Amy’s Issues, And Jennifer’s Butt

Two of our little blog’s favorite subjects are in the news lately.

Amy Winehouse, who’s always in the spotlight, has been nominated for 6 Grammy awards, including one for Album of the year. Despite the wide varity of her recent issues, Amy is eager to perform in the show. One of the singer’s reps told People Magazine, “Amy is thrilled to be nominated for six Grammys and is very much hoping to attend. She is determined to be ready and well for that performance. It’s a really difficult time and she’s been channeling it into her music.”

Jennifer Love Hewitt, who just recently announced her engagement to actor Ross McCall is now suffering the wrath of all sorts of gossip websites, and all because of some unflattering pictures of her that appeared on the cover of People Magazine, wearing a bikini … If this new obsession with Love Hewitt’s butt suggests that we’ll hear less about Britney’s, it’s great, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen…

Why The Island Called “Lost” Should Perish Forever

I’m a lover scorned. A meerkat whose mother has been viciously killed by a snake leaving me to make my way thru the wild without any well-trained defenses or line of attack. I’m Rambo without any ammo and Schwarzenegger without the Kennedy connections and steroids that made him.

I’m also fed up with the writers’ strike and feeling pangs of loss that can best be expressed thru the myriad of metaphors above.

And how it could potentially affect my January, no wait my FEBRUARY? That’s right, Lost fans will have to wait till February now to see just where things left off post-Looking Glass. Given that the show’s executive producer is claiming that only 8 shows have been written out of the regular 16, and that the final 8 will tie up all the loose ends presented in the first 8 (and that I happen to LIVE for resolutions), you can understand why the writers’ strike is getting me down.

I can do without Leno and his glib comments to Halle Berry, grimace at Tina Fey as she takes to the picketing stands (she is an executive producer after all) and bands with her fellow starving artists (?), but seeing writer/creator/executive producer Damon Lindelof lament the plight of writers (and himself) not getting their/his share of the moola generated by all the new media around makes me wanna lose the one I’m with and start a new relationship.

We understand fame and new-found fortune is enough to even make a decent man turn to debauchery. But really, how long do the producers at Lost think that they can play with their fanbase before their numbers of viewers start to diminish?

Lets Go Red Sox

After 12 years it’s about time… Red Sox clinch A.L. East. Yenkees suck!!!

Is YouTube Really A Web 2.0 Site?

As if social networking sites weren’t over-populated enough (hint of sarcasm) in the webosphere, TechCrunch just posted an insightful piece on the lesser-known, but deep-pocketed Web 2.0 sites that are worth noting. Among those profiled, the Palo Alto-based Ning, which visually reads a lot like Vox, but with a less hipster targeted demographic and helps members with guided instruction make their way through the sinuous road of social networking, and New York City’s KickApps, which plays for the more seasoned web guru i.e. developer and supplies users with applications to build communities/networking platforms on their own sites. Absent from the list was Spock, a cleverly named social networking site, which Irina Slutsky of PodTech invited me to see the other day. Read More…

Amy Winehouse ODs…Well Kinda, Anyways?

NME reports that our beloved MOT equivalent of Diana Ross, aka Amy Winehouse is currently in a hotel in London recovering from what appears to have been a drug overdose.

Reports have suggested that Winehouse suffered from a drug overdose at 1am on Wednesday (August , and was treated with an adrenaline shot before her stomach was pumped.

Anyone else find it mildly perplexing that Amy is convalescing in the warm, homey environs of a hotel? Anyways, talk-of-town post OD rumors was the Amy was entering rehab, but as fate would have it, her publicist dismissed that rumor with a “no, no, no.”

Winehouse overdosed on August 10th. Only two days earlier, she was nominated for 3 MTV VMA awards including Female Artist of the Year and and Video of the Year. Precluding any potential rumor of Winehouse succumbing to the pressure, and falling prey to its folly, one can only hope she’s emotionally and mentally in better shape when Grammy nomination time comes.

Katie Couric Admits To Smacking Bitches Up

When one associates slapping with the workplace, there are certain professions that spring to mind. It’s not a gentlemens’ vocation, but surely broadcast journalism doesn’t fall under the career paths of those seeking use of violence over words. Then again Katie Couric isn’t your traditional journalist. If one is so kind as to include Couric in this category.

Regardless, reading in the past few days of her career downturn and all the ugly doings surrounding it, I can’t help but feel sympathy even when I learn about her method of releasing steam (slapping co-workers who say words she finds curiously reprehensible) and her inability to remain confident in the face of harsh criticism directed at CBS Nightly News plummeting ratings. And to top it off having to endure the flagrant wrath of former CBS anchorman/cowardly henchman Dan Rather (once CBS’ own black sheep) jump on the “Let’s Lynch Dumbing it Down, Tarting It Up Katie” wagon just makes me feel plan ‘ol something or other for poor Katie.

Alls she wanted was a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T and some promise she wouldn’t end up in an early grave co-anchoring Dateline and staring at Stone Phillips impeccably buoyant locks everyday pondering why her hair couldn’t withstand the same humidity. Can’t fault a girl for trying to avoid that destiny.

Get Thee To Rehab

Because we love Amy Winehouse at Amaldo.com, we’re disheartened to hear more bad news from London where she stormed out of a restaurant when friends confronted Amy after she ordered only vodka, champagne, and 7-Up. Unhappy with her friends’ concern/re: criticism of her choice in libation, Amy left the restaurant. The jazz-pop singer has been in the news lately after a much-publicizedcutting episode and for pulling out of concert engagements.

For more updates on Amy’s erratic behavior, click here.

Silencing Perez Hilton

Internet Gossip Blogger Extraordinaire Perez Hilton aka Mario Lavandeira aka the Gossip Gangstar is a well-known pop fixture on the Hollywood socialite/drag queen scene. He’s not only accrued notereity through his blog and the legions of people (myself included) who visit each day to catch a glimpse of “The Hills” Heidi Montag’s breast and mouth augmentation, but he’s even relatively respected in media circles. He’ll be playing guest host over at “The View” later this month and made a special appearance at this year’s Canadian Much Music Video Awards (think MTV Movie Awards minus the Paris Hilton purgatory of paparazzi) earlier this month.

So it’s with a heavy heart that I say that Perez Hilton’s copyright infringement violations have finally caught up with him - at least for the short-term. Hilton has been accused of stealing photos in four separate lawsuits initiated by eight different photo agencies. It was reported earlier today by Variety that the site’s webhost Crucial Paradigm stated that if they received one more notice of copyright violation against PerezHilton.com they would take the site down immediately.

It looks like Crucial stayed true to their word because today they took official action and pulled the site down. And unfortunately for those of us gossip mongers, as of 9 PM tonight, you still can’t access the site’s archive nor are any of the links to the actual posts functioning properly. There is a skeleton in place but not too many photos, unless you could the one that likens the wrestler Chyna to former star of “The Practice” and on-and-off Jack Nicholson flame Lara Flynn Boyle. Quite honestly, the similarities are a bit disturbing. But I suppose with enough plastic surgery, Neil Patrick Harris might actually appear straight on “How I Met Your Mother.”

“Heroes” Rant Part 2

Ok Heroes: Last night’s episode sucked big time, too many commercials and nothing happens. A soap opera is more dynamic then what we saw yesterday. So here is the deal, there are 2 episodes left for the season, all you need to do is save the Cheerleader, and then save the fu#$% world. If you can’t do it by the end of this season, you lost a viewer. I will stop watching this show for good.

 

And to boot, I see that Beth has already wrote a post about “Heroes” today…

SNL Buddies

“I believed Saturday Night Live just wasn’t that funny. Oh sure, there were always random moments of savage comedic brilliance, but most of the time I felt as though I needed a few shots of Johnny Walker Red and a bong hit to get most of the sloppy, lazily-written bits to work.”

New York Times Poo Poos Bloggers

Since the dawn of time, NY Times owner has been b*tching and moaning about bloggers ruining his precious paper and sh*tting away revenue at the seams. Next week is the annual shareholder meeting for The Times and Gawker managed to weed through the report to give us all juicy snippets of the content and possible agenda items.

My favorite is this:

“The proliferation of nontraditional media, largely available at no cost, challenges the traditional media model, in which quality journalism has primarily been supported by print advertising revenues. If consumers fail to differentiate our content from other content providers, on the Internet or otherwise, we may experience a decline in revenues.”

Oh Sulzberger will you give it a rest already? Didn’t ya know that no one subscribes to, let alone buys that elitist line anymore? If you hadn’t yet noticed, your precious content smells the same as everyone else’s.

We Need A Makeover, Not A Code

Censorship in the media, on radio and in the blogosphere is the hot topic du jour. No one can stop talking about Don Imus, the senile radio personality with the obnoxiously loud voice (Ever notice that men more often tend to raise their voice to get a point across as opposed to using their words? Disclaimer: My husband is the exception in this case. I’ve never met a more verbal male. He speaks like two languages well and two others proficiently and his biggest dream is to master every language known to man and woman. )

But back to Imus and his racially charged comment and the fact that the radio only demanded some course of apologetic action when there was a public outcry. Why are we taking this man’s words seriously when they are being uttered from anything remotely attached to that coif? Isn’t the onus on us to carefully evaluate our sources before attaching any credibility to them? Sure Imus is a dipshit, but so are we for creating the guy.

Gender as pertains to blogging is a very personal affair for me. As I posted on Jewlicious today:

Female bloggers are more often left comments that are more personally slanderous and potentially hateful because of their personal nature whereas male bloggers are usually disputed on more philosophical and/or abstract terms that are far less personal.

The level of harassment internet blogger Kathy Sierra faced at the hands of a bunch of people who didn’t like what they read is unconscionable in any society (even if it’s pretty commonplace in Egypt) but it’s also symptomatic of greater social issues that people don’t wanna pay too much lip service to. The fear that stems from such an incident usually spawns a drastic superficial action and a lot of the time, way before people are ready to embrace it. Coincidentally, for every Kathy Sierra, there’s also an Esther Kustanowitz who was ridiculed in a comments thread for her appearance by “drunks” not too far back. Or a Natali Del Conte, a tech blogger at the well-known and revered site TechCrunch who left the site after only three weeks and cited personal attacks and sexism in the form of a comments thread as a motive behind her exit. Having read her posts at the time, I can assure you she wasn’t exaggerating.

We’d rather talk about a blogging code of conduct and censorship police or ban Imus from MSNBC than check people as we go along. I agree with the code of conduct in that it makes people more responsible for their actions and also bestows upon co-bloggers a sense of shared accountability. I can’t tell you how many times my posts have been buried with antagonistic comments and how my “thick skin” felt the edge of the blade graze my skin ever so slightly every time and even more so when no one was “sticking up” for me.

Blogging isn’t for sissies, but it shouldn’t be a playground for bullies either and more often than not it is. Hiding behind the anonymity of the internet by assuming a phony username/nickname much like in that ever-popular game Second Life affords people the opportunity to adopt a different persona. This virtual reality presented in Second Life is a fantasy platform of course and the internet isn’t (well sorta), but since the dawn of internet time people have used the internet primarily for porn and what is porn if not fantasy? What is aggression then without a nice comments thread ripe with daggers and a suitable blogger target to release the tension and anger on some random person we think we’ll never meet.

It’s scary really how Lord Of The Flies primal behavior becomes and the groupthink social dynamic that emerges. But given how the “real” world has policemen, I guess it only makes sense that our microcosmic “second life” follow suit.

TV’s Oldest Spot

Judging by its format, it seems as if the good folk over at CBS “Sunday Morning” are still quite surprised that TV is now in  color. Let alone not funded by state-run Socialist programming. However because of my wife’s compulsion to watch the show every week, I was forced to watch it and now find myself actually enjoying the segments. It’s like a TV blog and fo those of you who are early Sunday morning birds (as we are) I urge you to watch.

So I’m Loving AOL, So Shoot Me!

 

TV Follow Up # 2

 

I was wrong, and I guess not for the last time in my life. A couple of weeks back, I wrote about the NBC show “Heroes” and complained about the second season. Well, sorry Tony, you were right of course. Anyway, Tim Kring, creator of the show revealed to SCI FI Wire first-season finale will comprise the last three episodes of the year, will bring all of the main characters together in New York—and will ultimately result in the death of one or more heroes. The last new episodes of the season will air on April 23.