Filed under: Bret Michaels Bret Michaels ‘ reps confirm that the rocker suffered a “setback” in his recovery from a brain hemorrhage — and he may now be at risk for seizures. According to Bret’s people — test results show Bret is experiencing hyponatremia, a side effect from… Read more
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Bret Michaels — ‘Setback’ in Condition
Bret Michaels Daughter Died ? There is a big buzz going on around the trending topics about the condition of Bret Michaels family . The unconfirmed reports claims that the daughter of the former Poison member died. Bret Michaels was performing for an episode of The Celebrity Apprentice when he was rushed to the hospital. “After further examination by doctors in San Antonio it was determined that the singer was suffering from an acute appendicitis,” Michaels’ website statement reads. “He was rushed into emergency surgery at 1:00 AM. According to doctors, Michaels, who remains in the hospital, is doing well and beginning the recovery process.” As of writing, the rumors about the death of one of Bret Michaels Daughter is still rampant due to the fact that it was disclosed that one of them is suffering from diabetes. We will keep you posted about this. Bret Michaels Daughter Died? is a post from: Daily World Buzz Continue reading
Recovery Act Tax Benefits Vice President Joe Biden, joined by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman, announces that average tax returns are up nearly 10 percent this year thanks to tax benefits in the Recovery Act and says that a new Tax Savings Tool is available on whitehouse.gov. March 22, 2010. From: whitehouse Views: 2267 85 ratings Time: 22:30 More in News & Politics
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Recovery Act Tax Benefits
Posted in Hot Stuff, News, TV, Videos
Tagged average-tax, benefits, celeb news, obama youtube, politics, president-obama, recovery, tax-benefits, TMZ, whitehouse, Year
Project Runway is all about vision and delusion. The vision that making little clothes for little people is harder. The delusion that we care. The vision that little girls are pure. The delusion of tarting up a bunch of children. Last night’s Project Runway was a bit like smearing lipstick on a second grader or one of those shows where little JonBenet Ramseys twirl around in princess dresses trying to impress judges or like Jodi Foster in Taxi Driver but with better hair and worse clothing. It was like one of those. Pick a simile. The designers had to make an outfit for little girls between the ages of 5 and 8. They were each given a mini model and they were in turns cute, annoying, shy, loud, still, and squirmy. And because they needed something to keep the mature coat hangers busy, they were then given a surprise second look (!!!) for their big girl models. Fun. Well, not really because this challenge is one of the: Things We Hate Full-Tilt Lifetime Boogie : Really, a mommy and me challenge? This is ovary manipulation of the highest degree. This challenge was created so that the Midwestern moms targeted by the network could coo and aww and imagine that they were up there getting designed for by a bunch of hacks on a reality television program. These girls even melted Nina Garcia Fashion Director of Marie Claire Magazine. She actually smiled and it wasn’t her usual wince/grimace when she’s trying to not look like a huge bitch. It was a beaming that came directly from her uterus and snaked up her body pushing up the corners of her mouth. It was a horrible manipulation. Maya : What the fuck is going on with Maya. She was the only remaining designer not to show at the final runway show in Bryant Park last week, so we thought that meant she was going home for sure this week. No dice. Also, she was barely on this episode. Are they just trying to vanish her like it’s 1984 or something? Did she talk trash about Heidi and they’re going to erase her from the planet? And now we know she’s not in the final. How many weeks are we going to have to go carrying her bangs around like a backpack full of bricks? Listening to the Clients : Especially if they are little girls. Never do this. Ever. How many times do we have to teach this lesson? There are only four people you have to please and they never stand on the runway. They sit next to it in directors chairs stained with fake tanning solution and back sweat. Don’t make something for the girls, make something for the judges—every time! Seth Aaron Is Smart : Fucking asshole Seth Aaron. He has a daughter (how, how did that happen?!) so he knows what they like and made a purse, which his mini-model loved and made NGFDMCM’s lady parts twitch. We fucking hate him, but he is actually pretty good. His pair of designs looked like Gwen Stefani and her daughter, and that is a high compliment. He is going to do just enough right to get to the finals, isn’t he? God, he is Wendy Pepper with a penis. The Asshole Straight Guy : Nearly every season has had one, and Jeffrey Sebelia even won a season! You know the type, they are straight, abrasive, usually punk-rockish, and talk about their love of women and how it makes they design clothes for them, and it just pisses the rest of us off. This year we have two. Why can’t Seth Aaron Jingleheimer Schmidt and Logan Jesse. Why can’t we just have a bunch of girls and kooky gays? Straight guys have everything, just leave this for the girls and the gays! Bad Parenting : Don’t these girls have mothers? Where were they? They were just letting their impressionable young tots hang around with a bunch of absent-minded designers who want to exploit them for a win and a bunch of skinny models using them as props while teaching them sexy walks and the easiest way to barf up a baloney sandwich? Maybe these are all the kids of the producers and crew and they just all happen to have kids of about the same age, so they were really there behind the scenes. Anyway, I fear for these poor tykes. Things We Love Tim Gunn ‘s Peek : Every week, right after Tim hurries all the designers and their breathing mannequins out of the room for the runway show, he always opens the door to the workroom, peeks his head in, and looks around to make sure no one is in there. It’s like Tim is expecting to catch a stray designer hiding in the corner under a table quickly sewing the hem of a dress with an army of fairy helpers guiding the needle and thread. It’s so cute. And what if there was one? Would Grampa Gunn wing a Werther’s Original from his pocket and hit them in the head and tell them and their little fairies it’s time to go? Yellow : Both the ill-fated Jonathan and supremely ill-fated Maya used yellow this week. It was very cool. Why don’t we have more yellow clothing? Why don’t I have more yellow clothing? This needs to be corrected. Jay’s Outfit : Not the purple ruffley thing he made that made his 6-year-old look like a contestant on The Littlest Hooker , the one he wore while shopping at mood. It was a Kelly green sweater and shorts with some sort of printed sailboat pattern and probably topsiders (though we didn’t see the shoes closely). It was the most inappropriate getup we ever did see. He looked like he was dressed for a gay clam dig on Nantucket, but he was shopping in a fabric store in New York. It was so out of place it was amazing. The Boys : Last season the boys sucked and we thought it was some supreme Lifetime conspiracy to get all ladies to the end, which they did. Well, this year is the total opposite and the boys are kicking ass. Even if two of them are the horrible straight guys, we’re glad to have some penis power back in this competition. Maybe they’ve been taking the free lady vitamins that Lifetime put in their Atlas apartments and are somehow dodging the testosterone sensors at Parsons. Michael Kors Hates Kids : Of course he does, and it makes us love him even more. Lifetime Movies : God, they all suck. This week we had to watch commercials about Will Truman as a conman pretending to be a straight Rockefeller and marrying some lady so he could kidnap their kid. Also, Jill Scott is trying to win an Emmy for doing the TV version of Precious: A Television Drama Based on the Movie Precious Based on the Book by a Woman Who Wouldn’t Sell the Rights Unless Her Name was in the Title . They are so horrible, but we don’t want them to die. They’re like Sarah Jessica Parker’s little mole thingy. Her face isn’t be the same without it, and there is one fewer thing to pick on in the world. We miss that mole. “Bravo” : When congratulating a designer on a job well done, NGFDMCM said, “Bravo.” No, it’s Lifetime. Ha! That joke will never get old. In the end, Annoying Straight Man #1 took home the top prize for his little striped hoodie with watermelon pockets and a gorgeous black and white coat with a fucked-upedly fantastic collar that looked a bit like a fashion straight jacket for a couture S/M editorial shoot. The judges finally picked right and put Jay’s Barney purple tartlet creation and Jesse’s French-inspired preciousness in grey and red in the top as well. It was Tear up Weepy Janeane who was finally sent home for her boring blob of red and some other bullshit that she bought off etsy the night before and just passed off as her own. Bye-bye, dead weight, can’t you take Maya with you on your way out? Also horrible was Emilio’s Pepto Bismol poured in a shot glass and a champagne flute, Ben’s study in wilted lilacs, and Jonathan’s tissue explosion that he made with spare rolls from the Charmin Toilet off of the Brother Sewing Room. At least the last one had some yellow. Amy’s crazy “petal” pants—which looked like the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons —weren’t that bad. OK, yeah, they were. The petals weren’t finished and the colors were garish and the little girl looked like an orphan digging for trash in a alleyway right before Joseph Bologna shows up in a limo with a wonderful side part and puts her and four other girls in a band and lets them live in his mansion ( Rags to Riches , anyone?). Still, if Amy had made those petals in black, grey, and red and finished them, NGFDMCM and her estrogen-filled Easy-Bake Bun in the Oven would have climbed up onto the runway, thrown the kid out of the way and snatched them off the model’s body. But for Jonathan’s spot on Queen Tangerine impersonation, Suzanne Sugarbaker’s annoyance with little girls, and some other travesties, you have to go watch the videos. Don’t worry, we’ll babysit while you’re gone. We promise not to take LSD and put your baby in the microwave. Kors of the Matter Description : Jonathan finally show a little bit of personality with his funny German accent and his amazing Michael Kors impersonation. Vision : “Now is ze time on Schprockets ven vee make fun of Michael Kors.” Delusion : Sorry, kiddo, this isn’t as classic as Santino Rice doing Tim Gunn. Nice try. What Would Nina Say : “You know, my daughter does the most amazing impersonation of André Leon Talley eating Oreos.” Dramometer : 4 Under the Gunn Description : Tim goes to visit Amy, who is cutting out a bunch of frayed fabric to make some insane creation. Vision : Tim thinks this could be inspired, or clown clothes. Delusion : Oh, Gramps, the only thing that reeks more of clown clothes is the laundry room at Cirque du Soleil. What Would Nina Say : “If those pants were my child, I would have a late-term abortion.” Dramometer : 3 Suzanne’s Beauties Description : Our beloved Suzanne Sugarbaker is allergic to three things: subtlety, silence, and small children. Watch him try to deal with all three as the workroom is taken over by a bunch of howling banshees. Vision : This was exactly the producer’s vision of this challenge. Delusion : They are lucky that this is as messy as things got. We fully expected crying, and were sorely disappointed. What Would Nina Say : “Suzanne, you can babysit for me anytime.” Dramometer : 6 Runway Arrogance Description : Seth Aaron watches his design tromp and twirl its way to victory. Vision : This is what a girl wants, want a girl needs… Delusion : it makes us happy, but it won’t set us free of Seth Aaron. What Would Nina Say : “I could just eat you up! Yes I could!” Dramometer : 2 Caitlin the Hero Description : We do not like children any more than Michael Kors, but Amy’s model Caitlin is not afraid of bitchy old gay men who sell their wares at Marshalls. Oh hell no. She sticks up for her outfit right to Queen Tangerine’s face, and he gives her the scowl of disapproval. Vision : “I don’t care what you say old man, I like it!” Delusion : That a child would behave any other way. What Would Nina Say : See for yourself! Dramometer : 8
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Project Runway: Girls Gone Wild
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Tagged book, democratic, Girls, hero, michael-kors, muslim, president, project runway, recovery, Television, tim gunn
Joe Stack , the bass-playing, tax-hating Austin divebomber who murdered at least one person yesterday, left a confusingly post-partisan populist suicide note, making it hard for pundits to assign blame for his actions to their political opponents. But they’re still trying. As soon as Stack’s suicide note was discovered online yesterday, the political calculations began: He hated Bush (so do liberals!). He hated taxes (so do Tea Partiers!). He hated religion, but he also thought we live under a totalitarian regime. He approvingly quoted Karl Marx, but he hated government bureaucrats. That’s quite an incoherent grab-bag of positions, often with mutually exclusive political implications, which isn’t really surprising seeing as how it was issued by someone who set his own house on fire and then piloted an airplane into a building. But since we’ve lately had a rash of sudden and random violence from politically motivated actors, from James von Brunn to Scott Roeder, the de rigeur (and sometimes justified) next step is to associate the murderer’s rantings with other law-abiding political partisans, and begin the laying of blame. Since Stack’s manifesto is so confusing, the initial moves yesterday as the event unfolded were preemptive: He’s not one of ours . Literally minutes after the note was discovered, CNN’s Rick Sanchez was on the air arguing that Stack’s condemnation of “presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies” should be taken with a grain of salt, because Stack also attacked “Obama’s policies” (though that’s not really true—he seems to support health care reform, and nothing about the tax system that Stack rails against is specifically associated with Obama). Time observed that the note “eerily reflected the angry populist sentiments that have swept the country in the past year,” obliquely referring to the teabaggers. Meanwhile, the right-wingers at Newsbusters started complaining that the “liberal media” was deliberately covering up Stack’s shout-out to Marx , which constituted “perhaps the most politically consequential lines in the entire note” and proved conclusively that he was no teabagger. Last night, Laura Ingraham warned Bill O’Reilly that “over the next few days, you will hear from the left and all the crazies that, you know, we talk about other networks and so forth trying to tie CPAC maybe, the Tea Party movement, all of this anger on the right that is out there…. I mean, you’re going to hear that. I don’t think it’s believable. The guy is obviously a total nut.” And this morning. Michelle Malkin launched a screed against the “furious left-wing bloggers” trying to link Stack to right-wing rage, arguing that “no law-abiding Tea Party group would ever condone what he did” (ignoring the question of how the law- breaking Tea Party groups feel about it). It’s all a tiresome little game, really. When someone who hates taxes and the government kills people, he’s a lone nut and anyone who says otherwise is a disingenuous liberal. When a Muslim who hates the war in Afghanistan kills people, he’s part of a sophisticated international terrorist conspiracy and anyone who says otherwise is a traitor . The same people who are so strenuously declaiming that anti-tax rhetoric and ideas had nothing to do with his crime were literally days ago shouting that the Alabama professor who shot up her tenure committee was a “‘ far-left political extremist who was ‘obsessed’ with President Obama ‘”—as though we are at risk of a rash of gun crimes from Harvard-educated lefties. Stack is one in a long, long line of people who have attempted to injure or kill IRS agents . People have hated tax collectors for as long as people have liked money. Honestly, his profile— a bass player in the Austin country-rock scene, graduate of the Milton Hershey School for troubled teens in Pennsylvania, and lover of jazz —doesn’t seem to align too well with the reactionary gun-toting revanchist types that show up at Tea Party rallies. He sounds a little like a hippie. And to the extent that his little screed seemed to take up opposing threads of the contemporary political debate, it’s silly to try to fit him into a caricature of either side. He was motivated by rage at his own failures, for which he blamed faceless bureaucrats. But he did hate the IRS, and he did hate taxes, and he did feel entitled to not have to pay them. Political partisans will always be able to find examples of violent extremism with which to tar their opponents. The balaclava-clad lefties who throw rocks at G5 meetings are ideological cousins of the American left, just as Timothey McVeigh and Eric Rudolph were ideological cousins of the teabaggers. The difference is that the Democratic Party establishment isn’t currently engaged in actively fomenting the sort of rage that motivates the fringe of their party. The problem isn’t that the right wing is creating Joe Stacks, or should be held responsible for inciting them. It’s impossible to know whether Stack would have done what he did absent a current environment of deluded anti-government hysteria on the right wing, but given the facts that his grievances go back to the Reagan era and that he seems to have been squeezed to despair by the recession, it’s likely that his rage transcended the Fox News-driven political dynamic. And there will always be people like him. The problem is that the GOP and Fox News are currently addressing their political messaging to people like him. They’re not creating or inciting the right-wing fringe so much as bringing it in from the cold.
Posted in Celebrities, Hot Stuff
Tagged country, democratic, government, Hollywood, joseph-stack, muslim, president, recovery, tea parties
Tiger Woods spent 14 minutes this morning apologizing for, it seemed, practically everything he’s ever done. He may have just made things worse. His first mistake, of course, was waiting nearly three months to make his apology. But setting that aside, there is the issue of the actual apology, which was excruciating to watch. It was a string of clichés straight from a 12-step book. He took the blame, it’s true, but he sounded incredibly robotic and forced. (“The issue involved here was my repeated irresponsible behavior. I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated. What I did is not acceptable and I am the only person to blame.”) And the length of the speech worked against him; he should have stuck to the five minutes he was supposedly going to speak for. Because he ended up apologizing for things that people weren’t expecting, and lobbed some accusations that made him seem defensive. He said that the allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs were “completely and utterly false.” It reminded me of the old, “So when did you stop beating your wife?” question. No one would’ve been talking about performance-enhancing drugs today if he hadn’t brought it up. The other thing Tiger did that drove me crazy was his appeal to the paparazzi to stop harassing his family. “I still believe it is right to shield my family from the public spotlight. I have always tried to maintain a private space for my wife and children. They have been kept separate from my sponsors and my commercial endorsements,” he said. Which is a lie, as Don Van Natta of the Times pointed out on Twitter —Tiger was shown kissing his son in an ad for American Express. He also gave a shout-out to Accenture. Ew. Then there was the weird part where he brought up being raised a Buddhist (his mom looked distinctly uncomfortable at that point), but said he had “drifted away from it in recent years.” (No kidding.) Then he said, “Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint.” Again, this felt forced and false. The elephant(ess) in the room was clearly Elin, who wasn’t there but whose spectre hung over the proceedings. “Elin has shown enormous grace and poise throughout this ordeal. Elin deserves praise, not blame,” he said. Again—blame? Who was blaming Elin? From what I could tell, people sympathized with her. And her absence was telling. Think of how many men making apologies have had their wives at their sides—and not just politicians, either. Remember that when Kobe Bryant had to make his big apology, his wife Vanessa was at his side. Tiger also said that he wasn’t going to discuss whether he and Elin were going to stay together. Clearly he needs her more than she needs him.
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Tiger Woods Buries Himself in Recovery Clichés
Posted in Celebrities, Hot Stuff
Tagged discuss-whether, Family, golf, Money, movie-business, night, Paparazzi, recovery, sister, speech, took-the-blame, wives-at-their
Two weeks ago, author Edward Jay Epstein explained how the $5 billion deal in 2004 had cleaned out Wall St. hedge funds . Now he has obtained the dealbook that spells out exactly what went wrong. MGM, once the shiniest studio in the Hollywood galaxy, has fallen on hard times. Last October it failed to making the interest payment due on its $3.7 billion debt, and even with the six month forbearance granted by its creditors, it is hovering the threshold of bankruptcy. Its equity investors — including three big hedge funds — have been all but wiped out. The 140 banks that financed the leveraged part of the leveraged buyout deal are in danger of losing over $3 billion. With the creditors demanding their money, and the clock running on its forbearance, MGM had put itself up for sale, retaining investment bankers Moelis & Company to solicit offers from potential buyers that were due in mid January 2010. For a movie studio that was bought for $4.85 billion in 2004 (which is over $5 billion in 2010 dollars), the bids that have come in so far are shockingly low. Time Warner, for example, is offering under $2 billion and the bid from Lionsgate, once the leading contender, is worth even less. The secret numbers in the confidential information memorandum sent out by Moelis explain the problem, which goes to the root of what is happening to the movie business today. MGM’s main asset, as is true in the case of all Hollywood studios, is its library comprised of 4,100 film titles, including all the James Bond movies, and 10,600 television episodes. The money that comes in through this library comes from DVD sales — mainly older titles sold in discount bins at Wal-Mart and other retailers -– and television licensing packages to Pay TV, cable networks, and television stations around the world. The bet that the hedge funds made when they put up most of the equity for the $4.85 billion LBO in 2004 was that DVD revenue from the library would hugely increase when people replaced their standard DVDs with the Blu-Ray high-definition format that was just being introduced. But their projections proved to be pipe dreams. Instead of expanding, MGM’s DVD revenue plummeted, according to the confidential memo. MGM’s DVD revenues fell from $394.7 million in 2008 to just $69.8 million in the 2010 fiscal year (which ends March 31). This huge drop was attributed to a host of factors, ranging from the worldwide downtown in DVD sales to fewer new MGM releases. What turned out to be the real killer for MGM’s library was what the memo termed “significant price erosion.” Wal-Mart, pressured by competition from Netflix, Red Box, and video downloading, drastically reduced the “price point” that it would buy older (or so-called “catalogue”) DVDs, driving prices down to less than $5 a copy. So studios’ saw the stream of profits from older DVDs wither away. As with other studios, the larger part of MGM’s library’s money comes from television licensing. At first glance, these revenues appear remarkably stable, declining a mere one percent from $535.1 million in 2008 to $529 million in 2010. But like other phenomena in Hollywood, appearances can be deceptive. MGM had structured its long-term licensing contracts structured so the cable networks wind up underpaying for the early years and overpaying for the later ones, which is a common practice at studio libraries. As a result, even as properties lose value over the course of the contract (old films are worth less than newer ones), the illusion of stability is maintained . Of course, when MGM renews these multi-year contracts, the money it will get drops precipitously. And as impressive as $529 million in revenues may seem, it is not the amount MGM actually gets to keep since it splits most of these proceeds with various “third parties,” including producers, stars, directors, writers and Hollywood guilds. For example, the revenues from the 24 James Bond movies — which are the library’s most valuable asset generating nearly 30% of its revenue — have to be split 50-50 with Danjaq LLC, the holding company for the Broccoli family that originally created the franchise. These participations and residuals (which is what the guilds get for their pension funds) totaled $235.2 million in 2010. In addition, there were $33.2 million in other expenses for handling these complex rights, including calculating and issuing more than 15,000 different checks per quarter to participants. MGM also had to pay Fox a fee of $22.2 million for distributing its DVDs. What MGM kept turned out to be not enough to pay its overhead — $135.9 million in 2010 — and other costs, leaving it with a negative operating cash flow of $52.4 million. The bottom line here is that MGM cannot pay off its $3.7 billion in debt. And even if a white knight gallops in to carry off the library, the investors and creditors will take a loss. Edward Jay Epstein is the author of 14 books, including two examining the movie business: The Hollywood Economist: The Reality Behind The Movie Business will be published by Melville House later this month, which follows his 2005 book The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood .
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The Secrets Numbers Behind the MGM Fiasco
Posted in Celebrities, Hot Stuff
Tagged confidential, hugely-increase, illusion, melville-house, Money, movie-business, Movies, night, picture, recovery, sister
Look, in the sky! The clouds are parting and a heavenly ray of sunshine is screaming down towards Earth. It is the holy light of the Housewives, our most pious and delicate and wonderful and, occasionally, homeless creatures. Last night’s episode was all about faith. Faith in God, faith in family, faith in Merv Griffin. I mean, when you think of the phrase “Real Housewives” you immediately go to the word “faith.” Well, actually, first you go to “ham salad,” but right after that, it’s all about faith. These women just exude piety and beautifulness. And they breed it, too. I think we all feel a little more of God’s love in our hearts whenever they are near. Or not. I don’t know. WHEN LAST WE LEFT, all of the Wivery Wives were gathered in Sam Flamenco, a beautiful rocky city full of degenerate old Europeans , because their friend Cynthia Swann had thrown herself off the Golden Gate Bridge and they had to fish the body out before the pelicans ate it. They were a little late because Vicki had to stop and get her face re-skewered, so the pelicans had already done a number on her. Vicki stood there in her waders and big yellow fisherman’s hat, staring at the beak-mangled body of Stockard Channing, and she said “Hey, who wants lunch?” So it was off to lunch! Lunch for these ladies is mostly just sitting around and bitching (another brilliant zinnggggerrrr…) There is so much to bitch about. Their husbands aren’t rich enough, their girls aren’t pretty enough, their boys aren’t in and out of jail for stupid misdemeanors enough. These are what my grandmother, Stockard Channing, used to call “high class problems.” (Hurling yourself off a bridge in California while wearing a 1989 Talbot’s suit is also something of a high class problem, but I guess Grandma Channing didn’t really care about that.) Mostly though, the ladies like to bitch about each other. And these days their favorite target is Vicki. Because, see, Vicki threatens them. Vicki makes her own money and her husband hasn’t implanted a Warren Jeffs-designed microchip in her brain that triggers her pain receptors every time she has an independent thought. They don’t trust that, they don’t like it, and when they are lying in bed at night, listening to the house and their hearts settle, they are jealous of it. Plus, Vicki’s kinda a bitch. So, they attack her. Reeoowwrrrr! , they go, flashing their orange talons at her. Galllloooooooooo! , Vicki goes, scared as a water buffalo, jabbing her horns at them to protect herself. They struggle like this for some time until Vicki stomps away. Vicki always stomps away. When she was giving birth to Briana it hurt so much she just took off her girl parts and stomped away. “No, I’m not doing that anymore, I don’t need to sit here and take that.” Have you ever seen someone stomp out of a restaurant? I think I maybe have once, but maybe not. Anyway, it’s not a common occurrence. Unless you’re on this show, and then it happens every time you have a meal. So all the ladies weren’t surprised, but the producers had taped a $100 bill to the back of Vicki’s dress in the hopes that at least one of the girls would go out and follow her and try to get her back. It worked! Greedy Gretchen bounded out first and squeezed Vicki’s shoulders and told her that everything was OK, especially with Alexis. Alexis had been the main lunchtime antagonizer, because she really doesn’t like it when Vicki tells her things about how to do things. And then Alexis has the gall to act like she’s better friends with Tamara than Vicki is and Vicki doesn’t like that, so they just bicker like two old sea snakes while Gretchen replays Baby’s Day Out in her head and Tamara quietly enjoys being fought over. Yeah, that had been the big restaurant brawl and Vicki stormed out and Gretchen followed and then so too did Alexis. They stood on the curb and the Rice-A-Roni trolleys rolled on by and the men on rollerblades pointed and said “Look, Gideon” and “I know, I see it, Lance” and high above them all the pelicans fixed their horrid black beady eyes on the scene and waited. But, sadly for them, there was no bloodshed. A dribbling Vicki agreed to go back in, even if Alexis is a total bee’s natch. Back inside the girls sat down and then there was a loud sound of a conch shell being blown and a shattering of dishes and Lynne came tumbling out of a large vase. “What’s goin’ on,” she asked lazily, her voice the timbre of waffle batter. “I was in the bathroom…” Ha. Hahahah. Ha. Lynne was just in the bathroom, missed the whole damn fight. God I love that batty bitch. She’s just such a wackadoo. “I was playing cat’s cradle with myself. What’d I miss…” Briana, Vicki’s maybe-sick daughter was there and was trying to mediate and felt awful and yelled at all the women and they were shamed by someone half their age. As means to a peace offering, Alexis decided to lay hands on everyone and say a Jesus prayer to Space Jesus so Briana wouldn’t get sick anymore. The prayer was… fantastic. It went something like this: “Dear Space Jesus, in your name we trust, heavenly Father. For you are our Father and Uncle Art is in heaven, and you are our leader, Shepherd, please lead us and father us, Father, because blessed be the Space in which you are Jesus, Space Jesus, and you guide us every day, Guider, because you live in Space and wear a big brown wig, and please don’t let Briana be sick, and may all of our boobs be forever perky and beautiful, and please Father, look down upon us and make this crab salad have a little less salt in it, and tell the waiter we’d like some lemons for our water, Heavenly Father, in all that I’ve done wrong, I must have done something right to deserve your love every morning and butterfly kisses at night, ohhhh butterfly kisses after bedtime prayer, sticking little white flowers all up in my hair, dear Heavenly Jesus Father In Space, please fix Briana’s broken leg or whatever her illness is, and in conclusion please bless Jim, O Terrestrial Earth Jesus that he is, for teaching me to love the Gospel of the Sex Basement with all my heart, every anguished wail that comes roaring up from that dank dark place is going straight up to you, dear Space Father.” When the ethereal light had died down and Alexis’ hair had stopped billowing in a strange holy breeze, all the girls unclasped their hands and they looked at her and they knew that she was a holywoman, a true shaman. A priestess of the highest religious order. And they knew, with sudden supernatural force, that they had all been instilled with a deep, religious, sexual lust for the leathery fireplace bellows made animate by the Holy Spirit that is Jim. It is how he spreads his love seed. Our God is an awesome God indeed. NEXXXXT. Next Lynne. Oh Lynne. She sputtered by in her jalopy autogyro made of paper towel tubes and the dried husks of stink-beetles and finally alit on the roof of her soon to be not-house. Yes the Swam Manchego trip was over and it was back to stupid old Orange County, a place where problems grow like weeds. The problem is this: Her hubby, named Hubby, didn’t pay her automo bills, didn’t pay her telephone bills and, most importantly, he didn’t pay their rental bills. And he lied about it, because trying to discuss numbers and money with Lynne is like trying to describe the plot of The Manchurian Candidate to a pile of flan. So he feels like she should have done more and she feels like he should have just kept doing everything forever and so they are fighting and so Lynne isn’t staying with him anymore. As an even worse punishment, Lynne took the two gorgeous, precious daughters with her. Oh what torment!!! To be away from the sonorous and lovely Alex and her sister, Miguel Ferrer. He just couldn’t take it. He missed them so. To get them back, he summoned them to the crumbling Eviction House and presented them with a plan. So they’re broke, right? They ain’t got no funds, no cash, no dough, no doughlars, no simoleons, no spacebucks, no clams, no bones, no millionaires’ matches. Straight nerfin. And what’s the best thing to do when you’re in such a fiduciary pickle? Take the whole family on a vacation! Seriously. In the saddest and most telling and just like… sigh… economic moment of this economically-tinged season, Hubby said with stupid, blurry, teary American Cheesehead optimism: “You know what? Let’s take a trip. C’mon. We haven’t been on a trip together in ages.” And isn’t that just the saddest thing you ever heard? Just the most wonderful, O Beautiful For Spacious Falling Skies thing that anyone facing eviction could ever say to their dumb, overly tanned family. Let’s go on a fun trip. Meanwhile the housing authority is breaking down the door and the kids are being taken away and, oh biscuits, the dog is dead and Lynne has wandered into the air ducts again and is rattling around up there. But sure. Let’s go to Atlantis. SIGH. What else. What else. Oh. Um, Tamra and Simon went to dinner. They went to sexy romantic dinner and I’m told via email that there was some issue occurring with Simon’s toes and that’s all I know about that. When you’re itching to get through an episode of Real Housewives so you can go watch Olympics, you miss some things. Here’s something I didn’t miss: Gretchen and Doug Smiley are in lurrrrve. Or they are in TV love. Whatever it is, it involves meeting the folks. Obviously, because of his age, Doug’s parents have long since passed. But Gretchen’s parents are still bravely soldiering on in their early 40s, those feisty old coots. Gretch and Doug met them at a big house in the middle of the desert that they were renting. You know whose house it used to be? Merv Griffin’s. Yes. Merv Griffin. Why… Oh, forget it. It’s not worth asking. Just go with it. Gretchen and Doug rented Merv Griffin’s house so Doug could meet her parents, as is custom in California. It’s not the best tradition though. As it was Merv Griffin’s house, confused rent boys kept showing up for their “three o’clock” and Doug kept wondering why all the chairs had these weird things sticking up from the middle. “It’s like you’re… supposed to sit on it or something…” Basically Gretchen’s dad thinks Doug is a fine guy, even though he is not a fine guy with children he never sees and no job and he calls himself “Slade.” But, he does like to ride bikes fast, so he’s a winner in papa Rossi’s eyes. Mom does not care for him, sees right through him like that nice glass rolling pin she found in Merv’s bedside drawer. The Rossis both seemed like normal people, which pretty much always seems to be the case on this show. Most of the moms and dads are just regular folks who seem a bit, or a lot, out of place in this faux-fabulous world of horrors. I feel bad for them. I’m sure they feel bad for themselves. Being the parent of a Real Housewife must mean a lot of Thursday nights spent crying yourself to sleep. Doug kept dropping hints that he was going to propose, because his and Grechen’s is a special kind of love in which he enjoys being on TV with her and sometimes putting his penis into her fagina. That’s a really rare sort of passion there. So he basically told Dad that he wants to propose and Dad’s like “The fuck do I care? Do you think she’d be on this TV show if I managed my daughter’s life for her? Enn Ohh my friend. Ennnn Oh.” But just as he was about to pop the biggest, juiciest question since he proposed to Jo all those several years ago, Gretchen went on some drunken tirade about how marriage is horrible and awful and should be a “lease” because a playa’s gotta play and freedom ain’t free and you’re not gonna pay a lot for a muffler and other hackneyed catchphrases about relationships. Doug looked crestfallen. He frowned his face and farted with his eyes and Gretchen’s mom cackled and screeched and laughed and laughed and laughed into the night, the sound shooting up into the satin sky like wails from a holy Sex Basement. Speaking of that Sex Basement, over at Alexis and Jim’s temple they were having the preacher and his wife over for dinner. No it wasn’t Courtney B. Vance and some shivering crackhead. It was actual religious people. You know, white people. They were a square little pair (with dark brown hair and they live in a lair and the wife uses Nair and the husband loves Fred Astaire and her sexual cupboards are bare and life isn’t fair) from some Southern part of the electric-cord bible belt and Alexis really wanted to impress them with her healthy, sunshiny California Christianness. This meant presenting a beautiful dish full of various granolas (“This one has raisins, this one does not have raisins. This one is considering having raisins but it feels it’s a big step, and this one voted for a constitutional amendment banning raisins. I like that one best.”) and slops of yogurts and fresh squeezed tequila worm juice. The pastor and his sharp-featured wife were all tight smiles and nervous shoulders. Clearly they were uncomfortable in front of the cameras. So mostly it was Alexis who did the talking. See this juggy fuck is so wrapped up in her stupid self image that all she can really do is think and talk about how things relate to her. What does Christianity look like when framed by her? What does friendship mean when she is one of the friends? Etc. Etc. It’s awful. So the pastor listened and nodded his head and eventually the quiet wife swallowed a bunch of pills and was dead and the conversation meandered to where Alexis had wanted it to meander all along: Why are women jealous of Alexis? Ohhhhhh why are they jealous of her big fake tits and her tunafish-belching husband and her three little angels who are all ready ruined. It’s not Alexis’s fault that she’s perfect. Plus, God wanted her to get new boobs. At least that’s what Earth Jesus told her, and she believes him unconditionally. Alexis is just a good Christian woman, she believes in good Christian things. Christian this and Christian that. She has a Christian dog and a Christian spatula. She takes Christian poops and finds Christian schadenfreude in watching other women fail. Christian, Christian, Christian. You know what Alexis? Your man Christian’s a cake boy. If there really was a real magical space angel named Jesus Christ who lived a million years ago (there was not), I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t want you using his hippie philosophy as a fucking business card, you hack. You wanna be religious, fine. But don’t fucking brag about being a grown ass adult who believes in magic. That is the height of frustration for me. That is my letter to a Christian nation. Hey Christian Nation, kindly shut the hell up. Nobody else wants to listen to you drone on smugly about your myth cycle. Show don’t tell, please. You know what guys? I’m gonna have to end this thing here. No lame poetics or anything today, because I am hungover as a mother and it’s my boss’s last day and he’s letting us post anything, so I don’t want to spend all my time writing a boring old recap. I LOVE YOU GUYS. Not like Christian love. Like real love. Like Doug and Gretchen love. OK, that’s it. Goodbye goodbye goodbye. Have great weekends. Have fun at church. Have fun not going to church. Just have fun. And be safe. Girls, if you’re at a bar this weekend and some man who looks like a walking version of the heap of triceratops poop that Ellie Sattler digs through in Jurassic Park sidles up to you and starts slurring about God and his sex basement, you run. You just run and run and run and never look back. Just make sure you’re heading east. Nothing good lies west. Nothing but a hot sandy place full of lost souls. Which, come to think of it, sounds a lot like hell. UPDATE: I totally forgot that there was this part where Breastuhses and her Pizza the Hut go to a fancy dinner and she asked for “Surf & Turf” and thought it was lobster, but then Pizza the Hut was like “you thought there was lobster in that, do you even know what you’re ordering? huh huh huh” in his steak-filled voice, trying to embarrass her. And Tits just smiled and thought about other things while Pizza sat there chuckling horribly, Big Mac special sauce pouring out every orifice, the waiter quietly crying and wishing he’d never broken up with Darren and left Pittsburgh.
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Real Housewives of Orange County: Heaven Help Us
Eric Schmidt has long campaigned for free-flowing information, and even against the very idea of secrecy . But we doubt the Google CEO loves disclosure so much he’ll approve of an indiscreet blog-cum-memoir by his sometime mistress. Schmidt parted ways with Bohner last summer , but that hasn’t kept him out of what a tipster in his ex-girlfriend’s social circle called her “pet project:” a multimedia confessional autobiography, including a Google-hosted blog called “Recovery Girl 007” , and eventually a book. On the blog, Bohner writes about Schmidt, dubbing him “Dr. Strangelove” and disclosing that he gave her a prototype iPhone. She also calls Steve Jobs a “stoned Jesuit preist” (more below). That aside, the intricate online memoir-in-progress primarily details Bohner’s recovery from cocaine and alcohol addiction via 12-step programs and yoga. It’s not clear how Bohner is funding the project, which has seen the former CNBC correspondent hire an art director, webmaster and editor, all prominently credited here and at the bottom of this post in what might just be the most crowded masthead ever assembled for a personal Blogspot. One gossip thinks Schmidt’s money is somehow behind the project, but we’re not so sure; barely a year ago, when he was still dating Bohner, the married billionare was showering her with little more than love and jewelry, despite an overture for him to put money into the documentary company where Bohner worked. Maybe Bohner’s hocked some of those gifts, or is simply relying on savings. It certainly doesn’t seem as though she’s become reentangled with Schmidt; our tipster wrote that the couple are “hitting it too occasionally for her liking” — which could well mean not at all. What Bohner has so far detailed of her personal autobiography is certainly rattling stuff of the sort that would pull a caring lover’s heartstrings. She writes about snorting cocaine in Hyde Park, London; bingeing on tequila in Los Angeles; sipping brandy at age eight; quitting booze and then relapsing; shaking and heaving at a friend’s house when trying to go dry; and getting checked in to a detox center. (It is a “Colonel Stevenson” who introduces Bohner to brandy as a child in Southern Spain. That this same Colonel Stevenson appears on Bohner’s more public blog is, along with a pointer from our tipster, how we know the former Donald Trump ghostwriter is also responsible for the Recovery Girl 007 blog.) We assume Bohner will also eventually give the backstory behind her criminal record. Using her birth day and year, gleaned from her blog, and a public records search, we found she’d been sentenced to just under three years (of probation?) in South Florida (where she now resides) for aggressive assault with a weapon, no intent to kill, in a 2005 Florida incident. In New Jersey she got three years probation for a crime we’ve not yet determined. Then there were Bohner’s landlord issues in New York City. After two civil filings from a building management company in late 2005 and early 2006, Bohner was forcibly evicted in May 2006, according to a public records search. Despite repeated attempts, we were not able to elicit any quote or rebuttal from Bohner on her project or background. On her website, Bohner writes about turning her life around with help from a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, where she worked, and from a popular Los Angeles yoga instructor, Keith Fox. Schmidt has good reason to hope that turnaround sticks: On Bohner’s site, the former business journalist writes repeatedly about the men in her life; it’s not hard to imagine Bohner burning an ex who falls out of her good graces. In addition to Schmidt, Bohner’s dated author Michael Lewis (to whom she was briefly married) and Lazard executive Steve Langman. Among the lovers on the Recovery Girl site is someone code-named Dr. Strangelove, who is often in Los Angeles. “Dr.” Eric Schmidt holds a Ph.D. as well as a home in Santa Barbara County. Dr. Strangelove and Eric Schmidt are one in the same, as the first of several excerpts below makes clear. During a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands (emphasis added): I haven’t thought about Dr. Strangelove in such a long time-I try to sweep all of that data completely under the Persian carpet. That’s a lie. I think about him every so often in these fleeting cinematic flashes…I have completely stopped sleeping. My friend Jason is so worried about it that he confiscates my Blackberry… I’ve been sleeping with my Blackberry just in case Strangelove might send an e-mail. If I was really smart I ditch the Blackberry for the iPhone he gave me – the prototype version . But I have yet to arrive. Stephen Jobs is not St. Stephen. He’s just a stoned Jesuit priest lost in his garden . Strangelove still has his stranglehold on me and nothing is new under the sun. Later in the same post: The dream is always the same… strolling through winding paths at a government insane asylum in northern Massachusetts.I’ve been committed-against my will. It is Strangelove, my genuinely caring, concerned boyfriend . He has convinced me, or, he has convinced me that I’ve convinced him, that I am suicidal. The dream always begins with me walking the grounds of the campus. I look for the cafeterias with the free food. I can’t find the line for the free bus back to Santa Monica. I keep pulling on the locked doors. At the Buddhist temple in Thailand : How did I get here? There was the phone call. There was the betrayal. Dr. Strangelove had lied about his involvement in it all . And then there were a couple of conversations that followed. And all I remember feeling was that I had to get out of L.A. After detox in South Florida : You see I wasn’t going to go back to Los Angeles. That part was clear. The L.A . experiment hadn’t worked. Game over. Case closed. The work thing had ended when I went to the monastery in Thailand. And the relationship was officially over; Dr. Strangelove was dead . Next chapter. We’ll certainly be reading Bohner’s future installments closely. And we’re sure Schmidt will, too.
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The Google CEO and His Mistress: The Tell-All Blog
Posted in Celebrities, Hot Stuff
Tagged florida, fox, Hollywood, meh, palin, People, project, recovery, recovery-girl, rumormonger
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