Even though Showtime's Weeds doesn't lend itself to fun gimmicks like fountains bubbling with the blood of the freshly slaughtered, the series is doing what it can to lure in new subscribers with promotional stunts of its own, like casting a recently decoupled Olsen Twin as a fledgling drug-dealer who believes Jesus has sent her forth to get the world really, really high.
PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you spotted The Office's Toby exactly the way he should always be seen—nearly naked and sopping wet.
Ranking at the very top of a list we keep of Celebrity Pairs We Hope To Never See Making Out—and beating out such unholy couplings as Peter O'Toole/Nicole Richie and Elizabeth Taylor/Haley Joel Osment—has long been Sir Ben Kingsley and either of the Olsen Twins, the subjects of one our most troubling recurring dreams. (We will spare you the details, no matter how fiercely you beg us to share them. Just know that a messy chocolate souffle is involved. We've said too much!) But thanks to the upcoming indie film The Wackness, we'll soon have the opportunity to see the much-unclamored-for Kingsley/Mary-Kate osculation outside of our fragile, obviously very damaged subconscious. Worse still is the way in which Sir Ben describes his co-star to Access Hollywood:
When Billy Joel played a concert at the Ross School in East Hampton on Saturday night, he did so to an audience that supposedly had paid $3,000 a piece to see him. The not-so-dirty non-secret is that hardly anyone actually paid for tickets. Certainly Mary-Kate Olsen, crunched up to the front of the stage and looking like a tiny bejeweled bonobo, didn't. Jon Bon Jovi, looking older and hairier than we had ever seen him, probably didn't. Ditto for Steve Guttenberg. Then again, does Steve Guttenberg pay for anything ever? Though the Lizzie Grubman folks firmly refused our photographer Laurel Ptak entry, she did capture the weird scene outside of the concert. It was kind of like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" but with "Piano Man" in the background. Most of the ladies were Eastern European models and had no idea who Billy Joel was. Most of the men would have, in any other context, taken the question "What's your favorite Billy Joel song?" as an affront to their sexuality and have punched you. But things work differently here in the Hamptons. One fella in a striped shirt gamely responded, "Rocketman. That's my favorite song." Well, maybe it's ours too. After, everyone drove drunk.
The Row is all about a classic, chic sensibility for women and men, incorporating tailor made techniques to all of our garmets [sic]. We sell to the best botiques[sic]worldwide New York (Barneys), Los Angeles (Maxfield), Paris(Marie Louisa), Tokyo (Isetan, Adelaide, etc.) and others.
This position is part-time (3-4 days a week). This internship requires a 2-3 month commitment. [...]
Compensation: this internship is unpaid, metrocard will be provided.
Mary-Kate Olsen "knows her real estate," according to a broker who showed her a history-filled but decrepit townhouse on Washington Place. "She showed up with her big sunglasses. She said, 'This is three million to renovate and it's a two-year ordeal, and I just can't do that.'" Seriously, hasn't she suffered enough? [NYer]
Her New York Times byline notwithstanding, Mary-Kate Olsen (and sis Ashley) have a distrustful relationship with the press, at least when it comes to their own fashion line. You know, The Row? Which is supposedly available at Maxfield and Barneys? But who's actually seen the clothes? Not stern NYT fashion critic Cathy Horyn—and she won't be seeing them anytime soon. WWD reports that the Olsen gals are "scheduled" to emerge, elf-like, at Paris Fashion Week, where the fall-winter collection of their "fledgling designer ready-to-wear" label will debut. But! "A slate of high-end retailers is scheduled to see their fall-winter collection at a showroom here —with no cranky press critics, thank you very much." Those twins are just so sensitive.
The New York Times listed in-house two openings for the Baghdad bureau yesterday, in expectation of the return of "many" reporters this spring, according to the posting from foreign editor Susan Chira. Back in April, 2006, the paper similarly advertised two openings in Baghdad; five applicants applied. (Think they'll get that many this time?) That summer, Paul von Zielbauer, Damien Cave and Marc Santora shipped off to Iraq; Zielbauer returned to the U.S. a few months later, while the other two remain. Reporters live together in a compound and work closely—so maybe Mary-Kate should bring Ashley! The listing follows.
Hey, j-schooled kiddies scrivening away at the Podunk Times-Picayune in the hopes of one day making it into the Gray Lady's bosom? Check this out!
Crotchety Steve Cuozzo of the Post stops by Graydon Carter's Waverly Inn and is mightily unimpressed: "Welcome to the most annoying new place to eat in a long time." Cuozzo knocks the food, the service, the secrecy, the crowd, and the lack of decent beer choices. The contrarians at Time Out take the opposite tack, giving the mac-shack five out of six stars and calling it "the best surprise of the season." (Look for critic Randall Lane's byline in Vanity Fair sometime soon.) The Observer, meanwhile, reports some recent unpleasantness:
We enjoyed Star's cover story on Mary Kate Olsen's reanorexia as much as or possibly more than most people — "HER EATING COACH IS GONE" is a great name for a post-hardcore band, by the way — but we couldn't help but notice that some of the pictures of "Mary Kate" looked suspiciously full-bodied and — how to put this? — differently nosejobbed than the others. Today, WWD confirmed our suspicions: according to their publicist, the twin in at least one of the pictures is indeed Ashley, not Mary Kate. We guess those tricky twins confuse the Star photo department by periodically switching off haircolors, but we rely on other clues to distinguish one from the other. We thought we'd help out the Star photo editors with a handy list of our personal Olsen twin "tells" — subtle clues that reliably determine which platform-booted, layered-looked lady is the rexy twin and which is the relatively healthy-looking fraternal counterpart.
Ashley:
1) Generally wears about three fewer layers.
2) Weighs about 20 lbs more.
3) Japanese-style eye-widening surgery worked out better.
Photographer Sante d'Orazio has a reputation for doing the sexy picture thing, not to mention the actual sex-the-models thing. His new book, Katlick School, goes right for the groin of a particular fetish — the sexual awakening of a nubile girl in Catholic school uniform. Fulfilling the barely repressed urges of generations of Catholic school boys, the book has aroused adult Catholics in quite a different fashion, though none bothered to show up to protest the book's launch last night at the Gramercy Park Hotel. For this occasion, our week long Party Crash scrambling resulted in headliner photog Nikola Tamindzic getting able backup from lenswoman Our Pal Kate. The end result is a doubleplusgood collection of photos. You can look at a complete gallery of the whole shebang; or, you can sift through Nikola's photos; or, spend time with Kate's collection (full gallery here). Plus, check out an exclusive! gallery! of preview pics from the book over at Fleshbot. Warning: hidden somewhere in all these is a make-out scene involving Mickey Rourke and Val Kilmer. Go fetch! And after the jump, Kate gives up the narrative lowdown.
The time: 9:00 p.m.
The date: August 9.
The place: 147 Mercer Street.
Sighted: Saw MK in the ladies room at Mercer Kitchen. Wearing some long dress with a dragon on it and about 8 lbs. of eyeliner. The best part - she didn't wash her hands in the bathroom.
