I wonder if Lil’ Kim knows that after Simon & Schuster gave her a $40,000 advance to write an novel in 2003, they turned around in 2005 and gave Foxy Brown, of all people, $75,000 for a memoir called Broken Silence, which I’m going to take a wild guess was meant to be about her sudden hearing loss.
New York’s CW11 is classy enough not to name names, but it’s easy to recognize Lil Kim’s voice in this news segment about cars being repossessed. See, it even happens to wealthy, New York-based female rappers, the reporter tells us!
• In the midst of all the "Britney Goes Bonkers" and Lindsay Cokehands madness, Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams quietly and amicably decide they just weren't ready for the responsibilities of a pretend-marriage.
• Find out what celebrities are really thinking about. And no, the answer's not (always) "nothing."
• Nicole Kidman admits to wanting a baby of her own ever since she was 17. Which is actually rather strange! Especially considering her initial choice of sperm donor.
• Anne Hathaway shows us why she glows in the dark.
• Class act Gisele Bundchen spends $1,000 buying luxury baby clothes passive aggressive baby "gifts" for her new boyfriend's ex-girlfriend when a simple but straightforward "Suck it! He's with me" card would have cost her only $2.99.
• Lil Kim misses her jail cell so much she just might come back and pay it a small visit.
• Although the rest of the band knows that Axl Rose is a huge douche, Guns N' Roses are still upset with the Swedish police. [NME]
• Break out the champage! Lil' Kim is being released from prison. She'll head into 30 days of house arrest, or as we like to call it, another season of her reality show. [Billboard]
• Black Eyed Peas – aka the least intimidating group of rappers since Will Smith – actually got into a brawl. You've got no idea what this will do to their street cred. [R&M]
• Pretty much the most bizarre thing we've heard all day: President Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Graceland, singing Elvis songs. Nope, no sleep for us tonight. [AP]
• Was Jennifer Lopez' wedding video really worth that much? And what about her ex-husband's tell-all book? [MuchMusic, TMZ]
• Of course Annie Lennox knows who Orlando Bloom is. She has a life. [Defamer]
• Holiday cards from prison continue — today's special greetings are scratched schitzo style onto notepaper, with love, from Lil' Kim. [Lilkim.com]
• In order for David Letterman to stop mentaling harassing crazy people through the television, the crazy people should move their TV sets three yards away. Yeah, that probably won't fix this this lady's problems. [People]
• Well, if Ethan Hawke believes your defense, then you definitely shouldn't go to jail. [MSNBC]
• Three people were stabbed during a Notorious B.I.G record release party, held at Exit, early this morning. (Note: We probably would have heard about it sooner, had the MTA not totally taken over every single inch of news today. Do you really need every newspaper and television to tell you that walking to work sucks?) [AP]
Locked up? There's a better way to spend your time behind bars than biting down on the sole of your shoe while your ward's inmates take their turn on you. And just like Michael Lohan, Lil' Kim has discovered what it is: writing lyrics.
But while she scribbles away furiously in her cell, her fans are turning her Philadelphia lockup into a veritible Today show. Unfortunately for them, Kim just doesn't appreciate their signs and waving as much as Katie Couric.
Kim, who still has not been assigned a cellmate, has also had some unexpected visitors: fans who crowd the sidewalk outside several third-floor windows the inmates can look out of.
About two weeks ago, an enthusiastic group of Kim boosters came armed with a cake and candles and sang a belated "Happy Birthday" to her.
Motorists who drive by the lockup show their support by pumping their fists out their car windows and shouting, "Free Lil' Kim! Free Lil' Kim!"
"I've never seen anything like it before," said one person who works nearby.
Her fans also chant for her to come to the windows and wave to them to let them know she's OK. That hasn't happened yet, and when a Post reporter asked her camp if she'd pose for a photo, the answer was no.
And you thought she had given up her diva attitude behind bars.
• Tom Cruise is going to be hiding under a couch instead of jumping on one when he hears this: Brooke Shields is expecting her second child in the Spring. Just to make Katie Holmes jealous, expect a non-silent birth with lots of screaming and tons of drugs. [The Scoop]
• Karl Lagerfeld can expect an uninvited guest at tomorrow night's Fendi party: the devil. His pals at PETA plan to protest by sending Satan (no, not Anna Wintour!) as part of their "Wear Fur and Go to Hell" campaign. [Lowdown]
• Is Paris Hilton ditching her bi-coastal wrath in America for the cloudy skies of London? She's said to be shopping around for a new place, though given her tendency to globe hop, we're sure she'll be back at Spider Club by the New Year. [Radar]
• When Lenny Kravitz' neighbors say, "Oh, shit!," they aren't kidding. The rocker's toilet backed up and caused damage to two neighbors' apartments in his building. But they won't have to put up with Kravitz's crap much longer: he's put his unit on the market. [Page Six]
• Geraldo Rivera, who begins his new show Geraldo at Large on Monday, is watching his brother Craig tumble. The Inside Edition correspondent looked more like the celebrities he reports on when he got busted for DUI in San Francisco. [Page Six.
• Lil' Kim isn't going to win a lot of friends in prison with her new CD. The Naked Truth blasts everyone from her co-defendants to the prosecutor that put her there. She's just pissed none of her cellmates have knitted her a poncho yet. [NYDN]
• So much for Brad Garrett's attempt to ride on the coattails of Ray Romano for the rest of his career. Though he alluded to a possible Everybody Loves Raymond spin-off at the Emmys, CBS isn't too fond of the idea. [Fox 411]
• Who has the keys to Lenny Kravitz' heart? Alicia Keys, that's who. Despite being seated with a group at Mr. Chow's, it was obvious Kravitz wanted to devour Keys instead of the Moo Shoo Pork.
• Taking a hint from that great international traveler Wacko Jacko, hitting the watermarks of Dubai are none other than Brangelina and the kids! This comes fresh off a trip to an Edmonton mall, where Maddox was calling Pitt "daddy."
• Christina Aguilera is going into overdrive to make you believe she's thrilled about the arrival of Britney and K-Fed's new spawn. After gushing to ad nauseum (heavy on the nausea) about her joy for the new tot, she mentioned she's sent the trailer trash threesome a baby gift. A Cheetos gift bag, oh my!
• Missing: Lindsay Lohan's boobs. The starlet claims the main reason she's gaining weight is that she misses her breasts. (Anyone asked Tyra Banks if she's seen 'em?)
• Lil' Kim might have admitted to breaking the law, but that's not stopping her from appropriating herself as a victim of the government's gangsta rap crack down.
• The wedding between Paris Hilton and Paris Latsis is off, and has been for months. But you already knew that, right?
• Even as Lil' Kim heads off to prison today, she's still mounting her defense. Granted, she did admit lying to a jury, but she won't quit about her stemming from unfaithful friends.
• Adrian Grenier is joining Anna Wintour's most-hated list now that he's signed on to play Anne Hathaway's love interest in The Devil Wears Prada.
• Tyra Banks' is so desperate for you to believe her boobs are real that she took her bra off on her show (airing tomorrow) and underwent a sonogram for viewers to see all.
• As Gisele Bundchen and Kelly Gray say goodbye to the St. John's clothing ad campaigns, new face Angelina Jolie couldn't be bothered to show up to the press announcement.
• Chanel and Dior aren't the only fashion houses bitching about coke-friendly famous faces. Valentino has his own femur to pick with Paris Hilton, who's "not even pretty."
• Oh look: It's all the Emmy winners in all their bullet-pointed glory.
• So why did Kenny Chesney and Renee Zellwegger split? Depends on which paper you read. The New York Post's Cindy Adams claims it had to do with Kenny's "lifestyle choices," while the New York Daily News' offers up the tamer "she wanted kids, he didn't." Meanwhile, Page Six has the goods on their prenup, which Kenny had drawn up thanks to his fortune worth 10x hers.
• Beside trading the pasties for that pesky orange jumpsuit, Lil' Kim can look forward to 366 days in prison featuring recreation in a large cage per weekday and an 80-square-foot, dimly lit cell to pass the remainder of the time. At least she has her five mics rating for her new Naked Truth album from The Source, even if it did take her manager's romance with the mag's CEO to get it.
• Kate Moss owned up to those Daily Mirror photos and admitted her coke use, and H&M appreciates her honesty: They're letting her stay on as the face of the discount fashion chain. Meanwhile, her contracts with Dior and Chanel are said to be in good standing.
• Rosario Dawson waved goodbye to her Lower East Side haunt on Thursday now that's she left the Rent stage, and we're sure her much poorer co-tenants are glad to see her leave the rent controlled flat.
• We're not even sure how this happened, but we've got Joe Francis and Kimberly Stewart proclaiming they are not together while Francis' rep says they are. Usually handler and client get their stories in line first.
• Catherine Zeta-Jones turned down a $50,000 ring from a jeweler at Fashion Week, though we hear she was in a hurry to get more minutes.
• If Paris Hilton hand-holds with a man other than her fiance Paris Latsis, does it make a headline? Fortunately that question needn't be answered, since everyone saw Hilton hand-in-hand with her music producer Scott Storch at the MTV VMAs.
• She may have remained calmer than usual at the VMAs, but on her flight back to New York, prison-bound Lil Kim nearly got booted off the plane after arguing with flight attendants over a first-class "mix-up." Though she's gotta stir some shit up before her stay in the clink.
• Lindsay Lohan got reigned in by mama Dina, who forced her skinny offspring to stay put until the storm passed before getting on a plane for the VMAs.
• Brad Pitt and George Clooney's Las Vegas hotel gimmick, which has been talked about for years, continues to make the gossip rounds. Now they've picked up Rande Gerber of Whiskey lounge fame — and they might finally start construction in January. That doesn't mean it's January '06, however.
• Teen People is covering new ground: strip clubs. At least that's what Chad Michael Murray chose to chat about, re: his adult outing that wife and co-star Sophia Bush supposedly knew about.
• Jenny McCarthy's divorce from John Asher isn't just affecting her personal life, but also her business decisions. The light-hearted jokes in her tying the knot manual Marriage Laughs, which just got picked up for $1 million, don't sound so funny anymore.
• Fellow Elaine's patron Elaine Kaufman and Beatte Telle, the model at the center of this all, claim Roman Polanski did none of the thigh massaging Harper's editor Lewis Lapham claimed in a 2002 Vanity Fair article and again on the stand during the libel lawsuit.
• Walter Cronkite is boinking Carly Simon's sister Joanna. That's all we're going to say, because it makes us as ill as you are at this very moment.
• Melissa Gilbert is through with the Screen Actors Guild, actually admitting her decision not to seek a third term as president stemmed from internal fighting.
• New York mag continues exhibiting its personality disorder, finding the show critics hate (The Comeback) and defending it as a guilty pleasure.
• Upon learning even New York magazine staffers get denied from trendy nightspots, we don't feel so bad about the disastrous results trying to name drop Jossip at PM.
• When they're not taking over the radio waves with ubiquitous Top 40, Clear Channel is loading up on the Queer Channel, a new GLBT program debuting August 7. Which is sure to please their conservative investors.
• Jane Fonda gets up on her high war horse again, this time targetting the Iraqi war. You know, since her Vietnam efforts won't so well in the 70s.
• Whee, the teen fashion mags go back to school. This year's challenge: Making 15-year-old girls look more whorish.
• It doesn't take much, but somehow Kathy Griffin continually reminds us why she stays on the D-list.
• Lil Kim lies on the stand — and in her documentary.
Speaking of temporary restraining orders, a judge also agreed with Lil' Kim's efforts to keep former Junior M.A.F.I.A. confrere Lil' Cease from distrbuting a DVD based on the rap group, which includes footage of Kim.
The Queen Bee states that permission was never granted to Lloyd to exploit her name and image commercially, as well as alleging that Lloyd publicly confirmed plans to discuss her recent trial on the DVD in the form of interview segments.
Yesterday (July 19), a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order against Cease, the entire Junior M.A.F.I.A. and the DVD's producer, Ground Zero Entertainment, thus preventing the sale of "The Chronicles of Junior M.A.F.I.A. Part II: Reloaded." A hearing is anticipated for later this month, at which the judge will also rule on whether to band the DVD's sale indefinitely.
Hurry up, judge, 'cause Lil' Kim has to, uh, be "some place" starting in September.
• Lil Kim just wanted to celebrate one last birthday as a free woman, but her entourage of bodyguards (count 'em: 14) kept the sentinels at Aer and Butter from letting her ta-tas party.
• Choire Sicha weighs in on the weekend's Page Six v. Gawker event.
• It's bad news for Stephen Dorff but great news for Tommy Lee, as Pamela Anderson is rumored to be considering a third stroll down the aisle with her tattooed two-time-ex-husband.
• When they're not busy with their yo-yoing tennis careers, Venus and Serena Williams are keeping it For Real on their new ABC Family reality series.
• When Advertising Age weighs in on the Tom Cruise publicity machine, you know the beast has roots. But when New York magazine does it, it's just another week of Adam Moss antics.
• You mean all those mentions of PerfectMatch.com in Diane Lane's Must Love Dogs were intentional product placements? Get! Out!
• Sessa's Stratis Morfogen Shaving his pits.
• Because you can't get your music videos on MTV anymore, you might soon be able to grab 'em for $1.99 each on iTunes.
• Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is getting in on the social-networking game, behind Google and Microsoft, buying up MySpace.com as part of its purchase of Intermix Media for $580 million in cash.
Editorial Director
