Archives: December 2005

Hear me now and mock me later: there is never a bad time to invoke the “Sound of Music.” Especially as hilariously as this. Warning: do not read said this while drinking Diet Coke. Seriously. Your computer screen will thank you.

The “this” in question is today’s hilarious take on “Brokeback Mountain” re-imagined as “The Sound of Music” by Joyce Wadler, which finds two goatherds not quite so lonely anymore, and includes lines like this which must be reprinted in full:

UNKNOWN PERSON AT DOOR
Knock, knock.

GOAT
Who’s there?

PERSON AT DOOR
Die anschluss.

GOAT
This is Austria; come right in.

The goat, cracking up, turns to Ernst und Jurgen.

GOAT
It’s an old joke, but it gets me every time. In a few months, I bet it will work with France, too.

Even people who don’t know from Captain Von Trapp’s surpassing sexiness will understand that. For those who are familiar with this Oscar-winning classic (and also Oscar-penned classic, as in Hammerstein), there are hilarious reference aplenty, which will inspire you no doubt to climb all sorts of mountains solve all sorts of problems, whether they’re named Maria or not.

Please note that the illustration is by the NYT‘s Campbell Robertson, who has so far illustrated Wadler’s other “Underfinanced Production Company” entries (here and here). Who knew?

Also: could I plotz any more, thanks to this item Fishbowl once again is enjoying blog synchronicity thanks to dual unrelated Ethel Merman references (see Gypsy ref below). Bonus points for invoking Passover on Chanukah with a little Chad Gadya. Next year in Jerusalem!

p.s. Here’s my meshugenah horse.

This is more advertising than media, but I happened to catch a bit of “Ellen” this morning (as I was discovering to my horror that my DVR had failed to record Peter Rubin on “Jeopardy!” last night but don’t you worry, that only made us get an even better scoop for you) – and looky here, she’s in New York City! As I tuned in she was just settling in to a big ol’ pizza pie at Lombardi’s, where apparently the extra garlic is FREE! Score! Then she went up the street to (I think) that rice-pudding place on I believe Spring St. (just Googled: yep, “Rice to Riches” on Spring – the one I always pass and mutter “rice pudding? How does that place stay in business?”). I’d actually never been inside for that reason, but they showed a very tasty-looking array of what looked like ice cream, so what do I know. Ellen tried a whole bunch, and then had a moment of such incredible cross-promotion that my mouth actually dropped open: Scooping for customer behind the bar, she waved a black piece of plastic in the air and cried “A round for everyone! On the American Express One card!”

Which is kind of a crazy moment, because here she is pimping the rice puddding place on behalf of NBC, and in the middle of it she sneaks in a promo for her other employer, American Express. Which really made me want to see her contract with NBC. How does that work? Is that considered product placement? Does NBC get a cut? Does Amex pay extra for that or is it a freebie? What if MasterCard had purchased the 30-second spot right after this segment? Who thinks they’d have a right to be miffed?

As usual, I have no answers, just observations, and also, opinions: because later she had Billy Joel on and I’m sorry, music snobs, but I freakin’ LOVE Billy Joel. An American poet, just like Bruce (sez this Canadian). He played “Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway” (who remembers how often that was used in headlines after the blackout?) and he was amazing – his voice is still so clear and strong. I must confess I got a few goosebumps. I love Billy Joel. So he married a 22-year old. Who cares, clearly she’s always a woman to him. I guess she’s got a smile that heals him. Which is good, because we need him well to keep on making beautiful music, or at least go on playing his old stuff on TV shows.

Then he held up a slice of pizza from Lombardi’s and a bottle of ros&#233 and said “Meet you anytime you want…at Lombardi’s, where they accept the Amercian Express One card!” Just kidding but that would really have been egregious.

UPDATE: Oh, that’s hilarious. A helpful tipster just wrote to point out that I was watching a rerun. Duh. Apparently the Ellen-fest was last month. No wonder that rice pudding place is still in business! Whatever, excuse to put up Billy Joel soundclips, and the advertising question is still current. So there.

UPDATE to the UPDATE: Aha – mystery of how the rice pudding place stayed in business solved! Apparently it had another source of income: a $21 million-a-year sports gambling ring. Hm. You can pay off one heck of an Amex bill with that!

Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway) [Billy Joel]

Other Billy Joel Audioclips after the jump, just because.

Read more

Today the New York Daily News is coping with the loss of Les Goodstein to the New York Post by offering an EXCLUSIVE with the mother of Peter Braunstein. Which one do you think will sell more newspapers?

HE BROKE HIS MOM’S HEART [NYDN]

Related:
Have an eggroll, Mr. Goodstein [FBNY]
Peter Braunstein, by the numbers [FBNY]

The Post is crowing today after nabbing Les Goodstein from the NY Daily News, its now-former President and Chief Operating Officer. Today the Post happily (and somewhat smugly) introduces Goodstone to its readers as the new senior vice president News Corp, officially switching moguls from Mort Zuckerman to Rupert Murdoch.

The Post goes on to say all sorts of nice things about Goodstein, who, since leaving the Daily News, apparently no longer sucks.

Number of times the Post reminds us that it’s America’s fastest-growing newspaper: 2

Number of times the Post reminds us that the Daily News actually has a higher circulation: 0

According to Jeff Bercovici at WWD, Mort Zuckerman was not happy about losing his 28-year lieutenant (COO for 5 of them), a guy who “knows where the bodies are buried.” Zuckerman apparently flew back to New York from Aspen to cajole his man to stay put, to no avail.

In other news, somewhere in Morocco, a man is smiling.

Daily Defection [NYP]
Less Goodstein at the News [WWD]
Mr. Goodstein, I Love You [Gypsy, as sung by Mama Rupe]

Eden-like paradise, with all the fun of Cain and Abel! (Yes, it was Abel, Rubin. ‘Sokay, no one remembers.)

Related:
Travel & Leisure: Rwanda! [FBNY]

(From yesterday’s NYT website. Thanks to Dashiell for this one!)

This weekend’s NYT Mag did a lovely job of celebrating the lesser-sung heroes lost in 2005, including Ladies’ Home Journal longtime poetry editor Elizabeth McFarland Hoffman (written by Rwanda-visiter Melanie Thernstrom), Luther Vandross (I don’t know much, but I know that NY1 viewers loved him), Sandra Dee (her story is too sad for even me to quote the obvious lyric), and chicken scion Frank Perdue (I recall commercials for that chicken from my days listening to PLJ. Sounds a lot like “NPR” if you say it really fast).

But for me, the most bittersweet essay was about Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of “Tony the Tiger,” who got me addicted to crunchy sugar cereal at an early age. Ravenscroft also sang the Grinch theme song, which is apparently a little-known fact but which I actually knew because my cousin Michael Sadavoy interviewed him for his radio show a few years ago (we’re a very media-savvy family), and it’s a spirited and lively interview in which Ravenscroft gamely does the Tony voice and sings a few bars of the Grinch song, sounding exactly the same some decades later (and proudly proclaiming “I’ve never had a steady job…but I’ve never been out of work!”). Ravenscroft also worked with Elvis Presley and Rosemary Clooney, and somehow flew from Washington to Gibraltar to meet with Winston Churchill, of whom he said “You knew you were in the presence of greatness – something about him emanated.” He ended the interview saying, “Thank you, Mike, it’s been greeeeeat to talk with you!” Which is pretty great itself.

Update: A reader catches me out on a massive musical error: it was Aaron Neville who sang “I Don’t Know Much, But I Know I Love You” with Linda Ronstadt, not Luther Vandross. I am keeping the line in there, though, because it really was touching how moved the NY1 viewing community was by his life and death.

The Lives They Lived [NYT Mag]
Thurl Ravenscroft, interviewed by Michael Sadavoy [That Radio Guy]

• To schmooze the impossible schmooze:WWD asks a string of magazine editors about their New Year’s resolutions, which break down into “I’m very busy and important” and “pad thai is delicious.” Kudos to Cond&#233 Nast Traveler EIC Klara Glowczewska on her lofty aspirations for 2006 (“Read a book a week, cook at least one great meal a week, finally organize my 400-plus photographs from the safari I took in Zambia last summer…”); after reading those, we’re gonna need one of Jim Nelson‘s killer mojitos. Pad thai all around! Come on, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, you know you want it. [WWD]

• Shooting Blanks: Aw, Page Six, you’re reading us! Today they wonder about the identity of Malcolm Gladwell parody “Blank” author, the mysterious Noah Tall, and cite New York Observer editor Peter Kaplan who hazarded that it might be Harry Evans over a recent lunch at Michael’s. Page Six wonders if Gladwell will think “Blank” is funny, but devoted Fishbowl readers already know that he found it “completely hilarious.” But he doesn’t know who Noah Tall is either. Who do you think Noah Tall is? Send your best guesses to Fishbowl Central and we’ll tell you if you’re right, unless you’re actually right in which case we’ll lie. [NYP]
• Howard Kurtz: Liberal with the word “liberal” Over at FireDogLake, where they post like the bejeezus, Jane Hamsher points out how slippery the slope is from “outraged citizens” to “partisan liberals” when Howard Kurtz, writing on the NYT spying story, writes that “Some liberals, meanwhile, attacked the paper for holding the story for more than a year after earlier meetings with administration officials” and “Some liberals criticized The Post for withholding the location of the prisons at the administration’s request” (emphasis Hamsher’s). Labels can be dangerous, notes Hamsher: “And in one fell swoop the whole matter of illegal wiretaps is now reduced to a partisan squabble instead of a justifiable concern about government overreach, invasion of privacy and complete disregard for the Constitution. In other news, did you hear? THERE’S A WAR ON CHRISTMAS! [WaPo, FDL]

I’m guessing that a whole whack of you are secret (or maybe not-so-secret) fans of “Jeopardy!” – that great all-American gameshow hosted by a Canadian. Chances are you’ve even fantasized about being on the show, or maybe even tried to become a contestant. You might even own this book, or, you might have a life. Either way, it was very exciting for Fishbowl to learn through an astute tube-watching tipster that one of our very own is dominating the Jeopardy boards this week: Peter Rubin, late of GQ and now a freelancer for publications like Salon, of which it might be said that he is a member. Our tipster tells of his channel-surfing discovery:

Imagine our Boxing Day surprise when we sat down with grandma and a heaping pile of ham, green bean casserole, and maybe our second piece of apple pie and saw GQ’s Peter Rubin on Jeopardy. Rubin, bald-pated and ear-ringed, was the returning champion and told a charming story about Charlie Rose bowling him over on the way to the chips and dip at a party, which inspired host Alex Trebek to joke ‘now playing middle linebacker for the New York Giants, Charlie Rose!’ (Ed. Canadians are funneeee.)

The game was, well, the worst played Jeopardy game we’ve ever seen. Ken Jennings, the 67-day champ of last year, would have won this game even if his brain stem had been snipped. Poor Peter thought Abel was Lucifer‘s pal when all old-school Old Testamenters know it is Cain. He also missed that Jessica Lange once played Patsy Cline. It all came down to Final Jeopardy: “This Italian moved to Vienna in 1766, In 1778, he presented his native Italy with the first opera staged at La Scala.” (Ed. WTF? No clue. And I’m SMART.) Contestant #1: “Who was Verdi?” Wrong, thanks for playing. #2: “Who was Verdi?” Bzz. Sorry. We have some nice parting gifts. It all came down to Rubin, the champion. Did he know the answer? Or did he pull a Cliff Clavin and foolishly bet it all? A beat, and then his answer was revealed: “Who was Verdi?” Wrong, but he wagered $0 so he’ll be back tomorrow. Strangely, the $27,400 Rubin earned is the exact same amout GQ editor Jim Nelson spent on his last fashion trip to Milan.

We think our ham-addled tipster may have been a mite harsh about Rubin’s performance — he’s so smart! He knows what a frenulum is! — but since we didn’t see the show we can’t brag on Rubin’s behalf about the ones he got right (we’re not sure how he’d do in “U.S. Presidents” or “Potent Potables” but we’re pretty sure he’d kill in the “Penises” category). We’ll all have to watch it tonight and see how he does. Good luck to you, Peter! Shiny bald heads are fun to rub.

Extra fun:
Peter Rubin’s taped “Jeopardy!” promo [Jeopardy.com]

This weekend the NYT ran a feature on some of the neologisms/neophraseology* popularized in 2005, including “Cut & Run” “Scalito” and Fishbowl’s personal favorite, “Truthiness” which has officially become a word as far as we’re concerned.

This is the thing: if you’re going to run a feature on popular terms/trends in language this year, you kind of have to be right. To that end, I have two quibbbles with this piece.

The first relates to “Daughter Track,” the entry written by Jane Gross, who coincidentally wrote the article on that alleged phenomenon last month about adult daughters leaving the workplace to care for elderly, ailing parents. Gross says that “sociologists are beginning to give the phenomenon a name: the Daughter Track, a late-in-life version of the Mommy Track” — except she doesn’t back that up with any evidence that sociologists are, in fact, using that nomenclature. Neither of the sociologists in the original article use the term, and indeed don’t really cop to it as a new trend (what they do say is that women are “more likely” than men to leave a job for caregiving, but no actual stats attesting to any sort of change are offered). Still, one litmus test remained: Google. If “Daughter Track” was becoming a term of art, Google would know. Number of hits: 914, the first few of which seemed to cite the NYT story (perspective: “fishbowlny” gets 288,000 hits). Now, I have no problem with the NYT coining a term. Fabulous! Go for it! I do, however, have a problem with a writer writing about a term that she herself coined (in the absence of any evidence to the contrary) and presenting it like a Zeitgeisty, sticky term for an emerging new trend — all while failing to show that it is, in fact, a new trend, or that the term is, in fact, anything other than her creation. Agree? Disagree? Louise Story, what do you think?

Also: in Damien Cave‘s piece on the genesis of the word “Scalito” he cites a bunch of agglutenated couple-names in wide circulation — Brangelina, TomKat, Spederline. Wait. Spederline? I didn’t think I’d seen Brit and K-Fed so named. Back to Google: a measly 506 hits. Keep in mind that we are talking about Britney Spears here – #8 on the Top Ten Google Searches of 2005. Sorry, NYT, “Spederline” does not cut it. Neither does “Garfleck” (though slightly more popular at 768) or “Ashmi” (lots of hits on its own (it has a few alterna-meanings) but only 123 when coupled with “Demi” and 107 when coupled with “Ashton”). Perspective: “Schnoogie,” my nickname for my old dog, has 523 hits. I am not disputing the validity of the claim that “Scalito” entered the popular lexicon here, just the shoddy evidence used to buttress that claim.

Upshot: If you want to do a feature like this, NYT, it’s got to have one thing above all: Yes. Truthiness.

Update to the Upshot: I should have noted, however, that Damien Cave did interview both a linguist and celebrity-trend-maven Bonnie Fuller for his Scalito piece above, and did not rely on the popularity of “Spederline” to make his case. Is it me, or does “Spederline” sound like some sort of very cheap, very gross yet kind of weirdly tasty canned food? In other news, I think Amshi might taste good on pita bread (or matzah, actually).

2005: In A Word [NYT]

I got distracted by the cute babies, but the reason I was going to Choire Sicha‘s site was because he picked up on something I noticed a few weeks back: ’tis the season to trot out Pulitzer contenders, but the web buzz just isn’t there. Is this the equivalent of Oscar lauding “In The Bedroom” even though everyone’s buying tickets for “40-Year Old Virgin?” I mention below how surprised I was that the massive NYT Magazine cover story on the tsunami was so ignored; Sicha is amazed that Kurt Eichenwald‘s huge investigative piece on internet child pornography hasn’t made more of a splash in the blogosphere:

I can’t believe this NYT webcam teen porn ring story is being met with such a resounding silence on the web. It’s an amazing story on a lot of levels, not least of which is the interventionist nature of the journalism. But when a paper pulls out its Pulitzer-candy and the internets shrug? Weird.

I’m trying to think of any recent big investigative story that has gotten attention recently (one that doesn’t have anything to do with illegal wiretapping, abuse of executive power or newspapers holding stories by writers with pending book releases). The Times‘ series on “Class in America” this summer, that definitely made some ripples, but it didn’t set the blogosphere aflame like other topics. Hm. I have no answers here, only shared observations with Sicha.

Even if the Eichenwald story hasn’t taken off “on the internets,” it certainly has not escaped notice — or criticism, especially for the interventionist elements of it. Over at Slate, media critic Jack Shafer takes issue with Eichenwald’s active participation in the story, wondering about the slippery-slope precedent it might set for future investigations. The article is interesting (though I agree with Eichenwald that any decision made about how to deal with Justin — leave him impartially alone or help him — would have been met with criticism; and regular Fishbowl readers will not be surprised that I fall on the “help him” side of the debate). The best part of this column, though, is the frank back-and-forth email exchange between Shafer and Eichenwald, in which they debate the journalistic ethics of how Eichenwald and the NYT proceeded, and Shafer wonders about how much we can trust a reporter who is so invested in his story. Definitely worth a read. Go do it now. Come on, you can’t convince me that you’re working.

The New York Times Legal Aid Society [Slate]
Blue Velvet Times 10 [Choire Sicha]*

Related:
Are We Not Citizens? [BuzzMachine]**

*I have no idea what this headline means.
**Chanukah-appropriate headline!