cowperthwait | lies, evasion, spin, circumspection and cleverly veiled hype

The new, Ben Silverman–less NBC has settled on the slogan with which it will promote its fall lineup: "More colorful," which narrowly defeated "Now with fewer leaked YouTube videos of our chairman of entertainment singing blues songs in a towel." The new slogan will debut around the September 14 premiere of Jay Leno's colorful new prime-time show.

—New York

Palin had also taken issue with an item on Letterman's recent "Top Ten List," in which he said one of the Alaska governor's activities in New York was to buy "makeup at Bloomingdale's to update her slutty flight attendant look."

"The only thing I can say about this is I kind of like that joke," Letterman said.

—CNN

On International Whores Day, prostitutes in Australia marched in protest against the high rates that local newspapers charge when advertisements are placed by sex workers. “I'm paying too much,” said whore Ivy McIntosh, “for a measly two inches.”

A French court ruled that contestants on the reality show Temptation Island are employed workers entitled to overtime payments, a 35-hour work week, and vacation. “Temptation Island constitutes a job and therefore justifies an employment contract,” said the court. “Tempting a person of the opposite sex requires concentration and attention.”

—the tenaciously reliable Harper's Weekly Review

Romantic dispatches from hither and thither:

It seemed like a fairy tale romance for Connie Lee and Brian who met on a Christian Web site. She thought he was perfect, but it turned out things were too good to be true.

...

In fact, she says, Brian was having an affair, and even more shockingly with another man.

"No way did would I ever expect that he was doing what he was doing," she said.

—Woman Duped By Spouse's Secret Sex Life, KYW-TV (Philadelphia)

Despite their 62-year-age difference, Georgi said that Hardy "made it seem like a win-win situation.

He just made it seem like, literally, you don't have anything to lose, you will have the world at your fingertips, and he promised me the world."

For a while, Hardy delivered. His new bride enjoyed worldwide travel that summer to Budapest, Madrid, Paris, Italy and London, and her 2-year-old son, Matthew, got a pet tiger.

—22-Year-Old Bride Had Brief, Wild Ride With 84 Lumber Millionaire, WTAE-TV (Pittsburgh)

"I was watching the game with my family, Larry Fitzgerald scores the go ahead TD - then bam, penis," writes reader David. A Comcastic tribute to Fight Club?

The clip from cable show "Club Jenna" shows a woman sitting on a couch and struggling to pull out porn actor Evan Stone's genitalia from his pants. The pair laugh at the difficulty. Mr. Stone then jumps up and pulls his pants down and twists from side to side, slapping it against his body, and then the game comes back on.

" 'We were like in shock,' said Cardinals fan Alice Soto, 53, who was watching the game with her 11-year-old daughter and 80-year-old mother," writes TusconCitizen.com.

—Consumerist

He said to me after one of the shows, "I've been doing theater for 15 years to large crowds, and I've never felt the way that I have when I come out and sit on these people's faces." You know? They have a real sense of stardom up there.

—Tim and Eric, A.V. Club

Unlike certain other credentialed Cowperthwaits, I'm stuck in the Bay Area today. Then again, no risk of frostbite for me.

LiveJournal is spared my mundania for the day; instead, it's going here. What an awesome site.

We're coordinating a massive journalistic project to document BARACK OBAMA's inauguration. Observers across the country on JANUARY THE 20TH will track minutiae and seeming trivialities, creating a curious and comprehensive record of the day. We're replicating Mass Observation, a movement of 1930s' British intellectuals who believed the most revealing way to document an event was to report the peripheral activities surrounding it. THE MASS OBSERVERS carried out their greatest project on May 12th, 1937, when they dispatched more than 200 observers throughout London to document the coronation of KING GEORGE VI. To participate in this once-in-a-lifetime endeavor follow us on Twitter and post your observations on Inauguration Day.

—JanuaryThe20th.com

YES YOU CAN learn to animate in MS Paint

[79-year-old Randall] Wilt, of North Canton, [Ohio,] received his General Educational Development (GED) diploma last month after 10 tries and after about five years of meeting with tutors weekly. This semester, he’ll sit in a college classroom for the first time, with students a quarter of his age.

“What if everyone said we couldn’t go to the moon?” Wilt asked. “Nothing ever happens when you say, ‘I can’t.’ ”

Wilt was born in 1929 and grew up in Garrett County, in the Allegheny Mountains.

—At 79, North Canton man gets his GED, Canton (OH) Repository

It has taken most of his life – but, after 26 years, builder Graham Parker has finally solved the puzzle of the Rubik's Cube.

When he bought the toy in 1983, Yuri Andropov was leader of the Soviet Union, breakfast TV was a novelty and music CDs were in the shops for the first time.

'I cannot tell you what a relief it was to finally solve it,' the 45-year-old from Portchester, Hampshire, said. 'It has driven me mad over the years – it felt like it had taken over my life.'

—Man takes 26 years to solve Rubik's Cube, Metro

this will do you no good

Apparently absolved of the need even to try, I'm shelving the Will Shortz and picking up some more Hee Haw. Hee Haw!

Fertility experts, however, said that straining to complete crossword puzzles and other brain-sharpening games was likely to do little to improve a man's chances of fatherhood.

Dr Allan Pacey, a male fertility expert from Sheffield University, said: 'The fact that it's possible to detect a statistical relationship between intelligence and semen quality in adult men probably says more about the co-development of brain and testicles when the man was in his mother's womb, and therefore how well they both function in adult life, rather than suggesting that playing Sudoku can somehow stimulate more sperm to be produced.

—Intelligent men have better quality sperm, research finds, Daily Mail.

this will happen after all


It's easier to write here under the impression that nobody reads it, but that appears to be untrue today. Or my father is kind of creepily psychic. Either way:

I lumbered downstairs to my parents' kitchen, stepping around the waist-high piles of folding chairs in the entryway. As I entered, without turning from the counter Dad announced, "No, they're on On Demand, all 21 of them." They of course being the 007 canon, and the salvation of my Turkey Day.

Cable box remote in one hand, a jar of dry roasted peanuts and a bottle of Pellegrino in the other, I venture forth to soak up some Octopussy. Television holidays are, quite simply, The Shit.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

this will not happen


For the last week, I have been excited about Thanksgiving at my parents' house — my first since 1999 — for one reason alone: the James Bond Marathon on basic cable.

Every year, ignoring the nervous prattle about heat circulation, pretending not to hear the pleas for help to polish the bronzeware, turning the volume up to drown the electric mixer out. Every year, me and Sean, me and Roger, me and Pierce, and — even — me and Timothy, going into the night with a tupperware of crispy skin carvings and the remaining sparkling cider. Every year.*

It's as American as watching A Christmas Story on TNT four times in a row every Christmas. I need this.


Imagine, therefore, my suspense, before even getting out of bed this morning, logging into my parents' TiVo to line up a whole day of 007. And imagine my disappointment upon discovering ...

Noo. No Bond marathon this year?

What am I supposed to do now, talk to people? Oh, screw this.


____________________
* Which means it actually happened only two or three years. But I remember it. I need it.