A Little of the Old In and Out



(image via diablog)

In: Peter Rojas. We didn't especially care for the New York story on blogs. It seemed particularly bloodless for a magazine as consistently interesting as New York under Moss' stewarship. It missed the biggest blog sory: the rise in stature and clout of celebrity gossip blogs (perhaps this has to do with editor Adam Moss' muscular aversion to the subject of celebrity gossip). As a result, the story seemed entirely devoid of edge; it could just as easily have been a story for Business 2.0 as New York. A cover story on the profitability of blogging is lacking in "the sexy" (too early in the game; the chessboard is still being assembled). That having been said, one interesting figure emerged from out of the bland, unfocused porrige of a story:

"To see just precisely how rich blogging can make you, it�s worth visiting Peter Rojas, the cheerful, skate-punk-like editor of Engadget�and the best-compensated blogger in history.

"When I meet him one December evening in his bachelor pad on the Lower East Side, he�s sitting at an Ikea desk bedecked with three flat-panel screens and looking relatively fresh, considering he�s just come off another eleven-hour blogging jag. Like most A-list bloggers, he hit his keyboard before dawn and posted straight through until dinner. 'Anyone can start a blog, and anyone can make it grow,' he says, sipping a glass of water. 'But to keep it there? It�s fucking hard work, man. I�ve never worked so hard in my life. Eighty-hour weeks since I started.'

"For Rojas, the toil paid off handsomely. Last fall, AOL bought Jason Calacanis�s company Weblogs, Inc., which includes Engadget, for $25 million. Rojas himself didn�t disclose the precise amount he got from the deal, but he had a good deal of equity in the company and says that, technically, he doesn�t need to work anymore. Nonetheless, he�s still slogging away at Engadget because he�s still obsessed with cool new technology. His idea of a good time is hunting down samizdat pictures of the latest Palm Treo. 'I didn�t intend to become a millionaire,' he says, 'but I wound up there anyway.'

Our old boss and pal Jason Calacanis writes of the best-compensated blogger in history:

"Peter Rojas is on the cover of New York Magazine this week--right where he belongs. Seeing him get such major recognition got me to thinking about my history with Peter. One of my favorite moments came a month or two after Peter Rojas had jumped ship from Gawker to Weblogs, Inc. Nick Denton and I were having drinks and he told me that I would never be able to manage Peter. Denton then went into great details about how he couldn't manage Peter, that he was demanding, and that he would never compromise his vision."



(image via epochtimes)

Out: Michael Eisner. It seems like Eisner has been away from Disney for a century. The smoke has cleared. Steve Jobs and Pixar are integrating nicely; a clear digital strategy is taking form; and Bob Iger is renewing Old Friendships that had gone sour under the brutal Eisner regime.

But whither the choleric Eisner? How is he doing in the ghetto that is CNBC? (Averted Gaze) According to those intrepid Page Sixxies:

"FORMER Disney CEO Michael Eisner's new CNBC show, 'Conversations with Michael Eisner,' is off to a rocky start. 'They pre-taped three shows already,' tattles an insider. 'Each show will have a business-type person and a celebrity. But the only celebs he could find to be on the show so far are Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler. Dinosaurs! No A-listers. In the old days, everyone would have been lining up. His ego is so huge, he should have just started a charitable foundation and called it a day,' sniped our source. A CNBC rep did not return calls."

What? You wouldn't watch a half-hour interview between Bette Midler and Eisner? Well, The Corsair would (as a remedy, of course, for acute insomnia).



(image via classy2)

In: Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day guys. Thank you for reading this blog.



Whoopsie! (image via chadmuska.org)

Out: Paris Hilton. We shit you not, an Indian director --! -- wants Paris Hilton to play Mother Theresa. From Defamer:

"Indian director T Rajeevnath (sometimes credited, according to IMdB, as simply 'Rajeevnath,' perhaps making him Bollywood�s answer to McG) is developing a biopic on the life of Mother Teresa, and, according to British tab The Sun, has told his people to tell Paris Hilton�s people that he�d love to see the Simple Life star in the leper-loving title role:

Rajeevnath says he got the idea to cast Paris after being impressed by her refusal to strip for Playboy.
He told the Indo-Asian News Service: �My agents in California have contacted Paris Hilton.� [�]

This reminds us of a dispach from our favorite gossip superhero duo, Rush and Molloy:

"Don Cheadle and Ryan Gosling have some ideas for television that we could definitely get into.

"'Let's do a reality show about some family on the run from the [Sudanese militia groups] Janjaweed,' Gosling jokingly suggested in a three-way interview with Cheadle and BlackBook writer David Benioff in this month's issue of the mag. 'Let's get Paris Hilton to Darfur,' suggested Benioff. 'See how she does.'

"'Where's my phone?' mocked 'The Notebook' star, imitating Paris. 'This sucks!'

"'Darfur sucks,' echoed Cheadle, laughing."

We can imagine Paris Hilton in India, on set, amid the manufactured poverty and disease, ad libbing, blankly: leprosy sucks.