Dan Mirvish, co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival (Sundance's upstart kid brother), has always been a bit of a trickster. But his latest prank, with his partner-in-crime Eitan Gorlin, has stirred all kinds of trouble.

According to this New York Times article, Mirvish and Gorlin cooked up the story - which ran on Fox News and MSNBC - that an anonymous staffer in the John McCain campaign had said that vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin thought Africa was a single country and not a continent.

Mirvish and Gorlin invented a character, a policy analyst named Martin Eisenstadt (played by Gorlin), to dispense soundbites for reporters and bloggers. Eisenstadt even had a blog and a fictional think tank backing him up, the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy.

"Eisenstadt" also helped foster the story that Paris Hilton's grandfather was angry at the McCain campaign for insulting Paris in an anti-Barack Obama ad.

The purpose for doing all this? To pitch a TV show based on the Eisenstadt character - but also to show the gullibility of the mainstream media and the blogosphere.

It also shows that a hoax succeeds when the source material is wacky enough without embellishment. If Palin hadn't come off so clueless in early interviews, and so stubborn in later appearances, it would have been less plausible to think she didn't know Africa is a continent.

Labels: John McCain, Sarah Palin, Slamdance Film Festival

Leave it to Victoria's Secret to miss completely the signs that there's a recession going on.

The lingerie company has teamed with jeweler Martin Katz to create "The Black Diamond Fantasy Miracle Bra," a $5 million piece of underwear featuring 3,900 gems (black diamonds, white diamonds and rubies) with a total weight of 1,500 carats - including two black diamonds with a combined weight of 100 carats. (That's supermodel Adriana Lima modeling the bra in the photo.)

Now, at this point, I could make a sarcastic joke - something about how Sarah Palin will be using the Republican National Committee's Visa card to buy one - but I'm not going to do that. Instead, I direct your attention to the thoughtful commentary by CNN's Campbell Brown, who complained that the recent uproar about the Alaska governor's exorbitant wardrobe bill is a) distracting from important campaign issues, and b) reflecting a double standard about how people judge women's appearance compared to the appearance of men. Watch it:

Labels: fashion, politics, Sarah Palin

- Vice-presidential candidates Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) and Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) face off in their one and only debate, live from Washington University in St. Louis, at 7 on all major channels (and a few minor ones). Want to see it in a group? Utah Republicans start their party at 6:30 at their party HQ, 117 E. South Temple, Salt Lake City (call 801-533-9777 for info); while the left-wing party animals at Drinking Liberally will also have a party starting at 6:30, at a site to be determined (in keeping with Will Rogers' famous quote: "I'm not a member of any organized political party - I'm a Democrat").

- California indie rockers Cold War Kids play at 7 at In the Venue, 579 W. 200 South, Salt Lake City. Tickets are $15.50 at SmithsTix and 24Tix.

- Moses Pendleton's dance-illusionists Momix perform some of their greatest hits at 7:30 at Kingsbury Hall, on the University of Utah campus, Salt Lake City. Tickets, at $29.50-$37.50, available on the Kingsbury Hall web site.

- Repertory Dance Theatre opens its season with "The Messengers" - featuring works by the late Glen Tetley, the legendary Ze'eva Cohen, Elizabeth Waters and of-the-moment choreographer Andrea Miller - at 8 at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City. Tickets are $30 at ArtTix. Runs through Saturday.

Labels: Joe Biden, politics, Sarah Palin, Tonight's schedule

Today's dead-tree Salt Lake Tribune includes a roundup of Halloween activities along the Wasatch Front - with the usual onslaught of haunted houses, corn mazes and other autumn traditions. (Tribune writers also offer tips on how to pick and carve a pumpkin, how to cook pumpkin seeds, how to create a cool Halloween costume and throw a fun party, plus a look at Utahns who get carried away with the Halloween decorating.)

One of the highlights is Cornbelly's annual corn maze at Thanksgiving Point - which this year features the smiling, singing image of Utah's own "American Idol" runner-up David Archuleta.

If you think that's tacky - that millions of Americans will fly over Lehi and laugh at those wacky Utahns - consider what Ohio farmer Duke Wheeler did to his cornfield:


(Photos: AP)

Labels: American Idol, David Archuleta, politics, Sarah Palin

The words "fun" and "political speech" usually don't go together - unless you, like me, watched John McCain's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention with the members of the Salt Lake City chapter of Drinking Liberally.

The group, which is as dedicated to liberal causes as it is to having a good time, gathered last night at Saints and Sinners, a private club in South Salt Lake, to watch McCain's speech. About 30 or 40 people showed up - including the Democratic challengers for governor and lieutenant governor, Bob Springmeyer and Josie Valdez.

Drinking Liberally was born in New York City in May 2003, and now boasts 293 chapters in all 50 states. The Salt Lake chapter has been around for about three years, according to Heather Culligan, one of the three "hosts" of the McCain event. (The chapter meets regularly on the second and fourth Fridays of the month at Piper Down, 1492 S. State St., Salt Lake City.)

Before McCain's speech (which we watched on one-hour tape delay, because the TVs were tuned to KUED, and nobody realized it wasn't a live feed until it was too late), and I got chatting with Valdez and with Misty Fowler, chairperson of Utah for Obama (who was live-blogging the speech from the bar on her web site, saintless.com).

Valdez and Fowler were both in Denver last week for the Democratic National Convention, and they compared that experience to the show from St. Paul they were seeing on TV.

"It was absolutely amazing," Fowler said, "seeing so many different people gathered in one place from so many different backgrounds."

Valdez remarked on how disorganized and dispirited the Republican rank-and-file looked on the floor of Xcel Energy Center. "We had better sign flow and coordination at our party," Valdez said. Fowler added that the cheering and sign-carrying was all organized by Democratic volunteers, who took the job because it gave them a chance to get into the Pepsi Center and be part of the event.

Once McCain's speech started, everybody was gathered around the TV with their beer glasses ready. Culligan had passed out copies of a drinking-game (devised by Drinking Liberally's Portland, Ore., chapter) to go with the speech. A few people added their own rules, such as taking a drink every time the cameras captured a person of color (which, for the whiter-than-white Republicans, became a sort of televised "Where's Waldo?" game).

Most got into the game with good spirit, though there was one loud angry guy who kept getting louder and angrier as his beer intake increased. I hope he got home OK.

Here's the drinking-game scorecard, as I tallied it:

• Sip when McCain says taxes should be cut: 6
• Sip when he mentions Barack Obama by name: 6
• Sip when he talks about his bipartisan record: 3
• Sip when he refers to his running mate, Sarah Palin, as a reformer: 1
• Sip when he talks about the "surge" being a success: 1
• Sip when he says we have to stay in Iraq until we win: 1
• Drink when he mentions he's a POW: 1
• Drink when he refers to Palin's "executive experience": 1
• Drink when he acknowledges that most Americans think the economy is in bad shape: 3
• Chug when he calls himself a maverick: 2

And we didn't even get to the end of McCain's speech, because the bar's regular Thursday night reggae band, Soul Redemption started playing at 10 p.m. Those who wanted to catch the rest of the speech did so without sound, with the closed-captioning on.

As it turns out, some good reggae music is the perfect way to relax after fiery political rhetoric.

Labels: John McCain, politics, Sarah Palin

TMZ.com, the bottom-feeders of tabloid TV, ambushed Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch at the Republican National Convention, asking if there should be a comparison between Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and celebrity mom Lynne Spears - because they both have had to deal with their teen-age daughters' pregnancies.

Hatch brushed off the TMZ guy politely but firmly, as this video shows.

TMZ is late to the party, anyway. Most everyone - from Barack Obama to Lindsay Lohan (no, seriously, Lindsay Lohan has weighed in on this, and quite intelligently, too) - has declared Palin's daughter Bristol off-limits.

It's not about the politician's family, it's about the politician's policies.

Labels: Barack Obama, John McCain, Orrin Hatch, politics, Sarah Palin

Jay McDonough, a progressive blogger for the Salt Lake City edition of Examiner.com, perfectly pegged the off-the-wall suggestion by Cindy McCain that her husband John's vice-presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has foreign-policy experience because "Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia." (No, she really said that - here's the YouTube evidence.)

Countered McDonough: "I met Robert Redford so I, therefore, know about acting."

Labels: John McCain, politics, Robert Redford, Sarah Palin

Bad news for all those Utahns who still want to vote for Mitt Romney: Presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain has chosen Alaskan governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

Not Michael Palin from "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (pictured at far right), but Sarah Palin from Alaska (pictured at near right).

The pundits are speculating on why McCain chose Palin. I can come up with two reasons: Courting the spurned Hillary Clinton vote, choosing somebody comparatively young, and going after her oil-company ties - three reasons.

Labels: John McCain, politics, Sarah Palin