AUTHORS: Do You Have What It Takes?
It’s the ultimate reality series, the ultimate game show and the ultimate half-hour of intriguing storylines. The Ultimate Author is an awesome television program packed with entertaining, engaging and interesting events. Each week, contestants go toe-to-toe in a writing competition that tests their ability to develop attention-grabbing content.
Casting Call: June 16, 2007. Fort Lauderdale, FL.
[via gawker.]
American Suckers
Close to the centenary, all is not well in Dali world. Robert Deschames, author of a Dali biography, has been fighting the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation for some time. He claims that Dali gave him the commercial rights to his work during their friendship. The Foundation says no. The battle has waged in court for some time. Attorneys have profited. Deschames’ attorney claims that his client is ruined. This wouldn’t be the first time that money got in the way of one of Dali’s friendships, but it does mark the first time that it’s happened beyond the pale.
Putin is pissed. A history book suggested that he was a dictator running a police state. The great irony is that he’s now ordered a review of all history books.
Proving once again that Viagra conquers all, Julio Iglesias (that would be Dr. Julio, father of the Julio we know) has fathered a child at 87. This beats out Saul Bellow, who became a dad again at 84, and whose illegitimate grandson has recently taken over Playboy. Bellow responded, “That bastard! Does he know how much work it took?”
Here are several reasons why I will probably never read David Denby’s American Sucker:
1. He finds spiritual redemption in 8 Mile.
2. The Washington Post: “This warmed-over Horatio Alger rhetoric is very hard to stomach coming from a man cushioned in a handsomely paid magazine job, trying to stake himself to a stock market windfall in order to keep control of a $1.4 million apartment financed largely by his own family inheritance — someone who spent not one but two tours of duty at an Ivy League university, subsidized the second time via the good graces of a book contract. Bleary-eyed community college night classes, indeed.”
3. The Boston Globe channels John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash, noting, “When those same [economic] leaders are led off in handcuffs, it is a pretty good sign the boom has turned into a bust.” Denby, of course, stayed in after the NASDAQ dropped in March 2000.
4. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “At times, Denby’s obsessions become tiring - if he had a deeper navel, he would have written a longer book.”
Literary Grandson to Launch Unexpected Career
In response to the recent news that 25 year old John Buffalo Mailer, the youngest child of Norman Mailer, will be taken over the reins of High Times, Return of the Reluctant has learned that Ishmael Harris Bellow, the illegitimate grandson of novelist Saul Bellow (and little-known son of Adam Bellow), age 2, will become editor-in-chief of Playboy Magazine.
“We needed credibility,” said original founder Hugh Hefner. “Someone in touch with the next generation’s tastes.”
The decision to hire Bellow came hot on the heels of other noted family involvements (Drew Barrymore’s mom and Michelle Pfeiffer’s sister, to name two pictorial collaborations). Magazine insiders report that the Bellow decision, not unlike the Mailer hire, is nothing less than a desperate attempt to boost sales of a magazine that has lost its cultural relevance.
“Hugh Hefner is the worst publisher of his generation,” said Dale Peck, who then declared Playboy “homophobic” because it had refused to publish his stories.
“Goo goo ga!” replied Bellow, who then demanded to be burped and had two unpaid editorial interns close the door to his spacious Manhattan office.
