Monday, September 25, 2006

Princess Coldstare Has a Blog

Don't know who Princess Coldstare is? If so, consider yourself lucky. However, if you read Gawker, or the Times Thursday Styles Section, or live in New York and fall into some sort of loosely-defined downtown demographic, then you probably have some vague idea of Princess Coldstare, aka LoveLeigh, aka Leigh Lezark. Too bad, I say, that's valuable brain real estate that you'll never get back. But to bring the previously-lucky ones up to speed, Leigh Lezark is a CUNY student/DJ "famous" for hosting a regular asshat party, scoring lots of free shit/ bragging about it, and never smiling in pictures. And she has a blog, or some kind of online journal-thingie. There are no words.

OK, wait, here are some words -- "it may sound conceded" but only the tasteless drink vodka and Diet Coke. Yuck.

continue reading......

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

NY/NZ's Continued Continuing Coverage of Marisha Pessl

A few items over at Gawker today noted yet another New York Times article on Marissha Pessl. On the strength of the photo accompanying Dinitia Smith's piece, Gawker editors deemed Pessl merely "book hot":














but upgraded her to "TV hot" after seeing the official Viking publicity shot, below:












I followed this recantation -- and related bitchy comments --with bated breath, thinking all the while:
1. Was I trying not to like Special Topics because she's, y'know, so gorgeous and young and everything? (Um, not the first time that occurred to me. Gee, I am a meanie sometimes. Another review of her book is up here.) Also,
2. You know what would be fun? A literary version of HotOrNot.com! Marisha Pessl, as it turns out, is not the only writer to suffer from photos of wildly varying levels of flattery on the webbynets.

Jonathan Franzen: Hot?



















Or not?






















Nicole Krauss: Hot?



















Or not?













Benjamin Kunkel: Hot?



















Or not?













David Foster Wallace: Hot?

















Or not?























A. M. Homes: Hot?



















Or not?









Related: Jhumpa Lahiri and Zadie Smith -- always, always hot. Dammit. (I am a meanie sometimes, X 2. Although, let the record show, I was tempted to include Stephanie Klein in this roundup and did not.)

continue reading......