Last week, I showed you an e-mail that was circulating around Lowell House from a would-be Natalie Portman biography. And whaddya know—he reads my column! Unfortunately (and I know I’m gonna get another e-mail from him over this), a blockmate went to Amazon.com and found that not only does he have a sketchy resume (sample titles include: Dixie’s Dirty Secret: The True Story of How the Government, the Media, and the Mob Conspired to Combat Integration and the Vietnam Antiwar Movement, Last Suppers: If the World Ended Tomorrow, What Would Be Your Last Meal? and Dixie Chicks: Down-Home and Backstage), but the reviews of his past work were less than glowing (i.e. “Throughout the book, Dickerson’s judgment is questionable.”)

Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 01:54:54 EDT

From: Portmanbook@cs.com

To: schainan@fas.harvard.edu

Dear Soman,

Well, I can’t promise to write a biography on you, but I can certainly put you in my book about NP—and that’s a start : ) I do have one complaint—and it is a minuscule one at that—but you misspelled my name. James Dickinson is the piano player on the Stones’ classic “Wild Horses” and the father of the drummer and lead singer of the North Mississippi Allstars. I’m just a simple scribe who lives in a van down by the river. Or something like that. Thanks for mentioning my email.    

James Dickerson

TREND-O-RAMA: ONE MORE TIME

Everyone is risk-averse these days. Everyone wants to play it safe. Why? Where’s the harm is going out on a limb, being creative, being —gasp!—original? I want bigger, better, bolder! Instead, we get the same recycled doo-doo—is it any surprise that plagiarism seems to be such a trend-o-rama? Perhaps the saying should have been, “There’s no business like old business.” Let me explain...

When NBC started advertising its new game show “The Weakest Link” as “Survivor” crossed with “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” I groaned inwardly and looked for popcorn to throw at the television set. To make matters worse, this thoroughly unoriginal concept was also, like “Millionaire,” to be imported straight from Britain without even the slightest tinkering. And to play it as safe as humanly possible, the producers imported the host straight from the Brits too—no friendly banter with the host, no sympathetic encouragement from cuddly Reege, not even a trace of the good old American dream. This time it was all about authenticity—if we were going to get “The Weakest Link,” we were going to get every last bit of it, even if it meant enduring unpleasant tongue-lashings from that most terrifying of dragonladies, Anne Robinson. The effect, of course, is wonderfully comical. Robinson’s sneers, biting barbs, and unmerciful teasing seems to suggest that we’re back to pre-1776 America (Oh, this is totally random, but I once heard of a porn movie called Seventeen-Seventy-Sex: The Declaration of In-the-Panties. Cute, no?). Only this time—both because the contestants are uniformly moronic and because all the responses to Robinson’s quips seem to be edited out—there will be no Battle of Bunker Hill and certainly no Tea Party (though a friend suggested that the contestants all vote Anne off as the weakest link). Besides the whole colonization motif, the show also has a number of other things going against it. The set-up of the game makes it impossible to win any money, the all-too-fluorescent set and wretched music score suggest that NBC put all of the show’s budget into Robinson’s salary, the contestants can’t seem to understand a word the host says, the words “weakest link” are uttered so often that they’ve become a mainstay in my nightmares and nobody seems to be having even a smidgeon of fun. Where’s Supermarket Sweep when you need it?

On the same night that “The Weakest Link” bored audiences around the country, Michael Jackson gave us all another dose of the heebie-jeebies when he announced that he’ll reunite with the Jackson 5 for an MTV concert in September. This concert, incidentally, is to celebrate… himself. Yes, yes, the self-appointed King of Pop is holding the bash to commemorate his lasting “thirty years as a solo artist.” Who holds concerts to celebrate their own longevity? Sigh. Michael can try his darndest to turn back the clock, but it’s just going to go on ticking. (I’ll tune in if they promise to have Elizabeth Taylor give an unrehearsed introductory monologue. Her spectacular flub on live TV was the highlight of the Golden Globes!)

Let’s just pray that Madonna will show us that an old dog can learn new tricks. She announced concert tour dates on Tuesday for the “Drowned World” tour that will cover Europe and the States during the summer. But the catch, of course, is that where “The Weakest Link” and “Michael’s Tribute to Himself” can be seen for free on a tube near you, getting tix to a Madonna concert is a slightly more complicated enterprise. Sigh. The good stuff comes at a hefty price, but poo-poo comes for free. (And speaking of poo-poo, did anybody see Josie and the Pussycats this weekend? Yeesh!)

IN THE KNOW SUPERSTAR!

It Boy: Johnnie Lee ’01… So last week I went on and on about how much everybody loves Chris Pierce ’02. Well, not everybody loves Johnnie Lee. That’s understandable. The boy is, after all, one of Harvard’s most talented musicians, In the (K)now’s most loyal reader, and, as In the (K)now It Girl Alejandra Casillas ’01 eloquently puts it, “hotter than Texas in August.” Who wouldn’t be jealous of Johnnie Lee?

SOMAN’S SHORTS

www.somanintheknow.com. Workin’ it for the pleasure of the people…All the movies coming out for the next month look terrible. Ick. (And for those who think Pearl Harbor will be see-worthy, I make a very bad face at you. I believed the positive buzz around Armaggeddon and came out of it with an excruciating headache and bad-cinematography-induced nausea.) The only thing that’s keeping me going is the possibility for Moulin Rouge to be a creative tour de force…Speaking of Moulin Rouge, the new Nicole Kidman spread in Interview magazine is wonderfully insightful. Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann does the interview, so check it out… Freddie Prinze Jr. is gonna play Fred in the Scooby Doo movie, so one day my blocking group went around trying to figure out who each of us would be if we starred in the adaptation. I thought that I’d make a darn good Scooby, but when my name came up, everybody unanimously declared, “Daphne.” I am so not Daphne… Steve Buscemi got stabbed in the throat in a bar brawl this past weekend. Yikes! According to his publicist, he’s “ok” and currently looking for plastic surgeons to attend to his wounds… www.pimpwar.com. It’s got sass… Supposedly blond curly boys are the hot new models on the runway. And this is just after Justin Timberlake shaved off his flaxen locks. Tragedy… Speaking of Timberlake, he’s writing a book called Crossover Dribble about a teenage basketball star with the last name “Woodriver.” Timberlake. Woodriver. Timberlake. Woodriver. Get it? Get it?… Ahh, prefrosh weekend. Gotta love it. I remember when I was a prefrosh. I got to my room in Holworthy and the first thing my hosts said was, “Wanna play Booty Call?” I was like, “What’s Booty Call?” One snickered and said, “We all go out into the Yard and have 20 minutes to get a prefrosh girl back onto our bed. Don’t have to make out with her. Just get her onto the bed in 20 minutes.” Keep track of your scores. I’ll give a Scooby Snack to the room with the highest totals.

www.somanintheknow.com