It seems like only yesterday that I first set my alarm for the ungodly hour of 7am, spilled piping hot coffee all over my impractically thin sweater* and introduced myself as your brand new Jossip editor.
As expected, I was greeted by a predictable deluge of "Hello Newman" jokes, a litany of detractors and a relative minority of staunch supporters, whose generous praise – or at least intermittent approval – was only slightly undermined by their stubborn insistence on referring to me as "Corynne."
And while I had my share of missteps – an unnatural fixation on a picture of Hillary Clinton eating a sandwich, an ill-advised confrontation with a would-be heckler, and an overzealous response to a crazed Jared Leto fan – I prefer to focus instead on the brief, shining flashes of mediocrity. CONTINUED »
Calling all college kids! Did you catch the latest installment of SmartMoney TV?
Of course you didn't! You were far too busy skipping class, nursing your hangers and having unsatisfying alcohol-fueled sexual encounters with peripheral acquaintances, then documenting said encounters in equally unsatisfying (and not very nice!) blog entries.
If you had seen it, however, you'd have endured a long, painfully cheesy segment that purports to teach you how to instill your college-aged child with a sense of fiscal responsibility.
Boring? Yes. But also secretly amazing.
Are you young? Borderline ambitious? And, most importantly, willing to work for free? If so, you might be qualified to follow Intern Joe's illustrious footsteps!
That's right, we're looking for another intern (or two!) to help us with the day-to-day intangibles like fetching us coffee, debating who's the worst character on Fashionista Diaries and attending events we're not interested in.
REQUIREMENTS: In order to be like Joe, however, you're going to have to start thinking like Joe. And that means staying up every night until 4am for no reason, unabashedly listening to Kelly Clarkson, wearing the same (unwashed) olive green shirt every single day, chain-smoking and cultivating an irrational appreciation for Thousand Island Dressing.
But wait, there's more!
Every week, there are so many eventful developments in media and celebrity news that we (almost) can’t keep track of them all! So, for your convenience and ours, we’ve dispatched grabby handy Intern Joseph to remind us exactly what about this week made it so damned special.
• Star Jones was a better role-model back when she was a fatty. Or at least she was more fun to look at.
• Britney Spears and Kevin's custody wars have officially begun. And round one definitely belongs to K-Fed.
• Nicole Kidman's new movie is either a lame-o science fiction snoozer or a metaphor for her relationship with robotic Scientologist ex, Tom Cruise. Either way, it looks terrible.
• Desperate times call for desperate measures as L.A. residents attempt to track down a "missing" Lindsay Blowhan.
This week might well go down as the most boring in Talk of the Tabs' storied history.
Four out of the five weeklies ran seemingly identical cover stories on Britney Spears, while the fifth tab (a pioneer!) broke new ground by focusing their energies on a little-known couple named…Brangelina. Sadly, the most interesting (relatively speaking) piece of Brit-related gossip com comes from an unlikely source, OK! magazine, who momentarily puts aside this whole never-ending custody battle business and swears that Britney is a carpetmuncher.
But it's Star EIC Candace Trunzo who puts all the Spears mania in perspective.
"Just when you thought you'd seen it all with Britney— it gets even worse."
Unfortunately for Intern Joseph, the same could be said about this week's tabloids.
Another exciting tabloid Wednesday is upon us, and this time, all of the celebrity weeklies did an exceptional job not copying one another. Given that nothing ever happens in the month of August (and most journalists celeb weekly stalkers are on vacay) the tabs have unsurprisingly reverted to frequent standbys Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie to sell their covers.
And while the Cruises are vacationing in Berlin, the Jolie-Pitts are frivolously spending money on children's birthday parties, and LiLo is enjoying the comfort of her new Utah treatment center day spa, we invite you all to sit back, relax and let Intern Joe remind you that celebrities are like exotic creatures. Exotic drive drunk, wage custody battles against distant relatives and go to first base with broke college kids because someone "double-dared" them to.
• Lindsay needs to take lessons from clepto Spears & Co. You know, if she really wants the media to pay attention to another boring Elle photo shoot.
• Who knew the Southern Voice would be the ultimate gay playground? We thought that was Genre's territory.
• Braggy Anderson Cooper alludes to that time that he prematurely ejaculated with a woman man himself.
• ABC makes more excuses why their news people can't seem to actually… well, speak.
• Janice Min settles for a mere $2.5 million Wenner contract, you know, to keep up those outstanding sales.
This week, the tabs were essentially a continuation of last week. And the week before. And the week before that. As usual, the glossies can't seem to get enough of Britney Spears, whose antics grace the covers of two of the five mags, and received ample coverage from all. Meanwhile, we're less than thrilled by Star's and In Touch's unimaginative Brad & Angie covers, and OK!'s Nicole Richie 'I Could Have Killed Someone' cover was, well, OK, though all three scored big in the originality department for not sharing the exact same cover art as Bobbsey Twins US and Life & Style.
So read on and allow Intern Joe to educate you on who Zac Efron is (pretending to be) dating now, WTF is happening with Usher's wedding, and how Kevin Federline plans to win the Easiest Custody Battle Of All Time.
Every week, there are so many eventful developments in media and celebrity news that we (almost) can’t keep track of them all! So, for your convenience and ours, we’ve dispatched grabby handy Intern Joseph to remind us exactly what about this week made it so damned special.
• OK! Magazine disappointed us for the 2 billionth week in a row. Which is weird, cause our expectations were, like, rock bottom.
• If your friends have stopped taking your calls lately, it probably means that you're The Fat One.
• If you liked Hillary Clinton's knockers, you'll love donating to her campaign!
• For those who question whether the quality of the nightly news is declining, we have two words for you: Katie Couric.
• If the two CNBC hotties ever do slug it out, our money's on the one who has no shame.
Since Lindsay cruelly waited until Tuesday morning to pull out all the stops and go for a coked-out high-speed car chase, this week the tabs were all about Britney Spears. And while that's not particularly shocking in and of itself, this week, there was actually something worth talking about, seeing as Britney Spears went out of her way to attract the attention of the photogs, celebrity weeklies and mental health professions everywhere. In addition to possibly swiping some overpriced crap (something no self-indulgent famous person has ever done before!) she actually went into the ocean (get this!) to cool down. Call the psych ward at Bellview, and get this lunatic into the asylum, stat!
In other celebrity trainwreck news, things apparently aren't looking too good for Brad and Angelina (according to those ubiquitous unnamed sources) Tara Reid is still alive and still a fall-down drunk plus Hollywood apparently has this new trend called "parenting." Incredible! For a moment, we contemplated sorting through this week's glossies, until we remembered the tabs are actually Intern Joe's domain.
His findings (A new trend called "parenting!" Tara Reid's still a mess! Jessica Simpson has a new gay boyfriend!) after the jump.
Every week, there are so many eventful developments in media and celebrity news that we (almost) can’t keep track of them all! So, for your convenience and ours, we’ve dispatched grabby handy Intern Joseph to remind us exactly what about this week made it so damned special.
• Nicely done Con Ed, nicely done.
• If John Mayer didn't used to have inappropriately loud sexual relations with Jessica Simpson we'd think he had a secret Ryan Seacrest crush or something.
• The tabloids showed us that they actually aren't all the same magazine.
• Ronald Reagan miraculously died again, confirming our secret belief that he was actually a modern-day Jesus.
• If Jane featured topless Eva Mendes on its cover every month, it probably wouldn't have folded.
And now we interrupt you with an exciting, mid-afternoon news brief: Intern Joe has a date! Tonight! With a pretty young thing he met at a bar (whose name rhymes with "The Schlock.") Huzzah! The only problem is, Joe has a closet full of clothes, and not a thing to wear. And that's where all of you come in.
You see, we've ransacked Joe's closet, and it turns out he owns approximately five (negligibly) presentable outfits. (Not bad for an unpaid intern!) So we figured we'd list the various options, put it up to a reader's poll, and force Joe to wear whichever ensemble gets the highest number of votes.
So choose carefully, and remember: Joe's romantic future is in your hands.
Were you losing sleep over the supposed marital problems in the household of annoyingly perky celebrity chef, Rachael Ray? Were you chain smoking and refusing to eat until you found out whether or not LiLo really made it through six weeks of sobriety at Promises?
If so, sad! But, fortunately for you vicarious types, there are no less than five competing magazines that are kind enough to cater to your (somewhat frightening) obsession with celebs you don't even know and will—most likely—never, ever meet. And this week, the glossy gods were feeling particularly generous! So much so, that they bestowed each tabloid with a different, exciting story!
Or, in the case of OK! magazine, another unfortunate cover story about Eva Longoria's not-that-interesting wedding.
Either way, come inside! Take a load off! And allow Intern Joseph to do what he does best: sift through the gossip magazines and pretend that it's "because he has to" and not "because he secretly really, really enjoys it."
Every week, there are so many eventful developments in media and celebrity news that we (almost) can’t keep track of them all! So, for your convenience and ours, we’ve dispatched grabby handy Intern Joseph to remind us exactly what about this week made it so damned special.
• Is it wrong that we're more upset about losing non-existing Cocktail Weekly than we are about losing Jane?
• But maybe that's just because we're sick of hearing Jane Pratt's voice.
• It turns out lesbians and gays enjoy playing sports. Or at least ogling those that do.
• Queen Elisabeth suffers a crowning defeat.
• Lady Bird Johnson dies and all we got was a lousy story about Jessica Simpson's boobs.
• Lindsay Lohan wants it all: love, marriage and the house with the white picket fence. With ladyfriend Samantha Ronson.
This week it's all about the Eva Longoria wedding extravaganza, but—seeing as we've (gasp!) never seen an episode of Desperate Housewives, we could really care less. So, instead we'll bring you what we think really matters, or as we like to think of it, the creme de la creme of trashy non-Longoria related gossip.
In that spirit, allow Intern Joe to lead you into a wonderful escapist world, where we learn the perils of weighing only 90 pounds in your second trimester, how to "out" Lindsay Lohan by hacking into her Myspace account, who's the grosses PDA couple of them all and which celebs have been carbo-loading instead of hitting the treadmill prior to bikini season.
Ever wondered about the veritable mountains of fan mail a Jossip editor typically receives in a day? Sure, we’ve all got our own fair share of admirers (especially Intern Joe!) but as it turns out, not everyone has been drinking the Kool Aid as of late. Now, ordinarily, we’d respect the privacy of our tipsters, but since some of our respondents have expressed an ardent desire to be heard, we’ve decided to once again indulge your implicit curiosity by excerpting a representative sample from today’s giant mailbag of crazy.
"this is what i wrote about the 'article' about jared leto," begins our Number One Fan, referring to a months-old post characterizing the My So-Called Life star as a 'mediocre lay.' "And id really like it if everyone could see it…thanks."
And, seeing as we've always been suckers for angry, unemployed types who refer to our posts as quote unquote "articles," we were more than happy to oblige!
Every week, there are so many eventful developments in media and celebrity news that we (almost) can’t keep track of them all! So, for your convenience and ours, we’ve dispatched grabby handy Intern Joseph to remind us exactly what about this week made it so damned special.
• So Paris Hilton gets twenty-five days in jail for an expired license, while Scooter Libby gets a "get out of 25 years in jail free card," for lying in a federal investigation and leaking top-secret information.
• Al Gore falls slightly less in love with politics, falls significantly less in love with that ne'er-do-well son of his.
• Next time Vanessa Manillo decides to have sex in a hot tub she should try to at least feign a modicum of interest.
Did you know that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is now only the second richest man in the world? But before you start making a barrage of "Haha, Gates is Number Two" jokes, here's a little bit of food for thought.
Based on stock, bond and money market projections, Gates is currently on pace to rake in approximately $3 billion this year. And since that number is so huge it's essentially unfathomable, we thought we'd do some quick math and break it down into terms we can all understand.
Every week, there are so many eventful developments in media and celebrity news that we (almost) can’t keep track of them all! So, for your convenience and ours, we’ve dispatched grabby handy Intern Joseph to remind us exactly what about this week made it so damned special.
• Free at last, Paris confesses to Larry King that getting strip-searched was the most "humiliating experience of her life." Clearly, she's forgotten about the sex tape scandal, the leaked Valtrex prescriptions, and sleeping with Jack Osbourne.
• Janice Min debates the merits of pocketing $1.5 million dollars versus never having to work for Jann Wenner again.
• Justin Timberlake is doing for Pepto Bismol is what Arthur Ashe did for AIDS.
• Details hires a new photographer to take pictures of sexually ambiguous men…for sexually ambiguous men.
So what did the glosses tell contribute to the world this week?
Well, they reminded us that the celebrity baby boom makes for some excellent page fillers, resulting in copious amounts of baby pictures and relatively few stories. Meanwhile, Paris Hilton is out of jail and most of the tabs have either realized that we're well past caring, or else failed to get the interview exclusive (ahem, Janice Min). Regardless, we made the most of our Paris-free afternoon by reading about LiLo's newfound sobriety, appreciating the meager efforts of the remaining four-person Life & Style staffers and admiring In Touch for giving us a jam-packed issue that may or may not result in a libel suit with Jesse Metcalf.
Intern Josephs sifts through the unconfirmed rumors, celebrity scandals and summer cellulite to bring you the highlights…after the jump.
Editorial Director
