Nick Lachey, who made a career out of banging Jessica Simpson, will host ABC's High School Musical reality TV show spin-off High School Musical: Summer Session, so he can continue bankrolling his current claim to fame: banging Vanessa Minnillo.[AP]
• OMG! Harry Potter is hitting it with Hermione. If J.K. Rowling were dead, she'd be rolling over in her grave. Since she's alive, she's probably pleased with any extra DVD sales that result from the romance.
• Gene Simmons has a sex tape. We're only surprised this didn't surface earlier.
• Jessica Simpson doesn't want to become the next Kirstie Alley, and is consequently being sued for $10 million.
• Speaking of Simpsons, Joe Simpson wants Tony Romo to become the next Nick Lachey. Not a good call, man.
• Britney Spears needs the anti-depressants that help people remember to wear underwear.
• Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon growing fame makes us feel old.
There’s nothing like a Rolling Stone cover to validate a musician’s career, or at least a competent publicist. But Britney Spears wants none of that, and has pulled out of a potential cover of the magazine.
Her reasoning: Wenner Media refused to guarantee that the shoot wouldn’t end up on the cover of Us Weekly. They pulled the same trick on Nick Lachey.
Here’s the thing, Britney. The cover of Us Weekly is a step up from the cover of In Touch. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Take opportunity where you can find it.
"OK!, which is the American version of a British magazine," writes the NY Times, "has acknowledged that it occasionally pays for cover stories, mostly in efforts to build relationships with the celebrities it covers," [Ed: think overpaying for Eva Longoria's snoozeworthy nuptials.] "But while paying for the rights to exclusive stories and photos has become increasingly common among OK!’s American competitors, buying photos to protect them from being published is more unusual and ethically dubious."
And by "ethically dubious," what the Times actually means is "awesome blackmail potential."
"If OK! did pay for the images in order to repress them," the Grey Lady continues, "then the magazine now holds compromising photos of two celebrities it will want to cover in the future. The situation raises questions about what sort of access to the celebrities the magazine may have negotiated in return for the favor."
Hang on, did somebody say "access?"
• Kelly Clarkson's record company woes can all be explained by this confrontation with Clive Davis, in which Clarkson screamed, "You're 80. You're not supposed to like my album." Somebody get this girl a muzzle!
• After spending millions on the exclusive rights to Eva Longoria's wedding snoretacular, OK! mag pays $400,000 for steamy sex photos of Nick and Vanny…that they have no intention of ever running. Related: OK! magazine officially has the dumbest accountant ever.
• Britney Spears is slowly, methodically cutting "anyone who can even remotely tolerate her" out her life.
• Not long after he was overheard ordering a "the fruitiest" beer in the joint, Kevin Spacey was spotted "dirty dancing" with himself. Yep, that one's as straight as they come.
Or his Holly Shakoor was standing by with the cord in her hand — and gave it a yank when she saw where this was headed.
• More pics of Nick and Vanny enjoying a private moment in a very public hot tub.
• Katie Holmes has old lady hands.
• Christina Aguilera is officially preggers, unofficially bragging that her tiny, unborn fetus is "way cuter" than Nicole Richie's tiny, unborn fetus.
• Lindsay Lohan does a "bend and snap" while losing her brother at a beach party.
• Orlando Bloom rocks the Hitler 'stache.
• The gloved one ditches his gig at a Vegas casino, complaining "Everyone there was over 21."
• Sources say Life & Style has graphic pics of Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minnillo getting it on while vacationing in Mexico. Naturally, the couple has threatened to sue anyone who publishes the pictures, which is pretty harsh language indeed, especially coming from two people who just finished screwing in an outdoor hot tub.
• A-Rod's wife wears a "tight-fitting, white tank top" emblazoned with a profanity to yesterday's Yankees game, and in doing so, traumatizes a 10-year old boy who's only used to hearing the f-bomb screamed from the bleachers.
• Kim Kardashian and Kelly Osbourne are apparently starring in The Simple Life 3.
• Bono and Nicholas Cage have never looked so…heavenly!
&bul; Ewan McGregor needs lots of jock support.
• Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson to join forces on overbudgeted Hollywood extravaganza.
• For Vanessa Minnillo, hanging out with boyfriend Nick Lachey is no day at the beach.
• David Hasselhoff is really sorry that he got drunk and lost custody of his daughter devoured a hamburger without pausing to grab utensils.
When someone makes a dumb joke at your expense, they're essentially leaving you with three options:
1) Laugh it off.
2) Hit them right back with a zippier comeback, (a.k.a. the "Jerk-Store" school of mythology).
3) Act like a whiny, spoiled brat, and allow yourself get bested by a man who used to voluntarily bang Roseanne Barr.
At a recent charity auction, Nick Lachey went with tried and true Option #3.
Find out how it all went down, after the jump!
CONTINUED »
• Kate Moss' friends sing "Happy Birthday" to her in the lavatory, where she spent the majority of her bday "powdering her nose."
• Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minillo to stop living in sin??
• Today, Widdicombe has us racking our brains to figure out which "travel magazine expert on a popular daytime TV show" has been pulling a Paula Abdul, a.k.a. boozing it up at the press junkets.
• Dedicated actress Sienna Miller became a super-skinny boozehound…all in the name of nailing a role, of course.
• Bonnie Fuller to "inspire" Hunter College grads today while Janice Min hopes to corrupt upstanding Ivy League writers/editors over at the Columbia Specator.
• The Daily News promised Paris Hilton would perform at the Plumm; Page Six can't wait to gloat after Paris is a no-show.
• Dan Abrams says "great job" to all your MSNBC folk! You're doing a fantastic job maintaining third place.
• Fabian Basabe isn't content with just a DUI charge; he needs a 20/20 special to go into elaborate detail as to all the reasons he's not fit to hold down a real job.
• Stop. Everything. Simon Dumenco found a magazine he likes.
• Dan Peres turns his diary into an editor's letter.
• Former Budget Living doyenne Sarah Gray Miller too cheap for InStyle?
• Nick Lachey shows he's over Jessica and on to guys in cups.
• Hey, David Letterman. There is such a thing as too soon. Eh, who are we kidding? You, Letterman, made it already funny. [ETP]
• Here's your Mel Gibson sneak preview. We'll sum it up for ya'. Diane Sawyer: "But, you're a racist." Mel Gibson: "No, I'm a drunk." Diane Sawyer: "But you hate Jews." Mel Gibson: "No, I just really love the sauce." (Plus, the lotto numbers!) [FBNY]
• Ok, just breathe. Calm down. Jennifer Aniston that her and Vince Vaughn are not broken up. No word as to how she feels about Page Six sighting him with blondie the other day, but … she's obviously pretty desperate. [People]
• Someone replaced someone at the New York Times. What? They don't have a TimesSelect column. Nobody actually cares about their names. [E&P]
• See, Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson know how to settle things. Well, er, Mollygood will settle it for them. [Mollygood]
• Actually we would say this is one of the only normal things we've read about Lindsay Lohan doing in a while. You have to protect your man from those triflin' Hollywood girls. Come on, we've seen Entourage. [Page Six]
• Unlike the very un-normal tales from Lindsay's dad's prison cell. We are so creeped out. [Lowdown]
• Nick Lachey is bringing Vanessa Minnillo home to meet his parents. They are just thrilled he found a girl who knows that chickens don't swim. [Scoop]
• Orlando Bloom is now free to casually date whoever he wants. We hear Scarlett Johansson is free. [Mollygood]
• Anderson Cooper has a really big secret: he worked for the CIA. And we're pretty sure that's a secret that's ok to keep … since you really aren't supposed to tell anyone. [Radar]
• Thanks a lot Kelly Clarkson. Now we have to see an entire VMA show with no Gwen Stefani. And what's the point of that? [Page Six]
• We think about Michael Bloomberg singing Shakira’s “My Hips Don’t Lie,” and the child inside of us dies. Thankfully. It's better to die than experience that. [NYDN]
• DMX finally returns, bringing along with him, the worst album title since William Hung’s “Hung for the Holidays” [Houston Press]
• You know Eminem is really bad when it causes a girl to write about him in her MySpace blog. [TMZ]
• We wonder what act of sexual deviance Vanessa Minnillo allowed Nick Lachey to perform to get him to forget about his ex-wife in just a week. [Page Six]
Exclusive
Janet Jackson's June Us Weekly cover became the magazine's best-selling issue in its history — all while editor-in-chief Janice Min was on maternity leave. But it wasn't just Janet's 60-pound slimming that landed her on the cover. Rather, it was one of those editorial arrangements we've come to expect from media outlets with multiple properties to satisfy. While Time Warner stands by its story that Anderson Cooper's Angelina Jolie interview wasn't an arranged off-shoot of her agreement to give Time Warner's People magazine her baby photos, we're now hearing Janet's involvement with Us-owner Wenner Media includes a very strict agreement that also promises her the cover of Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone.
With a new album out, a Rolling Stone cover would be a nice boost for Janet's likely to be unimpressive album sales. But to get that elusive cover, Wenner required her to shill for tabloid baby Us Weekly.
Sound familiar? It should. Something similar happened to Nick Lachey when his album dropped. What was supposed to be an exclusive post-Jessica Simpson break up Rolling Stone cover story to coincide with his record's release turned into a beefcake Us Weekly cover — all because Wenner brass enforced Vanity Fair-like cover story requirements for Nick: Spill it all, or you'll be banished from the front.
The Janet-Wenner fallout is breaking now only because the American version of OK! magazine tried scoring an interview with Janet — and was summarily informed she'd be unavailable to chat, since she had an exclusive arrangement with Wenner.
• We feel bad that Kate Moss was all ready to walk down the aisle in a white mini-dress, but, uh, isn't planning a wedding the day after your boyfriend's drug charge hearing a little presumptuous? Especially when you know he does tons of smack? [Gatecrasher]
• Just because the New York Post makes a sellable whore out of you doesn't mean you can start a brawl in a bar. [Page Six]
• Sure, plenty of people care about what Lindsay Lohan's wearing. When she can actually manage to put something over her bathing suit, that is. [WWD]
• Jessica Simpson just barely missed a run-in with her ex, Nick Lachey — but she could smell his Axe from twenty feet away and immediately changed route. [People]
• Want crabs? Buy Paris Hilton's bed, get on all fours, and smile for the camera. [Scoop]
From yesterday's TRL, the thought bubbles you didn't see:
Vanessa: I hope he's not pissed I tried to kiss him in public the other day.
Nick: If any of my 13-year-old fans saw those paparazzi shots of us together, I'm gonna smack that bitch. My appeal is that I'm hot — and single.
Vanessa: I'm so glad producers didn't replace me with La La like they did when Jessica Simpson came by the show. I can't believe we're on stage together, pretending to just be friends. I can't wait to TXT all my girlfriends about this very moment!
Nick: Does this microphone make me look fat?
Every wish you could you watch Jessica Simpson give head? Yeah, us neither. However, we do find this version of her slobbering all over an ice cream cone in the fashion of fellatio a bit telling. Too bad Star never clued us in on this troubled aspect of her and Nick Lachey's marriage.
And while our heart goes out to Nick for seemingly having to endure this himself for a few years, we would also like to take this opportunity to disprove Christopher Hitchens' theories about all-American gals and blow jobs.
The celeb gossip must be slowing down. Surely tired of asking "where's Suri?" and chronicling Lindsay Lohan's latest face to crotch shot, the news of Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro's split has the tabloids doing backflips. Star happened to be the first glossy to break the dish this time around, and kindly points out how marriages which are chronicled on television have a better chance of flopping.
They married on Nov. 22, 2003. During their marriage, Carmen and Dave starred in their own MTV reality series, Til Death Do Us Part. And oddly enough their marriage endured the same fate as MTV reality couple Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey: Splitsville!
We had actually sort of forgotten that these two even existed, so we are less ecstatic over their fall from bliss than we were about Nick & Jessica's … but if Carmen starts practicing the Jessica Simpson method of recooping (you know, bed hopping at the Chateaux Marmont) we could continue to feign interest for at least another month or so.
CARMEN AND DAVE TO SPLIT [Star]
Editorial Director
