John McWhorter Dissects "Conscious Rap"

In the LA Times, John McWhorter tackles what he calls "Conscious Rap", or Hip Hop with a message, to be distinguished from rap that just talks about "about tying women to beds and shooting them dead": Word on the street is that hip-hop is a message, the black CNN. Anyone who questions that winds up at the bottom of a verbal dog pile. Such traitors, we're told, just don't listen to enough of the music — that, in particular, the work of "conscious" rappers would change their minds. Please. One can take a good dose of Talib Kweli, Common, Mos Def and Kanye "Bush doesn't care about black people" West and still see nothing that resembles any kind of "message" that people truly committed to forging change would recognize. Hip-hop, "conscious" or not, is music, and that's it. For one thing, a lot of the "conscious" work sounds as much like street fighting as the gangsta stuff — an upturned middle finger set to a beat. Yes, Mos Def and Talib Kweli decorate their raps with calls to stop smoking and drinking, starry-eyed timeouts when they sing the praises of their baby daughters and vague calls for black Americans to look sharp. But there's a decent amount of that even in so-called gangsta rap, such as Tupac Shakur's chronicle of the vicious cycle of urban poverty in "Papa'z Gong," or Nas' hope that he will be able to redeem his past through his child in "The World Is Yours." Meanwhile, Kweli tells us that when he's at the mike "you get hit like a deer standin' still in the light" and how in one competition he "smacked them in they face with a metaphor." OK, he means it in the abstract. But why so violent? Why, exactly, must "consciousness" so often sound like a street fight? The "conscious" rappers just relocate 50 Cent's cops-and-robbers battle from the street to the slam contest. McWhorter thinks, erroneously, that rappers should somehow be held responsible for the state of the world that they rap about. While there are many artists, writers, journalists, and other people whose work is released for public consumption and critique, rarely do they have to go through the same scrutiny as rap artists on the true meaning of their work. If a visual artist creates a piece on the state of homeless in urban America, is that artist really expected to do anything more than express his feelings about the situation through the visual medium? McWhorter insists on holding rappers to a different standard. What would he say about James Baldwin, one of the best writers of the American experience, who after actually helping out in the Civil Rights struggle in the 1950s, finally decided to move to France, because he felt that living in America was just too damaging to his psyche. Indeed, have we ever read or heard of anyone criticizing James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and others like them for not personally doing enough to correct the wrongs that they wrote about? The "conscious" rappers themselves make the "message" analysis even harder to fall for because they tend to squirm under the label. "They keep trying to slip the 'conscious rapper' thing on me," Mos Def says. "They try to get me because I'm supposed to be more articulate, I'm supposed to be not like the other Negroes, to get me to say something against my brothers. I'm not going out like that, man." So it would be "going out" even to question the theatrical savagery that hip-hop's critics fail to see the good in? "Conscious" rap, like gangsta rap, is ultimately all about spitting in the eye of the powers that be. But this is precisely what the millions of blacks making the best of themselves in modern America have not done. And contrary to what we are often led to believe, spitting is not serious activism. It's merely attitude. It is merely attitude, because rappers are merely entertainers, who should only be expected to create work for the public to consume. "Don't Believe the Hype: Rap Anger isn't a Meaningful Message" (LAT)

Sour Notes (Tuesday Edition)

• Rihanna: the bargain-basement Beyonce. (Guardian UK)
• Interview with Donnell Jones. (AHH)
• Take That will never be big enough to accommodate Robbie Williams's ego. (BBC)
• 50 Cent banned from Canada? Too bad no one came up with that idea here...
• Speaking of Fiddy, he plans to come out with his own line of sex toys-- sometimes the humor just writes itself... (A Socialite's Life)
• PopMatters on the state of Hip Hop journalism in France.
• Interview with Stevie Wonder. (Guardian UK)
• Joss Stone doesn't want to be a singer her whole life; that sounds like a good idea to me.
• The death of the compact disc. (SFGate)
• Everything you wanted to know about The Source Magazine and more. (VV)

News and Nonsense (Tuesday Edition)

• Jennifer Beals is getting sued by her former business manager, because he feels that actors who break out of obscurity are not entitled to pro bono work.
• "Billy Elliot" is all grown up. (Observer)
• Bob Johnson leaves BET in the dust. (TV.com)
• The strangest things take place at Wal-mart... (DListed)
• The "Hollywood geisha" backlash begins.
• Since Usher decided to play himself in his new film, "In the Mix", he should realize by now that his money and fame are really what make women stick to him like glue. (CNN)
• The Observer profiles George Clooney.
• If you like to spend a lot of money to be tacky, maybe Donald Trump's new vodka is for you. (Gawker)
• I'm sure that Michael Jackson has already "come clean" over this matter. (DListed)

Random Ruminations (Tuesday Edition)

• Strolling even further down the road that leads to overexposure, Anderson Cooper talks about his mother's sex life. (CNN)
• Busta Rhymes gets a makeover. (AHH)
• Can indie directors make it in Hollywood? (Independent)
• Elijah Wood doesn't look as cadaver-ish as Daniel Radcliffe.
• Eddie Murphy pulls a Tom Cruise.
• Now there's at least one thing that we know Usher is not good at.
• Speaking of terrible actors, Madonna feels that if one is not good at acting, directing should naturally be the next professional endeavor.
• Either George Clooney's really nice, or he's really rich... I think it's more the latter than the former.
• Naomi Watts has apparently never heard of the original King Kong movie, or the Jessica Lange version...
• Why so many kids are so bratty these days... at least the ones that aren't being brainwashed by Nickelodeon. (NYT)

How Hip Hop went Pop

Will the Beat eventually shut the MC down? Are the lyrics to Hip Hop songs just background for a standout, pulsing beat? According to a number of top-selling producers and industry observers, the beat has largely superseded the rapper performing over it as the driving force of the industry. And the music's true core today is the instrumental track — that is, everything but the words. "The most important elements of a hit in hip-hop are the beat and the chorus," says the Bronx's Fat Joe, who is known for his gritty street-smart rhyme style. "The role of a rapper is getting less and less." "Sometimes, if you have great lyrics and not a great beat, the people won't pay attention," says Neysa Camacho, manager for beat maker Justin "Just Blaze" Smith, and project manager on hip-hop kingpin Sean "Diddy" Combs' upcoming album. "On the other hand, if you have a great beat and bad lyrics, you can have a hit." How many beats does it take to make several chart-topping hits? Just one: Once a producer creates a hit with a certain beat, it's likely to become that person's signature sound. West, a prolific producer, is known for using R&B vocal samples to create the choruses for his songs (rather than recording live singers) and has applied the formula on tracks for diverse artists such as Ludacris, Common and Jay-Z. As in the movie business, if it sells, it spawns a sequel, or in this case, many. The rise of the producer as the main composer of the Hip Hop track: A burgeoning class of superproducers typified by Kanye West is crossing from behind the mixing board to become top-selling artists in their own right, largely for their ability to build beats with mass appeal. One of the most highly anticipated albums of the winter is from Pharrell Williams of the dynamic producing duo the Neptunes. And Cool & Dre, who have already been touted as the "next Neptunes" by hip-hop pundits, are following a similar trajectory. Lyon will release his solo album on Violator/Zomba Label Group next year. "It's gotten to the point where producers are responsible for about 90% of what goes into a record," Smith says. "So a lot of times, the producer is already like an artist themselves." [...] "You used to write the song and then hire the producer to make the song around it," says Dallas Austin, a platinum-selling producer who has worked with Gwen Stefani, TLC and Michael Jackson. "Now it's flipped on the record industry: beat first, song second." But that intense focus on hip-hop's most elemental unit, he cautions, may not be a good thing. "The bad part is when you start looking at records as a product like soap or cereal, as mass-produced sounds," Austin says. "You start putting it on the shelf, then at a certain point, it's got nothing further that people feel is special." How the beat became a mass-produced commodity: Braggadocio is part and parcel of hip-hop, so it's no surprise to hear a beat maker claim that the beat reigns supreme. But in the last five years, record-label heads and artist and repertoire executives admit that to reduce overhead costs they have come to rely on the voluntary submission of "beats CDs," containing dozens of unfinished musical snippets. Sounds range from the minimalist finger-snap percussion of "intimate club" music to the baroque electroclash soundscape of crunk. Producers, as the beat makers are called, usually work isolated from the input of artists, creating music at their home studios and submitting their beats to well-connected friends, label execs and performers... "[The market] has become so over-flooded with producers," producer Austin says, "they say, 'Just listen to my tracks and if you hear a beat you want, pick it.' They do the beats hoping artists will say, 'That one sounds like me!' " Now, the typical Hip Hop track is like a pre-fab house. You just take a few bits and pieces that have proven to have worked in the past, and add them together to make something "new". This is how we keep getting the same sound replicated season after season. You can almost tell what the new songs will sound like a few months down the road, just from listening to what is climbing the charts today. Something like the familiarity that chain stores and restaurants provide. We like them, because we know what to expect-- but even though we may like certain songs with a catchy beat, do we really want every other song to sound like last summer's big hit? "In Hip Hop, the Beats Do the Talking" (LA Times)

News and Nonsense (Tuesday Edition)

• Frankly, I think Tyra is scarier than Naomi. Naomi may give you a serious beat down, but physical wounds will heal faster than the effects of the mind fuck that Tyra likes to engage in. (Jossip)
• This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while. (Wonkette)
• Chris Tucker finally comes to his senses.
• CNN talks about all things Internet.
• While Snoop and others protest the upcoming execution, an LA Radio station campaigns to kill Tookie Williams. (Davey D)
• Would "American Idol" survive without Simon Cowell?
• Will "Miami Vice" ever be completed? (Movie Blog)
• I never knew that Kate Hudson ever acted... is that what she calls what she does in front of the camera?

"Massclusivity": The Poor Man's Elitism

Being cash-strapped no longer has to prevent you from being a fashion snob. If you're an aggressive, sales-savvy shopper, you too can have that "limited edition" ensemble, without paying tons of money for it. When elite designers first linked arms with mass-market retail chains, the driving impulse was populist. The architect Michael Graves helped kick off the trend in 1999 when he signed up to create housewares for Target; his idea was to make well-designed products available to people of modest means. Subsequent collaborations—between Target and Philippe Starck, Cynthia Rowley, and Isaac Mizrahi; between JCPenney and Nicole Miller; between H&M and Karl Lagerfeld—have also been framed in rhetoric that conveys a sense of aesthetic noblesse oblige. H&M's most recent collaboration, with Stella McCartney, seemed to be no exception. In a presale press release, McCartney said she wanted to offer "a wider female audience" a line that is "attractively priced yet offers high quality together with a superb fit and details." But when McCartney's collection debuted earlier this month, it sold out within hours. So, in truth, the defining characteristic of McCartney's clothes for H&M is not that they're cheap, or even that they're well-designed. It's that you can't have them. Those skinny jeans that retailed for $69.90? They're about as hard to acquire as an Hermès Birkin bag... As they say, "the early bird gets the worm". Caffeine, and a trustworthy alarm clock are basic necessities for the poor man's fashion elitist: The idea is to offer a limited run of a premium item. The upside: Shoppers who are savvy enough to snag what you're selling feel like part of a members-only club. (I saw women at H&M buying clothes without trying them on—they just wanted to own a piece of the Stella McCartney collection.) And for the retailer, there's virtually no downside: Shoppers who show up after the exclusive goods are gone might stick around and buy something else. H&M marketing director Jorgen Andersson told Fortune that the company's collaboration with McCartney was "the ultimate in massclusivity," adding, "if we had these designs in the stores for a month, people would get bored." In other words, what makes these clothes desirable is not their inherent quality, but the demand manufactured by the company. What H&M is selling, even more than designer clothes, is a designer experience. Typically, limited-edition goods are designer goods, and because of the time and expense it takes to acquire them, they're available only to the rich and well-connected. But with the McCartney and Lagerfeld collections, H&M has made such items available to anyone willing to rearrange her schedule. Get up early, throw a few elbows, and you, too, can own a rare designer piece. If Target and Michael Graves were advocating the democratization of good design, H&M seems to be promoting something stranger and more elusive—the democratization of designer shopping itself. "Selling Out: Why You Can't Buy H&M's Stella McCartney Collection" (Slate)

Sour Notes (Saturday Edition)

• Interview with Alicia Keys. (Independent)
• What are the worst record covers of all time? (Pitchfork)
• Fantasia should look to 50 Cent as a role model. Being illiterate might keep you from getting a role in a Broadway play, but 50 shows us that it won't necessarily keep you from starting a publishing company. He's keeping the reading simple by specializing in graphic novels and novellas.
• R. Kelly might not be the Shakespeare of his time, but his "Trapped in the Closet" is confusing enough to merit its own study guide. (BWE)
• Who is Chris Brown, and who keeps buying this stupid song? (Billboard)
• Interview with Annie Lennox. (Guardian UK)
• Only Michael Jackson could come up with the "thank you" gift that will pay for itself 100 times over. (MSN)
• Ludacris tries to reinterpret the Confederate flag at the Vibe Awards. (Davey D)
• Who knew that B5 had real fans? I didn't even know that they were a real group... (MTV, VV)
• Madonna is still fresh-- even after 20 years.
• Speaking of Madonna, if Gwen Stefani is copying her style, then I guess Gwen's next album will be full of dance tracks stolen from some random Belgian DJ.
• Cab Calloway, "the original rapper". (PopMatters)
• Will Starbucks become the new Walmart?
• Cam'Ron isn't snitching... (MSN)

Will Women Ever Learn to Make Up Their Minds?

It seems that a lot of women like to pretend that they think that "dating down" is a noble endeavor, but in the end, they feel resentful of any guy who isn't making more money: So there’s this terrific woman you know living in New York. She’s fun, attractive, smart and has a great job … and is dating a bartender, a waiter or someone altogether unemployed. Some might say she’s “settling,” to use the favored relationship parlance of today. But what if she’s actually a pioneer? ... “The whole idea that all women in New York only want to date up is a little maddening,” said a copywriter in her mid-30’s, who lives in Park Slope and married a carpenter last year (like most interviewed for this article, she didn’t want her name used). “It’s like the bad apples—the modern-day scheming Lily Barts, the ones whose Times wedding announcements say, ‘Until recently, the bride taught first grade at blah-blah,’ or ‘Until last month, the bride worked in guest services at Hooters,’ because now that they’re married, their job is essentially to stand there and look good and be a hot little wife with a personal trainer, dietitian, decorator et al.—are spoiling the barrel.” ... Memo to Mr. Moneybags: When it comes to the mean Manhattan mating scene, cash alone isn’t necessarily going to cut it anymore. “I dated this guy who was worth millions, and the fact that I didn’t want any of his money made him want me more,” said an attractive and gainfully employed Manhattan blonde, an editor in her 20’s. “It was frustrating for me, because I worked my ass off to make a good living, and here’s someone who’s rolling in piles of money—it was almost unattractive! People acted like I was crazy when I broke up with him. They were like, ‘What’s wrong with you? He’s cute, and you’d be set for life’ …. But how can people actually think like that?” She must be the only one of her kind... she says this now, but if she decided to date down, her friends and family might ridicule her. How would she hold up to that kind of pressure? Of course, tried-and-true gender roles die hard. A low paycheck isn’t a guarantee against a guy straying, for one thing—quite the contrary, as he might be extra-desperate to prove his manhood. And if a woman is the breadwinner in the couple, she must brace herself for some amount of mockery from friends and family. Some dating-downers interviewed by The Observer told stories of family members sighing in disappointment when told of their boyfriends’ employment status, of friends giving “funny” (a.k.a. derogatory) nicknames to working-class beaux, of having to constantly defend their romantic choices. “I have this one friend who lives with her boyfriend and a championship Himalayan cat,” said a twentysomething New York woman. The friend is an art director, the boyfriend a low-level office assistant. “I have this joke she doesn’t find very funny, in which I insinuate that the cat brings in more of the rent than the boyfriend does and perhaps she should make him drink out of the toilet.” It seems that any guy who has a low paying job is a loser-- even if he's a law student. Suddenly, all of these guys have been lumped into the same group. If he doesn't make as much money, or more money than I do, then he has no ambition: Caroline, 32, a dark-haired beauty who works in marketing, believes that the old norm of women dating up is fundamentally impossible to change. “There’s pressure to do so, depending on your family and peer group,” she said. “I was once interested in this guy who was the outdoor-pursuits coordinator at a local college. My mother asked me what he did, and she replied with a dramatically disappointed ‘Ohhhh.’” Eventually she concluded, “I have a hard time respecting a man who isn’t ambitious and self-confident. Lots of money isn’t a requirement, but a desire and ability to be financially secure is.” So, women don't want men to throw money at them, but they don't want a man who doesn't have the power to do this so that she has the option to say no. But they want to be able to say that they're open to dating down, but that's not to say that they'd really want to do it. So confusing... "Should A-List Girls Marry for Love?" (NYO)

Some Questions About the New GQ Cover(s)

(image via A Socialite's Life)

• 50 Cent... Why?? Why did he agree to be photographed in this way? For someone who claims to be "no homo", you'd think he would have threatened the photo editors who decided to run this photograph...
• Jennifer Anniston-- what, exactly, has she accomplished this year? I would even go as far as saying that Paris Hilton has accomplished more. Being dumped by Brad Pitt makes you a role model? What kind of message does that convey to the public? Angelina Jolie might indeed be a homewrecker, but she manages to make time for humanitarian work.
• And why is she topless? She looks like a barbie doll that won a field trip through the microwave...
• Vince Vaughn-- is it just me, or does he really look like Vincent Gallo in this photo?
• And does getting Brad Pitt's sloppy seconds merit him a cover, too? Maybe that's why Chris Martin is so famous; it's not the music, it's the fact that he married Gwyneth Paltrow, who used to date Brad Pitt...
• Maybe Brad should have been "Man of the Year"...

Random Ruminations (Saturday Edition)

• Is Nicole Richie really smart, or just lucky? (NYT)
• Photoshop contest: Everyday objects as boats. (Boing Boing)
• Al Reynolds really is sort of like a Ken doll, because Star Jones, just like Barbie, needs a companion to make her seem more "normal". (CityRag)
• Christmas just isn't the same anymore; even Santa isn't above reproach these days.
• The Independent interviews Terrance Howard.
• Fergie's never had plastic surgery-- puberty causes a lot of physical changes in most people, and it just happened to affect her more than others. Just like Lindsay Lohan. (Perez Hilton)
• The iPod just keeps getting more buzz... (LA.com)
• More proof that there will never be a Soledad O'Brien nip slip-- ever. (Gawker)
• We've seen more photographs of Eddie Murphy with Johnny Gill than we ever saw of him with his wife... (ASL)
• Kate Winslet falls to peer pressure.
• They should just call this stuff "vomit in a can".
• Courtney Love scares herself straight by looking into a mirror. (UK Guardian)
• Knowing that Hollywood relies on pretty faces to sell movies, producers of this film are really taking their chances; if the movie flops, we'll know why.

Saturday Stream

• Halle Berry shows that those girls on America's Next Top Model will just have to keep on dreaming.
• Diana Ross and John Voigt? *Cringe*...
• Will television eventually go extinct? (Popwatch)
• Who would actually buy Paris Hilton's men's cologne? I won't even ask what it smells like... (AdRants)
• It seems that R. Kelly will have sex with anyone but his wife...
• The strangest things happen in Bangkok. (Queerty)
• Has Michael Jackson never heard of a nifty little thing called a compact?
• Speaking of Michael-- everything that's been printed in the news about him lately is apparently untrue... at least, according to his publicists.
• O.J. Simpson takes a break from his arduous search for the murderer of his ex-wife and her friend to give his opinion of the Robert Blake Civil trial verdict.

"Memoirs of a Geisha": Pandering to American Ignorance

When Margaret Cho wrote about Gwen Stefani and the way she has managed to "accessorize" the Harajuku Girls, she brought up an interesting point. Not only did she bring up the issue of the lack of Asian/Asian American presence in entertainment, but also the fact that the few times that we get to see Asians in any prominent role, we are treated to stereotypical images such as this: Now she has 4 things all together, the Harajuku Girls. I want to like them, and I want to think they are great, but I am not sure if I can. I mean, racial stereotypes are really cute sometimes, and I don't want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show. I think it is totally acceptable to enjoy the Harajuku girls, because there are not that many other Asian people out there in the media really, so we have to take whatever we can get. Amos 'n Andy had lots of fans, didn't they? At least it is a measure of visibility, which is much better than invisibility. I am so sick of not existing, that I would settle for following any white person around with an umbrella just so I could say I was there. It is weird being Asian American right now, because I don't exactly know what my place is. America is supposed to be for everyone, and people are supposed to treat me like I belong here, and yet you would never know that from watching tv or movies. I still get the questions about where I am really from. Then when I try to explain this feeling of invisibility to those whose every move and moment is entirely visible, they come back at me with, "Maybe Asian Americans don't want to be in entertainment!" Yes he really said that. I just screamed, because there was no other way I could answer without hitting him. Now Hollywood is pushing a new movie for Oscar season, the film version of the novel, Memoirs of a Geisha. While the big question that the media is asking right now is "will the American public be open to seeing a big-budget Hollywood film with an all-Asian cast?" (as if Americans don't have enough of an attention span to sit through a full-length movie unless there are white faces on the screen). There is another question that has not been asked. Why is it that most of the starring cast, of a Japanese-themed story, is made up of Chinese actors? ... casting Ms. Zhang, Ms. Gong and Ms. Yeoh, who are all Chinese, as Japanese geishas was a controversial move. As a result, the film's reception in Asia will be closely watched, though Mr. Lee said those who object should get over it. "American films are less American every day, because you have to please a world audience," he said. "There's less authenticity, so it's more accessible. Do American directors care about Japanese life more than the Japanese? So what? They'll probably still watch it with great interest." (NYT) I suppose we should be grateful that we won't have to revisit the days of having white actors (such as Marlon Brando and Jennifer Jones) being painted up as "orientals" with dramatic eyeliner and dark makeup-- but if so much time, money, and research was invested into the production of this film, was it really impossible for the producers and the director to find some authentic Japanese talent? Or, did it really not matter anyway, since it is assumed that the average American thinks that all Asians are pretty much interchangeable? "The Delicate Job of Transforming a Geisha" (NYT) "Sony Allows Asians to Star in Geisha Movie" (Defamer) "Harajuku Girls" (Margaret Cho)

A Backwards View of Sex

Is sex not supposed to be exciting? According to Lauren Winner, it's not: Winner grew up Jewish, converted to Christianity, and now says she is still "unlearning many of the false lessons I learned through years of premarital sex." What does that mean exactly? Winner, who had only been married for three months when she finished the book (her marriage is now in its second year), believes that sex has been overly hyped. "Premarital sex has no normal qualities. It is based on mutual desire and dispenses with the ordinary rhythms of marital sex, trading them for a seemingly thrilling but ultimately false story," Winner says, treating sex with reverence instead of disgust. "The twisted lesson premarital sex teaches is that sex is exciting. In fact, the opposite is true: The dramas of married sex are smaller and more intimate." And that's what everyone wants, right? Excitement is overrated, anyway. "The New Faces of Chastity" (Village Voice)

Sour Notes (Sunday Edition)

• R. Kelly files a new lawsuit against Jay-Z, because he needs courtroom practice for his child pornography trial next year. (AHH)
• Is 50 Cent speaking from experience here? He's seems to be the expert on the subject of being gay in Hip Hop...
• Speaking of Fitty, someone needs to make him understand that he is not Tupac.
• Interview with George Benson can be found here. (London Times)
• Alex Blagg on the lost lyrics of Kevin Federline.
• Missy Elliott must be the queen of multitasking, and I don't mean that in a nice way.
• I thought this happened years ago?
• Will I. Am wants to work with Sade-- I think him winning the lottery would be a safer bet.
• Instead of blaming the criminals, the Mayor of London blames Hip Hop on the rise in the city's crime rate. (AHH)
• Biggie's mom doesn't have nice things to say about Diddy and Lil' Kim.
• An intriguing interview with Carlos Santana can be found here. (London Times)
• John Legend doesn't really seem to be too eager to "get lifted". (3am Girls)
• Interview with Pharrell Williams can be found here. (Observer)
• RFT profiles Byron Crawford.

Random Ruminations (Sunday Edition)

• Janice Dickinson and Omarosa are more alike than they'd ever admit. (ONTD)
• Maybe this girl should never get pregnant. (Adrants)
• Another iPod parody, provided by Dave Chappelle.
• LA Times states the obvious about blogs.
• Are women actually better at living alone than men? Or are we just better at wasting time and money? (London Times)
• Nick Carter + Bai Ling = Nick Carter + Paris Hilton - a lot of money.
• Maybe one day we'll be able to wake up from the bad dream that is Gwen Stefani's "fashion" designs.
• Are tailors just getting lazy these days, or is wearing an evening gown just too complicated a task for some people? (Gawker)
• An interview with Clearskinned Dunce can be found here. (Independent)
• Who's the dummy here? (SFGate)
• Does Shaggy really prefer the clothes to the woman? (3am Girls)
• Apparently, if a successful woman wants to be with a successful man, she'd better keep some of her success on the DL, so that she won't be a threat to her man's success. (London Times)
• Kathy Hilton likes to think that Paris Hilton was in love with Rick Salomon... well, maybe she was-- because Hilton time is like light years faster than real time. This explains why Paris goes through so many men from month to month.
• When, exactly, did proms turn into the high school equivalent of Spring Break? (Slate)

Sunday Sundries

• Latifah and Laila Ali? (A Socialite's Life)
• You knew that someone would want to spoof March of the Penguins, right? (BBC)
• Maybe Donald Trump doesn't like gays because they can't help telling him how tacky he is. (CityRag)
• Jamie Foxx is still brave enough to consider making a Mike Tyson biopic. (Movie Blog)
• For once, Don Imus is actually making sense. (Jossip)
• Janet Jackson is working with personal trainer again-- must mean that she'll have a new album coming out soon. (Gawker)
• This is a sure-fire sign that MTV is getting shittier every season. (TV.com)
• Prince Albert of Monaco tells all to The Guardian.
• What is the only company that Wal-Mart is afraid of? (NYT)
• Sharon Osbourne is the queen of TMI.
• Omar Sharif is the new Zsa Zsa Gabor.
• Sean Connery gets no love in his native Scotland. (Movie Blog)
• Shar Jackson really needs to find something new to talk about.

Will Models Cease to Exist?

Who will the winner be on America's Next Top Model? According to NYT, it won't be any of the girls competing on the show: The truth at the core of this least-real reality series, now in its fifth season and with nearly five million viewers from the coveted demographic of women age 18 to 34, is that the winner is never Nik or Kim or Nicole or Lisa. It is Tyra Banks, the show's host and producer, a Victoria's Secret beauty with a snap queen's attitude and the entrepreneurial chops of Donald Trump... There are a few good, simple reasons why the competitors on "America's Next Top Model" will not become America's next top model, insiders say. For starters they are generally too old to succeed in a field where much of the talent, like the current teenage Australian star Gemma Ward, is recruited out of middle school, explained Cathy Gould, the director of Elite models. And even though, by ordinary standards, the bodies of cast members on the reality show are unobjectionable, they are too plump to succeed in a business where eating disorders are no hindrance to success. In an ironic way, though, the most serious strike against the women may be, like their beauty itself, an unalterable accident of birth. They are American. "You just can't sell an American model right now because editors completely don't appreciate them," explained James Scully, a casting agent responsible for discovering many of the quirky, provocative sexpots who helped mold the image of Gucci during the stellar Tom Ford years. "Americans are just not in." So, since these girls are already too old, too big, or too "average looking" (despite the fact that Tyra specifically looks for girls who have some quirk that will make them stand out from other models)-- what is the purpose of competing on America's Next Top Model? Tyra herself informs the contestants that the era of the model who only does modeling is over; everyone wants to be an entertainer now, so if all they have to offer is a pretty face, with no other talents to accompany it, then they'll get nowhere. In addition to learning how to apply makeup, walking the catwalk, and creating a personal style for themselves, the girls also get an accelerated acting course, some dance or movement lessons, and a sort of charm course on how to present themselves to the public, and to the press. The judges are constantly telling the girls that good looks are not enough for success; a personality, a sense of grace, and real style and talent are all a part of the package. It's more difficult for models to get jobs now, because they have stiff competition from actors, pop stars, and other celebrities who, in a lot of cases, are just as photogenic as the average model, but have more selling power because they already have a built-in audience. Tyra should actually rename her show; it shouldn't be called, America's Next Top Model, but "America's Next New Entertainer". These days, modeling is seen as the stepping stone to a bigger, more multifaceted career. The only real supermodel left walking the runways, who hasn't successfully ventured into other areas of the entertainment world is Naomi Campbell. And while there will certainly be more models who have a singular purpose, but they won't be considered as successful as the models who manage to branch out into other fields. "Who Is America's Next Top Model, Really?" (NYT)

Sour Notes (Thursday Edition)

(image via Stereogum)

• Poor K-Fed... he needs to spend some time with Hooked on Phonics before he tries the rapping thing again. Maybe he "doesn't write anything down" because he can't read or write? (Perez Hilton)
• Justin Timberlake is apparently to acting what K-Fed is to rapping. (Defamer)
• Weren't Omarosa's 15 minutes up, like, 2 years ago? (NYDN)
• Does T.A.T.U. really have talent? Or will they have to resort to being pretendy-lesbians again? (Queerty)
• Madonna has been spending a lot of time in another man's bedroom lately-- to record her new album.
• Heavy D is just now making the cover of Jet Magazine? And why is this newsworthy? (AHH)
• Cam'ron has apparently missed his calling as a detective. (MTV)
• Joe Jackson wants to clean up Hip Hop... if he wants to clean up things in the music industry, maybe he should start with Janet and Michael... (NYDN)
• It seems that Pharrell is too lazy to mack on the ladies himself; he sends his bodyguard to do the dirty work for him. (3am Girls)
• Jaheim is "crafting 'classic' third album"-- does that mean that it will sound identical to the first two? (Billboard)
• Talk about multitasking-- how does Clay Aiken find a guy talented enough to be his hairstylist and a backup dancer for his stage show-- at the same time? (Perez Hilton)
• Kanye West has apparently pulled a Li'l Kim... (second item, NYDN)
• What is it with John Mayer and phones?
• Interview with Floetry can be found here. (Guardian UK)

Random Ruminations (Thursday Edition)

• Pamela Anderson, the queen of plastic and all things artificial, doesn't like leather seats in cars, because it's like "smelly, dead skin".
• People don't want to see empty action flicks? You could have fooled me. (BBC)
• Don't the Beckham boys have enough crap already? What are they going to do with diamond encrusted watches-- scratch up all the plate glass on their estate?
• Now we know why Nicole Richie was such a close friend of Paris Hilton's-- simple minds think alike.
• Paris Hilton has finally discovered that anal is not the only form of birth control. (Defamer)
• Speaking of birth control, it seems that Dennis Rodman never considered that Madonna might have used any with him.
• If people think that Beyonce is pregnant, why is it that no one assumes that Mariah Carey is? Oh, yeah... right. (HT)
• Woody Allen has officially become creepy. (Gawker)
• Kim Cattrall has officially become Samantha Jones.
• Is there anyone in the world who is crazy enough to pay for Vincent Gallo's sperm? (Perez Hilton)
• Is Sharon Osbourne actually some kind of pervert?