Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - Jun 15, 2011

Weinergate:

Despite growing pressure from lawmakers who think he should resign, but after a caucus on Capitol Hill yesterday, Rep ANTHONY WEINER's fellow Democrats decided to wait a while longer before taking any action.
The closed-door meeting ended with House Democrats taking no action on stripping Weiner of his committee assignments. Democratic leader NANCY PELOSI left unanswered when further steps might be taken.

We've got the first national poll on the ANTHONY WEINER mess, and most folks want him o-u-t. A survey from Public Policy Polling --a Democratic firm-- finds 60-percent of registered voters across the U-S want Weiner to resign from Congress while 25-percent want him to stay and 15-percent say they're not sure.
Fifty-six-percent of those polled last week in Weiner's home district wanted him to stay.
An interesting note from the PPP poll: men were much tougher than women on the question. Sixty-six-percent of men surveyed want Weiner to quit, versus 55-percent of women.

It was just a matter of time: The ANTHONY WEINER doll is out.
Made by the same company that made action figure dolls of other famous political figures, like BARCK OBAMA and SARAH PALIN.
One Weiner doll is fully covered with "Tweet This" on his shorts. That one goes for $39.95.
The adult version costs $10 bucks more. (Maiman)

Big Money, Big Problems:

The big stock story today will be the IPO of Pandora, the online music service, in which 14.7 million shares will be initially going for $16 --generating around $235 million in proceeds for itself and shareholders, including the Hearst Corporation.
Pandora, which has about 94 million registered users, will have a market capitalization of $2.56 billion... but wait until the close of business, when we find out how much the stock price jumped during the first day of trading.

On, off and way-off Broadway:

After a series of awful mishaps, U2's Broadway musical, "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark" finally opened last night. BONO and THE EDGE were there, along with the show's original director, JULIE TAYMOR, even though she was fired from the production she helped create. Former President BILL CLINTON was also in the audience. The reviews were a lot better than the nasty ones that slipped out during early previews of the troubled show, but it's still getting a mediocre vibe. The original cast album, featuring songs by Bono and The Edge, is in stores now. (Marino)

Spider-Man reviews:

--"The costliest, most ambitious endeavor in Broadway history, “Spider-Man” finally gets off the ground but fails to soar." (Hollywood Reporter)
--"'Spider-Man' is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst... Stock the Foxwoods gift shops with souvenir crash helmets and T-shirts that say 'I saw ‘Spider-Man’ and lived.' Otherwise, a more appropriate slogan would be 'I saw ‘Spider-Man’ and slept'." (NY Times)
--"No superpowers needed to sniff out this stinker" (Washington Post)
--"I'm sorry to report that the eight-legged, nine-lived megalomusical-which finally opened tonight, in its newly tamed, scared-straight and heavily Zolofted post-Taymor state-has deteriorated from mindblowingly misbegotten carnival-of-the-damned to merely embarrassing dud." (New York magazine)
--"The question, of course, is whether the show's revamping... has improved what had been an incoherent mess. The answer is yes. The response to the follow-up query --Is the show good?-- is: not really." (NorthJersey.com)