On Offering from Wenn.

This is evidently some of the things the public would like to see pictures of. A collection of captions from Wenn, a photowire service used by newspapers and magazines.

• Paul O'Grady signs copies of his new book 'Paul O'Grady: At my mothers knee..and other low joints' at Foyles book store


• Joaquin Cortes attends a judgement on the paternity of his former personal assistant Katie Asumu's son.


• Mickey Rourke goes for an evening stroll along the Via Condotti with his dog Loki


• Judd Nelson leaving the Chateau Marmont hotel, unrecognizable wearing round rimmed glasses and sporting a beard


• Omarosa signs copies of her book 'The Bitch Switch: Knowing How to Turn It On and Off'


• Tila Tequila hosts the grand opening of 'Tacos and Tequlias'


• Janice Dickinson looking very happy as she leaves a pharmacy


• Anika Noni Rose from 'Dreamgirls' and her son visit a bank


• A very tired looking Lily Allen arrives home, talking on her mobile phone


• Paris Hilton arrives back at her hotel, and poses for pictures in a red dress


• Reese Witherspoon getting back to her car after leaving a children's book store. She seems to have fallen over and badly grazed her right knee


• Celebrities out and about on Robertson Boulevard


• Kelly Brook walks arm-in-arm with her boyfriend Danny Cipriani, holding a pot of Creme De La Mer face cream


• Katie Price aka Jordan leaving Movida nightclub appearing rather worse for wear, and carrying a model of the Eiffel Tower


• Shawn 'Jay-Z' Carter celebrates Sean 'Diddy' Combs' appearance on the 'Black on Black L'Uomo Vogue' cover at 1 Oak


• Elbow performing at Liverpool University


• Christina Ricci out and about in Beverly Hills


• Eva Mendes leaving her gym in West Hollywood


• Rapper T.I. went shopping at Niketown today with friends and a documentary film crew while under house arrest


• Charlie Sheen and his wife Brooke Mueller are expecting twins, her mother has confirmed


• 'Dancing With The Stars' professional dancer Karina Smirnoff is embarrassed after a magazine article about her and fellow dancer Maksim Chmerkovskiy is read out by her stylist, Ricardo Lauritzen of B2V salon


• Carrie Underwood has her waxwork figure unveiled at Madame Tussauds in Times Square


• Rachael Ray shopping at Curve on Robertson Boulevard

BEST HED/LEDE I'VE READ IN A WHILE

[NYT]

Two Condoms and A Novel

Found on the street, just south of Delancey by the base of the Williamsburg Bridge: Two Magnum condom wrappers, some lube and a copy of the Stranger. Better than a Joseph Cornell box!

El Bulli's Genius Bully Ferran Adria Destroys Times

The crowd that filtered in to the Times Center which, Lord Almighty is like some sort of spacious temple, was giddy with anticipation to see Ferran Adria, chef of El Bulli, TV personality and chef Anthony Bourdain and interlocutor Eric Asimov. They queued for an hour or more. One woman did the entire Saturday crossword puzzle, in pen, in an hour.

Once inside the auditorium, four chairs sat on the stage. "Oh my god," said the woman next to me, "who is the fourth chair for?" Red Red Wine played over the speaker. "Oh my god," said the woman next to me, "this is my ring tone." She was here to see Eric Asimov, the wine guy from the Times. "I hear he is the grandson of Isaac Asimov. Someone who knew him personally told me." He's not. He's his nephew. Drew Neirporent sat in the second row. Behind me some cute asian girl kept on looking at me like she thought I had dirty hair, which is accurate.

Soon enough Mr. Asimov sauntered on stage with a strange and compelling strut. He was followed by a very tall Bourdain and a very bull-like Adria. The fourth chair was for the translator, a very very cute Spaniard. Though Adria speaks English, he prefers Spanish. Vale! Adria was clearly the star. Bourdain was his back up. Eric Asimov said a total of about three things, none of them relevant and all of them ignored. He would ask a question and even before it was translated to Adria, the chef would be answering. His reply rarely had anything to do with Asimov's query but were consistently enlightening. He was simply reading his manifesto, interrupted occasionally by a question and pausing momentarily to allow Bouraain to interject. What really stuck with me is Ferria's insistence that he was creating a new language, a language spoken by avant garde cuisiniers around the world. With this new language he was engaging his diners in conversation. "Cuisine is a dialogue" he said on numerous occasions.

Bourdain manned up to approaching El Bulli with a hostile attitude. But after he ate there---he was the first person to actually eat with Adria---he said. it was like "Eric Clapton seeing Jimi Hendrix play." That makes Bourdain Clapton to Adria's Hendrix which is, well, a tad overly self-regarding but he said it with a smile. He then called his meal, "the most important meal on the planet." Asimov did ask one good question for which Adria's non-answer is germane. "There's not going to be an El Bulli in Las Vegas?" he asked. Adria replied, "El Bulli has become a monster. It's impossible to tame." Which is, what, a yes or just another moment of disregard?

Other tidbits: The are 70 people who work at El Bulli for 50 diners. Adria supervises their staff meal every day. The meal he's most excited for in New York? Katz's Delicatessen.

Joseph Stalin Dictator Special No Choice

For lunch yesterday I found myself in the culinary chamberpot of Midtown Manhattan. Thankfully Zach Brooks at Midtown Lunch offers a handy map of carts/delis worth their salt. Instead of getting an overpriced wilted salad from Digby's, I gamboled over to Hallo Berlin!, a German soul food cart on 54th and 5th Avenue.

Now I'm not one for ironic Stalin nostalgia (especially after reading the Gulag Archipelago...ok, ok, I'm only on Volume One which is DEPRESSING) but how could you say nyet to a special called the "Joseph Stalin Dictator Special No Choice" when it contains one Berliner Knockfrank, one Bratwurst, topped with German fries, Red & White cabbage, satueed Onion and Small Soup all for $8.00? Quite simply, you can't. Next to that the Angela Merkel Democracy Special, which comes with free choice of any two wurst and a bonus Bavarian Meatball, pales in comparison. No soup! Cabage? No good.

They Came For Israel For Vesuvio

Sad Soho bakery Vesuvio has been closed due to oven trouble according to a note in the window. For the tourists who flock, somewhat annoyingly, to the area, this is a tragedy. Israelis, Indians and Sicilians have been writing well-wishing notes. It's like the Wailing Wall. Except for one fuck who wrote, "More lies." Actually, upon reflection, that's exactly what I'd stick in the Wailing Wall too.

I Heart Joshua Stein

It took me 27 years to find this joke.

We (wifey and me) just got back from our mini-honeymoon (a night at the Bowery, a night at the Greenwich Hotel). Walking home from Tribeca on Collister Street, one of those great Tribeca alleys, we found this graffiti. Somewhat disappointingly there's a website called Rodstuartlovesthehamptons and the whole thing seems rather engineered. It's safe to say there's no website behind this piece of street prophesy:

From Gay Talese's 1961 book New york: A Serendipiter's Journey:

At 7 a.m. a floridly robust little man, looking very Parisien in a blue beret and turtle-necked sweater, moves in a hurried step along Park Avenue visiting his wealthy lady friends--making certain that each is given a brisk, before-brekfast rubdown. The uniformed doormen greet him warmly and call him either "Biz" or "Mac"
because he is Biz Mackey, a ladies' masseur extraordinaire.

Mr. Mackey is spry and straight-spined, and always carries a black leather grip containing liniments, creams and the towels of his trade. Up the elevator he goes; then, half an hour later, he is down again, and off to another lady--an opera singer, a movie actress, a lady police lieutenant.

Biz Mackey, a former featherweight prizefighter, started rubbing women the right way in Paris, in the twenties. He lost a fight during a European tour and decided he'd had enough. A friend suggested he go to school for masseurs and six months later he had his first customer--Claire Luce, the actress then starring in the Folies-Bergere.

DuMont Disaster

After a rainstorm. Dumont. 7:30. Dinner Rush. Packed. Back and Front. In and Out. In a moment, smoke. Kitchen. Fire? No. Exhaust stopped working. Diners flee to garden like bees smoked from hive. No more burgers. Anger. Disgruntled diners. New waitress. We order Strip Steak. She writes Skirt. We get Hanger. "They're the same thing in my mind," she says. Not true. Steaks on the house. Nice.

A birthday group from the outer boroughs, smoking, in front. Outside. Unhappy. "She doesn't want cake this year. She wants a fry volcano," says a fat girl smoking Parliaments. "We gotta get some fries and make them into a cone and put ketchup on them." Another guy in the party, "But these fries are mad expensive. Where's the closest McDonald's?" The Parliament girl, "We can use [Dumont's] plates. What the fuck are they gonna say? You can't use our plate?" They look at each other. "We should have gone to Falafel Chula."

[Photo: Sarah Is Me]

A Big Announcement.

Dear Friends,

I'm getting married. That's me in the World War I Italian Infantry uniform, holding a rose. The woman behind me in traditional housewife garb is my fiancée. Her name is Ana Mascarenhas Heeren. I met her the first day I ever came to New York back in 1999. That's long enough to know she is brilliant, beautiful and Brazilian. Also that I love her and will forever. Nuptials are set soon (August 29) at City Hall for families. At some point after that, we'll have a much larger raucous celebration.

JDS

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehit, Lion!

Clay Davis is alive and well and living as a ballsy Mexican lady who isn't afraid of lions. [NYT]

New Yorker Cover Insulting to Crustaceans, Jews, Humans, Hamptons, Porches

Once again in a failed attempt at satire, the staff at the New Yorker has managed to publish an incendiary cartoon cover. It seems like last week's Obama kerfluffle didn't teach them anything. This week's cover depicts a bunch of affluent whites carousing while their crustacean dinner escapes through the kitchen window with the aid of a red-and-white tablecloth. Clearly this is a veiled attack against the Jews. In this case, the humanoid character with the Semitic nose (on the right) is shown drinking some sort of red wine. Not only are lobsters a food no self-respecting Jew would eat (shellfish aren't kosher) but this diner is shown with a glass of red wine in front of him. Red wine does not go with lobster. Karen MacNeil, chair of the professional wine studies program at The Culinary Institute of America recommends an Albariño from Galicia or a Oregon Pinot Gris. At any rate such an insulting depiction of American Jewry should not go unmentioned.

Then there is the issue of the lobsters, a noble and brave species, who have in the past, faced their fate with the sealy Stoic resolve of a true warrior. Like good Soviet soldiers, they would never retreat. Better to die nobly than live as a coward. This cover, in which the lobsters prefer ignoble escape, is an insult to homards worldwide.

The Princes of Google Image Search

How did John Paczkowsk, the senior editor at the website All Things Digital and a graduate of Brown University somehow rise to the primo spot in Google Image Search for "John," one of the most common male names? How did Josh Trentine, the CEO of Overload Personal Training, become the prince of all Josh's on Moderate Safe Search All Images? And Peter! Professor Peter Guttorp, a Swedish Professor of Statistics. These men have no right to crow from atop their perches. Especially John. Peter, I'm completely happy with. "He received a B.S. in mathematics, mathematical statistics, and musicology from the University of Lund, Sweden, in 1974, and a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley, in 1980. He joined the University of Washington faculty in September 1980." That's great. Also, the top three Peters all have full beards.

As for Josh, though I'm not entirely happy with an orange bodybuilder representing visually my namesake, it's slightly better than 2nd place:

Long Journey Into the Knight

I wrote about Batman for Huffpo. Check it out.

Wall-E and the Fall of Man

I, like you and me and everyone we know, wrote about Wall-E and the Fall of Man [Huffington Post]

American Blogged (Foreigners Dirty!)

On a recent trip to Atlantic City, I escaped the Las Vegas colonial outpost for the seedier spectacular boardwalk. There was a light drizzle and the boardwalk was mostly empty. Crap souvenir shops faced the dunes beyond which the Atlantic Ocean stretched darkly. Cheek-to-jowl, stores sold t-shirts that read, "Atlantic Fucking City" or that pictured Tweetie Bird in baggy shorts. (I thought that trend disappeared in the nineties but perhaps it's resurgent.) One store proudly proclaimed, "American Owned" (right) which, yay! Hey! I'm American too. We all love our country right? Then I noticed a woman in a sari in the store next door (left). Ah, I thought. I get it. You, sir, are forming a dialectical pair! What you are really saying is "Don't Buy From the Dirty Foreigner/Terrorist!" Why didn't you just say so? I will buy my creepy clowny AC t-shirts from you, my fellow American because implied racism masked as patriotism is something all Americans share!

It Came From the New Yorker

Introducing a new and hopefully one-time feature in which we feature a sentence found in the pages of the august publication The New Yorker which induces its reader to dry heavee while reading the said sentence on the J train, much to the displeasure and discomfort of his fellow passengers. Today's sentence comes from Atul Gawande's essay on itching called, The Itch. Without further ado, presenting "It Came From the New Yorker" June 20, 2008 edition:



One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.’s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.

Please join us next week for "It Came From the New Yorker" and have your air sickness bag ready!

Portrait of The Artist As A Young Punk

When I was just a baby, my mama told me, "Ace, always be a good boy, don't ever pierce your face"
But I shot my face full of metal, just to watch her sigh.
Now when I see those older photos
I hang my head and ask why?

Blogging Live from the Borgata

Right now I am at the Water Club, the new non-gaming hotel in Atlantic City which is adjoined by a long interminable passage way to the Borgata, a newish gaming hotel in Atlantic City. The external architecture is all aviator glasses. Inside--in the gaming portion of the hotel--it smells weird and reminds me of hell. It's a modern voluntary Gulag where the old go to lose their money and the young to lose their youth. I feel like I've somehow entered into an automated phone system like Dennis Quaid in Innerspace. Logic, to the extent to which it exists here, is completely internal. The outside world is sealed off and 27 floors below me. And down there too are sad fat people in khaki and Hawaiian shirts who haven't yet figured out that the house always wins. This perhaps explains why I've blockaded myself into my room where, thankfully, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West is on.