As you know because you are currently reading this blog post on your handheld device as you stand in line at Home Depot where you're purchasing plywood, duct tape, and guns (shhhh), Hurricane Irene is allegedly headed straight for New York City. Is it even worth worrying?
You hear them all the time, you read them in blind items, and your friend at the bar knows someone who knows someone who definitely used to sleep with a guy who used to sleep with Bradley Cooper. Yes, we're talking about celebrity gay rumors. But when do you think they're actually true?
Sean Parker, immortalized in The Social Network as a hard-partying playboy, was up early this morning. Around 6 am, the former Facebook president posted a quote to his profile concerning "the deaths of our enemies." It's hard to escape the conclusion that he was referring to Steve Jobs. (Update: Parker responds to this story below.)
The relationship between "Big Labor," especially the AFL-CIO, and the Democratic party over the last few years has been painfully one-sided. Unions raise large sums of cash for Democrats in federal elections, help them whip up support for major votes, and get nothing in return. Is labor finally ready to reconsider this terrible deal? Perhaps!
Yesterday, the already-shrunken world of media reporting lost its two grandest figures: Jim Romenesko, the quiet man who singlehandedly set the agenda, like a front page editor for all media news (semi-retiring, by choice); and Slate's Jack Shafer—America's most consistently fearless press critic (laid off). Step back. Look around at the smoldering carnage of the media critic landscape. Who's left to carry the "harassing one's own industry colleagues" torch? A brief look, below.
Is a Rihanna-J. Cole sex tape about to come out? Does Lindsay Lohan really think she is "just like Marilyn" Monroe? Christina Aguilera freaks over a child abuse rumor. Lady Gaga starts a fashion line with her sister. Thursday gossip has lecherous intents.
Dick Cheney's memoir In My Time comes out next week, and the New York Times and Drudge Report both got their hot little hands on early copies. It sounds as excruciating as you might imagine: No apologies, no regrets, plenty of self-satisfied machismo. If Cheney had it all to do over again, the only thing he'd do differently is bomb the shit out of Syria.
Some blind items are so obvious that if you don't know the answer you need to pick up a copy of People stat. I'm not saying I know the answer to this item about a couple about to break up, but you should read it while listening to Meat Is Murder.
Rebels ransacking Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi's compound found a strange artifact yesterday: A big album of close-up pics of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Even brutal dictators have schoolboy crushes, apparently.
Renowned Syrian political cartoonist Ali Ferzat was found severely beaten early this morning on the Damascus Airport road, apparently by plain clothes government thugs, or shabiha. A picture from the hospital today shows both of his hands appearing to be severely injured. Long critical of the Assad family, Ferzat was nonetheless tolerated and, as the Guardian notes, even respected by Bashar al-Assad at one point. Ferzat told the paper in 2001 about an encounter he had with Bashar the aspiring opthamologist:
To celebrate its Independence Day, Ukraine yesterday officially opened the first, and most likely only, nuclear missile museum in the world there, the Pervomaisk Strategic Missile Forces Museum. Visitors can check out intercontinental ballistic missiles like "Satan" and "Sandal", as well as have a look around original bunkers. In the ITN video tour above, you also see a Soviet shitter that was used when the present day museum site was an active nuke silo. I'd go.
Smotherer of the Year Casey Anthony emerged from hiding on Wednesday and returned to Florida, there to begin serving a one-year probation for check fraud convictions that have nothing to do with her other legal enstranglements.
Summer flies by too fast. One second you're sweating on the front porch, watching neighborhood kids skip through open fire hydrants and eating soft serve cones covered in heroin-strength prescription painkillers — the next, it's Labor Day, your white pants are useless for another eight months, and the Staten Island ice cream guy is doing three-and-a-half:
Ashton Kutcher stepped out of his insanely oversized trailer on the Two and a Half Men set tonight for long enough to visit the Late Show. And while most of us aren't the least bit interested in knowing about Kutcher's Charlie Sheen-replacing character—or the details of Sheen's on-screen death—David Letterman nonetheless seemed quite intent on getting him to cough up some details. Video of the interrogation is above.
The Great East Coast Rumbler of 2011 has, for the most part, produced a lot of bad news. Not terrible news, mind you — just mildly inconvenient, bummer-type news. Cracked monuments. Missed golf putts. Random stabbings. Belching orangutans. That kind of thing. But what's this? Not just a story of earthquake uplift — but a full-fledged miracle. The earthquake gave a deaf man his hearing back!
For reasons unknown—and probably best left unexplained—Jim Carrey took to his new website today with a creepy video love letter to Emma Stone, who at 22 is less than half his age. Full of lines like "If I were a lot younger, I would marry you, and we would have chubby little freckle-faced kids," Carrey's full confession is above (for those who can get through it). [via Dlisted]
Each member of an "obscure board of volunteers" representing the city of Clearwater, Florida, has earned a gold star and pat on the back, as they have ruled that the Church of Scientology must cough up $413,500 in fines which they could have easily written off.
A "Jewish Indiana Jones." The very words conjure up thrilling scenes of cliff-hanging, deli-sampling adventure! And that's precisely what a mild-mannered Jewish bookstore owner from Maryland was passing himself off as, in what has turned out to be nothing more than an extremely clever con.
When Michael Jackson died, he was worth a paltry $50 million. Pfft, that's nothing. Pocket change. Now that he's gone and not accumulating debt to fuel his extravagant lifestyle, the value of his estate has skyrocketed.
