Late Monday links: less malaise, more F.A.T., booty

Now we know why Rosie pulled out of the magazine biz. She was going to get, um, pushed out by the Rachael Ray magazine.

Ms. Ray, whose title will be editor in chief, said she wanted to create a magazine that would motivate people to try new things that relate to their lives. "I want to see legitimately useful information: here are shoes you can cook in and party in," she said.

Look out Oprah and Martha, I guess.

Now, my girlfriend and I have discussed Ms. Ray in detail before. Maureen thinks I'm attracted to her but as I explained, she's someone who's perfect on paper but doesn't deliver on the field. You see, she has what guys look for - pretty face, cooking skills, outgoing personality, willingness to get drunk and a big ol' booty. Yet, the whole doesn't quite match up to the sum of the parts.

I see her on the Food Network quite a bit, that is to say whenever Emeril Lagasse isn't on, and the more I watch her, the less drawn I am. I don't know, maybe it's the crazy eyes when she's getting all excited about her 30 minute soup or when she comes in just under $40 at the end of the day. It's hard to explain, but she scares me a little bit. Fascinated? Yes. Mystified? Sure. Attracted? Afriad not.

Say Hello to The Gap's new store for over-35 women, F.A.T. (via Adland). Well, not quite - it's Forth & Towne, and that's an ampersand instead of an "and" in the middle.
From the Snarkhunting post:

In the article, Gap President Paul Pressler weighed-in, calling F.A.T. a “sizable opportunity”.

Nice. If I weren't better at keeping track of dates, I might think this was some elaborate April Fools joke.

In any case, what kind of name is Forth & Towne? I concede that I am not an over-35 woman so it's not really meant for me to "get". Maybe the target is okay with buying clothing from a chain that kinda sounds like "fat"?

Bomani Jones has joined Bill Simmons and Jason Whitlock as my "must read" ESPN columnists. Granted, he doesn't write very often, but his column on the Carolina hoops exodus is spot on. Damn, I was about to order the 2005 season DVD too.

On the guy who will replace Raymond Felton as the starting point guard:

The Heels' most glaring weakness will be that Quentin Thomas, who had as many minutes in the Final Four as turnovers – two – will play point guard.

That would be the same Quentin Thomas who lost the only game he started last year, a double-digit loss to Santa Clara that was forgotten by the world because it happened the same night as the Malice at the Palace. That would also be the same Quentin Thomas who showed up at the team's victory celebration at the Dean Dome wearing a white vest that had his likeness airbrushed on the back, a move that renders him unqualified to decide what to eat for dinner, let alone run Carolina's offense.

Brand New links to a Boston Globe article about the emergence of indie labels like Merge, and how listeners are replacing the "industry" as tastemakers.

I'm not sure if I agree with that completely. Sure, the tastemaking is happening is happening outside the boardrooms and focus groups, but are listeners really running things? Josh Schwartz may be a Death Cab fan but he still needs the medium provided by Fox to get his favorite bands out there. Pitchfork may be independent of the big media, but they're not reviewing. Even mp3 bloggers need a critical mass readership to have any authority. People are still looking at the media, traditional or otherwise, for direction. Not to mention some of the cult favorites out there - Bloc Party and Kaiser Chiefs to name two - are products of the British hype machine that, for better or worse, can't stop searching for the next Radiohead/Blur/Coldplay/whatever.

Still, at least hype/buzz is being generated by people who actually listen to the stuff instead of the people who see them as mereley products that need to be moved. That's a welcome development.

But I can't help agreeing a bit with Barsuk Record's Jake Rosenfeld, who says, ''A couple of years from now, we'll probably have a really nice crop of really awful bands that look a lot like the bands we're talking about now." It happened to alt rock in the early 90s. It happened to New York hip hop after the 1994-95 golden age. And it's going to happen to the current wave of indie rock after sooner or later.