Obama in New York: Lulling, Invading, Charming
Barack Obama came to town yesterday, both to schmooze donors for money and have a little chat with Dave Letterman. While Times politics guru Adam Nagourney reported Sunday that the senator has been taking a low-key, professorial tack at his recent talks, “lull[ing] his audiences into long, if respectful, silences,” the tabs are still writing up the appearance in terms of wild manic excitement: Obama “invaded” New York, as he “swooped” in on a break from his “cash dash” to “gobble up” campaign funds. Okay, sure. And how was he on Letterman? To be honest, we didn’t watch, and the clips are already gone from ever-vigilant YouTube. (CBS is a Viacom company, after all.) But our little brother, who was long ago nicknamed the family’s Peoria, because he falls for the same things average voters do, once actually saying, “I’d like to have George Bush as my little-league coach,” sent this e-mail at 12:20 a.m.: “I don’t know if you just saw Obama on Letterman but you cannot be more likable.” Hey, if it plays in Peoria …
‘I Am a NYer’: Obama [NYP]
I’m Not Running for 2nd — Barack [NYDN]
intel
The Times, They Are A-Changin’Mediaweek, January 9, 2006:
“We’re never going to accept an ad from a domestic car manufacturer,” Gawker Media’s sales director, Christopher Batty, boldly declares during a discussion about his zeitgeisty, blog-based Internet company’s advertising revenue. “We hate American cars, and our readers do, too.” He also adds that big pharmaceutical companies are not on their call list: “They don’t want us, we don’t want them — all our readers are healthy and beautiful.”
Gawker, today:
Healthy, beautiful, and, apparently, old.
The Annotated Dish
Morandi’s Deceptively Simple Duck Sandwich
Chef Jody Williams had made her mark as a master of Italian cuisine at Gusto when Keith McNally hired her to run the kitchen at Morandi. Like most of her cooking, this duck sandwich with quince and apple mostarda and green savoy cabbage appears simple and rustic but was created with a great deal of thought and technique. Mouse over the arrows for Jody Williams’s explanation of each ingredient.
intel
Pataki Planning Weekends in Puerto Rico?It could be that George Pataki’s pidgin-Spanish support for a Vieques bombing halt during his 2001 reelection campaign wasn’t just a ploy for the Latino vote; it may also have been sound real-estate strategy. Last week a waitress at Trade Winds, a restaurant on the Puerto Rican island, told a reliable source that the former governor had just passed through with news of purchasing a house there. Apparently Pataki, who agreed in January to phase out his controversial, state-provided, $20,000-a-week security detail, wasn’t rolling with his usual entourage. “It’s the first time he’s been down here not surrounded by security guards,” the waitress noted. Then again, who needs bodyguards when there are “no mas bombas”? —Daniel Maurer
gossipmonger
Reliving HistoryJeff Gerth and Don Van Natta’s Hillary bio will come out in August and may cause ethics problems for her in the Senate. Bonnie Fuller worried she showed too much chest on TV; also, she was cold. Hooters won’t host a PETA book party, prompting bad jokes from a PETA exec. Newt Gingrich and Lally Weymouth ate lunch. Thora Birch’s dad watched her shoot sex scenes. Martin Scorsese wants Leo DiCaprio to play stock swindler Jordan Belfort. And he’s also making a movie about Queen Victoria, says Liz Smith, with Sarah Ferguson as a co-producer. Sean Penn spoke at an antiwar rally in Oakland, didn’t make much sense. Whoopi Goldberg and Kiefer Sutherland had brunch.
today in astor-ia
So Maybe Brooke Astor’s Son Didn’t Actually Leave Her Destitute
Today’s Times indulges one of our favorite pastimes — counting other people’s money — with a piece detailing the twelve-page audit report of Brooke Astor’s riches. The numbers come from the fortune’s court-appointed guardian, JPMorgan Chase. One unexpected side effect of the list: It makes Brooke Astor’s disgraced son, Anthony D. Marshall, look like a pretty sensible handler of his mother’s money. (Marshall claims to have quadrupled Astor’s liquid assets over the last 25 years.)
How does Mrs. Astor’s $131 million kitty break down?
grub street
We All Scream for Lobster!
If it were us, we might not have named the thing a Lobster-Roll Ice-Cream Sandwich, because it sounds, well, gross. But look at the picture and consider the ingredients: a buttered-and-griddled top-cut hot-dog bun, filled with chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream, and more chocolate sauce. And then remember that had Ed McFarland, of Ed’s Lobster Bar, called it something else, it might not be this week’s Sandwich of the Week. And then where would we be?
That’s Right: A Lobster-Roll-Inspired Ice-Cream Sandwich [Grub Street]
developing
Hotel Gansevoort Will Have to Find a New Way to Annoy Neighbors Andrew Berman, chief of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, notched a victory Friday as self-appointed Sheriff of Downtown Tastefulness. For weeks, he’d organized protests and demonstrations near the well-lit, eight-foot-high ads around the Hotel Gansevoort. Today he sent a letter to Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster declaring that the city had seen the light. Berman says the city plans to tell hotel developer Michael Achenbaum that his illuminated signs break the zoning law because they stand at less than a 90-degree angle to Hudson Street. The two-page letter notes that if Achenbaum turns the signs to the legal pitch, “this would of course turn the signs toward the windows of the Hotel, and we hope that the Hotel will simply choose to remove the signs.” Now even if that does happen, it’s not as if the meatpacking district will morph into a redoubt of elegant restraint. But fear not Berman’s letter CCs all local elected officials and nameless “community groups” with hints of further battles. A round at Pastis, anyone? —Alec Appelbaum
Letters from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation [PDF]
the follow-up
Wal-Mart Tells Court What It Told ‘New York’ About Marketing Veep’s Alleged Affair
At the end of January, as Steve Fishman was finishing his New York feature on ousted Wal-Mart marketing exec Julie Roehm and the scandal that led to her downfall, the discount retailer’s execs finally broke their silence. In a last-minute statement to Fishman, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman claimed the company had proof Roehm had engaged in an affair with Sean Womack, a subordinate. “Wal-Mart now has irrefutable and admissible evidence of the relationship,” the spokeswoman told Fishman. “I would not tell you this if we didn’t know it was true.” And yesterday that charge — first made to New York — entered the legal record, when Wal-Mart filed a brief in its battle with Roehm (she charges wrongful termination; the company charges a violation of corporate policy) repeating the claims.
in other news
Rudy and Donna: The Way They Were
Today’s Times reminds us that Rudy Giuliani, America’s Mayor, used to be and likely still is a “mean-spirited,” cross-dressing, twice-divorced guy who used to call his old gay roommate “mother” as he left for work each day. But that’s not all there is to Rudy. He’s also “strong, and at the same time gentle,” according to a testimonial Ben Smith reports today on the Politico. Who’d that endorsement come from? His then-wife, Donna Hanover, in a 1993 TV commercial that featured the whole Giuliani family. It’s a misty, water-colored campaign ad, about the way the Giulianis were.
RudyTube 1993: Rudy and Donna [Politico]
New York Label May Not Fit All in Giuliani Run [NYT]
photo op
They’re Here, They’re Black, Get Used to It
We saw this billboard in the subway station at Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street yesterday, we took in its photos of shirtless, sculpted black men, and it all made sense. Then we noticed it starred Bernie Mac, and we realized that we didn’t think this movie was at all what we’d thought it was. And that whoever named it should probably be fired.
[Snap a Photo Op–worthy shot? Send it to us at [email protected].]
Pride [IMDb.com]
in other news
Ralph Nader Stands Up for the ShystersAmbulance-chasing in New York just turned into an obstacle course. Under new state rules, lawyers here can no longer freely advertise their awesome settlement-getting prowess (“Lead paint in your house? Over $100 million in damages awarded!”) without providing a sober, diet-pill-like disclaimer that “prior results do not guarantee similar outcome.” They’re also barred from using words like “heavy hitters” or “we’ll fight tooth and nail for you” or any of that macho trash talk beloved by personal-injury, medical-liability, and divorce mavens. Fair enough? Not really: The rule defines almost any private or public communication whose purpose is “the retention of the lawyer” as an ad. Thus, it forces firms to mark their mailings, including newsletters and law updates, as attorney advertising — and guess in which folder an e-mail with those words in the subject line is going to end up. Since the rule could be seen as impinging on First Amendment rights, its opponents have formed the weirdest bedfellowship in recent memory: Ralph Nader is getting involved on the lawyers’ side, through his Public Citizen organization. That’s right: Nader is now fighting on behalf of the shysters. We suspect this is about to get a little confusing but very, very good.
New York Law Firms Struggle With New Restrictions on Advertising [NYT]
photo op
Come on and Join Your Fellow Man
Forget the old “Join the Army: Travel the world, meet interesting people, and kill them” joke. According to this Bronx billboard, photographed for the blog Razor Apple, if you join the Navy, it’s all just one big rock show. Fun!
[Snap a Photo Op–worthy shot? Send it to us at [email protected].]
Fight for Moshzilla’s Right to Party [Razor Apple]
gossipmonger
Judi Nathan Must Be ThrilledFormer Giuliani spokeswoman Cristyne Lategano-Nicholas is back at his side for his presidential run. Unable to pick just one, Barbra Streisand donated money to Clinton, Obama, and Edwards. David Letterman asked Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump to appear in a Super Bowl spot with him, but they declined. Scarlett Johansson hooked up with Justin Timberlake — and won a $50k condo lease — while in Miami for the game. And also during the big game, Bud Light may have “borrowed” inspiration from a sketch-comedy troupe and Sierra Mist for two of its commercials. Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld bought a $21 million fixer-upper on Park Avenue, which only requires $10 million more to fix it up.
in other news
Bud’s New TV Station Is in the CanIf 30-second doses of Budweiser’s audiovisual genius aren’t sufficient for you — and, really, who could get enough of crabs worshipping a cooler? — today is your lucky day. It’s the launch of Anheuser-Busch’s own online entertainment network, Bud.TV. Bud.TV provides all sorts of longer-form entertainment commissioned by the beer company, not just their ads but also series from producers like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s production company, LivePlanet, and Kevin Spacey’s Trigger Street Films. And what a rollout: Not only does the launch come the day after Bud spent untold millions on Super Bowl ads; it also comes one day after a huge New York Times Magazine feature on the new service, which makes it sound like the greatest entertainment product since color TV.
the sports section
Super Bowl Ads: Apparently, Guys Do Dumb Things for Beer
Last night’s Super Bowl commercials were, as expected, a hilarious and witty set of well-executed premises leaving viewers with increased affection for and knowledge of the various brands the usual series of “jokes” about things like letting an unkempt, rapey-looking fellow into your car against your girlfriend’s objections — because he has beer! Also, there was a pitch for something called salesgenie.com that was so earnestly terrible it actually evoked sounds of sympathetic pity — the kind of noises one might make upon seeing a three-legged dog getting chased away from his food bowl by a pack of strays — at our viewing party. Where, we should add, we were roundly chided by the group for not realizing that the actually quite-good Coca-Cola Grand Theft Auto takeoff has been running in movie theaters for some time already.
intel
Gay TV Station ‘Dominates’ Eighth Avenue Subway Stop
Get the odd feeling as you passed through the 14th Street and Eighth Avenue subway station this morning that every billboard around you seemed exactly the same? Good news: It wasn’t your imagination. For the month of February, Here!, the new gay cable network, is running a “station domination” campaign in station, blanketing every available ad slot with propaganda for its gay soap, Dante’s Cove, and two other shows. The “station domination” program is run by CBS Outdoor, which leases advertising space in a number of terminals, and they’ve got similar dominations scheduled in the next six months for 25 major gay markets nationwide. So of course they picked the stop at the Chelsea–West Village border! Frankly, we’re just sad this whole targeted, dominating, subway-based TV marketing campaign didn’t arise sooner. Think how much an effort at the 125th Street A station could have helped to save UPN.
in other news
Sheryl Crow Will Save the Newspaper Industry!
So there are all the standard problems newspapers are having with their readerships — that they’re too old, that they’re moving online, that they never call or write anymore — and at the Wall Street Journal there’s a whole other set on top of that: Long seen as only the businessman’s paper, the Journal has a readership that’s particularly old and significantly male. How to bring younger, womaner readers to the paper? With a new ad campaign, of course. People like the New York Giants, Alice Waters, and Sheryl Crow will be depicted talking about why the Journal is important to them, according to a reporting today’s Times. For example:
Ms. Crow, 44, for example, learned last year that she had breast cancer; the ad with her includes part of a Journal article about breast cancer.
You know, as opposed to all those old Journal ads featuring men talking about their prostate cancer.
Newspaper Readers of a Different Kind [NYT]
the morning line
So Dark the Con of Man
• The Times declares Spitzer’s political honeymoon over; the governor’s first state budget, which cuts $1.2 billion from health care and increases spending by 6 percent, seems guaranteed a hard time in both the State Senate and the Assembly. [NYT]
• Firefighters: Every time we come dangerously close to deifying them, they do something crazy. Like, in this case, by buying fake “St. Regis College” diplomas online, at $500 a pop, and submitting them to the Fire Department for promotions. [Newsday]
• A Long Island con-artist duo lured married marks into one-night stands, videotaped the trysts, then proceeded to blackmail them. The scammers’ photos, printed in the Post, make the “luring” part positively puzzling. [NYP]
• In a feat of participatory journalism, a Daily News reporter spends a “day dressed like Sienna” (Miller). For our money, she looked more like JT LeRoy. [NYDN]
• And a New York marketing firm scared the bejesus out of Bostonians with promo signs for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which the Boston Police Department somehow mistook for bombs. Nobody objected here, where “a box of fries … giving passerby the finger” is a relatively normal sight. [amNY]
in other news
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, New York HistorianHere’s a nice change of pace: A legendary sports figure has come out of retirement to write a book about the past, and this time we’re pleased about it. No, it’s not O.J.’s scribblings; instead, legendarily goggled Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has published a work of history. On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance hit the shelves yesterday, according to an NPR report. It’s full of fascinating details about upper-Manhattan athletics in the age of the Cotton Club — like that the Cotton Club’s main competitor, the Renaissance Casino and Ballroom, hosted its own basketball team, the Harlem Rens. At the Renaissance, the dance floor doubled as a basketball court, and a Rens game reportedly featured the first interracial jump ball in basketball history. But Abdul-Jabbar has harsh words for another rival, Harlem Globetrotters, whose clowning around he associates with the Cotton Club’s tradition of catering to a white audience. You can only imagine what he must have to say about the Washington Generals.
The Harlem Renaissance, On and Off the Court [NPR]
photo op
Dov Charney Fulfills Calvin Trillin’s Prophesy
The latest American Apparel billboard at Allen and Houston Streets, photographed (badly, with a cell phone) Saturday night. To those who have read Calvin Trillin’s Floater: Look, two-thirds stockings! (To everyone else: Look, standard-issue American Apparel hipster pulchritude!)
Floater [Amazon.com]
Chain-Link Solid Thigh-High Socks [American Apparel]
company town
Lindsay Lohan, DumbstruckThe big news today in the city’s big businesses.
FASHION
• Lindsay Lohan’s Miu Miu ads keep coming — now she’s a vibrant, dumbstruck dolly. [Fashionologie]
• There’s a bimbo logjam at the top of Mr. Blackwell’s annual worst-dressed list. [Downtown Darling]
• A Paris court dismissed Karl Lagerfeld’s claim against journalist Alicia Drake. He sued her for invasion of privacy — but really, people say, because she called him middle class. [WWD]
in other news
Also, Andrea Peyser Wears Combat BootsAs an astute young writer recently pointed out, there’s a tabloid war going on in New York City, and it makes fine spectator sport for all of us. Which is why we were so pleased to pick up this week’s Advertising Age to find this ad for the Daily News, boasting that the paper has a higher in-the-city readership than its competition and also, unless we’re reading it wrong, implying that the Post’s reportage is at least somewhat fictional. Oh, snap. And such fun! Your ball, Mr. Murdoch.
Because While Other Cities Are Losing Their Papers, New York Still Has a Tabloid War [NYM]
cultural capital
And Now For Something Negligibly Different
If you’ll indulge us for a minute in an observation that has nothing to do with New York: What’s up with the USA Network’s ceaseless ads for the holiday episode of Monk? Have you seen them? In the most confounding gimmick on television since someone green-lighted Joey, the December 22 episode of Monk, which the network has already been plugging for weeks, will be broadcast in black-and-white. Then, immediately thereafter, it will be broadcast in color. No alternate ending. No change of cast. No live transmission. No nothing. The audience is invited to watch both and decide which version is “more Monkish.” We’re not sure who watches Monk in the first place (a quick survey of friends and relatives turned up no one), but, please, don’t ruin things by telling viewers that the same nostalgic frisson is attainable by setting hue saturation to zero. Next up: A very special muted-unmuted episode.
Monk [USA Network]
in other news
Finally, You May Squeeze the CharminIt’s not in our typical habit to report on ad-campaign gimmicks, much less “seasonal” ones. This seems worthy of exception, however: Starting next week, Charmin, the toilet-paper maker, will cut out the advertising middlemen and directly ensure that New York City feels the soft touch of Charmin Ultra directly upon its collective ass.
Yes, Charmin is going to open a free public restroom in Times Square, which will function from Monday through the end of the year. It will feature twenty stalls (!), a seating lounge (!!), and a cast of attendants cleaning each stall after each use (!!!). To quote the Times, which even provides a mockup façade of the place (though, thankfully, not the interior), “Charmin representatives will be roaming the streets dressed as toilets.” Hey, just like the old Times Square!
The restroom, incidentally, will take the place formerly occupied by a different kind of shithouse: the departed Bar Code.
Charmin to New York: ‘Go in Style’ [NYT]
intel
Exposé: Ousted Mac Man Was Computer Illiterate!
Was Justin Long — the scruffy-faced Mac to John Hodgman’s straitlaced PC in those ubiquitous Apple ads — ousted from his role simply because, as Radar and Gawker suggested the other day, he was an annoying dweeb? Or was it because — and make sure you’re sitting down for this — the human embodiment of cool computing actually didn’t even know how to use one of the machines? Long made the confession at a party this summer. “I know nothing about computers,” he said at the Strangers With Candy premiere in June. “I get guys coming up to me saying, ‘Dude, what makes you think you’re better than PCs?’ I don’t even know where to begin! I know nothing about either. I’m computer illiterate.” Even worse, technology frightens him. “It scares me that they control so much of the world. I’m not taking a high road about it. I’m just not smart enough to figure them out. I still have never IMed. That scares me. It’s like, “Hi, it’s your friend you don’t really want to talk to and if you really wanted to talk to you could call.” At least, his rep assured us then, he’d been given a free Mac. One hopes he didn’t get too attached to it.
— Jada Yuan
Movie Star, Loosely Defined [Gawker]
Apples Ditches ‘Mac Guy’ In New Ads [Radar Online]
in other news
Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been, a New Yorker?Let’s say you’re a Republican congressional incumbent in mostly rural Wyoming. Your president isn’t exactly Mr. Popularity, there’s a war on, your colleagues are discovering instant messenger — long story short, you find yourself in dead heat with a Democrat in Dick Cheney’s old district, which hasn’t swung the Dems’ way in 27 years. What do you do?
If you’re Barbara Cubin, as the Daily News reports this morning, you film an ad calling your opponent, Gary Trauner, a — wink, wink — “New Yorker.” You also distribute push polls calling him “New York liberal.” (What, “bagel-eating New York liberal” didn’t test well? Oy.) We wanted to see the ad, but, sadly, only Trauner’s side is represented on YouTube. (Liberal New Yorkers, always controlling the media.) So we’ll have to make do with the News’ details description of the ad. Hold on, dear reader, because we’re not making this up.
early and often
Who Are You to Question Jeanine Pirro?
So you suspected your philandering, tax-cheating, speed-limit-averse husband was philandering anew. And so you asked your philandering (with Judith Regan!), corruptly apartment-renovating former-police-commissioner buddy to look into it. And you get caught, because the Feds are wiretapping aforementioned philandering, corrupt, former commish for entirely different reasons. How do you salvage your foundering law-and-order campaign for state attorney general? By releasing a new 30-second spot in which you masterfully play both victim and avenger, and, to top it off, falsely suggest your rival has a plan to offer “amnesty to criminals.” Early and Often has Pirro’s new ad, which leaves “you the viewer … apologizing for even thinking about counting her out.”
Jeanine of Arc [Early and Often]
grub street
DiSpirito Bottoms Out
You know all about adorable Rocco — the restaurants, the failed restaurants, all the TV appearances (and failed TV shows). What you don’t know is just how bad things have gotten for him. Bertolli, the olive-oil company, has been mounting a stealth-marketing campaign, in which hacky “chefs” indirectly pitch the product. And, as our well-fed colleagues at Grub Street have noticed, Mr. DiSpirito is at the fore of that gastroridiculous bunch. Grub Street has the whole story.
Having Hit Rock Bottom, Rocco DiSpirito Speaks [Grub Street]
