There was a feature in the New York Times on Wednesday about an on-air tiff between WNBC-TV anchors Sue Simmons and Chuck Scarborough in which the former ripped the latter with an “eyebrow-raising word-bomb” (is that the Times attempt at a little hipster patois?). What was the word used? Well, you had to find out elsewhere because it was “not publishable in the newspaper.” Which basically means that the world’s paper of record cannot accurately quote people, books, movies, war protestors, plays and spats between TV anchors (one wonders if that might have just a little impact on one’s understanding of a subject).
Years ago, I was in Miami covering Super Bowl XXIX for the Village Voice. I remember my press credential read “New York Village Voice” instead of just Village Voice, and so alphabetically, I sat in the press section next to a really nice young reporter from the New York Times. I introduced myself, and when he saw for whom I was writing, he looked at me and said, “The Voice! That’s great. You guys can write ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’.” The Times’ profanity policy is fucking weak-kneed bullshit and they can print that. Oh wait, they can’t.
The opening paragraph presents Lil’ d (as opposed to Big D, Dallas, 35 miles to the south) as a classic Texas town as imagined by a New Yorker. Piggly-Wiggly supermarkets! Pawnshops! Football fever! Yee-Haw!
Yes we have Piggly-Wigglys, lovingly referred to as “the pig” and barely patronized. Yes, we have pawnshops. So does NYC. Yes, one of our local colleges, University of North Texas (Texas’s fourth largest university) has a football team. Last year our record was two and twelve and our home games averaged 18,000 fans. The average for other NCAA Division IA games? 46,000. Yep. We’re crazy about our football, just like Texan stereotypes should be.
Curiously, our gourmet sushi restaurant, historic home district, and “South Denton” shopping haven, complete with such bourgeois trappings as a Barnes and Noble bookstore, Starbucks and multiplex theater, went unreported.
Yesterday, for the first time ever, Playboy Radio aired an interview with Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody that was recorded at the time she published her memoir, "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper." On Sunday, Cody won the Oscar for best screenplay for Juno, one of 2007's most acclaimed films.
After the jump, you'll find four excerpts from the twenty-minute interview with Playboy Radio's Tiffany Granath, which will re-air on Playboy Radio on Sirius 198 on Thursday and Saturday at 1:30 p.m. PT during the Afternoon Advice show.
Sam Jemielity from Playboy.com would like to draw your attention to the radio...
Today, Playboy Radio on Sirius plays a never-before-aired interview with Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, who walked off with the golden statue last night for her screenplay for the film, "Juno."
In this 20-minute interview, Cody talks about her career as a stripper and how that empowered her, and discusses the experience of having completed her first film.
The interview airs today on Playboy Radio on Sirius 198, during today's Afternoon Advice show hosted by Tiffany Granath, between 1:30-2:00 p.m. Pacific time (4:30 p.m. on the East Coast). The interview will re-air at the same time on Thursday and Saturday of this week.
Don’t have Sirius? Get their online service through your computer.
Also, check back tomorrow for audio excerpts on the Playboy Blog.
On Thursday, the Chicago Tribune reported that, “A team of Chicago fossil hunters has discovered two massive meat-eating dinosaurs that prowled the ancient African landscape.” From the looks of the illustration accompanying the article, the Eocarcharia dinops, aka "fierce-eyed dawn shark,” was also pretty fierce when it came to rubbing one out.
The three pictures above the fold on the National Edition of Wednesday’s New York Times gave us a double take. One showed Barack giving a peck to a middle-aged African-American woman, another portrayed Hillary in a bear hug with a well-tressed white woman and the last showed John McCain firmly holding the shoulders and staring into the eyes of a young man who looked like he just got back from a tour in Iraq. To any student of the news, it’s always interesting to examine how the candidates are portrayed in pictures to uncover what aspects of their character are being portrayed or critiqued inadvertently. In these scandalously unsubtle photos, though, the trio is visually stereotyped beyond any doubt. It’s a shame that this diverse group was pictured in such a predictable way, and that a paper of such magnitude could reinforce the stereotypes this election is actually trying to diminish.
We here at Playboy aren’t ones to boast about things like our spectacular annual Super Bowl party- why bother when everyone else does it for us?
“Final grade: As a dear friend who attended the party put it: ‘This is the best party I've ever been to in my [expletive] life.’ Page 2 couldn't possibly cover the 60-plus parties that occurred throughout Super Bowl week, but we have a hard time believing any of them could compete with Playboy…Playboy continues to set the gold standard. For the second straight year, it rates No. 1 on our list, garnering a Mary Lou Retton-esque perfect 10.” -ESPN
“The hottest party last week, according to most wire-service polls, was Hugh Hefner’s Playboy party. Hef is the only superstar player in town who brags about how many times he’s been sacked.” -San Francisco Chronicle
“You've got to give it to Hef and his ‘Girls Next Door’, Playboy knows how to throw a party. This was certainly the best party I have been to so far, topping some Shaq bashes, LL Cool J performances and other NBA All-Star gigs I have been to. And several other people I met at the party wholeheartedly agreed: Playboy was off the hook. I'm at the Super Bowl now at the stadium and my voice is hoarse and I am tired but it was worth it.” -New York Daily News
By now you have probably heard that the Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman joked on-air that in order for younger golfers to beat Tiger Woods they should “lynch him in a back alley.”
And you have also probably heard that Golfweek magazine’s Dave Seanor hanged himself with the cover to the left.
On SportsCenter this morning they reported that PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem called the cover “tabloid journalism.” While I disagree and side with Seanor who said, “We chose it because it was an image we thought would draw attention to an issue we thought deserved some intelligent dialogue," a quick Google News search turns up over 550 other legitimate media outlets including the Times covering Finchem’s “tabloid” remark. And now in this post we are bringing it up. Doesn’t this make us all tabloids?
David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is an extremely rewatchable film, but its surreal imagery is lost when watched off the big screen. But don’t just take my word for it.
A lot of liberals are upset with the New York Times for hiring smug right wing talking head and magazine editor Bill Kristol as the voice of conservatives on its op-ed page. We think the Times is just being diabolical. If you want to discredit the right – and don’t we all think that’s always been the Times’ secret agenda – why not give a major platform to the one man who is wrong more than any other Republican powerhouse? Even conservatives admit that you’d be hard pressed to find anyone this side of Britney Spears who has said more dumb things over the past few years. Read this inadvertently hilarious laundry list of wrong-headed predictions from Unclaimed Territory and you’ll see what we mean.
Here’s one example (and it’s not even the worst): “We are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N., and the French, and the Democrats. But the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. It will reveal the aspirations of the people of Iraq, and expose the truth about Saddam's regime. It will produce whatever effects it will produce on neighboring countries and on the broader war on terror. We would note now that even the threat of war against Saddam seems to be encouraging stirrings toward political reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and a measure of cooperation in the war against al Qaeda from other governments in the region. It turns out it really is better to be respected and feared than to be thought to share, with exquisite sensitivity, other people's pain. History and reality are about to weigh in, and we are inclined simply to let them render their verdicts.”
We just wonder if Kristol is in on the joke. If he is, it’ll be a first.
Chances are that you have heard (of) This American Life, but if you haven’t, you really should. I’m not going to try to explain it- the people who work on the show can’t even really figure that out: “There's a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It's mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always. There's lots more to the show, but, like we said, it's sort of hard to describe.”
Consider their recent report on a businessman who brought workers from India to Tulsa. He housed them in inhumane conditions and paid them measly wages, but he truly thought that he was saving them from squalor and starvation in India. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I listen to their free podcast every week and catch them on Showtime whenever they air, because I find the product to be some of the most interesting storytelling out there. The pieces are impossibly entertaining, but they also really make you think and reflect. Yes, public radio isn’t all Garrison Keillor and Car Talk. Here is an entertaining skit that TAL ran a few weeks ago.
You’re probably sick of listening to that new Wyclef album by now, shake up your mp3 player with something worth listening to.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The “supermodel” who “slept with” Tony Parker is a hoax. What’s unfortunate is that actual print magazines are committing this garbage to ink. Over the holidays, some female relatives bought a stack of celebrity weeklies and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I came across the familiar name Alexandra Paressant. God, not this again.
The people (there are at least two) who are currently smearing Tony Parker and Eva Longoria tried something similar with Ronaldinho after the 2006 World Cup:
That was 17 months ago; when I heard about it I did very little digging, and the Ronaldinho story quickly fell apart. Here’s what I found in detail. I stopped responding to dim-witted e-mails from “Alexandra” and her supposed manager “Olivia Ducreu,” and the two geniuses pretty much went away.
Dana Kennedy had much the same experience when she investigated the story for People. Her experience is uncannily similar to mine – I have no doubt these are the same idiots pushing the same unsophisticated act. She explains it all over at the Huffington Post.
A few more things of interest here:
1. I said Alexandra and Olivia pretty much went away. But not totally – here’s an e-mail I received from Alexandra in February: I have to shoot with Antoine Verglas for Playboy and other magasine in march in NYC, otherwise I was selctionate to meet Georges Lucas for Indian Jones 4 IN june in Hollywood.
As in Los Angeles at the begining of march is it posible that you Give me the contact of HUGH HEFNER cos he tried to contact me in my old mobile( as each year) to attend at his party in L A.
Wow. Oh, what tangled syntax we weave. Let me get you Mr. Hefner’s direct line.
2. Dana mentioned Alexandra’s alleged best friend Ornella Irie. This wasn’t part of the story back in 2006. As with Alexandra, Ornella has a fan blog on auFeminin.com– and as with Alexandra, the pictures on the blog are of other people, most notably Sports Illustrated swimsuit models Oluchi Onweagba, Carla Campbell and Jessica White.
3. Ornella’s MySpace gallery had some of those pictures as well. And Alexandra’s had a vast gallery of suspicious images. Both profiles are now set to private. I wasn’t able to identify many of Alexandra’s photos in the brief time I had with the MySpace gallery (I’m better with cheesecake than fashion), but I did recognize one shot (above), Milena Roucka by the photographer Bruce Brandon. Alexandra also had a picture of “herself” with soccer player Sergio Ramos. The same photo is on this soccer blog and the woman is identified as Carolina Martinez.
4. Yeah, but… yeah, but… X17 has a VIDEO of Alexandra Paressant talking about Tony Parker! Possible explanation here.
5. It is wrong to spread rumors. Web pages are easily faked. Magazines and newspapers have an obligation to check facts. Bearing all that in mind, and making no claims for the following’s veracity, I present a very amusing page from an escort reviews site. Credit to HuffPo reader hutsisi.
Our friends at Time magazine made a curious editorial decision the other day. In an article on the new film Charlie Wilson’s War, they quoted an article which quoted Julia Roberts talking about the role she played in the film: "Joanne's so fantastic to play, and between the hair and the tits and the attitude. . . I loved every second of it,’’ Time quoted Roberts. "I don't read that many scripts. I finish less than I care to reflect upon. I mean, it's just s___, it's just a big pile of steaming s___ that sits in my house. . .''
Lots of magazines want to have their cake and eat it, too—they want to talk to famous people and quote them using vernacular language, but then they want to use dashes and brackets and so on to protect readers from seeing that vernacular language (language, by the way, which is all over the TV and which the readers liberally use.) Seldom do we see a magazine not be able to make up its mind in public. Weird. Thankfully, Playboy doesn’t play that game.
I grew up in Darien, CT in the 70s and 80s. Darien is as white-bread as it comes; it’s the home of The Preppy Handbook, a bedroom town; it’s Cheever. Alex Kelly was one of my contemporaries; he was part of a crowd of teenagers I fell in and out of. He’s recently gotten out of prison after serving 10 years of a 16-year sentence for rape, two rapes actually. When I got home from work last night and put on the TV, there he was -- a feature story of one of the sensation-mucking shows; he was back in his parents’ yard raking leaves and the voice-over report was something like “he wears glasses and has gray in his hair now but there’s no mistaking his boyish good looks.”
Yes, we in the we of groups then, popular or trying to be, insiders or trying to be, thought him appealing.
Intern Callie Enlow has been reading the paper. She is surprised by what she’s learned.
Yesterday, for the first time ever, Playboy Radio aired an interview with Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody that was recorded at the time she published her memoir, "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper." On Sunday, Cody won the Oscar for best screenplay for Juno, one of 2007's most acclaimed films. 
We here at Playboy aren’t ones to boast about things like our spectacular annual Super Bowl party- why bother when everyone else does it for us? 
By now you have probably heard that the Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman joked on-air that in order for younger golfers to beat Tiger Woods they should 
A lot of liberals are upset with the 
Chances are that you have heard (of) This American Life, but if you haven’t, you really should. I’m not going to try to explain it- the people who work on the show can’t even really figure that out: “There's a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It's mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always. There's lots more to the show, but, like we said, it's 
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The “supermodel” who “slept with” Tony Parker is a hoax. What’s unfortunate is that actual print magazines are committing this garbage to ink. Over the holidays, some female relatives bought a stack of celebrity weeklies and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I came across the familiar name Alexandra Paressant. God, not this again.
Our friends at Time magazine made a curious editorial decision the other day. In an article on the new film Charlie Wilson’s War, they quoted an article which quoted Julia Roberts talking about the role she played in the film: "Joanne's so fantastic to play, and between the hair and the tits and the attitude. . . I loved every second of it,’’ Time quoted Roberts. "I don't read that many scripts. I finish less than I care to reflect upon. I mean, it's just s___, it's just a big pile of steaming s___ that sits in my house. . .'' 