Maybe people are wrong about the faith that Tom Cruise so fervently and publicly embraces. Not only might the Scientologists possibly be somewhat accepting of vaguely-defined "ethical" relationships which may or may not include homosexuals, they've also been honored by a JV member of the Bush family for their hurricane-related charity work in Florida (where, coincidentally, the organization's Clearwater headquarters is located):
It's finally happened: After nearly a year of denying the public an officially sanctioned, televised document of their love, pop star Britney Spears and the man she's chosen to spend at least a portion of the immediate future with, spottily-employed, background-dancing bastard-factory Kevin Federline, are staging their own reality show on UPN. The still-untitled show (working title: Brit-Brit and K-Fed Are In Love For Now ) "will document the story of the Spears-Federline courtship, engagement and wedding," and, presumably, ear-splitting fights over skanks Federline consorts with on solo trips to Las Vegas which end with Spears' inevitable threats to "take back every motherchuckin' piece a' bling I gave you and send you back to delivering Papa John's, you ho-banging deadbeat!"
· Attention J.Lo stalkers—proximity to her world-famous hindquarters is merely $1K away. Jane Fonda fans, the same deal applies.
· Britney Spears hires a Kabbalah rabbi to save her marriage...and if that doesn't work, she'll slip him two grand to make sure his "light is extinguished."
· Xeni Jardin, BoingBoing blogger and sexpot Wired reporter sent from 15 minutes in the future to send back information about our inferior technology to some alien race, does the LAist interview. She is so very shiny, and we love her so.
· Q: Why are these people lining up in front of the Chinese Theatre in anticipation of the new Star Wars movie, when the theater hasn't even officially announced that it's showing the movie yet? A: Because they are more hardcore than your typical bunch of Boba Fett-worshipping fanboys, and don't you forget it. And you know what else? They're answering the pay phone.
· Headline of the day: Statutory Rape Not So Good For Gap. Not yet, anyway.
· Monday Evening Multimedia Collage Special: The Red Cat hosts Panorama Ephemera, an exhibit by artist Rick Prelinger, who will appear in person to explain it all.
· Music-related concerts of interest: The Jimmy Chamberlin Complex, featuring former Smashing Pumpkins skin-smasher, ahem, Jimmy Chamberlain, play the Troubadour; Ed Harcourt performs at the Hotel Café; also: someone named Moby plugs his new CD, Hotel, at the W Hotel. Afterwards, he will retire upstairs to perform turndown service for all the W's guests as part of his high-concept promotional tour. (It's a free show, btw.)
· Patton Oswalt, whom we are contractually obligated to mention once nearly made us vomit from laughing Paul F. Tompkins tries to induce a similarly joyful puking fit in the audience at M Bar. (Thanks to the reader who pointed out the error, and who also pointed out there's a great show at Largo with Sarah Silverman as well.)
Jessica Alba continues to torture us through prudish headlines, but far more disturbing is the larger trend of actresses portraying exotic dancers while eschewing the nudity required for stripper-verisimilitude. Sure, we put up with Natalie Portman's coy refusal to show even a single nipple in Closer, but she's a "serious actress." Seemingly every other female in Sin City either paraded around topless or in revealing bondage gear, so why must she buck the system and lose the career points? This was her freebie, where she could've said "it made sense for the role" with a straight face.
As much as we theoretically think we'd enjoy the ritualistic humiliations meted out to the desperate strivers on The Starlet by the tragically slumming host Faye Dunaway (on-the-nose dismissal catchphrase: "Don't call us, we'll call you"), we still haven't caught a single episode. Obviously, the show has lost a deathmatch deep inside our TiVo with something more urgently demanding our attention. For those of you who've been following the show, however, we suggest that you avoid the Pussy Ranch blog's potential spoiler, inadvertently leaked in a fit of parental pride by a contestant's mother who felt her little starlet-in-waiting was slighted:
It was only yesterday that we sat down to a hearty brunch at our favorite eatery when our mind wandered, and we found ourselves silently asking, "I wonder if the one of the Olsen twins is dining somewhere else in the greater Los Angeles area, and if they are, what could they possibly be eating?" Lo and behold, our unspoken wish for an update on an Olsen's food intake was granted by a reader:
At the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, Johnny Depp and Ben Stiller delight the crowd by acting out a scene from next year's Shrek sequel, Shrek 3: Ogre Facials. They assured the parents in attendance that DreamWorks' first-ever animated bukkake flick will be made more family-friendly when it's finally rendered in CGI.
As if it wasn't bad enough that new, vanilla MPAA head Dan Glickman has to suffer through the inevitable, unfavorable comparisons to Jack Valenti, his swashbuckling, dashingly demented, and poetic predecessor, Glickman, a Democrat straight out of Clinton's cabinet, has to prove that he can swing both ways:
· Variety celebrates the Pope's "theatrical" flair and claims he was "as much of a global pop-culture icon as Michael Jackson in his heyday." We suppose the publisher wouldn't pay for a plane ticket to Rome and a bag of rocks to toss at the pontiff's body. [Variety]
· BET is developing new series for the network, including their own, completely original Apprentice knock-off featuring Damon Dash. [THR]
· After months of breathless anticipation, the Fox Reality network is finally ready to launch in May. Finally, the country's 24-hour-a-day hunger for bastards to finally meet the parents that abandoned them as children will be sated! [Variety]
· Director Peter Jackson's completely plausible claim that he's shooting back-to-back King Kong sequels alongside the first installment in New Zealand was merely an elaborate April Fool's Day prank. Don't worry, kids, Universal will shoot the inevitable sequels at a later date in a fashion that will waste as much money as possible. [THR]
· The assumed-dead Yes Dear's surprising success filling the schlubby-husband-with-hot-wife sitcom hole left by the flop Center of the Universe in CBS's schlubby-husband-with-hot-wife schedule might earn the series a new episode order. [Variety]
Scientology's gotten a bum rap for being "homophobic." Would aggressively heterosexual, and often traditionally married, stars (who we refuse to name here) possibly endorse a religion that would discriminate against gays? Of course they wouldn't. Listen to this enthusiastic, incredibly tolerant explanation of the inclusive spiritual inspiration society's policy on homosexuality as recited by a publicist:
Do you find television dramas too talky, with all of that yakkity-yak dialogue distracting from your enjoyment of all the pretty colors and pleasing noises emitted by your home theater? And when it takes more than 43 minutes to resolve your TV stories, are you afflicted by blinding migraines that subside only when you concentrate on the rhythms of inhaling and exhaling through your mouth? Of course you do, and of course you are. But don't worry, faceless Nielsen number, producer and de facto CBS programming executive Jerry Bruckheimer understands you:
Maybe it's the Don-Johnson-at-his-swaggering-best stubble, maybe it's the fresh coat of Just for Men's "Natural Ash Brown," or maybe it's the fact that only one of the "weeping wounds" on his face is bandaged, thereby deflecting all suspicion that he's very recently had some elective age-correction surgery with some canny facial asymmetry, but that Michael Douglas is looking awfully spry these days. In fact, he's so darn youthful we feel we must issue an apology for referring to Catherine Zeta-Jones as a "mummy war bride"—at least until his face starts to slacken again.
Sometimes brevity isn't the soul of wit and only an ungrammatical, spittle-flecked mini-diatribe can effectively express your cynically affected moral outrage. We shudder to think what might have happened if the heathens at Dimension went with their original working title, Popefuckerville.
Mourn the passing of a beloved spiritual leader with Hollywood's version of the rosary—a recitation of the weekend box office numbers.
· Remember "En Escandolo de Lesbianas?" Sigh. No tan caliente.
· Ouch, more bad news for Ben Affleck! And this time, it involves his penis.
· The Pocket Guide to Past Mistakes That Can Get You Tossed Of American Idol: Posing for softcore porn: You're out; Shoving your baby-mama and phone-tossing: You're still in!
· RIP, the Fake Michael Bay Blog. You lasted longer than anyone could reasonably expect.
· Enjoy these two loving tributes to blogging institutions.
· The degenerate geniuses at Liquid Generation again ply their trade on a suspect pursuit.
A miraculous thing happened after we uploaded a cameraphone picture of our tasty Quizno's sub, which we intended to include in a lighthearted April Fool's Day feature commenting on the banality of our blogging existence: a ghostly image of waterbedridden producer-in-twilight Robert Evans appeared on the photo of the sandwich. Has anyone heard from Evans lately? Someone ought to check on him, or at the very least call his butler English and have him slip a finger underneath the boss's turtleneck to check for a pulse. We want to make sure this was some sort of internet-related technical hiccup and not the first miracle in Evans's resume for sainthood. It's not his time.
Friday
· "Night Conversations invites artists, poets, musicians, and members of the audience to continue the 'conversation' that resulted in the unique artist installations and soundscape for the Museum's Conversations exhibit." We're not sure we understand exactly what's going on after dark at the Natural History Museum tonight, but we hear it's pretty cool—a dude from the Postal Service is involved..
· If the words "Lemmy is God" hold any meaning for you, Motorhead is playing the Wiltern. If not, you can see the Dears for free at Amoeba.
Saturday
· The LA Indie Film Group is hosting a panel on distribution at Raleigh Studios, so grab your box full of DV home movies and get ready to harass reps from Lion's Gate, Netflix, and New Line.
· The Soundtrack of Our Lives continues the Swedish invasion with a show at the Avalon, with the Dears (again) opening to soften you up to their headliner's Scandinavian rock charms.
Sunday
·Speaking of invasions: Ralph Nader, everyone's favorite third-party election spoiler, brings his Stop the Iraq War and Bring Our Troops Home Tour to UCLA. Not expected to attend: the military-industrial complex.
· The great thing about LA is that if you wait a couple of weeks, someone's throwing a New Year's party. This time, it's the 2005 Thai New Year Festival on Hollywood Blvd.
· Bill Maher, The Dan Band, Teri Hatcher, Calista Flockhart, and Julianne Moore gang up to beat down tuberous sclerosis at the Comedy for a Cure benefit at the Henry Fonda. As much as we'd like to think that celebrities have the power to cure illnesses, they're going to need the funds from the ticket sales to battle the disease.
Because today is Every Website Must Pull a Prank Day, you may be disinclined to believe this reader report about second-tier fauxteur McG leaving an invisible angel behind in a lift at Sony. But rest assured—we received this e-mail yesterday, so it's probably not part of the April Fool's Day tomfoolery overwhelming us at every turn.
