Category Archives: Movies

VanityFair.com: best. faq. ever.

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Just like my house! 

-I think James Wolcott is fab. [seriously, who among us doesn’t have a crush on Jimbo?] I’ve tacked his contributor’s picture to my wall, and every night I read some sonnets, such as “Woman’s Constancy,” to my Little Jim, as I call him. I’ve bought these cutouts of Ken-doll clothes and sometimes dress Jim up. Could you let him know green corduroy works best with his skin tone?

Comments and questions should be directed to . Please note that because of the volume of feedback received, not every message can be answered individually. Press requests should be directed to .

VF Hollywood IssueAs always, read all FAQs before even thinking about framing a question in your minds, much less taking up the valuable time of their well-bred and expensively-educated interns with a misdirected or simply misguided query.

Such as:

-To whom would one submit Frequently Asked Question questions?

What? 

-My Aunt Verity wants this old issue of Vanity Fair. It had a story on some rich guy who dated models. He had gray hair, if that helps. Aunt Verity can’t remember the month or year of the magazine—or who was on the cover either. Can I get a copy of it for her?

If you can’t remember the date of the issue in which a particular story appeared, please call 212-286-8180, and we will try to help you. All requests for back issues should be sent to . You can also call 800-365-0635 for issues dating from January 1999. Individual copies are available for $9.45 each (including first-class postage and handling) and should arrive within four to six weeks. To expedite your order, you may include a personal express-mail account number; the charge per issue is $4.95.

-Right. I’m in cashier school in Modesto. I can’t possibly fork over 30 bucks to reread that Michael Shnayerson piece on Ira Rennert.

Why not try your local library instead? Look for the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature or use your library’s Web site by clicking on the periodicals link and using the search function.

-I’ve got a scorching-hot tip for Dominick Dunne. I really can’t say what it is, but it involves a very famous cousin of a really rich daughter of this high-society lady who recently had her bejeweled Pacarana stolen by an Oscar-winning set designer. Whom can I call?

Gems such as these should be e-mailed to . If they sound credible, they will be presented to the diarist, who will either follow up on your lead or dismiss it as imaginative drivel.

-Graydon Carter’s “Editor’s Letter” really got my goat, who ate it and became quite ill. I’m appalled and want to let him know.

To send letters to the editor, click CONTACT US, or e-mail us at . You can also fax your correspondence to 212-286-4324. In all cases, be sure to include your name, address, and daytime phone number. Vanity Fair reserves the right to edit your submission and publish or otherwise use it in any medium. All submissions become the property of Vanity Fair.

-Man, I love that Proust guy‘s questionnaire. So probing. Has he got any books out I can buy?

To purchase books by contributing editors and photographers, as well as copies of classic covers, click V.F. STORE.

-Our glee club hopes to perform a choral version of a Vanity Fair story. We were thinking of Bruce Weber’s photo portfolio on Scandinavian lingerie, “Swede Surrender.” How does a club, company, school, or organization get a reprint of a previously published piece?

To ask permission to reprint a picture or article in any medium, please fax a request to 212-630-5883, contact , or call 212-630-5656. For press requests, contact . For personal reading purposes—if you know the article’s issue date—e-mail or call Back Issues at 1-800-365-0635.

-I’m the publicist for Glom Altoidov, the Uzbek sausage king. How can I get him into the Vanity Fair party the night of the Oscars—along with his Afghan hound, Follicula?

The party is by invitation only. Prostration, self-flagellation, or coquetry will hold no sway with V.F.’s editors, though such behavior is wildly entertaining. Animals are not admitted. Press inquiries regarding the party, and press inquiries only, should be directed to .

And so on…I really wanted to close this with the pic of Parker and Benchley forming an archway of mops, under which presided Conde Nast, with a doily for vestments, but it’s not out there and my scanner’s not working. Ah well, of such suffering is great art born. Right?

The Round Table by Hirshfeld

the Simpsons vs Star Trek

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From a WordPress blog I can’t seem to find at the moment; sorry, if it’s you, leave a comment and I’ll update the entry.

The Simpsons theme meets capitan Kirk. Performed with Rhodes piano, Theremin and funnel.

What he does not say is that it’s performed by a COMPLETE LUNATIC! I love this whackjob, and so do 380,000 other people, primarily sexy Scandinavians, according to the YouTube stats. I bet he never has to suffer through a chilly Arctic night alone.

The Manolo sez: help The Hoff

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From, obviously, The Manolo, with whose suggestion we beg to differ. Photobucket - Video and Image HostingSeems The Hoff is looking for a lovely lady to swank with him through the sad remains of his life as a popcult oddity.

Former Baywatch star David Hasselhoff is refusing to allow his recent divorce get him down – he already has plans to find a new “chick”…

He says, “I’m coming to England in September and I want to find myself a beautiful girlfriend. But I don’t want some dumb blonde. I’d like a woman who’s really intelligent.

“I saw this girl recently who must have stepped out of the office during her lunch break and was wearing work clothes and glasses, and I thought to myself, ‘That’s what I want, a chick who’s career-orientated.’”

Think of the lifestyle available to the consort of an icon such as The Hoff: rivers of champanski on the house, the valet lets you jump the line when picking up your Acura, unlimited partying with other superannuated action figures such as Jan-Michael Vincent and their wizened, bleached concubines of the moment, and fighting off hordes of deluded German blondes…ah, that’s the C-list life!

We at the raincoaster blog have a suggestion for the trophy doxy.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Think about it. She comes with her own load of Internet infamy. She’s already both famous and notorious worldwide, so it’s inconceiveable she’s not already popular in Germany. She’s apparently going to star in the Spanish Big Brother, despite perhaps not even speaking the language. She’s legal. And, most importantly, she’s an engineer, so when it comes time for The Hoff to capitalize on the new Knight Rider movie, she’ll undoubtably be able to whip up a new KITT for the occasion.

A match made in Internet Infamy heaven.

Ghost Story Part One

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From the Archive

So this is the story:

There I am up in Vernon, staying with my friend James. His house is haunted. I told him that last time I stayed up there, told him that not only did his new house have ghosts, but they were very pushy ghosts, poking at me every time I got up to go to the bathroom.

And he just looked at me like I had just crawled out of the gin bottle, which I had but that was not related!

If I’d been sober I’d never have told him at all.

James goes to sleep early, but I stay up till all hours and thusly encountered the poky ghosts. They poked me all the way from the living room (which I think aught to be reserved for the living; I mean, just look at the word but you can’t get these dead people to listen to reason, you can’t even get them to stop poking you and pay attention. You sure can’t get them to agree to split up the house, even though it’s just so obvious that the basement room with the unexplained Indiana Jones tunnel just big enough for a coffin has to be ghost territory and the living room, I mean **hello?** the living room, should be for the animate to lie on the couch and watch Space Channel in peace with no spiritual visitors, no, not even if the Omen is on again) through the French doors, all the way down the hall and into the guest room, where they continued to poke at me from time to time as I lay in the bed, until finally, finally I was forced to address the issue directly.

Now normally there is nothing I avoid so much as addressing an issue directly. Now normally there is nothing I avoid even more so much as confrontation with a disincorporated intelligence; it’s faintly embarassing, as my own fleshiness points up the issue of their ectoplasmicism. We are both made uncomfortable. So this is something I generally avoid. I am not, however, normally poked at so agressively. Sure, one or two quick tentacle-feels, maybe even a tentative arrow prick, but nothing like what I was undergoing now. I **had** to take action.

“You’re dead. Leave me alone.”

And did it do me any good at all? Hell no! Got not a moment’s peace from that time on; poke-a-rama it was, with me all the time going, “hey, stop that, you’re dead! Leave me alone! Oh, fine, ignore me, but you’re still Dead! And I’m Not! Ow!” You know, it wasn’t my finest hour.

the woolly mammoth rises again!

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Woolly Frickin' Mammoth, yo!

So how frickin’ cool is this? There are plans afoot (oh, those scientists! Always up to mischief!) to take the now-discovered-to-be-viable sperm from Woolly Mammoth corpses preserved in the tundra, and use it to impregnate an Asian Elephant, their closest living relative.

Not a particular Asian Elephant. That would be pervy, and more than a little strange. It’s not like they’ve been lying in the permafrost, waiting for some Indian Britney of pachydermic pulchritude to mature before awakening their long-dormant seed, like so many lusty geezers in a home, gathered around the tv, watching Miss Universe.

No, this is, like, way more normal and not at all Jurassic Parkian, oh not in the least. All perfectly safe, they assure us, the scientists.

The scientists whose reputations and fortunes depend upon doing this, regardless of the risks, are quite adamant that it’s not going to be another Jurassic Park in any way, shape or form.

Oh, hold the phone:

A team of Japanese genetic scientists aims to bring woolly mammoths back to life and create a Jurassic Park-style refuge for resurrected species. The effort has garnered new attention as a frozen mammoth is drawing crowds at the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan…

Their plan: to retrieve sperm from a mammoth frozen in tundra, use it to impregnate an elephant, and then raise the offspring in a safari park in the Siberian wild.

Mammoth herd, how frickin' cool is that?Well, nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan; if the not-really-woolly-but-perhaps-in-need-of-a-good-waxer half-breed herd got loose in the Siberian Tundra, there’s no way they could survive an environme-…

Well. Still. Frickin’ cool. Even the Times lost its treasured journalistic objectivity over this one:

Mammoths may roam again after 27,000 years
By Mark Henderson, Science Editor
 
BODIES of extinct Ice Age mammals, such as woolly mammoths, that have been frozen in permafrost for thousands of years may contain viable sperm that could be used to bring them back from the dead, scientists said yesterday.
Research has indicated that mammalian sperm can survive being frozen for much longer than was previously thought, suggesting that it could potentially be recovered from species that have died out.

Several well-preserved mammoth carcasses have been found in the permafrost of Siberia, and scientists estimate that there could be millions more.

Last year a Canadian team demonstrated that it was possible to extract DNA from the specimens, and announced the sequencing of about 1 per cent of the genome of a mammoth that died about 27,000 years ago.

With access to the mammoth’s genetic code, and with frozen sperm recovered from testes, it may be possible to resurrect an animal that is very similar to a mammoth.

The mammoth is a close genetic cousin of the modern Asian elephant, and scientists think that the two may be capable of interbreeding.

The frozen mammoth sperm could be injected into elephant eggs, producing offspring that would be 50 per cent mammoth…

“Restoration of extinct species could be possible if male individuals are found in permafrost,” Dr Ogonuki said.

“If sperm of extinct mammalian species, for example the woolly mammoth, can be retrieved from animal bodies that were kept frozen for millions of years in permanent frost, live animals might be restored by injecting them into oocytes [eggs] from females of closely related species.”

Although without question the proud daddy will be disinherited immediately. They’re very old-fashioned, you know.

Mammoth skeleton, unlikely to become a daddy at this point but still frickin' cool!