Ray Allen for President.
Not really. This smarmy white guy is fictional; he’s part of Ray Allen of a viral campaign for BigFix, a computer software company.
Like so many presidential campaigns before it, this one doesn’t really make sense. Ray Allen isn’t representing BigFix and BigFix is never mentioned on the Ray Hopewood for President ’08 site. The whole plot, which took three reads of the New York Times article to understand, is that Ray Hopewood is supposed to personify BigFix’s competition.
In essence, if you thought Mitt Romney was creepy, then do we have the anti-spyware program for you.
Good to know someone’s taking advantage of that whole democracy thing.
• Britney Spears foolishly squanders an opportunity to record a duet with her all too sympathetic ex, Justin Timberlake. Or, as Yeeeah puts it, "Justin Timberlake Tries To Ruin Career; Fails."
• Pee-Wee Herman (a.k.a. Paul Reubens) returns to television in the role of a "traveling homeopathic antidepressant representative/salesman." Which "beats" jacking off at a porno theater any day.
• That Pete Doherty is such a drug-addled mess, even his frickin' cat is hooked on heroin.
• Ever wished for the magical ability to turn everything you touch into crappy artificially fruit-flavored candy? No? Well, don't.
• The New York Observer kids "play softball." If you call "hitting people with bats" and "getting hand fungus" a sport. Then again, it was like 800 degrees, so we give them some credit. [NYO]
• Yeah, we pretty much figure a gym on the Lower East Side would look more or less like this. [Gawker]
• Gavin Rossdale's illegitimate kid doesn't call Gwen Stefani "stepmum." She calls her "fucking bitch who stole my dad." [Page Six]
• Mel Gibson isn't the only one in Hollywood who can make fun of Jews. [Defamer]
• Melanie Griffith is one of those "cool moms." [Mollygood]
• Minor league baseball players want to remind you: Britney Spears is a really bad mother. Don't put your baby in a car seat backwards in a convertible just because she did. Ok? Great. [AP]
Nobody loves TV more than we. While much of New York's media elite foolishly disband the tube as a brain cell sucker, sure to send those who worship it into mental rigor mortis, we can not get office jobs because they won't let us work from the couch while watching television.
Well, the only people who might love TV more than Jossip are the networks themselves, and yesterday two of them laid out their plans for fall programming at the upfronts. In an attempt to lure and convince advertisers that their shows will not suck, networks really had to rally this year. Proven by the popularity of Friends, Will & Grace, and Sex and the City re-runs, viewers are majorly jonesin' for good TV.
Though NBC is adding six drama programs to its line-up, most of the buzz is over drama pitch Studio 60, which will star Matthew Perry, and the comedy 30 Rock, a spoof on Saturday Night Live.
ABC is taking a huge risk by switching Grey's Anatomy to Thursdays … which sucks because it is becoming a going out night. But ABC is taking the ax to some of it's programs.
Also not returning on ABC are sitcoms Hope & Faith, Freddie, Less Than Perfect, Rodney and Sons & Daughters; dramas Commander in Chief, Invasion, In Justice and The Evidence; and docudrama Miracle Workers. American Inventor, which concludes season one this week, has been picked-up for midseason.
So, come on everyone! Let's get really, really excited for the 35 new shows being introduced for fall … and then brace yourself for when they get cancelled after two episodes.
ABC Upfront: Unwraps Six Degrees, The Nine; Shifts Grey's to Thursdays [Marc Berman, Mediaweek]
NBC Looks Beyond TV for a Prime-Time Revival [Stuart Elliott, New York Times]
