Will this photo cost Antonella the Idol throne?

Somebody's got it in for Antonella Barba, the Jersey girl who made it to the Top 24 on American Idol. Photos like this are spreading across the net. They were taken before she entered the competition and aren't close to sex pix, but the "half nude on a toilet" description is pretty embarrassing, and people are already predicting they could get her bounced from the competition.

And here's another that's actually "safe for work":


That's our girl, second from the right. (Is that best bud Amanda Coluccio on the left?) She should survive this, right?

Did Kelly Osbourne "out" her brother's HIV?

He cleaned up his act, dropped 70 pounds, got into kickboxing and even made an endearing comeback as a Muncie, Indiana cop on the axed-too-soon CBS series, Armed & Famous, but it's poor Jack Osbourne who's being targeted now that his big sister Kelly blurted out that a "member of her family" is HIV positive.

Kelly has made headlines around the world after "breaking down" onstage at an HIV charity event in London last night, then running off and leaving everyone to use their imaginations about what and who she was talking about. But within hours, fingers began pointing at 21-year-old Jack, whose quick ride to teenage fame on the MTV reality show The Osbournes led to a very public battle with hard drugs and opiates.

Tonight, someone's even defaced Jack's Wikipedia entry, stating that he's "now once again made headlines in 2007, when he was diagnosed with HIV."

Sources tell us that Jack is indeed the one Kelly was referring to-- but that's not the point, is it? Indiscreet Kelly has started a guessing game that won't end until the family ends it-- or some tabloid buys up the medical records. And though Kelly added "I am so, so proud of him," any member of Kelly's immediate family could have been exposed to the virus in recent years. Pick drugs, wild, promiscuous rock 'n' roll and/or TV star sex-- or surgery:

Mom Sharon, the sharp businesswoman who ruined her children's lives when she arranged for the family to star in The Osbournes was operated on for colon cancer in 2002. Eldest daughter Aimee-- the one smart enough to mostly stay away from the reality cameras-- had breast cancer surgery in 2003, the same year that legendary drug abuser Ozzy was involved in a near-fatal quad bike accident. Kelly also had a stint in rehab for painkillers.

And poor chubby Jack became addicted to opiates at 17.

"It wasn't how I expected my life to turn out. Especially, mainly pertaining to the show," he told an MTV interviewer in another TV special after he completed rehab. "It never crossed my mind that one day I'm gonna be big and famous and have my own TV show, you know? All of a sudden we are meeting with MTV, (and they're) saying, 'You are gonna be doing a show, and you are gonna be followed around.' When we were filming I never thought once about it coming out. And then when it came out, it was just such a... it was like a shock to the body.

"It was super insane and just like, 'What is this?' There's people outside our house; you get followed by photographers; you can't go out and have a cup of coffee with a friend without someone coming up to you with a picture and (saying,) "Sign this"... It's stressful. Just the whole fact of being someone in the public eye."

And if you want to expand the field of "hims," we should mention that Kelly showed up at that fundraiser with her 40-year-old male cousin, Terry. He's a hairdresser who stars in a UK TV show, The Salon.

Thanks, Kelly. Thanks for nothing.

The face of agita

Fuhgeddabout Britney Spears and her shaved head. This our favorite picture of the weekend: James Gandolfini looking like he doesn't regret for a minute that he joined a grand lineage of TV stars as 39th King of the Krewe of Bacchus Mardi Gras Parade down in New Orleans this weekend (meet the past kings-- including Jim Nabors, Dom DeLuise and Steve Guttenberg-- here).

Just look at that face! Does that sum up Tony Soprano's troubles as he heads into the second half of the show's sixth and final season or what?

Then again, the picture could be seen as a tribute to Britney-- the look on her face the first time she gazed into a mirror after her Friday night shaving.

Plus, Jim's got a little upskirt action happening there.

The final stretch of The Sopranos begins on Sunday, April 8th. Only nine more episodes. HBO has been running a retrospective promo that shows startlingly how Gandolfini has... grown... into the role.

The next televised celebrity murder trial

Phil Spector hasn't had a hit in years, but he's lined up to become the next biggest media star in the world one month from tomorrow, when he stars as the defendant in the next live courtroom celebrity murder trial-- the first celeb courtroom case to be televised from Los Angeles since the OJ Simpson trial.

Too young to have heard of Spector? Don't think he counts as a celebrity? Well, his trial's got sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, Viagra, bullets, kink, pop culture, the Sunset Strip, Roger Corman flicks, lots of Hollywood noir sleaze-- and a castle! And remember, neither OJ nor Robert Blake were exactly celebutards.

This being L.A., the judge who okayed the cameras in his court--and guaranteed another media circus when trial begins on March 19-- actually mentioned "The Dancing Itos" when he made his decision!

The Dancing Itos were the chorus line of bearded Asian men in judge's robes that was trotted out with regularity on The Tonight Show during the Simpson trial-- Jay Leno's way of mocking trial judge Lance Ito and getting cheap laughs from the slaughter of a young mother and her friend.

"I'm sure Judge Ito did not expect to turn on 'The Tonight Show' and see the Dancing Itos," Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler said on Friday. " "I don't worry about seeing the Flying Fidlers."

Spector, the Sixties record producer behind the "Wall of Sound" and legendarily volatile nutjob, is charged with killing aging B-movie actress Lana Clarkson at his home in the early hours of February 3, 2003, after he picked her up at The House of Blues on the Strip, where she was working as a hostess. He allegedly made some kinds of incriminating statements after Roger Corman's legendary Barbarian Queen was found shot in the mouth in the vestibule of his creepy castle in an LA suburb. He's remained free on bail for more than four years-- four years!

How's that for justice?

Two notes: Spector shows up in the book Tabloid Baby, the definitive account of the OJ Simpson media circus. And we produced a Court TV hour on Spector, Lana and the murder case-- back when it was fresh. So stay tuned here for some good inside stuff...

Brit-Head: Crowley gets scoop on Spears' shear

Jon Crowley over at Hollywood Thoughts is turning into the Spike Jonze (or is it Warren Beatty?) of L.A. bloggers. He takes his time betwen releases, but when he comes out with something new, it's bound to be interesting-- and probably a hit. After returning from a long, self-imposed hiatus, the guru of Disneyana, NASA, Dodgers and Hollywood history didn't take long to score big again: breaking the Britney Spears headshaving incident. Crowley happened upon the scene in person Friday night-- when he noticed a crowd of paparazzi outside a tattoo parlor across the alley from his garaget. His instant eyewitness account, Britney Spears Has A Shaved Head & A New Tattoo, was titled like an Esquire piece, picked up by Defamer and spread through the universe:

...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. Sporting a new pair of red lips on her wrist 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)...

Crowley was the first to notice that USC running back Reggie Bush was taking gifts. More shocking, close to a year before the "Pampered Astronaut" story, Crowley had a detailed post on excreting in space.

Read the complete, historic "Britney Spears Has A Shaved Head & A New Tattoo" here.

Ralph Penza

We worked with Ralph Penza in the Eighties at WNBC-TV's News 4 New York. He was a great reporter and anchorman, and a very-down-to-Earth good guy.

We never knew he'd gotten his start in the business in the heart of tabloid, as a copy boy for Walter Winchell.

Ralph died yesterday at 74. He got a nice New York Times obituary.

The Times says "Mr. Penza, a senior correspondent for WNBC-TV, was best known for his aggressive reporting style and investigative news series, which often carried provocative titles like 'Killer Fish' and 'Dangerous Doctors.' He was also known for his signature 'walking stand-ups,' in which the camera would follow him as he moved around a scene instead of standing still in one spot..."

What Ralph Penza was really known for was his authoritative reporting and knowledge of local, national and world events-- a network-level correspondent who plied his trade in local news. He was a heavyweight who, as satellite technology expanded the range of local news operations, took on the big national and international stories (as the Times notes)--traveling and reporting from places around the world-- and made the nightly network news nabobs a little less important.

Which brings us back to New York Times obituaries. Ralph got his. And he deserves one, being such an important part of the fabric of New York City news media and popular culture. So why didn't Harry Ryttenberg and Mark Monsky get obits in the New York Times? This week alone, the Times gave nice fat obits to the founder of the Arctic Chamber Orchestra and a slippers inventor. That Ryttenberg & Monsky-- Ralph's colleagues at News 4 (Harry, founder of the Broadcast News Service, was the assignment editor and Monsky was news director for a time-- see Tabloid Baby)-- and giants in the history of New York City local news, as was Ralph -- were ignored in death-- is a bit of an oversight and a disgrace, wouldn't you say?

Basketball Man hailed as "epic story, well told"

It's looking like the hottest film documentary of the year is Basketball Man from our friends and relations at Frozen Pictures. The film about the life and legacy of Dr. James Naismith, who invented the game-- and the RV adventures of his grandson, Ian-- premieres tomorrow night at the NBA All Star event in Las Vegas. The latest review comes from the hoops-crazy Boston Sports Review. Look for a nod on Parade magazine's website next week.

‘Basketball Man’

Given New England’s passion for the Red Sox and the recent Super Bowl success of the Patriots, some found it curious that basketball was named the official state sport of Massachusetts in August. “Basketball Man,” a new documentary DVD celebrating the creator of the sport, should provide some historical perspective for that decision.

The DVD, set for release Feb. 20, is the story of James Naismith, who invented basketball in 1891 at a YMCA in Springfield. Some of the biggest names in the history of the sport, from Bob Cousy to John Wooden to Michael Jordan, contribute their thoughts.

Naismith’s is an epic story, well-told here by weaving in historic elements with footage of Naismith’s grandson, Ian, touring the country with the original, handwritten 13 rules of basketball in a golden briefcase. What began in Massachusetts in 1891 spread to Mexico by 1892 and China by 1893, eventually winding up at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, where Naismith introduced his sport to the world in front of Adolf Hitler. “Everybody knows James Naismith invented basketball,” executive producer Keith Zimmerman said. “Everybody’s seen pictures of this nice old man with a ball in his hand and a three-piece suit and as peach basket, but people don’t know the story of James Naismith.”

The DVD extras feature more than 20 minutes of footage from what was one of the last interviews with Celtics legend Red Auerbach before his death at age 89 in October. The segment was taped at his Washington-area home last summer. It’s clear that his health was fading but not his enthusiasm for the sport. “We feel like we have the two coaching icons of all time," Zimmerman said. “Red Auerbach, undoubtedly the greatest NBA coach of all time; John Wooden, arguably the greatest college coach off all time."

There are few personalities in basketball history as far apart as Naismith and Auerbach.

Naismith, who invented the game essentially to keep kids out of trouble, emphasized sportsmanship over victory. He organized boxing matches as a chaplain in World War I to keep the troops from leaving camp for nearby brothels. Auerbach. By contrast, was nearly as famous for his cigar-chomping, win-at-all-costs mentality and skill with a sound bite as he was for leading the Celtics to eight straight NBA championships.

“If you keep score, you play to win,” Auerbach says on the DVD. “I don’t care what it is. That’s always been my theory. I can’t stand these guys who can’t wait to shake hands at the end. In the old days, we lost, we got outta there. We didn’t congratulate them."

Still, Zimmerman thinks Auerbach would have gotten along with Naismith. “It was all about team with (Auerbach),” Zimmerman said, "and that's what Naismith tried (to create).”

--Nick A. Zaino III
February 2007

Johnny Wendell stars in a national TV spot

That's Tabloid Baby pal, talk radio star and punk rock legend Johnny Wendell (aka Johnny Angel) holding the sign in a new national ad for Volkswagen. Johnny can be heard weekends on KTLK "Progressive Talk" radio AM 1150 in LA. Now give him Adam Carolla's slot and all will be right in the world.

Good stuff!

Howard Stern will do anything to get into the news

Poor Howard Stern. Now that he's been out of the public spotlight for more than a year and no longer part of the public discourse, he's wound up playing second fiddle in the public consciousness to Anna Nicole Smith's boyfriend-attorney. Today, it's Howard "K." Stern whom everyone knows! So what does the old Howard do? He gets some Valentine's Day ink by claiming he's proposed to his longtime galpal Beth Ostrosky, the model who's becoming more famous than the 53-year-old former radio star. It's just another broken promise to his longtime fans, and only the latest step toward the inevitable day that portions of Howard's satellite show are offered on "free" radio. He'll be back.


And check out this indignity (above photo) to Adam Carolla, the crapulous motonotous bore who's replaced Stern in LA and other markets: first the bosses fired his on-air team and replaced them with Danny Bonaduce. Today, the show makes the NY Times-- and Carolla's cut out of the picture!

Heather looks to get a leg up on 'Dancing'

Hey, we can't make this stuff up! It's being reported that Heather Mills has signed up for the new season of ABC's Dancing with The Stars. The future ex-Mrs. Paul McCartney, as you may know, would enter the competition with a handicap.

She's only got one leg.

"The one-legged gold-digging former porn model and ex-hooker," as she's known to readers of the British tabloids, would love nothing better than to become America's beloved underdog. And with fellow Brit Sarah Ferguson (whose tabloid rep, coincidentally, is also tied to her lower extremities with those notorious toe-sucking pix) withdrawing from contention as a Dancing dancer, she's got her chance.

Thanks in part to Paul McCartney's pull in the UK, the ugly divorce and revelations about her porny past have helped make Heather the most despised woman in all of England. Here in the States, though, infotainment shows like Extra, and now Access Hollywood, which reports the Dancing news, have been much kinder to Heather-- because that's the agreement they make in order to get an interview with her.

It doesn't matter. The British accent will have most viewers thinking Heather's as royal as Denise van Outen on Grease You're The One That I Want! And what do you bet the announcement convinces McCartney to one-up her by appearing on American Idol?

Goodbye, America's Rose

Was Anna Nicole Smith really the Marilyn Monroe of our time? Was she the Princess Diana of Reality TV? The way the network news and celebutainment shows are joining forces slogging through the mud in tribute to the sad beauty, we can't help but think that maybe she does complete that particular Die in Threes triangle.

And now, someone has sent us a song that confirms it.

Goodbye America's Rose comes "with apologies to Elton John... which are wholly insincere because he was such a bitch to Madonna."

"Goodbye America's Rose"
by Mike McNamara

Goodbye Vickie Lynn
Though I never knew you at all
You were the crazy glue
Stuck to the hearts of us all

You crawled out of the fast food stand
up to Guess? and to Playboy
And you brought leagues of men
Lots of masturbation joy

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a Red Bull mixed with gin
Never sleeping, never sober
Until the pain gave in.
And I would have liked to known you
But I was a too poor gay kid
Your sanity ran out long before
Your TrimSpa ever did

Spilling cereal on your chest
Drooling milk down your chin
You were truly outrageous
Even more so than Jem

Another people's princess lost
The empty eyes under your smile
Your death is incredibly suspicious
Could see that from a Texas mile

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a Red Bull mixed with gin
Living fully, living happy
Until Howard K Stern moved in
And I would have liked to have known you
More than just your show on E!
The Supreme Court gave you a ruling
I hope you're finally free...

(See more from the poet Mike McNamara at here.)

ANNA NICOLE STILL DEAD!

You know, at a time when ordinary people become Reality TV stars and Britney Spears gets more ink for stepping out of a limo than making music, maybe Anna Nicole Smith really is the Marilyn Monroe of our time. She was a cartoony bombshell, she slurred, she mixed booze and pills, she died mysteriously-- though, if she really did choke on her own vomit (as opposed to someone else's), she could be our Jimi Hendrix.

Anyway, with the autopsy underway as we write (Inside Anna Nicole?), the fun's only beginning. Splash News brokered the sale of a videotape showing the futile efforts to revive the dead beauty. Someone paid more than $500,000 for it, even though, according to a producer who apparently passed on it, "You cannot see her face, you cannot see hair flowing out from underneath the mask... If someone didn't tell me this was Anna Nicole Smith, I totally would not have known it. You can't even tell it's a woman." See for yourself. At least part of the video surfaced in the above news report. Look for the cameo from Adam Carolla. Translations welcome.

And there's more on the way...ABC's 20/20, a tabloid TV series disguised as a serious network newsmagazine (many of its producers are "tabloid babies") has slapped together an Anna Nicole commemorative tonight at 10. (Look for them to address, then brush off our "Who Killed Anna Nicole" theory). And the prestigious Biography Channel dusts off an Anna Nicole story tomorow night at 8.

We haven't heard of plans for an E! Entertainment marathon of The Anna Nicole Show, but were in touch with folks over there yesterday, and they were really broken up over the news.

WHO KILLED ANNA NICOLE?

That's the question they'll be asking. We might as well ask it first.

In wake of the mysterious death of her son in the Bahamas, the fight over her late octogenarian billionaire husband's fortune, the paternity battle over her baby girl, yesterday's lawsuit over the TrimSpa ads-- the fight over her late octogenarian billionaire husband's fortune... there are more than enough avenues to investigate.

A drug overdose in a hotel room? Anna Nicole Smith died like a true Hollywood legend (though in a nod to her humble roots, it was Hollywood, Florida), and that all-too-perfect ending is another reason the conspiracy theories are already developing. Who stands to benefit from her death? Anna Nicole recently married her attorney and reality TV show co-star Howard K. Stern. He's claimed paternity of her five-month-old daughter Dannielynn, who will now inherit any fortune that's decided.

Something's ‘Wong’ with Eddie Murphy’s Norbit

Once again, connections to the hilarious motion picture comedy Cloud 9 are figuring into the Oscar® race-- and this time it's a question of whether Best Supporting Actor nominee Eddie Murphy is right-- or Wong.

Last Oscar®time, Cloud 9, the movie written and produced by Burt Kearns and Brett Hudson of Frozen Pictures, along with 2005 Best Picture Academy Award® winner Albert S. Ruddy (Million Dollar Baby) was shown to have a connection to each and every nominee in every major category— most especially the surprise Best Picture winner (as well as to every Best Picture winner of the past 11 years).

This season, it’s Eddie Murphy, who’s hoping to win a statuette® for his work in Dreamgirls— but mostly hoping voters have forgotten or forgive the primadonna behaviour of his heyday, the time he was caught picking up a transvestite hooker on Santa Monica Boulevard when he should have been filming Dr. Dolittle (the hooker later died in a mysterious fall), and his unchivalrous treatment of Scary Spice.

Some say the ubiquitous ads for Eddie’s new movie comedy Norbit, in which he plays multiple characters including an obese black woman, isn’t helping his cause. And neither is the fact that in Norbit, he plays a stereotypical “Chinaman.”

A stereotypical "Chinaman" named “Mr. Wong”!

Mr Wong! Cinephiles and social activists will remember that the cross-racial casting of a character named Mr. Wong took place in last year's smash Burt-Reynolds-and-beach-volleyball-strippers DVD hit Cloud 9 — currently available for sale and rental on 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment DVD.

Paul Rodriguez (like Murphy, a minority actor and comedian) played the "original" Wong-- a Latino landscaper masquerading as a stereotypical "Chinaman" in order to enhance his work opportunities in Malibu. The sly social comment within the controversial role adds a sophisticated undercurrent to the already-outre class comedy in Cloud 9 (though many of the script's nuances were ironed out in the direction)-- and was recognized as sharp social comment at the time of the Mexican American protests in Los Angeles and other cities.

Both "Wongs" wear hats and glasses to achieve the race-shifting transformation— though Rodriguez played his character convincingly without the elaborate prosthetics employed by Murphy.

Murphy’s lack of originality in “ripping off” the character created by Brett Hudson and Burt Kearns of Frozen Pictures, along with two-time Academy Award® winner Albert S. Ruddy (he also won Best Picture for The Godfather), could work against him with Academy® members. Then again, if the Wong character in the script he wrote with his brother Charlie is considered an homage to Cloud 9, the connection can only help.

Who needs a wardrobe malfunction?

Hey, he's got a point there!

The Artist who would die 4 U says F U to the FCC!

Now that he's gone mainstream Las Vegas, we suppose CBS forgot about this:

'Oz' actor makes front page tabloid news

One of the stars of HBO's nightmare prison series, Oz, is finding out that life can imitate art in a nightmarish way.

Granville Adams, who played the Muslim leader Zahir Arif (and also played a detective on Homicide), may be wearing that knit cap and prison togs for real, now that he's been charged with criminally negligent homicide in an event that plays like an opening scene from Law & Order.

While Oz was a career-starter for both Harold Perrineau and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje of Lost, Adams has most recently been working as manager and maitre d' at a swank New York City nightclub called Bed. It's a joint where a bottle of Absolut vodka goes for $275 (hey, we can get it for about ten!), and features twenty beds on the first floor (the place was featured on another HBO show, Sex & The City).

Early yesterday morning, Adams got into a tussle with a customer on the sixth floor. The man he was fighting with got thrown against an elevator door. He hit the door with such force that the elevator door popped off its rollers-- and opened! The man plunged down the shaft-- four stories! Head first! To his death!

Doesn't that stuff only happen in the movies or on TV?

A birthday shout-out from Our Man Elli

A reminder from Tabloid Baby contributor Our Man Elli In Israel: "The last of the Rat Pack lives!"

Joey Bishop is 89 today.

Belinda Carlisle records an album in French

Ha! Belinda Carlisle has made the greatest of album of her career. And it’s in French.

Yeah, somebody sent us a CD and it was a big surprise: the singer from the Go-Gos tackles some of the the greatest hits of the French pop world in Voila. Sacred hipster pop like Serge Gainsbourg’s Bonnie et Clyde and chanson warhorses like La Vie En Rose. And from the first notes, it's very cool. And Belinda is very good; grown-up, with a deep voice that sounds like it's been oiled by lots of pastis, surprising gutteral growls, and only occasional lapses into Berlitz diction or Ronstadt-phonetics-by-the-numbers.

She sounds French. The band plays clean, classic Europop and features Brian Eno on keyboards (along with our favorite Irish accordion player, Sharon Shannon). It’s good living room music.

Now, you should know that French pop music is very big in the Tabloid Baby office. Gainsbourg, Jacques Higelin and Johnny Hallyday’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Attitude all get play on the hard drive. But the real favorites are the spice girls like Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin, Carla Bruni, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, Valerie Lamercier, Claudine Longet and Vanessa Paradis. Well, against all odds, add Belinda Carlisle.

We were never fans of the Go-Gos or any of that early Eighties LA powerpop. Belinda Carlisle always seemed chubby and squeaky. When the Tabloid Baby LA years began in earnest in the early Nineties, she lived down the road from us in Benedict Canyon, married to James Mason’s son, cleaned up into a lady who lunched. Later she got herself airbrushed and naked in Playboy and apparently moved to southern France.

Of course, Voila was recorded in London and she credits not only a “French Vocal Coach” but a “French Language Tutor” in the liner notes. But it all sounds like Paris, a nice cartoony version of France, as all good French pop music provides. And on the cover, she looks her age—slimmed and worn. All good. (The only unnecessary frill is a “bonus” 4-track disc in which she sings some of the same songs in English. She sounds better in French.)

Si! Si! Si! Fab Forever conquer Mexico

No, that's not the Beatles with a lucky fan-- that's the Fab Forever, the greatest Beatles tribute band in the world, with a lucky fan in Mexico City, after recovering from their tragic engagement at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas to represent the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority in a goodwill promotional tour South of the Border. The Fabs played to sold-out crowds in Guadalajara, Monterrey and Mexico City beforfe heading back to the States.

The tour marks a comeback for the group, which was forced to cut short its full-on stage show at the Riviera Hotel & Casino after a car crash injured John Lennon's wife and daughter. But as you see in the photo above, the replacement is a spitting image of the intellectual Beatle, with chops that match his predecessor's. Las Vegas officials and hotel reps on the South of the Border tour were very impressed with the Fab's performance and a high-profile Vegas comeback is all but certain..

"The tour was terrific," says Fab Forever manager and legendary tribute impresario Jerry Peluso ("The Brian Epstein of the Tribute World"). "It was Besame Mucho all the way! Mexican audiences are loco for the Beatles-- In Mexico City, there's even a radiopstation that dedicates two hours a day to their music. To paraphrase A Hard Day's Night: 'We'll be back."

Peluso was mum on the future for the group's future, so we'll ask:

Which hotel will be smart enough to offer a new Vegas showcase for the Fab Forever?

They're that good.

What, us worry? Satire lives!

We were at the airport this weekend, and on a wall of glossy magazines, this cover stood out.

MAD is back.

We're like others our age. MAD was the magazine of our youth, the one that shaped our comic sensibilities and anti-authoritarianism. We're always on the lookout for those old paperback compilations from the first twenty five years or so, and The Mad Bathroom Companion, a massive loaf of a compilation from 2004 ("The Mother Load" edition, which combines all three in the series-- the original, "Number Two" and "Turd in A Series"-- under one hardcover), is a favorite in the Tabloid Baby office. Recent spotchecks at the newsstand have confirmed that the old mag has new life-- and holds its own against Viz.

TMZ prepares for mainstream TV debut

The corporate gossip site TMZ.com will soon be turned into a daily syndicated magazine series. As they prepare for the mainstream, we've suggested they clean up their often sordid act. A check of today's TMZ posts shows they're taking our advice:


Not.

Top Chef's main course, served raw

As Bravo’s Top Chef heads into its second season finale with a bitter showdown between its two top antagonists, we must salute its tasty model host, whom we were prepared to dislike, just as we were prepared to ignore this show until we surfed by-- and stopped.

And returned.

Good show. Good host.

We'd written about Padma Lakshmi on another website shortly before the season‘s premiere. We knew she was a model and Bollywood actress who’d written a cookbook, flaunted a hideous scar on her right arm, and happened to be Salman Rushdie’s trophy wife! In an interview with the LA Times, she seemed to exhibit the sort of up-herself haughtiness one would expect from a pretty young British empire climber who’d latched onto a respected old author.

"I hate reality TV, I have to tell you," the latest reality TV discovery told the LA Times back int he fall. "I think a lot of it brings out the worst common denominator of the human spirit."

She promised that her season of Top Chef would be "a very high-caliber, high-brow food show. "I didn't want it to turn into some kind of schlocky reality piece of fluff that I would feel embarrassed about."

Well, no reason to be embarrassed at all!

In the end, Top Chef is schlocky reality fluff at its finest! And while we mentioned that with all her talking, Padma “sounds like the next TV superstar,” she’s proven to be an ingratiating presence, sampling dishes, describing tastes and wandering into the test kitchen in a low-key, down-to-earth manner that makes Heidi Klum look like a stiff.

We found a site that has an even grander tribute to Padma’s assets (and titsets) here.

"Osama bin Idol" plays Sudan for Ramadan

When you get right down to it, the best singer on American Idol last night was Sean Michel of Bryant, Arkansas-- the bearded guy who admitted that he looks like a cross between Fidel Castro and Osama bin Laden.

Think he'll get some "American backlash"?

According to YouTube and Sean's MySpace page ("sean michel - pronounced mee-SHEHL"), the video above shows Sean "playing Forgiven Much at Abood's Park in Khartoum, Sudan as a part of Ramadan Festivities in 2005."

Hey! No "American Taliban" jokes!

It appears that the guy who sang a snappy version of Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down" for his audition (we think he looks more like Woody Allen in Bananas) is a Christian-- judging from his lengthy MySpace bio, which says in part:

"The songs of Seanmichel are not meant for a market or genre. They are simply an attempt to find meaning through music in the same place the music we love first found its meaning: the Gospel. Their music presents the listener with equal parts reality and Truth, driven by deep emotion and conviction. These songs are meant to attack the evils in this world, while also inspiring hope, simultaneously piercing the heart and uplifting the spirit..."

Yeah, but will he lose the beard in Hollywood?

Beware of imitators

Look what we ran into: a website called "TabloidBaby.net."

Apparently it has something to do with a female rock band:

"We're looking for musicians and performers to help us make this Tabloid Baby thing happen: If you dig our early skinny sound and have somethin to offer, puhleeze let us know. Particularly, we're needing electrified, synthesized, modified punk riot Grrrl type singers."

We've emailed them to find out who they are and what's up.

We'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, accept no substitutions...

'Virgin' show looks like mockumentary sequel

Wow, a reality show in which ten schmoes get a shot at losing their virginity on camera. To a "celebrity"! Sounds like a wild idea-- and already the casting call is spreading around the Internet, thanks to a high-profile corporate tabloid site that moonlights as a porn promoter. But a closer look at Virgin Territory suggests the winner may not be the only one getting screwed...

The ads today are pretty funny. With an idea he describes as "Big Brother meets The Howard Stern Show," pornmeister Kevin Blatt maps out a parody of the reality format that's up there with the best of Fox Television.

Ten "medically certified" (how they hell are they going to prove that?) male virgins will be locked lock in a house in LA's pornful San Fernando Valley. They'll be "monitored" to make sure no one has any sexual contact-- "even with themselves," and a "celebrity host" will preside over competitions and tests that result each week with the lowest-scoring virgin being Prematurely Ejected. "America" will vote via a 900 number to decide between the final two. On the last episode, "surprise celebrity takes the winner to the Lose-it Lounge, where video cameras will record the action to be shown on the Web and on TV (Fox again?).

Blatt is best known for marketing the Paris Hilton sex tape, and today, TMZ, the sleazy AOL website that's being spun into a syndicated TV magazine, is hyping the new sex show and teasing that Jenna Jameson or Paris Hilton might be involved.

But notice the poster's mention that Blatt "originated" American Cannibal.

Last year saw the release of a documentary called American Cannibal: The Road To Reality that told the supposedly true story of Blatt's attempt to produce a reality TV series in which contestants are placed on a desert island, starved and encouraged to eat each other. He develops the idea after passing on an idea called... Virgin Terrritory, wherein a guy gets to lose it to a porn star.

Many believe the Cannibal documentary was actually a staged , Blair Witchian "mockumentary."

So is this one for real? Or are the casting call, and the billboards set to go up in LA and NYC, the first steps in the making of a sequel?

Hey, at least let's hope the "celebrity" isn't Andy Dick.