Friday Night Nitpicking

It's always a good day when the new issue of Vanity Fair arrives in the mail. VF is one of the more misjudged magazines out there, no doubt because the cover always features a celebrity, if male viriley posed with a throbbing piece of machinery, if female, largely naked with a glossy lipsticked pout. This month it's Nicole Kidman, shirt unbuttoned, bra exposed, red lips gleaming. But don't be fooled. Their coverage of the war and the Bush presidency is fantastic. Yet! There are many ads for luxury ridiculousness, photos of celebs and Dominick Dunne chronicling celeb trials and travails. And excellent horoscopes. It satisfies my desires both for trash and substance, which neither People nor The New Yorker can do.

How alarmed was I to see that Mikhail Gorbachev is hawking Louis Vuitton?


Absolutely bizarre.
Makes me wonder what W will do when the blessed day arrives that we no longer call him President. Maybe sell guns? Represent Sylvan Learning Centers as a cautionary tale for parents of dullard children? Really, what else can he do? I can't imagine he'll make much money on the lecture circuit. Could he? Paying George Bush to articulate and engage an audience verbally? Makes as much sense as hiring Porky Pig to be your speech therapist.

Back to Louis Vuitton. Gorbachev is part of an ad campaign called Journeys. I'm not even going to link to the LV site because it is too stupid and pretentious. The whole thing is in Flash so you have to wait for the "movies" to load. The "high concept" ad campaign as storytelling thing is annoying especially because Andre Agassi telling me that his ideal trunk would have a compartment big enough to hold his snowboard with the bindings is not a story. Please just stick with photos. That way, we won't know if you have nothing to say. It's okay, as long as you look good.

Speaking of photos, that Annie Leibovitz is starting to bother me. Is there no other photographer on the face of this earth who can shoot celebrities? It's like every ad featuring Giselle Bundchen or Kate Moss. Bring on the fresh faces already! I watch America's Top Model, I know they're out there--call Tyra! I think I am still mad at Annie for not just telling the world she is a big old dyke and the late Susan Sontag was her lover and partner instead of all the lame mealy mouth things she said about how the best word to describe their relationship was "friends."