Newsday Slipping From Murdoch's Clutches [Newsday]

"Cablevision is preparing a $650 million offer for Newsday, $70 million more than bids by Rupert Murdoch and Mortimer B. Zuckerman... Executives... interested in Newsday said they learned over the last month that printing, trucking and subscription operations were more troubled and inefficient than they knew. Paradoxically, that has persuaded them that the paper was worth more... 'These are problems that can be fixed, so there’s a lot of room for improvement,' one executive said." [Times]

New York's Greatest Modern Eccentrics [Urban Anthropology]

Every city has its special weirdos. Santa Cruz, California has Pinky Valentino, who wears clown makeup and carries a tin-foil umbrella. Detroit has a bearded older guy in a jean jacket called Papa Smurf. And Seattle has so many local characters, like a would-be green elf from Legend of Zelda and the "original hipster" in a large-brimmed black hat, that someone created a site called Seattle Notables, modeled on Gawker Stalker, to track them all. Shamefully, there's no such central clearinghouse for eccentrics New York, which must content itself with individual sites, like the one dedicated to chronicling the shirtless, brawny heroics of a guy called "He-Man. To get the fameball rolling, we've assembled a handful of key Gotham characters after the jump. Add to this surely-incomplete list in the comments, or via tips@gawker.com. Because there's no way Seattle should be allowed to out-weird New York. On to the freakshow:

"He-Man" is stalked by Paul Briganti and his informants at FindHeMan.com, which Briganti created with the comedy group Beast after "I was at a bank talking to a friend about this guy and someone overheard me and knew who we were talking about," Briganti told Wired. Top marks for muscle definition.

The Naked Cowboy has been around forever and kind of wants his infamy a bit too much. And yet there he is, still at it. You have to admire naked ambition (HEY-OH!).

The DJ trio MisShapes have elevated themselves, if only barely, beyond the typical, calculated quirks of hipsterdom and into the gloriously marketable and annoying arms of arty eccentricity.

We still don't know the name of this Asian guy with ponytails. But a couple of weeks ago he took a near-naked walk through SoHo with a Whole Foods bag, and we're betting he's going to keep distinguishing himself.

Williamsburg mullet guy needs no introduction, because he became the obsession of a borough — no, an entire city — for months on end. His bald-in-the-front, skyscraper-in-the-back haircut terrorized Brooklynites at the start of what was supposed to be a happy New Year. An ironic-hair-cut sketch artist quickly issued a rough whiteboard rendering. A reward was offered. Weeks passed. Nothing. Then, a photo. Eventually, an identity emerged: He was a cellist and composer; he did crazy things with his hair all the time; he wants a sarcastic braniac girlfriend with green eyes. Whatever. Just don't touch the hair.

[Wired]

Scarlett Johansson Being Stalked By Everyone [Celebrity-industrial Complex]

What's with the Scarlett Johansson sightings tonight? Her every movement is being tracked, apparently. Some kind of event for her Tom Waits cover album at Bowery Ballroom, maybe? Two recent stalkings after the jump. UPDATE: Make that three.

Scarlett Johansson - 450 W.15th St - I got into the elevator with ScarJo, but couldn't tell if it was her at first since she had sunglasses on. She got off on floor 2. When I left the building 15 minutes later, she got in the elevator again on the way down. This time, I heard her talk - it was 100% her signature voice. Looked normal and cute, but shorter than I would have imagined. She had darrrrk roots showing through her platinum blonde hair. Jogged to an SVU waiting outside, definitely in a hurry.

ScarJo at bowery ballroom taking in jessie baylins set. Standing to
the side, hair up and under a hat. No makeup, naturally gorgeous.
Oblivious to the all the stares.

Scarlett Johansson at Bowery Ballroom - She was there this evening with a few friends watching singer Jessie Baylin's set. She's really quite striking, and more petite than I expected (and clearly not shy about standing right up front). She seemed very relaxed and looked like she was really enjoying herself.

Disney's Kiddie Lingerie Billboard Advertises Hypocrisy [Miley Cyrus]

The Walt Disney Corporation was nothing short of outraged when its billion-dollar-a-year child star Miley Cyrus appeared in Vanity Fair wearing only a bedsheet, as shown in the rightmost image above. Said a spokeswoman at the time: "A situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines." But check out the Disney billboard pictured on the left, snapped by Slate's Daniel Brook in Beijing, China. The model, who looks barely pubescent, is being used to sell a matching bra-and-panties set. Brook said the billboard made "the controversial 1990s Calvin Klein underwear ads look artistic by comparison." And it's not the work of Chinese intellectual property pirates; it comes from a legitimate Disney licensee pledged to clear all ads with Disney corporate. What does Disney say? Controlling child exploitation is hard! Also, Chinese people have certain... tastes:

"It has caught us totally by surprise," [a Disney spokesman] told me by phone from Guangzhou... "We have literally hundreds of licensees making our products. They are supposed to submit any kind of imagery to us before it is used, but it's hard to enforce that sometimes," he said...

"I don't want to make excuses for them at all because it is not anything that we would ever approve, but in other parts of the world this is not unusual at all... In fact, in Europe, they have similar type of taste, if you will. Here in China that's not unusual at all, but it's not usual for the Disney brand."

Disney's hypocrisy has been on display since the start of the Cyrus scandal. The company isn't against the manipulation of a 15-year-old for profit when the profit in question is its own, derived from selling a wholesome image of Cyrus to young girls through the Hannah Montana franchise. That's why Disney was so eager to tamp down Cyrus' natural and fairly tame (if unusually public) experimentation with her own sexuality, a process well under way — and heavily photographed — on the internet before Vanity Fair's Annie Leibovitz turned her lens on the star.

But this billboard is the clearest, simplest symbol yet of how Disney's beef with Vanity Fair is about business, not morality. If this sort of thing were a moral question for the company, it would police so-called manipulation of all its child icons with equal vigor, whether the kid in question was selling 10-figure TV packages or cheap underwear sets. That clearly is not the case.

[Slate]

Spider [Things We Actually Like]

It's been a rough day! It's always a rough day. Relax with this sweet little short film (shown below) about a prankster.

Rick Moody Pies Dale Peck [Everyone Is Friends]

Dale Peck has become so much less angry since he scored that $3 million book deal! The novelist and critic—whose Friendster profile was once described as "incredibly anti-corporate and anti-consumer," who famously hated things much more than most reviewers do these dark days, and who was slugged by Stanley Crouch because of it—recently allowed himself to be pied by Rick Moody. Moody was once described by Peck as the worst writer of his generation. But at a fundraiser the Montauk Club last night, it was all fun and games and pieing. [NYT]

Three Steps To Getting A Book Deal For Your Blog [Book Deals]

If everyone's getting a book deal for their blog, why aren't you? Mostly because your writing hasn't gone anywhere better than a Gawker comment thread, but also because you haven't followed these three steps (note: not a joke article! Real advice inside) to getting a blog book deal. Short version: Start a blog that's short and sweet and high-concept, spread it on Tumblr and LiveJournal, send it to Gawker, and call Kate Lee.

Your personal blog isn't good enough. Book deals for personal, story-telling blogs fizzled out a few years ago. There's just too much research for the publisher and no guarantee of mass appeal. The latest book deals look more like movie deals: A conceptual hook will draw people in even if some of the jokes fall flat. There are three kinds of blogs that recently got deals:

So did it work? If not, try again. If so, go to hell you lucky bastard. I'll be spitting at you during your reading, next to the guy from White Whine.

Literary Love Connection []

Byron Crawford, one of the best hip hop bloggers out there and also a raging homophobe and horny bastard, was very impressed by fake author Margaret Seltzer's outfit and demeanor in her video rendition of fantastic tales from the hood. He'd like to get to know her better. "You know who has two thumbs and lurves white chicks who wear doorknocker earrings? This guy. *points at himself with his two thumbs*," he says. Just carrying the message! [XXL]

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