Archives: July 2007

Writer Glenn O’Brien bids a farewell to Theresa Duncan, and her readers at her blog, The Wit of the Staircase. He also quotes the Steely Dan song that was read at her funeral, Walk Between the Raindrops:

In my dreams I can hear the sound of thunder
I can see the causeway by the big hotels
That happy day we’ll find each other on that Florida shore
You’ll open your umbrella
And we’ll walk between the raindrops back to your door…

Journo/TV-film writer/novelist Frank Coffey used to just read blogs. Now he writes one. Coffey’s Venice-based parody sports website, eTrueSports.com, is “committed to taking scraps of truth and turning them into absurdist nonsense.”

Recent headlines include: Manny Ramirez Adopts Carbon Neutral Lifestyle and Woods’ Daughter Signs With Gerber.

Let’s see how well he does with our nonsense.

1. What newspapers do you read? You mean, like, newspapers made out of paper? NYT, LAT, WSJ, Variety and VenicePaper.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading?
Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, snarling.

3. Which Web sites (aside from FBLA, of course) are on your favorites bookmark? NPR, The Daily Tube, Slate, LA Observed, G-4, Rubber Chicken Cards and, in relentless self-promotion, eTrueSports.com.

Read more

Matthew Garrahan, the Financial Times’ guy in LA, finally got a sit-down with Simon Cowell. He tells FBLA:

I hadn’t met him before. I spent months trying to arrange the interview and kept getting put off by his PRs because he didn’t have time. Then suddenly he was ready to do it so I went up to his place. There was no PR there–just me and him–(his girlfriend was floating around too).
He’s very media savvy but didn’t dodge any questions and smoked a load of cigarettes. I suppose I was expecting him to live in a highly secure gated develepment/celeb hideout but it was just a regular house (albeit a very nice one). We talked a lot about his business–I think usually when he does interviews it’s with the UK tabloids who ask him about his girlfriend /private life etc. The surprising thing was that he was actually very likeable,which I didn’t really expect.

Best line he got from Cowell:

When I’ve had a hard time with the press I’ve normally deserved it.

Nobody: Saw this coming.

Everybody: Saw this coming.

Nobody: Is going to see this.

Alexander Pete Schreiber–son of Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber. Pete?

The WGA West is offering the chance to win one of four $100 Apple gift cards if you take their Reality Survey. Watch your in-box, and then hit SPAM.

Tour de France–dead at 104.

Astronauts were drinking? What’s the big deal? It’s not like they’re driving.

Kevin Roderick’s commentary on KCRW today at 4:44 pm will talk about the role of websites and blogs in spreading the news on Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. By news, does he mean secret government mind control ?

(photo from NASA)

Sarah Jessica Parker, or her publicist, is so environmentally aware, she even recycles anecdotes. In the August Elle:

Coty Prestige exec Catherine Walsh, who works with SJP on her ever-expanding collection of perfumes, tells this story about the star to Elle’s Maggie Bullock:

“I used to send her weekly ratings [for Lovely],” says Catherine Walsh…”When they dropped, she would say, ‘Oh my gosh! Do I need to go to Dadeland Mall and make a personal appearance?’”

In the October 2006 Marie Claire:

“When we launched,” says Walsh, “we started to send her sales reports weekly, by store. She would read them, and if we weren’t in the top three names, she’d e-mail me and ask, ‘Is there something I need to do? Do I need to go there?’ I mean, who does that? Even I don’t do that! Carlos and I just looked at each other and said, “She’s really going to go to Macy’s in Dadeland, FL, because we’re number nine there?” She just puts you to shame.”

Glossed Over puts us to shame because they actually read this junk.

We are not rushing out to take in Springfield-mania, and we don’t know too many people who are. But when we saw hordes of fans lined up at The Grove late last night for the midnight showing of The Simpsons Movie, we thought maybe it would be a surprise blockbuster. Then we heard all three of the midnight shows at the Arclight had sold out, and we started to think it was going to be a monster hit.

Luckily, that cute-as-a-button, wanna-be ghetto movie reviewer kid on E! is around to set us straight. In his new weekly feature, Beat Ben @ The Box Office, Ben Lyons pits his movie knowledge against yours by predicting box office takes every weekend.

As he assures his readers:

The Simpsons Movie, 18 years in the making, will take in roughly $37 million. Strong, but not overwhelming.

Here’s Why: The film will not reach the coveted $45-50 million range because younger moviegoers, the ones who make up the majority of summer ticket sales, don’t have the same passion for this animated flick as they did for Shrek and Ratatouille.

Science in Hollywood usually fares poorly, but Sunshine gets a surprising amount right, according to Popular Mechanics. Susannah Gora asked Dr. Brian Cox, a physicist at the largest particle physics lab and the film’s scientific adviser about the feasibility of the sun’s lifecycle actually being interrupted, and whether we could really bring it back if it started to fizzle.

What are scientists saying about the film?
We have debates in the scientific community about Sunshine. If you look at it and say, “Yeah, but the sun is not going to die for five billion years,” then you’re probably going to get upset with it. If you look at it as a film that tries to get under the skin of scientists, then you’ll really enjoy it.

Pasadena theaters are bracing for an onslaught of CalTech types.

Why can’t the critics come clean and call Arctic Tale what it is: a cartoon.

The footage is faked.

The script is bogus.

Audiences call it fake but accurate, propaganda aimed at kids, dorky, and endorsed by Starbucks.

Wouldn’t it have been easier just to get a bunch of plushies and throw them in a blender? A Splushy?

And by the way–just stop talking about Kristin Gore’s one week gig on Saturday Night Live. One week is not a comedy career. We don’t want to hear about it ever again.

Just in time for whatever: How to Raise a Jewish Dog. Ellie Weiner and Barbara Davilman (married and they write together!) channel the Rabbis of the Boca Raton Theological Seminary to produce the ultimate guide to instilling guilt in all living species.

We asked Weiner and Davilman (Davildog?) to explain a little more.

How do you think this stuff up?
We don’t think–we just live. HTRAJD is really how we raise our dogs because this is in fact how we ourselves were raised. We just pretended that the Rabbis wrote it because we were afraid the Humane Society would come and take our dogs away.

Which one of you is the huge-er Jew?
Peaches.*

How do you work togther and not kill each other?
Cause I make him do most of the work.

Can a dog have a bris?
A dog can have anything he/she wants. Haven’t you read our book?

FBLA says:
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll plotz and wet on the good rug.

Read more