Herewith, our list of Salon’s 50 most popular stories in 1999, based on cumulative volume of Web traffic. Each day this week we’ll add 10 to the list, counting down to the most-read articles of the year. And don’t miss our “Editor’s Pick” list — a handpicked selection of Salon’s best work from 1999.
46. Too many naked women By Joel Stratte-McClure An interview with Helmut Newton.
[02/10/96]
45. Live! From my bedroom By Simon Firth “Homecam” operators broadcast their daily
lives to Web voyeurs. Why? For art or fame, love or money — or reasons they
can’t quite explain.
44. Do penguins eat apples? By Andrew Leonard
Once upon a time, Apple dreamed of killing giants. Today, that hope
belongs to a new generation — of open-source programmers.
42. Hillary, Naomi, Susan and Rush. Sheesh! By Camille Paglia Clinton requires emergency intervention; Wolf’s mind is amazingly slack; Faludi’s “Stiffed” is a stiff. Meanwhile, Limbaugh brings a genuine intellectual service to American culture.
It’s Valentine’s Day, perhaps the sappiest day of the year for couples. But it’s also a good day to remember that being part of a couple is hard — and that no one other than those two people truly understands what goes on or why it works.
So Salon asked four top novelists to look at celebrity couples in the news recently either for a split or a disagreement and imagine the back story. What went wrong? What was really said?
Just click on the links below to read the stories:
When Gisele Bundchen defended Tom Brady by criticizing his receivers after the Super Bowl, it created some awkwardness. An author and New Yorker editor re-creates the conversation.
It was an awkward day on “Project Runway” when Heidi Klum and Seal split, guesses the author of “This Is Not Your City” — especially for those who speak in Seal song titles.
The evening before Demi’s friends called 911 with a medical emergency, she was at another party, and despaired of ever finding anyone who truly understood her again, imagines the author of “The Missing Person.”
Singer Whitney Houston is shown during the Whitney Houston "I Look To You" CD Listening Party held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Thursday July 23, 2009 in Beverly Hills, California.
Before the tragic tabloid headlines, the “crack is wack” denials and the tumultuous marriage to Bobby Brown, pop/soul diva Whitney Houston towered over the music world in the mid-1980s and early ’90s.
Houston died Saturday in Beverly Hills, on the eve of the Grammy Awards. She was 48.
She sold 200 million records worldwide, won six Grammys, two Emmys and nearly two dozen American Music Awards. Hits like “How Will I Know,” “Saving All My Love For You” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” ruled the pop charts — and made her one of the few singers who could be identified by one name.
With royal music roots — the daughter of gospel sensation Cissy Houston, the cousin of Dionne Warwick and the god-daughter of Aretha Franklin — she seemed destined to become a pop queen. But drugs and erratic behavior helped tear her career down.
“The biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy,” Houston told Diane Sawyer in a 2002 interview, with Brown by her side.
Let’s remember her at her peak, with some of her biggest hits:
Certain experiences will always force a reevaluation of life’s priorities. The birth of a child, a near-death experience — or getting fired. The latest episode of Salon’s video series on unemployment in America begins with Theresa Iacovo, a laid-off truck dispatcher, reminiscing on all of the Christmases she missed during her 20-year career. “Why did I give up that time with my family that I can never give back?” she asks.
Several recent submissions to Open Salon on the topic of unemployment also question the relationship between personal fulfillment and work. Homeless Scribe aptly sums up the source of much frustration: “Fresh out of college, I expected job security in exchange for hard work. I expected fairness in exchange for loyalty. And I expected respect in exchange for respect. I lived up to my side of the bargain. It’s the other side that failed.”
While challenging the myth that unemployment equals a meaningless existence, Livia Gershon explains how the freedom of not having a job can come with more benefits than the meager compensation of, for example, a part-time shift at Wal-Mart. She writes, “An unemployed father might create a more stable home for a little while, so his wife doesn’t have to take a day off if a kid gets sick. He might also be able to watch a neighbor’s child after school, or help his parents fix their roof.”
The trick, of course, is finding balance. We would all love to chase our passions, but we can’t just ignore those pesky bills. The former employee of a Chicago law firm captures this conflict in his cathartic piece “My Unintended Vacation.” He writes, “Between temp jobs, I started spending a lot more time volunteering for a few nonprofits and found it much more rewarding than the old job — except for the money, of course.”
Love woes are timeless — so why not look to literature’s most lasting works for advice on how to deal with them?
In their new book, “Much Ado About Loving,” authors Maura Kelly and Jack Murnighan do just that. Next week, in honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re bringing their expertise — and the innumerable literary examples at their fingertips — to you.
Tell us about your romantic problems, and we’ll send Jack and Maura to the stacks. Heartbroken after a nasty breakup? Languishing in a long-term relationship that’s lost its spark? They’ll tackle anything — from good old-fashioned forbidden love to ultra-modern online dating disasters — and let you know which Great Works offer words of wisdom suitable to your situation.
Email your entries to bythebook@salon.com, and check back on Valentine’s Day to see which classics they prescribe. Submissions will be accepted until 5 p.m. EST on Friday, Feb. 10.
Keith Olbermann was back in his usual seat on “Countdown” Monday night. First up: a segment on on Barack Obama’s improving poll numbers and reelection outlook with Salon’s Steve Kornacki:
The factory jobs aren’t coming back 
Jack Donaghy fears the 99 percent 
Tim and Eric’s comedy of repulsion 
Who is Newt’s sugar daddy really helping? 
“Eastbound and Down” heads to the Redneck Riviera 
David Brooks: “I have heard of Jeremy Lin” 
Come back, “Colbert Report”! 
Anthony Shadid, the best of his generation 
Billionaire Romney donor uses threats to silence critics 
Secret papers turn up heat on global-warming deniers 
