If you’re going to airbrush a woman in an ad, you must include a disclaimer exposing the wrinkle-hiding, curve-thinning lie—at least if an Arizona lawmaker gets her way. The proposed bill seeks to make it illegal in the state for advertisers to enhance a photograph without attaching a note that reads: “Postproduction techniques were made to alter the appearance in this advertisement. When using this product, similar results may not be achieved,” reports the Arizona Republic. Read more…
Whitney Houston may have had a premonition of her own death, telling friends she “really wanted to see Jesus” in the days before she died. Friends tell TMZ Houston quoted the Bible, sang hymns, and talked a lot about the afterlife in recent days, and said she “felt like her time was coming.” After singing “Yes, Jesus Loves Me” in her final public appearance, Houston told a friend the next morning, “I’m gonna go see Jesus … I want to see Jesus. You know, he’s so cool … I really want to see that Jesus.” Read more…
Jon Stewart ripped into Mitt Romney’s tax return last night, and Elizabeth Warren showed up later to hammer home the point. “How can you justify making more in one day than the median American family makes in a year, while paying an effective tax rate of the guy who has to scan your shoes at the airport?” Stewart asked incredulously. Sure, as Romney pointed out, we might not want a candidate “who pays more taxes than he owes,” Stewart agreed. “No, but we might want one who thinks that’s wrong.” Added Warren later in the show, “Washington now works for those who can hire an army of lobbyists.” She pointed, to a booing audience, to a recent study showing the US’ top 30 corporations spend more on lobbying than their tax bill. “That is the investment, and that is what they see as the future.” Read more…
Joe Paterno’s death caused, to put it mildly, mixed reactions: The Hollywood Reporter has a roundup, and it includes everything from George HW Bush’s glowing remembrance of the Penn State coach to this zinger from a Late Show writer and producer: “Will there be a moment of silence for Joe Paterno, to honor his silence when he discovered children were being attacked?” But the most extreme reaction came, of course, from those paragons of understatement, the Westboro Baptist Church. Read more…
Rihanna and Chris Brown appear to have sent each other “secret love tweets”—and by “secret,” we mean completely public messages posted on a social networking site. The “secret” part? Neither Rihanna nor Brown mentioned the other by name. Brown tweeted yesterday, “Love U more than u know!” and just two minutes later, Rihanna appeared to respond, tweeting, “I’ll always love u #1LOVE.” Read more…
Celebrities tend to choose some very, er, interesting names for their offspring, but this year two names stood out: Bear Blu Jarecki, born to Alicia Silverstone, and Moroccan Cannon, born to Mariah Carey. Those two tied for the worst celebrity baby boy names of 2011 on a new BabyNames.com poll, ABC News reports. Read more…
Van Halen is back: The iconic rock band announced a tour yesterday featuring original members Eddie and Alex Van Halen and David Lee Roth. (Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, replaced original bassist Michael Anthony in 2007.) The band has had its problems—the Los Angeles Times cites “that whole Gary Cherone nightmare of 1998,” as well as the “best left unmentioned” Sammy Hagar era. A 2007 tour featuring the same mostly-original line-up was well-received, but ended early so Eddie could go to rehab. Read more…
After battling anorexia, singer/actress Demi Lovato is furious her former boss, the Disney Channel, joked about the eating disorder on a TV show. A character on the program Shake It Up said recently: “I could just eat you up. Well, if I ate.” Lovato responded in an incensed, all-capitals tweet. “I find it really funny how a company can lose one of their actresses from the pressures of an eating disorder, and yet still make jokes about that very disease,” she wrote, referring to her own exit from a Disney series. “Eating disorders are not something to joke about,” she added. Read more…
Are you the kind of person who spends hours fretting over the perfect holiday gift? Or who tries to impress by spending big? Don’t bother, because it’s not helping your cause, writes John Tierney in the New York Times. In fact, price matters a lot more to the giver than to the recipient—and gift-getters would rather have money or something they put on a wish list than a surprise present, according to research by Stanford University psychologists. (Surprised? What do you think a married couple would rate more favorably: cash, the sheets they registered for, or those ridiculously expensive crystal candlesticks…) Read more…
Entertainers of the world, we understand you need to lip sync every now and then. All we ask is that you at least come close to making it look real. Today at the Macy’s parade, American Idol winner Scotty McCreery most definitely did not, notes the Huffington Post. The recording of his “The Trouble With Girls” got off to a cringe-worthy start: See the clip here.
