Early this morning legendary basketball star Charles Barkley was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. He was "processed, cited, and released," which is just a boring way of saying the 45-year old Space Jam star managed to not make any incendiary comments about the Jews while being taken in.
CNN's hottie weatherman Rob Marciano appeared in Jossip's own "Journalust" series last year. This year? It's Journa-busted. Some photos of the handsome Atlanta-based CNNer have surfaced showing his party side. We're not saying Marciano is hammered in these photos, just that he sure as hell looks it. Which is, for the record, totally all right with us. CONTINUED »
Sparks is only six years old? It feels like that perfect blend of Flintstone Vitamins and goat piss has been around forever. Well, no longer: Your third favorite way to stay up and rally (after Adderall and cocaine) is being shut down for marketing to children by sponsoring an air guitar competition.
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..That dinner party was almost 10 years ago; it was the last time I saw anyone visibly drunk at a New York party. The New York apartments and lofts which were once the scenes of old-fashioned drunken carnage — slurred speech, broken crockery, broken legs and arms, broken marriages and broken dreams — are now the scene of parties where both friendships and glassware survive intact. Everyone comes on time, behaves well, drinks a little wine, eats a few tiny canapes, and leaves on time. They all still drink, but no one gets drunk anymore. Neither do they smoke. What on earth has happened?
- 65-year-old "former drinker" Susan Cheever on NYT.com's new alcohol blog Proof, which she is in no way qualified to write for
The reason Chicago politics is so corrupt is because, in modern American history, it's never not been, which makes it very difficult to clean up. Especially because every politician who says they're going to try and straighten Chicago out ends up lying and cheating worse than the pig who came before him. Imagine trying to clean up a greasy stove with a sponge covered in used Crisco and you'll understand the job of cleaning up Chi-town. Basically, it's the Frankenstein's monster of political machines—a thing, composed of scrap materials functioning for a common cause (money), that will only be stopped if it commits to self-immolation.
Here's the back story: starting about 100 years ago, Chicago's elected officials started to realize they could play the city's increasing number of immigrants off one another for financial and political gain. Shrewd politicians would employ ward heelers, people who implanted themselves into ethnic enclaves and promised government handouts in exchange for votes. "Vote for [insert name of rotten prick here]," they'd say, "and you'll get a leg up on those no-good Eye-talians." This is why so many Irishman became Chicago police officers.
From there, the favors and money flowed as freely as Capone's bootlegged liquor during Prohibition, eventually leaving the Windy City where it is today, with the goddamn Illinois governor auctioning off high offices.
If you're smart, you should be saying, "But that stuff happened in New York, too. Why isn't Albany full of criminals?" Good question! The short answer is: Albany is full of criminals, just like all of politics. (Remember Spitzer, the hooker-fucker?) The long answer comes from Slate:
… machine politics faded away in New York, due in part to external pressure from former New Yorker Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected president in 1932.
Boston's pretty corrupt, too, as evidenced by this state senator stuffing a bribe into her bra just last month, but it's nowhere near as bad as Chicago, which has seen dozens of elected officials face criminal cases in the last three decades.
With the "WHY" out of the way, here's some of our favorite Chicago scandals from history.
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The beer brand Heineken has gone without any new advertising for a year, after dumping its creative agency and failing to approve any new spots. Sales of Heineken, thus, fell almost 4 percent during "prime beer sales months" July and August. See? America needs to be told what to like. [AdAge]
Not only is the death knell for New York nightlife's bottle service too premature to declare (wait till next week, please), but the crashing American economy also hasn't rid us of grotesque displays of alcohol one-upmanship that don't even need some club marking up the price 500 percent by having a cute waitress deliver it to your private table.
Witness: The $50 bottle of Double Cross Luxury Vodka, "which is actually filtered through diamond dust." And babies. [FWD, via]
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas — even at the expense of children's birthdays, if you're Kevin Federline. The father of the year was in town for the Friday preview party for a new nightclub and had so much fun that he decided to stay for the weekend. One small problem: His sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James, were celebrating their birthdays back in LA:
Have you heard? Rich bankers in New York, the poncy swindlers who keep us out of Manhattan after sundown (they've discovered the LES!), are becoming a tad less rich. Boo hoo. And with the money goes the ridiculous luxuries it buys. No more willowy blonds who don't mind not kissing during sex, no more bespoke wingtips and, according to various nightlife connoisseurs, no more fucking bottle service. Huzzah!
In deference to those kind, decent human beings who know nothing of the favorite pastime of New York's most detestable pricks, bottle service is a practice in which scantily clad club waitresses bring overpriced bottles of vodka to tables of wealthy, hooting clowns who like rap music but hate black people. Good times! But God knows they couldn't last; clubs around New York are kiboshing the service as our nation falls into financial ruin and i-bankers run around with less disposable income:
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At a RNC event last week, guests enjoying beverages at the bar were ordered to chug their drink or toss it — if it was a foreign booze. That's because Cindy McCain was approaching, and bartenders, a spy tells us, were instructed to offer only domestic beers in her presence. Which meant the Heineken had to go, and the Bud Light moved front and center. (Nevermind that Anheuser-Busch is about to be a foreign cash machine.) The sake-sipping Lady McCain is, of course, heir to her father's beer distributorship, and holds more than $1 million in Anheuser-Busch stock, so maybe it was less about offering anti-American product and more about showing support for Cindy's financial portfolio.
For the last few idiots left who look to Lynne Spears for parenting advice, consider this: The woman just leaked some of the "shocking" revelations from her new tell-all disguised as a celebrity parenting how-to in an effort to garner some publicity. The revelations include stories about Britney's sex life and drug and alcohol abuse, which would be surprising if the wise Road Kill Willie hadn't already spilled the beans.
Apparently Lynne claims that Britney began drinking alcohol at the age of 13, when she joined the Mickey Mouse Club. By 14, she had lost her virginity to an 18-year-old football player from her hometown, and by 15 she was taking drugs. Lynne details "the horror when Britney, just 16, was caught with cocaine and cannabis on a private jet."
This is public notice for media watchdog groups: It's officially time to chill.
Sure, you caught Sue Simmons cursing, and protected your children's blessed ears from hearing repeats of Jane Fonda saying the C-word, but now look what you've done.
Allison Payne, a correspondent for Tribune's Chicago station WGN, was forced to make a public apology this weekend for slurring her speech during last week's broadcast, after viewers called in complaining that she was drunk on the air, and various media reported the claims.
It would've been a legitimate qualm, except: CONTINUED »
Jessica Simpson is relevant again, y'all, which is such a relief because, honestly, when was the last time you stopped and thought about how she was doing? Like she was really going to make sports fans' wishes come true and disappear forever after being blamed for ruining football? No.
She is a survivor, she is a Southern belle dammit, and if you don't believe it take a look at her new ad campaign (for a beer brand she owns a 15 percent stake in).
Oh good, Jess. Now you can join the ranks of "classy celebrity alcohol endorsers," right next to Danny DeVito's Limoncello, and most rap stars.
Rush & Molloy stringer, Ladies Man(tm), and Bill O'Reilly target Sean Evans gave himself a difficult task: Get wasted on organic booze and see if the hangover is less intense, as the rumors say. The results? "There was no headache, and at first everything felt groggy. But despite being slightly slow, after a quick shower nearly all symptoms had dissipated. There was no nausea, no stomach pain; no normal hangover feelings." He still ate street meat. [NYDN]
Know what helps pumps millions into the university athletics umbrella NCAA? The same thing that pumps millions into magazine publishers and criminal defense attorneys: booze! Though the NCAA supposedly has the interests of college athletes in mind as it sucks in huge broadcasting revenues for its games — they've got a $11 billion deal with CBS — they also allowed alcohol sponsors to advertise during games. This upsets some people, like college presidents, who pointed to beer sponsorships during the NCAA men's basketball tournament "embarrassingly prominent." Too bad there's nothing the NCAA can do! Or so it says. CONTINUED »
That nipples — or is it mere areola? — are, much like actual genitalia, one of the defining lines between "acceptable" and "OMG NUDITY HIDE YOUR CHILDREN!!!" is something Americans learn at an early age. This explains why print advertisements around New York for the Brazlian rum Cabana Cachaça go without nipples, while advertisements for newspapers in Europe include full breasts. (Okay, not always; NSWF.) On television, nipples are an even bigger affront to civility, which explains why the Eva Mendes spot for Calvin Klein's new fragrance Secret Obsession was banned from U.S. airwaves in a convenient publicity-driving announcement. The scent's print spots, too, do not show nip.
But why, in an age where music acts and television shows can be named "Pussycat Dolls," are we still afraid of nipples? CONTINUED »
While the Olympic media are learning some lessons the hard way — such as: do not take a picture of Chairman Mao's portrait, or Chinese guards will shove you — the biggest challenge on their plate is surviving the smog, which has returned to Beijing after a few days of clear air, which was triumphantly portrayed as China caring about the environment. "At first I thought it was the smell of the jet engines," blogs CNN's Steve Almasy. "Then I thought it was the bus engines. But as we pulled away from the Beijing airport in the media shuttle, the stench was joined by a haze. It was 830 p.m. when I arrived with some of the guys from CNN sports. So we have yet to get the full visual effect of the smog. The smell of the pollution lingers with us now as we sit in the cafeteria, having a few drinks, swapping stories about the flights over and Olympics past …"
LA Times writer Eric P. Lucas has had enough of the Heath Ledger hype and wrote a strongly-worded article to argue otherwise. Except instead of convincing everyone that the Oscar buzz is unnecessary, he makes the fatal mistake of insulting Heath and sending his diehard fans into an angry frenzy.
It's 1999 again! Back before the dot-com bust, with-it companies were all about Aeron chairs, free cafeterias, in-house masseurs, and on-the-clock drinking courtesy the office bar. Now, with multiple ad agencies gloating over their top shelf staff offerings, we've officially got a trend on our hands. And perhaps it's all thanks to AMC's Mad Men, a throwback to the good old days where 10am didn't role around without a single malt. CONTINUED »
Since 2004, George Clooney has been the face of Martini vermouth, his ads popping up on European television where he doesn't think American audiences will find him and realize, in addition to lending his name to charitable causes, he lends his name to corporate come ons. Here's his latest spot, which, like his previous ads, features Clooney with a moustache, an uttering the one word he knows in Italian.
But analyzing the ad under another context makes it more interesting.
In 2005, Britain's Code of Advertising changed the rules for liquor ads, requiring them not to link alcohol to "seduction, sexual activity or sexual success." However, romance and flirtation are allowed, which explains Clooney's PG chase of the object of his desire.
If this ad had aired in America, of course, you would've seen Clooney sealing the deal.
Another of his tame spots, below.
