A little of the Old In and Out

In: Rem Koolhaas. Fancy yourself being an architect named Rem Koolhaas -- the world is your oyster, for you are Rem -- and if you do a good job on a project, people say to you, "hey ... cool house, Koolhaas." (silence, soonafter followed by the sound of crickets gently mating) Okay, admittedly that was a cheap laugh. Perhaps the cheapest I have ever stooped to conquer. Greg Lindsay brings us up to date on Rem's life:

"Three years ago, Cond� Nast hired architect Rem Koolhaas to lend advice to its editors, and up until now, his mug on the cover of Wired last summer was the only outside proof that he�d ever been there at all. But it turns out he�d been busy. Very busy, indeed.

"He and his team had produced a book, for example � a hardcover dictionary containing every word that had ever appeared in Wired, graphed by popularity. Its usefulness in the long run (and whether it was worth the effort) is up for debate, but hey, it looks neat."

Kool and the gang.

Out: The Bush advertorials on the drug bill. Roger Ebert in Romenesko's blog today has a great idea, "If tax dollars paid for those Bush advertorials, shouldn't the government bill the Bush campaign for the production costs?"

In: Mel Gibson is having Doubts about George Bush. According to the Drudge Report, the Sean Hannity radio show will air an interview with Mel Gibson critical of the President. As Drudge reports:

"In the interview, set to air on Tuesday, Gibson says of Bush: 'I am having doubts, of late. It mainly has to do with the weapons [of mass destruction] claims.'

"The surprisingly critical comments from Gibson, a rare conservative voice in Hollywood, come as PASSION continues to dominate the boxoffice."

Wild. I just love it when Drudge does words in ALL CAPS, you just know the Miami heat is getting him all loco in the membrane.

Out: Way out. Passed out. Christian Slater passed out at a strip club. Remember when that little bastard's entire acting career -- his (makes ironical quote marks into the air) "repertoire" -- hinged on his impersonation of Jack Nicholson? Oh how we laughed -- ooh, la la -- at his "uncanny mimicry," at his eerily accurate rendering. Hey Hollywood press -- he was a little kid copying his idol, no genius there, you drank his press agent's cool aid on that one.

Anyhoo: these days he's starting to look a lot like Robert Downey, Jr. According to that significant cultural artifact Star Magazine, Slater may be an addict -- an addict of love, or, at the very least, "dirty pillows:"

(cues for music, Tina Turner's "Private Dancer")

"At 2:10 p.m. the day after the Oscars, most of Hollywood was still sleeping off the previous night's festivities. But after a long night of partying, 34-year-old Christian Slater stumbled out of Los Angeles strip club 4 Play and hailed a cab, according to eyewitnesses. No, Slater hadn't stopped in for the free lunch buffet -- he had been there all night long, according to sources.
On Feb. 29, after hitting the Vanity Fair Oscar party, Slater headed to 4 Play, a club he's patronized before that features all-nude dancers and offers private and secluded V.I.P dances for $20 a pop.

"Slater and a male friend pulled right up to the stage.'He was just like any guy, throwing dollar bills and cheering the girls on,' says one patron.

"After a short time, Slater became smitten with a 4 Play dancer named Leah, a 22-year-old buxom brunette whom he asked for a private dance. But by the time Leah finished shaking it on the main stage, Slater was already slumped low in his seat. He stumbled over to a nearby couch and proceeded to pass out for the night (and into the next morning and afternoon) still wearing his suit and sunglasses!"

Graydon Carter should be offended. Mortified, really. How does Slater top off his Oscar bash? The 4 Play strip club. Imagine the cheek!

In: Whitney Houston in rehab. Crack ... crack ... crack is whack, Whitney, and good of you to notice. Ananova reports:

"Whitney Houston has entered a drug rehabilitation facility, her publicist has said.

"Whitney 'thanks everyone for their support and prayers,' publicist Nancy Seltzer said in a statement in Los Angeles. She declined to offer any further details.

"Houston, 40, admitted in a December 2002 programme on ABC television that she had abused drugs in the past, but said she had moved beyond that time through prayer."

The Corsair wished the Browns best of luck, no snark at all in those sentiments.

Out: The Jim Lehrer Newshour versus Christian Parenti and Katrina Vanden Heuvel. Cynthia Cotts of the Village Voice gives us the lowdown:

Parenti, author of an upcoming book on occupied Iraq, was being interviewed by NewsHour's Ray Suarez. He and Middle East history professor Juan Cole were analyzing the recent suicide bombings in Iraq and various groups that might have been involved. Then something went terribly wrong: Parenti suggested that Halliburton and Bechtel have failed to provide 'meaningful reconstruction' and that the U.S. occupation might actually be contributing to the instability in Iraq. Lehrer apparently went ballistic."

As a result, Jim Lehrer ran on March 4 an "Editor's Note acknowledging the mistake," which read, "For those who were watching two nights ago, a discussion about Iraq ended up not being as balanced as is our standard practice. While unintentional, it was indeed our mistake and we regret it."

And Katrina Vanden Heuvel's response? 'We think Christian Parenti's reporting has been thorough and reliable,' she told (Cotts). 'This is a journalist who spent a great deal of time on the ground in Iraq." According to vanden Heuvel, Parenti's comments about the failure of meaningful reconstruction were based on his reporting and firsthand observation.'

Stay tuned for round 2, where Jim Lehrer gives The Nation "the gasface".

In: But what I really want to do is Executive Produce. Kelsey Grammar produces UPN's Girlfriends, Sandra Bullock produces George Lopez, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith will produce All of Us, Sylvester Stallone will produce The Contender, Dick Clark produces American Dreams -- everyone has their own project that they want shepharded. Executive Producing is the new black.

And, in that vein, here's what I wrote way waay ahead of the curve on October 31, 2003:

"Whatever happened to just wanting to be a writer and creator of an HBO Show? That's so 2002. Okay, fine, there is a certain coolness about Executive Producing, like, say, the great Michael Hirschorn does at VH1 on those X Generation nostalgia shows. Even Sandra Bulloch is in on the act with George Lopez. Then, of course, there are Courtney Cox and David Arquette and their design-fashion show. (BTW Was that Courtney Cox on the cover of Town and Country? Has Cafe Society morphed into the Jet Set? Yes, alas, I trace the exact moment to when John Travolta occupied the cover story talking about his gaudy planes and not, say, Dina Merrill talking about the roses she grows in Newport, Rhode Island or Harry Bellafonte on the Harlem Rennaissance.) And then there was Graydon Carter's The Kid Stays In The Picture that started off the madness. First the End of Irony and now Executive Production mania! Do we blame Canada for this? Now, it appears, everyone wants to Executive Produce. Steven Soderberg of K Street, etc, etc, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, Tom Cruise Executive Produced his ex wife Nicole Kidman in The Others and Rita Wilson exec produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding. You know what they say: a family that Executive Produces together .... But what happened to wanting to Direct? When did that all of a sudden become uncool? BTW: Fellini retrospective at the Guggenheim; anyone who knows me knows that Mwangaguhunga loves to get his Fellini on."

basta!

Out: AdAge talked to Heart's Cathleen Black on Oprah, their partnership and that spectacularly well selling magazine of hers("Oprah is averaging 950,000 copies a month. It's over a 40% increase over the year before"), and, of course, the inevitable question:

AA: "So what happens to that magazine if Oprah gets hit by a bus?"

Ms. Black: "I don't know! Having just celebrated all of her 50th birthday celebrations from Chicago to Santa Barbara, I wish her a fantastic next 50 years, at least, and not just because of our partnership."

Mixed: Douglas Faneuil. The always excellent Michael Musto analyzes Faneuil, and what may become of him:

"As for Douglas Faneuil, the social set is torn between pegging him as a total rat fink or a noble whistle-blower, but either way, he proved to be the most credible witness, maybe because he clearly had a ghostwriter. ('It intensifies your tactile sensations and emotions,' he testified about Ecstasy.) Faneuil's cleverest move of all was that, in the midst of Team Martha's hope that he'd come off like a ditzy drug queen, he copped to just two Ecstasy uses. ('Say one," you can hear the lawyer strategizing. 'Nah, they'll never believe that.')"

The jusy is out on young Faneuil.

Mixed: Baby Heathcliff. Plum Sykes in FashionWireDaily, on her Juicy Jeans:

�I got three boxes delivered to me the other day; one marked �Lucy,� one �Lucy�s husband,� and one �Lucy�s baby.� Inside was a stash of Juicy Couture! Heathcliff, my son, even got two Juicy tracksuits!�

In: You can skip to the next blog here if you want, I won't be hurt, I'm going to get a little geeky here with regards to The Great Books. Oh Lord help me, I love The New Criterion's pretentious weblog. What does that say about me? Don't say it out loud; I'm sensitive. Alas:

"For a time it seemed almost like a rite of Spring. As April showers turned to May flowers, protest season arrived at the campus of Columbia University. But it has been a number of years--not since 1996--that there has been a sizable Columbia protest against its own Core Curriculum, the famous freshman year series of classes designed to bring each undergraduate up to speed on the basics of civilization and those texts formerly known as 'Great Books.' Why not? Have the tenured radicals retired? Oh, no. The reason for the lack of public protest is that there was a backlash to the radicals in '96. The indictments of the Dead White Male fell flat. David Denby's book on the Core was a best seller. The Curriculum almost seemed strengthened by the turmoil. So, if you are a radical, what to do?"

Well, how about you throw in Dickinson, Woolf, Marie Curie, Confucius and Ralph Ellison in there and I'm down. The Corsair is a big booster for the Great Books, except when it becomes a "Great Books of Western Civilization" issue, then it becomes a white racial pride issue and you've lost me. Great Books do not belong to any culure but to mankind. And Marie Curie and Sun Tzu were geniuses in any universe.

My cure for the Great Books debate? Internationalize it, mix in a UN vibe. Oh, and did I say The New Criterion weblog is interesting?