Last July, when Christopher Ciccone published his gosspy memoir Life With My Sister Madonna, I paged through it to see if I would be mentioned. Not because of that torrid romance Madonna and I had when I was one of her back-up dancers–that was really just a big rumor–but because in the summer of 1993, when I was at Us magazine, I wrote an article called “Immaterial Girl”, which maintained that while Madonna would no doubt go on to have many hits, she had nonetheless reached her peak as a cultural figure. It was kind of a no brainer point to make–nobody stays hot forever, and by that point Madonna had kind of played her last card with her Sex book, a lousy, cheaply made book that degraded her and robbed her of her mystery. Well, long story short, there was no mention in little brother’s book. But now, thanks to Jossip.com, we know that Christopher, at least for a while, was blogging about all the stuff that was left out of the book. Take it away, Jossip:
“Now that he’s exhausted all avenues of publicity — namely, Good Morning America and Chelsea Lately — Christopher Ciccone is taking his book tour to the web. As if there aren’t enough places on the information superhighway trashing Madonna, Ciccone’s started a blog to add to the fray where, he says, some of the material that lawyers kept out of the book appears. Which means you will find tales of Madonna pooping herself and Madonna sucking a guy off while the guy blows Christopher. Lawyers indeed! But our favorite part of Ciccone’s blogging so far? Madonna whining, in August 1993, about a savage Us Weekly article: (more…)
Congratulations to my friend Paul Lindstrom. Paul is a SVP at Nielsen Strategic Research, and he was just ranked Number 23 on Mediaweek‘s list of the Fifty Most Indispensible Executives Shaping the Future of Media. Here’s what the magazine said: “A 30-year Nielsen vet responsible for its first services for measuring cable, Lindstrom has become the research giant’s go-to guy for developing measurement services for emerging media. He created a common format for reporting audiences of out-of-home video networks, paralleling Nielsen reports for cinema, the largest segment of the video OOH business.
Several emerging OOH video ad networks have signed up, including CBS Outernet, Ideacast.” Outstanding, Paul–way to go! (Although they might have mentioned that you are also an affable host, a good dad, an enthusiastic fan of Briarcliff’s various teams, and a good friend.)
Got the bad news that thanks to huge deficits, Playboy and I will be going our separate ways. Too bad. I enjoyed my job and the people I worked with. But onward and upward. (Above, I say goodbye to my friend Joseph DeAcetis, who lost his job as Fashion Director. Joseph and I first worked together at Esquire in the nineties, and I daresay we’ll work together again before we’re through.)
Thanks to my friend Derek Alger, I was able to have lunch on Wednesday with Thomas Fleming, the very distinguished historian and novelist. Tom is the author of The Illusion of Victory, Duel, Washington’s Secret War, The Secret Trial of Robert E. Lee, and the just published The Perils of Peace, about the struggles the colonies had in securing a peace treaty during the final days of the revolution. Tom regaled us with stories about J.D. Salinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Margaret Truman, among others. It was great to meet him. As we were leaving, Tom paid me a terrific compliment by comparing me to his first boss, Fulton Ousler, the author of The Greatest Story Ever Told, and like me, a native Baltimorean, and like me, a journalist. Tom said “You’re like Fulton. You are a magazine man.” I guess I am.
Thanks to LinkedIn, I’ve heard from two more friends from LaSalle. My very first college roommate, Dennis O’Dowd, sent me a hilarious letter. “I was just using you as an example the other day. My mother sent me an email which detailed all of Obama‘s past foreign and/or suspicious associations and how this proved he is someone who can’t be trusted. I responded with a list of my past associates to show how anyone can be made to look suspicious if shaded the wrong way. You were included in my list because my parents were convinced you were a campus radical (this based on the fact that when they dropped me of at the dorms on my first day at LaSalle they saw you had long hair, wore an army hat, and your suitcase was an army duffel bag.) So, I was able to show that you are now an upstanding member of the establishment and a bestselling author. Probably won’t make any difference to my mother . . .Of course it didn’t help that one of the other examples I used was Phil Leonetti, a high school classmate I was friendly with. He later gained fame as ‘Crazy Phil’ Leonetti working as a hit man for his uncle, Little Nicky Scarfo of the Atlantic City mob.” Dennis has had an interesting career in business, during the course of which he spent eleven years living in Singapore, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. He and his wife have three kids and now live in Havertown, Pennsylvania. I also heard from Sallyanne Harper, who was a very good friend of Ginny’s and mine. Her husband Francis Nathans was also a good friend, and they now live in Virginia. Sallyanne has a major job with the government–she’s like the COO of the GAO, or something like that–a title so exalted that it has no words, only letters–and she’s hard at work on the bailout and bank liquidity issues. Sallyanne was kind enough to mention one of our teachers, John Grady, the head of La Salle’s Honors Program, and the man who recruited us to La Salle, who died this summer. “I wanted to pass on to you how very proud he was of you. I saw him whenever I went to La Salle and he always mentioned your latest publication and how wonderful he thought it was. He frequently used you as a positive example of a LaSalle honors program graduate when discussing the honors program.” What a nice thought. And that’s me–something between a role model and mobster-like. It was great to hear from Dennis and Sallyanne.
Grim article about the state of book publishing by Leon Neyfakh in The New York Observer: “Think of it like a supply chain,” said one publishing executive who would not speak for attribution. “If the newspapers have fewer ads, they’re running fewer book reviews, so therefore, for those books that don’t have a pre-estab- lished audience, there are fewer opportunities to appeal to the consumer. Therefore, there are fewer of those consumers going into the bookstore. The bookstore recognizes this, and they tell you your mid-list books aren’t doing shit, so they’re not gonna order them, or they’re just gonna order 100 copies. They can cut off those books, and then the publisher is faced with a tough decision—how am I gonna buy those books that I know I can only ship 100 copies of? What am I gonna do? Am I gonna keep doing it? Or am I gonna spend more [money] chasing established authors?” . . . . (more…)
I got a note on the LinkedIn network from my colleage friend Ned White, who is currently the Regional Sales Manager at Midwest Media Group, which according to the company’s website “has emerged as the leading Digital New Media Reseller/Systems Integrator in the central United States.” Showing why he remains a great pal, Ned writes “First, I have to say that I’m a big fan of The Coup. I’ve actually given copies as gifts to several other LSC alumni.” That is a compliment indeed. Ned has a daughter who goes to NYU, a fact which might bring him close enough for us to meet up for a drink. That would be fun.
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Writing about last night’s debate on newsweek.com, Richard Wolffe focused on John McCain‘s physical presentation: “He paced up and down in fits and starts as he spoke. He leapt from subject to subject, sound byte to sound byte. Between answers, he sat down and scribbled page after page of notes, then jumped up and paced around silently. Early on, he seemed ill at ease in engaging with his questioners; how close should he stand? And how much should he look at them? . . . .There was no questioning the GOP nominee’s energy level; he seemed to have enough pent-up force to power a sub-station.” Barack Obama, by contrast, “moved easily about the stage, and seemed far more comfortable.” And why not?
McCain was like the angry sea pounding onto Obama’s heedless rock, and with all the same effect. America has turned the page on this election. We want a new president, we want change, we ‘ve decided Obama is the guy. Almost no one is passionately pro-McCain, and almost no one is passionately anti-Obama. Dick Morris says in the New York Post that Obama has peaked too soon, that his big lead will attract increased focus and that because some people won’t like what they see, the race will narrow, Well, you can’t discount that, but McCain is doing nothing to help himself; he is even being outshone by his running mate. At this point, if people don’t like what they see about Obama, they’re going to stay home. America mostly wants to move on. The sooner we can end the Petraeus-Paulson Regency and let a duly-elected president get to work, the “far more comfortable” we’ll all be.
I am pretty thrilled to have won at auction on eBay copies of four prints by James Gillray, the great British satirical artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Gillray had a sharp pen and a merciless and brilliantly comic sensibility that must have reduced the targets of satire to tears and rage. One of the four prints is Sir Richard Worse-Than-Sly, exposing his wifes bottom; O Fye!, first published, March, 1782. It shows a naked Lady Worsley–who looks quite different in the military costume she wears in Sir Joshua Reynolds‘s portrait of her that hangs in Harewood House mansion in Yorkshire–stepping into a sunken bath while her husband helps one Captain Bisset to peep at her through a window.
Another print, “Bologna Sausages, or Oppositions Flux’d”, takes on the leader of the opposition, the formidible Charles Fox. First published during the Regency Crisis of 1788. it depicts the scene in Parliament, which was wracked by debate between the the advocates of the Prince of Wales‘ regency (including Fox, Edmund Burke and Richard Brinsley Sheridan), against the supporters of the mad (temporarily, as it turned out) King George III, chief among them William Pitt. Gillray depicts Pitt chasing Fox from the House of Commons with the threat “I’ll unwhig the gentleman.” This period of history–the era of George III, Pitt, Nelson, Napoleon, Austen–is one of my favorites, and Gillray’s trenchent illustrations make it especially vivid.
Last July, when Christopher Ciccone published his gosspy memoir Life With My Sister Madonna, I paged through it to see if I would be mentioned. Not because of that torrid romance Madonna and I had when I was one of her back-up dancers–that was really just a big rumor–but because in the summer of 1993, when I was at Us magazine, I wrote an article called “Immaterial Girl”, which maintained that while Madonna would no doubt go on to have many hits, she had nonetheless reached her peak as a cultural figure. It was kind of a no brainer point to make–nobody stays hot forever, and by that point Madonna had kind of played her last card with her Sex book, a lousy, cheaply made book that degraded her and robbed her of her mystery. Well, long story short, there was no mention in little brother’s book. But now, thanks to Jossip.com, we know that Christopher, at least for a while, was blogging about all the stuff that was left out of the book. Take it away, Jossip:
