A Little of the Old In and Out

Me droogs, how about a little of the old in and out?

In: LA.com's blog runs this suculent and juicy blind item, fuck if I know who they are talking about, although someone on the board speculated Angelina Jolie, and another speculated Scarlett Johanssen:

"Shes a sassy, sexy thang with a booming movie career that just wont quit. And it turns out shes got an appetite that just wont quit either. Just check out her curious habit of juggling several no-name boyfriends at the same time -- not all that hard a thing to do, considering how much time she spends filming and making the scene all around the planet. Why, shes even hired a couple of her anonymous studs to join the staff that waits on her hand and foot (not that she keeps them on very long once theyve outlived their usefulness). But Dolly knows that the real reason the lusty thing likes to keep her dating options in the multiples is because her favorite way to get her freak on is to do it in threesomes and foursomes and, yes, fivesomes."

Out: Famous indie film asshole, Vincent Gallo, who famously had on-screen oral sex with former It Girl Chloe Sevigny in the laughable "Brown Bunny (and, somewhere in the mix, put a curse on the colon of harmless film critic Roger Ebert)," in Paper Magazine, just saying any old shit just to get a reaction:

"(Gallo) On film festivals: 'I want to make a film with a handicapped Black Jew lesbian main character so I can win at Sundance.' On Tim Roth: 'Tim Roth is like holding a penis upside down to make it appear erect.' On Buffalo '66 co-star Christina Ricci: 'I don't like her. But it's okay. She's basically a puppet. I told her what to do, and she did it.' On Harmony Korine: ' ... a mini-dwarf, faggot date-raper.' On his hometown Buffalo: 'Like Deliverance with smoke stacks.'"

Like a school on Saturday ...

In: Town and Country Magazine, and their cover girl, the ethereal, beautiful Thandie Newton. During the Reagan 80s, Town and Country regularly ran features touting vacations in then Apartheid-era South Africa. Sad, but true. But all that is thankfully in the past, as Teri Agins of the Wall Street Journal notes:

"By mid-1993, executives at Hearst Corp. decided to reinvent (Town and Country), and brought in Pamela Fiori, editorial director of American Express Co.'s magazines, as editor in chief. Ms. Fiori says she realized that 'the face of affluence was changing dramatically,' and resolved to change the magazine accordingly. An unlikely tenet of her new strategy: boost the visibility of prominent blacks and other minorities.

"The most dynamic members of society were no longer scions, but often self-made 'doers,' Ms. Fiori reasoned, and they weren't necessarily white. Along with Asians, blacks and Latinos were gaining representation in the top income brackets, and Ms. Fiori set out to actively court them -- both as subjects and readers."

The move is as shrewd as it is principled. "High Society," as opposed to, say, the jet set, is a cultural class on life support. Rumor has it that high society currently consists of 50 old ladies and their elegantly tended rose gardens in Newport Rhode Island? So, Town and Country has embraced the upwardly-mobile minority readership in American society. Good for them, now, if only we could get Graydon Carter on board.

Out: "Underripe Cheesecake." Sounds unsavory, no? Okay, I was a little bit afraid to bring this up, you know, Patriot Act paranoia and all, but since Tom Scocca at the salmon-colored weekly did, then so will I. Was I the only one who was disturbed by last week's New York Magazine photographs of "underripe cheesecake" last week? Scocca writes:

"Last weeks edition (of New York Magazine) ... betrayed a creepily underdeveloped id.

"In a fashion spread titled 'Apr�s Swim,' New York presented the 'latest swimwear inspired by the sultry feel of the seventies.' The swimsuits, the magazine explained, 'hark back to those long Montauk summers when Cheryl Tiegs and Peter Beard ruled the waves.'

"But the shoot harked back more like nine years, not 30. Instead of evoking the sunny adult sexuality of Ms. Tiegs, shot by Mr. Beard, the photos echoed the creepy mid-90?s basement images of teenagers shot by Steven Meisel for Calvin Klein.

"Things opened legally, if seamily, with a 20-year-old woman in a Tomas Maier swimsuit. In front of her, on a bed, lay a young man of unspecified age wearing 'towel, Vintage.'

"Not all the models who followed were over the age of consent, though. A later shot presented a 15-year-old girl in a tiny black bikini, her developing body stretched out in an easy chair and one arm slung behind her head, pinup-wise.

"Any resemblance to underripe cheesecake was strictly accidental, the magazine insisted. 'Come on,' New York spokesperson Serena Torrey wrote in an e-mail, 'this was hardly an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. These were tasteful, arty fashion pictures.'"

So, for the record, let me get this straight, Adam Moss believes that gossip is an unpalatable appetizer, but underripe cheesecake is fine for the main course? Just asking.

In: Jerry Springer will cover the Democratic convention for WOIO Channel 19 in Cleveland, according to the Plain Dealer (link via Romenesko):

"A Cleveland news station has tapped a special correspondent with a nose for political scandal to cover the Democratic Party convention in Boston this month: Jerry Springer.

"WOIO Channel 19 which already has wowed viewers with flashy graphics, breathless anchors and relentless hype will use Jerry Springer as a correspondent instead of its own reporters. 'He's well-connected and as plugged-in as any anchor or reporter we could send,' said news director Steve Doerr.

"That's because Springer, who campaigned across Ohio last year in an exploratory bid for the U.S. Senate, is a Democratic delegate to the convention. State party leaders rewarded him with the slot for his fund-raising efforts.

"'We were looking for an unusual way to cover it, with an unusual person who could give it an unusual bent,' Doerr said. 'Based on our unusual format, it seemed to be a decent fit.'"

Is this the ultimate blurring of the line between entertainment and news? Is this a shrewd attempt to gain a local news broadcast buzz? The Corsair, actually, has an optimistic take on this development, despite what the great Howie Kurtz will probably report on exhaustively this Sunday. Springer was Democrat of the Year in Cleveland, had a powerful exploratory commission for a possible Senate run, is a delegate to the convention, a former news anchor at WLWT, a mayor, and worked on the Presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy. Is he a spectacle? Of course. Might he hasten the disintegration of the gravitas of Tv news? Possibly, but Springer is eminently qualified to serve as a special correspondent for television station WOIO in Cleveland.

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