Dear Celebrities/Celebrity photographers,

Please, for the love of god, stop "re-creating" the following things for your photo shoots: anything Marilyn Monroe has ever done, anything Brigitte Bardot has ever done, anything James Dean has ever done, anything Bettie Page has ever done, The Wizard of Oz (I'm looking at you, New York), that late-night diner painting, anything from the '80s in an attempt to be ironic, Barbarella, Audrey Hepburn's cigarette holder and pearls photo from Breakfast at Tiffany's, scenes from Bond movies, the Abbey Road album cover, or the Rat Packers doing anything, especially in Vegas. It is played. It makes dead people roll around in their graves. Nobody likes that.

And just in case you get any ideas, don't start re-creating: Dogs Playing Poker, Britney's crotch shots, Einstein's "Wazzup?!" photo, Friends drinking milkshakes, the Pink Floyd back catalog poster every stoner has in their dorm room, Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, this thing, or this thing.

Love,
TWoP

Soooooo . . . what do we think about the forthcoming CW/Tyra Banks production Stylista? I just watched a clip for it and am on the fence. I mean obviously I will be watching it faithfully when it starts airing this fall, if only to bitch about its melodramatic treatment of the hollow, vapid world that is fashion, specifically the Elle Magazine fashion department. But in watching the three-minute trailer, I can't help but have some Major Metropolitan Misgivings. First and foremost, could they bite The Devil Wears Prada premise any more? We all know that TDWP was art imitating life (if the Lauren Weisberger tell-all-turned-movie can be considered "art" in any way, shape or form). And in imitating life, there was ample, broad-stroke hyperbole. But now we're coming full-circle. All the dramatic embellishments that made TDWP enjoyable -- faggy, bitchy fashion people reveling in their shallowness, holier than thou editrixes (sic?) putting peons through the paces with demeaning tasks that had nothing to do with their actual jobs -- are being co-opted for this "reality" show, and it rings incredibly false. It's a Hills-ification of reality -- actual people playing pre-assigned roles. I'm aware this is nothing new -- hello, The Real World -- but never has it been so unapologetically fake.

I can't explain why this irks me so much. It's such a blatant parody of the archetypal magazine internship experience that I should just accept it as such and move on. And yet ... I just want to smack everyone involved -- Tyra, Elle fashion director Anne Slowey, the eleven contestants who will stop at nothing to be Slowey's bitch, supermodel Maggie Rizer for deigning to appear as a guest on such a trainwreck of a show. Perhaps I have rage issues that need addressing.

Underwhelmed by the so-not-surprising- I-can't-even-believe-people-are-reporting-it news that Miley Cyrus will be hosting Fox's "Teen Choice 2008" this August, I've compiled a concise list of more compelling things I could do instead. Drumroll!

Not satisfied to exploit every inch of his own being and empire, Donald Trump has resorted to pimping out his daughter Ivanka for a new reality dating show called Date My Daughter. To quote the press release/casting call: "'Date My Daughter,' starring Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka, features dads helping their daughters find true love, with daddy's approval [Ed's note: PUKE! Any grown woman who calls her father "daddy" needs to quit it. NOW.] Casting producers are looking for socialites [Eds' note: Again, puke.] between the ages of 21-30 years old who are attractive, possess a great attitude and a generous spirit. The dads should be affluent and interested in helping their daughters find true love." Here's a thought. Maybe these "affluent dads" should mind their own damned business and/or explore why they take such an abiding interest in their daughters' dating practices. In therapy.

Are you a king-sized douchebag? Congratulations! You will eventually be given your very own show! The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Brody Jenner -- whose sole accomplishment up to this point has been successfully riding the coattails of his 1) dad 2) quasi-ex-girlfriend and 3) step-sisters -- will be starring in a new MTV competish-cum-reality show called Bromance, which, based on descriptions, sounds like a hybrid of Entourage and A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila. Contestants will face challenges and compete to become a part of Brody's totally rad posse. At the end of each show, there will be a Hot Tub Elimination Ceremony. I wish I were making this up. As the show's name might suggest, there is some seriously homo-erotic subtext going on, but I'm sensing, based on the major fuckwad vibes that effectively emanate from the Brodster's person, that it's of the Cat On A Hot Tin Roof/wrestling/frat boy variety. That is, latent and volatile and mean-spirited and potentially violent. Think forcing potential "bros" to drink pee and taping their asscheeks together. Brody, sweetie, did you learn nothing from the colossal failure that was Princes of Malibu? Let me spell it out for ya: We don't give a shit. Go away. Kthxbye!

Finally I can sleep at night! The Daily News has reported that after much speculation (mostly by supercilious Williamsburg hipster douches -- whom I count myself among -- and bougie Park Slope moms), the new, Brooklyn-bound cast of The Real World will hunker down in the neighborhood of Downtown Brooklyn. This news makes me both relieved and bummed. On the one hand, I effing hate when TV crews get all up in my business. I've experienced first-hand their disruptive nature, first when I was forced by default to be involved in the short-lived MTV show I'm From Rolling Stone at my previous place of employ, and more recently at my neighborhood watering hole when my attempts to pound Pabst Blue Ribbon in peace were thwarted by the presence of a crew filming the new Michael Cera (swoon) vehicle Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist. (Sorry about that run-on sentence; I had a lot of name-dropping to cram in there!) Living in New York, you're automatically subjected to some measure of film crew-related annoyance because, well, people film here. But when it gets in the way of me doing my job, or worse, working on my burgeoning alcohol addiction, it is a problem.

I think we all can agree, having watched America's Next Top Model for 49 cycles now, that what makes a top model in the Tyraverse is not any of the model-esque qualities you might assume are prerequisites -- superior height, facial symmetry, a runway walk not copied from Peter Boyle's performance in Young Frankenstein -- but rather the "desire," the "really wanting this"-ness.  By which of course I mean the undignified, and un-optional, coating of Tyra's giant ass in damp kisses, the better to evolve Tyra's delusion of herself as a benign (and gigantic) Henrietta Higgins who Does Good For People.  A girl's real-world modeling potential is irrelevant here -- fortunately, since few of the contestants have any such thing, which, naturally, is why they get onto the show in the first place.  Nobody with a snowball's chance in hell of getting work in the industry on her own is as pathetically grateful for the faux-pportunities offered by ANTM (for real, the Seventeen readership's age tops out at around 13), and it's that pathetic gratitude that Tyra requires.

Tyra has gotten more and more obnoxiously imperious in the last year or two, but her fucktardedly outsized sense of her own importance isn't a problem per se -- at least, not compared with the problem it must pose for her employees.  What is a problem, from a television standpoint, is that that grandiose insistence on choosing the girl who thanks/beseeches/admires Tyra the most fervently, instead of the girl who's the best qualified (or, you know, qualified at all), voids the competition of any significance.  Tyra doesn't think we notice it, I suspect; Tyra doesn't see, or is not hearing anyone who tries to tell her, that the motives behind her choices are increasingly obvious.

Y'all will be excited to know that Bucky Covington is hosting CMT's new search for great undiscovered country talent. I don't know about you, but if there's one person I did not expect to see so much of after Idol was over, it's Bucky Covington. I mean, I give the kid credit, but...dude.

Bucky Covington?

REALLY?

Was there no job available for Kevin Covais? Nothing? Not the search for America's most compelling science-fair project?

Those of you hoping to get your Aaron Sorkin fix on Broadway may have to go back to reading Sports Night recaps -- his play about the (alleged?) creator of television, Philo Farnsworth, "has shuttered for now" due to the Broadway strike.

Frazier Moore's AP story makes much of Farnsworth's persistently bad luck -- didn't get credit for his invention; died penniless -- and how the strike's effect on the show is yet another iteration of same.  But if fickle fortune is punishing anyone, I suspect it's Sorkin himself, for sins of hubris related to the sublimely frustrating and obnoxious Studio 60.