Media-Whore D'Oeuvres



(image via getmeawayfromhere)

"FORMER Bond Girl Grace Jones isn't shy about flaunting her wares. At H&M's yacht party at the South Street Seaport celebrating its collaboration with designer Matthew Williamson, the singer, 61, who descended onto the stage in a glass elevator, drew a shriek from the crowd after she exposed her bare backside and gave it a few firm squeezes. Observed one female partygoer, 'She's still got the best legs on the planet.'" (PageSix)



"Jack Kennedy once said that the reason people read a biography is to answer one question: What was he like? What was the late William F. Buckley Jr. really like? And what of his wife, Pat, that formidable New York socialite? What could a son make of her? And what were those two, Bill and Pat, like together? What on earth was it like growing up in the middle of all that? .. And what a life the old man shared with his boy. 'My father had always had the notion of sailing across the Atlantic, and this we did in 1975. We set off from Miami on June 1. A month and 4,400 miles later, we dropped anchor in the shadow of Gibraltar.' Buckley writes about 'Mum,' who died first and not by that many months before 'Pup,' with more exuberance. She had come dashing into Bill Buckley’s heart as a Vassar roommate of his sister’s. Despite all the spats and all the years, she never left it. What a glow she left in these pages. 'I’ve got the best legs in the business.' What other son can claim to have heard his mother drop that baby?" (Chris Matthews/TheDailyBeast)



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"If the Wolverine star is really straight, then he's a super cool guy who plays around with the rumors and has even said there's nothing wrong with being gay and people can think whatever they want. If he's really gay, then he's a fool, an a-hole, and a traitor who parades around his wife and kid for the cameras, living a lie while milking the gay rumors for sensational interest. So which is he--a brave hero or a monstrous wuss?" (Musto)



"Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett lambasted bankers, insurers and regulators for being blind to the possibility home prices could fall, and said their shortcomings caused the worst recession in half a century. Buffett and Vice Chairman Charles Munger said Wall Street sold subprime mortgage 'sewage,' blamed the media and regulators for missing the danger and said the government stress tests of financial firms won’t advance Berkshire’s understanding of the stocks the company owns. Buffett hosted a record 35,000 people at the Omaha, Nebraska-based firm’s annual meeting May 2 and spoke at a news conference yesterday. 'I think that virtually everybody associated with the financial world contributed to it,' Buffett said of the crisis. 'Some of it stemmed from greed, some from stupidity, some from people saying the other guy was doing it.'" (Bloomberg)



"The ladies of the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival were honored with a Women’s Filmmaker Brunch yesterday at City Hall Restaurant. Actresses Mary-Kate Olsen, Debra Messing, and Parker Posey were spotted mingling and enjoying brunch with the festival’s co-founder Jane Rosenthal, among others." (Guestofaguest)



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"Faced with slumping prime-time ratings and dwindling ad revenues, MTV is hoping that showing live tweets, Facebook updates and even RockYou videos will get teens excited about its new show, What You’re Watching With Alexa Chung. Blending social media with TV content is a no-brainer (especially for a network whose target audience is the 18-24 set). What’s more unusual is that MTV sharing some of the ad revenue with Facebook and Twitter." (Paidcontent)

"It's hard to predict exactly when President Obama might announce his nominee to replace David H. Souter on the Supreme Court. But if recent history is any guide, expect a Senate confirmation vote before Congress leaves for its August recess. The best recent parallel to the current situation is probably the two Supreme Court vacancies President Clinton faced early in his presidency. (Put aside the situation in 2005 when Sandra Day O'Connor waited until the end of the court's term in July and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's death threw off the process further.) Both Byron R. White and Harry Blackmun announced their retirements in the spring: White in March 1993 and Blackmun in April 1994. Three months passed before Clinton announced the nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to replace White in June 1993 and only about five weeks to name Stephen G. Breyer as Blackmun's successor. The task was easier the second time since Breyer had already been identified as a top candidate the first time around. In both instances, the Clinton administration heeded the lesson of Robert Bork's failed nomination in 1987 about the importance of not leaving a nomination hanging over the August recess when opposition can coalesce." (CQPolitics)

"In January '95, (Jack) Kemp announced that he wouldn't run in '96. The party was changing; supply-side evangelism alone wouldn't be enough for the new Republican base. Dole ended up winning the nomination and making Kemp his running-mate, but the duo was doomed to defeat from the get-go. And after '96, Kemp's days as a serious national political player were over. On the day that he died, three top Republicans—Mitt Romney, Eric Cantor and Jeb Bush—kicked off a drive to make the Republican Party appealing to the masses once again. But more than a decade ago, when he spoke out against Proposition 187, Kemp recognized the self-destructive path on which the G.O.P. was embarking. Had his party listened to him then, Republicans might not now be in such an awful predicament. And they might have listened to him back then had he been their president, and not just a former congressman and H.U.D. secretary. And he might have been their president if only Reagan had gone with his gut in July of 1980." (PolitickerNY)



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"Jim Jarmusch’s 'The Limits of Control' led the specialty box office this weekend, according to estimates provided by Rentrak. The Focus Features release - described by indieWIRE‘s Michael Koresky as 'as a series of discrete, uncannily repeated sit-down encounters between a mysterious loner on some sort of criminal assignment and a succession of enigmatic oddball contacts throughout sunny Spain' - grossed $54,233 in three theaters. It’s $18,087 average topped all other reporting limited releases .. Control‘s grosses were largely driven by its showing at New York’s Angelika, where its likely to take in around $32,000. Much lighter grosses came out of showings at the Arclight and Landmark in Los Angeles. The film expands to six new markets next Friday - Washington, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, and Seattle, which Focus told indieWIRE are 'core Jarmusch markets similar to New York.'" (IndieWIRE)



"The annual New York May art sales, the biggest event in the art world calendar, start on Monday in a drastically shrunken form, with Sotheby’s expecting its contemporary art auction to generate less than a quarter of the sales it did a year ago. The two weeks of sales – Impressionist and Modern auctions are this week and postwar and contemporary auctions take place next week – come after a 35 per cent fall in the price of art in the first quarter of 2009, according to the Mei Moses art index. That index excludes works that failed to sell. Some insiders put the price drop closer to 50 per cent, sharper than stock markets." (FT)



"NBC’s next season will include new dramas about parents, nurses, first responder paramedics, and life after the end of the world. The stuck-in-fourth-place broadcast network previewed its upcoming shows for advertisers and reporters on Monday, two weeks before the formal start of the upfront season for TV show announcements. 'With Jay Leno’s new hourlong comedy show at 10 p.m. to occupy one-third of the network’s weeknight schedule, NBC executives said they were able to build a strategy around choosing among the strongest pilots they had developed,' Bill Carter reports. At the same time NBC announced four new dramas — 'Parenthood,' 'Trauma,' 'Mercy,' and 'Day One' — it also released promotional trailers and photographs for the shows. See below for the videos, with descriptions by Mr. Carter." (TVDecoder)



"That led to (Howard Stern) talking about this Kim Kardashian show that he was watching the other night. He said that the show is just them doing one bad thing after another ...Howard said that Bruce Jenner is in this show and looking like a woman with that face lift and nose job. Howard said he looks really odd. He said that Bruce was flying a toy helicopter around in the street and the wife was asking to fly it. Howard said she grabbed it and flew the thing right into this black guy's car. The guy didn't do anything because the cameras were there. Howard said it was one bad behavior after another on that show." (Marksfriggin)



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"Last week BusinessInsider.com estimated Glenn Beck would make $18 million in 2009 — now it appears he's headed for even more. Beck's new book deal with Simon & Schuster will give him more of a share in the profits of each book, as well as increased creative control, reports the Wall St. Journal. 'I'd rather take a lower advance and have a partnership,' said Beck. 'I'll bet on myself and a smart person on the other side of the table every time.' The deal is similar to the one given to Stephen King about whom, Beck noted, King once called him 'Satan's mentally challenged younger brother.'" (TVNewser)



"Last Thursday night several hundred attended the gala preview of the International Fine Art Fair benefiting the Frick Collection. Vice Chairman of the gala were Mrs. Henry Clay Frick II, Mr. Christian K. Keesee, and Lynne Wheat. The Young Collectors Chairs were Clare McKeon, Lisa D. Morse, Lynne M. Wheat, and Jennifer Wright." (NYSocialDiary)