Oh, HI, Self-Promotion!

This is not shameless, only because I do feel embarassed (but, obviously enough, not so bashful that I'm not typing this shiz right now).

Every now and again, I write things, and I'd like to think that someone other than my father—no, I mean it: my dad's my lone reader as my mom "can't find the time to sit down!" and "isn't good at checking her email!"—consumes these "published works."

Now that I've made the stories look fancy, I will tell you they are always, always, always about 1) celebrities/actor-types and 2) food. As you can see, I'm a super serious reporter who will probably be up for a Pulitzer in '09. WATCH OUT.

Self-deprecation aside! First off, I did a rundown of the best coffee in America (theme of the day: U.S.A.) for GOOD. Spoiler alert: It doesn't come from Starbucks. Some of the tastiest does come from this place, which is a block from my abode:

I stole this from Flickr. But I'm linking! Luvsssss youssss.

Two of all, I did a profile of this up-and-coming actress Kate French for FOAM. It's a fashion-surfing magazine and is pretty rad. Kate is both adorable and hot (cause we all know those are totally different things). She is on The L-Word and, starting Mon. (a.k.a. my birfday) is doing a stint on Gossip Girl as, duh, a Chuck Bass love interest. All together now: DIE. For the pretty, picture-filled version, click here and navigate to pg. 94. For the user-friendlier option, direct your attentions here.

Most importantly, the teaser for next week's GG that promises to bring us K.F.—and a Blair Waldorf expulsion?!?! Yah, prolly no.

Insert Cover Girl Joke Here

Tina Fey is on the cover of the new issue of Vanity Fair, but before I address the article, which was written by Maureen Dowd, we've gots to talk about the styling. Why is it that whenever anyone wants to prove T.F. (or, really, anyone for that matter) can be glamorous, they do this forced retro Hollywood L.A. Confidential look with red lipstick, side-swept curls, a bustier, and peep-toes? I'm over it. Way over it. And I'm also way over the biting-the-eyeglasses trick, which is apparently universal moron language for "I'm both smart and sexy!!!"

Moving on: The story itself feels...old. Like it was meant to come out on 11/11—a mere week after the election—but we are just seeing it now. This is clearly a problem that all magazines are facing—how do you deal with a topic that everyone cares about when you can't be at all current about it—but you can really feel it here when a big ol' chunk of page is dedicated to Tina doin' the Palin. The best parts of the piece come straight outta the comedienne's mouth. I guess that's kind of a duh, but still.

On binging before her shoot with Annie Leibovitz:

"Annie’s going to photograph my soul, right?"

On her high school social life:

"I remember bringing people over in high school to play—that’s how cool I am—that game Celebrity. That’s how I successfully remained a virgin well into my 20s, bringing gay boys over to play Celebrity."

On moving to NY

"I’m five four and a half, and I think I was maxing out at just short of 150 pounds, which isn’t so big. But when you move to New York from Chicago, you feel really big. Because everyone is pulled together, small, and Asian. Everyone’s Asian."

PS: Happy belated Thanksgiving!

PPS: Sorry for the long blogging break! I'm back! Not that you were really worried.

How We All Wish We Could Leave Our Jobs

Nick Denton, head of Gawker Media (the internet co. that owns blergs like Gawker, Valleywag, Deadspin, Lifehacker, and Jezebel) announced last Fri. that he'd be canning 19 employees—a lot for a company this size—and beefing up the operations of the most financially successful/promising sites.

Among those to get the boot was Moe Tkacik, who came over to the head site (if you can call it that anymore) about a month ago from Jezebel, a site that she helped launch. And, wow. How did Moe respond? Why, she wrote a 1400-word missive titled "The Downsized Employee" explaining, ostensibly, what fucking sucks about her boss. And she posted it on Gawker.

And I quote:

"The Downsized Employee's Boss had downsized some 18 employees along with her, some of whom had been re-hired in different capacities. Did the fact that Downsized Employee received no such opportunity have to do with the fact that "The" Downsized Employee had been an unusually vociferous voice of dissent? It was possible. When the Downsized Employee had started at the company to co-launch a new website her boss decreed should position itself to compete with a supremely inane website for celebrity photos and gossip overseen by a dogmatically shallow celebrity tabloid reporter, the Downsized Employee filled with righteous indignation and said she would rather quit or hell, die than do any such thing. The Downsized Employee proceeded to co-produce a website she saw as being the precise opposite of that and co-usher said new website to prominence and widespread popularity by offering to the public what she saw as an antidote to the easy, sloppy superficial bullshit. Oh sure, it was easy for the Downsized Employee's Boss to say, "Come on, it is not like you are offering the Paris Review," but it was far harder, she felt, to actually show up every day and bother trying to reconcile the dumbed-down, image-based internet habits of the American public with what she knew—okay, she did not know, but for sanity's sake she had to believe—to be a deeper, harder-to-satisfy longer-term hunger for content that would be more challenging, more nourishing, more unique or in any case actually funny."

And:

"The Downsized Employee does not want to give her old customers the sense she thinks she is so important. The Downsized Employee just wanted one final chance to remind them that she thinks some things are important, and it is much more than "what sells right now," but that she blames the "What Sells Right Now" mentality for her Downsizing, because the Downsized Employee would have gladly taken a pay cut, but she does not believe the Boss who Downsized her realized that, and she could no more expect the Boss who downsized her to realize that than she could herself start a multimillion dollar 150-employee media company."

Now, don't get me wrong, the whole thing is too writerly and inflated, but the essence of it is brilliant. Chick's job (er, old job) is to be critical of the "media machines" and all that business, and turns out she's working for one of the shittiest machines of all.