The Alex Cooper Profile Olympics

Alex Cooper, surviving host and “single father” of the formerly Barstool and now Spotify-exclusive podcast “Call Her Daddy,” was the subject of not one, not two, but four profiles yesterday. Should you read all of them? Absolutely not. I read them all for you, because I work hard to earn your subscription dollar every day.

I started with only one question: how did Alex Cooper walk away from Barstool and her former co-host Sofia Franklyn as the sole owner of the “Call Her Daddy” brand and complete back catalogue? Incredibly, no one managed to answer that question, but now I have a new question: on a sunny, 85 degree day in New York City, how do you wear this leather outfit and not look like the Niagara of sweat waterfalls?

All four stories hit the same biographical notes: Sports-TV producer father, psychologist mother, Pennsylvania childhood, Division 1 soccer at B.U., film production classes, winning short film. She edits her own podcast. Hamptons hijinks, Mr. Sexy Zoom Man and the Gluck Gluck 9000. All of them present the same carefully constructed quasi-human brand identity: a beautiful young woman whose competitive drive and media-business smarts led to her inevitable success. A self-made woman who wanted to be rich and was willing and able to fuck over anyone to get there. For all the calculated openness of her “female locker-room talk” (a nauseating phrase that only Kat Stoeffel avoids, to her credit) if Cooper has emotional depths beyond “I love a good little competition,” they are nowhere to be found here.

Medal Ceremony:

🏅 Best Written: “Alex Cooper Takes All,” Kat Stoeffel for Bustle: Cooper eats a salad, and hints that she probably had sex with Logan Paul. The longest, but if you’re interested in Alex Cooper the brand/person this is the one to read.

🏅 Most Red Flags: “‘Call Her Daddy’ Host Alex Cooper Wants to Have the Biggest Podcast in the World,” Lane Florsheim for The Wall St. Journal. Reveals that her Spotify deal has her producing “48 main episodes of Call Her Daddy a year, plus 26 bimonthly mini-episodes,” which is a lot! And in addition to her 1.5 CHD episodes per week, Cooper is planning ”a second podcast, which is still in early development and will likely focus on crime.” Sounds dreadful.

🏅 Shortest: “Call Her Alex Cooper — The Call Her Daddy Host Is All Business (& Sex),“ Morgan Baila for Refinery29. Besides the incoherent title, this features one memorable quote: “I'm paid to talk like I'm with my girlfriends, [but] that doesn't mean that when I was sitting down with Spotify to sign one of the biggest deals in podcasting history, that I'm like, ‘What's up guys? Let's suck dick!’” Aside from that it hits the main points and then ends, so if you want a tiny bit more than you just got here, this is the one for you.

🏅 Longest Title I guess? “Call Her Daddy’s Alexandra Cooper Made Her Name Talking About Sex. With Her Massive Spotify Deal, She’s Pushing Beyond That,” Eliana Dockterman for Time. Notes that “[Barstool] is still handling Call Her Daddy’s merchandising,” which is the only hint in all four stories to how Cooper ended up owning the whole brand. Otherwise, not really the most anything. Features another appearance by the leather pants.

Speaking of Bustle, BDG Media is preparing to SPAC and just bought Some Spider Studios, which publishes parenting websites. Which, fine, whatever, but the news is: did you know 2013’s schlumpy young woman-desk enthusiast Bryan Goldberg got swole? At age 38, Goldberg is young for middle age but nevertheless looks well on his way to becoming what Jacob Bernstein has dubbed “a Bezos.” Hyper-Bezos Scott Galloway’s awful Bloomberg Quibi promo cringed him right out of a show, reports Daily Beast media news duo Cartwright & Tani.

Today in Actual Olympics: A second opening ceremony creative director has been fired, this one for Holocaust jokes, leaving organizers with just one day before the ceremony to find a third director to hire and fire. “New COVID-19 cases in Tokyo reached a six-month high,” and “at least 91 people affiliated with the Olympics have tested positive for COVID-19 thus far,” reports The Hill. But Will Leitch thinks we’ll forget all of this when NBC cranks up the sports-narrative machine, and he’s probably right. Anyway there’s a bear at the softball venue.

Also today in bears: “A Grizzly Bear Terrorized a Man for Days in Alaska. The Coast Guard Saw His SOS.” Meanwhile, in Canada (CW: gross). They saved that Ottawa pony just in time, but “MARS HAS A NEW HOLE!!” 😬

We interrupt this newsletter to bring you a special report from Today in Tabs Senior International Pizza Crime Correspondent Linda Yu:

Law & Order: Special Pizza Crimes Unit

It's Herlock Sholmes reporting live on a pizza crime. No, not that one. Or this one.

When A$AP Rocky was arrested in Sweden in 2019 a source close to the rapper told TMZ that the food was "inedible". In response Aftonbladet published the prison's menu that week, which included items such as "cowboy soup." But it appears Mr. Pretty Flacko wasn't the only one with complaints, as this week two inmates at a high security prison in Eskilstuna took two wardens hostage and demanded 20 kebab pizzas, one for each prisoner in their wing, which they received before being double-arrested.

SVT Nyheter spoke to Beshar Toma, who baked the 20 kebab pizzas but noted that the police just up and took them without paying the SEK 1,700 tab. Triple pizza crime? I’m just getting word… stand by… breaking now: Kriminalvården backtracked and asked the pizzeria to invoice the Swedish Prison and Probation Service. "We are happy about that," said the shop's owner Aram Waliid. That’s one pizza crime solved. The article didn't name the shop, but here are the possible nearby pizzerias triangulated:

Exclusive Tabs source Doktor Motson investigated and thinks it's Pizzeria Montana, whose “Kebabpizza 3” costs SEK 85. Also the “Martin's Special,” which contains "Tomato, Cheese, Pork Fillet, Banana, Pineapple, Curry, Peanuts," sounds like an experience.

Maybe the actual crime here is Swedish pizza itself. If pineapple is too much for you, avert your eyes, because in addition to the always popular Kebab pizza you can also get everything from meatballs to raisins to crab. If that's not enough, normally these dada-ist creations are also topped with a shredded, dressed cabbage mix called "pizzasallad."

“Kebabpizza—so good that you could kill for it, or at least sit inside for a few years extra.”

Jokes aside, these pizzas are actually the creation of immigrants and a sign of multiculturalism in Sweden. Responding to the kidnapping, a poster in r/Sweden wrote wistfully: "From someone who has previously been in a state institution... I can imagine that it has been a long time since the inmates got to taste the ordinary Swedish things that most of us take for granted."

“Free access to kebabpizza could be the solution to escalating criminality.”

“But god let them fly a helicopter and eat kebabpizza. It’s summer.”

Choire and NYMag newsletters director Kaitlin Jessing-Butz are hiring someone to write Today in Tabs. Felicia Sonmez filed her long overdue discrimination lawsuit against The Washington Post and Marty Baron. Guy Trebay: Why is everyone topless suddenly? (And why aren’t NY Times readers allowed to see any of them?) Guy Trebay in 2013: “Why is everyone topless suddenly?”

And finally: Rest of World has an outstanding story about a Turkish Farmville clone turned multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme.

Today’s Song: Flipper’s Guitar, “Blue Shinin’ Quick Star”

~call her tabsy~

There was too much today. Join me in the open thread tomorrow and we’ll try to process it. Thanks to Senior International Pizza Crime Correspondent Linda Yu for the special report, which she clearly was going to just keep texting me about until I let her write it up. Say hi on Twitter. Happy Tabs weekend, nothing else happens until Monday!