In today's "Lowdown" column., flacks for both George Clooney and Brad Pitt both openly question the veracity of a tip that NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove received from his favorite Italian ferry operator. Clooney, they assert, will not be playing host to Pitt and Angelina Jolie's nonexistent secret Lake Como nuptial celebration:
· Late night talk show joke writers despair: Nipsey Russell, frequent non-sequitur punchline and the "poet laureate of television," has passed on.
· Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt are selling their Beverly Hills estate for $28 million. That breaks down to about $8 million for the house and grounds, and $20 million for the opportunity to invite your friends over to marinate in the palpable psychic pain left over from the destruction of America's Favorite Couple.
· Trust us, if your Desperate Housewives came in only in Spanish last night, you didn't miss much. But how many more times can Adelphia fuck up (Defamer HQ was in last Wednesday's odd blackout, making us miss Lost) before someone burns down their offices?
· Sarah Polley and Terry Gilliam correspond about Polley's traumatizing experiences as the nine year-old star of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Strangely, none of these psychic wounds concerned prolonged exposure to Robin Williams.
· Pamela Anderson's stalker may never get to work with her.
• Italian tabloids are bubbling with news that Brad Pitt is planning to wed Angelina Jolie at George Clooney's Lake Como villa. We're not sure how true this is but, even if there's no wedding, we're sure there'll be celebratory lovemaking as they force an orphan into Clooney's possession. [R&M (2nd item)]
• Model Naomi Campbell continues to claw her way through Fashion Week, saving it from ennui up until the very last moment. For tonight's finale, Campbell has scheduled her Fashion for Relief charity show at the same time as Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B. show, which was supposed to be the week's big closer, and Stefani's rather pissed. We're not even sure who's in the wrong here, but this bitching certainly does feel oh-so-right. [Page Six]
• Photographer Dave LaChapelle continues to rail against Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, which is about as controversial as hating the Holocaust. [Lowdown (last item)]
• So, uh, will French Vogue still let Kate Moss guest edit their December/January issue? [Page Six]
• If God is truly dead, then Michael Jackson has arrived in NYC. [Fox411]
After months of painstaking preparations, the plan had finally come together. The marital strife played out in the unwittingly complicit tabloids, the arty, portentous magazine spreads, the signing of the divorce papers, and, lastly, the public face-mashing session with a co-star with whom no sexual attraction was shared, all culminated in this moment. While Angelina Jolie was occupied by a demanding scene on the set of The Good Shepherd, Brad Pitt slipped into her trailer, scooped up the newly-adopted Ethiopian orphan in the crook of his arm, and coolly strode to a waiting limo, never succumbing to the adrenaline pumping through his heart. Within an hour, actor and and child would board a private jet headed for the West Coast, where he would reunite with Jennifer, his wife, his one and true love, and finally start that family they'd long talked about. No swollen belly, no stalled career. A perfectly plotted Mametian double-cross. Ang and Maddox, he thought to himself, They'll get over this, they're strong. There are other orphans. But this one's mine. No. Ours.
• Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston have reached the summit of Heartbreak Mountain, having finally settled their divorce. As of October 2, Pitt will thus be free to have even more insanely sexual sex with Angelina Jolie, perhaps in a church of some sort. [Reuters]
• Designer Marc Ecko wins his case against NYC and is now free to have graffiti parties whenever he damn well pleases. [Wooster Collective]
• There's something special about the Sunday Times in August: The complete lack of news. [The Media Mob]
• Oh, if only we had the time to write a line-by-line rebuttal to the Times' Alexandra Bandon and her foray into the renter's inferno. [Property Grunt]
• Put your hard-earned cash right back in the man's pockets at the best corporate cafeterias. [Cakehead]
• London taxis make their way to NYC; the novelty ride costs the same as a regular cab and is presumably less dorky than a pedicab. [Witz]
• Wal-Mart preys on our city's weak, goes for Staten Island. [NYT]
From time to time, we dip into the mail bag and turn over some blogspace to an opposing viewpoint. In response to our posts about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's recent trip to Lake Havasu, Arizona (in which the couple's local itinerary was recreated in painstaking detail, right down to Pitt's choice in IHOP breakfast). Writes "Disgusted with Your Story":
· On September 1st, legendary Variety columnist Army Archerd is retiring after 52 years...and Var is picking up Liz Smith...who thinks Peter Bart is flipping off the LAT...the cafeteria over at Sony is really underrated, we've always thought. (As this lame homage illustrates, that three dot thing is harder than it looks. Someone give Larry King a raise!)
· From Photoshop joke to reality: Brad Pitt is Maddox's daddy now.
· Ashton Kutcher's acting and producing careers win him the top spot on Teen People's Young Hollywood power list, as the magazine conveniently ignores the fact that Kutcher is actually 47 years old.
· Hey, underwater unicorn!
·Ugg hatred wasn't dead, it was just sleeping.
· Whether this story is true or not, it's almost enough to make us feel bad for Scott Stapp. But then we remember the tune of "Arms Wide Open," and oh, how we laugh. One gets what one deserves after driving two hours to Gainesville to break off a piece of booty.
• Us Weekly reports that young Maddox Jolie is referring to his mommy's boy toy Brad Pitt as "Daddy," prompting Jennifer Aniston to bravely cry on cue for a whole new slew of magazine reporters. [Page Six]
• Teenadonna Lindsay Lohan may be allowed to videotape testimony for her parents' divorce trial. How long, then, until said tape gets leaked on the internet? [NYDN]
• Tom Cruise's first wife, Mimi Rogers, gets pissy when the British press ask her about Cruise's insta-romance with Katie Holmes. As if they were interviewing Rogers for any other reason. [Scoop]
• Jacko's lawyer says they're close to reaching a child custody settlement with the mother of his children, Debbie Rowe. Rowe's lawyer, at hearing this, asserts that no such thing is in the works. We're still not sure why Jackson's allowed to have children in the first place, nevermind fight for them in court. [R&M]
The LAT explores the process of celebrity photographer Steven Klein, whose infamous 58-page spread in W magazine depicted the Mr. and Mrs. Smith era (i.e. "we're just friends, not ferocious lovers") Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a horny suburban couple surrounded by genetically perfect mini-Pitts, and discovers that Klein didn't have to try too hard to get his subjects to exercise their acting chops for the shoot:
A little over a week ago, the world held its breath as beloved actor Brad Pitt checked himself into Cedars Sinai with mysterious flu-like symptoms. Most of us exhaled when Pitt was discharged a mere day later with a publicist-endorsed diagnosis of "viral meningitis," but reflexively distrustful of any words originating from a public relations professional, we mused that Pitt had "actually contracted some extremely rare social disease previously identified only in seventeenth century French kings, and has returned home to live out the rest of days wracked with madness." That diagnosis went unchallenged until today's AP report that Pitt appeared in public to collect a check for charity, seemingly free of any Sun King finery that might have confirmed our suspicions. Therefore, we are inclined to correct the record and recognize that our conclusion might not have been wholly accurate. We apologize for any sexual fantasies that may have resulted from picturing Pitt dressed as a promiscuous French monarch engaged in a syphilitic orgy comprised of buxom chambermaids and the finest court dandies.
Attention Brad Pitt fans: You can stop sending your get-well cards, stuffed animals, and lacy underthings to Cedars Sinai (see, we told you so), as Pitt has already left the hospital and returned home. Our hysterical diagnosis of the dreaded African Mystery Flu, perhaps obtained by eating some bad hummus procured from an Ethiopian street vendor, proved incorrect. According to Pitt publicist Cindy Guagenti (initial flack diagnosis: "I think he has the flu"), the actor has been temporarily felled by viral meningitis, the mild-mannered cousin of the sometimes deadly bacterial meningitis. We'd love to accept this explanation at face value and move on, but experience tells us that publicist-endorsed statements about hospital stays nearly always mask some other unpleasant reality. Therefore, we're forced to conclude that Pitt has actually contracted some extremely rare social disease previously identified only in seventeenth century French kings, and has returned home to live out the rest of days wracked with madness. The lush robes and powdered wigs, however, should lend an air of the exotic to his and Angelina Jolie's lovemaking, which lately had failed to reach the villager-terrifying heights of their infamous sexual safari.
OK, guys, we get the message: Brad's a super daddy stand-in, and your relationship consists of more than just the animalistic throwing together of your sexual reproductive organs. And it's nice that you're all outdoorsy with the cute sand-castles and the dirt-bike riding, but the tandem skydive was really overkill.
