HarperCollins Fires Judith Regan Who Backed O.J. Simpson Book
(Bloomberg) -- Editor Judith Regan, who backed a book by O.J. Simpson on how he could have killed his ex- wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, was fired yesterday by HarperCollins, a unit of News Corp.
Most every month, I get a handful of comments and/or emails on this blog from people that I don't know. Which is cool. But I'd just like to know a little bit about who you are and where you came from. Or what you like or not about the blog.
So if you wouldn't mind, tap on the comments line down there to the right and introduce yourself. Tell me anything and everything you want me to know, or you think I might like to know about you.
A few suggested questions to answer follow.
When and how did you find my blog?
When you're not reading this blog, what are you trying to do with your life?
And how's that going for you?
Where did you grow up, and where do you live now?
Age?
Marital status?
Children?
Pets?
Democrat, Republican, or other?
Use as many or none of them as you like. BTW, this is strictly for my own curiosity, I'm not conducting a demographic survey or anything.
The online virtual game Second Life has a swell feature that allows players to purchase a rape:Gawker: "What's the fun of enjoying your second life in Second Life without a little ultraviolence? ... We're not as conversant with SL's moral conventions as your average nerd, but it surprises even our jaded souls that you can indulge in rape fantasies (options: 'Rape victim,' 'Get raped,' or 'Hold victim') for a trifling 220 Linden dollar things. Nice that the purchase takes place in an evocative back alley, with the actual rape set in some kind of red cobblestone gimp-dungeon."
Ann at Feministing has more, and points to a review of a game calle RapeLay, which actually made my stomach churn and eyes water as I read the description of the game. [Warning: Graphic content ahead.]
To amplify what others are pointing out, the know-nothing Beltway Blowhards are conveniently ignoring a hugely important point:Democrats now have 233 seats in the 110th congress, more than Republicans have had since 1952. the Republican "revolution" never secured this large a majority in the House. We beat them. We did better than they ever did. So much for the vaunted Republican political machine, which recorded record voter contacts, record fundraising, and record early voting this cycle. With their best effort, we beat them harder than they ever beat us.
This is a progressive country. All the talk of a "conservative" majority destroyed with a Democratic majority that towers over the best the Republican "revolution" could ever muster.
It's been a good year.
Anne Hathaway, Jessica Biel and Jennifer Hudson are this year's winners at the Hollywood Magazine's Breakthrough Awards.
Hathaway won the Star of the Year award for her role in The Devil Wears Prada, and Jessica Biel and Jennifer Hudson were also honoured for their roles in The Illusionist and Dreamgirls respectively.
Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout! (I like dragons a lot. Have I mentioned that to you people?)
Seriously. Did I miss one?
(Apart from an unjustly obscure animated short I saw at a festival back in 1991, Denny Goes Air Surfing. Which, believe you me, if I could find online I would post here in a milisecond.)
Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota was hospitalized after becoming disoriented Wednesday, weeks before his party is to take control of the Senate by a one-vote margin.
Johnson, who turns 60 on Dec. 28, was admitted to George Washington University Hospital with an undiagnosed illness, said a spokeswoman, Julianne Fisher.
She said, however, the senator did not suffer a stroke or heart attack. His office had said earlier it was a possible stroke.
Democrats won a 51-49 majority in the November election. South Dakota's Republican governor, Mike Rounds, would appoint a replacement to serve until the 2008 election should Johnson die or resign.
If the Senate is split 50-50, the vice president breaks ties. That is Republican Dick Cheney at present.
Peter Boyle, who played the tap-dancing monster in "Young Frankenstein" and the curmudgeonly father in the long-running sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," has died.
I'm remembering his turn as the racist old father in "Monster's Ball," and his good work in "The Candidate," still one of the best and most acute political movies ever made. I'm also kind of fond of his work in "The Dream Team" as the former ad exec with a Messiah complex.
Coincidentally I have been watching "Everybody Loves Raymond" a little more recently because I read producer Philip Rosenthal's book. By and large I can either take it or leave it.
But I've seen enough to get a sense that Boyle's role on that show was to be a little one-note. But that one note he played, he played exceedingly well.
I'm also remembering a charming movie he made back in 1973 called "Steelyard Blues." I don't know how well-known it is today. I only know it because in the book "Harlan Ellison's Watching" there's a rave review Ellison wrote of it at the time. Along with what he called "A Sort Of An Interview With Peter Boyle," so named because he didn't feel he was able to spend enough time with the actor.
Rather touchingly, Ellison admits in the piece that one reason for doing the (sort of) interview was that he wanted to meet and possibly become friends with Boyle. I was gratified to see them together on a talk show (I think it was "Politically Incorrect") years later, and get the sense that it had happened.
But like most people, I suppose, I do think of him first in "Young Frankenstein"-Mel Brooks' best film, I've always thought. Everybody remembers the dancing, but with the repeat viewings to which the film holds up, you realize that Boyle's performance contains a note of pathos that is the soul of the film.
Pathos usually defeats comedians, most of whom have to be kept away from their Chaplin shit with a whip and a chair (think Robin Williams). But although he could be extraordinarily funny, Boyle was an actor through-and-through first.
As fortune would have it, "Young Frankenstein" is currently availible in the cable On-Demand section. I shall almost certainly be watching it later.
"If you're blue, and you don't know where to go to, why don't you go where fashion sits..."
It's so hard to be sure because one is inside oneself. One is one's own instrument, and inside the complex maze of one's own personality, one can go sadly astray.
An actor, like any other artist, is someone who can't forget. A painter's medium is paint, a writer's words. An actor's medium is character.
Unnamed Official probably could have gotten away with the handjobs, but Unnamed Official wanted something more…"The two men are then alleged to have moved on to another part of the building, where the politician was spotted giving oral sex to his companion.
…When questioned about the allegations, the politician denied taking part in any sexual activities on the swimming pool premises.
"I understand that it could have looked like that," [he said] to police. Instead he explained that the whole thing was a misunderstanding. He had been leaning over to read his companion’s newspaper when the pool employees arrived on the scene.
I don't know how many times that's happened to me. I just lean over to look at someone's newspaper and then—bam!—I'm sucking his dick.
I'm posting this first one not because I have anything very affecting or funny to say about it, but to give my chum Corey Klemow a fright. You see, by a random coincidence, this image is from (according to its tags) a production at Sacred Fools, an L.A. theater group Corey's in.
Something called The Cody Rivers Show, about which I know nothing, but it certainly does seem to be an intensely wrought scene, doesn't it?
Selection:
Choose which child in this scene is going to be an actor, a writer, a GOP candidate for President, head of the CIA, or conservative talk-show host. I'll give you a hint. The writer's the one seething with self-hate.
Credit.
Sexist:
Secretly, Shannon knew the other girls resented her for her full bust.
Credit.
Subtle:
Although she was pointing to the crucial word as directly as she could, Paul never had been the kind to take a subtle hint, and chose to believe she was invoking the ancient Hebrew name for Lord.
Surreal:
According to Donna Deitch, who wrote and directed the groundbreaking lesbian romance Desert Hearts in the mid-1980s, playing a gay character is now seen on a par with playing an autistic character, or a schizophrenic, or someone with horrible physical deformities. "That's where the acclaim is," she said. "Actors want to play disadvantaged people, whatever the disadvantage is...
But playing gay and admitting to being gay are two completely different things. When it comes to the latter, Hollywood still adheres to the mentality that American audiences look to their on-screen idols as outlets for their own romantic fantasies and thus need to think of them as strictly heterosexual. The mentality is not necessarily wrong - homophobia is certainly widespread in the American heartland, as evidenced by the slew of recent state ballot initiatives condemning gay marriage. But it does suggest a certain failure of the imagination. Actors, after all, are professionals who make audiences believe they are something they are not.
If a straight actor like [Tom] Hanks can play a gay character convincingly, why shouldn't a gay actor play straight?
There are exceptions to the rule. A openly gay character actor such as Sir Ian McKellen can work unhindered partly because of the prestige that comes of being a British stage veteran and partly because he is not expected to play heterosexual romantic leads. An actress like Ellen DeGeneres - who famously came out on her own sitcom in the late 1990s - doesn't suffer unduly because she is a comedian first and an actor only second, and because, once again, she doesn't play parts that call for her to knock the sexual socks off her male audience members.
