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Bringing an end to her legal woes, Charlize Theron has reportedly settled a $20 million lawsuit after being accused of breach of contract by a luxury watchmaker.
Press reports tell that the bosses at Raymond Weil claim to have paid the Academy Award-winning actress a large sum to wear their watches exclusively between October 2005 and December 2006.
As the results roll in this Tuesday, the whole nation will be watching the judicial womb that is the state of California. The non-presidential portion of the ballot — Proposition 8 (to ban gay marriage) and Proposition K (to legalize prostitution) — takes center stage in a state Obama will win handily. We try to predict how each initiative will do, along with figuring out how many pictures of protesting prostitutes can fit in one post.
Popular San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has come down hard on both proposed measures, supporting gay marriage with one hand and rallying against legalized prostitution with the other.
The prospect of the decriminalization of prostitution led Newsom to point to the surrounding Tenderloin district and tell his audience, "If Prop K passes, can you imagine living here? If people really knew what was happening in these massage parlors, there would be outrage." Say what?
San Francisco’s district attorney Kamala D. Harris explains "it would put a welcome mat out for pimps and prostitutes to come on into San Francisco." Even the San Francisco Chronicle came down hard against K.
Still, Prop K is getting some support from unlikely places, including Christians. Prostitutes like Alice Brown seem in favor of K, with some reservations:
"If it's decriminalized, the girls will have more rights, though it'll still be unsafe no matter what. The bad thing is that it'll bring more prostitutes out and that competition will make it harder on the girls who really need this work to survive."
Other hookers, like Mission Street's "Barbara", aren't as sanguine about the concept:
"Decriminalization would be just the first step," said Barbara, who has supported her heroin and crack addictions through prostitution most of the past 33 years. "The next thing they'd do is make us all work in special houses like they do in Nevada, then they'd start taxing it. So in the end, we'd just be paying the government instead of a pimp."
"Yes" and "no" on Proposition K are in a virtual tie right now, and it's amazing how the issue transcends age or race in this CBS poll:
That this measure could even have a chance of passing is the real development here: decriminalization of prostitution has never been very popular outside of Vegas.
Prediction: K won't pass.
Then here's the higher profile gay marriage question. Although Obama holds a 22 percent lead in the state, YES on the ballot initiative to define marriage as between a man and a woman trails NO by only seven points. Both sides have been buoyed by out-of-state contributions, including $1 million from the gay founder of WordPerfect.
Prediction: In the end, the polls indicate that Prop 8 will be defeated, but this may only be the beginning of state-level ballot initiatives against gay marriage. Here's the field poll, reproduced in today's San Diego Union-Tribune:
Appeasing aggression simply invites more aggression, corporate people! First you caved in to demands from the Hydrox hippies that you bring back their subversive little devil snack and now look — you've got to consider bringing back Kellog's OKs cereal, Hit Parade cigarettes and the most awful thing ever made, Postum, which is beloved only by some Seventh-Day Adventists and a handful of Mormons and which was mercifully put out of its misery late last year. Some of the more terrifying information on Postum's Wikipedia page reveals:
Postum was a powdered roasted grain beverage sold by the Kraft Foods company as a coffee substitute. The caffeine-free beverage mix was created by company founder C. W. Post in 1895 and produced and marketed by Postum Cereal Co. as a healthy alternative to coffee...Postum was made from wheat bran, wheat, molasses, and maltodextrin from corn...
Postum was sometimes marketed by an invisible cartoon ghost named, "Mister Coffee Nerves" [please do click that link], who would appear in situations wherein normal human characters were shown in uncomfortable life-situations (e.g. irritability, lack of sleep, loss of athletic prowess) due to their use of coffee and its negative effects. These cartoons always ended with the humans switching to Postum and Mister Coffee Nerves running away until the next cartoon.
Companies are under pressure to consider reviving bizarrely beloved products like Postum, the Times reports, as slowing consumer spending discourages investment in new products. Internet obsessives accelerate this process, from their basements.
Maybe we'll get Plymouth cars back, along with Duz detergent and Sunshine Lemon Coolers cookies (they killed those??). Don't forget Mello Yello, which become impossible to find before I was even old enough to buy it. (Memo to self: Start Mello Yello blog. No, wait, Tumblr — it's mello-er.)
[Times]
newVideoPlayer("/bostonmarket_dubbedad.flv", 506, 423,""); 
How does Boston Market offer such cheap meals to its sad customers, aside from through atrociously poor food quality? By skimping on TV commercials! Agency Spy caught the fast food chain overdubbing the advertisement at left, in which one guy's voice says "five new meal-size deals for $4.99" but his lips betray the original boom-time price of $5.99. Because, hey, who wants to pay for another take?? Whatever, just keep the stuff cheap. Subprime mortgage holders, ex Bear Stearns traders and eventually everyone will thank Boston Market for its frugality when the still-unfolding economic depression turns us into hobos.
Tim Russert died. I'm not sure if you've heard. But, yes, the Meet the Press moderator and dedicated D.C. journalist passed away, at a too-young 58, last week and the media has been in a frenzy since. Jack Shafer at Slate (among many others, I'm sure) feels that the coverage is a bit overdone. Yes Russert was by all accounts a good guy and a good worker and just one of those decent people that feel in short supply, especially in Washington, especially in the media. But isn't it still a bit much? All the tributes and montages and teary testimonials. I mean, nearly every life deserves parades and fireworks and tears and montages when it ends. But, because this is on TV and people are being paid, somewhere, doesn't this seem all a bit circusy? Maybe that's cynical, but television has, to some extent, earned our cynicism. If this is indeed a "circus," then where does it rank among other notable, much-covered celebrity deaths? A writer for Psychology Today says it's the biggest death since John Lennon. We disagree. We'll put this all in some context after the jump.
Jossip offers names like Biggie, Tupac, and Anna Nicole Smith as comparison, but we've selected three other figures (Lennon included) who died famously and tragically to compare to Russert's death. We'll measure the impact (socially, on the media, etc) of each passing on a scale from 1-10.
The Respected Institution: Tim Russert, Heart Failure, June 13, 2008
Russert was a fixture of Washington press and politics. He was both jovial and stern, pleasant and probing. He was the kind of reporter who gave a good face to politics. To that end, every news media figure had some fond remembrance of Russert, some anecdote. Every news show in the land had (or is having) a special Russert retrospective. A "private" memorial service will be broadcast by MSNBC tomorrow.
Impact: 4. I suppose all of this is just something of a twenty-one gun salute from his colleagues. Some people, like Shafer, may criticize the coverage for being indulgent. Of course it's indulgent, these people are his friends and have newscameras in front of them. Whether some sinister network exec is standing in the shadows, rubbing his hands together, with dollar signs in his eyes seems mostly inconsequential. The lamentation and celebration seems genuine, heartfelt.
The Rising Star: Heath Ledger, Drug Overdose, January 22, 2008
The young actor, who had received critical raves for his portrayal of a repressed gay cowboy in 2005's Brokeback Mountain, was getting large buzz for a number of upcoming films, including this summer's The Dark Knight, in which he stars as The Joker, Batman's arch nemesis. Ledger's death, from a bad mixture of sleeping pills and other medication, was originally thought to be a suicide, but tests quickly disproved that. It seems as though it was just a dumb bit of bad luck. As the paparazzi was largely responsible for Princess Diana's death (see below), the paparazzi made themselves well known here too, this time as rabid spectators and (ahem) gawkers. When the news broke, legions of photographers rushed to the SoHo apartment where the 28-year-old's body was found, hoping to see the body brought out. And they did.
Impact: 5. The instant explosion of news about Ledger's death showed the blogosphere at its full, bellowing power. It mushroom clouded very quickly, with people speculating, trading gossip (was Mary-Kate Olsen involved?), and eventually criticizing the media's lasciviousness toward the whole matter. But news moved on fairly quickly, and it was all over within a week or so.
The Poet: John Lennon Shot and Killed, December 8, 1980
The strange, swirling brain of definitive rock band the Beatles, Lennon was as iconic a figure of the Western world's social, sexual, and political awakening as any other in the 20th century. Naturally, news of his death reverberated enormously with his fans and followers. A crowd of a 100,000 or so gathered in memorial in Central Park, not far from the scene of the shooting. News outlets covered the story non-stop, dogging the surviving Beatles for reactions. Central Park's Strawberry Fields was dedicated in his honor.
Impact: 8. As shocking a death as possible, given the nature of the incident and Lennon's iconic status. Though it had been ten years since the Beatles broke up, Lennon and wife Yoko Ono remained fixtures of the progressive music scene. Grief over his death was genuine and profound, and substantial and enduring media coverage reflected that. In the past two years two films about the assassination have been released.
The Heroine: Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales Killed in Car Accident While Trying to Avoid Paparazzi, August 31st, 1997
The death of Diana, ex-wife of the United Kingdom's Prince Charles, rocked the entire world. A grand tragedy in all possible ways — a lovely young mother of two little boys, a beloved activist for peace to boot, killed in the stupidest and most avoidable of accidents — 2.5 billion people watched her funeral. My mother, who had woken up very early in the morning years before to watch Diana's wedding to Charles, woke us up in the middle of the night to tell us what had happened. The world felt immediate then, everything felt close by — even though we were in a small summer house in Rhode Island and the tragedy was farway on a busy Paris street. I imagine that's how many others felt, as well.
Impact: 10. As big and devastating as these deaths get, one hopes. Loved for her kind nature and down-to-earth sensibilities, for many people Diana represented something universally good and hopeful in the world. When that was taken away, quite suddenly and under such frustrating circumstances, the sense of loss lingered for some time. That sadness, compounded with the scandal of the Queen's relative silence on the matter, made the frenzy over the story reach unimaginable heights. It seemed to go on for months and months (aided, I'm sure, by Elton John's "Candle In the Wind" redo). And who can forget that dreadful, defining footage (shown over and over and over again) of her two boys, William and Harry, walking in the funeral procession?
The real fact of the matter, though, is that many people have died since Friday, since this morning, since I started writing this post. Like I said earlier, nearly every one of those deaths deserves recognition and memorials and all manner of other things. As our world doesn't quite work that way, we're left here with the famous deaths and, strangely, I've been tasked to quantify the reactions. I'm certainly not assessing the import of the actual life, of the actual grief, but rather what the media and its followers did when they stumbled, carelessly or not, upon it.
Tina Brown, with all the dignity that comes with a lifetime achievement award, declares celebrity journalism has made America sick. "We're at a point where we're in a giant reality show," the former Vanity Fair editor tells the Naples News-Press. "I'm not interested in digging into someone's private life just for the hell of it." Oh yes? Tina's tenure of Vanity Fair was a success because she turned the title into an upmarket supermarket tabloid. And the purpose of this interview with the obscure Florida newspaper was promotion of The Diana Chronicles, Tina's gossipy account of Princess Diana's affairs. After the jump, a summary of the Dianamen, the succession of cockney bodyguards, riding instructors, rugby stars and phone sex buddies, whom Tina Brown inventories with lip-smacking relish.
She, worldly piece of work that she is, thinks everything would have been hunky-dory if Di had only got it on with Prince Philip, the Queen's consort. He fancied her anyway, and it would have kept the fuss inside the family. But Di aimed lower. Her first affair, Tina believes, was with Di's cockney bodyguard Barry Mannakee. For this flash, Tina pumped Di's pal Dr. James Colthurst, who helped the Princess tape all the dirt used by Andrew Morton in Diana: Her True Story, the H-bomb dropped on the House of Windsor in 1992. Not only had Diana admitted an affair, Colthurst said, but she thought Barry was "bumped off" when he died. Next came the red-haired Life Guards Maj. James Hewitt, her (and the boys') riding instructor. Later, when the discarded and broke Hewitt sold his memoirs, he was widely scorned as the Love Rat.
Was he or was he not the father of ginger-haired Prince Harry? Tina thinks so. "Well, I don't know what she was doing at the time," Prince Charles once responded, not too gallantly, when the subject arose. A succession of tall, handsome beaux, both before and after the official royal separation of Dec. 9, 1992, were dubbed "the Dianamen" and the "42 Longs" by her bodyguards. She fell hard for married art dealer, Oliver Hoare, becoming his "phone sex pest." She carried on with Will Carling, the rugby star.
[Washington Post]
A very aerodynamic Jon Cryer is seen here, pumping gas and going inside to pick up a Rolling Stone magazine and a snack. Our beloved Duckie looks at one point like he's spotted the paparazzi who are obviously all going to get a shot of him in his workout gear and simply resigns himself to the fact that soon, the world will see him walking around dressed in very expensive sausage casing.
When asked for a comment, he had this to say, "Hey, drinking and driving don't mix. That's why I ride a bike." OK, not really, but I was feeling nostalgic.
Photos: BauerGriffinOnline.com
You know you want them. More photos of a spandex clad Jon Cryer are after the jump.