Every year (since last year) on this magical day before Thanksgiving, we bring you this inspiring message of hope and change from the original Barack Obama, junkie wife-murderer William S. Burroughs. It is a prayer to heal our troubled nation in these dark times.
There may not be a fresh posting on Turkey Day, but you can bet we'll be sitting in front of the television instead of explaining to various aunts and uncles what blogs are and why we don't shower very often. For Thursday, if you can somehow avoid sports and stay awake despite consuming a half box of wine and a full pound of turkey, check out Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew [10 PM, VH1]. Mary Carey stops by to encourage the group and Jeff Conaway ruins more of his relationships with other humans. If you aren't thankful after watching former addicts with weird skin get clean, then you're too far gone. As for Wednesday, we've got tonight, why don't you stay? WATCH Rosie Live [8 PM, NBC] - Rosie hits the boards in her triumphant return to NBC. Her stint playing the straight woman to the short guy on Little Britain USA did nothing to quench the whole lacka Rosie in our lives. Joining Rosie are a bunch of entertainers who could never hope to upstage her: Ne-Yo, Kathy Griffin, Harry Connick Jr., Clay Aiken, Jane Krakowski, Alec Baldwin, and Liza Minnelli. OK, Liza could steal the show, but Rosie would be fine with that.
Clearly, the most pressing aspect of President-elect Barack Obama's transition is what kind of freaking puppy he will be getting his daughters Malia and Sasha — and everyone's weighing in with their opinion. Frequent watchers of The View know that Barbara Walters is borderline obsessive about imploring the Obamas to adopt a pooch similar to her Havanese dog Cha Cha (short for "Cha Cha Cha," natch), so when it was announced that Walters would be interviewing the couple for a special to air this week, we immediately combed through the transcript to see if she would take the opportunity to push Cha Cha on them once more.
Lori Drew (right), the 49-year-old Missouri mom who posed as a 16-year-old boy on MySpace, has been convicted of three misdemeanors, but no felonies, in the death of 13-year-old Megan Meier — a former "best friend" of Drew's own daughter Sarah — who committed suicide after being rejected by the fake boy. In short, the only charges prosecutors could bring involved off-topic acts such as "accessing a computer without authorization." Drew's real crime — cruelly manipulating a vulnerable child for four weeks — isn't proscribed by law. (Photo by AP/Nick Ut)
What are "50 New York Socials" thankful for this holiday? Guest of a Guest talked to people who are supposed to be the city's tastemakers, movers, and shakers—yet aside from a few things, like not having to mix with the proles on the subway and utter fearlessness of God, their lists sound just like your Aunt Martha's: family, friends and being able to afford weed and champagne. We've broken their predictibility into a pie chart, proving that there truly is no randomness in the universe. Click for it.
Friends: 25 Family: 21 Mom: 7 Being employed: 7 Barack Obama: 6 Getting knocked up: 3 Not having to ride the subway: 2 God: 1 Weed and other trifles: 18
Are you quite enthusiastic about the upcoming release of the new Tom Cruise WW2 thriller Valkyrie? We are, if only for the myriad Tom Cruise posts it will inspire. And you know who else is? The Razzies people, who pick the worst movie of the year. Early reviews have them thinking they just might have a surefire winner here!: Choice quotes from an early MSNBC review:
It took four fired writers, a Will Smith-defied picket line, an open letter from Tina Fey (among others), and an intervention by the NAACP, but we're happy to report that the impossible dream has finally landed at Tyler Perry Studios: The mogul is finally coming around to a deal with the WGA.The Guild sends word today that it reached an agreement with Perry after five months of negotiations, during which a handful of veteran scribes for his series Meet the Browns and House of Payne were terminated for attempting to unionize the staff. The catch? Those writers will not be coming back, according to a WGA release issued late this morning. But, they added, the mogul "thanked them for their services and wished them well in their future endeavors." Surely that's of little comfort to the reeling Tyler Perry Four, who now confront the reality they may never again have the enviable opportunity to mass-produce Madea jokes for a Perry-starved populace. We hope the NAACP negotiators can sleep at night.
Last weekend, President Bush attended the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Lima, Peru. Turns out you can't do anything in Peru without someone handing you Peru's national drink, the Pisco Sour (made with pisco, a brandy-like liquor). It's a pretty agreeable drink, so we wouldn't complain, but President Bush has been supposedly teetotalling for 22 years. He avoided an international incident by downing that sucker. Peru's ANDINA press agency has some great details:
In 1992, suave Billy Clinton was sexin' the nation and wearin' boxers, and MTV had a big ole inaugural ball that was reportedly the hottest ticket in DC, even though Don Henley was the main act, which just goes to show once again that political people are really not cool when you get right down to it. But during the Bush years MTV had no inaugural balls, because Bush was so non-embodying of the Music Television vibe, you know? Well now Barack Obama is president and MTV is once again having a big cool inaugural ball! This is the single worst consequence of Barack Obama's election. [Ad Age; pic via]
Spoiler Alert! A brand-new promo for season five of Lost (that still, sadly, features the ear abortion forced on us by The Fray in a Dharma-like experiment) reveals the answer to one of this season's most-speculated upon mysteries: will Matthew Fox still be shaving his chest? We've covered the evidence up with Lost's smoke monster for now, but after the jump comes the shocking reveal:
Vice President-elect Smilin' Joe Biden is spending this Thanksgiving in lovely Nantucket. Just like he takes the train to work every day, he took the ferry from Hyannis. It is important to maintain your blue-collar cred when traveling to Nantucket to holiday. Biden shocked onlookers by pouring his own coffee at a local store. (How does he take his coffee? "Turns out he likes his coffee like he likes his presidents," our Gawker Nantucket Operative reports.) [Cape Cod Times]
As Gays across the nation make last-minute plans for their Milk screening parties—a lot like Sex and the City parties, except instead of Manolos and cocktail dresses you and your best girlfriends show up in Adidas Gazelles and crack-riding gym shorts—we thought we'd once again pay a visit to its white-hot screenwriter. That would be Dustin Lance Black, the frequently shirtless recovering Mormon introduced to you recently on this very blogspot.
When you're halfway into your forty-sixth season, as NBC's long-running crime drama Law & Order is, there are only so many storylines left to do that haven't been done before. Thus, it's no surprise that the show's "ripped from the headlines" method of generating plot points would eventually lead it to the death of Heath Ledger (you'll get your turn soon, Mario!), though it's impressive just how deeply they botched their opportunity. Says Page Six:
Time contributor and (decidedly former) constructor of DC press corps conventional wisdom Mark Halperin told a forum recently that the pro-Obama bias displayed by the media this campaign season was "disgusting." "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage," he added. You know who agrees with him? Al-Qaeda! Earlier this month, al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri invoked Malcolm X and called our president-elect a "house negro." Apparently, the international press did not take this criticism seriously, and al-Zawahiri was roundly mocked for tryna start shit. Al-Qaeda message boards are dismayed!
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♦ Going shopping on Friday? Expect bargains galore. "This could be the most heavily promotional Black Friday in history," says National Retail Federation president Tracy Mullin. [WWD, WSJ]
♦ At last night's British Fashion Awards, Luella Bartley was "thrilled" to be named British Designer of the Year, while Model of the Year, 19-year-old Jourdan Dunn, stole the evening with a tearful acceptance speech. [WWD]
♦ Last year a documentary team followed Anna Wintour, André Leon Talley, and the rest of the Vogue team around as they put together their biggest-ever September issue. Does the fact that the film is "creating heat" as a potential Sundance entry mean that the rest of us might get to see it one day? [Reuters]
It took a rumored meeting of superstars like Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep to get us to care again about a potential actors strike, and a hasty bit of rumor-debunking this morning to dash all the intrigue. But after a retraction, a non-retraction, and a few sharp personal jabs between dueling industry journos Nikki Finke and Sharon Waxman, all we know is that this match in their ongoing feud deserves a bit of play-by-play.We amended yesterday's news of a top-secret actor's meeting to reflect Waxman's retraction, which occurred overnight after Nikki revealed how Waxman got punk'd. Except, Waxman noted this morning, she didn't retract the story; she was just correcting her errors and saved the piece to "draft." Right. Still, Waxman emphasizes, "the essence of the story is correct": A high-octane, strike-gauging meeting took place at SAG president Alan Rosenberg's request, though not at the time of federal mediation between SAG and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which would a serious no-no. But what about Finke's allegations?
