By Drew Grant 5/31 12:16pm

Celebrity Detox

Philip Seymour Hoffman (Getty Images)

Philip Seymour Hoffman in Heroin Rehab For Totally Appropriate Amount of Time

Philip Seymour Hoffman, the Oscar-winning star of Capote, recently revealed that he has spent the past year spiraling out of a prescription drug habit and into a week-long heroin snorting binge. That Mr. Hoffman, whose iconic voice and posture has been imitated by many, also disclosed (to TMZ.com) that he had struggled with drug issues in the past and had fallen off the wagon after 23 years clean only serves to make the amount of time the actor spent in detox more confusing. Read More

By Steve Huff 9/25/12 12:22am

celebrities and drugs

Lady Gaga, not thinking of the children. (Screengrab)

Staten Island Borough President Molinaro Calls Lady Gaga a ‘Slut’ [Video]

James Molinaro may know who Lady Gaga is but he probably isn’t aware of her fandom, the “little monsters,” and how they might react to an NY1 report that Mr. Molinaro referred to the pop star as a “slut” while launching an anti-drug campaign Monday night.

The performer’s fans are fiercely loyal and may not take well to the Staten Island Borough President’s characterization of their idol, whom Mr. Molinaro said was part of a celebrity culture that promotes drug use, among other things. Read More

By Drew Grant 4:18pm

Badvertising

False advertising

Fake Drugs That Look Like Real Drugs Are the New Real Drugs (Video)

Three years ago, Nate Hill made news for his business venture/performance art piece, a weekend crack delivery service. Mr. Hill would come to the houses of curious (or fiending) patrons, wearing a white tuxedo and a dolphin head bringing a baggie full of rock. Too bad it was of the sugar variety. Surprisingly, the sheer novelty factor kept him in business, despite complaints to the police from concerned citizens who fell for the prank. Luckily for him, the NYPD’s hands were tied. “It’s just candy,” one officer said. “Unfortunately, being criminally stupid is not illegal.”

While this endeavor was entertaining the first time around, we’re not sure how well it’s going to play with the Weed Van, a cross-country vehicle with lots of druggy imagery on the outside and actual pot smokers “Kush” and “Dro” on the inside. The biggest problem with these Mary Pranksters is their non-buzzable product: despite costing $5 a (lolli)pop, the candy you buy from the weed van is made out of hemp oil, and will not get you high. Read More

By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 9/14/12 6:18pm

Kickin' It

image

Cat Marnell Gives Up Her Vices

In last week’s installment of her Vice column, “Amphetamine Logic,” Wild child blogger Cat Marnell announced that her time at the hipster web mag was coming to an end.

“I’m writing my last columns,” Cat Marnell explained when we reached her late Friday afternoon .“I almost feel addicted to them, like I could go on forever.”

However, Ms. Marnell, who celebrated her 30th birthday earlier this week, is ready for her next venture. She said she has become a perfectionist. “I’ve  just got to do it right. When you are writing weird, it’s make it good or go home, you know?” Ms. Marnell noted she scrapped this week’s column because she wasn’t happy with it and missed her deadline.

“I miss my deadlines all the time, and my editor just has to deal with me like Jane did.” Ms. Marnell was the Beauty Editor at xoJane.com until June. Ms. Marnell said she still talks to Jane Pratt all the time, and they plan to have dinner soon.

“I love her, she’s the great love of my life,” Ms. Marnell said of her erstwhile mentor. Read More

By Drew Grant 8/02/12 4:17pm

designer drugs

Bath salts: do not ingest (Divawhispers)

Bath Salts Officially a Drug Problem in New York, Claims DEA and Man Who Destroyed Upstate Headshop With a Bat

Are you tired about hearing about the new synthetic drug bath salts yet? We’re glad to have clarified that the brand of white crystallized substituted cathinones–paging Walter White!–were not actually bath salts.  (For awhile we were plagued with images of getting arrested at Bath & Body Works while on a perfectly innocent shopping sojourn.)

At the same time, it seems like the press is reaching with this one, especially since the drug seemed to be contained within bored teenagers in flyover states and INSANE PEOPLE. (See: Spin‘s “expose” on the topic, and the aftermath.)

That being said, we can’t pretend like the epidemic of bath salts– a designer drug that produces a cocaine/amphetamine/LSD-like high, or as one person who was offered it recently related to The Observer, “makes you feel like an animal”–is just going to disappear off the news cycle because we want it to. (Our magical thinking made Khat trend stories go away, right?)

In fact, the bath salt chickens have finally come home to roost in New York, turning vague rumors of people who pee on art and cannibals in Florida into a NYC reality. Read More

By Rex Reed 6/19/12 4:04pm

movies

Thomas and James in The Last Ride.

The Hillbilly Shakespeare’s Last Ride

On a frosty New Year’s Day in 1953, a life of genetic back trouble and spinal pain exacerbated by drugs, alcohol and self-abuse took their toll on a man in a white cowboy hat, slumped in the back seat of a powder blue Cadillac Eldorado convertible. Hank Williams died, holding a guitar and a notebook of unfinished song lyrics. The king of country music was 29 years old. He was on his way to a comeback, traveling from Montgomery, Ala., to sold-out shows in West Virginia and Canton, Ohio, in a blinding snowstorm, with a high-school dropout who didn’t even know who he was in the driver’s seat. The Last Ride, carefully directed by Harry Thomason and skillfully written with chords and spaces for humming and breathing by Howie Klausner and Dub Cornett, hauntingly and sensitively negotiates the final three days in the life and death of a legendary character of mythic proportions, warts and all. Read More

By Rex Reed 6/13/12 12:09pm

movies

Baldwin and Crusie in Rock of Ages. (David James)

Rock of Ages is a Head (Against Wall) Banger

As rock musicals go, Rock of Ages can’t go fast enough. This sloppy freak show is two minutes shy of two solid hours of screaming swill, without a shred of freshness, insight, cleverness or coherence to be detected within a two-mile radius. It’s based on a noisy Broadway jukebox joke that was never much to write home about in the first place, but it still had a soupçon of humor and banal charm, both of which are bewilderingly missing on the screen. The fact that the show is still running testifies to the confounding disregard for taste and intelligence rampant among today’s mass-market audiences. I haven’t seen a movie this bad since Battlefield Earth and Howard the Duck. Read More

By Drew Grant 3/26/12 11:39am

Occupy Wall Street

Protesters in Union Square (Getty Images)

Union Square Loiterers Confused, Angered by Occupy Wall Street Protests

Over the weekend, 14 people were arrested during Occupy Wall Street protest in Union Square. The participants were demonstrating against Commissioner Ray Kelly and police brutality, and friends told us to avoid the area at all costs.

“The police are really jumpy today,” The Observer was advised.

But protesters had another group to contend with: the burnouts, skaters, and drug dealers who spend their days in the Square, and didn’t appreciate the extra heat OWS brought to their stomping grounds. Read More