How much do you love Anderson Cooper? He's a great news anchor, making a valiant attempt to stay neutral and simply report the news instead of bullying his guests into submission (ahem, Bill O'Reilly), and he manages to take time in his day to enjoy what really matters: reality TV.
Coop stopped by to visit with Jay Leno last night about all things Obama-related, but the main highlight (around 3:10) occurred when he brought up his love affair with The Real Housewives of Atlanta's NeNe. If anyone can get the Silver Fox to do some reality television commentary for Mollygood, let us know.
A meticulously crafted fake edition of The New York Times broadsheet is being given away throughout the five boroughs today. Purportedly from July 4, 2009, the future-paper, the work of a team of infamous pranksters, tells of a world gone perfect, one in which the Iraq war is over, maximum wage laws have been enacted and people have collectively decided to stop burning their youths away toiling as lawyers and businessmen. It's a great gag, but also a cruel one—your eyes will never see these headlines on an authentic newspaper.
Check out the online edition here before the real Times sues everyone into hell.
A roving gang of reporters cornered Jesse Ventura at
For this week, at least. No decisions about a permanent replacement have been made. NBC News President Steve Capus says they're making decisions week-by-week.
Because he's an imbecile and increasingly insignificant and a drug addict (in that order), Rush Limbaugh needs to say outlandish, off-color nonsense if he is to remain even in the extreme periphery of the public eye. This is a fact of which Limbaugh is quite aware, which is why he's using photographic evidence of an uncontacted Amazonian tribe to remind everyone he's a bigot.
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A devastating fire ripped through Universal Studios on Sunday, damaging a mechanical King Kong exhibit, tens of thousands of historic videos and the iconic clock tower from the Back to the Future movies.
18 years ago, a blaze similar to yesterday's destroyed the same three areas of the studio, a piece of information that led some witty genius at the AP to load up his story on the disaster with lots of discussion of sequels.
It was the second fire at the historic site in nearly two decades, leveling facades, hollowing out buildings and creating the kind of catastrophe filmmakers relish re-creating.
There's your "real papers," ladies and gents.
WHO'S PLAYING ELVIS? Our money's on James Franco: "Producers David Permut and Steve Binder have acquired screen rights to Alanna Nash's 2003 book 'The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley.' Permut and Binder will develop a feature titled 'The Colonel' based on the book about the man with shadowy origins who reinvented himself as the Svengali behind the world's most famous entertainer."
Yay! Fox News is being divisive again, adopting weird reasoning for something that's happened in order to smear their current target of choice: Barack Obama.
According to the three loons hosting the clip after the jump, Oprah's unabashed support of Obama for the presidency might very well have played a part in her most recent rating's decline.
As one of the frothing hosts so delicately puts it: "Middle-aged white women" are steadfastly refusing to get down with black Obama and his black friends.
"But Oprah's ratings have been declining for three years now—well before she supported Obama," one might exclaim whilst considering this case. One might also mention that television viewership has been dropping across the board. Both of which are true. Nevertheless, Fox says it all has to do with old white people liking their Oprah fat and docile, not lippy and political.
Interestingly enough, that's also the way Fox likes its old white people.
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MOVIE EXECUTIVES MADE SLIGHTLY LESS WEALTHY LAST YEAR "More than 2.5 billion movie files were downloaded worldwide in 2007, 2.5 times more than in 2006, according to figures from the MPA released in Brussels on Monday. The MPA report also revealed that more than 17 million people are simultaneously using the six largest peer-to-peer networks at any one time."
This movie! This MOVIE! This damn Sex and the City: The Movie movie!
It's inescapable (especially in THE city), but does that mean it's going to be successful? No.
But probably yes, too.
The recent history of female-focused summer films shows it could go either way. The Devil Wears Prada debuted in June of 2006 with $27 million opening weekend — on its way to a considerable $124 million grand total domestically. But just a few weeks ago, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler took center stage in Baby Mama, a widely hyped comedy that opened with a respectable-but-less-than-stellar $17 million opening weekend.
After the jump, industry analysts assess the situation while simultaneously calling you and your friends predictable and Kentucky primitive.
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SHUT IT DOWN " … I propose that it is time for CBS News to be put down, in the Old Yeller sense of the phrase. It's time to turn out the lights and just start airing Hollywood gossip at 6:30 p.m. The network could follow Schieffer's lead and simply dissolve the thing after the inauguration, maybe keeping 60 Minutes around, either as a commercial-free public service program (because what exec doesn't love a prestige-hogging loss leader?) or under the auspices of CBS' entertainment division (because why keep pretending?). The farewell would be handled with dignified pomp—tributes to Murrow and Severeid and so forth. And if Walter Cronkite is in good health, he could do the honors with a final sign off. I'm serious. That's how bad things are, and that's the way it is."
IS COURIC LEAVING? WHO CARES? "O.K., out there: Raise your hand if you've caught any of the Big Three's evening news in the past year? I know I haven't. Like most folks I know, I'm not home when it airs at 6:30 p.m., and even if I was, I've already had my fill of news from Google, Yahoo!, or the news alerts from the Washington Post that show up on my e-mail. There's a reason why only about 25 million folks get their news from the Big Three news readers each night, according to Nielsen. 'It's appointment television in a world where no one gets their news by appointment any longer,' says Brad Adgate, senior vice-president at advertising buyer Horizon Media."
DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT "Despite a contract due to run until 2011, Katie Couric is expected to end her anchor job at CBS Evening News possibly as soon as the January 2009 presidential inauguration, reports the Wall Street Journal, relying on information from CBS News executives and Couric's inner circle."
FINGER-POINTING "A city buildings inspector faces up to four years in prison on charges of faking a report on alleged safety problems with the construction crane that collapsed and killed seven people. Edward J. Marquette … was assigned to inspect the crane at 303 East 51st St. on March 4 after an area resident said the crane did not appear to be properly braced to the building. He allegedly filed a report stating that he had inspected the crane and found it had been erected according to city-approved plans. But prosecutors say Marquette never visited the site on March 4, and that he falsified his report."
And to think that just last night we thought our friend's bar trivia team name – "Ike Turner Beat His Wife So Hard That He Died" – was the lowest it could go. We were fools! Always check the Post.
If you squint real tight, turn around five times and knock back a few, it almost looks as if Victoria Beckham's smiling in this picture with Oscar De la Renta.
Almost…
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