The peak of the Spice Girls’ popularity has long passed, but Victoria Beckham – aka Posh Spice – still has massive media exposure. And Paris Hilton, who is famous for her lifestyle alone, makes world headlines daily.

A new psychology study helps explain why some stars burn bright, long, long after their talent has faded – if it ever was there to begin with.

Simply put, says Nathanael Fast of Stanford University in California, people need something to talk about. The human desire to find common ground in conversation pushes us to discuss already popular people, he says.

Fast’s team focused not on gossip column celebrities, but on professional baseball players in the US

“We realised that there’s a ton of stats and performance data available for baseball, so if we can show that famous or well-known baseball players become more prominent than unknown baseball players who perform just as well or better, we’re able to make a convincing case,” he says. (…)

Volunteers who were baseball fans themselves tended to pick an obscure player if they thought they were emailing an expert. Yet the same fans tended to converse about prominent players when they didn’t know anything about their correspondent.

“The very experts who could kind of inform everyone else don’t. They actually keep feeding them the information they already know because that helps establish a connection,” Fast says.

{ New Scientist | Continue reading }

HarperCollins has confirmed that it will not be publishing the memoir of Jerry Hall this autumn, after the model paid back her £500,000 advance. (…)

The book, which was bought in October 2007, was originally billed by HarperCollins as an “explosive” and “candid” autobiography. The Texan model, 52, was expected to reveal details of her relationship with Rolling Stone Mick Jagger.

{ The Bookseller }

Hall said she would tell her story “as honestly and truthfully as possible”, but it is understood the publisher HarperCollins has decided to scrap it after finding the first draft underwhelming.

Hall, who spent two years writing the memoir, was expected to reveal the ups and downs of her relationship with Jagger, including occasions when she had found other women’s underwear in their bed.

The book was also likely to be highly critical of the Italian model Carla Bruni, now married to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. Bruni is alleged to have begun her seven-year affair with Jagger in 1992, while Hall was pregnant with the singer’s third child. She is also said to have persuaded Jagger to go with her to Thailand the day after the birth.

Hall was expected to speak her mind about other models who made their way into Jagger’s bedroom.

The model received just £10m of Jagger’s fortune of around £200m when they separated in 1999 after having four children together over 24 years. They “married” in Bali in 1990 – but the ceremony turned out to have no legal status.

A friend of Hall said: “She went to Mick and said, ‘I’ve been really nice about you in the book, but they want me to give them more. Otherwise they won’t publish and I have to give the money back’.”

It is believed Hall had spent £30,000 on lawyers sorting out the £1m book contract and had already paid tax on her £500,000 advance.

{ Times }

photo { Andy Warhol and Jerry Hall at club Studio 54. | Thanks Shampoo! }

{ Matt Dillon, NYC, 80s }

Books are being loaned to commuters on the London Underground in a scheme aimed at giving readers an alternative to free newspapers. (…)

Alfie Boyd said: “Everyone enjoys reading a nice story rather than about a useless celebrity that no-one really cares about too much.”

{ BBC | Continue reading }

Cleopatra died 2,039 years ago, at the age of 39. Before she was a slot machine, a video game, a cigarette, a condom, a caricature, a cliché or a synonym for Elizabeth Taylor, before she was reincarnated by Shakespeare, Dryden or Shaw, she was a nonfictional Egyptian queen. She ruled for 21 years, mostly alone, which is to say that she was essentially a female king, an incongruity that elicits the kind of double take once reserved for men in drag.

From her point of view there was nothing irregular about the arrangement. Cleopatra arguably had more powerful female role models than any other woman in history. They were not so much paragons of virtue as shrewd political operators. Her antecedents were the rancorous, meddlesome Macedonian queens who routinely poisoned brothers and sent armies against sons. Cleopatra’s great-grandmother waged one civil war against her parents, another against her children. These women were raised to rule.

Cleopatra had a child with Julius Caesar. After his death, she had three more — two sons and a daughter — with his protégé, Marc Antony. Motherhood confirmed her hold on the throne. She was a little bit the reverse of Henry VIII; she too needed a male heir, though she was rather more successful in securing one. Almost certainly Marc Antony and Julius Caesar represent the extent of Cleopatra’s sexual history. She was self-reliant, ingenious and plucky, and for her time and place remarkably well behaved. Having inherited a country in decline, she capably steered it through drought, famine, plague and war. (…)

If we find Cleopatra’s tomb, we may well be able to solve the mystery of Cleopatra’s death. We may be able to determine if Cleopatra committed suicide or was in fact murdered.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

NY Times: What do you think of Edward Liddy of A.I.G., whose name has become synonymous with corporate bonuses?

Donald Trump: Edward Liddy is in totally over his head, just as I think many bankers are right now in over their heads. I don’t know why bankers get paid $30 or $40 or $50 million, and what they’ve done is lost more money than any human beings in history. (…)

NY Times: What do you think will happen to Ruth Madoff?

Donald Trump: The wife should be put in jail on the other side of the hallway from him. I think she’s guilty, his sons are guilty, and I think that many of the people in the firm are guilty. He had 16,000 clients, and he’s one man. What, he’s going to send out every envelope every week?

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

related { Like Bernie Madoff, Marc Dreier bilked unsuspecting investors out of many millions of dollars. But Dreier did it with flair. | NY mag | full story }

{ Alison Jackson | Britney has Lipo (2007), Bill Gates with his iPod (2005) | M+B Gallery | more | Alisonjackson.com | more photos | Wikipedia }

The parents of 15-year-old leukaemia patient Josh Morten, who last night passed away after a four year battle with the illness, said they were sorry not to have fulfilled his dying wish to get a blow job from Cameron Diaz.

The courageous teenager told his family two months ago that the one thing he’d really like before he died was to be sucked off by the successful Hollywood actress and former model.

“Josh never asked for much,” his father confided. “He never complained about his illness, or made unrealistic demands. So when he requested fellatio from the star of Charlie’s Angels and There’s Something About Mary we thought, sure, that’s the least we can do for him.”

“We wrote, we rang, we faxed,” Mr Morten explained. “And every time it was the same answer: ‘Sorry, Ms Diaz is currently unable to comply with your request.’

{ Chaser.com | Continue reading }

{ FOUND by Adam in New York, NY }

When Marc Jacobs found himself in a meeting on a recent Monday morning to brainstorm about Louis Vuitton’s next fashion advertising campaign, inspiration struck. “I just blurted out, ‘I think we should do Madonna,’” said the designer, Vuitton’s creative director, mentioning he’d attended a concert by the pop icon the night before in Paris. “I was totally just blown away by it, and moved by her performance, by what she had to say, and her energy.” (…)

The result is six atmospheric pictures of a smoldering Madonna by Steven Meisel that will break in a range of fashion magazines in February.

{ WWD | Continue reading }

The thirty-thousand-square-foot Italianate villa, built this century by Vanna White’s ex-husband, looks like many of the other houses in Beverly Park, a gated community in L.A., except for the bright-purple carpet that spills down the front steps to announce its new tenant: Prince. One afternoon just before the election, Prince invited a visitor over. Inside, the place was done up in a generic Mediterranean style, although there were personal flourishes here and there—a Lucite grand piano with a gold-colored “Artist Formerly Known as Prince” symbol suspended over it, purple paisley pillows on a couch. Candles scented the air, and New Age music played in the living room, where a TV screen showed images of bearded men playing flutes. Prince padded into the kitchen, a small fifty-year-old man in yoga pants and a big sweater, wearing platform flip-flops over white socks, like a geisha.

“Would you like something to eat?” he asked, sidling up to the counter. Prince’s voice was surprisingly deep, like that of a much larger man. He picked up a copy of “21 Nights,” a glossy volume of photographs that he had just released. It is his first published book, a collection of highly stylized photographs of him taken during a series of gigs in London last year. “I’m really proud of this,” he said. Short original poems and a CD accompany the photographs. (…)

Limping slightly, Prince set off on a walk around his new bachelor pad. Glass doors opened onto acres of back yard, and a hot tub bubbled in the sunlight. “I have a lot of parties,” he explained. In the living room, he’d installed purple thrones on either side of a fireplace, and, nearby, along a hallway, he had hung photographs of himself, in a Moroccan villa, in various states of undress. At the end of the hall, a gauzy curtain fluttered in a doorway. “My room,” he said. “It’s private.”

Prince has lived in Los Angeles since last spring, after spending years in Minneapolis, holding court in a complex called Paisley Park, where he made thousands of songs, far away from the big labels. Seven years ago, he became a Jehovah’s Witness. (…)

When asked about his perspective on social issues—gay marriage, abortion—Prince tapped his Bible and said, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’ ”

{ Claire Hoffman/New Yorker | Continue reading }

I told one of Prince’s people that I was willing, and we agreed that the next step was to meet. I said I could fly to either Los Angeles or Minneapolis, but this turned out to be unnecessary. Prince was coming to New York and would be staying in midtown. Fantastic. We agreed to meet at 9 P.M. on a Monday evening. I was told that his driver, Raul, would be calling me.

{ Sasha Frere-Jones/New Yorker | Continue reading }

photo { Purple Rain costume }