When it moved Project Runway from Bravo to Lifetime, Weinstein Company transformed the latter cable network from overearnest television for spinsters into something more chic and cheeky, or so some people said at the time. Weinstein Company was promptly sued by Bravo parent NBC Universal, which won an unexpected victory in court and impounded the show. Lifetime has been stewing, bitterly, and yelling at its cats, like a spurned mistress, and now Lifetime has decided it's going to sue Harvey Weinstein's company, presumably for being a slimy jerk who said the divorce was final when really he wasn't even separated yet. This makes 2008 the year of total meltdown for Weinstein:
- Bravo is developing a Runway copycat while it keeps the show bottled up in court. Some of the program's original producers are involved. Harvey is pissed.
- Weinstein Company lost four executives in six months.
- Weinstein lost and agreed to pay a $1 million bet, a bet that would have paid him nothing had he won.
- The New York press Weinstein used to believe he controlled began to turn on him.
- The fashion company Weinstein paid $25 million for got tepid reviews on its new line.
- Weinstein's Facebook for Millionaires saw traffic decline.
- His charitable giving was questioned as perhaps too low.
- Stock in in his home-video distributor declined to less than one-tenth its prior value.
The mogul at this point would be well advised to get any more disappointments out of the way over the next 40 days or so, so he can hit rock bottom and try to redeem and restart himself in 2009. Now that would make for a fresh reality show.
Failure may be an orphan, but McCain campaign veterans seem to be doing their best to pin blame for defeat on their MAVERICK VP choice Sarah Palin. Fox News Channel political correspondent Carl Cameron today disclosed the first of what he predicts will be an "avalanche" of unflattering stories about the Republican vice presidential nominee: Off-the-record tips from McCain aides that Palin did not know Africa was a continent or the constituent countries in the NAFTA treaty. He later told Bill O'Reilly Palin didn't know the constituent nations of North America, either. More damning, from a campaign perspective?
As we 
Poor reality show also-ran Rocco DiSpirito. The "celebrity chef," who used to date 
Somehow, YouTube already has a copy of David Letterman tonight lacerating John McCain for skipping the Late Show and suspending his campaign in the midst of the Wall Street meltdown. As 
If you happen to be a commuter train driver, it's probably not a good idea to be texting with a teenager while you chug along. Lots of people might die.
Hey internet trolls, troll-victims, and other people whose lives have been ruined by the buzzy, robotic forces of the internet! Would you like to go on television and share your woes with millions of Tyra Banks fans? If so, we have good news for you. Producers for the Tyra Banks Show, a talk show of sorts in which a thirty-something former model bellows about herself and her bowel movements for an hour, are looking for people to appear on an episode about the various wicked pitfalls of the web.
Realizing that no Federal or local agency will be able to do much of anything when Hurricane Gustav reaches New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin has initiated the mandatory evacuation of half the city's coastal parishes today. And he when he says get out, he means it. There will be no emergency centers and the Superdome will not be a scene of mass chaos and tragedy this time around—because it's going to be closed. More on the evacuation, and video of Nagin's scary-ass warning, after the jump.
Poor Denise Richards. Her disastrous Hot Shots of a marriage to Charlie Sheen crumbled, her acting roles have become few and far between, and now her last-ditch E! reality show 
Though I found it thorough and immensely helpful, I guess The Ultimate Zombie Survival Guide just wasn't enough. A new book called Just in Case: How to Be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens has just been published that exhaustively maps out how the typical homeowner can achieve ultimate disaster preparedness. This manual wasn't written by some salty former Marine or wild Alaskan adventurer, it was written by a 56-year-old woman named Kathy Harrison from the small (and regrettably named) Western Mass town of Cummington. And she's kind of a nut! 
Rock of Love, in which former Poison something-or-other Bret Michaels tries to find the love of his life among a bevy of obliterated old groupies, may be our most winningly repulsive reality show. And that's saying a lot, considering it's on VH1 which is also host to the grim parasite that is I Love Money. But the problem is that it's always been in Los Angeles—we'd have to send our blinded-by-bathtub-moonshine sisters and daughters (and wives) hobbling all the way across the country if we wanted to vicariously taste the salty-sweet thrills of the Bret Michaels Experience ("face time!") But, now, no longer!
If you've ever watched The Hills and thought to yourself "these girls just aren't bitchy enough," well then you oughta be satisfied now. Lauren Conrad, star of MTV's odd sensation of a reality soap, was the star of a charity event last night that was all about being nice to puppies and stuff. She slouched down the red carpet holding a dog she didn't own, posed for pictures, all that googaw. At the end of the evening she was supposed to do some sort of catwalk thing with the little beast, but it never happened. Because she'd already stormed off in a huff, leaving the emcee of the event to say to the whole audience “those reality stars can be such temperamental bitches." It's a joke... about dogs... and about unpleasant women.
Because the world has not yet suffered enough, a reality show about a hooker looking for love may soon be foisted upon us. When Ashley Alexandra Dupré was sadly diddling former New York governor Eliot Spitzer in a tony Manhattan hotel room, I'll bet she never imagined that one glorious day an outlet as prestigious as E! would report that she 
Remember how Vogue had everyone in a tizzy this spring over its covers? First there was the 
You guys wanted to see a horrifying image of everything that is insidiously vapid and ideologically bankrupt about our country this afternoon, right? Oh good, because after the jump we have a YouTube video of a little girl, who is maybe six-years-old, singing the song "Fabulous" from High School Musical 2. In it the child gyrates and flashes her fancy threads and shrieks a lot. Its truly heinous nature is only amplified by the little note posted by the uploader: "So Disney encouraged kids to make their own video to one of four song clips from High School Musical. Jordyn chose fabulous, and made this clip. She has roughly 50 video song clips she is begging me to post, that I haven't had time to get to. So one down- 49 to go! ;-)" Watch and weep for our ruined nation after the jump.
Do you remember Alex McCord? Of course you do. She's the Real Housewives of New York City reality show star with the sorta-gay husband who 
So, sigh, The Love Guru. The Mike Myers-starring, Deepak Chopra-inspired "comedy" film — about an American-born, Indian-raised spiritual guru who travels back to the States to spread his message of peace, love, and weird unidentifiable accents — is opening tomorrow, and dark clouds are forming. The doomsayers began clucking when the cringe-inducingly unfunny trailer premiered this winter (during the Superbowl, was it?) and they've only gotten louder as the inexorable date (tomorrow!) draws closer. The unfunny clips, the badmouthing about Myers, the sheer presence of Jessica Alba. All signs point to this thing being a catastrophe on an epic scale.
Hey kids 13-16! Do you like truffles? Do you make a mean osso buco or quick salad with radicchio and pancetta? Sure you do. All kids like food. Which is why Bravo, home to more reality shows than there are hours of programming in a day, is getting ready to start shooting 
Amid all the glamor and glitz and lady empowerment, an unsisterly tragedy struck at the 