For many actors, the decision to go nude for a role is a tough one to make. They grapple with the idea that millions of strangers will see their butt cleavage, that Great Aunt Barb might have a heart attack when she's sees a nip slip, and what will Mom think? Nothing but a flashback to her own youthful nude scenes, if your mother happens to be Susan Sarandon. Sarandon's daughter Eva Amurri will star in nine episodes of Californication, in which she plays a creative writing stripper -- a student of professor Hank Moody by day, pole dancer by night. I know a gaggle of girls who would rather streak down Park Avenue then dance and crawl around in the nude in front of their mother, but that's how Eva's clan does it. Sarandon herself has experience with nudity, playing a seductress in 1978's Pretty Baby, as a lesbian lover to Catherine Deneuve in 1983's The Hunger, and she has a nude sex scene with James Spader in 1990's White Palace. Amurri's role has the majority ruling 'like mother, like daughter,' and though the pictures prove the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, it's their fun and empowering position on nudity that makes the mother/daughter naked team more interesting.

Finishing school headmistresses be damned! The Obama girls have won the heart of someone mightier than the lot of you combined. That's right: They're currently the red delicious of noted FOX News rival Susan Sarandon's bionic eye. Sarandon says, "They were just lovely, and really smart." And on their handling of instantaneous fame, she adds, "I don't think that they seemed particularly fazed [by the attention]. I think that they are going to handle fame fine. It's not like they have been thrust into the public life overnight. This is certainly bigger, but they seem very grounded."

It's hilarious when celebrities adopt some new sport-activity trend. It's truly a curious affliction. Patrick Dempsey races cars, and Jack Gyllenhall races bikes. It's no longer enough to own a Malibu spread teetering on the Pacific plus a fine armada of automobiles outside, not to mention a searingly hot significant other, and then a successful career (respectable or not). It seems they have this Bud Fox moment looking out over the skyline of their life -- "Who am I?" Well, most recently that internal voice answers, "I'm a Ping-Pong player."

Talk about being thrown under the bus -- and by your own flesh and blood. Susan Sarandon's daughter Eva Amurri said her mom has no style. Speaking to press at Tuesday night's Max Azria show, the 23-year-old actress said her mom has no interest in fashion whatsoever. "She doesn't care. She wears her gym clothes from when she comes back from the gym until night. Sometimes she puts a jacket over it if I really beg her to, but she doesn't really care very much." But Amurri, the spawn of Sarandon and Italian filmmaker Franco Amurri, has friends in fashion. "I don't know, maybe seeing what they do and kind of learning about how artistic it is. The whole process has given me an appreciation I think."

VIP access to this weekend’s All Points West Music and Arts Festival means hanging with the artists, but not actually watching them perform. Ignore the tempting buffet because there is too much beer to drink. Score a bunch of free shit and feel very important because of it. At the entrance, unimportant and important people alike wait in long-ass lines while their are bags checked. But we very important folk waltz right in.

A devastating virus brought the whole moment to a tragic, unforgettable end. But the legacy that is Robert Mapplethorpe extends far beyond the censorship, headlines—and S&M. As a new generation views his subversive, formalistic Polaroid portraits in an ongoing exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Nick Haramis catches up with some of the late icon’s equally illustrious subjects, supporters, chroniclers and partners in crime in an oral history submitted to set the record (mostly) straight.

Taken at a glance, the anthurium looks fragile, as if its rawboned stem might collapse under the weight of the fleshy spike engulfed by heavy leaves which sits atop the entire thing like a crown. Robert Mapplethorpe’s camera, however, not only captures the delicacy of the flower, but also draws attention to its pulsing, yannic throb, which, along with its neoclassical beauty, elevates the near-wilting object into a work of art. It’s a still life, but there’s nothing still about it. And, despite initial appearances to the contrary, it isn’t all that far from his more recognizable photographs, the shocking ones, all of which strive for unparalleled aesthetic splendor.