LESSON: IF YOU’VE BEEN ENGAGED TO PAMELA ANDERSON, YOU WIND UP GOING TO STRIP CLUBS FOR THE MUSIC
Kid Rock was arrested in February for punching a disc jockey at a Nashville strip club in what police called a squabble over song selection.
IMPROVISE THIS
ImprovOlympic’s 25th anniversary show was meant to propel this Chicago institution toward Second City-like status, with performances by such famous alumni as Mike Myers, Andy Richter, Rachel Dratch and Amy Poehler. Instead, this pricey August event at the Chicago Theatre was an artistic and technical disaster in which unrehearsed performers attempted to wing it in the less-than-intimate auditorium while malfunctioning microphones caused almost an hour’s worth of delays plus a do-over for the show’s first 15 minutes. Not even the offer of refunds worked: The line at the box office grew so long and angry that officials abruptly cut it off.
NO, BUT FINALLY O.J. HAS SOMEONE HE WANTS TO INTERVIEW IN HIS SEARCH FOR THE REAL KILLERS
After Tara Reid’s red-carpet wardrobe malfunction earlier this year, she explained to FHM: “People act like it was the worst crime in the world. It was a mistake, you know! But you would think my boob had popped out and shot Gandhi!”
TONIGHT ON “NIGHTLINE”: STUPID NETWORK TRICKS
“Nightline” fans feared that comedy would take the place of in-depth news analysis after ABC essentially forced out founding anchor Ted Koppel by making him an offer they knew he’d refuse. But the network showed its commitment to late-night news by replacing Koppel with three hosts, including Michael Jackson interrogator Martin Bashir, and a flashy newsmagazine format. Wait a minute, this is comedy.
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ALSO, YOUR HONOR, JAY LENO’S BEEN TORMENTING US FOR YEARS WITH HIS LAME JOKES
A Santa Fe district judge actually granted a woman a temporary restraining order against David Letter-man in mid-December after she claimed he had been tormenting her for years with secret words, gestures and “eye expressions” to woo her as his future wife and co-host. Her complaint demands that the late-night host keep at least 3 yards’ distance from her and not “think of me” so he can “release me from his mental harassment and hammering.” Letterman’s lawyer called the claims “obviously absurd and frivolous.”
JUDGES’ DECISIONS ALSO CAN GET VIOLINS
A federal bankruptcy court judge in Roanoke, Va., ruled that two married members of the Audubon Quartet must surrender their beloved musical instruments as the result of their losing a $611,000 judgment in a lawsuit brought by the quartet’s first violinist, David Ehrlich, who claimed he was wrongfully ousted from the group in 2000. The couple also faces the loss of its home, annuities and bank accounts.
THE SELLOUT STARTS NOW
“The revolution starts here/Where you work and where you play/Where you lay your money down . . . ” Steve Earle sang in 2004 in his blistering anti-Bush, anti-war anthem “The Revolution Starts Now.” Less than a year later, the twangy rocker sold the recording for a Chevy Trucks ad.
YEAH, BUT K-FED’S RAPS ARE DOPE
How insipid can love be? Britney Spears and hubby Kevin Federline showed us with their cobbled-together home videos that UPN aired as “Britney and Kevin: Chaotic.” The series purported to document how the couple met and became soul mates forever. For some mysterious reason, UPN hasn’t scheduled a follow-up series about the couple’s continued bliss since Spears gave birth to a son this fall.
SPEAKING OF EPIC LOVE STORIES FOR OUR TIME
“Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica — The Final Season” was released on DVD on Dec. 6. Ten days later Jessica Simpson filed for divorce.
GARRR! WE’LL GET YE PIRATES IF WE HAVE TO BLOW OFF OUR OWN HEADS!
Sony BMG recalled 3 million CDs from stores and was expected to exchange 2 million more from customers after being sued this fall by the Texas attorney general and others who contend the company violated consumers’ rights by embedding millions of CDs with copy-protection software that damaged the users’ computers. This fiasco represents another massive misfire in the music industry’s war against Internet music file-sharing.
COULDN’T HE HAVE USED SCIENTOLOGY TO FIX THE ENDING OF “WAR OF THE WORLDS”?
Quiz: What was the most compelling evidence that Tom Cruise is out of his gourd?
a) His love-struck couch-hopping antics on “Oprah.”
b) His picking a fight with Brooke Shields over her postpartum depression treatment.
c) His lecturing of “Today” host Matt Lauer about psychiatry and Ritalin. (“You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.”)
d) His urging of firefighters who suffered from smoke inhalation during the World Trade Center terrorist bombings to give up their medication and inhalers in favor of a Scientology “purification rundown.”
e) Just that whole Katie Holmes engagement/pregnancy/buying-a-sono-gram- machine/no-wedding-date hullabaloo.
f) That crazy, crazy laugh of his.
Answer: HEH-HEH-HEH-HEH-HEH!
MORE LIKE HER “DIVA” MOMENT
When Oprah Winfrey was turned away from Paris’ up-scale Hermes store 15 minutes after it closed in June, the TV talk goddess’ friends and representatives took to the media, terming the incident “one of the most humiliating episodes of her life” and her ” `Crash’ moment” — a reference to the racism-themed movie then in theaters. Yet instead of publicly discussing these serious accusations at the time, Oprah waited to use the incident as a ratings gooser for her first new show in September — on which she accepted an apology from Hermes’ U.S. CEO (“You did meet up with one very, very rigid staff person”) and then urged viewers to shop at Hermes again. Oh, OK!
FUNNY, THAT’S JUST WHAT R. KELLY SAID
In August hip-hopper P. Diddy shortened his name to Diddy, explaining, “I felt like the ‘P’ was getting between me and my fans.”
FORTRESS MANHATTAN, COMING RIGHT UP
The June unveiling of a new design for lower Manhattan’s 1,776-foot Freedom Tower offered the most visible sign that the once-promising redevelopment of ground zero was slouching toward mediocrity. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the tower consisted of a monumentally ordinary top perched on a nearly windowless, 200-foot pedestal; this brutal base offered the very fortresslike architecture officials promised they would not build after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
SEE, THEY THOUGHT THE “M” IN MTV STOOD FOR “MONKEY-BRAINED”
MTV showed how out-of-touch and contemptuous it has become toward music with its insulting coverage of this summer’s multi-continent consciousness-raising concert, Live 8. The network (and sister station VH1) seemed allergic to showing performances live (despite the name) or to letting bands complete songs without interruption from insipid VJ’s and endless commercial breaks. When MTV cut off Pink Floyd’s first live performance in more than 20 years, the backlash was so vigorous that the network wound up re-airing the entire concert without commercials or VJ’s the following weekend.
AND WE WON’T EVEN MENTION HIS RECENT DESCRIPTION OF PREGNANT (THIRD) WIFE MELANIA AS A “MONSTER” WHO’S “LIKE A BLIMP — IN THE RIGHT PLACES”
In February, Donald Trump and producer Mark Burnett announced the new fall NBC series “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.” “It was an easy decision. We think this will be a tremendous success,” Trump said at the time. When it became clear that Stewart’s show was tanking in October, the ever-gallant executive was all over the media proclaiming, “I was never in favor of it” and “I never thought it was a good idea.”
MAYBE IT CAN PLUCK TRUMP’S EYEBROWS
In Chicago’s version of skyline follies, developers J. Paul Beitler and LR Development Co. floated a plan in October for a 2,000-foot-tall broadcast tower across Lake Shore Drive from Navy Pier. Designed by the normally sure-handed Cesar Pelli of New Haven, Conn., the tweezer-shaped tower utterly lacked the panache of Santiago Calatrava’s Fordham Spire, the twisting tower that developer Christopher Carley has proposed a few blocks to the south.
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AND I NEED TO HEAR HER SAY, “TUCKY! TUCKY! TUCKY!”
While in New York promoting his turn as underdog heavyweight boxing champ Jim Braddock in “Cinderella Man,” Russell Crowe assaulted a hotel clerk with a phone after he couldn’t get through to wife Danielle Spencer, thus undercutting the whole root-for-the-little guy ethos. (The film subsequently tanked.) He also revealed the level of trust in his marriage, explaining to David Letterman: “I’m, you know, trying to fulfill my basic obligations to my wife who needs to know I’m at home, I’m in bed, I haven’t had too much to drink, and that, you know, primarily important, that I’m alone.”
THOUGH WE LOVE THE LINCOLN HAPPY MEALS
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, which opened in Springfield in April, showed the world a timid classical exterior that resembles a small-town convention center or a stockade designed to repel an attack by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The interior offers stage-set versions of historical scenes and mannequins that critics dubbed “rubber Lincolns.” Speaking on “The Charlie Rose Show,” Ada Louise Huxtable, the dean of American architecture critics, said of the popular museum: “It’s not done in a shabby or shoddy way. It’s done so well that it’s seductively destructive. What it’s doing is . . . what do the advertising people say? Cheapening the brand.”
KIND OF LIKE PUTTING AWNINGS ON STONEHENGE
Ozzy Osbourne had plastic surgery early this year, crowing, “I’ve had a face job and a new nose. It boosted my confidence to no end.”
THAT’S WHAT THEY GET FOR NOT CRIBBING FROM THEIR USUAL NEWS SOURCE, “THE DAILY SHOW”
When ABC announced that Mel Gibson, whose father believes that whole Holocaust business was exaggerated, would be making a Holocaust-themed mini-series for the network, the caustic entertainment-biz Web site Defamer joked, “While the baldfaced grab for controversy might seem utterly crass to us, ABC was powerless against the visionary Gibson’s breathtaking pitch for the mini-series’ climactic scene, a Braveheart-style battle with thousands of Jewish and Nazi combatants rushing at each other across an open field.” The Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper The Australian subsequently reported, “Gibson’s Con Artist Productions reportedly clinched the deal with a breathtaking pitch for a climactic `Braveheart-style’ battle scene where thousands of Jewish and Nazi combatants rush at each other across an open field.”
YESTERDAY WAS THE GREATEST DAY I’VE EVER KNOWN
Chicago’s Billy Corgan pulled the rug out from under his well-reviewed first solo album, “TheFutureEmbrace,” by taking out full-page newspaper ads the day of its release to herald his decision “to renew and revive The Smashing Pumpkins,” his former band. Turns out, two of Corgan’s three original bandmates learned of the reunion through the ad and, as of year’s end, had yet to respond.
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