Richard Pryor, finally dead

Richard Pryor’s official website is subtitled “I ain’t dead yet, M*therF@ck%r!!”

We guess they'll have to change that.

We don't like marking deaths. Obits and death anniversaries take up too much space. But deaths of the great ones are signposts along the way, as we get closer.

Anyway, Richard Pryor:

When we were kids growing up in the Sixties, he was one of the comedians on the Ed Sullivan Show, alongside Jackie Vernon and London Lee and George Carlin.

He was a skinny guy in a suit and he was really funny.


He was in Wild in The Streets.

Big movie.

Big influence, in a Monkees kind of way.


Those of us who hung out in record stores remember the album cover, where he was naked with the ring in his nose, holding a bow and arrow, like a tribesman.

We didn't buy the album.

But the cover was up there.


His comedy concert movies were scary and funny as hell. They were embarrassing and real and in the end made everyone in the audience feel like they were united somehow. We used to watch them on 42nd Street so we could hear people talk back to the screen.

About ten years ago, we were leaving the Mondrian Hotel on the Sunset Strip when we noticed the marquee at the Comedy Store was advertising Richard Pryor. He was deep into multiple sclerosis at the time. We investigated. Tickets were seven dollars. “Is this THE Richard Pryor?” we asked the guy at the ticket window. He shrugged.

It wasn’t even the main room. There was a Jewish comic, a Latin comic and a black comic. Or maybe another Jewish comic. They all cursed a lot, did sex jokes and ended their acts by thanking Richard Pryor, the man who made it possible. Then sometime before midnight, they wheeled Richard Pryor into the back of the room. A big man carried him onto the stage, plopped him on a chair and he sat there. Everyone cheered. A lot of people were crying.

Pryor was game. He went right for the multiple sclerosis stories. “I’m in my car. (long pause) In traffic. (long pause) And I look over. (long pause) And there’s this really beautiful woman in the next car. (long pause) And she’s waving to me. (long pause) And I look down. (long pause) And I realize, (pause) I was covered in piss! I peed myself…”

Pryor was "there all week” as they say. I called Steve Dunleavy and I think he did a column in the Post about the shows and what happened to Richard Pryor. We all figured it was historic and the guy would be dead by the end of the month.

We're surprised he lasted another decade (and Dunleavy’s still alive and kicking).

It was Pryor’s ex-wife Jennifer Lee who’d gotten him back on stage. They were married in the Seventies. He beat her and performed other cruel acts, and she was apparently lucky to get out alive. Then, after he got sick, she came back into his life. Took it over. Some say it was to exact revenge. In any case, she set him up in a house in the Valley, and took control of his legacy. He remarried her in 2001.

A couple of years ago, Chaunce Hayden interviewed Pryor’s daughter, Rain. She complained she and her sister were only allowed to see their father once a month:

“Put it this way. If you’re a women who this man used to beat up for years and years and years. Like even his children watched him beat her up, right? And than all of a sudden when he’s at his sickest, sickest, sickest moment and can’t speak you marry him? Why? What’s the motive? And now your name is on everything. When there’s something about him, your name is on it and his children don’t exist. You don’t talk about his children. It’s like none of us were ever born. That’s a horrible situation. That’s tragic. But he’s not tragic.

“…She has hired wonderful caretakers to take care of him. They clean the house and they live with him. They make sure his feeding tubes are in and out and they love him… On the surface everything looks really fine and dandy and wow, isn’t she doing a great job. But she hired people to do a great job for her…”

Prepare for the Pryor family feud.

Twenty-five years

The email newsletter from our favorite New York City Irish rock band, Black 47, arrived today with some poetic words from leader Larry Kirwan:

"How strange! Twenty-five years since John Lennon was murdered and, next May, the same anniversary for Bobby Sands. So much passion, so much idealism swept away, to be replaced by what? Is rock & roll even a pale shadow of itself now? Can you imagine Lennon allowing this travesty in Iraq to go without some howl to the heavens? Or am I missing out on something? Are there great songs, that I'm not hearing, protesting the fact that working class kids are again being sent off by rich chicken-hawks in DC to be killed and maimed? Oh well, it's time for me to get back to Fox TV and find out how Mrs. Clinton justifies her vote for invasion now that the polls are showing that the people have finally woken up to the lies and deceit of the current governing parcel of rogues...."

Sheryl Crow's Cowboy Tw-hat

What the hell is this?


This is on display in the Hard Rock Cafe in San Antonio, Texas, a memento from Sheryl Crow's 1999 concert tour.

The color of the display is accurate.

Now when we walked into the gift shop, all's we could do was take off our own cowboy hats and scratch our heads.

What the hell is this?

Well, this of course, is her... hat.

Texas, of course, is Lance Armstrong's home state.

What did she sing?

The first cut is the deepest?

We guess this makes her a, uh.. country... star.

Exclusive Photos: Gangsters Go Goth

Armand Assante was John Gotti in the TV miniseries.

Gray Frederickson won an Oscar for producing The Godfather: Part II.

Now the goodfellas have met in Oklahoma City, Gray’s hometown, to shoot the Graymark vampire film, Soul’s Midnight.

Gray promises the movie won't suck.

But Tabloid Baby’s good pal Armand and his costar Lucila Sola surely do.


Fun fact: Gray & Graymark executive produced Cloud 9, the Burt Reynolds beach volleyball stripper comedy out on DVD January 3rd!

Free advice for CBS News: Forget Katie

Here’s some free advice for Sean McManus and Les Moonves and CBS News.

Save the $20 million a year.

Katie Couric’s not worth it.


She’s a former cutie who’s been temporarily retooled into a glamour puss.

She’s pushing fifty.

She’s not going to age well, physically or emotionally.

And people don’t like to work with her.

Katie’s a morning show host. Reading the TelePrompter and gravitas ain’t her shtick. Give her a talk show and move on.

Besides, it’s a new century. The network news half hour is over. It doesn’t matter!

ABC admitted it when they settled on Elizabeth Vargas and “Bob” Woodruff to replace Jennings.

NBC has Brian Williams. Now there’s a guy who connects with that young demographic.

So CBS, here it is:

Think Charlie’s Angels.

Think Steve Edwards.

Keep old Bob Schieffer in the “anchor” chair. He’s like Steve. Glad to be anywhere. And fire all your reporters except the sexy news chicks, all those hot gals who camp it up in CBS drag; the only reason guys watch CBS News in the first place.

Make Schieffer the only male on the show. Surround him with the CBS Maxim girls. They’re already on the payroll. Lara Logan. Serena Altschul. Thalia Assuras. Susan McGinnis. Trish Reagan.



Let Bob play the exasperated male, putting up with all the young birds.

It’s like Harry Smith on that CBS Morning Show, the one nobody watches, only with testosterone and hot chicks in places like Iraq.

It’s almost as good as Moonves’ idea to clone Naked News.

Mark my words.

Sorry, Wong Number!

Latino comedy pioneer and Cesar Chavez pallbearer Paul Rodriguez is bracing for more attention than George Lopez's new kidney, playing a stereotypical “Chinaman” in Cloud 9 , the Burt Reynolds sports comedy out on DVD January 3rd.

Rodriguez says of his character, "Wong": “Wong is more confused than the Bush Administration… a Mexican guy who thinks he’s Wong for the wong reasons. He figures that if you’re Mexican you’re just a gardener, but if you’re Asian, you’re a landscaper!"

And he says more on the Frozen Pictures blog.

Cloud 9 is Burt’s follow-up to Tuesday’s DVD release of The Dukes of Hazzard. In his first good ole boy starring vehicle since the Smokey & The Bandit days, he plays the coach of an all-stripper beach volleyball team.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment's January 3rd DVD release just misses the Oscar nomination deadline.


Cloud 9 happens to be producer Albert S. Ruddy’s follow-up to his Academy-Award winning Million Dollar Baby!

It’s also fellow writer-producer Burt Kearns & Brett Hudson’s follow to the failed relaunch of A Current Affair. Now we know where the volleyball strippers came from.

But we already knew that.

Frozen Pictures

Elephant cruelty at the Studio City Parade

While L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa awaits his promised study on whether to end cruelty to elephants at the L.A. Zoo, the Studio City Chamber of Commerce sponsored a startling display of animal abuse and child endangerment at its low-wattage Christmas Parade last night.

Hundreds were waiting in the biting cold for the delayed parade on Ventura Boulevard, when a big, sad, betusked elephant was trotted up the boulevard by two “handlers,” and stopped in front of the Mexicali Restaurant to give perilous rides to a hapless few.

It could have been a scene out of King Kong as mama handler screamed, spit and snarled frantically at frightened children and confused parents, ordering them to move back and onto the sidewalk, lest the unhappy beast go on a rampage!

Unhappy? The elephant’s head swayed and its body rocked to and fro as the male keeper yanked its tusk, slapped its mighty head and shouted warnings to the beast to calm down. Of course, he added a few pokes and pulls with the barbaric "ankus," the sharpened hook used for centuries to keep the behemoths under control.

(We haven’t seen any abuse so blatant since witnessing Bobby Berosini’s orangutan antics backstage at the 1987 Jerry Lewis Telethon in Vegas (see Tabloid Baby, pg 74).

Mommy and daddy hid the sharp end of their sticks so as not to alarm the already-scared kids.

But while Betty White led a demonstration to keep the elephants in their cramped enclosure at the antiquated L.A. Zoo a few miles away, the true face of elephants in captivity was paraded out in the middle of the boulevard.

And somebody human could have gotten hurt, too.

The only other “celebrities” in the parade were Richard Karn from Family Feud, some drippy soap opera actresses, and too many realtors.

The real starpower was on the sidelines. Among the crowd at Mexicali were tabloid television legend Doug Bruckner and this old gray-haired guy who plays a lot of cops and priests on TV (I think he guested on NYPD Blue). Parade spectators included Terminator’s Robert Patrick dressed up like a Fifties gas station attendant, complete with fat wallet chain, Linda Gray and Jimmy Kimmel, who haunted the block near Art’s Deli in a white OJ watchcap. (Would Johnny wander alone aimlessly up and down Ventura on a Saturday night? At least Jay would be riding a Stanley Steamer and wearing a train engineer’s hat.)

Animal activist Chris DeRose runs Last Chance for Animals. He’s the point man in the elephant cause. Visit the LCA site and learn.

The Studio City Chamber of Commerce hired the elephant and runs next year’s parade, too. 818-655-5916.

Big Ten Inch Jesus

Someone pointed out Steven Tyler's sensitivity in selecting stagewear for his performance at the Big Ten Million Dollar Bat Mitzvah.

Mitzvahpalooza fallout: Oy!

Jesus f-in' Christ! What's going on out there?

First, thanks to Gawker.com for the new Tabloid Baby tagline:

"Tabloid Baby does some impressive reporting work!"

And to the anti-Semitic dirtbags who turned the November 29 comment board into an Aryan Nation-Al Qaeda dating site:



...a Christmas gift for you!

The Secret History of Rock 'n' Roll cont'd...

Shock and awe and disappointment and the expected knee-jerk anti-Semitism greeted our photographic confirmation of the rock 'n' roll and rap stars whoring and pimping for easy money playing a daddy warbucks' little rich girl’s bat mitzvah bash.

But as we'd explained, pop stars have been quietly pocketing big bucks for playing private parties for years.

Brett Hudson, formerly of the Hudson Brothers (along with Bill & Aerosmith collaborator/producer Mark), recalls being offered up as a “birthday present” after performing at a Sweet Sixteen party for a Mafioso’s daughter in the group’s Seventies heyday.

Of all the gigs he played, that’s one Brett remembers most fondly.

(Now Brett’s producing big movies, like the hilarious ‘Cloud 9,’ out on DVD January 3rd.)

In June, Forbes offered moguls tips on booking pop stars for parties (this could be where Brooks got the idea).

The menu included Bon Jovi ($850,000 to $1 million), the Beastie Boys ($500,000 to $600,000) and Modest Mouse ($100,000).

The Rolling Stones charged $7 million to do 40 minutes at Texas billionaire David Bonderman's 60th birthday at the Vegas Hard Rock in 2002. Robin Williams and John Mellencamp opened.

In 2003, Elton John was charging between £300,000 and £1 million to play private parties (he did about a half-dozen a year).

Sting got $500,000 to wail at a Bill Gates bash in 2004.

And Paul McCartney reportedly got $1 million to perform at a birthday party for TV executive Wendy Whitworth (a nice twist for the ones who didn’t know that was the “Beatles for Sale” album cover posted yesterday).

Forbes warns:

“Every performance contract has a production rider, which spells out the nuts and bolts required: staging, lights, sound equipment and the rest. For ‘one-off’ private gigs that are not coordinated within a tour schedule, bands typically prefer to rent sound equipment rather than transport their own… Every band needs a green room…and dressing rooms-- and chances are your master bedroom won't cut it. Then there are the catering necessities… for both band and their crew. And don't forget… parking for all the semis and catering trucks…

“Want to assure you and your friends get to hang out with the band? A ‘meet and greet’ will have to be spelled out in the contract ahead of time. Hoping for an invite to hop up on stage and join the band for a song? Better put that in the contract, too…

"Then there's insurance. John Roskopf, senior director of Tave Risk Management in Northbrook, Ill., recommends adding a $20 million personal umbrella to the typical $500,000 to $1 million homeowners' liability. 'If a child falls off the stage and hits his head, you can go through $3 million to $4 million pretty quickly.' You may want to look into a special-events policy. 'All it takes is for the lead singer to toss a Champagne bottle into the crowd to ruin everything.'"

For Beatles, Aerosmith and related stories about various media sell-outs and stars, check out Tabloid Baby.

(photos copyright tb)

Exclusive Photos! Mitzvahpalooza!

Big news over the weekend, when "Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks booked two floors of the Rainbow Room, hauled in concert-ready equipment, built a stage, installed special carpeting, outfitted the space with Jumbotrons and arranged command performances by everyone from 50 Cent to Don Henley to Stevie Nicks to Aerosmith..."

Brooks got better talent than the NBC Katrina relief benefit.

It’s the little secret of pop music.

Be they rockin’ rebel, gangsta rapper, tabloid witch, or hifalutin’ media-bashing prick who hasn’t been allowed near a 13-year-old girl since one turned up comatose in his hot tub, you pay them enough money and they’ll play at your little girl’s bat mitzvah.



Steven and Joe, we give you a pass because of Honkin’ on Bobo and Mark Hudson.



And because you’ve been refreshingly candid about rock ‘n’ roll whoredom.


Ciara, you’re cool because we never heard of you.


But 50 Cent? Oy! (Isn't this from that James Toback flick, "Get Rich or Die Shrayen"?)


And Don Henley? Live this one down!



Ha! Forty one years ago, this was commentary:

photos © Tabloidbaby.com

UPDATE!! Click here and scroll down for more exclusive and shocking Brooks bat mitzvah photos!