In the future, maybe each and every one of us will be a disliked microcelebrity for fifteen minutes. We can only hope!

(Radar made a list of the The Web's Most Hated People, but clearly they did not use scientific data/crowdsourcing like we did.)

The Monster That Washed Ashore In Our Bank Accounts
Unless one person clicked on the post 1.4 million times, I'm pretty sure most have you have heard of our good friend the Montauk Monster. He's an international phenomenon, featured on CNN and Fox News and in David Edelstein reviews of art house movies. Is he a dead raccoon? A movie marketing ploy? A terrible Plum Island experiment gone kablooey? No! He's a monster from some hell planet that brings bad tidings of doom and misery for this American life. But he's also kind of fun and charming in a gross, leathery, bloated and beaked way. Oh Monty, never let us go. Srsly. Need summer home in Montauk, kthx.

El Chupacabra Es Un Diablo!
No, it's not viral marketing for the X-Files movie. That piece of junk was already a terrific bomb when video footage of this bordertown beast surfaced. It could be some sort of dog, a goat's blood-sucking fiend, or a mournful Jennifer Lopez wandering the desert searching for validation. Really, though, he represents our completely legitimate Lou Dobbsian fear of illegal immigrants. If such a creature can roam our edges unmolested, what nefarious El Salvadoran dreaming of working at a car wash could be threatening our most desolate and boring American towns?

Bruce Davison's Night Terrors Made Manifest
Perhaps our most famous and elusive monster, Bigfoot is America's Loch Ness Monster. The legend has thrilled and fascinated people for years, tying into international cryptozoological study of the Yeti of the Himalayas, the Yeren of China, and, of course, Orang Pendek of Indonesia. People have suggested that he is some sort of missing link, perhaps a member of the supposedly extinct Homo Erectus (heh heh heh) species. What mystery! What history! Oh it's all so exciting! And now, well, the lumbering fucker is dead. Yep. Curled up dead in an old freezer in Georgia. (The peachy one, not the warry one.) Sad.

The Great Two-Headed Turtle Caper
One of our tiniest and adorablest and "oh my gawd Mother Nature has a dark, dark sense of humor"est monsters has been pilfered! Freak-face McSnappers is a two-headed turtle who was taken from a Brooklyn pet store on Sunday. The owner of the store—who brews strange potions in the backroom and cackles wildly, her one jaundiced eye sparkling with some demonic knowledge—says it's not a good situation, because the turtle(s?) needs special handling, "each head has to be fed by hand because otherwise they fight over food." Um shriek! that's shriek! so shriek! sad shrieeeek!!! KILL IT! BURY IT DEAD AND SEND IT BACK TO THE HORRIBLE NUCLEAR INFERNO FROM WHENCE IT CAME!!

So those are the four big monster stories of the season, but I'm sure there are others. Perhaps you took a wrong turn near the Pine Barrens on the way home from Denise's house (maybe you should just kiss her, Ricky said she liked you a few months back, right?) and you saw some shadowy something loping through the trees. No, it wasn't the Jersey Devil. It was Jim McGreevey looking for men! Haha, gay jokes.

So, in conclusion, gay people are monsters. Happy summer y'all!

The official line is age, experience, and foreign policy expertise—Biden matches up well against McCain by outdoing him on most of his strengths besides the "tortured for five years by homos" thing. But with Biden comes the history of saying insane and inappropriate things and, you know, the plagiarism. (We said he matched up well with McCain!) And hey, let's look at some of our favorite moments of Biden saying something insane—taken entirely from his recent run for the presidency!

July, 2006:
Biden: goes to a 7/-11.
And says: "You CANNOT go into a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts without an Indian accent."
Which he meant as: some sort of comment on how Indian-Americans are a fast-growing and terribly productive group whose support he's always welcomed!

August 27, 2006:
Biden: goes on "Fox News Sunday."
And says: "You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth-largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state."
Which he meant as: reassurance that he was not an out-of-touch liberal coastal elitist!

December, 2006:
Biden: goes before the South Carolina Rotary Club.
And says: Delaware, he noted, was a “slave state that fought beside the North. That’s only because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way.”
Which he meant as: a joke.

January, 2007:
Biden: is interviewed by the New York Observer.
And says: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man."
Which he meant as: a compliment to Barack Obama, whom he actually seems to like, and also an astute observation on the way Americans and the media represent Black-ness couched in cringe-inducing language.

October, 2007:
Biden: is interviewed by the Washington Post editorial board.
And says (when asked why Iowa schools perform better than DC schools): "There's less than 1 percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with...."
Which he meant as: look, who knows now? Maybe he meant, as his campaign said, that "the disadvantages were based on economic status, not race." But that is not what he meant because it is not what he said. The most charitable possible explanation for this is that by "it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with" he does mean that minorities are born with far fewer advantages in life than whites out in Iowa. But at this point the man's tone-deaf inability to discus race in any sane way—despite no evidence that he, you know, dislikes black people or anything—is actually stunning, like watching an acrobat repeatedly fall to his death over and over and over again.

BUT. The Biden penchant for saying dumb shit is tied to his charm for saying whatever the hell is on his mind. His extemporaneous monologuing produces both gaffes and gems. Like at the Democratic debate where he just up and called a gun nut a dangerous crazy person:

See? Also when, more recently, he asked if the Vice President had been kissed, in Iraq. Why? Who knows. Maybe because he knows he's in the running for the job.

Politically, Biden is probably a terrible choice. Another two Senators for the Dems. And he's from Delaware. And he makes Obama look even less experienced. And honestly he has nothing compelling to say on domestic issues, at all, which is still what the voters care about. And he doesn't help to win any swing states, at all.

But, you know, the guy is also a hilarious blowhard. So we win.

The intern was at NBC in New York, at the famous 30 Rock (NBC has not responded to our request for comment). Our tipsters diverge a tiny bit in their details, but all agree that this intern did exist, and she did have quite an accident. They say it all happened on the intern's first day on the job, in June. Apparently, she tried to make a run to the bathroom, but didn't quite get there. One account:

Said intern did in fact shit all over the 18th and 25th floors of 30 Rock. She did it in the hallway, on the floor, on a pile of FedEx boxes, on the way between floors… pretty much everywhere but the bathroom or (hey, sometimes you’re desperate) a garbage can. Or a cup. Or a napkin. Or in her hands. No, just streaking through the hallways. And then she took it into that room where she locked herself in and proceeded to wipe (sorry, I couldn’t come up with a better word) it on the walls, on the computer, on those same FedEx boxes. It was a shitshow (pun absolutely intended).

One tipster even said that the intern was in a meeting with her boss when the drama occurred. News of it spread quickly throughout the building. What was the reason for the treason? We hear that bad foreign water was blamed:

The intern blamed the mess on bad water that she drank in Israel (although she had been back from her vacation more than 2 weeks before she started). The rumor at NBC is that it was some kind of laxative induced disaster.

The cleaning staff reportedly took care of the mess. But the biggest mystery of all: Why, and how, did said intern get to stay on for the rest of the summer? For one thing, it wasn't her fault: the bathrooms were locked, and she didn't yet have a key. And a general sense of mortification kept everyone quiet:

The bosses did want to fire her but were so shocked that she came back that they were a little scared because, what kind of person does something so gross and then shows up the next day like nothing happened? No one wanted to bring it up again, so she got to stay by default.

This poop story is truly nightmarish. Deep inside, we all harbor a fear that something like this might befall us on the first day at a new job. Nevertheless, this person was able to hold her head up high and continue in what must have been the most snicker-inducing environment imaginable. And with little hope of a good recommendation.

Pooping intern: We salute your courage.

"...Her naked, muscular body glistened with the almond oil that he had been rubbing between her every nook and cranny for the past several hours.

He lit his 3rd cigarette of the day and checked the Rolex strapped to his hairy wrist. 8:30. Damn but it was early and it had been a late night and he felt like fuck-shit, even though he’d been blown from kingdom cum and back. It was a typical Tuesday night troll through Hollywood with his friends, all of them but him desperate to get laid. He’d found the blonde at the second bar. Like the rest of them she was easy for Finn Collins, the hottest young actor in town, to get into bed.

Finn rolled out of bed, off the wrinkled, stained sheets, still damp from two bodies being entangled between them all night. He disappeared into the bathroom as the blonde started dressing.

He turned on the shower, stood under the hot stream, and rubbed soap on his limp penis. It was actually sore. The blonde had given him some workout. Since “arriving” in Hollywood three years before he’d slept with countless starlets, fathered a child out of wedlock and shot no less than seven medium-budget action films, as well as a few historical dramas. He was perceived to be the ruthless bachelor no woman in town could tie down but the truth was he hadn’t found anyone worth staying with much longer than a night. He wasn’t about to lose his heart to some silicone-injected Hollywood whore. Not one of them – and he couldn’t count how many there had been – was good enough to bring home to his ma, figuratively at least. Literally he didn’t have much of a choice.

His mother lived in the bottom half of his two-story house perched above Sunset Boulevard with a spectacular view – babe magnet view – a pool and not much else for the money...Mother Collins was a saint, she was. Dublin born, a gal who liked her pint and could hold it too, she was proud of her son’s success. She’d raised him like a prince, even on a housekeeper’s wage. She never let him forget he was special. Better than all the rest. She sacrificed everything for him when he was growing up. He played in the streets while she worked as many jobs as she could find. She never bought a new dress that wasn’t from a thrift store and she practically prostituted herself to a distant relative to send Finn to school in London, where he’d studied Shakespeare and gotten his break treading the boards on the West End in a big important drama she didn’t much understand but didn’t care, because all the critics wrote about what a marvel her lad was.

When Hollywood had called, of course he’d packed her up and taken her with him. Now she lived like the Queen. Drivers to take her whereever she wanted to go, not that she ever wanted to go anywhere other than a dicey Chinese restaurant downtown called Mrs. Foo’s. She’d become fast friends with Mrs. Foo, an eighty-two year old bird who gave out advice along with the city’s best take-out. Mrs. Foo held court six nights a week. Many an afternoon Ma Collins had sat at Mrs. Foo’s tiny restaurant on a gang-ridden street downtown, eating wonton soup and pouring her heart out about her son and the “tramps” he was bringing home.

“My lad’s going to catch something from them,” she would say, sake in hand. “I don’t know why he can’t find a nice girl to settle down with.”

Mrs. Foo would squint her eyes, set her wrinkled face and tell Ma Collins not to worry. “Wild oats. Let him sow and he’ll always be yours. If you stop him now he will marry someone wrong and she will cut you out of his life.” Ma Collins lived in fear of someone taking her boy from her. For twenty-four years she’d poured every ounce of her being into making sure he’d had the opportunities she never did. Wild oats or not, she’d be damned if some clap-ridden skank was going to get hold of her son and ruin everything.
Ma Collins spent most of her time watching the telly, her skinny feet propped up on an ottoman, resting after forty years of slaving away, washing stains out of other peoples’ clothes.

“Morning ma,” said and kissed the old woman on her cheek. She smelled of lemon and baby powder and sat on a barstool at the lime green breakfast counter sipping tea, not saying anything, her mouth a silent gash in a caved in face.

“Do you have your teeth in ma?” She hated the expensive new teeth he’d bought her.

Silently she reached into a drawer and slid them in.

Finn stood looking at his mother with love, a towel draped around his waist. His muscles on his chest were hard and white.

“Ma?” he said. “Aren’t you going to at least say ‘Good morning’?”

“That whore forgot her underclothes.” She held up a tiny triangle of cotton nothing. There was nothing to cover the bottom with. No more than a piece of string. This is a crazy country, the old woman thought. It was a good thing she was here to protect her poor vulnerable boy from the likes of these girls all looking for a rich husband so they could sit on their skinny behinds all day and kick her into an old age home.

“Forgot? Where is she? You didn’t kick her out? Not another, ma? I told you. Let me do that, it’s not polite.”

“Are you wearing protection son? Already one child, ya don’t need another,” she warned.

Now I don't hate them any more—not these particular guys. I hate and detest the leaders. Some guards would just come in and do their job. When they were told to beat you they would come in and do it. Some seemed to get a big bang out of it. A lot of them were homosexual, although never toward us. Some, who were pretty damned sadistic, seemed to get a big thrill out of the beatings.

Yes, ok. What?? How did POW McCain know they were gay if they weren't gay "toward him"? Were the homosexuals the ones who enjoyed the beatings or were the sadists a separate category? We have lots of unanswered questions here. Like—how come he mentions how gay the North Vietnamese were but leaves out that inspiring tale of the cross on the floor he mentioned last weekend?

John McCain, Prisoner of War [USNews via Queerty]

"Additionally, the author doesn't really have the vocabulary she needs to write a frothy book like this. She frequently uses dated words like "bod," which makes it sound like she's mimicking a writing style that she doesn't completely understand. There are a few problems with the plausibility of her story as well. Why are these vastly different women friends in the first place? Why doesn't anyone in this hyper-fashionable world notice that Meghan's husband, Tom Ford, has the same name as a famous designer?"

The book begins a little like this:

"Natalie sat on her six-foot long magenta sofa surrounded by the latest issues of People, US and Glamour. Entertainment Tonight blared from the flat-screen TV in the darkened room. On the plush carpet the color of cotton candy, next to the freshly delivered pizza box, lay three new pairs of Jimmy Choos; gold open-toed stilettos, fuchsia silk pumps and calf-high brown suede boots..."(A good collection of FM shoes to add to her already expansive collection.)

If she was going to be hiding out she was going to do it armed with new loot, junk food, trashy magazines and television.

“Shit!” A dime-sized drop of marinara sauce dripped down Nat’s all-white cashmere Juicy’s. She dabbed at her top, brand new from Neiman’s not three hours old. A half dozen shopping bags lay tossed across the carpet. She’d had a very good day. Done over $8,000 damage – and that was just in an hour. Yoyo, her personal shopper at Neimans, was an overly hip Korean woman with purple streaks in her hair and the clout to get Natalie most anything she wanted to fit her size 2 bod. Yoyo had wanted her to buy a fox fur trimmed trench coat. “Armani’s for older women,” Natalie protested, which saved her another $9,000. Or rather saved Nick, her father. All personal credit card bills were sent directly to his business manager as part of Natalie’s allowance. A mere “pittance” she complained. She’d been trying to squeeze more money from her trust fund to no avail.

“If all the papers call me a trust fund baby,” she’d argue with Nick, “shouldn’t I have the spending power?”

“Baby, don’t I take care of you?” he’d say, still keeping the purse strings tight. He had changed in the past couple months. Sure he had bought her the condo in Westwood recently in addition to her annual new car, but all of a sudden he’d become tight with cash. Why wouldn’t he front her a few thousand? She didn’t understand this sudden change of heart.

“You’ll get all those millions soon enough,” Nick assured her. And she would, when she was thirty – six long years away.

Peeling off her top she revealed a new black lace La Perla push up. She didn’t mind not having much of a chest to push up. Nat knew she looked hot. Hot enough to regularly make the papers. Though this week she would rather they write about Lindsay or Jessica or Rosalee St. Cyr."

Whispers our publishing elf, "There are 408 more pages of the same." We're waiting for all those pages to print out.

One of my old [Conde Nast publication redacted] interns had a nightmare herself - she moved up to Vogue and was passing Anna in the hall on her first day. Knew she wasn't supposed to look at her. As they passed, Anna tripped and fell, just bit it. Intern freaked out. she didn't know what to do. So she ran.

Oh, no! How like a poor young thing unschooled in social interactions not involving the "BRB" option! However.

Didn't help AW. got back to her desk, told her new boss what had happened, and the boss told her she did the right thing and that if she'd actually attempted to help AW, her first day would def have been her last.

Of course, there are two castes of interns at Vogue: worthless debutante billionairespawn, and meticulous and diligent pretty untouchables. Now let's contrast that with this dispatch from the Embassy of a major European country:

I've got a story of an intern here whose dad is some bigwig in the biggest [European country] union, and who has erased his title of "intern" from his sig., and instead calls himself the "acting social economic attache" or some bullshit like that just because he's commandeered in the office of the REAL social economic attache, who is on vacation. Because of this elevated, clearly non-intern status, he refuses to engage in the less-glamorous work all the other interns are required to do, namely act as hosts and hostesses at events and basically be bitches.

But! What works in Old Europe won't fly in, say, Boston.

We had 2 interns last semester who showed up at an Ashlee Simpson appearance at saint, or some other club here, and tried to bully their way in by telling the GM they worked for Boston Magazine and if he didn't let them in they'd blog mean shit about him and his club. Then they gave him the names of various Boston Magazine editors. While they were arguing they spotted one of our art department assistants, who was on a freelance photo job, and tried to pretend they were with her.

Such an uncharacteristic show of resourcefulness, right?

So the art assistant almost lost that freelance account because the GM was so pissed, and an editor here had to make some big show of apology to the GM or else it would probably end up in the Track. And then the interns first denied the whole thing. Then each blamed it on the other one.

God, are they too preoccupied with aspirational reality TV to have absorbed the single most obvious lesson of all crime television?

Then we made them write notes of apology to the club and they were filled with misspellings.

Yes.

Anyway, our last story, from a publication in Philadelphia, is a long, cautionary tale about Why You Cannot Trust Ivy Leaguers Even If They Appear To Be Hardworking And Eager To Please (And Also Attend Lesser Ivies)

Once upon a time, [website] had an intern. Let's call her Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Aniston came into our lives around three winters ago. Our website explicity states that we do NOT consider Penn students for internships, for reasons that would be obvious to anyone who's ever lived in any kind of proximity to Penn, and Philadelphia's radical allergy to the kind of senses of entitlement for which Penn students are widely known. But when we met Jennifer Aniston, she made a good point: She had graduated from Penn, and was thus, no longer a Penn student. And she seemed nice enough, and we really needed the help, so we let her by on the technicality.
And here it must be said that Jennifer Aniston was actually a really, really great intern. She loved the [publication], did tons of grunt work with gusto, and was really just super diligent about any task with which she was charged. She ruled. But the more time we spent with her, the more we realized that Jennifer Aniston basically had no sense of self. For example, she constantly talked using "we" when discussing anything about her personal life, referencing things not simply she, but she and her boyfriend of a few months, did or enjoyed.
Q: Hey, Jennifer, what are you listening to these days?
A: Gosh, well, we really love Peter Bjorn and John and Italo disco!
It also became apparent that JA was just a really, really sheltered young adult — that she was one of these people who moved to a big city to go to school, and then proceeded to basically never leave the campus, thereby terminating more than half the value of her education.
In addition, we soon learned that she was attending this strange emo born-again Christian church that seems to prey on hipster transplants here in Philly.
We felt bad for her. And we also felt like we wouldn't be doing our duty as intern masters/psuedo mentors if we didn't expose her to the world as we knew it. So we took her on a trip that we needed to make for work. A long, long road trip.
On the trip and long conversations that ensued as we drove halfway across the country, we learned a lot of wacky stuff: That Jennifer Aniston didn't seem to know a lot about sex for a young woman approaching her mid-20s. That her boyfriend seemed to hold an almost cult-leader-like control over her. That she would pout at the slightest inconvenience. She was utterly horrified when we started listening to Howard Stern to break up the car rides.
Well, the trip was what it was. But when we got back, through the strange social mesh of Philadelphia, we found out (inadvertently) that a friend of a friend of ours had met up with Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend roughly 30 minutes after we picked her up for the trip. This friend of a friend was then reported to have holed up and fucked Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend for a week solid.
We didn't know what to do with this information.
So we just held onto it for a while. But then, things got weirder
It turned out that we started working another young woman who turned out to be Jennifer Aniston's Boyfriend's last girlfriend. We'd known this woman for a while, respected her a lot, and eventually, one day while chatting we realized that she and Jennifer Aniston shared something in common ( Jennifer Aniston's Boyfriend), and unbeknownst to Jennifer Aniston, that at least in the beginning, they were sharing this young squire concurrently.
But Jennifer did know that our new co-worker did see her boyfriend in the past. When she found out that she was on the team, Jennifer quit her internship. Immediately. Despite the fact that she'd basically never have to see her.
Meanwhile, Jennifer had been posting on her blog and talking nearly constantly about when she and her BF were going to get married, and how much in love they were, etc.
We were worried. It made us sick to think that here she was, proclaiming eternal love, when in reality her BF was basically the town pump and here she was, unwittingly making a fool of herself.
This all came to head at another employee's birthday dinner, where, unlikely as it seemed, all concerned (except the chick that Jennifer's BF screwed for a week while we were away) were present.
When Jennifer's BF showed up, our new employee asked if they could talk outside for a moment.
While we were not there, we assume and were told later that Jennifer's BF was given the dressing-down of his life.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Aniston slowly sat at the table and slowly lost her mind. When everyone returned to the table, Aniston bragged to our new employee, as if she had been hypnotized, about how she and the BF were so in love and were going to get married and make many many Aniston babies.
Everyone at the table stared in disbelief. Silence.
When the dinner ended, we decided that this could not go on. While it was not really our place to tell Jennifer Aniston what we know, we could, we realized, pass it along to a mutual good friend and co-worker whom we did know, and at the time, was very close to her.
In short order, Jennifer Aniston reacted in the following ways:
- She pulled down her Myspace and her blog.
- Her Flickr stream as well.
- And never spoke to us again.
In the time since, it's become clear that she shot every messenger she could, and stayed with the BF. She still alludes to us on her blog from time to time as these evil, awful people from her past. It's made us sad, but it's also shown us one thing that we kind of knew already, but needed to be reminded about:
No Penn students, ever.

The young man was a Tucker fan, and quit a real job to go be a paid assistant on the set of Tucker's film, where we pick up his experiences:

I quit my stable job at a publishing house and moved out there. He said I could stay at his house, but when I arrived he made me sleep in the backyard the first night. Tucker had other assistants but I detected animosity right from the start. One guy continually tried to commit assault on me. I figured because of my lesser stature it was all part of the "breaking in" process. Well, 5 days into production, I'm being threatened with crossbows and berated at every turn. Tucker has me doing ridiculous tasks like getting him water at a perfect temperature. The first few times he'd say it was 10 degrees too hot. I knew he was joking, but I'd take it back and add some of the cold water (which I realize is poposterous, but if you'd seen this guy he'd sic on me with choke holds or really hard arm punches, you'd understand). Finally on day 8, I bring him a paper cup filled with water; he takes a sip and throws it right in my face. I practically fell over a chair. This was in front of Jesse Bradford who even cautioned Tucker that it was a little too far. Tucker told Jesse to shut up, and then Nils (the "other" Tucker) intervened.

After two weeks of constant abuse, including Tucker letting me use the bathroom in his house, which had his shit in the toilet that he didn't flush. I quit on the spot. Nils first tried to comfort me by saying that Tucker is a jerk, and that it wasn't worth quitting over. I said I understood until HE confides that it was him that left the gigantic log in the toilet for me.

I understand that guys like to laugh and joke and get along. I do the same thing with my friends. On the IHTSBIH set, however, it was a very different story. These people weren't funny. They were "fratastic" in that douchebag sense. On my last day on set I talked to Matt Czuchry, who I got to know rather well. He told me that the Hollywood business was cut throat, and that he'd had his share of lumps. He said everyday he was losing respect for Tucker and that he worried this role my be career ending because the character doesn't have any redeeming qualities. Actually, he said the character Tucker as it was written might appear to, but after studying Tucker himself, he realized the guy was a fucking prick.

You'll notice there are no party picks of Tucker and the actors after the first week or so. This is not a coincidence. I've never been so incensed with an individual. Perhaps I was asking for it, chasing a pipe dream with no regard, but nobody should have to deal with what I did. I haven't even scratched the surface...

I'm done with the fucking asshole for good. I've found a new job, similar to what I'm doing before, but I don't' think I'll ever forget the sheer humiliation I faced.

After quitting, the assistant sent Tucker a pretty polite email asking for his check, and wondering if Tucker would be putting up any photos of him in the film's Flickr page. The response:

From: Tucker Max
Date: Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:19 PM
To: [Former assistant]

It's not MY fault you couldn't hack it. Don't come crawling back AND don't waste my time with bullshit promises if you wont back them up. You know something about photos? The person who takes them — or the person who employs the person who takes them — owns the copyright. I OWN THEM. You want them? Pay me.

You want your money? Jeff has it. Get it from him. I warn you, he's been in an extra bad mood lately.—

"...highly entertaining and thoroughly reprehensible..."
-NY Times describing TuckerMax.com

He asked for his check to be mailed to him, and said that he just wanted the photos to show his friends. Tucker wasn't fooled:

From: Tucker Max
Date: Thurs, Aug 14, 2008 at 5:20 PM
To: [Former assistant]

You want the photos so you can cry to Gawker. I didn't get where I am today by being a moron. You'll get your photos like everybody else – when the movie is done shooting.

Jeff will be passing through your area after we wrap. He'll hand deliver the money. We'll bring a camera along for the DVD extras. Now stop fucking bothering me.—

"...highly entertaining and thoroughly reprehensible..."
-NY Times describing TuckerMax.com

[DISCLAIMER: My personal belief is this story is authentic, though as some commenters have pointed out, it could be some ruse by Tucker fans to plant a fake story. Though, counterpoint: the story makes Tucker sound bad, not good, so if it were a plant (and we've seen some bad attempts), it would be a stupid one. Verdict: Real in my considered judgment, but if not, I hope Tucker writes a triumphant note soon so that we can mock it.]

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Slavery now
Current mood: thoughtful

Hello Friends, i'm writing this little blog to find out what people consider slavery and freedom. I've had these ideas in my mind since i was a child and they are starting to make my life really hard now. Well lets see.... My idea of slavery is not having a choice of what you want your life to be like, not being allowed to make decisions to better your life, being forced to live a certain quality of life, and my list goes on. I guess the easiest way for me to explain is by showing you how we live as americans. Why in america is everyone given a social security/tracking number at birth, is this really something necessary or government convenience. Why are all americans taught white history , when this is one of the most diverse places in the world? Why are their private schools even in elementary , is this to make certain members of society more elite ? Why are we forced to pay for education(college) that is vital for our survival in our nation? Is this a way to keep certain social classes contained and to lead them into becoming products of their environment. I know that their are such things as scholarships and loans, but what does that really mean when we could just look out for our well being. With banks closing so rapidly, what are you going to do with your hard earned money my friends and where will your money go. Are you going to continue you to pay taxes for living in a country founded on stealing,raping,lying. Paying taxes is something that peasants did because kings forced them to.Do we really want to stay ignorant, broke, deceiving, scared of one another. If all power went out tomorrow what would you do, would you be able to start a fire, would you be able to grow your own food, would you have drinking water, knowledge of how to catch and clean a fish, or even shelter. If our president declared marshal law what would you do? My friends we are all slaves in this country, i hope that you are ready for survival of the most efficient. Please teach yourself a trade or a skill, something that you can actually use if shit really hits the fan. You have to think what is graphic design going to do for you when your starving?

Some key pieces from the lawsuit:

Yesterday some kid named "Stephany" born in the nineties wrote a Facebook message to fellow members of Princeton Class of 2012, and now we have her picture. (There's another after the jump!) Inspired by its imagery (ripped condoms! bloody lips!) but also by its flawed underlying assumption that anyone gives a shit where you went to college, we crafted our own letter, to all the young people who ever went to college, as part of what we plan to make a regular feature, Tough Love.

Dear Young Folks, you know that saying "We don't care about the young folks?" Of course you do, you're young! But it's not really true. I care deeply about Kids Today, especially since it has started to come to my realization that everyone in Generation X hates you! I mean, even if we actually love you, we hate your blog, that you pretend you know everything even as it so rarely seems to occur to you that there is stuff you can't learn on Google, that you have so much misplaced self-confidence, and that when something makes you insecure we get the sense it is the first time you ever felt insecure about that thing and that makes us feel old.

To that end, there's a few things you should know, starting with how we feel about college, and where you attended. There are numerous other things you should know, and you can even feel free to ask questions if the inspiration strikes you, but don't worry, I'm not expecting you to pretend you don't know it all for a second. I'm basically writing this for the sake of my demographic anyway, because, Jesus Christ, sometimes your generation makes mine want to start a MySpace suicide pact. Only that would just be so you of us.

You know what I could give a shit about? Where you went to college! I might ask you where you went so I can fine-tune my expectations about the magnitude of the "sense of entitlement" I expect you to embody, but I don't really want to know, so don't let the conversation come around to that. It's not like I'm actually curious about you. Look, curiosity is one of the 10 great endangered virtues in this town, and having toiled to cultivate a small crop of it despite the terrible handicap that is living here, I've learned to be reflexively incurious about most people who hang out in the places I drink, but I have earned the right to not be curious about you. You should think on that for a second, because in saying it I am also advising you to harbor intense — though wholly unexpressed, know your place — suspicions about anyone older than you who professes to be curious about you (i.e. if you don't end up having sex with them within a couple of hours they are probably too nice/pathetic to ever be particularly powerful.) But anyway, say we've gotten past that point. Say I already asked you, and you tell me where you went. Perhaps it might help you to know what my assumption is.

College in the news angle
Say your college is in the news. Then we don't have to talk about what I am supposed to think you think this says about you. Oh, you went to Brandeis, so did that crazy terrorist lady who tried to shoot up those intelligence officers in Afghanistan, what about that? Duke: so you sorta regret reporting your date rape too? Etc. etc.

College In New York Angle
Oh lord, you went to NYU/Columbia/New School/Pratt/one of those colleges I always forget is actually in town because it's not like I walk the streets thinking, "Ooooh, how much you wanna bet those kids went to Hunter?" I am expecting you to have years of subsidized experience living and drinking and interning and amassing anecdotal evidence that "Gentrification: It's not a figment of your imagination!" about which you are eager to converse, so be a dear, pretend you are planning on leaving town for a few months so you can find out what it's like to be a real person a la Jessica Roy, and just straight-up give me an honest answer to the matter of can you get me drugs.

Lesser Ivy Angle
Oh, thank the deities, a lesser Ivy Leaguer. So you have spent four years and $160,000 tethering your identity, reputation and sense of self-worth to an institution with no hope of ever fostering any sort of genuine intellectual or otherwise culture because it is too preoccupied with all the relentless comparisons to Harvard. Yay, another absurdist.

Harvard/Yale Angle
Yikes! I think the only way to really handle this one is to never lose your sense of bafflement that there are places so simultaneously insular and inculcated in their own sense of self-regard that some of the most intelligent people in the country can go there to teach and wind up like this guy. (Who not only doesn't have anything worth saying to his plumber, he doesn't realize that he doesn't have anything worth saying — at all!) But don't talk about said bafflement! Just say something like, "Yale, but don't be intimidated, my SAT score was only 1340*and that was untimed."

One of those colleges where there are no grades or whatever Angle
See "College in New York" angle, last sentence.

State school Angle
I will expect you want to partake in all sorts of cultural offerings of which you have been so unjustly deprived the past twentyodd years at least until March Madness comes around, and as long as you don't live in Bushwick I will find this charming. For about two more years!

Canadian angle
The problem with Canada is that you have all these flawed assumptions about how Americans perceive you, as in you think we feel guilty about not knowing anything about the customs and inner workings of a foreign country one fifth as populous as Bangladesh, or that the fact that you assume your travails getting a work visa will inspire our sympathy — ummmm like, hey read this! — and you never see it from our perspective, as in "Yeah, I have about as much sympathy for you as I do for someone who grew up in Portland, but with universal health care and never having to say you're American."

Historically black Angle
Look, I'm not going to act like I meet a lot of you in the Manhattan media scene, but on the occasion that I have it has always been a pleasant experience and if you are looking for extra credit see what it would take to arrange Stephany as your next commencement speaker.

*Yeah, fuck you, I'm old, that was the point.

Photo from the Spanish Tennis Federation's site:

Photo of Spain's team from the Fed Cup site:

Hey Spain, stop that.

Ethinicity also played a role in this episode. My first idea of it started when Ms. Shields told Korto who is from Liberia and who presented an impressive sketch, "The touch of ethnicity is delightful." That was curious and also true. Later, Korto snaps at that guy from Detroit for undermining her (which he did) in front of Tim Gunn. He furiously backpedals and tries consensus building. (Their garment, btw, was in my opinion, lovely.)

The moment of wonder: In a segment that was the most curious and also the most true of any statement ever made, Terri questioned whether Suede was packing balls or vajajay. She also noted that she doesn't have any children and that, therefore, no one should be sucking on her titties. (On the other hand, when the artist Peaches sang in a song, "Sucking on my titties like you wanted me," she presumably isn't talking to her infant.) This truly was delightful for Suede is a little whiny bitch.

Speaking of! Daniel, who I thought I liked, is a little whiny bitch too! When he's getting made fun of or criticized he adopts this look of helpless confusion like a little doggie woggie. He wore this face on the runway. His face says, "Me? Me? You're talking about me? I don't understand!" Kenley also scored some serious points for helplessly laughing when the little twerp reiterated that he had impeccable taste.

I also realized something about orange muppet Michael Kors. His face is never a reliable indicator of his inner life. You could tell him his kid died and there would still be that rictus frozen there. You could tell him he just won Crest Whitening strips, a lifetime supply, and that workmen had just finished installing a carrot juice fountain in his home (two of the things I bet would excite him most) and that smile wouldn't change. All you can judge from are his glazed over eyes which sometimes, if you look closely, are crying for help.

Still, balls or vajayjay!

You have mercilessly beaten out your friends, your girlfriends, your boyfriends, your brothers, your sisters and every one you have loved...

Try everything once: Pilates, squash, open mic night, tantric sex. What do you have to lose? When you risk everything, you have anything to gain...

Laws are nothing but restrictions: break every one you possibly can...

Pain is weakness leaving the body. That ache in your muscles? The ripped papers? The taste of blood on your lips? The broken condom? The fatigue in your bones? Those are the victories. Life is a beautiful game and you sure as hell are winning...

Boys and Girls, there are no rules to this game. Someone crosses you? It’s BURN BITCH BURN...

This is the death of dynasty. The authorities may make the rules, they may think they have control, but we cannot forget we are Princeton. We are her blood and her bile. And we are the generation they have never seen before.

We are the anti-Christs to save the world from the mercy of God, the self-pity that festers within the masses. Religion is the opiate of the masses, so drug them until they are nothing but slaves at your will. You have deserved this. You are Hitler the fourth, Alexander the Great the Second, Napoleon the Fifth, here to destroy the world we know.

The (presumably Ivy League) commenters on IvyGate can't decide if Stephany is a prankster who infiltrated the Princeton 2012 group or if she's a hero because she lacks "success guilt," LOL.

But it's kind of great that she's repositioning Princeton as a kind of Madrassa for extremist, hyper-hedonistic secular humanism rather than an institution of higher learning. Because, for many students, that's basically what it is, no?

[IvyGate]

As you can see, the Beijing public relations strategy was brilliant: first, get the Olympics, then generate alarming rates of economic growth bulldozing and erecting structures and developing innumerable ambitious infrastructure projects in preparation for the thousands of journalists you are expecting for the Olympics, consuming such unprecedented amounts of energy in the process that oil prices rise more than tenfold between the year you land the bid and the year the Olympics actually happen, triggering fears of a recession in the overly developed countries whose living standards your artificially undervalued currency has been subsidizing, such that journalists feel obliged to attend the thing if only to write that last epic think piece on the Emerging Superpower before taking that buyout, while gas prices force the rest of the citizenry to sit at home and watch the Olympics. Hopefully over an ice-cold Coke Zero!

But in lieu of that, cool cars seem to do the trick. A lot better if you locate them in a city that is not totally depressing.

Why not let the drama unfold organically, letting the audience figure it out at the same time as the other contestants. I mean it would probably come finger snapping out after like three seconds because these girls always love to talk about their damn issues, but still. At least then it wouldn't seem like this big gimmicky thing, like having a plus sized model win a fixed competition last go around. Now it's not so much of a "surprise tranny! so what? what're you gonna do about it?" like it could be. It's just a "hey hey hey! look look! weird person! whole lotta weirdness going on between the legs! wait look back at me I'm still Tyra!" and great googly moogly that is a tiresome old trope. And the pre-arranged shock value is only going to be good for one episode this way. Ah well. Meet the whole cast at Jezebel.

Hunter's father, James D. Druck, a successful Ocala lawyer representing insurance companies during the 1980s, was implicated in a scam that involved a local man, Tommy "The Sandman" Burns, who electrocuted horses for their owners to collect the insurance money. One of Burns' first victims was the show horse Lisa Druck rode, Henry the Hawk.

That's right: Rielle Hunter's own father hired a man to electrocute his own daughter's horse "using a stripped extension cord and a wall socket." The horse killer eventually went to jail, but Hunter herself was doubtless haunted with lifelong dreams of her noble steed, Henry the Hawk, meeting his death at the hands of a live wire.

So what effect might long-term dreaming about horses have on a woman's personality? Let's consult a new-age dream symbolism guide for the answer!

HORSES : Horses have for a long time been associated with passion and excitement... Horses then tend to link to the general excitement and the level of risk in our lives. They may also refer to some upcoming event which involves excitement and risk.

KEY WORDS : Exciting, passionate, exhilarating, reckless, unpredictable

And there you have it. Without a scam to bilk horse insurance companies in rural Florida two decades ago, Hillary Clinton would be our next president.

[Ocala Star-Banner]

Recently, the tabloids have led the MSM in covering the illnesses of Kennedy, Liz Taylor, and Paul Newman—though how reliable their coverage has been is called into question by the continuing survival of all of those people. Then again, when the mainstream press waded into the fray with their alarmist reports of the imminent death of Patrick Swayze, Swayze seemingly underwent a miracle recovery.

So the reader is almost completely without reliable information. It does seem newsworthy, in this case, to ask precisely how bad Kennedy's doing. Does he actually have two weeks to live? Wasn't he just recently showing up to work at the Senate? But much as the press only ever hinted at how far gone Reagan or Strom Thurmond were (until they were done with public service), notions of privacy and respect lead editors to gloss over the uncomfortable details.

Not so in England, where tabloid media is often indistinguishable from the "real" press. The Daily Mail, Mirror, and Sun all keep running tabs on the mortality of Britain's famous. Decrepitude and mortality sell papers! Who knew? Not American editors, yet.

"The story is false, it's completely untrue, it's ridiculous," Edwards said when confronted with the first Enquirer story on his affair. Then, when he admitted the affair this month, he explained that that wasn't actually a lie: "When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99 percent honest is no longer enough." As others have noted, that math does not make very much sense.

But Edwards is helped in his crusade to be 99% honest by the fact that flaky Rielle Hunter seems unreliable and prone to flights of fancy. So her affair with Edwards actually happened, yes, but how many of the details as she recounts them are accurate? How many of the stories she told her friends are based on reality and not fantasy? Sources close to Hunter can only reveal what Hunter told them, which is hardly concrete proof of anything.

So is this story true? Did the affair start up again? In Edwards' confession, he said: "But that misconduct took place for a short period in 2006. It ended then." That misconduct. Leaving himself room to not admit to a further, separate misconduct that happened later. See what he did there?

It all began when actor couple Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams moved to shady brownstone Brooklyn. You couldn't read any one damn thing about either of them without the author slipping in something about their hip, unassuming New York lifestyle. The same could be said for Keri Russell and her new family (yes, I'm as guilty as anyone else), Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, etc. Nearly everything written about these actors makes mention of New York City as if it's some sort of positive personality trait. And, yeah, I've fallen prey to the same kind of thinking, but isn't it time we just gave up the ghost and admitted that it's just as bad as the celebrity pandering in Los Angeles (or anywhere else)?

At least it's out in the open elsewhere. Here there's just the illusion of blended-in-ness, when really everyone is spying and tittering and penning sycophant newspaper articles about how Kirsten Dunst is the kind of girl you'd never think to write newspaper articles about. It's gotten a bit silly and exhausting, seeing the collective nose so high up in the air. There are interesting, talented celebrities who live in LA, just as there are famehound idiots who live here. I mean, it's gotten to the point where Steve Guttenberg has moved to the city in the hopes of chipping off some of that sweet, sweet locally-gifted cultural cachet. And that's kind of a disaster.

And look! Radar agrees with us about the LA hipster celeb invasion. So it must be true.

• DO have neighborhood clout. The president of the local block association, Marilyn Dorato, has her own table at the restaurant, which she occupies weekly. Graydon wouldn't want to much of a fuss over the limos and paparazzi and drunken revelry and so forth.
• DO NOT complain about your food. "The reservations system has miniprofiles on clients: the number of times they have eaten at the restaurant... whether they complained about the food, whether they yelled at a waiter..."
• DO NOT work in reality TV or hedge fund management. "'For that reason, we screen calls from the 203 area code,' [Carter] said, poking fun at chateau country in the Connecticut suburbs."
• DO NOT notify the paps of your reservation. "Mr. Varda admits that there is one group [blacklisted]. 'B-list stars who call the paparazzi from inside the restaurant... They are not invited back.' (Privacy is so sacred at the Waverly that Mr. Varda says he has stopped a major film star from photographing his own family at dinner.)"
• DO NOT take a seat in the garden. It is Siberia. Carter claims it's great but "no one is buying it."
• DO NOT sit out front, oh God: "There is also a tiny outside area out front with tables in summer, but that is irrelevant — one frequent diner called it 'tragic.'"
• DO NOT brag about hanging out at the bar. No one cares, because that is also Siberia.
• DO perhaps try just asking at the front desk. It worked for the Kaufman. Go figure.
• DO be Harvey Weinstein, a very close personal friend of Mr. Carter. "Weinstein, for example, lives nearby and, according to Mr. Varda, frequently arrives for dinner without calling ahead to reserve. 'He is family,' Mr. Varda said, 'so we make room anyway.'"

Or just wait for the restaurant to become less fashionable, or for your ego to stop caring, both of which will happen eventually. (Until that day, you can scour the restaurant's blog for still more tips.)

[Times]

(Photo by Pistols Drawn on Flickr, who managed to do what the Times could not and get a picture inside the theatrically secretive restaurant.)

TV PITCH ****AMERICAN PRETENSE*****

THE PREMISE: As the alarming, poignant Matter of Jessica Roy recently reminded the world, thousands of girls (or at least probably a thousand girls!) all across America dream of literary ingenueship in New York City. There's no money in it of course, but the romance! The richness. Pathos. And bathos! (Haha, Glamour…and Grammar!) Okay, so: It's an elimination-based competition show in which 10 photogenic 18-24-year-old females (yes, just females, blame affirmative action or something) cast as interns for N+1, the most important literary magazine of our time, compete for the chance to be…nominally paid interns? Token female contributing editors? Unclear. Wait, that's the gimmick! It's a SATIRE, of the conventional reality show PRETENSE that creative fields actually lead you to security/success/fulfillment!

THE MARKET: American Pretense will be the most laserlike television target yet at the "Everyone I know in the New York Media seems to be watching this show nobody is actually watching which is why the media keeps laying people off so in five years if I have not been laid off from my media job and quit for the Peace Corps and/or pharma sales referencing this show will be one of those cultish rituals in which I engage so as to act as if New York Media cultural currency was not actually the worst investment since the Indonesian rupiah" psychographic that has made "Gossip Girl" such a valuable brand.

Liberal use of sponsors, online component and free labor solicited by various proprietary email lists to offset production costs. (Obvs.)

GESSEN: Gessen is this show's CHIEF JUDGER NURTURER DIPLOMAT. Like Tim Gunn/Ryan Seacrest with a dash of Trump. He will introduce the show, offer tips and critiques interspersed with pieces of wisdom he wished he had known when he occupied the 18-24 demographic.

PANEL OF JUDGES: JUDGES are the crucial element that makes a voyeuristic treatlet into a FRANCHISE. Important to cull panel from three universes: PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL WITH LITERARY MERIT (Hitchens as Simon Cowell figure)…Has-been female with drugs (Wurtzel) … and a few new unknown but Googlable bad cop/villain types. (Like I have seen this guy around!)

CHALLENGES:
This is still sketchy. Because you shouldn't really be able to read/pontificate/frantically Wikipedia literary references you missed, and act out the Hobbsean histrionics that make for good reality television, simultaneously, and yet I somehow have a feeling you can! Like that guy on Project Runway who got kicked off for hoarding pattern books…we could have something like that happen here, like an Orwellian "no books on penalty of excommunication" policy that no one can, by the other requirements of the show, actually follow, and on that note, maybe the consequence of breaking rules, or losing individual challenges should actually be the opposite of elimination. You have to stick around forever like in that play! Maybe the biggest losers will mobilize to start a class struggle? (No of course not duh! They will discover some obscure post-structuralist theorist who restores their self-esteem or go into private equity or something.)
Other ideas:
*Competition to get the words "Mark Sarvas sucks cock" somehow published on McSweeney's website.
*Competition to get semi-famous rapper to write (publishable!) letter to N+1 website.
*Competition to convince minor literary celebrities to attend an official N+1 pizza party in Brooklyn and/or Foreign Policy-ranked public intellectuals to attend a loft party in the West Village. (The WINNER, though, gets Steven Pinker to the pizza party and sneaks some into the fancy loft party, right?)

MAKEOVER ELEMENT:
Obviously a slight makeover ("makeunder"?) element is involved, but will have to tread lightly w/r/t corporate sponsors so as not to pollute the N+1 brand. Ideas?

He's a cheapskate.

Last week we noted how Tucker scoffed at a former blogger who wondered why he only made $82 for six months of work. Other employees tell us the standard pay for Rudius bloggers is somewhere in the $80/ quarter range, with one noting "I got just a tiny bit more than that when my site was doing really well." Sweet. So Rudius must be making a lot of money.

You work hard for the money.

One Rudius employee was ordered by Tucker to move to a different, more expensive city because Tucker thought that they could better do their job elsewhere. Once the employee had gone to the trouble of packing up and moving and finding a new, more costly apartment, we hear, their pay was reduced to almost nothing. Which seems like the standard Rudius pay rate, now that we think of it.

He's not popular with publishers.

We hear that at least one book agent quit working with Tucker because he flaked out on book proposal deadlines. (Not true? Email us!)

He's not popular with the bloggers that work for him at Rudius.

The emails we've received from disgruntled bloggers alone are ample evidence of this. He attracts bloggers he's interested in with the promise of writing for a wider audience—though, as you can tell by their pay, not necessarily more money. But when bloggers tire of Rudius and leave the fold, we hear, they are bizarrely wiped from existence in Tucker Max's world:

If an author leaves the site, the circumstances are never discussed. Not even on the message boards. It's reminiscent of some 1984 thought-crime type thing. The author is simply never mentioned again, the site stays up and repeated questions about "what happened" are ignored.

He's vindictive.

Those who have worked with Tucker say he's very protective of his "image," such as it is. We hear that his failed appearance on Opie and Anthony is a very sore point. This sensitivity manifests itself in both the disappearing of his fallen disciples as mentioned above, and in an atmosphere in which Tucker Max sycophants feel that harassment of detractors is a way to win approval. One blogger, Violent Acres, wrote a Tucker Max parody a couple of years ago. This resulted in 70 harassing phone calls from a crazed Tucker fan in a single weekend—and we hear the harassment is still ongoing, though the blogger has filed a police report.

Is it Tucker's fault that he has a crazy fan? Not necessarily. But it is Tucker's fault that he expressed his discontent with a cast member on his movie by taking a big crap in the toilet in the guy's trailer, taking a photo of it (do not click that link), and then blogging about it.

Can't wait till the movie comes out!

[Read all previous Tucker Max coverage here. Anybody else with Tucker stories, email us.]