Make The Ultimate Set Of Song Covers [Friday Mixtape]

Maybe I just have an inferiority complex about my novelty-music past, but I feel guilty about my love for song covers, particularly cross-genre covers. I even love when one hit song inspires dozens of covers. But instead of mocking the artists who remade "Crazy" or "Umbrella," shouldn't we honor them for reviving the "standards" tradition that enriched decades of jazz? Below are a few of my favorite sources for covers and the username and password for adding to this week's Friday Mixtape, "Cover Me."

To add to Gawker's playlist "Cover Me":
Page: Upload
User: Gawkercovers
Password: gawked

For more covers:

• Cover Freak groups covers by themes like "Dance Fever" and "The Inevitable Tom Jones Post."
• Clash of the Covers compares two artists' versions of the same song.
• Cover Me sometimes posts covers of an entire album, like Weezer's Blue Album.

The Week We Made Our Own News [Week In Review]

• There wasn't any news this week so we watched a lot of tv and laughed.
• A mole disappeared along with a bullshit title.
• We held contests! Who is the hottest white person and what should we call him? Him and this.
• Keith Olbermann Tim Russert Page Six Rupert Murdoch Bill O'Reilly Chris Matthews.
• Things got ugly and an asshole did not get whatever is coming to him.
• Robert Cox sends letters. We called him a nerd, but he set the record straight: he is a tool. Now we don't get to be in his club. :(
• Death. Birth. Re-birth.
• We dug deep into the archives in search of media bitchery of all kinds.
• There was some investigative reporting and everything.

Kreepie Kats in "The Only Thing Ginormous Enough to Fill the Simpering, Gaping Need Inside of Keith Gessen For You To Respect Him Would Be The Khrysler Building Topped With a Kondom" [Kreepie Kats]

[Jim Behrle's Kartoon Kats explore precisely how best to take back the internet. Maybe they will be at the party tonight? Suck Stella Artois with the doucherati! Animated fun, after the jump]

How to Satirize the 60's Ad World [Television]

Here's the best entertainment piece you'll read all weekend: Alex Witchel's New York Times Magazine profile of Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, a brilliant drama on AMC entering its second season that does to the 60's advertising industry what Boeing Boeing tried to do to the 60's airline industry. Lots of sex, booze, smoking, shellacked hair, and modular furniture, but also some of the smartest scriptwriting on television. Whether or not Weiner stays true to the nature of jingle-and-tagline executives as they formerly existed (the secretaries' breasts are right out of the John Currin catalog) is almost besides the point once you hear him describe a plot motive:

"I wanted to do a story about a woman getting fat because she couldn’t deal with being sexualized all the time, and that more important, she was never going to be taken seriously professionally until that happened. She becomes a guy, and they give her a big punch in her shoulder. She makes it.”

Well, that's one way to turn a period glutted on stereotypes on its head. Another is to dismiss Nordic ingenues at casting calls because you want a gal Friday who looks Jewish. Though some graying manes of the 60's ad-world aren't so very keen on Mad Men. George Lois, the art director who co-founded Papert Koenig Lois in 1960, thinks the show misrepresents the workaday tedium he remembers. Were there three Martini lunches?

“Of course not, are you serious?” he retorts. “We worked from 5:30 in the morning until 10 at night. We had three women copywriters. We didn’t bed secretaries. I introduced Xerox. It was hard, hard work and no nonsense. ‘Mad Men’ is typical of ‘The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,’ those phony S.O.B.’s. I was a Greek bigmouth, a Korean War veteran. I used my ethnicity to promote my talent. Before you knew it, most of the great creative talent was Italian, Greek and Jewish. We broke through the terrible WASP-ness of the business.”

Maybe. But one of the other ethnic talents, Jerry Della Femina, says Weiner pretty much gets it right:

“People had bottles in their drawers...For lunch, we used to go to the Italian Pavilion, which is now where Michael’s is...The bar was still in the same place, and the bartender would start shaking our martinis as soon as we walked in. They would literally serve us the first martini as we were sitting down, the second, the third, then we would figure out what to eat. It was such a wild time, and the best period for advertising, so much looser. We had Blue Nun, which was a terrible wine to sell to people. If there were a Nuremberg trial for selling bad wine, we should have been hanged.”

That last line even sounds like dialogue.

[New York Times Magazine]

MORE: Office Nostalgia

Arianna Huffington's Great Illegal Nanny Search [Political Wives]

On Tuesday, we explained Arianna Huffington's decade-spanning feud with Tim Russert. On Wednesday, we explored the orginal article that sparked it. Today, for the hell of it, another passage from the book that reported the blog mistress's alleged hiring of a private investigator to tail Tim Russert's wife. The book is Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms by Republican strategist Ed Rollins, who ran the Senate campaign of then-Huffington husband Michael. Click through to read the thrilling tale of Dianne Feinstein's Magical Illegal Nanny!

The book is roundly, universally cruel to Arianna.

Arianna Huffington had charmed me out of my socks to get me to manage her husband's campaign. But in a few short months, I'd come to realize that she was the most ruthless, unscrupulous, and ambitious person I'd met in thirty years in national politics—not to mention that she sometimes seemed truly pathological. Her allure and style were only a veneer: the soul of a wily sorceress lurked beneath.

Jeez. It's worth mentioning, of course, that after this debacle, Rollins went on to work for Katherine Harris in her disastrous Senate campaign. Until he quit and leaked terrible shit to newspapers. Rollins has a nasty habit of losing political campaigns and then blaming ambitious women, right? (Though in the Harris case, well, that was definitely her fault. She's fucking nuts.)

[Amazon]

The Naked Cowgirl! [Urban Anthropolgy]

A mostly-naked lady of a certain age took to the streets in Times Square, playing a guitar as "the naked cowgirl." What no one seems to realize is that we're preeeetty sure that it's actually Sandy Kane! She's a career stripper, stripper-comedian, late-night cable star, and overall cult figure/holdover from the grimy old days of Times Square. Rock on, Sandy! [via Intelligencer; photo Bennett Marcus]

Friday Night's Allright for Fighting [Pic Of The Day]

We already told you about the mysterious no-holds-barred public fights that sprang up one afternoon in Union Square (and showed you two skinny, chickenfighting hipsters.) But now there's more photography from the event, highlighting these graceful, modern gladiators. The best thing about these fights? Their backdrop: Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and a variety of chain stores. [Photo by Anya Roz via AndIamnotlying]

"Spend All Day Masticating Uselessly" [The Commies]

"What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade." —Gertrude Jekyll. Enjoy your Commies for best comments of the week, before the glory fades, after the jump.

• From Knucklehead Babylon in MySpace Hotties Prove Themselves Real:
  "They should have certificates of authenticity. Like Beanie Babies." —Sheila
• From Pope John Peeps II in Candy Candy Candy:
  "famous retard Thomas Friedman says:

  Gum was a pre-911 candy, when americans could lounge over the disappearing flavour of their confection, and spend all day masticating uselessly. It was a candy of indulgence and softness, which allowed terrorism to strike. In the 90s there were many bubbles. There was the stockmarket bubble, the corporate governance bubble, the terrorism bubble and the gum bubble...[continues on post]" —Hamilton

• From fiveinchtaint in Entertainment in New York City:
  
  
• From Sarcastro in Luck of the Drowned:
  "I got a tremendous amount of stanky for my hang-low whilst on holiday in Burma." — I don't really know what this means, but it sounds funny. And gross.
• From EleanorRigby in Prepare to Be Robbed, IKEA Customers:
  "Particle board and gravlax make people do crazy things." — Heh, gravlax
• Party Pick. Two words: CodePink. She wrote ewoqwentwee in Naughty Bits Left Out of Barbara Walters' Audiobiography:
  "His tone bawday stood befaw me like Adonis himself. Wonduhwing exactwy what I had gotted myself into, he ansuhhed that question by getting INTO me. That is to say, he entuhhed me, with bweathless abandonment and waging passion. That of a centahh or maybe even, a dwagon. I. Bahbaw Wahwah. Was his."

• Terrific week everyone! Nothing actually happened, but all still had plenty to say.

  ENJOY YOUR FREEDOM.

"His Facebook widget is going to change your life." [Twitter]

Ryan Catbird mocks the cocky tone of Twitter users and (I think) Gawker people. [F.U. And The Blog You Rode In On]

Olbermann and O'Reilly Drag General Electric and Rupert Murdoch Into Their Dick-Measuring Contest [Tabloid Wars]

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp owns Fox News and the New York Post's Page Six, so there's often a bit of corporate synergy in the targets those two outlets decide to attack. Like NBC, for example. MSNBC competes directly with Fox News and NBC with the Fox network, so it's only good business to undermine them at every turn. But it's become an all-out a war, lately, waged both in print and on television. Let's go back to the beginning!

And so the feud widened. From Bill versus Keith to Fox versus NBC to News Corp versus General Electric. It went as high as Immelt and Rupert Murdoch! Fox News head Roger Ailes called NBC head Jeff Zucker personally to complain about Olbermann and threaten to take the battle to the New York Post. Murdoch called Zucker to ask that the network not play a video of a blogger harassing O'Reilly.

Page Six, the Post's gossip arm, constantly runs embarrassing stories about Olbermann. Which often leads to Olbermann naming some News Corp or Post-related figure his Worst Person in the World. And then the cycle begins anew! Over and over again!

But the involvement of Murdoch? The harassment of Immelt? As GE decides whether it wants to keep its toes in the broadcasting business, this ego-driven bullshit might help convince them it's not worth it. Bill might win this one, sort of!

As in most things Murdochian, Rupert doesn't dirty his hands. While it's fun to pretend to see his fingerprints on each Olbermann smear in Page Six, the truth is Johnson and Post head Col Allen do indeed call the shots. They just know which shots they're supposed to call. Just like Roger Ailes at Fox, all the way down to Bill.

Would that GE and NBC/Universal had a message machine so in tune? They've got the cable blowhards warring with the broadcast newsmen and it all ends up publicized by one News Corp outlet or another.

The real winners, as always: us!

A Superflack Scorned [Rob Shuter]

Earlier this week we gave you a brief history of Rob Shuter, the shameless former celebrity flack whose various transgressions have reduced him to editing OK! Magazine. That post brought back some memories for Michael Lucas, famous gay porn performer and impresario (pictured, on the left). According to Lucas, he once snubbed Shuter's request for love, which sparked a neverending campaign by the uberflack to exact his revenge! Worst of all, Lucas says, Shuter even used poor supermodel Naomi Campbell for his own nefarious ends. Lucas' full, telling letter is below.

Hey guys,

I just read your article about Rob Shuter and I have my own story on this guy that you might find interesting, useful or not.

I met him first at a party where he told me he wanted to talk business. He came over to my apartment several days later and after a few minutes, I understood that it was nothing about business, the guy was just horny. Nevertheless, he went into a long "proposal" to work on the project with me and Naomi Campbell which would be "groundbreaking." I am a very ambitious person, but I am also realistic so I didn't even listen and was thinking of how to get rid of the liar. When the guy made a move, I very politely declined.

Since then, this guy has done everything in his power to make me suffer for that.

I was always a guest at Heatherette show but I am no longer welcomed any longer. Lately, I found out that this was Rob's doing. Apparently, he has or had something to do with Heatherette's people.

During another fashion week, I was a guest of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and was sitting in the first row for the Huricane Relief fashion show. The next day, there was an article in Page Six accusing me of "hiding under a makeup table backstage for hours to get in." When I asked someone I knew at the New York Post how such an article could come about, he told me that all information was provided by Rob Shuter. Indeed, I was behind the stage that night, but not to sit under the makeup table. I had a very good time socializing with Carmen Dell'Orefice (who I later had a photoshoot with for Korean GQ), Timothy Sanders, and others. I also saw Rob, who came over to me and told me that he was Naomi Campbell's manager and that she would like to take a picture with me. He brought me to her table where she was giving interviews while getting her hair done and told me to wait. After 30 minutes of waiting, I decided to go back to my seat, as the show was about the start. Mr. Shuter was just enjoying my waiting while he knew the picture with Naomi Campbell would never happen. He just kept saying, "Michael, just another minute!"

I rarely meet such a vicious person as Rob Shuter who put so much energy toward making others miserable. And with his looks, shouldn't he be used to rejection?

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