Gawker - I'd like to buy the world a joke

You may never trust a pilates instructor again

From “caviar bumps” to “healthy Coke,” the Internet is alive this week with things that are not cocaine. A caviar bump, as you may know, is a lump of caviar served on your fecal matter-coated hand. The recipe for “healthy Coke” is somehow even more disturbing.

“Healthy Coke” is a TikTok thing. I found out about it via this tweet from former Gawker writer and current New York magazine diner-at-large Tammie Teclemariam.

“Thank you,” Tammie. In the TikTok, a Gigi Hadid-esque young woman explains that this is a recipe from her pilates instructor. This explanation is unnecessary. (Once one learns the recipe, one instinctively understands that it came from a pilates instructor.) “It’s a healthy alternative to a Coke,” the woman explains. “And I am not joking you … it taste [SIC] just like a Coke and you’regonnathinkI’minsane.”

The recipe is as follows:

— “Like a splash” of balsamic vinegar

— Ice in a cup

— Any sparkling beverage

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A power ranking sequel

BuzzFeed Inc.’s much-hyped and increasingly troublesome tenure as a public company took another blow on Monday. Its stock plunged by 41 percent, the worst single-day drop in a very short public history, after a ban preventing “executives and major institutional investors” from selling shares expired on June 1. It was a bad day for Buzz; they’re now worth a fifth of their $1.5 billion valuation last year. It seems digital media is not the cash cow we’d once thought.

It is easy to get depressed about the media economy. The most stable business model involves a billionaire in need of reputation laundering who can pull the plug the second they get bored or sufficiently good PR to bury their Google results about insider trading. But it is likewise easy to forget how many barely legal companies are hiring recent college graduates to trawl social media for online trends. Eight years ago, Gawker assessed which media brands would survive. They predicted only their own demise correctly. Here's where we are now: Continue reading

A picture would've been nice, dear

We know that Harry and Meghan, those Inseparable Seceding Sussex Sisters, can handle a little bit of Gran’s icy disappointment. They blew up The Firm via their proximity to Oprah, and still managed to get a Jubbly invite. But the maternal presence whose scorn I don’t think these two can tolerate? Their good old Nanny Netflix, the welcoming bestower of life, that money-shielding axer of deals.

At the Jubbly, Meghan and Harry were supposed to get a photo of Lilibet Jr. and Lilibet Sr., which they failed to do. That wouldn’t have just been a coup for the Markle twins, but a rare win for the streamer, which is desperate for any justification for their decision to fork over a reported 100 million dollars to this duo. Apparently, the company is “dismayed” that Meghan and Harry’s photos didn’t reveal any unspeakable truths about the world, or any photos of the baby with Lil Sr. or Kate and Will. Continue reading

The Madonna biopic will be harrowing work, if it even happens at all

After a grueling boot camp that included singing, acting, and 11-hour choreography sessions, Madonna has chosen Julia Garner to play her in an upcoming biopic directed by Madge herself. The Inventing Anna star “won,” beating out actresses like Florence Pugh, Alexa Demie, and Odessa Young.

On Thursday, it was announced that Madonna had “offered” Garner the role. It’s an interesting choice of words, because usually this kind of news only comes when the contracts have been signed. “Offered” implies that Garner hasn’t yet accepted the role, and still has time to save herself.

If you are not Julia Garner you can stop reading this now, this is just between me and her. Continue reading

Danny Boyle's new miniseries isn't good, but it is revealing

Given the dire state of things, a miniseries about the Sex Pistols, even directed by arch-nostalgist Danny Boyle, isn’t a particularly offensive proposition. There have been several treatments of the group already, including the 1986 Sid and Nancy, featuring Gary Oldman at the peak of his chaotic early style, as well as 1980’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, featuring the members of the band themselves. And with ready source material in guitarist Steve Jones’s memoirs, 2017’s Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, it’s not surprising that the adaptation industrial complex has finally scooped the storied outfit up.

It’s also not surprising that the show is not very good. Thoroughly predictable in both form and content, Pistol, a six-part series streaming on Hulu in America and Disney+ in the UK, is a mélange of digital grain and pointedly lopsided camera angles, while its beautiful cast of caricatures alternates with vertiginous speed between shopworn sneering and maudlin vulnerability. The cynicism of the narrative is breathtaking: the early episodes focus on Jones’s youthful life of crime and his flowering as a punk rock archetype under the protection and guidance of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, a role Thomas Brodie-Sangster plays as though he were drunk and asked to do his best Malcolm McLaren impression. Jones’s bouts of stage fright are explained by cutaways to horrific depictions of his sexual abuse by his step-father. That these scenes are a half-step short of Gaspar Noé is probably an attempt at boldness and daring, rather than the complicity it comes across as. The later episodes, when they’re not embroiled in the clichés of runaway success, exploit the swift deterioration of Sid Vicious with all the verve of its original manufacturers. The basic competence of Pistol — Boyle is undeniably a pro — makes it all worse, not better; this was done on purpose. Continue reading