Today we break from our regularly scheduled programming to check in on Lauren “Lo” Bosworth, the perennial sidekick from Laguna Beach and The Hills. She never achieved the same level of celebrity as Kristin Cavallari or Lauren Conrad or even Audrina Patridge, but lo, she’s still here. And doing ads for Crisco!
If 'Gossip Girl' doesn't provide you with enough insight into the lives of privileged New York's youth, then let us direct your attention to "Under the Arch," a 7-minute-long "pilot" video by NYU junior Sean Patrick Murray, who is either a complete genius, or a total tool. Either way, he's kind of adorable&mdash and at the very least, he knows his MTV reality schtick&mdash it's all about the fast-moving-cloud shots, the angsty Z-100 soundtrack and the whiny blond chicks. Toss in a drug overdose and a catchprase like "Meet me at the Arch," and we can't see why this thing wouldn't get picked up in a millisecond&mdash he even made sure not to include any black, Hispanic or ugly students! It's perfect! Too bad it's not real. Oh&mdash never mind.
If I'm From Rolling Stone is any indication, reality TV shows about interns are boring, because interns are boring. (Even The Hills wisely minimizes the time they spend showing Whitney and Lauren sitting in front of their iMacs doing nothing at their Teen Vogue internships.) Then again, it seems as though the only way to actually get hired as an intern is to be on a reality show. Go Go Luckey Productions is supposed to be hard at work on Rodeo Girls but they're shooting a pilot—and now they're desperate for luscious young fashion victims!
This week MTV launches Virtual Laguna Beach, its online community that will allow fans of the wildly popular "reality" series to meet up in an online paradise based on the confusingly semi-scripted world featured on the show. In a demonstration of what will surely become the site's most popular feature, MTV senior VP Matt Bostwick proudly showed the NY Times how easy it is for a middle-aged man to trade in his insufficiently alluring physical form for one more likely to attract the attention of bored, horny teenage boys:
How long does it take for dreams of young love die? Approximately eleven days, it seems, if you're crooner-spawn Kimberly Stewart and barely-legal Laguna Beach star Talan Torriero, whose passionate engagement has disintegrated into heartbreak.
Yes, yes, we read the "news" this morning just as you did, and sure, our stomach did the same little shit-spasm as yours: Kimberly Stewart, daughter of much-doppelganged singer Rod Stewart and Talan Torriero from MTV's quasi-reality show Laguna Beach, are engaged. It's a whoretastic match was made in D-list heaven.
Last night's season finale of MTV's pseudo-reality drama Laguna Beach featured one of show's main cast members, Lauren (or, like, LC, as everyone calls her), skipping north towards Los Angeles and a totes awesome internship at Teen Vogue. In the preview scene, our young LC is even introduced to whip-brandishing Vogue EIC Anna Wintour. We can only imagine how Anna reacted to LC's permatan and eyeliner enthusiasm.
• Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and supermodel Giselle Bundchen have reportedly ended their relationship — for real this time, and perhaps because of a third party. If this is the case, let's hope Leo cleans himself up a bit before heading back into the singles scene. [Page Six]
• Oh, the horror: Laguna Beach bad girl Kristin Cavalleri is dating poptard Aaron Carter. [Gatecrasher (3rd item)]
• Ted Koppel prays for Good Morning America co-host Charlie Gibson to replace the late Peter Jennings at the ABC evening newsdesk; GMA first lady Diane Sawyer commissions Haitian housemaid to create Koppel voodoo dolls. [Lowdown]
• Notorious fagodrome the Roxy, accused of admitting underage patrons, meets the long arm of the law just in time to wreck their gay ol' Halloween party. And so the war on fun continues. [Page Six]
• PETA narrows its gaze on Prince Charles, who it intends to harass on his forthcoming visit to the states. Apparently the royal guards use real bearskin on their helmets, which has the animal-rights group's knickers in a bunch. [Scoop]
· Angelina Jolie proposes an ambitious adopt-a-landmine program for Iraq. God, we hope she doesn't try to give one a mohawk. The resulting People spreads would be horrific.
· Jealous of Rupert Murdoch's recent MySpace acquisition, ultra laid-back Viacom execu-dude Tom Freston totally paid $49 million or whatever for iFilm, whenever he gets around to signing off on the paperwork. Get it? he's laid back, man.
· It's almost like Boy George never had a male hustler come over and try to rob him before. Hell-oooo! Amateur hour!
· Not content with revolutionizing the energy drink market, Steve Seagal turns his attention to saving the Delta blues.
· And just because it's Friday afternoon and you've been so well behaved all week, here's a possibly stale link to a nipple slip from a Laguna Beach cast member (NSFW). Don't say we never did nothin' for ya.
Having seen one too many $2000 My Super Sweet Sixteen party dress and Laguna Beach butt-floss bikini, The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke is finally ready to tune her television to MTV and chainsaw the fucker in half (kids, ask your parents!). In this week's column, Finke laments the network's—which, we hear, used to primarily present delightful mini-movies set to the most popular songs of the day—loss of semi-innocence; after all, what kind of basic cable channel can claim a rock-and-roll soul when it cynically underwrites some Hollywood do-gooding just because the host is a movie star who boffs Justin Timberlake?
We're starting to suspect that the Times is more obsessed with MTV's quasi-reality show Laguna Beach than we are. Sure, we may have our Gawker HQ walls plastered with the sunny faces of Orange County, but the Gray Lady certainly does write some long-ass articles about the skein. We're impressed: It's quite the challenge to squeeze out more than a thousand, Times-worthy words on a show that on average features only 50 words of intelligent dialogue.
• Some hot Laguna Beach gossip for you kids: At a VMA after-party in Miami, Jason was seen holding hands and locking face with LC. And if you've no idea what this means, you're so much better than us. Really.
• Our congratulations to urban redneck Steve Cuozzo, whose contempt for the Pakistani Pride festivities is admirably unrivaled for its sheer racism. [NYP]
• If Target buys online wedding planning service TheKnot.com, does this mean we'll never have to deal with another Tiffany's registry? Please, oh please. [BW]
• Some women will go just too damn far to be on Oprah. Rest assured, their children are ashamed. [Oprah]
• It's not murder, but something just as sinister: A gay catfight over litterbox duty. [Towleroad]
· Did Eddie Murphy's wife file for divorce because he's not enough fun? You know, the kind of fun that doesn't involve the tranny hookers.
· Our pals at TVGasm scored some pretty sweet pics of the Laguna Beach kids at their prom. We've fallen woefully behind on the second season, so we have no idea who the hoo-er in the yellow dress is.
· Our degenerate blog-brothers from Oddjack and Gridskipper got together to handicap various odds related to Tara Reid's hosting of Wild On Tara, like the 3/1 chance that drunken Americans in Pamplona successfully exhort the hostess to flash the Frankenboobs.
· LAist thinks it's discovered the best waiter in Los Angeles at a Chevy's in Glendale. More amazingly, it seems that this super-waiter has never been a cast member of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge.
· The Cityrag blog finds itself obsessed with Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson's trademark crooked nose and its representation in the media. It's nice to see someone concentrating on something other than his sex life, isn't it?
· Whether you want to listen to Howard Stern spank strippers on satellite radio or watch him do it on cable, you're going to have to pony up a subscription fee.
· "Hey, Gammaw, tell us again about the time you made out with Johnny Depp!"
· Gawker finally gets some answers about the enigma-wrapped-in-a-riddle that is Laguna Beach.
· We're pretty sure that they're called "spec scripts," um, not the thing that this writer calls them. But then again, we're not familiar with his work.
In a fit of the usual lackadaisical Friday ennui, last week we expressed our confusion regarding MTV s Laguna Beach, which presents itself as a reality show following the interaction of several teenagers in various, intertwining cliques in Orange County s prestigious Laguna Beach community. Our problem was multi-thorned: If LB is a reality show, why is it so meticulously filmed? How did MTV just happen to have camera crews present at all the times pivotal to these story lines, which seemed remarkably linear for a reality show purporting to follow around the random lives of high schoolers? Frankly, we just didn t buy it.
