Rumors and/or Gossip

The son of a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at WaPo isn’t exactly a star player on his District-based little league baseball team. To be fair, however, we’re told the games have sucked, so who are we to judge?

But it probably wouldn’t hurt Dad got in a few games of catch with the tike. Might want to step it up before Fathers’ Day.

Just a thought.

Comedian Joan Rivers was a hot mess of candor at Reagan National Airport over the weekend. Our resident paparazzo Colin Drummond caught up with her and asked about the deeper meaning of the paper stars she was handing out to fans.

“This makes you an official deputy and you go over to someone and say, ‘You look like shit,’” Rivers told him, hidden behind dark sunglasses and looking like a frumpy mass of coat and scarf who deserved one of her own stars.

Drummond also asked how Rivers feels about the White House potentially having a white first lady again. She replied, “I think every president should have a uterus.”

Watch here.

We have it on good authority that Tom Rosenstiel of PEW is applying to be the next dean of American University’s School of Communication.

The University’s Dean Search Committee will be hosting the first of three student forums with finalists for the position tonight at 5 p.m. in the Wechsler Theatre. Tonight’s forum will feature Eileen O’Connor. Student forums with candidates Rosenstiel and Jeff Rutenbeck will be held Monday, March 26th and Thursday, March 29, respectively.

MSNBC Contributor and Mother Jones’ Washington Bureau Chief David Corn apparently got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

He was spotted in the Barnes & Noble at Union Station throwing a fit because his new book — his fifth — fitting called Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party out today didn’t have its own display. He was overheard yelling at the manager that “every paper in America” was going to be talking about his book today and yet nobody could find it there.

The manager explained that corporate tells him what books get displays and that the order did not call for that. Corn maintained that the bookstore wasn’t well run and stormed out in a huff.

“It was a scene,” our spy tells us.

Corn, who is usually very amiable, explained to FishbowlDC what happened. He admitted he was “agitated” but said he did not “lose his temper” with either the Nook salesman out front or the manager in back. “Agitated? Yes. Losing my temper? No. I was exasperated.” Corn said he was upset that this is the only bookseller left on Capitol Hill and that his book was not prominently displayed, as he’d been promised.

“It could just be this bookstore didn’t get the memo,” he surmised. “People are walking by. This is the day you want them to see the cover. You don’t know what it means the day your book comes out and your book is not prominently displayed.”

Our spy said the manager kept his cool. “Manager was awesome. Totally calm. Looked up the order for him to confirm no display. Actually, he acted as if he gets a bunch of jerks coming in there with similar demands. Washington!”

UPDATE: Three cheers for Corn! His book is now displayed at the front of the store, as it is supposed to be, he noted. He still discounts the version our spy told us, saying, “I did not yell at the manager. As the author of several books, I know better than to shout at the people who sell my books. He even asked me to return to sign books–which I will gladly do.”

Vogue Editor Anna Wintour was the last person to show up to the White House State Dinner last night.  This would make her, of course, fashionably late. Our spies tell us she had to take the long walk up the street as the Diva wasn’t allowed to be driven inside.  The only cars that drove straight inside where George Clooney, Harvey Weinstein, and the music acts. “Wonder if Anna wore her signature shades inside,” cracked Colin Drummond, our resident paparrazo. As you can see above, she at least removed them for a little while.

Update: And now the video in which Drummond asks, “Anna, is there such a thing as being fashionably late?” When she laughs it off, he replies she is, “just a little bit.”

….that one of those House Beautiful green chairs will be in Georgetown in the vicinity of Cady’s Alley around 1:30. The chair is a Palace Chair from Baker’s Jacques Garcia Collection.

What the hell are you waiting for? Go get it. It’s free! (And psst…picture this white number in green. This is the style.)

As we told you earlier in the week, House Beautiful Magazine is giving away a whopping 19 green chairs this week. And they’re not the ugly ones — they’re beautiful green-hued chairs in all shapes, designs and shades of green.

Update: That same birdy tells us that at 2:15ish they’re placing an Arhaus Modesto Lime Chair near Chinatown’s Friendship Arch.

Update #2: The birdy is a regular chatty Cathy. Around 3ish, a “fabulous” chair from The Container Store will appear in the U Street Corridor, in vicinity of U and 12th Streets.

Update #3 (last one of the day): Farragut Square gets its turn between 3:45 and 4:15 today when HB will place the Phillipe Chair from Room Service somewhere near I/Eye and 17th streets NW.

It goes without saying that the father of Snooki‘s baby, Jioni Lavelle, is far more interesting than any of the hopefuls — except, well, maybe pompous Newt Gingrich telling us how he’s going to pork his blonde bobbed wife on Valentine’s Day.

But now we know for sure that Lavelle is officially more popular. On Super Tuesday, iProspect, purportedly a “leading global digital performance agency” (that we’ve never heard of) collected data on what topics were Googled most. The results? None of the candidates even cracked the top 20 and “Super Tuesday” itself only landed in 10th place. Embarrassingly, number nine was “Buckeyballs” — an addictive magnetic desk toy.

See the Top 10 list after the jump…

Read more

The rose has fallen off the bloom. And TBD‘s intrepid fiction writer Ryan Kearney is actively on the hunt for a new job, FishbowlDC has learned. Maybe he can use mediabistro as a resource — he wouldn’t be the first TBDer to approach us for employment assistance.

No one can fault Kearney for wanting to jump ship. With pretty much everyone in his midst dropping like violinists on the Titanic in recent months, it isn’t terribly surprising that Kearney is also looking to get out of there. In the meantime, we’re sure Robert Allbritton is hanging on the site’s every word. After all, TBD writes about such urgent matters as cupcake trends and FishbowlDC party invitations they didn’t receive. That was Ryan’s latest investigative masterpiece. But we’re sure Kearney would be an ass-et to any newsroom. Good luck Ryan!

If you’re female and your heartthrob is actor Kirk Cameron, you better check your hormones at the door because he won’t take one of those goofy “Here I am with a strange female I’ve never met before” photographs.

While at CPAC yesterday, Cameron was quite the standout star. But like many actors, he has demands. In his case, it’s more like a hard and fast rule. At one point the Washington Examiner‘s gossip scribe Nikki Schwab was interviewing him. TWT‘s Senior Opinion Editor Emily Miller approached to take a picture of Cameron and Schwab and his people physically pushed her and blocked the shot (above is the blurry shot she wound up getting). “I said, people he’s not that important,” Miller vented back in Blogger’s Row at the Wardman Park Hotel. And they told her, “He can’t be photographed alone with a woman.”

Later on, a woman came into Blogger’s Row and shouted that any reporter wishing to interview Cameron in the next 24 hours needs to set it up in advance. Miller remarked wryly, “There was less ado when Rick Perry walked in here.”

Though Cameron’s handlers wouldn’t offer specifics, here’s what we know. Cameron, a Christian evangelist, operates a ministry called The Way of the Master. He created The Firefly with his wife, Chelsea Noble, who is an obvious exception to the no photographs with random females rule. Once an atheist, midway through TV’s “Growing Pains” he became a born again Christian and refused story lines he considered too racy.

The Guardian‘s Ana Marie Cox may be keeping herself relatively low-key in Texas, but her ex-husband Chris Lehman let some details slip about how he’s coping after the divorce. Lehman, who recently left Yahoo! News and is a longtime editor at Bookforum and contributor to In These Times, gave an interview to the literary culture blog Full Stop this week about his book, Rich People Things. In the interview, he opens up slightly to Michael Schapira about his recent breakup. Schapira refers to the book as an “act of public therapy.”

Take a look…

You’re in a band called The Charm Offensive. Is this another side of your work as a social critic? “I was very much influenced by punk rock and politically-minded bands like the Minutemen. My lead guitarist used to be in Ian MacKaye’s first band, Teen Idol. I like Fugazi, but I’m not of the D.C. hardcore scene, by any means. My stuff is more poppy. It is the only coherent ambition I ever formed in my young adulthood that has stayed with me. Though becoming a rock star never panned out, I keep going at it. But I write a lot of break-up songs, so it’s not economic.”

Read the full interview here.