Father of the Year contender and rageaholic Alec Baldwin has jumped on the “Save your career by promoting a cause” bandwagon, and he’s picked the noblest one out there: the manatee. That’s right; natures’ best loved boulder-with-a-face-looking sea creature now has Alec Baldwin’s sponsorship. I wonder if that’s like sponsoring a child where they write you a letter every month to let you know how they’re doing.

“The actor and producer has recorded two 30-second public service announcements for the Save the Manatee Club. The animals are on the federal endangered species list and at risk of being seriously injured or killed by boat strikes.

“The Save the Manatee Club has a history of famous promoters. It was founded by musician Jimmy Buffett and former Florida governor and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham in 1981.

“And this isn’t the first time Baldwin has taken action for the animals. In 2005, Baldwin voiced a marine biologist character on ‘The Simpsons’ that was passionate about manatees.

“Baldwin’s recordings were sent to radio stations nationwide Tuesday.”

[From the Herald Tribune]

I remember just a few months ago when some of Alec Baldwin’s other recordings went to radio stations nationwide. They seemed to get a lot more attention though… I think that time he was promoting pigs. The guy just can’t decide what his favorite animal is. Do you think the manatees want to be associated with this whack job? Hey Alec Baldwin, how about instead of saving the manatees, you just be decent to your kid. That’s enough for me. Though next time he calls his daughter a “vile little pig” she can legitimately call him a “wicked giant sea cow.” I’m not hating on the manatees at all. I feel badly for them. They’re my favorite car-sized animal.

Update by Celebitchy: Thanks to reader Lippy for pointing out that Baldwin appeared on a Simpson’s episode, “The Bonfire of the Manatees” in September, 2005, in which he played a scientist (not himself) working to save the manatees.

Manatee image from Sea World San Diego Manatee Rescue via About.com. Alec Baldwin image thanks to PRPhotos.

On Wednesday, Hilary Duff dished up chicken stew for the homeless in Edmonton, Alberta at Herb Jamieson Centre as part of her campaign to raise awareness about poverty and hunger. Duff also solicited food donations from those attending her concert. The food will be distributed in Edmonton through Alberta Harvest.

Duff volunteered her time for over an hour and also paid a visit to Hope Mission, a Christian social services agency.

“The Hope Mission was a priority and we wanted to lend a hand. It’s so rewarding for me. I love to get down and dirty and help out. A big misconception of charity work and celebrities is that it takes a lot of money. It doesn’t take a lot of money. Your time is the best thing you can give.”

Vancouver Sun

Duff, who was in Canada for a scheduled stop on her “Dignity Tour” which kicked off Saturday in Winnipeg, has previously collaborated with Canadian Harvest and has raised more than 125,000 pounds of food on her two previous Candadian tours.

Interesting to note that Duff’s supposed new man, New York Islanders player Mike Comrie, is also from Edmonton.

“I’m in Edmonton, he’s from Edmonton,” she said, squirming in her chair. “Some of the guys (at the shelter) asked me about him, about hockey.”

Canada.com

Hope Mission spokeswoman Janelle Aker praised Duff’s efforts, contributions and time saying Duff dished it up until the last man was fed.

“She stayed for the whole lunch,” Aker said. “Until the last man received his food.”

Photo: Vancouver Sun

Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jennifer Garner, Jason Biggs and Sarah Silverman are amond the celebrities that appear in a series of new videos promoting the use of cleaner-burning fuels. There are three ads out produced by the Center for American Progress Action Fund that feature a dorky guy named Phin, a “lone citizen for change” who gets awkward help from the celebrities in his quest. Affleck is featured in the first ad, while Jason Biggs is in the third. Silverman, Damon and Garner will appear in the upcoming segments. The ads are kind of goofy, but if you watch them you get the point and they are entertaining. If you want to learn more about exactly what they’re proposing, it’s in the second video below and/or you can visit their website, CleanMyRide.org.

They want to increase mileage requirements for automobiles in the US and make ethanol and “flex fuel” available at more gas stations.

This seems completely reasonable and attainable, but it will take work and advocacy. In Europe you can get biodiesel gas all over the place. Biodiesel is usually a little less expensive at the pump than regular diesel in Germany. It’s made from vegetable oil such as rapeseed oil, and it has 60% less CO2 emissions than standard diesel, as well as a lot of other environmental benefits. We have more deisel cars here, and there’s a real push to use alternative fuels and cars that get better MPG because gas is so much more expensive. Maybe if Americans started to feel the pinch too they would be more supportive of measures to fund and use alternative fuels.

To learn more and see the new video spots when they’re out you can visit the website CleanMyRide.org

Update: Soundexchange, under immense pressure from Internet broadcasters and listeners, backed down and announced in a Congressional hearing yesterday that it would not enforce the astronomically high royalty rates and would work on negotiating new rates for now. This doesn’t mean the Internet Radio Equality Act is not necessary, just that Internet radio has been granted a last-minute reprieve. Here is more information about the temporary arrangement. (Thanks to Metadish for the tip.)

This is outrageous, and unless something is done immediately Internet Radio will shut down. (If you would like to learn more about this, please visit SaveNetRadio.)

There is a new bill called the Internet Radio Equality Act that will make royalty rates more reasonable for Internet Radio stations and allow them to operate. Unless this bill is brought to the floor for a vote today, Internet Radio will shut down.

Call your senators and representatives about this right now. It’s very easy. Just go to the form and put in your zip code. There are talking points next to each congress member that will tell you exactly what to say, and again it’s really easy to do. The staff members are usually very nice and this is a simple process. Even if you have never done this before I cannot urge you enough to do it for the sake of music lovers, artists, and free speech.

Here are some of my favorite Internet Radio sites and applications, and thanks to some commentors for pointing some of them out:
Di.fm
Last.fm
Pandora
Shoutcast
SomaFM

Again, visit SaveNetRadio and find out how to contact your Senators and Representatives and ask them to bring the bill to the floor today, or we can say goodbye to most music online.

(No one from SaveNetRadio has ever contacted Celebitchy and asked for help, and all the links for them on this site were added by me.)

Header image from user ninino on Photocase.

Something only slightly more important than the million or so weddings that took place this past Saturday, 7/7/07 were the Live Earth concerts. Held around the world over 24 hours, the concert were intended to focus attention on climate change (you know, the slightly more neutral term for global warming).

The BBC did an interesting story on Madonna, one of Live Earth’s featured performers. She sang her new song “Hey You,” written for Live Earth as a call to action for the rest of us to rescue the environment. The song’s video shows cars being filled with gas, airplanes taking off, and polar bears alongside melting ice-caps. But Madonna herself?

“The lion’s share of the performer’s carbon output was generated during the Confessions Tour, one of the biggest pop tours ever staged.

Madonna clocked up 56 concerts across the world. At least 100 people, including crew, dancers and support staff, traveled with her.

Based on these calculations it’s estimated that the tour generated over 651 tons of carbon.

‘Madonna produces the same amount of carbon as 102 average Britons,’ said Mr. Buckley [from the company Carbon Footprint]. “Even though she runs a global business she’s also set herself up as some sort of ambassador for the environment.

‘Therefore she needs to be seen to be walking the walk as well as singing the song.’”

[From the BBC]

I think it’s a fantastic idea to do something that gets people to pay attention to climate change. However it’s difficult to see how lots of rock concerts helped to do that. It’s hard to find out what happened to the proceeds. I assume they went to environmental charities, but if they did, that certainly wasn’t a focus of the promoters. I wanted to be Pro Live Earth. If nothing else, I appreciate someone trying to do a good thing. But at some point I had to agree with what everyone else was saying: this was just ridiculous. I can’t think of how massive concerts could possibly be green.

“Organizers say the concerts will be as green as possible, with a tally of energy use being kept. Proceeds from ticket sales will go toward distributing power-efficient light bulbs and other measures that will offset the shows’ greenhouse gas emissions, they say.

“’This is going to be the greenest event of its kind, ever,” Gore told The Associated Press recently.”The carbon offsets and the innovative practices that are being used to make this a green event, I think, will set the standard for years to come.’”

[From the New York Post]

This seems like it was a big waste of time. The press hardly covered the event. Are we really to believe that most of the concertgoers went to support the environment? Anyone who really cared about climate change that much would have stayed home and watched it on television. That would have left a much smaller carbon footprint. Instead it seems like it was just a bunch of musicians trying to assuage their environmental guilt. I truly don’t want to sound like I’m so down on this – I do appreciate the thought and the effort. But I think we need to find smarter ways to get the information across. It sends quite a mixed message to put on a concert and tell people not to do what you’re doing.

Note by Celebitchy: I’m with Jay in that I’m not sure if a series of concerts was the best way to get the message out, but I know that my husband and I watched a lot of the Live Earth coverage this weekend and we talked about conservation more than we normally do. We already do things like bring our own bags to the store and recycle. We have one car and my husband often bikes to work. After watching Live Earth we were talking about ways we can conserve at home. My husband mentioned that we might switch to bar soap instead of shower gel. I know this sounds minor, but there is a lot of plastic around shower gel, and by using bar soap instead we might make a difference. Little things like this do make a difference and I think if everyone can start to make even minor changes it will help. Just because the celebrities are big ass hypocrites doesn’t mean we can’t do our part.

Thanks to WENN for these pictures of Madonna at Live Earth. I deliberately picked photos of Madonna that were unflattering, but it’s not like I had to look hard.

Sharon Stone was holding some kind of benefit auction in Berlin yesterday for a peace foundation, and she started drunken dirty talking to the audience, calling them “naughty, nasty little Germans” and purr growling. She must have confused her gig as a charity auctioneer with the job she was hired for later that night as Dieter Bohlen’s mistress. After Stone’s weird purr, which garnered applause from the audience, the annoucer just says in German that the last winning bidder is coming onto the stage.

[via ONTD]

This is the woman who said during an AIDS benefit auction that “I want to take it [cash] from your pocket so I can feel how big your penis is when I take it,” so it’s not like this is new for her. She also made out with a holy wall in Israel and claimed she would kiss anyone and everyone for world peace. You can see from the video that she got upset that people were talking and that’s when she started with the bedroom talk. Stone can’t stand it when she’s not the center of attention.

The source of the video (link plays automatic video) claims she was making out with Richard Gere the night this footage was taken, but unfortunately I haven’t seen evidence of that.

Header image is from Sharon Stone’s “peace mission” to Israel last March.

Josh Hartnett is being painted as a sad sack by London paper The Mirror, which has a video interview with him focusing on the cause of climate control. He is promoting the charity Global Cool in England, and will meet with Prime Minister Tony Blair at a dinner reception on behalf of the group. The video they have posted with him has an interviewer asking him about conservation and climate change. Josh talks about his interest in the cause and how he tries to offset his personal effect on the environment.

Somehow, though, the article focusses on Hartnett as this pitiful creature pining for his lost relationship with Scarlett Johansson. There are none of the quotes they mention in the text in the actual video interview, and indeed the topic of Scarlett is never even brought up.

The quotes they have from him in the text, which again are not in the video at all, are the kind of regular trite statements you’re supposed to give when you break up with someone. While I doubt he even said this stuff it’s not like the quotes show he’s all broken up over it.

In an exclusive interview, the chiselled star admitted that their break-up last year was “really painful”.

He told us: “It was difficult spending so much time apart with all our different commitments and both of us flying all over the world.”

The sexy actor dated Scarlett, 22, for a year after they met on the set of the movie Black Dahlia.

But they decided to call it quits last November as dates grew more and more infrequent. And Josh, 28, has remained tight-lipped about the one that got away. Until now.

He reveals: “At the end of the day, we’re just ordinary people and it didn’t work.”

Pining for his ex he might be but the stud is far from lacking female attention.

He has been spotted with both Brit babe Sienna Miller and Spider-Man star Kirsten Dunst.

Then then go on to quote an “insider,” which just means the person who wrote it, saying that “Josh was gutted when he and Scarlett split.”

They’re not going to get another interview with Hartnett after asking him about climate change and then making up shit he said about Scarlett and basically calling him a pussy for it.

If you want to see the video, just right click over Josh’s picture on the Mirror website and choose “save target as.” I tried to click directly on the link and it just came up with a bunch of code.

Header image is from last summer, and I just thought it was cute because Josh was covering his mouth.

Celebrities don’t rough it when they go on peace-keeping and refugee missions to third world countries. A company called AFEX Group offers permanent and on-demand housing for UN officials. Accommodation in the field is provided at around $200 a night in gated luxury tent compounds outfitted with all the necessary amenities. Gourmet food, internet access, big screen televisions, a fitness center and driving range make their camps in dangerous Sudan and Kenya more resort-quality than pup tent:

Ever wondered why celebrities like Angelina Jolie have been rushing off to war zones? Life for international peacemakers may not involve quite such danger and hardship as we imagine. It seems to be more like living in an Ian Schrager hotel.

UN, UNICEF, foreign correspondents and the staff of most big aid agencies spend their time in camps run by a company called Afex. For more than $200 a night, foreigners trying to stop the war in Sudan live in luxury gated compounds (with names like Hotel California) enduring wi-fi, ensuite tents that wouldn’t look out of place in Wallpaper, satellite TV, games rooms, fully stocked bars (in this otherwise dry country) and espresso cafe.

Food-wise there’s everything from Mexican themed nights to curries, carveries, chinese buffets and ladies’ party nights.

Plus “logistics and security” experts Afex have a private army at your beck and call. They offer “asset protection” (ie can shoot anyone who looks twice at your laptop), and
“access control” (guarding you from having to come into contact with locals etc).

[From the PopBitch e-mail newsletter, January 25, 2007]

You can hardly blame them for wanting somewhere nice to stay, and I’m not saying it takes away from their charity work because it’s not like they demanded to be equipped with life’s luxuries while in the field. Of course they need security and a decent place to stay. It just seems like that money would be better spent on the very desperate people they’re trying to help, but surely I’m oversimplifying the problem.

Lindsay Lohan had the uncharacteristically smart foresight to snag her extracted faulty appendix from the hospital before it ended up on eBay. She took it home in a jar and threw it into the freezer for safekeeping.

Word is that Kimbo Stewart told her she should auction off the thing herself for charity.

Terrified that her recently-removed appendix might fall into weird hands and be auctioned off on eBay, Lindsay Lohan ordered the hospital to preserve her priceless part, then took it home, popped it into a canning jar - and froze it solid! Now here’s the twist: Lindsay’s pal Kimberly Steward is urging her to raise money for charity by auctioning off her appendix herself!

[From National Enquirer print edition, Mike Walker's column, January 29, 2007]

William Shatner’s kidney stone went for $25,000 to GoldenPalace.com, so Kimberly has a good idea. Lindsay hasn’t done much else for charity and this would get her name in the papers for something positive.

I didn’t really think these two were friends, especially since Kimberly was said to hook up with Lohan’s ex, Harry Morton, this December. Lohan and Kimberly were both seen partying in Miami around the new year at the same club, but there are no pictures of them together. They both have liver problems, though, and may have bonded over a medical conversation.

Lohan left rehab briefly this weekend for a follow-up visit to the doctor. She was seen stopping for a snack at a convenience store. And that is what passes for news on this blog.

Header picture is of Kimberly in early December. Taken by Celebrity Puke.

Update: I’m putting this update at the top. There is no affiliation between Jay-Z’s “Water for Life” campaign and this SUV he designed. I wrote that title as a joke, and hoped the text of the post would make it clear that I was trying to point out that designing an SUV is not the best way to conduct your business affairs when you’re trying to bring awareness for the need for clean water in the third world.

Jay-Z unveiled the new gas guzzler he helped design for GM, a bright blue GMC Yukon Denali. Maybe the blue helps signify his “Water for Life” campaign, since designing SUVs and bringing water to the third world is so consistent:

Jay-Z and General Motors are teaming up to bring a stylish hue to a rugged sport utility vehicle. The music mogul emerged from a concept GMC Yukon Denali SUV on stage Saturday during a celebrity-filled party thrown by General Motors Corp. on the eve of media previews for the North American International Auto Show.

Painted “Jay-Z Blue,” the SUV was developed through a partnership with the rapper during the past two years. Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, worked with the company’s global color studio to create the reflective blue color for the SUV.

“Hopefully I’ll be able to drive one of them out of here tonight,” he said.

This is the guy that chartered an extra plane for his luggage when he was doing the charity circuit for “Water for Life,” so he doesn’t quite get that conservation starts with you.

It’s great that he’s doing something meaningful and all, but if he doesn’t care about the environment or doesn’t realize that he’s contributing to its demise by making SUVs glamorous, he should pick another cause.