R u a ‘sucker’ 4 Edward or do u howl 4 Jacob?

It’s not easy for a vampire or werewolf to find that special someone online

Sure, it’s flattering to have girls and women the world over swooning over your every move and hair toss, but sometimes a guy just wants to connect one-on-one, you know? Without a lot of D-R-A-M-A.

This seems to be the case with “Twilight” heartthrobs Edward Cullen and Jacob Black, as played by Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner in “Twilight” and its sequel, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” which opens Friday. Finding love in these troubled times isn’t easy, especially if you’re a vampire/werewolf — and have to do an online personal ad.

Edward’s ad: SUCKER 4 U
If you think that last jerk you dated was the king of ‘Come here, go away,’ then hold onto your cafeteria tray! I will read your mind, haunt your dreams, ruin your birthday and leave white pancake makeup all over your piano keys. And you’ll love every sick, delicious second of it.

Transplanted Midwestern boy seeks Forks-area female for good times and odd line readings.  I’m 17 but I seem older, a lot older. I have greenish, goldish, blackish eyes, the metabolism of a coked-up gazelle. And I seem kind of British but I’m really just pale.

You can’t mess up my hair any more than it already is, but it sure is fun to try, right?  So hit me up. I’ll make you feel more alive than you’ve ever felt in your life and then kill you, maybe.  Can’t rule it out. That’s part of my charm. No fatties.

Jacob’s ad: HOWLIN' 4 U
Some jerk breaks your heart then vanishes into thin, foggy air? You can cry on my shoulder all you want. It’s a totally buff shoulder, too, built for crying on. Go ahead, beautiful, let it go. I’m here for you.

Long-haired, Native American hunk-next-door seeks lady love for LTR or tortured love triangle with third party. I’m as loyal as a German shepherd, a great listener and I may or may not have feelings for CMA Entertainer of the Year, Taylor Swift. I wear my heart on my sleeve and my hair in a ponytail. I’ve also experimented with HairDinis and Topsy-Tails but I’m thinking of just cutting it all off. What do you think I should do?

My passions include long, expository walks on the beach, shapeshifting, snacking on red vines, protein shake parties with my homies and our trainers, gate crashing proms, fixing up cars and motorcycles and making Mario Lopez feel washed up and out of shape.

I’m ready to get serious but first, a confession: Lately, I’ve had this overwhelming desire to howl at the moon. Not sure why. How ’bout you answer my ad and give me a reason howl?

I’m one of the good guys, I swear, and I’m housebroken. Go Mariners.

By Dennis Hensley

Pitt passes on millions to trick-or-treat

Plus: Palin jolts Oprah’s ratings; keeping tabs on TomKat

With so many celebrities willing to attend the opening of an envelope if a paycheck is involved, a recent decision by Brad Pitt is especially impressive.

Pitt declined an invitation to the Oct. 31 Grand Prix Ball Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, and the $5 million payday that came with it, according to Life & Style magazine. Instead, Pitt was photographed trick-or-treating with his kids in L.A.

“He’s spending more time with the family and doing less of these appearances, even though it’s a huge sum of cash,” according to a source who spoke to the magazine.

James Magee, a rep for Global Event Management, confirms that the actor was expected at the affair.

“We were told he would be attending as the guest of the Tourism Development & Investment Company,” Magee told Life & Style. “But he was a no-show, and nobody seemed to know why.”

The ball, which helped raise money for the clean-water charity Fresh2o, was the culmination of a three-day event celebrating Formula 1 racing. Beyoncé, Aerosmith (sans Steve Tyler) and Timbaland all performed.

Palin gives Oprah a ratings jolt
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s book, "Going Rogue," was a best-seller before it even came out, so it did stand to reason that interest in the former vice presidential candidate would spill over into her appearance on Monday's "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

It did more than that: Winfrey’s sit-down with Palin was the highest rated “Oprah” show in two years, since the entire Osmond family appeared in 2007.

And it’s a good thing Palin delivered: by the looks of it, she’ll have to suffice as Oprah’s favorite thing this year. According to reps for the show, there are “no plans this season” for “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” the much-loved holiday gifting episode.

Keeping tabs on TomKat
People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” franchise is unbeatable on the newsstands, regardless of the choice the editors make. (But quick question: Aren’t there sexier-looking photos of winner Johnny Depp out there? The one chosen for the cover doesn’t exactly drive home the decision.)

So really, the fight for your celebrity magazine dollars this week is about what the other publications thought was newsworthy. The most popular choice: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. The two celebrated their third anniversary on Wednesday; in a slow news week, they’re the obvious hook.

But happy stories don’t really sell, so despite the many sources who insist the couple is happy and boring, two mags, Star and Us Weekly, come up with the opposite. Star claims on the cover that Holmes has a $15 million tell-all in the works, and Us runs the headline: “Her secret deal: Katie’s regrets.” Given the fact that from the outside looking in, this celebrity relationship still seems confounding, the stories are just believable enough — both ought to do well.

Quick Oscar programming note
The 2010 Academy Awards ceremony has a director now, Hamish Hamilton, who most recently directed the MTV Video Music Awards.

Why should you care about the director of an awards show? During the event, there are a number of cameras shooting from different angles simultaneously. The director is in the control room, making decisions about which shot to take. Some of them are scripted: obviously, when a presenter is listing the nominees in a category, you take the camera focused on the presenter, not one panning the audience for reactions.

Some are unscripted, split-second decisions. When someone rushes the stage and takes the microphone from the person accepting an award, you cut to the camera capturing that moment. Which is exactly what did not happen at the VMAs. The Oscars are shaping up to be an interesting production.

By Courtney Hazlett

Art Basel Miami Beach ever hopeful

Despite loss of 60 galleries, fair returns with redesigned space and more dealers

The eighth annual Art Basel Miami Beach converges from 3-6 December amid shaky times for art sellers. Around 40,000 visitors are expected, and fair organisers remain bullish. “What we are seeing, and what we saw at other shows in the fall, is that there is definitely a market for high quality art,” said Art Basel co-director Marc Spiegler.

Fair sales picked up with June’s Art Basel, and sales have continued to flow. “I had no sense of desperation at Fiac,” said New York art adviser Thea Westreich. “Most dealers did quite well at Frieze.”

However, 60 exhibitors from last year’s Art Basel Miami Beach are not returning, including Berlin’s Arndt & Partner, London galleries Waddington and Maureen Paley, and New York’s Per Skarstedt. Fair organiser have added 65 new exhibitors, including some who had previously been turned away. The 2009 edition now boasts 266 dealers from 33 countries.

Another big change is the fair’s physical appearance. The layout has been redesigned, adding 20% more exhibition space, with extra lounge areas, wider aisles and bigger stands. Some of the new space is allocated to the 23 younger exhibitors taking part in the Art Positions section. Formerly on show in beachside shipping containers at Collins Park, the section will now be housed in the Miami Beach Convention Center with the rest of the exhibitors. Its previous location is now called “Oceanfront”, and New York’s non-profit Creative Time has commissioned artist Pae White to create a setting for daily video and film screenings, performance art and panel discussions.

New York dealer Andrew Edlin is taking part in the fair for the first time. He was admitted to Art Positions with a solo show by film-maker Brent Green, whose DVDs and sculptures are priced at $1,000-$25,000. “My expectations are not unrealistic in terms of actual sales,” say Edlin. “But I know all the ancillary things that come out of fairs.” He is keen to network with other exhibitors and collectors and provide a context for his outsider artists.

New York dealer Edward Tyler Nahem, who specialises in postwar art, is also making his debut. For years he has consigned works to other galleries at the fair. “I’m tired of making everyone else’s stand look pretty,” he said. Dealer friends suggested he limit his inventory to work ranging from $100,000-$500,000—considered safe in a down market—but Nahem has a blue-chip plan. He is bringing a 1957 Sam Francis painting Towards Disappearance III, which had been “buried away in Japan” and is now priced around $5m-$6m. His stand will also include works by artists including Calder, Twombly and Basquiat.

“I think there is certainly money and interest out there,” said Nahem. “You can never gauge the success of a fair in the immediate moment. If we pay for the fair, I am happy.”

Despite the general dip in satellite fairs, Miami continues to attract a strong showing. The Wynwood Art District will host fairs including Red Dot, Scope, Art Miami and a new fair, Graffiti Gone Global. Pulse is relocating to the downtown Ice Palace, vacated by Nada (New Art Dealers Alliance).

The Nada fair is setting up with 80 exhibitors at the Deauville Beach Resort hotel, north of the main fair. “It’s going to be a much more pleasant experience,” said Nada director Heather Hubbs. The fair has been shortened by two days and has slashed booth prices to entice galleries. It has lost European dealers and had some top exhibitors poached by Art Basel Miami. But Hubbs said: “There are always good young galleries out there, and this year some people who have been trying to get in, got in.”

By Lindsay Pollock

Costume Dramas

E. V. Day dresses for excess at New York City Opera

E. V. Day, who is known for her "Exploding Couture" series (most famously, her 2006 piece Bride Fight, which will be shown at the Cincinnati Art Museum next August), often deals with intriguing questions. This past spring the new general manager and artistic director of New York City Opera, George Steel, asked, "Could we make a dress explode from a performer and fly back and forth?"

"Probably—with a lot of Velcro," Day replied. As she and Steel toured the Philip Johnson–designed David H. Koch Theater, the director had a new thought: would the theater's Promenade, with its gold ceiling and balconies, be a good site for an installation?

And that's how Day came to fill the space with 19 suspended-in-air "time capsules" featuring retired costumes and accessories from Don Giovanni, Carmen, The Magic Flute, Madame Butterfly, and Manon. Funded by a City Opera board member, the installation is on view to ticket holders (and, on select occasions, to the general public) during the opera's Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 seasons.

Day, who was an opera naïf with a devotion to punk rock (in college, she was lead singer for a punk band called Cockpit), listened to arias, plunged into City Opera's library, and visited the wardrobe warehouse in North Bergen, New Jersey. Carmen's "Habanera" aria, which she watched on YouTube, made her cry; she keeps its text in a binder, next to the lyrics for "Priestess" by punk rocker Wendy O. Williams. "They're about the same thing," Day exclaims. "I love you, and love is fickle."

Day chose costumes, then wielded her knives and monofilament at the warehouse, where she and six interns worked for six weeks. "The costumes may not look as 'exploded' as in the past," she says. "I want you to see the origin and its coming away from that."

The installation debuts as City Opera tries to find its stride with a new leader and a just-renovated theater. Steel sees the symbolism. "There's an easy surface reading about exploding the old," he says, "but I see the work as a supernova, a tremendous release of positive energy."

The project has sparked some new ideas the artist may explore in a solo show at Deitch Projects in New York. "I'd love to work with toe shoes and tutus," she says.

by Amanda Gordon