Archive for August 7th, 2008

Les News, 080708

Freeman released from the hospital, Betty White clarifies, L. Ron's matching tats?
Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Designing That Olympic Spirit

ATTENTION: 'PROJECT RUNWAY' SPOILER ALERT WARNING
Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Project Runway got into the Olympic spirit with this week’s ep (and just in time as the 29th Olympic Games get underway in Beijing, China tomorrow) as the designers were challenged to create women’s wear outfits for the US Olympic Team that would be fit to wear to the opening ceremonies of the Summer Games:


Celebrity guest judge and Olympian speed skater Apolo Ono was on hand to help with the judging process. After the jump, find out who was in, who was out and who took home the Gold (since we already know that Blayne won the Bronzer) …

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Blog Of This Sister, Madonna

Christopher Ciccone tries his hand at blogging
Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Not content with merely publishing wild and lurid tales about his sister Madonna’s private life in book form, it now appears that her younger brother, Christopher Ciccone, has decided to take up blogging in order to tell the tales he would like to tell but was unable to publish in his new book Life with My Sister, Madonna due to various legalities. The blog promises to provide new content online since some “lawyers [are] blocking some content in the book”. Here is a lovely excerpt from a blogpost about Madonna and her disdain for her stepmother Joan:


Madonna hates our stepmother, Joan. I try and have a little more understanding for Joan and the fact that she has made our father happy again after our natural mother’s death. At times, Madonna pretends to like her and when she does, I always know there’s some weird motive … Madonna knows that Joan likes chocolate milk. “Do you want some Chocolate milk?” Madonna asks, to which Joan nods her head. I go downstairs with Madonna and her friends as Madonna makes her “speciality.” I couldn’t understand why Madonna was so excited about making chocolate milk. But wait… After mixing up the Hershey’s syrup into the milk, Madonna puts her lips together and lets out a spit ball that slowly falls from her mouth into the milk. Madonna takes a dirty fork and mixes it. The audience looks in shock, which Madonna loves. “I think she’ll like this,” Madonna whispers as if she’s the wicked witch of the East. We don’t believe that Madonna is going to give this to Joan, but we follow her back upstairs. By now, Joan and my father have their clothes back on. Madonna gives Joan the milk and Joan thanks her. Madonna turns around with a smile and closes the door. Madonna gags as if she’s going to throw up. The rest of us are still in shock. Till this day, Joan never realized what the “special” ingredient in her chocolate milk was.

Well, I guess Joan Ciccone knows about it now. Thus far, there are only 3 blogposts online right now and none of them are really all that juicy (one is about a private breakdown in 1993 and the other about a threesome he claims to have had with her and a guy named Johnny in 1983 — um, okay, that one is kinda juicy). I’ve yet to read his book myself but I hope it provides more meat than what he’s giving away here. I have a hard time believing that lawyers for Joan Ciccone have tried to “block” this chocolate milk thing from being published in the book (especially since he claims that she never knew about it in the first place … oh yeah, and cuz it’s a lame story) so I don’t get why it’s on the blog at all. I’ll keep my eye on the site to see if anything of substance gets blogged but … meh, I’m not really holding my breath.

[Source, thanks Kevin]

Detroit’s Mayor Jailed

Kilpatrick begs forgiveness, gets jail anyways
Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Very sad and shameful news out of my beloved Detroit, Michigan today. The current mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, has been sentenced to serve one night in jail after it was revealed that Kilpatrick defied the terms of his bond after being charged with perjury and obstruction of justice (the latest in a long list of crimes and misdemeanors). Even tho I have been away from the Detroit Metro area for a couple of years now, I am well aware of Kilpatrick’s shady biz and have never been a fan of his tactics or his leadership of the city. As embarrassingly shameful as it is, I am very glad to know that the judge in this case deemed it appropriate to lock up the sitting mayor and force him to endure a night in jail as part of his punishment. Here are a couple pics from court today, the second shows Kwame Kilpatrick being led away to a holding area before being transferred to his awaiting jail cell:


Judge Ronald Giles just sent Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to jail moments after the mayor pleaded for forgiveness and admitted he made an unauthorized trip to Windsor on city business. As of noon Kilpatrick was still at 36th District Court being processed for transfer to Wayne County Jail. “The first day you were before me, I thought I made it clear to you that this court comes first in everything,” Giles said. “I do understand that you’re under…pressure…but I have to look at how the system should be run and perceived by the public. At the beginning of this case you were given every privilege that could be given to you with regard to travel,” Giles said, adding that he later imposed restrictions after learning Kilpatrick had been abusing his privileges. “At that time I made it perfectly clear … don’t come back … ,” he said. Giles revoked Kilpatrick’s $75,000 10% bond and ordered him jailed … Giles’ jailing of Kilpatrick leaves no clear line of authority in who is running the city because there currently is no deputy mayor. Anthony Adams has temporarily relinquished his deputy mayor duties to be the interim director of the Water and Sewerage Department, and Kilpatrick said at the time of that announcement that chief of staff Kandia Milton and chief operating officer Cathy Square would divide up Adams’ deputy mayor duties. The charter provides that in the “absence or temporary disability” of the mayor that the deputy mayor is the acting mayor. Giles’ comments came after Kilpatrick told the judge he had been living under incredible pressure for the past 7 months. “I don’t believe that there is a person that’s ever been through this process that respects it more than I do,” Kilpatrick said, referring to the legal proceedings stemming from the eight felonies ranging from conspiracy to perjury to misconduct in office to obstruction of justice filed against him in March. “Last week was a tremendous wake-up call to me,” he said, referring to Giles’ rebuke last month after he allegedly assaulted law enforcement officials trying to serve a subpoena … Kilpatrick admitted violating the terms of his bond by traveling to Windsor without notifying the court. He said he was sorry. “My life has been revolutionarily transformed and it’s transforming in front of the eye of these media people who don’t know me at all,” he said, referring to what he called intense scrutiny. “Your honor, I ask for your forgiveness…it will never happen again.” He said his sons were watching these proceedings because he asked them to. “I told them that I did something wrong,” he said. Kilpatrick further said he was not “frolicking” in Windsor but trying to make a deal that would let him avoid laying off more than a thousand city workers. “I apologize to the citizens as well, but mostly to you. It was never an affront to you,” he said of the trip. Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Robert Moran said the mayor’s pleas rung hollow. “Now that he’s caught, he’s taking responsibility…he thought he got away with it,” Moran said.

I have always contended that Kwame Kilpatrick is a criminal and now we have the bona fide proof … a sitting mayor has been sent to jail! I really hope this serves as the FINAL WAKE UP CALL to the people of Detroit that Kilpatrick is not fit to serve as mayor of the city I love so much. I will be very surprised if he isn’t impeached and removed from office, it should’ve happened a long time ago. His laundry list of crimes and malfeasance is too long to list here … as sad as I am for the way this makes Detroit look I am very happy that someone finally held Kilpatrick accountable for something. He is an embarrassment and I hope this will be the final end of him. After the jump, watch video of Kilpatrick’s pitiful apology to the court …

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‘Open Your Minds, Live A Happier Life’

Kanye West suggests
Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Kanye West brought his Glow in the Dark Tour back to Madison Square Garden in NYC this week and ended up giving the audience an almost 5-minute exposition on tolerance. Kanye has previously spoken out against the use of discriminatory and homophobic words in rap music (and in rap culture overall) and used this latest opportunity to expound on those beliefs a little further. Here is a rough translation of Kanye’s speech (provided by Andy Towle of Towleroad):


“Open your fucking minds. Open your minds. Be accepting of different people and let people be who they are. You know how many people came to me calling me gay cause I wear my jeans the fresh way? Or because I said hey, dude, how you gonna say ‘fag’ right in front of a gay dude’s face and act like that’s ok. That shit is disrespectful. Coming from Chicago, where if you saw somebody that was gay you were supposed to stay ten feet away. It should be time to break out of the intuitions that I was sayin’, the steretypes, or the fear, the backlash that I would get if you don’t believe in what I believe in, acceptin’ people for who they are…they’re very talented and if they do something special in the world and they’re discriminated. I’ve flown across the world y’all, and I’ve come back here to tell you — open your minds and live a happier life…”

I must say, I am very impressed with Kanye West and his stance against homophobia. Don’t get me wrong, I usually find the man overly cocky and far too full of himself but I am impressed with his devotion to standing up for beliefs that are, in all honesty, very unpopular in his music culture. He deffo gets my respect on this one. After the jump, watch the full video of his speech for yourselves …

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Sunday Rose Wants Her Privacy

Yeah, good luck with that
Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban and their newborn baby daughter Sunday Rose have been in Australia for only about a day and they are already making it known that they would like to enjoy as much privacy as they possibly can … by giving interviews to the media. Now, I totally get that they may want to enjoy their homeland as much as possible without a throng of photogs following them around but, again, I have to stress that celebrity doesn’t really work that way. In the end, both Nicole and Keith have made vast fortunes from courting the attention and love of the public and they just can’t turn that off whenever they want to … but, that’s an argument that is for another time I suppose. In their first Aussie interview since arriving in Sydney with their newborn bundle of joy, Nicole revealed to the Kyle and Jackie O breakfast radio show that Sunday Rose has reddish hair and that she looks a lot like Keith … which isn’t really evident in these new pics of the family making their way thru the streets of Sydney earlier today:


Australia’s newest celebrity baby, Sunday Rose, looks like her father Keith Urban and has a “bit of a reddish tint” to her hair, her mother Nicole Kidman says. Kidman and Urban last night returned to Australia with Sunday Rose for their first trip back since the birth of their daughter in the US on July 7. The couple, who were greeted by a small group of media when they flew into Sydney on a private plane, today called a Sydney radio station to plead with journalists and photographers to back off while they show their new daughter their home town. The proud parents enthused about their love for their “little four-weeker”. “She looks like Keith. I think she does,” Kidman told the Kyle and Jackie O breakfast radio show on 2Day FM. “She’s got a little bit of hair, it’s a bit of a reddish tint.” Urban said being a new dad was an “awesome” feeling that only other dads could understand. “Anybody out there who’s got kids [knows] it’s just a certain kind of feeling that you can only experience when you do it,” he said. “She’s just awesome … cute little thing. I’m not looking forward to having to go on tour and having to leave.” Kidman said she had enjoyed a “surprisingly” smooth labour, with her husband, mother and sister by her side and she was now looking forward to introducing her little “doll” to the rest of her family. Kidman said her labour had been made easier by the presence of her mother, who is a nurse and midwife, and her sister, Antonia, who has had four children. “They say a lot of it [labour] has to do with how your sister and your mother gave birth, so luckily my sister’s had four children … and that was pretty easy for her too,” she said. “My mum was a nurse too and also she’s a midwife so we were surrounded … but we also had wonderful nurses at the hospital. “I’m embarrassed now. That’s too much information on a breakfast show.” The couple pleaded with photographers to let them introduce Sunday Rose to Sydney and her other three grandparents in peace. “Keith and I are both appealing to the press and stuff just to give us a little space so we can walk around Sydney and show the baby our town,” Kidman said. “She’s tiny. She’s like a doll, she’s like a little, little thing. Just [don't photograph] right in her face or in our faces because it’s scary for her.” Urban said he understood the media interest, but that people had to think about the effect it could have on their little girl. “I get it. I get the interest there is,” he said. “But at the same time it’s our little girl. Sometimes when people come right up in your face and you think: ‘Good God, would you do that to anybody else’s child?’ That’s all” … No photographs of Sunday have been released and Urban today confirmed the couple had no intention of selling any.

At least the couple seems reasonable about the whole matter of public interest. It seems clear that the couple plan to do everything they can to foil the paps as best they can but I think it’s reasonable for them to ask that photogs not get into their faces. Honestly, I do feel for celebs like these *sometimes* because I can appreciate that they think they want to live normal lives like everybody else … but they don’t live normal lives, they enjoy exorbitant lives of wealth and privilege. If they lived normal lives, the might not even be able to afford to jet off to OZ or other parts of the world at a moment’s notice, they wouldn’t be giving interviews and they wouldn’t have major motion pictures to promote. It’s a double-edged sword, public interest comes with the territory … but, really, this isn’t news to them.

[Photo credit: Splash News; Source]

Heath Ledger’s Case Closed

Much ado about nothing
Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Yeah, remember all that jazz about Mary-Kate Olsen getting subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury to find out what she may know about the circumstances surrounding Heath Ledger’s untimely death? Yeah, that’s already over with … the US Attorney’s Office has decided to officially end the investigation, putting a stop to all subpoenaed testimony before it was even given. You know somewhere Mary-Kate Olsen is heaving a HUGH sigh of relief right about now:


The U.S. Attorney’s Office closed its investigation into Heath Ledger’s accidental overdose death and will not enforce a subpoena against Mary-Kate Olsen, a law-enforcement source told PEOPLE. The probe was closed without any charges being filed. Olsen, 22, was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury on April 23, but her attorney had been in negotiations with federal authorities since then, the source said. Olsen had wanted immunity before testifying. Olsen’s attorney released a statement saying the actress “had nothing to do” with Ledger’s drugs and had already provided “relevant information” to investigators. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and Olsen’s rep both declined to comment. Ledger, 28, was found dead in his Soho apartment on Jan. 22, and the coroner determined the actor died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs for pain, anxiety and sleep.

And that, folks, is that. To be honest, I never thought that things would be brought to this point, I never anticipated that subpoenas would even be issued so I’m not all that surprised that the investigation was ended (called off?). By the sounds of it, the investigation shouldn’t've even gotten this far (since “a massive investigation … launched over an accidental death in which no criminality was even hinted at” has never happened before). Hopefully now Heath can just rest in peace and the world can move on … and MK can finally get a peaceful night of sleep (which doesn’t necessarily mean her conscience is totally clear).

[Source]