I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass

George Clooney also reads Young Manhattanite and has since put me on the payroll. All of the fabricated tips below were sent in over the past couple of weeks and Gawker has published them. Some of us are trying to preserve the sanctity of celebrity privacy, one fake sighting at a time...

Saw Martha Stewart today at about 5pm going into a hotel near the time warner center. I was shocked to see her and nearly said hi and then i saw the stone cold look on her face that basically said "Talk to me and I'll knife you" so we just kept walking on by.

I saw Liv Tyler at the children's boutique, Estella, on 6th Avenue between 12th and 13th streets. She was wearing jeans and sunglasses and was on her cell phone, perusing the clothing, I'm assuming, for her new baby.

I just saw Chris Rock leave the Tower Records at 66th & Broadway, buy a Mr. Softee cone, with rainbow sprinkles, and hop into a black Suburban.

I saw Sam Waterston on 32nd between 6th & 7th today around 9:45am. Nobody seemed to notice him since it was during commute time.

Saw Maggie Gyllenhaal in front of st pats on Mott and Prince, arm in arm with a girlfriend and listening to bagpipers practice for a wedding.

Saw Stephen Baldwin of all people, bargain-hunting at century 21 shoes. He was with a tall Italian-looking dude and cooing to a small child. Baldwin looked beefy but not unhealthy in that overgrown-frat-boy "I work in finance" kind of way.

Saw Richard Belzer at 83rd and Bway walking his dog along with a male friend. Does he ever take off those glasses?

My friends and I saw Claire Danes with what looked like her dad at Prune Restaurant on East 1st Street near Houston. The were both really messy.

Just passed by Chris Parnell on my way into Bloomingdale’s by 59th and Lex. He was wearing a green jacket, carrying a medium brown bag and was surprisingly very handsome.

Related: George Clooney [Gawker]
Previously: Gawker Stoker and Five Get Over Excited

Yes, That's a Roll of Quarters In My Pants

The logic of this sentence seems off:

In exchange, he offered "free books, dinner, sex," pointing out that hooking up was a good way to pass the time between loads.

Blogger Bad Boy's Got Dirty Laundry [NYPost]
See Asshole: Tucker Max

These Walks Are Made For Bootin'

I did a "walking tour" with NYU students last Friday for Gawker and the results are here. As always, photographer Nikola Tamindzic was on hand to make the journey look more real than it actually was. Above, unused photo from the night of a futon that's seen more ass than a port-a-john at Coachella.

Taglit, You're It

Good luck to Rachel Sklar on her upcoming Jew book. There's a "movement" amidst, I think. Can you feel it?? I nominate her for the ROI120 wave to Jerusalem this summer. I can't figure out exactly what it involves but Jews certainly love to congregate and shoot the shonda.

And just so no one thinks Kate Lee is offering book deals to just any blogger with a coffee table to put it on, she turned down a proposal that Chris Gage and I sent her three months ago. Apparently, we're too "bloggy" -- or more frankly, not very strong writers. No worries though, we're working on Young Manhattanite The Movie to be shot on location in Mexico where the animal laws are more lax.

The City That Reads...The Economist?

It's not unusual for Baltimoreans to mock one of the city's well-known slogans, "The City That Reads." (The City That Breeds, The City That Bleeds, The City That Reads... at a Third Grade Level, etc.) But a recent study of 79 U.S. cities released by the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater rates Baltimore as the 25th most literate city examined by researchers. The study places Baltimore below Minneapolis and Seattle (the top two most literate cities in the nation), and Cleveland. But Baltimore, surprisingly, is rated as being more literate than New York City (No. 49), New Orleans (No. 43), and Los Angeles (No. 68). - City Paper, August 2004

and now:

The Economist, the venerable weekly published by the British company Pearson, is using Baltimore — chosen because it is a typical American market for the magazine — to test a new effort to increase newsstand and subscription sales, along with brand awareness. The test involves employees of the magazine and four agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. - New York Times, March 2006

Shit, 'Stringer' Bell could have been reading it while catching up with off-off-shore investments on The Wire if Avon "I ain't no suit-wearin' businessman like you" Barksdale didn't already ice his ass.

Five Get Over Excited

Felix, don't ever doubt my commitment to Sparkle Motion. Yes, you are correct when you say "It's a fun joke for Krucoff for one day, but he's not going to do it day in and day out" but there are plenty more from where I comeuppance. For example, blogger Faded Youth*Celebrity Terrorist reveals:

I personally can vouch for this story. Strictly for journalistic purposes (of course), I have submitted two very false star sightings, and wouldn't you know it, they appeared on the site within minutes. So as the Gawker people continue to gain more publicity and notoriety for breaking the seal of privacy, celebs everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that whole thing is a scam. So don't be surprised if one day you log on and there is a Brangelina sighting on the moon!

Of course I can't wait until readers will be able to add sightings directly, down the line.

Sightings Unseen [Page Six]
Previously: Gawker Stoker

Well's Bells (and Whistles)

I lack the proper vocab to comment on a theatrical production other than to say "I liked it" or "it sucked" but I caught Well on Broadway last night (I rarely turn down blog-marketed freebies) and I can confidently say: I liked it. There was a lot of shit happening on stage. My short-attention span was pleased. For actual articulation, go here, here, and here.

Gawker Stoker: A Bad Case of Wisteria

The Google Maps/Wists enabled Gawker Stalker feature that recently launched on Gawker.com has caused quite a stir among the spoon-fed set. Fans are going ga-ga while mainstream celeb reporters and PR flacks are freaking over fears about security issues. Dammit, if satellite images of the Kashmir weren't bad enough, we now have Kate Hudson eating a muffin in midtown to worry about!

Of course... if that really was Kate Hudson. (cue thunderclaps and high-pitched guitar wankery) See, it's not. I sent in this fabricated sighting.


And this one.


And this one.


(Oddly, I did not send in this Kate Hudson follow-up, but it just goes to show you that anyone can take a guess with these celebrity sightings and it'd probably be right. Or wrong. It doesn't matter either way.)

So what's my point? Is it to demonstrate that Gawker doesn't fact check (something they've never claimed to do anyway) and these sightings are meaningless? Well yes, I like fucking with Jess/Jesse/Nick/Lock but that's exactly my point. Consumer-generated garbage in, poorly-designed garbage out.

(It's hard to pinpoint, but somewhere between the launch of the "testosterone trio" and the re-design of Sploid, Gawker Media's design sensibility got clogged with all manner of ill-fitting shit and currently stands ankle deep in a tub of St Mark's gutter water.)

There's nothing to get in a tizzy over when the "Stalker" premise is thinner than Lizzie Grubman's winged pads. "The public gets what the public wants," or so said Paul Weller. The celebrity fear factor on this concept should be zero as it's just another brain-dead tool to give the appearance of immediacy, however false it may be.

You can't trust much these days (especially me), except for the public's gullibility and that's something Gawker Media honcho Nick Denton is taking all the way to the bank. The North Fork branch on Lafayette St to be exact, where I spotted him yesterday around 3pm, right around the corner from where he lives at 81 Spring Street.

Dental Dams Are Cheaper Than Herpes

The NY Underground Film Fest had a reception at the Participant Inc gallery on Sunday night and the most interesting part was the installation on the top floor which offered a lesson in lesbionic histrionics. I opted not to take a picture of the fecal splattered urinal.

Lit Sandwich

Have you ever heard of a wish sandwich? A wish sandwich is the kind of a sandwich where you have two slices of bread and you wish you had some meat.
The Blues Brothers, "Rubber Biscuit"

The review ... was merely a two word review which simply read "Shit Sandwich."
Marty DeBergi in This Is Spinal Tap

Do you know what a jam sandwich is? You take two pieces of bread, jam 'em together.
Rick Gassko in Bachelor Party

eat dick sandwiches!
Popular drunk text message from Dennis Crowley

In the great big ballroom of Amazon sales ranks there are dancing whores, sleeping liars, rollerskating cheats, wondrous animal companionships, and child prodigies trading on the horse sticker stock market. Without commentary, I offer four books by James Frey, JT LeRoy, Ana Marie Cox, and Jessica Cutler with the pairing of their bunkum buddies. This stuff often speaks for itself.









Note: Sales ranks as of Friday, March 10th. Minor cosmetic photoshopping applied to make re-sized images readable.

Highway to Helmetta

This also serves as my birthday counter and at the rate I've been eating lately it's likely I'll explode at 00:00:00:00. I'm renting a fully catered party bus to Atlantic City for the occasion.

It will be packed with winners and losers, sinners and users, fried chicken and coffee, no-look passes and champagne glasses, clams on the half-shell and prayers under a full moon, rabbinical supervision and high-def television, the Mr. T Experience and the women who love them, hand soap boxers and foot fetish players, unrequited love drugs and unmitigated disaster zones, boiled beef and rotting teeth, Tony Orlando and Dawn, boys in wolf's clothing and girls who use coconut-scented shampoo.

Sign up now, best seats are in the back.

Rise of the High School Power Forward

My sister sent an understandably ecstatic email earlier in the week:

FINALLY!!! My team won the Women's Division 2 championship game at Chelsea Piers last night. It's been a long time coming...I've been to a few championship games but never won and we beat a team that we would always lose to...what sweet revenge :)

I won't say which one is her but if you want a hint, she's not Australian. Half of these ladies are and they grew up playing netball, which is not unlike something I remember playing indoors on rainy days during gym class in junior high. Not bad for a bunch of court-birds who still have a hard time dribbling a ball. Congrats.

Kors, Klein, Karan Took My Baby Away

Demographics: The Population Hourglass [Fast Company]

Fast Company's 10th Anniversary Issue is out and while it has lots of interesting tech-bits (industrial-design students in Singapore are building a waterless, detergentless washing machine!), doo-data (in 2010 there will be a Wal-Mart for every 70,000 Americans!), and quick-quotes (permission-marketing guru Seth Godin said in April 1998, "I guarantee you that by the year 2000, Internet banner ads will be gone") to riffle through, what really caught my eye were a bunch of photographs by Phil Toledano. We interviewed him for Gawker a couple years ago and he generated the most feedback, mainly from straight women and gay men, than any of our snap-slappy profiles. (Sorry, he's married. To a woman.) I don't know where to place Phil on the portrait photo-plankton food chain among the sperm whalian Terry Richardson and head sturgeon Annie Leibovitz, but damn, can he shoot the shit out of a man in a baby-suit or what?

UPDATE. Phil replies with more background: "I couldn't believe they went for my babysuit idea - I have to give them a tip o' the cap for not (barely) flinching when I said, 'Demographics? Sure, it's going to be a shot of a guy wearing a suit made of babies.' As it turns out, I'm making a whole series of those now...wait until you see the 'boob poncho'..."

No Data: "Well I Went to School...in Olympia"

From the No Data Newsletter:

This month's installment of No Data will also serve as the Northeast Regional for the US Air DJ Championship. Added bonus: good chance we break out a ice cream birthday cake (w/ Skittles) at 3am for no good reason.

No Data
Sat. March 4th
11pm
Loreley - 7 Rivington St. (btw. Chrystie/Bowery)

dens+grellan+randy
www.nodata.dj

Also, be sure to check out Randy's re-designed site. I'm gonna bloq-quôt his shit again:

I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in 23 days. I woke up on Sunday, Feb. 5 and just decided I wanted a break. So I decided to take 30 days off. And I have and it’s been … well, I’ve enjoyed it just fine, but I guess I wanted more from the experience somehow. I mean, the ol’ brain feels a tad more nimble, and I definitely like not having to deal with that whole “Sunday Morning Coming Down” thing, but life hasn’t changed as drastically as I’d hoped. More energy? Sure. Extra cash in pocket? Absolutely. But as the 30-day finish line approaches, I suppose the experience just made me realize that if booze is your problem, then you’ve got bigger problems than booze. Not sure I need to go cold turkey to figure that one out. I mean, couldn’t someone just have said something? Stupid friends. You guys need to get your shit together. Maybe you’re drinking too much.