This Just in...

HUDSON BAY CENTRE
Gorgeous colour combination

Great colour, but I hate Wellies with a passion

HOLT RENFREW CENTRE
Boldly graphic Ray-Ban poster

Stunning window for the Holt Renfrew Cafe

MANULIFE CENTRE
De Catarina (luggage, handbags and leather goods)

I've no desire to buy a bag of spit - I mean - Spitz

A beautiful, highly collectable Lampe Berger at William Ashley




This one's called The Cobra

About Lampe Berger (vid)

BLOOR ST.
Freshly laid granite sidewalk__Bloor St. E @ Yonge

I think the black tubing may be used in the winter to heat the Bloor St. W sidewalk between Yonge and Avenue Rd. This stretch is also known as the "Mink Mile" for its numerous high end stores (Gucci, Prada, Chanel, Tiffany...)

YONGE ST.
My neighbour, MTV Canada

The Cookbook Store

I want this stool__China Panda

A cute sign of summer

Le Chateau's lifelike mannequin scared the crap out of me

We're in day 26 of the garbage strike

No way in hell is this my Toronto

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What the Mayor Stands to Win - and Lose - for Taking a Hard Line on the City Worker' Strike
[NOW Magazine - Jne.25/09]

He Wins
*Brownie points (and maybe a few votes) from the inner burbs for looking like he's trying to hold the line on taxes.

*A reprieve, for now, from the braying on council's right wing about how he's supposedly soft on unions.

*Some $240 million dollars in sick leave savings - if the union gives in.

*Time (but not much) during the impasse to figure out how to get out of this mess without looking like he's caving. Tick, tick, tick...

*Support from non-unionized city managers whose bonuses have already been suspended and cost-of-living increases put off.

He Loses
*The trust of city unions the mayor worked hard to win - and their support in the next election.

*The quality of public services. If you think morale's low now, imagine how ugly it could get should workers be forced back to work and to make concessions.

*The fight against privitization of garbage services. Anti-union backlash is already reaching a boil in the electorate. The mayor's detractors will point to (the suburb of) Etobicoke.

*Political capital if the strike lasts more than two weeks. A fickle and ill-informed public (see the hysteria whipped up by the Star) can turn fast when the whiff of garbage hangs thick in the air.

*Pride weekend, Toronto's biggest single tourist draw. Private haulers have been hired for the post-party cleanup. Will unions picket Pride events?
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Evidence of Pride Week (Jne.19-28) displayed outside of Crepes a GoGo and Le Pain Quotidien

Rainy day birds eye view of the Pride parade from my condo window__Church St. @ Bloor

Paid 4 bucks for this. It looks like it sucks, but with two hot actors in it I'm hoping I get my money's worth. The blurb reads:

Too much of a good thing...can be deadly. When Alice, an American living in London, meets Adam, a handsome adventurer, she's lured out of her safe, mundane life to pursue an affair that brings her to the heights of excitement and ecstasy. But when Adam's mysterious and violent past begins to surface, Alice investigates...and learns that Adam's past - and her future - may both point to murder!

YORKVILLE AVE.
This grocery store has just gone out of business - it didn't last 6 months. Before that, there was a candy store that also tanked after a short run. Guess what? There's a firehall across the street, the block is a retail desert, and Whole Foods is minutes away. They never stood a chance.

It appears they're making progress at the Four Seasons Residences site but I don't know if they managed to sell the 9,000 sq. ft. top floor penthouse suite for $30 mil yet.

A massive 28,000 sq ft spa is expected at this property, to be completed in 2011. In addition to treatment rooms, relaxation lounges and changing areas, the facility will feature a health club and a pool. Two towers will house 203 one- and two-bedroom units, in addition to a 9,000 sq ft custom penthouse in the Yorkville area of Toronto. Prices range from $1.2 million to more than $16 million. [spafinder.com]

The Regency is a spectacular property (from the outside at least) and wildly expensive, but an acquaintance tells me it's only 30% occupied. I've yet to see anyone besides security walk in or out of this building.

Poster of Scarlett Johansson on the cover of this really shitty magazine whose name is best forgotten

Another one bites the dust

Here's a Ducati bike sporting the characteristic solid panel at the bottom

I prefer the Ducati Monster 696, which as of Mar.09, is available (in the U.S.) for $119/month [Motor Racing]

This car resembles a Studebaker Convertible and is just as pretty



Gorgeous Maserati

The eye-catching Toyota FJ Cruiser

HAZELTON LANES
I'm a sucker for a tight dress__TNT

Not my style but pretty nonetheless__Asian Culture

This dress looks like a tribal costume__Asian Culture

Sasha's ass remains uncovered here in Canada__Whole Foods

Interesting combo of lace-up and sandal__Browns

100 YORKVILLE
The condo development is progressing at a steady clip

Anthropologie will open soon as part of this residential/retail complex

Women can't wait to shop here - I see them peeping in the windows all the time

Anthropologie's presence will help revitalize Yorkville

Sunglass Hut will also join Anthropologie, Teatro Verde and Diesel at 100 Yorkville

RECENT FINDS
vest = $98 & tube = $89 @ Guess

vest = $89 @ Guess & skirt = ? @ American Apparel

shoes = $65 (on sale) @ Aldo

I'm rockin' the gladiator trend with these babies

TV
Wipeout. A rather staid imitation of the Japanese game show, Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC). It's got all of the props and none of the charm. Still, a faceplant is a faceplant and satisfying to watch in any language.



The Agenda with Steve Paikin is a real snooze, but he's smart as a whip and sometimes manages to shed light on topical news, like a recent parliamentary scandal.

Some new shows have cropped up this summer:
Law & Order: UK. Yes, another addition to the franchise. This one's actually pretty good - a little grittier than the other L&Os and the acting's superb. It stars (amongst others) Bradley Walsh (a very familiar face to Brit TV fans)...

...and the gorgeous Freema Agyeman, who I wouldn't be surprised to find posing topless sometime in the future. Hefner - or whoever owns Playboy now - probably has her number on speed dial.

Guess who's on TV now? Tim Roth! With the addition of Jeff Goldblum to Law & Order: C.I., it's my theory that character movie actors on TV just might signal a return to storytelling as an antidote to the glut of reality TV and CGI-laden movies. Is it too much to hope for that quality writing finally makes a comeback? Only time will tell...

Lie to Me is about these body language experts who can tell when a person is lying. It's okay. Not superlative or groundbreaking but kind of interesting because they show actual evidence of their theories through photos of real life public figures caught in a lie. I'm on the fence about this one and since it won't appeal to the Gossip Girl crowd, I'm guessing aging boomers might give it a shot.

I don't know who this actress is but she's hot and brings a feisty energy you rarely see in female roles. Her character in Lie to Me is a prodigy of sorts to whom reading people comes naturally. In this episode "A female soldier says her sergeant raped her."

Don't you know what it's like for a woman in the military? You're either a bitch or a whore. They're just waiting for you to fail.

If your boss makes advances, you're afraid of losing your job, but if your platoon leader makes advances, you're afraid of losing your life.

You're a natural. He's spent two decades trying to see what you were born seeing.

The Philanthropist with James Purefoy is about a billionaire traipsing around the world saving people while he rakes in the dough. It's maudlin and heavily cliched, so the only reason I take a peek at it now and then is because Purefoy's attractive and has a nice speaking voice. Neve Campbell (Wild Things) and Jesse L. Martin (Law & Order) are also in it. Their acting sucks big time which makes me wonder whether they're doing it just to cash a cheque.

The production value seems high on this show as it appears as though they're filming in actual locations around the world. Heavy financial involvement may imply that the studio's committed to an extended run, but I honestly don't think the writing, acting and direction are strong enough to see it through to a second season.

I spent my life watching from behind tinted glass and you know what? I couldn't do it anymore. So I stepped out and the most amazing thing happened.

This show's not new - it's in its 2nd season - but it was the first time I'd seen The Cleaner starring the delectable Benjamin Bratt (Law & Order). His character helps others get over their addiction to booze, drugs etc. by isolating them in a remote location. It's gloomy, depressing and only mildly interesting to me because he's so foine.

Same old P.K. You're back in my life and already 9 miles up my ass.

Hmmm...
I caught this horrible movie called Walk All Over Me (2007) with Leelee Sobieski. The blurb is "A small-town girl becomes a dominatrix." I couldn't watch the damn thing, but here's the interesting part: a blind item not too long ago alluded to a Hollywood starlet who makes big money as an actual dominatrix. Not only that, but apparently this domme also has at least one other girl working for her, effectively making her a bona fide pimp. The name being tossed around was none other than Leelee's. Juicy! Now as far as this crap movie goes, is it a case of art imitating life or vice versa? Was she inspired to pursue "the life" after shooting wrapped up or was she already in the game? I guess the only way to find out is to book a call with her, but dommes - as far as I know - aren't into chit chat.
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NEW POSTS
Design Blogs
Johnny Ca$h
What's That Smell?
Brazilian Girls

Vive la France?

Woolworth building__Manhattan

candy store__Heidelberg, Germany

Pushy French Are World's Worst Tourists: Study
[ca.news.yahoo.com - Jul.09]

PARIS (AFP) - Penny-pinching, rude and terrible at foreign languages: French people are the world's worst tourists and Japanese the best, according to a study of the global hotel industry.

Carried out last month by TNS Infratest for the Expedia online travel agency, the study asked 40,000 hotels worldwide to rank tourists from 27 countries based on nine criteria, from their politeness to their willingness to tip.

Clean and tidy, polite, quiet and uncomplaining, Japanese tourists came top of the crop for the third year running.

At the other end of the spectrum, French holidaymakers and business travellers were the least generous or ready to tip, and ranked next-to-last for their overall behaviour and politeness.

Pushy French travellers made amends on elegance -- classed third -- as well as for their discretion and cleanliness.

But the French were the least ready to try a new language, unlike US tourists who were most likely to swallow their pride and order a pizza, baguette or a paella in the local lingo.

US tourists also got top marks for generosity -- as the biggest spenders and tippers -- but fell short on other counts as the least tidy, the loudest, the worst complainers, and the most badly dressed.

Despite cliches about beer-guzzling hordes descending on Mediterranean resorts each summer, Britons came a surprise second for their overall behaviour, politeness, quietness and even elegance -- second for dress sense only to the Italians.

But the model Japanese were followed by Canadians as the least likely to whine when a trip goes wrong.

France's rivals for the "worst tourist" tag, Spaniards and Greeks came near the bottom of the pack in almost every category.

The study was released on Thursday.

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The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.
--Susan Sontag

LINK
Fanny Pack Antics
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NEW POSTS
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Fox Hounded
Nicole Scherzinger
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LINK
365 Days by Aaron Nace
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The Champagne Spy

The story of Ze'ev Gur Arie, a former Israeli intelligence agent who secretly lived a double life as a wealthy ex-Nazi horse breeder in the 1960s, as told by his son Oded Gur Arie.

Ze'ev and his son, Oded

Oded

Ze'ev, aka Wolfgang Lotz, proclaiming his innocence on Egyptian TV

Wolfgang arrested by Egyptian officials

Wolfgang convicted of espionage in Egypt

Ze'ev back in Tel Aviv after his release

Ze'ev basking in the spotlight on Israeli TV

QUOTES
He was the kind of man who could look the Angel of Death in his eyes and never lower his gaze.

He knew how to make people talk and get information from them.

It was an exceptional case in which the family knew what the husband was doing.

He changed from being a watchman to a sharpshooter.

-----Headline: Letter Bombs Rock Cairo------

The lifestyle he led in Egypt was a lifestyle he enjoyed.

Espionage isn't a profession, it's an art form. And (he) was a true artist.

They (Wolfgang and his secret wife, Waltraud ) had lots of parties. It served the mission very well.

-----Headline: Six Germans in Cairo Disappear-----

If an Israeli spy is caught in Egypt it's the end of the road.



In Israel there were TV sets which could receive Arab broadcasts. We feared someone would see his face and recognize him as an Israeli. We scrambled the reception in Israel.

His acting ability was really put to the test.

All the self confidence I'd had came from the confidence which my Dad projected. "It's fine. I'm in control." Suddenly the bubble burst.

-----Headline: Eli Cohen Was Hung in Damascus----

I remember that...I couldn't talk about it with anyone. And it really hurt in my heart. So I just kept it inside and went on.

They (Mossad officials) didn't think a 15 year old boy needed psychological support.

-----Headline: Slim Chance for German Spies-----

Looking back it seems insane.

I felt so sorry for him.

I was told Dad is arriving tomorrow and he's not coming back home.

Reality after a mission is hard. There (Egypt) you're a king, here (Tel Aviv) you're just a pawn...he became bitter.

You can't leave people like that alone.

Everything he touched failed.

He asked me to help him financially...it was a last resort.

He had a sense of humour to the very end.

I asked him if he ever thought about the price others paid for the incredible life he led.

I forgive him for what he did to me. I don't forgive him for what he did to Mom.

Time review (with discrepancies)
Egyptian generals and Cabinet members in the early 1960s knew Wolfgang Lotz as a wealthy German horse breeder with an engaging habit of sending champagne and other lavish gifts to well-placed friends. They thought of him as an ex-Wehrmacht captain in Rommel's Afrika Korps who later made a fortune in Australia. Some whispered that he was actually a former lieutenant colonel in Hitler's dreaded SS who had joined Egyptian intelligence.

_______The New York Times review summary_______
Oded Gur Arie was born in Israel, and as he was growing up in the 1960's his father would frequently go away on business trips for weeks on end, with little warning of when he would be coming or going. Oded was puzzled by this, but it wasn't until Ze'ev Gur Arie moved to Paris with his wife and son that he told young Oded what he did for a living -- he was an agent with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, and under their tutelage he was leading a double life as Wolfgang Lotz, a wealthy horse breeder with a past in Nazi Germany. As Lotz, Ze'ev made friends with a number of former Nazi scientists who were being courted by the Egyptian government with an eye towards creating advanced weapons systems to use against Israel. Lotz was also a man who traveled in sophisticated circles and enjoyed the life of a playboy, quite a change from Ze'ev's staid existence as a husband and father. As a boy, Oded Gur Arie was forced to keep his father's double life a secret for the safety of his family, but years later he shares the strange story of his father's career with filmmaker Nadav Schirman in the documentary The Champagne Spy, in which Oded and a handful of former Mossad agents talk about Ze'ev Gur Arie, his years as Wolfgang Lotz (including a marriage to a German woman), and his troubled life after leaving Mossad, in which he and his family came to understand the toll his career had truly taken on them all.

Cinemattraction review
In the early 1960s when Oded Gur-Arie was about 13, his dad brought him along for a coffee with his boss. Gur-Arie knew his dad, Ze’ev, worked for the Israeli government in some capacity, which is why the family lived in Paris and didn’t see him for months at a time. But during this lunch, Ze’ev and his boss brought Gur-Arie into the secret: His father was an undercover agent for Mossad, the Israeli secret service.
If you think it’s astonishing that a man would choose to burden his child with the knowledge of his double identity, the story is only getting started. The Champagne Spy is a documentary so jaw-dropping you really wouldn’t believe it if it was a fictional film (although of course there is now one in the works). But Ze’ev’s double life – he was better known as Wolfgang Lotz – and the price other people paid for his duplicity deserved a straight documentary telling.

The Gazette review
Nadav Schirman had always been fascinated by espionage flicks. The Israeli director spent his formative years in Montreal gobbling up James Bond capers. But little could he have realized then that the true-life exploits of a spy whose saga he stumbled on decades later would make those of 007 pale by comparison.

RELATED
The Impossible Spy - trailer
A spy is really an actor except the stakes are a little higher. If I do a bad job, I get a bad review, but if HE does a bad job acting, he gets killed.

He started to lose some of his original self and the lines between the persona and the mask that he created and his original self became really really blurred.

In My Opinion

It just got a helluva lot easier to navigate Gawker.com and Jezebel.com. All I did today was skim the headlines and skip the comments. It took me ten minutes. Usually I spend at least an hour or two if the topics and debates are particularly interesting or heated.

But now I feel excluded.

Under their new system, if my opinion doesn't matter as much as a "starred" commenter's does, what's the point in posting it? And if I'm not going to participate - or at least feel welcomed to participate - what's the point reading anyone else's comments? To glean whatever witticism and insight they may proffer with no chance of my voice being heard in response?

No thank you.

Since the people who read and administer Gawker and Jezebel now get to decide who's promoted to a place of prominence in the commenting structure, where does that leave me? Or anyone else for that matter who doesn't have a star but may have something funny or intelligent to say?

Ignored, that's where.

Also, I never understood how the administrators decided who got a star or not - it all seemed so arbitrary and juvenile. If it was solely based on a commenter's number of followers and the quality of their comments, then plenty of people were passed over in favour of lesser, more mediocre participants.

And then there's this: What we're not looking for: snark for snark's sake...

Huh?

Well there goes what little fun there was to be had. I thought the whole point of Gawker was to snark. I mean, they're certainly not a legitimate news site. Why pretend to be anything but a high-minded gossip rag?

I think Gawker is confused - and now with the new commenting system - confusing. Seriously, it's a mess over there.

Discourse between intelligent people should never be that hard.

Oh well...when they introduced the star system I thought that would be the end of my commenting history, but I stuck around in a feeble attempt to bring bodies over to my site. Now that that's over, I carry on anyway because I simply have to feed my soul with something other than what pop culture offers to the masses.

Somehow though, I consider this the end of an era for me at Gawker and Jezebel. It's been close to 2 years, I think, and while it became more and more tiresome to weed through the ever-increasing amount of inanity, banality and sloppiness, I did manage to walk away enriched by the few nuggets of wisdom and insight people dispersed now and then. There are some wonderfully opinionated people out there and sadly, I won't be engaged by their thoughts on anything anymore.

Sucks.

Welcome to the hierarchy of preference!

It's just too bad the preferences of Gawker and Jezebel aren't mine.
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[Jul.21-09]
Jezebel addressed concerns over their new commenting system. I'd link to the post but they're still experiencing programming glitches. To search for it, the title is 15 Questions - and Answers - About the New Comments.

Here are a some illuminating responses:

Gardenia says:
I agree the editors are probably called onto defending a commenting system they had no part in shaping - but in my opinion you can do that more respectfully.
'We run the site' is a rich thing to say, considering that the whole endeavour relies on pageviews just as a magazine relies on readers.
Of course you can publish anything you want in any way you want, but if you alienate your readership you will soon have NO product.

One can refute almost every single argument made in favour of the new system.
'But we DO read all / will promote thoughtful comments' is not a logical or helpful response to the argument: 'I do not want and should not have to appeal to a group of chosen few to partake in a community.' Most people jump through this type of hoops enough at work and in school - a leisure activity is supposed to be a reprieve from the competition (unless you actively choose it, i.e. in team-sports).
The problem of many 'greys'* on this site is that they neither chose this format, nor did they perceive Jezebel to be the place where this type of activity was necessary - whether you choose to call it 'bringing your A-game' or 'sucking up to the cool kids'.

Just as an observation: I can count the times I saw an unstarred comment go promoted this past week on the fingers of my hands. Most (although not all) starred people engaged in their own discussions, often punning away and inside-joking - while many worthwile discussions went on completely in gray.
There were positive exceptions, but this was the tendency.
This is the first thread where some of that changed, I will have to see if that is a trend or not.

I could go on, but seeing as my comment is already incredibly verbose, incredibly late and probably greyed out anyway, I will stop for now.

[*Promoted comments are in black type, unpromoted ones in grey.]
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aloysius says:
The new commenting system violates Jezebel's ethos of equality and of not squelching (any) woman's voice (or at least of not systematically privileging any given one over any other to this extent).
Because of that off-putting "class system"/Heathers aspect, and because it's simply unwieldy, of course it has a chilling effect on the MAJORITY of would-be commenters.
So I hate it.

aloysius says:
@Gardenia: Right back atcha!
Surely a major reason people are reacting so strongly is that this was one of the depressingly few places that we felt "equally heard" (as everyone else). So a lot of people may feel all that more keenly a sense of betrayal.
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femibot says:
I'm not angry about the new system - but it has made commenting so pointlessly complicated and just... not fun. This will be my last comment here. No anger, it's just not worth the effort anymore.
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nora charles says:
I think some of the editors (and commenters) are missing the point when it comes to the "This is like high school" comparison. The point is that "popularity" in high school was rarely determined by the number of people that actually liked you--instead, it was decided by a small group of like-minded but fairly arbitrarily chosen people who were then given the ability to make your presence either relevant or irrelevant. In that sense, the new commenting system is exactly like high school--much more than the old commenting system, which was based on the number of people who legitimately liked you and gave no one power over anyone else.

I can see how the new commenting system makes sense for some of the other Gawker sites (I'm thinking, specifically, of Deadspin, where the average commenter seems to be someone posting irrelevant, stupid, or mean commentary just for the hell of it), but it seems like applying it to Jezebel is a mistake. The commenters here, on the whole, are insightful and interesting and relevant most of the time, and thus the division between starred and non-starred commenters seems much more arbitrary than it does elsewhere in the Gawker world. I don't think there would be nearly as much uproar if the starred commenters here were a small group of people that inevitably posted thoughtful, discussion-provoking commentary, but they're not. In fact--and this thread is a perfect example--I often find that the unstarred commenters are the ones posting the thoughtful, discussion-provoking commentary, but it's largely being overlooked because it's buried on Tier 2. The Tier 1 posters seem to post a lot of jokes, puns, silly stuff and "Awww, wish I could heart you all over again!"s, and while there's nothing wrong with that in moderation, and their sense of humor is likely what made them well-liked and earned them their stars in the first place . . . clearly you're going to lose posters if that's the stuff under the featured commentary, and those who spend the time to put together an insightful, interesting comment just get ignored. On the whole, I've found that, instead of doing what it's purported to be aiming for--shedding a light on the best discussions--the new commenting system actually buries them.

Hopefully the new group of mini-mods* will be able to address that imbalance. I have no issues with spotlighting the best discussions, but that's hardly what's been happening so far.

[*A group of 5 commenters chosen to help moderate the comment section (promote comments etc.).]
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chancentrate says:
@nora charles: i totally agree with you. The new system doesn't anger me, i just think it's sorta a shame. I used to love the comments section on jezebel and now that, in my view, they're gone I find myself visiting the site less and less (this is also because of the endless tech problems as a result of the new comments). I now know for a fact that comments I make (unless replies) will basically never be read.
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ZemarSea Urchin:
@nora charles: At this point I just click "show all comments" and then wade through to find a discussion that interests me or a comment that I find fun or interesting...I think the concept that the jezzie editors are trying to promote is legit its just unfourtunate that the message is muddled and comes across as "starred people are more intelligent than greys and much funnier so they get top billing. Now you greys step up your game and impress (that is the kicker having to impress somebody that may not impress you) a star or stay in the nosebleed section".
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lolobentley says:
@nora charles: Before people were friended or followed truly based on what they were saying too. Unless someone came out and said it you had no idea what their race, gender, religion, body type, socio-economic status, etc. was. People were liked truly based on their ways of thinking and how they voiced their opinions. The people who commented a lot were never the ones I found had something truly great to add to a conversation...Now even though "a lot" of people will still check out the grey comments it just isn't the same. I went to a high school where we sat at "harkness" tables and everyone was on an equal plane, including my teachers. It sort of sucks this feels like a step back.
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CriminalConversation:
@nora charles: More substantively, I know starred commenters who are afraid to promote the "wrong" comment because they don't want to lose their stars and have their comments sent to the vast abyss of grayness.

Jezebel has never been all that open to dissenting opinions and this system only makes it worse.

"Arbitrary" is the operative word. "High School" is a very apt comparison.
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1.1.1. says:
@ZemarSea Urchin: The claim that this system promotes meritocracy is complete and utter bullshit.
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ZemarSea Urchin says:
@1.1.1.: I for one am glad to see you on the grey list with the rest of us as I now only read the grey comments and (with a few exceptions) skip the black. Glad to be in your company.
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mayfly says:
I am very late to this discussion, and I doubt that anyone will get to this 700-somethingth comment. But in case the powers that be are paying attention, I'd like to raise my hand and say I am not a fan of the new system. My main issues are:

1) The gray is really, really hard to read. The fact that this issue is not going to be fixed just adds to the feeling that second-tier comments are not encouraged or welcome.

2) When I click read all, I honestly don't see much of a difference between the gray and black comments. I can understand the desire to up the quality of the comments that are displayed, but I really don't see that happening here. It just makes it cumbersome and irritating to read.

In conclusion, I find myself spending much less time on this site and enjoying it less since the new system was introduced. Oh well, I have become more productive at work!

(Also, I had to come back and edit my comment to say that (horror of horrors) I've found myself over at XX more than Jezebel in the past few days. Sign of the times, I guess.)
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Tmoney02 says:
Hmmm...I thought the new system was supposed to encourage more visitors and page views? (and peoples enjoyment of the sites?)

If that is the case Looking at Gawkers own metrics for Jezebel I would say it is a big failure. As in a 40% decline or so in visits and page views since the new comment system was implemented. Its funny to see how the graph was trending up nicely with new highs just before the system was implemented. (But of course we must print the "Official Party View": the old system was bad!)

And considering the decline doesn't look to be stabilizing I wonder how low and for how long this can go before they realize hey maybe those gray people were right, this new commenting system stinks and is driving far more people away than gaining.
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NicoleItchy says:
It still feels like the unstarred commenters have to get to the back of the bus blog...Thanks! It was good while it lasted.
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mariamariamaria says:
GRAY (GREY?) COMMENTERS: PLEASE KEEP COMMENTING! Without new blood we will all develop hideous underbites and bad hips. We need you!
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BytheSea says:
Except the featured comments aren't the best ones. It would be a full time job for all the starred commenters to go through and fairly promote/demote the best/worst comments. Most people don't care about 150 comments and weeding through them, and they shouldn't. That's psychotic. With the old system, readers could read the comments THEY FIND most interesting and relevant.

A lot is getting censored now out of laziness. Your idea is as practical as communism.
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NoWhereGirl says:
Just to throw my opinion out there, I think that the new commenting system would be ideal if everyone had been unstarred and we'd all started out on equal ground. It just feels like everything I type is being judged before it's even read. I know that a lot of people have said that they scroll down and hit the read all comments button before reading them, but that seems so much more complicated. Also, there are starred commenters here who got there stars not because what they say is particularly interesting, but because they comment over and over several times on each thread. It may just be me, but it seems like bad business to do something that makes your readers feel alienated.
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BytheSea says:
@NoWhereGirl: Notice how commenting has gone way down? I don't think I'm the only person who feels like every time I post I'm auditioning for some in-crowd.
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Ms. Stewbert is tired says:
I like to go back to previous posts and see if anyone has responded to my comment or if there are additional threads in which I might be interested. Since I am now grey I have a hard time finding myself. I used to do CNTL+F and find my name but since I am collapsed the find function doesn't work.

For reals, even past the whole popularity thing, this new system is ridiculously unwieldy.
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gwaste says:
I'm sorry, but I dislike the new system. I'm a fairly new commenter on the site but I feel like I normally provide valid insight into arguments - or at least used to, until the new system began discouraging me from participating on this forum. I guess it's all for the best, since I'll soon have better things to do on here - but it's really discouraged me from not only COMMENTING on entries but also from reading this blog period.

I think any system that discourages new members from participating is flawed - and sorry, having to get someone else to "promote" my comments isn't really an incentive to continue commenting. Things get boring without fresh blood - things already seem pretty homogenous around here anyways sometimes. Anyways, just my 2 cents, thanks for making it really easy to cut the cord from this blog.
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emily.jane says:
The problem is that commenting when you're gray is like putting your thoughts out for evaluation. If you say something that you find interesting, and you come back a few hours later and it's still gray, it's kind of sad. I think that's the aspect that people are referring to when they say that the new system feels like high school. You're always being judged, trying to impress the starred people, etc...
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serreca says:
@emily.jane: I can definitely understand that and agree with you. It's easy for me to sit back and say the system is great b/c I have a star.
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cait98 says:
@emily.jane: It's especially frustrating when you say something kind of interesting, get no responses, then see the exact same thing later posted by someone with a star and heavily replied to. I've definitely had that experience.
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BytheSea says:
I'm not starred but I used to get regular replies, daily. Now I almost never do. i know people aren't bothering to read the greys.
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Dodgergirl says:
I have a lot of problems with the concept of the system in general, but I'm going to go ahead and guess Nick Denton [head of Gawker Media] doesn't give a shit what I think, so I'll skip that.

I think often that while the rules for commenting/what makes a good comment here (different then say, what makes a good comment on gawker or deadspin) are understandable in theory, they are often very difficult to understand in practice. How someone gets starred and unstarred is even more confusing, and occasionally contradictory. I'm thinking specifically about how, in a previous thread, it was suggested that while it was theoretically possible to lose one's star for promoting too many comments, it wasn't something to worry about. And then people were destarred for that very reason less than a week later, without any clarifying of this point. And frankly, this has made me think twice about promoting comments I find funny and interesting, because what if the things I find funny and interesting aren't good enough?

It may seem obvious to the editors why these things are done, but it is not obvious to me, nor, I suspect, to many people. And I really wish these things were clearer. It makes it hard to follow the rules when you can't quite pin them down. I have no doubt this is causing a lot of people-- interesting, funny, and intelligent people-- to psych themselves out of commenting. And I'm afraid it is having an effect on the quality of the discussions that go on here.

I didn't particularly want to post this because a) I really do like it here, and I realize that the system is itself coming from above and b) I am basically a chicken and I don't want to lose my star, but I've been turning this stuff over in my head for a few days, and I feel like I should just put it out there.

Aaaand... this really wasn't supposed to be a novel.
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Nick Denton says:
@Dodgergirl: I do read the criticism here. And you're right that the criteria for designation as a star commenter are confusing -- or subjective at the very least. Star quality is whatever the site's editors and moderators deem it is. And I can see how that seems arbitrary compared with the old system, which conferred stars on those commenters with the most followers.

But here's the thing. We do want to shape the discussion here. And we want to encourage comments from the smartest contributors, even if they're only occasional visitors.

The old system -- by giving priority to commenters who hung around the site all day, made friends, and jumped quickly into each discussion -- encouraged a clique. The goal in these changes is to open up the site to new voices -- interviewees, the subjects of stories, other journalists, authors themselves who might have been deterred before. Mixing up the crowd should be to everybody's benefit.
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Dodgergirl says:
@Nick Denton: Thank you for your response, and I didn't mean to suggest that you were unaware of the criticisms. I simply meant that my individual hatred for the new system wasn't really going to have an effect on your choice to keep using it.

My problem with the concept of "star quality" is not with its subjectiveness but with the arbitrary way those standards are sometimes applied. I have seen consistently funny and interesting commenters destarred for saying the "wrong thing" once and I've seen starred comments keep their stars despite being repetitive and unnecessarily condescending and mean.

I value this place because of the level of discussion and exchange of new ideas, but the new system is already difficult to follow for longer discussions, and as different voices are occasionally bullied out by "starred" commenters, it becomes even more frustrating. And though the goal may be to avoid cliquishness, I'm not sure that is the effect it is actually having.
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Total # of Comments: 655
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To reeeeach the unreeechaaaabbbllle...staaaaarrr!

We're No. 1

Canada a Top Producer of Ecstasy, Methamphetamine, Says UN
[ca.news.yahoo.com - Jne.09]

WASHINGTON - The United Nations' drug czar is urging Canada to take action on a UN report that identifies Canadian gangs as the leading suppliers of ecstasy in North America and increasingly proficient producers of methamphetamine for markets around the world.

"Canada has emerged an important hub for ecstasy and amphetamines," Antonio Maria Costa told a news conference Wednesday in the U.S. capital as he released the agency's 2009 World Drug Report.

Costa said the lucrative underground industry of manufacturing amphetamines has migrated north to Canada since both the U.S. and Mexico banned the chemical precursors used to make the drugs.

"These important measures taken by countries inevitably tend to create a problem somewhere else unless similar measures are undertaken," he said.

"So I am inviting Canada to be equally proactive in taking the measures which are preventive strikes to avoid the proliferation of manufacturing of amphetamines in that country."

An anti-gang bill currently before Parliament is being held up by the Liberal majority in the Senate, said Rob Nicholson, Canada's justice minister.

"Under the new legislation, these people are looking at two-year prison terms as a minimum," said Nicholson, who blamed the holdup on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.

"I am asking him to do something, call people, get this bill moving through the system. I am hoping this increases the pressure on him to make this a priority and get this bill passed."

Gil Kerlikowske, U.S. President Barack Obama's drug watchdog, said the UN report isn't likely to lead to any further border security tensions between the U.S. and Canada.

"For quite a while we've exchanged guns going into Canada for drugs coming back," said Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and a one-time chief of police in the border cities of Seattle and Buffalo.

Law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border are "absolutely committed to working together, to sharing information, and I know the United States is committed to working hard on those border checkpoints."

The UN report found that since 2003-2004, "Canada has emerged as the primary source of ecstasy-group substances for North American markets, and increasingly for other regions."

Before 2003, Europe was the leading producer of U.S.-bound ecstasy, or methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) - a synthetic, psychoactive drug that produces feelings of increased energy, euphoria and emotional warmth.

But the trade was effectively dismantled, the UN report says, and "Canadian intelligence reports indicate that Canada-based drug trafficking organizations are attempting to fill the supply void, and have drastically increased their ecstasy production and trafficking."

Asian organized crime groups primarily control ecstasy labs in Canada, using chemicals smuggled into the country in sea containers from China.

In 2007, half the ecstasy produced in Canada was destined for markets outside Canada, most of it bound for the U.S., Australia and Japan, the report found.

Japan has identified Canada as the single biggest source for seized ecstasy tablets, followed by the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.

The report also found that Canadian organized crime groups have significantly increased their participation in the meth trade over the past few years.

"By 2006, law enforcement intelligence noted that Asian organized crime and traditional outlaw motorcycle gangs operating in Canada had increased the amount of methamphetamine they manufactured and exported, primarily into the USA, but also to Oceania and east and southeast Asia," the report found.

Australia says Canada accounts for 83 per cent of total seized meth imports by weight; in Japan, the figure is 62 per cent.

"Although only five per cent of domestically manufactured methamphetamine was exported in 2006, by 2007 that figure was 20 per cent," the report said.

The report also found that while global markets for cocaine, opiates and marijuana are holding steady or in decline, some 28 million people are heavy drug users who are likely to be physically or psychologically dependent on drugs.

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan, where 93 per cent of the world's opium is grown, dropped by 19 per cent last year, and there was a 28 per cent decline - the report called it staggering - in production of cocaine in Colombia, which produces half the world's cocaine.

Marijuana, or cannabis, remained the most widely used and cultivated drug in the world and it is more harmful than commonly believed, with more users reporting dependency problems, the report said. Roughly 167 million people use marijuana at least occasionally.

Canada is also a leading producer of hydroponic marijuana, Costa said. There are high rates of domestic consumption as well as exportation south of the border.

"I believe there is a lot of work that needs to be done on these two problems in Canada and elsewhere," he said.

The report , however, found that production and demand for most illegal drugs is declining, except for a rise in amphetamines. Illegal drug seizures were up in 2007, and all drug seizure totals were at all-time highs or close to all-time highs. There are also declining rates of drug addiction, Costa said.

"The drug control regime has contained drug abuse in terms of percentages of the population to a fraction compared to tobacco addiction," he said. "Basically we have not seen an increase; we have seen flat and now decreasing rates."

Costa credits improved prevention and awareness about drug use. "We now know how to deal with it in terms of treatment and in terms of prevention."

The UN report advises against decriminalizing illegal drugs, but Costa said drug addicts must not be treated as criminals.

"We are very strongly in favour of decriminalizing drug abuse," Costa said. "We deal with addicts ... they need to be put in hospital, not in prison."

But that doesn't mean the manufacture and distribution of illicit drugs should be decriminalized, he said, despite suggestions that legalization could help eliminate organized crime and contribute to cash-strapped government coffers if drugs like marijuana were taxed.

"Why should we should unleash a public health problem in potential drug abuse in order to deal with a subject matter than can be dealt with, namely public security issues and organized crime?" he said

"I don't believe there's a tradeoff ... we should deal with both the public security and the public health problem without surrendering one of the two."

Kerlikowske also shut down any talk of decriminalization during the news conference.

"In regards to legalization, it's not in the president's vocabulary and it's not in mine."
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It looks like I'm raping the sofa.

Hollywood Backlash

Jennifer's Body, written by Diablo Cody of Juno fame, will be released in September.

Megan Fox looks great in the trailer (as you'd expect from a woman whose body came with a hefty price tag) but I have to say I'm tired of the played out storyline: dark-haired-psycho-man-eating-tramp vs. innocent-blonde-angel-saviour-heroine.

It's been done.

I suppose it's no secret Hollywood takes comfort in its formulas, clinging to them like a baby to a rattle. Hollywood is afraid to take risks, afraid to challenge embedded cultural mythologies and afraid to alienate what it perceives to be key demographics.

Hollywood is anti-art.

Hollywood's participation in a project is a death knell to anything truly creative, provocative, controversial, experimental, novel or exciting. It brings in the financing, but with this blessing comes the countless rewrites, excisions, censorship and dilution of the writer's original vision.

Hollywood is like a plastic surgeon who erases character as he instills uniformity.

Hollywood is like Mr. Rogers: sedate, stultifying, stifling and condescending as he offers strange comfort to millions of children (I never liked that guy - he always struck me as the type who put razors in Halloween apples).

Hollywood is like a mid-1950s housewife whose smiles and idle chatter belie her limited, tortured existence.

And Hollywood is a juggernaut: the very definition of success in the entertainment business and the maker and breaker of careers.

But also...Hollywood is ripe for a takedown by a new wave of fresh, young, hungry, restless, agitated, impatient, creative people who won't wait for its permission in order to prove themselves in the entertainment arena.

These New Creatives will tap into a desire people don't know they have and communicate in a language Hollywood won't understand.

Hollywood won't get it.

And as Hollywood attempts to co-opt these new forms of expression, the ensuing backlash will result in an abandonment of the Hollywood-ized product for something completely original.

Maybe one day "Hollywood" will become a dirty word in the entertainment business and taint whatever it touches. People will vaguely recall its glory days of emaciated starlets, bloated executives and empty narratives with a note of derision as they eagerly await the Next Big Thing to come out of God Knows Where.

Until then, I'll watch Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight for the 100th time and revel in the glory that was George Clooney circa 1998. For me it's the perfect movie: beautiful, romantic, exciting, engaging, smart and sexy and nothing in this century has come even close to equaling it.






What if I had stopped...what if I had said something...what if...what if...

That's Entertainment

Young Boy Gives Katherine Heigl Orgasm

COMMENTS
Understandable. There are some movies that I just don't like. And I found Borat to be incredibly offensive, even though most of my friends thought it was hilarious. There just seems to be a lot of anger around here sometimes towards movies/books that aren't meant to be thought provoking at all.

Well, that's because it doesn't matter if it's meant to be thought provoking...and the very fact that they're so insipid, casually sexist, and gross, IS the problem. This is what they think ALL women want to watch. They make these movies over and over, and people keep watching them. And hey, we still perpetuate the stereotypes we see in them, too. Funny how that works.

And I feel the same way about those horrible spoof genre movies like The Spartans. Those movies get wide distribution while other, better, films, don't. And they're awful. Opinions and varying tastes aside, some things are, on a basic, structural level, not good stories or movies.

I think I get frustrated that every time someone has a problem with these movies we're always accused of being anti-fun or "reading too much into" things. And I think that's problematic, dismissive, and strange. Movies are pop culture, that communicates and entertains. And likewise influences and is influenced by our cultures assumptions, ideas etc. I absolutely get that people will be entertained by different things. But finding these types of movies problematic and frankly, so intellectually void as to be insulting, isn't weird.

I do like to be entertained, and have fun, and sit down to a good movie that isn't a documentary or a lecture or a dissertation on Important Issues. But WHY does that somehow mean I can't also discuss or criticize it when it goes beyond that, into some banal, creatively dead, hideous mess? I'm sorry, but I find it insulting that this is the dreck we're constantly marketed as women. And even beyond that, as a story person, I find it really sad that we value stories so little.

If I want to watch a fun movie that isn't basically like a giant fuck you to my intelligence while it also takes my money and votes with it that this is what I want to watch...I'll watch Go, or Pride & Prejudice, or When Harry Met Sally, or Chocolat, or Slither, or Adventureland, or Star Trek, or Big Trouble in Little China.

And I realize other people don't care about this stuff the way I do. Okay, fine. But I'm tired of being suggested that makes me, or others who feel the same way, somehow "unfun" or weird. It's not.

Mafia Wars

Mafia Wars
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The house is $25 million...hopefully we'll sell it.
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All Made Up

Karen Mulder, supermodel

Modeling and the Tragedy of Karen Mulder
How a woman like Mulder, one of those people who journalists are always quick to say "has it all," could fall so far, so fast is not really the question that commands interest here. We all know this story: it's got drugs in it, and predatory older men, and very young women, and the abject self-consciousness of the individual whose worth is in her pictures. It's always more or less the same story, even if Mulder, with her recantations and paranoid stories of kidnapping and poison at the hands of a shadowy "they," isn't always its most credible narrator. It's the story of Wallis Franken, of Ruslana Korshunova, of Katoucha Niane.

It's the story presented in a 60 Minutes segment from 1988 that reported, according to author Ian Halperin, "about the many models who had been drugged, raped, and sexually harassed by the world's top agency owners." (Halperin characterized the segment as "shocking.") It's the story of the BBC's undercover documentary of Elite executives offering to pimp out their models for drugs. (This was seen as "alarming" and "surprising.") It's the story models like Sena Cech and Sara Ziff are telling when they talk about being coerced into sex by photographers and clients at castings and on the job. (These accounts were described in the Observer by writer Louise France as both "shocking" and "surprising.")

What amazes even more than how little the story actually differs from telling to telling, how fundamentally the same its elements remain, is our capacity for disbelief. It takes a certain dedication to one's own credulity to insist on being "surprised," "alarmed" and "shocked" by a situation that has been the subject of interest from such under-the-radar media venues as 60 Minutes going back a generation. As a culture, we have so far managed, through every news story and blog post and exposé, to maintain an innocence of the realities of the modeling industry that is almost touching. Or nearly culpable.

Our persistent willingness to be taken aback by the notion that wealthy, powerful, older men, when left in charge of a younger, poorer, female workforce, might generally act as something less than gentlemen, is testament to the power the multibillion-dollar fashion industry wields as an expert creator of narratives. It's this attitude of disbelief that allows agency directors to claim they had no idea some of their models were using cocaine and that some of their bookers were dealing it to them, or that some photographers like to sleep with models and some bookers encourage models to go along with it. Our endless capacity for shock is what gets Karen Mulder sedated and lets Gerald Marie retain, to this day, his position as head of Elite Paris. [...]