Lucky participants at the Chicago Fest for Beatles Fans are about to become a very select film audience on the morning of Saturday, August 15th, when they get the first sneak preview of El Viaje Musical de Ezekiel Montanez: The Chris Montez Story.
And of course, it's a got a Beatles twist.
Tommy Roe and Chris Montez, who headlined a UK tour in 1963. The Beatles were their opening act.
We've been hearing about the Chris Montez film bio project since last summer, when it was announced by our pals at Frozen Pictures. While the guys have spent the past twelve months running their Neil Innes biopic, The Seventh Python, through film festivals and special screenings around the country and the world, they've also been shooting the definitive work about the influential and diverse rock and pop musician who went to school with the Beach Boys, launched the lounge movement, and is hailed as the successor to the first Mexican-American rock star, Ritchie Valens.
Chris Montez at the site of the Wilson brothers' childhood home (a California Registered Historical Landmark), where he'd jam with the future Beach Boys
We caught up with them earlier this month at the Grammy Museum, where Chris was participating in a tribute to Ritchie Valens, and their crew has been filming around Chris' hometown, Hawthorne, California.
In March 1963, Chris headlined a tour of England with Tommy Roe. The opening act was a group called The Beatles. That month will be the focus of the preview shown in the ballroom of The Hyatt Regency O'Hare on Saturday morning, August 15th.
"We're looking forward to the fans at the Beatles Fest," says director Burt Kearns. "We got a great reception when we screened The Seventh Python and now we're able to give a little back with some Beatles history. Chris' Beatles tour took place at the cusp of Beatlemania. Their first album was released midway through, the fans were wild-- the audience will be very surprised at the revelations."
"Including the truth about Chris' fist fight with John Lennon. It's been forty-seven years, and no one's gotten the story right until now," says producer Brett Hudson, who will also be performing at the Fest with Mark Hudson-- another third of The Hudson Brothers.
We've gotten word from the attorney for Danny Gans' estate, family, DG Entertainment and other affiliated entities that our story, "Did Dr. Conrad Murray provide prescription drugs for Danny Gans?" was "outlandish, defammatory and false" and that we have caused, among other things, severe emotional distress to Danny Gans' family.
As it turns out, Danny Gans did not receive any prescriptions from Dr. Conrad Murray, and, as we reported, Dr. Murray's attorney Ed Chernoff made it clear that Dr. Murray never treated Danny Gans, nor did he have anything to do with Danny Gans' tragic death.
Our report was not malicious and we have always paid respect to Danny Gans' tremendous talents, influence and good works. Tabloid Baby is interested only in getting answers that have not been reported or sought by the Las Vegas news media.
In this case, the "talk around town" that we reported on was obviously inaccurate and our call to the Las Vegas news media to investigate was overshadowed by the publicity surrounding the questions we posed.
We therefore retract the story and apologize to Danny Gans' family and estate and organization.
Friday, August 14th, The Comedy Shrine 22 E. Chicago Avenue Naperville, Illinois 630.355.2844
So what is it with The Seventh Python and Chicago? The veddy-Anglocentric award-winning nonfiction feature about the veddy-British musical satirist, rock 'n' roll legend and Monty Python compatriot Neil Innes from our pals at Frozen Pictures returns to the Chicago area on Friday, August 14th, with a one-night-only screening and (two-thirds) Hudson Brothers performance at The Comedy Shrine.
The announcement is great news for comedy and Monty Python fans... but begs the question why, after entertaining audiences and winning standing ovations around the world-- from Perth, Australia to the New Jersey Meadowlands-- The Seventh Python keeps returning to the City of Big Shoulders in the American Heartland?
Since the film's premiere at the American Cinematheque's Mods & Rockers Film Festival in Hollywood, it's played at:
The Comedy Shrine 22 E. Chicago Avenue Naperville, Illinois 630.355.2844
So what's the secret to Chicago?
"The secret to Chicago is-- there is no secret," says Seventh Python director Burt Kearns. "Chicago is a comedy capital. They've got The Second City there, but also universities, where some of the finest comics and comedy writers were schooled. There are a lot of comedy legends in and around Chicago."
One of those legends is Dave Sinker. The longtime Hudson buddy, Emmy-winning writer and Second City veteran runs The Comedy Shrine, and came up with the idea of bringing back The Seventh Python for a return engagement.
The Friday evening show on Chicago Avenue in Naperville is set to begin with a screening of the hilarious film starring John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Aimee Mann, Matt Groening and many others, followed by a special performance by Brett and Mark Hudson (they'll arrive after they appear at The Fest for Beatles Fans at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare). Brett produced the film. Mark, the noted music producer and performer, was music supervisor.
Click here for tickets. Arrive early so you'll have some time to check out the extensive comedy memorabilia collection. They don't call it The Comedy Shrine for nothing.
Interesting to see this morning that once again the Las Vegas print media is not exactly providing blanket coverage of its most far-reaching news story of the day. The police investigation into celebrity drug addiction and the issuing of fraudulent prescriptions is the biggest of its kind, is receiving international coverage and is centered on Flamingo Road in Las Vegas, where investigators searched the offices of Michael Jackson's personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray.
One Los Angeles detective only hinted at the scope of the scandal when he said:
"It’s long been suspected that friendly doctors have been enabling celebrities in Hollywood to feed their habits. However, the real extent of what’s been going on is truly shocking. We are uncovering a massive trade in fraudulent prescriptions.”
So where are the Las Vegas newsmen? The Las Vegas Sun is on its third day of covering prostitution at the Rio pool, The Review-Journal notes that Wynn resorts profits freefell 91 percent in the second quarter (the one during which his star attraction Danny Gans died), but they continue to shy away from the big embarrassments.
In fact, Vegas McCloud impersonator and Review-Journal editor Tom Mitchell has yet to assign a reporter to follow upon his gossip columnist's July 11th item about a local doctor aproached to provide drugs to Jacko: "How widespread has the practice of doctor-shopping become in Las Vegas? Will the investigation into Jackson's prescription drug abuse lead back to the Las Vegas medical community, given Jackson spent a good deal of time here in recent years? Will the intense scrutiny uncover more leads in Danny Gans' drug-related death?
"Doctor-shopping 'has become very common'...
"The physician felt pressured to accommodate a VIP. He treated a high profile casino executive who wanted sleeping pills. A week later, the executive wanted a refill and a week after that he requested another refill 'and I said no'...
"The sad thing, he said, is that someone else filled the void."'It's Elvis Presley all over again.'"
As we'd predicted, the Danny Gans story has become a watershed moment for the news media in Las Vegas. How long can they run? And what's their excuse this time?
(UPDATE: The Sun posted a brief story on the records seized from Dr. Murray on its website at 2:55 pm. The Review Journal ran five sentences at 3:12 pm.)
When we heard Reverend Ike died this week, the words, "pie in the sky"... "sweet bye and bye..." and "now" came to mind immediately. After all the time we spent covering crooked television evangelists, we looked back with fondness on Reverend Ike, the first TV preacher to take advantage of the soliciting power of television, and a man who was refreshingly up front about his mission: while he preached prosperity and his purpose was soliciting donations, preferably in paper cash (He'd say, “Change makes your minister nervous in the service.”)
Ike was the TV preacher we remember from the Seventies, a cross between Jackie Wilson and Eddie Murphy, and his money message certainly set the stage for the real crooks who'd follow.
Rev. Ike died this week after suffering a stroke two years ago. We were surprised he was only 74. His church as asking for donations in his memory.
And the entire Rev. Ike pitch went like this:
“The love of money is not the root of all evil, It is the lack of money. Have you ever seen a rich man down in the street mugging someone? No! You can talk all you want about the pie in the sky and the sweet bye and bye, but what about the good ol' now and now!”
The Times' coverage of the Michael Jackson criminal investigation in Las Vegas is being handled by Steve Freiss, the Las Vegas writer and comp queen who led the campaign to stop news coverage of the secret life and overdose death of local headliner Danny Gans, who later wrote that Michael Jackson's death was "the best thing that could ever have happened to Michael Jackson's music," and is now producing and promoting a Michael Jackson "tribute" show (with ticket packages at $504) at the Palms casino.
If ever a reporter would recuse himself from a story-- or an editor would take a second look at whom he assigns-- this would seem to be the case.
But it is not.
Times readers: Caveat emptor.
(Well aware that he has been the subject of Tabloid Baby investigation since he [but not because he] made an attempt to shut down our site early in the Gans case, Friess, mentions his Times assignment in his blog today. Unfortunately, he also reveals the closeknit, corrupt Las Vegas news culture when he writes from the scene of a raid at a medical office:
"Happily, I have some connections. The fine folks at Miles' TV station, KVBC, let me chill inside their news van."("Miles" is Miles Smith, executive producer at KVBC TV News, the local NBC affiliate, and Friess' unofficial second husband.)
How did the drug overdose death of Wynn Encore Hotel & Casino headliner Danny Gans impact the bottom line for his boss Steve Wynn? We'll find out later this week when Wynn Resorts Ltd. reports its second-quarter financial results after the market closes Thursday.
Gans was three months into a longterm, multi-year, multi-million dollar contract at the Encore Theatre when he died suddenly and mysteriously in his bedroom smack in the middle of the second quarter on May 1st.
Wynn Resorts, run by billionaire and major stockholder Steve Wynn, operates casino resorts in Las Vegas and the Chinese island gambling enclave of Macau and has a resort under construction in Macau.
The $700 million Encore at Wynn Macau, due to open next year, is expected to include 600 rooms and suites along with casino, restaurant, retail and lounge space.
A subsidiary of Wynn Resorts Ltd. filed for a possible initial public offering of its Macau assets last week. The action did not come as a surprise to industry analysts.
These analysts expect Wynn Resorts to lose a penny per share on $739 million in revenues, compared with a profit of $1.11 per share on revenue of $825 million in the same period a year earlier.
Gans' death certainly did not help the Wynn Las Vegas operation, which is being propped up by the Chinese business. All casino corporations in Las Vegas are expected to have a rough year, even though many have lowered room rates to keep their hotels filled.
New hotels coming to Las Vegas in the next year will hurt everyone's revenues and earnings.
Wynn Resorts’ stock price has dropped from its 52-week high of $119.74 and closed the second quarter at $35.30.
Gans' showroom at the Encore has remained empty most of the time since his death. Though the local news media refused to investigate the circumstances of his untimely demise at age 52, publish what it knew about his use of painkillers and steroids, or speak to the many sources who claimed the musical impressionist was getting illegal prescription drugs from within his organization, most everyone in the beholden Vegas fourth estate is helping promote New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author and comp queen Steve Friess's 3 pm "Michael Jackson’s Untimely Death Was The Best Thing That Could Ever Have Happened To Michael Jackson's Music Birthday Tribute But Not To The Man Show" set for August 29th at the Palms.
Beyond Twisted, the clip show brought to you by the subliterate scumbags at the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com, has gotten the axe only three mind-numbing weeks into its eight week "trial run" by Warner Bros. and Fox television stations.
The cancellation is of little surprise and surely pales beside the original decision by cash-tight syndication suits to allow TMZ's shaved bronzed midget frontman Harvey Levin to enter the genre of concise, well-written and often dramatic reality clips, based on his middling success with his sewer site's whitewashed inconsequential syndicated sister.
Giving Harvey Levin and his classless crew of corner boys a daily show that requires subtle writing skills and topnotch production values is akin to giving Chevy Chase (or Sharon Osbourne or Magic Johnson or Howie Mandel or...) a talk show.
Bad enough the show's title sounds like it was spit out by a 13-year-old. One would think hubristic hairless Harvey's corporate overlords would have gotten the picture when he originally pitched the putrid project under the title, "WTF?" (that's the type of wit and style that circulates in his circles). While the show's website has already been purged from the Internet, the official promotional material still refers to the program's content as "funny and gross"-- good examples of the crude, sleazy and childish worldview and methods of a Fagin and his team of street thugs who've soiled the celebrity scene with foul intrusive reports like the one yesterday in which directional microphones were used to record private conversations between sad Lindsay Lohan and her girlfriend, behind a closed gate, in a supposedly exclusive residential neighborhood, at five o' clock in the morning.
Does one's dedication to the arts and entertaining the masses negate all expectations of privacy even while inside one's wall- and hedge-protected home? Has Harvey Levin paid off everyone in the Sheriff's and police departments?
Yet, TMZ spreads like a virus and our criticism goes unnoticed--
NO, IT DOESN'T!
A tip of the Tabloid Babyhat to the scrappy, funny, mysterious and never cheesy newcomer to the celebrity news and gossip scene, Hollywood's Rumor Rat. The anonymous Big Cheese and his rat pack have come out of their hole, nibbling away at bigs like Perez Hilton and joining us in targeting offenders like the Levin gang. Rat has not only proven to have excellent sources inside every syndicated infotainment operation (including Harvey's pit) in town, but manages to come up with scoops that may be overlooked because they hit a week or two before anyone else catches up.
Case in point: the Beyond Twisted cancellation. Rumor Rat had the scoop last Wednesday.
Rumor Rat has the buzz and has generated speculation as to his identity. Once he upgrades his site to include individual story links and reader comments, the Rat is bound to nibble its way to the top.
The Las Vegas celebration of Michael Jackson's 5ist birthday next month ("The Michael Jackson’s Untimely Death Was The Best Thing That Could Ever Have Happened To Michael Jackson's Music Show," at $25 to $504 a ticket, is only the latest intriguing offshoot of the local media's coverup of the life and overdose death of Strip headliner Danny Gans. A Twitter post from the show's producer and promoter adds a new twist. New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author and comp queen Steve Friess celebrated Michael Jackson's death in print, yet raced to be the first to exploit Jacko's legacy with a benefit for public school music programs, all the whole condemning "Jackson the man." Now the journalist is offering package deals at the Palms.
Developing...
(Meanwhile spin through our archives for a deeper view of a fascinating desert saga...)
The Texan Lott who, after O'Neal blocked his visits, maintained a weeks-long vigil in Los Angeles while Farrah lay dying, showed up on television in his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, over the weekend, blasting O'Neal and Farrah's friend Alana Stewart-- and announcing plans to write his own book about his relationship with Farrah.
Perhaps coincidentally, a posting on the blogsite that had become his forum in the weeks after Farrah's death reports today that the Farrah Fawcett.us website will not be returning to the web, and that for now, Greg Lott is being held liable for all the fans who've ordered Farrah memorabilia from the site and are left holding the bag:
"...Mr. Lott was the manager of www.FarrahFawcett.US and held a minority 25% stake in the ownership with Ms. Fawcett in this website. As you are aware the licensing rights have reverted to the Farrah Fawcett’s estate on June 25 2009 when she succumbed to her long battle with Cancer...
"I realize there are numerous people out there that have not received the items they have ordered prior to the site being taken down by the law firm working for the estate of Farrah Fawcett. Many people have reportedly sent complaints to Paypal as well as their credit card companies, and in one instance to the FBI. I have no response to this as Mr. Lott has not responded to our repeated phone calls or emails..."
Steve Friess has kept his name off the poster for the first paid event to exploit the recent death of Michael Jackson, but the Las Vegas stringer for The New York Times, USA Today and other national publications, Gay Vegas author and comp queen who wrote that "Michael Jackson’s untimely death was the best thing that could ever have happened to Michael Jackson’s music," is behind the show that he has written pointedly does not celebrate the flawed human being-- "There will be no speeches about Jackson the man at this event. It is all about the songs, the dancing, the art"-- though it is being held on what would have been Jacko's 51st birthday.
Earlier this month, we reported on driving into the aftermath of a pair of bank holdups in the San Fernando Valley. Shotgun-wielding crooks had made off with thousands of dollars and in one bank left behind a device they said was a bomb. They were, the FBI says, a six-man "crew" dubbed the Buckshot Bandits, suspected of five holdups at various banks in the San Fernando Valley.
While we've been otherwise occupied, the G-Men have offered a five thousand dollar reward and released this new batch of surveillance photos and a phone number--213.485.2511-- for tips.
Word that Ryan O’Neal will not be reieiving any of the proceeds of Farrah Fawcett’s will may be premature. Sources tell Tabloid Baby that the executors who will oversee the inheritance bestowed on her son Redmond, are Richard B. Francis and his son and partner Russell Francis.
Richard B. Francis is Ryan O’Neal’s business manager. After 43 years, Ryan O’Neal is Francis & Associates’ oldest client.
Francis, along with O’Neal and Alana Stewart, was named in the lawsuit by producer Criag Nevius that claims his documentary project and company with Farrah were taken from him unlawfully. Nevius is contesting an "Appointment of Chief Executive Officer and Delegation of Rights" document signed by Farrah in April, which appointed Richard B. Francis as Chief Executive Officer of Sweetened By Risk LLC, and gave him "the full power and authority to take all actions the Chief Manager is authorized to take."
O'Neal, meanwhile, took control of Farrah's cancer documentary project, which had been based on her diaries, and with the help of producers from NBC's Dateline infotainment show, turned it into an updated version of his 1970 film, Love Story.
In interviews and court papers, Nevius has claimed that Francis threatened him physically and professionally.
One source, a friend of Farrah, tells us this afternoon that “the fear” is that Francis or his son could simply assign control of the drug addicted, incarcerated 24-year-old Redmond's money to his father Ryan.
“That would put Redmond right back in his father's control, and that’s the last thing Farrah would want,” says one friend. “It's why she left Ryan to begin with.”
Farrah and O’Neal ended their 15-year relationship in 1997. O’Neal returned as a heavy presence in Farrah’s life after she was diagnosed with cancer in 2007. Ryan and Redmond were arrested together on methamphetamine charges at O’Neal’s Malibu home in November of last year.
In the final weeks of Farrah’s life, O’Neal stated that she had agreed to marry him on her deathbed. Farrah was never made available to confirm his statement. The wedding never took place.
Sources tell Tabloid Baby this morning say that Farrah left the bulk of her $5.5 million estate to Redmond O'Neal, her son by the contentious Love Story actor, who is now jailed on drug charges.
Ryan O'Neal took control of Farrah's affairs and cancer documentary project after she began to slip in and out of consciousness in the final stage of the cancer battle that ended on June 25th.
Sources tell Tabloid Baby that the $5.5 million figure quoted may reflect Farrah's cash holdings, but that her assets push the total value of Farrah's estate past the $50 million mark.
Farrah's holdings include a collection of Andy Warhol art (some of which depicting her as subject), property in Texas, and the the copyright to the legendary 1976 burnt-orange swimsuit poster, which is worth millions every year in licensing fees.
Farrah was also the majority owner of the film production company, Sweetened By Risk, that produced Farrah's cancer journal documentary that was taken over by O'Neal in April and turned into the morbid, Emmy-nominated NBC special, "Farrah's Story."
The group of Las Vegas journalists who tried their darndest to keep the secret life of superstar Danny Gans from being investigated or revealed in the weeks before the coroner confirmed his death by Dilaudid overdose is keeping close tabs on Tabloid Baby's coverage of their unusual Michael Jackson tribute show.
Beauty queen turned TV entertainment reporter Alicia Jacobs, who literally took out a Bible during a news report to demonstrate the clean-living spirituality of her longtime close personal friend, referenced Tabloid Baby in a Twitter message early this morning.
Jacobs was bragging that she had been a guest at a roast for Harrah's Las Vegas president Don Marrandino over the weekend, seated with New York Times stringer, Guy Vegas author, comp queen (as exemplified in this case) and Jackson show producer Steve Friess (who led the campaign to quell Gans coverage) and Norm Clarke, the ubiquitous Las Vegas Review-Journalist gossip columnist who went to print with whatever Jacobs and Friess gave him-- and who revealed that the Marrandino was attended by "500 high rollers" along with the Gans trio.
Listing Friess, Norm as among the "fav pals" she "hung" with, she added somewhat defensively: "Hello Tabloid Baby!"
Hello, Ms. Jacobs.
(As of now, no Las Vegas journalist has written or broadcast a definitive, no-holds barred examination of the circumstances of Danny Gans' life and death.)
In celebrating the queue at the box office, Friess also added a sick Britney Spears death joke to
Friess (right), who is the primary Las Vegas freelance reporter for a number of national and international publications, took the highly unusual step of profiting off the subject of his reportage, jumping at the chance to be the first to exploit Jackson's death with an August 29th 3 pm "tribute" at the Palms Hotel, where Jackson had recorded and where Friess participated in an unofficial wedding ceremony with local television news producer Miles Smith.
"I would never do anything like that. I would never lend my name to anything that charges readers money-- no matter the cause," one Las Vegas-based journalist told us.
Yet, with memories as long as Dory the Fish's and investigative curiosity lagging slightly behind that of the members of the Warren Commission, the Las Vegas news media have been happily hyping the unusual money-procuring brainstorm without question.
In a post on his casino-promoting blog with a headline that squeals, People On Line At Box Office!!!, Friess previews the sale of tickets that top out at $504, and includes YouTube videos of various local news reports on his endeavour.
Primary among them is a report by Alicia Jacobs (top) the beauty queen turned TV entertainment reporter who used her longtime close personal friendship with Danny Gans to help distract the media and public from the unpleasant facts about his reliance on the drugs that killed him, and in the process diminished her credibiity even in a gladhanding, palm-greasing media environment like "Sin City."
After our coverrage showed the links between Jacobs and Friess in the deliberate campaign to stop coverage of Gans' tragic death, one would have expected her boss at KVBC-TV News to insist that she remove herself from the Jackson concert story. Her boss, however, is Friess' unofficial husband, Miles Smith.
In a shocking footnote to the concert ticket sales posting, Friess makes a sick joke about cashing in on the potential death of troubled popstar Britney Spears.
Under a YouTube video of his co-producer Erich Bergen "singing Britney Spears at the Liberace Museum" (we don't make this stuff up, folks), Friess adds:
"Memo to Erich: If something awful happens to Britney Spears and you decide to do one of these things, you're on your own. :-)"
Friess has ignored repeated requests by Tabloid Baby for an interview or clarifications of his intentions.
This year's accelerated celebrity death cycle has taken a swerve toward the reality genre, bumping into the ridiculous along the way, with word this morning that Alexis Cohen, the middle-finger flashing madwoman wannabe who brightened up two seasons (Seven & Eight) of auditions on American Idol was killed over the weekend in a hit and run accident on the New Jersey shore.
Was she walking in the middle of the road? No matter; whoever hit her didn't stop. Homicide charges await. Internet tributes are already pouring in. Expect a salute on the next season of Idol.
We alone among the world's journalist noticed and reported that the photo showing Jackson's lifeless corpse on the way into the UCLA Medical Center revealed that the tip of Jackson's cosmetic surgery-damaged schnozzola was missing:
In a detailed report of Jacko's final days and the hours after his demise, Rolling Stone reports that further attempts to pump sone life back into the star had rubbed away the rest of the false appendage, revealing the horrific results of one nose job too many. The once-essential mag quotes a witness who claims to have seen Jacko's corpse on an autopsy table said there was simply a small hole where the singer's nose should have been:
"The prosthesis he normally attached to his damaged nose was missing, revealing bits of cartilage surrounding a small dark hole."
The Daily Mail reports the story today, adding confirmation from a former Jacko housekeeper who adds: "In his closet he had a jar of fake noses and stage glue, which he told me he used for disguises. But some were similar to his real nose, just without the hole."
Most of the mainstream and tabloid Internet media have attributed the story to the Daily Mail. Only the most perceptive and cutting edge tabloid news sites, like Hollywood's Rumor Rat and the UK's Anorak, cited out story-- on Day One.
The benefit show at the Palms Hotel and Casino (where Jackson last recorded) on what would have been Jacko’s 51st birthday is produced and being promoted by Steve Friess, the New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas author, local entertainment blogger and comp queen, who attacked Tabloid Baby, and made attempts to have this site shut down, because we were investigating the mysterious death of Gans on May 1st, and who, in the days following Jackson’s death, applauded the tragedy as “the best thing that could ever have happened to Michael Jackson’s music.”
According to a press release issued yesterday, the 3 pm show at the Pearl showroom will feature video montages and “cast members of Jersey Boys, Lion King, Peepshow and Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular.”backed by a 10-piece band comprised of musicians led by Las Vegas’ own Joey Melotti.”
Tickets, which go on sale Saturday, are $29, $54, $79, $104 and $129, “plus applicable box office fees. A VIP package is available for $504.” Proceeds are said to go to “Music Education programming in Clark County Public Schools.”
Details of the show were promoted on television this week by Alicia Jacobs, the beauty queen turned entertainment reporter who was Gans’ longtime close personal friend and who, with Gans’ manage Chip Lightman, led a spin campaign to divert attention from Gans’ drug use that led to his death by overdose of the powerful painkiller hydromorphone. Jacobs’ boss, KVBC News executive producer Miles Smith, is Friess’ unofficial husband (the couple were married at the Palms, though same-sex unions are not sanctioned in Nevada).
Friess’ show was announced last week by Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Norm Clarke. (whose paper has deliberately downplayed the Gans story). In the weeks before the cause of Gans’ death was announced, Clarke was used by Jacobs and Lightman to plant items that painted Gans as a clean-living, drug free, and spiritual figure.
Friess came to our attention in the days following Gans’ death, when he launched a vicious public attack against Tabloid Baby (and took steps to have this site shut down) after our correspondent emailed to ask why the local news media was not investigating the circumstances of Gans’ tragic death. Friess later admitted he knew of rumours that Gans was a steroid user, and that he was involved in spreading false stories about the tragedy to throw reporters off the scent.
Not Michael Jackson, but Danny Gans in an incredible simulation
While Friess has switched his “journalist” hat for one of show promoter, most of the talk in Las Vegas media circles concern his motivations for celebrating Jackson’s birthday, since he has expressed a disdain for the life of the late singer.
Some suggest it would be more appropriate for him to take the time to plan a tribute to Danny Gans, whose birthday is October 25th.
Fans of the classic beach volleyball motion picture comedy Cloud 9 can rest easy: the Taco Bell chihuahua who died tragically at 15 was not the little dog who co-starred in the hilarious cameo scene in which Gary Busey just about stole the movie from stars Burt Reynolds, D.L. Hughley, Paul Rodriguez, Angie Everhart, Gabrielle Reece, Katheryn Winnick, Kenya Moore, Bruce Bruce, Rick Overton, Pat Finn, Jeff Altman, John Caponera, Tony Danza and Tom Arnold!
Gidget was the name of the Taco Bell pup who succumbed to a stroke Tuesday. Moonie was the dog who appeared in Cloud 9. Gary Busey plays her owner, who grumbles and grouses while picking up Moonie's droppings. Busey's adlibs were so hilarious that the outtakes were compiled for the DVD extra, "Being Gary Busey."
Moonie also starred alongside Reese Witherspoon as Bruiser in Legally Blonde. Coincidentally, Gidget played Bruiser's mom in Legally Blonde 2.
Moonie and Gidget were best friends, and sometime roommates.
Cloud 9, the 2006 Frozen Pictures co-production written and produced by Brett Hudson and Burt Kearns along with two-time Academy Award® winner (The Godfather, Million Dollar Baby) Albert S. Ruddy, has incredible connections to Oscar® winners remains a pay-per-view and rental favorite in the States while its fame spreads around the world.
Despite the dire warnings about comouter viruses being spread by viewings of the Erin Andrews nude hotel peephole videos, and threats against those who post it, we find it interesting that two days after the perverted, apparently criminal betrayal and unconscionable invasion of privacy was revealed to the world by the ESPN gals' attorneys, the video is now easily accessible with a simple Google video search (on an official page where screengrabs have been available throughout).
Interesting also that this video, apparently shot through a peephole drilled through the wall of her hotel room (not, as intimated originally, through through the peephole in the hotel room's door), and possibly by a fellow employee (one who'd be as high on the heap as Erin, rating a similar room in a posh hotel), has been online for something like four months, with the subject identified as an anonymous blonde who looks something like Playboy's Sexiest Sportscaster of 2007 and 2008 and object of admiration for sportsfan butt fetishists.
So why did Erin's people "out" her, knowing the video would suddenly become an Internet sensation? Is there any chance that Erin, seen prancing and posing, was party to voyeuristic games that were meant to remain private? There's lots in this story still to be revealed-- but it's a little strange that a "forbidden" video that no one but the one-handed typing crowd knew about three days ago is so easily accessible today.
London's Daily Mail has the best and most-quoted celebrity tabloid page of all the mainstream newspapers, but were still trying to figure out the circuitous, misleading story they're hyping this morning about Michael Jackson's "secret son." Twenty-five year-old Omer Bhatti sat with the Jackson family at the Staples Center Memorial and wore the sunglasses and black suit combo favoured by Jacko's brothers. The Daily Mail writes that he "is believed to have asked for a DNA test to prove once and for all if he is the singer's love child," fathered on a one-night stand in Norway in 1984. The paper even touts the young man's physical resemblance to Jacko's (white) surrogate son, Blanket (let us not forget that Jacko was a black man).
But read a little deeper and see that Omer was more likely one of Jacko's little circle-jerk buddies, sold to the superstar by his parents, to whom Jacko gave jobs and gifts.
Omer, it turns out, was one of those mini-Michael Jackson impersonators from modest circumstances in another part of the world who was thrust upon the so-called King of Pop by his parents during his wildest pajama party days. Jacko reportedly "met" the child in Tunisia in 1996. was "impressed" by the pretty boy's aping of his dance moves and soon had the kid and his folks moved from Oslo to his Neverland lair.
Omer's mother Pia was hired as a nanny for Jacko's surrogate son and Omer's father Riz got a job as a chauffeur.
Parents cared for, son slept with: it was a scenario played out more than once in Jacko's fantasy world. Jacko's secret son? Not bloody likely.
We reported three years ago on the Still Crazy-style resurrection of David Hull, the local rock star from Tabloid Baby’s teenage years who'd been called out of obscurity to tour as a member of Aerosmith.
David was the coolest bass player out of Statford, Connecticut (and still a teenager) forty years ago when he and local guitar hero Charlie Karp joined The Buddy Miles Express in time to play on the Them Changes album (the song appears on the new Eric Clapton-Stevie Winwood live album). David and Charlie toured the world before going on to their own success with White Chocolate and The Dirty Angels, including opening for their stadium pals Aerosmith (they'd been working with Steven Tyler when Buddy Miles called). David would later join The Joe Perry Project, and settled in the Boston area, where he remained a part of the blues and rock scene for decades.
Then, in 2006, Aerosmith called him back up to the big leagues, to fill in on tour for bassist Tom Hamilton, who was stricken with throat cancer. He was received warmly by fans, even when he played Tom's signature opening riff to Sweet Emotion, and was suddenly a rock star in his fifties.
Three years later, Aerosmth's on the road again, and David Hull is once again filling in for ailing Tom Hamilton. The band's site reports:
AEROSMITH bassist TOM HAMILTON will be sitting out some dates of the Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Presents Aerosmith tour dates with special guests ZZ Top as he recuperates from non-invasive surgery. Filling in for TOM will be David Hull, a longtime friend of the band who played in the Joe Perry Project and who sat in for TOM on various shows in 2006. When STEVEN TYLER, JOE PERRY, AND JOEY KRAMER return to the road on July 15 at Lakewood Amphitheatre in Atlanta, GA, they’ll be welcoming back BRAD WHITFORD, who has recovered from a recent surgery after having sat out the opening dates of the tour.
Aerosmith is battered. Tyler is recovering from leg surgery and drummer Kramer's got a new book about his depression and addictions. We're sure Joe Perry's not feeling so hot himself. Yet, they rock on. And David Hull can be considered one of the boys.
Now it's Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch who's announced he has cancer.
Yauch posts on the band's website that he has a cancerous tumour in his left salivary gland.
Adam Yauch is the one they call "MCA," the Buddhist with the grey hair. He says he needs surgery. The band's summer tour and new album have been postponed.
A hotel room peephole video? Have you ever heard of a hotel room peephole video? We've heard of celebrity sex tapes and we've seen telephoto shots of topless and naked celebs on their hotel room balconies, but we haven't heard of a hotel room peephole video until this morning, with word that ESPN sportsgal Erin Andrews, whom we've also never heard of but gather from her photos is jock channel eye candy for the belly-scratching fans who was twice voted America's Sexiest Sportscaster by Playboy, was victimized by some person or persons who videotaped her walking around naked in a hotel room. The footage was apparently shot without Erin's consent or knowledge, and since the poor girl is on the road so much she can't identify the hotel or city.
This morning, attorney Marshall B. Grossman of Bingham McCutchen LLP issued this poignant statement:
“While alone in the privacy of her hotel room, Erin Andrews was surreptitiously videotaped without her knowledge or consent. She was the victim of a crime and is taking action to protect herself and help ensure that others are not similarly violated in the future. Although the perpetrator or perpetrators of this criminal act have not yet been identified, when they are identified she intends to bring both civil and criminal charges against them and against anyone who has published the material. We request respect of Erin’s privacy at this time, while she and her representatives are working with the authorities.”
"Hotel room peephole video" sounds like some kind of corporate espionage or at something that goes a beyond your standard pervert paparazzo.
It will at least open up the market to a new videoproof hotel room peephole.
Meanwhile, the video has been taken off the web, and in clever response, someone's spread worf that files supposedly showing Erin Andrews video will trigger a computer virus.
With the Die in Threes celebrity death calculator thrown askew by the sheer number of clogs-popping stars from a variety of fields of fame (see Frank McCourt), it wasn't much of a leap to anticipate Patrick Swayze would be losing his battle against pancreatic cancer in the dead of summer. Happy to see in the Daily Mail, then, that the actor, dancer, and real-life tough guy is looking a hell of a lot healthier than he did back in April, when the effects of the disease and the chemotherapy used to fight it left him looking a step from the grave. Swayze's survival and odds-defiance can be credited in part to by treatment by the CyberKnife, a cutting-edge radiation device that blasts tumours with a high-powered laser, reaches tumours that conventional radiation cannot, and does its work in hours, as opposed to several punishing months.
The CyberKnife was brought to the world's attention by Tabloid Baby pal Brett Hudson and Frozen Pictures in their The Klinik documentary project, and has been getting a lot of attention in the UK becaue England now has its very first CyberKnife at Harley Street in London.
The only journalist in Las Vegas to publish uncompromising reports on the overdose death of local superstar Danny Gans has gone silent, and apparently missing, since his last controversial post on the subject, which looked at the complicity of the Las vegas news media in the coverup-- as well as the possibility of foul play.
The posting, which hit almost all of the topics that the rest of the mainstream Las Vegas news media deliberately shooed away from because of pressure from casino powers and other conflicts of interest, has been the last posting on the site since.
That's one month, two days without a posting, on a site that was posting several items a week.
Down Charleston Blvd. had been ostensibly an entertainment site, reviewing Las Vegas shows as well as new music an performance. But after Gans' mysterious, untimely death on May 1st, the blogger behind the site found himself as the sole hometown source of information, as local newspapers and television media alike apparently conspired to keep a wall of silence around the tragedy, ignoring whispers of foul play and in some cases, deliberately covering up the rampant talk about the musical impressionist's use of prescription painkillers and steroids.
While the Tabloid Baby newsteam kept up an unrelenting barrage of exclusive reports and criticism of the news media and those most responsible for the Danny Gans news blackout-- (including New York Times stringer, Gay Vegas writer, Michael Jackson concert promoter and comp queen Steve Friess (far left) and Tom Mitchell, the mustachioed, duster-wearing McCloud wannabe and editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal (left)-- our praise was unqualified for the anonymous journo behind Down Charleston Blvd:
"No one in Las Vegas is tackling the biggest story to hit Sin City in this young century...
"No one, that is, but a man with a blog called Down Charleston Blvd.
"His recent posting, dated on the one-month anniversary of Gans' untimely death, is the type of story we'd expect to see in a newspaper or alt-weekly-- if today's crop of "alt-weaklies" lived up to the name.
"Pretty simple, really. A local journalist serves his readers, engages them in a dialogue and responds to their questions, chases down rumours that have swept through the Ls Vegas area like bad luck.
"Bravo, Down Charleston Blvd."
Shortly after the Clark County Coroner delivered a carefully-parsed verdict on Gan's death by the powerful opiate hydromorphone, Down Charleston Blvd. posted a story titled: "More on Danny Gans' overdose"-- perhaps the only local journo to call the death an "overdose" rather than "toxic reaction."
Among the lethal points:
"First and foremost, lets call it for what it really is – an overdose";
"A source had told us Gans did not have a prescription for hydromorphone";
"A reliable source tells us that Gans became addicted";
"Our source says that Gans’ did dabble with steroids on and off – which started way back in his baseball playing days";
"He also used and tried various pain meds, typically in the synthetic opiate family";
"Another source close to Gans told us on the topic of Chip Lightman – 'Chip’s comments in the RJ since Danny died are phony"; "The chances of Gans’ family giving consent (to releasing the toxicology report) are extremely slim. The chances would be higher if there was a doctor involved in prescribing the meds because the family would likely want justice for the doctor’s malpractice..."
"A... Review Journal Employee has informed me that the RJ has been extremely reluctant to talk about Gans. They want to story to be gone as soon as possible... This is not the first time the Review Journal has buried stories or reported as little as possible..."
That was June 16th. Down Charleston Blvd. has not posted anything since.
Has the site been shut down? Have its owners run out of town for breaking the "stays in Vegas" code?
Our emails to the site and its editor have not been returned.
Perez Hilton admits he doesn't even write his own column. He gets his kid sister Barbara to do the dirty work, without credit. Why does Perez all of a sudden remind us even more of JJ Hunsecker, the nasty, vindictive gossip columnist portrayed by Burt Lancaster in The Sweet Smell of Success? No, not because Lancaster was gay, but because of JJ's sick, inappropriately close relationship with his sister Barbara. Does Drudge have a sister?
Old Walter Cronkite didn't do all that much since he retired as the face of CBS News twenty eight years ago. While the "Tiffany Network" and the credibility of its news organization slipped steadily in the years to come, Walt spent a lot of time on his boat, voiced many a documentary special and went out a lot in a tuxedo. They were well-deserved golden years. Walter's beloved wife Betsy died in 2005. She was 89 and he was 88. By the end of the year, Walt had hooked up with a hot 65 year-old who lived in his building: Joanna Simon, older sister of Carly Simon.
Ten years ago, we sent a copy of the pre-publication galleys of the book Tabloid Baby to the office of Walter Cronkite, in hopes that the great newscaster would write a nice blurb for the book, as his colleague Mike Wallace had done.
On a return phone call, Walter's assistant was apoplectic. "There's no way he's writing anything about that book!"
A few good tabloid news notes in the clip above: Walter Cronkite's reporting of the death of John F Kennedy was burned indelibly into the minds of many a young future tabloid journo. His show of emotion is a reminder that Steve Dunleavy didn't invent the practice. And Dan Rather's confirmation of JFK's death was premature-- he didn't really have it confirmed, but like the shaved bronzed midget Harvey Levin and his corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com would do in the case of Michael Jackson decades later, he went for it.
With Uncle Walter's death, the era of 20th century news and its avuncular, Voice-of-God, trusted, probably liberal and with some lineage to Edward R Murrow "anchorman" can safely be called officially over-- which doesn't bode well for the Brian Williamses and Katie Courics, who keep those Burberry trenchcoats in their closets.
We're not sure why Mischa Barton is famous, but with the recent run of celebrity deaths and lots of talk about drug abuse among the partying classes, we took notice of before-and-after photos showing her transformation from stick-thin celebutard to bloated party animal -- a slide that in our books nudged her past Lindsay Lohan toward Courtney Love in the death pool. We also found it interesting, and a little irresponsible-- that after reports of the British actress making scenes in nightclubs, including getting tossed for bringing friends into the toilet cubicles, that tabloids and news organizations reported straight-faced her people's claim that her shocking appearance was due to "wisdom teeth" (as in the removal of one).
Now maybe the famously pear-shaped, cottage cheese 23-year-old's been saved to nipple-slip again. The guys with the butterfly nets grabbed Mischa Barton at home in Los Angeles yesterday and dragged her off to the mental ward at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center under the 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold law-- just as they did to Britney Spears.
Craig Nevius, who's suing over the NBC special Farrah's Story, for which he's been nominated for an Emmy (Farrah's boyfriend Ryan O'Neal wrested control of the project), explains the above clip: "It's me interviewing Farrah from the final episode of Chasing Farrah. And it, probably, more than anything else, explains why she is nominated for am Emmy as executive producer of a documentary. Or maybe why she actually decided to do this to begin with." Craig Nevius:The audience wants to see the real you, not you from a distance...
Farrah Fawcett: So we'll have to figure it out, right? Who I am.
Craig Nevius: "We" have to figure that out? You don't know?
Farrah Fawcett: Well, I don't want to go to a therapist. So I think I'll just... use you.
Craig Nevius: If there was one thing you wanted us to walk away with... one thing you wanted us to know about you... what would that be?
Farrah Fawcett: ...That I'm not "one thing." There's not really a box that I fit into. And for me? That's, I think good. I like that.
Television and documentary producer Craig Nevius may have been shoved out of the Farrah Fawcett documentary project that was eventually turned into an NBC TV special, but he managed to retain his executive producer credit, and was therefore among the names announced this morning when Farrah's Story was nominated for an Emmy.
Nevius sent us this gracious statement, which gives all honor to Farrah, who was nominated posthumously:
"Unfortunately, Farrah is not here to appreciate the result of her bravery and creativity. But fortunately her 92 years young father is here to bask in the glow of his daughter's honor. When I shared the good news with him this morning, he demonstrated his usual dry wit and asked: 'Is there any way for me to take credit for this?' I told him he could take all the credit. Because he gave the world Farrah. He and Mrs. Fawcett were delighted.'"
It's one of those best-of-times-worst-of-times mornings for producer Craig Nevius. He and Farrah Fawcett spent years working on the documentary about her travels in search of a cure for her cancer. Then Farrah sold the project to NBC, and when her condition worsened, her boyfriend Ryan O'Neal took control of the project, pushing Nevius out and alowing producers from NBC's Dateline to re-edit and reshoot the nonfiction film into a maudlin, morbid death march.
But Craig Nevius managed to retain his executive producer title.
This morning, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced that "Farrah's Story" has been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Nonfiction Special. So along with NBC's Alexandra Gleysteen and Robert Dean, Craig Nevius is an Emmy nominee.
And so is Farrah, with a posthumous producing nomination (she'd had acting nods for The Burning Bed, Small Sacrfices and The Guardian).
It's all good for Alana Stewart. Farrah's companion on her trips to Germany, who often held the home video camera, not only was first out of the gate with a book deal, she held out at the end for more money and producer's credit. She, too, is an Emmy nominee.
Farrah's Story • NBC • Sweetened by Risk LLC Alexandra Gleysteen, Executive Producer Craig Nevius, Executive Producer Farrah Fawcett, Executive Producer Robert Dean, Producer Alana Stewart, Produced by
(Farrah's Story is up against History Channel's 102 Minutes That Changed America... ABC's Michael J. Fox: Adventures Of An Incurable Optimist... HBO's Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired... and HBO's The Alzheimer's Project: Momentum In Science Parts 1 & 2.The Emmy Awards show airs September 20th on CBS.)
Hey, this is news: a mainstream network news operation has picked up an exclusive report from Tabloid Baby.com-- and given us attribution!
A tip of the Tabloid Babyhat to NBC New York, the website for NBC's New York City news operation,and veteran newsman Michael Horowicz, who this afternoon posted a story on Farrah Fawcett's missing diaries:
"The publisher of Alana Stewart's book, entitled 'My Journey With Farrah,' is mum on reports that the book contains words from Farrah Fawcett's own diary, which has gone missing."
Most crucially, Horowicz adds: "The website 'Tabloid Baby' quotes an 'insider' as saying 'The scuttlebutt is that this book ... contains Farrah's words from her diary'..."
With a link! That's rare. Top Internet news sites like Ray Richmond's Man Bites Hollywood and our new pal The Big Cheese at Hollywood's Rumor Rat always play it fair, as we all break stories and link to the sources-- but one of the mainstream organizations were challenging? Huzzahs for Horowicz!
What's most impressive is that Horowicz and crew followed up on our reportage and took the story to the next level:
"When contacted by WNBC-TV News, officials at Harper Collins, the book's publisher, had no comment."
The hacks in Las Vegas should take a cue from a real pro journo like Michael Horowicz.
The valuable diaries written by Hollywood icon Farrah Fawcett during her transcontinental battle against cancer have mysterious gone missing, and accusations are flying about who made off with them.
Farrah, who died June 25th, had jotted her thoughts, experiences and artwork in the faux-leatherbound books over the two years she traveled back and forth to cancer clinics in Germany for the treatments that extended but ultimately failed to save her life from the disease that ravaged her since 2006.
The first of the blank-paged volumes was given to her by producer Craig Nevius in 2007 before her first trip to Germany. Nevius, who produced Farrah's 2005 reality television series, was producing the documentary based on Farrah's video diaries of her cancer fight.
One insider tells Tabloid Baby exclusively: "Farrah wrote in them all the time. They were brown and looked like leather. You can get the book at stationery stores. It's long and rectangle-shaped rather than perfectly square. You open it and it's just empty pages. I saw her with it. Farrah would draw in it-- write her thoughts and stuff like that.
"Apparently, it's gone missing."
This week, HarperCollins publishers announced the forthcoming publication of a related book by Alana Stewart, Farrah's friend who accompanied her to Germany, helmed the video camera for the documentary, and later held out for a producer's credit after the material was sold to NBC and recut under the stewardship of Farrah's companion Ryan O'Neal.
According to the press release, the book My Journey with Farrah is a "tribute" in which "Stewart shares her personal diaries from her three years by Farrah’s side."
"The scuttlebutt is that this book that Alana Stewart is writing-- and you know she's not really 'writing' it; she has a ghostwriter-- contains Farrah's words from her diary," says the insider. "And Redmond is not very happy with Alana's book coming out."
Redmond is Redmond O'Neal, Farrah's son with Ryan O'Neal, who's currently jailed on drug charges. Redmond is presumably Farrah's beneficiary and the owner of the missing diaries.
The Las Vegas blogger, New York Times stringer, gay guide writer and noted comp queen who led the fight to prevent journalistic investigation of Danny Gans' overdose death has moved quickly to be the first Sin City personality to capitalize on the tragic passing of Michael Jackson.
Steve Friess, who wrote earlier this month in the Las Vegas Weekly that "Michael Jackson’s untimely death was the best thing that could ever have happened to Michael Jackson’s music," is producing and promoting a concert at the Palms Hotel & Casino on August 29th called "Las Vegas Celebrates Michael Jackson."
According to Friess' website, the show at the Pearl concert venue will celebrate "the music of the King of Pop on the occasion of his 51st birthday" and is "a benefit concert to raise money for music education in public schools.
"My partner in this venture, 'Jersey Boys' star Erich Bergen, is really the visionary behind all of this as well as the true MJ die-hard, but I jumped in because it seemed like a terrific, timely and dignified way to use this pop-culture moment to do some real good."
Friess is promoting the show with a separate website and on Facebook. He has not announced ticket prices, talent, or what charities will benefit, though he claims: "Every dime is going to the causes we choose -- VH1's Save the Music Foundation is the leading contender at this point."
I’m just going to come right out and say it: Michael Jackson’s untimely death was the best thing that could ever have happened to Michael Jackson’s music.
--Steve Friess, Las Vegas Weekly
Tabloid Baby has contacted Friess several times in an effort to determine what charities will be benefited by the show, the details of his relationship with the Palms (site of his unofficial marriage to and honeymoon with local TV news executive Miles Smith), and whether he finds it unusual for a New York Times reporter to be sponsoring such an event (especially after his aggressive stand against "exploiting" Danny Gans).
He has not responded, beyond referring to our reporter as a "stalker extraordinaire."
Still unclear is why Friess would want to honor Michael Jackson. Last week, Friess floated a story by Gans' manager Chip Lightman that Jackson's brothers were angling to take over Gans' spot at Steve Wynn's Encore Theatre. Last month, he wrote an astounding column in the Weekly that commended his fellow local journos for avoiding coverage of the mysterious death of Strip headliner Gans, noting that "in Las Vegas, when left to our own devices, we do things a little differently."
Don Osmond, PR man, bobsledder and blogger, is a son of show business legend Donny Osmond, whose show with his sister Marie at the Flamingo Hilton on the Vegas strip was produced by Danny Gans (and the type of anti-sin family-friendly shows that jibed well with his Born Again Christian image and following). Donny and his brothers saw their squeaky clean act soar in the the Seventies as a "White Jackson 5." In his weekly column in the Mormon Times, Don the son acknowledges that the "untimely deaths... hit my family pretty hard during the past couple months."
"Interestingly, when our time is up, it's the kind and simple things we are remembered by.
"During Danny Gans' memorial service, personal stories were shared of how he always looked for ways to give back to a community that gave him so much.
"One such story described his daily trip to the theater. He would travel the same route every day, and would regularly visit with a man who had been left homeless.
"Often, Danny would take a couple minutes to stop and chat. During these visits, it became apparent to him that this man had difficulties walking. Danny decided to purchase a wheelchair the following day, and give it to him.
"No one ever heard that story until Danny's memorial service. Why? Because those stories don't sell magazines and newspapers. Those stories are not what the media thinks the public wants to hear.
"...Now I'm not here to vindicate or condemn a celebrity for the way the media portrayed them. And, thankfully, I'm not the judge of salvation -- I leave that job for God.
"However, I don't think any of us realize the private lives of a celebrity until we hear a young girl say, as Paris Jackson said of her father, 'Daddy has been the best father you can ever imagine, and I just want to say I love him so much'..."
Read Don Osmond's entire column here. Amid allegations of doctor shopping and questions about what other drugs Danny Gans had been supplied with, it is yet another compelling argument for the Las Vegas news media to do its job and find justice for him.
A Southwest Airlines 737 headed out of Nashville made an emergency landing in Charlston, West Virginia, Monday, after a hole appeared in the fuselage (in the middle of the cabin at the top of the plane). The cabin lost pressure, the air masks came down, and at kleast one passenger got some footage with his cell phone camera. No one was hurt.
“As far as any word I'd like to get out... words have been spoken and rumors spread, but the real story has yet to be told. 'The Voices In My Head’ is that story."
--RG Ryan, Danny Gans’ ghostwriter
Plans to rush-release Danny Gans’ autobiography, said to be completed the day before he died of a drug overdose on May 1st, have been thrown into chaos as Gans’ family and ghostwriter tangle behind the scenes in secret negotiations that fans had assumed were completed before the first words were typed.
RG Ryan (left), novelist, poet, songwriter and blogger (Snapshots at St. Arbuck’s) says he and the Gans’ family have made a deal that will see the book published— with his name attached.
The book, The Voices In My Head, became an instant part of the Danny Gans legend when Gans’ manager Chip Lightman revealed it was not only in the works but had completed hours before Gans died. However, the veracity of the claim remained in dispute, as Lightman and Gans’ close personal friend, beauty queen-turned TV entertainment reporter Alicia Jacobs, had been working together from the time paramedics pronounced Gans dead to spin the circumstances of his death and life into spiritual and often misleading directions.
The book also played a major role in the Las Vegas news media’s hands-off approach to the unpleasant facts about Gans’ life and death, when-- less than a week after his passing-- the publisher of Las Vegas’ major newspaper, The Review-Journal, made a deal with Gans’ family to publish the book and make a quick killing.
"The family of Danny Gans is moving ahead with plans to have his autobiography published next month. "
Gans' manager, Chip Lightman, and Review-Journal Publisher Sherman Frederick met on Monday, and 'we're crossing the T's as we move forward on a handshake,' Frederick said.
"The R-J is planning a mid-May ad campaign to allow people to reserve copies."'We are proceeding at a fast pace to have the book printed and available in June,' Frederick said.
"Lightman said the book will also be printed as a hard-cover collectors item and hopefully will be available in June.
"The book, tentatively titled 'Voices In My Head,' will be published by Stephens Press, a division of Stephens Media, the parent company of the Review-Journal."
Plans became undone sometime after it was revealed on June 9th that Gans had died of an overdose of hydromorphone, a painkiller known as “drug store heroin.”
The prologue to the book was posted on coauthor RG Ryan’s website, but removed the day after we posted screen grabs of the text.
When we asked at the time why the page had been removed from his site, Ryan referred all questions to Lightman.
Yet Ryan indicated there was more intrigue on July 3rd, when he posted:
“After weeks of not knowing what was going to happen, I have come to an agreement with the estate of Danny Gans.
“It was nine months of hard work (completed the day before he died) and I am so looking forward to his remarkable story being in the hands of the fans he loved, and who loved him in return.
“I’ll try to keep updates happening here and on Twitter regarding a date for publication. “rg”
When we reached Ryan via email this week, he confirmed that the story of Gans’ autobiography being completed hours before his death was not a public relations fabrication:
“Yes, it was finished at eleven AM on Thursday. We were supposed to get together at four Friday afternoon, May 1.”
As for details of the behind-the-scenes holdup, he replied:
“Can't say a whole lot at present as negotiations are at a critical point. I can tell you that the book will be published, I am still credited as co-author and it's going to be a great read for the people who were truly fans of Danny Gans.
“As far as any word I'd like to get out...words have been spoken and rumors spread, but the real story has yet to be told. ‘The Voices In My Head’ is that story.”
"Ryan O’Neal... was so positive and so supportive. ‘You have to do it’, he said emphatically. 'There will be lots of people writing books about her. Yours will be the truth, and it will be a wonderful tribute to her. You have to do it!’"
--quote attributed to Alana Stewart in press release
We told you on July 5th that Farrah Fawcett's friend Alana Stewart was the first among the tragic actress' inner circle to cash in with a book based on her proximity to Farrah in her final days.
Now, eighteen days after Farrah's passing, with this press release from HarperCollins Publishers, the cat is officially out of the bag:
10 East 53rd Street
New York, N.Y
10022-5200
News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
William Morrow to Publish Alana Stewart’s Tribute to Farrah Fawcett and the Actress’ Valiant 3-Year Fight Against Cancer
New York, NY (July 13, 2009) – William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, today announced that it will publish the diary of Alana Stewart, actress, former model and close friend of Farrah Fawcett. A portion of the proceeds from this book will go to The Farrah Fawcett Foundation to support cancer research. Stewart, a friend of Fawcett for more than thirty years, spent much of her time caring for Fawcett during her three year battle with cancer, which tragically ended Fawcett’s life on June 25, 2009. Stewart helped capture Fawcett’s tireless struggle against cancer in the documentary, “Farrah’s Story”, where Stewart worked as both a videographer and producer.
In the book, titled MY JOURNEY WITH FARRAH: A Story of Life, Love, and Friendship, which goes on sale August 11, 2009, Stewart shares her personal diaries from her three years by Farrah’s side. A celebration of their incredible bond, the power of Farrah’s spirit, and the memories from their thirty years together, this book is a tribute to the award-winning actress and pop culture icon. Containing never-before-seen photos and deeply intimate revelations on life and spirituality, MY JOURNEY WITH FARRAH is a love letter to friendship, filled with the honesty and emotion of their three decades together.
“When the idea to do this book was presented to me, I thought long and hard about it,” says Stewart. “In fact, I agonized over the decision. Now, was I doing the right thing by sharing many of our private moments? Farrah had originally encouraged me to write this book. It was her idea. However, while I was contemplating my decision, her health took a turn for the worse, and I could no longer seek her advice. So I turned to Ryan O’Neal. He was so positive and so supportive. ‘You have to do it’, he said emphatically. ‘There will be lots of people writing books about her. Yours will be the truth, and it will be a wonderful tribute to her. You have to do it!’ My hope is that people will find this book to be a heartfelt tribute to my friend of thirty years and her valiant fight against cancer. I also hope that it will be helpful and supportive to all of those people who have loved and cared for someone close to them with a lingering illness. I realized while I was putting it together that it was a way of keeping Farrah’s memory alive, not only for me but for everyone who reads this book.”
“There is nobody better able to tell this story of life, love, and friendship than Alana Stewart,” says Lisa Sharkey, Senior Vice President & Director of the Creative Development Group for HarperCollins. “What Alana learns after putting her life on hold to help Farrah will forever teach us that gratitude and selflessness are more important than anything else. This book will touch the hearts of millions of Farrah's fans, leaving a lasting impression about why compassion is the greatest gift a friend can give.”
The book was acquired by Lisa Sharkey, who bought world rights through Frank Weimann of The Literary Group International. Matt Harper, Editor in the Creative Development Group for HarperCollins, will edit the book.
Word that Ryan Seacrest signed a well-deserved $45 million deal to host three more seasons of American Idol has apparently led to a barrage of Brian Dunkleman jokes on Twitter, the radio and across the universe (Tabloid Baby pal Nili informs us that "Howard Stern was making fun of Brian Dunkleman on his show today... Artie Lange said he was doing stand up in Peoria and Howard said he was cutting coupons out of the Pennysaver...") Dunkleman was Seacrest's cohost on the first season of American idol, but quit the show-- yes, he quit-- because he thought it was "mean to kids."
On the surface, Dunkleman has not achieved the same level of success as his former cohost, but he has carried on an is sitting on a multimillion dollar goldmine in the form of a scripted comedy series about his travails, mishaps and public persona called American Dunkleman. Check out the trailer above and, agent and network pals, set up a meeting.
Matt Drudge and the team over at The Drudge Report make their millions by linking to other news organizations' stories so lazy and inexperienced news assignment editors can have something to cover and right wing talk radio show producers can have topics to pretend to be poutraged about.
But what about Bruno? On Sunday, Drudge linked to a Reuters report that folks in Austria think that Sacha Baron Cohen's new comedy about a flamboyantly stereotypical Austrian gay television personality is pretty funny.
Drudge gave it the headline:
Austrians say outrageous Bruno is funny.
Yet this morning, someone came into the Drudge office and changed the headline to
Austrians say outrageous Bruno isn't funny.
Again, for the record, the Reuters report says that
"Austrians say outrageous Bruno is pretty funny."
Perhaps it was confusion over the word "ist," which translates to "be or "exist"-- or "is"! Or maybe "pretty funny" doesn't count as "funny" this morning.
Looking for a juicy international scandal? Our mates in Australia tell us the dust still hasn't settled in the mysterious death last November of beloved music exec Peter Ikin, who dropped dead at 62 in a Paris hotel room-- possibly after a fall down a flight of stairs-- shortly after marrying a mysterious young Frenchman named Alexandre Despallieres who quickly cremated ole "PI" and poured the former evidence into an urn.
Now it turns out that young Alexandre not only got PI's ashes, he's also got his entire estate thanks to a "secret" will-- and his Aussie mates and journos alike smell somethng fishy.
"Despallieres, who told Ikin he was an internet billionaire dying from a brain tumour, has moved into Ikin's £3 million ($A5.8 million) Chelsea pad and emptied £2 million from his Channel Island bank accounts.
"Last week he was spending some of the money on a new Porsche for his personal assistant, Jeremy Bilien, home after a recent stint in London's famous celebrity Priory Hospital.
"Ikin and Despallieres had exchanged vows at Chelsea Town Hall on October 10. The executive died on November 12.
"Ikin's Sydney solicitor Peter Court, with whom he had lodged a 2002 will which did not mention Despallieres, only found out about the second will last month.
"It was signed on August 7, 2008 in Paris and not witnessed by a lawyer but by Mr Bilien and another friend of Despalliere's, Vincent Bray.
"Mr Court said he was deeply concerned to discover that the UK courts had already granted probate of the second will to Despallieres.
"In the 2002 will, drawn up by Mr Court, Ikin left his wealth to two Sydney charities, friends, his god children and his only blood relative, nephew Father Garry Perritt, a Sydney Catholic priest...
"The story of the millionaire showbiz identity, his young lover and their rock star life is one of passion and tragedy.
"Ikin was vice-chairman of the ARIA awards, joining Warner in 1975 and also working for EMI. Respected by the stars whose huge egos he managed to handle, including Fleetwood Mac, his friends knew him as warm-hearted and generous. He split his year between London and his Elizabeth Bay penthouse in Sydney.
"He loved travelling in style and always wore his signature gold Cartier bracelet and watch.
"When he first met Despallieres in 1988, Ikin had the money and the rock star contacts to make the world their playground, wooing the then 20-year-old in the heat of a Parisian summer and on the Californian coast in San Francisco.
"During their whirlwind romance, they met Ikin's friends who happened to be stars such as Elton John and Stewart...
"Taking delivery of the Porsche last week outside the Chelsea apartment in exclusive Cheyne Place, Despallieres, 42, laughed at the suggestion he had a brain tumour.
"He said he had been suffering from HIV for 23 years. Actress Britt Ekland, a friend of Ikin's through Rod Stewart's former manager Billy Gaff, has been helping care for him, taking him for short walks..."
We told you yesterday about driving into the crime scene left behind by the "The Buckshot Bandits" on Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley. If there's any question about the seriousness of the story, one of our readers dispelled the notion with the comment:
"was not funny if you were there... i was there with my kids not funny at all."
As Michael Mann's bank-robbing John Dillinger tribute, Public Enemies, plays its second weekend in local theatres, police say they responded yesterday to reports of the robberies committed within minutes of each other, first at 12:10 pm at a Citibank in the 22000 block of Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills, then a half-hour later down the street at a US Bank in the 17000 block of Ventura Boulevard in Encino-- mere yards away from Michael Jackson's family estate, where media had been camped out for more than a week.
Witnesses describe the robbers as two Latino men in their 20s, wearing sunglasses, hats and casual clothes. They threatened customers individually, telling them to get on the floor, robbed at least one and pointed a gun at one person's head.
At the Citibank, one of the crooks showed a device he said was a bomb and threatened to set it off if the tellers did not give them money. They made similar threats but didn't show it off at the US Bank.
The robbers got the cash and took off in a vehicle, managing to escape road blocks set up by police, FBI agents and the California Highway Patrol.
The LAPD bomb squad called to the scene used a robotic device to detonate the alleged bomb at the Citibank branch. Cops won't say if there were any explosives.
Investigators believe some of the same men used fake bombs to rob a US Bank in Sherman Oaks on May 1 and First Bank in the 17000 block of Ventura Boulevard on May 29th. Footage from the First Bank surveillance cameras shows two robbers who fit the description of the men who robbed the Citibank and US Bank yesterday. Surveillance footage from the May 1 robbery shows it was committed by a pair that included a man in his 50s, (in photos above) leading investigators to believe there may be a group at work.
The bomb squad responded to both May robberies and detonated devices, which proved harmless, she said.
Persons with information are asked to contact investigators at 888.226.8443.
How widespread has the practice of doctor-shopping become in Las Vegas? Will the investigation into Jackson's prescription drug abuse lead back to the Las Vegas medical community, given Jackson spent a good deal of time here in recent years? Will the intense scrutiny uncover more leads in Danny Gans' drug-related death?
--Norm Clarke, Las Vegas Review Journal
Norm Clarke of The Las Vegas Review-Journal has brought up the subject of "doctor shopping" in the Danny Gans death case. The gossip columnist and compulsive Twitterer buries the reference in story about Michael Jackson, but his column reveals once again that Las Vegas journalists are covering up a huge story bubbling under the drug overdose ten weeks ago of the biggest star on the Strip and the most unique entertainer in the country.
Norm's column, in which he interviews an anonymous doctor who claims Jackson's handlers once tried to intimidate him into prescribing painkillers under someone else's name," directly connects Jackson's apparent overdose death to Gans'.
Norm also extends the accusation of "doctor shopping" (requesting care from multiple physicians, often simultaneously, without making efforts to coordinate care, usually due to a patient's addiction to prescription drugs) in Las Vegas to at least one "high profile casino executive."
The column is all the more extraordinary for several reasons:
* The exact cause of Jackson's death won't be known for weeks, until toxicology reports are completed;
* The Las Vegas news media had refused to speculate about or investigate Gans' untimely death, claiming they could do nothing until toxcicology reports were completed;
* The talk of the town in Vegas was and is Gans' alleged use of steroids and prescription drugs;
* No one in the mainstream Las Vegas news media opened the floodgates of revelations about Gans once it was revealed that the supposedly Born Again Christian former athlete had died from a dose of hydromorphone, otherwise known as Dilaudid or "drug store heroin."
Leave it to the gossip columnist.
Just as his jaunty eyepatch is key to his image, Norm's candid reporting is a hallmark of his work. As a gossip columnist, he is known to plant unconfirmed items from publicists-- or, in the Danny Gans case, from Gans' manager and close female friend who were on a campaign to mislead the public about the musical impressionist's lifestyle-- but his job also frees him to write whatever he wants to fill the space (after the coroner's report on Gans was released, he was the only one to copy our report that Gans was now linked to Vegas legend Elvis Presley though Dilaudud).
This morning he writes about a doctor who claims he was called to Jackson's suite at the Mirage Hotel & Casino in 2003 (owned at the time by Steve Wynn, and the home of Danny Gans' show ): "The doctor's experience with Jackson raises several questions: How widespread has the practice of doctor-shopping become in Las Vegas? Will the investigation into Jackson's prescription drug abuse lead back to the Las Vegas medical community, given Jackson spent a good deal of time here in recent years? Will the intense scrutiny uncover more leads in Danny Gans' drug-related death?
"'Doctor-shopping 'has become very common,' he said.
"The meeting with Jackson wasn't the first time the physician felt pressured to accommodate a VIP.
"He treated a high profile casino executive who wanted sleeping pills. A week later, the executive wanted a refill and a week after that he requested another refill 'and I said no -- and my services are no longer required.'
"The sad thing, he said, is that someone else filled the void.
"'It's Elvis Presley all over again.'
Though we've criticized Norm for the recent Gans factoids he spread, the joy with which he covers his beat and his excitement over getting a scoop-- see his constant, compulsive Twitter posts-- sets him apart from the corrupt editors and scaredy-cat reporters who are content to keep their heads down so they don't join the ranks of the laid-off.
The speculation in Las Vegas-- and knowledge among many reporters and editors-- is that Danny Gans got his prescription drugs from more than one doctor, as well as from members of his entourage.
Norm's single sentence in the nineteenth paragraph of a gossip column, could be the spark that sets off the explosive coverage that will blow this lid off off a scandal that goes far beyond the hypocrisy of Danny Gans.
The realization of what slipped through on the weekend will surely cause editor Tom Mitchell to tear off his three-beaver Resistol, toss it on the floor and jump up and down on it, yelling, "Dag nab it! Dad burn it!"
Norm's column could also convince a reporter to interview a doctor or musician under the cover of anonymity.
It could even lead to some real independent journalism in a city where journalism isn't merely dying, but slowly killing itself with painkillers.
At 68 years old, Ryan O'Neal is playing a role better suited for someone far younger than his age. Last seen playing the star-crossed lover after the death of his on-again, off-again girlfriend Farrah Fawcett, the hot-tempered actor was in a courtroom in Malibu today, facing a judge and looking and being treated like a seedy teenager at a drug progress report hearing. O'Neal and his son Redmond were arrested and charged with felony drug possession last September after cops found methamphetamines in his home. O'Neal pleaded guilty in January and was ordered to complete a drug program. The judge today said he was doing very well, especially in light of the pressures accompanying Farrah's passing. O'Neal's (and Farrah's) son is still in jail.
Hey, if we were going to set off on a bank robbery spree in Los Angeles this week it probably would have been on Tuesday, when thousands of police were hanging around downtown at the Staples Center, but maybe the crooks who robbed two banks in the Valley today knew better. We ran into the aftermath near the intersection of Topanga Canyon and Ventura Boulevards in Woodland Hills this afternoon, as police had the whole area evacuated and cordoned off because the robbers had left behind a package they'd claimed was a bomb. Turns out it was our encounter with the Buckshot Bandits, named for the long-barreled rifles and sawed-off shotguns they tote. Cops like to give bank robbers nicknames. It supposedly helps get them caught. Maybe they should call these guys the Buckshot Bombers, seeing they also left fake devices after two bank jobs in May. At today's second heist in Encino, not far from the Jackson family compound, one of them also put a gun to a customer's head.
Our dedicated coverage of the overdose death of Danny Gans and the Las Vegas news media's failure to investigate it like a truly responsible, curious, resourceful and independent entity has begun to pay off.
The writer who attacked us publicly for investigating the mysterious passing of the musical impressionist, is not only disclosing his connections to the heart of the Danny Gans death coverup-- he's paying-- perhaps unconsciously-- tribute to Tabloid Baby, by copying our style!
Steve Friess, a local stringer for The New York Times and other national publications, best known as author of the Gay Vegas tourist guide, went on the attack against Tabloid Baby the week after Gans' untimely death, calling us "beneath contempt, vermin and a Perez Hilton wannabe"-- all for trying to get a few answers about why a clean-living, athletic, Christian family man who billed himself as the antithesis of Vegas sin would die in his sleep at 52!
And that was only the start of our troubles with Steve Friess continued. After we ran his photo, he contacted our web host in an attempt to have our site shut down and harassed us to the point that we were forced to use fascimiles!
It didn't take long for tipsters to clue us in as to why he was on the Gans coverup campaign: Steve Friess is in an unofficial marriage with Miles Smith, executive producer of KVBC News, where Danny Gans close friend Alicia Jacobs is employed as an entertainment reporter. While the local media waited for an official toxicology report to confirm hat they knew about Danny Gans' drug use, the former beauty queen was working tirelessly with Gans' manager to cloud the truth, claiming they knew Gans was clean as a whistle.
Steve Friess later wrote a mind-boggling defense of the local news media's failures in the Gans case, yet apparently, or his freelance editors, have decided full disclosure would be most healthy for his future. In one of his latest postings on his Vegas-promoting blogsite, Friess fesses up to his Alicia Jacobs bond: "Finally, it must be said that my pal (and Miles' KVBC colleague) Alicia Jacobs provided some really cool coverage via Twitter. Say what you want about her as a journalist-- it seems to me she occupies a unique netherland between being a reporter and being a celebrity who uses her connections to take the public into worlds we don't usually get to go..."
Anyone notice the wording of Friess' condemnation of his pal's journalistic credibility?
Here's another clue: "Another tip of the hat is due to the Review-Journal's Jason Bracelin and Mike Blasky..."
Our readers know that the word "pal"-- as in "Tabloid Baby pal"-- has been part of the Tabloid Baby lexicon for years.
Steve Friess might shout that our coverage has had no influence in Las Vegas, but it's evident we've had a major influence on him! And for that, we offer our troubled pal a tip of the Tabloid Babyhat!
Ten weeks ago, Danny Gans was the biggest name in las Vegas. The musical impressionist's image towered over the Las Vegas Strip on electronic billboards. Hs name seemed to be on every taxicab in town. The man who did imitations of George Burns and Kermit The Frog was synonymous with the city and its future.
Today, it's as if Danny Gans never existed. A visit to the city finds videos of musical impressionist Wayne Brady and Gordie Brown (doing an Elvis impression as corny as anything Gans would serve up) playing at the arrivals section of McCarran Airport and Beyonce on the billboards of The Wynn Encore Hotel & Casino where Gans had only recently begun a long residency when he was found dead of a Dilaudid overdose on May 1st.
At first glance, the young man who walked onstage at the Staples Center to lead off the singing of We Are The World appeared to be the extraterrestrial alien visitor Michael Jackson attempted to turn himself into. With his doe eyes, deer-in-the-headlights expression and reptile skin jacket, he could have come from the Black Lagoon.
Was he one of Jacko's backing singers? This brother from another planet certainly made an impression.
Los Angeles freeways came to a halt as Michael Jackson's casket was transported across town to the Staples Center this morning. But is Jacko's body inside that box? We know his brain is not inside the body but are Jacko's remains actually undergoing plastination preservation for a future exhibition. The corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com is insisting its "sources" say they know "100%" for sure that Jacko is inside the golden casket. But who believes them?
In the eleven days since Michael Jackson's death, the fallen idol's brain has gotten more attention than his dancing feet or spotted genitalia. Great speculation and concern has been expressed about the organ being removed from the inside of his head, as if the process was unusual in the case of an unexplained drug overdose and not common to every autopsy. In Jacko's case, the brain will not be returned to its home behind Jacko's scarred face in time for his memorial and possible burial, as it will be needed for a couple more weeks as tests continue to find exactly what deadly cocktail of pharmaecuticals killed him.
In a bizarre twist, Jacko's only major movie role was in The Wiz. He played The Scarecrow, who did not have a brain.
Michael Jackson's memorial at the Staples Center tomorrow offers another lesson to the Las Vegas media after its shameful lack of coverage or investigation of the drug overdose death of local superstar Danny Gans. With thousands of free tickets being distributed to Jacko fans, notice that none among of the world's journalists covering the event has expressed amazement that the public has been invited to the service, as some Las Vegas columnists did (dismissing them as "seat fillers") when local fans were invited to Gans' memorial at the Encore Theatre.
The overwhelming expression of admiration and sympathy for Jacko-- and the ability of the public to compartmentalize or dismiss the overwhelming possibility that he was a paedophile who destroyed the life of more than one young boy-- shows that the reporting of his drug habits and faults did not diminish, but in fact, burnished his legend.
The legend of Danny Gans, however, has been permanently dimmed by the actions of the Fourth Estate of Las Vegas-- small timers in a city with a larger cultural shadow than they could possibly understand, trembling in the shadows of the casino magnates and corporate high rollers-- who kept a very suspicious lid on the circumstances of his death, and what is now generally agreed to be, secret life.
One reason appears to be corporate pressure to maintain Gans' previously untarnished image, as evidenced by an article in the Las Vegas Sun this weekend. "New isn't all bad for Las Vegas companies" noted as the leading "positive" example among "layoffs, corporate bankruptcies, lawsuits and commercial loan defaults":
"Cox Communications stepped up and committed to a five-year sponsorship of the 'Danny Gans' Partee Fore Kids!'
"The First Tee of Southern Nevada announced that the 15th Annual Danny Gans’ Partee Fore Kids! will continue in honor of the late entertainer and will be held on Monday, Nov. 2. Cox is sponsoring the tournament to ensure the event will continue in Gans’ name and continue to raise funds to support children in Southern Nevada.
"The tournament draws entertainers and athletes to raise money for The First Tee of Southern Nevada and its Danny Gans Junior Golf Academy. The 2009 Celebrity Pro-Am Memorial Event will honor Gans and will be hosted by Strip headliner Rita Rudner. It will be held at DragonRidge Country Club in Henderson.
"Several years ago, Gans joined The First Tee of Southern Nevada to create the Danny Gans Junior Golf Academy (DGJGA) where all kids are given the opportunity to affordably learn the game of golf and the positive core values that it instills. The DGJGA is operated by The First Tee of Southern Nevada, an organization that positively impacts, through the game of golf, the lives of thousands of youth in Southern Nevada. "'Our family looks forward to the ongoing outpouring of support for this wonderful community program, which enables young people a chance to learn the great game of golf, which Danny loved so much,' said Gans' widow, Julie. 'It is a sport that helps develop sportsmanship, character and discipline while building potential, encouraging confidence and individuality. We, as did Danny, value the opportunities this program offers the children of the community, their families and what it will mean to their future, whatever path they take.'
"'Danny was an incredible entertainer who was also very dedicated to helping our community, especially children,' said Steve Schorr, vice president of public and government affairs for Cox Las Vegas. 'We wanted to make sure his legacy continued and that children would be able to benefit from the shining example Danny set for years to come.'"
The First Tee is not a religious organization, but relies on corporate partnership and sponsorship, just as the corporations rely on The First Tee to provide them with goodwill publicity.
More valuable dead than alive? Danny Gans is turning out to be like Michael Jackson in more ways than one.
The First Tee's corporate friends (click image to enlarge)
Another connection between overdose victims Michael Jackson and Danny Gans is being floated this evening in the form of unsubstantiated gossip from Gans' former manager Chip Lightman on the Las Vegas blog of New York Times freelancer and comp queen Steve Friess:
"Chip Lightman, the late Danny Gans' manager, informed me today that he's been contacted by an envoy for Michael Jackson's surviving brothers about the prospect of a permanent Jackson Brothers show in the vacant Encore showroom at Wynn Las Vegas."
Is Chip Lightman to be believed?
In the days following Gans' untimely death on May 1st, Lightman and Gans' close personal friend, beauty queen turned TV entertainment reporter Alicia Jacobs clouded the truth about Gans' drug use and worked overtime to mythologize him as a heroic, religious figure with stories that were either shrugged off as exaggeration or retracted. Meanwhile, Friess began a smear and harassment campaign aimed at stopping TabloidBaby.com from investigating or reporting on the mysterious circumstances of Gans death.
It was later revealed that Jacobs works for Friess' unofficial same-sex marriage partner at the local NBC affiliate and was the "celebrity guest" at their nonbinding gay wedding at the Palms. (The group's curiously close and ethically questionable relationship was explored here in a post subtitled The Danny Gans daisy chain.)
Oddly, while floating Lightman's latest Barnumesque blather without any confirmation, Friess (above left) dismisses it in the same posting:
"Lightman noted that the call was extremely preliminary and that it's unclear exactly what the Jacksons have in mind... Lightman also noted that there's no telling how Wynn management might react, but I suspect the answer would be a 'HELL NO.'"
While it's understandable that Lightman would be looking to be involved with the act that ultimately takes over Gans' spot at the Encore Theatre, and should be given a pass for trying to float an idea in front of his boss, Steve Wynn, Friess' role in spreading the rumour brings to mind his involvement in spreading false rumours about Gans' death in order throw journalistic investigators off the scent of painkillers and steroids.
Let's see how long it takes this one to make The New York Times.
Farrah Fawcett was laid to rest at Westwood Memorial Park, the small but celebrity-packed graveyard, hidden away behind a movie theatre and office buildings off Wilshire Blvd., not far from the condo where she spent her final months.
According to the Adventures in Grave Hunting blog, Farrah's grave "is located in a prominent garden plot on the south side of the cemetery, across the lawn from another famous blonde... Marilyn Monroe"-- and next to Merv Griffin.
The cemetery is the final resting place for other tragic beauties including Natalie Wood. Minnie Ripperton, Heather O'Rourke and Dominique Dunne.
Who will be the first to cash in on the death of Farrah Fawcett? Less than a week after the brave icon's funeral, her close friend Alana Stewart is first out of the gate and well ahead of the pack with a book based on the Farrah's cancer journey journal that was supposed to be the basis for her cancer documentary.
"My Journey with Farrah: What I've Learned about Life, Love, and Friendship" has shown up on Amazon.com with a healthy discount off its hardcover list price of $23.99.
The title is set to be pblished on August 25th, the two-month anniversary of Farrah's death.
Alana Stewart accompanied Farrah through much of her cancer battle, traveling with her to German cancer clinics and running the video camera as Farrah documented the cutting edge treatments that gave her hope and extended her life by years after doctors in the States told her there was nothing more they could do. Working with her longtime confidante and producer Craig Nevius, Farrah shaped the footage into a "cancer journal" that explored the question of why lifesaving treataments are not available in America and beyond the reach of most all but the very rich.
Farrah sold the project to NBC. When her condition took a turn for the worse and she began to fade from consciousness, her longtime on-and-off lover Ryan O'Neal took control of her affairs, forced Nevius off the project and, with the help of producers from NBC Dateline commandeered the recutting of the documentary into a maudlin, morbid entertainment called "Farrah's Story" (a reference to his 1970 film, Love Story).
Alana Stewart reportedly held up the project, demanding a producer's credit and a fat payoff, before the special aired.
We reported on June 24th, the day before Farrah's death that Alana was turning Farrah's journals into a book of her own:
"Farrah's journals, we're told, are being turned into a book by Alana Stewart... The book, we're told, will be announced after Farrah's passing, 'for maximum effect.'"
At the reception following Farrah's funeral on Tuesday, Ryan O'Neal confirmed that a sequel to the high-rating Farrah's Story is in the works. Cameras filmed the funeral. It's still not known whether, as feared, O'Neal also filmed Farrah's passing.
There's much speculation tonight as to why Sarah Palin chose the start of a holiday weekend (when traditionally fewer people are paying attention) to announce in a hasty, ill-prepared, rambling and mysteriously-worded news conference that she's quitting her job as governor of Alaska at the end of the month. Some say she'll begin rebuilding her image and powerbase so she can run for President. We like the theory that she's vamoosing as quickly as possible in advance of a bombshell scandal. Preferably a sex scandal. Proof of that affair. Or a sex tape.
Her presser was stranger and more evasive than Governor Mark Sanford's. Let's wait and see.
The press conference for the Michael Jackson memorial next door at the Staples Center delayed the ceremony at The Grammy Museum proclaiming today as Ritchie Valens Day in Los Angeles, fifty years after the great Latino rocker from Pacoima was killed in a plane crash with Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper.
Chris Montez (center), subject of the upcoming nonfiction film by our pals at Frozen Pictures, talks with legendary guitarist Tommy Allsup of Buddy Holly & The Crickets (who flipped a coin with Ricthie Valens for the last seat on that plane), and Stan Ross, legendary engineer from the legendary Gold Star recording studios, where Chris recorded his hit Let's Dance.
While plans were announced for Michael Jackson's memorial service at the Staples Center, a few doors down at the Grammy Museum, a Jacko exhibit that had recently closed is back and amazing fans when they hear each jacket weighed fifteen pounds.
Too much death. Too much celebrity death. Too many people we know. Now we find today that death has taken one of Tabloid Baby's most longstanding and talented pals.
Steve Brennan is dead of cancer at 57.
Cancer.
Enough already.
Steve's been a reporter and editor at The Hollywood Reporter for more than twenty years. He's not only been one of the best, most hardworking and accurate entertainment writers around, he's one of the most colorful characters of the Tabloid Baby generation. He wrote about us. Put our names in headlines. He could write a story. he could drink with the best of them (and we were). He could spin a yarn. And he could sing a song. Steve was from Dublin. He got his start as a beat reporter in Ireland, covering the troubles in the North. Two years ago, Steve and his wife Bernadette O'Neill published "Emeralds in Tinseltown: The Irish in Hollywood," a book about Irish screen legends. Steve was a legend. Steve was a gem.
Is the Drug Enforcement Administration entering the investigation into the drug overdose of Las Vegas superstar entertainer Danny Gans?
After all, the musical impressionist died at 53 after ingesting a powerful opiate he did not have a prescription for— "drug store heroin” that was given to him by an associate or pusher, or acquired by a doctor under an assumed name. Such illegal activities are currently being investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department in the apparent drug overdose death of superstar entertainer Michael Jackson. The LAPD has reportedly asked federal drug agents to help them find out who was feeding painkillers to 50-year-old Jacko.
But will the enablers, pushers and Dr. Feelgoods who helped grease Danny Gans’ skids to oblivion at 53 be brought to justice?
Not very damn likely.
CASE CLOSED
Police in Henderson, Nevada closed the case on the same day Jacko died, despite glaring clues and questions raised by their incident report, and after eight weeks in which the lead detective apparently did the same thing the corrupted Las Vegas news media did: sat back and waited for a politician to give him the news.
We decided to give the Las Vegas news media a week to let the police report sink in, and react in some investigative way to the fact that police closed the case with minimal investigation. With the events unfolding in the Michael Jackson in such stark contrast to the secrecy and palm-greasing so evident in the Gans aftermath—and the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which still has not reported what its journalists know about Danny Gans’ habits and lifestyle, been reprinting Associated Press reports that detail allegations and findings about Jackson’s drug abuse (even though the toxicology report is still pending), they’d be bound to come up with something.
They didn’t.
Danny Gans is past history in Las Vegas now, swept under the sand like those bodies in the desert. The Vegas journalism ambassador and symbol of all that’s wrong in “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” local media scene, national freelancer, comp queen and Gay Vegas author Steve Friess (above right) celebrates Jacko’s death in today's Las Vegas Weekly, stating that “Michael Jackson’s untimely death was the best thing that could ever have happened to Michael Jackson’s music” because “a dead Michael Jackson provides show producers in Vegas… no more surprises.“
Enough (for now) with these bozos with buffet coupons.
NEVER MIND THE 911 CALL
Ponder this line from the skimpy police report typed up by Detective Chad Mitchell, of the Henderson Police Department, the lead investigator in the Danny Gans death case:
“Julia told me at the direction of the Henderson Police she had gathered and placed all of her husband’s medications on a table located directly outside of the master bedroom doorway so that they could be examined.
"Henderson Crime Scene Analyst Jennie Ayers then responded to the scene to complete the procesing and collection of evidence...”
"Julia" is better known as Danny Gans' wife Julie, and with all due respect to her, in the case of a premature death in the initial hours of investigation, especially one as high-profile as that of Danny Gans, the wife is often regarded as “the first suspect.”
Yet in this case, she was allowed to go alone into what we’d assume would be the bathroom, and come out on her own with a selection of medications to be examined.
What, if anything, did Julie Gans choose to not show the police officers?
Detective Chad Mitchell also indicates he did nio further investigation while awaiting the autopsy:
"ENTERED DATE 5/5/2009
“Upon conducting the autopsy, (pathologist) Dr. (Gary) Telgenhoff was unable to determine the cause of death and told me that he would need to wait for the toxicology results to rule the cause and manner of Daniel’s death. Dr. Telgenhoff did not feel that foul play was involved in the death. This case will remain open until the results of the autopsy are available.”
By all indications, Detective Chad Mitchell did what the Las Vegas news media did in the six weeks between Danny Gans’ mysterious, untimely death and the Mike Murphy’s press conference: He waited.
When Tabloid Baby’s man in Las Vegas tried to obtain a copy of the police report on June 22nd, he was told, and we broke the news, that the case was still open. As it turned out, Detective Chad Mitchell was not out doing shoe leather research all that time-- he was on vacation. At our prodding, he typed out the final entries in the report and Henderson police released the report and the long-withheld 911 tape on Thursday, June 25th, only to be overshadowed by the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson the same day.
"ENTERED DATE 6/25.2009
“The Clark County Coroner has ruled the death iof Daniel Gans an accident. The case will be closed non-criminal.”
The autopsy on Michael Jackson was inconclusive, as well, but in the week since his body was found unresponsive in his bedroom, journalists and police alike have worked to uncover leads in the case without waiting for a toxicology report from the coroner. Friends and associates have been interviewed, property has been searched, and most important, the hunt is on for the person or persons who supplied Michael Jackson with the drugs that killed him.
One of Danny Gans’s doctors stepped forward shakily after the coroner’s findings to insist he wasn’t currently prescribing Danny Gans any hydromorphone and that his own search of computer records showed no doctor in Nevada or California was either.
Despite the doctor’s cockamamie single-bullet theory that Gans was done in by an accidental dose from a five-year-old prescription, the revelation should have been enough for Detective Chad Mitchell to strap on his shoulder holster and do some investigating.
Detective Chad Mitchell’s not talking. Neither is the crime scene analyst. But it has been stated that Julie Gans and her family do not want to know more, and do not want the public to know more, than the scant details released by the coroner.
JUSTICE
From the start, we've been talking about "justice" for Danny Gans. It doesn't matter that he didn't practice the clean life he preached. He was an entertainment giant who employed many people, added a new facet to the Las Vegas scene and chose cannily to market himself to two of the biggest niche audiences in the Western world: tourists and evangelical Christians.
It's the police's job to find out who gave him the oxymorphone that killd him-- as well as all the other drugs in his body that the politician coroner wouldn't reveal. It's the job of the news media to be the watchdogs and sniff out evidence on their own.
For now, there is no justice for Danny Gans. His killers remain at large.
We'll leave it to the mayor of Las Vegas, and his words on the day Danny Gans died-- and the comments from our readers on the day the Dany Gans case was closed:
"He lived the life he preached. It was always a clean show, it was always a wholesome show. That's the way he really lived. That's unusual in and of itself. Most people are a little bit phony about that, but Danny Gans was not a phony,"
--Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman
Anonymous said... I find it odd in the 911 call that the wife is clearly talking directly into the phone (not on speaker)-- how was she able to do that while using both hands to do chest compression? Couldn't hear any of the children's voices or the son's when they were moving him from the bed to the floor but you can hear her direct in the phone when she is compressing with both hands - huh?? No background voices, no emotion, very odd.
Thursday, June 25, 2009 5:02:00 PM PDT
Anonymous said... I know people respond differently to a crisis, but honestly, could she sound any more bored or like this was routine? Thursday, June 25, 2009 7:52:00 PM PDT
Anonymous said... You mean that the Gans death gets a pass on drug enablers, unlike Michael Jackson ? Wow, the Vegas Press and Police really CAN be bought off by casino owners ! In the wake of the Michael Jackson death, they are going after the drug "enablers" or "drug peddler" that surrounded Michael and caused his death. This is a manslaughter charge in any state...except, apparently, in Nevada. ...It is a disgrace that this case is not being investigated.
Concert promoter AEG says this video shows Michael Jackson shortly before his death, slow-moving and lip-synching, in one of his last rehearsals at the Staples Center for his doomed London concerts.
The Saturday, July 4th presentation of the acclaimed, award-winning documentary about legendary pop satirist, wit and Monty Python cohort Neil Innes will be the Australian premiere of the film from our pals at Frozen Pictures that's received accolades and standing ovations as its made its way across America through film festivals, special event screenings and Beatles fan conventions since its premiere at the American Cinematheque's Mods & Rockers Film Festival last summer.
The 12th annual Revelation Perth Fest is perhaps the most respected film festival in all of Australia. One film reviewer writes: "Under the curatorial leadership of author Jack Sargeant for the second year running, Revelation aims to bring new, weird, interesting and unusual features and documentaries that wouldn't otherwise get screened in cinemas to Perth audiences."
There's particular excitement about The Seventh Python-- enough that the musical comedy doco is getting two screenings at prime times. Along with the Saturday, July 4th showing at 7:15 pm, The Seventh Python will also be screened on Friday, July 10th at 7:15 pm.
click photo to enlarge
One reason for the buzz Down Under can be found on the Festival website: "Alongside many interviews The Seventh Python features numerous versions of Innes’ songs including the Australian version of The Philosopher’s Song."
Brett Hudson, who was treated with Farrah Fawcett at German cancer clinics and whose documentary film project about alternative treatments has been dedicated to her memory, shares his thoughts about Farrah and her funeral yesterday at his popular blog page on The Klinik movie website.
Hudson writes:
"I went to say goodbye to my friend Farrah yesterday. Her funeral service was beautiful... It was strange for me in a way. Farrah and I were both fighting for our lives at the same time and she's not here anymore. When we were in Germany at The Klinik, I was only three months in to my disease-- a rookie, so to speak. Farrah had been battling her cancer for over a year. In our six-hour drive to Frankfurt, her strength, determination and fearlessness were an inspiration to me in fighting this hideous disease.
"Farrah said to me, 'Never, ever give up. Keep fighting'..."
Comic and sci fi publisher, distributor and retailer who gave first break to many great names, a creator of the Comic-Com comic book-pop culture convention, of a heart attack at 83 (Comic-Com founder Shel Dorf died earlier this month)
"Sad, funny, undeniably authentic, Tabloid Baby tells the tale of what befell too much of mainstream television news over the past couple of decades as the bad drove out the good."
--Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes
"Burt was there for the birthing of tabloid, he became the heart of the genre, and now he's written the bible."
--Maury Povich
"... the boozy, Vegas-stomping, strip-club-hopping, Sammy Davis Jr.–fawning life he describes, in vomit-in-the-office-trash-can detail, is emulated by mainstream media personalities today!"
--LA Weekly
"...a potpourri blog... a mash-up of retro stars, LA stories, forgotten details, well-worn memories, breaking scoops, all mixed in with a little spritz of analysis. (And damn---excellent grammar and sentence structure from our host!! That you certainly won't find on too many media blogs.)" --Anonymous commenter, 10.24.07
"Dear Burt: While you always had quite a flair for the dramatic, you never had much regard for the truth... Apparently you can't be bothered to read anything carefully. Maybe that is why you, like O'Reilly, make half your crap up.
Glad to hear you finally got sober." -- Barry Nolan, 04.12.08
"Hey! Who said Burt got sober?" -- Tabloid Baby, 04.12.08
Tommy Roe and Chris Montez, who headlined a UK tour in 1963.
Chris Montez at the site of the Wilson brothers' childhood home 
