Madonna has been in this industry long enough to know that she should have fueled divorce speculation back when her album was coming out, because she is getting more attention now than she has in a long time. The latest rumors to hit Madge involve a certain Yankees baseball player, who has been making late-night visits to her NYC apartment while soon-to-be-ex Guy Ritchie is away.
Republicans Larry Craig and David Vitter made headlines last week after cosponsoring a Senatorial act “protecting” marriage from the vile homosexual beasts.
This is hilarious, of course, because the men both had extramarital excursions last year. Seizing the absurd moment, Patriot Boy mocked up these faux ads mocking the hypocritical politicians.
Brilliant!
While reporting on apartment-jumping Russian model Ruslana Korshunova, who reportedly committed suicide on Sunday after leaping to her death, Fox News broke what most media types would argue is an ethics commandment: Thou shalt not show the dead. This tenet falls somewhere next to “Thou shalt not show sex abuse victims,” though clearly on the other side of “Thou shalt be OK if you show a dead Saddam Hussein hanging from the rafters.” Now, following its various apologies to Obama’s camp, FNC is apologizing for broadcasting Korshunova’s corpse, lying partially covered by a sheet on the street. CONTINUED »
By now you’re well aware of AMC’s excellent Mad Men, the Jon Hamm-led drama set in the 1960s advertising world where three martini lunches and sleeping with the girls of the typing class was expected and celebrated. We count ourselves among the show’s original fans — not these Johnny-come-latelys with their season one DVDs — and, having professionally stalked at least three of the cast members, are very clearly a little bit obsessed with this show. And now, everybody else will be too, because every damn one of you critics is sharing with America television’s best-kept secret, from Entertainment Weekly (plastering it on the cover of their Summer TV Preview) and Vanity Fair (laid out in the June issue as the “high-water mark of male chauvinism”) to today’s New York Post (Linda Stasi is on the beat!).
But when the crowd forms to lift the champion atop its shoulders, the only thing that’s left to happen is The Fall. You know what we mean: the backlash, where something we couldn’t imagine not loving in suddenly the punching bag we throw knives at. Don’t believe us? CONTINUED »
Actress Jessica Biel, who is often photographed by the paparazzi looking very unhappy next to professional jerk Justin Timberlake, blogged her first bloggy blog item on The MySpace yesterday! She’s down in South Carolina filming the movie Nailed with Jake Gyllenhaal and Tracy Morgan, and she’s only got a few minutes of rest while sitting in her trailer, probably drinking SmartWater, because that’s what celebrities like her do, so she’s punching out her very first item where she reports she is “thrilled to join the tech revolution!” And we are thrilled to welcome her! But for being such a novice blogger, Ms. Biel has already learned rule No. 1 of blogging: self-promotion. This medium is barely worth the effort if you aren’t going to rush from the gate and start plug-plug-plugging away at your own projects. CONTINUED »
Noble public official forgiver Keith Olbermann delivered one of his Digg-bait “Special Comments” last night, except this time he wasn’t devoting 10 minutes to assailing President Bush — he was extending an olive branch, and a “second chance to make a first impression,” to Sen. Barack Obama, who suddenly decided to vote for FISA, the federal wiretapping-without-warrants law that the Bush administration has so long wanted on the books, as well as blanket immunity for the telecom industry who’s been cooperating with officials who may or may not be violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment.
Nevermind that Olbermann was championing Obama just last week for “refusing to cower even to the left on the subject of warrantless wiretapping” — signaling a flip-flop of his own, since Olbermann was championing Obama when he was anti-FISA back when this campaign started — and got thrown to the lions by Glenn Greenwald, who pointed out the discrepancies in Olbermann’s logic. Video below. CONTINUED »
Like any do-gooding multi-hundred-millionaire movie star, Hancock’s Will Smith is involved in the philanthropy scene. He’s also, as prying eyes have woefully pointed out, been involving himself with the Tom Cruise scene, which means of course that he’s basically a raving Scientologist trying to hold in his inner homo, because that’s what the cult is about, right? Back in 2004, Smith donated $20k to something called “HOPE: The Hollywood Education and Literacy Program,” which is the church’s “literary program,” where children get homeschooled and, we’re guessing, brainwashed in their formative years. Now, he and Jada have been plugging a way at their New Village Academy, a private school they’re funding that will open in December, which got the LAT treatment over the weekend. Naturally, the first word out of the school’s mouth is that it is not a Scientology facility. (Even Will and Jada still insist they aren’t of the church.) But a certain anti-Scientology crusader is casting his eye of suspicion on this educational institution, mostly because of a … goat. CONTINUED »
Culture + Travel, the mostly ignored and barely read magazine that was the toast of the town when owner and Canadian billionairess Louise (McBain) Blouin hired former Conde Nasty James Truman to run the show, has since been plagued with high-profile departures, staffer exits, gossip leaks, and a situation barely more sustainable than China’s algae nightmare. One might think, so many months later, that things are finally rebounding. One might also be an idiot! CONTINUED »
Supermodel Ruslana Korshunova, the one-time cover girl of French Elle and Russian Vogue who supposedly flung herself off the balcony of her 9th floor downtown apartment yesterday, may have, like so many before her, left clues about her inner suffering in the dumpster of all emotions: the Internet. One line in particular — “My dream is to fly. Oh, my rainbow it is too high.” — is already being highlighted as the “foretelling” bit from her online postings, though, in all likelihood, had nothing to do with how she planned to take her own life. [Daily Mail]
Matt Lauer wore the same bathing suit twice and all he got was this fashion criticism from TMZ. [TMZ]
And yes, there is a waiting list to get them. [Arktip]
Billionaire and massaging young-thing procurer Jeffrey Epstein has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to felony charges. After his sentence, he’ll return home for a year-long house arrest and a slot in Florida’s sex offender registry. [TSG] The biggest surprise? The New York Times, which took four hundred years to finally report on the Epstein scandal, already carries a wire report of the news.
Says Mollygood’s Whitney: Say hello to my latest love interest, Robert Buckley. My roommate and I ran into him on St. Mark’s a couple weeks ago and I can assure you he is even better looking in person — a feat I once thought impossible. Don’t worry, we didn’t interact with him except for a few blocks of innocent stalking with our camera phones. Anyway, here he is filming scenes for Lipstick Jungle in the East Village with the insanely lucky Kim Raver. Enjoy.
Because there’s no such thing as too much pride - except for hubris - here are some shots from yesterday’s march here in New York City. We’re absolutely in love with the snap of Mayor Michael Bloomberg waving his rainbow flag. So cute!
New York insider guide UrbanDaddy describes new Meatpacking nightspot Bijoux, a subterranean lounge, this way: “This club is underground in both senses of the word, so all you’ll find out front is an interrogation-room-style, two-way tinted-glass door with a bouncer hiding behind it. If you can entice the door to open, you’re in. Just head downstairs, down the kitchen corridor (dodging the Berbere rack of lamb on its way upstairs) and through the door labeled ‘private.’” Because a velvet rope is just. too. passé.
That Variety is weighing in on the Olbermann-O’Reilly feud pretty much means it’s time to turn in, doesn’t it? [Variety]
It was not Rolling Stone that Conde Nast was after, but another of Jann Wenner’s publications: the tabloid Us Weekly.
That’s what Keith Kelly hopes to clarify in today’s column, where he names a price tag of $750 million that Si Newhouse would have to cough up to get his hands on the well-performing celeb weekly in what’s already a crowded market.
Except news of a potential deal brings more questions than it does answers. Officially, Wenner media says, “There are no talks. Wenner Media and its properties are not for sale.” As for Conde Nast, they’re word is, “It is a company policy to never comment on potential acquisitions.” But what would upscale Conde want with a tabloid that, no matter how much revenue and how glossy, is still viewed as downmarket? CONTINUED »
If you’ve watched just one episode of Fox’s dancing competition So You Think You Can Dance — as every member of Jossip HQ has — then you already know the best part of the show is not Cat Deeley’s legs, the male dancers’ lean and solid torsos, or the female dancers’ crotch flashing. It is Mary Murphy, the choreographer and ballroom dancing champion who sits in the judge’s chair next to producer Nigel Lithgow. After each performance wraps, Murphy tells the dancers one or more things, which range from, “It just wasn’t doing it for me,” to, “You’ve got a ticket on the HOT TAMALE TRAIN!” The number of her shrieks are matched only by the number of times she flashes that toothy smile. Today, she is profiled by the Los Angeles Times, which, according to this graph that charts the paper’s coverage of her, is making it her month.
While the hot tamale train used to be Murphy’s most esteemed honor bestowed on contestants, her newest top award is “Tra La La,” as in, “the Tra La La phase of my heart.”
Every notable reality show judge has their “thing.” For Donald Trump, it’s, “You’re fired.” For Heidi Klum, it’s, “Auf wiedersehen.” But those are concocted by producers; they’re supposed to stick. Murphy’s “hot tamale train” catchphrase, however, seems to have been born organically. It doesn’t seem to be an executive producer-coined (in this case, it would’ve been Lithgow, who created the show) gimmick to deliver each episode. Rather, if our memory serves, she began saying it during Dance’s first season, realized how much of a trademark it was, and kept on using it.
What, then, of other reality show judges who have tried to follow her lead? One horrific example sticks in our memory, and MTV’s to blame. CONTINUED »
As Wired wraps its head around Wanted, the $50 million opening weekend excuse to up Angelina Jolie’s income statement, and all the tricks it employs to make things like a high-speed train crash look like something a little better than a four-year-old crashing in Thomas the Train toy, it finds what is quickly becoming the most recycled character devices on screen: tattoos. CONTINUED »
The great (and by “great” we mean “annoying”) thing about Heidi Montag is that she’s a mystery: Does she really believe the stuff that comes out of her mouth or is it all a big joke? And if it’s a joke, why does she insist on being the punch line?
Lately, Horse Face has gone off on a Christianity tangent, claiming she reads the Bible every day and is a “kind of non-denominational Baptist.” Whatever that means. Also? She plans to insult God through the power of her terrible music by recording a Christian album.
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