As part of his post-Star Jones lifestyle, non-homosexual and YouTube star Al Reynolds is trying to sell a book on personal finance. The logic: Because he once worked at Merrill Lynch, Reynolds is now a fiscal expert. That he would generate more sales with a book about personal style — as in, "How to dress to catch a beard" — is lost on him.
The uppity music review website Pitchfork will release its first book since its online snobbery began in 1995. It will be a paperback guide of the 500 best songs released since 1977, carefully selected by editor in chief Scott Plagenhoef and publisher/founder Ryan Schreiber. Rather than compose a listicle "best of" book on albums or artists, Plagenhoef said they chose songs because, "Listeners are increasingly engaging with songs outside of their parent albums, and some of the most influential and exciting music of the past three decades was released on 7” and 12” records or EPs rather than on LPs—not just in stereotypical ‘singles’ genres such as pop, hip-hop, dance, and dancehall, but in punk and indie as well." Also, it make the task of attaching phrases like "audacious Escobar floss raps" and "a letter of intent from a band that's squatted on the fence, tentative to commit to one particular genre until now" to music reviews much more challenging. [NYO]
Chris Ciccone wrapped up his two-part interview today on Good Morning America with a smile on his face and a new batch of insults for his sister Madonna. For someone who claims to love his sibling, he sure has an interesting way of showing it. And as for hope that the two will reconcile, Chris says that depends on whether Guy Ritchie cleans up his act. Because this rift between Chris and Madonna has nothing to do with this stupid tell-all book that he admits is all about the money.
Larry King will write another autobiography, to be published on Father's Day in 2009. It will be called What Am I Doing Here?, and not Sometimes I Fart On Air, I Worry That Jay Leno May Take My Job, nor Softball: How to Conduct the Least Engaging Interview with Society's Most Interesting People. [Variety]
As Christopher Ciccone's publicity tour hits full stride this week — the book drops today — you've got the two-part Good Morning America interview, where he spends some time defending his sister's extramarital reputation, to concern yourself with. But there are two places where you might not hear about his scandalous accusations about husband Guy Ritchie's homophobia and his sister's obsession with Kabbalah.
We're hearing reports that neither Entertainment Tonight nor The Insider, both produced by CBS Television Studios, will be airing specials about Ciconne.
How come? Because Madonna's rep had them killed. CONTINUED »
Among the claims in Christopher Ciccone's forthcoming Madonna tell-all: "Guy Ritchie is a homophobe whose heterosexuality 'swells noticeably' in the presence of gay men. In a dinner toast Ciccone made the week before Ritchie and Madonna's wedding, he cracked about the groom, 'I'd like to toast this happy moment . . . and if anybody wants to [bleep] Guy, he'll be in my room later.'" [P6]
There are two new books out on shelves about Clear Channel.
One is from Alec Foege, titled The Monster That Ate Mass Media, which exposes the radio giant for the steamrolling corporate giant that it is.
The second is Clear Vision: The Story of Clear Channel Communications, by Reed Bunzel, the former editor of the trade magazine Radio Ink. And it was commissioned by none other than Clear Channel, for the sole reason of countering Foege's book.
When execs learned of Foege's book back in 2005, they knew they'd have a public relations matter on their hands — and what better way to counter the report with an officially sanctioned tome dedicated to a friendlier retelling of the corporation? CONTINUED »
The new (fictional) book from Curtis Sittenfeld, author of board school bible Prep, is American Wife, the thinly veiled retelling of Laura Bush's life that most gossip types would love to believe the White House is very concerned about. But when the book hits in September, it will be a blip on the media radar; Sittenfeld will be lucky to score a sit down on The Early Show. Her main character, Alice Blackwell, is a librarian whose husband Charlie finds himself manning the Oval Office. Blackwell learns her grandmother is a lesbian (this is taboo), kills her high school sweetheart at 16 (sort of like Laura did when she was involved in a fatal car accident), sleeps with his brother, finds herself in a family way, and aborts the fetus (this would anger pro-life types, like Laura Bush). And then there are the sex scenes, like the one of Bush — sorry, Charlie — finding himself between his wife's legs. Reading it makes us very uncomfortable, because we like our president unethical and stupid, not horny and giving of himself. CONTINUED »
You might think cable news networks, morning gab shows, and Comedy Central's unique offering of satire soapboxes might be interested in the new book from Vincent Bugliosi, the Los Angeles county prosecutor who put Charles Manson behind bars, who's now promoting The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, which has sold a quite remarkable 130,000 copies.
You would be wrong.
Bugliosi and his publicity team can't get him booked on Today or Good Morning America, let alone Countdown or The Colbert Report. Book review publications, so far including the New York Times (it's "under consideration"), won't write up his manuscript. Don Imus won't even accept his advertising. Don Imus! (Bugliosi has, however, conducted some 100 radio interviews.)
Perhaps it has to do with the book's central premise: That President Bush could, and should, be held criminally accountable for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. And while Newsweek editor Jon Meacham says "Bush bashing fatigue" may be to blame, there are a few other plausible scenarios. CONTINUED »
It really should be Madonna's year. She's got a new album out (although it's been panned by critics and fans), she's about to embark on an international tour this fall (to perform lyrics that include "Don't pretend you're not hungry, I've got plenty to eat / Come on in to my store, ;cause my sugar is sweet"), and her adoption of David Banda, once mired in controversy, is finally being made official. And then she had to come to New York.
It's then that rumors of a romance with Yankees star Alex Rodriguez really began pouring out, forcing publicist Liz Rosenberg to repeatedly shoot them down with the excuse that they share the same manager, Guy Oseary, rather than acknowledge the long-standing trouble in her client's marriage to Guy Ritchie. And it's then that Madonna began taking the blame for the marital woes between A-Rod and wife Cynthia, despite the baseball player's well-known man-about-town romancing, all of which forced Cynthia to run off to Paris to spend time with "friend" Lenny Kravitz, who just happened to once date Madonna.
And all of that's before her brother even has a chance to make the morning show rounds to plug his tell-all book. CONTINUED »
An "explosive" Harvey and Bob Weinstein book might one day hit bookstore shelves, but don't expect its arrival anytime soon. That's because the still-anonymous author likely doesn't even have an agent, like alone a book deal, based on the report Page Six filed today — sourced by the author himself.
The scribe, a former Weinstein employee using the pseudonym "The Final Nail," wrote Page Six insisting "our database of Miramax files is huge" and that there was no nondisclosure agreement even signed, and even included a phone call recording, from 1996, between Harvey and Joe Roth, then president of Walt Disney Studios, where they're caught complaining about Michael Ovitz's $138 million severance package from Disney.
All potentially scandalous stuff — but none of that means a book will ever get printed. CONTINUED »
The second-best column in the New York Times Magazine, next to The Ethicist, is Consumed. Written by Rob Walker, who claims to have created the term "murketing," and noted by the "$ / ¢" stamp, Consumed explains in just a few hundred words each week why we spend the way we do. (This week he told you why you buy a certain snack, because you believe it to be healthy, when it isn't really.) Walker's out with a new book, Buying In — that we'll file in on our Consumer Trend Books That Are Actually Interesting shelf next to titles like Maxed Out — which is like pages and pages of his excellent magazine column rolled into things called chapters and billed with the buzzworthy promise to take on a tour of the "consumer-persuasion industry." Who knew it'd be such a suspense-thriller? CONTINUED »
Stanley Bing, the nom de guerre of CBS News chief flack Gil Schwartz, wrote another one of his throwaway books recently, Executricks: Or How to Retire While You're Still Working, and got himself booked on Wednesday's The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson to promote it. Ferguson asked Bing how, exactly, he had time to write the book while still holding down an executive gig at CBS, to which he responded: "I practice some of the tricks in the book." Those who might think he's just kidding around would be sorely mistaken. CONTINUED »
E! late night television host Chelsea Handler, who is no longer afraid to tell people how she slept her way to the top, is also a do-gooder for the little people. Literally.
She helped her personal assistant Chuy Bravo, who maintains his own profile page on E!'s website, score a book deal. (Even still, Bravo will remain Handler's assistant.) Little Nuggets of Wisdom, pun-ily named because Bravo is a little person, will feature 90 fortune cookie/Jack Handy-esque tidbits.
Nugget No. 1: Work for a nice pretty lady who has connections. [STA]
Whoever is employed as Sam Gosling's publicist, congratulations. You somehow got Newsweek to manufacture an entire article promoting your psychology professor client, his new book Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, and the premise that the crap you keep in your house might say something about you as a person. Well, no crap. CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
