What exactly is this Kawasaki Syndrome—the rare disorder that John Travolta had said his son had suffered from before dying today at the age of sixteen?
According to the Mayo Clinic's website, it's an uncommon disorder that affects children, "that causes inflammation in the walls of small- and medium-sized arteries throughout the body, including the coronary arteries." It comes with a variety of unpleasant symptoms, including diarrhea and lots of skin peeling. But in most cases children suffering from Kawasaki Syndrome make complete recoveries after receiving proper treatment. However, Jett Travolta—whose parents described him as a Kawasaki sufferer amid reports that the boy was actually autistic—has had medical problems for years.
While promoting Ladder 49 in 2005, Travolta described what he said was the first time Jett suffered from Kawasaki Syndrome when he was 15 months old:
"He was hospitalised for five days. His whole body swelled up, it was chemical poisoning, from picking up toys or food particles from the carpet."
The supposed culprit was a carpet cleaner, so the family decided to go natural. Travolta's wife Kelly Preston told the Mirror in 2004:
Jett's whole immune system shut down and he got really sick with high fevers - 104and 105. He developed a rash on his body and swollen lymph glands - it was horrible. ... We're 90 per cent organic, though there's some canned foods - a little bit of junk food here and there.
But lots of folks just didn't believe this story, claiming that the boy's parents' rigid devotion to the Church of Scientology—a cult that doesn't eagerly recognize mental illness as anything that vitamins and exercise can't fix—was causing them to willfully deny what some saw as painfully obvious: that Jett was suffering from autism. Folks picketed the Travolta/Preston family, saying that their refusal to seek treatment for the boy bordered on—or, you know, flat out was—child abuse. Travolta's brother Joey even produced a movie about the condition, but the family continued to shut down any reports that autism was involved. They hewed to the Kawasaki Syndrome story while a glib world believed there to be some bigger secret truth.
The holidays turn our thoughts to love and family. But the "m4m" section of Craigslist, usually a venue for anonymous hookups, is a strange place to begin one's soulmate quest. That didn't stop one reporter!
A Christmas gift for lovers of political intrigue: Was the death in a plane crash of 
The name of the third person possibly involved in the sad, strange case of 
More developments in the 
As we hear they're having lay offs right now, we're a little reluctant to kick Entertainment Weekly when it's down. But, meh, what the hell. Why is the magazine so ridiculously gung-ho about Twilight? You know Twilight, it's that book series and soon-to-be movie about a cloudy young woman named Bella and the irritatingly chaste relationship she has with a chiseled demigod of a vampire named Edward. Sure it's set a good deal of teen girl and sad lady shut-in poonani afire, but srsly EW? They've had some 50 mentions of the books or the movie in the past six months, including two, count 'em two!, splashy sexy covers.
The one back in August was, sure, OK, servicey enough for not in-the-know people who had never heard of this modern-goth bodice-slightly-tearer. But last week's second cover—three collectors' edition covers, actually—when factored in with all the other yammering about the silly franchise, has just laid it on way too thick. At one point in her 
What the hell? The stores where 
Anne Pressly, the anchorwoman of a 5 a.m. TV newscast in Little Rock, Arkansas, was 
Several weeks ago, a very random assortment of acquaintances in my hometown in Florida started telling me that they'd been approached by a private investigator asking questions about me. The PI's—a man and a woman—had told these people that they were doing a background investigation on me for a job I'd applied for. This was news to me, since I haven't applied for any jobs. So who hired a pair of Keystone Cops to go blundering around my hometown? Funny you should ask!
Former Star editor Bonnie Fuller, who floats menacingly over the celebrity media like mist on a bog, has 
Oh hey there! On the cover of this week's Entertainment Weekly Fall TV Preview is Gossip Girl, that much crowed-about teenage soap opera about horrendous idiots milling about the Upper East Side of that island across the river from me. You see, it's the buzziest show in a buzz-happy medium, people like gossips and the internet are writing about it and legions of squealing, sexually-awakening girls are flocking to its mop-topped (and bottomed) male leads as if they were sex magnets, and these young ladies mere paperclips. But there's just one little thing, one nagging flaw that the 
Hey, um, Martha Stewart—craftswoman, entrepreneur, be-vaginaed insider trading escape goat—is currently appearing in Wal-Mart ads and her left arm is missing. Judging by the above screenshot at least. Where did it go? Lost in a prison shanking? Severed while trying to make her famous Whirling Dervish Spinning Saw Blade centerpiece? Gnawed off by the Montauk Monster?? The world may never know. [
Celebrated flyboy and action man Steve Fossett, who mysteriously 
Could this be the end of the anonymous life of 
Hard to believe, but we still haven't conclusively figured out the identity of the self-styled hedge funder in this photo. He ID'd himself as Prescott Hahn from his own Kensington Square Capital Management fund at the now-infamous 
Entertainment Weekly's Q&A with Angelina Jolie is unremarkable—except for the remarkably unflattering photograph the magazine uses for its cover. Now it could be that EW wanted an image that matched in spirit the "candid interview" touted in the coverline. But I thought the Hollywood publicists demanded photo approval when negotiating interviews—even when they're pushing a movie such as Jolie's forthcoming Wanted (
We've been waiting all week for word of the success or failure of New York magazine's sort-of maybe kinda identification of D. B. Cooper—who has become something of an American myth since he hijacked a Northwest plane in 1971 and made off with $200,000. So far we've gotten not much: "Bonney Lake residents doubt neighbor was D. B. Cooper,"