“An application that lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them premiered last Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Developed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish mobile software and design firm, the prototype software combines computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality.“
Well, that should really facilitate the stalking (and now everyone will know right away I like sunsets and long walks on the beach…) The Atlantic‘s Derek Thompson reports in on Recognizr, a smartphone app soon likely to cause all kinds of consternation and unwanted advances in a town near you.
A very happy Valentines Day to you and yours. To keep tradition going for its sixth year here at GitM — ’05, ’06, ’07, ’08, ’09 — time for the yearly musical valentines from yours truly.
First off, in keeping with the usual once-a-year romantic status-update, you’ll be happy to know that this 2010 post actually comes with 44% less whining than usual. (Yay, and there was much rejoicing.) I am still single on this end, as per the norm, which means my trusty sheltie sidekick is once again holding down the official valentine spot. (Aw, he got me Bioshock 2. How did he know I wanted it?) But, having at last escaped the egregious emotional, financial, and general personal sandtrap that is late-term gradual school, it’s safe to say I’m in a much happier place these days. And, since returning to DC, a town that’s been swell to me so far, I’ve at least been taking a few swings at the plate lately. So, no wallowing this V-day. I’m in a pretty good place, all in all, and hope springs eternal. In any event, on to the music:
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“Hang with me in my MMO, So many places we can go!
I’m better than a Real World quest You’ll touch my +5 to Dexterity Vest.
What role do you want to play? I’m just a click away, night or day. And if you think I’m not the one, Log off, log off and we’ll be done…”
But can she kite the adds? First off, as always, I offer some quality cheese: Singlehandedly raising unrealistic expectations for gamergrrls the world (of Warcraft) over, The Guild‘s fetching Felicia Day scored a massive (multiplayer) online hit last summer with the supremely catchy “Do You Wanna Date (My Avatar)?” In some ways a peppy, poppy update to Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love” (which led off the order in ’06) this was one of two songs I heard in the past year that I knew — immediately — would make it into this post.
Now, having spent more than my fair share of time MMO’ing over the past few years — everybody say hi to Jacklowry — it’s safe to say that the bubbly, infectious enthusiasm that drives this track isn’t really a huge part of games like Warcraft. (In fact, everyone usually seems vaguely depressed — There’s a reason why some of the biggest facets of WoW-life are “grinding” levels and “farming” mats. If you take it seriously, it sorta becomes a day job.) But, all that being said, Day and The Guild crew know their WoW — how ’bout a little tank-and-spank? — and they’ve delivered a ditty that works as both a fun and knowing riff on the MMO life and a silky, effervescent pop song all on its own. Great job, y’all…Lvl 80 rogue lf healbot pst?
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“You told me you loved me, Why did you leave me, all alone?
Now you tell me you need me, When you call me, on the phone.
Girl I refuse, you must have me confused With some other guy Your bridges were burned, and now it’s your turn To cry, cry me a river.”
Don’t it make you sad about it? This song probably needs no introduction — most everybody knows it, and I’m sure a lot of people are totally sick of the durned thing. Still, since the last song, however cheesy, is already a gamer standard and perhaps not nearly as embarrassing a guilty pleasure as I’ve tended to offer in years past, I give you JT’s “Cry Me a River.”
It’s easy to playa-hate Justin Timberlake, and to be honest, I think I can only name three or four songs of his anyway. Still, I’d argue this well-crafted track and “SexyBack” put JT as the truly deserving 21st century pop heir to, say, Stevie Wonder or Michael Jackson. He’s got the pipes, he’s got the beats, he’s got the production values, the dance moves, and the marketing savvy, and to my mind “Cry Me a River” just holds it own as a classically catchy pop ditty. And when the scorned lasses of this world roll out Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” as their peppy post-break-up standard on the dance floor, I in turn will call forth this track, Pokemon-style. Game on.
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“I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm.
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you.
But now it’s come to distances and both of us must try,
Your eyes are soft with sorrow, And I know when to say goodbye.
When he’s at his best, as he is throughout Live in London, Cohen’ sheer rawness — his naked, direct emotion — cuts like a knife. He’s not one to dabble in misdirection, or to try to obscure his feelings with extended metaphors. He just goes right to the heart of it, every time.
With that in mind, I much prefer this version of “That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” to the original 1967 version. At times, the young Cohen sounds too callow to me. It took years, even decades, for his voice to catch up to the power of his poetry. And the slight change in lyrics here — Now it’s “I know when to say goodbye” — helps push this ballad from petulance to poignance. It’s one of many transcendant moments on this superlative album.
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“Well I could sleep forever But it’s of her I dream.
if I could sleep forever
I could forget about everything…“
And, really, who doesn’t love sleep? As a love-song sorbet of sorts, here’s The Dandy Warhols’ “Sleep.” Like Brian Eno’s “By this River” and Hot Chip’s “Crap Kraft Dinner” (written up in ’09), this is one of those songs I find endlessly soothing. It could just play on and on like this for twenty minutes and I’d be blissfully content…perhaps eventually nodding off, fading away into the wilderness of dream…
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“I’m so tired, of playing Playing with this bow and arrow
Gonna give my heart away Leave it to the other boys to play Been tempted for too long
Go on, give me a reason to love you Give me a reason to wanna be your man Give me a reason to love you Give me a reason if you can.”
As I said back when hyping Third in 2008, Portishead’s Dummy was one of those ubiquitous albums for a few years there in the mid-nineties, with the most memorable track therein possibly being “the second single, “Glory Box.” I include the late guitarist John Martyn’s cover of “Glory Box” here not because it’s an improvement on the original — they’re both amazing — but because it captures so well that song’s hothouse sultriness, while managing to sound quite different in the end (and switching the gender dynamic.)
Also of note on this subject: Portishead’s “Scorn,” the ice-cold B-side version of this same song. I love how it completely inverts the sensation of the original tune, just by switching the beats involved. Now, the whole song plays out atop that sensual, brooding oil-tanker rhythm only heard when everything goes wobbly in the original version. And, conversely, only in the climax of this mix are the original lyrical strings heard, like a moment of clear-thinking grace before the hammers descend anew. (The Youtube of “Scorn” below cuts out the end, unfortunately, although you can hear the whole mix here.)
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“A love-struck Romeo sings the streets a serenade Laying everybody low with a love song that he made. Finds a streetlight, steps out of the shade Says something like, ‘You and me babe, how about it?’
Juliet says, ‘Hey, it’s Romeo, you nearly gave me a heart attack!’ He’s underneath the window, she’s singing, ‘Hey la, my boyfriend’s back.’ You shouldn’t come around here singing up to people like that… Anyway, what you gonna do about it?”
You and me, babe, how ’bout it? Now, if forced, with a gun to my head, to pick the Dire Straits’ absolute finest hour, I’d have to go with “Sultans of Swing”, that testament to resolute keep-on-keepin’-on long after the crowd’s gone home and all the midnight oil is burned. Still, their brief retelling of “Romeo & Juliet” is an unabashedly lovely song indeed. (Full disclosure: This was, in fact, the favorite tune of one of my former ex’s, a long, long time ago. But, no plagiarism here. I ended up earning this streetlight serenade’s stripes myself…the hard way. Anyway, let’s move on.)
There are a lot of covers of “Romeo & Juliet” floating around — Indigo Girls, The Killers, Edwin McCain — but none of ’em really do the simple beauty of this song justice. Also, the original Dire Straits video is also online, but frankly it’s so bad and ridiculously Eighties-ish that it detracts from the timelessness of the tune. No wonder they later plunked down big dollars for “Money for Nothing“…
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“Looking from a window above, It’s like a story of love Can you hear me? Came back only yesterday Moving farther away Want you near me…
All i needed was the love you gave All i needed for another day, And all i ever knew, Only you.”
As I’ve said ’round here many times, I’m a big Depeche Mode fanfrom way back. (Their “Here is the House” went up here in ’06.) And I think they became a better, darker, richer band in 1982 with Vince Clarke’s departure after Speak & Spell, when Martin Gore took over the songwriting full-time.
Still, with all due respect to melancholy Marty, Vince Clarke always had a way with a happy three-chord love song that the minor-key-obsessed DM never ever really got back to. Case in point: Yaz’s “Only You” (as well as almost all of Erasure’s many hits over the years.) There are no regrets or guilt or religious allusions or teenage scared-stiff-of-sex angst or black cars driving around in the distance. It’s just a simple, very pretty ode to that one special person.
There are a lot of very good tracks on the better of Yaz’s two albums, Upstairs at Eric — “Don’t Go,” “Situation,” and “Winter Kills,” for example. Still, I’d put “Only You” as the pick of the litter: It’s the perfect blend of Vince Clarke synth-pop and Alison Moyet soul.
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“Love is a delicate thing, It could just float away on a breeze! (he said the same thing to me)
How can we ever know We’ve found the right person in this world? (he means he looks at other girls)
Love is a mystery, It does not follow the rules! (this guy is a fool) (he’ll always be a boy, he’s a man who never grew up) I thought I told you to shut up…”
The first time you get dumped, it feels like a tragedy. It just plain sucks. The second time, it…well, actually it’s even worse. And by the third or fourth time, you start to really wonder what’s wrong with you. But, after enough iterations of the dismal cycle, as the Conchords’ “Carol Brown” points out, it does become farce. And a really funny one, for that matter.
Along with Felicia Day at the top, this is the other song I knew I was going to post here this year as soon as I heard it. The Flight of the Conchords’ second season included a lot of really hilarious tunes: “Hurt Feelings” (and its reprise), “Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor,” “Fashion is Danger.” But “Carol Brown” is, imho, their magnum opus. It’s funny on its own terms (as well as a great riposte to Paul Simon’s smarmy “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”) But, more importantly, it’s just a funky-sweet song with truthiness to spare. (The Michel Gondry video is great too.)
I’m sure most of y’all out there know the old Annie Hall joke: “This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.’ And, uh, the doctor says, ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?’ The guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’ Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and…but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us…need the eggs.“
That’s the gag that “Carol Brown” gets so well. The whole song is a litany of ugly dumpings for most of its run. But every time that peal chimes (at 1:15) and the angelic chorus kicks in for the first time (“He doesn’t cook or clean…“), you can hear exactly why Jemaine — and so many others of us, for that matter — keep leading chin first regardless. Carol Brown took a bus out of town…but I’m hoping the next gal sticks around.
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That’ll do for ’10, I think. Have a safe and happy Valentines Day, everybody. I’ll see y’all on the flip side. And, until next year…
“Cohen has explored the theme of love as an all-consuming flame, both destructive and creative, from the outset of his career — a painting of St. Bernadette in flames appears on the back cover of his first album — and that tortured ambiguity flickered throughout the evening. ‘If he was fire, then she must be wood,’ Cohen sang in ‘Joan of Arc,’ but the old ladies’ man himself has always been dry wood, burning up, consumed by the same flame, dying endlessly. Cohen is a battered philosopher of eros, and the beauty and horror of much of his poetry derives from his alternately exhausted and triumphant response to the demigod of sex.“
Rumors of the Death of a Ladies’ Man have been greatly exaggerated: From the bookmarks, and based on the current tour that’s recently been immortalized on the very listenable Live in London, Salon‘s Gary Kamiya sings the praises of one of his idols, Leonard Cohen. “‘Looks like freedom but it feels like death/ It’s something in between, I guess,’ Cohen sings in ‘Closing Time.’ That knife edge, that balancing act between the intolerable and the redemptive, is where Cohen lives, both in his work and in his performances. He is a fearless explorer of darknesses of all kinds, mostly erotic and romantic, but also, and increasingly, political and spiritual. For Cohen, without darkness there is no light — a credo summed up in his song ‘Anthem,’ with its exquisite chorus ‘Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.’“
“With Perlow’s Mail Goggles, users can specify which hours they would like to enable the feature. If a user tries to send an e-mail during the self-selected time — say, midnight to 3 a.m. — a screen pops up forcing the user to solve a series of simple math problems before the message can be sent.” Thinking outside the box for new and useful apps, Gmail engineers try to tackle the thorny problem of drailing (drunk e-mailing.) “Perlow created the function last fall when he found himself sending messages to an ex-girlfriend — late at night — asking to get back together.” I feel you, brother.
Happy belated valentine’s day, all. I know this is a few days late now, but just to keep the streak going (’05, ’06, ’07, ’08), here’s the usual yearly song-blog entry. And with that, the obligatory V-day, behind-the-curtain status-update: Well, as per the norm, I’m as single as a one-dollar-bill. (The last time I had an actual, honest-to-goodness valentine on this day, l’il Berk notwithstanding, was in 2004. Before that, 2000.) At any rate, it’s now been years since the last gal, figuring she could do better, left with a shrug and disappeared forever…just like the one before and the one before that. And, since then and right up to now, there’s been no one in sight.
This obviously can get to be a little depressing, and, now that I’ve reached my mid-thirties by myself, I sometimes struggle with bitterness over it. Didn’t virtually every movie, tv show, song, and book I’ve ever consumed consistently promise I’d have someone in my corner? It’s not like I’ve been a bad guy. (Then again, all the evidence tends to suggest that that might well have been part of the problem. Like the old Stephen Wright joke, women have often told me I’m “wonderful” …usually right as they kick my sorry ass to the curb.)
But, oh well. I’ve got my health, my faculties, and a First World quality-of-life, so I’m already way ahead in the game compared to a lot of folks out there. And to be honest, I’ve got enough problems on my plate right now without getting pulverized yet again by someone else’s caprice anyway. Besides, given my current steady-jobless, apartment-less, penniless, PhD-less existence, which, frankly, seems less and less “transitional” as the months go by, I probably wouldn’t date me either. (As a colleague noted, nostalgically studying the depression era is turning out to be quite a bit more preferable than actually living it.)
So, no worries. Some politically-minded freelance writing gigs should get me through the next couple of months even if no steady employ is forthcoming, and one day soon, I’m sure, I’ll rise like a phoenix from the ashes of my current lowly existence. And, lo, it’ll be a New Day…just like on The Wire. At any rate, to the music:
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“When the sun shines, we’ll shine together,
Told you I’ll be here forever
Said I’ll always be your friend
Took an oath, I’mma stick it out ’till the end
Now that it’s raining more than ever
Know that we still have each other
You can stand under my umbrella…
As with ABBA last year and Kraftwerk in ’06, I like to kick this post off with a happy, guilty pleasure. This year, it’s Rihanna’s “Umbrella”. Yes, it got played into the ground during its single run, even getting its own Clinton v. Obama version on Mad TV last year. But, just as with Titanic, sometimes things are popular for a reason. With its Jay-Z opening, infectious hook, not-very-oblique double entendre, and inescapable chorus, “Umbrella” is pure, unadulterated pop, and a perfect lyrical counterpart to another quality hip-hop ballad, Method Man’s “All I Need”. (“Even when the skies were gray, you’d rub me on my back and say ‘baby, it’ll be ok.’ Now that’s real to a brotha like me baby…”) And now, with a lot of things “comin’ down with the Dow Jones” in this current economy, “Umbrella” is starting to sound more and more like one of the quintessential 21st-century Depression-era ballads, the kind you might find on “Sister, Can You Spare a Dime?”-type mixes fifty years hence.
[Note: I thought about writing up “Umbrella” this year before the unfortunate Chris Brown situation last week, which can’t help but inflect the song negatively. At first, I figured it might be in poor taste now and that I should choose some other pop song. But, in the end, I just decided to go with it anyway — hopefully, the song stands on its own, and will continue to long after recent events have receded.]
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“Yes indeed, I’m alone again.
And here comes emptiness crashing in.
It’s either love or hate, I can’t find in between,
’cause I’ve been with witches and I’ve been with the queen.
It wouldn’t have worked out anyway.
So now it’s just another lonely day…”
On the other side of the emotional spectrum from “Umbrella”, Ben Harper’s “Another Lonely Day” is an acoustic, bone-dry lament to the most recent smash-up. (“Yesterday seems like a life ago, ’cause the one I love today, I hardly know.“) To be honest, there are elements of this otherwise-beautiful break-up song that rankle. Unlike, say, Chris Isaak (listen to anything on Forever Blue) or Tom Waits (last year‘s “Make it Rain” for example), this reads like an I-got-dumped song by a guy who’s never, ever been dumped. (“I’d rather walk alone than chase you around.” Oh, it’s your call, then? How nice that you have the hand. “Further along, we just may?” Again, not up to you, pal.) If, as the song says, this final kiss-off is of Harper’s doing, I wish it’d had more of the conflicted brio of U2’s “So Cruel” or most any of Dylan’s impressive stable of “It’s been real, it’s been fun, hasn’t been real fun” farewells. But, not to lose the forest for the trees, “Another Lonely Day” is still close to perfect in its simple, painful delicacy, and it definitely well captures that grim “SolitaryMan” sensation of “Ugh. Here we are again.”
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“I was feeling lonely, feeling blue,
Feeling like I needed you,
Like I’m walking up surrounded by me,
A&E.“
Ever looked at the words of a song you thought you knew decently well and discovered that it’s not at all about what you thought it was? (I would guess a lot of Republicans had this experience when discovering that “Born in the USA” wasn’t even close to a pro-Reagan anthem of the heartland.) This happened to me just this past week when I decided to write up Goldfrapp’s A&E. Given the upbeat tempo, the video, and the snippets of lyrics I knew, I always thought this song was about someone slowly emerging out of the clouds of a bad break-up and enjoying a day outdoors. (“It’s a blue, bright blue Saturday, and the pain’s starting to slip away.“) But, I was wrong. Reading more closely, it seems the “backless dress” is a hospital gown, A&E is the British term for the ER, and Alison Goldfrapp is basically waking up druggy after a botched “Then he’ll be sorry!” suicide attempt. (“I think I want you still, but it may be pills at work.“) Uh, oops.
Ok, so this is less like Bjork’s All is Full of Love” and more like The Sundays’ “Here’s where the Story Ends” than I originally thought. Still, it’s a great song, and not half as depressing as it reads on the page. Goldfrapp more often go for cinematic Portishead-like atmosphere (Felt Mountain) or sultry, come-hither dance numbers (“Ooh, La La,” “Strict Machine”), and I’m a big fan of both settings. Still, the organic, pastoral feel of Seventh Tree is a grower, as is “A&E.”
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“All the people I love are here.
All the people that I love can’t hear.
All the people I love are drunk.
All the people that I love aren’t here.”
After getting “A&E” wrong, I’m not even going to try to make heads or tails of the lyrics to Hot Chip’s obscenely catchy “Crap Kraft Dinner”, a current staple of my driving time. At first it just seems to be about a happy, drunken party buzz (i.e. the exact opposite of “This Place is a Prison,” by The Postal Service.) But, eventually amid the haze, there’s clearly somebody missing, and/or sort of break-up happening. (“All you can hear is my refusal, ’cause i haven’t got the time for a jerk-off loser.“) Regardless, both strands intertwine, then fade into that sweet, melancholic outro. Like Brian Eno’s “By this River,” this isn’t really a love song per se, but one I find strangely soothing.
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“Everybody wants to be hollywood. The fame, the vanity, the glitz, the stories. One day I’ll become a great big star. You know like the big dipper. And maybe one day you can visit my condo.
On the big hill you know like 9-0-2-1-0…“
Speaking of obscenely catchy , Felix the Housecat’s “Madame Hollywood” isn’t a love song either. And, granted, almost every cut featuring Ms. Kittin has almost exactly the same “ritzy, raunchy, and bored” monologue somewhere therein. (Cases in point: “Frank Sinatra,” “1982,” “Nurse.”) So I don’t have much to say about this one, except that I could listen to the crisp, old-school-Modish backbeat that drives this track for just about forever.
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“And have you ever wanted something so badly that it possessed your body and your soul, through the night and through the day, until you finally get it…and then you realize that it wasn’t what you wanted after all? And then those selfsame, sickly little thoughts now go and attach themselves to something — or somebody — new! And the whole goddamn thing starts all over again…”
Well, I’ve been crushing the symptoms, but I can’t locate the cause. Unfortunately, The The’s “True Happiness This Way Lies”, the stand-up-routine opening track to Dusk, one of my desert-island discs, doesn’t appear to yet be on the Youtubes. (That is, aside from one well-intentioned misfire of a cover.) [Update: It is now. Added below.] But in it is distilled much of what makes Matt Johnson’s better albums (Dusk, Soul Mining) so powerful — the relentless self-questioning (“Slow Emotion Replay“), the soaked-through melancholy (“This is the Day“), the dismal sensation of being endlessly driven astray by one’s passions (“The Dogs of Lust.”) So, for the next day or two, and as per the old-school method around here, you can grab this track here. And remember: The only true freedom is freedom from the heart’s desire…and the only true happiness this way lies.
“I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society.” (The notorious) BettiePage, 1923-2008.
For an appreciation of Page, see TIME‘s Richard Corliss, who today delivers a tribute as gushing and fanboy in its own way as Peter Jackson’s moving remembrance of Forry Ackerman earlier this week. (1916-2008.) “But what everyone remembers about Bettie, aside from her trademark bangs, is her smile. Guileless and guiltless, it conveyed an Edenic sensuality. To her fans and her official detractors, who might have agreed that sex was dirty, Bettie’s giddy energy said, ‘Heck, no, it’s fun!’”
“‘This is the part of the brain involved in knowing that you want something,’ she said. ‘When people who are not adjusting well are having these sorts of thoughts about the person, they are experiencing this reward pathway being activated. They really are craving in a way that perhaps is not allowing them or helping them adapt to the new reality.‘” It’s darker than you know in those complicated shadows…A new study finds that unrelenting grief works on the brain differently than the usual kind of post-traumatic depression. “The same brain system is involved in other powerful cravings, such those that afflict drug addicts and alcoholics…It’s like they’re addicted to the happy memories.“
“Pity the would-be Romeo who earnestly confesses middlebrow tastes: sometimes, it’s the Howard Roark problem as much as the Pushkin one. ‘I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand,’ said Laura Miller, a book critic for Salon. ‘He was sweet and incredibly decent despite all the grandiosely heartless “philosophy” he espoused, but it wasn’t even the ideology that did it. I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn’t hide my amusement.’” In the NYT, Rachel Donadio looks at relationships undone by differing book tastes (and, along the way, quotes a college friend of mine, Christian Lorentzen.)
Funnily enough, my last serious relationship, lo, 18 months ago now, didn’t end because of book taste, but — like Laura Miller above — I always considered the Ayn Rand citation on her Friendster profile an ominous red flag (and, in the clear light of retrospect, I was absolutely correct in this regard.) In the relationship before that, things started out ok, and then, eight or nine months in, we daringly ventured to trade lists of recommended books. At first, all was well: She seemed to dig All the King’s Men, and I finally got around to reading Moby Dick (I liked it, but also found most of it the longest…Atlantic piece…ever…) But we got on shakier ground when I didn’t cotton at all to her favorite tome, Thomas Wolfe’s Look, Homeward Angel. (If you’ve never read it, here’s the short version: I, the protagonist, am more brilliant and tortured than absolutely everybody here in fake-Asheville, NC, and thus noone will ever understand me. After 500 pages of complaining about it, I will leave, and seek my fortune elsewhere.) Meanwhile, she was so embarrassed to be seen with Dan Simmons’ Hyperion — a book I don’t love, but thought might make a good intro to decent sci-fi yarns for someone with highbrow sensibilities, what with all the Chaucer and Keats nods therein — that she’d hide it from people on the train. Whether all this brought about or hastened the end, I know not…but it surely didn’t help. The point being, be wary, young lovers: The book collection can be a minefield, as the Donadio essay attests.
I’m not going to cover all the sordid details of the Spitzer case here — he’s gone, so, politically speaking, there’s not much else to say about it (and — for the moment anyway — the search for a possible campaign funds connection sounds likes a fishing expedition.) Nevertheless, regarding the news coverage here in the Apple, it — to no one’s surprise, I guess — has already pushed past prurient to wallow in the tacky. When the feeding frenzy first locked on to “Kristen’s” MySpace page (5 million hits in a day), I actually felt sorta bad for the poor girl. (Ok, I know, she’s not poor — she makes $5500/hr. Still.) Prostitution is illegal, true, but she’s still basically a troubled kid engaged in a seedy enterprise, and I think it’d be pretty hard for any personal site — this one included — to withstand that level of withering, snark-heavy scrutiny from the entire world at large. That being said, from front-page, come-hither portfolios all over NY today to 200 large made on music downloads overnight, I have a feeling the last thing Ms. Dupre needs right now is anyone’s pity. Oh well. Milk it, I guess.
Just be clear, I’m not saying the coverage is anywhere near as repellent as the media aftermath to the Virginia Tech killings, and I know sex has sold newspapers since the dawn of the printing press. (I mean, the tabloids caught my attention this morning.) But, c’mon now. In any case, I’m guessing Silla Wall Spitzer is having a truly terrible day.
(By the way, if anyone cares about my own editorial decision to post a pic of Ashley Dupre here, I did so to be fair to Ms. Iseman, of McCain fame. The lesson here seems to be: If you must get caught in a sex scandal (or what the NYT thinks might be a sex scandal), try to keep the seamier-type pics off of the Internets.) Update: Client 9 radio? Um, yeah.
Apparently Natalie Portman loves her some prequels. In case you’re desiring to see Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, or at the very least more of Ms. Portman than was disclosed in Closer, Anderson’s 13-minute short film, Hotel Chevalier, starring Jason Schwartzman and the former Queen Amidala, is now available free on iTunes. Cute…dare I say precious?
