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Click here to read about Tabloid Baby’s 2005 Person of the Year.
And click here to order a copy of the Cloud 9 DVD.
(Click for Tabloid Baby’s 2005 Person of the Year!)
We’ve gone to the movies here and there over these holidays. And we’re sad to report it’s over. Movies, that is. The whole movie-going, movie theatre experience. 
King Kong was one of those movies. But tellingly, when they ran the first teaser trailer on television, the one that outlined the entire plot, it just looked okay. A period piece with Jack Black and Adrien Brody’s nose. It was only after we saw the trailer on the office computer, on the Apple movie trailer site , in its high definition digital glory, that King Kong promised to be something spectacular. The Tabloid Baby staff gathered round the desktop, marveling at the craft, the almost seamless blend of computer animation and real life.
The second movie that seemed worth seeing was a tossup between Munich and Syriana. We saw the fat Clooney movie. There were three other people in the theatre. This movie was more than two hours long, and looked and felt like those serious European TV series that make their way over here (like the one they ripped off Traffic from). The movie made a lot of sense after we got home and hit the Internet to read all the reviews and figured out what had happened. And it’s pretty obvious that whether it’s directed by George Clooney or Stephen Gaghan, Steven Soderbergh is pulling the strings.
Tonight we’ll see Cinderfella, at home, in digital color. 
On Tuesday, our movie comes out. Cloud 9. On DVD. Twentieth Century Fox decided to skip the theatres and send it straight to the big flat panel TVs. We hope everyone buys a copy of Cloud 9. (Exclusive! Tabloid Baby’s 2005 Person of the Year!)
Thanks, folks at Disneyland, for offering us up a tidbit so soon after we inaugurated our Disneyland Babylon updates.
L.A. Times website
One to two feet of water from firefighters' hoses pooled on the hotel floor, damaging carpet, floor and furniture around the tree, Sabol said... 
Anderson Cooper is Tabloid Baby’s Person of the Year! 
Okay, Anderson Cooper plays it coy when fellow journalists ask about his sexuality (and they ask all the time), and fellow journalists who know better compromise by referring to him with a wink as “metrosexual” (a bitchslap because of the “sissy” implications, and Coop’s no sissy even though he cries on TV).
Uneasily wearing the crown on CNN, Anderson Cooper is the standard bearer as eternal boy-- a poor little rich boy at that-- fleeing personal tragedy and demons by running toward the world’s danger zones; an inquisitive silver-haired manboy who mixes with the common folk like Truman Capote in Kansas; an otherworldly Little Prince who can be politely indignant when he’s lied to; a youthful visitor who leads with his heart and isn’t afraid to show Earthlings how to cry. He’s Michael Jackson, circa Thriller.
Ironically, Coop’s cable news nemesis (another man with two last names) was already in place for the festivities, set up in a small hotel in the French Quarter, enjoying breakfast, serenaded by a pianist, when the levees broke and the city began to flood. With other TV reporters cut off from the action, Shepard Smith was blocks from the convention center, where, in a bizarre parallel to Cooper’s performance, he briefly “came out,” unleashing his Blanche DuBois accent, emoting, raging, and even snapping back on air at Sean Hannity. 
Credit for the Coop coup goes to Jon Klein, the new president of CNN, who made the bold move of dumping Aaron Brown and replacing the fey with the gay. 
Stay tuned for 2006. There will be a time, soon, when Anderson Cooper will “come out.” It will probably take another big story, a 9/11- or Katrina-sized story that all the honchos will feel the need to stamp with brand personification, and then, Anderson Cooper will drop his guard and let us in on who he is.
That’s the culture shift we’re looking at, those are the barriers he is breaking, and that’s why we salute Anderson Cooper, Tabloid Baby’s Person of the Year for 2005!
Each year since 2001, when NYPD Blue sexpot-turned-CNN anchor Andrea Thompson received the honor, the Tabloid Baby team of journalists, producers, TV viewers and tipsters around the world has come up with the person who best exemplified the spirit of tabloid: the Tabloid Baby Person of The Year.
Pat O’Brien: There but for the grace of God go so many of his peers. As Pat’s dirty voicemail messages provided endless hours of entertainment, his shattered career received instant rehabilitation through the most bizarre and humiliating public flogging in network television history. His session with Doctor Phil was 2005’s greatest hour of television. Its producers should be forced to live in the Big Brother house.
Howard Stern: He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.
Beth Twitty: Natalee Holloway’s mother manipulated the media like an expert and dictated the cable news agenda until her story was washed away by Hurricane Katrina. She showed how even ordinary folk can call the shots when it means you can broadcast from Aruba. Sadly, she still hasn’t gotten her daughter back. But who’s been leaving those phone messages? 
Dr. Franklin Ruehl: The nuclear physicist turned public access cult hero is television’s most indefatigable and optimistic personality. On the brief and lamented return of A Current Affair, he led a groundbreaking and historic Bigfoot expedition, and brought celebrity coverage to new heights. Dr. Ruehl is one of a kind, and television nabobs will one day realize it.
Bill Hudson: Goldie Hawn’s ex stood up against the Hollywood machine when he called out Goldie for mischaracterizing and demeaning him in her recent autobiography. A veteran musician, performer and producer, he is the Howard Beale of Malibu: Mad as Hell with a sense of humour.
Kate Moss’ advisers know the way to crawl out of a scandal is with a laugh.
An added bonus for Kate Moss fans as the spot is bounced around the Internet: her costar is Ken Garito, who shares the screen with Burt Reynolds in Cloud 9, out on Fox Home Entertainment DVD on January 3rd.
In Cloud 9, Ken plays Tommy Z, the bartender at the Cloud 9 strip club, where Burt recruits the sexiest beach volleyball team in cinematic history.
Cloud 9 boasts an impressive cast, including D.L. Hughley, Paul Rodriguez, Angie Everhart, Gabrielle Reece, Gary Busey,Tom Arnold, Tony Danza, Kenya Moore, Patricia De Leon, Ric Overton, Pat Finn, Jeff Altman, and Bruce Bruce—among others. (Find out more at the Frozen Pictures blog.)
We love Disneyland.
But most of all, we love the dark side of Disneyland: the alternative history, the secret goings-on--the crimes, the deaths, the disasters and the tragedies. Mostly we like to read about them. 
There are lots of great websites like Laughing Place , Mouse Planet and The Unauthorized Anti-Disney Page and books like David Koenig’s Mouse Tales series, dedicated to the place and all the horrors, embarrassments, cover-ups and secrets behind the Mickey mask.
Los Angeles Times
On Saturday, fire officials closed the Disneyland Railroad ride, which loops around the park, for three hours because of the chemical smoke.
Howard Stern’s radio show died for our sins. Hey, we vote in the conservative reactionary demagogues who staff the FCC with crypto-fascist schoolmarm ayatollahs. 
He talked straight. He broke the rules for radio jocks. And he helped open social discourse under the cloak of smut and toilet jokes.
Not unlike the Tabloid TV era. The rise and fall of both coincided. And Howard appears often throughout Tabloid Baby, the comprehensive and hilarious history of the genre and its movers.
So what will happens now? As Stern entertains his limited audience on satellite, will he still have an impact?
Yahoo News: "Pamela Anderson and pole dancing proved too hot for NBC, which dropped a number featuring the actress in a sexy big-screen video from an Elton John special. 'Elton John: The Red Piano,' a Las Vegas extravaganza taped at Caesars Palace, aired Monday night without the segment in which John sang 'The Bitch is Back' while an oversized screen behind him displayed a scantily clad Anderson..."
Click here to see the video. 
Another reason we hate obituaries: 
"Just before he graduated, he saw Spielberg's 'E.T.' and he came out and said, 'That's what I want to do,' " said documentary filmmaker Eames Yates, who had been best friends with Newmyer since the first grade. "We argued about it. I said, 'Wouldn't you rather go into Wall Street and make hundreds of millions?' He said, 'No, I'd rather make movies.' "
They sure had a lot of media “witnesses” at the Tookie Williams execution.
Rafael Abramovitz witnessed an execution. You can read about it in Tabloid Baby.
Howard Stern has five radio shows to go before he possibly disappears from the mainstream public eye and ear (I’ve checked out some of that Sirius equipment at Best Buy and it looks like a lot of work that only a month of bad car radio will force us to look into). Howard's goodbye seemed to peak the week before his Thanksgiving vacation, but this last week of shows will be historic in any case.
Phil Hendrie: He may be the most brilliant talent in all of show business right now. 
Michael Savage: The most hilarious radio personality out there. 
The fact that his real name is Michael Weiner and that he once ran a flower shop and wrote love letters to Allen Ginsberg only adds to the wackiness.
Johnny Wendell: Punk rocker turned music journalist turned smart liberal radio talk show host. 
Steve Jones: Punk rocker turned Sunset Strip guitarist turned rock ‘n’ roll deejay. They give him a sidekick to translate his Cockney mumblings, but his snorting, farting, gurgling amateurishness is part of what keeps us tuned in. He plays old music hall & Benny Hill 45s, then picks up an acoustic guitar and bangs out a rock ‘n’ roll parody in the key of the original that follows. Inspired casting.
Stephanie Miller: Nice Sixties-style comedy lady does a funny, smart morning show with a good impressionist.
Mancow: First of all, that name is very disturbing. Man Cow. Supposedly it’s a nickname from college, but it brings to mind a hermaphroditic guy with breasts (which, photos indicate, he does indeed resemble). I don’t get it. And I don’t get the Mancow act. His show reeks of racist, homophobic, jock-sniffing, evangelical Christian right wing creepiness, it’s always got this Nazi heavy metal guitar crunching in the background, he’s got a guy who imitates Lewis Black, prank phone calls that aren’t funny, and when he’s not picking on poor people like New Orleans victims, he’s saying degrading things about his wife. He tries to be Howard, but he’s the anti-Howard. This guy really blows.
John & Ken: These reactionary nitwits play up racism and anti-immigrant hysteria for ratings. We hope Tookie Williams escapes from prison and climbs into their bedroom windows. That would make good radio.
Sean Hannity: I don’t believe this guy is a true conservative. I think he’s a college radio dork who jumped on the conservative bandwagon because he didn’t fit in with the music hipsters and came up with an angle. When he slips in references to his good pals Ollie North, Charlie Daniels and Phyllis Schlafly, this literal lowbrow reveals how out of touch and stupid he is.
Larry Elder: Listen to his show and realize he’s the one major league talk show host who yells at, then hangs up on, his listeners when they make good points that disagree with his. He seems to be afraid of real debate and his bits with his mother are not revealing. Dull.
Conway & Whitman: Tim Conway Jr. and his partner Doug Steckler worked a long time to develop a very dry comedy chemistry that even took the edge off their “What the hell is Jesse Jackson saying?” bit. It worked because Steckler was a weird old guy who’d last touched the big time writing for SCTV more than twenty years ago, and Conway was, well, Tim Conway’s kid who spent his days at the racetrack. Then, weirdly, Steckler quit or was fired and Conway just carried on with a new partner, radio voice man Brian Whitman. They still do the Jesse Jackson bit (and for some reason they use this really heavy compression on their voices, making them sound like they’re caught in Cousin Brucie’s echo chamber). But they're just a dull radio team, two contemporaries teamed arbitrarily like "Frosty, Heidi & Frank" or Peter Tilden and his cohorts on the country station.
At least Tilden is a lesson in how not to lose your dignity or patronize your audience when your situation changes. He made his reputation doing smart talk radio. He became a morning country music jock. And he doesn't sound like a country jock. He sounds like a smart talk radio guy. But he plays it straight. And funny. Too bad most of the music is terrible. But that's a different story and it's coming from a country fan.