Rebel Prince

In this week’s New Yorker financial page, an economic look at the myth of the box-office weekend (“Open Wide,” Aug. 4, 2003). My favorite phrase from the article is “non-informative information cascade.” Use that instead of “buzz” the next time you refer to all the Hollywood promotion that gets rolled out several months, seasons, human gestation periods, before a movie actually opens.

And if you really want to read more in this vein, I found a paper entitled “Movie Stars, Big Budgets, and Wide Releases: Empirical Analysis of the Blockbuster Strategy” (PDF, 584k), complete with the kind of mathematical-symbol-laden econometrics that I see everyday at work and pretend to know something about. (It’s all Greek to me. Literally.)

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The Times reports that the upcoming issue of Bride’s magazine features an article on same-sex weddings (“Outward Bound,” Sept./Oct. 2003), a first among the major bridal magazines. Reactions:

Cathy Renna, news media director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said every such article is an important step. “Maybe a cynical person would say they just want our business,” Ms. Renna said. “But if you want to have a wedding, these are the publications you’ll read. A story like this really energizes the gay and lesbian community.”

Same-sex ceremonies have been covered for some time on Internet wedding sites. “Wow, they finally caught up,” said Carley Roney, editor in chief and a co-founder of one such site, TheKnot.com, which claims more than two million visitors a month. The Knot has covered same-sex weddings since it began operating in 1997.

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