Media-Whore D'Oeuvres



(Jennifer Hudson and James Blunt via thisislondon)

"Topshop boss Sir Philip Green looks set to conquer America - with a little help from Kate Moss .. Other guests at the launch party included Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Hudson, James Blunt, Rosario Dawson, Agyness Deyn, Marc Jacobs and Vogue editor Anna Wintour .. J-Lo, 40, in a figure-hugging strapless white gown, and her husband Marc Anthony, greeted Moss on the red carpet like an old friend. As the evening went on Lopez, Dreamgirls star Hudson and Blunt took the microphone to surprise fellow guests with a series of songs." (Thisislondon)

"Does the puzzling failure of the Doha Arab summit signal the demise of Arab summitry? That's a question which is being batted around the Arab media over the last few days in the wake of the baffling early conclusion of the summit in Qatar and its failure to address any of the urgent issues facing the Arab world. Will the Doha summit go down in history as the swan song of Arab summitry? Abd al-Rahman al-Rashed, the director of the Saudi TV station al-Arabiya and a reliable window into official Saudi thinking, wrote yesterday that the time has come to abolish Arab summits altogether ... Meanwhile, Hosni Mubarak has now skipped two summits in a row, without even bothering to provide an official explanation (even if his efforts to convince others to stay away failed miserably). Jordan's King Abdullah reportedly went home early because he was upset that he wasn't met by the Emir at the airport (of such stuff is high politics made in the Arab world). Much of the summit was overshadowed by the pyrotechnics between Moammar Qaddafi and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, and the Qatari Emir's efforts to smooth over the public spat. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki seems to have gone home empty-handed after the Saudi King refused to meet with him, nobody agreed to cancel debt, and the vacuous official statement declined to include boilerplate praise for improved Iraqi security or democracy." (ForeignPolicy)

"Yesterday was Wednesday and so it was Michael’s. I don’t know what it is about Wednesdays but it’s the day they can’t stay away. At Table Six at the beginning of the center of the room – Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee and their son Quinn along with a lady friend, and Tom Brokaw. At the table in the bay, Evelyn Lauder, Mika Brzezinski, Alexandra Trower, and Myra Biblowit (who’s head of Evelyn’s Breast Cancer Research Foundation which is having it’s annual Hot Pink Party at the Waldorf on April 29th with a special musical performance by Elton John and Liza Minnelli)." (NYSocialDiary)

"For the week ending March 29, 2009, Nickelodeon and USA Network dominated the top twenty as usual, snaring eighteen of the top twenty spots between them. Nick had twelve spots led by the Kids’ Choice Awards, the Penguins of Madagascar and, of course, SpongeBob. USA network grabbed six spots led by WWE RAW and NCIS. Jon & Kate Plus 8 on TLC the season 1B finale of The Secret Life of the American Teenager on ABC Family were the only other networks/shows in the top twenty." (TVByTheNumbers)

"Robin (Quivers) told the crew she was considering taking a trip to Africa, and said that someone had suggested that go speak at Oprah's charter school in South Africa. Howard (Stern) even wrote the first line of Robin's speech: 'First of all girls, you should know that Oprah hates me and the show I work on' ..Lisa G reported that Donald Trump appeared on Barbara Walters' Sirius show last night and the pair discussed how they had settled their feud at Howard's wedding." (HowardSternShow)



(image via guestofaguest)

"Last night Taylor Momsen, Zach Braff, Erin Lucas, Ciara, Adrienne Bailon, Christian Siriano, Lydia Hearst, Alexis Bledel, Amber Tamblyn, among others celebrated NYLON Magazine’s 10th Anniversary with Editor-in-Chief Marvin Scott Jarrett and Publisher Jaclynn Jarrett at the Thompson LES." (Guestofaguest)

"You’re Scarlett Johansson. You’re pretty and you’re pretty famous, too. And you’ve just been offered the part of the Black Widow in Iron Man 2! That’s got to be some payday, right? How about $250,000, which is what Marvel Studios offered Johansson and Mickey Rourke to be in the film? The stars negotiated the number up to something over $400,000. Still, it’s not hard to imagine that even a year ago Johansson could have expected to break seven figures for a role in a big franchise film. It’s a pretty thrifty deal for such a recognizable name." (TheDailyBeast)

"If you separate the broadcast-network business from the very large cable-branded network business, as you know all of the hundreds of channels – not cable, the multichannels, somebody ought to get a good word for this —it’s the branded channel business of TBS and MTV, Disney Channel, etc., and all of those have clear identities, loyal audiences that watch them on television—all we’re saying is that all of those branded channels delivered by cable, satellite and telecom, they should be available on demand on your television set and they should be available on demand on your PC and your mobile-broadband device. What we’re saying about TV Everywhere, we’d like to move in the direction of having all of those networks and certainly all of the ones that we [run] to be available to you for no extra charge, for free on broadband. You’ll be adding the other platforms – broadband and mobile – to your television experience for no extra charge." (Jeff Bewkes/Paidcontent)

"There’s no question for me that the low point of my career was being sued by Michael Ovitz and receiving an initial ruling that I had lost, a result that was later vacated by the court. I don't usually talk about this. The only reason to revisit it, really, is to view it with the perspective of time, because I learned a lot from the whole experience. I’ll never forget the day I walked out of my house, knowing there was going to be something in the paper about the lawsuit, but I didn’t know what. I was by myself standing in my front yard, and I saw the L.A. Times lying there with two giant color pictures above the fold -- one of me and one of Michael Ovitz, telling the story about how in this David and Goliath case, me being David, Goliath had won." (TheWrap)



"It's no surprise that Gucci would choose L.A.'s Chateau Marmont as the site of a Tuesday night fête for its latest scent, Flora. For years, the company has had a lock on the giant billboard outside the famous Sunset Boulevard hotel, and that space is currently plastered with the fragrance's new ad campaign starring model Abbey Lee. 'I drive by that sign all the time, thinking, I could be a Gucci girl,' sighed Amanda Seyfried, who co-hosted along with Vanessa Hudgens and Vogue's Lisa Love. With other Hollywood starlets and visiting models (Rumer Willis, Dakota Johnson, Chanel Iman), not to mention boy toy Zac Efron .." (Style)



(image via artfils.art.com)

"SPIRITS were high in more ways than one at the opening night of 'Hair.' While the cast smoked herbal cigarettes onstage to simulate marijuana joints, some 'old hippie' audience members got into 'real 60s-style smoking outside during intermission -- and it wasn't tobacco,' a source told us. The star-studded crowd included Diane von Furstenberg, Jill Clayburgh, Taye Diggs, Caroline Kennedy, Rosie O'Donnell, Joel Grey and Martha Plimpton, who can thank the show for her exist ence -- she was conceived during the original 1967 run, which starred her parents Keith Carradine and Shelley Plimpton." (PageSix)



(image via papermag)

"Hunter S. Thompson once said, 'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' And this is precisely what is happening at Sessions at Santa's, a Tuesday night party at Santos Party House curated by different arty pants each week. The worldwide vibe is definitely weird and the weirdest people in the world are the New Yorkers, especially the artists, and Sessions is where the weirdos dial up their weirdness in front of audiences that are just as weird as them. [OK, I'm going to stop saying weird.] The party's mission, according to Spencer Sweeney, one of the co-owners of the club and the mastermind behind it, is to bring some good old-fashioned art-damageness that's been lacking for what seems like forever back to the city of New York. The first Session was rather capricious -- curator Bob Nickas put together a night of metal bands in an almost empty upstairs room on a cold January night. But since then, the party's been growing and getting deeply strange, cathartic even. Artists and musicians such as Kai Althoff, I.U.D. (Lizzi Bougatsos and Sadie Laska), Daniel Higgs of Lungfish and Matt Sweeney have curated and performed downstairs where rows of black Hefty trash bags hang from the ceiling like it's laundry day in ghost town." (Papermag)

"While celebrities and other glossies trotted downtown to raise their glasses to the cause of fast fashion, New York's finest philanthropists found themselves in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel to raise funds for the Henry Street Settlement. 'We talk about Wall Street and Main Street, but maybe we should talk a little more about Henry Street,' said Mayor Michael Bloomberg as guests sat down to a goat cheese and heirloom tomato salad .. Gala co-chairs John Demsey, Jill Fairchild, Eva Jeanbart-Lorenzotti, Kalliope Karella, Angela Mariani and Pilar Crespi Robert coaxed the likes of Christine and Stephen Schwarzman, Gillian and Sylvester Miniter, Muffie Potter Aston, Debbie Bancroft and Jamee and Peter Gregory to the event, which honored filmmaker and philanthropist Tatiana von Furstenberg. 'She takes right after her mom--glamorous, smart and philanthropic,' said Bloomberg of the first Lower East Side resident to receive the honor." (Fashionweekdaily)

"Martin Sheen, Rory, Ethel and Kerry Kennedy; and Steve and Liz Alderman of the Peter C. Alderman Foundation traveled to the Paley Center for Media on Wednesday for the premiere of the award-winning documentary, A Ripple of Hope. Retelling the events surrounding the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. through the eyes of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, the film drew members, supporters and fans of the very public Kennedy and Kennedy-Cuomo families." (Guestofaguest)

"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is warning fellow Republicans that conservatives may leave the GOP for a third party in 2012. 'If the Republicans can’t break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012,' Gingrich said Wednesday during a speech at the College of the Ozarks in Missouri, the local television station KY3 reported. Gingrich thrashed Republicans for allowing increased spending during the Bush administration and for not doing enough to block President Barack Obama’s early initiatives. 'Remember, everything Obama's doing, Bush started last year,' Gingrich said. 'If you're going to talk about big spending, the mistakes of the Bush administration last year are fully as bad as the mistakes of Obama's first two, three months.'" (Politico)



"This is my favorite kind of meeting of the minds: Tomorrow's episode of ABC's The View is gonna feature Saturday Night Live's hysterical comic Fred Armisen. But not as himself -- he'll show up in full Joy Behar regalia, playing the biting caricature of her that he's created on the late-night show. Just look at this preview photo of the two of them!" (Popwatch)

"CBS' Face the Nation had its most Total Viewers since January 23, 2005 last Sunday, helped by an interview with President Barack Obama. Still, NBC's Meet the Press was the top program in Total Viewers. Face the Nation won in the A25-54 demo. For the first quarter of 2009, ABC's This Week closed the Total Viewers gap with Meet the Press by 42% compared to Q1 '08. It is the smallest gap between the two programs in the first quarter since 1998." (TVNewser)



"The spiritual figure is Ashtar Sheran, and sort of hot elvin looking man with a serious rhinoplasty, sometimes with an awesome spacey curl on his forehead. He is from outer space and arrives to liberate us ..They are in Eastern Europe, but there are believers and 'abductees' everywhere. Basically the cult revolves around the concept that all of us have been 'chipped' by the Saurians, grayish big black eyed aliens. We have tiny chips put into us by every means imaginable that account for everything horrible. We must 'unchip' ourselves. There are over 3,000 of this organizations propaganda images that you can access if you make it through their site slideshow, all in flash so I had to mess around to get them dragged over to jpegs .. As usual, I am drawn to the organization simply for the outfits. I'm all for any brainwashed paradise if that's what we're going to wear." (ReavisEitel)

"I went for a walk today. It's the most exercise I've had in months. I'm ready to vomit. Fuck, I'm fat." (Kevin Smith/Twitter)