Now that we're fully into week 2 of Fake Writer Day, it's time for all the weekly publications to play catch-up with their insights on Fake Writer James Frey. Time and Newsweek give us the expected recaps, just vanilla enough for red-state readers who have no idea what the hell is going on. Tom Scocca at the Observer however, has no qualms about flat-out calling James Frey a liar. Which, of course, he is.
• On the website for NBC's The Office, there's a cutesy little feature which allows users to upload original photos documenting their own office torture sessions. Someone posted the picture at right with the following caption: "Art Director of a major magazine busy at work with some fashion samples for Holiday Gift Guide." Alright, kittens, IDENTIFY THIS MAN. Who is he? We know you know! [The Office]
• It was inevitable: James Frey faces a class-action lawsuit regarding the false claims in A Million Little Pieces. [HND]
• Urban Outfitters liked online retailer Johnny Cupcake's t-shirt designs, so they asked for a sample to be considered for placement with the retailer. For whatever reason, a deal wasn't worked out — presumably because Urban realized they could save cash by stealing the designs and making the t-shirts themselves. [Consumerist]
• What does your H&M location say about you? Personally, ours says "poor and desperate." [VV via Curbed]
• How to write Gay. [MBToolbox]
Memoir poser and Fake Writer James Frey has wisely added password protection to his personal page, Big Jim Industries. Christ, so many people are relapsing this very minute.
We promise that this will be our last James Frey post of the, uh, minute — but it's really important, we swear! While the Smoking Gun has dug up and disproved that which can be disproved in rehab memoir A Million Little Pieces, much like us, the boys at Freakonomics have wondered what else Frey might've falsified. Apparently, there's a disturbing little resource called the Mortality Detail File, which provides information on every death in the United States. Oooh, why not use that to find out if anyone resembling Frey's lover Lilly, who hangs herself in a Chicago halfway house just as Frey is coming from prison to see her, ever existed:
• Colin Farrell's lawyer's beat up on poor little Jossip, but Jossip lives to tale the tale. [Jossip]
• Which is not to say Farrell's lawyers have caught up with all the cock pix quite yet. [Totally Joshness]
• Freygate forces Oprah to make a drastic move with her Book Club. [Storms Illustration via Emdashes]
• Naturally, the one time the English and the Germans successfully cooperate on something, it's a hideous line-dancing song you haven't been able to forget nearly a decade later. [Silver Jacket]
• Just in: Scientists have identified the four ur-Jewish mothers, from whom 40 percent of all Ashkenazim are descended. Reply the mothers, "What, so now you finally decide to write?" [Reuters via Yahoo!]
• We can't relieve believe we're mentioning this, but, as what's apparently Diabetes Appreciation Week continues, you can finally get away from the pictures of unfortunate, obese, poor people the Times has been foisting on us all and instead tune into CNBC Sunday night as — we kid you not — Poison's Bret Michaels "talks candidly about partying with diabetes." [dLife]
Late yesterday, it was announced that James Frey would be adding an author's note to future editions of his memoir A Million Little Pieces. While we doubt this note will contain an unabridged reprint of the Smoking Gun's 4,000-page exposé; on the book's repeated inaccuracies regarding Frey's "criminal" record, we're sure it'll be just enough to appease Oprah and keep our grandchildren from attacking him 50 years from now.
• Honestly, you didn't think another day of FreyGate would pass without the media's resident rehab expert Seth Mnookin weighing in, did you? Hell no — we were wondering what was taking the dude so long. [Slate]
• You may be dismayed at Frey's dishonesty, but admit it: You're also kinda jealous. Here's how to mack his style and make Oprah your bitch. [BlackTable]
• What if Frey is really a diabolical story-stealer? WHAT IF?! [Exile]
• Considering the stance Frey's publisher, Nan Talese, has on the definition of memoirs and what her husband, Gay, thinks of nonfiction, you have to wonder what this mess has done to their marriage. [GalleyCat]
• Tomorrow is Friday, meaning you have only one day left to compose your own parody of a gritty, dramatically embellished memoir. Come Monday, that shit's gonna hit unprecedented levels of tired. [BlaggBlogg]
• Listen to Frey talk about being in the prison yard. You know, for irony's sake. [B&N]
• Oh! Look! James Frey is walking! With people! This is huge! [Telescreen.org]
• Assuming A Million Little Pieces still gets made into a movie, we'll be petitioning for Joey Fatone to star. [Defamer]
We were actually going to do a live-blog of "memoirist" James Frey's appearance last night on Larry King but, if you saw the program, you understand why we couldn't bear to put forth the effort. To put it mildly, it may have been the most uncomfortable, uninformative, painfully banal hour of television to which we've ever been subjected. When he wasn't nervously sipping from his coffee mug every two seconds (surely that thing was empty after 10 minutes), Frey deftly handled hardball questions. For example:
Yes, yes, we know it's ironic.
BREAKING! FAKE WRITER DAY(s) UPDATE! From the Random House website:
• Times foodie Frank Bruni's cutting investigation into restaurants discovers the unthinkable: you will spend money, often more than you originally intended. We're grabbing a Pulitzer nomination form right now. [NYT]
• Perhaps The Source should have gone looking for a new accounts manager before their landlord booted their broke asses. [MB]
• A very odd and possibly sad sighting of Radar's widower Maer Roshan. [PX This]
• Former councilwoman Margarita Lopez crowns Mayor Bloomberg an "honorary lesbian." We always knew he had a little bulldyke in him. [Politicker]
• Yet another theory on James Frey's FTBSITTTD tattoo, this one with as powerful a message as they come. [TMN]
• Our society has finally come to the point where a young, helpless woman will sacrifice her ladyflower for a fucking videogame system. Score one for those Left Behind-type freaks. [Craigslist]
• James Frey will be on Larry King tonight to give his first interview (or statements of any kind, really) since the Smoking Gun first broke the news about his "dramatic embellishments." Inside scoop: we shit you not, he'll be bringing his mother on the program. Grab the kleenex, Oprah. [USA Today]
• In a "holy shit how far can this go" move, Random House will offer full refunds to readers who bought A Million Little Pieces directly from the publisher. If you scored your copy at the bookstore, have fun arguing with the pimple-faced staffer at Barnes & Noble. (If you actually do try to make a return at the store, do let us know how it goes.) [CNN]
We've spent an unhealthy amount of time alone lately, quietly mulling over the implications of the synchronized scandals of James Frey, who falsified key details in his Oprah-sanctioned rehab memoir A Million Little Pieces, and JT LeRoy, who falsified a tragic past and a case of AIDS when, in fact, he doesn't really exist. We've pored over our old texts of literary theory and given much thought to existential issues of criticism, but we're still not sure how to feel about this whole stupid mess. Help us, won't you?
From last night's Publishers Lunch weekly roundup:
• Only because we have to: Colin Farrell's sex tape. Enjoy, if that's your thing. And it probably is, considering it's someone worth seeing naked. The site has only been working intermittently, so you can use your imagination with this artfully cropped screen shot. [DirtyColin]
• While New York begs us all to remember that they were on the scent of JT Leroy's scam long before Warren St. John and the Times, let's all remember that the Village Voice was on this one, oh, four years ago. [VV]
• Let the mockery begin: "What I Plan to Embellish for Obvious Dramatic Reasons in My Own Forthcoming Memoir." [Minor Tweaks]
• You never forget your first Goatse. [Flickr via EdRants]
• Anderson Cooper undergoes an emotional investigation into the emotional work of Anderson Cooper. [Slate]
• Thanks to the expanding laws of the universe, mass quantities of douchenuggets are now able to enjoy simultaneously looking like a Gotti. [Sherdog]
• Breaking: Avril Lavigne is a LADY! [PITNB]
• On Fake Writer Day, it's not just about the fake writers. Blogger Claire Zulkey, who has interviewed both JT Leroy and James Frey for her blog, crumbles to the floor and realizes her blogging ethics have suffered at the hands of these evil, literary minstrels. [Zulkey]
• We've no idea what sort of club would call itself V.I.P. room and then use Tara Reid as its spokeswhore, but her malformed side-boob defeats any notions of the venue's V or I. [Hollywood Tuna]
• Lindsay Lohan and Leonardo DiCaprio are 88% compatible. You have a 6% chance, however, of giving a shit. [Jossip]
• Star Jones would appreciate it if you didn't post on her blogs in all caps. It gives hubby Al a headache, you know. [Just Jared]
• We've no complaints regarding the calculated pimping of Anderson Cooper, other than that we'd like to see more jackets in the ads. Why not a bomber jacket? Perhaps a khaki trench? The puffy coat, while warm, just isn't flattering. [B&C] • As for this morning's Blind Item Guessing Game, you all were more silent than a scared altar boy. We're not sure how to punish you for playing poorly, but it'll likely involve force-feeding you complex carbohydrates.
Because today is Fake Writer Day, best-selling author James Frey is, alas, not all he claims to be. While we have no doubt that, as chronicled in his Oprah-approved rehab memoir A Million Little Pieces, he was chugging 5 O'Clock, smoking rock, snorting half of Colombia and popping pills of shit we've never heard of, the Smoking Gun reports that Frey was never quite the bad-ass Criminal he claims to have been.
