TMZ's crappy clip show canceled

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 Baby hat 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.