Entries from April 2008 ↓

Fly the Photogenic Skies

Stay away from the props….

Typically, if you found yourself this close to the working end of an aerobatic sports plane, not to mention a Boeing 777, below, you’d be in a world of mess.

But if you’re Erik Hildebrandt, you’re, basically, at your desk. (Hey: That rhymes!)

If you’re this close, get outta the way…

One of the today’s most skilled aviation photographers, the Minnesota-based Hildebrandt is the guest on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, April 18, 2 pm ET.

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Fakon.

Mad you found out….
“I’m sorry…I meant to go to jail!”: Akon makes a mean face

I’m not even an Akon fan. However, I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to write that headline before another blog did.

The Huffington Post got to The Smoking Gun earlier than the rest of us did, pointing out what rigorously fact-checked hip-hop magazines should have known a long time ago: When Senegal-born singer-songwriter-producer Akon

settled on “Konvicted” for the title of his second album, which sold nearly three million copies last year … “Kontrived” might have been a more accurate choice.

Akon’s ad nauseum claims about his criminal career and resulting prison time have been, to an overwhelming extent, exaggerated, embellished, or wholly fabricated, an investigation by The Smoking Gun has revealed.

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Redefining “Paid.”

Paulson is paidAccording to Forbes.com’s 2007 list of top TV personalities, in the year between June 2006 and June 2007, talk show host Oprah Winfrey earned over a quarter of a billion dollars, $260 million, precisely, or over $1 million a day.

Pauper.

In a report cited by The New York Times yesterday, Institutional Investor’s Alpha (IIA) magazine ranked the 50 top hedge fund earners of last year. (The incomes on this list are so outrageous that you need to have made at least $210 million to get on it. Were Oprah a fund manager, she’d have ranked 38th.)

At #1, John Paulson, right, 52, of Paulson & Company, utterly nuked his competition by taking home compensation of…hold your breath, people…$3.7 billion.

That’s not his net worth. That’s three billion, seven hundred million dollars in salary.

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“Well, if I did, they weren’t one for long.”—Conservative pundit Ann Coulter, suggestively responding to the question, asked at a February Young Americans for Freedom forum, as to whether or not she’d ever dated a liberal.

Ann Coulter…Smokin’ HOTT!Tee-hee. This week, The Huffington Post quoted a New York Times‘s article on the new Wall Street Journal parody, My Wall Street Journal. Apparently, it so angered Rupert Murdoch that someone from the company went throughout Los Angeles, buying up the entire stock of local newsstands.

Last Thursday, Alexander Laurence was working at one such stand in Los Angeles, chatting with a customer, David Metz, when, both of them say, a man in a shirt with a Journal logo asked if anyone had seen a paper that looked sort of like The Journal.

“This guy comes by all the time to bring promotional stuff for The Wall Street Journal — bags, coin trays, stickers,” Mr. Laurence said.

Sure enough, they found what he was looking for. “He grabbed them all, said, ‘I need to buy all of these,’ ” Mr. Laurence said. “He had been going around to different stands, buying them.”

The man paid with a corporate American Express card. “At first he’s saying they have to make a correction or it’s not supposed to be out yet,” Mr. Metz said. “But then he said these are not published by The Wall Street Journal.”

Perhaps what most outraged Murdoch, and what the Huffington Post reproduced but the Times didn’t, was this, above: A full-page, topless spread of conservative “#1 FOX News Fox” Ann Coulter, done painstakingly in stipple, per Journal stylee.

On one hand, though satire, it could be argued that the image refines the use of women’s bodies as a territory over which men do battle, often symbolically, and that this post is part of that.

On the other hand, if accurate, the picture of a sow-like Coulter raises serious questions about the veracity of her Young Americans for Freedom forum quote, in the hed, further proving that conservatives not only mangle the truth, but exaggerate the greatness of Americans, particularly when speaking to naive, impressionable audiences.

Does John McCain Suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Mad as hell…
I’m gonna get you, sucka: John McCain flashes those pearly whites

It’s such an obvious question that it seems bizarre few in the media have asked it:

Does John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?

And, outrageously, did he refer to his wife with the evil “C-word,” during an outburst?

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Flashdance: That “Steel-Town Girl on a Saturday Night” Turns 25 Today

Kevin Kavendish let’s loose
What a feeling: Carlton Draught’s “Kevin Kavendish” gets footloose

Here’s the safest bet you can possibly make in your life: When director Adrian Lyne released Flashdance, on April 15, 1983, dollars-to-donuts that neither he nor the movie’s distributor, Paramount, was counting on anyone talking about it a quarter of a century later.

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Every Day, She Breaks So Much More Than the Sound Barrier…

Black female, comin’ out fightin’

To quote rapper Craig G, from “The Symphony,” mm mm mm, ain’t that somethin’: Maj. Shawna Rochelle Kimbrell is the first African-American female fighter pilot ever in the United States Air Force. (Thanks to Black Spin for the tip.)

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Tight Tees!: Kwame & Christine Bring Something Sexy for Spring!

Kwame-Christine tee (detail)

Thanks to Afro-American Pie for tipping me to the spring’s hottest tee (detail, above): A stylish little number, set off with mugshots of indicted Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff / paramour Christine Beatty, and tastefully finished with patter from the duo’s estimated 14,000 X-rated e-mail text messages. Sassy!

Love the Shoes.

After the party….
Bag lady: Victoria Beckham says “Aaah” for photog Juergen Teller

Interesting article from yesterday’s New York Times on the creative partnership between German photographer Juergen Teller and American designer Marc Jacobs. But even more startling are Teller’s images, which have prettied up W and other fashion bibles for a decade: Teller as artist Cindy Sherman’s twin, or, in an incredible story, as Charlotte Rampling’s hapless gigolo.

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This Is One Bugged-Out Talk Show.

Fanning makes small talk
“How can I bittorrent this sweet ride?”: Shawn Fanning ponders a VW

I was watching TV yesterday when, out of nowhere, a commercial popped on, featuring, of all people, Shawn Fanning, above, creator of the contraband late ’90s file-sharing service, Napster.

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