Taking this morning's post about the macchiato-wielding vigilante who attempted to disperse the swarm of photographers surrounding Britney Spears' car with a scalding hot coffee-shower together with yesterday's NY Times story on the teenage founders of the Pint Size Paparazzi agency, one of our readers asked us, "Don't you ever feel like sometimes we live in the most horrific place on earth?"
Actor Tom Sizemore, currently carrying out a jail sentence for having violated the terms of his parole after pleading no contest to tweaking outside a Bakersfield Sheraton, is due for release next month, at which point under the state's stringent "Three Strikes and You're Seriously Fucked, Sizemore" law, another arrest would put him behind bars for four years. That sobering fact is more than enough deterrent to straighten up for good, Sizemore told the Bakersfield Californian:
· Music round-up: The Oohlas at the Viper Room; Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs at the Echo; Fionn Regan at the Troubadour; Abe Lincoln Story at Mr. T's Bowl.
· The New Beverly Cinema prepares you for The Darjeeling Limited by doing a double feature of Wes Anderson's Rushmore and Bottle Rocket.
· The Writers Bloc brings together presidential historians John Dean and Paul Slanksy for a conversation about the state of the current administration at Temple Emanuel</</p>
When 75-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, married eight times to seven men, was asked in this clip from The Soup if she thought she might make it to nine before she died, the resulting squawk was instantly reminiscent of her announcement of "Glaaaaadiator!" as the 2001 Golden Globe winner for best picture.
While a story about how Los Angeles's fun supply could be threatened by anti-narcotic crackdowns might ordinarily be an occasion to panic, we can all be comforted by the knowledge that the exciting innovations in smuggling technology being developed outside of U.S. borders could probably be adopted by domestic suppliers before a bottleneck brings our city to a grinding halt.
Is the idea of Britney Spears taking a bartending job really that crazy? If she's going to spend all her time at drinking establishments anyway, she might as well be picking up extra cash to help pay her lawyers to get her babies back. And she's already proven she has no natural talent for the other potentially lucrative profession with flexible, late-night hours she could be undertaking while she's waiting to have her custody restored, so her best shot at collecting wadded up tips will clearly come from behind the bar, not on the pole. [TMZ]
Charlie Sheen, author of the "go cry to your bald mom" e-mail suggesting his ex-wife Denise Richards might have more luck extracting sympathy from her cancer-suffering mother than from him, is painfully familiar with the sometimes irreversible consequences of indulging one's impulses. Luckily for him, however, lasers can remove the patchwork of ridiculous tattoos covering his body, as requested by fiancée Brooke "I'd rather not have to stare at Puff the Bookish Dragon every time we make love, honey" Mueller. From Page Six:
· Hollywood Out Of Ideas, Feature-to-TV Recycling Edition: Demonstrating a company-wide commitment to reducing its new-idea-footprint, NBC Universal's USA Network plans a TV series based on Thank You for Smoking, while its NBC flagship will try to adapt Outsourced into a primetime workplace comedy. [Variety, Variety]
· If this doesn't stoke your interest in the upcoming Ashton Kutcher/Carmeon Diaz comedy What Happens in Vegas... (not to be confused with the recently announced, Kutcher-free Dude, Where's My Groom?) nothing will: Queen Latifah has signed on for a cameo so hilarious that if the details of her participation were to escape, the entire project would be doomed to turnaround. [THR]
· Just in case you hadn't heard, last week's WGA contract talks weren't as friendly as they could have been. [Variety]
· NBC wins Sunday night behind its Packers-Bears football game, beating lineups from ABC and CBS that dropped off from last week's numbers. [THR]
· While American moviegoers largely shunned this weekend's offerings, overseas ticket-buyers turned out for Rataouille to the the tune of $19.7 million. [Variety]
"Sadie Sandler, with dad, Adam, wore her Disney Vintage "Hug" t-shirt while the two ate lunch at Hamburger Hamlet in LA on Saturday. Available at www.fredsegalfun.com. Please let me know if you can place this or would like more info on Disney Vintage! Thanks!"
Occasionally, the shutterbug class has to contend with the occupational hazard of having the scalding hot contents of a Starbucks cup thrown on them, an airborne assault that can originate either from their macchiato-loving quarry or from a third party displeased with the parking lot congestion that accompanies every impromptu Spears photo shoot. Overall, however, the mild burns are preferable to having a Merecedes hood ornament tattooed on one's torso following a typical run-in with Lindsay Lohan.
Never one to let a couple butt-rocker mistakes in her past scare her away from true happiness, serial matrimonialist Pamela Anderson has again tied the knot, this time to longtime friend Rick Salomon—best known as the adventuresome protagonist of 1 Night in Paris—in a quickie reception Saturday night in Las Vegas:
Sunday's LAT provides the world with the fascinating backstory of Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, the proudly uncool corporate kamikaze responsible for carrying out the public relations suicide missions Sumner Redstone dreams up while partially hypnotized by staring too intently at his collection of exotic fish, such as suing Google for copyright infringement, replacing a wildly popular executive, or blaspheming a Hollywood deity. But more impressive than the French-speaker's childhood language-acquisition skills (he learned English from Saturday morning cartoons!) and stunning promotion from kindergarten to Columbia Law School (there may have been a stop in college we're forgetting, but we don't have time to go back and double-check that part of the bio) is Dauman's uncanny ability to stay in the good graces of his notoriously prickly boss:
There is perhaps no more heartwarming moment than when, after the DNA tests come in positive following months of denials of paternity, a guy tells a gossip column he'll accept legal responsibility for his child. Kevin Federline is really going to trounce Diddy in Us Weekly's Reluctant Celebrity Parent of the Year Awards. [Rush & Molloy]
Kick off this Columbus Day holiday—don't worry, no one is off today, so you're not alone—with an invigorating stroll through the weekend's box office numbers:
· The last thing standing between Britney Spears and a truly killer weekend is finally out of the way. The first carefree day. K-Fed wins the kids but loses depth perception. Hollywood lends a helping soundbite. The besides-the-point video premiere.
· The Week in Rape: Paramount would like to know where in The Kite Runner riders it said anything about clothing, feeding, and sheltering the violated Afghani kid until adulthood. Anand Jon Alexander makes it a round 20.
· Huge Showtime star Jeremy Piven whales on the Metal Skool skins.
· Cavemen not quite as sucky as you might have expected, but still pretty sucky.
· The extraordinary correspondences from Charlie to Denise.
· Howard K. Stern serves Rita Cosby with a $60 mil lawsuit.
· Today on Oprah: balls.
· David Letterman swats Paris Hilton around like he was a feral barn cat.
· Surrogate Rosie mom Barbara Walters—a closet stallophobic—steers her away from KY.
· Fortune pays a visit to the baby-munching factory.
· Tell Me You Watch Me For Something Besides the Fucking.
· The Sultan of Sleaze commits suicide.
· Defamer visits the WOW Gallery's Just Britney opening.
· Danny Bonaduce vs. Johnny Fairplay.
· Phil Spector's defense permanently rests.
· Isaiah Washington back and bigger than ever.
· We understand why Sharon Osbourne was all whooped up on Ellen, but our money would be on Courtney Love if their feud ever came to blows. If Osbourne had ever taken a look at Love's batshit MySpace blog, she'd know she'd be the one fighting out of her crazy-class.
· This is what happens when you trust a guy named the Sultan of Sleaze with your money.
·We're probably no more than three days away from the announcement that Chris Tucker will star in the remake of Escape from New York.
· A magnificent cock moves on, filling us with indescribable sadness.
Just in case you were looking for some cheery news to take with you into the weekend, contract talks between the Writers Guild and the studios ended for the week with these encouraging words from the AMPTP: "We have had six across-the-table sessions and have been met with only silence and stonewalling from the WGA leadership. We have attempted to engage on major issues, but no dialogue has been forthcoming from the WGA leadership. This is the most frustrating and futile attempt at bargaining that anyone on the AMPTP negotiating team has encountered in guild negotiation history. The WGA leadership apparently has no intention to bargain in good faith. The WGA leadership is hidebound to strike. We are farther apart today than when we started, and the only outcome we see is a disaster engineered by the present leadership of the WGA." At least they stopped short of telling the WGA membership they should head to CostCo to start stockpiling the canned peaches and bottled water they'll need to survive the coming apocalypse. Happy Friday! [TV Week]
People reports that Lindsay Lohan's journey at Cirque Lodge has drawn to a close, the I Know Who Killed Me star having been photographed checking out of the Utah detox facility earlier today. Accompanying her was newly reconciled father Michael Lohan, dutifully helping to load several suitcases full of cokeless apparel into an awaiting vehicle.
Friday
· Music round-up: Metric at the Henry Fonda; Morrissey is in the middle of his 10-show Palladium odyssey; Jon Brion at Largo.
· Legendary dirty-wordsmith George Carlin paces the stage at the Gibson Amphitheatre.
· Co-hosts Scott Gimple and Dave Holmes once again preside over their drunken IO West game show, the Friday 40, in which booze is consumed and the recall of current events celebrated.
