Video: Now you can dress like Liam Gallagher

The greatest rock 'n' roll singer of our time, from the greatest rock 'n' roll band in history.

Classic:

Natasha Richardson

Christmastime 1993. Actor Ralph Fiennes starts popping up at restaurants and eateries in and around Beverly Hills in the weeks following the opening in limited release of the film Schindler's List (based on the book Schindler's Ark by Aussie Thomas Keneally, who wrote a character based on Tabloid Baby's author in his book Jacko The Great Intruder) in which his turn as a Nazi SS officer has introduced him to Hollywood in a big way and will score him an Academy Award nomination. Weeks later, as awards season approaches, he shows up in the bar lounge of The Four Seasons Hotel, sitting across from Liam Neeson, who played his nemesis Schindler. At Neeson's side is his wife, Natasha Richardson. Someone says something witty and she laughs and her, laugh is big and loud, honking and bawdy and filling the room, not at all refined or polite or even ladylike and we all get a big kick out of it-- as much as the sight of Oskar Schindler sharing a drink with Amon Göth a few blocks from Nate & Al's. We've remembered her laugh fifteen years now.

Ray Richmond bites Tinseltown with new site

Ray Richmond, columnist for The Hollywood Reporter, is not only the conscience of the industry, but the best and funniest television writer in town and a much better critic of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com than we are. He had a major hit with his Past Deadline website-- until something went down and he passed on the writing to others who posted only occasionally, so it's good news to see that Ray's got a new site.

Man Bites Tinseltown went into operation only hours ago and already it's jampacked with good stuff.

Promises Ray:

"I'm determined to shake everyone (you included) from their showbiz stupor and supply a heaping helping of Hollywood news and comment along with a big-time surge of energy. But I'm going to do it in a way that doesn't feel forced or heavy-handed or, you know, lame. My pledge is that MBT will be tantalizingly offbeat as well as informative. The goal is to deliver something that you can't find anyplace else, a provocative page with some snark, yes, but also a measure of (violence arrogance bigotry) sophistication. Something that's written for actual grownups but that you wouldn't be embarrassed to have your Third-Grader read..."

Yay, Ray. Bookmark Man Bites Tinseltown as we already have done.

R.I.P. S.P.-I.

Now TMZ penis-cake boy declares bitch war on us!

TMZ's penis-cake producer pounces on pix post!

Looks like some people noticed the exclusive gallery of behind-the-scenes party pix from the office of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com that we posted over the weekend-- including one of the stars, TMZ on camera boy "Antonio" (above and below), who responded on the Oh-Bitch-Pleez site:


Oh Ma Gawd!
This is so fucking funny! This poor dude over at Tabloidbaby.com has been trying to take down TMZ since day one. He’s tried desperately to spread filth about TMZ and it’s employees. Clearly he’s a little behind if he thinks I still work there. Check out the hilariously STUPID post he came up with this time. And for the record, those cakes were delicious! We ate up every last (drop) piece.

Altovise

Altovise Davis was Sammy Davis Jr.'s third wife, the willowy ex-dancer who accompanied him through the swinging, swapping Seventies, his incredible renaissance in the Eighties and, ultimately, to the end of his life in 1990. Twenty years of marriage to the entertainer was a wild ride, but the two decades remaining until her death yesterday were not so high-flying. Widowhood was not good to Alto. She did not enjoy the dower and philanthropic autumn of a Barbara Sinatra or Jeanne Martin, as Sammy spent it all and left her deeply in debt, forcing her to sell not only their home on Summit Drive in Beverly Hills, but his awards, mementos, and everything except whatever she could hide in a storage unit. The hidden cache was taken as well. Alto invited us to Sammy's funeral. She invited us into her home, where we did admit in Tabloid Baby that we searched the medicine cabinet for glass eyes. Chapter 9.

Exclusive photos! Behind the scenes at TMZ

Try to find some photos of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com or its inconsequential whitewashed syndicated television sister the week that the stately, creaking New York Times claimed the sinister Time Warner- AOL-backed operation "drove mainstream coverage and Congressional outrage" in the story of the "billion-dollar business scandals and the economic collapse," and you might be surprised at what TMZ's on-camera toyboys post on the Internet for unprotected public consumption. As these and other pix we've shown you in the past indicate, it looks like a lot more than numbers are being crunched and more than Wall Street finances are being probed in 'Hef" Harvey's hirsute harem!

New York Times' acclaimed investigative business journalist crawls back to familiar turf, dishing with fellow gay about their dead icon Anna Nicole

Harvey Levin (right), shaved bronzed midget frontman of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com and its inconsequential whitewashed syndicated television sister, was comfortably back in clone Polo and his familiar checkbook coverage of dead sex symbol Anna Nicole Smith, today, while today's New York Times gives credibility to his sleazy operation in a controversial front-page story by a website blogging fanboy turned Times reporter.

Sinking New York Times elevates stinking TMZ

Recent viewers of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com and its whitewashed syndicated television sister know the AOL and Time Warner-backed operation for its ugly misogynistic harassment of the troubled woman who gave birth to octuplets, and know its shaved bronzed midget frontman as the giddy giggling amalgamation of Sidney Falco and Roy Cohn who's shown up joyfully on local news and morning shows to wallow in the pugwash of the latest conscienceless backdoor gangbang perpetrated by his jealous Hollywood-hating attack squad.

But to readers of The New York Times, TMZ.com is a shining light of investigative muckraking journalism, not only challenging but leading the mainstream in the coverage of "billion-dollar business scandals and the economic collapse."

In a story that's hit the Times website tonight, reporter Brian Stelter states that TMZ actually "drove mainstream coverage and Congressional outrage with a blog post late last month that exclaimed, 'Bailout Bank Blows Millions Partying in L.A.' The site reported that Northern Trust, a bank that received $1.6 billion in taxpayer money, had hosted hundreds of clients and employees at a golf tournament and a series of parties in Southern California. 'Your tax dollars, hard at work,' the site wrote.

"Northern Trust never sought the bailout funds, but agreed to take them last fall at the behest of the government. Regardless, the photos of Tiffany gift bags and the grainy video clips of Chicago and Sheryl Crow performing for the group angered readers —as well as Congressional Democrats, who demanded in a letter that Northern Trust repay what the company 'frittered away on these lavish events.' The bank said it would do so 'as quickly as prudently possible,' news that earned four exclamation points from TMZ.

"Harvey Levin, the editor of TMZ, who called the story 'the most important thing we’ve ever done,' knows his readers don’t come to the site for a dissertation on mortgage-backed securities. 'It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around $800 billion in bailout money. It’s too big a thing,' he said. 'It’s much easier to understand paying for a Sheryl Crow concert.'"

At a time when established, major newspapers are folding left and right in the face of economic woes and Internet competition, such praise and validation in the pages of the financially-troubled New York Times seem outlandish and hard to even fathom-- unless you read TabloidBaby.com and remember our criticism of the boy blogger-turned-Times reporter.

After Stelter wrote his second gushing Times story about the TMZ TV show in December 2007, we wrote that "youthful TV blogger-turned-New York Times special reporter Brian Stelter continues to drag the former 'newspaper of record' down the slippery slope of hype and spin with his breathless adulation of the syndicated television series based on the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com."

While TMZ's most notable "contribution" to the coverage of the economic crisis has been its scapegoating and mocking of the so-called "Octomom," tabloid television shows have been, as Stelter praised TMZ and other infotainment shows, "expanding their coverage" since the Eighties, when A Current Affair covered the San Francisco earthquake and fall of the Berlin Wall. The acquisition of the Northern Trust celebrity party photos was the center of TMZ's jaded and cynical spin, but it was a very brief diversion from its usual corrupt fare. Stelter's use of the Times platform to give credibility to the site only gives Levin and his patrons more authority to state with a straight face that the work they do is of value and deserving of corporate and network support in expanding.

And all this comes on an evening when TMZ's gallery of online headlines is highlighted by

Reality Doc Sued Over Alleged Botched Vagina

and

Neverland Was Filled with Sculpted Boys

(Of special to irony to those who recall Harvey Levin's initial brush with the spotlight, TabloidBaby.com "drove mainstream coverage and Congressional outrage" in 2005 with its exclusive photos of Mitzvahpalooza, the $10 million bat mitzvah tossed by a Long Island defense contractor accused of supplying faulty body armour to US soldiers in Iraq, and featuring pop and rock stars like Don Henley, Tom Petty, 50 Cent and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. Mainstream organizations from Rolling Stone to Time magazine used our photos.)

We're glad the LAPD dedicated a police car to patrol and protect Pacific Palisades

...because a cop took twenty minutes out of morning rush hour to follow us and then give us a ticket for using a cell phone while in traffic....

Exclusive! Chitown is Seventh Py-town!

Chicago's hipster movie and music trendsetters willingly lost their collective cool tonight as the Chicago International Movies & Music Festival featured an exclusive screening of The Seventh Python. As you can see from the clip above, the audience at the Chicago Cultural Center was fully appreciative of the Neil Innes biopic produced by our pals at Frozen Pictures. Tabloid Baby's special correspondent Sam Peters is in Chicago. He's sent us this report:


"The Second City Chitown is Seventh Py-town tonight, as the first annual Chicago International Movies & Music Festival takes over the windy city with cutting edge and experimental music flicks and shows that have made the indie the talk of the town from downtown to Wicker Park.... Hip and exclusive though it may be, most of the filmfest talk is about The Seventh Python, the flick with the most mainstream appeal... Pop satirist and Monty Python sideman Neil Innes ruled from afar as his doco biopic was featured at the oh-too-classy Chicago Cultural Center tonight...


"Rain did not dampen the spirits of the film festival crowd... good-sized audience... even the most jaded film buff was howling with laughter at stars like John Cleese and his fellow Pythons... hilarious Phill Jupitus was surprise standout laffmaker-- I see Ricky Gervais potential in this Brit comic... Wish I could say the same for director Burt Kearns. His post-movie Q&A showed he could use a public speaking coach, reminding us of the void left by the last-minute cancellation by film's writer-producer and longtime Chicago fave (and former Hudson Brother) Brett Hudson...


"Kearns did score points, taking on local rag Chicago Reader's misguided whacks at the film's innovative and deliberate rejection of archival footage... defended 'deliberate decision' to 'not turn this into the standard VH1 or BBC documentary' in creating 'a portrait of the artist as an old man. Not elderly, still vital-- but as he is today'... Urged audience to seek out Innes' entire career on YouTube... Reader's been served! Kearns not so bad after all!... Big cheers for animation director and NeilInnes.org creator Bonnie Rose and her win in the Colbert Report Green Screen Challenge... Celebs in the crowd included 'Vet' Ken Simpson, one of the Innes backing musicians featured in the film; star local performer and 'Storybook Mom' Nili Yelin; and, I'm pretty sure, Oprah.


"CIMMfest awards are handed out Sunday evening. Look for The Seventh Python to strike again!"


Sam Peters On The Aisle!©®™

Stay tuned...

Seventh Python Saturday night at Chicago Fest

The Seventh Python is screening Saturday night in a prime showcase at the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival. We pass along this release from its producers, our pals at Frozen Pictures:

The Seventh Python is Saturday night special
at Chicago International Movies and Music Festival

CHICAGO (FROZEN PICTURES) Tickets are still available for the exclusive screening of The Seventh Python Saturday night at the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival.

The acclaimed and award-winning film about legendary pop satirist and Monty Python collaborator Neil Innes will be screened in competition March 7 at 8 pm at the Chicago Cultural Center at 78 East Washington Street. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "charming and illuminating," and "hilarious" by the LAist, The Seventh Python was recently named winner of the Golden Ace Award from the Las Vegas International Film Festival for 'superior and standout filmmaking.'

The Seventh Python has been applauded for its handling of a unique artist with a marked distaste for "the fame game," while including appearances by Innes friends and fans including John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michal Palin, Simpsons creator Matt Groening and songwriter Aimee Mann.

The film also stands out because of its playful tweaking of the documentary form and a unique interactive element that eschews the hackneyed use of archival still photos and film clips. Instead, state-of-the art (and often Pythonesque) animation combines the aforementioned elements into an innovative new method of biographical time travel. The Seventh Python also contains prompts that encourage viewers to expand and extend the film's scope in any direction they wish.


"This isn't a crawl through someone's photo or video archives. This is a 21st century nonfiction film that takes advantage of the almost unlimited resources of cyberspace," says director Burt Kearns. "Neil's entire musical and comedy history is there online. We're giving the power to the audience and encourage viewers and fans to find it and do their own directors cut."

"To be honest, we're sick of the old ‘stills and archival footage' docos," adds producer Brett Hudson. "They're 20th century. They're old. We've been there and done that too many times. The Seventh Python takes us on a journey through the past, but Neil's story is set in the present and leads the audience into the future, just like Neil Innes does."

Tickets for The Seventh Python at the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival are still available at www.cimmfest.org.

Tabloid Baby and the latest phony memoir

This morning we add the name Matt McCarthy to the list of pseudomemoirists, another lily-gilding wannabe accused of embellishing his sordid life in order to hype up a story of his experiences. McCarthy, a graduate of Yale and the Harvard Medical School caught out faking a book about his life as a minor league baseball pitcher, joins James Frey and his rehab book, Herman Rosenblat and his Holocaust story and Margaret Seltzer's made-up life as an inner-city gang girl in a hall of shame reserved for the elite publishing world's golden children who conjure literary fiction and arrogantly pass it off as experience. And while these East Coast and Oprah faves embarrass the elite publishing crowd, some might find it ironic that the wildest major memoir of recent years, the one with the most outrageous, jaw-dropping stories, is the one that is incontrovertibly accurate and true and stands unchallenged in its veracity, while its subject is the supposedly fiction-weaving world of tabloid television. But then you recall that the book was not only blacklisted by the oldstream media, but dropped suddenly by interested New York publishers, and you realize that it's not ironic at all, actually.

About an hour and a half ago at Starbucks

Smoking kills The Winston Man

We've heard of The Marlboro Man and Joe Camel, but never The Winston Man. But Alan Landers was apparently him, a male model who was the face of Winston cigarettes, appearing in magazine ads and on billboards in the Sixties and Seventies.

Alan Landers wound up leading a multi-million dollar crusade against the tobacco industry and was set to testify against cigarette manufacturer RJ Reynolds (a suit that was brought in 1995 and is only now going to trial).

But Alan Landers, who helped make smoking "cool," also wound up with lung cancer and throat cancer. And he won't testify next month because he died of cancer Friday at 68.


Read about Brett Hudson's winning battle against cancer and the American medical establishment here.

Muhammad Ali last night in Las Vegas

We all know that heavyweight hero Muhammad Ali likes magic. And last night, Ali, his wife Lonnie and other family members were in the audience for Lance Burton's magic show at the Monte Carlo. When fellow Louisville native and Tabloid Baby pal Burton announced the champ was in the audience, the entire crowd of over 900 people leapt to their feet with a standing ovation that went on for minutes.


Poor Muhammad Ali.

The greatest voice on radio

"Hello, Americans. You know what the news is. In a minute, you're going to hear... the rest... of the story." Up until last week, we were saying those words along with him in the car at 7 pm while we were waiting to hear one of our few, maybe our only, radio appointments, with The Rest of The Story, and try to figure out who he was talking about before he revealed the name at the end. Paul Harvey was an old kook with a very interesting background, with early years including a Section 8 mental illness discharge from the Army Air Corps during World War II and other shenanigans, and up until the end he was the greatest voice on radio. Whenever we were our there in a car somwhere in America, whether we were barreling through Kansas, speeding across Texas or on the road to Vegas, we'd cut the music around noontime and search the dial for his Paul Harvey News & Comment, which was about the most American thing you can ever hear when all you see is sky and the highway ahead of you. His reports were the best-written on radio and television both, witty and economical, with a point of view and full of quirky pauses and internal punchlines. Recently the local ABC affiliate started running Mike in his news spot and it wasn't the same. You know Mike, the radio veteran, the guy who wanted to be president. Only you know him as Mike Huckabee and that's why we changed the station and now you know... the rest... of the story.





Good day!

Dr. Ruehl says ailing Ed McMahon seemed to be "in excellent health" when they worked together

Word that television icon and Jerry Lewis Telethon cohost Ed McMahon is hospitalized near death was a special shock to Tabloid Baby pal and contributor Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D., who co-starred in what could be Ed's last project.

He writes us:

"It is reported that Ed McMahon is suffering pneumonia and bone cancer, and has been hospitalized.

"I am surprised and saddened by this dire news. I worked with Ed on his 'Gangsta Rap' video a few months ago and he appeared to be in excellent health! He was energetic and cordial, shaking hands with everyone on the set, and doing retakes like a pro!

"He only asked, when we were dancing in a motel room, that we try to avoid bumping into him as he did not want another fall.

"I am seen with my repent sign and raccoon hat 38-42 secs into the Ed McMahon 'Gangsta Rap' video (above)."

Carry on, Wendy Richard!

Our own Sam Peters informs us that the world lost another popular Carry On player this morning when Wendy Richard died after a long battle with breast cancer. Wendy starred in Carry On Girls, Carry On Again Christmas and Carry On Matron, AKA From Here to Maternity or Familiarity Breeds or Womb at the Top or The Preggars Opera. She was only 65.

TMZ uses Octocharade to push another pornsite

The pseudojournos at the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com began the day with a ridiculously concocted story that one of its porn-pushing partners had offered the mother of octuplets $1 million to appear in an x-rated movie, and now end the day with another stunt extropolation that manages to give the Internet address of yet another pornography distributor.

The crass, distasteful, shameless and shameful story, based on a "letter" obtained "exclusively" by the breeder-bashing TMZ, was most obviously a stunt that the AOL Time Warner subsidiary and CNN corporate cousin had cooked up in cahoots with the porn company, whose product TMZ has pushed in the past and, as we showed you this morning, pushed today.

The Seventh Python producer says film festival selections and awards will lead to new screenings

More news from The Seventh Python front: The City of Chicago and The Chicago International Movies & Music Festival are gearing up for the arrival of the acclaimed nonfiction film from our pals at Frozen Pictures, which is being featured in a prime festival showcase on Saturday night, March 7th. Frozen's already got a team on the ground laying down promotion in the Windy City as the film's selection for the prestigious CIMM Fest competition slate has shined an international spotlight on the hilarious and moving flick-- and the man at the center, legendary and still-vital pop satirist and Monty Python collaborator Neil Innes.

And on the heels of the Python's Golden Ace Award from the upcoming Las Vegas International Film Festival, Seventh co-executive producer Keith Walker announced today that film, which also stars Python alums John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones, will be screened for the general public as well as distributors during the Las Vegas festival, which runs April 9-12.

"Since we've already been honored with the Golden Ace, we won't be screening the film in competition at the Vegas fest," Walker tells us this morning. "But this prestigious award has gotten a lot of people asking where they can see it in Vegas. We're arranging screenings in a movie theatre. We'll be inviting the cast of the Beatles' Love show from The Mirage, some folks who worked with Spamalot when it was in town-- and a magician or two."

The Atlanta-based Walker, a veteran producer who's the Southern and East Coast emissary for the LA-based Frozen Pictures, says he's also arranging screenings in his hometown.

"Atlanta's been Monty Python country from the beginning. Spamalot, which includes Neil's music, is coming to town next month. Elton John's got a place here. And we've got a great music and film scene. Folks can't wait to see The Seventh Python."

Watch this space for details for announcements about Los Angeles and other cities.

(The Seventh Python will also be shown March 28th at 11 a.m. at the NY Metro Fest for Beatles Fans, the world’s largest Beatles fans convention. Director Burt Kearns and producer Brett Hudson will be on hand for the screening in the ballroom of the Meadowlands Crowne Plaza Hotel— along with Neil Innes himself, who will be performing and signing autographs throughout the weekend.)