MySpace tackles entertainment news with new 'Celebrity' site

January 9, 2008 9:04 PM PST
Posted by Caroline McCarthy

MySpace has unveiled a new MySpace Celebrity site devoted to entertainment culture, which is slated to launch in full on the News Corp.-owned social network on Thursday. The portal will feature news (including gossip aggregated from People magazine's Web site), blogs, and multimedia content pertaining to already-big and fast-rising names in acting, music, comedy, sports, and Page Six notoriety.


MySpace already operates several other 'channels' of aggregated content, including the Impact political channel and an upcoming casual gaming page.

Content on MySpace Celebrity goes beyond gossip, encompassing news about celebrities' charitable endeavors and behind-the-scenes antics on the job. Perhaps most useful, MySpace Celebrity has an index of official celebrity MySpace profiles--more than 300 at launch. As many avid MySpace users know, fake and unofficial celebrity profile pages are a dime a dozen on the social network, and this ideally can create a way to weed those out.

"MySpace Celebrity is Hollywood's new home page," MySpace President and co-founder Tom Anderson said in a statement from the company. "Celebrities have been using MySpace since the site's launch and it's a natural extension for us to now offer them an aggregated channel where they can be in control of their own image...We want MySpace users to connect with celebrities in the same way that they do with musicians."

That's a lofty goal. Long before the News Corp. buyout, MySpace gained heavy buzz as a hub for discovering independent music, and it still continues that role today. There's not quite a perfect analogy to be drawn between an independent band eager to showcase its talent and an outlet for Jessica Alba to promote her latest movie.

Besides, the entertainment news niche is already fully saturated online with the likes of Perez Hilton, Popsugar, the online outlets of magazines like Entertainment Weekly, and the AOL-owned TMZ.com--which grew so big on the Web that it turned to network television.

On the other hand, MySpace has shown that it knows entertainment. As the social-networking leader still struggles to catch up to smaller rival Facebook in terms of technology and networking tools, branding itself as a central point for Web-based pop culture has helped differentiate it. And so far, that's proven at least relatively successful.

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Britney's family slams TV doctor

Thursday, 10 January 2008, 09:16 GMT

Britney Spears' family has criticised therapist Dr Phil McGraw for speaking publicly about a visit he made to the singer during a recent hospital stay.
Lou Taylor, a spokesman for Spears' mother Lynne, said on US TV that "he was not invited to make this part of a public display or part of the media".

McGraw said he thought Spears was "in dire need" of "medical intervention".

The star was treated after police were called to her home to settle a dispute over the custody of her two sons.

'Quality care'

Ms Taylor told NBC's Today show: "The family basically extended an invitation of trust for him to come in as a resource to support them, not to go out and make public statements.

"Any statement publicly that he made, because he was brought in under this cloak of trust [is] just inappropriate."


It is not clear why Spears was admitted to hospital
McGraw, who made his name with appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, cancelled a planned show about Spears earlier this week, saying her situation was "too intense".

The counsellor has hit back at healthcare professionals who have accused him of infringing the singer's privacy, saying he was lobbying for her health.

"Somebody needs to step up and get this young woman into some quality care - and I do not apologize one whit, not one second, for trying to make that happen," he said in an appearance on the Entertainment Tonight show earlier this week.

After Spears' dispute with former husband Kevin Federline last Thursday, officials granted sole custody of their two sons in his favour.

She had refused to return the children to Federline after a monitored visit at her home.

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U2's Bono presses for French aid

Thu Jan 10, 1:37 AM ET
PARIS - Rock star Bono pressed French leader Nicolas Sarkozy to increase aid to developing nations, the aid advocacy group DATA said. 

The organization, co-founded by Bono, front man of the U2 rock group, has urged France to raise development assistance to 0.7 percent of gross national income by 2012 as agreed earlier. In 2006, French aid stood at 0.31 percent of gross national income, DATA said.

"The president admitted it would be very, very hard, but France would keep her word," the statement quoted Bono as saying Tuesday following the meeting.

DATA's statement cites an October parliamentary report showing France's estimated overseas development assistance would be 0.35 percent of gross national income in 2007 and would remain at 0.35 percent in 2008.

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Ratings for People's Choice Awards sink

Wed Jan 9, 11:02 PM ET
LOS ANGELES - What happens to an awards show forced to scuttle its live ceremony because of the Hollywood writers strike? For the People's Choice Awards, it meant losing nearly half its TV audience.

The two-hour taped show that aired Tuesday on CBS was watched by 6 million viewers, compared with the 11.3 million that watched last year, according to Nielsen Media Research figures.

The weak ratings reflect the damage being exacted on the entertainment industry awards season by the two-month-old Writers Guild of America strike. The Golden Globes also canceled its ceremony Sunday on NBC, which instead plans to air a news conference to announce winners.

Representatives of the People's Choice Awards did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment Wednesday.

The writers guild refused to grant waivers for its members to work on the awards shows, and the Screen Actors Guild said its members would honor picket lines and refuse to take part — depriving the ceremonies of their all-important star power.

The People's Choice Awards replaced its traditional live show and with a taped format, hosted by Queen Latifah, that had its crews deliver trophies to music, film and television stars on location.

Winners included Johnny Depp of "Pirates of the Caribbean" and Katherine Heigl of "Grey's Anatomy."

The guild also has refused to grant a waiver for the premier awards ceremony, February's Academy Awards. Its producer has vowed to stage the show as planned.

Talks between the guild and the alliance representing producers broke off in December and have yet to resume, with production on dozens of TV shows and some movies brought to a standstill.

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Retailers Limit Purchases of Designer Handbags

By ERIC WILSON
Published: January 10, 2008

FOR products that are truly in demand, like Wii game consoles, tickets to the Super Bowl or cans of corn Niblets on double-coupon day, it may seem reasonable to limit the number a customer can buy at one time.

But readers of the fine print on the Web sites of luxury retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman may be surprised to discover that such a policy also now applies to designer handbags, like Prada’s latest ruched nylon styles, which cost $1,290; Bottega Veneta’s signature woven leather hobos, at $1,490; and the new rectangular Yves Saint Laurent clutch that looks like a postcard addressed to the designer (with a $1,395 stamp).

“Due to popular demand,” potential shoppers are warned, “a customer may order no more than three units of these items every 30 days.”

Popular, the bags may be. But how many of the customers who can afford them really want more than one, or for that matter, three?

On its face, the policy sounds odd; that is because it really doesn’t have anything to do with popular demand. Rather, it is the fear that foreign buyers, taking advantage of the severely weakened United States dollar, will hoard the bags, then resell them in Europe or Asia, where the same items in Prada and Gucci stores typically cost 20 to 40 percent more. The popular Yves Saint Laurent Downtown bag, which is restricted to three per customer at Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, costs $1,495. At Harvey Nichols in London, the same bag is £910 (or about $1,796).

Foreign tourists who are treating American department stores as if they were a nationwide outlet sale have largely been viewed as beneficial to retailers, and by some estimates those shoppers were the only bright spot in what was otherwise a feeble holiday sales season. But that spending power has not been so welcome to luxury companies like Gucci and Prada, which have spent the last decade trying to reach those customers in their home countries by opening expensive new shops throughout Europe and Asia.

Now those companies stand to suffer a sting from increasingly educated comparison shoppers, if not a more serious blow from a gray market of designer goods resold from American stores.

Ron Frasch, the chief merchant of Saks Fifth Avenue, which has 54 stores across the country, said the number of foreign shoppers trying to buy multiple items in stores was “pretty minor,” but he added, “it is certainly an issue that we watch.” Besides restricting online sales, Saks may deny a customer’s purchases of duplicate merchandise in stores on a case-by-case basis.

“What we try to do is use a lot of logic and common sense if we sense that someone is taking advantage,” Mr. Frasch said. “We monitor at the store level and at the corporate level for any patterns. We are very sensitive, first and foremost, to serving the customer, but secondly to any potential for reselling by customers.”

Ginger Reeder, a spokeswoman for Neiman Marcus, said its online policy applies to certain bags and shoes sold from designers who asked the company to limit sales.

“We work with our vendors,” Ms. Reeder said. “It’s primarily a protection for them, to protect their distribution from bags getting out there on the gray market.”

For now, the policies of Saks, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman apply only to online sales of handbags and shoes from Prada and the Gucci Group labels (Gucci owns Yves Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta), but not other luxury brands like Dior or Givenchy, which are owned by the competing fashion conglomerate LVMH. Meanwhile, LVMH sells its Louis Vuitton handbags online only on its own site, www.eLuxury.com, where the policy is even more strict: two of each style per customer, per calendar year.

There are no stated restrictions on shopping inside the 39 branches of Neiman Marcus or at the company’s Bergdorf Goodman store in Manhattan, Ms. Reeder said. But a sales associate at Bergdorf said this week that the staff was instructed to use discretion with customers looking to buy a large number of items. A salesman at the Louis Vuitton store across the street said a customer trying to buy more than two bags would be asked to give a reason. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to speak to reporters.

None of the makers of the designer brands would speak for the record about such policies, but several executives acknowledged privately that they are meant to prevent bags from being resold.

During the luxury boom of 2000 and 2001, when shoppers lined up in the street outside Gucci, Hermès and Vuitton shops in Paris, the companies drew criticism for putting into effect bag-per-customer limits that appeared to be aimed primarily at Asian shoppers. Some Asian customers complained they had been banned from Vuitton stores, and they could be found on the Champs-Élysées offering to pay Western tourists to buy bags for them.

What has surprised some retail analysts is how quickly the concept of quotas has arrived in the United States — and not just for handbags. In its online store, Apple currently limits customers to five iPhones per order.
“This is not an unusual situation for designer brands,” said Claudia D’Arpizio, a luxury goods consultant at Bain & Company in Milan. “It’s unusual for the United States. What is changing now is the geography of the touristic flows.”

In the ’80s, American and Asian tourists commonly shopped for luxury bargains in Italy, when the lira was weak against the dollar. But since the dollar began its spiraling decline against the euro in 2000, shortly after its introduction as the European common currency, the value-minded tourist tide has shifted to the United States.

Travelers who buy multiple items to resell to friends back home are only a small portion of the gray market, said Fred Felman, the chief marketing officer of MarkMonitor, a San Francisco agency specializing in brand protection. It is more problematic when professional networks of buyers resell luxury goods through small shops throughout Asia, or through online retailers like eBay.

Last month, Patricia Pao, an independent retail consultant, arrived at Newark Airport from Los Angeles and was approached by a young woman who asked her to help close a suitcase by sitting on it. The woman was returning to Slovenia with what appeared to be 200 pairs of designer jeans, the least expensive bearing a price tag of $228.

“She said that by selling the jeans back home she could not only cover the expenses of her trip, but she could also make a profit,” Ms. Pao said. “The weakened dollar makes everything here look like a bonanza.”

As anecdotes about foreign shoppers flocking to buy electronics, toys and Manhattan real estate become more common, analysts are debating the long-term impact of shopping tourism on brands that place a premium on their exclusivity.

“Imagine a scenario where you have people buying all your stuff,” Ms. Pao said. “In the short term you benefit, but in the long term, you don’t, because you don’t know where the sales are going, and that is very scary to these people.”

Given how difficult it is to control every aspect of distribution, though, some would argue that an indication of desirability — a burgeoning gray market, say — should be seen as an opportunity for brands to capitalize when demand is strongest.

“There is an underground railroad of iPods going back to Europe,” said Susan Nelson, an executive director of Landor Associates, a branding agency in San Francisco. “Contrary to damaging the brand, I think it creates a bit of a mystique.”

Of course, handbag quotas may not be the most effective solution anyway, considering the many ways determined shoppers can get around them — by using multiple credit cards, for instance, or buying from more than one store. But the alternative — raising prices of European luxury goods sold in the United States, as many companies have begun to do — risks alienating American consumers, or giving an advantage to American luxury competitors.

“What they don’t want to see,” Ms. Nelson said, “is for the market to be flooded with what they consider to be cheap handbags.”

Especially not their own.

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The Bride Made Me Buy This

Barry Wetcher/20th Century Fox
WHAT NOT TO WEAR TWICE Katherine Heigl, a bridesmaid in “27 Dresses.

OLD SCHOOL The more Ms. Heigl is a bridesmaid, the more she needs a bigger closet.
By RUTH LA FERLA
Published: January 10, 2008

IN the new romantic comedy “27 Dresses,” Jane, a perennial bridesmaid, smiles a shade too brightly in response to a remark repeated in scene after scene. Eyeing her invariably frothy bridesmaid’s dress, a well-meaning friend chirps, “Well, you can always wear it again.”

Have you ever had to wear a hideous bridesmaid dress? Send us your photos and we'll post them in an online slide show. Please send photos and comments to bridges@nytimes.com.
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New School

Barry Wetcher/20th Century Fox

“So true,” murmurs Jane, played by Katherine Heigl, who clearly knows better. Jane is painfully aware that the sari, plantation gown, kimono or prairie dress she is wearing is destined to join the racks of castoffs in her closet, forlorn and deflated with no place to go.

Bad style takes center stage in the movie, which opens nationally on Jan. 18. The film is filled with wicked if hoary conceits that are bound to resonate with viewers still reliving their own bridal-party nightmares.

Women like Jennifer Pugh, who has close to total recall of a bridesmaid’s dress she was forced to wear a half-dozen years ago. “It was a sort of Pepto-Bismol pink,” said Ms. Pugh, 33, who works as a nanny in Indianapolis. “We had to wear gloves and a crinoline underneath.” More humiliating still, “the dress did not begin to fit,” she said. “I remember thinking, I’m going to have to tell my friend that I can’t be in her wedding.”

Had the wedding been today, her friend could have discovered options: a proliferating selection of bridesmaid’s dresses far hipper and breezier than convention dictates, and certainly more versatile. “Trends today are much kinder to the bridesmaids than they ever were before,” said James Mischka of Badgley Mischka, the evening and bridal wear specialists. For spring, the house is offering a parade of styles that could easily double as cocktail dresses.

“The look these days is much more casual,” Mark Badgley said. They have “migrated from the structured duchess satin kind of gown to styles that are more fluid,” like Badgley Mischka’s tinsel-colored, tissue-taffeta cocktail dress just kicky enough for an Oscars after-party.

Indeed in the ultraconservative bridal industry, which traditionally has been several beats behind current fashion, the news is that bridesmaid’s dresses are beginning to mirror runway trends. Meaning that conventional prom looks and crinoline-propped frocks reminiscent of sunset at Tara are fast losing ground to pert bubble and trapeze shapes Sienna Miller would not snub.

Francesca Pitera, the chief designer for Jim Hjelm, a New York bridal house, is one in a coterie of trendsetters experimenting with progressive details and shapes. For spring, she is offering racer-back dresses and a baby-doll style with diminutive pockets. “Girls are ready for that,” Ms. Pitera said. “They want more fashion-forward looks.”

To say nothing of colors that flirt outright with decadence. Willfully blind to the seasons, designers are countering standard-issue pink, blue and jonquil for spring with shades like champagne, bronze, olive, coffee and even black — versatile colors intended to extend the life of the dress.

“The biggest trend in dresses for the bridal party is the wear-again dress,” said Ramona de la Rosa, the executive vice president for merchandising of David’s Bridal. “A gown that is not in its essence a bridesmaid dress.” The house’s cocktail-party-worthy frocks vary from knee-length to “tea-length,” industry-speak for full, calf-grazing hemlines. She cited the red carpet influence on styles that show off recklessly plunging necklines and backs, and others with custom details.

“Everybody wants to put their personal touch on the dress,” said Lazaro Perez of the Lazaro bridal house. Requests typically include hems and neckline modifications, or a change in fabrics. Some houses are responding with a menu of options meant to render the one-style-fits-all philosophy of bridal-party dressing as quaint as twin beds in the honeymoon suite.

Mr. Badgley pointed out that a variety of shapes accommodate differing body types. For Eva Longoria’s wedding, “there were 12 people in the bridal party,” he recalled, “and they literally chose 12 different styles.”

Not every bridesmaid is so privileged. Given a choice, though, the savviest shun extremes, turning their backs on pencil sheaths and ball gowns alike, in favor of what Laurie Savino, the manager of New York Bridal Couture on Staten Island, calls a modified mermaid line, curvy but not restrictive, and most often strapless. “A look that anyone can wear,” she said.

Conventional? Maybe. But its simplicity is an alternative to the theme-park styles still prevalent in the culture — looks so outré they have spawned a Web site, Uglydress.com. The site, conceived six years ago to help promote a party novelty supply business, has apparently touched a nerve. People write in weekly, attaching snapshots of their own fashion barkers. Current postings include a ruffled crimson saloon dress and a large-bowed confection in what the sender called pole-dancer pink.

Such disasters abound, Tom Nardone, the site’s founder, suggests, because even in these enlightened times, many brides regard the bridesmaid’s dress as “part of the scenery.”

“Brides will choose a dress the same way they choose the cake, the chair covers and, especially, the flowers,” he said. “That’s why you get necklines that match the contours of the calla lilies.”

In “27 Dresses,” themed nuptials vary from a Bollywood-style affair, in which the attendants are required to wear coordinating saris and bindis, to a “Gone With the Wind” extravaganza, complete with tiered skirts, parasols and picture hats. Catherine Marie Thomas, the movie’s costume designer, found ideas on eBay and at local resale shops.

“You’d be surprised at how many gowns of that genre are littered in thrift and vintage stores,” she said. “It’s interesting to see what people discard.” Her foraging trips inspired the kind of wedding drag that even the most enterprising bride could not envision.

“Certainly an underwater wedding would not be for everybody,” Ms. Thomas said drily, alluding to one of the film’s more creative flights. “Not too many people would be happy in a white ruffled bathing suit with an Esther Williams bathing cap.”

Least of all Ms. Thomas, who chose to avert such potentially shaming displays when she was married seven years ago. “You can get a bad rap imposing your taste, your aesthetic, on your friends,” she said.

Her solution? “I eloped.”

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Where Skis Meet Skates

Physical Culture | Gear Test, Cross-Country Skis

By JACK BELL
Published: January 10, 2008

THE cross-country ski has come a long way from the days of wooden slats and bamboo poles. In the last 10 to 15 years, the equipment has undergone drastic changes, resulting in skis that are lighter, faster and stronger. 
  
And a new style of cross-country skiing developed by the American Olympian Bill Koch two decades ago has evolved, attracting committed fitness fanatics. The skating style (think ice-skating on skis) makes for an extreme workout and has grown more rewarding as new racing technologies, including composite materials, trickled down to the equipment for recreational skiers.

Drew Gelinas is the World Cup race technician for the United States Nordic combined team, whose members compete in both ski-jumping and cross-country events. Mr. Gelinas, wearing the Fischer Vasas, left, tested five of the latest models of recreational skate skis at the Soldier Hollow Cross-Country Ski Resort in Midway, Utah, the site of cross-country competition during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games at Salt Lake City.

He rated the skis on glide, feel, ease when climbing hills, stability and overall response.

His caveat: the right fit is essential, because cross-country skis must be matched to height and weight for optimum enjoyment.

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Hospital Cited for Quaid Twins Screwup

by Natalie Finn
Wed, 9 Jan 2008 06:40:49 PM PST

The hospital at the center of the Quaid twin medical mixup has just gotten its wrist slapped.
The California Department of Public Health has issued a 20-page deficiency report detailing the various violations that resulted in Dennis Quaid's newborn twins and one other patient receiving an accidental overdose of anticlotting medication at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in November.
Daughter Zoe Grace and son Thomas Boone ended up in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit Nov. 18 after nurses mistakenly administered a 10,000 unit/milliliter solution of the blood thinner heparin, often used to flush out IV lines, rather than the 10 unit/milliliter dosage prescribed for infants.

After a doctor noticed that the twins were oozing blood around their IVs, they were diagnosed and treated with protamine, which reverses the effects of heparin, per the report obtained by E! Online.
The Quaid babies, now two months old, appear to have made a complete recovery. "Everything looks good," the family's attorney said when the twins were released from the hospital Dec. 4. (The third baby didn't need the antidote and was discharged the night after receiving the overdose.)
"This violation involved multiple failures by the facility to adhere to established policies & procedures for safe medication use," the report reads, going on to cite a number of rules not followed, including a failure to "re-emphasize the facility-identified high-alert, high-risk medication heparin with pharmacy warning labels, segregation and double-checking."
A lawsuit filed last month by the Quaids against heparin maker Baxter Healthcare Corp. charges that the manufacturer has created a dangerous situation by using nearly identical labels to identify the 10-unit and 10,000-unit solutions.
A statement released by Cedars-Sinai at the time admitted that "preventable errors made by pharmacy and nursing staff," who failed to double-check the labels, "caused the wrong concentration of heparin to be used."
"These violations caused, or were likely to cause, serious injury or death to the patients who received the wrong medication," the CDPH's report concluded. "The facility [sic] systemic practices involving these failures to follow facility policies & protocols also had a potential to affect all patients in the hospital."
An internal investigation at Cedars-Sinai resulted in similar findings, according to a statement from chief medical officer Dr. Michael L. Langberg, and steps have already been taken to retrain staff, segregate the high-concentration heparin and review all policies and practices involving high-risk meds.
"While this is a rare event, we are pleased that the [public health department] shares our view that it is an important opportunity for the entire institution to explore any and all ways we can further improve medication safety," Langberg said.
The hospital has been fully cooperative in the agency's investigation, Kathleen Billingsley, deputy director of the Center for Healthcare Quality, told the Los Angeles Times Wednesday.
Cedars-Sinai has 10 days to respond to the deficiency report, to ensure that patients are no longer "in immediate jeopardy," before the CDPH decides on a course of action.

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