FAMOUS BILLIONAIRES HAVE PROBLEMS, TOO • "Billionaire Internet entrepreneur and onetime Dancing With The Stars contestant Mark Cuban has been charged with insider trading. The Securities Exchange Commission alleges that in June 2004, Mamma.com Inc. invited Cuban to participate in a confidential stock offering after he agreed to keep the information private. Less than four hours later, he learned the company was planning to raise money through a public offering and that the stock price was about to fall. To avoid losses in excess of $750,000, he allegedly instructed his broker to to sell all of his Mamma.com stock."
[Source]
Cinemark Theaters, the company hemorrhaging money since the great candy recession rocked America, is apparently headed up by a crotchety old Sour Patch Man who hates gay people. Dig it: "Alan Stock, the head of the large movie chain Cinemark, which also goes by the names Century Theatre, CineArts and Tinseltown, gave $9,999 to the 'Yes on 8' campaign." Consider this your formal call to boycott Cinemark and its demonic cat goblin mascot, which is gay (JUST LOOK AT THAT FORM-FITTING TUX!!!!).
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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Michelle Obama's Election Night earrings, white-gold, diamond-encrusted, dangling things that blinded bitter Republicans when the spotlight hit them, reportedly cost the First Lady-elect a cool $11,000.
How is this any better than when Sarah Palin adorned herself in luxurious clothes and jewels? For one, Obama didn't purchase her earrings with donations from Democratic supporters. Nor did she bemoan "rich elitists" for weeks and weeks before buying the accessories.
That said, when will everyone come to their senses and stop spending thousands of dollars on something as stupefyingly useless as jewelry, which has the same root word as joke?
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.
The increasingly annoying Blake Lively is gracing the cover of W magazine's December issue to talk about how she's just gosh darn normal. Take, for instance, her closets full of designer handbags:
I probably have, like, 60 gorgeous bags. I have a closet with my really sharp, fancy, nice ones — the ones that go with my Valentino pumps, for example. And then I have a closet with the ones that are a little more rugged-feeling, the kind that go with my Belstaff motorcycle boots.
Ah, yes. We always need more "rugged" handbags to go with our dirty, casual designer motorcycle boots. And we, too, keep them in separate closets. Totally understandable.
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?
PHELPS SINKS TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SHALLOW END "Olympic hero Michael Phelps - besides banking a bundle from endorsements - picked up $100,000 for appearing at an LA pool party for a TV network chief's wife and swimming some laps."
• Miley Cyrus' hanger-on boyfriend might be just a little bit gay. [DListed]
• Sarah Jessica Parker spent $250 on a pair of two-tone Chanel pantyhose. Just like us! [Yeeeah]
• Jessica Biel has decided to dabble in singing, because that always works out so well for actresses. [ICYDK]
• Tila Tequila is still alive and slutting it up. [HT]
• Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will get married when their children ask them to. Wait, whatever happened to waiting for the gays? [INO]
• Beyonce is Sasha Fierce. Also: Delusional. [PS]
Heather Mill's, the one-legged ex-wife of Sir Paul McCartney, spent most of this spring fighting in a bitter divorce settlement that left her way richer than she was before she met the Beatle. The former porn star was awarded $48.6 million, an insane amount but still only a fraction of what Mucca originally asked for ($250 million).
You guys remember this right? She poured a cup of water on her husband's attorney's head after it was all over? Super fun!
So what has Heather Mills been doing with all her cash? Keeping a low profile so to not attract any more press? Saving her money for a rainy day?
Haha, what, why would you ever think that:
Two months ago, hoggish kingpin Donald Trump vowed to save kindly old Ed McMahon, whose Beverly Hills home was in danger of foreclosure. Trump said he was going to buy McMahon's place and lease it back to the aging TV personality at a reasonable price. We told you then that the move was prompted by nothing more than Trump's craving for easy publicity, but we had no idea how low Trump was willing to go to get his sullied name in print.
Heyoooooooooooooo, Ed's been abandoned!
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The greatest thing about seeing Barack Obama and John McCain roast each other at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner, an annual fundraiser in honor of the first Roman Catholic to run for president, isn't the speeches themselves, though they are decent (even McCain's!). The best part is watching how quickly partisanship goes out the window in front of Manhattan's wealthiest plutocrats/donors. Politics is so screwy and sad.
Click through for the roasts.
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First we told you that Guy Ritchie stood to make $100 million plus from his divorce with Madonna. Then came word that, no, Ritchie wants "not one penny" of Madge's fortune. But if that's true, then why has Madonna acquired the services of Fiona Shackleton, Britain's shrewdest divorce attorney?
Today, new information about the still unfolding drama says that not only is Ritchie going after Madge's millions, under British law, he stands to see about 250 of them. If he's successful, his would be the most expensive celebrity divorce in recent history.
After the jump, some more ungodly settlements.
KEEP YOUR STINKIN' MONEY! According to The Sun, we spoke too soon when we speculated that Guy Ritchie would probably wrangle away around $100 million from estranged wife Madonna's coffers: "THE marriage of Madonna and Guy Ritchie has been dogged by bitterness and recrimination for YEARS — and any notion that they have battled to save it is a myth. The couple are said to be just days away from finalising their split. And Guy has told lawyers he wants 'not one penny' of her estimated £300million fortune."
Now that Madonna and Guy Ritchie's marriage has gone the way of their Swept Away remake, let's look into how much rapidly devaluing cash and assets are going to change hands, shall we?
The sleaze has reached a new low on the political front and, for once, it's got nothing to do with bulbous cretins waving around brown monkey dolls or candidate lookalike gangbangs. This time it's all about our government unabashedly accepting donations from corporations in exchange for favors, almost as if our nation were a plutocracy and not a democracy. The Ministry of Truth sure has grown audacious!
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HISTORIAN: BEATLES, STONES WERE FAT CATS, NOT REVOLUTIONARIES "Pop culture icons John Lennon and Mick Jagger were clever capitalists who cashed in on the mood of the 1960s, not spokesmen for a generation seeking revolution, a British academic said Thursday. Cambridge University historian David Fowler said that so-called 'Swinging London' was in fact beyond most normal people, 'less a golden age for the nation's young than a celebration of wealth by its social elite. Groups like The Beatles were basically capitalists interested in enriching themselves through the music industry. They did about as much to represent the interests of the nation's young people as The Spice Girls did in the 1990s.'"
Editor
