A Little of the Old In and Out



(image via fortlewis.edu)

In: Viacom to Buy iFilm. The online gold rush continues apace with the media paleosaurs incorporating the smaller, edgier raptors into their digital portfolio. This time, NewsCorp doesn't figure into the headlines; rather, Viacom -- the one with VH1.com and MTV.com -- buys iFilm, which, according to its Wired profile, had its "Eureka moment" when they virally-marketed that infamous John Stewart-Tucker Carlson Crossfire clip: "'Everyone needed a hero, and Stewart has the zeitgeist of his audience firmly in his grasp,' (iFilm CEO Blair) Harrison says. 'The clip wasn't just popular, it was Janet Jackson's-breast popular. A lot of people downloaded the clip who would never have watched Crossfire - me included.'"

indispensable digital media resource Rafat Ali at Paidcontent believes that the viral video, ads and discussion angle plays well with MTV.com and VH1.com and --drum roll -- cell phones(Okay, we added the cell phones):

"Viacom , the Tom Freston part of it, is buying iFilm, the online movie-related and broadband content website, paidContent.org has learned. The deal, which is still being finalized, will be announced in the next week or so...the final sale price will stack up around $50 million. iFilm, based in LA, has a very complex ownership structure, and from what I know, has about 300 different preferred shareholders, so the deal dynamics are bound to be a nightmare. Among the other companies that looked at it included CNET (and others), but surprise surprise, not News Corp."

How does Newscorp miss out on that one? The full story here.



(image via all-encompassingly)

Out: Harry Reid. According to the AP's David Espo (link via Drudgereport) "Born to be Mild" Senator Harry Reid is throwing his lot in with the losing side in opposing John Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. According to the AP:

"Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has told associates he intends to oppose confirmation of John Roberts as chief justice, Senate sources said Tuesday as rank and file Democrats began staking out positions on the man named to succeed the late William H. Rehnquist.

"Reid scheduled a speech on the Senate floor for mid-afternoon, at which he was expected to make his announcement public.

"Roberts has strong Republican support and appears headed for easy confirmation."

So easy, in fact, that California Democrat -- we hear through Washington whispers -- icy Senator Diane Feinstein is ready to support him. This is an interesting move on her part as Roberts is still a largely unknown quantity, despite his showing consummate smoothness in deflecting the inquiries of the Senate Judiciary Committee (Then again, he may have been too smooth and thus philosophically ambiguous, alienating the Right). Should Roberts vote conservative on the New Hampshire abortion parental notification case (A possibility, we believe, that led to The Old Gray Lady opposing his nomination on the grounds of "Mysteriousness"), the yes-vote may come back to haunt Feinstein in either next year's Senate reelection, or a possible (and also whispered) bid for Sacramento against Schwarzenegger.

In: The Senate Fight Club. The United States Senate, whom jet-set journo Taki -- who knows his aristocracies -- once called the most aristocratic club, outside of the Council of Cardinals, is a world of Gladiatorial Fundament. And the intellectually challenged Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum needs a goddamned babysitter. After The President personally campaigned against the Senate Minority Leader, bringing -- in the process -- Daschle low, all bets for a modicum of Senate collegiality were off the table. This, according to our favorite Dickensian villain, Robert Novak, is one of the consequences:

"Sen. Elizabeth Dole, the Senate Republican campaign chairman, has assigned fellow Republicans to defend Sen. Rick Santorum from increasingly harsh Democratic attacks on the floor as he faces a tough re-election in Pennsylvania.

"Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy have led political attacks on Santorum that formerly would not have been possible in a less combative Senate. Sen. Hillary Clinton has sniped at Santorum's new book, It Takes a Family.

"Although Santorum is third ranking in the party's Senate hierarchy as Republican Conference chairman, his colleagues have not risen to support him. Under Dole's plan, a designated Republican senator will take the floor in Santorum's defense whenever needed."

Wait: Rick Santorum knows how to write?



(image via thespiannet)

Out: Ambassador Sharon Stone. You know, in the end, that this is precisely what she's really been angling after all this time. After "ManEating" all those countless directors and executive producers, Sharon Stone's hidden-secret-deep-down-desire has always been to stand in front of all the leaders of the world and issue forth gulf streams of tremendous hot wind on all sorts of yam-yam topics that she knows nothing about but sound important. According to Lloyd Grove:

"She'd really like to be named a peace ambassador by the United Nations.

"'I try not to get quite so pushy,' Stone said, recalling a U.N.-sponsored appearance years ago before business types who 'refused to look up from their s-y lunch' when she lectured them about the economic impact of AIDS."

Granted, Stone has done great things for AIDS prevention moneywise and -- lest we forget -- malaria netting in Africa. But when faced with a shitty UN lunch, which we endured for years as a schoolboy, or a gaseous Sharon Stone lecture ... well, we'll go in for the soggy vegetables and overcooked mystery meat.

In: Tim Arango. It's been a good week for the NYPost's Tim Arango. Take, for instance, the AOL-Time Warner scoop followed gingerly by his first reporting on the Viacom-Comcast "hook up." Arango talked to Iwantmedia (link via Romenesko)

"IWM: What is your assessment of the situation of Time Warner and AOL?

"Arango: My assessment is that Time Warner desperately wants to figure this thing out, and at this point in time management's preferred solution is to partner with Microsoft.

"IWM: ... Of all your scoops, which ones make you the most proud?

"Arango: A few that stick out are, obviously, last week's AOL-Microsoft story; talks about NBC Universal acquiring DreamWorks; Time Warner and Comcast teaming up to start a New York Mets network; Sony Music and BMG merger talks.

"IWM: ... Will we see more media conglomerate breakups like Viacom?

"Arango: In the wake of Viacom's decision, we've seen Clear Channel and Cablevision announce breakup plans, and Time Warner is certainly in the midst of reconfiguring its businesses. Two others to look for are Sony potentially spinning off its U.S. entertainment assets and G.E. spinning off NBC Universal."

The full interview here.



(image via wohtheatre.org)

Out: The Saperstein Divorce. David and the infamously spendthrift Suzanne Saperstein are getting a billion dollar divorce. Gag 'em with a fork, they're done. The only question remaining is -- will the divorce take place in California, with their generous community property laws, or Houston, which ... well, youknowwhatI'mgettingat. Their entertaining union and dissolution of social mountaineers is chronicled acutely by -- who else? -- our favorite social chronicler, David Patrick Columbia in NYSocialDiary:

"The Sapersteins met on an airplane, many moons ago, flying from Europe to the U.S. He was married with two small children and running his very prosperous MetroTraffic business out of Houston. They were seated side by side. She was a zaftig Scandinavian blonde and they started to flirt.

"In the midst of their tete-a-tete he told her he wasn�?t crazy about European women because they were hairy. Whereupon she took her bare leg and flung it over his leg. Feel that, she challenged. And he did. Hey ... by the time she got off the plane, he had asked her to come to Houston to work for him. Eventually, she did. He 'fell madly in love with her,' recalls a friend who knew them well. 'She was a poor little girl fromScandinaviaa' and he was a man on the move. They got married and built a big house which they called Tara.

"... But like a space age Madame Bovary, the ladies who lunched mainly ignored her invitations. Barbara (Mrs. Marvin) Davis, the self-proclaimed doyenne of Beverly Hills ignored her, and so did many of the others 'of consequence,' with the sole and curious exception of perhaps the most prominent social figure in all of Los Angeles: Betsy Bloomingdale. She went and she saw. 'They were very very gauche but sweet nice people,' according to one who knew them well."

DPC knows how to tell a story. Trust us. The full, gossipy story Here.



(image via geocities/royrogerslocations)

In: Lil Kim's Last Supper. Oh no she didn't (Oh yes she did). According to Lloyd Grove, although the evening before being locked up Lil Kim noshed on Mr. Chow's with producer "Swizz Beatz" (Averted Gaze), as opposed to Saint Peter, her last Last Supper was indeed at Roy Rogers. (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment) This, from The NYDailyNews:

"The nation's new most famous federal inmate drove down the New Jersey Turnpike in a convoy of five luxury vehicles from her Englewood home.

"Trailed by a reality TV crew, she stopped at a rest stop for fried chicken at Roy Rogers before beating a 5 p.m. deadline by 30 minutes."

That's so ghetto. De rigeur, even. But scrumptious. Lil Kim's "Last Supper" just had to be the 3 piece extra crispy; she couldn't have gone out on a classy note.



Gabba gabba, hey. (image via everglo)

Out: Joe Francis and Kimberly Stewart. It's a fucking bitersweet emotional roller coaster ride compounded by lies, that relationship -- can we call it that? -- between rock royal Kimberly Stewart, who we still cannot figure out why she's famous, and Joe Francis, the oily, smarmy, soft-core swine-boy. According to RadarOnline:

"We hear Francis and Stewart, who reportedly stole her man from Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon at last month�?s Comedy Central roast for Pamela Anderson, were walking out of a Blockbuster hand in hand last week in Brentwood, California, when 'all of a sudden they started wrestling in the exitway of the video store, and it got really rough.'

"'Joe started strangling Kimberly, and she was laughing and then started screaming that he was choking her,' says an eyewitness. 'Then this paparazzo came up, and they totally freaked out.'"

Of course they would. How could they not? Autoerotic asphyxiation interrupted abruptly by the flash of cameras could conceivably precipitate a grand mal seizure. (A considerable pause; and embarrassed silence) Or so we're told. Radar continues:

"We're told that as the photographer began snapping pictures, Stewart, known in some circles as 'the poor man's Paris Hilton,'"

--so unnecessary, but so damned true -- "screamed at him, 'We're not together!' The pissed-off party girl then turned to Francis and ordered him to 'tell [the photographer] we're not together,' according to the source. On cue, Francis mumbled that they were 'defindefinitelyinitely not together,' and the two posed 'as friends' for a quick photo before slinking off to the softcore-porn king's car."

Nice.

Tamara Mellon should give Kimberly Stewart a medal for taking out her trash.