Good morning? Not for these divas.

Look what we woke up to in the Daily Mail. Mariah Carey, Lady GaGa, Britney Spears and Diana Ross. The fact that they represent four generations of female pop superstar and the sheer volume of tragedy make it worth pointing out.

New York Times' man in Las Vegas makes shocking Britney Spears death joke as tickets go on sale for his Michael Jackson birthday "tribute" show

Tickets have gone on sale this weekend for the Michael Jackson birthday "tribute" show produced and promoted by New York Times reporter, Gay Vegas author and local comp queen Steve Friess, who celebrated Jackson's death as "the best thing that could ever have happened to Michael Jackson's music" and led the media coverup in reporting the similar prescription painkiller death of local superstar Danny Gans.

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.

Mischa Barton: Not wisdom teeth, after all

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.


Wisdom teeth.

Their best recordings were Christmas songs

There's a radio station in Los Angeles playing only Christmas music this month, which on the surface is a great thing what with all the great Christmas music out there, like Mele Kalikimaka by Arthur Lyman, Robert Earl Keen's Merry Christmas from The Family, Chuck Berry's Run Rudolph Run, Donde Esta Santa Claus by Augie Rios, Darlene Love's Merry Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), All I Want for Christmas is A Little Bit of Music by Huey Piano Smith & His Clowns, The Beach Boys' Little Saint Nick, Oh What A Silent Night by Randy Travis, Johnny Mathis' Sleigh Ride (and that's just off the top of our heads)-- but it's not, because soft rock KOST FM insists on programming the dreariest, most depressing funereal dirges that too often force us to change the station to K-EARTH, where we have to hear the Jackson 5 sing I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus for the thousandth time-- though they did play a Rick Nelson Christmas tune over the weekend that we hadn't heard. Anyway, complain to KOST-- even a run of Karen Carpenter songs would be preferable to Bing Crosby singing White Christmas, anyone singing Little Drummer Boy or Kenny G-- but it probably won't matter since it's Clear Channel...

Which brings us to Britney Spears and Mariah Carey. Funny how their Christmas songs are the best things they've ever recorded. You can throw out everything else they ever did but keep these two. Though Mariah's would have been a lot better with the E Street Band backing her.

THE KOST-FM PLAYLIST (TOP 20)
1. Amy Grant - Winter Wonderland
2. Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You
3. Andy Williams - It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Yea
4. Burl Ives - Holly Jolly Christmas
5. Hall & Oates - Jingle Bell Rock
6. Johnny Mathis - It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
7. Nat King Cole - The Christmas Song
8. Vanessa Williams - Do You Hear What I Hear?
9. Brenda Lee - Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree
10. Josh Groban - O Holy Night
11. Leroy Anderson - Sleigh Ride
12. Gene Autry - Rudolph The Red-nosed Reindeer
13. Jose Feliciano - Feliz Navidad
14. David Foster - Carol Of The Bells
15. John Lennon - Happy Xmas (full Version
16. Trans Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Cannon
17. James Taylor - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
18. Harry Simione Chorale - Little Drummer Boy
19. Bing Crosby - White Christmas
20. Bobby Helms - Jingle Bell Rock

See what we mean?

Hollywood Thoughts' greatest hit

We don't write much about Britney Spears unless it's to point out the complicity of the LAPD or LA County Sheriff's Department in the civilian-endangering crim-filled car chase circuses that consistently tie up our colleagues on the PCH while feeding the mind-blowingly inconsequential and borderline evildoings of operations like that boy-bandying corporate porn-pushing gossip site. But today marks a milestone in LA cultural reporting: one year to the day that LA Dodger Jon at the once-essential Hollywood Thoughts website reported on the shaving that launched a year of shame in celebrity journalism, year in which the spirit at the once-leading Defamer site sagged and its editors' interest slipped to the point that they were reduced to padding across the apartment in fuzzy slippers to post clips from The View, Ellen and other daytime TV shows they were glued to; sinking even lower and simply posting links to the dreaded TMZ, and ultimately reaching such a level of ennui that their feted goateed main man Mark Lisanti quit altogether last week.

LA Dodger Jon, meanwhile, in a little more than a year of operation, had made his Hollywood Thoughts site an authoritative and humour resource for all things architectural and Disney, with the scope that encompassed any and all media and cultural and sports-related issues that captured his imagination or grinded his gears. But sadly fir us readers, his responsibilities as a top Hollywood television producer have in recent months taken time away from his site (the last posting was October 17th's disemboweling of Disney's plans to renovate the California Adventure Park-- advice the Imagineers have already taken to heart).

But today we look back at the Hollywood Thoughts posting that made international headlines one year ago today: when he came home and found a pack of photographers lurking int he alley behind his garage.

Come back to the five and dime, Hollywood Thoughts, Hollywood Thoughts...

Britney Spears has a shaved head and a new tattoo

Honestly, with a headline like that, I don't think there's much more to say.

But why do I care? I don't... except that all of this happened not much more than 500 feet from my backdoor.

See, when I came home tonight, there were twenty to thirty photographers lurking in the alley across from my garage door. I soon found out they were paparazzi stalking Ms. Brit who was inside the slightly tattered buzz-parlor known as "Body + Soul."

Hey, a celebutard right in my backyard. Literally.

I decided to take a look.

Who cares if the hot turkey melt I just picked-up from the Mel's Diner would be reduced to a congealed mess of gouda on cold poultry meat? I smelled a story... and I JUST HAD to be an investigative reporter for my readership.

I went around to the front of the place, and was quickly engulfed by a mob of nearly a hundred twenty-somethings. But, LOOK! There she is! I spotted my quarry: a now bald-headed, trash talking, newly inked mother-of-two. Ooops, she just did it again.

Who the hell is watching after the kids while Mama is running around without panties or hair??!!??

Ah, hell... at least the new 'do has Brit's carpet matching her drapes. If you know what I mean.

With her wrist newly etched with a pair of red lips, and a completely cut down pate, she definitely looks like the type that would man the drive-thru next to Kevin whats-his-name on the fry machine* (*please review the Federline Super Bowl commercial if you're having a tough time following the line of thought here). Maybe she was celebrating her one day of sobriety after her short -- but successful? -- stint in rehab.

Bottom line? Well, let's just say I don't quite understand people that still wonder why home values are slipping here in the 'hood...

--Feb. 17, 2007