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Morning Wood
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Song of the Day: '50ft Queenie' by PJ Harvey
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Shirtless Tommy Robredo Means Business
The injured-of-late Spaniard is giving his comeback two thumbs up, although I'm still completely fixated on what he does with those digits in the boudoir.
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What Would Ryan Lochte Do?
Apparently lie through his teeth, according to prosecutors in Rio. He and teammates Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and Jimmy Feigen should be prosecuted for what amounts to the biggest anti-tourism ad in the history of travel. Just shameful.No wonder he was so blasé about the whole thing.
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Card Times
The guy at work who eats his dinner out of a Pyrex dish, clanking nonstop for 15 minutes every night should look for one of these on his desk once I find a suitable printer.
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Meet Six-Time Italian National Wrestling Champion Daigoro Timoncini
While I realize the pool of great-looking Olympic athletes is deep and wide, I'm officially ready to go on the record as saying 6-foot, 212-pound Italian Greco-Roman wrestler Daigoro Timoncini is hands down the hottest of them all. Eighteen evidentiary photos -- including a jaw-dropping Speedo shot -- HERE.
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Circus-Peanut Americans Rejoice!
So grand, but shouldn't we have waited to unveil this until after Donald Trump finished his term(s) in office?
Teddy Roosevelt in Central Park
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Page 1 Roundup (08/19)
Ryan Lochte is everything the world hates about Americans / Read HERE.
Ryan Lochte and Olympics teammate Jimmy Feigen may face criminal charges in Brazil for bogus robbery report / Read HERE.
A Symbol of Syrian Suffering / Read HERE.
At the Anarchists’ Convention, There’s Not Much Structure / Read HERE.
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Morning Wood
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Song of the Day: 'If You Leave Me Now' by Chicago
I don't even know how I started singing this very loudly in the newsroom yesterday ...
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Grooming Employees
Even our training modules at work have been run through the Scruff app.
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10 Things About...Woody Allen's 'Interiors'
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Roger Federer's Sheer Animal Magnetism
Remembering the life and times of Roger Federer ...
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How My Summer at a New York Tabloid Changed Me, or Why I Won't Miss Gawker Much
It's unfortunate that it's come to this for Gawker -- was a 101-second edit of Hulk Hogan having sex really worth hanging your hat on? -- but not all that surprising. When I started my blog in 2005, I would sometimes get asked if I ever wished I could do it as my full-time occupation. The answer was an empathetic no -- I was two years into my dream job at The New York Times, and the idea of blogging from home without the camaraderie of a newsroom didn't appeal to me in the least. But when I got laid off in 2010, the idea of working for blog like Gawker definitely appealed to me. While I never got hired there -- God knows I tried! -- the equally snarky New York Post took a shine to me after reading some blog posts I submitted. ("You sound fun! Would you like to start Monday?" was the reply I got.) After years of copy-editing, writing and getting bylines in the nation's fifth-largest newspaper was exhilarating if not a little bit scary. But that summer started out with a bang, and before I knew it I was having the time of my life -- even being sought out by colleagues who wanted to compliment me on my witty turns of phrase or a funny lede I'd written.
Writing about Naomi Campbell's blood-diamond trial and getting PAID for it? Sign me up!
By the end of the summer, my totally fun boss was telling me she wanted to make an honest (wo)man of me. I had just turned 43, so was eager to be on staff again somewhere and told her I'd love to join the team. But then one night the news broke that the 17-year-old daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Thailand had died. She had apparently been out drinking at a nightclub in the Meatpacking District, and wound up at an after-hours party in a luxury high-rise building where she'd stepped out on the window ledge to take a selfie and plunged to her death. It was a tabloid's wet dream, and I happened to be the person assigned to write the piece while two others helped me pour through her social-media posts to get a better idea of who she was.
As I looked through her Facebook pictures, I saw a pretty young girl with a lovely family and everything to live for. I thought of my own little sister and how I would call her when I got home from work. But deadline was approaching, so I submitted my first draft, perhaps written through the lens of a big brother. The editor on duty immediately came over to my desk and shouted, "What the hell is this?" I kind of froze, which angered him more, and before long the woman who had hired me (who was above him) came over to me. She tried to smooth things over and gave me an idea of what they were "looking for," My stomach turned to knots, but I knew I had to give it another shot. When she walked away, the angry editor started to urge me to include any vaguely racists comments she'd made on her social-media accounts ("This neighborhood is so ghetto" she posted from D.C.) and to rip her to shreds for being a girl of such privilege who squandered it all by being so spoiled and self-destructive. As I tried to craft the story, all I could think about were her distraught parents and her brother, who were undoubtedly in the midst of enduring the most painful thing anyone could imagine.
The Herald Towers building where Nicole John died.
Although I knew the larger-than-life way she had died was newsworthy -- she fell out of a window and plummeted to her death in the middle of New York City -- I also knew she was a private citizen who did not deserve to be raked over the coals because of a bad decision she had made. One that had cost her her f**king life, no less. After another 15 or 20 punishing minutes, I finally turned in my revamped copy. I had never seen the show, but the woman who hired me had suggested a "Gossip Girl" angle so I just ran with it, still omitting many of the unsavory details my editor had insisted be included.
The Village Voice didn't like what it saw, either.
I quietly slid out of the newsroom that night, and a much meaner version of my story ran on the front page the next morning with my name on it. And I never worked another day at the New York Post. The promised job still hadn't come to be, and I think it became obvious to everyone concerned that I just didn't have the stomach for it anyway. (Nasty blogger Kenneth, who was once banned from commenting on Gawker for being "too mean"!) All of this is a long way of saying my opinion of tabloid journalism changed dramatically that summer. And then watching what Gawker put (private citizens) Justine Sacco and David Geithner and writer Mary Elizabeth Williams through -- not to mention the countless number of other everyday people whose names I didn't remember who Gawker viciously took apart who had no way of fighting back (we recently learned how Gawker's then-editor mocked a young woman who begged the site to delete a video of her drunken sexual encounter inside a bar bathroom stall that the editor later acknowledged was "possibly rape") -- reiterated what I had somehow forgotten: that there are some boundaries in journalism that we must observe on our own no matter what rights are afforded us by the First Amendment. Everyone should be very concerned Peter Thiel is in a position to decide what constitutes journalism. But that doesn't mean another rich white man should be allowed to decide what's news (i.e., another man having sex in the privacy of his own home) and what's not with impunity. My feeling has long been that Nick Denton is like the bully who showed up at the playground only to find his prey brought along a bigger kid. And whether it's entirely fair or not, Gawker -- which The Washington Post reminds us had many talented writers -- came to symbolize that the anti-privacy/anti-decency pendulum had swung too far in the other direction. This is the reason I had long ago stopped regularly reading Gawker and why even its supportive new owners want nothing to do with it. Well, that and because it became boring, repetitive and seemed to think its Kristin Cavallari "coverage" was cute.
UPDATE:
Worth a read HERE.
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Ryan Lochte 'Apologizes' for His 'Role' in Rio Robbery He Fabricated
Wow. With wording like this he would make a great disgraced politician.
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Did Pokémon Go Assholes Ransack the 'Brady Bunch' Home?
Wow, two Brady real-estate stories in one week? Just days after Eve Plumb made a cool $3.8 million selling her Malibu beach house comes news that the famous Brady Bunch house in Studio City, Calif., was broken into -- while the elderly woman who owns it was inside. (Alice, perhaps?):
Intruders broke into a rear door and ransacked the downstairs before moving upstairs, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. The elderly homeowner was woken up when she heard the burglars broke a door upstairs. She called 911 as the burglars fled, the LA Daily News reported. The homeowner was uninjured and it wasn’t clear if anything was stolen from the house, which is also a stop for Pokémon Go. A neighbor told the newspaper that the homeowner had been beaten two years ago in an attempted robbery. The two-bedroom, three-bathroom home was featured in exterior shots of the ‘70s sitcom about a blended family with six kids. The single-family home was built in 1959 and used throughout the five-season run of “The Brady Bunch.”Poor lady. But at least she has more bathrooms than the Bradys did!
I never understood why people used to tell me my childhood home looked like Mike and Carol's, but I guess I sort of see it now!
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On the Rag, Vol. 421
A weekly look at what's making news in the free gay mags:
Lavender (Twin Cities): Playing for the Other Team: Insta-stud Simon Dunn Isn’t Wasting Time / Read HERE.
QX (London): All about secret gay London / Read HERE.
GT: Orlando survivor Angel Colon takes first steps by himself since shooting / Read HERE.
Get Out!: Meet music video director Mikhail Torich HERE.
Next: Iman Le Caire, Queen of the Pines / Read HERE.
Britney Spears and Colton Haynes Create Gay Magic on Stage (Video) / Watch HERE.
Metro Weekly (D.C.): Ricky Martin on the power of music, Pulse Nightclub, and why he supports Hillary / Read HERE.
Next (South Florida): Local Entrepreneur Set to Rock Fort Lauderdale With New Bar / Read HERE.
Gym Bar Bartenders Relax at the 5 Elements Spa / Read HERE.
Gloss (SF) Locoya’s IJWFD Celebrates 5 Years / Read HERE.
The Boys of Jake Biondi’s ‘Boystown’: From Book to TV / Read HERE.
Echo (Phoenix): Roxx spokesmodel shares why networking is always ‘worth a shot' / Read HERE.
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Jack Riley, Mr. Carlin on 'The Bob Newhart Show,' Is Dead at 80
God, the hits keep coming. Jack Riley, who played Elliot Carlin on "The Bob Newhart Show," died today in Los Angeles. He was 80. Riley’s wife, Ginger Lawrence, told Deadline he died of pneumonia and infection. The toup-wearing, misanthropic real-estate tycoon was always my favorite patient of Dr. Hartley's. His interaction with Carol Kester (Bondurant) was always a joy, which will take on a special meaning now that they are both operating out of Rimpau Medical Arts Center location in the sky. RIP.
Mr. Carlin with Carol and Jerry (Peter Bonerz) at the TV Land reunion!
Also ...
Oh, my god. I'd be derelict not to mention the passing of Arthur Hiller, who directed some of the biggest films of my childhood ("Love Story,""Silver Streak,""The In-Laws") and one of my all-time favorites, "The Out-of-Towners." Read his New York Times obituary HERE.
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#WhiteLivesMatter in Jupiter, Fla.
Could someone please explain to me why the police have no problem apprehending ALIVE this man who resisted arrest, fought off five officers and multiple tasers and a K9 dog -- who had just murdered two people and eaten one of their faces off -- but the only way they can "apprehend" black men selling CDs and loosie cigarettes on the street is to shoot them dead? I also don't buy that the "face-eating frat boy" was the perfect angel his friends and family are making him out to be when their reaction to his getting up from the table at a restaurant where the service was slow was to CALL THE COPS! (Who does that unless they're dealing with someone with a history of erratic behavior?) Read HERE.
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Meet KIT212's Newest Blogroll Friends!
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