Sometimes it's fun (read: our lives are so very dreary) to place a couple of timely PrivacyWatch sightings next to each other and muse about what they might reveal about their celebrity subjects. Readers spotted two couples from opposite ends of the tabloid speculation spectrum out on Friday night, courting are they/aren't they attention by their very presence:
We can't really fault the editors at People for mistaking Jennifer Aniston for her body double. Even Vince Vaughn's confused about his publicity deal for The Break-Up. He wasted an entire afternoon pretending to make out with the doppleganger on that balcony before lawyers reminded him that in order to meet his contractual obligation, he needed to bounce the real Aniston in his lap until someone "secretly" took a picture.
• Actress Rose McGowan got into a Tuesday-night tussle after exchanging words with a security guard. Funny, this version of events has nothing to do with the key-bombing tragicomedy we heard about. [Page Six]
• America's Favorite Maligned Sweetheart Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn are, according to the celebrity weeklies, officially a couple. Vinifer? Jence? It just doesn't seem right to us. [R&M]
• Madonna dips her fantastic fingers into the UN, giving us hope that Angelina Jolie will be knocked off her pedestal and go back to making Brad Pitt's babies. [Scoop]
• Overpaid Yankee Alex Rodriguez mourns the death of an uncle by playing poorly and getting loaded at Cain. [Lowdown]
• Bombaster Donald Trump bombastically puts his Palm Beach estate for sale, priced at a record-setting, bombastic $125 million. [Page Six]
The New York Post: Redefining what constitutes as national news, one cover story at a time.
No matter how many times the tabloids run pictures of Vince Vaughn trying desperately to conceal his alleged, torrid, off-screen affair with emotionally crippled The Break-Up co-star Jennifer Aniston by making out in semipublic with a publicity stunt-double in a Rachel wig, we're going to be skeptical of all things Vaughniffer. What's it going to take to buy our black, cynical hearts? We'll start with a secret two million dollar wedding in Santa Barbara and three children via videotaped vaginal birth (with DNA test—sorry, kids, adoption and C-sections are off the table). Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have really driven our credulity quote sky high.
· 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.
We watch the Today show around here. Not because we like it, mind you, but because it's ripe for comedy. But as Alexis Glick is increasingly permitted to smash her pretty face against the camera and we grow more attentive to Matt Lauer's scalp than his interviews, we're beginning to wonder if, God forbid, we might have to jump ship for the sake of common sense.
· Martha Stewart is callously ignoring our generously offered Apprentice dismissal catchphrase, "Bite the doily," in favor of the unfathomably less catchy "You just don't fit in."
· Anchorwomen, please don't forget that this is a very stressful time for your co-workers in the weather department. They don't need your sass right now.
· The cops are nickel-and-diming Jennifer Aniston's cheapskate stalker: "'The petty theft charge is a result of him taking a cab and stiffing the cab driver,' Los Angeles County District Attorney's spokeswoman Jane Robison said. 'He took a cab from Santa Barbara to Malibu and then didn't pay.'"
· Teaching kids to respect copyrights has never been so much fun! "(kid with blue, deformed, football-shaped head) a pirate is what we call someone who steals stuff online, including songs... pirates nowadays don't have to look like pirates, it's just what we call people who steal stuff online. Let's go ask Cookie what to do, come on!"
· The Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum in Graz, Austria, is closing its doors. We hope that his original set of steroid-shriveled testes can find a temporary home until they can one day occupy a permanent place of honor in his presidential library.
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.
For whatever reason (ambivalence, unpleasant mental images of Vince Vaughn pumping away on top of Jennifer Aniston, etc), we never lent much credence to the tabloid/weekly speculation that The Break-Up's stars were engaging in some hot, off-screen action. It seemed too tidy, too convenient. Today, however, Rush & Molloy's spies claim to have seen Vaughn and Aniston locked in a tonsil-tasting competition at their movie's wrap party:
Unfortunately, this is just one of those serendipitous computer-generated photo/story mismatches, not a gripping account of how the world's prettiest and least-threatening stalker wandered into Jennifer Aniston's home.
• 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]
In our heart of hearts, we just know that Brad and Angelina had a three-way with that judge, then sent Polaroids of the well-choreographed robes-and-gavels action to Jennifer Aniston. It really was the only way that this chapter in their lives could end.
• Vanity Fair pulls Jennifer Aniston from its October cover, allegedly because they fear too many details of her interview have been leaked to the press. Instead, they've replaced her with Paris fucking Hilton. Words cannot describe our horror at this crack-infused decision. [Page Six]
• Maybe the VF cover story will be about how Paris' 24-carat engagement ring is too heavy. The poor dear. [Scoop]
• Kate Moss wins her libel suit against the Sunday Mirror, which printed a false story claiming that a toxic amount of cocaine sent her to a Barcelona hospital in 2001. Of course the story's not true — she wasn't even dating Pete Doherty at the time. [R&M]
• The heat is centering on incumbent advocate Betsy Gotbaum, who refuses to release her public schedule for "security reasons." But Bloomberg's number and info are listed in the white pages? Nice try, Gotbaum, but 'fess up: We know you're at Bendel's. [Lowdown]
