[Wow, I couldn't spell anything]

Last year I started go to a Turkish bath house in the East Village about once a month. It was so much fun: I would get totally overheated, jump in a freezing pool, rinse, and repeat. People sometimes make made jokes about sexual behavior there, but I never say saw anything.

Now, there’s this:

An ex-masseuse at the famed Russian and Turkish Baths says sexual high jinks at the East Village spa were too much for her to deal with – and she’s a former call girl and dominatrix.

In a $100 million Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit, Susan Shellogg says she was “was strongly urged” by her bosses “to engage in sexual activity with clients,” and was routinely exposed to male-on-female, female-on-female, male-on-male and solo sex acts – and that doesn’t include the fetish porn she was told to watch.

“This was a terrible way to earn a living,” said Shellogg’s lawyer, Mark Lubelsky. “This goes beyond the bounds of decent civilized society.”

I honestly had no idea.

I just did a radio interview with an AM radio host and he asked for my prediction for how the Sopranos will end. I said that a Soprano family member will die. Not very insightful, but I hate guessing about these things. He thought that Tony never woke up after being shot by Junior last season, and would wake up and discover this was all a dream. Not very inventive.

One thing that will happen: I will cancel my HBO subscription after tonight. The Sopranos is the only reason I’ve kept it; otherwise I just use it to zone out and watch movies like the War of the Worlds over and over again when I’m too tired to think.

The bigger question, of course, is if she’s still hot in light of this behavior.

Tags: Kate Moss

It didn’t last in part because Eugene was a dick, and in part because I was a dick. He was obsessed with how “punk rock” things were. He once told the singer of another band I was in that he wasn’t punk rock, that he didn’t even know “who Nick Cave and Bad Seeds are.” It’s a stupid obsession because, if you want to break it down, nobody is really punk rock. Even Sid Vicious might have done some softy thing in between slashing his arms with broken glass. Nevertheless, Eugene gave me and others the insult he considered the harshest of all, the tragedy of not being punk rock enough. I would soon discover that I don’t have the stomach for being in a rock band at all.

I ended up going to college in Vermont and Eugene moved to New York, and through the years I would hear about his new band, Gogol Bordello, and how good they were, about how he changed his named to Eugene Hutz for some reason, and about his life as a model who appeared on the covers of European fashion magazines.

Yesterday Darren sent me a link to the trailer for the new film, Everything is Illuminated, adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer’s hugely successful novel. I remember reviews of the book that mentioned a comic character in the book, a Ukrainian who mangles English in cute ways. I hadn’t thought about that for a while (though recently I did walk by Jonathan Safran Foer and his wife, Nicole Krauss, in my neighborhood, which made me feel cool for about two seconds).

So Darren sent me the link to the trailer, and I watched it. That funny Ukrainian sidekick? He’s played by Eugene Hutz! My Eugene Hutz! His name is even second on the poster, right after the star of the film, Elijah Wood! It’s totally insane to watch the trailer and see Eugene talking in the same accent I remember, acting as the comic sidekick to Elijah Wood. I’m happy for him, and I’m sure he’s great.

But one question comes to mind: is it really punk rock enough?

Tags: Hutz| Gogol Bordello| Safran Foer

Maybe I’m overly sensitive to this kind of fluff, but placing this article in this section of web site is like celebrity culture looking at itself in the mirror.

He has this advice for those who are obsessed with celebrity gossip: “Go kiss someone and go get something to eat and take a nap, you’re going to be fine, kid.”

It’s like opening a copy of People and reading, “What we do is completely ridiculous.”

The best part, though, is that after they get the commentary on celebrity out of the way, the hard-hitting questions start:

Vaughn said he wouldn’t be good at picking up women at a wedding because he doesn’t like blind dates.
“You don’t really know the person. You’re kind of forced into the situation where you’re not really comfortable,” the 35-year-old actor said. “It is easier, I think, to meet someone and say, `Let’s meet out somewhere. Or both bring our friends.’ And that way, there’s less of a pressure on it, you’re more comfortable.”

Thank the lord for that piece of insight.

Technorati Tags: celebrity| media| vince vaughan

“During the announcement remarks, George W. Bush unveiled a (to me, at least) entirely new facial movement, and it was a trimphant debut, since the movement/tic/signal was repeated more than a dozen times. I have no idea what it means, but a new Presidential facial movement, well into the second term, is exciting enough on its own terms.”

I’m glad Nicole and I weren’t suffering from a group hallucination—or maybe that’s what was happening to Georgie?

Technorati Tags: George Bush| jaw movements| John Roberts| Supreme Court