Leave it to the New York Observer to go above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to the Oscar wrap-ups. The Transom reports not just from a Thursday pre-Oscar party at Mondrian, but from the men’s room,

which was rapidly being permeated by a fetid odor. “Jesus!” said a curly-haired man at the front of the one stall, scrunching his face in disgust. “Oh man–that’s awful!” gasped another, burrowing his head inside his trench coat. “Lawd-a-mercy!” cried still another, and then: “Check out those shoes,” pointing to the black suede loafers peeking out from under the stall.

Before The Transom could compliment Mr. Davis’s performance and inquire as to his influences, the latter man made for the door–no doubt much lighter on his feet than before.

Kudos to The Transom for sniffing this story out!

I’m not sure how this fits with the blog, but here’s Fr. Neuhaus on the passing of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.:

Nonetheless, Arthur Schlesinger was a delightful interlocutor. It was simply that he had not had a fresh thought for years. Our last encounter was at Princeton in 2004 at a conference occasioned by the twentieth anniversary of my book The Naked Public Square. I’m not sure he had ever read the book, but he used the occasion of what he understood to be its argument to blast the Bush administration for being the most dangerously religious presidency in American history. He was then age eighty-six and somewhat frail, and the other speakers at the conference were gentle but firm in trying to set him straight. But I had the impression that Schlesinger wasn’t listening. At that point, and for many years before that point, he had made up his mind.

Galley Friend L.B. gives us this wiggedy-whack Vandy hoops highlight reel. You won’t be sorry.

Holla T. to the Double E.

Will Perdue represent.

Jenny’s still dogging the story. The wet T-shirt at the WWII Memorial pics are actually kind of morally repugnant. I don’t mean to sound more prissy than usual, but isn’t posing semi-nude in the fountain of a memorial to the 405,000 men and women who died protecting your country kind of out of bounds? I’m just saying.

Although I’m also just saying that if Antonella could handle a snap, maybe Jenny wouldn’t be into this story . . .

Chris Anderson has a provocative post on the future of webdom:

I propose that things that are paid will become free and vice versa. So music and books and other media are turning from paid products to free marketing, while free-to-air video and radio become a subscription or on-demand product for a fee. If I explain any more the premise will fall apart, so I’ll stop here. It is now A Law. Obey.

He’s just thinking out loud, so there’s no sense in trying to pick this apart, but as a conversation starter, I think it’s pretty interesting. Also, it seems to me that it may be at least half right: The half about things that are now free becoming paid.

I’ve spent the last couple years preaching that newspapers and magazines should be charging for at least a portion of their online content. If I were running the web operations of a big-city daily, I’d follow the Wall Street Journal‘s model: Give away the stuff that other people do for free (opinionjournal.com) and charge like a mofo for the stuff that only you provide (everything else in the paper, which is locked down at wsj.com). It’s not obvious to me why this wouldn’t work for the Baltimore Sun or the Kansas City Star. Take the op-ed pages, supplement them with some opinion writing by your editorial staff that only appears online, trim down the national and world covereage in the paper, and throw lots and lots of resources into reporting the heck out of local news, business, technology, politics, and sports. And don’t give any of that away for free.

Few newspapers would be able to get away with charging what the WSJ.com charges, but why couldn’t they charge something smaller, say $19.99 a year. And if more newspapers and magazines move to this formula, they’ll increase each others’ pricing power, because as the freebie alternatives dry up, consumers should be more inclined to pay. (Consequently, I also suspect that having a paying audience of readers would increase the value of online advertising at a site.)

(I remember back about six or seven years ago, the holy grail of online news was the idea of micropayments–that everyone would have some PayPal-ish version of an EZ Pass and all articles would carry some tiny price tag, say $0.05. And then readers would pay as they go. I suppose that’s still theoretically possible, but I suspect that the evolution of payment for news is much more likely to follow the traditional subscription model than an iTunes model.)

Not to over-analyze the psychology of media executives, but it seems to me that they’ve become so brainwashed by the constant claims that journalism is worthless, the Old Media is dead, MSM = Big Evil, dinosaurs, sail power, blah, blah, blah, that they’ve lost the confidence to even consider charging for the work they do when it appears online. This has allowed a huge market of bloggers and news aggregators to spring up and make space for themselves, in many cases off the back of the reporting work done by traditional newspapers and magazines. (Churchill would be unsurprised to see that failure of nerve cripples industrial empires as surely as it does military and cultural ones.)

If newspapers and magazines are to survive and thrive, eventually they’ll have to take the plunge and find the courage to charge for the work they perform.

The other half of Anderson’s argument, that paid programming today (books, music, video?) will become free is also interesting, although it seems less obvious to me. The bellwether here may be Google’s attempt to digitize and distribute books, thus making a profits on other people’s copyrighted material. Will individual authors and artists be cowed into not enforcing their copyrights? I would guess not.

But there are certainly signs suggesting that they might.

Dream Girl Jenny is all over the Antonella Barba-American Idol scandal. Just in case you were interested.

It’s a Sony-hating mash-up video. I applaud it.

Also, there’s this bit about Call of Duty: The Lawsuit. Very interesting.

And let’s not skip over this awesome piece of news: Sony didn’t just delay the European launch of the PS3 because of supply problems–the company has decided to give European gamers an updated version of the console that’s different from what Japanese and North American consumers bought. How’s it different?

The European version of the PS3 will apparently not feature the PS2’s Emotion Engine chip and will rely mainly on software to emulate PS2 compatibility. The result is that backwards compatibility will be limited compared to the U.S. and Japanese models. Some analysts see this as a positive, though.

The positive comes from the long-term production cost savings:

initial analyst reaction to the move by SCEE has been positive. In a note from the folks at Datamonitor, analyst Alex Kwiatkowski said, “By utilizing the latest hardware Sony is able to rationalize the number of components required. This move is significant, as it will have a positive impact on the PS3’s long-term cost profile. By launching the PS3 in Europe with the new chassis, Sony has at a stroke removed one of the barriers to future price reductions, and providing it can make enough units available, Datamonitor believes there will be sustained growth in PS3 ownership as new users seek to benefit from the PS3’s enhanced features and functionality.”

Of course, that assumes demand high enough to realize savings. The real question is: When will PS3 ads begin appearing in European Sunday circulars?

Or maybe only colossal squid”:

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A fishing crew has caught a colossal squid that could weigh a half-ton and prove to be the biggest specimen ever landed, a fisheries official said Thursday.

If calamari rings were made from the squid they would be the size of tractor tires, one expert said.

The squid, weighing an estimated 990 pounds and about 39 feet long, took two hours to land in Antarctic waters, New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said.

The fishermen were catching Patagonian toothfish, sold under the name Chilean sea bass, south of New Zealand “and the squid was eating a hooked toothfish when it was hauled from the deep,” Anderton said. . . .

Colossal squid, known by the scientific name Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, are estimated to grow up to 46 feet long and have long been one of the most mysterious creatures of the deep ocean.