Lauren Conrad Is Less Stupid And Inane Than You've Been Led To Believe [Gossip Roundup]

Shouldn't They All Be Rewarded? [The Cinema]

In honor of National Bikini Month, the boys at Entertainment Weekly have addressed themselves to the grueling task of selecting the 18 most iconic movie bikinis of all time. Undeniably, the bikini is the hardest working garment in show business. It must lift, separate and support women during tasks as varied as killing soviet spies and washing high performance automobiles. Truly it is the king of sportswear garments that are barely more than lingerie. Now, to the list!

Most of the classics make it: Princess Leia in the gold bikini, Ursula Andress in the white bikini, Phoebe Cates in the about-to-be-removed bikini. There were some real surprises, too. Shirley MacLaine in John Goldfarb, Please Come Home? I had no idea! But the egregious omission was Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, a fine film about a mad scientist who attempts to take over the planet using really, really hot robots.

And, also, Jane Fonda in On Golden Pond. Yes, it is a movie about dementia, but it's a movie about dementia with some nice bikini shots.

Any others missing?

(And is it just coincidence that Pam Anderson's birthday falls in National Bikini Month?)

How Much Organza Is Too Much? [Fashion]

Paris says that boys are supposed to look like girls next year. The Paris men's shows which just ended were unified by a theme of male's fashion with some decidedly feminine flair. Another big trend was global warming, with linen, silk, and light cotton getting a lot of play. So apparently we all need to be wearing more fuschia clam diggers. Perhaps Emmanuel Ungaro designer Franck Boclet put it best when he said "I wanted a gay fresh style." [Yahoo! News]

Just Take The Second Ventilation Duct To Your Right [Urban Anthropology]

The Meat Packing District's newest underground lounge is literally underground. Boasting security measures which would make Interpol blush, the club requires you earn the good graces of a bouncer through "an interrogation-room-style, two-way tinted-glass door...Then head downstiars, down a kitchen corridor, and through a door marked private." Though getting in may sound like a puzzle from an Infocom game, UrbanDaddy assures us the bar is worth the stealth.

Inside, you'll find a low-ceilinged, mood-lit paradise, complete with a custom-carved ceiling, black-and-gold posters of a model in the nude and a fog-covered well in the center, in case the journey left you parched.

All this downstairs from Marcus Samuelsson's Merkato 55, one of the finest perveyors of kitfo in the tri-state area.

[via Jossip]

What's The Most Regrettable Music You've Ever Listened To? [Last.fm]

God I love these perverse little lists: A web site that tracks what its users listen to on iTunes has compiled a list of the songs its users most often delete from their records, presumably tracks that people listened to but don't want anyone to see. So what are the most popular guilty pleasures?

Surprisingly, the Beatles are the most often deleted artist (after "unknown," for obvious reasons). Maybe there's an error, but maybe they're so often played but so little identified with modern cool. Couldn't imagine why, really, other than "Birthday" inexplicably popping up in everyone's Party Playlist. Second place goes to Radiohead, then more predictably Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne.

Spears also tops the single tracks list, with her song "Piece of Me" winning the spot of Most Regrettable Song. She shares the rest of the list with Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" and Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend," definitely guilty pleasures for the sort of hipster who would try to clean up their own listening history.

Vanity Fair Curses A New Generation of Demi-Stars [The Cinema]

During the warm, lazy days of summer, Vanity Fair likes to turn its attention to Hollywood, declaring some actor or clutch of actors the future of entertainment. It rarely ends well. This time they've taken something of a shotgun approach, naming 27 young actors, aged 15 to 26, to be the brightest stars in Hollywood. I'm sure if they expanded things a little more, to say, everyone in California under the age of 30, they'd be certain to catch a winner in the bunch. Actual names, and the dreaded fates of those previously tapped by V.F. after the jump.

This year's crop includes the cast of Gossip Girl

The Jonas Brothers

And a passel of Judd Apatow finds like Jay Baruchel

and Jonah Hill

The interviews are essentially questionnaires with hard-hitting questions like "Jimmy Choo or Christian Louboutin?", but the accompanying article manages to achieve levels of inanity previously thought beyond the reach of man. Setting the scene to catalogue the survivors of V.F.'s first young Hollywood article in 2003, James Wolcott reminisces,

It was... a more innocent time in America... the Web site Gawker, that celebrity garbage-disposal unit, hadn’t yet left its snot mark on the culture; its best worst years lay ahead.

So, to Vanity Fair's class of 2008, our condolences.

[via LA Times]

Quotations From Chairman Barry [Politics]

Garen Thomas, author of Santa’s Kwanzaa and Let’s Go: The Budget Guide to Rome (1995), has written a biography of Barack Obama targeted to young adults, and it seems to imply that he’s the messiah. The Wall Street Journal’s review characterizes her writing as “hagiography”, “worshipful”, and anything but even-handed. Clearly, this is an attempt to propagandize to the key bookish middle-schooler demographic.

Born in the U.S.A., the son of an African father and an American mother, a boy who spent his childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii, Barack Obama is truly a citizen of the world. His campaign for the presidency is powered by a fierce optimism, an exuberant sense of purpose and determination, and, above all, a belief that change can happen.

Admittedly, young adult novels are hardly the place for hard-hitting political analysis, but there has been a real problem with the media dealing with Obama in terms ill-suited to active politicians. A few months ago, Gerard Baker in The Times of London addressed the core of the problem.

Mr Obama is portrayed throughout as an immanently benevolent figure. Not human really, more a comforting presence, a light source. He is always eager to listen to all aides of an argument, always instilling confidence in the weak-willed, resolutely sticking to his high principles and tirelessly spurning the low road of electoral politics.

Maybe the problem is that we shouldn’t be young adult biographizing Obama quite yet, and that much of the media is kind of already dealing with him like the subject of a young adult biography.

Ruslana's Tortured Post Was House Lyrics [Ruslana Korshunova]

Media are poring over Supermodel Ruslana Korshunova’s blog in the wake of her apparent suicide, hashing through entries they interpret as warning signs of inner anguish. The Daily News references "emotion-soaked passages posted on a social networking site", and The Times of London contrasts her up-beat demeanor with solemn lines from her blog. However, one of the lines, “My dream is to fly. Oh, my rainbow is too high” appears to be a misheard quote from Swiss DJ Yves Larock's “Rise Up”.

[NY Daily News]

Site Problems [Housekeeping]

The search box still isn't working—and nor are the tag pages. Bear with us.

The Ironic Moustache Tat of Tomorrow [Urban Anthropology]

There’s a dude in Utah who’ll tattoo your teeth for you. While tooth (actually crown) tattoo is clearly a natural progression in body art, I think the real surprise here is that there’re novel forms of bling being developed in the Jell-O belt. The procedure costs between $75 and $200, usually takes a half-hour, and will give you a lifetime of shame and regret. Steve Heward, the oral Donatello behind this innovation, seems to specialize in faces like Micky Mouse, Amy Winehouse, and Abraham Lincoln. A parade of horribles after the jump.

[via Best Week Ever]

Emily Gould's Memoirs [Rumormonger]

Word is that the 26-year-old former Gawker editor and New York Times Magazine covergirl has sold the rights to And The Heart Says...Whatever—for a stupendous $1m. The auction concluded on Friday morning. Anyone know which publisher shelled out such an extraordinary sum?

Subscribe with an RSS reader Older News Archive Add news to your web site