some recent clips.

Gelato for the Soul (June 5, 2010).   “If the Italian love story is usually the adulterous kind—Seyfried kisses a boy who’s not her boy; Swinton bags a man who’s not her man—the folklore of these films is deeply faithful.”  (URL | PDF)

“Sex and the City” and Halston (April 23, 2010). “Striding down Fifth the Carrie way demands white jersey ($325) and gold-glitter heels. For lounging around the apartment, it’s kicky, royal-blue flapper tiers ($435). For breezing through Abu Dhabi, it’s the one-shoulder caftan—a river of peach-melba polyester flooding down her like a slippery piano shawl ($325). And for hiking the Arabian desert, she endorses tea-length burnt-orange silk plissé ($895). Naturally.” (URL)

No Wonder They Called Her Grace (April 10, 2010). “By the time Jackie Kennedy first appeared on the Best Dressed List in 1960, Grace Kelly was already in its hall of fame. Now, Kelly is being inducted into another hallowed hall: London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, unveiling the first Kelly-closet retrospective.” (URL | PDF)

Parsing Tiger’s Nike Golf Ad (April 8, 2010). “You don’t have to think long and hard about the Woods spot to realize it’s tainted love. It looks like a black-and-white tone poem, but it smells like a fresh bag of range balls—its purpose, really, is to start selling some clubs again.” (URL)

Are We There Yet? (March 19, 2010). “No one would dare say today that ‘women don’t write here,’ as the NEWSWEEK women were told 40 years ago. But men wrote all but six of NEWSWEEK’s 49 cover stories last year—and two of those used the headline ‘The Thinking Man.’ In 1970, 25 percent of NEWSWEEK’s editorial masthead was female; today that number is 39 percent. Better? Yes. But it’s hardly equality.” (URL | PDF)

Not-So-Plain Jane (February 26, 2010). “Textually speaking, it’s tolerable menfolk Lizzy Bennet finds in short supply—not loyal girlfriends. So where is the sisterhood in her hour of need?” (URL | PDF)

Goosebumps for “Glee” (October 14, 2009). “Liam Doyle is feeling the full wrath of AP U.S. history right about now. He’s lagging in behind-the-wheel practice for his driver’s license; he’s swamped with practice for the school band, in which he mans the percussion section. And in the southeastern Minnesota suburbs, where he lives, there’s already snow to shovel. But online, he’s not just another oversubscribed teen: he’s tribune of the Gleeks, the diffuse online fanverse dedicated to Glee.” (URL)

How Real is “Bruno?” (July 8, 2009). “Marriott and Fowler may have avoided physical assault, but their accounts of being openly gay in Ft. Smith are filled with similar stories. Rocks with ‘fag’ scrawled on them have been hurled at the home they share; Fowler, who’s studying to be a history teacher, was excommunicated from his Jehovah’s Witness faith and kicked out of his childhood home by his parents. Marriott, a marketing student who formerly had a side job as a Wal-Mart cashier, says patrons frequently skipped his line and told others to do the same to avoid contact with ‘the fairy.’ But others in the community are upset. What appears in Bruno, they say, was indicative not of regional intolerance but of heavy-handed stage management.” (URL)

From other publications:

Elementary School’s Drug-testing Fuels Debate Over Civil Liberties, The Associated Press. August 3, 2006.

Universal Music’s Plan to Slow Downloading Takeover. The Associated Press. July 5, 2006.

Series on a visit from a delegation of Virginia Indians to the UK, seeking recognition and honoring the 400th anniversary of Jamestown’s founding. The Associated Press. July 14 to 26, 2006.

Several celebrity breaking-news items, filed from London. The Associated Press, summer 2006.

This Pro Fro’s A No-Go, The Washington Post. Outlook, B02. May 9, 2004.

And, most importantly:

Five Endangered Monkeys Stolen in Latest Zoo Heist, The Associated Press. June 20, 2006.

That Time That JCVD Hit On Me, Newsweek. November 15, 2008.