‘Nuff said. No money of mine is supporting her continued notoriety. I know, it’s like watching an accident happening, but seriously. Say no to funding her next attempt at the presidency.
Condé Nast announced yesterday that they were closing four magazines, shockingly including Gourmet. (Click here for the NYT article on the subject.) Cookie? Never heard of it. But Gourmet? I was disappointed when Domino folded, but at least Domino was a relatively new magazine. Gourmet is practically a grand dame by magazine standards, in print for nearly seventy years. Wow.
Just a few of the names who have signed the Free Roman Polanski Petition:
Woody Allen (ok, no shocker here), David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Julian Schnabel, Terry Gilliam, Jonathan Demme, Stephen Frears, Wes Anderson (sniff), Pedro Almodovar (sniff sniff), Wong Kar Wai, Adrien Brody (no!), Tilda Swinton (no no no!), Monica Bellucci, Gael Garcia Bernal, Penelope Cruz … and many, many others.
Some excerpts from the document itself:
“Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him … Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renown and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom … Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians – everyone involved in international filmmaking – want him to know that he has their support and friendship … If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.”
(And let’s not forget Harvey Weinstein, who wrote his own opinion piece in The Independent, claiming that “Whatever you think about the so-called crime, Polanski has served his time. A deal was made with the judge, and the deal is not being honored . . . This is the government of the United States not giving its word and recanting on a deal, and it is the government acting irresponsibly and criminally.”) (OK, we always knew Harvey was a bastard to begin with.)
WTF???
I’m not going to get into all the sordid details again, but let me just say this:
So what if she looked 18 and has a terrible mother. So what if the judge made a deal, and went back on it. So what if the victim, now-fully-grown with children of her own, has moved on with her life. So what if the case was “mishandled”, and so what if Mr. Polanski has spent the last 30 years suffering from guilt and international travel restrictions. And most of all, SO WHAT if he’s a great director, if he’s famous, if he’s powerful, if he’s made some good movies, if he’s a kind and charming man, SO WHAT????
Are people crazy?
To paraphrase Chris Rock – this is like saying – Yeah, but did you see O.J. play against New England?
If Clive Owen’s name pops up on this petition I will really cry.
I just had to share: my Dell replacement computer crashed twice today — while I was filling out a customer service satisfaction survey for them. Does it get any better than that?
I can but laugh. By all means, share your latest poetic moment!
Lady Gaga at the 2009 MTV VMAs
Look, I’ll say it: fashion and entertainment has long been in need of a Lady Gaga character.
Tentative good news on the computer front, I’m happy to say. Dell has supposedly shipped a refurbished replacement system that will supposedly arrive tomorrow and will supposedly be functional. They will supposedly also be shipping the disc for Microsoft Office separately, so someday I will again be able to word process on a keyboard larger than three square inches.
Lest I disappoint, however, my interactions with Dell have gotten no less ridiculous since my last post. Now that there’s some reasonable prospect of my getting some kind of functional system back prior to retirement, the total confusion at Dell customer service has passed beyond frustrating to fascinating. Despite the fact that I wrote a letter to Dell’s president for consumer products and the customer service folks are clearly taking me seriously, they cannot get their s*** together to save their lives. It is like watching the fall of the Roman Empire. I really think this is how it happened. One side of the empire doesn’t know what the other side is doing, communication lines fall, a few key shipments are lost, and the next thing you know, the barbarians are sweeping down from the north waving bankruptcy papers.
I’m now dealing only with the escalation department. That’s nice, since they speak better English and seem to have slightly more ability to take actual action than the regular customer service people. Even they, however, cannot get themselves straight. I have been receiving multiple daily phone calls from different people, who, as always, have conflicting stories to tell me every time they call. Your computer will ship Friday! Your computer will ship tomorrow! You will be able to access your old hard drive! You will not be able to access your old hard drive! How do they not know when they call that someone in their department called ten minutes earlier with a different story? Being as they are a computer company, surely they have a computer system recording this stuff. (The opinion of a friend of the family at IBM? Dell’s lost my system and doesn’t want to admit it. Did I mention I’m glad I didn’t send my hard drive?)
The latest? A replacement system will be shipped to me. And Escalation Guy #1 will have my old system shipped back to me SO THAT I CAN SHIP IT BACK TO DELL. Seriously? Dear God, people, what kind of ship are you running? I have to admit that despite earlier posts I had been sort of hoping Dell would wow me (with say, a new system) in such a way that I could go back to being a Dell customer in good conscience. But this? This is the path to bankruptcy, folks. Don’t count on buying a new Dell and being able to rely on your warranty, because if they keep running things like this, they won’t be around long enough to back it up for you.
Dell has finally broken my spirits. I’m not sure I have the strength to go into the ridiculousness that has occurred since my last post. Suffice it to say that it involved representations that my computer would be overnighted to me by tomorrow (not gonna happen) and a circus of different people telling me conflicting information about what was wrong with the computer, sometimes several times a day. Finally, Dell has achieved an indefinite delay to replace a part that was in perfectly good condition when I sent it to them and that the service depot apparently broke. Is it just me, or should I not have an additional month’s delay because DELL broke something?
They now claim I’ll have a refurbished system in two weeks, but I’m not holding my breath. It seems like it’s just about time for me to start looking for a new computer, and I sure as hell won’t be buying another Dell. Of course, I can’t shop for it online, but I guess there are always computer magazines. Anyone have recommendations?
So, if you’ve been watching tv, you may have seen the commercials for the upcoming season of “America’s Next Top Model.” Bravo has been trying to present the next season as a groundbreaking search for women who aren’t tall enough for traditional model standards. Look at us! We’re broadminded and forward-thinking!
I am far from the only person to comment on this, but they’ve been using Kate Moss as an example of the trail these women are supposedly going to follow, referring to her as “petite supermodel Kate Moss.” Uh, yeah. A quick Google suggests that Kate Moss is in fact my height – 5’7″. While that admittedly makes us at least two inches shorter than most runway models, it also makes us taller than approximately 85% of American women. Kate Moss is not a role model for “short girls,” people, and she’s not petite compared to anyone but models and basketball players. 5’7″, incidentally, is the maximum height for the upcoming season. Exactly what sort of modeling career are they expecting women who are genuinely petite to have?
Fans of Vogue magazine may be aware that ‘The September Issue’ comes out this week. This documentary follows Anna Wintour as she supervises the assembly of Vogue’s renowned September issue, traditionally the biggest of the year. Are the Femmeinistes going to see it? Of course. (Does the devil in fact wear Prada? Stay tuned!)
Aside from the voyeuristic pleasure of seeing whether Anna Wintour, arguably the most powerful figure in fashion today, is really as difficult as reputed, I am looking forward to seeing what light, if any, the movie sheds on Vogue’s position in today’s increasingly shaky publishing industry. We all know it’s been a hell of a year for publishing – Domino magazine folded, newspapers seem to be fleeing to the online world right and left. Vogue may be the bible of American fashion, but I have trouble believing it’s entirely immune, especially given its extremely high end focus. With all the hand wringing going on about how luxury fashion is going to weather the new economy, Ms Wintour must be thinking about it.
A Wedding Dress, believe it or not.
Proving that reality TV participants do not have a monopoly on embarrassing ploys for celebrity, Reuters reports that a bride in northeastern China recently got married in a 1.2-mile-long wedding dress (with 9,999 silk red roses attached). The idea apparently came from the groom’s wish to break the Guinness World Record for longest wedding dress (1.5km or 0.9 miles, held by a bride in Romania).
?????????
The dress took three hours for guests to roll out (now there’s a fun wedding activity) and cost $5,856, which – granted – is actually not completely out of range for certain American wedding dresses but GIVE ME A BREAK!! Do people really not have anything better to do with their time and money? And this is China, where $5,856 dollars could probably buy food for the entire wedding party, their guests, and their families for a year.
All of which makes me want to call up CCTV and suggest that they launch a Chinese version of Bridezillas.