Saturday, June 08, 2002 posted by Jen at 6/08/2002 08:34:00 PM
On a less-grumpy note, you can listen to an interview with me here. (Funny true story....the very nice interviewer, Bill Thompson, had to stop taping, because my cell phone actually rang in the middle of it. Quelle embarrassment.
To: Graydon Carter From: Jennifer Weiner
Subject: Your magazine
My new Vanity Fair arrived yesterday, and my first question is, Who is this guy on the cover? This was not asked in a good way, as in, who is this unbelievably hunky young thing gracing the cover of my magazine? It was more along the lines of, I've never seen or heard of this guy in my life, and yet there's a five-page story in here about him which apparently involved a staff writer flying to Ireland to spend many drunken evenings in the unknown's company. What gives?
I understand that you all like to think of yourselves as the arbiter of what's cool in Hollywood, the ones who decide not only Who's Hot and Who's Not but Who's Going To Be Hot Very Soon. Unfortunately -- and how to put this? -- your track record sucks.
My advice -- stick with genuine stars. Or, if you must kick over rocks to discover unknowns squirming about beneath them, try to fnd ones who aren't quite so odious. Mister Never Heard of Him announces to the world that he enjoyed his time in Austin because of the "beautiful women. So many of them. It's like an ant farm." Yuck.
Next point. Dominick Dunne? Build him a bridge and tell him to get over himself already. Did you read his latest diary? The one where he starts off by announcing that he ought to be at the Hotel du Cap, but was unavoidably detained by a trial that's only happening because of his novel A Season in Purgatory? I mean, does he have to stand sideways to fit his great swollen head through doors? Also, tell him that Andy Rooney called. He wants his eyebrows back.
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posted by Jen at 6/08/2002 09:03:00 AM
Oh, so much to say, so much to tell you about. First, let me commend to anyone who watched The Hamptons the MightyBigTV recap of said four-hour brain suck. Specifically, let me commend these sentences: Except then we meet "Josh Sagman, Entrepreneur" riding in an SUV and braying into his cell phone....so swollen with male entitlement that he doesn't even need a fucking airbag." See, I wasn't the only one who found him repellent!
Next: the Meanest Book Review Ever. Seriously. You get the feeling that the critic not only really hated the book, he had something personal and specific against the woman who wrote it. Then again, I've been taking book reviews and book critics, and editors of book reviews personally a lot lately. As in complaining morosely to my agent, "My book's ahead of all these other books on every bestseller list I can find, and yet they're numbers 13 and 14 on the Times bestseller lists, and I'm number 16 and not even on the printed list, and they got full, respectful reviews, and all I got were two semi-dismissive sentences in the Times Beach Trash Round-Up. I think Chip McGrath hates me." Which I'm sure isn't true. Chip McGrath, editor of the NYT Book Review, does not hate me. Chip McGrath is too busy seeing whether it's possible to run a second profile of that hot young male Russian writer or, possibly, a photo shoot featuring Jonathan Safron Foer, to even know who I am.
Tuesday, June 04, 2002 posted by Jen at 6/04/2002 04:53:00 PM
True confession time -- I'm probably the only person in America not directly related to one of the participants (I don't think you can really call them stars) who sat through all four hours of ABC's The Hamptons.
It started out as a voyeuristic thing. I'd look at the pretty places and pretty people, ooh and ahh over beach-houses and Baldwins.
Voyeurism got me through the first half hour. After that, I was actively rooting for the Hamptonites to die, rooting with a fervor I haven't felt since the finale ofThe Amazing Race. Lizzie Grubman, the blond uber-publicist who mowed down 15 pedestrians outside a nightclub? Steven Gaines, the bitchy writer who was too busy partying and name-dropping to actually set pen to paper, and who mourned his doggie's death by purchasing the "grief gift" of a BMW convertible? Josh, the smarmy, bandana'd, beer-swilling, weenie-burning, oxygen-huckstering, man-shaped glob of hair gel? Die! In fact, every time Josh came on screen to make another one of his pompus pronouncements, I'd be actively entreating the heavens to rain down VD upon him. (I think I reacted so badly to him because he reminds me of all the guys who were jerky to me in Hebrew school. I was complaining about him to my brother Jake, who, it turns out, went to college with him. I'm not sure what this means, but it freaked me out).
Anyhow, The Hamptons? Yuck. With the exception of the retiring police chief, the farmer lady, Robbie the dog and, unbelievably, Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, every single person who got face time during the two night, four-hour spectacle was selfish, shallow, self-absorbed -- and, worst of all, boring. What happened to the waitress-turned singer? Evidently, she nabbed a boyfriend. We never learned his name. How 'bout the ingenue from Iowa who stumbled into a timeshare at Animal House? We get about thirty seconds of her saying the Hamptons weren't what she hoped they'd be. That's it. And some woman got her picture in Hamptons Magazine. The policeman retired, the farmer lady never reappeared, Robbie the Dog went on to his heavenly reward, along with a restauranteur, whose death might have had more impact if the filmmaker hadn't introduced him just five minutes beforehand, and then September 11 happened and rained on everyone's parade, and Billy Joel's daughter played a sad piano song, and it was over. And not only did I waste four hours watching this thing, I also missed opening night of The Bachelorettes on Ice (or, as we're calling them around here, the Bacheloritos).
But in better pop-culture news. My new hero? Thicke.
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Monday, June 03, 2002 posted by Jen at 6/03/2002 07:41:00 AM
Email and JenniferWeiner.com are up and running again. If your email to me was bounced over the past 48 hours, feel free to resend now.
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Welcome to A Moment of Jen, author Jennifer Weiner's constantly-updated take on books, baby, and news of the world. Email me at jen (a) jenniferweiner.com.
