{"id":919,"date":"2006-04-19T18:24:20","date_gmt":"2006-04-19T23:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bald-win\/"},"modified":"2006-04-19T18:24:20","modified_gmt":"2006-04-19T23:24:20","slug":"bald-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bald-win","title":{"rendered":"Bald Win!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I follow Page 6<\/a> in the New York Post<\/em> pretty devotedly. I’ve never been one for the supermarket tabloids & gossip mags, with their overriding fixation with pregnancy<\/a>, but Page 6 usually gets is just right, with embarrassing celebrity stories, blind items that Amy & I occasionally suss out, and a seeming moratorium on Paris Hilton items.<\/p>\n

I don’t link to the items because they go dead within a week, and it always makes me sad to look over blog-archives and find dead links. I’ve got issues.<\/p>\n

Anyway, in the past week, Page 6 raised an interesting question in the VM household. See, a few months ago, there was an item about Stephen Baldwin’s<\/a> residence in near(ish)by Nyack, NY. Baldwin, a born-again Christian, so objected to a local porno store, he began writing down the license plates of cars in its parking lot, for publication in the local paper. <\/p>\n

Last week, the column reported that Baldwin’s moving out of Nyack for another town in Westchester. The thing is, the item referred to him as “the least-famous Baldwin.”<\/p>\n

Well, we thought, it’s pretty easy to say that Alec<\/a>‘s the best known, but what about the rest? I know Daniel Baldwin<\/a> best from his crack-binge blowout a few years ago, but Amy sez he’s pretty well known from being on Homicide<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But Billy<\/a>? More famous than Stephen? Sure, he’s married to Chynna Phillips, but could we really say that Billy’s Dagwood Bumstead haircut in Sliver<\/a> outranked the “Oswald was a pussy” line from The Usual Suspects<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Fortunately, a week later, they followed up with an item referring to Stephen as “[t]he third-most famous of the acting Baldwin brothers,” which sounds better. Unfortunately, the item was about how Baldwin’s actually moving because he’s stuck for cash.<\/p>\n

All of which gets me to this weekend’s movie revelation: The Cooler<\/a>. Sure, William H. Macy was great as a down-on-everybody’s-luck casino jinx, and Maria Bello was flat-out great to look at, but Alec Baldwin was absolutely fantastic as the casino owner. I was amazed at how he devoured the role without playing up the “Look at me! I’m Alec Baldwin!” face. He seemed to revel in the past-his-prime-ness of the character.<\/p>\n

He’ll always be the most famous of the Baldwins to me. Even if Page 6 reports more terrible details of his custody fights with Kim Basinger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I follow Page 6 in the New York Post pretty devotedly. I’ve never been one for the supermarket tabloids & gossip mags, with their overriding fixation with pregnancy, but Page 6 usually gets is just right, with embarrassing celebrity stories, blind items that Amy & I occasionally suss out, and a seeming moratorium on Paris … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Bald Win!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-eP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1865,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/a-map-of-miss-reading","url_meta":{"origin":919,"position":0},"title":"A Map of Miss Reading","author":"Gil","date":"January 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Picking up my mail this afternoon, I noticed a Pottery Barn catalog with the tagline, \"NEW REDUCED DELIVERY CHARGES ON MORE THAN 65 ITEMS!\" My reaction? \"Why, if I order more than 65 items from these jokers, I sure hope I would get reduced delivery charges!\" Then I thought about\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1461,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/progress-i-guess","url_meta":{"origin":919,"position":1},"title":"Progress, I guess","author":"Gil","date":"April 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"At my glamorous day job, I receive a ton of e-mail from PR firms. They pitch articles, send over news items, and announce events and new product launches. Sometimes, they enclose pictures, which is always nice; I can't remember the last time I actually had to go to the \"scanner\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":707,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/rss-thang","url_meta":{"origin":919,"position":2},"title":"RSS thang","author":"Gil","date":"October 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"If you're on a Mac and you're not happy with the RSS feed on Safari (or you haven't upgraded to Tiger), you oughtta give NetNewsWire from Ranchero a try. It's got a smooth interface and doesn't hog memory like Thunderbird. I can't figure out how to delete old items yet,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9390,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/fear-of-a-square-planet","url_meta":{"origin":919,"position":3},"title":"Fear of a Square Planet","author":"Gil","date":"January 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I just launched the monthly bonus podcast for The Virtual Memories Show, called Fear of a Square Planet! It's only for patrons\/supporters of the podcast, so visit my Patreon or Paypal page to make a contribution to the show, and you'll get access to the new podcast, along with other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"foasp_logo_color_square_500px","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/foasp_logo_color_square_500px-440x440.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1343,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bizspeak","url_meta":{"origin":919,"position":4},"title":"Bizspeak","author":"Gil","date":"February 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I read a lot of financial earnings statements at my job. I learned early on that \"pro forma\" and \"adjusted\" numbers, intended to give a true reflection of a company's performance, are usually crap, and that when a company takes a different \"extraordinary charge\" each quarter, then they're not so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5263,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/keeping-it-unreal-coming-up-short","url_meta":{"origin":919,"position":5},"title":"Keeping It Unreal \/ Coming Up Short","author":"Gil","date":"May 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A few days ago, I wrote about my disappointment at visiting The Liquor Store, J. Crew's men's boutique in TriBeCa. I mentioned the $250 straw hats as one of the \"not found in our other stores or catalogs!\" items. It turns out that the store has an even wackier waste\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fashion"","block_context":{"text":"Fashion","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/fashion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}