Archives: May 2011

It didn’t take long for a Twittering journalist to react to Variety critic Brian Lowry‘s harsh takedown of Rebecca Keegan‘s LA Times Sunday Calendar cover story “Muscle Summer – The Men of Captain America, Thor and Conan.” Lowry holds up the feature as an example of questionable entertainment journalism, suggesting it is “filled with ridiculous statements” and “tricks of the trade,” which he breaks down paragraph by paragraph.

Entertainment Weekly film writer Anthony Breznican quickly jumped to Keegan’s defense, rebutting the Lowry item as “a crock” and offering some Variety blog item critiques of his own in the A), B), and C) format used by Lowry:

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Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Mediabistro.com’s one-time director of education (pictured), shared a funny freelance writer experience over the weekend via Salon.

Once a year, the wife of New York magazine west coast editor Claude makes a point of flying from LA to New York to confab in person with her various features editors. Smart move. This winter, the group included Sarah from Salon.com, whom Brodesser-Akner knew only up to that point via email:

I started talking ideas. I had an idea about Ikea, how it’s come to represent the interchangeability of our society–after all, isn’t it weird that we’re all buying disposable furniture now? As I told her an anecdote about meeting a friend at Ikea recently, she just let me talk and talk. She must really like me, I thought. Five whole minutes must have passed.

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The Woodward and Bernstein wannabes at Big Government just broke their latest story of import: Weinergate. Wildly important, we assure you. An anonymous BG blogger posting under the handle Publius somehow got hold of a private tweet sent from New York Representative Anthony Weiner‘s account to a young lady Twitter follower of the Congressman. That tweet contained an image of an underwear-clad man sporting what appears to be a generous stiffy. Potentially big news, considering Weiner recently married longtime Hillary Clinton aid Huma Abedin.

Weiner claims his Twitter account was hacked, as was his Facebook account. Which seems pretty plausible, because as dumb as our politicians are these days, the majority of them have the sense not to tweet pictures of their junk to random girls they don’t know. That’s what email is for.

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The only thing Brown University did wrong with its 2011 Commencement ceremonies was to schedule them smack dab in the middle of Memorial Day weekend. As a result, Jack Nicholson‘s Sunday acceptance of an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree is getting nowhere near the media coverage that it should.

The best account of what went down at Brown this weekend comes from fellow honoree Arianna Huffington. She blogs that Nicholson brought the house down with the line, “Particle research is one of my special hobbies,” but that’s actually a bit of an exaggeration.

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Apparently upset with a recent Frontline documentary on WikiLeaks, the hacker group LulzSec hacked into PBS’ website and posted a fake story that Tupac was alive and well and living alongside Biggie Smalls in a small, unnamed New Zealand town. Despite the ridiculousness of the story and several grammatical errors, the post went viral before PBS could take it down.

Frontline issued a statement in response to the hack, in which Executive Producer David Fanning called the attack “irresponsible and chilling.

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The eXiled‘s Mark Ames was on the Boulder, Colorado radio station KGNU over the weekend, talking about novelist/sociopathic philosopher Ayn Rand‘s ascendance in American intellectual life–which he likened to “Megadeath running the country.”

Ha.
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Her name is Sharlotte Hydorn. With the help of her adopted son, she toils in back of her house in the El Cajon area east of San Diego to fill mail orders for asphyxiation kits consisting of medical-grade tubing and a clear plastic bag. The idea is for the recipient to connect the contraption to a helium canister and permanently fall asleep within minutes.

As we all know by now, people with lethal intentions come in all shapes and sizes. LA Times reporter Richard Marosi makes great use of this convention about halfway through his May 30th article:

“Do I look like a criminal?” Hydorn said, standing on her manicured front lawn.

Her critics would say yes. Even people who believe in assisted-suicide said she peddles the product without knowing the circumstances or identities of the buyers. While some suicidal people are rational, others are not, said Alan Berman, executive director of the American Association for Suicidology, a suicide-prevention organization.

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The Tim Burton exhibit opened this weekend at LACMA and was summarily panned by the LA Times.

In an art museum, do we really need to see baby Penguin’s black-wicker pram from “Batman,” Catwoman’s shredded polyurethane cat suit or the fluffy angora sweater used as a fetishistic prop in “Ed Wood”? Such dark or peculiar items are often outward signs of their character’s concealed inner life; but that’s catalog essay interpretation, not exhibition material. You get the feeling they’re only here to satisfy the paying movie fans. Sometimes the display looks like the Arclight Cinema lobby on steroids. Toss in assorted puppets and a few toy-like sculptures, such as a suspended flying-saucer carousel illuminated by black-lights, and the quotient of celebrity self-indulgence climbs.

Ouch.

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As Allegra Huston reveals in a heartfelt essay for Newsweek, she first learned that film director John Huston was not her real father right around the same age that Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s illegitimate son is now struggling with his new identity.

The year was 1976, and John Huston had recently run off to Mexico with the household maid. Her stepmother sat her down to reveal that her biological dad was in fact John Julius Norwich, an English lord and media personality, and that this heretofore unknown parent was about to arrive for a belated introduction:

My “real” father? This sounded more like a fairy tale, the unpleasant kind. When he left, after a long, awkward hour, I had no idea what role he would play in my life. None would be fine with me.

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When former US Weekly editor Janice Min took over The Hollywood Reporter, she had her work cut out for her. Many, including us, were skeptical that the floundering trade mag could be revived. But in just 10 months, Min has transformed the troubled daily into an attractive weekly, and earned her place in a Sunday NY Times column from media critic David Carr.

Carr calls Min “a demure Columbia graduate who knows her way around a Diane Von Furstenberg dress.” Her management style sounds as if it verges on the Zen:

Many magazine editors are known for cutting a wide swath in their own offices and beyond. Ms. Min has never been big on acting big. For much of an editorial planning meeting last Tuesday for The Hollywood Reporter’s weekly magazine, Ms. Min was content to let Owen Phillips, the executive editor, run through the schedule.

Not many editors seem as content to just let people do their jobs.

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