Andrew LaVallee

While the Warren, N.J., company said it limited submissions to strippers 18 and older and was screening the clips to police their content before posting them, the campaign quickly drew criticism from people worried that it would attract teenagers eager to shed their clothes. Further, some nonprofits that work with homeless teens said they weren’t comfortable with the stunt … In response to the outcry, Virgin Mobile is giving the campaign a facelift, renaming it “Blank2Clothe.” Instead of taking their clothes off, viewers will instead be asked to do anything they want — juggling, singing or standing on their heads, for example — to trigger views and therefore, more clothing donations.

Before:

After:

Read more: Virgin Mobile Pulls Back Racy Campaign

Other stuff I recently wrote or chipped in on:

• iPhone pricing details
• Verizon acquiring Alltel
• Virgin Mobile acquiring Helio
• Philadelphia’s last-minute Wi-Fi rescue
• News on RIM, CenturyTel and “in-call media“

It’s not often I get to reference “Donnie Darko,” pig poop and Michael J. Fox in a single story:

Clearly, “Mr. Fusion” was ahead of its time.

“I wanted not a single tooth mark on the dog,” says Ms. Turbeville, 54. Her solution: a paste of cayenne pepper and Cholula Hot Sauce, which she painted on its tail. The cats still sniff the Aibo’s backside. “They just can’t help it. But they never, ever bite him anymore.”

Many owners have found robotic pets attacked by their “bio-pets” when they aren’t home, she says. People on some online forums suggest getting rid of the flesh-and-blood pets with territorial issues. “Obviously, they’re feeling threatened,” Ms. Turbeville says. “They retaliate. They retaliate hard.”

On Page One: When Dogs and Robots Collide, Somebody Needs a Talking To (Thanks, Gizmodo, BoingBoing, Jezebel and Wonkette!)

(This story also ran in the Arizona Republic, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Charleston [W.V.] Gazette, Houston Chronicle, Seattle Times, St. Paul [Minn.] Pioneer Press and the Virginian-Pilot/Ledger-Star.)

• Iron Man - Movie - Review - The New York Times
  Those are the rules of the genre, as unbreakable as the pseudoscientific principles that explain everything (An arc reactor! Of course!) and the Law of the Bald Villain. (geek hollywood movies nyt review)
• Features : Radar Online : In defense of “Sex and the City”
  Carrie and Co. weren’t supposed to be like us or like anyone we actually knew. They were roles women could take on anytime–the slut, the prude, the kooky overfeeling narcissist, the brain. (movies television)
• Cultural Stew: Gay, Hipster, Yuppie Condo Party Degenerates Into “Shitshow”
  At a new condo in the East Village in NYC, a volatile mix of summer weather, a rooftop pool, gays, hipsters, and wealthy young hedge fund yuppies conspired to form a party that resulted, predictably, in drinking, drugs, debauchery, and defecation. (class gawker gay nyc realestate schadenfreude)
• Attack of the Amusing Little Snack Cakes | The New York Observer
  a prolonged and occasionally wearying exercise in wit and detachment … an era of Ironic Food, with chefs taking working-class staples, citifying them into nearly unrecognizable form and serving them with a wink and a smile to the upper crust. (class food nyc restaurant)
• The Political Scene: The Fall of Conservatism: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  least divisive Rep. in the ‘08 race is the last one standing.. shows how little life is left in the mvt that Goldwater began, Nixon brought into power, Reagan gave mass appeal, Gingrich radicalized, DeLay criminalized and Bush allowed to break into pieces (conservative history newyorker politics president washington)

• Ivanka Trump on How to Spot a Frenemy — Daily Intel — New York News Blog — New York Magazine
  Another sign to watch for is insincerity. Watch the way they react and treat you, and then watch the way they react and treat people they probably consider not as important as you. Duplicity is a key sign of the frenemy. (class magazine nyc psychology social )
• Terry Gross’ remarks to 2008 Graduates of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
  “masochism is an integral part of a woman’s psychological makeup.” Thankfully, that’s my only surviving recording of Womanpower. I sounded like a feminist Minnie Mouse. And by playing it for you today, I guess I’ve given new meaning to the word masochism. (academic journalism journalist npr )
• Sweet on Obama! | The New York Observer
  “no one ever told me to do it. It was just like, I, I just smelled the coffee. I just understood that’s what I could be about.. No one will work harder than I am. I will never not worker harder than someone. I will never stop reporting.” (chicago journalist obama politics president washington )
• News - Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
  You are not horse pickers or handicappers, he said. Your goal as you cover a campaign ought to be this: to be as sure as you can be that when a new president is elected, your readers will understand why that person won. (academic journalism journalist politics president washingtonpost )
• Park Slope: Where Is the Love? - New York Times
  That authenticity, he said, generally lasts only for the first phase of gentrification. It’s a theme in modern urban history: the sense that authenticity is always slipping away. In short, this place was authentic until you people showed up. Repeat. (class economics nyc nyt realestate )

• When in San Francisco… | Gulliver | Economist.com
  The recent arrivals upon hearing that you have clocked in more than 6 years in San Francisco, will literally look up to them like a grandson to a grandfather that wants to hear campfire stories about the events here that attracted them to San Francisco in (economist sanfrancisco travel )
• Seed: “So”
  This “so” is key to a basic unit of scientific talk: the explanation. What follows “so” is another idea, insight, or fact–not because it’s merely next in a series but because it’s conceptually consequent: (article jargon magazine science )
• True class - The Boston Globe
  You know that section in the back of the alumni magazine .. who’s married, who’s remarried, and who got a promotion? .. most likely to be missing: Commune dwellers in rural Washington, freegan activists, doulas, those who have changed their sex. (academic college gossip journalism )
• I Have To Ask: Books: The New Yorker
  Sawyer, a former beauty queen and (as Walters notes) aide to Richard Nixon, doesn’t have a conventional journalistic resume, either… Walters is, by blood relation, one degree of separation from vaudeville, and it shows; Sawyer is a television person (books newyorker review )
• Folks, We’ve Reached an Awkward Age - washingtonpost.com
  Recently, the Maryland students all tried to come up with the situation most deserving of the declaration and decided on this: You are about to hook up with someone when you discover that he or she is the opposite sex than you thought. (college psychology washingtonpost youth )

I started on the telecom beat last month and have been pitching in on phone-company earnings (AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, Alltel) and writing about the struggles of city wi-fi projects (EarthLink, MetroFi), other things wireless and along the way, the sharpening decline of newspaper circulation.

• Can P.S. 1 Director Alanna Heiss?s Vision for Her Museum Outlast Her?
  To ease the tension, Heiss maintains an open-bar policy… "Pretty much every meeting is expected to have some wine or some Champagne or, you know, a frozen margarita from Court Square Diner"–the greasy spoon next door. (art article interview museum nyc )
• Open Letters Monthly: An Arts and Literature Review » December: Second Glance - Psalms and Prophecy
  (interview literature toread writing )
• Kelly Cutrone, People's Revolution Honcho Turned "Hills" - PAPERMAG
  We're like a very good private school, but more like Little Red than Brearley… And you know, people love to hate. I'm used to it — I have black hair and I wear no makeup, people always think I'm bitchy. (celebrity fashion reality television thehills )
• Michael Domitrovich On the Second-Generation Artistic Elite - PAPERMAG
  you will eventually stumble upon the city's New Bohemia. I?m not talking about the Williamsboogers brunching at Café Habana or the out-of-town transplants sheltered by our private universities in the public sector. I point instead to those who have bot (culture hipsters nyc )
• A Swamp Forest Grows in Brooklyn | Ginger Strand | Orion magazine
  These rewilded woodlands are a new kind of landscape, with new meanings. They suggest to the visitor not an untouched, prehuman world, but a reverted, posthuman one. That creates an interesting tension. Critics point out that there can be a ?stigma? (dance environmental nyc )

• Hephzibah Anderson: To say bon appetit is really so de trop | Comment is free | The Observer
  It's a notoriously impenetrable city and the truly determined cling to the notion that strict adherence to its Byzantine etiquette will eventually yield a way in… to frown on bon appetit, it seems, is an attitude très snob. (british europe guardian jargon opinion )
• Agents & Editors: A Q&A With Editor Pat Strachan
  He had four daughters, and his wife had four daughters, so there were eight girls. And when my daughter was born I remember he said, "Congratulations–you have fourteen years before she's fourteen." (books interview nyc poetry writing )
• Still with stupid? - Los Angeles Times
  At the time, I was 25 and strenuously devoted to the cause of making my life resemble that of a Woody Allen character… a clueless suburban refugee who dreamed of rent-controlled apartments filled with house plants and volumes of Goethe (culture lat opinion woodyallen )
• National Journal Magazine - Not in Kansas Anymore
  Dems are right that the top conservative social priorities–banning abortion and gay marriage–don?t tangibly respond to those concerns. But for years Repubs have felt more comfortable than Dems talking about the value of maintaining moral order (article conservative politics )
• On the Gay Bar Circuit with Chelsea and the Gov. | The Trail | washingtonpost.com
  And so it was that, as she walked out of Tavern on Carmac after midnight, a crowd of men outside the bar shouted "We love your highlights!" and "You're gorgeous, baby." (blog gay politics president washingtonpost )
• GreetingsEarthlings.jpg (JPEG Image, 511×666 pixels)
  (art asia economist photography )

• Youth! - The New York Review of Books
  one is living in a debased post-9/11 political era during an ugly war in which a small fraction of one’s generation is in fact fighting overseas while, as a “literary” person, one is living an essentially sedentary and irrelevant life. (books gawker review youth )
• THE NEW REPUBLIC | Blogs
  the real Colbert is extraordinarily demure, as you’ll learn when you meet him before the show. But Colbert-in-character likes to be stroked, and the best way to do that is to smile or laugh–to simply marvel–when he fires off some genius remark (blog humor television )
• 30 Rock | ‘30 Rock’: Meet DeBorah! | 30 Rock | The Q&A | TV | Entertainment Weekly | 1
  You did your best Tawny Kitaen?
  Crawling, cooter slam, flipping the hair, the whole thing. It was awesome.Should I ask the definition of ”cooter slam”?
  Oh, a cooter slam is when you jump in the air, and you land into a split. You don’t just find the s (funny gawker hollywood reality television )
• Frenemy Territory: Television: The New Yorker
  why teenagers want their bra straps to show and how it came to pass that crooked hair parts are considered chic.. The show’s soundtrack is.. underlining the 3 overriding and broadly painted feelings of the characters: I’m so glad.. so sad.. so confused (newyorker reality television )
• village voice > people > Pucker Up: The New Wave of Trans Cinema by Tristan Taormino
  The men behind Trannywood credit Morty Diamond.. as one of their influences.. Trans Entities: The Nasty Love of Papi and Wil is Diamond’s documentary-style porno love story about two sex radicals who consider themselves male, female, both, and neither. (gay nyc porn sex )

• The Canon: Still Flying: The Talk of the Town: The New Yorker
  “When Moqtada al-Sadr comes to power, and I am facing the firing squad, it will be for that.. I never stopped writing poetry, but the poets stopped writing about me.. Because when you have a bestselling novel, or two, or three, everybody hates you.” (academic books ericajong newyorker nyc writing )
• “The requirement” by Wendell Berry (Harper’s Magazine)
  Big had said he wasn’t long for this world, but he looked about the same as yesterday. For all I knew, he might live a long time yet. When somebody tells you he’s going to die, you can’t say, “Well, go ahead. I’ll just sit here till you do.” (harpers literature shortstory wendellberry )
• The Great Forgetting - New York Times
  Proustian memory bullies who get 1,800 pages of recollection out of a mere cookie-bite.. other side are those of us suffering the normal effects of time, living in the hippocampically challenged community that is one step away from leaving the stove on al (column conservative nyt psychology )
• The Believer - Interview with Miranda July
  My ideal life is just lounging around the house and every once in a while I’ll kind of write something, and then I’ll leave and eat something and masturbate or whatever–just this very fluid life of comforting myself, you know. (hipsters interview magazine mirandajuly )
• A brief history of street violence: It’s the economy, stupid - Crime, UK - The Independent
  Street crime, though, is a hybrid of the two and it is most prevalent in areas where the “have-nots” have ready access to the “haves”, which suggests it may actually rise further as the economic gap between the two widens. (article british crime economics law )
• ‘Acceptable face’ of fascism may cost Berlusconi victory - Europe, News - The Independent
  Ms Santanche told women viewers: “Don’t give your vote to Berlusconi, he sees us only horizontally, never vertically” … For a man like Mr Berlusconi, as priapic as a character in an Aristophanes farce, Ms Santanche was too gorgeous to be ignored. (europe italy politics )
• Deseret News - Video - First look inside YFZ Ranch
  (news religion video )

• footnoted.org » Blog Archive » Booyah: Dissecting Jim Cramer’s new contract
  There was also interesting new language on the Cramer persona, which the Company “acknowledges and agrees that sharp and caustic commentary and behavior is a part of Cramer’s persona and appeal and “shall not constitute Cause for termination.” (blog financial law television )
• Tina Fey: One hot ‘Mama’ | Tina Fey | Cover Story | Movies | Entertainment Weekly | 3
  “How do you get to be Christopher Guest? Just live your life, make hilarious movies with your friends, and then go home.” (magazine profile television )
• The Aria of Chris Matthews - Profile - New York Times (page 5)
  “His interruptions are invariably a reaction to something you just said, which indicates that he is, in fact, listening.” (nyt politics television )
• The Aria of Chris Matthews - Profile - New York Times (page 4)
  Sometimes during commercial breaks, Matthews will boast to Olbermann of having restrained himself during the prior segment. “And I reward him with a grape,” Olbermann says. (nyt politics television )
• The Aria of Chris Matthews - Profile - New York Times (page 2)
  they appeal to the eye-rolling tendencies of a cooler, highly educated urban cohort of the electorate that mostly dismisses … Matthews as annoyingly antiquated, like the ranting uncle at the Thanksgiving table whom the kids have learned to tune out. (nyt politics television )

• Where: Exploring the City of Tomorrow
  Soon, maps won’t just tell you where movie theaters are; they’ll tell you which ones are less likely to be crowded, dirty, or noisy. Get ready for the cartographolution. (blog google gps map )
• Eater: The Week in Yelp: Obsessed With Pickles
  Awkward confession alert! When I was a child, because I loved them so much, if I was upset my mother would comfort me by giving me a cucumber to fall asleep holding like a teddy bear. (blog food )
• Cable’s First Lady Of Explicit - New York Times
  she opened the phone lines, expecting the worst. “But the callers were telling me I was beautiful,” she said. “I was never called beautiful in my life. My mother always said I was ugly and that I’d be dead before I was 25.” (nyc nyt porn profile sex )
• The Tears of Things: Not Art Bloggers @ All
  By now, there is nothing unique about a blog, nothing new to say about its form, structure, or function … the whole point of their enterprise is make the interface transparent and painless, so you’re not looking at the finger, but the moon. (art blog criticism )

• Rhizome: Interview with Aron Namenwirth of artMovingProjects By Paddy Johnson
  On the computer screen in the privacy of your home, you can do research… it’s not the same as looking at it in a real space, walking around it, and experiencing it. A lot of new media work requires interaction, and that interaction is mediated by the (art interview museum online)
• When Is a Fashion Ad Not a Fashion Ad? - New York Times
  Shamelessness is a feature of contemporary life; it visibly afflicts the celebrity and the wannabe celebrity, but it also informs and liberates the artist. (advertising celebrity fashion nyt sad )
• They Call Him the Fixer in a World That?s a Mess - Michael Clayton - Movie - Review - The New York Times
  She’s a cliche — brittle, sexless, friendless, cheerless and all the rest — but what makes her work is her unnerving banality… This is a pitiful creature, as unloved by her writer-director creator as by the genius actress who plays her. (movies nyt review )
• Is the Tipping Point Toast?
  “If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one — and if it isn’t, then almost no one can” … To succeed with a new product, it’s less a matter of finding the perfect hipster to infect and more a matter of gauging the public’s mood. (argument article books marketing research trends )
• Crossings By Migrants Slow as Job Picture Dims - WSJ.com
  Lopez, a 43-year-old illegal immigrant … earned about $50,000 a year transporting construction material, but the work dried up and he now drives a taxi to make ends meet. “To live in America these days is to suffer,” said Mr. Lopez. (economics labor politics race wsj )