Media-Whore D'Oeuvres



(image via splashnewsonline)

"Which A-list action star is trying to fool fans with his new facelift?" (NYDailyNews)

"TOM Cruise could use a geography lesson. In Rio de Janeiro hawking 'Valkyrie,' Cruise tried to ingratiate himself to reporters by saying hola (hello) and gracias (thanks), not realizing that the language of Brazil is Portuguese, not Spanish. Accord ing to Glamurama.com, Cruise also said he fell in love with Brazil watching movies about samba and tango, unaware that tango is an Argentine dance. Cruise, who's been staying with wife Katie and baby Suri at the Copacabana Palace, took a side trip to the private island of plastic surgeon Dr. Ivo Pitanguy, who has his own landing strip and a menagerie of exotic animals." (PageSix)

"I went down to Michael’s to lunch with Linda Fairstein, the former prosecutor, assistant D.A. whose tenth mystery novel, 'Lethal Legacy,' (Doubleday) will be in the bookstores next week. Michael’s was its typical jammed up Wednesday. Peter Brown with Shirley Lord next to Joe Armstrong and Chris Meigher who were across from Elizabeth Harrison who was with former Spice Girl, the beautiful Melanie Brown and her husband Stephen Belafonte. In the corner: Michael J. Wolfe, then Stan Shuman of Allen & Company and guest; then Barbara Walters with Tina Brown." (NYSocialDiary)

"I’m exhausted. For hours I’ve been listening to testimony in Congress on how the SEC screwed up, how The Wall Street Journal failed to follow a lead, and so on. As somebody who was taken to the cleaners by Madoff, I am rightfully annoyed by the failure of the nation’s regulatory systems. But for me, there’s also reason to celebrate losing $5 million to Uncle Bernie: I’m now officially a member of the most exclusive club of suckers that ever walked the face of the earth. When you think of the director Steven Spielberg, the actor Kevin Bacon, the publisher Mort Zuckerman, the Mets owner Fred Wilpon, and the economist Henry Kaufman, you can now think of me, Burt Ross, schmuck of the year. In my almost 66 years on this planet, I have never kept such impressive company. Life sure doesn’t get any better than this!" (Burt Ross/TheDailyBeast)

"Drag really went underground, and now that's changing. There is a shift in our culture with new hope and optimism, and our show is a part of that. We are reintroducing drag to a new generation of people who have no idea what it is. Drag has been alive for straight men who want to do drag like Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy, but when it pertains to gay men who are doing drag, it had all but dried up." (RuPaul/Papermag)



(image via daylife)

"WE'D always heard that Carla Bruni comes from a wealthy family. Here's proof - her family castle near Turin, Italy, has been sold to an Arab sheik for $9 million. The furnishings from the 40-room Castello di Castagneto Po fetched $10 million at an earlier auction in London, La Stampa newspaper reports. The French first lady's father, in dustrialist Alberto Bruni Te deschi, bought the castle in 1952. Her mother, Marisa, said yesterday: 'We had finished with Castagneto Po - nobody went there anymore.'" (PageSix)

"The combined effects of Barack Obama naming senators to his Cabinet (and the VP slot), Republicans retiring and Democrats picking up seats in the last election present an opportunity for the President to remake the United States Senate to his liking. It will be a new and different place over the next few years. Even among Senate leaders their years of collective Washington experience is among the shortest in a long time. This reshaping of the Senate results in an unusually large class of new lawmakers, all coming to Washington in a climate of change that might very well put Obama in the driver's seat. Some of it he has engineered. In other cases, he's just lucky." (CQPolitics)

"Since it's starting out a slow day, I'm reading VF's Hollywood issue. What a diss that Graydon Carter bumps the usual Hollywood gaggle of star wannabes or naked actresses for Obama on the cover. Like that couldn't have waited another month .. What's so sad about all this is the utter lack of creativity that went into the issue. Someone from the LA office should at least send smoke signals to the NY headquarters so it can get a clue. Given that Slumdog Millionaire has been the Best Picture shoo-in since December, and VF circulates overseas, a Hollywood issue devoted to moviemaking internationally should have been the theme. Seriously, why should we as readers bother when VF doesn't? I've written before that Graydon is now more restaurateur than editor. This issue shows that: even the 'Best Seats In The House' look at the showbiz restaurant scene shamefully includes his business partner's hardly hip joint which is also hosting VF's annual Oscar shindig (now that Morton's has shuttered). The piece doesn't even mention Comme Ça or The Bazaar at SLS while it name-drops Madeo's and La Scala even though I had to double-check they were even still in business. VF, give it a rest next year." (DeadlineHollywoodDaily)

"After Alaska's papers roughed her up over her grandmotherhood and non-election, Sarah Palin got a call from B. Clinton. She refused it at first, thinking she'd again been punk'd. Her person then called his person to double-check. It was legit." (CindyAdams)

"Her acting career is far from first-class... so why should Lindsay Lohan get special airline treatment?.. LiLo kicked up a right fuss when she was refused an upgrade to firstclass on a flight from Tampa to Los Angeles. A source said: It was so funny. She began to stomp her foot like a little child. Then when they insisted she couldn't be upgraded she whined to her friend, 'You better come and see me in there and check I don't die'." (3AMGirls)

"Paul Volcker has grown increasingly frustrated over delays in setting up the economic advisory group President Barack Obama picked the former Federal Reserve chairman to lead, people familiar with the matter said. Volcker, 81, blames Obama’s National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers for slowing down the effort to organize the panel of outside advisers, the people said. Summers isn’t regularly inviting Volcker to White House meetings and hasn’t shown interest in collaborating on policy or sharing potential solutions to the economic crisis, they said .. Volcker 'is not in the White House and he doesn’t have a bureaucracy to command,' Silber said. 'It puts him at a disadvantage.'" (Bloomberg)

"At the end of January, Gawker Media owner Nick Denton said ad revenues would be up 10% over the same month last year. During the current advertising implosion, that's remarkable. Consider that yesterday, Time Warner CFO John Martin said AOL's display revenues were down 25% year-over-year. So what's Gawker doing right? Nick tells us that sponsored posts have been nice and sticking Google ads in clever spaces has helped, but that the major revenue driver has been branded site takeovers. You've seen them. Built by Gawker's in-house graphic designer, Chrissie Lamond, they are the site re-skinnings wherein Gawker re-shapes the entire look of its sites after a advertiser's brand or product. On the site's navigation bar, it says that the title is "sponsored by" or 'presented by' the advertiser. Sometimes the blog's own logo changes to the brand's colors." (AlleyInsider)

"Rumour of the President's Three-Part Plan to Restore Credit. The Financial Times has floated a three part plan that is said to resemble what the Obama administration is preparing as the Big Bang that will right the markets. This is Tim Geithner's work, and he wants to get it published as soon as possible to begin the adjustments and agitprop. It is described with the metaphor of a three-legged stool .. The first leg is the remaking of the American banking system .. The second leg is mortgages. The notion is to guarantee all family occupied mortgaged properties so that the owner has no more than a 38% monthly payment .. The Obama team argues that the third leg is the stimulus package in Congress that has now grown to $900 billion in the Senate amendment voting." (JohnBatchelorShow)



"Yesterday morning, CNBC president Mark Hoffman announced in a memo to staff that senior vice-president for business news, Jonathan Wald, would be leaving the network. In the ensuing coverage and chatter, the word that seemed to come up again and again was 'surprise' — surprise that seemingly amiable negotiations to extend the contract of the man credited with revitalizing CNBC could come to such an impasse, and surprise that an executive would leave the financial network during the worst economic crisis in almost a century — and the best financial story. Hoffman's memo said he was 'disappointed' that the two could not agree on terms of a new agreement — Wald’s contract was set to expire on March 31—and that they'd been having 'months of conversations' trying to work it out. For his part, Wald told the Daily Beast: 'They wanted me to stay, I wanted to stay — we just couldn't in the end work out a deal we could both be happy with.'" (RachelSklar)



"Hugh Grant and Jemima Khan are doing little to quell rumours they are back together after meeting for yet more secret trysts. They were seen dining together in Mayfair not two weeks ago, and yesterday the former lovers were spotted having a cosy lunch together at Olivomare in Belgravia before being snapped outside Hugh's home, as our pic shows. But as soon as they spotted photographers, they jumped back in the car and drove off." (Thisislondon)

"It was the toke heard round the world. Even Dr. Drew is drawing a distinction between full-blown marijuana addiction and the occasional recreational use. In an era of Ponzi scheming sociopaths and badly behaving bankers who have brought the global economic system to the edge of ruin it is hard to think of Michael Phelps, the Olympian swimmer, as Public Enemy Number One. In fact, the now iconic image went a long way in explaining why Phelps fiended after those 14,000 calories a day. To people of my generation -- and, frankly, to Boomers -- it is simply no big deal." (Awearnessblog)