Media-Whore D'Oevres



"The pop queen and her movie-director husband's seven-year marriage is on the rocks, according to Page Six sources and reports out of Britain. Madonna is said to have lost respect for Ritchie when she found out he had embellished his past,' one in-the-know Briton told us. 'Far from the tough, working-class London dude he adoringly echoed in 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,' he's actually a privileged, prep school boy who chose to affect a gangland accent and walk with a street swagger. Brits can spot this at 100 yards, or hear it in an accent. Yanks, alas, can't.' But while Madonna might feel she has worn out her welcome in England, Ritchie is loath to leave his native country. "He's known in the UK as a moviemaker homeboy-made good,' our source explained, 'while in the US, he's just the foreign half-wit who took Madonna from her American homeland and made her talk all funny.'" (PageSix)

"Sen. Barack Obama sought Tuesday to quell the most threatening controversy of his historic presidential campaign, detailing his relationship with his church and his background as a multiethnic American and presenting his candidacy as an attempt to put aside generations of racial divisions and start solving problems. In a wide-ranging speech delivered in a city settled by Quakers who envisioned a race-neutral society, Obama explained the inflammatory comments by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as reflective of the times in which the 66-year-old pastor grew up and 'a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years.' Drawing a link between anger that has consumed both African Americans and whites, Obama said the country has a choice: It can continue to argue over race as a distraction, or 'at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, ‘Not this time.’" (Politico)

"Two mostly naked female models, posed perfectly still, were portraying a classic dominatrix scene last Friday in a spacious and dimly lit Chelsea art gallery. One of them, a curvy 25-year-old known as January Darling, who donned bright red lipstick and shiny Betty Page-like locks, was kneeling upright, wielding a long faux pearl necklace that she used as a leash to constrain her partner, Dusty, a petite girl crouched on all fours who was wearing nothing but a black paper mask and a tiny corset around her waist. Ms. Darling was one of a handful of young women who posed for as long as 25 minutes at a time over the course of Adult Drawing, an ongoing XXX-rated affair with wine and DJ’s that attracts artists and voyeurs alike, and where all eyes tend to remain fixed on a variety of racy nude scenes that unfold in the center of the room." (Observer)

"I had my first Wall Street job at Bear Stearns. My grandpa was one of the original partners. It was a firm built on integrity, and where the customer came first. Ace Greenberg once made a man resign because he thought he charged a customer too much commission on an international trade. I am sure the old timers are rolling in their graves. I hope Jimmy Cayne sleeps peacefully in his million dollar Plaza apartment. Maybe he and Alan Schwartz should be worried about taking care of some of the employees, whose entire retirement nest egg is in Bear Stearns stock. Very Sad to see Bear go down like this ..." (NYSocialDiary)

"Day three began with hangovers overlapping with previous hangovers. Mikel and Anna went for a run. The rest of us drank water, fell asleep, then woke up again. We made our way back to the Fader Fort to borrow a couple acoustic guitars (courtesy of Maria from Guitar Center) and brought them to Buffalo Billiards, where we played a live radio set for Austin's 101X. Sixth Street is kind of amazing during SXSW, like Mardis Gras or New Year's: a hundred bands playing concurrently -- the air filled with everything from Appalachian bluegrass to free jazz to the worst nü metal you've ever heard. We were one of those bands for about 15 minutes while we did our radio performance. Hanson went on after us." (Papermag)

"In my entrancing column tomorrow you'll find a lively interview with One Day at a Time icon (and Jenny Craig star) Valerie Bertinelli, who confirmed to me that me she has a talk show in the works. The woman's a natural! She's tough talking like Dr. Phil yet speaks compassionately, sprinkling in all those new agey words like 'gift' and 'journey' to make her vaguely reminiscent of queen Oprah. At the Ladies Home Journal luncheon where I met Val, the actress turned best-selling author even broke down sobbing while admitting, 'There’s still the little voice inside me that feels I don’t deserve all the good things that come to me, but I’m going to enjoy all this. It’s a gift!' She seemed so vulnerable I couldn't even bear to tell her that her favorite talk show, Rachael Ray—which she's a regular on—isn't getting renewed!" (VillageVoice)