Golden Globes 2009 Fashion & Follies

Number 66 for the Golden Globes highlighted fashion forays into the désert and for silver screens big and small. The designer eats on behalf of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association were great while the show drifted along as apéritifs increased in alcohol content.

De Apertif at GG 2009, Ze Entrée at GG 2009, Le Dessert at GG

Best dressed of the evening goes to a soigné Salma Hayek

Botega Venetta creation

The corset bustier look with wild draping was the theme of the night. Hair seemed to be created by Charlie the Truly Evil hairstylist for Drew Barrymore wearing Galliano and two tones of boring blonde by Cameron Diaz in a Chanel engineered frock.

Evan Rachel Wood of The Wrestler has a wedding cake tiered fairy princess gone lacy black look from Elie Saab(AP). Dexter's Julie Benz is cinched at the waist in the scads of material blah blah iridescent blue dress. The most useless accessory of the night - a belt. Seems to be a rather common styling 2009 preference. (AFP) And nope, it does not work for everybody.

Last year Olivia rocked a dress at the Emmy's - tonight, not so much. A belt with bustier in purple with red hair to pass out the now sturdier GG awards. It's lilac run amok with a belt. Even Demi's and Bruce's daughter had to do the belt thing and a sneaking suspicion its Christina Appelgate's dress in a different color - Mom was elegant.

Debra Messing gets it right after a couple of off years - classic, one color with the frou frou involved in the Vera Wang dress that has a waist sash built in.

Critic's Choice Award winner for Rachel Got married, Anne Hathaway had a Armani Privé dress and a gem of a stylist for the occasion. Hayden Panettiere is now getting the styling thing with a beautiful Gianfranco Ferre plum purple with a tad of glitter above the waist detail.


Eva Longoria Parker one of the few wearing bright and bold from Reem Acra, but still bustiered and skintight....

Guys: Aaron Eckhart form the widely acclaimed Dark Knight isn't going to be mistaken for the chauffeur. (LAT) - Tiki Barber's tie is interesting, but the elegant suit looks well done. the pair, Freida Pinto and Dev Patel from Slum dog looks good. The drapery and tiers this year are a bit overwhelming. Button actor Alexandre Desplat layered the black and light black in a matte finish. Simon Baker looks Bond like. (wire image)

Last year's winner of the glitter ball on Dancing with the Stars is a Grecian draped svelte Brooke Burke. Hint - that much draping can leave the florals on another dress. It's gilding the lily. Pssst, the hanging lock of hair a no-no. Eva Mendes is wearing Dior with a giant hip acessory. J Lo went Marchesa backless and light in front.


Purple with frills at the neck and the fitted waist is the outfit for just looking at the food for Maria Menounos.

And bringing the straight up ugly is Maggie Gyllenhaal. (G) A Belt - and florals make it stop... I'm begging.

What were the stylists thinking this year, J. Mendel's shirred and patterns again in black with spots of color for Taraji Henson from the Button movie. Heidi Klum joined her in the I was blinded by sunlight when choosing my dress after coming out of a fashion coma. Killer shoes though.... (G)

Thank you Kate Winslet with a chic belt on an all black dress.

Christina Appelgate also does better in a golden champaign bustier by Roberto Cavalli for the evening. Miley Cyrus, while irreverent gets the Marchesa glam styling thing right. Marisa Tormei has the look of a regal Spanish bullfighter with princess touches. I like it and the belt is unusual in this case. (WI)

Woman of a certain era - they dressed faster than an egg boils collection...

Love ya Glenn C and Armani, but my goodness it's like Mother of the Bride meets Mrs. Cleaver. Susan Sarandon decided on the velvet man tux cut for a for woman. And Sigourney Weaver is doing the human female alien. Beyoncé strikes a pose in what seems an ill fitting Elie Saab gown or she's turned into a pear.

Let's just have a moment of silence for America. Seriously - a long oh whoa silence for Oscar de la Renta. (You don't even want to know about the Carolina Herrera that Renne Zellweger wore.)

Irony is not dead in Hollywood. the rehabbed sexual guy, David Duchovony, shows up after his part in Californication to present at the 66th annual show after last years non-show. (wire image)

Musical Chair Derby to Audition for Transition

The White House is the scene of the best braggarts and brightest burblers competing to get one of the last seats before the dramatic Gothic music stops. The scramble is fierce. The players have the arrogance of elitists, use dumb seeking minions to sharpen their wits upon and find any means necessary to wipe out, trip or just outright legally slit the throats of their fellow professionals. Out of the mêlée comes sanguine victors who join the legions of cube rates across corporate America for a chance to sit and work in the Brady Briefing Room located in the West Wing. The latest journalistic perk is getting senior in front of the words White House reporter.

Confinement to little sections of the White House with special security passes and an itsy bitsy workspace with wifi was worth all of the professional rivalry, hidden hand backstabbing of a new administration and pontificating that goes on in millions of workplaces around the globe. But this is the White House. Barack Obama will be running the historic show. Hidden from public view is the transition to see which millionaire TV journalists and their less well paid print counterparts get to be assigned to stand outside the White House when the mosquitoes bite or the snow piles up around their ears to cover the most closely watched presidential transition in world history. Yet, because the White House during the Bush locusts and famine years was pretty much like a GOP convention - a surfeit of non-French vanilla with an arresting rare chocolate or butterscotch sprinkle for spice, more media enterprises feel a sudden need to diversify their reporting pool. Will the miracles that just the advent of a President-Elect Barack Obama can do never cease...

While The New York Times has yet to announce its White House team, sources tell Politico that it will include Liberian-born journalist Helene Cooper, previously a diplomatic correspondent. Cooper has something in common with the president-elect — her own highly acclaimed memoir delving into her familial ties in Africa, published earlier this
year.

But simply wanting to cover the White House isn't as easy as just showing up. Longtime correspondents tightly hold onto the best seats in the small work space in the basement. Coveted hard passes can take months to obtain through the Secret Service.

"I think people who haven't covered the White House will be surprised how rigid they are about rules," said Julie Mason, White House correspondent for the Washington Examiner, mentioning the assigned seating as a particular sticking point among veterans.

DC journalists notoriously protected privilege and access to their bottom line detriment. Many political bloggers, especially on the left, just moved into the wide open space left by many journalists. Scooter Libby's trial transcripts put the punctuation marks ^%#$(^ of how in the tank many top journalists were for republican agendas after their almost total meek acceptance of all things Bush led to the travesty, the Iraq War. So now people see an opening and the editors and producers have to decide who is going to get the crown jewel of a WH spot to cover this presidency. Do they keep the same people in place or shake things up? Obama decided in-house bloggers were going to get an official White House stamp of approval.

Also getting under way is a new team of official White House bloggers. One, prominent liberal blogger Michael Lux, joined the transition team this week.

He's expected to be joined by bloggers assigned to specific Obama initiatives, such as overhauling health care and conserving energy.

At the same time, McClatchy Newspapers has learned that Obama's Internet army, which is in the course of moving from his campaign communications Web site to his transition site, www.change.gov, may be asked to move again in January. (AFP)

Some media conglomerates are seeking to add more reporters to cover this White House. Just a whiff of drama is catnip to the reporters who strangely enough tell the news on Tv in virtually the same order night after night. Newspapers are hiring their own bloggers while former print magazines are folding shop and becoming web only operations. Newsrooms have a high degree of anxiety over what January 20, 2009 will bring. Media staffing decisions are fraught with peril because they have no control over how an Obama Administration plans to set up or upset current traditions the press deems dear.

Dishing the dirt and taking no guff from press or presidents is the Iron Lady of the Beltway. An eighty year plus feisty woman who famously gave JFK tough questions and every president since. Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Failed the Public, is her book outlining the press and its epic failures to fulfill their purpose of being the People's representative, not their corporations. Waves hi to the Mouse, a Lightbulb and assorted other corporate brands bringing the tarted up "news".

Part of the Transition Series.

Obama States A Truth, Media & RivalsTwist It

A smear perpetuated by a tone deaf mainstream media and amplified by over eager rival presidential candidates, exemplifies all that is vapid and vainglorious about the American political system. Hillary Clinton, once again aligns herself with an aged John McCain to bear false witness against the meaning, tone, and context of what ails those who are among the least of these clinging to a way of life dismissed by the long term Elites of this country. Bitterness is a byproduct of a loss of opportunity at the hands of corporations enabled by Clinton, Bush and mcCain policies to feed at the trough of US treasury first and foremost while individuals are moved to the scraps line and treated with derision.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Barack Obama, the son of a goat herder turned PhD, fights back with words and deeds against the cynicism of a vain Lou Dobbs, a desperate Hillary and a relic trying to recapture a bygone era, McCain. CNN's inability to get to the truth of anything is suspect. Even marshmallows can keep secrets from a media that prides itself on surface and shallow issues. Barack takes them all to task:

Let Barack's Words continue Forth to a new Generation that prizes nuance, depth and quests for Truth beyond those immediately seen by the less endowed among us.

The War On Words on Writers

From 4 pennies to 8 pennies per CD/DVD is just too big of an increase for producers and giant corporate media moguls to bear to part with for mere writers. They moan it would eat into their thin margins as they wage vicious see and be seen ratings wars, ongoing battles of which bloated scripts to be put in executive rehab and it unilaterally disarms the rich by giving a pittance to poor WGA writers. Thy writer may have a few other jobs to keep their health care and food on the table. This will not be the reality TV show America gets to see during the newest Dark Laptop Ages of the Writer's strike. Instead, US television drivel will come from the untested mind of some milquetoast MBA with an urge to prove that Fear Factor 13 is economically viable. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

All of the trappings of a union protest were there — signs, chanting workers, an inflatable rat, and a discarded bag of wrappers and cups from Dunkin Donuts. The rat was borrowed from Local 79, an AFL-CIO laborers’ union, and commuted in from Queens.

But instead of hard hats and work boots, the people on the pickets had arty glasses and fancy scarves.

“A lot of the public probably feels like we are brats,” said Sarah Durken, a writer for children’s programs. “We are not hospital workers and firefighters, we know that — the world is going to keep turning. But I think everyone understands that the issue of corporate greed versus the needs of workers and their families.” (30 Rock's writer Tina Fey/AP Photo)

Stay on a pre-paid script. Put a bunch of dysfunctional people together in awkward circumstances with a big shiny prize that will bring out the semi-cognizant and Behold, a 46 minute burning reality show paid for by corporate entities hawking pills, diapers and the next reality show born of dire doom. Note to television audience: those same dysfunctional people on the show are mirror images of those deciding to air the show. Whew, makes you really rush to get to the TV. A half billion dollars of losses during the last strike in 1988, was a mere rainy day piggy bank to some big shots while others watched financial and professional ruin advance at the speed of light with scripts withering in the dust bowl of boring entertainment. The War on Words is a spiffy acronym - every marketer will say, you need that to get the public's attention, so WOW is officially on, over a few pennies. Call me when they speak in terms of folding money...

Writers produced an incredible amount of original product before hitting the picket and bread lines. The immediate audience ouch comes from those who like the topical late night shows like fake news star John Stewart's The Daily Show and ex-presidential premature panderer Stephen Colbert, of The Colbert Report. There is no one left to write his campaign speeches. Whoa, is business going to be better with YouTube since the content of the reality shows have a few decency limits. YouTube can sink to new depths of depravity with a bored audience or become the heights of drama capturing audience share never to return to TV again with web sensation classics like Obama Girl, Britney Spears howling Public Defender or the shocked squirrel.

Let the Word go Forth to media producers and executives alike - Writers own the Words and you need those to make the entertainment industry actually work. It's not rocket science, its the writing, stupid.


Steven Colbert has a satirical genius book out to keep us amused and suitably entertained, I Am America: And So Can You. John Stewart is a New York Times Bestselling author of The Daily Show with John Stewart Presents America: A Citizen's Guide to democracy Inaction - that word thing again in the ironic hands of awesome crafters.

Fury & Denial from A US Justice and Ex B-baller

What a vivid week for sexual harassers who are having public snits in writing or in front of the courtroom for being called out about their poor behavior in the workplace. In 1991, America found itself divided along gender lines and loudly debating the merits of sexual harassment in the workplace. A brave young and naive Anita Hill, in a demure blue suit, gave sworn testimony to US senate and called Clarence Thomas, the Bush nominee for the Supreme Court, a liar and giving graphic examples of comments and his fascination with sex and body parts. Clarence Thomas was replacing the noted legal liberal lion from the seminal Brown case, Thurgood Marshall. In another federal court today, the victim of Isaiah Thomas' inner-fantasy playboy with a tiny dormant brain in his pocket, won $11.6 million dollars from his employer, the debauched Madison Square Garden. Both men are howling at the moon and to any news crew that will listen about their innocence. The Doubly Doubted Thomas' do not claim to be related.

A myopic manly senate with a current Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, made it possible for Thomas to pompously sit mute on the Court and write a screed fifteen years later about his "high tech lynching" from so-called DC liberals. Isaiah Thomas was out front of the court learning new tap dance skills as he proclaimed in touching tones, his innocence. The judge declared a mistrial on the question of assigning a material punitive judgment against Thomas. Madison Square Garden was shown to be a house of ill repute when one player admitted to having sex with an intern in his truck and other activities that fit the definition of creating a hostile work environment.

Thank goodness, a pinstriped suited up Isaiah Thomas no longer works as an executive there because his leadership of the NY Knicks organization sucked. Now, Thomas just has his hands on the team as coach, but for how long? It seemed as if the corporation wanted to fully occupy the dank basement evidenced by a CEO who was not coached or prepared for his videotaped deposition. Being unprepared seems to be a theme with the MSQ exec team as the Knicks have been a moribund team showing up at the playoffs only once in the last seven years. The company stock took a hit.

Thomas was not found liable for punitive damages after the trial, but the jury decided that he had harassed Browne Sanders, herself a former college basketball star.

"I'm innocent, I'm very innocent, and I did not do the things she has accused me in this courtroom of doing," Thomas said after the decision. "I'm extremely disappointed that the jury did not see the facts in this case."

The case has reflected rather disastrously on James Dolan, the billionaire CEO of Cablevision, which owns the Knicks. In a videotaped deposition that was played at the trial, Dolan sat slumped in a chair wearing a black crewneck shirt with the sleeves pushed up. His demeanor and answers may have seemed flippant to the jurors.

Laughing off this case may have been Madison Square Garden's undoing. Cablevision is valued by the stock market to be worth more than $10 billion. When Browne Sanders left the Garden, she offered to drop her suit for $6 million. She was rebuffed.

It seems Justice Thomas has brooded and seethed in silence for the last fifteen years and his ode to his life is filled with a sense of entitled suffering as he describes his tenure on the court. He makes it plain he was not Justice Scalia's sycophant and his work changed the US Supreme Court behind the scenes. His early life was rife with hardships and this was just one more that he endured in the harsh glare of a public enthralled with the sexual imaginings and goings on inside his EEOC.

Anita Hill has released her eloquent statement in a New York Times op-ed.



After her court victory, Anucha Browne Sanders said the jury verdict today was a "victory for all working women".




Justice Clarence Thomas recently released his autobiography/memoir to date in a surfeit of publicity. The book is My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir. It is well written, harsh about his critics and one sided.