See these smiling, joyous faces? They won't be around this year, because Oprah is no longer doing her Favorite Things, thanks to the flatlining economy. Well, technically she is, but it's all going to be stuff she dug out of a dumpster in her studio's back alley. According to Harpo, the show "will showcase some of Winfrey's things that cost next to nothing, including a special gift that won't cost a thing."
Did you hear that? Hugs for everyone!
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THAT WAS EASY • "According to the British press, Madonna, 50, and [Guy] Ritchie, 40, reached a settlement over money and their kids Lourdes, 12, Rocco, 8, and David, 3. … Madonna will keep the bulk of her estimated $500 million fortune intact, though Ritchie was entitled by law to a share of it. Additionally, Rocco and David will split time between the U.S. and London, while Lourdes, whose father is Carlos Leon, will live with her mother."
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When was the last time you were forced to read a bad pun in Page Six regarding oil billion-heir (see?) Brandon Davis and the amount of shiny grease in his hair? Get it, because he's got oil money, and his hair is oily. Oy vey.
You might not be so happy at first to see Davis' name in print: He's pretty much disappeared after calling Lindsay Lohan a fire-crotch, but then you realize that he's only being mentioned because of his recent string of bad luck and insane debt, and your Monday just started out a little better, right?
Watching which luxuries people are relinquishing in these financially dreary times is like watching a neat little piece of sociological theater. While I've given up Whole Foods in favor of Trader Joe's (like a common urchin), young men in Tampa are abstaining from strippers. In Fort Pierce, Florida, the crackheads are being asked to calmly suppress their habit (the cost of which has doubled) and they're fucking crackheads!
With the whole world falling down, don't for a second think the ultra-wealthy aren't tightening their belts. They may be richer than God, but this recession is leaving no pocket unpicked. Subsequently, Manhattan's elite have emerged from their caviar comas and realized that arbitrarily priced canvases spattered with paint aren't worth more than the homes of the vast majority of the world's population.
Yesterday, artist Francis Bacon's "Study for Self Portrait," a piece Christie's estimated would collect $40 million plus, went unsold with nary a bid. WHAT MADNESS IS THIS!!!?!?!?!?!?!?
These days it's clearer than ever: loyalty and Hollywood go together like boxing gloves and telephones.
Now that we in the Western world are eating fish skeletons out of the garbage like the Heathcliff of world powers, too poor to lavish celebrities with sufficient amounts of money and gifts, our disappointed stars are turning their rhinoplastied noses eastward, to the mysterious, exciting, oil-rich Orient. In Dubai, where oil barons mingle with Russian gangsters in $1,500 shoes, the money flows as plentifully as the region's largest export. And just like that, our celebrities are taking their balls and going to the UAE!
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OUR TRASHY WORLD • Hey, angry blog commenters, if you thought we were "insulting the first fam" (oh, the irony in that quote!), put this in your pipe of indignation: "Hope Toast" on eBay. "Keep it real with Obama Hope toast! Barack Obama has miraculously appeared on a piece of toast I was preparing for breakfast. … Nothing has been added to the bread - no butter or oils."
THAT'S TOAST YOU CAN BELIEVE IN!!!!
It's about time we all started flashing our money around a little bit more noticeably — it's not like it's going anywhere, right? Or at least, so the logic goes over in Dubai, that city on a cloud that's made out of sand, dreams and oil money.
Those kookie developers, not content to have merely a five-star hotel shaped like a sailboat or extra islands dredged up from the ocean floor, are trying to lure our most valuable resource, Paris Hilton, to their native lands by promising her a hotel named in her honor.
We hope you're happy with yourselves, poverty-stricken American moviegoers. The nation's greasy, smiling, apple-cheeked concession stand hot dogs are going uneaten because of you and your wise spending. For shame.
… Carmike Cinemas and Cinemark Holdings both reported weaker US revenue on Monday as dwindling concession spending added to smaller admissions figures in the third quarter.
The figures were down despite record-breaking results from Warner Bros.' "The Dark Knight."
Both the theater chains made reference to the tough economic environment, which could cut into consumers' willingness to spend on popcorn and movie tickets even though conventional wisdom holds that movie-going is a recession-proof activity.
Listen, freeloaders, if this frugality continues, this sneaking in of outside food and beverage and restraint when it comes to $6 cups of fizzy sugar water, theaters will have no choice but to raise ticket prices to an infeasible amount of money. And then the whole world's gonna be clogging up the BitTorrents for us normal movie watchers. YOU GET IN THERE AND GET THOSE $11 SOUR PATCH KIDS!!!!
Remember that Simpsons where Marge buys a pink Chanel suit for cheap and then wears it over and over again until it's in tatters? It looks like Sarah Palin is totally living that plot line in an attempt to get everyone to forget about how she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on luxurious, rich-people garments. Hahahahahahaha!
Whose encyclopedic knowledge of The Simpsons is "absolutely useless" now, Mom?
Bless Lou Pearlman's heart. The musical con artist, who is currently serving 25 years in a Florida prison for conspiracy and money laundering, is truly an inspiration to all Americans — despite the fact that he's locked up, the former manager of the likes of Backstreet Boys and 'NSync is trudging onward and forming a new boy band.
The name of the future group? Biteboy. We're not even going to touch that one.
Hopefully Biteboy's members like being robbed and molested — when he wasn't stealing money from his clients, Lou was giving the boys "creepy massages and rubbing their abs to align their auras." Sign us up!
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OLSEN TWINS STARBUCKS' ONLY REMAINING CUSTOMERS • "Fewer U.S. customers and venti-sized costs for closing poorly performing stores led to lower sales and profit in the fourth quarter at Starbucks Corp., the company said Monday. … Seattle-based Starbucks said profit in the quarter fell 97 percent to $5.4 million, or a penny a share, from $158.5 million, or 21 cents per share."
Uh oh! Everyone's poor and the holidays are coming up! How to get through the next few months, during which we all SIMPLY MUST celebrate the birth of God by spending money on each other, without inching even closer to the poorhouse? HERE COMES WAL-MART, BITCHES!
Errant, temperamental meathead Danny Bonaduce has been ordered by an LA judge to pay $16,000 a month in spousal and child support to his ex wife, Gretchen. Before you get all depressed that someone like Danny Bonaduce has $16,000 a month to just give away, remember how much of himself he has to part with to come across that wealth. For instance, part of his divorce settlement allowed him to keep the rights to Gretchen's former title for use in an upcoming reality show: The Next Mrs. Bonaduce.
In other news, thank god Prop 8 passed! Can you imagine how completely ruined the sanctity of marriage in California would have been if it hadn't?
BEST EX-BOYFRIEND EVER "Both Simon Cowell and Terri Seymour’s camps have been referring to their recent split as amicable, and well, how could it not be (at least for Seymour) when a $9 million goodbye gift is involved? Cowell is said to have given Seymour, who he dated for six years, $5 million cash and another $4.6 to buy a Beverly Hills home just before calling it quits."
LET THE MCCAIN-PALIN INFIGHTING BEGIN!!! "On Wednesday, two top McCain campaign advisers said that the clothing purchases for Ms. Palin and her family were a particular source of outrage for them. As they portrayed it, Ms. Palin had been advised by Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain aide, that she should buy three new suits for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September and three additional suits for the fall campaign. The budget for the clothes was anticipated to be from $20,000 to $25,000, the officials said. Instead, in a public relations debacle undermining Ms. Palin’s image as an everywoman 'hockey mom,' bills came in to the Republican National Committee for about $150,000, including charges of $75,062 at Neiman Marcus and $49,425 at Saks Fifth Avenue. The bills included clothing for Ms. Palin’s family and purchases of shoes, luggage and jewelry, the advisers said."
Barack Obama discovered a way to keep print publications from dying! He just needs to get elected president every day forever and erase everyone's memory of the event after each successive election. By doing so, he'd ensure that each normally insignificant newspaper would have the possibility of increasing in value in a hundred years, thus sending every overgrown baseball card collector out to get a Times they can look at and never read, as they're doing today.
You really are amazing, America.
LAWSUIT ACCUSES JUDGES OF TAKING SCIENTOLOGY BRIBES "Tom Cruise and the Church of Scientology are the targets of an amended Florida lawsuit that seeks more than a quarter of a billion dollars, FBLA has learned. Ex-Scientologist Peter Letterese, using the RICO statute against the Church of Scientology, originally sought $250,000,000 in a suit filed in July. In the amended suit, filed Oct. 24, he added another $15 million to the total. In court papers obtained by FBLA, Letterese leveled serious charges against Cruise and the Church. He claimed that Cruise and Scientology bribed and improperly influenced a federal judge, a Florida state judge and a federal bankruptcy trustee to tie up his original law suit in bankruptcy court. Letterese's lawyers are really putting a lot on the line, potentially their careers, accusing federal and state judges of taking pay offs,' said Los Angeles private eye Paul Barresi, who had done some work for Cruise in the past."
Tracy Morgan's attempt to save money and avoid financial troubles: giving up strip clubs.
I don't do that [bleep] no more. I'll tell my [next] wife to get on the bed and put big [underwear] on and throw $400 at her — then take the money back and go food shopping.
Romance!
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