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The Daily News says teacher evaluation talks "seem doomed to fail."
Crain's calls for a minimum wage hike.
Mayor Bloomberg sat down with the Post's editorial board.
Said editorial board writes: "First there was “The Little Engine That Could” — and now there are the “Little Public Workers Who Won’t."
And continues to bombard the Associated Press.
John Liu met with campaign contributors on the job.
9/11 responders' checks are less than they expected.
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via @MikeGiardi
Someone behind the New York Giants' website tried to play sports Nostradamus on Saturday, prematurely declaring the Giants champions of Sunday's Super Bowl match with the New England Patriots. Giants.com briefly became a portal to Super Bowl champs merchandise and triumphant images of team members raising fists in victory. Web producers quickly realized this might be bad form and reverted the site to its more modest state, but not before Comcast Sports Net anchor Mike Giardi happened to take a screengrab. Sports blogs like The Nosebleeds wondered if this could be a "bad omen" for the New York team, but Giants fans would likely insist it was just an effort to get a head start on the inevitable.
[CBS Boston]
Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in Nevada for the Republican primary caucuses, has scheduled a mysterious press conference in Las Vegas later tonight. Active candidates typically hold a rally regardless of voting results; Mr. Gingrich's presser has prompted The New York Times to report via its political blog The Caucus that "rumors have been flying" in Nevada that Mr. Gingrich will cease his run for the presidency.
Those rumors may be unfounded--embedded journalists following the campaign have already a received preliminary schedule of appearances Mr. Gingrich will make in upcoming caucus states such as Colorado and Ohio.
Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to a Super PAC supporting the Gingrich campaign, is based in Las Vegas as well, so Gingrich could simply be acknowledging a major donor's support. The upshot is no one really knows what the former Speaker is up to, which is perhaps just the way he likes it.
UPDATE: In his press conference after Mitt Romney was declared winner of the Nevada caucuses, Mr. Gingrich declared he was the only real conservative seeking the nomination and definitely still in the running.
[NYTimes.com]
Courtney Love, not tweeting.
In addition to her @Courtney Twitter account, sometimes a source of entertainment, consternation and lawsuits, kaleidoscopic rock queen Courtney Love has a second, private and much more personal account on the microblogging site: @Cbabymichelle. "Personal" as in Cbabymichelle is actually written by Ms. Love and not an assistant. According to former Radar Magazine chief and current Fix-meister Maer Roshan's new eBook about Ms. Love, Courtney Comes Clean: The High Life and Dark Depths of Music's Most Controversial Icon, Ms. Love has used the lesser-known account to have barbarically yawping dialogues with her public persona, one online voice acting as a PR-friendly saint to Cbabymichelle's heckling sinner. Mr. Roshan writes:
Courtney hasn't shied away from using Twitter to blast her enemies. Last Spring, after she paid fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir $430,000 to settle the world's first Twitter defamation lawsuit, her handlers implored her to stay away from social media. Love announced that she was quitting Twitter for good. But total abstinence was apparently too much to bear for the singer, who went on to maintain two separate Twitter accounts, which her pals dubbed 'Good Sister' and 'Bad Sister', after the title of one of her songs. In September of 2011, Love reclaimed the handle @courtney that she'd abandoned years earlier. According to sources close to Love, @courtney was written by a staffer who was instructed to keep up a positive and press-friendly tone. But the real Courtney continued to tweet from a password-protected handle, @cbabymichelle, where she lashed out at a wide range of enemies, from Chelsea Handler to musician Dave Grohl. "So Edward Norton gets to be ambassador to Malawi?" cbabymichelle railed about her former boyfriend last August. "That's funny, he doesn't even like Madonna." At the same time, @courtney was issuing a daily series of saccharine tweets, begging @kellyosbourne for forgiveness for Love's attacks on her, heaping praise on casino mogul @ElaineWynn and slathering @perezhilton with "xxoxoxxos" despite his trashing of her over the years. Many of Courtney's fans were confused by her chipper tune. Courtney was also displeased. Things took a surreal turn last October when Bad Courtney lashed out at Good Courtney for her embarrassing performance. Annoyed by a series of particularly cloying tweets @cbabymichelle chastised her counterpart for "not following the plot" of her life and over-tweeting in a style "that sounds nothing like me!!" “Look, good Courtney, I know we have to be behaving cause were up for movie roles and people are watching,” raged Love, threatening to replace her alter-ego. “I’ll have you removed at once from doing the celeb-friendly/corporate act if you don’t get your shit together and stop making me look like a fool!” A day later, Bad Courtney’s inflammatory tweets disappeared.
Courtney hasn't shied away from using Twitter to blast her enemies. Last Spring, after she paid fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir $430,000 to settle the world's first Twitter defamation lawsuit, her handlers implored her to stay away from social media. Love announced that she was quitting Twitter for good. But total abstinence was apparently too much to bear for the singer, who went on to maintain two separate Twitter accounts, which her pals dubbed 'Good Sister' and 'Bad Sister', after the title of one of her songs. In September of 2011, Love reclaimed the handle @courtney that she'd abandoned years earlier. According to sources close to Love, @courtney was written by a staffer who was instructed to keep up a positive and press-friendly tone. But the real Courtney continued to tweet from a password-protected handle, @cbabymichelle, where she lashed out at a wide range of enemies, from Chelsea Handler to musician Dave Grohl. "So Edward Norton gets to be ambassador to Malawi?" cbabymichelle railed about her former boyfriend last August. "That's funny, he doesn't even like Madonna."
At the same time, @courtney was issuing a daily series of saccharine tweets, begging @kellyosbourne for forgiveness for Love's attacks on her, heaping praise on casino mogul @ElaineWynn and slathering @perezhilton with "xxoxoxxos" despite his trashing of her over the years. Many of Courtney's fans were confused by her chipper tune. Courtney was also displeased. Things took a surreal turn last October when Bad Courtney lashed out at Good Courtney for her embarrassing performance. Annoyed by a series of particularly cloying tweets @cbabymichelle chastised her counterpart for "not following the plot" of her life and over-tweeting in a style "that sounds nothing like me!!"
“Look, good Courtney, I know we have to be behaving cause were up for movie roles and people are watching,” raged Love, threatening to replace her alter-ego. “I’ll have you removed at once from doing the celeb-friendly/corporate act if you don’t get your shit together and stop making me look like a fool!” A day later, Bad Courtney’s inflammatory tweets disappeared.
Cbabymichelle was still at it as recently as January 29, addressing the differences between "good Courtney" and Cbabymichelle in the following exchange:
@Cbabymichelle explains (courtesy The Fix)
To add to all this fun, crazy Thai video news outfit NMA.TV has taken an interest Mr. Roshan's book, creating a high--(low?)--light reel of events in Ms. Love's life using details from Courtney Comes Clean and court records related to custody battles over Ms. Love's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.
Frances Bean Cobain: Courtney Love was a bad mom - YouTube.
Woody Harrelson as seen by Reddit
Yesterday we suggested fun questions to ask Woody Harrelson during his AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on link aggregation juggernaut Reddit, but as it turned out, our suggestions were probably mooted by Mr. Harrelson, who clearly did not understand what he was getting into. Mr. Harrelson appeared to treat the question and answer session like any other sit-down interview focused on promoting his upcoming film, Rampart, and that was his first mistake. Reddit users (Redditors) flayed him for the strategy, and have continued gleefully roasting the actor as only Reddit could for the last 24 hours or so.
What happened? Where did it all go wrong for one of Hollywood's most happy-go-lucky weed activists? Probably at the outset. Redditors take the literal meaning of AMA seriously--they expect to be able to ask the subject anything. That's just what a Reddit user with the screen name "AndyRooney" chose to do:
I swear this is a true story. I went to a high school in LA and you crashed our prom after party (Universal Hilton). You ended up taking the virginity of a girl named Roseanna. You didn't call her afterwards. She cried a lot. Do you remember any of this and can confirm or have you been so knee deep in hollywood pooty for so long that this qualifies as a mere blip? (...)
"AndyRooney" appears to have edited the question to add additional commentary but Mr. Harrelson's response to the original query, while perhaps predictable and understandable, was a good example of the sort of answer that is like raking nails across a chalkboard to any long-time Redditor:
Reddit user "bersh" commented, "Should change this AMA to AMAAR (Ask Me Anything About Rampart)," and Mr. Harrelson's answer to that statement didn't help at all:
For further fun times you can check out all the instances where Woody Harrelson/some publicist answered questions by following links from this post in the original Q&A thread.
For anyone not inclined to go poking through the many Reddit threads and associated (often hilarious) images surrounding the Woody Harrelson AMA Debacle of '12, a Redditor using the handle "Dulljack" may have summed up the situation fairly well with the following imagined bit of dialogue:
Agent- "Hey, there is this website called Readdit where we can pitch Woody's new movie! Every person on it is in our target demographic!!!" Publicist - "Sweet, let's go piss them off!" EPIC HIGH FIVE!
Mark Berndt's mugshot
It was bad enough when long-time second grade teacher Mark Berndt was arrested for allegedly playing horrible "games" with his students involving body fluids. Now a second faculty member at Miramonte Elementary School in South Los Angeles, 49-year-old Martin Springer, has been arrested and accused of "lewd acts":
The arrest of Miramonte Elementary School teacher Martin Bernard Springer, 49, came three days after L.A. prosecutors accused former teacher Mark Berndt of bizarre acts in his classroom that have generated national attention. Berndt, 61, allegedly spoon-fed his semen to blindfolded children as part of what he called a "tasting game."
The arrest of Miramonte Elementary School teacher Martin Bernard Springer, 49, came three days after L.A. prosecutors accused former teacher Mark Berndt of bizarre acts in his classroom that have generated national attention.
Berndt, 61, allegedly spoon-fed his semen to blindfolded children as part of what he called a "tasting game."
Two students accuse Mr. Springer of improper touching, according to a L.A. County Sheriff's spokesperson. Capt. Mike Parker told the L.A. Times that the students were "fondled in the classroom" by Mr. Springer and "were approximately 7 years old" when the alleged incidents occurred.
According to the Times both Mr. Berndt, 61, and Mr. Springer have spent their careers at Miramonte, one of the biggest elementary schools in America.
Mr. Berndt's arrest raised questions about how school officials had handled past allegations of misconduct on his part, as students had come forward even in the early 1990s with allegations of bizarre, lewd behavior.
Investigators are still seeking possible victims. Mr. Berndt is being held on a $23 million bond; Mr. Springer on $2 million bail.
[ latimes.com.]
Scene from "The Thing," which isn't happening for real in the Antarctic right now. We hope.
Contrary to somewhat overheated reports from Fox News regarding their mysterious silence, scientists with Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute are probably just very busy. The Russian team has been drilling through 13,000 feet of Antarctic ice to reach subterranean Lake Vostok, a body of water that hasn't seen daylight for 20 million years. On Thursday, an article published by Fox News seemed to leave open the prospect the scientists might have reached their goal and perhaps awakened some horrible evil from beyond time and space:
A group of Russian scientists plumbing the frozen Antarctic in search of a lake buried in ice for tens of millions of years have failed to respond to increasingly anxious U.S. colleagues -- and as the days creep by, the fate of the team remains unknown. "No word from the ice for 5 days," Dr. John Priscu -- professor of ecology at Montana State University and head of a similar Antarctic exploration program -- told FoxNews.com via email.
A group of Russian scientists plumbing the frozen Antarctic in search of a lake buried in ice for tens of millions of years have failed to respond to increasingly anxious U.S. colleagues -- and as the days creep by, the fate of the team remains unknown.
"No word from the ice for 5 days," Dr. John Priscu -- professor of ecology at Montana State University and head of a similar Antarctic exploration program -- told FoxNews.com via email.
U.S. News and World Report says Dr. Priscu's dire seeming words were misconstrued:
"I can assure you that they are not lost or out of contact," he wrote in an email. "I never said the Russians were lost." [...] "What I can tell you is that they are doing something that has never been done before—think of it, sampling a lake under 2.5 miles of ice at a location that is the highest, driest and coldest desert on our planet," he adds.
"I can assure you that they are not lost or out of contact," he wrote in an email. "I never said the Russians were lost."
[...]
"What I can tell you is that they are doing something that has never been done before—think of it, sampling a lake under 2.5 miles of ice at a location that is the highest, driest and coldest desert on our planet," he adds.
So we can relax--dread Cthulhu has not wakened from his timeless slumbers to consume the intrepid Russians for disturbing his dark and eldritch dream-time. Dr. Priscu assured U.S. News that Russian team is simply "working round the clock" to complete their historic mission and reach the buried lake before the brutal Antarctic winter arrives.
Though it would probably be good to know if they do check in, soon. Just in case.
[US News and World Report]
Ms. Tsotsis, Freedom Fighter (or something like it).
Last time, Ms. Tsotsis explained that she was "beginning to feel stupid" for still working at TechCrunch in light of what she felt were AOL's poor decisions on an executive level. This was, of course, besides having already seen some of the oldest writers for the site (including founder Michael Arrington) get dispatched by Arianna Huffington in an aggressive power play.
Today, she posted an email forwarded to her about a new initiative by AOL chief Arianna Huffington: The installation of nap rooms. Nap rooms themselves aren't entirely hysterical. Plenty of people have crashed overnight in an office pulling all-nighters, usually on uncomfortable couches. These people could probably use more comfortable couches.
But what is funny about a nap room is the strong importance Arianna Huffington is placing on them. From the email to TechCrunch:
"This is high on the priority list for Arianna and your office is one of the few where we don’t yet have it in place."
Also funny is the phrasing Ms. Tsotsis chose to use, especially for the headline:
"Arianna Wants To Put A Nap Room In TechCrunch HQ. LOL."
And also, the way she posts an Onion piece at the end of the post lampooning The Huffington Post's aggregation strategy:
"At least they’re not trying to install one of these things. "
The entire thing is wonderful, and a clear shot across the bow at her employer. That said, if Ms. Tsotsis is in fact trying to get fired, this strategy—that of attracting attention to the site for its belligerence—make backfire for being successful. Or Ms. Tsotsis is trying to attract attention to the site on a Friday evening by openly provoking her boss.
Either way, it's fun to watch. One more like this and we'll open up the betting pool on when she gets canned.
fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek
The Times reports that Ben Gazzara, famed for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the films of John Cassavetes, has died at 81. In the video, Gazzara discussed his role in the Cassavetes film Husbands.