Daniel K. Stern (remember him?) sued Rita Cosby (remember her?) for libel back in 2007 over her book about Anna Nicole Smith, and a federal district judge ruled yesterday that much of the suit can go forward.
This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, so it's time once again to remember how great things were, how different things are, and how they'll never be that good again.
Architecturally speaking, what will the bust leave us? Woolworth, Cunard, Standard Oil—their buildings stand even if their companies didn't. What do we get this go-around? Media- and finance-subsidized glass and steel, pretty much.
If the Beatrice Inn were to close forever, rather than just temporarily, what would we say at its funeral? Because we're feeling wistful this afternoon, we're going to attempt something of a eulogy.
Wispily pompadoured Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter's new midtown venture Monkey Bar is a bar/restaurant for rich people. There's even a giant mural commemorating some of between-wars New York's bestest richies. So who's in it?
The Boston Latin School (which I trudged through for six long years) has a vampire problem. Kids are spreading rumors that the school is infested with blood-suckers. The headmaster now assures us: It's all lies!!
Here's a photo, found on Facebook, of Radar founder Maer Roshan in... middle school? Ninth grade maybe? He looks to be about 14 or so. Anyway, just a funny trip back in time.
Just in time for New York to revert back to the mean streets of old, the blockbustery film Watchmen comes out offering us a reimagined 1985 cityscape. How does it compare to the real thing?
As we learned that her assistant was laid off today, our attentions were drawn to be-boa-ed Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby. Coincidentally, a tipster directed us to some nostalgic photos from her young, frivolous college years.
Continuous Lean points out a series of Time Life photos detailing the collection of hand signals that Sherman Billingsley, the owner of Old Manhattan institution The Stork Club, used to communicate silently with his staff.
Hollywood continues to dredge up your beloved childhood memories and cruelly destroy them. The latest victim is The NeverEnding Story. The 1980s German puppet mindfrak may soon be zombified into a crappy new remake.
Oh, hey, look: Flailing NBC executive Ben Silverman just bought a reality TV project from Jerry Seinfeld, marking the 1990s comedian as the ultimate trailing indicator of desperation and creative bankruptcy.
Media elites call Anna Wintour's Vogue editorship stale, but after 20 years some in the creative underclass have grown attached. Or maybe, like Wintour, they've learned celebrities sell clothing.
Even as the New Yorker waxes nostalgic on the glory days of the Village Voice, the weekly is severing more of its legacy, including Nat Hentoff, hired in 1958.
Google somehow contrived to include full digital images of old New York magazines in its new magazine search service on Google Books. Sadly, the archive is missing key issues, containing such classics as "Radical Chic: That Party At Lenny's" and "Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night." But both of those are available, albeit ripped from their original context, on nymag.com, and Google has one classic that isn't: Barbara Goldsmith's "La Dolce Viva," which revealed the seedy side of Andy Warhol's entourage through Viva, a shriveled one-name actress. "I had never seen anything like it," Tom Wolfe wrote of accompanying nude photos from Diane Arbus. But the article's appearance in the fourth debut standalone New York nearly ended Clay Felker's magazine.
In its review of Elle-focused reality show Stylista, the Times finds plenty to like, surprisingly. It seems hippie editor Anne Slowey does a surprisingly convincing impersonation of Meryl Streep imitating Miranda Priestly standing in for mean old Anna Wintour of Vogue. (So much for those embarrassing preview clips from a few months ago.) The catfighting is inspired and "novel." And yet that's not what will hook you on the show. You'll watch because you are aching to pretend, for an hour each Wednesday, that the brutal hierarchy of yesteryear lent work an elegant simplicity. Writes the Times' Gina Bellafante:
Why else would we even go to the movies or turn on the television? Okay, there are a few other reasons, but mostly it's the sex and violence. So. What are you favorite scenes of people getting it on or having it out? Or both at once? Obviously, keep it tasteful and SFW. I'll get us going after the jump.
This is certainly a scary time in America, what with the racist McCain/Palin fans and a liberal response that is still cringing and frightened to offend no matter what crazy shit the Wingers spew. But America has had scary times before—times when racists and rednecks and bullies and other pieces of shit went all out to stop the spread of progress and new ideas and common decency. And we have always stuck it to the man, at least in movies and TV. My opener after the jump.
Ah, the Burbs. So many good times. Sadly, with the collapse of the economy, they'll probably disappear along with the middle class. The rich will live in inaccessible luxury high rises like in Land of the Dead, or on well-guarded manses like in a Philip K. Dick novel. The rest of us will hunker down in urban hell-zones, disaster-prone trailer parks, and underground bunkers. Actually, no, that won't happen. But, still, the suburbs figure so prominently in so many fine movies and TV shows that they deserve a dedicate clip-fest. I'll get us rolling after the jump.
What do you do when the world's economy is falling apart and God only knows when things will get better? Duh! You get together with your friends, pretend that you're six, and start building some sofa-and-blanket forts stat! Dig deep into your memories for the days when food and shelter was someone else's problem, and find some clips that hearken back to those warm and cozy—and lost—times. They don't have to be cartoons, but they do have to be from childhood. That's all. I'll start with my biggest childhood hero.
