Lisa Rinna’s Bikini Tweet Homage To Demi Moore (PHOTO)
Lisa Rinna tweeted a photo of herself in an animal print bikini and sunglasses this week, days after similar pics from Demi Moore surfaced, seen below right.
Rinna tweeted the below left along with the message,
Doin the Demi! Power to the 47yr olds!!!!! She is my idol!
View full post on Entertainment on HuffingtonPost.com
Jon Chattman: Band on the Rise: Get to Know ‘The Drums’
I’m going to just steal a line from their bio, their track “Let’s Go Surfing” features the best whistling in a song since the infectious Peter, Bjorn & John recent classic “Young Folks.” But, there’s more to this indie-pop-rock New York band than blowing air choruses. Thank goodness. Imagine if whistling was their only gimmick.
The Drums are a buzzworthy band who share a similar 80s new wave vibe with fellow indie-buzz band Surfer Blood, whom they’re fittingly on the road with. The band, whose brand of electro-pop has brought them many fans in New York City alone, just released their debut album and are committed to tour way through 2011. (On a related note, they just covered Arcade Fire’s “We Used To Wait,” and it’s kick ass.)
I spoke with the band’s frontman Jonny Pierce the other day, and asked him about touring, and forming the band, which it so happens he did with his best friend Jacob Graham, a guitarist he met in summer camp (guitarist Adam Kessler and drummer Connor Hanwick joined the band in 2008). Oh, I also asked him about Wilson Phillips. Deal with it.
Where are you guys from originally?
Well, Adam and I grew up in a small farm town in upstate New York called Horseheads. Jacob grew up in Ohio and then moved to Florida when he was young, and Connor was born in NYC. As far as the band goes… I was living in NYC and decided to move to move to Florida to start the band with Jacob who was living in a small apartment off the highway, just outside of Kissimmee. It was there that we wrote our Summertime EP and most of our debut full length.
As soon as we thought we had something special, we moved to NYC to turn The Drums from just a “project” to a four-piece band. We like to consider ourselves a New York-band.
How would you describe your sound? Who are your influences?
Well, any song that you ever hear from us is completely self produced, and honestly, I have no idea how to produce really. I just do my best. We really just consider ourselves a pop band. Our greatest passion is writing simple pop songs. Our sound is very stripped down. We aren’t really interested in being excessive in any way. So if you are looking for experimental, cutting edge, trendy stuff, I guess we aren’t the band for you.
While your tone is pop happy sometimes the content contradicts the sound, is that a conscious decision?
No, it just happens that way. Maybe in a sub-conscious way I am balancing the two emotions. I don’t think it is possible for me to write a happy song and be sincere about it. I am too miserable of a person I think. Happy music is for children, anyhow. Once you are a teenager, and have any brains at all, the world becomes darker and there is no use in fighting against it. I actually find the music we make to sound sad, but maybe that’s because I am writing it. Maybe it’s true that from the outside, the music translates as happy. I don’t know.
It does. You’re touring with like-sounding group Surfer Blood, how’s it going on the road with those guys?
I don’t know how like-sounding they are to us, I mean they kinda sound like Weezer, and I don’t think we sound like that at all. We use really sad chord changes, where I find their approach to be much less melancholy and just more fun maybe? Anyhow we have a history with those boys. Jacob has known them for years, seeing that they were all friends in Florida. We are looking forward to the tour, I mean, it’s our first proper American tour, and while we have run into them frequently on the summer festival circuit all over the world, it will be a cool thing to spend two months with them on our home turf.
Totes McGotes. What’s the songwriting process like for you?
Well, I won’t record anything unless it feels very natural, so sometimes I have to wait a month or two until a song is literally forcing itself on me, then I find some time and quickly record the song — usually in one days time. I think good pop should not sound labored over. It should feel very organic. If I hit a snag, I usually just throw the whole song out. As far as recording, we record every song with the same instruments: an off brand guitar we found lying around while we were in Florida, an old Roland synthesizer that Jacob has had since he was just a kid, a reverb machine a friend gave me, and a thirty-five dollar microphone from Radio Shack. We do it all in my apartment in Brooklyn.
Band name is so vital. Why The Drums?
Well, the name is really the cornerstone of the band, I suppose. I would like to think that everything we create from the artwork to the music videos to the songs are all a reflection of the name. Simple with a lot of nostalgia. And honestly, we just thought it sounded cool.
Can you appreciate a good Wilson Phillips tune like I can?
I really like anything that feels pure. Sincerity is greater and much more interesting than perfection is. In the case of Wilson Phillips, I must say there is a side of me that loves it. It’s actually very strange that you brought them up because about a week ago, Connor started playing them on the road and I’ve gotta say, there’s something unexplainable about them. I mean, they kind of sound like the bullshit Christian music I was exposed to as a kid, but it also sounds like pre-fab Sprout but a little more commercial. I don’t know — strange question. I guess it’s more nostalgic than anything else, and that is comforting, I guess.
Have you started forming groupies? If so, how do you know?
There are kids that travel for hours to come to our shows, and kids that bring us gifts and all that. But we aren’t really that kind of band I don’t think. I guess we have some super-fans, but we try to really just focus on being creative and keeping things pure.
Are you perfectionists or can you take in pure joy from your successes and/or album ?
Well, I don’t think anything we ever do is “perfect”, but we strive to do the best we can at whatever we are doing, and yes, we all love our debut album. It really is a wonder anyone even knows it exists. When we started writing songs, we had never played guitars before and thought that we would be the only ones who ever gave a fuck, but apparently we were wrong and I guess it gave us a degree of hope that we had been needing for quite some time. So thank you for that, world.
View full post on Entertainment on HuffingtonPost.com
Regina King: The Emmys: As White As Ever
Since the Emmy ceremony, I have been going back and forth about whether or not I should compose this letter. I try hard in my daily life not to engage in uncomfortable situations regarding race. But sometimes it’s very difficult to find other reasons that better explain why certain events play out the way they do. It is impossible for me to ignore the published statistics regarding the number of people of color mentioned, celebrated or honored in the history of the televised Emmys. Up to and including this year, there have been only 53 non-white actors nominated for emmys out of nearly 1,000 possible nominations in the top four acting categories for drama and comedy.
I’ve worked in television nearly all of my professional life, and that statistic is quite sobering to me. And to add injury to my already sensitive nerve endings a picture of Rutina Wesley from True Blood, who attended this year’s Emmys, had a caption that read: “Regina King enters the 62nd Emmys.” No, I wasn’t there. Mistakes happen, right? Well after a few “mistakes” of how people of color are portrayed in the Hollywood media, I decided it was important to say something about how things go down in Hollywood.
The initial pull on my heart strings was not seeing the veteran Sesame Street actress Alaina Reed Hall included in this year’s memoriam. I know I am taking it somewhat personally because of the history I shared with her, but then I stopped to think about the fact that she was on Sesame Street for 12 years, a show that is an American institution. People of all ages and generations have seen and enjoyed this highly influential television show. You have to admit, to not recognize her contribution to television baffles the mind. I first wondered, maybe I had turned my head quickly and missed seeing Alaina’s picture scroll past the screen or she was mentioned later. But no such luck.
I am assuming other actors have lost someone close to them who weren’t recognized during that segment of previous Emmy telecasts. So I will take the stats about people of color out of my complaint and pose an essential question on behalf of any television artist of note working in our business. What is the process in determining who will and will not be recognized during the Emmy memoriam?
View full post on Entertainment on HuffingtonPost.com
Bonnie Fuller: Why Squeaky Clean Stars Like Kim Kardashian Are in, and Troubled Bad Girls Like Paris and Lindsay Are Out!
Notice to celebrities — the time for drugging, and partying it up beyond the max, is OVER!
Take a look around you, check out who’s landing TV shows, movie roles, product endorsements and oodles of fans — it’s the new Hollywood goody goodies, not the toxic trainwrecks.
Kim Kardashian who told Jay Leno “I’ve never been a drinker, I’ve never gotten into drugs,” when she dropped into his Aug. 31 show, is the new Queen of the squeaky clean set. And listen, you need two hands to list all her business ventures. Besides starring in the reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and executive producing The Spin Crowd, starring PR meisters Jonathan Cheban and Simon Huck, she’s got a clothing line for Bebe, Kardashian Glamour Tan for Sephora, Fusion Beauty, Kim Kardashian perfume etc. — etc. — you get my drift!
Other members of Hollywood’s new squeaky clean club are Justin Bieber, Taylor Lautner, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, The Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato, Amanda Seyfried, Jessica Alba, Heidi Klum and former heroin-addict/new healthy mom, Nicole Richie.
Can we talk about how Bieber and Taylor Swift have burneded up the charts, filled concert stadiums and have broken into movies. Hey, they’re too busy recording, performing and having fun, to drug-it-up!
It’s no longer in any way cool to get-arrested Paris Hilton-style for dropping a bag of cocaine out of your “it’s-not-my-purse,” or show up at your probation officer meeting in a sheer top, Lindsay Lohan-style.
Don’t believe me? Here’s what one Hollywood manager tells his clients: “Directors and producers are squeamish to work with actors who have reputations as party animals,” he says:
Lately, directors and producers have been really thorough before they cast anyone… There was a time when directors didn’t get involved with personal stuff. They’d turn a blind eye. Nowadays they want to know what’s going on with their stars. If the stars turn out to be a druggie or an alcoholic, it’s on their shoulders.
For more on why Hollywood goody goodies rule click!
PHOTOS: Kendall Jenner’s Glam New Modeling Pics!
PHOTOS: The Oval Office Gets A Makeunder!
EXCLUSIVE: Check Out This ‘DWTS’ Gossip!
View full post on Entertainment on HuffingtonPost.com
William Bradley: Mad Men Makes the All-Time Television Pantheon and Unspools Another Fine Episode
As if it weren’t clear before, Mad Men has entered not only the current cultural pantheon but also the all-time television pantheon. As always, there be spoilers ahead.
Before we get to Mad Men‘s third straight Emmy Awards win as the best dramatic series and what that means, as well as the details of another fine episode in “Waldorf Stories” and what that may mean, let’s get one thing out of the way right now. We finally know how Don Draper got hired at Sterling Cooper. He didn’t!
How perfectly Don Draperesque is that? But before we return to that, and the rest of the latest episode, let’s look at Mad Men in the pantheon.
Mad Men won the award for Best Dramatic Series for the third year in a row at Sunday night’s Emmy Awards at the Nokia Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
Mad Men won its third straight Emmy Award as Best Dramatic Series on television on Sunday night. It wasn’t a surprise, but with a lot of upsets during the ceremony, it wasn’t impossible that it would lose. But even though none of the six nominated actors won, the show won again for the third year in a row for best writing — with creator Matthew Weiner again, and Erin Levy earning the prize for the season 3 finale — as well as for best casting and hairstyling. And Lost simply wasn’t good enough in its final season to knock off Mad Men, especially with Lost‘s rather insipid finale.
So Mad Men, the series that HBO infamously passed on and which finally debuted on a channel, AMC, once reserved for repeated showings of Commando and other such fairly recent, er, semi-classics, won its very deserved third straight award as the finest show on television. Which puts Mad Men one season away — this one, as it happens — from the all-time record of four straight wins.
Only three shows in the history of television drama have won more best series Emmys than Mad Men.
Let’s look at the company Mad Men is in.
The Defenders, described by some as the most socially conscious show in history, won three in a row from 1962 to 1964. Mad Men already paid homage to the show, depicting the controversy around a Defenders episode in which the father and son lawyer team, played by E.G. Marshal and Robert Reed, defended a woman who got an abortion.
The gritty-yet-humanistic police drama Hill Street Blues won four in a row from 1981 to 1984.
The slick but telling L.A. Law won four in a row from 1989 to 1992.
And The West Wing won four in a row from 2000 to 2003.
What about The Sopranos? Well, the show on which Weiner got his big break won twice, in 2004 and 2006, with Lost and 24 winning the award in between. I was a big fan of The Sopranos, but Mad Men is better.
How badly should we feel for the six actors — Jon Hamm, January Jones, Christina Hendricks, Elisabeth Moss, John Slattery and Robert Morse — who garnered Emmy nominations but didn’t come away with the awards? Probably not too bad. Four of them just made the cover of Rolling Stone. (You can guess which four. Sorry “Roger Sterling,” maybe Esquire awaits.) And they are fashion icons the world over now. Well, maybe not Robert Morse. Though his socks ought to be.
As good as Bryan Cranston is in Breaking Bad, I’d love to see Jon Hamm finally end up with an Emmy as best actor. His Don Draper is the center of Mad Men, and he shows a great range, including in the latest episode, “Waldorf Stories.” I expected Julianna Margulies to win best actress for The Good Wife, which is actually a very fine CBS show I’ve seen a few times. Margulies is outstanding in it. (Though Kyra Sedgwick pulled off an upset for a show I haven’t seen.) I halfway expected Christina Hendricks, or perhaps Elisabeth Moss, to win as best supporting actress. But Hendricks, though very potent in her appearances, probably didn’t get enough screen time last season, and the winner in that category, Good Wife‘s Archie Panjabi, is constantly in the middle of the action on that show.
So, “Waldorf Stories.” What more have we learned?
The essential milieu of Mad Men is not all that admirable.
For one thing, that Matthew Weiner is a cheeky fellow. The latest episode, which first aired the night of the Emmy Awards, turns on, yes, an awards show. In which Don Draper is up for a big award. Which he wins.
It’s the Clio Awards (sort of), the premier awards in advertising. In 1965, the Clios are staged as a long boozy affair at the Waldorf Astoria. The Clios I was at some years ago were in Miami, and it was decidedly not an afternoon event.
Before they get to the awards show, in a sequence highlighting the show’s more comedic focus, Don and Peggy Olsen interview an aspiring copywriter recommended by Roger Sterling. Or, more accurately, by Mrs. Roger Sterling, the beauteous young Jane Siegel Sterling, Don’s former secretary, whose affair with Roger caused the sale of the original Sterling Cooper to the Brit conglomerate that set all the professional changes into motion.
The young and very diminutive Danny Siegel — he’s Jane’s cousin, and he’s played by a fellow that I could swear was one of the would-be super-villain “Nerds of Doom” on Buffy the Vampire Slayer — has a hilarious portfolio consisting of other people’s work that he “admires” and precisely one, very hackneyed, idea, executed ad (so to speak) infinitum. Fill-in-the-blank product is “the cure for the common fill-in-the-blank.”
Afterwards, Peggy says she’s relieved to meet someone worse than she is. “Don’t get used to it,” Don tells her. Nice.
Don’s in high gear as we open, since he’s the toast of the industry and up for a major award — actually the Clios give out a great many awards — and continues as he tells Roger that he admires the fine prank of sending “the kid” to him. As if Roger’s very smart young wife is going to let her cousin go unhired.
All this makes Roger, who is hilariously working on his memoirs but not recalling all that much, think back to how he met Don in the first place. Don, as we’ve previously established, was a fur salesman, who also did the company’s ads. (We see the young, and still future, Betty Draper in one of the ads.) Roger has stopped in the shop to buy a “getting-to-know-you” fur for Joan Holloway, with whom he is embarking on what becomes a long affair.
Don is not at all the smooth, urbane character we’re used to. He’s more like a big, gawky, very eager Labrador puppy. Roger wants no part of him and is irritated when he finds that Don has placed his advertising portfolio in the box with Joan’s fur, a junior varsity move.
I think what we often forget about Don Draper, who is really Dick Whitman, is that while he successfully stole the identity of his dead Army lieutenant in the Korean War, and the Purple Heart that goes along with it (which Dick himself actually rates, oddly enough), he didn’t actually know much of anything even though he returned from Korea with the status of a decorated former Army officer. He certainly didn’t know his dead lieutenant’s profession, that of engineer. That’s a gig that’s hard to BS your way through. So he sold used cars, and went to night school, and worked his way to selling furs and making some local ads on the side.
In the present day, with Peggy getting no recognition for helping conceive the Glo-Coat ad that’s up for the award, Don, Roger, Joan, and Pete Campbell head to the Waldorf Astoria for the awards. In thinking about his memoirs, Roger has decided that recruiting Don is one of his big accomplishments. Unfortunately, they don’t give awards for that.
Following his big Clio win, Don Draper evidently came up with some better lines than this in the latest episode. Too bad about that blackout drinking.
Don, secretly holding hands with Joan, who is also secretly holding hands with Roger, under the table, wins, naturally. After planting a serious kiss on Joan, he collects his award. Which he, also naturally, promptly misplaces as he launches into what can alternately be described as a two-day bacchanal, bender, or spree. After a hilariously misbegotten pitch session.
Before discussing that, let’s deal with Don and Joan. In a sense, they are the most obvious potential couple on the show. They’re both great-looking, both very smart, both worldly, both very good in the advertising business, with complementary skills. In fact, in today’s world, the two of them could easily start their own ad agency.
But we’ve never seen even a hint of them hooking up, aside from the very meaningful looks they exchanged toward the end of last season’s “Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency” episode. Could they become a major item? Perhaps they already have been. In any event, we get no more of that the rest of this episode.
Instead we get a boozily celebratory Don striking out again at the Waldorf bar that night with Dr. Faye, the fetchingly manipulative consulting psychologist for the agency. But only after scoring on a pitch back at the agency.
Cereal company execs running late had canceled on the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce crew prior to the Clios, but showed up at the agency after the awards show. Feeling invincible after his Clio win, after Roger does a victory lap around the conference room, Don decides to go ahead with the pitch even though he’s several sheets to the wind.
We’ve seen a pensive, heartfelt Don Draper pitch before. We’ve seen an eerily-in-command Don Draper pitch before. We’ve even seen a desperate Don Draper pitch before, with nothing going into the meeting. In the pilot episode, no less. But we’ve never seen an overconfident, drunk Don Draper pitch before.
It actually goes rather well, which is not surprising, since Don has presence, nobody minds that he’s been drinking since he’s just won a big award, and he’s well-prepared. Just one problem. The client thinks the idea is too intellectual.
So Don has to improvise. Desperately, hilariously, throwing half-baked one-liners off the top of his head. Finally he scores with… “Life, the cure for the common breakfast.” Hey, that sounds familiar. Actually, it works fine. (In real life, slogans are overrated anyway. Just make sure it’s not bad.)
Roger Sterling discusses the philosophy of drinking.
With this late afternoon victory, Don is back to the bar at the Waldorf. After Dr. Faye, who’s warming to Don but doesn’t want to succumb to his drunken version, sends him on his way, Don finds that his blooming celebrity status is catnip to another Clio winner, a smart brunette. Have we noticed yet that Don does best with brunettes?
Presumably Don doesn’t get slapped around by her, as we saw with his call girl pal in the season opener. Somewhere over the thoroughly lubricated next 36 hours, he picks up at least one other woman, the blonde he wakes up with only to field a call from an enraged blonde, the one named Betty.
He’s forgotten all about picking up the kids! Oops. So much for domestic Don. At weekend’s end, yet another woman arrives at Don’s man cave in the Village. This time it’s Peggy, who’s been rather put upon by Don’s snubs and demands that she work with the agency’s arrogant new jackass art director. She’s not there to continue his revelries, but to tell him his successful pitch with the cereal execs was actually from Jane Siegel Sterling’s nerdy cousin.
Naturally, he has to be hired now. (Of course, he always had to be hired, or Roger’s life would have become markedly less pleasant.)
The saving grace at the start of the new week for Don, aside from having recovered some of his mojo with women? Roger has fetched his Clio trophy from the Waldorf bar. All he wants is some thanks for having hired Don at the old Sterling Coo in the first place.
He doesn’t exactly get it, though he appears to think he does. Nor should he, because as we see in a flashback, Roger never actually hired Don.
Friendly, and very persistent, young Labrador pup Don had cajoled Roger into having morning drinks with him, leading to not much more than functional blackout conviviality for the older man. The next workday, there is Don greeting him in the Sterling Cooper lobby. After Navy vet Roger asks Don to leave him alone, Don informs him that Roger hired him. “You said, “Welcome aboard.’”
As the elevator door closes on Don and Roger, with Don making his first ascent to Sterling Cooper, Don has the greatest little grin. He pulled it off! Sadly, the closing song is not “Anchors Aweigh.”
In our B and C stories …
Peggy, left out of the Clio Awards, is further affronted by Don with his instruction to work with the new art director, having to hole up in a hotel room with him to brainstorm the Vick’s consumer cough products line. This character, who is very excited about having made a TV ad for President Lyndon Johnson’s campaign that wasn’t actually used, is one of the biggest male jerks on the show, and that’s a stiff competition. Too stiff for him, as it turns out, with Peggy calling his bluff about her supposed prudery by insisting they work in the buff together. With hotshot, who turns out to have no ideas, getting an errant stiffy, to complete the punning, Peggy wins the stare down. As if there was any doubt.
I think it’s getting to be about time to bring back Sal Romano.
Meanwhile, the old Sterling Coo gang starts reassembling, with Kenny Cosgrove rejoining the agency, bringing some big-time clients with him. Pete Campbell, always at least a little insecure, is not pleased about this, but he lays down the law to Ken, noting that he is a partner and Ken is not.
So where are we? Don is even bigger than before, having won a prestigious award to go with his big press clippings. He’s rediscovered his sexual mojo with women he doesn’t have to pay. The agency again gains big new clients. Roger mis-remembers his great coup of doing something he never did, i.e., hire the great Don Draper.
Is this still the TV programming most frequently featured in the Don Draper household?
On the other hand, Don, like a great many people with acclaim and fame thrust upon them — Hollywood, anyone? — reacts by nearly drowning himself in a sea of alcohol. He’s again blown off his kids, which again convinces me that he has them in the first place mainly because he thought he should. And he’s ripped off a nonentity for a winning pitch, without even realizing it.
Don Draper is getting to an age where all this drinking really catches up with you. We’ve seen him exercise exactly once on this show. (He did 15 push-ups, which he faked to be 100 as Betty walked into their bedroom.) He smokes like a chimney. He doesn’t eat at all healthily. Clearly, he’s heading for Roger Sterling territory if he doesn’t change. Blackout drinking, multiple heart attacks, maybe even an embarrassing episode in front of influential people. (Who can forget Don goading Roger into a long lunch of oysters and martinis before meeting with Richard Nixon’s campaign leadership, and that long hike up the stairs with the elevator conveniently “out of order?”)
How bad off is Don now with the drinking? Well, we’ll know more if he has a bad experience in an episode not set around a holiday or an awards show.
The bigger question right now, on the heels of Mad Men winning a nearly unmatched third straight Emmy Award as television’s best show, is how good is this season?
We’re nearly halfway through the season, and I’m finding it to be more entertaining than the comparable run last season. But perhaps not as consequential.
It’s easy to forget, given the spectacular final three episodes of Season 3, that the first part of the season had some heavy going. All the family set-up material had a certain degree of tedium. Betty Draper, and you have to admire January Jones for playing the role without trying little tricks to make the character more charming, turned into quite a pill in a number of episodes last season. Sidelining the Joan Holloway and Roger Sterling characters for much of the season robbed the show of much of its zest. Yet moving all the pieces into position, as a novelist would do, payed off in spectacular fashion down the stretch.
The first part of this season, especially with all the humor, is more pleasant to watch than the first part of last season, which I actually did just watch again. But until we know where we’re going this season, I’m not sure how consequential it will all turn out to be.
Can Mad Men repeat next year with a record-tying fourth straight Emmy win? Sure. The biggest threat to the streak was probably this year, with the final season of Lost. Will it repeat? We’ll have a much better idea in October.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes … www.newwestnotes.com.
View full post on Entertainment on HuffingtonPost.com
