In this week's Rolling Stone: Bruce, Catty Celebmongers, and the Dropkick Murphys destroying cars
In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, which hit my mailbox this weekend:
- Great interview with Bruce Springsteen, who's on the cover, but no big surprise there. I think it would take some real skill to write a bad Bruce interview. Some great early pictures of Bruce with the story, including one of him rail thin and shaggy in a pair of jeans, size-small tank top and beat-up black Chuck Taylor All-Stars. He looks like every pseudo-hippie kid I went to high school with.
- More of their kind of crap election coverage by Matt Taibbi, whose continuing assignment to write nasty, sort of obvious things about all of the Republican presidential hopefuls brings him to Mitt Romney this issue. Taibbi shocks and appalls us by revealing that Romney is...a politician! He says things people want to hear (No!)! He uses (gasp!) stock public speaking techniques. He speaks in (for shame!) glittering generalities! Somebody stick a wooden stake in this guy's heart, quick!
- A pretty good piece on Internet gossip-monger Perez Hilton (AKA Mario Lavendeira), who makes his living by posting other peoples' celebrity photography for free and making catty comments about its subjects (as I'll do now, following his shining example).
His ability to post other peoples' work and be snarky about the rich and famous is apparently making him $250,000 a year and he's just landed a television show.
This piece would make me hate this guy even more than I already do...but somehow I can't bring myself to bother. What I do like: the piece reveals Hilton's Bond-villainesque origin as a cranky, chubby, misanthropic little kid whose parents let him lay in bed watching TV 12 hours a day and would bring him meals on trays so he didn't have to get up and go to the kitchen. People were mean to him in high school, so his being mean to famous people who commit the mortal sin of occasionally going outside without makeup really makes perfect sense.
"I think what I do is noble," Hilton says.
Get this guy a Pulitzer! And a swift kick in the nobility!
- A weird "Wheels 07" feature wherein musicians pose with cars, test drive them and offer their opinions. This makes me love The Dropkick Murphys more than I already do, as they test drive an Infiniti G37S. The Boston punks break all sorts of traffic laws in it, squeal into a Dunkin Donuts parking lot excitedly screaming "Dunkies!" and ultimately break the windshield while posing with the car with "props" like a sledgehammer and chainsaw.
"This is the car of a Yankee fan!" bassist/songwriter Ken Casey says after the "accident."
The writer theorizes that he should never have told them the car was fully insured.
Comments (4)
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Don't you pay any mind to Perez. He will be fun to watch on Celebrity Fit Club.
Posted on October 24, 2007 11:27 AM
If I had that much money and was miserable with how fat I was I'd have some crazy, expensive plastic surgery. Like hitting the "reset" button.
Posted on October 24, 2007 8:53 PM
Perez has way more talent than that, Joe. You're forgetting his ability to add crude bathroom-wall-like scrawling to said photos in MS Paint.
Semen! Ha!
Posted on October 25, 2007 9:19 AM
The profile does actually mention that -- and also talks about him occasionally drawing a white phallus next to someone's face as "commentary."
This guy's making $250,000 a year.
Posted on October 25, 2007 3:42 PM