Today's Boldface Names column spends some quality time with our favorite homoerotic trainwreck, comedian Andy Dick, who seemingly has taken to standing upright and speaking in complete sentences:
We're sure we're not the only one who looked at the front page of the Times this morning, saw that horrible photo of the man in a cage getting pinned by a man in very ugly shorts, read the headline "Alive and Thriving in Midwest: Brawling in Cages," and thought, thank God we live here instead.
It's not a rhetorical question.
We first became engrossed in the Thursday Styles piece on adult kids who pilfer from their parents because we wondered how the Times had so perfectly captured our cheapskate little brother without actually speaking to him. ("He goes to Costco and has 40, so I'm like, 'I'll take eight,'" Stephen Kunken told the Times about filching Mach 3 razors from his dad, and we're pretty sure we've heard our own li'l cheapie say the same thing, verbatim, on the train back into the city.)
• 7-Eleven, which theoretically never closes, has closed on Park Avenue South. Till at least Thursday. [Manhattan Offender via Curbed]
• Sure, Hell's Kitchen is gentrifying. If you don't count the public shitters. [ToTC]
• Never mind Jesus. What would Anna Wintour do? [Ambigutrex]
• The new BBC show from The Office creator Ricky Gervais is out, and Andrew Hearst both likes it and shows you where and how to torrent it. [Panopticist]
• Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley has no idea what she's talking about. [Radosh.net]
We don't read the Lexington, Kentucky, newspaper very often, because we were under the impression that neither the paper nor, frankly, the city offered much of interest to New Yorkers.
At last, the moment we've been waiting for is here.
• Quite literally, tens of tens of you have asked why we're not doing today's blind items from Page Six. Well, because they're hardly blind. What up, Sienna? [Page Six]
• And why haven't we mocked the Times piece on the too-rich-for-their-own-good boys of College Humor? Because they're posing in a tent, and writer Warren St. John has a thing for young boys in tents. It's a sensitive situation, and lawyers are involved. [NYT]
• Before he was signing $650k book deals, blogger Dana Vachon was sending his sassy tidings to possible Imaginary Socialite and Daily scribe Faran Krentcil. [Duke Chronicle]
• Bonnie Fuller and other tabloid demi-goddesses (snarf) claim they're no longer outing closeted celebrities. You win this time, Tom Cruise! [Fox]
There they are folks, your ideals: Crossword editor Will Shortz is the Timesman you love for his brain, and Styles reporter Warren St. John is the Timesman you love for his body.
Here's where our Men of the Times contest stands as of just a few minutes ago. It seems all locked up — Warren St. John has a comfortable "body" lead, and Will Shortz, of all people, is well ahead in the "brains" category. But remember that polls are still open till Monday morning, and, of course, that in Double Jeopardy anything can happen.
• NYT Arts & Leisure czarina Jodi Kantor gives up the big job for a reporting slot at The Way We Live. "After a couple of years in the building," she says in the memo, "I'm dying to get out and actually report some stories myself." Sure. And Willy Loman was dying to drive from city to city and make no sales. [Romenesko Memos]
• The removal of the couch shows that Jon Stewart is trying to take on Ted Koppel. Or something like that. [LAT]
• Fairchild interns think Fairchild's new dress guidelines make no sense, reports Fairchild's WWD. [WWD, fourth item]
• Like the Catholic church and sinners vs. sins, Seventeen chief Atoosa Rubenstein doesn't hate blogs. Just the no-longer-anonymous bloggers she nearly hires to work for her. [Jossip]
• More fun with maybe/once-anonymous bloggers: Hot on the trail of Imaginary Socialite, Daily Transom builds us to a great climax. Then, natch, it doesn't finish. Sigh. [Daily Transom]
Contrary to popular belief, this is not an autobiographical article.
The Times runs an odd profile today, of the forgotten file cabinets in the old pressroom in the Queens courthouse (yes, you read that right), to which Jimmy Breslin adds this non sequitur complaint that newspaper writing was better in the old days:
We'd be remiss if we let the day go by without noting this: Harper's editor Lewis Lapham testified in fugitive director Roman Polanski's London libel trial against Vanity Fair yesterday, recounting under oath the anecdote at the center of the suit. The article in question was about Elaine's restaurant, on the Upper East Side, and it repeated Lapham's account of an August 1969 evening there that involved himself, Polanski, and a Scandinavian model Beatte Telle.
It's here: Our much-anticipated, first-ever Gawker Hotties competition. We tallied your responses, added a soupçon of our own predilections, tossed in a dash of who-can-we-find-good-pictures-of, and, finally, we now present the formal contenders for your voting pleasure. (This recipe took much longer to prepare than expected. Sorry about that.)
Timesian TMI in Howie Kurtz's coverage of Dean Baquet's promotion to editor of the Los Angeles Times:
