Pitt-y party

This isn't Gawker Stalker, but it is an excuse for a quick post. Brad Pitt is currently one floor above me, in the office of my former editor, presumably having a little chat with a real-world journalist to prepare for his role in State of Play (Robert Redford loses his crown as the glitziest student of The Washington Post's cinema school; he spent weeks in the newsroom in 1976 for All the President's Men). If you ever want to send a bunch of hard-nosed journalists into a tizzy, circulate a rumor that Brangelina's on the premises. The whole fourth floor cleared and pretended to have business on the fifth. People have been circling the office like vultures. A nonchalant stroll through the area revealed Pitt inside, in a gray cap, taking notes.

One of the managing editors just sent this notice out to everyone via the internal messaging system: Would anyone disagree with me that in the last 30 minutes, the entire newsroom has forfeited its right to ever high-hat pop culture again?

This, of course, has prompted a global dialogue as staffers lob statements of pith across the whole system:

As many a child has said to their parents, You guys are embarrassing me!

Says the woman who passed the office and then double backed on her way to her desk.

I'm not in the building, and yet even I am suffused with the glow of His presence via receipt of minute-by-minute accounts from various parties, attesting to the magnificent wonderfulness of the Coming, and the degree of their propinquity thereto.

no fair for all far-flung bureau reporters!!

i wouldn't say that. I'm in kabul and I feel like i'm there...

he's ugly, you ain't missing nuthin'

Mr. Pitt! Can I call you Brad? The Post's Alexandria bureau is really really nice....and so very welcoming!

Yeah, well, Clive Owen just showed up at the MoCo bureau, with ELEPHANTS!

Everybody hide your babies!!!

Starlets & scofflaws

This blog is more than two years old, and I've yet to mention Lindsay Lohan and the Hilton heiress (such restraint!) ...until now. The Lohan was arrested for DUI or something and the heiress might be going to jail, or something, because she didn't pay parking tickets, or something. Whatever. The point is this wonderful article about silent screen star Bebe Daniels (whom my aunts lunched with in London in 1970; long story). A 19-year-old Daniels was arrested and jailed in 1921 after she was caught going 30 mph over the speed limit in Santa Ana. Read the article. All of it. The details are sensational. My conclusion: the intensity of our celebrity-mongering hasn't changed in 86 years, but the tone of it has. We tar and feather our mischievous/woebegone celebrities with extreme prejudice today. In days of yore, people were a mite more classy with the tough love.