Ugh, LC. What's to say about the unnecessary star of The Hills (season premiere next Monday you guys), except that she sucks and yet is endlessly fascinating the way the minutiae of those mean girls in high school were endlessly fascinating. Except those girls wore American Eagle or Abercrombie & Fitch and had run-down Toyotas, and LC has a $3,000 Chanel bag, and last season bought herself a house for $2.36 million dollars. MainStreet.com — the mix up of celebrity and finance — thinks "Being L.C." costs some serious change, but the hair, styling, clothing, and goodies are usually provided by MTV or marketers looking to attach themselves to her "brand," part of which involves getting dolled up enough to look gender-ambiguous.
Please stay on the other coast, LC; in New York, even the cast of Gossip Girl would knife you for charging nearly $200 for this literal sack of crap you call a clothing line.
LC, the star of the number one show (used in Jihad-training videos on why America is the great devil) The Hills, wants to branch out. She told on E! Online, “I love Gossip Girl, I just love it. It’s so gossipy and superficial. It’s amazing.” She want on to mention that she'd like to do a guest-spot, ala Lydia Hearst last season. The problem is Hearst, while not exactly Katherine Hepburn, has never given viewers reason to think that she plausibly can't act, and LC has spent her teenage and early adulthood proving that she is incapable of any emotion besides pouting and having really shiny hair (that's her favorite emotion). After the jump, our two favorite examples of LC trying to convey a sentiment ….
CONTINUED »
Two weeks late with the news, OK! reminds us that L.A. boutique Kitson has dropped Lauren Conrad's fashion line from its shelves. Blame poor sales — or the fact that Conrad refused to do in-store appearances to promote her own goods. But the real scandal? That Conrad didn't even design her own wares! An "insider" tells OK! "it’s the best-known secret in the fashion industry," which is to assume Conrad is even an after-thought in the fashion industry. "The real designer is named Sherry Wood." What's next, Heidi Montag isn't the actual creative mind behind Heidiwood?
The great (and by “great” we mean “annoying”) thing about Heidi Montag is that she’s a mystery: Does she really believe the stuff that comes out of her mouth or is it all a big joke? And if it’s a joke, why does she insist on being the punch line?
Lately, Horse Face has gone off on a Christianity tangent, claiming she reads the Bible every day and is a “kind of non-denominational Baptist.” Whatever that means. Also? She plans to insult God through the power of her terrible music by recording a Christian album.
In May, Times television fabricator Alessanda Stanley referred to The Hills star Heidi Montag as a "feminist hero." Now, Lauren Conrad gets her own (incredibly accurate) misnomer: "an avatar of synergy." That's how academic Mark Andrejevic, who wrote something called Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, describes Conrad, for her fusing entertainment and advertising together into one easily consumed product. Andrejevic is talking to Forbes about how MTV's most successful television show has produced a troop of ladies who are brands unto themselves, launching fashion lines and scoring endorsement deals while cameras chronicle their normal lives. But soon, with Hills creator Adam Divello spinning off the show, it won't just be the ladies who are earmarked for synergy. CONTINUED »
When Lindsay Lohan starts downing shots of tequila with The Hills' Lauren Conrad, it's hard to tell who's social standing sank. [R&M]
Somehow the travails of Buzz Bissinger v. Will Leitch, Jared Paul Stern v. Ron Burkle, Page Six v. Vanessa Grigoriadis, Cathy Horyn v. Giorgio Armani, Dale Peck v. Rick Moody, and Leonard Wieseltier v. Andrew Sullivan get boiled down to what's going on between Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag: CONTINUED »
In what will truly be the worst hour in the history of television, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag are set to appear on Tuesday’s episode of The Tyra Banks Show. And, because they don’t know how to discuss anything else, the topic of conversation is Lauren Conrad.
Spencer offers to take a lie detector test and claims he is “1,000 percent” positive that a sex tape featuring Lauren and ex-boyfriend Jason Wahler exists. Did we suddenly travel back in time to one year ago?
Not only did Heidi Montag repeat an outfit at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, she offered more fodder for the boring war with Lauren Conrad to continue. "After hearing about Conrad’s earlier rants, Capitol File magazine thought it best to create a separate VIP area for Pratt and Montag when they arrived at the Newseum afterparty. But the bitterness apparently remained. After potty-mouthed celebrity DJ Pete Wentz (of Fall Out Boy) gave multiple shout-outs to the couple, Conrad called it quits and headed out." Then again, Wentz also "kept it classy by shouting, 'I just want to thank my girlfriend's vagina!'" So, yeah.
AGAINST ALL ODDS Spencer Pratt says he is 100 percent sure that a Lauren Conrad sex tape existed, despite her denials and the awkward segments on The Hills where she alludes to why she's not friends with Heidi Montag anymore. Sadly, this news comes on The Tyra Banks Show and is only relayed by Us Weekly, who Spencer supposedly inked a deal with. [Us]
MTV's investment in the incomprehensibly popular reality show, The Hills continues to pay off: "With an average of 4.7 million viewers, the premiere was the most watched program across all of TV for viewers aged 12 to 34 and the highest rated cable telecast of 2008. An additional 1.8 million streams of the show were delivered on Tuesday by MTV.com."
Some people say the gays are killing America, but these staggering numbers indicate something far more sinister.
After Us Weekly supposedly tricked Lauren Conrad into bashing "friends" Audrina Patridge and Brody Jennfer, the Hills star found herself apologizing on her MySpace blog, blaming the tabloid for a bait-and-switch. Conrad, who is friends with the Us reporters she spoke to, was shocked to find EIC Janice Min went with a cover story that pieced together interview segments into a "How I Was Stabbed in the Back" article — so she went off on the tabloid.
Naturally, Min wasn't having it — she was left fuming after the press-needy Conrad slammed Us. Which means Conrad spent the weekend using Page Six to relay her apology to Min, who could easily kill the money train to Conrad if she stops buying paparazzi pics of her.
It's been a troubling week for Conrad, who then had to wake up this morning to see the New York Times crown foe Heidi Montag as a "feminist hero." Nevermind that even after all of this, millions of viewers watched her call friend Jenner "scum" on The Hills premiere. Or maybe we're in the middle of a Hills scripted segment?
Merchandising expert Lauren Conrad wasn't happy with the cover Us Weekly gave her this week. She agreed to give Janice Min's tabloid an exclusive interview (whatever that means with press-hungry reality tarts), and they had the audacity to write a cover line that made her look all woe is me instead of girl power. CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY WOULD DO THAT TO HER?!?!
So she took to, where else, her MySpace blog to set the record straight: "Hey! I just wanted to take a moment to clear something up. I recently did an interview to talk about the show coming back on and what everyone had to look forward to. Unfortunately it was turned into yet another 'poor me' story. The article itself is a nice one but it follows headlines that, in no way, represent my words or feelings. I do not feel betrayed by Audrina or Brody. I love them both and said nothing to contradict this. I understand that headlines sell magazines, but I value my friendships above magazine sales any day. On a more positive note, I got to see some of the first episode yesterday and it looks amazing. I’m sooooooo excited for everyone to see Paris. Best wishes and I hope everyone tunes in Monday."
Unless you're friends with Lauren, perhaps you weren't alerted to the post the way you usually are — by MySpace's PR team, which issues releases whenever one of its celebrity clientele does something meaningful like string words together. So how come tabloid TV producers and their kin weren't notified?
We're just riffing here, but a one Shelly Reinstein happens to work at MySpace PR. She used to work at Us Weekly. And her sister, Mara Reinstein? She still does.
After the jump, a photo of Lauren's dog Chloe, just 'cause. CONTINUED »
As Dolly Parton says, "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap." For Lauren Conrad, it takes a lot of handlers, merchandising experts, and red carpet appearances. The reality starlet has big plans for herself, taking the path of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in turning her TV fame into retail dollars. At least she's not kidding herself: Most of her dollars come from endorsement deals, with guarantee an upfront fee and a cut of sales from whatever she's pushing.
She's on board with a toy company, a leather-goods maker and a cosmetics line. But her true passion is fashion, and it's in that world she hopes to make a name for herself. Which is why Conrad, who you'd think will accept any cheque made out to her name, actually refused one retailer's overtures to slap her name on a clothing line — because she wouldn't have any creative input!
Those two months in Paris and interning for a TV version Teen Vogue will NOT be wasted, even if she can't spell "beret."
• Puff Daddy is literally begging for you to participate in democracy. If that and Facebook status updates don't do it for you, the terrorists will win if you don't vote.
• If your idea of a good time is to get stoned and watch the 10 funniest anti-drug commercials in advertising history, you might have a problem. Also, you're in luck because Best Week Ever did all the work for you. CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
