We invited you to take a crack at Ted Casablanca's blind items from this week's column, and, as always, you responded with the enthusiasm, humor, and occasional bile that makes us love you just a little bit more every week.
Possible spoiler alert: A reader spots an Amish in the City cast member in the Beverly Center, enjoying some "regular" big city life. You might want to skip the passage (or avoid looking at the picture on the left, oopsie) if you're a fan of the show and don't want to know which of those wacky Amish kids wanted his rumspringa to last a little longer. We look forward to seeing him doing body shots off of Paris Hilton's stomach in the back of the Spider Club any day now.
1. If you hurry, you can still make it over today to the annual Pit 91 Excavation (going on now through Sept 12th) at the La Brea Tar Pits. You'll see the kinds of Hollywood fossils that don't spend all day calling their agents to commiserate about how there are no good parts for women over 40.
2. Gain a deeper appreciation of Lindsay Lohan by checking out second-rate jailbait actress/pop-star Hilary Duff at the Arrowhead Pond. We know you're really not going to do it, but time is running out to experience Duff before she winds up wasting her days getting drunken rubdowns at the Four Season with Tara Reid.
3. Tonight's Main Event: Watch Vincent Gallo squeeze the bottom of the publicity tube to further promote The Brown Bunny. He'll be at Agnes B. to sign a book of still photos from the movie (i.e., pictures of him receiving a blowjob). Suggest you'll help Gallo up the cinematic ante by offering to do anal in his next film, or try to get him to sign all over Chloe Sevigny's face in the photos. Endless Defamer love to anyone who sends in a report from this event.
Confession: We've been missing Ben Affleck a little bit. When a tabloid favorite like 'Ffleck drops out of the headlines for a while, we always jump to the worst conclusions: some kind of disastrous backyard whirlpool accident that will only be discovered by the pool boy days later, a three-week bender at the Palms, or a secret location shoot for Gigli 2 with the entire original cast. Luckily, a reader spotted him this morning at a WeHo Coffee Bean, just bein' Affleck. We just wish that our spotter's Hollywood training hadn't prevented us from finding out what had Ben so excited. Sobriety? The recent Red Sox resurgence? A big victory on his "Eating Babies for Kerry" tour? We suppose we'll never know.
Sugar Ray singer Mark McGrath is joining genetically-exact Mary Hart clone Dayna Devon as host of the syndicated celeb-news black hole Extra. This isn't the most exciting thing we've ever heard, but it's sure to send ripples through televised dinnertime gossip programming. Watch as Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood scour Sunset Strip clubs in search of washed-up-but-still-somewhat-telegenic rock stars [Ed.note—Vanilla Ice? Hootie? No, not Kid Rock, too much "edge."] to deliver the evening's report of Lisa Rinna's latest Rodeo Drive shoe-shopping excursion.
Today, the Jack Valenti Era at the MPAA fades into the ether and the Dan Glickman Era dawns over Hollywood. Valenti's been leading Glickman around by the hand at the RNC, introducing him to the political players crucial to his job as head of the movie lobby. The LAT sits down with Glickman for a brief Q&A, and let's just say that Glickman, the former Clinton Agriculture secretary, is not exactly a sound-bite machine. Observe as the interviewer throws a juicy cut of raw, piracy-related meat on the floor, which Valenti would have devoured in a teeth-gnashing shower of spittle:
· Jonathan Schaech has dragged wife Christina Applegate into the M.O.W. mire; the couple will star in a TV movie for CBS, James Patterson's Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas. We hope that Applegate can live up to the fine small-screen acting standards established by Tori Spelling in such compelling fare as Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? [THR]
· ER staggers into its tenth season by whipping out tricks from the bottom of the gimmick bag. They've stunt-cast Ray Liotta for an episode that will unfold in "real time." If you've insisted on watching once Eriq LaSalle left, you really do deserve what you get. [THR]
· Unsurprising tidbit of the week. RNC viewers prefer Fox News Channel's 24-7 conservative reacharounds to the comparatively bed-wetting liberal coverage offered by every other network. [ Variety, sub req'd.]
· Fox, master of ill-advised reality television programming, scoops up Ivana Trump for the puntastically titled Ivana Man. Ivana will pimp twentysomething guys to "mature" women. She probably won't come up with a catchphrase as good as "You're fired!" but could always end each show with the snappy cackle "I got half!" [Variety, sub. req'd.]
Can someone please just buy MGM already? We're getting a little tired of having to read a new, incremental report every day about how this conglomerate or that conglomerate is taking up a collection to acquire The Lion and its film catalogue. Yeah, we know that billions of dollars and complicated stock transactions are involved, blah blah blah. At least today's THR says that Time Warner is this close (picture your thumb and index finger really, really close together) to closing the deal, and our spies at MGM have told us that TW auditors are swarming around in white gloves and checking for dust. Let's get this thing done so that we can happily report on the TW/MGM shitergy brainstorms that will soon follow. James Bond casually reading Time magazine before he chases a super-villain in a flying Aston Martin? The possibilites are staggering.
Wherein we invite readers to unsheathe their machetes to hack away at humpy E! gossiper Ted Casablanca's impenetrable thicket of prose and guess the identity's of this week's blind items. We're getting started slightly earlier today because Ted has gifted TWO items to his fans this week—and one of them involves a seemingly straight actor and gay sex! Answer one, answer both—hell, eat a baby if that's your thing, as there are no rules in the dirt-dishing anarchy of a two blind item week. One Misleading Blind Vice (Hers & His):
—“Besides, some of the tabloids keep trying to say they’re getting back together again –—which they’re not. So, if they’re photographed together in Venice, that will just be fuel for the fire — unless they snub each other, which, of course, then causes a whole new type of story.” Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are swallowed up in a classic gossip Catch-22. You know, just like when Tom Cruise is seen out in public with a man.
—The hilarious bitches at Go Fug Yourself claim another high-waisted victim.
—Holy fucking shit: The Passion of the Christ sells 4.1 million DVDs in a single day.
—The rundown of Late Late Show guest hosts: Michael Ian Black, DL Hughley, Amy Sedaris, and Jim Rome. Hire everybody! Hire nobody! We're still watching Conan.
We hear a rumor that Hollywood reporter Kim Masters is out at Esquire after they failed to renew her contract. Says a source, "From what I hear, Esquire felt 1) she couldn't write and 2) wasn't generating any buzz with what she did write. Also, she kept complaining to them about everything, and they just got sick of her." Another source offers a capsule review of Masters: "Good reporter, bad writer, unpleasant person." L.A. Press Club members, start firing out those resumes! You might want to play up your cheery disposition if you're going to apply for the job.
A spy overhears this "inspired" conversation at a street corner near Wilshire and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills:
ABC News is reporting that the Kobe Bryant rape trial might finally be over, with prosecutors filing a motion to dismiss agreed to by both sides this afternoon. Quick, someone go pull Jack Nicholson out from underneath that pile of hookers and give him the good news! (But please be sure someone settles the tab before he leaves. He doesn't need another incident.)
The Paris Hilton Collection on Amazon.com looks to fill all of your tacky jewelry needs and brand your earlobes, neck, and ankles with a telltale rash of quality that tells the world, "Paris was here." Perhaps most intriguing among the baubles is the "Sterling Silver and Swarovski Crystal Multi-Cross Necklace" (pictured at left), subtly evoking Jesus and his companions on Calvary Hill (The Passion is hott right now), with plenty of extra room for Paris, Nicky, and Tara Reid.
Defamer asked intrepid, fearless Intern Y to spend some quality time at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood. She gamely accepted the potentially dangerous assignment, knowing full well that she may have been returned to Defamer HQ "clear," self-actualized, and no longer cheerily willing to freshen up our morning latte with a shot of Jagermeister or accept the ritualistic beratings brought on by a slow Lindsay Lohan news day. Her brief experience with the Church of Cruise, Travolta, and Ribisi follows after the jump.
Star magazine has pictures of temporary Britney Spears husband Jason "55 Hours in Paradise" Alexander making out with "a she-male escort" named Ana in a Miami club, though an eyewitness admitted he probably didn't know that his drunken snuggle buddy was packing serious heat. We knew the good luck that saved him from a life with Spears couldn't last forever.
Blog The Corsair comes across some chatter on the Howard Stern show's message board indicating that sidekick Artie Lange has quit Stern in favor of a sitcom (with TV writer/producer Sam Simon, with whom Lange had a script in development with DreamWorks and NBC last year) shooting immediately in L.A. Stern regular Sal the Stockbroker confirmed the rumor, first floated by a fan on the board, then finally contacts Stern to straighten things out.
· The Father of the Pride premiere's ratings are just OK, but they're spending a lot of money to do a little better than Last Comic Standing, which has a budget of $35 dollars per episode. It would be far cheaper to rent a couple of lions and have them maul each week's Last Comic loser. [THR]
· Jane Pauley is not crazy enough for a big premiere. Let's get her off the happy pills and see what happens. [THR]
· It appears that Time Warner is no more than a week away from becoming the proud owner of MGM. The purchase will net them the Bond franchise and an opportunity to be the company that finally runs MGM into the ground. [THR]
· Eddie Murphy will produce and star in a "Western comedy." Note to DreamWorks: Putting a black comedian on a horse does not makes this Blazing Saddles. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· As expected, The Passion of the Christ DVD sales are off to a huge, lucrative start. The movie's theatrical run proved that you really can't underestimate Christians' appetite for watching Jesus getting his ass kicked for two hours. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
A quick note on yesterday's reader report, in which we used the omnipresence of Uggs in Chicago to shame L.A.'s boot-whores into giving up their furry pimps: While we now have enough material to compose the treatise In Defense Of The Very Fashionable City of Chicago's Early Adoption Of Hideous Trends, such matters do not concern us. If our correspondent was indeed describing the scene in the suburbs (as many of you theorized), it should give even the staunchest Los Angeles Ugg-lover pause.
