FRIDAY, JULY 30

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Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tweeted her opinions of President Barack Obama's interview on "The View" this morning.

Palin wrote: "President with no time to visit porous US/Mexican border to offer help to those risking life to secure us, but lotso' (lots of) time to chat on 'The View?'"

A later tweet read: "I'm headed to border in near future... let's see how quickly his travel schedule will allow that border visit after all."

Earlier this summer, The CW announced that on the new season of "90210" it would be revealed that one of its three leading men would be gay: The three in question are Liam (Matt Lanter), Navid (Michael Steger) and Teddy (Trevor Donovan). Now ET talks to two of the guys to get their take.

"It is going to happen," Trevor tells ET, at the same time denying that he knows which of the hotties it is going to be. "I would be flattered if [it was me]. What a great chance to use your acting chops a little bit to dive into a different kind of character. That is why we do this."

Michael adds, "They are approaching it with respect. I know Adrianna (Jessica Lowndes) had an experimentation phase last year, but this year they are going to go the full arc and take it seriously. Not that they weren't last year, but it is going to be a shock."

The ladies of "The View" asked President Barack Obama a series of questions, even having the president weigh in on Mel Gibson and Lindsay Lohan.

In a sit-down interview with Obama that aired on "The View" this morning, July 29, Joy Behar asked the Commander-in-chief, "Does Mel Gibson need anger management?" Obama, seemingly taken aback by the question, jokingly responded, "Let me answer that Afghanistan question." He then added diplomatically, "I haven't seen a Mel Gibson movie in a while." Obama told the ladies that he had not heard the leaked audio tapes of the actor lashing out at his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva.

Behar also asked the president, "Do you know that Lindsay Lohan is in jail?" He answered, "I actually know that. ... It was in the ether out there."

"The Price is Right" host Drew Carey has a whole new look, dropping at least 80 pounds!

Debuting his slim frame at CBS' Television Critics Association Party on Wednesday night in LA, Drew almost didn't get into the bash. The game show host said, "They didn't recognize me coming in here. I went to park my car and they were like, 'Whoa, whoa, sir, sir.' I said, 'I'm with CBS on 'The Price is Right.' I kind of blew by him and parked downstairs. One guy came up to me and he goes, 'I'm really sorry about the confusion, you just don't look the same.'"

He shared a similar story about customs officers in South Africa. "I went to the World Cup and I was going through passport patrol and people were looking at my passport and doing a double take everywhere I went," he said.

Eric Christian Olsen got a phone call recently that made him jump for joy. After guest starring on "NCIS: Los Angeles," the hit CBS show decided to make him a series regular. He told ET at CBS' Television Critics Association Party on Wednesday night in LA what it is like on the explosive set.

"It's like shooting a 'Bond' film every week," he said of the guns, bombs, and action sequences. His character Marty Deeks is an undercover LAPD officer who is hired as a liaison for the NCIS unit.

The handsome star faced the macho LL Cool J in the fighting ring. "I was super excited, but also completely terrified. I weigh like 180 pounds and he weighs 245," he said of his on screen opponent. "We had this huge four minute fight scene, all choreographed. We didn't use doubles. It was just him and I. But he's so good and so athletic, that he's careful."

The horn line on “Darkest Light,” the 1975 jam from French funk act Lafayette Afro Rock Band — you’d know it if you heard it — is one of those timeless hip-hop samples, and appears as the centerpiece of Jay-Z’s “Show Me What You Got,” Public Enemy’s “Show ‘Em Whatcha Got,” and Wreckx-N-Effect's “Rump Shaker” (along with tracks from a whole bunch of other people). Also, now, on a song by Britney Spears! A new batch of outtakes (coming hot on the heels of the serendipitous release of her “Telephone” demo) has surfaced, and it includes “Mad Love,” a flirty slow jam built around the familiar Lafayette riff. Otherwise, not much to say here: Whoever made the call to leave these tracks on the studio floor — there’s also the stern “Am I a Sinner” and the anti-monogamy “When I Say So,” which features the lyrics “you’re feeling me, my jeans, my baby tee” — did the right thing (by the way, Spears was supposedly recording a new album for this summer, but Idolator theorizes these particular tracks are leftovers from 2001’s Britney). Still, it is nice that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re willing to trudge through random Britney demos as if they were unmarked tapes from the Sgt. Pepper sessions or something.

"Mad Love"

"Am I a Sinner"

"When I Say So" at Idolator.

Read more posts by Amos Barshad

Filed Under: right-click, britney spears, music

The season-four premiere of Mad Men didn't just introduce SCDP’s cute new office and Peggy's adorable new haircut, it set up what could be this fetishistic show's kinkiest sexual relationship yet: Don Draper, the “son of a whore,” is regularly sleeping with a prostitute — and asking her to slap him, too. As far as mainstream TV dramas go, this is fairly unprecedented stuff: Masochism is typically treated as joke (Desperate Housewives) or as prelude to grisly murder (CSI). On Mad Men, however, Don’s shocking but brief, slap-happy sexual interlude is not just stratospherically, nakedly Oedipal, it makes sense — both for him, and as a kind of mirror of fans' obsession with the show. Weiner could kill this story line at any minute, but it will be fascinating to see how far he pushes it — and us.

(SPOILER ALERT: According to IMDb, we'll see the escort, Candace, again, in episode three, when Don "goes to Acapulco." Cast lists beyond that episode are not available.)

For three seasons, Don has crafted alluring commercial fantasies while working through a retinue of sexual fantasies: the dream girl, the bohemian, the mother figure, and even the worthy adversary, Bobbie Barrett, who shared Don's most consistent kink: "Being bad, and then going home and being good." Now that his favorite fetish is off the menu, he's found another.

Here's how it unfolds: "I don't have much time," Candace, the redheaded prostitute says. "I have supper with my family. Should I not mention my family?" Don smiles warmly when he answers, "No, it's fine." (Don may actually get off on the idea that the escort is a mother, perhaps reminding him of his own.) While Candace is riding him and sweating, he orders her to leave on her brassiere — probably because he likes the dress-up, the role-playing, and can't resist art directing. "Stop telling me what to do — I know what you want," she says. "So do it." And then she slaps him. "Again … " More slaps. Even after a blow, Don's chiseled face looks blank as ever.

Maybe Don is just another executive top who likes to play bottom for kicks. Perhaps he wants to be punished for his divorce. Maybe Don — who once told Bobbie, "I don't feel anything" — just needs to keep creating more extreme sexual experiences in order to feel something. But Don likely wants to be punished because he knows he's such an epic fraud. (Recently on NPR, Matt Weiner compared Dick Whitman's "false self" Don Draper to Norma Jean Mortensen's Marilyn Monroe.) And Don's most secret shame is that he was only conceived because his father was too much of a cheapskate to spring for a "sheath": He’s still afraid that he's just like pops.

"Stop telling me what to do, I know what you want," is also the kind of line you can imagine Matt Weiner (or Damon Lindelof or J.J. Abrams) saying to a demanding, obsessive, needy fans, who are practically tied down to the bedposts of a long TV series. In some way, showrunners are TV’s doms: They control the narrative, and fans’ access to pleasure, but they ultimately serve at the bottoms' leisure (we pay in Nielsen points). Mad Men, in particular, has always thrived because of its particularly obsessive fandom, with its object (the typewriters, the fonts) and fashion fetishes (the skirts, the suits). Mad Men is built to be the kind of show you lust after, obsess over, and role-play on Halloween in a tight little skirt and big red wig. Whether you’re into Silver Foxes or Brassy Bombshells or Perky Secretaries or Nerdy Catholic Girls or just plain Tall, Dark, and Mysterious, Mad Men has your vintage fetish covered.

But Mad Men's biggest turn-on isn't just the style: It's always been the kink, the naughtiness, the flat-out wrongness of it all. Sex is never white-bread or healthy, it is Illicit, adulterous, violent, or just plain weird, it's always naughty, always bad. ("Being bad is sexy," Christina Hendricks explained to us last year.) And because of the period, there's an exaggerated titillation to intercourse as art-directed here: Sex that isn't really all that crazy by CW standards can suddenly seem wild (Don's having sex in a car?!) as if nostalgia is a kind of kink multiplier, making every act of vintage copulation at least 40 percent hotter than it would be today. The show's eroticism thrums with this element of disaster sex (screwing while Vietnam rages) and with this tension between nostalgic pleasure (those sexy fonts) and historical pain (racism, sexism, homophobia).

Mainly, though, sex on Mad Men is bad. We love that it's bad. And we may even want to be punished for how much we enjoy watching it. There are very few sex scenes that aren't followed by something crazily harsh. The show often balances our pleasure with punishment: Roger Sterling has an office romp with a twin, then he has a heart attack. Pete and Peggy have a hot affair, then he gets engaged and she gets pregnant. Sal finds a bellhop: The building catches on fire. Joan finds a handsome doctor: She gets raped. Don gets his name on the door: He gets slapped. If you're a fan, these wrenching reversals can be painful — but they're also what give the show its edge.
Like Don, Mad Men fans like the feeling of being bad for an hour before we go back to being good. And, like Don, maybe fans like getting slapped around a little, too.

Read more posts by Logan Hill

Filed Under: sexcapades, mad men, tv

The synthy indie-pop track is his "new song about Bible Prophecy and Barack Obama."

[Videogum]

Read more posts by Edith Zimmerman

Filed Under: music, clickables, video

Last night’s challenge on Bravo’s Work of Art didn’t exactly bring out the best in our six remaining artist-testants, who were paired up and charged with making works that embodied opposing ideas or forces.

Ultimately, it was fry cook/photographer Mark Velasquez who got the boot after he and teammate Peregrine Honig got a bit too didactic with their heaven-hell motif (not to mention personal — the piece was inspired by the stomach rupture that nearly killed Velasquez when he was 18). Velasquez took the morning off to chat with us from Santa Maria, California, where he continues to make art and, of course, flip eggs.

You and Peregrine haven’t always seen eye to eye. Were you nervous when you were paired with her for this challenge?
Yeah. Mainly, I knew she wasn’t handling the pressure all that well at that time and it’s really hard to work in a team, especially when it’s just a pair, when the other person is really kind of skiddish and afraid. She was a bit defensive and it was hard to deal with. So that makes you have to compromise more if you want to be considered a team player.

Were you happy with the image you produced?
Overall, I think I did the best I could. I had applied a lot more things to the image. With my stomach I can’t eat popcorn; I can’t eat nuts; I can’t eat certain things. And I took photos of all that and tried to collage it. But the concept of heaven in my mind is absence — less is more. In heaven I would think there are less things to worry about and have fears of instead belaboring it with tons of things. The best way I could [communicate that] was to make it very light and simple and have the light behind the scar coming out. Of course the judges didn’t see it that way, but that’s fine.

Had you ever made work about this scar/surgery/brush-with-death experience?
Oh yeah. I had done that when I was 18 or so. So not only did I never really see it as hell, I just saw it as something that I had definitely gotten over. When I woke up from surgery the doctors were very afraid to talk to me about it because they thought I was going to lose my mind. And I just said, "Well, what’s it going to take for me to get better?" Okay — let’s do this thing! Why sit there and freak out about it? The fact that Peregrine would say, “Oh my God! I see that as hell … ” I went through it and I don’t see it as hell, so that says a lot more about her than it does about me. Again, I agreed to do it and I take full responsibility for being a part of it. And the image I ended up with, I thought, was pretty nice.

Was there another specific image you had wanted to make?
I posted an image on my Facebook page of the image I wanted to make. And I’m really proud of it. But at the same time, I don’t think the judges would have liked that one either because it’s too literal. It’s a nude woman from behind ascending into heaven in a very tasteful way. I think it’s a really good, pretty, beautiful image and I used one of my favorite models in town, a young 18-year-old girl who’s got two years left to live and is dying of Lyme disease.

Is this the sort of image you wanted to take of Peregrine? When you asked her if she’d be comfortable posing for you nude?
Yeah. But that was another thing — she said she’d be uncomfortable with nudity yet in the first challenge, Nicole didn’t want to get naked and Peregrine made a drawing of her nude. And Peregrine runs a lingerie store — she’s used to nudity. But apparently she’s just not comfortable with her own nudity. But again, that’s fine. You have to work within the parameters that you have.

Did you feel that, throughout your time on the show, you got to communicate who you really are as an artist?
People really have too high a mind for the show’s challenges. I hear a lot from the established art world who say, “Oh man! Gosh! You guys really should have done better!” When really you have twelve hours, no resources, no outside stimuli whatsoever. You’re basically doing homework assignments. And you’re doing homework assignments for four people whose criteria kind of changes every week. So you never really know what you’re doing. I tried to make work that fit each challenge, but was true to myself. Whether that’s successful or not, it’s just four people’s opinions on the planet. So again, I’m going to sleep fine thinking that Jerry Saltz doesn’t like my work. That’s fine. The pieces that I was most proud of got very little acclaim or no notice at all. But this wasn’t my target audience. My target audience is people who are welders and blue-collar workers but are well-rounded and educated enough to be able to get things. The common man is much smarter than the art world gives him credit for.

Did you feel like you learned anything from the crits with the judges?
In their eyes, the work that I was presenting was a little too safe or a little too contrived. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make a lot of the work that I normally make. Usually, the critiques I get in my daily work is “too over-the-top,” “too crazy,” or “too shocking.” Yet all of a sudden I get there and I’m the safe quiet guy. I’m like, What? How is that possible? But without access to models, without access to the things that I’m used to, of course it’s going to be a little bit of a challenge. Ryan takes nine months to make an oil painting and then the critique is saying that the painting isn’t finished … What do you want from us? It’s telling that there’s no real artist as a constant judge on the panel. They’re all critics and gallery people. It would be really interesting to have someone on the judging panel that has worked in the studio, someone that has had to deal with critics being judgmental for absolutely no reason. I think that would have been much more interesting to see.

China Chow got super-emotional when she had to eliminate you — real live tears, even. Did that come as a shock?
I was very touched. I’m a sensitive guy, and China — for as much as she’s shown on TV for being a fashionista and cold and deliberate, which she has to be for the show — our experience with her behind the camera, she was very goofy and funny and silly and full of life. I think that’s why I was emotional in my exit confessional interview. To see someone like that who, you know, she dated Keanu Reeves for Christ’s sake! And she’s crying over me? That’s pretty kick-ass.

You’re from a small town on the West Coast. What were your impressions of the New York art world?
I went to art school in Seattle and I was represented by a gallery in Seattle. The Seattle art world isn’t the same as the New York art world, but it’s big enough that I learned pretty quickly about the car salesmanship of the art world. [Being on the show] reminded me of things I had forgotten — or chosen to forget — in my experience of being represented by a gallery. I do come from a small town and I am, essentially, one generation away from field workers, but at the same time I’ve lived in that world also. So I’m not naïve; I’m not blind to how it works. But it still shocks me to see so much of that stuff is still sort of cliquish and high school-ish. And a few of the younger contestants on the show were so obsessed with being in a gallery where, in my experience, I learned that being in a gallery means nothing. You make no money from it because the gallery’s making money from it. Just like a band wanting to be signed to a record label — you don’t wake up a millionaire one day.

So what’s next?
I still flip burgers — I took the morning off from making egg sandwiches so I could talk to you. But I leave in the afternoon. I’m still able to go and take photos. I’m working on a new ironic bikini calendar. Not erotic, ironic. I just published my first photo book that seems to be getting a decent response. I’m also working on a bimonthly magazine. I’m busier than I’ve ever been! That’s not to say that I’m making all kinds of money at it, but the goal of any artist is to make enough money to keep making art. And as long as I can do that, I consider myself a success.

Read Jerry Saltz's recap here.

Read more posts by Rachel Wolff

Filed Under: work of art, tv

All eyes on the eyes. (Business Casual is due out September 14; a free MP3 of the song is still available at the Smoking Section.)

[Pitchfork]

Read more posts by Edith Zimmerman

Filed Under: music, chromeo, clickables, mp3s, video