"The founders of Facebook aren't the only game-changing geeks poised to have their story told on a movie screen. Michael London's Groundswell Productions has teamed with producer John Morris to acquire movie rights to the Ken Auletta book Googled: The End of the World As We Know it. They will use the book as the blueprint for a feature film that tells the story of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and the fast rise of the juggernaut web business that made them billionaires. The book was published last fall by Penguin. Auletta, the media columnist for The New Yorker, chronicled a business that grew into a search engine-driven octopus whose $20 billion in ad revenue last year was more than the major broadcast networks combined. CEO Eric Schmidt predicted to Auletta that Google will become the world's first $100 billion company." (Deadline)
"Born Sári Gábor in Budapest, Zsa Zsa was the middle child of Vilmos Gabor, a soldier, and Jolie Gabor. The family appears to have been (at least partially) Jewish, and her younger sister Eva was the first to move to the U.S. in the '30s, as the Nazis ascended to power. Over the next few years, both Zsa Zsa and Magda followed her to America, and one often repeated story is that after Eva had her rhinoplasty, she took Zsa Zsa and Magda to the plastic surgeon for exactly the same nose as soon as they collected their luggage from baggage claim. (Jolie, who also came to America, was said to have gone directly for a nose reduction as well.) In addition to possibly sharing the same surgically reduced proboscises, each of the Gabor sisters had a knack for hiring and firing men. Eva was married five times over the course of her lifetime. Magda got hitched six times. But it was Zsa Zsa who took the cake: Her current husband included, she made it to the altar nine times, and even told Johnny Carson, 'I’m a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.'” (TheDailyBeast)
"An article in Vanity Fair about a man I knew for over forty years has turned me into Orlando Furioso. Oleg Cassini died in 2006 well into his nineties. We met in 1956 on an airplane going to Bermuda to play a tennis tournament. Cassini was a good club player and a so-so skier, back in the days few people skied. He was a heterosexual dress designer who designed very ugly clothes for women and even worse ones for men. Women, however, had made Oleg famous in an age when people were celebrated for proper reasons. He first married Gene Tierney, the beautiful sloe-eyed star of Laura, in the forties, then romanced Grace Kelly during the fifties, losing her to Rainier, a loss he took very badly and talked about often in the years to come. He hit the big time when Jackie Kennedy picked him as her favorite American designer when the Irish clan took over the White House in January 1961. What about his ugly designs, you might ask. Jackie was a clotheshorse and knew the great European designers. Well, the orders had come from above, JFK himself, because Oleg was an American, and, more important, pimped for the young president. Oleg and his brother Igor, known as Ghighi, were Italians who had come over to America claiming noble Russian and Italian blood. Although they’re not around to defend themselves, I’ve always believed their title to be a bogus one, as well as their name Cassini. Mind you, it’s not important." (Takimag)
"Over at the Paley Center for Media, they screened highlights of As the World Turns, one of the most groundbreaking series in television’s history, the epitome of multigenerational, serial storytelling. Set in the fictional town of Oakdale, As the Worlds Turns enraptured generations of fans for more than fifty years, being the top-rated soap for thirteen consecutive years. Members of the illustrious creative team reflected on the upcoming ending of As the World Turns in September, as well as the serial’s many changes over fifty-four years.
After the screening, they discussed how the soap has tackled many contemporary themes over the years, including AIDS, alcoholism, and Alzheimer’s, and how it made history by introducing daytime television’s first gay character in 1988." (NYSocialDiary)
"The idea of being cooped up on a boat with nowhere to go, at the mercy of a princess, an aging playboy, and his equally virile son made me hesitant. Apart from the time we spend together over Christmas, we haven’t been on a family holiday in twenty years. For the most part, the four of us get along well. Even so, I was expecting the worst. For a moment, it looked like it might be the shortest holiday ever. After the requisite blow out, it has been nothing but smooth sailing. Floating around the Peloponnese aboard Bushido, my father’s pride and joy, is a dream ... Sadly, more beautiful places have been ruined by unbridled development and tourism than anything else. I go on about it because the effects of greed and popularity are virtually irreversible. Think of the Côte d’Azur, and resorts like St. Tropez or Monte Carlo, which were among the most beautiful on earth. As the great F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote about Antibes in Tender is the Night, it was 'the only place in the whole wide world that’s touched by magic.' These days during the summer months the South of France is a sweaty hell hole, what with all the mega yachts, working girls, and wealthy barbarians. For the most part, these types stay away from Greece. Unfortunately, there are package tourists in Mykonos and the like, although they can be easily avoided. On our boat we find a new cove every day free of other vessels, other people, and horrible jelly fish." (Mandolyna Theodoracopulos)
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