I know, I know, I promised we were done with the animal videos come fall, but cut me some slack, it's late and I've had such a long week. Anyway, a bear shut down a pot farm! The reporter characterizes this as unlikely, but everyone knows that bears hate pot, since hungry stoner hippies encroach upon their precious, precious honey. Stupid hippies! Honey is for bears! Oh God, is it five yet?
Political conventions abide by the mullet strategy—business in the front, party in the back.
The venue for the closing party for the Republican National Convention is the Walker Art Center in downtown Minneapolis. Google and Vanity Fair are the hosts. Like the Google campus, food is ubiquitous; like Vanity Fair, luxury is the tone.
Last month, Massachusetts-based millionaire gay entrepreneur Jonathan Crutchley, one of the co-founders of Manhunt, the incredibly popular gay hookup website, was identified as a Republican in a profile in Out. He'd made a donation of $2,300 to the presidential campaign of John McCain. The gays freaked out, mostly over on gay central, which is Andy Towle's website Towleroad. Right after that, Crutchley stepped down as chair of the company. (Though of course he'll still be a co-founder—and receive plenty of gay sex cash dollars. That move was just PR.)
READ MORE >> David Cho's Rap Beat
In an effort to keep the Radar audience abreast of all national, breaking developments in urban dance culture (I hope you haven't forgotten about our coverage of "The Wam"), I'm pleased to introduce you to "Donk," the latest offering from Soulja Boy Tell'em, the 18-year-old producer/rapper/YouTube phenomenon who brought the world—and countless athletic arenas and stadiums—"Crank That," better known as "Superman Dat Ho." Pay close attention to the Donk. Live with it for a while. Let it become part of you. Because there's going to be a test later.
Condoleezza Rice is making historic stop today in the North African loony bin that is Muammar Gaddafi's Libya. The visit, the first by a U.S. secretary of state in over fifty years, is a reward for the Libyan tyrant's recent-but-much-delayed decision to pony up a billion dollars for a "Sorry 'Bout Murderin' Your Loved One" fund that will largely go to family members (and lawyers) of people killed by the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. READ MORE >> Talk of the Tents
HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, KID At Yigal Azrouel(Photo: Connie Wang)
The crunchy-fresh show at Yigal Azrouel drew an impressive crowd. Clutching invites printed on cardboard, and press sheets printed on (what feels like) recycled toilet paper tubes, top editrixes and boho-luxe hip kids packed the Eyebeam Atelier on W 21st street to catch Azrouel's drapey, volumnious collection.
We spotted Julia Frakes, the diminutive college freshman and fashion blogger at Paper, perched in the front. Two rows behind the eighteen-year-old? None other than fashion giant Andre Leon Talley. Upstage? A break in rank? Did Andre not fit in the front? IS THIS EVEN A BIG DEAL? Your guess is as good as ours.
Was John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate a brilliant masterstroke or an utter disaster? It's too soon to tell! History has, however, already rendered its verdict on a slew of other ticket-balancers. Read and learn from "Making Number Two," our brief look at poor selections in presidential elections.
The tents at New York City's Fashion Week opened a few hours ago, although fashion's finest won't dare present their lovely visages until things heat up a bit. Fortunately, for you judgmental sorts, some of fashion's foulest either never got the message about arriving a tad tardy, or have chosen to ignore it altogether. After the Michael Angel show this morning, Radar spotted this bespotted couple in town to represent the wares of the stern man to the left. "The suit is actually a man's suit," he trilled. "We're here to show that a woman can look stylish, even when she's wearing menswear!" Oh honey. It's going to be a very full week. Stay tuned!
The New York Times will, on some weekdays, collapse the sports and Metro sections into other sections of the newspaper entirely, the New York Observer is reporting. The Times is expected to make an announce later today with more details. (On a Friday afternoon, of course!) So, wow. Well that's over! "According to newsroom sources, the Metro Section is moving into the A-section and the Sports section will move into the Business section for some portion of the week," writes John Koblin in the Observer. It's a bloody daily Pennysaver now—though according to the leak at the Times, "no content will be lost in either section." Sure! Still, we'll be watching that page count very carefully.
UPDATE: Memo from Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. follows:
In which our intrepid reporter journeys to the wilds of Las Vegas in the company of Adrian Grenier, Matt Dillon's brother and Richard Branson only to learn that true happiness was within himself all along. Or whatever.
There are two absolutes that apply to all journalists, whether they work at In Touch or the the Economist: 1) They like to drink, and 2) They like free stuff. Which is what makes the press junket one of the most coveted assignments around. The premise of the press junket simple: A company/service provider looking for exposure ("press") invites a bunch of journalists ("journalists") to partake, free of charge, in whatever product they are hawking or service they are providing. There is no signed contract between the company/service provider and the journalist, but the idea is that the journalist, having had an enjoyable time out on the town on the company/service provider's dime, will return home and feel inspired to write a story about just how enjoyable/beneficial/awesome the company/service is.
If you work at Radar, your editor, feeling generous, might even encourage you to go on a junket to Las Vegas sponsored by VIRGIN AMERICA and HBO'S ENTOURAGE (starting SUNDAY!) to write about the peculiar experience that is a press junket. This is how it will play out:
Yesterday, the Dow took a massive tumble—this morning it opened shabbily, based on bad new employment numbers. (Joblessness is back up to 6.1 percent!) And folks on Wall Street have now begun hearing that bonus season may be absolutely zero, zilch, nada. And, if you have visited America's cosmopolitan coastal cities, you will have seen that their skylines are dominated by cranes tied to half-finished high-rise buildings of luxury apartments. Now that the bankers aren't buying, because they're panicked, the real estate markets of big cities have been supported by foreigners buying up "cheap" properties while the dollar stagnates. That's worked well so far, even if it has induced a new kind of casual racism against the Irish. (It's true! Perfectly normal people walking on New York's Park Avenue South will talk about how everyone around them is from Ireland). But now, that party is ending. This could be it, kids! The big collapse!
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Quick, who's the lamest actor in the world? You're right! It isNic Cage. Exactly what I was thinking. And pretty much exactly what film critics who had the displeasure of watching Cage in this weekend's Bangkok Dangerous were thinking. The remake of a 1999 Thai movie called, what do you know?, Bangkok Dangerous is holding steady at 10 percent on RottenTomatoes, but the small number of reviews seem to indicate that it wasn't widely screened for reviewers (or it was and they just didn't want to see it).
Anyway, the consensus emerging from the reviews is that the movie is awful and Cage's hair is worse. See for yourself:
By now, you've probably heard about how maverick moose-eater Sarah Palin single-handedly reformed Alaskan politics by putting the governor's private jet on eBay. Sure, it didn't sell and she had to hire a aircraft broker to unload the thing at a $600,000 loss, but no matter! This story demonstrates what's important about Palin: a) she's a reformer and b) she's not afraid to recklessly throw stuff on eBay.
It got us thinking, what happens if John McCain and Sarah Palin win the election and she has all the valuables in the White House at her eBay-loving fingertips? Might she try to reduce the nation's eye popping debt by unloading some of the goods? We brought aboard Official eBay GuruGregory Kusch to advise us on how much money Palin could make for the American people by taking her eBay know-how to the White House:
The right-wing corners of the Internet are going gaga trying to figure out the identity of ArcXIX, the DailyKos diarist who first published a long, picture-heavy story (Google cache here) about who mothered future moose-eater and son of Sarah Palin, Trig Paxson Van Palin. When the notorious post, along with all other posts by the user, was taken down from the site, one blog declared "Daily Kos Fascists EXPUNGE and BAN the blogger ArcXIX for Sarah Palin's Babygate." Others, too, have wondered if DailyKos had scrubbed the site of the post and what exactly that means.
