-Caveat Lector-
>From Slate.CoM
<<In view of the premise that Hollyweird has an immense influence on
our daily lives, the following is being shared so all can have some
assistance in keeping track of the 'movers and shakers' thereat.>>
_______________________
>
>
> keeping tabs
>
> Touched by a Tabloid: Rosie O'Donnell rediscovers her faith, Tommy Lee
> exorcises his demons, and Alicia Silverstone blesses the elephants.
>
> By Jennifer Mendelsohn
>
>
> Maybe it's a touch of premillennial fever or all that
> post-Columbine soul-searching, but for whatever reason, the
> tabloids turn their collective eyes toward heaven this month and
> find God. Even when the Big Guy himself is not explicitly
> mentioned--and he's mentioned plenty--the current crop of tabloid
> offerings brims with so many transcendent crises (life-threatening
> illnesses, brushes with sudden death, ruminations on mortality,
> profligate lives steered straight and narrow) that it feels like one
> long episode of Touched by an Angel.
>
> The Globe, for starters, details not one but two exorcisms underway
> this month: one performed on Burke Ramsey, the brother of murdered
> child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, to "rid [him] of any remaining
> memories" from the murder; and one on Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee.
> Lee's exorcism has supposedly unearthed the "sweet little boy" inside
> him, spurring ex-wife Pamela Anderson to run back into his tattooed
> arms--and, apparently, into his bed. Pregnancy rumors abound, but only
> the Globe has a damning photo of Anderson's abdomen, highlighted with
> a red circle to point out its eyebrow-raising convexity.
>
> Talk show host Rosie O'Donnell has also had spiritual matters on
> her mind of late. After 25 years as a lapsed Catholic, the Enquirer
> reports, O'Donnell recently "took God back into her heart." And,
> according to the Star, she is so terrified of dying young that she has
> entered into a pact with perhaps the world's most famous lapsed
> Catholic, Madonna, to make sure her children will be cared for. Hoping
> to keep the Grim Reaper at bay, O'Donnell is also said to be
> assiduously dieting and exercising.
>
> We heartily recommend that she do whatever it takes to stay in the
> here and now, if only to avoid being included in the Enquirer's
> "Scandals of the Century" double issue, which devotes an entire
> section ("The Quick and the Dead") to celebs cut down too soon. Unlike
> O'Donnell, actor River Phoenix was apparently quite keen on the idea
> of checking out early. "I don't want to die from old age in a nursing
> home," he reportedly told a friend. "I'll be the best-looking guy in
> the morgue." It was surely in the interest of proving the accuracy of
> this prediction, therefore, that the Enquirer chose to run a
> post-mortem photo of the actor. And while Keeping Tabs finds it
> inappropriate to quibble over the attractiveness of corpses, we will
> bestow upon Phoenix our special nod for clarity in the face of
> eternity; it was he who reportedly shouted, "I'm gonna die, dude!" on
> his way out.
>
> On the brighter side, celebrities have saved--or tried to save--so
> many lives this month that we wonder if anyone's getting any real work
> done in Hollywood. They've revived an ailing dog (ER's Anthony
> Edwards), spent $700 nursing a rabbit back to health (actress Gretchen
> Mol), spearheaded efforts to free an inhumanely caged gorilla (Doris
> Day), and aided African elephants that suffer from "Floppy Trunk
> Syndrome," a malady that keeps the poor beasts from eating properly
> (Alicia Silverstone).
>
> Business has been no less brisk for human rescues. The Enquirer
> details lifesaving efforts by Meryl Streep, Sylvester Stallone, and
> Tom Cruise, among others. The re-Christianized Rosie O'Donnell is
> reported to have made two daring rescues aboard her Jet Ski, says the
> Globe. Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Kennedy's ex-wife, Joan, reportedly saved
> her own life by calling a taxi in the middle of a mild heart attack.
> The Enquirer suggests that "lonely" Joan was forced to make the call
> because she's been "abandoned" by her ex-husband. The Globe, on the
> other hand, has the good senator "rush[ing] right over" to be with his
> ex and thanking--you guessed it--God that she was all right.
>
> One Globe photographer's prayers must have been answered when he
> followed Brooke Shields and new boyfriend Chris Henchy on what was
> supposed to be a simple exercise outing. The "lensman was expecting to
> snap some fun photos of the couple enjoying the spring day," the Globe
> explains breezily, as if the photographer had actually been invited
> along for the trip. But Shields is on emotional thin ice, having
> recently filed for divorce from her husband and having lost a fellow
> Suddenly Susan cast member to suicide; and the photographer was
> "stunned" when she suddenly began "sobbing uncontrollably." Luckily
> for Globe readers, the quick-thinking paparazzo was not so stunned
> that he couldn't get off several frames of the disconsolate actress.
> Shields quickly pulled herself together, however, and she and Henchy
> headed for a "trendy health-food store" to buy organic fruits and
> vegetables.
>
> While the Globe's photographer failed to capture the pair choosing
> hydroponic tomatoes, we feel fairly confident that they did not buy
> any apples. The Star suggests that Shields' breakdown may be in part
> attributable to the fact that the "stressed-out" actress is battling a
> "crippling disease": temporal mandibular joint syndrome, or TMJ, which
> sounds a bit like the aforementioned floppy trunk syndrome. With all
> due respect to TMJ sufferers, Keeping Tabs can't help but note that
> Shields' symptoms, while no doubt troublesome, seem to fall just a bit
> short of "crippling." "It got to the point where I just couldn't open
> my mouth wide enough to eat an apple," Shields is quoted as saying. "I
> had to get someone to 'start' my apples for me." Fear not, apple
> eaters; the Star very thoughtfully reprints the address of the TMJ
> Association's Web site.
>
> And finally, the tabloids try to account for the end of soap star
> Susan Lucci's 18-time losing streak at the daytime Emmys. (The Star
> asserts that she'll now quit All My Children for her own talk show.
> But there's no word on whether she'll consider the path taken by
> soap-stars-turned-preachers Susan and Bill Hayes, who according to the
> Star have "traded in steamy scenes between the sheets" to "devote
> their lives to the Lord.") The Enquirer offers this rather
> down-to-earth explanation of Lucci's win, straight from an Emmy judge:
> She snagged the trophy because she finally stopped submitting tapes
> with "overly dramatic" performances and went with something subtler
> instead. (Less, apparently, is more, even for a soap opera character
> who's been married to virtually everyone on the show and once
> impersonated a nun.) The Globe, however, looks to the Fates to explain
> her win, calling in two numerologists to mull over Lucci's birth date,
> the cosmic significance of the year 1999, and the importance of the
> number 19 in her life. Should we even feign surprise that she was 19
> when she "survived a devastating car accident"? Or that it was 19
> years ago that Lucci's son Andreas made it through a "touch-and-go"
> health scare? As far as the numerologists are concerned, the other
> nominees shouldn't even have bothered to show up on Emmy night.
> Numbers, shnumbers. Keeping Tabs is certain that Lucci's win was,
> quite simply, the will of God.
> Copyright (c) 1999 Microsoft and/or its suppliers. All rights
> reserved.
A<>E<>R
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
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