Celebrity Disaster: February 2012

Always Good For a Tepid Laugh

I'm sure that the Academy Awards is thrilled to know that Sacha Baron Cohen was able to flog his worthless film for a few minutes on their dime by going with a lame, easily anticipated joke.

When did mediocrity demand an airing and why are we forced to see this sort of thing over and over again? Cohen practically had a meltdown in public when they wouldn't let him pull his seen-it-coming-from-a-mile-away prank and this is the best he could come up with? Bimbos, a fake beard, and crap dumped on Ryan Seacrest?

I just can't understand why anyone tolerates this stuff anymore. This is why they give money to Adam Sandler to make movies--there's no one willing to tell the people who hand out the bucks that this stuff is over and done with.

Sacha Baron Cohen Cries and Gets His Way

Hollywood loves a shill, and that's all Sacha Baron Cohen aspires to be.
He has to shill his new movie on the red carpet and try to drum up as much interest as possible. If it flops like Bruno, he knows he won't get to make too many more of these films and he'll be relegated to playing "the foreign weirdo" for the next thirty years.

The Nasty Business of Lawyers

That's actually a great way to deflect blame. When Sugarland's lawyer says "voluntarily assumed risk," that's exactly how they're going to get away with turning back all of the lawsuits that have been filed.

It all comes down to planning. Who planned out the construction of the stage and the lighting equipment? Who specified that the overhanging stage portion would have lights and would thus be "appropriate" for the venue, the artist, and for the shows that were planned?

Given that this was probably going to be a shared stage with numerous acts, someone had to have produced a document or a plan that specified that the artists would be presented on a stage with x number of lights, y number of overhead sound speakers, and z number of scaffolding pieces upon which to either attach or secure that equipment. There are also considerations for video equipment and how many operators would be utilized in that overhang as part of each show. Each band would either provide overhead lighting technicians or would use the venue's technicians for the duration of the various shows that were scheduled to take place and so there had to be a schedule or an agreement as to how all of that would be organized and run. Finally, the panels that screened or covered up that equipment as it faced the audience no doubt carried corporate logos or advertising, perhaps even video screens.

Whoever ordered the lights, speakers, video equipment, corporate logos and flat-front panels is liable. Whoever specified how that equipment would be used and for there to be roadies in that collapsed overhang is to blame. And this is for the entire duration of the production, since it could have been equipment installed by another act that actually made the overhang heavy and/or susceptible to collapse.

But people tend to go after whoever has deep pockets and hope for a settlement. This was a planning and safety failure. It should never have happened, but there it is.

So much for all of that sympathy and for all of those prayers. Lawyers don't much care if you prayed for the injured and the dead. They want their money and they're going to find a way to get their money.

Who's That Crazy Man Being Attacked by Birds?

When Chris Brown isn't beating women, or telling women that he wants to date that he will not beat them, he is being attacked by birds. Who lives their life like this?

The Pathetic Debacle Surrounding Whitney Houston's Funeral

It would seem that a larger-than-life drama is going to surround Whitney Houston's demise for some time now. I don't think any of this stuff will disappear. What was supposed to be a celebration of the someone's life turned into a pissing match between Bobby Brown and the Houston family.

I deliberately shut down and avoided this nonsense over the weekend. Who, in their right mind, would want to try and make sense of how Brown would throw a fit at his ex-wife's funeral and storm out? Who would want to sit and read the "insider" speculation from the well-paid hacks within the family's circle who are leaking every detail to the press? It all seems so pathetic and sad.

Now the drama will center around three issues. First, what will become of the only daughter, Bobbi Kristina? Second, when will Bobby Brown himself overdose on drugs and end up on a slab? Third, what will happen to all of the money that Clive Davis and LA Reid didn't already steal?

You can expect years of this nonsense to continue. The leaks out of this family will never stop, either. If you follow the link above and go to the The Daily Beast, you can see the "insider" stuff practically oozing off the screen. Some nobody bent the ear of a hack, and that's what it reads like to me. Of course, you can fully expect Brown to try to cash in on what happened and try to make money for himself. Which is fine, because he needs it now that his cash cow of an ex-wife is gone and her money will probably be handled by lawyers and the Houston family like a bottomless pot of gold.

Oh, and you can expect the record label now holding onto her recordings to continue fleecing consumers and you can expect that this tragedy will be milked for every penny it has left in it. Everyone will get their cut in the end and nobody will take the high road.

Nancy Grace Can't Help Herself

From now on, anytime anyone dies, Nancy Grace is going to speculate in an irresponsible way and claim it was murder so that she can maintain some semblance of being relevant. This allows her to possibility of being right at least once over the next twenty years.

Just get used to it.

Jimmy Kimmel is the Real Deal

The more I see of Jimmy Kimmel, the more I am convinced that he is the real heir apparent to Johnny Carson.

Whitney Houston 1963-2012

Robert Dewey Hoskins is On the Lam

Robert Dewey Hoskins is a piece of work. He has made terroristic threats and he has crossed the line from stalker into a very strange territory where his actions led him to being incarcerated. And now he has escaped.

I don't know if Madonna is still terrified of him, but Halle Berry is and she wants to move to France in order to get away from him. And who could blame her? The guy is batshit crazy.

UPDATE:

Batshit crazy has been captured.

Anything For Happiness

I know it may sound shocking, but some people do go after happiness, despite the fact that, in so doing, they may not be making celebrity blog writers happy or giving their career in showbiz a much-needed lift.

We Have an Exceptionally Good President

This is how you start a bromance with science.

Where Sports and Celebrity Shouldn't Really Mix

This is where being a celebrity married to someone who plays professional sports goes off the rails. She is entitled to her opinion, but that doesn't mean anyone who understands football is going to really pay attention to her or blame Tom Brady for what she said. The game is a little more complicated than that.

Roland Martin's Stupid Tweet

Roland Martin wrote something stupid on Twitter yesterday, and, yes, he will probably be fired if not suspended for how stupid it was.

This was the sort of thing someone writes when they want people to laugh at how funny they are. Martin didn't engage his brain before writing it, however. He should have made it about how his wife left and bought him the underwear Beckham was wearing or something like that. He should have made it about anything other than hitting a man who might be attracted to another man.

Media personalities are no smarter than anyone else. And people with large followings on Twitter aren't going to survive for very long if they make their feed "interesting." As soon as you start trying to make people laugh in the United States of America, circa 2012, you're going to offend someone and lose your job.

UPDATE:

CNN has basically cut Martin loose. Oh well. So much for mea culpa, mea culpa.

No Bros to Help Him Out

It's not easy to describe the smell of neglect and shame that hangs over your typical Asian Internet cafe.

Ten years ago, I knew the Internet cafes of South Korea pretty well. The obsession with gaming and socializing in the abstract sense was very much in evidence when I would use the cafes to do E-mail and look for deals on pre-recorded music (this is how I came to have an Amazon.com account that is my second oldest account, which is a Hotmail account that is pretty crusty and old). The gamers would sit there, determined and twitching, and not moving. They would stare, blankly, for hours.

And this was in an establishment where the computers were fairly average. Keyboards did a lot more clacking in those days. And the monitors were all the heavy CRTs that took up massive amounts of cubicle space. No flat screens. This was all set up in a crowded room lit by florescent lights. It makes my eyes water just to think about it.

The smell often made you want to get up and walk right out without logging off. Prices were cheap as hell, so it wouldn't have made much of a difference. I never needed more than twenty minutes or so in those places. To spend any more time than that in a place where the people are resigned to their fate was foolish. To this day, I can't sit for very long and work at a computer. It suggests the impending demise of the body and the soul, all at once.

This dead gamer needed a bromancing partner with him; someone who would get up and slap him and make him walk down to the store and get a juice can with actual grapes in it. That might have helped save him, but it wouldn't have kept him alive for much longer.

Madonna is Promising Not to Suddenly Appear to Be Nude

Aside from Justin Timberlake making Janet Jackson not actually nude by accident (and then acting like he was, whoa, you know, not responsible, nope), there are no memorable halftime musical performances at the Super Bowl.

Whoever thought putting Madonna up there would be a "great move" or a culturally relevant event is kidding themselves. Madonna looks great for 53, but her her impact on today's culture is over. She is doing this because people now care a heck of a lot more about Lady Gaga, Adele, Rhianna, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry. And, you'll note, she's going to surround herself with a lot of people who are younger. In some small way, this is pathetic, but only just.

In fact, pick any of those five singers that I just mentioned and you've got more interest in the half time show than you do it Madonna shows up. I'm not exactly a hater, but, damn. Only Elton John is more over than Madonna.

Snap!

Rachel Weisz Can't Catch a Break

This incident has led the aggregation sites (like Buzzfeed) to seize upon the fact that there's something wrong with Rachel Weisz; the problem here is that the "post-production" techniques were a little too over the top. As in, they Photoshopped the hell out of the image they were using of her and tried to make their product look better than it really was.

So, who do you blame here? Well, if you're a smartassed headline writer, you blame Weisz for not being "luminous" or "beautiful" or "attractive" and that's patently unfair. The real blame rests with the people who decided to use her image and then doctor it to the point where the industry watchdog in Britain had to step in and say something.

There's no need to be catty. Weisz wasn't leaning over the shoulder of the Photoshop user, demanding more of that smoothing effect.

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