On his radio show yesterday (which opened with funeral music), Gibson called Ledger a “weirdo” with a “serious drug problem.”
Making fun of the famous “I wish I knew how to quit you” line from “Brokeback Mountain,” Gibson said of his death, “Well, he found out how to quit you.” [hear audio]
This isn’t the first time John Gibson has been so insulting. Huffington Post reports,
In July 2005, just one day before the 7/7 terrorist bombings in London, Gibson said that “the International Olympic Committee missed a golden opportunity….If they had picked France instead of London to hold the Olympics, it would have been the one time we could look forward to where we didn’t worry about terrorism. They’d blow up Paris, and who cares?” The next day, after the London bombings, Gibson repeated the remarks.
If you would like to complain to Fox News, you can go HERE.
Colin Farrell is dad to four-year-old son James, and he recently spoke out about James’ disability, a rare form of cerebral palsy called Angelman’s Syndrome. The affliction affects his speech and motor skills.
Colin says James has shown “amazing courage” even as a toddler. He says,
“He took his first steps about six weeks ago and it was four years in the making. All the work is his, he worked his arse off for four years. And when he took the first steps it was incredibly emotional, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”
“With my son the only time I’m reminded that there is something different about him – that he has some deviation of what is perceived to be normal – is when I see him with other four-year-olds. Then I go ‘oh yeah’ and it comes back to me. But from day one I felt that he’s the way he’s meant to be.”
Fortuitously, Farrell became involved in the Special Olympics prior to James’ birth.
“It’s mad the way the world works. It’s bizarre. I experienced the overwhelming effect of being around those athletes pretty much just before my son was born with special needs.” For Farrell, both experiences have been enriching. “[I am] incredibly blessed to have him in my life,” he says of James.
It’s so nice to see this side of Colin – who knew?
What others are saying:
dlisted says, “I was thinking to myself the other day ‘where has dirty Colin been?’ Looks like he’s cleaned up for his boy. He used to be a straight-up, dirty whore, skank licking slut and now he actually sounds like a good daddy. Who would’ve thought?!”
celebitchy says, “I have to say, I’ve never really thought of Colin Farrell as this super deep guy, but he’s done a lot of things recently that make me have a lot of respect for him. It sounds like he has an amazing attitude towards his son. …This on top of the helping homeless people makes me have a crush on him all over again.”
A Socialite’s Life says, “I’d like to thank Colin Farrell for making it impossible to snark in this post. Yeah, great. Wonderful. I’ve been rendered a snark eunuch with this one!”
After admitting on Friday to using steroids before, during, and after the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Marion Jones has returned all five medals she won.
“She has returned the medals,” her attorney Henry DePippo said Monday. “She’s not going to comment on the matter while it’s pending in court but the medals were returned today.”
Marion had this to say after court, where she plead guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice:
“I want you to know that I have been dishonest and you have the right to be angry with me. I have let (my family) down, I have let my country down and I have let myself down.”
Marion had won three gold medals and two bronze medals during the Sydney games. Two medals, one gold and one bronze, were won as part of four-woman relay teams. Marion is concerned about what will happen to the medals given to the other members of the relay teams.
“She deeply regrets any impact this may have on her former teammates and offers her sincere heartfelt apology to all of them,” a source said.
It’s great that it took seven years to figure this out. Stop taking the drugs, people – if you’re an athlete, the chances are good that you’re going to get busted.
Forbes Magazine has compiled a list of the 10 Most Expensive Celebrity Divorces.
Forbes’ list of the 10 Most Expensive Celebrity Divorces examined only divorces during the last 25 years. Reporters scoured press reports, interview transcripts and, whenever possible, court documents to verify settlements. Figures are not adjusted for inflation. Some celebrity divorces with allegedly high settlements were excluded when information was unavailable or unreliable.
#10. Mick Jagger & Jerry Hall
Estimated settlement: $15 to $25 million
The Rolling Stones rocker and Texas supermodel met in 1977 and had two children together before marrying in a traditional Hindi wedding ceremony in Bali, Indonesia, in 1990. Hall filed for divorce in 1999 after learning that Jagger had fathered another woman’s child. Jagger, worth an estimated $325 million at the time, successfully challenged the legality of the Balinese wedding and received an annulment. Hall walked away with between $15 and $25 million, a fraction of Jagger’s estate.
#9. Lionel & Diane Richie
Estimated settlement: $20 million
Richie, then 36 and married, met the 18-year-old backup dancer at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Richie, divorced from his first wife in 1993, married Diane by 1996. The Richies became tabloid favorites when Diane filed for divorce in 2004 and detailed their lavish lifestyle in her alimony petition. Among her claims: a monthly clothing allowance of $15,000; $50,000 a month for manicures, massages and other personal services; and a plastic surgery budget of $20,000 a year.
#8. Michael & Diandra Douglas
Estimated settlement: $45 million
Douglas met 19-year-old Georgetown co-ed Diandra Luker in 1977 at a Jimmy Carter inauguration party. They married six weeks later. During the course of the marriage, Douglas became one of Hollywood’s top earning actors, starring in classics like Fatal Attraction, Wall Street and Basic Instinct. Amid rumors of the actor’s infidelities and alcohol abuse, the couple split in 1998. Diandra was awarded an estimated $45 million, plus homes in Beverly Hills and Majorca.
#7. James Cameron & Linda Hamilton
Estimated settlement: $50 million
The Titanic director married the Terminator actress in July 1997. They had one daughter together before the marriage tanked 18 months later. Cameron received some $100 million from Paramount for Titanic (which grossed $1.8 billion). Hamilton received half of that, an estimated $50 million, in the divorce settlement.
#6. Paul McCartney & Heather Mills
Settlement pending: Possibly more than $60 million
In 2002, the former Beatle wed Mills, a model-activist 30 years his junior. McCartney reportedly shunned Mills’ offer of a prenuptial agreement. By 2006, the pair, who have one child together, split acrimoniously. She accused him of assault; he locked her out of their London home. Rumors of a settlement suggest Mills may get in excess of $60 million–McCartney’s worth is an estimated $700 million.
#5. Kevin Costner & Cindy Silva
Estimated settlement: $80 million
The pair, who met at California State University, wed in 1978. During their 16-year marriage, Costner became one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors, scoring seven Oscars for Dances with Wolves and starring in iconic films like Bull Durham and Field of Dreams. Costner pocketed $50 million in 1991 alone. Because Silva was married to Costner during his peak earning years, she was awarded $80 million, a substantial piece of his net worth.
#4. Harrison Ford & Melissa Mathison
Estimated settlement: $85 million
The couple met in 1977 at a dinner with casting director Fred Roos (American Graffiti) and wed in 1983. Six years later, Ford became one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors when he banked $7 million for Presumed Innocent. By 1995, he was making $20 million a film. The couple divorced in 2004. In addition to her divorce settlement, Mathison negotiated a piece of Ford’s future earnings from films he made while married, including DVD sales of the Indiana Jones trilogy and The Fugitive.
#3. Steven Spielberg & Amy Irving
Estimated settlement: $100 million
The couple met when Irving auditioned for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). They married in 1985, after Spielberg had already struck it big with his first Indiana Jones flick and ET. They divorced after nearly four years of marriage. Irving successfully contested their prenuptial agreement (reportedly scribbled on a napkin) because she did not have legal representation and was awarded $100 million, roughly half of Spielberg’s fortune at the time. Today, he is worth $3 billion.
#2. Neil Diamond & Marcia Murphey
Estimated settlement: $150 million
The crooner married Murphey, a television production assistant, in 1969, before he released his first gold record, Touching You, Touching Me. By the late ’70s, Diamond was one of the most successful musicians in showbiz, grossing upward of $14 million annually. After 25 years of marriage, Murphey filed for divorce in 1994, citing irreconcilable differences. She walked away with half of Diamond’s fortune–she’s “worth every penny,” he later said.
#1. Michael & Juanita Jordan
Settlement pending: Possibly more than $150 million
The legendary basketball star married Juanita Vanoy, a Chicago bank officer, in 1989. He had already signed an eight-year, $25 million contract with the Chicago Bulls. He also was earning another $30 million a year from Nike and other endorsement deals. She filed for divorce last year. Over the course of the marriage, Jordan earned more than $350 million. Should Juanita press for half of his assets, she could get more than $150 million in the settlement, making the Jordan divorce the most expensive in entertainment history.
Wowsers. At least they were married a long time. Getting $15 million for a few months of marriage is just ridiculous. And, frankly, if she didn’t even change her name, she probably wasn’t in it for the long haul anyway.
P.S.: If you’re worth several hundred million dollars more than your beloved, you simply must insist on a prenup. No, it’s not romantic. Too bad.
Actor Calvert DeForest, best known for his role as Larry “Bud” Melman on the Letterman show, has died at the age of 85.
The balding, bespectacled nebbish who gained cult status as the oddball Larry “Bud” Melman on David Letterman’s late-night television shows has died after a long illness. Brooklyn-born Calvert DeForest, who was 85, died Monday at a hospital on Long Island, the Letterman show announced Wednesday.
He made dozens of appearances on Letterman’s shows from 1982 through 2002, handling a variety of twisted duties: singing a duet with Sonny Bono on “I Got You, Babe”; doing a Mary Tyler Moore impression during a visit to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where her 1970s show was set; handing out hot towels to arrivals at New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal. Cue cards were often DeForest’s television kryptonite, and his character invariably appeared in an ill-fitting black suit behind thick, black-rimmed glasses.
“Everyone always wondered if Calvert was an actor playing a character, but in reality he was just himself — a genuine, modest and nice man,” Letterman said in a statement. “To our staff and to our viewers, he was a beloved and valued part of our show, and we will miss him.”
DeForest’s gnomish face was the first to greet viewers when Letterman’s NBC show debuted on Feb. 1, 1982, offering a parody of the prologue to the Boris Karloff film “Frankenstein.” “It was the greatest thing that had happened in my life,” he once said of his first Letterman appearance.
DeForest, given the nom de tube of Larry “Bud” Melman, became a program regular. The collaboration continued when the talk show host moved to CBS to launch “Late Show with David Letterman” in 1994. The Melman character opened Letterman’s first CBS show, too — but used his real name because of a dispute with NBC over “intellectual property.” DeForest, positioned inside the network’s familiar eye logo, announced, “This is CBS!”
DeForest often drew laughs by his bizarre juxtaposition as a “Late Show” correspondent at events such as the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway and the Woodstock anniversary concert that year. His last appearance on “Late Show” came in 2002, celebrating his 81st birthday.
Four Olympic ice skaters agreed to appear as themselves in Jon Heder and Will Ferrell ‘s figure-skating spoof Blades of Glory, but not all of them got the gold medal of a big laugh.
The movie, which opens March 30, stars Heder and Ferrell as nasty rivals who team up to reclaim their honor after being ejected from solo competition. Peggy Fleming, who won Olympic gold in 1968, has a cameo as a judge, but the role is mostly serious. The high point: She got to see Ferrell “doing one of his trademark underwear runs.”
“Will Ferrell told me the skating moves were some of the hardest things he’d ever had to do,” adds Brian Boitano, 1988 Olympic gold medalist. “He said, ‘Now I feel guilty for making fun of skating.’ ”
Like Fleming, whom he joins on the faux panel, Boitano also wishes he’d gotten a funny line: “I said, ‘Can’t I swear or something?’ ”
The film mocks the hyper-competitiveness of skating, which Nancy Kerrigan, who also appears as a judge, knows too well. She won Olympic bronze in 1992 and silver in 1994, and was attacked by associates of her rival just a month before her second Olympics.
Though skaters in the movie brawl, she says it’s silly fun. “They just cause a lot of chaos at the competition, but it’s all comedy.”
Kerrigan got one unwelcome close encounter with Ferrell’s character. “Will makes a play for me because he’s a sex addict,” she says. “He did it so many different ways, with different takes and reactions, I don’t know what they’ll use.”
Gretchen Bleiler sits down with FHM for a quick interview and photo shoot.
When snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler was forced to sit out of the 2002 Olympics after narrowly missing the qualifiers, she vowed she would return–and return she did. This week, the sultry Bleiler captured the silver during her halfpipe Olympic run at Torino. That’s not surprising considering the siren of the slopes is one of the top female snowboarders in the halfpipe, having won eight consecutive competitions in 2003; snagging wins at the 2004 X Games, Gravity Games and U.S. Open; not to mention placing first-place in World Cup competition at Bardonecchia, Italy, in 2005.
To top things off, the 24-year-old Aspen native was one of the first women to complete a 900–a two-and-a-half-revolution jump–snowboarding’s equivalent of a grand slam. This is the same powder princess, while training for the 2002 games, gave herself a black eye by slamming into the pipe during a practice jump. Now, that’s our kinda girl!
And she provides some advice for aspiring snowboarders:
As an athlete, you’re in great shape. What do you consider your best feature?
“My butt’s probably the most prominent feature on my body. It’s shapely like J.Lo’s, which is probably the reason I do well in snowboarding. You need a strong lower body to hold the board under you.”Â
On his radio show yesterday (which opened with funeral music), Gibson called Ledger a “weirdo” with a “serious drug problem.”
“He took his first steps about six weeks ago and it was four years in the making. All the work is his, he worked his arse off for four years. And when he took the first steps it was incredibly emotional, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”
