"In an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card warned President Obama about, well, something bad about the month of August. 'August is a challenging time to be president,' Card advised. What, exactly, could go wrong for President Obama during this time? 'It's prime-time hurricane season,' Card said. 'An awful lot of wars have started during August … The Bosnian wars all started, kind of, in August … You had the Russian coup attempt in 1990.' He summed up his warning: 'I think you have to expect the unexpected.'" (Politico)
(Amy Fine Collins, Martha Kramer, and Neal Fox via NYSocialDiary)
"I went down to Swifty’s to dine with Kathy Steinberg and Alice Shure. Kathy and Alice have been very close friends since at least the 70s. Although not close, I’ve known both girls, and especially Kathy, since then too. It’s things like that make this place a town .. Swifty’s was bustling. I saw Adolfo across the room with some friends and Robert Couturier entertain a group in another corner. Brad Collins and his daughter Flora were at another. They’d just come from seeing the new Johnny Depp movie which they liked, especially the star although it’s more than two hours. Wife and Mother Amy was home, getting to bed extra early because she had to get up at 5 a.m. to be on the Today Show this morning. The subject was the annual International Best Dressed List which is about to be published in the next Vanity Fair .. there are very few men or women who dress consistently, no matter who they are. Many of us look like slobs even on the street oftentime. It’s the sensibility; I’m not knocking it. Although Amy Fine Collins is the exception. She defines it. She always looks best dressed. Impeccable, and in fashion." (NYSocialDiary)
"The news just keeps getting better for HBO. Sunday's episode of the pay cable network's 'True Blood' brought in 4.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen. That's a record tune-in for the two-year-old show, and a stunning stat given just how few home HBO reaches vs. other broadcast and cable networks. Indeed, 'True Blood's' viewer tally was higher than the premieres of some much- hyped network shows, including Fox's 'More to Love' (4.0 million viewers) and ABC's 'Defying Gravity' (3.6 million). The news was also good for the other shows in HBO's Sunday lineup. Both 'Hung' (3.4 million) and 'Entourage' (3.2 million) had their second-best ratings of the season." (TheWrap)
"I went to a party last night at Joan Rivers's three-floor East Side palace (Melissa has the lower floor), which is elegant and gorgeous and currently for sale. The bash was for Joan's TV Land show, How'd You Get So Rich?, but I also wanted to know about her already legendary Comedy Central roast, airing on the 9th. On the show, Brad Garrett tells Joan, 'Your face has been lifted more times than Bristol Palin's prom dress.' And Jeffrey Ross quips about the comic, 'If you Google her, you can find her on Craig's and Schindler's list.' Was she upset by the jokes? 'No,' Rivers told me. 'It hasn't all been said already? I'm old, I'm ugly, and I work for QVC!'" (Musto)
"Last night, New York's Sunshine theater served as the backdrop for the special screening of It Might Get Loud, a rock and roll documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim (you know him as the gorgeous Oscar-winning filmmaker of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth). Chicsters and the music crowd alike flocked to the venue to see this highly anticipated film. The verdict? It's not your typical sex-crazed, guitar smashing, high as a kite rockumentary, but a love song, a serenade to songwriting, rock music, and the electric guitar told through the personal stories of three generations of virtuosos: Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's The Edge, and The White Stripes' Jack White. 'I was backstage and I saw down a hallway Eddie Vedder talking to Bruce Springsteen while I was making this movie,' said Guggenheim of his vision for the film. 'I was like What are they talking about? That's what I want the movie to be about: what they're talking about.' Movie-goers like Anna Sui, Courtney Love, Rachel Roy, Elise Øverland, Jessica Hart, and Tory Burch beau Lyor Cohen had-appropriately--music on the mind." (Fashionweekdaily)
"In the past 18 months, just about every investment bubble in the world has burst. Property has collapsed, equities have plummeted, commodities have crashed, and even fine art isn’t fetching the same fancy prices. But one bubble refuses to burst: banking bonuses. Even after receiving billions in government money to rescue the industry, whose bonus culture has been nailed as one of the causes of the crisis of 2008, the bankers have slipped right back into their old ways. And yet the one lesson we can draw from the last year is that all bubbles burst eventually. The bonus juggernaut is staying afloat on a wave of cheap money and taxpayer support. That will be withdrawn one day, and the fallout will be huge. The banking industry should have transformed itself while it had the chance. It may well be too late for it to try now." (Bloomberg)
"With two of its own films under its belt, Marvel Entertainment is starting to look a little less like a comicbook publisher and more like DreamWorks Animation or the old Pixar. The company reported a 38% drop in profits on a 26% reduction in revenue during the second quarter, driven mostly by the lack of a major movie release since 'Iron Man' and 'The Incredible Hulk.' Yet those pics still helped Marvel post a profit of $29 million from revenue of $116 million for the three-month period, that ended June 30, largely because of DVD and pay TV sales, which elevated the company's stock to an all-time high of $41.74 earlier Tuesday. Revenue from Marvel's core comicbook publishing biz was flat during the period at $31.7 million from the same period a year ago, but profits were down 7% to nearly $11 million because of the depressed ad market. The importance of films to Marvel's bottomline is unavoidable, since the company formed Marvel Studios to self-finance and produce a slate of films based on its superheroes." (Variety)
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