Entertainment - Thursday, October 8, 2009 7:15 - 11 Comments
“They’d Pay Me If They Could:” Three Recent NYU Grads on the Difficulties of Landing a Media Gig
At the end of Clarissa Explains It All, Melissa Joan Hart’s character moves to Manhattan for a reporting job at a newspaper. Today, however, landing a post-graduate journalism job isn’t as easy as waving your teenage wand. (Zing.) Gourmet just folded, newspapers are in turmoil, etc. So what’s a bright-eyed, diploma-clutching, aspiring writer to do? Start a blog? Fight for links? Pray for print? We turned to three graduates – a famed NYU Local writer, a former Washington Square News editor-in-chief, and Local’s entertainment editor emeritus – to find out.
Note: Two former WSN editor-in-chiefs declined to comment; they actually have print jobs one has a print job and the other a job at a website (though his e-mail to us read, “Man, I wish I had a print job.”) One former WSN news editor didn’t write back, but the last time we saw her she seemed drunk and told us: “Yeah, I worked in journalism for a while. Now I work at a shoe boutique.” If any of you NYU-grads out there want to participate, e-mail us.
After the jump, the testimonies of our three contributors.
Entertainment - Thursday, April 16, 2009 10:40 - 2 Comments
NYU Program Board Smokes Jandek Out of His Hole
Outsider folk artist Jandek will head from his mystery hole in Texas to NYU’s Kimmel Center next week for an on-campus show. The cult figure has released more than 50 blues/folk albums since 1978, but he remains famously reclusive, refusing to give any biographical or personal information to the press, and rarely performing live. (He didn’t play a show until 2004). So what enterprising NYU student smoked the mystery man out his hole and convinced him to a play a concert in the Kimmel auditorium, at our “private university in the [very] public service”? Cuteass Program Board Music Chair Mallory Blair, the same chick who turned the Empire State Building blue with her bare hands at age nine. Duh.
Entertainment - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 13:00 - 14 Comments
MTV’s “College Life” Reminds Us Why Reality TV is Scripted
MTV’s latest reality show College Life ups the ante on authenticity, giving four freshman at the University of Wisconsin handheld video cameras with which to document their lives. And just like real college life, the show is messy, anxiety-inducing, and hard to follow. Oops—it looks like the kids forgot to turn on the camera at pivotal moments, so the choppy editing weaves together narratives even less compelling than those of fake-reality.
But, if only because it’s the next best thing to having produced this show ourselves—(ahem, this writer may or may not have once carried around a video camera freshman year only to lose/burn the tapes later in life)—we’re going to watch anyway.
Onwards, then. Continue…
Entertainment - Thursday, April 2, 2009 10:20 - 7 Comments
Yung L.A. Sings Anthems for Young L.A. Transplants
There was a time when the New York Times speculated that African American culture had begun integrating with young, white people in urban milieus. Yes, I’m talking about “blipsters.” But by now, an arguable shift has seen a racial/cutural reverse: Pharrell’s Ice Cream waffle shoes, black fixed gear bike and BMX tricksters crowding Union Square, and Kanye West (cum Martin Louis King, Jr.) and his tastemaking blog. Young, stylistic people of both races are often taking their cues from a primarily black artist-led counter-culture. Continue…
Entertainment - Thursday, March 19, 2009 14:41 - 6 Comments
The City Exceeds Our Not So Great Expectations
As HBO’s many beloved series ended and more inane MTV reality shows were born, it become en vogue to intellectualize and commentate on bad TV. Playing with the scraps of momentum left over from Sex & The City and the dwindling appeal of The Hills, MTV’s The City promised an outdated, embarrassingly glossy New York City and a cast of dim-witted young women. In short, it seemed poised for artistic illegitimacy from the moment it was announced. But then, shockingly, The City defied our expectations.
The show follows Whitney Port, a naïve, wide-eyed idealist moving to this big, cold, corrupt city, a literary narrative so well-established that Russian author Ivan Goncharov had already titled his similarly plotted novel The Same Old Story by 1847. But that well-worn arc is a popular parable for a reason; when told plausibly and correctly, the story’s compelling, the protagonist is endearing, and the milieu is chock full of moral landmines. The City’s characters pulled off this storyline over the course of the show’s first season by offering authentic personalities facing legitimate conflicts.
Catch up on everyone who matters after the jump so you too can become obsessed next season. Continue…
Featured, On Campus - Monday, March 16, 2009 10:04 - 1 Comment
“Prozac Nation” Author Comes Back to College, An Interview with Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel’s cellular phone is ringing, and she doesn’t want to deal with it. “If it keeps ringing, I’ll turn it off,” she says, and then continues talking about the state of the pharmaceutical industry to a room full of NYU undergrads. But the ringing is persistent. Finally, she picks up her phone and groans. “Ugh, it’s my ex-boyfriend. He has a habit of calling twenty-two times in a row, so if I don’t turn it off now, it’s just going to keep ringing.” Empathetic twenty-year olds giggle. The professor, CNN’s Phil Rosenbaum, tries to get the conversation back to a less dramatic note: “At least he stays in touch…” But Wurtzel just tosses the phone; it falls into a chic handbag on a classroom seat. She smiles. “Where was I?”
The 41-year old with the persistent ex-boyfriend is the author of Prozac Nation and Bitch. More recently, she penned a controversial homage to the late David Foster Wallace for New York magazine.
And also, oddly, graduated from Yale Law School. She now does civil litigation for David Boies, the lawyer who represented Al Gore in Gore v. Bush; America, in the US v. Microsoft.
Despite her literary talent, pervasive depression, suicide attempts, brushes with fame, and encounters with notoriety, Ms. Wurtzel is now a successful and seemingly stable adult working in a powerful attorney’s office.
Wurtzel strolled into the business journalism class last week for something of a class-wide interview, and later corresponded with Local via e-mail. Too young to really know the author for the acclaim and infamy she achieved in the ’90s, most of the students in the class had only the knowledge of Wurtzel that they garnered from a Google search: a shaky Wikipedia bio that included unsympathetic 9/11 quotes, and an unclear relationship with Gawker that involved the epithet “cokehead slut.” Before Wurtzel walked in, a few aspiring journalists even half-joked about asking her “So, why’d you do it?” in reference to her allegedly plagiarizing stories for the Dallas Morning News.
But then Wurtzel did walk in: big lips, blonde hair, and those famously round eyes, still a cross between come hither and droopy. On her wrist, she donned an enormous, gold Michael Kors timepiece. On her shoulders, a dramatic fur coat. “I promise it’s vintage,” she told us. “Even PETA is okay with vintage fur, because at least then the animal’s death wasn’t in vain.”
For a four hour lecture, Wurtzel suddenly seemed like an interesting interview. Twenty years after the “psychodrama” she lived through at Harvard, ostensibly now winning the battle versus the “black wave” of depression she once described, a room of college students, she found, is still an audience she can connect with.
Interview after the jump.
Entertainment - Tuesday, March 10, 2009 1:06 - 0 Comments
Lauren Conrad Knows What You Did! She Knows What You Did!
Beginning April 6th, MTV will squeeze every last bit of juice out of Lauren Conrad’s feud with Heidi Montag. In this dramatically scored trailer, The Hills showcases what it has to offer: absolutely nothing. Spencer still acts like a douche, Heidi is still obsessed with Lauren, and Lauren breaks the self-pity barometer. At this point, we wouldn’t even want any real action. A Hills without dead air and plotlessness is like The City without Allie’s sad mug and Olivia’s evil smirks. But can we PLEASE get more of that fortune teller?
On Campus - Wednesday, March 4, 2009 8:02 - 4 Comments
NYU Junior Kate Ray Is A Good Girl Gone Blog
Kate Ray, an NYU Local City writer studying abroad in China for the semester, has been blogging for Shanghaiist, the Chinese outlet of Gothamist. Ray has been a long-time long-form print devotee, landing herself in Mercer Street freshman year. At Local, Ray aggregated city news and spun it with a voice that mixed the professional and the personal, sometimes eschewing the common short, sharp ‘blog voice.’ After a very vulnerable, drunken reading of his favorite blog posts at Sound Fix, Kate told one Local writer (ahem): “You’re a good writer, but this blog voice… it isn’t doing anything for you.” But Ray has come around on the Internet since beginning an internship at the popular far East blog.
“Shanghaiist is awesome,” she said. “The writing style is similar to snarky NYU Local, but they’re so unfamiliar with it [in China] that I can pass for being pretty good at it.”
You can check out Ray’s recent posts here.
[Ray is the first in our 'NYU Local's Where Are They Now?' series, which will update people who care (likely just other Local writers and their immediate friends) on the lives of former NYU Local writers.]
Entertainment - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 11:21 - 3 Comments
Kelly Cutrone Is The Advisor Every NYU Female Needs
Mentoring New York newbie Whitney Port, P.R. queen Kelly Cutrone recently broke The City’s painfully mundane tone. “Are you okay? You look so skinny,” she asked emaciated model Allie. Cutrone repeated the question until Allie, irritated, exposed, and probably hungry, stormed out.
Let’s look at the ladies’ patented reactions:
Whitney, sweet and safe, if a bit incomprehensible, lends Allie a shoulder to cry on. She apologizes for Cutrone’s behavior and calls body image a “personal thing,” whatever that means. Port’s co-worker Olivia Palermo, desperately glamorous and jaded, joked that Shamu can’t come walking down the runway. (I love a pretty socialite as much as the next MTV denizen, but isn’t Palermo getting a little old to be a mean girl?) For her part, Allie bitches to her boyfriend who proceeds to call Kelly “jealous.”
So: blonde; bitch; weak.
City - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:13 - 3 Comments
NYMag Delves Into The Deep Lives of Male Models
“Petey is 20, from Tennessee, and so pretty,” writes Mike Albo in this week’s New York Magazine. Petey won the Vman Ford Model Search competition, broke up with his girlfriend Sally, moved to an apartment in South Williamsburg and now, according to the accompanying photos, spends his days lounging in underwear, jumping on beds, eating, and walking. But good news for everyone who, halfway through fashion week, has had just about enough of long torsos and cheekbones: by the end of Albo’s subtle and effective exposé, being a male model kind of sucks! Petey makes no money and gets lonely. Of course, Petey’s stint in New York is still as glamorous as a bisexual, chain-smoking starlet, but Petey eventually gets to a “weird state,” as he says (he has to move home; he misses Sally; his agents won’t stop bothering him). The story hits a note of honesty after a week of aggrandizing every skinny young thing and their sweater; even if I do, at the end, pity the pretty boy.
Photo: Cass Bird/New York Magazine
