti'd critiques of Kate Moss could be easily mistaken for a legitimate fashion campaign blurb.
Things are not always as they appear. It would be unfair to draw any conclusions based solely on these photos.
As a final farewell to Paris Fashion Week, which brought us the runway debut of "Velvet d'Amour's" monolithic talents for designer Jean Paul Gaultier as well as Karl Lagerfeld's dislike of fat French chicks, we present the climactic offering from oddball clothier Hussein Chalayan. It's a pretty funky hat, to be sure, but the real NSFW sizzle of the ensemble awaits after the jump.
Since we got to enjoy photographer Terry Richardson's take on Vincent Gallo earlier, why not also enjoy Richardson's new "Lolita" ad campaign for Lee Jeans in Australia? Sliding in for approval under Ozzie decency regs, the photos depict barely legal gals in baby-doll getups and various nymphet scenarios. Inevitably, the shirtless, tattooed, wholly off-putting figure of Richardson himself sneaks into various frames, though perhaps not all of those actually used in the ads. When we were coming up, kids wearing Lee Jeans routinely got beat up by kids wearing Levi's; apparently those Lee Jeans dorks were all having crazy kinky sex in motel rooms while their creepy uncle looked on.
Lee's Lolita OK, board rules [The Age via Adrants]
We don't see anorexic (girls). The girls are skinny. They have skinny bones.
Mummified ABC legend Barbara Walters recently went to the Australia Zoo to film an interview with Crocodile Widow Teri Irwin, whose husband, Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, was killed a month ago by a stingray. Now this is completely unconfirmed, but a zoo staffer present during Walters' appearance sends us the following:
Avuncular New York Times business travel columnist Joe Sharkey happened to be aboard the 13-passenger Embraer Legacy 600 jet involved in the mid-air collision near Sao Paulo, Brazil. Everyone aboard Sharkey's jet survived, while the 155 people aboard the Boeing 737 were not so lucky. Sharkey was undertaking a freelance gig about private jet travel at the time, and ended up instead with a story that catapulted him from the mordant depths of the travel section all the way to the NYT front page. Contains very mild mortality humor.
Our gearhead brothers over at Jalopnik are at the Paris Auto Show right now (apparently we now send bloggers to far-off locales to cover events relevant to their site — speaking of which, isn't about time there were a NYC media event in the Maldives?). When they're not chain-smoking Gauloises and test driving baguettes, they're expected to blog about all the shiny cars...except that the venue's press internet access has Gawker on its list of banned sites. So the Jalops can't really get into our publishing system and are thus unable to write anything. Les b tards chanceux.
I think it's discrimination [to ban underweight models]. We are skinny, this is our work. There are lots of overweight people working in offices but I'm not going to say "This girl is fat, she can't work in an office."
