Entertainment

Dear Ms Hale and the editors of Guardian Books, I’ve been reviewing books for about 4 years now. I’ve used my name online for that length of time but it’s not due to some desire for fame or transparency. It was more to do with youthful foolishness and my naïve trust in the people I talked to online. They were friends, right, so they wouldn’t do anything bad to me. Looking back, I can’t help but feel stupid at such gullibility, and if I could go back in time, I would immediately use a pseudonym. I read your article on the Guardian today with a mixture of shock, confusion and genuine fear. The piece, “Am I Being Catfished? An Author Confronts Her Number One Online Critic” was not only a hatchet job full of factual inaccuracies, it was a straight up bragging fest about stalking someone...
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Dear Jay Leno, First off, my intention is not to fight you on this. You have more cars than I have dollars, and so I know I don’t stand a chance legally, and on top of that, I don’t really understand how legal stuff works. But the truth is you kind of fucked up my shit and I need to talk to you about it. In 2007 my good friend Travis Irvine was running for mayor of his home town, Bexley, Ohio. He asked for help making him a funny campaign commercial. So together, me and my pal Travis composed, performed and recorded an original campaign jingle onto my four track (we did, not you). Then, I directed and shot a silly music video for that song featuring Travis strolling about his town, looking patriotic, friendly and mayoral. Remember that video? I think you might, because in 2009...
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Dear Hollywood Wax Museum, I recently visited your Los Angeles location and was exceptionally disappointed with what I saw. Upon entering, I was greeted by your Tom Hanks in Castaway waxwork. It was not very good. Scary, even. I have never seen Castaway, so there may actually be a scene in which Tom Hanks becomes blind in one eye, but I doubt that is the case. But it wasn't just your Tom Hanks that was awful. It was all of your waxworks. They look like something from the nightmares of a person who has been blind since birth and has no real concept of what human beings look like. Some time ago, I watched a documentary about a ship that sank in the Baltic Sea. There was this one shot that has haunted me since, where they showed the beautiful, blond wife of one of the...
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Dear Alicia Keys, I have learned today that you are due to perform in Israel very soon. We have never met, though I believe we are mutually respectful of each other’s path and work. It would grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country that is being boycotted by many global conscious artists. You were not born when we, your elders who love you, boycotted institutions in the US South to end an American apartheid less lethal than Israel’s against the Palestinian people. Google Montgomery Bus Boycott, if you don’t know about this civil rights history already. We changed our country fundamentally, and the various boycotts of Israeli institutions and products will do the same there. It is our only nonviolent option and, as we...
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Dear Kelly, While I wish you had reached out to me personally, as the head of the Born This Way foundation with my mother Cynthia we would like to respond. Everyday, through my music and public voice I choose to be positive and work towards a kinder and braver world with our community of followers. I encourage them to ignore criticism, stand up to bullies, know their own value and see that we are all the same and no one person is worth more than another. I know I’m perceived as a wild child, but in reality I am woman that deeply cares for humanity. I have empathy for you Kelly, but I feel it culturally important to note that you have chosen a less compassionate path. Your work on E! with the Fashion Police is rooted in criticism, judgment, and rating people's beauty against one another...
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Dear Kim, Please stop bombarding the internet with pictures of your vagina. Please. Just. Stop. Everyone is super happy you’re so proud of your naked body. But really, it’s enough already. As a card-carrying member of the vagina club (translation; I have one too), I can assure you the world is NOT– I repeat NOT– your gynecologist. And (this will shock you) your vagina is not unique. Every woman has one pretty much just like yours. And you know what else? We’re proud of ours too even though we don’t air it out online like you do. I know writing this open letter is giving you more exposure, and I’ve tried turning away. But like the killer in a bad movie, everywhere I turn, YOU’RE THERE. It’s creepy. It’s time to take some responsibility. Now, I refuse to be a mean-girl blogger...
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Hi Oovee, Spintires is great. Thanks. Unfortunately, it seems that many of us cannot play the game reliably. In fact, some of us cannot play the game which we paid for at all. We think that's a rather terrible state of affairs. As your customers we want you to address the following issues directly and specifically. 1 - Quality Assurance Prioritize stablilizing the core game and fully resolving game-breaking and save-breaking bugs. When you won our investment as customers, you made a promise. It's time to keep that promise. We're going to make the assumption here that this is an issue of company management/priorities. Developers almost universally care about the quality of their work. 2 - Transparency Customers often make speculative and totally unfair assumptions...
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Dear Contact Center, We know the drill. We call our (somewhat) favorite service provider to make a change in the account details, service package, or just get a simple answer to that strange billing record. And then, the interrogation ensues - “what are the last 6 digits of your credit card… And your mother’s maiden name…And the street you grew up on? Of course, it is only for authentication purposes...” The thing is that with your complex authentication processes, we customers are left having way too much to remember. We are fed up with the over-reliance on usernames, passwords and “challenge questions.” (What was first your dog’s name?Seriously!) We end up experiencing rejection - and this is MY account we are talking about. The frustration continues to mount as we are...
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Dear Jeff Bezos, bezosIn your position, I imagine that you rarely have an opportunity to receive feedback from one of your temporary-contract employees. I thought you should have some input. I hope you find this useful. Having just completed my maximum of eleven months of contract work Amazon allows, I thought I would share my thoughts on your practice of hiring a staff that is made up of temporary-contract workers. Although it may seem like the company is saving money — because you don’t have to provide temporary workers with medical coverage or paid vacation time — the revolving door of new hires encourages low quality work, inconsistent productivity and wastes useful resources on training. I joined the X-Ray for TV and Movies development team in its infancy. [“X-Ray for Movies...
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Dear Morrissey, In the hope that you might consider bringing your much-rumoured memoir to The House of Eliot, I am posting this letter on the Faber website. Forlorn as this hope may be, I can only fantasise that at least you might read my letter through and consider the pleasures and prestige of being an author at Faber, the last great family-owned independent publishing house in the western hemisphere. I have been trying to persuade you of the virtues and wisdom of this for some years now. You probably won’t remember. We even corresponded at one point via a friend of yours, an author of mine, most famous for his biography of Roxy Music which ends just as the band are getting together. You see, we love the perverse and the contrary at Faber. And we also like to think we are the...
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