The press conference was called suddenly and without warning, and the line leading up to the press conference was simply that she wasn't going to run for her office again.

First, the bizarre, kinda teary announcement:

Even Politico got hosed, sending out a breaking email alert before the conference started about Palin not running for her next term as Alaska's governor. Palin then went ahead with the resignation and didn't let on anything about the presidential run. "I know when it's time to pass the ball. Some are going to question the timing of this. This decision has been in the works for a while," she noted.

Says Gawker's John Cook:

"They clearly deliberately leaked that she wasn't going to run for re-election an hour or two before the announcement in order to muddy the waters and get the "setting up for a presidential run" line out to blunt the obvious conclusion that a shoe is about to drop...."

So people are convinced: some shit went down, and someone's definitely got something. Any ideas? To the Twitteratti!

Gawker's Nightman to Gabriel Snyder's Dayman, The Cajun Boy, hears something pretty substantial:

Original Defamer editor and blogger Mark Lisanti is going with the Jimmy Hoffa school of thought:

Sarah Palin doesn't know she just resigned!

Jason Calicanis is trying to start a meme. Lisanti has yet another theory!

CNN's Rick Sanchez thinks she might be pregnant again!

Mark Drapeau at True/Slant thinks she should be working on her personal brand, looking towards the future: "Get your voice out there - start writing for True/Slant or The Daily Beast, put up 5 minute videos with your raw opinions about news or issues on YouTube, and start experimenting more with things like Twitter, Seesmic, and 12 Seconds when you're mobile."

Yes, the Real World: Cancun had its first obligatory The Roommates Who Hate Each Other/The Roommates Who Fuck Each Other episode last night, and it just sort of farted into existence, all quiet and smelly, as if MTV was splayed out on the neighboring bed, our hotel room ruined, that cruel beach sun slanting in through the curtains, reminding us that day has arrived but our hangovers have not left. These kids are just sort of dull, the half-baked sorta people you'd see on a show like Fear Factor where personality doesn't matter. You just have to be trashy and scrappy and thoughtless. And these kids have that in spades!

So the two couples were:

Those That Hate
Swoony rockerbilly Joey likes to antagonize girls because he's a little pissant punk-wannabe with that kind of sitting-at-the-back-of-the-class bravado that's, oh you know, catnip to some of us. The girl he most likes to antagonize, because she is ridiculous, is Ayiiiiiia. They fight about basically everything. She walks around like she owns the place, he has mysterious herpes on his lip, he says mean sarcastic things to her, she yells about cigarettes, and then he spits in her taco. Yes m'am JoJo done up and spit in that girl's damn taco when they had been out there after the club tryin' to get theyselves some food. This was in retaliation for Ayiiiiiia running down the street and shrieking "Herpes on your lip! Herpes on your lip! You've got herpes on your lip!" It actually turned into a little song and I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a pot and a wooden spoon and paraded around the house banging them together, as if Ramona Quimby were a sad lonely 26-year-old in Brooklyn, sing-chanting "Herpes on your lip! Herpes on your lip! Everybody's got herpes on their lip!" It was a fun song, and a fun moment, until my roommate came up and spit in my taco. Well, I actually didn't have a taco and she didn't spit, but she did give me a withering look that seemed to say Only one more month..., but on the show Joey did, in fact, spit in the lady's taco. So that started a whole clusterkaduddle and everybody was yelling and Fuckface from UMass got involved and started getting upset.

So the girls were out on the balcony complaining about Joey and eating the tacos that had not been spit on. Those bitches really wanted some tacos. I mean, that's commitment. Inside the other roommates were just unsure what to do. Hilariously, the girl from Cadillac Stevens' Foodhut, Jonna, was sitting on a couch-bed eating rolls of ham of cheese. Like taking deli-sliced meats and deli-sliced cheeses and rolling them up into little cylinders and eating them. It was very funny because we've all been there, or at least I have. Points to you, Jonna. So everyone was confused and eating ham and cheese and Joey still wasn't done being in attack mode so he strode out onto the veranda playing a song called "Nobody Cares About Your Spit Taco" and the girls got so mad that they threw water at him and some of the water went into his guitar. His thousand-dollar guitar that is partly electric and now it's ruined. So Joey went to another balcony and cried and Derek the Gay tried valiantly to take advantage of him in his time of need (someday, Derek! believe in yourself!) and everyone was sad. Well, the girls didn't care. Ayiiiiia thought it was funny. Because Ayiiiiiia is annoying. I think I hear Joe Rogan calling, m'dear. Go be on that show.

Anyway, eventually the next day or whatever Joey apologized to Fuckface and she was all "Aw, I love everyone," and then later he took a walk with Ayiiiiiia and they brokered a tentative peace accord. Derek unzipped his fly and unleashed the doves from his pants and there they fluttered and flapped, into the silver-streaked azure sky, looking like souls should look, dancing. Then they decided it would be funny to pretend for the other roommates that they'd just gotten in another fight and she'd hit him so they ran back home and put on a show where Joey raged and Ayiiiiia threw things and all the other roommates were like "Ohhh, she's going home" and hilariously no one seemed to be unhappy about that but then oh ha ha, Ayiiiia and JoJo gave each other a hug and the roommates said "Aww, we're friends again!" and Derek unzipped his pants and instead of releasing more doves he just looked plaintively and expectantly at Joey, though he looked in vain. Everyone just sort of cleared their throats and said, OK, yeah, and slowly walked out of the room and Derek stood there alone, bare feet on the cold marble, a clock ticking off in some other room.

Those That Mate
Binky and Jonna are in love. Binky and Jonna are in love but there's nothing they can do about it because Jonna has a boyfriend back home in Sunstain, AZ and she's so loyal to him. She's so loyal to him that when she's grind dancing and spooning in a hammock and gratuitously hugging and talking about making out with Binky, all her thoughts are on her boyfriend. Every one of them. Every thought other than Man I want to fuck this roommate, every single other one, is about the boyfriend. Binky is upset because he broke up with his lady, and c'mon it's Can-fuckin'-cun, let's partay down. Invested in this whole lovers' duet more than more than the actual lovers is creepy Bronne. Creepy Bronne looooves to call Binky "the Heartthrob" and he's always smirking and leering while Binky and Jonna dance or flirt or dry hump in a vestibule, staring right at them, with intense bleary eyes. He's a creeper. At one point when Binks and Jinx were spooning in the hammock Bronne walked out wearing a wig and tapped out Jinkies and got next to Binky and Binks, thinking it was Jinx, pulled him in close and said "Mmmm..." You'd think that would be one of the stupid things I make up to entertain myself while writing these things, but it's not! It actually happened! Bronne walked out wearing a Jonna wig and spooned with Binky. He will murder someone. And he will murder them hard.

Anyway, at the clurrrb Binky tried to kiss Jonna on the mouth-hole and she was all "Nunh unh!" and later she called her boyfriend and said "Why would you think that I want to be with anyone else?" while her foot massaged Binky's crotch and she sat there naked drawing an arrow on her tummy that pointed down to her unmentionables.

So, they're totally gonna do it.

All Those Other Things That They've Done
Oh, and, they got their jobs! Yeah yeah yeah! They'll be working for Student City, an underground luxury travel agency for sex tourists and date rapists. They met their boss, the dimwitted Christina, and she told them the rules. And the Rules, my friends? The Rules are pretty goddamned strict. The Rules are:

- No drinking in front of clients.
- No sexing the clients.
- No smoking near clients.
- If you murder a client, make sure you dispose of the body in a manner befitting Student City's new Go Greeen! initiative.
- If a client murders someone, give them the $700 cash you have in your emergency pouch and point them towards El Salvador.
- Fridays are casual.

Now the whole murdering thing ey'body was aight with, but not that DRINKING RULE. Holy fuck, if I want to go out in Cancun and get shitfaced, that is my right as an American abroad on a television station's dime. That is my RIGHT. Ayiiiiia was especially adamant about this and it was truly beautiful to watch. It was like watching Harvey Milk come speechmaking out of his mother's womb. Like seeing Malcom X first clench his fist. Like stumbling by accident on Susan B. Anthony in the bathroom and her swatting her hand at you or at the door you can't quite tell and yelling "Hey, get outta here!" It was truly something. She brought a little soapbox with her to the Student City interview process, where the kids had to talk to Christina about what they wanted to do for the sex tourists and semi-professional Roofie-appliers. Christina just shook her melony head and said "Sorry, babe, no can do. We can't have anything reflect badly on the company." Which was... wait, what? On the company that organizes low-rent trips for horrid sunburned assholes from Ohio to get drunk and sloppily fuck and do horrible things they'll forever regret? That company? What, exactly, could possibly reflect badly on that company? Accidentally decapitating an old Real World cast member while just trying to get them to shut the hell up? Oh Paula, we hardly knew ye.

So that's gonna cause a problem and everyone will get drunk and several will die. At one point during the Christina Interviews, Fuckface said "I'm a leader." Fuckface works at Hooters. If that doesn't spell leadership, I don't know what does.

I don't know how to end this. So, here:

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY, MEXICO.

In the end, Schmidt, architect of the McCain campaign's wildly shifting meta-narratives and stunts, was smart enough to realize that his hail-mary VP stunt had backfired, terribly. And so his relationship with Palin, a paranoid narcissist, suffered. CBS's Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe are writing a book about Palin, and they are releasing some of its wonderful anecdotes to us, the public, in advance.

So. Remember when it was revealed that Todd Palin was a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party? The publication of that actual fact annoyed Sarah Palin greatly!

Palin blasted out an e-mail with the subject line "Todd" to Schmidt, campaign manager Rick Davis and senior advisor Nicolle Wallace, copying her husband on the message (all of the e-mails are reprinted below as written).

"Pls get in front of that ridiculous issue that's cropped up all day today - two reporters, a protestor's sign, and many shout-outs all claiming Todd's involvement in an anti-American political party," Palin wrote. "It's bull, and I don't want to have to keep reacting to it ... Pls have statement given on this so it's put to bed."

Her reference to a single protestor's sign and "many shout-outs" was indicative of Palin's occasional tendency to take anecdotal evidence of a minor problem and extrapolate it into something far more menacing.
[...]
Schmidt hit "reply to all" less than five minutes after Palin's e-mail was sent. "Ignore it," he wrote. "He was a member of the aip? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks say it is ridiculous. Todd loves america."

That simple and smart response did not work for Sarah, who responded by "adding five more names to the 'cc' box, all of whom traveled on her campaign plane."

"That's not part of their platform and he was only a 'member' bc independent alaskans too often check that 'Alaska Independent' box on voter registrations thinking it just means non partisan," Palin wrote. "He caught his error when changing our address and checked the right box. I still want it fixed."

Haha that is just a straight-up complete fucking lie. This woman! She is pathological! She is not even responding to a question from a reporter, she is straight-up lying to her own campaign strategist, in a really obvious and stupid way. This is not the way normal people behave. This is the way bad children behave when they are caught being bad.

So Schmidt replied-all, again:

"Secession," he wrote. "It is their entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the website shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site. Our records indicate that todd was a member for seven years. If this is incorrect then we need to understand the discrepancy. The statement you are suggesting be released would be innaccurate. The innaccuracy would bring greater media attention to this matter and be a distraction. According to your staff there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews. If you are asked about it you should smile and say many alaskans who love their country join the party because it speeks to a tradition of political independence. Todd loves his country

We will not put out a statement and inflame this and create a situation where john has to adress this."

So yeah, one can see how working with Sarah Palin might be difficult. Neither that nor the admirable straighforwardness of these emails absolves Schmidt of his responsibility for the campaign's miserable failure, though.

Now that they're the proud parents of three chillens, it might be time for the actor couple to bust out of their simply tiny West Village townhouse and into more respectable mansiony digs. Perfect then that artsy power couple Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany sold their Prospect Park West manse last year. A company called Harken Pretty purchased the home for $8.45 million last December, and the Post thinks that simply must have something to do with SJP's production company Pretty Matches. It just must! Whoever bought the palace is gutting it completely. After all the work you put into, Jennifer...

Parker has shown an interest in Park Slope creatively recently, snapping up the rights to Amy Sohn's decadent take on the Park Slope mommy-cult Prospect Park West. It could become a TV series! Because everyone loved Lipstick Jungle so much they'll like it even better when it's about moms! In Brooklyn!

Oh man, get us outta here.

Pic via Curbed

"[There is] no indication that she was [manhandled]," [New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly!!] said of Brooklyn blogger Chrissie Brodigan.

So now The Fuzz thinks they can intimidate citizens, pug dog owners, pukers, and bloggers alike by trotting out the "big guns" to try to shut down our protests? So Ray Kelly thinks this is "an appropriate issue for the Civilian Complaint Review Board to handle," eh?

Well that's actually pretty reasonable.

But dog-in-a-bag L train riders and their supporters will not be muzzled! Ray Kelly, we demand that you—and, hell, Mayor Bloomberg too, at this point—clear your schedules immediately to answer the following interrogatories:

FIRST: Why would you want anything bad to happen to a poor sick pug dog?

SECOND: Do you think pug dogs are cute, or just weird looking?

AND FINALLY: Have you ever gotten sick on a train? If so, explain in humorous detail.

Justice for L train dog puke victims—now and forever!
[NYP]

First, let's briefly recap what we and others have reported so far: The film was set to begin shooting last week. Five days before the start of shooting, director Steven Soderbergh turned in a rewrite of the original script, which was written by Steven Zaillian, that Sony executives, led by co-Chairman Amy Pascal, did not like. The studio felt that Soderbergh, who was insistent that every event in the film had to have taken place in real life, was taking the film in an "artsy" direction that they weren't willing to gamble $58-million dollars on, so they killed it. That's the short version of events according to Amy Pascal anyway.

Since then a few more details about the project emerged. Movieline and Deadspin provided some new information in reports of their own, and today the New York Times has an article that sheds some light on Soderbergh's zeal for authenticity.

One reason was to win the approval of Major League Baseball, which was not happy with some factual liberties in Mr. Zaillian's version. Such approval is crucial in a baseball film that intends to use protected trademarks.

"Typically, on a film like this, we look at it for historical accuracy," said Matthew Bourne, a vice president of Major League Baseball for public relations. "We've been in touch with Soderbergh and Sony, and they've been receptive to our requests."

What baseball saw as accurate, Sony executives saw as being too much a documentary.

All of this brings us to the information provided to us by a tipster who'd been working on the project and has a decidedly different point of view than that of Amy Pascal and Sony.

First and foremost, Soderbergh had been upfront with the direction in which he intended to take the film from the very beginning of his employment. In fact, it was clear to all of us - whether in the Art Department or the Costumes Department, etc. – that Soderbergh intended to use real people to play themselves in the creation of the true story of Moneyball. Additionally, for months Soderbergh had been shooting interviews with real ball players and people from Billy Beane's past, and the studio approved these shoots. How could the studio then at the eleventh hour claim that his approach was a surprise to them? He intended to tell the true story rather than a fictitious version of the story. How innovative.

What exactly is wrong with making a movie accurate? And since when does an authentic film translate as an "art" film? I know numerous people that thought that Soderbergh's approach sounded insightful and interesting and true to the game and what really happened. If baseball lovers and non-baseball lovers alike in my large social network felt this way (not to mention the hundreds of bloggers that were fans of the concept), why couldn't this approach have universal appeal?

Regarding the notion that Sony executives were shocked to discover the direction Soderbergh planned on taking the film:

Soderbergh's script dated June 17, 2009 was not the first script that he handed in to Sony. On June 7th, Soderbergh submitted a draft to the studio with the following note on the first page:

"NOTE: Scenes involving Billy Beane's minor and major league career have been removed from this draft. They will be determined by filmed interviews with scouts, coaches, managers, players and family members who were with him at the time."

Sony executives read this draft. And Sony executives gave Soderbergh their notes. Clearly Amy Pascal did not read this draft – if she had, maybe the drama that began with the June 17th draft could have been avoided.

Another fact: Soderbergh handed in yet another draft dated June 10, 2009 with this note on the first page:

"NOTE: Billy Beane's minor and major league career will be shown via filmed interviews with scouts, coaches, managers, players and family members who were with him at the time. These interviews will comprise approximately ten percent of the film.

"Another ten percent of the film will consist of re-enactments of real events as remembered by the people playing themselves. The purpose of these scenes will be to provide set-up and perspective for subjects, situations, or relationships which currently appear in the screenplay without the requisite/normal amount of context."

Now why in the world was Amy Pascal so shocked (or, rather, "apoplectic" as it was relayed to the production team) when she read the June 17th draft? Could Soderbergh have made his intentions any more clear? Even if these executives did not read beyond PAGE 1, they would have known the direction in which he wanted to take the film – and they should have perhaps reported that to their boss. And maybe, just maybe, if there had been communication with their boss, maybe, just maybe, another avenue could have been taken rather than pulling the plug three days before the film was supposed to start shooting. For instance, maybe they could have delayed principal photography while script/concept issues were resolved.

Our tipster closed with this note:

On the day that Amy Pascal pulled the plug, there were 230 people that were working on Moneyball. Now those 230 people are all out of jobs.

When Soderbergh had to address a stage filled with crew members who were about to lose their jobs, he told us that just as Moneyball was the unorthodox version of building baseball teams, Moneyball the movie was the unorthodox way of making a film. Unfortunately, Amy Pascal does not believe in Moneyball as a concept; otherwise the film would be in its second week of shooting right now.

So there you have it—Another side of the story. All of this is obviously meaningless in the grand scheme of life, not to mention very "inside baseball" (pun intended), but it's so damn fun to talk about. We anxiously await the next bit of backbiting to emerge between the Sony and Soderbergh camps.

Why Did Sony Kill the Pitt/Soderbergh Film Adaptation of Michael Lewis' Moneyball [Previously]
MLB Approval Still Murky as Moneyball Circles the Drain [Movieline]
Money Worries Kill A-List Film at Last Minute [New York Times]
Soderbergh's Moneyball Script Too Real to Get Made [Deadspin]
pic via Vulture

This whole argument is premised on the assumption that we must save newspapers. At the cost of making the internet into an inefficient mess! So Richard Posner, professional smart man and US Appeals Court judge who writes 23,000 words per day, floated the idea of banning links (and more!), so internet cannibals don't keep stealing newspaper content for nothing:

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

Periods, Richard Posner. Try them. To break up text. What you may notice here is that Posner proposes banning linking or paraphrasing copyrighted materials. The problem: this is America dude, we say what we fucking want, amirite?

You can copyright a news story, but you can't copyright the news. "The news" just means "things that happen in the world." What would it mean, in practice, to make it illegal to paraphrase a copyrighted news story? Summing up, for example, political events, or a sports controversy, or even a fashion trend, could be interpreted as paraphrasing copyrighted material. So let's ban talking about anything. And banning links will help us make our references even more obscure, by making it impossible for anyone to refer to source materials! Good idea, Posner. This gross oversimplification makes you look none too freedom-loving!

We all know journalism happens only at newspapers. Better to protect them at all costs than to invest in the murky "future."

This idea is supported by a newspaper columnist! Connie Schultz, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer (who's married to a senator, btw, nothing to see here), also touts the idea of giving newspapers a 24-hour injunction on news they post, during which time it's all theirs, and can't be aggregated by others online.

Fine. You can have your injunction. But you can't stop anyone from discussing, and writing about, current events. As they happen. Go read all those "Twitter Generation" stories you guys are always writing! The idea that it's worth crippling the entire free flow of information on the internet in order to add to the bottom line of newspaper companies is prima facie idiotic. I guess you could also help save newspapers by passing a law that everyone has to buy one every day, or by making it illegal for TV news to exist. That doesn't make those things good ideas.

If Bill Gates pledged to make it so computers could not be operated properly until the user could prove they had read today's Cleveland Plain-Dealer that might save a reporter and he is a monster for not doing so, QED.
[Pic: Chronicling America]

Hopefully you remember the moment to which I'm referring. Glass-eyed Camille is sitting at the fancy club birthday party and chatting up the rumply Russ troll that is Sebastian. See, she was trying to get information out of him so she could run and tell poor pointy-faced Kelli, but she's also a teenage girl and he's a teenage boy that everyone's in lurve with so she was also trying to flirt with him, just a little bit, just a little sad, aching bit. So she asked him some dumb question and gave him a big smile and a little coy head tilt and he just said to her: "You have something in your teeth." And there in the still glass of her eyes, something exploded or crumbled. She laughed and said "Wait, are you being serious?" and he nodded and she covered her mouth and ohhhh holy Anything in heaven, it was just so... We've been there. We've all been there as someone is just so flippant and casual about mortifying you. That she'd been leaning in close, trying to act cool (See, I can talk to boys...) and then there it went, up in smoke like flash paper. Oh man. It just hurt my soul and tickled my funny bone and then poor Camille just sat there, deflated and quiet, while the rest of the party raged on. Agh. A primal scream to you, poor Camille.

Anyway. That was toward the end. So let's cycle back, through whole other series of embarrassments, to other moments of kids being precarious kids.

The evening started with PC and Jessi, eating dinner in a fancy kitchen, leaning against the counter, feeling cool and whatevs about it all. They had their snappy little dialogue that they always have, because they are such dear friends, such dear hearts who are so similar, and PC said that everyone thinks Jessi is a bitch and she slapped him across the face (really, she did) and said "I am not a bitch!" and we were meant to see the irony there, or the contradiction, or whatever, and say "10 points to Bravo house!" or something. But instead I just watched it, slack-jawed on the couch, the sticky night cobwebbing my brain, and thought: Man, Jessi is really really in love with PC and it is sad. And it's true, and it's sad, but it's also pleasingly real in a way. There's a soft hurt that's not manufactured. There's something that Jessi will look back on, in the midst of the college sprawl, and say "Oh, yeah. I did feel that once." And then she'll keep walking. For now, though, it's probably miserable. So, sucks for you J.

Speaking of miserable, dim Kelli went on a date with mumbling Sebastian. Well, she thought it was a date—he brought her cupcakes and she loves cupcakes, she's obsessed, she likes them more than cake!!—but he just seemed bored. She smiled and twinkled and giggled and cooed like she'd learned to do from TV but none of it worked. He just sorta smirked at her and then told her that later that night, he was going to a fancy French restaurant with the apple(core) of his eye, the brave hobo princess Rags McTattershanty. Kelli's face fell and she said "Her? Really?" And Sebastian grinned his jerky playa grin and inside Kelli a sad opera aria'd to its end, a cave door started to close and brave Aida held her heart up to the disappearing sun and then it was time for Sebastian to go.

While Kelli was stuck on a park bench, wallowing in the past, old Rags was skibbling down the sidewalk, her skeleton chorus following her in a grim-yet-cheerful dance macabre, dreaming of the future. The date was on! Since she'd never set foot inside a restaurant except to scuttle in and steal dinner rolls from the plates of negligent old dowagers before getting chased out by an angry chef wielding a rollingpin, she decided she needed new garments. She opened her leather coin purse and sifted through its contents. She had two mismatched buttons, a few kernels of corn, and a gold tooth she'd taken from Smokestack McGee after he'd fallen asleep in the storm drain one rainy night and never woken up. Perfect! It was just the right amount to go to a thrift store and buy some dress-like cloth. While perusing the store with her two hobo compatriots, Loretta Jingles and Barnacle Betty, Rags mused that lord Sebastian probably doesn't even know what a thrift store is. Why, he's probably never had whisker stew, either!

Over in richtown, little PC was feeling blue. PC was feeling lost and strange. Something was changing in him, something he couldn't quite explain. He went to see an old girlfriend of his, a wise girl of 19 who said that he just needed a change of scenery. Needed to get out of that cliched Upper East crowd, needed to shake things up, to open himself up like windows in a shuttered summer house. Let the clean air in. The 19-year-old looked as though she had something else perched delicately on the tip of her tongue, a small sparrow of knowledge, and she almost let it flutter out but PC just looked so sad and so worried just then, on that little black couch, and she decided now wasn't the time. But PC still didn't feel better so he went to see a therapist. You know, the kind of therapist who holds her sessions in the I Dream of Jeannie bottle house and lets the session be taped. PC said that he was very hard on himself, that he didn't let himself show feelings, and the therapist too felt that little sparrow alight on her tongue but she swallowed, gulped it down like so many other people in poor PC's life, and he just stared off at nothing in particular and felt the gears of his feelings grind on in their lonely way.

The Seine gurgled on and the Tour Eiffel sent its searchlight beacon twirling around and around and around, and an accordion played softly while two young lovers, be-do'd Sebastian and worried Rags sat and ate fancy French food. Well, OK. Sebastian got steak frites while Rags, who didn't understand the concept of a menu (at first she just said gruffly to the waiter, "I'll have whatever it is you're cookin' back there"), just had a plain house salad. No dressing. That was it. Oh, teenage girls. Just eat! It'll be OK. I promise. Anyway, the pair talked cute and Sebastian grilled her with questions and she swooned at his French. She said she wanted to be a philosopher. Sebastian was impressed. What Rags didn't tell him is that Hobo Philosophy is very different from Muggle philosophy. Hobo Philosophy is concerned with the deciphering of runes, with the mulling over of how to best jump a moving boxcar, with the History of Soups, with the proper way to tie a bindle, with the true meaning of the phrase, coined by Jewish-Hobo thinker Shlomo Slacks, "There's six ways to get a nickel, but only one way to spend it." Rags didn't tell Sebastian all of this, because she was scared he'd be confused and run away. Probably a good idea. That said, Sebastian was smitten. He walked her home and they kissed on her doorstep.

Kelli, meanwhile, was sitting in a pile of mud with Camille. They were at a spa. Kelli's insides felt muddy, too. All thick and gloopy and brown. She talked to Sebastian on the phone and he told her about the date and the kissing and Kelli wanted to just sink down there into that mud and disappear forever. Float through the Earth and out the other end and then there'd be outerspace where, sure, there are no boys but at least there's no pain, either. Later, she and Camille asked a post-date Rags to come meet them at Intermix so Camille could act like a total weird-o-matic and dig, vicariously, for details about Sebastian. Rags was just amused by the store, saying she could "buy" (i.e. have Phineas Fingersticks cause a commotion while she stuffed it under her tophat) the same shirt at Target for a way lot less. And I liked her then. She was charming and real. But anyway, she eventually let it spill that she'd kissed Sebastian and Kelli fell over dead, her sad, fake "I don't care" smile frozen on her face. Camille and Kelli's corpse invited Rags to a party that a girl named Zoe was having, because Sebastian was coming too and Kelli wanted to see them together. Why, Kelly, why?? Why are you torturing yourself so?? Oh, kids. So dumb.

Zoe is a girl who lives in a hip loft downtown and is friends with Jessi. She and Jessi just have a wacky time together, talking about clothes and doing jokey-joke dances and making fun of bridge-and-tunnel folks and their stupid big SUV limos. Zoe is one of those girls, so stuffed and matted with insecurities and prickly city miseries that she ends up letting herself spill out on the world and be mean. She's the kind of girl who you become friends with in college because she's interesting but then you slowly realize that she's cruel and spoiled and woefully unhappy and you quickly try to unknot yourself from the friendship. And years later, around the time that you're lazy and drunk and nostalgic and about to graduate, you sit with friends somewhere sharing old stories and someone says "Remember Zoe?" and everyone laughs and said "Oh God, Zoe! Whatever happened to her?" And of course she went abroad and never came back and someone saw her at a New Year's Eve party in the city last year and she was just doing coke all night. So, Jessi, I'm glad you have friends who you aren't secretly in love with, but Zoe... I dunno about her.

At Zoe's birthday party, obviously, yes, the horrible incident of the teeth happened and Camille's life was forever ruined. Also at the party: Jessi was mean to Kelli and Camille because that's what the producers have told her to do. Sebastian and Rags danced and sat next to one another and fell blissfully in love and Kelli watched all this from the sidelines and was miserable. She started to tear up and then stormed out and it was just sort of like... But, Kells, m'love. You made this happen! You knew it was going to happen if they both showed up at the same party, but you willed to happen nonetheless. Because teenagers like to hurt themselves sometimes just so they know they are feeling something. Kelli is an emotional cutter. It's sad, but true.

It wasn't all sunshine and posies for the Royal Couple, oh no. Rags was sitting there all happy until she felt a knobby finger tapping on her shoulder. She turned, and oh crap, it was Soots McKenzie, her old flame. They weren't "quite over" or some such nonsense. The child is 15 for God's sake. And yet this wealth of history she has! Oh do come sit with me by the fire, Rags, and tell me tales of old. Of adventures at sea, of knife fights, of loves won and lost, of bathtub gin exploding. Sebastian was really unhappy that Rags and Soots were talking, so he went, like a robot with one particular set of programming, and chatted up other girls, plunking their numbers into his phone, collecting things he would never use, like marbles or decorative plates, that at least look good on the shelf.

But his efforts weren't necessary, as Rags really only had eyes for Sebastian. She shooed Soots away and he went tinkering into the night, whistling a vagabond song and twirling his bone-topped cane. Rags and Sebastian strolled down the street and professed that it was all about them, it was only ever about them, and they kissed and somewhere in another part of town it snowed cold wet snow in Kelli's bedroom.

While all of this drama was going down, lonely PC was waiting for a blind date. He went to some vast restaurant along the park and sat with a bottle of wine, waiting waiting waiting. And she never showed up. After 50 minutes, the date never arrived, and you had to figure that Bravo was just being cruel to this poor lad. And crueler still they will be, when next week the Question becomes concrete and two girls assume he's gay. So this is where PC's story is headed, whether we like it or not (we do), and isn't Bravo wily for trying to trick us.

So, this episode was pretty good, right? I mean, with the dating intrigue and gloomy, torturing Kelli and the ascendancy of Rags McTattershanty to the vaunted halls of Those That Made It Out, those that transcended and skipped up into a new plane. The Hobo folk call these people Mulligans, those that get a do-over at life. Those that marry a Pullman car worker, those that stumble upon a cache of gold bullion while sifting drunkenly one night through the tall reeds down by the docks. Rags has landed herself a richie, and by Hobo law, she'll have to leave all of her old world behind. Goodbye Loretta Jingles! Goodbye Barnacle Betty! Goodbye forever, Smokestack McGee! Thanks for the tooth.

What do you think it was like for poor Camille to watch that misery unfold last night? I wish she was in college now and that it didn't matter, but she's not. She's still moored in high school, still easy prey for all those high school nasties that, unfortunately, gnaw at you forever. But they do dissipate some, dear Camille. I promise you that.

For now you'll just have to gulp it down and try to move past it. And check your teeth. In the mirror or in a polished butter knife. Just to be sure. Be vigilant. Be brave.

And, most of all, carry a toothpick.

Chrissie's version: Her pug got sick on the subway, so she took it out of its bag, then a cop ran up and grabbed her and harassed her and arrested her and said anti-woman things!

The cop's version, courtesy of the New York Post, obv: Chrissie Brodigan is a crazy anti-Semite who went wild on the cop in question—NYPD's first Hasidic cop!

But a witness, Viane Delgado, said Brodigan was the one out of line. Delgado said Witriol "repeatedly" asked the woman to place the barking pug in a carrier she had. But instead, she allegedly insulted him with anti-Semitic slurs and tried to walk away.

"You f—-ing Jew, you're not even human," Delgado quoted Brodigan as saying.

She repeatedly said, "Jewish people think they own everything," a source said.

Ha, really? A little extreme, no? Chrissie denies saying this. Do people really say that, in Williamsburg? Pug owners? It seems doubtful. We're just reporting, here.

No word on whether the pug is still puking, but we will bring you word as soon as this important saga develops further, puke-wise or otherwise.
[NYP. Pic via Gothamist]

That decision comes after an intensive, six-month probe in which investigators scoured financial records and interviewed scores of people.
In the end, the feds found "no criminal exposure" for Ruth, a source said.

The Post says that the government plans to charge up to 10 more people in the Madoff case, and that Bernie's sons have not been ruled out as criminals. But Ruth—dear, beleaguered Ruth—is off the hook. This gives her a chance to collect her $2.5 million settlement and then put our redemption plan into action. In 15 or 20 years, people won't even remember your face, Ruth! Just tough it out.

It could be much worse: Ezra Merkin, the financier who made millions steering investors into Madoff's funds, has been forced to sell his collection of Mark Rothko's to help pay back those same investors. Instead of staring at three parallel lines of varying colors, he will be distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to his ruined clients.

These people suffer as well. On the inside.
[NYDN, NYP. Pic: AP]

Why would any good, patriotic American say such a thing in a discussion about border protection? Because all of our politicians crave is the approval of Europeans and to hold on to their cushy jobs and it's going to take an attack from Bin Laden to wake America up to the fact that our leaders need to use "as much violence as necessary" to firmly establish our place in the world. Meanwhile Beck just sat there nodding his approval.

Yeah.

The neoconservatives aren't even trying to hide their pulling for such things anymore. And these are the same people who revel in cloaking their deranged beliefs in patriotism, mind you.

Happy 4th of July weekend everybody!

Apparently some LA-based flack named Charmaine Blake, "the most famous publicist," is on a date right now with Cliff Clavin from Cheers and couldn't resist blasting out a poorly written press release under the table on her Blackberry.

Poor John Ratzenberger. He's probably trying to put the pieces of his life back together after his ex-girlfriend was almost inspired by a country song to set his car on fire, and now he's on a date with the craziest, drunkest, most publicity-hungry publicist in town. She also has a blog, which is always a sure sign of mental instability.

This is why LA sucks!

via Alex Blagg's Tumblr

Was arrested by police at L train today - ffor a 15lb pug that I took out of his tote bag for throwing up and overheating. Held for very long time - photos and video and about 12 cops involved. Pug okay,. but me, very sad,

Her pug dog threw up in its tote bag on the L train between First Avenue and Bedford Ave, then when she got off the train a cop came up to her and asked her for her ID and she didn't have the ID and the cop cuffed her and pushed her against the wall and said "If you're going to act like a woman I'm going to treat you like a woman," and people were taking pictures and they arrested her and gave her three tickets and said they were going to have her puking pug dog put down but when she finally got to the police station the dog was just behind the desk and the cops were playing with it.

The state of her fellow subway riders is unknown.
[Free Williamsburg via Animal NY]

The South Carolina governor had previously copped to five encounters, all in South America, with Argentine TV reporter Maria Belen Chapur. Now he tells the Associated Press — in a "lengthy and emotional" interview! — that he met with the woman three other times:

• Two nights in Manhattan in September 2008.
  
• Three nights in the Hamptons in November 2008.
  
• One night in New York in 2009 with a "trusted spiritual adviser," to end the affair, which his wife found out about in January of that year.

Wait, didn't Sanford say he went to Argentina earlier this month to end the affair? Yes, yes he did, even though the affair was supposed to be over after that trip to New York. So what was Argentina really about?

Something, perhaps, that would endanger his reconciliation efforts and marriage counseling with hero wife Jenny. Or maybe Sanford resumed seeing Chapur at some point in 2009 after his January confession to his wife, and had to break things off again, in person. This would explain why Jenny moved out only "several weeks ago" despite knowing of an affair since January.

Sanford's initial public mea culpa was forced by an imminent story in the local newspaper, so it's no wonder it was incomplete. One wonders what goods the press used to force the governor's candor this time around.

(Pic: Sanford interview with the AP in his Columbia, SC office today. By AP.)

Wikipedia sums up Vibe unexpectedly well:

The magazine owes its success to having a broader range of interests than its closest competitors The Source and XXL which focus more narrowly on rap music or the rock & pop-centric Rolling Stone and Spin. It also differs from the more staid Essence, Ebony or Jet publications by attracting younger readers of many ethnicities.

It was essentially the black version of Rolling Stone, and its readership grew broader as hip hop became pop music. (Kind of fitting that their last issue had Eminem on the cover). But Vibe hasn't been doing well for a while now; in February, the magazine cut its circulation and frequency, and salaries. Now the music industry is crumbling, and the magazine industry is crumbling, and the music magazine industry is really crumbling.

The recent dead include Radio and Records, Performing Songwriter, and Blender. Vibe probably had the most demographically diverse readership of any major music magazine. Now, the hip hop magazine world is ruled by the shaky Source and XXL, with strong online competition; the trade music sector is still topped by Billboard, incredibly shaky as well; the pop music mag sector is ruled by Rolling Stone, which is a shell of its former self; and Spin, Fader, Paste, and everyone else are just trying to protect their own audiences from the free, and many times much better, online intruders. Hard times.
[Jeff Bercovici at Daily Finance with the scoop.]

UPDATE: We're waiting to hear back from Vibe ourselves, but their latest Twitter message pretty much confirms the worst.

UPDATE 2: Here are the statements from Vibe's editor, and a staff memo from the CEO. From editor Danyel Smith:

On behalf the VIBE CONTENT staff (the best in this business), it is with great sadness, and with heads held high, that we leave the building today. We were assigning and editing a Michael Jackson tribute issue when we got the news. It's a tragic week in overall, but as the doors of VIBE Media Group close, on the eve of the magazine's sixteenth anniversary, it's a sad day for music, for hip hop in particular, and for the millions of readers and users who have loved and who continue to love the VIBE brand. We thank you, we have served you with joy, pride and excellence, and we will miss you.

Danyel Smith
the former Chief Content Officer VIBE Media Group
& Editor in Chief, VIBE

Staff memo from Vibe Media CEO Steve Aaron:

Dear VIBE Team:

It is with a heavy heart that I share some tough news, VMG is closing down effective today, June 30th.

It's been an 16 incredible years since VIBE's inception. There are very few magazines with the richness of history and breadth of talented visionaries who created the powerful lens in which VIBE viewed and shaped urban music and culture.

Ever since I first set foot in this courageous company, I've regarded myself as incredibly fortunate to be be involved with this remarkable brand and group of individuals whose performance has never been nothing short of outstanding. We finished 2008 in an improved position versus the prior year, and accomplished so much, including:

* Editorial Awards
* Editorial transformation into content dept
* New Ad accounts being broken
* The Most Mag Launch
* Award winning re-design
* Profitable digital operation
* VIBE.com growth and improvements and programs such as Best Rapper Ever, #1 Stan, etc
* Mobile VIBE launch
* Micro-site development Mostmag.com to start off.
* V Sessions
* Improved PR coverage

Unfortunately, over the last several months, a confluence of events has obviously posed VMG to exceedingly serious challenges.

* The collapse of the capital markets has impacted us greatly. Over the past several months, we have actively pursued investment resources while working intensively with our bank to find a solution. But the deal market right now remains very poor and at the end of the day, the lack of investment resources to restructure the huge debt on our small company has made this outcome become a reality.
* The print advertising collapse hit VIBE hard, especially as key ad categories like automotive and fashion, which represented the bulk of our top 10 advertisers, have stopped advertising or gone out of business. It's also unfortunate that in a recession many companies reduce the multi-cultural campaigns. These facts, coupled with the continuing decline of the music industry not to mention the newsstand wholesaler consolidation in early 2009 all negatively impacted our business in a significant way.
* The relentless economic situation has depressed our growth initiatives on the digital front. To be clear, VMG has made significant improvement in this part of our business, but not at the accelerated pace required to offset the devastating effects of the most severe recession in our lifetime and the accompanying print losses.

I want to thank you all for your hard work and commitment, and for all of the adventures along the way. I'll miss this place a lot, but I'll miss you all and the magic you create.

Vibe will be remembered as a shockingly brilliant content company that everyone can be proud of and I look forward with great excitement to all of future endeavors you all pursue.

With great affection and respect –

Steve Aaron

former CEO of VIBE Media Group

Earls is a bad man. He raped a little girl and got a ridiculous one-year sentence. But it's still astonishing that last night two grown men openly discussed on national television whether or not it's OK to just up and kill him.

O'Reilly, cognizant of the criticism he received for his role in turning George Tiller into a national villain who was then gunned down by an abortion opponent, managed to struggle through the moral logic of Thou Shalt Not Kill. But Rivera, with a wink and a nod, basically said "Yes." The only reservation he has about someone taking his advice to go out and kill Earls is that they might get hurt themselves.

Here's the gist of the exchange:

O'Reilly: If Earls ever walks out of jail and gets killed, who are they going to blame?

Rivera: ... I can only tell you ladies and gentlemen, that I will not weep if something happens to David Earls. I do not encourage vigilantism. I think it is something that puts your own life at risk. I do not advise it, I do not counsel it. I will not, however, weep if David Earls is found sometime on a country road.

O'Reilly: We obviously don't want anyone to do anything. That would be as morally wrong as what Earls did—to take Earls' life. You can't do that.

Rivera: I don't agree quite with your moral reasoning. You're more moral than I am.

These men actually want people to die.

1. Trying—and failing—to forgive.

Julie Behar lost $2.6 million; her children lost their trust fund; her mom lost millions as well. But now she's started saving again, concentrating on her children's futures, and hoping for the best. She knows that holding anger in her heart is no way to live. How about it, Julie—do you think you can forgive this man? "I'M NOT accepting Bernard Madoff's apology." Ah. I see. Okay.

2. Trying—and failing—to move on.

Let's just focus on what we need to do now, okay? The past is the past. There are so many things to do now. Phyllis Molchatsky lost $2 million and may lose her house, but she's moving on by...losing her faith in the government, the SEC, the American Way, and god. "I think part of me died that day I learned of the fraud, along with so many hopes and dreams for the future." Oh. Well. That's depressing as fuck.

3. RAGE!

This rage is Biblical:

"I told the judge that when Bernard Madoff leaves prison, which means after his death, that he will then go down to the depths of hell where he'll join those other people who are in the mouths of Satan," Burt Ross, the former mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., who lost $5 million with Mr. Madoff, told the crowded press corps outside the courthouse.

You people will die of stress before Madoff does.
[Read em all! And weep.]

I had lunch with a friend at Apple today and as I was leaving the campus I saw Jobs getting into a chauffeured black Lincoln Continental. This was right outside 1IL [Infinity Loop] at about two PM today.

A Lincoln is, of course, not Jobs' usual ride, and the notorious micromanager usually likes to be behind the driver's wheel; his Mercedes is known for turning up in Apple's handicapped parking spots. But Jobs just underwent a liver transplant and is only traveling to the Apple campus a "few days" per week, according to an Apple statement heralding his return to the company today. Presumably, the CEO's health is such that he needs to conserve his energy for activities other than driving, like running a company.

Earlier today, Apple declined to tell Bloomberg News whether Jobs was on campus. The company had good reason to avoid such a discussion: Entertaining that line of questioning might have led to a discussion of Jobs' itinerary and unwelcome question about why the CEO had to leave early, and about his health. More practically, it also would open the company up to endless questions from reporters about where Jobs is on campus that day. Of course, there's a good chance Apple is going to be getting those queries anyway, whether it answers them or not.

Anyone else spot the newly-returned honcho today? We'd love to hear from you.

UPDATE: Last week, Reuters spotted Jobs leaving the campus in a "black car."

UPDATE 2: The original version of that Reuters story last week had Jobs being "driven off by men in black suits with ear-pieces."

(Pic: Jobs at a MacBook press announcement on Apple's Cupertino campus in October via Getty)

Obviously the Michael Jackson story is big news, and the man's father has a right to say what he wants about his dead son, but the twinkly gleam in his eye as he revels in the press attention just chills our blood a little bit, the record company plug being the cherry on top.

Sad that even in death, MJ still isn't free of his scary father.

Earlier: Watch Joe Jackson Stoically Use His Son's Death to Plug a DVD

• Wise Money Management: Your settlement with the Justice Department left you with only $2.5 million to live on—a mighty blow for a 68 year-old woman with little earning power left. Have no fear! With a little skill, you should be able to survive your remaining days without going hungry. Even at a modest 4% rate of return, this principal invested wisely would earn you $100,000 per year. You'll find that a human being can survive on this modest stipend. You're being forced to sell your posh penthouse; that's actually good! Check out Craigslist for cheaper rentals. You can find a roommate there, too. Your hair salon doesn't want your business any more, which will help you save on grooming costs. Try Head & Shoulders. Above all, be sure to invest your money under a different name. Lest something "happen" to it.
• Resurrecting Your Reputation: You should just forget this one. There's no point stressing yourself about it. You'll be despised by a large portion of the public for years. But you can slowly develop enough distance from the fraud to, at least, allow yourself to walk the streets without immediate fear of maiming.
  You haven't started off on the right foot, though. Your post-sentencing statement about being "betrayed and confused" by Bernie's fraud: come on. Betrayed and confused by math, maybe! Didn't you work at his firm? Ha. This tactic will probably fail. Better to downplay the part about you not having any idea what was going on, and play up the meager restitution to the fraud's victims that you plan to make your life's work! You won't be able to make a speck of a dent in the total amount owed, of course. But by making it clear that you will pay back the token amount that you can, it will also make it easier for you to...
• Get a Job: A real job, lady. MTA conductor. Shoe salesperson. Wal-Mart greeter. Well, maybe not a job that necessitates direct contact with the public; could be dangerous. But a job, nonetheless, where you can be photographed—preferably dirty, and sweating—to show the world that you are paying some penance for this colossal crime. You only have to work a few days a week. Then you tithe a percentage of your earning into a fund for victims. A large percentage. 100%, for example! And really, what else do you have to do with your time? It's a winning idea all around. You could even sell paintings, like some serial killers do. Kitsch appeal and all that.
• Move: Don't just move out of your luxury apartment. Don't just move out Manhattan. Don't just move out of New York. Don't just move out of America. Move out of the Western world. Move somewhere like Botswana, or Nepal, or Suriname, where the Madoff scam is not likely to be a topic of discussion for a long period of time. For at least a decade. Get forgotten. Get a haircut. By the time you come back to America (isolated Western or Southern states only) your face won't be branded into the memories of millions of haters quite so distinctly. And then, finally, you can...
• Do Something Good: Habitat for Humanity. Look what it did for Jimmy Carter. Or feeding the homeless in a soup kitchen, while wearing a hairnet. Great photo-op. Do this for the remainder of your years. And do it well. And when you die, give the rest of your money to the victims of the fraud. And maybe, just maybe, your soul will have a chance.

Video clip probably NSFW, BTW!

It's so hard to tell about the general quality of the show, glamored as we were by director Alexander Payne's reliably gentle/tough hand and the nimble work of Jane Adams, as Thomas Jane's pimp, who is one of Hollywood's most criminally underused actors. She gave a fine, nuanced, weird performance last night—spanning from sexual ecstasy to untethered artist sadness to hard-minded pragmatist with natural ease. And Payne's details—his close-ups, his visual aesthetic that's both warm and chilly—provided such a lovely backdrop for this kind of pleasingly lived-in acting.

But Thomas Jane? Hm. He's always been such a conundrum. He was maybe going to break out and be big after The Sweetest Thing and The Punisher and then it just fizzled into nowhere. And he's got that curious face, that bashed-up maybe-handsome, maybe-too-unfocused set of features that can be manly and attractive one minute, and then sort of sad and grizzled the next. It works mostly to his favor, we think, in the role of Ray Drecker, a washed-up high school coach who, in his youth, had a string of opportunities that never panned out (hey... sounds familiar!). Anne Heche ably plays his angry, moved-on wife in a part that could either stay shrill or round out to something unlikable, sure, but undeniably compelling in its true-to-life humanity (see: Nikki Grant on Big Love).

So we like it OK. But we're definitely not in love. We're trying to remember the last time a TV pilot grabbed us and demanded further viewing. Didn't happen for True Blood or, hell, even Big Love. What about over on Showtime? We're sorta liking Nurse Jackie, but it's really only for the same reason as Hung: a wonderful performance by a lead actress amid a sea of other, murkier things. In the case of Nurse Jackie: What the hell were they thinking casting that guy as Jackie's husband? He's like twenty years younger and belongs in some indie about softly strumming guitars in a sparsely-furnished New York apartment, not playing the borough-dwelling owner of a local dive bar. Also, Anna Deavere Smith is sort of embarrassing herself with jokey-joke cameos as a stern hospital administrator. And while Eve Best is a terrific actress, we're not sure that her hyperbolic character—bitchy blase rich Englishwoman doctor with a boatload of Blahniks but no love for children—belongs alongside Falco's more dependably "real" Jackie.

Both of these shows have promise, and we'll stick with them, but we're disappointed that we're not more excited. Not everything can be The Sopranos or Mad Men where we're hooked like suckers from the very beginning, but watching a show out of duty or some pretentious high-minded ideal that this is Good Television starts to feel like work after a while.

Before sentencing, Madoff addressed the courtroom:

"I'm responsible for a great deal of suffering and pain, I understand that," Mr. Madoff told the court. "I live in a tormented state now, knowing all of the pain and suffering that I've created. I've left a legacy of shame, as some of my victims have pointed out, to my family and my grandchildren."

Addressing his victims seated in the courtroom, he said: "I will turn and face you. I'm sorry. I know that doesn't help you."

But after hearing a succession of Madoff's victims plead for a harsh sentence, Judge Denny Chin rejected the Madoff team's pleas for leniency, including their (preposterous) suggestion of a 12-year sentence.

Bernie Madoff will now die in jail.

[NYT, WSJ. Pic: Getty]

The most vexing thing about of all of this is that Silman's review wasn't a trashing by any standard, other than inside of Hoffman's obviously delusional mind of course, but it certainly wasn't positive either. Here's a sampling of the most critical statements by Silman we found in her review:

"...this new novel lacks the spark of the earlier work. Its vision, characters, and even the prose seem tired."

"This heavily plotted part of the book becomes more predictable, yet also more unconvincing."

"...the author doesn't deliver."

"There may be lots of readers who crave books that have their feet planted both in reality and fairy tale, complete with mysterious passages like those introducing each chapter of this puzzling, and, in the end, unsettling book."

It should be noted that Silman also said some nice things about Hoffman:

"...one of my favorite books is her "Illumination Night,'' which amply displays her gifts of precise prose and the ability to create sympathetic characters. I especially remember its evocation of the awful condition we call agoraphobia, as it was suffered and mostly conquered by Vonny."

"This section is described with real skill and precision, and my heart lifted as I began to feel some empathy for this eldest child who has caused such pain, and then goes missing."

"...there are some wonderful passages as the book winds to a close."

But Silman's sprinkling of praise didn't stop Hoffman from acting like a petulant child on Twitter.

This was the first of 27 tweets that Hoffman fired off in response to Silman's review, where she immediately took the high road and called Silman a "moron" for having the audacity to criticize her writing.

Then the blissfully ignorant Hoffman displayed a staggering level of intellectual laziness by obviously not even bothering to Google Silman's name, where she would have learned that her reviewer is not only not an "idiot," but someone with a rather long and esteemed literary career.

Hoffman then went one step further and trashed the paper itself.

Hoffman published Silman's phone number and and email address and encouraged her fans to contact her to give her a piece of their minds.

Hoffman trashed Boston, her hometown, which is actually kind of funny.

Hoffman then brought out the smoke and mirrors in a pathetic attempt to disguise her behavior as feminism in action.

Then Susan Orlean, always willing to enter the writerly fray on Twitter, provoked Hoffman to betray Boston in the worst way possible.

For all the criticisms that exist about writing on the internet, this situation is a bright, shining example of one of the best things about writing on the internet—After a while it thickens your skin to the point where you're easily able to easily differentiate between valid criticism and hateful venom-spewing. At some point, the hateful venom-spewing fails to even faze you any longer, while the valid criticisms are accepted and processed rationally and learned from. Too bad Alice Hoffman never had a blog to help her overcome her hypersensitive ego. She'd be a better writer because of it.

In fact, she should come intern for Gawker for one day like James Frey did! We'll let her write a couple of posts and let the commenters have some fun with her. On second thought, scratch that—She'd probably go on a killing spree the first time someone called her out for using an improper pronoun or misspelling a word.

Regardless, we hope that Hoffman comes to her senses after a good night of rest, realizes that she acted like a douchebag and apologizes to Silman. Anything less would be downright shameful.

Via the Head Butler and Alice Hoffman's Twitter

Update: Hoffman's Twitter account is no more.

The Blu-Ray plugging comes in at about the 3:20 mark, but the whole thing is completely cringe-worthy right from the start and doesn't stop until the very end. To his credit, Don Lemon maintained his composure throughout the interview and resisted what must have been an overwhelming urge to grab Jackson, slap him across his face a few times and shake him vigorously while screaming, "What the hell is wrong with you old man!"

Ominously named The Intelligence Group, CAA's market research subsidiary "builds creative solutions for (their) clients." But their "best known division" is Youth Intelligence. According to their language they're the "premier research group focused on Gen X and Gen Y (ages 14 to 39)," to all of which I say: nice demos.

But: do the higher ups at CAA know that the swarmy pollsters Youth Intelligence put a poll out in the field only a day after Michael Jackson's death, looking to do focus group work on Jackson's demise? The email:

From: YI PANEL
Subject: the passing of michael jackson
To: [Redacted]
Date: Friday, June 26, 2009, 9:05 PM

Hello friends-

The passing of Michael Jackson was a crazy surprise, and has left many of us truly saddened. He was a pretty incredible artist whose influence on pop culture is immeasurable. Because the impact of his music, his fashion, and his talents was felt by so many around the world, we're very much interested in your reaction to his passing.

What does Michael Jackson mean to you?
What kind of impact did he have on your life?
Are you doing anything to memorialize him? If so, what?

It would be awesome if you could send us your thoughts by Sunday night - and thank you for sharing.

The Intelligence Group

Awesome, indeed. We received this email late Friday night; I contacted The Intelligence Group for comment, they have yet to get back to me.

On that note, we've got three questions for The Intelligence Group:

1. Aren't the results of this research ultimately going to be swayed and too varied due to the intense newsdump that's taken place over the weekend to be of any substantial use?

2. Market research one day after Jackson died, with the body still warm, and someone's looking for answers that will eventually lead them to build a "creative solution" somewhere?

3. Won't the gigantic celebrities CAA represents - among them, friends and cohorts of Jackson's, surely - find this a little, uh, callous?

You can reach us here with whatever answers you've got for us. It would be awesome if you could send us your thoughts by the time your CAA overlords read this. And thanks for sharing.

- Gawker Weekend

Via jp1958's Photostream, a marcher in Toronto's Dyke March holds up a sign that reads: Her sign says, "Sex Work is Real Work. Dancers, Escorts, Phone Sex Operators, Massage Attendants, Street Workers, Porn Models, Pro Subs, Porn Actors and Pro Dommes." No doubt, it probably pays more than this as well.
Via anw.fr's Photostream. From the French Pride Parade in Paris. Are French people happy again? Maybe! But seriously, they are probably telling the greatest inside joke ever. Don't you wish you had friends like that?
Via malu teodoro's Photostream. From last week's Pride Parade in Sao Paolo, Brazil. I had a dream one time that I ended up getting on a plane to go to Antartica and ended up in New Zealand, dressed like an eskimo. This is like that, except they were going to Vegas and detoured in Sao Paolo.
Via bettyx1138's Photostream. It's like Michael Alig held a Scooby Doo themed party except he's the one who ended up in prison, and they all took a coffee break. Superb. Tell me they all took the train together.
Via Steve Rhodes' Photostream, revelers from yesterday's Dyke March in San Francisco cheer the parade on from a rooftop in the Mission District. The winged creature is actually native to the Bay Area, and according to several people's parents, has lived there peacefully since 1964, when it fed them a block of cheese and showed them how to get to their hostel before fluttering away into the brilliantly dark night. Not that they remembered that.
More from San Fransisco, via liveintent's Photostream: You are not Glenn Danzig, Sir Purple Of The DayNight. But I wish you were. Oh, how I wish you were.
Again, Via Via bettyx1138's Photostream. In New York: now this is how you rock a pride parade/scare tourists home. I hope you took this to Times Square, honey.
Via Ron,Ron,Ron's Photostream, from the St. Louis Pride Parade: These are the nicest roller derby players to ever live. Don't you just want to hug them? They probably get the shit beaten out of them in the rink by all the mean, non-wing-wearing roller-derby-ers.
Via sassyradish's Photostream, from today's NYC Pride Parade: Plumber's Magical Ginger's Crack? Gold Lame Undies: SOHOTRIGHTNOW. But seriously, I think I wore those in Middle School P.E. Do they say "Hyde Park Middle School" on them? If so, please return to tips@gawker.com.
Via kptyson's Photostream. New York, earlier tod-wait, Aunt Roz?! Hm. If you've ever had Jewish relatives, or know anyone with you Jewish relatives, then you might know that this is what it's like to be "kvelled" or "kvetched" at. This basically sums it up. You're like an acid-flavored shmear from Zabars. Stop it, stop it right now. Seriously.

Ian Halperin, the writer of unauthorized biographies on Celene Dion, Kurt Cobain, and James Taylor, penned a piece for the Daily Mail in which he claims to have predicted the death of Michael Jackson six months and one day ago. It appears that he might be telling the truth. There's a lot inside the article, so we'll run it down, for you. Some of it might have full-bodied shades of truth, some of it could be totally off the mark. At the very least, though, it's all pretty fascinating:

- Ominous Prediction: "Had he not been driven – by a cabal of bankers, agents, doctors and advisers – to commit to the grueling 50 concerts in London's O2 Arena, I believe he would still be alive today."

- Jackson's Exhaustion: He was preparing for a string of concerts nobody in their right mind could've thought he could've completed. While leaving a Burbank studio, he reportedly told fans: 'I don't know how I'm going to do 50 shows. I'm not a big eater. I need to put some weight on. I'm really angry with them booking me up to do 50 shows. I only wanted to do ten.' One of his former employees weighed in to Halperin earlier this month: "It's like he's not in control over his own life any more."

- Dr. Tohme Tohme: Jackson's official spokesman as of last year. Incredibly seedy. Refuted a claim Halperin made that Jackson had six months to live, back in December. Tohme called it a "complete fabrication." An important player in all of this, if only to indicate the people Jackson was surrounded by near the end: "Tohme has been alternately described as a Saudi Arabian billionaire and an orthopedic surgeon, but he is actually a Lebanese businessman who does not have a medical license. At one point, Tohme claimed he was an ambassador at large for Senegal, but the Senegalese embassy said they had never heard of him." At one point, Tohme (associated with the Nation of Islam, more below) threatened an auctioneer's life if he didn't postpone an auction of Jackson memorabilia.

- Image Protection: Jackson had a huge collection of wigs that he used out in public to hide his graying, thinning hair.

- Mental Health: Feelings of despondency and suicidal thoughts started surfacing after his latest acquittal from the 2005 sexual molestation trial involving Gavin Arvizo. He was close to a "complete nervous breakdown." He was being fed "pills like candy" by those around him, who were described as "enablers." He was worried he would end up dying like Elvis (a claim backed by Lisa Marie Presley). He wasn't eating and had nightmares of being murdered. His drug of choice was OxyContin. Then there's this: "On June 21, Jackson told my contact that he wanted to die. He said that he didn't have what it would take to perform any more because he had lost his voice and dance moves. ‘It's not working out,' Jackson said. ‘I'm better off dead. I don't have anywhere left to turn. I'm done.'"

- Halperin/Jackson: Halperin began his work with Jackson believing he was guilty, but changed his mind as time went on.

- Jackson's Sexuality: "It is clear to me that Michael was homosexual and that his taste was for young men." He had two secret lovers, supposedly. One was a construction worker who he went on rendezvous with at a seedy motel in Vegas. The other was a young aspiring actor he invited over to his place in LA for late-night trysts.

- Jackson's Health: He had "Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency," which is a genetic condition that leaves the lungs vulnerable due to a lack of protein. He was receiving injections of a treatment made from human plasma that were fairly effective in combating his condition. Halperin claims sources inside the Jackson camp confirmed that this would explain the wheelchair and surgical masks Jackson could sometimes be seen in public with. He'd lost an abundance of weight in the last few months. People were worried.

- Finances: The Bahraini sheikh Jackson crashed with after the last trial sued Jackson for repayment of what Jackson thought was his "hospitality." Jackson settled on the night before it went to court specifically so his exact financial condition - miserably bad - wouldn't come to light. The only reason any attempts by Jackson to work were made over the last four years were for money. At one point, he was convinced by those around him that he could make a comeback and "be the king" again, however.

- The Beatles' catalog: One of the more insane claims Halperin makes: the only thing standing between Jackson and bankruptcy was his ownership of the Beatles catalog with Sony. Sony's dream was to own the entire thing themselves, and could've repossessed it, but didn't because they were afraid of the bad press it would get them (and potential sales it would cost them).

- Jackson's Will: He has upwards of 200 unpublished songs, the sales and royalties of which are for his children to live off of. His will's going to reveal Jackson's desire for his kids to stay with Jackson's 79 year-old mother, Katherine.

- Nation of Islam ties: Jackson's kids' nanny, Grace Rwaramba, had ties to the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. Rwaramba was supposedly the "Queen Bee" in Jackson's camp. The Nation of Islam supplied Jackson's security detail and started running his affairs. Farrakhan's son-in-law was Jackson's business manager for a few years, but his role diminished.

And there's so, so much more. Halperin's got a book to promote, and again, there's no telling how many of these claims are going to pan out to be true. But a lot of them are certainly strange and sad enough to be true.

The Michael Jackson story (and the story of how it's going to be handled) is going to stay a bizarre, sad one. A week ago, a Michael Jackson joke was classic if not outdated, another pop culture bar room punchline. And now the reality is that these punchlines might manifest themselves into something much more uncomfortable: the truth, without the protection of settlements and PR cover. Maybe Jackson's going to get the sympathy of a public - or a portion of the public - who went from unconditionally loving him to stigmatizing him overnight. Or maybe it's just going to get worse. This one - the way pop culture reflects on Jackson, on his music, and on his legacy - is still very much being written.

'I'm better off dead. I'm done': Michael Jackson's fateful prediction just a week before his death [Daily Mail]

The profile details Ellis' move to L.A. and comes in the middle of his writing the "sequel" to his first book, Less Than Zero (which made him a literary superstar at the age of 20), which is tentatively titled Imperial Bedrooms. The article - which isn't avalible online - paints Ellis as kind of sad and living a very existential, somewhat disconnected life. Also, he thinks The Hills is genius. The full quote, transcribed from print:

He is, however-and on this subject, he is highly animated-a huge fan of MTV's scripted reality series of the young and the monied in L.A., THE HILLS. "I think THE HILLS is the greatest show I have ever seen in my life," he says, sincerely. "It is a modern masterpiece. I think that ADAM DeVILLO is a mad genius. He creates it and controls it perfectly." Mr. ELLIS is very specific about the way he watches THE HILLS. "I'm holding off on Season 4 right now. I started watching a bit of it, but I'm waiting until the DVD comes out because I want to see it all so beautifully mastered. Even if you download the show there is that irritating MTV logo in the corner. It doesn't work for me that way. It has to be on a big screen with the sound right up. It blows me away...I'm sorry, but whoever invented HEIDI MONTAG and SPENCER PRATT are just...nothing matches it. I've never see L.A. look more beautiful in a work of art. There are no movies that are as beautiful as that."

This is why I'm never moving to L.A. Just like The City is why you should never move to New York.

He was also, interestingly enough, called out on a social networking site on a date going out ("BRET ELLIS is not a fan of social-networking sites. He has been "caught out" by someone on a dating site, though understandable doesn't care to flesh out that story. He won't try it again.").

Thing is, this makes an interesting point that I've never really considered before. The Hills is the tame, boring drug-less version of Less Than Zero (note to Hills producers: show them doing blow, and I'll watch). A bunch of severely disaffected brats, fucking around with their parents' money, creating an awe-inspiring charade of lives inextricably tied to the celebrity culture of Hollywood. This raises the question: was Less Than Zero the predecessor to The Hills? Do we blame Ellis for Speidi? Is Paul Telegdy off the hook today?

Meanwhile, Fantastic Man, which could be a test-tube baby between Esquire and McSweeny's, is kind of a fascinating product. It's a giant, pretty magazine with nice pages and a strange sense of humor. It costs $11. And it has Bret Easton Ellis on the cover, drinking a Diet Coke. This should tell you what kind of magazine it is: at once both kind of genius and a complete waste of one's time. I love it.

For example, in one issue, there is:

- A 1,000 word essay from the Editor-In-Chief of Interview on waking up with a hangover in Paris.

- A 1,000 word treatise on the greatness that is toast.

- A designation of the word "Super" as their word of the season. This is written on their masthead.

- A selection of single meals art-world people have had recently (one of them: pervy photog Terry Richardson's meal of a vegetarian burrito from Pinche Taqueria in New York. "For dessert, he had a pack of sour Skittles, also very 'yum yum.'").

- And a cover story featuring Bret Easton Ellis with nothing to promote. Did we mention he was drinking a Diet Coke?

In a shallow attempt to divert attention away from their Iranian brethren (?), while you were getting out of bed today, Hondurans were having a military coup. Here's the basic rundown:

- Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya was arrested outside the presidential palace. He's been transported to Costa Rica, where he's seeking political asylum.

- The military arrested him because he was going to follow through with a referendum that the Supreme Court of Honduras had ruled illegal.

- The referendum in question Hondurans would be asked to vote on today was an extension of term limits. It wasn't a vote to extend the term limits, it was a vote to get the question of term limits put on the ballot in Honduras' upcoming election in November. The vote would put in place a constitutional assembly who could essentially override things like term limits.

- Zeleya's noted that it's "just a poll" that doesn't obligate the government to do anything. He's asserted that the poll isn't to ensure his reelection, as he'll be out of office regardless. On Friday, Zeleya lead a peaceful protest to pick up a bunch of ballots from a military base to show that he was actually going to go through with this thing, today. Zeleya had also instructed the armed forces to provide him and the poll with security.

- The heads of Honduras' military have all resigned to show support for the military's chief, Gen. Romeo Vasquez Velasquez. Zeleya had threatened earlier this week to fire Velasquez if he didn't support Zelya's poll.

- Protesters and supporters of Zeleya who've gathered at the presidential palace - about 600, according to initial reports - have had tear gas fired at them by the military.

- Finally, President Obama is not cool with any of this shit. Put it on ice, Honduras! "I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference," was the statement Obama put out.

Either way, it looks like a crazy leader kinda got a little carried away with this little poll of his. But it seems to be a mostly by-the-numbers kind of Junta - if you can even call it that - no? Either way, in Honduras, they protest and get active over this kind of thing! If Bloomberg had lost the opportunity to run for a third term, and we found out he was going to do it anyway, we'd probably all just sit around at brunch, gnawing on a croissant, figuring out when we could take a nap. Actually, I'm pretty sure that already happened. But no, this isn't quite on the level of Iran, which will still retain the title of Hot Revolution Of The Moment.

Anyway: more to come on the Honduran "coup," I guess!

Honduras president arrested, local media report [CNN]

Troops Detain Honduras President [NY Times]

A US district judge issued a final order for the forfeiture of $170,799,000,000 from Bernie, which divests him of basically everything but his ass. I'd make a joke about that being divested from him in prison, too - his sentencing that'll be sending him into medium-security lockup is on Monday - but, oh, what the hell: Bernie Madoff's ass will be divested from him in the hoosegow, or at the very least, commodified. His sentence is expected to be somewhere between 25 and 35 years of hard time, but Bernie's lawyer asked for a high single digit number due to Bernie's old age.

Meanwhile, Ruth - who will most definitely be affected tomorrow by the rise in price of a Metrocard (Agh!) in a few days - struck a bit of a deal. She's relinquishing $80M in assets for a measly $2.5 Million in cold, hard cash. She's apparently not going to be attending Bernie's sentencing, probably because eleven of Bernie's victims are going to be having a snap-tacular prose slam of their grievances against Madoff in court that day. She's been given the option to have a statement read without her in the house, however, and according to her lawyer, might elect to do so.

I know one thing I wouldn't do with $2.5 Million in cash - invest in Bernie Madoff, har! But really: it was recently reported that her kids have taken to calling her and Bernie by their names (as opposed to, you know, "Mom" and "Dad" or whatever you call Bernie Madoff if he's your dad - Scrooge McDuck?), so who knows if they're going to have doors open to her, or if they're going to have doors, period. Maybe Ruth can write a tell-all. Maybe she can get a TV show! I'd like that: The Ruth Madoff QVC Hour. Nice ring, right?

Also, says some thug who consults Wall Street-ers who go to lockup:

"There will be people who think that Bernie can give them stock tips, but I don't see anyone being his big pal," said Larry Levine, founder of Wall Street Prison Consultants who served 10 years for his ties to organized crime. "I believe he'll be treated like an outcast."

Look on the bright side, though. Most parents never find the time to repair broken relationships with their kids. Madoff's going to have plenty of it. An ideal blueprint for this kind of thing has thankfully already been provided:

Madoff reduced to nothing [CNN]
Madoff's Wife Cedes Asset Claim [WSJ]

Via Web Of Deception, the documents show Conrad Murray owing a state tax lien of $2,544 to Arizona, $1,578 to California, and defaulting on housing loans worth a few million dollars, including one in the tax-sheltered, foreclosure-plagued city of Las Vegas, Nevada at the Red Rock Country Club, where reporters attempting to see Dr. Murray's house were turned away by the guard gate. The associated press filed a great report on the guy who's about to be under some intense scrutiny by the LAPD and medical boards in the three states where he's licensed to practice medicine (Texas, Nevada, California). His practice was in Vegas. What to know:

- Murray was supposed to accompany Jackson on his upcoming comeback tour, per Jackson's very specific request.

- Murray was with Jackson when he passed a physical that showed no evidence of drug use.

- Murray's practice was hit with $400K in court judgments for defaulting on payments. He also owes $940 for driving with expired plates and no proof of insurance in 2000. [Don't you just have to show up to court to get those erased? Eh?]

- Murray's still dealing with two other pending cases regarding his lack of fiscal solvency.

The portrait of this guy that's about to emerge is guaranteed to be pretty interesting. How did he end up in Jackson's life? Why was Jackson so attached to him? It won't be as notable as the picture of Jackson that's surely going to start showing up in weeks to come, but as far as the end of his life went, Murray's own story is definitely going to be key to understanding Jackson's.

Michael Jackson: His Doctor [Web of Deception]

LA police want to talk to Jackson's cardiologist [AP]

The Romanian teen was way, way too addicted to the microblogging service. Not only was she using it in the bath, she ran down her laptop battery doing so, and then tried to plug the thing into the wall. Reports the Croatian Times:

Flavia's mother... said her daughter had tried to plug the power into the socket with wet hands after the battery had died as she used the device for a lengthy period in her home in Brasov, central Romania... Her only injury was a burn mark on her hand.

The lesson, of course, is to always dry your hands before connecting your electrical Twitter device to a power source and bringing it into a tub of water.

(Pic via ebertek on Flickr)

The doc, originally identified as Dr. Tohme Tohme, is being "hunted by cops" who want to talk to him about a supposed Demerol injection that led to MJ's death, according to The Sun:

LAPD are said to be examining a BMW which was towed yesterday from the singer's home where they also seized bags of prescription drugs.

It is believed the missing doctor gave the star a dose of Demerol - a painkiller similar to morphine - before he suffered a cardiac arrest.

The paper says that MJ may have become addicted to painkillers while preparing for his upcoming world tour. Brian Oxman, the Jackson family lawyer, is telling anyone who'll listen that MJ never should have been prescribed powerful drugs.

But! The New York Post managed to track down Dr. Tohme (before the cops, apparently), and he says he wasn't there at all!

"It's not me. I wasn't there at the house when this took place," said Dr. Tohme Tohme, who described himself as Jackson's manager and was present at a press conference where Jermaine Jackson formally announced his brother's death yesterday...

He said reports that Jackson was using prescription drugs were inaccurate and blasted claims by a Jackson family lawyer, Brian Oxman, that Jackson had been surrounded by disreputable people before his death, as untrue.

And now! TMZ ID's a different doctor as the one who was there with Michael:

KHOU in Houston reports the man is Dr. Conrad Robert Murray, who had been living with Jackson in his rented mansion. We're told Murray attempted to revive Michael until paramedics showed up at the scene.

They say that a car registered to Murray's sister was towed from MJ's house last night, and that cops are looking for Murray to question—which would presumably mean that Dr. Tohme is telling the truth. We'll keep you updated.
[Pic: Getty]

So how did you first hear that your picture was making the rounds on the internet?
I was walking to school and some friends came up to me and said "Harvey, you're in the newspaper." And then it was on one of the morning chat shows and I thought to myself, "Wow, this could be really big." I can't believe there's a picture of me and Megan Fox.

Why do you like Megan Fox? Are you a fan of her work, or is it a crush kind of thing?
I just really love celebrities. And I'm basically a big fan of Megan Fox. I like her work.

Tell us about what happened that night.
We'd heard she was in London for the premiere, so we decided to head down there. I picked up the rose on the way.

And when she came by and didn't take your flower, did you feel rejected?
I felt rejected. But I couldn't really tell if she'd done it on purpose. There were so many cameras around. She was moving really fast. Afterwards we ran through the hotel, but she didn't stop. I dropped the rose on the ground and went home.

Have you accepted her apology?
I actually haven't heard anything that she's said.

I see that you've met Kevin Jonas and Lady Gaga?
I've met a lot of celebrities. Only a few take pictures. Some celebrities are complete [bad word that we won't reprint because he's 11-years-old and was nervous, folks].

Who do you want to meet next?
I went after Katy Perry once, really wanted to meet her. We ran after her car. I wanted to give her a flower. Lady Gaga is going to be in London when I get back, so I'm going to try again with her.

So do you want to go into the entertainment industry when you're done with school?
I really love to sing and dance and act. I'm trying to get into a stage school in London, but it's really hard to get an audition.

I bet you'll get an audition now, now that everyone knows who you are.
I hope so.

Anything else you want to tell us?
I think I've told you pretty much everything!

Harvey is in town until Monday with his mother and godmother. They're going to see the musical Shrek tomorrow night.

For their part, Kodak, who orchestrated this whole whirlwind adventure, is giving $5,000 to both Kim the French Canadian and Collider.com who got Megan to make her apology.

So, a happy ending mostly! If nothing else, a nice trip to New York for a kid with stars in his eyes.