All over town, assistants who were pressed into twelve hours of iPhone line-waiting duty are quietly laughing to themselves, taking some small satisfaction in the fact that their boss's expensive, must-have gadget just dropped in price by $200—that is, until those now-overpriced phones crash into the call-rollers' skulls because they failed to anticipate the discount. [Gizmodo]
So today, nearly all of the celeb mags are breathlessly reporting the nastiest coupling we've come across: Anna Nicole Smith's baby-daddy Larry Birkhead and her attorney and semi-husband Howard K. Stern were, according to that strumpet Rita Cosby's new book, totally doing it! And struck a backroom deal, and there's a sex tape, and oh my God, gross.
Unsatisfied by Rosie O'Donnell's disappointingly cursory video review of Whoopi Goldberg's controversial first day on The View ("Whoopi was good," said Rosie in the middle of critiquing the show's new, beige-heavy set), Defamer videographer Molly McAleer decided to take her camera to the sidewalk outside of Grauman's historic Chinese Theater, home to some of Hollywood's most outspoken and insightful media critics, for more penetrating appraisals of the show's new co-host. Unfortunately, her subjects had not yet seen Whoopi's debut, but that didn't stop them from decrying the conspirators who ousted Rosie for her 9/11 truth-telling, holding forth on Elizabeth Hasselbeck's intellect and spank-worthiness, or sharing anecdotes about their second-degree connections to the dreadlocked comedian.
"Family hour"—the sacred block of TV programming between 8 and 9 p.m. that for generations has given parents a handy tool for avoiding direct and awkward communication with their children—has been found to contain higher incidents of sex, violence, and cursing than ever before, a study conducted by the Parents Television Council has found. From the Reuters report:
The summer may have unofficially ended, but your quest for a more generous, less fellatio-demanding employer continues. Spend some time on the Defamer Job Board and free yourself from Hollywood's degrading—yet dismayingly effective—sexual-favors-for-promotions cycle:
· Sacha Baron Cohen is "firming plans" to star in Bruno (but aren't they already shooting that one? Sneaky!), then will move on to Dinner for Schmucks, a remake of Francis Veber's Le Diner de Cons, a comedy about a dinner guest whose manners would shame even the tableside-feces-proferring Borat. [Variety]
· TBS orders a second season of The Bill Engvall Show, keeping the weakest member of the Blue Collar Comedy family working for an additional ten episodes. [THR]
· Var provides a blow-by-blow of the Whoopi Goldberg's controversial, Vick-defending first day on The View. [Variety]
· TV viewers desperate for the networks' new Fall programming to begin settle for watching CBS placeholders Power of 10 and Big Brother 8 on Tuesday night. [THR]
· Pedro Almodovar pre-casting shocker! The Spanish auteur plans on giving Penelope Cruz the starring role in the film he's currently writing. [Variety]
As much of the world spent their Monday evenings funneling turpentine into their ears, hoping the primitive technique might somehow wash away the indelible vision of Larry Birkhead and Howard K. Stern engaged in "a compromising, intimate position," the two men figuring most prominently in the outrageous claims made by Rita Cosby's new book have begun to fight back. A round-up:
· On a Larry King Live guest-hosted by TMZ's Harvey Levin, Birkhead again dismissed the allegations made in the book, insisting it belongs next to "Harry Potter in the fiction aisle," among "similar, made-up acts of wizard-on-wizard depravity." [transcripts.cnn.com]
While gabby Grey's Anatomy gay-conspiracy victim Isaiah Washington finds himself running out of media outlets willing to let him break his silence yet again about the shadowy machinations that led to his dismissal from the hit show (really, once you've chatted with Star Jones in football metaphors, there's nowhere left to go), reporters are begging Grey's slur-survivor T.R. Knight to say something, anything, about the F-Bomb That Continues To Rock The World of Primetime Television Nearly A Year After The Fact. But not even a bottomless basket of garlic knots and untold glasses of honor-bar chianti at one of Venice's finest family-style Italian eateries could entice the actor to abandon the high road he's so committed to traveling, as the LAT discovered recently:
Even though Brad Pitt is despondent over how age is cruelly robbing him of the good looks that have made him rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams, all is not lost: As a member of Hollywood's Secret Brainiac Society, he should be able to make a nice living from his staggering intellect long after his legendary six-pack has softened. [Rush & Molloy]
Perhaps more acutely aware of the personal peril that comes with Hollywood-pretty-boy status following yesterday's disturbing report about Brad Pitt's chilling near-hugging by a crazed Italian fan, actor and recent UN Peace Day ambassador Jude Law was arrested Tuesday after allegedly assaulting a photographer near his home in London. While the official police statement following the incident declined to name the star, its curious description of the attacker as "a 34-year-old man from Maida Vale so handsome that this officer found himself secretly wanting to grab a camera and see if the appealingly boyish rogue would rough me up a bit if I asked to take his picture," a slip that allowed the British tabloid press to make a positive identification of the paparazzo's celebrity assailant.
Defamer Partywatcher Ann bookended a week of girls and violence that began with a visit to the Derby Dolls match in City of Industry with a stop at Thursday night's Lucha VaVoom, the ongoing Mexican wrestling, burlesque, and variety show at the Mayan. With guest photographer Maggie Serrano in tow, the two managed to avoid flying folding chairs and bloodthirsty drag queens to provide a full report, even managing to catch a glimpse of some rare and elusive drunk hipsters in attendance, practicing their newly learned wrestling skills after the show at the nearby La Cita. The full image gallery and report are after the jump:
· Music round-up: Okkervil River at the Troubadour; Clipse at the Roxy; Kennedy at the Silverlake Lounge.
· Kathy Reichs signs Bones to Ashes, the 10th installment of her Bones-inspiring series of novels, at Borders in Westwood.
· At the Hollywood Bowl, Diavolo Dance joins conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Philharmonic for a night of "one of the sweatiest, sexiest, and most athletic combinations of ballet and orchestra on record."
It's been months since the modest trickle of swag into Defamer HQ has yielded an item useful or interesting enough to survive longer than thirty seconds before finding its way into the trash can (seemingly each week, the UPS guy gets to hear our anguished cry of, "Fucking hell, another Mad TV screener? Is that show even still on?" before taking two steps backs towards the safety of his brown truck), but just moments ago, Fox delivered a winner to promote the 20th season of everyone's favorite shirtless-rednecks-denying-domestic-battery-accusations series: a keychain alcohol tester which, in the words of the enclosed note from the show's executive producer, "might prevent your being included in a COPS cameo." Finally, someone really gets us!
Having deemed Jerry Lewis's recent off-color remark about an "illiterate faggo" (he stopped himself before completing the final hard consonant) as being unacceptable televised-fundraising humor, self-appointed Voice of the Downtrodden Gay GLAAD demanded an apology from the comedian on their website. Lewis has since released the following statement:
Halle Berry and her nonfamous lover start building their family the old-timey, penis-in-vagina way. Back at the Tam Binh orphanage, a parentless four-year-old crosses Berry's name off his list of A-list actresses who might soon save him from a life of never appearing in the pages of Us Weekly. [Access Hollywood]
PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you saw Mike Tyson requesting earlobe-consistency mochi topping on his Pinkberry frozen dessert.
