I can’t stand Kyle Richards. She’s a nasty, petty, narcissistic piece of work – in other words she’s perfect for the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills because the drama, backstabbing and catfighting come naturally to her. Yesterday I got an e-mail from the PopSugar network that alerted me to this new self help book by Kyle called Life Is Not a Reality Show: Keeping It Real with the Housewife Who Does It All. It’s just so ridiculous I had to share. In the book trailer on Amazon, Kyle calls herself “the quintessential girl’s girl” and says she wants to “share my thoughts on everything, from my personal life to how I dressed at night, to how I put myself together to how I get up and make my kids snacks in the morning.” That’s pretty much why Gwyneth Paltrow started Goop. She thought that the public wanted nothing more than to have her life, and Kyle suffers from the same delusion. Here’s the book description:

In the wild world of Beverly Hills, high-priced glam squads, flashy cars, and off-the-charts drama are the norm. Enter Kyle Richards: born and raised in the nation’s most dazzling neighborhood, she’s practically royalty in the 90210 zip code. And yet her loving family life, lack of pretention (no nannies, stylists, or personal chefs for this diva), and “girls’ girl” attitude make her a breath of fresh air on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Now, she’s revealing how she achieves that perfect mix of celebrity and normality. In this collection of the best tips, advice, and strategies she knows, Kyle’s talking friend to friend so you can create that blend of glitz and know-how in your own life:

Family
Kyle’s a hands-on parent who shares how she’s raising her four daughters to be self-sufficient, compassionate, and—above all—not spoiled. (Kyle grew up in a family of all women with her extraordinary mother teaching all the children her unique take on life.)

Men
Being married to Mauricio, a devoted husband and wonderful father, Kyle is often asked what makes a happy and lasting marriage. She shares all of her best advice for keeping a marriage strong and, for single women, how to find the perfect partner.

Hair
Would you believe those famously luscious locks are courtesy of drugstore shampoo? Turns out Beverly Hills style doesn’t have to cost a fortune!

Beauty
Kyle’s beauty routine is practical and never too trendy. She shares her secrets for choosing the best lip glosses, blushes, creams, and cleansers, and explains how you can look gorgeous even if you’re on a budget. (Her tips on applying glam-inducing false eyelashes alone are a must read.)

Entertaining
After years of soirees fit for the Hollywood elite, Kyle knows what it takes to throw a party your friends will talk about for years…without breaking the bank.

Childhood memories, tales from behind the scenes of The Real Housewives, warm and hilarious family stories—Kyle’s sharing all.

Stop imagining what it’s like to live in the country’s most glamorous zip code…and start trying out the good life yourself!

[From Amazon]

Kyle spackles on the makeup and she has huge fake hair extensions. She’s cruel to her sister and is a catty, petty person. Of course she considers herself an expert on everything and a “girl’s girl” when she’s anything but. This is going to sound super bitchy, but here goes. Like that evil drunken psychic last season on RHOBH, I get the impression that Kyle’s husband Mauricio is a cheater. He projects this good guy image, but he’s super slick and confident and I just get the cheater vibe from him. Maybe I’m hoping that’s the case because I just so thoroughly dislike Kyle. It’s wrong to wish ill will on people, but there you go.

Also, Lisa Vanderpump has a book out too. It’s called Simply Divine: A Guide to Easy, Elegant, and Affordable Entertaining. At least Lisa has experience in those matters, having owned successful bars and restaurants for decades. She does think it’s perfectly acceptable to have your dog eat at the table with you, though. No matter how cute the dog is, that’s just wrong.

These photos are from 12/14/11 and 10/29/11. Nice Halloween costume. It looks like something her niece Paris would wear. Credit: Fame

A month ago, the rumors began. Pippa Middleton was allegedly shopping a book around to various publishers. Was it a tell-all memoir, perhaps? Something like The Other Waity: Pippa’s Story? Or My Sister Married a Prince And All I Got Was An Ass Made of Lies? No and no. Pippa was shopping a “party planning” book – all about how to be a hostess and how to throw great parties. When the rumors first came out, British snobs were like, “HOW GAUCHE” and “What do you expect from the dreaded middle class?” Pippa’s family and the royal family might have even tried to get Pippa to withdraw her book idea, but now there’s some great news – Pippa didn’t back down! She got her book deal. And then some.

Pippa Middleton has signed a six- figure deal to write a book about being the perfect party hostess. The younger sister of the Duchess of Cambridge is believed to be banking a cheque for £400,000 after a fierce bidding war with some of the country’s biggest publishing houses.

Pippa’s literary agent David Godwin is believed to have finalised the deal last week, which is understood to be with publisher Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin books. HarperCollins and Random House’s subsidiary, Cornerstone, were also said to be keen to buy the book, but Penguin outbid them.

Pippa, 28, has told friends she signed the deal last week and will not be employing a ghost writer. She has been setting aside several hours a day to draft chapters.

‘Pippa says it’s a nerve-racking prospect but she is looking forward to the challenge of writing her first book,’ said a friend. ‘She had to deliver a synopsis that was sent to a number of publishers under a strict confidentiality agreement. There were some serious offers, but Penguin stumped up the most cash. It will be about entertaining and how to throw the perfect party. It’s not just about being the perfect hostess – it will also include recipes and information about how to host different types of events. Pippa has been sketching out the chapters and has decided to start each one with an amusing anecdote.’

Pippa has the full backing of sister Kate, who thinks the idea is ‘brilliant’. As a professional party planner for London-based events company Table Talk, she is in the perfect position to write about hosting parties.

She is also a talented writer and edits The Party Times, an online newsletter on her parents’ Party Pieces website. She is, however, keen not to be seen to be cashing in on her Royal connections and, as well as consulting her family about the book, she spoke to St James’s Palace before signing.

‘Pippa has turned down the offer to be a lady-in-waiting for her sister and wants a career in her own right. But she knows she can’t be seen to be making money out of her connections. Kate thinks it’s a brilliant idea,’ says the friend.

The book is a welcome distraction for Pippa who has separated from her long-term boyfriend Alex Loudon, say friends. ‘She is throwing herself into her book and it’s helping to distract her. She’s had a horrid time.’

[From The Mail]

I think it’s a great idea too. For one, I seriously doubt Kate is all that pleased with it, and it will probably piss off the royal family and it will be seen as Pippa “cashing in” on her royal connections. That’s what’s great about it! Pippa SHOULD do her own thing and not just wait around for Kate to fix her up with some titled aristocrat. Pippa doesn’t want to WAIT. Pippa wants to make it happen for herself. And now she’s got her own money to make it happen – good for her.

By the way, does anyone else think that this move is designed to alert the UK snobs that Pippa doesn’t need them anyway? Like, now that Pippa is doing a book and she’ll be making her own party-planning and publishing fortune, the aristocrats might not want to get near her. Which is fine – now I want Pippa to find some dude who is new-money wealthy and self-made too. That’ll show the snobs.

Photos courtesy of Fame & WENN.

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My mom and I watched Carrie Fisher’s one woman special Wishful Drinking on HBO together. It was so much fun for us, and we could each relate to the Hollywood stories she told. Carrie was funny, self effacing and honest. She went into detail on her crazy family background and upbringing, and somehow she managed to make extreme dysfunction sound hilarious. She was also very honest about the fact that she’s an addict, that she has bipolar disorder and that she’s used electroconvulsive therapy to treat it.

The last we heard of Carrie she was triumphantly showing off her 50 pound weight loss as a new spokesperson for Jenny Craig. She was also sporting an entirely new face, something that she didn’t really mention but was incredibly obvious. She looks good and she hasn’t gone overboard with the Botox and fillers. Well Carrie was on The Today Show this morning promoting her latest memoir, Shockaholic. While smoking an e-cigarette, she extolled the benefits of electroconvulsive therapy, saying that it was a last ditch effort for her, that it’s not painful at this point since they put you to sleep before they do it, and that she highly recommends it. I find her awesome, but it was clear that Ann Curry didn’t get her sense of humor at all.

On if she sees it as her job to break the stigmas over ECT
I want to fracture them. Breaking is just going to far… The stigma on that one is so crazy, though. It’s a Hollywood one.

On why she did ECT
I did it because I’m bipolar. It took me 5 million years to do it. It is the last ditch treatment. They had tried everything else on me. Once I did it, it was like “I wish I’d dont this before.”

On if ECT hurts
They put you to sleep. It’s very different than it used to be. They put you to sleep, there’s no more convulsions. They should call it ET.

On if she recommends it
If they’re that far into it. I don’t recommend like if you have a free afternoon… If you’re depressed, absolutely. They put you to sleep, there’s a medication they give you so there’s no convulsions.

Remember in that movie “What Lies Beneath” when Michelle Pfiefer goes under and Harrison almost kills her? That’s the medication. I had Harrison inject it to me and almost kill me.

Ann: “Oh dear, dear dear. Alright let’s move on.”

Carrie was cracking jokes and all Ann Curry did was act all serious and go “oh,” and “mmm.” After a while, Carrie made more obvious jokes and then Curry gave a couple of forced laughs. It’s like Carrie realized that Ann was so dim she wasn’t going to get it. She’s such a lousy interviewer.

I love that Carrie is so open about what she went through and is talking about what worked for her. They should have had Al Roker interview her instead of Curry. Al would have laughed his ass off.

Here’s Carrie and her mom Debbie Reynolds at the Emmy Awards on 9/11/11. Credit: WENN.com

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Did you know that Snooki has a new book out already? She really does, it’s called Confessions of a Guidette. It was just January that she put out her first book, A Shore Thing. We covered some excerpts here, and it was just as bad as you would expect from a girl known for getting so wasted she can’t stand up straight and hooking up with random guys at clubs. Snooki was on The Today Show yesterday to promote the book and she did a serious interview with Matt Lauer and everything. It was hard to watch her try to sit there and play off like she’s an author and not a punchline. She talked about herself in the third person while claiming that she could be a role model, but not as “Snooki.” It was weird:

Nicole Polizzi wants to be taken seriously! The Jersey Shore star famously know as Snooki draws a line between her guidette alter ego and the person she actually is.

“I think you see more of the party side of me … on the show, but right now, you’re talking to Nicole,” the pint-sized reality star told Matt Lauer on the Today show. “It’s like the soft, calm, business-ready person.”

Nicole continued to explain that the tanning addict, club-going, makeout-loving queen that we see on the MTV hit show is not a role model.

“Snooki’s definitely not a role model. Snooki’s just there to have fun in life,” she shared. “Nicole, I would say, I can be a role model. I’m very strong, independent and I’m lovable, I guess,” she said.

Nicole is making her rounds promoting her new book Confessions of a Guidette, in bookstores now.

“A Guidette is a girl with with a strong personality,” she explained. “She doesn’t let anyone bring her down. She likes tanning. She’s very independent and she loves to be, like, flashy.”

[From OK! Magazine]

I guess we know how she copes with having to see herself on video humping a plant. Bitch has dissociative identity disorder. I’m sure she forgets a lots stuff she does as Snooki too, but that’s probably just because she’s blackout drunk most nights.

Oh and Snooki and Vinny recently slept together as shown on Jersey Shore, but she’s still with her boyfriend. She gushed about him to Matt Lauer. I guess Snooki hooked up with The Situation too, but he recently denied ever sleeping with her. Sitch told Chelsea Handler on her show “We did something else. Well, I didn’t do anything. She did something.” So he’ll accept a beej from Snooki but his standards aren’t rock bottom enough to screw her. She’s the perfect height for it.

Imagine my surprise (or mild amusement really) when I found an ad for Levi Johnston’s new book on one of our favorite sites, D-Listed. That’s the first time I’ve heard that the book Levi has threatened to release for months is actually out. Levi’s new memoir Deer in The Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs has been published by Simon & Schuster. Judging from the passages I skimmed, the book is highly readable, interesting and relatable. They got Levi an incredibly competent ghost writer who makes him sound both coherent and self aware to a degree that is in no way supported by the dull, halting interviews he’s given to date. Levi is a high school dropout who posed for Playgirl and at one point wanted to run for mayor of his Alaska town. In an interview on “The View” announcing his candidacy (which never materialized), he was incapable of reciting a single reason why anyone should vote him. So it’s laughable to imagine Levi writing this book in any fashion since it actually flows well and describes things simply and vividly. Here’s an example in which he talks about his family. Levi’s love of hunting and the outdoors is a common theme throughout:

My male relatives… were ballsy, somewhat crazy, and still are. Not in a Deliverance kind of way though. They wouldn’t think twice about running a wild river in a canoe, catching air on a snow machine, jumping four-wheelers, or flying off hilltops 120 feet downslope. Those same men had unending patience as they taught us boys what we needed to know to be out there, on our own and safe…

I know who I am from hunting. It’s my identity – a world and an activity I know as well as anyone. Better. It’s a place where I can survive.

Kodiak brown-bear country is different from the heavily treed home of black bears need Wasilla. Kodiak land is mushy, swampy in the valleys, with adler that has been stunted by the wind, the cold and the fog. The saplings are ten, twelved feet high. Sometimes you see the tops of these thickets trembling as a bear pushes through, on the move. You guess the direction and cut that bear off or you’ll lose it.

A snow machine? Is that what they’re calling snowmobiles now? (It seems to be the case as they’re called snow machines consistently.) The passages in this book are evocative and interesting. I actually enjoyed reading some of this because it described nature and hunting in a way that changed my perspective. Levi had some incredible stories to tell, like when he nearly got sucked into a whirlpool when he was canoeing with his uncle. They had to wade through ice cold water for hours at night before they made it the ten miles back to camp.

As for what people are really interested in, The Palins, Levi didn’t say much that we haven’t already heard from him, but he did say it in a convincing way. He described a home life in which mom Sarah was in her own world, separate from her husband and the kids. Her husband Todd did his own thing, hanging out in his man cave and sleeping on the couch at night. Here’s the part where Levi describes that:

Claims Sarah and Todd were estranged, Sarah ignored her kids
The first time I went snow machining with [Todd], he surprised me. At home he is like a shadow. Always in the garage, doing something. Away from home, Todd was a totally different guy. He opened up and we had fun together. Todd and I got home one night and he walked back to his house, past Sarah, who was on her way to her bedroom with her typical dinner, a Diet Coke and chips. They didn’t say a word to each other, yet Todd’s face darkened. He went back to his usual grumpy self and headed for his hidey-hole, the garage, where he could be alone…

For the most part, Sarah was as distant as Todd. She gave out hugs and handshakes to the public, but in private, she didn’t reach out to her kids. If she was in one of her hyperjoyful moods, they she might grab one of them as they went by. Otherwise, she left them alone.

If they wanted something, she’d give in, always. It wasn’t important to her to get her own way about uninmportant stuff – things she wasn’t all that interested in.

Most days, by the time Bristol and Willow got home, Sarah was out of sight. She’d be in her first-floor, cavernlike bedroom with its big walk-in closet – that might have been a huge master bedroom, but it was all hers, not Todd’s, although he kept his clothes in there. He spent his time in his workshop in the garage, with overnights in the living room. Still dressed…

I was spending more time with her family than she did…

I never – I mean never – saw Sarah and Todd touch or kiss, other than for a photo op. They barely even talked to each other.

Levi (his ghost writer) was really sweet and gushing when he described how he fell in love with Bristol and spent time with her dreaming about their futures. He didn’t try to nullify their past at all. At this point I just started skimming looking for the good parts, and I found a few but there are probably more.

On how Levi and Bristol told Bristol’s parents about Bristol’s pregnancy
Todd, who had been watching Sarah first, and then me, was in that place where some quiet men go. Look out.

Do you think I’m going to support Bristol and your baby? His voice was loud. Suddenly he wasn’t so quiet after all.

Well, no.

You need to quit school, get a job.

Sarah picked up. You guys are going to have to get married.

Maybe. After we graduate, I was thinking. Had been thinking.

This was the only time she mentioned marriage – until, that is, the McCain team would make it an issue.

Sarah Palin lied when she said she told Bristol she had a choice to abort
There was no talk of abortion. Sarah would later say that she told Bristol it was her choice and her daughter made the right one… That’s total fiction, although Sarah might be deluding herself or just doesn’t know the truth. Bristol got pregnant on purpose. She had finally come clean, admitted to me that she hadn’t been taking her birth control pills. We were having a baby, end of story.

Levi’s ghost writer calls Sarah out a few more times in the book. He mentions that Sarah called her baby Trigg retarded in a joking way (we’ve heard that before), that she lied when she claimed that he purposefully wasn’t there for the birth of his son, Tripp (he made it there as soon as possible), and that she got livid when he tried to tell her that there wasn’t any difference between questioning Obama’s birthplace and people questioning whether Trigg was actually her son. Levi calls out Bristol, too, for fibbing to the press about her plastic surgery. He does it from his perspective without directly calling her a liar.

On Bristol’s plastic surgery (prior to her new face)
During the time we were together, before she was pregnant, Bristol had had her double chin reduced… Then she decided she needed to get her breasts reduced.

On Bristol’s new face not being necessary
Bristol has had more cosmetic surgery; she showed off her changed features a week before my twenty-first birthday. She told the media about the braces she used to wear. I remember those endless orthodontist’s appointments. I never knew it wasn’t all taken care of – the alignment issue she pointed out as the reason for her reshaped jaw. I did know she had continued to complain after the lipo about the remaining roundness of her cheeks…

There’s a lot in there about the custody battle for Tripp, about how Sarah and Bristol tried to keep Levi from his son and tried to block his visitation at every turn. Here’s another segment I’d like to share, about how Sarah was a big flirt. I doubt she was into Levi though.

Sarah Palin regularly flirted with other women’s husbands
All along my female friends had been trying to convince me that Sarah had had a cougar crush on me and was jealous of Bristol once we had a child together…

It’s a classic situation, my female friends told me, while their menfolk rolled around on the floor cracking up.

What did come to mind was how Sarah behaved with men her own age. I remember her standing next to my dad in the stands in the hockey rink in Fairbanks, rubbing the back of his neck. He wasn’t the only guy she was flirty with. I thought my mother would have a stroke. What could she say? Get your paws off my property?

Sarah could care less as she linked arms with another father and walked away. It was her mojo, her strength. Her sexuality. It was pretty powerful.

There’s more I’d love to repeat, and I’ll include some bullet points below.

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We love Roger Ebert, and I’m not using the royal “we,” I’m talking about Kaiser and me, and probably Bedhead too although I didn’t double check. The guy is awesome. He lost his physical voice along with half of his jaw to thyroid cancer about five years ago, but even though he can’t talk or eat he’s still talking smack and making his opinion known. Ebert was interviewed in a taped segment that aired on The Today Show this morning. He’s promoting his new memoir, Life Itself, and given his story, and how masterfully he writes, I just know that it’s going to be a bestseller. I was thinking of covering what Roger said on the Today show, but instead I’ll just include a brief passage from his book, which was poetic and lovely and pulled me in immediately. Somehow in this flurry of words he takes you there, he reminds you of your own childhood and he makes you yearn for all those sweet fleeting things that make up the whole of your past.

I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not neces­sarily. I don’t remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me. At first the frames flicker without connection, as they do in Bergman’s Persona after the film breaks and begins again. I am flat on my stomach on the front sidewalk, my eyes an inch from a procession of ants. What these are I do not know. It is the only sidewalk in my life, in front of the only house. I have seen grasshoppers and ladybugs. My uncle Bob extends the business end of a fly swatter toward me, and I grasp it and try to walk toward him. Voices encourage me. Hal Holmes has a red tricycle and I cry because I want it for my own. My parents curiously set tubes afire and blow smoke from their mouths. I don’t want to eat, and my aunt Martha puts me on her lap and says she’ll pinch me if I don’t open my mouth. Gary Wikoff is sitting next to me in the kitchen. He asks me how old I am today, and I hold up three fingers. At Tot’s Play School, I try to ride on the back of Mrs. Meadrow’s dog, and it bites me on the cheek. I am taken to Mercy Hospital to be stitched up.

Everyone there is shouting because the Panama Limited went off the rails north of town. People crowd around. Aunt Martha brings in Doctor Collins, her boss, who is a dentist. He tells my mother, Annabel, it’s the same thing to put a few stitches on the outside of a cheek as on the inside. I start crying. Why is the thought of stitches outside my cheek more terrifying than stitches anywhere else? The movie settles down. I live at 410 East Washington Street in Urbana, Illinois. My telephone number is 72611. I am never to forget those things. I run the length of the hallway from the living room to my bedroom, leaping into the air and landing on my bed. Daddy tells me to stop that or I’ll break the bed boards. The basement smells like green onions. The light beside my bed is like a water pump, and the handle turns it on and off. I wear flannel shirts. My gloves are attached to a string through the sleeves because I am always losing them. My mother says today my father is going to teach me to tie my shoes for myself. “It can’t be explained in words,” he tells me. “Just follow my fingers.” I still do. It cannot be explained in words.

When I returned to 410 East Washington with my wife, Chaz, in 1990, I saw that the hallway was only a few yards long. I got the feeling I sometimes have when reality realigns itself. It’s a tingling sensation mov­ing like a wave through my body. I know the feeling precisely. I doubt I’ve experienced it ten times in my life. I felt it at Smith Drugs when I was seven or eight and opened a nudist magazine and discovered that all women had breasts. I felt it when my father told me he had cancer. I felt it when I proposed marriage. Yes, and I felt it in the old Palais des Festi­vals at Cannes, when the Ride of the Valkyries played during the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now.

[From MSNBC.com]

I want to be able to write like that, but more than that I want to be able to think and to remember like that. Roger said on The Today Show that when he writes, the memories come to him. He writes a little later in this excerpt “In these years after my illness, when I can no longer speak and am set aside from the daily flow, I live more in my memory and discover that a great many things are safely stored away. It all seems still to be in there somewhere… When I began writing this book, memories came flooding to the surface, not because of any conscious effort but simply in the stream of writing. I started in a direction and the memories were waiting there, sometimes of things I hadn’t consciously thought about since. ”

This isn’t just a book about how he grew up, it includes so many details of his past that are interesting in their own right. EW has a positive quick review along with some interesting anecdotes from Ebert on the first time he met Oprah and how he once had lunch with Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.

I have to also mention that I was so happy to see him walking with his wife, Chaz, in footage shown on the Today Show. The last time I saw him, on Oprah last year, he was still wheelchair bound.

Oh and MSNBC has a list of the best lines from Ebert reviews. It’s a fun read, especially when he’s scathing.

Photos are of Roger and his wife Chaz earlier this year.

Credit: WENN.com

Taylor Armstrong aka Shana Hughes, aka Taylor Ford, just got a book deal following her husband’s tragic, and possibly suspicious, suicide. Several stories came out after Russell Armstrong’s death that he was abusive and had beaten Taylor, which were supported by similar allegations of abuse and restraining orders taken out against him by two of his exes. Taylor’s book will reportedly focus on domestic abuse and will include photos she took documenting the injuries that Russell inflicted on her.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star’s book will be about domestic abuse, but desperate for money, a source reveals Taylor will be including the photos hoping it will boost sales.

“Taylor’s acting like she’s not trying to bank off Russell’s suicide, but by including photos of her injuries after he allegedly beat her, that’s exactly what she’ll be doing,” an insider told RadarOnline.com.

“It’s no secret that Taylor’s been strapped for cash since Russell died, and since she hasn’t received the advance on her book yet, a few of the Housewives have been helping her out financially.”

As RadarOnline.com was first to report, Taylor kept photographic evidence documenting the abuse she was allegedly enduring at the hands of Russell.

“Taylor is hoping to have the book out by the end of November, just in time for the holiday sales,” the source said.

“Not only is Taylor going to write about her own personal experiences, but she wants to spotlight other celebrities who have been involved in domestic abuse situations.”

[From Radar Online]

I think Taylor is a con artist and that she’s definitely cashing in after her husband’s death, but that doesn’t mean she had anything to do with his death (if it wasn’t a suicide) or that she’s somehow trumping up these abuse claims to bolster public sympathy. If the guy did it to his ex girlfriends, that’s enough evidence to convince me that he beat Taylor too. We heard yesterday that Taylor ran up $90,000 on Russell’s credit cards in the weeks following their separation. I’m sure that Taylor is a piece of work, that she’s manipulative, and that she’s both a money-grubber and someone who squanders money on useless sh*t in an attempt to feel like she belongs. Again, if Russell’s death was suspicious, I don’t think Taylor is at all complicit in that given that his business partner also “committed suicide” just a day later. It sounds like someone wanted those two dead, or that they were in over their heads and thought that death was the only way out. There’s something untoward about Taylor inking a book deal so soon after her husband passed, but if she suffered abuse that’s her story to tell. She needs to do something to bring some money in, the way she spends it.

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Perez Hilton was a guest on The Today Show yesterday and I have to say he came across as much nicer than he has in the past. I’ve seen several interviews with him and he’s often defensive and obnoxious. This time, maybe because he had something to promote, he seemed friendly and like he really has genuinely changed. He was still a loudmouth for sure, but I was impressed with how decent he came across. Perez is promoting his new children’s book called, I sh*t you not, The Boy With Pink Hair. It’s got a cliched plot about a fat kid who used to scrawl anonymous graffiti on the walls of school about all popular kids, until they figured out who he was and then started to mock him mercilessly. Then he lost weight and said he was sorry and tried to get accepted in their club. Or maybe it’s just another book about an outsider kid. Whatever. Didn’t Madonna already do that?

Perez claimed he’s “the perfect person to write a children’s book,” not because he’s ever had children, worked with children, babysat children, said a kind word about someone else’s child, or has any nieces or nephews. Just because he used to be an asshole and changed.

I’m the perfect person to write a children’s book because I’m somebody who made mistakes in the past, acknowledged them, and has taken steps to no longer do that and I think that’s a great message for children.

In the past I was definitely meaner, nasty, give people unpleasant nicknames, draw lots of nice things on photos. But then, last year there were all these gay teenagers who were committing suicide… A lot of people were calling me a hypocrite and a bully myself. That’s not who I am in my heart.

They next showed some illustrations from the book, which were done by a professional illustrator and don’t feature crude penis drawings. Perez explained that “there’s a great message in it for parents about being accepting of your kids no matter how they are.” Kathy Lee clarified that “This is not a gay book, it’s not about your sexual orientation. It’s just about being uniquely different.”

Then Perez chimed in with “Everybody’s different, unless you’re Reese Witherspoon or Taylor Swift, who everybody loves.”

I believe that he’s changed for whatever reason, but I see it more as a public persona choice than a genuine personal awakening. It’s still really tough to buy that this guy is now putting out a children’s book. Even if you just look at the other books he’s released and aren’t that familiar with his website, there’s a mismatch there to say the least. It looks like he needed a new angle for a book and for his image.

Perez is shown at a book signing on 9/6/11. Credit: WENN.com

Full disclosure: I read half of The Help and it bugged me so I put it down. It just seemed hackneyed to me, with the maids all speaking in slang dialect and the white women speaking in a perfectly normal way that didn’t even have a southern twang. Plus the plot bothered me. I’m white, which makes me feel unqualified to judge whether it was racist (which I suspected), but it started to drag in the middle and I put it down.

So I haven’t finished the book, and I’ve never seen the movie, but I felt a little twinge of smugness when I read that the author, Kathryn Stockett, is getting sued. Apparently the lead character in The Help, Aibileen, shares an incredible amount of commonalities with a maid and nanny who worked for the author’s brother for over 12 years, Abilene Cooper. I’m going to include some details from this article in The Daily Mail about the lawsuit, because it lays out the details well. The Mail gets it wrong, though, by claiming the suit is ongoing. This lawsuit for just $75,000 in damages was dismissed in mid August for being filed after the “statute of limitations for misappropriation claims.” It sounds like Cooper had a decent claim against Stockett, though. Here’s more:

When Abilene Cooper picked up her copy, however, her reaction was rather different. Instead of sympathy for the characters of The Help, there was anger and devastation.

As she turned the pages she came to believe that the story at the heart of the book – an unlikely friendship between a white girl and a black maid – was her own. Her life, she believes, has been stolen, without acknowledgment or payment.
Certainly the name is hers, although in the book the heroine is spelt Aibileen. The city, Jackson, Mississippi, is correct, and like the characters in The Help, she has spent much of her life working in white households.

Intriguingly, these include the household of Kathryn Stockett’s brother and sister-in-law, where she has been a maid and nanny for 12 years.

Abilene says: ‘When I started to read the book, I said, ‘‘This is the closest thing to my life I ever seen. It’s gotta be me.’’
‘Kathryn spelt my name wrong, but they pronounce it exactly the same way in the book and the film. I introduced myself to Kathryn when I first met her at her brother’s house that way: ‘‘Aib-e-leen”.

Kathryn has Aibileen teaching the white folks’ baby girl to call her ‘‘Aib-ee”. That’s what I taught Kathryn’s niece and nephew to call me because they couldn’t manage Abilene.

‘I just cried and cried after I read the first few pages. In the book, Aibileen has taken her job five months after her son is killed in an accident. My son, Willie, had leukaemia and died when he was 18, in July 1998, three months before I went to work for the Stocketts.

‘I felt the emotions in my heart all over again. Kathryn copied parts of my life and used them without even asking me.’
In the book, Aibileen is a deeply religious woman who sports a gold tooth and a gold cross, as does the real-life Abilene.
Both women cope with the stifling heat of the Mississippi summer by wearing wigs when their own hair goes limp in the humid air.

Both devote a lifetime to bringing up the babies of ‘white folks’: the fictional Aibileen has raised 17 children while Abilene estimates her total to be 18 or 19.

The novel is set in the early Sixties and Aibileen hears that black civil rights leader Medgar Evers has been assassinated by the Ku Klux Klan in her home town, Jackson. The heroine is dizzy with fear and the passage has an eerie similarity to Abilene’s own memories of the murder.

She, too, remembers how Evers’s death brought the city to the brink of civil war. When Abilene, then 12, heard the news from her grandmother that day in 1963, she was terrified: ‘My grandmomma September 4, 2011 From Sharon Churcher in Jackson, Mississippi told us all we had to protect us was God and prayer,’ she says. ‘There weren’t no coloured policemen.’
The killing was one of the most significant moments in the long, hard battle for civil rights in the Deep South.

A careworn, heavyset woman who has been working as a maid for white families in Jackson since she was 13, Abilene says: ‘My brothers were involved in the civil rights protests and my daddy feared for our lives and my momma walked around praying.

The Help compares Aibileen’s skin colour to a cockroach: ‘He black,’ Abilene says of the insect, ‘blacker than me. How can Kathryn live with herself after writing that? How can a person be that cruel?

‘I think she is just a racist. She claims she respects black people but she just ran all over me.’

[From The Daily Mail]

Again, this lawsuit isn’t going anywhere. Stockett sent Cooper a note in 2009 telling her the character in the book wasn’t based on her despite the obvious name similarities. Cooper didn’t get around to reading the book until over a year later, and since the suit wasn’t filed until 2011, after the one year statute of limitations, it was thrown out. I follow celebrity news closely (well only the most superficial and trashy of it, but still) and I didn’t hear anything about this lawsuit when it was dismissed nearly a month ago.

The Help continues to dominate the box office. It was number 1 over this holiday weekend for the third weekend in a row, bringing its domestic box office total to $118.6 million. E! Online asks if it’s the Avatar of chick flicks. (Here’s an article that discusses how it got made. Apparently Stockett was childhood friends with the guy who ended up directing it, actor/director Tate Taylor.)

As for this lawsuit, I’m surprised that Stockett didn’t offer some kind of settlement. She may have based Aibileen on another maid she knew who passed away, (as she claims) but the biographical similarities to the real Abilene are striking. To me, it just goes to show what a derivative book it is, but I know a lot of people enjoyed it and obviously the movie as well.

Kathryn Stockett is shown at the premiere of The Help on 8/9/11 and at The Deauville Film Festival with The Help director Tate Taylor on 9/3/11. Credit: WENN.com

Stockett and her daughter from a previous relationship.

This last picture is priceless.

Bristol Palin was on The View yesterday promoting her new memoir. OK! has details of her appearance and Barbara Walters took Bristol to task in that way she has while squinting her eyes and looking at her subject like they’re dirt. She questioned why Bristol claimed on one hand that Levi “stole” her virginity, but then kept having sex with him. Bristol’s answer reveals a lack of logic, which seems to be common in her family:

Bristol Palin has been making the media rounds about her new book, Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far, in which she claims her virginity was “stolen” by Levi Johnston. But as Barbara pointed out, Bristol must have liked it since she continued to have sex with him, right?…

In the book, Bristol describes losing her virginity to Levi (now the father of her son) after getting drunk on a camping trip and claims her virginity was “stolen” because of it. However, Bristol didn’t get pregnant from just that one event — she continued to have sex with Levi after that first time.

So Barbara asked the obvious question, “It must have been okay, because you kept on having sex with him, yeah?”

Bristol smiled and explained, “We did it that one night and I just figured it’s okay to do it again because I’d already broken my moral code.”

[From OK! Magazine]

That “I broke my moral code” logic is pretty flawed. It’s not like a moral code goes away once you do one thing that goes against it. “Well I stole some lipstick when I was wasted and didn’t know what I was doing. That goes against my morals, but I may as well never pay for makeup again.” It doesn’t make sense to me, and it sounds like she’s still blaming Levi for decisions she made. I’m not going to get into this more than that, I realize this is a touchy subject and Bristol was young when it happened. I just would like to hear her take responsibility for having sex with Levi and getting pregnant. She seems to be rationalizing that it’s all due to external factors beyond her control. I don’t even hear her admitting that she forgot to take her birth control pills. Maybe she didn’t forget and they just didn’t work right. It’s all someone else’s fault.

A quick glance at the reviews on Amazon for Bristol’s book reveals that people who supposedly read it have the same impression of her.

Photos are from 5/3/11 and 4/30/11. Credit: WENN.com