Julia Allison's Weary Morning-After Email To Wired [Celebrity Science]

Julia Allison posted n email conversation with the editor of Wired, the magazine that, in case you missed it, put her on the cover this month and thus made her famous for being famous for nothing. Ever the crafty self-promoter, Allison asked if her cover was as good for <i>Wired</i> as it was for her: "I hope - that as time goes on, you’ll be proud you took the leap," the Time Out New York dating columnist wrote. Remember aspiring fameballs: follow up is key. Wired editor Chris Anderson said "I feel great about this one." So sweet. In another moment protocelebrities should study, Allison makes a thinly-veiled pitch for some kind of Wired writing gig by pretending she's tired of all the self-promotion (for real this time!) and wants to get back to her "roots" (what??) as a writer:

The true goal was never “fame” at all. I wanted two things: 1) editors to publish my work, 2) people to read my work. I wanted to be like Nora Ephron - able to exist creatively with an audience and relative financial freedom...

I did over two dozen print interviews and 350 television segments in the last year - and probably over 500 in the last two years. I taught my brain to think in soundbites, in PR nothing-speak, to project authority on subjects I have no real knowledge about [emphasis so added]. It’s a game … but I’m a bit tired of playing it. Now I need to unlearn much of that.

All of this left me little time to actually do what it was that I set out to do in the first place - which is to communicate, to explore, to wonder, to interview fascinating individuals about their own discoveries - and yes, write.

...I suppose that if I get lost along the way back to my roots as a writer, I can always head up a marketing firm...

You hear that, everyone? Julia Allison is tired of "playing the game" of self-promotion and being famous for nothing!

And we know this is so because she posted it to the website her company started to broadcast online her life as the star of a new Bravo reality show.

[Non Society]

Times' Dark Knight Review [The Cinema]

"Mr. Ledger's death might have cast a paralyzing pall over the film if the performance were not so alive... He’s just a clown painted on black velvet, but he’s also some kind of masterpiece." [Times]

Times Reporter: "I Was A Fat Thug Who Beat Up Women And Sold Bad Coke" [Books]

How does David Carr pull this off? The Times media critic writes in his forthcoming memoir of drug addiction that he kidnapped his children, smacked around his girlfriends and left two babies in a near-freezing car on the street for hours while he got high. This in addition to dealing drugs and fathering crack babies, which we already knew about. It's all in his book excerpt from next Sunday's Times Magazine. And yet, after reading the account, it's remarkably hard to detest the guy.

He's the one openly feeding you all of this unflattering information, first of all, and self deprecation tends to be charming. He's recovered and made some amends.

But just as important is the running meta-commentary. Carr repeatedly and self-consciously points out the autobiographer's primal, protective instinct toward self-flattery, and corrects this with his own reporting about himself. He calls many of his own memories "myths" based on this fact checking.

Carr also admits some of his unfair advantages:

When a woman, any woman, has issues with substances, has kids out of wedlock and ends up struggling as a single parent, she is identified by many names: slut, loser, welfare mom, burden on society. Take those same circumstances and array them over a man, and he becomes a crown prince. See him doing that dad thing and, with a flick of the wrist, the mom thing too! Why is it that the same series of overt acts committed by a male becomes somehow ennobled?

Carr also cleverly takes a preemptive shot at judgmental readers:

In the convention of the recovery narrative, readers will want to scan past the tick-tock, looking for the yucky part so that they can feel better about themselves. ( (Here’s a taste: When I got to detox for what I thought was the last time, they took one look at my arms and brought me a tub filled with lukewarm water and Dreft detergent to soak my scabrous, pus-filled track marks. They dropped pills into my mouth from several inches away as if feeding a baby bird, and even the wet-brain drunks wouldn’t come near me. See how that works?)

Carr's excerpt is worth a read, not only because it's a page turner, but also because it's a remarkable example of how, amid the spread of internet protocelebrity and the return of tabloid-style media wars, one inoculates oneself against smear campaigns: Smear yourself first, in the most charming way possible.

[Times]

Gay-Bashing Campaign Comic Book Pushes Satire To New Heights [Wtf]

Thanks to Wonkette for reminding us that satirical caricatures are so hot right now! A county commissioner running for re-election in Oklahoma sent a comic book to everyone in his district with over-the-top drawings of "pedifiles," "pedaphiles," anal sodomites, the devil and "liberal good ol' boys" all trying to frame him (on felony campaign finance chages). Oh, sure, at first the drawings might look like an old-fashioned nasty smear campaign in cartoon form, rather than sophisticated ironic commentary ala the New Yorker's Barack Obama cover. But this little graphic novella can't help but lampoon itself, what with its portrayal of the full gamut of Christian extremist politicking! Assuming that Times op-ed contributor Timothy Egan was correct about red states having a well-developed sense of satire, Oklahoma City should be certifying gay marriages by Labor Day. More hilarious frames after the jump.

[Reason via Wonkette]

Important Advice For the Humor-Deficient [Advice]

John McCain got in trouble this week for an old joke he told once about how women enjoy rape. No one gets his sense of humor! He grew up with the subtle wit of Sir Francis Burnand's Punch, is it his fault the kids today all read filthy comic books or whatever? Similarly, The New Yorker got in trouble this week for printing a cover that everyone had to pretend not to understand in order to be outraged about how no one would get the joke. It was complicated. But we have advice from an expert that will help. John McCain needs to read this email from your day editor's mother.

Maybe, though, you could have summarized all of your tips by using the very sage advice that kid gave you in 2nd grade, when the teacher had you guys write an advice column. Each of you wrote one letter asking for advice and each of you answered one letter. You had a sad letter about basically how you were too hip for 2nd grade, you were telling all sorts of funny jokes and nobody got them. And you wanted to know how to make those kids understand.

And the kid who answered your letter wrote:

Alex,
you should tell funnier jokes.

To this day, I laugh and laugh and laugh when I think of that, and how mad you were about it.

And I never made bad jokes again.

Peter Braunstein Won't Make The Mediabistro Christmas Party [Criminals]

Peter Braunstein, the former WWD writer who went psycho and turned into a rapist on the run a couple years back, has been sentenced to 23 years in prison in Ohio. That's after he finishes his 18-to-life bid in NY. He called himself a "Hamlet character," complained about the "absurdist quality" of the trial, and promised to orchestrate his own murder in jail, preferably before Christmas. So, still crazy. [NYDN]

"You Live Your Life On a Tightrope" [The Cinema]

Here's a trailer for the upcoming documentary Man On Wire, about Philippe Petit's famous World Trade Center tightrope walk. It gives me chills. [Apple]

Jingles To Scare Children [Reality Tv]

The predicted awfulness of CBS' upcoming American Idol-style ad jingle show Jingles has been confirmed, months before it actually debuts. It seems that—incredibly—hundreds of people have already auditioned for the show, and many of the audition tapes are available on YouTube. Ad Age has viewed them, and predicts a "trainwreck." We only have the stomach to bring you one of the auditions; below, a sample jingle for "Fruit It Up" candy, from a bizarre pink-clad singing duo. What would Gene Simmons have to say about this?

[Ad Age]

We hear that Williamsboard is some people's entire lives [Williamsburg]

Writes a tipster about the hipster neighborhood's messageboard, today's thread starts out with "whining about being poor, then it turns into outing your 'best friend's' abortion on the Internet." [Williamsboard]

Today's News, In a Word Cloud [The Internets]

Wordle generates what they call “word clouds” from the text you give them. "The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like." We inputted today's Gawker. Here's what showed up!

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