Today at Flavorpill, we were horrified by the castmates of MTV’s Jersey Shore. That poor landlord. We called a stranger in the desert. We learned that legibility and correct punctuation can indeed be street. We wondered what they’ll be serving up at the Rolling Stone restaurant in LA. We drooled over Zac Posen’s pre-fall collection, which he describes as, “Lewis Carroll meets Paloma Picasso.” We were impressed by these brothers’ bike skills. We made a mental note never to assemble a LEGO gun in the office and to always guard our foreheads when we’re in the same room with Anthony Michael Hall. We wanted to make like a Lilliputian and crawl all over Gulliver. We streamed Camera Obscura’s Christmas song. We didn’t understand why the US military is paying people to track balloons. And finally we’ll send you out with Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden. It’s the true story of one man’s psychedelic journey.

Read More »

A recent issue of the French style publication Purple features a racy photo of Sean Lennon and his model girlfriend, Kemp Muhl, recreating John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous 1981 Rolling Stone cover. What do you think of the photo shoot? Vote in our poll!

The only real advantage to the Internet hype cycle is that today’s annoyance is tomorrow’s afterthought. Still, we’re particularly put off this week by the prevalence of unnecessary controversy tethered to iconic imagery. OK, so maybe we’re hypocrites for perpetuating the cycle, but can we put them away already? After the jump, the four images (and accompanying non-controversies) sending our gossip meters into annoyance overload.

Read More »

1. Rupert Murdoch says the future of newspapers is digital and there may be a time when you “get it on a panel which would be mobile, which will receive the whole newspaper over the air, (and) be updated every hour or two.” [Via Breitbart]

2. Coldplay’s Chris Martin “has been hit by a run of stinking bad luck that is blighting the band’s world tour.” [Via The Sun]

3. Pixar’s latest, Up, opens today. The New York Times‘ says it starts off strong but “the story grows progressively more formulaic. And cuter.” [Via NYT]

4. Moot? “A well-placed magazine source tells Page Six that [Adam] Lambert will be coming out officially on the next cover of Rolling Stone.” [Via NYP]

5. ABC has given the green light to Crash Course — which will feature 5 couples competing in extreme driving challenges — for a late summer run. [Via THR]

Generation Kill chronicled Evan Wright’s experience reporting as an embedded journalist in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. His original Rolling Stone articles won him a National Magazine Award, and the resulting book was spun off into an HBO series. But Wright’s writing career didn’t begin with war reporting, and Hella Nation attests to this. It’s a collection of the best of his long-form journalism, comprising thoughtful and immersive portraits of individuals and communities who have seceded from the normal. Hella Nation is stuffed with dispatches from weird America: neo-Nazi conventions, anarchist riots, porn sets, and the living rooms of professional skateboarders. Wright spoke with our sister publication Boldtype about journalism, voyeurism, and his taste for insanity.

Read More »

It might make me unpopular, but… the cigarette company was right, and the government overreacted to Rolling Stone’s Camel-sponsored “Indie Rock Universe” article. Back in 2007, a large feature ran as a gatefold (one of those special flip-out sections that wraps out of a magazine) with Camel ads on the outside and (strangely grouped) lists of indie-rock bands on the inside. The actual music-related content was generated by the RS staff (you can see some scans here) while the front and back ads were created by the cigarette company.

As a result of the article, several states sued the magazine, bands went into an uproar over their implied endorsement, and the cigarette company has now been found liable for fines because the ads were placed next to the illustrated feature (it was argued the piece constituted a breach of their agreement not to advertise using cartoons). After the jump, why Camel and Rolling Stone are right and everyone else is wrong.

Read More »

1. Remember this cartoon in Rolling Stone magazine mapping out the “Indie Rock Universe”? We don’t either but it’s causing a real shit storm. [via Pitchfork]

2. The War on Drugs is rebranding itself, placing “a greater emphasis on rehabilitation and treatment for drug offenders.” Meanwhile, marijuana is more potent than ever. [via DTB, Salon]

3. Are people sick of Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow? Or are we just watching less news? [via LF]

4. Fans of Cold Case, Without a Trace, Numbers, Law & Order, The Unit, My Name Is Earl, Scrubs, and The New Adventures of Old Christine, you’re going to have to wait to find out if your show gets renewed. Because the networks hate you. [via THR]

5. The cast of Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty dropped a few f-bombs in front of some kids during an in-store performance. [via NYP]

Yesterday was a Terry Richardson day — first we saw him sitting on a fire hydrant on Spring Street, and then we got home and saw his “sexy” Gossip Girl photoshoot for Rolling Stone plastered all over the internet. Mildly-interesting photographer sightings aside, we’re kind of bothered by the whole thing: first, Rolling Stone’s blatantly sensationalist cover, then, the cover’s timing to coincide with the worst episode of Gossip Girl yet (just look at all the Twitter results for “Gossip Girl sucked”).

We at Flavorwire are divided in our Gossip Girl levels of tolerance — some of us never miss it (cough, cough, Caroline), some of us started boycotting it back in January (and the rest of us probably have never cared). But regardless of whether or not we think the show has been the most amazing thing on TV, it’s time to drop the “Best Show Ever” narrative and hope that the actual plotlines get better before we have to deal with Blake Lively’s re-creation of Lindsay Lohan’s Marilyn Monroe re-creation (after this photoshoot, could that one be too far off?).

TV can be an art form, or it can be absolute crap — Gossip Girl is inching closer to the latter while attempting to be the former and failing, then overcompensating with photos like these.

Read More »

While a cover line that references Obama is a strange choice, Britney Spears is looking neither crazy or bald on the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone which comes out on Friday, and according to excerpts from the accompanying interview by Jenny Eliscu, she sounds just as boring as most of our friends.

Some of our favorite tidbits: Spears reports that she goes to bed each night at 9:30 p.m. each night. She doesn’t go out much. The last date she went on was with a guy who she says looked a lot like an older version of Harry Potter. She’s upset that her 3-year-old drops f-bombs.

Our question for you:

With Beyoncé’s latest two-disc album, I Am … Sasha Fierce, she publicly outs “Sasha,” the flashy on-stage alter ego who the rather boring star has name dropped in a decade’s worth of interviews.

“I want to be an icon. That’s why this is a double-album. One side has songs that are more mainstream and another has my more traditional R&B songs for my fans who’ve been there the whole time. Some of it sounds like Barbra Streisand, Karen Carpenter and the Beatles around the 1970s,” she explained to Billboard.

Sounds sensible — give fans both sides of the coin. But what happens when critics dig the material put forth by your other half more? It sounds like the plot of a new Charlie Kaufman flick.

After the jump, what they’re saying about Sasha, and why we think Beyoncé should watch her booty.

Read More »