The week began with reports that bidding on Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby twin photos was skyrocketing past a $15 million mark; today brings word the final sum could hit $22 million, as the tabloids feed the human trafficking frenzy. (What's an ultrasound worth?)
No matter that the two magazines still in the bidding for the photos, People and OK!, claim those figures are wildly out of touch with the actual dollar amounts being tossed around.
But make no mistake: This sale is on track to break all previous records, including the estimated $7 million Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony scored for selling U.S. and European rights to their twins.
As for who's going to end up on top, the smart money is on CONTINUED »
Entertainment Tonight isn't yet ready to retract its (said to be early, said to be false) story on Friday about Angelina Jolie giving birth to twins. Taking its website offline, for "technical difficulties," was not, actually an admission of error.
Yesterday Jossip broke the news that ET might've been duped by someone impersonating Jolie's assistant Holly Goline, using a fake BlackBerry email address — that's been used to dupe media outlets for at least the past year.
But now the show says they were not made a fool. CONTINUED »
Only People and OK! are the remaining contenders. And, joke of all jokes, the proceeds will supposedly go to charity. [TMZ] Time to, once again, revisit the economics of paying ridiculous sums for these type of photos.
JOSSIP REPORTS
How to explain how Entertainment Tonight so very badly bungled the EXCLUSIVE!!! story about Angelina Jolie giving birth last week? (And then their website "crashed"; maybe they were hiding from their screw up?)
Well, it wasn't entirely their fault.
Jossip hears that somebody has been impersonating Angelina's assistant Holly Goline, using a fake BlackBerry email address and sending erroneous reports to the press. Jolie's attorneys at cease-and-desist happy firm Lavely & Singer are said to be circulating a letter among entertainment outlets explaining the situation.
And the worst part? This impostor has been sending fake information to the media for the past year. Time to start counting up all those outrageously untrue items!
Says the letter: CONTINUED »
John Edwards may not be running for president, but he's still in the running to be America's Next Top Attorney General. Which means that little story about his love child, with campaign staffer Rielle Hunter, is still on! [NYDN] The National Enquirer reports Hunter, who claimed the father was fellow campaign staffer Andrew Young, has given birth to the baby and, naturally, wants Edwards and she to submit to a DNA test to prove, once and for all, that American Media wastes money as a matter of policy.
Following yesterday's news of People paying an estimated $1.3 million for Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz's pics from tomorrow's wedding comes news that Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves are already shopping around their offspring to the highest bidder. [TMZ] They've enlisted "brand agent" Todd Shemarya, who was behind similar deals for Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera, and already there's interest from at least three magazines with a price over $1 million. We're guessing it's People, OK!, and Us Weekly in the running, leaving the only question remaining: Will McConaughey hold the baby with or without his shirt on?
Just in time to blow a second wind into her movie's $18.2 million opening weekend, Amy Poehler announces she and husband Will Arnett are expecting their first child. Her movie is called, for fuck's sake, Baby Mama.
Publicist Lewis Kay deserves a jock nod for lobbing that headline perfectly into the news cycle. (Not to mention her Nickelodeon show The Mighty B also debuted this week.)
Staffers at Parents magazine love their celebrity gossip as much as the rest of this TMZ-revering nation, so they were fawning over People's $6 million Jennifer Lopez baby photos this week, too. Except they spotted something awry with the new mom's six-figure nursery.
Basically, it's a baby death trap!
The Meredith Corp.-owned magazine was only too pleased to call out Time Inc.'s tabloid's nursery pictorial, which includes crib "suffocation hazards" called pillows, stuffed animals, and blankets. The "dramatic draped canopies hanging over the cribs" are cause for "strangulation." And the "cute bows tied onto the crib slats" are "choking hazards as soon as the babies are big enough to get their hands on them." And there's an open window sans window guard. CAN YOU BELIEVE?!
If all goes accordingly, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby twins could fetch upwards of $10 million from the right celebrity magazine. The deal will likely be worked out before she's even in her third trimester, and far before she's admitted to the hospital under a cloud of security. Placed in the proper high-yield investment fund, those twins could be worth $50 million each before kindergarten.
The Daily Mail, the respected British news source that today leads with Jennifer Aniston in a pink bikini, is picking up a report from Star magazine that Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis and terrible singer, is pregnant with twins.
Funny, because wasn't the Mail most recently reporting Presley was fat because she was binging?
Yes, actually, they were — and it pissed her off so much that she's suing them under the U.K.'s less stringent libel laws.
Maybe we're witnessing the settlement agreement in effect?
BABY BEAT Thanks to Djimon Hounsou's seed, Kimora Lee Simmons is pregnant with a new opportunity to exploit a wee one for a Baby Phat ad. [P6]
WE'RE NOT THAT DESPERATE FOR BABY NEWS, ARE WE? From People.com: "Answering Machine Confirms Julianna Margulies Baby." That's right, a real journalist working at People magazine figured out that a 90s actress who most recently had a nice run on The Sopranos gave birth from her mother's voicemail. People knew she was pregnant. It was just a matter of time before the kid came out. This is a new low.
Union Hall is a fine Park Slope bar. We've enjoyed many a beer there. But we’ll say this: It’s the kind of bar people from Manhattan who don’t usually go out in Brooklyn visit and say something like, “I go to Brooklyn. I went to Union Hall that one time after we went to Al Di Là. Gotta love the Bocce.”
Actually, do you need to love the Bocce? Wii Bowling would take up less space, and really, it appeals to the exact same demographic.
But anyway, in an attempt to maintain its Brooklyn cred, Union Hall has banned Park Slope babies.
That sounds like a good thing. But the fact that Union Hall needs to make such a ban speaks to a larger problem with that bar.
[Photo]
OH BABY Nicole Richie and Christina Aguilera, along with lesser celebrities Courtney Thorne-Smith and David Alan Grier, had babies over the weekend. Is it tacky to start a pool now about which spawn will enter rehab first? [NYP]
GREAT MOMENTS IN JOURNALISM A freelance journalist from New Hampshire got his five-month baby photographed with every presidential candidate except Mike Gravel, who was deemed “too creepy.” That sentiment isn’t too dissimilar to our feelings about this project. [Slate]
Many of us (ourselves included!) have shelved the possibility of having kids until some distant, unforeseeable future when we're suddenly transformed from immature borderline alcoholics to surprisingly functional adults with longterm career aspirations, non-messy apartments and, potentially, significant others. Which is why we were alarmed to hear about the growing phenomenon of women who become grandmothers before they reach the age of thirty.
Like 29 year-old Leticia Magee, who (as our friends at Stereohyped put it) "had her daughter when she was 13, and the girl, now 15, has just given birth to a baby boy, who will hopefully be taught the virtues of condoms by age 7." [QCTimes]
• Casting for a slutty blond pin-up girl in Hollywood is like going to a Star Trek convention and looking for a pimply-faced socially awkward guy who's never been laid. Trying to find a curvaceous size 16 in Los Angeles? Now therein lies the challenge.
• And today in crazy: "Sperm donor 'dad' hit up for child support.'" Geez. For that matter, any masturbatory emissions could be termed reckless abandonment.
• Lindsay Lohan may have cheated on her annoying rehab fling with recently divorced womanizer Heath Ledger. Discuss.
• John Edwards has yet to discover how to outshine fellow Democratic rivals Hillary "The Woman" Clinton, Barack "The African American" Obama and Mike "I Remind You Of The Grandparent You Never Call Or Visit" Gravel.
• Ever wondered what the inside of an interior designer's home looks like? It's easy! Just picture your apartment, except with rich colors, expensive couches and nothing from IKEA.
…Whether anyone else is less than shocked to hear that Chris Noth and his girlfriend are expecting a child out of wedlock.
"Don't panic. Your weird baby is likely normal." So begins the intro to an informative (if slightly gross) article on CNN detailing the the myriad of unfortunate-looking ailments afflicting newborns today.
Thought colic was your biggest problem? Think again! Try having an infant with crossed eyes, a third nipple, an alarmingly gigantic belly button, ample baby boobs, acne or, better yet, all of the above.
Surgery to remove the extra set of limbs on the Indian toddler who was born with a parasitic twin was a complete success. The parents of the child, along with many people in her village, thought she was the reincarnation of the multi-limbed Hindu goddess Vishnu.
No word yet on how removing the physical evidence of her connection to Vishnu will affect her in the next life.
[AP]
Editorial Director
