Media Minutiae, You'll Read It Instead of "Lunch At Michael's" And Like It Edition
Simon Dumenco wants more Celebrity Hairstyles, dammit! He'd also munch some Doritos over a High Times when 4:20 rolls around, questions the relevance of U.S. News & World Report (I know, just typing that made me feel more boring), misses Organic Style and appreciates how Seventeen learns him good. Upshot: Not every mag can be on the A-List, but any magazine can be a punchline, except when, er, Seventeen learns us good. [AdAge]
"But what is it you actually do, Mr. Grove?" Lloyd gets the smackdown from legendary New Yorker writer Lillian Ross, who seems to turn up her nose at the travails of a gossip columnist. 'Sokay, Lloyd, we appreciate the job that you do and we're glad you, Hud and the Belt Buckle are in our little gossip-starved lives. We shudder to think what Lillian Ross has to say about blogging. [NYDN]
"American Society of Magazine Editors, why are your magazine covers so gay?" Legendary adman George Lois was all prickly in Puerto Rico, channelling Jon Stewart and castigating the hapless ASME folk for boring, celeb-pandering covers. We're sure OK! was very inspired; can't wait to see Jessica Simpson wallowing in a can of soup. [AdAge]
Fine, but there's still nowhere else I'd rather be. Big shock - when it comes to cost of living, NYC (and particularly Manhattan) takes the cake, plus an arm and a leg to boot. Runner up is San Fran, followed by LA, DC and weird wild card San Jose. Huh. I guess it has hidden charms. [CNN]
Chomsky: Smarter than Hitchens, chicks, and the French In a recent poll, the British Prospect Magazine and American Foreign Policy magazine wondered jointly who the top intellectuals of the day were, and came up with a list of 100 smarty-pantses from which to choose. Noam Chomsky took the top spot, followed by Umberto Eco, Richard Dawkins, Vaclav Havel and Christopher Hitchens (Richard Dawkins? How much brainpower does it take to oversee "Family Feud"?). Says the Guardian: "The most striking aspect of the list is the shortage of the young, the female and the French." Hmph. They are CLEARLY not reading Fishbowl. We PRIDE ourselves on our smartness. Other eggheads on the list: world-flattener Thomas Friedman, fatwah-inspirer Salman Rushdie, Canadian smart chick Naomi Klein, and Newsweek's Jon Stewart-man-crush-inspiring Fareed Zakaria. Oh yeah, Richard Dawkins was also good in "The Running Man." [Guardian UK]
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past, you must fight just to keep them alive: For the record, "Eye of the Tiger" still RULES.
Kvelling for a MEL-ling: As is his wont, the NY Observer's Tom Scocca crunched the MEL numbers for the last week to see how the op-ed pundits are doing, TimesSelect subscription wall notwithstanding. This week, a breakthrough: four Op-Ed columnists clawed their way past the freebie competition and on to the list. MoDo even cracked the top ten. Fluke or trend? If "trend" was a fish that could also represent a dilemma in a grocery store. See, Fishbowl IS smart! [NYO]
As if we forgot. We didn't; Michael's-related coverage coming soon. To tide you over: we also saw André Leon Talley, David Price, Gil Schwartz, and didn't see Michael Wolff (guess who was at his table though...?)
Amanda Ernst
