Actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild, Alan Rosenberg, poses for a portrait in this March 17, 2003, file photo taken in Los Angeles. The Screen Actors Guild said Saturday Nov. 22, 2008 that contract talks with Hollywood studios has failed despite the help of a federal mediator and it will now ask its members to authorize a strike. (AP Photo/Ric Francis, File)
In what seems an inauspicious time, what with a down economy, the Screen Actors Guild is threatening a strike.
“We have already made difficult decisions and sacrifices in an attempt to reach agreement,” the statement said. “Now it’s time for SAG members to stand united and empower the national negotiating committee to bargain with the strength of a possible work stoppage behind them.”
The statement did not specify what led to the impasse, saying only that “management continues to insist on terms we cannot responsibly accept.” A SAG spokeswoman said she would not comment further. A call to the movie producers group, known as the AMPTP, was not immediately returned.
It’s difficult to imagine a less sympathetic labor class — or one less in need of collective bargaining — than Hollywood actors. The horrible working conditions that could lead to the strike?
SAG is seeking union coverage for all Internet-only productions regardless of budget and residual payments for Internet productions replayed online, as well as continued actor protections during work stoppages. But the AMPTP said it was untenable for SAG to demand a better deal than what writers, directors and another actors union accepted earlier in the year, especially now that the economy has worsened.
Katie Holmes has been wearing gloves and long sleeve shirts with the sleeves pulled down over her hands, in order to cover their freakish purple coloration.
It’s rumored that Katie may have taken part in a Scientology purification ritual that caused her hands to turn purple.
According to reports, the purification ritual is called the Purification Rundown or Purif, which is the process of taking ‘vitamin bombs’ to get ‘toxins’ out of their bodies.
It’s reported that in almost every single case, Scientology founder Hubbard recommends dosages in his teachings that are well above the safe limits, in some cases as much as 142 times more than the toxic level. The side effects of such huge overdoses range from liver damage, hair loss, brain swelling and nausea up to fatal heart and respiratory failure.
The cleanse also prescribes huge doses of niacin. Large doses of niacin can cause liver damage, peptic ulcers, and skin rashes. Even normal doses can be associated with skin flushing.
Are they trying to kill her?
More info on the Scientology Purification Rundown Program
The Scientologists themselves describe the Scientology Purification Rundown Procedure.
Scientologists are 100% drug-free and are very concerned about the devastation caused by drug use in their communities. The reason for this remarkable statistic is that Scientology churches and missions have a very effective program that handles the effects of past drug use. A key component of this program is the Scientology Purification Rundown. This rundown is the result of many years of research by the founder of the Scientology religion, L. Ron Hubbard.
[...]
L. Ron Hubbard found that there was a “drug personality,” an artificial personality created by drugs.
[...]
Mr. Hubbard noted that Scientology parishioners who had been exposed to environmental pollutants and radiation were manifesting similar emotional, mental and spiritual difficulties to those who were drug takers. This too would have to be solved, to accomplish the goals of the Scientology religion.
Oddly, the site is circular, taking readers through a loop of links that provide no information.
David Hogg, M.D. attempts to debunk Purim with his “CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PURIFICATION RUNDOWN.”
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Anna Faris stars in the upcoming “The House Bunny” (which features the men’s magazine mogul and his three busty blondes), and has since been spending quite a bit of time at the iconic Playboy Mansion.
I bet Holly Madison truly hates this woman.
“I was just there yesterday. Hef has been an incredible support system; it’s thrilling to see him act, I’ve been made a real-life honorary girlfriend.”
The bubbly blonde also said to keep an eye out for the September issue of Playboy (no confirmation that it is a centerfold).
But speaking of Hef and his girlfriends, it seems things weren’t quite so sunny at the annual Fourth of July bash at the mansion on Friday.
According to some partygoers, there was a bit of a tiff among the girls and Kendra wasn’t speaking to Holly or Bridget.
“They didn’t even exchange glances,” an eyewitness said. “I don’t know what happened, but Kendra made sure to keep her distance.”
It has been speculated for quite some time that 23-year-old Wilkinson is getting ready to fly the coop, having been busy focusing on building her own brand-name independent of the “Girls Next Door.”
Only time will tell, but last time we spoke to Hef, himself, just a few weeks ago, he said that it’s quite amazing they’ve all been together for this long.
“Girls will be girls, and there are moments where they will disagree,” he said. “The amazing thing, quite frankly, is that we’re all together after six years.”
source: Anna Faris Named Hugh Hefner’s Honorary New Girlfriend [fox news]
LIKE A VIRGIN — Madonna popped out of a wedding cake in a crucifix and puffy white gown to sing her hit at her first appearance on the MTV Video Music Awards in 1984. The album went on to become No. 1 in the U.S. and sell over 7 million copies.
PAPA DON’T PREACH ABORTION CONTROVERSY — After singing lyrics, “I’ve made up my mind/I’m keeping my baby,” in 1986, abortion-rights groups praised her (while anti-abortion supporters were up in arms). Madonna called it a “message song that everyone is going to take the wrong way.”
POPE AGAINST MADONNA — In 1987, Pope John Paul II urged Catholics not to see her “Who’s That Girl?” concert in Turin, Italy. The church later boycotted her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour.
LIKE A PRAYER — Madonna’s 1989 music video featured the singer kissing a black saint and dancing in front of burning crosses. Pepsi cancelled her $5 million endorsement deal (signed just two months earlier) after religious groups expressed outrage. Madonna kept the money.
JUSTIFY MY LOVE — Madonna simulated sex with a woman in this 1990 video, which was banned from MTV. “I think the video is romantic and loving and has humor in it,” she later told the New York Times. Lenny Kravitz - currently in Paris with the wife of Madonna’s “friend” A-Rod - co-wrote and produced the tune.
DATING MICHAEL JACKSON — The king of pop and the Material Girl hooked up for a few dates, including the 1991 Oscars.
SEX, the book — Released by Madonna (who portrayed herself as a character named Mistress Dita) a day after her 1992 album Erotica, the book is packed with pornographic images and features Naomi Campbell, Vanilla Ice and Isabella Rossellini.
MADONNA ON DAVID LETTERMAN — The singer used the F-word 13 times in her 1994 appearance on the Late Show - causing the show to become the most censored in TV history at the time. The duo made up at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.
MADONNA VS. MARIAH — In 1995, Madonna said, “If I were Mariah Carey, I’d kill myself,” and further attacked the singer by calling her “too mainstream.” In 1996, Carey snapped back that she “hasn’t really paid attention to Madonna since I was in like 7th or 8th grade when - when she used to be popular.” Their 2008 albums were released just two weeks apart.
EVITA — The archbishop of Buenos Aires protested Madonna’s role as Eva Peron in 1995 - but the singer turned actress went on to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress, and an Oscar for Best Song with “You Must Love Me.”
HINDU BODY ART — Madonna drew ire from the World Vaishnava Association after wearing a Hindi mark and body art during her “Ray of Light” performance at the 1998 MTV VMAs. “She didn’t want to insult anyone,” her rep later said.
KISSING BRITNEY — After sharing a kiss with Spears at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, Madonna had to explain to her daughter that she “was the mommy pop star… [passing] on [her] energy…to the baby pop star.”
AMERICAN LIFE ANTI-GEORGE W. BUSH MESSAGES — In this 2003 video, Madonna throws hand grenades (one is caught by President Bush) between flashing images of war. “I am not anti-Bush,” she later said in a statement. “I am not pro-Iraq. I am pro-peace.”
PERFORMING ON A CROSS — Madonna “crucified” herself on a giant cross during her 2006 tour. “[Putting myself on a cross] is no different than a person wearing a cross or ‘taking up the cross’ as it says in the Bible,” she said later. “I believe in my heart that if Jesus were alive he would be doing the same thing.”
LIFE WITH MY SISTER MADONNA — The cover of the new, nasty, unauthorized, warts and all biography on Madonna, written by her estranged brother, has just been revealed.
A supermodel plunged to her death Saturday afternoon by leaping from her Lower Manhattan apartment window in an apparent suicide.
Ruslana Korshunova, barely shy of her 21st birthday, apparently jumped from the balcony of her residential building in Manhattan’s Financial District, police tell the New York Post.
Authorities said there appeared to be no signs of a struggle having taken place inside the 9th-floor apartment, which the green-eyed, 5′8″ beauty had occupied for only two months.
The Kazakhstan-born “Russian Rapunzel,” as she was known, had appeared as cover girl on editions of French Elle and Russian Vogue, as well as in ads for Marc Jacobs, DKNY, Vera Wang and Christian Dior.
“Our hearts are with her family,” a spokesman for her agency, IMG (which also represents Heidi Klum and Kate Moss) told the Post.
A former boyfriend, Artem Perchenok, 24, told the paper that the two had watched the movie Ghost and that he dropped her off at home at 5 a.m. Saturday. “She was a good person,” he said.
The Daily News suggests that Korshunova had become despondent over a lost love. She poured her heart out on the Web in the months leading to her apparent suicide.
“Life is short, Break the rules, Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly, Love truly, Laugh uncontrollably,” the sandy-haired knockout wrote in a poem that concluded: “And never regret anything that made you smile.”
The Kazakh beauty wrote that love “blinds,” “sets souls afire,” and “is always the answer” in emotion-soaked passages posted on a social networking site.
Korshunova volleyed between Russian and English in her heartfelt prose, but love was a central theme no matter the language. “Do not confuse love and desire,” she wrote in Russian in her most recent posting May 30. “Love is the sun, desire - only flash. Desire dazzles, and the sun gives life.”
The soulful note warns of the perils of sacrifice.
“Love does not take away from one in order to give to another,” wrote Korshunova, a 20-year-old thousands of miles from her native Kazakhstan. “Love - this is the essence of life. But you will not give your life to another.”
Korshunova’s most telling message came three months ago: “I’m so lost. Will I ever find myself?”
She appeared angry in some postings, brokenhearted in others.
“I’m a bitch. I’m a witch. I don’t care what you say!!!” she wrote March 11. “I know what it is. I know why my other relationships didn’t work out, ’cause I’m unpredictable. Why are you afraid of it?”
In January, she wrote, “It hurts, as if someone took a part of me, tore it out, mercilessly stomped all over and threw it out.
“My dream is to fly. Oh, my rainbow it is too high,” she wrote in a March note.
This is very, very sad.
UPDATE (James): Fox News has shown video of Korshunova’s body . I think the family could have done without that. Sad, indeed.
George Clooney might have a gazillion bucks in the bank but he’s apparently a union man through and through.
In a two-page letter released Thursday, Clooney adopted a neutral stance in the dispute between the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Screen Actors Guild.
“What we can’t do is pit artist against artist,” he wrote.
AFTRA has already reached a tentative agreement with Hollywood studios. SAG wants AFTRA members to vote against the deal, saying its approval will handcuff SAG at the bargaining table. Both unions’ current contracts are set to expire Monday, leaving Hollywood on edge about a possible replay of the 100-day writers strike that ended in February. Results of the AFTRA vote are expected July 8.
Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin and others have joined hundreds of actors in signing an online petition urging actors to ratify the AFTRA pact. Meanwhile, Jack Nicholson, Viggo Mortensen and Holly Hunter have endorsed a SAG ad calling for AFTRA to return to the negotiating table to get a better deal.
Clooney called the fight counterproductive. “Because the one thing you can be sure of is that stories about Jack Nicholson vs. Tom Hanks only strengthens the negotiating power” of the studios, he said.
Clooney also called on higher-paid actors to chip in a greater share of union dues and for 10 A-listers — “people that the studio heads don’t often say ‘no’ to,” he suggested, listing only Nicholson and Hanks by name — to sit down with studio heads once a year to “adjust the pay for actors.”
The idea of millionaire actors unionizing, let alone going on strike, has always struck me as ludicrous. But Clooney’s instinct here is right: if they’re going to organize, the big money stars ought to take care of the little guys. It makes sense to have a system in place for the folks struggling for scale jobs trying to get regular employment. Not so much one that has the likes of Clooney and Hanks walking a picket line.
Kid Rock doesn’t care if you illegally download his music.
In an incredibly sarcastic YouTube message to the children, he also says it’s A.O.K. to steal from Apple, Microsoft, Toyota, the gas companies and even Tommy Hilfiger.
Not the brightest idea in the world, planting those types of seeds.
Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin fell in love at a time when lesbians risked being arrested, fired from their jobs and sent to electroshock treatment.
On Monday, more than a half-century after they became a couple, Lyon and Martin plan to become one of the first same-sex couples to legally exchange marriage vows in California.
“It was something you wanted to know, ‘Is it really going to happen?’ And now it’s happened, and maybe it can continue to happen,” Lyon said.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to officiate at the private ceremony in his City Hall office before 50 invited guests. He picked Martin, 87, and Lyon, 84, for the front of the line in recognition of their long relationship and their status as pioneers of the gay rights movement.
Along with six other women, they founded a San Francisco social club for lesbians in 1955 called the Daughters of Bilitis. Under their leadership, it evolved into the nation’s first lesbian advocacy organization. They have the FBI files to prove it.
Their ceremony Monday will, in fact, be a marriage do-over.
In February 2004, San Francisco’s new mayor decided to challenge California’s marriage laws by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. His advisers and gay rights activists knew right away which couple would put the most compelling human face on the issue: Martin and Lyon.
Back then, the couple planned to celebrate their 51st anniversary as live-in lovers on Valentine’s Day. Because of their work with the Daughters, they also were icons in the gay community.
“Four years ago, when they agreed to be married, it was in equal parts to support the mayor and to support the idea that lesbians and gay people formed committed relationships and should have those relationships respected,” says Kate Kendell, a close friend and executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
Lyon and Martin vividly recall the excitement of being secretly swept into the clerk’s office, saying “I do” in front of a tiny group of city staff members and friends, and then being rushed out of the building. There were no corsages, no bottles of champagne. Afterward they went to lunch, just the two of them, at a restaurant run as a job training program for participants in a substance abuse program.
“Of course, nobody down there knew, so we were left to be by ourselves like we wanted to be,” said Martin, the less gregarious of the two. “Then we came home.”
“And watched TV,” adds Lyon.
The privacy was short-lived. Their wedding portrait, showing the couple cradling each other in pastel-colored pantsuits with their foreheads tenderly touching, drew worldwide attention.
Same-sex marriage would become legal in Massachusetts in another three months, but San Francisco’s calculated act of civil disobedience drove the debate.
In the month that followed, more than 4,000 other couples followed Martin and Lyon down the aisle before a judge acting on petitions brought by gay marriage opponents halted the city’s spree.
The state Supreme Court ultimately voided the unions, but the women were among the two dozen couples who served as plaintiffs in the lawsuits that led the same court last month to overturn California’s ban on gay marriage.
They were having their morning coffee when Lyon heard the news on the radio. She rushed across the house to embrace Martin. Not long after, Newsom called to offer congratulations and to ask if they would be willing to be at the forefront yet again.
The voicemail threats made against Hulk Hogan and his family — calling Linda and Brooke Hogan “whores” and threatening to “piss on you and your family’s grave” — have been released.
Bubba the Love Sponge, radio host and Hogan family friend, played the messages allegedly made by John Granziano’s brother, Frank, on his show this morning. Clearwater PD states there is an “open investigation” into the calls.
Authorities said there appeared to be no signs of a struggle having taken place inside the 9th-floor apartment, which the green-eyed, 5′8″ beauty had occupied for only two months.
In a two-page letter released Thursday, Clooney adopted a neutral stance in the dispute between the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Screen Actors Guild.
