It started as just another letter in the pile that Elle magazine advice columnist E. Jean gets every week. Like a lot of us lately, the letter-writer was coping with unemployment and asked E. Jean for help:
I’m currently homeless and living in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I’m educated, I have never done drugs, and I am not mentally ill. I have a strong employment history and am a career executive assistant. The instability sucks, but I’m rocking it as best as I can.
The rest of the letter recounted the story of the homeless young woman applying for a job and bombing the interview. Here’s what E. Jean had to say, after two paragraphs of useful and inspirational job search advice:
Talk about art imitating life – Ugly Bettystar Mark Indelicato, who plays Betty’s fashion-conscious nephew Justin, may be jumping into the fashion world for real. Indelicato, age 15, took a tour of designer Carolina Herrera’s showroom last week. While there, he showed Herrera some sketches he had in mind for a denim line he wants to do. The designer was reportedly so impressed that she offered Indelicato an internship on the spot. Will he be a vanity intern who skips straight to designing, or will he actually get a chance to learn about the workings of the fashion industry?
Let’s just remind Carolina Herrera that, while it was very kind of her to offer this internship, she might want to hold out another year or two. Fifteen-year-olds, as we all learned from the Tallulah Willis at Harper’s Bazaar incident, are not able to be interns. So maybe Indelicato will just have to be a “guest of the designer” while he’s still a minor.
Former Fugees member Wyclef Jean stopped by MTV’s New York studio recently to promote a new contest. He has 10 aspiring musicians remixing versions of his latest single, “More Bottles,” and is posting them all on his official website so that fans can vote on which one they like the best. However, while he was at MTV to promote one contest, he ended up starting another one. An MTV intern named Josh Rosenstrauch challenged the musician to a push-up competition. Not only did Clef accept, he’s upping the ante. During the taping of one of the remixes, he announced:
Josh from MTV, push-up competition, we’re gonna do it at the Nokia Theater, so I can embarrass you in front of everybody. No less than 100 push-ups. I know you’re a young man, so you will be facing the old man. Wax on, wax off.
Is there a day set yet? Because I’m happy to pop over to the Nokia Theater and record this for posterity.
Remember when Kanye West was going to intern at a fashion company in London so that he could then start his own fashion line? I thought it was just another celebrity vanity internship, where he would pretend to intern for two weeks and then claim he had so much industry credibility.
However, it seems that Kanye actually got a real – or semireal – internship not at Gucci or Prada but at The Gap. The Chicago Tribune reports:
According to published reports, West, who is known not just for his music but for his cutting-edge style as well, has been interning at The Gap headquarters in Manhattan. He’s apparently working side-by-side with pal designer and creative director Patrick Robinson, who was reportedly hired to spruce up the label.
Sources say West is taking the internship seriously, too. He’s apparently been putting in late night hours – including staying in the office until 2 a.m. It has been speculated West is looking to launch a line of clothing for the Gap, but so far, those reports have not been confirmed.
As a former Gap employee – I spent the summer before college folding shirts and helping tween girls pick out an outfit to wear to ‘N Sync concerts – I welcome Kanye to the folding board club.
If you’re a diehard Devil Wears Prada aficionado and you thought that assistant life couldn’t possibly get worse at Conde Nast, think again. A spy tells Gawker.com that the publishing behemoth has come up with some ‘creative’ ways to try and keep the assistants hard at work:
So now we have incentives to be good assistants because there is an assistant of the month prize of $500. I’m going to be the model assistant, lol. A couple of those and mama can buy herself a chanel bag or some loubs!
That’s great for the lucky assistant who gets recognized that month, but when everyone is making close to a poverty-level wage it really doesn’t help. How many assistants do they have at Conde, anyway?
While the assistants are toiling away in hopes of winning a bonus, it seems like the interns have finally had enough. A sign was posted in the breakrooms informing Conde employees they will have to wash their own dishes instead of the interns doing it for them. The whole note is here, glorious, and totally worth reading, but here’s my favorite part: “I know, I know: you went to Vassar, you have a rich husband, you’ve never washed a dish in your life.” I want to hire whoever penned that note to run this blog for me when I go on vacation. Call me, intern!
John Krasinski is best known for playing the Jim on The Office, but it turns out he has a pretty impressive resume. In addition to majoring in playwriting at Brown University, he studied acting at various places including The Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and The Actor’s Center in New York City. Not only does the guy have technique, he also put in time doing less-than-glamorous work before finding TV stardom. He spent some time working as a script intern on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
Not only is this guy yummy, he is willing to work hard. If I wasn’t already planning to go check out his bearded hipster hotness in the movie Away We Go, learning this information would have totally pushed me over the edge.
Case in point – Tallulah Willis, youngest of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis’ three daughters, will spend the summer interning at high-fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar. That’s normal for a college student, right?
Well, it is. Tallulah, however, is fifteen. And her mom appeared on the cover of the magazine recently. Oh, and her stepdad occasionally pens columns for said magazine. Gosh, what a coincidence that lil’ Tallulah beat out all those older kids who study journalism in college to get the coveted internship.
But wait! It seems that fifteen year olds are too young to work for free. (Really, isn’t EVERYONE too young to work for free? I digress.) Lest anyone get in trouble with the law, a Harper’s Bazaar spokesperson told Page Six that “Tallulah is a guest of Harper’s Bazaar, shadowing our editors for a couple of weeks.” If you’re not familiar with PR-speak, allow me to translate: the editors are doing a favor for her celebrity relatives, and Miss Willis will certainly not have to stoop to actual intern tasks like fetching coffee or answering telephones. Perhaps she caught the intern bug after her dad did a gofer stint on Letterman?
What’s the over/under on when she’s going to do a “cute” Sean-Avery style photoshoot of her pretending to do filing?
Last night I was all ready to commend David Letterman for making a point of thanking his summer interns on The Late Show, but then the “thank the unpaid help” bit turned into a hilarious segment showing Bruce Willis as one of the intern crew. Here’s Bruce in action as he gives dating advice, makes copies, and runs errands:
Talk about art imitating life – 
Remember when Kanye West was going to intern at a fashion company in London so that he could then start his own fashion line? I thought it was just another celebrity vanity internship, where he would pretend to intern for two weeks and then claim he had so much industry credibility.
If you’re a diehard Devil Wears Prada aficionado and you thought that assistant life couldn’t possibly get worse at Conde Nast, think again. 
Celebrities’ kids – they’re just like us!
