Would you like some meat-scented man perfume with that?

Burger King is running an even weirder ad campaign with their King mascot than the one where people woke up to see his frozen face smiling at them in bed. After seeing that commercial I had what can only be described as a nightmare involving that massive head in my bed. I was afraid to wake up.

Now, the King is promoting a new cologne that features the subtle undertones of Whopper. The “scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat” campaign has the big-headed, perma-creepy-grin King in nothing but a carefully placed blanket lying on a bearskin rug in front of a roaring fire, in full 70s Playgirl fashion. It’s hard to get past huge and deeply disturbing King head to see the hot body, but I managed.

While fast-food chains aren’t exactly best known for selling signature fragrances, on Sunday The Home of the Whopper rolled out a men’s body spray called Flame by BK. The 5-ml bottles are available for sale in Ricky’s stores in New York City and on a dedicated Web site, firemeetsdesire.com.

On firemeetsdesire.com, Burger King takes pains make satire of the “sexy is serious” stylings of other fragrance campaigns, offering this description of the scent against a chic black background: “The WHOPPER sandwich is America’s favorite burger. FLAME by BK captures the essence of that love and gives it to you. Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat.”

As with any decent marketing stunt, the whole Flame campaign has stoked the embers of opinion among fans and critics alike.

“I would not wear it out of principle,” said 23-year-old Mike G., after seeing the slim silver package sporting art of a flaming heart. “It’s from Burger King. I would never wear a cologne from a fast-food restaurant. It actually angers me slightly. I mean, the packaging says heartburn — what are they trying to say?”

[From MSNBC]

Quoted detractor Mike G. seems to be in the minority. Ricky’s, a NY based novelty drugstore, has reported that the cologne has completely sold out at all of their retail locations. There are going to be plenty of guys in the Big Apple getting Flame in their stockings this year.

I must admit, if I could walk into my local BK and buy a bottle for a gag stocking stuffer, I would. My husband would seriously wear the stuff and keep sniffing himself, though, so it’s probably best that the Whopper-inspired scent isn’t available at the fast-food restaurants. For those of us outside of New York City, our only alternative is to order the stuff online and the in-demand spray won’t get here by Christmas. I don’t think Santa has any inside contacts at fast food chains, either.

You can learn more about this fragrance on FlameMeetsDesire.com.

Note: This is not an advertisement and we were not contacted or paid by Burger King to mention this.

Jodie Marsh and her girlfriend, Nina, kissing on 12/11/08. This photo doesn’t have much to do with this story

I’ve heard of kisses that make you light headed, that make you weak in the knees, even kisses that make you faint if you’re in a romance novel and wearing an extremely tight corset. But I’ve never heard of a kiss that makes you deaf… until now.

A young woman in southern China has partially lost her hearing after her boyfriend ruptured her eardrum during an excessively passionate kiss, local media reported Monday.

The 20-something girl from Zhuhai, in southern Guangdong province, went to hospital completely deaf in her left ear, the China Daily said, citing a report in a local newspaper.

“The kiss reduced pressure in the mouth, pulled the eardrum out and caused the breakdown of the ear,” the paper quoted a doctor surnamed Li from the hospital as saying.

[From Reuters]

It sounds to me like someone took the phrase “sucking face” just a tad too literally, and aggressively! What exactly was this guy trying to do? Syphon the glass of wine she just drank? I wouldn’t call the kiss “excessively passionate” as much as excessively creepy.

The girl is going to be fine, the doctors anticipate her hearing to return to completely normal in a couple months. There’s no note on how the relationship will fare, though. It would be hard not to use the incident for leverage later in life. I know if it were me and I wanted something, I wouldn’t be able to fight the urge to play the old “you made me deaf” card.

“While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution,” the paper said.

[From Reuters]

So, let this be a warning as mistletoe season approaches. If the partner standing under the twig with you starts bragging about lung capacity, safety says find a reason to run. It’s always fun until someone ruptures an eardrum.

Today I made a list of all the things of Michael Jackson’s that I’d want. And it was a super long list. For once I’m not being sarcastic – the dude has some crazy stuff. Your own zoo? The bones of the elephant man? Jewel-encrusted toilet seats? I’m not actually sure the last one exists, but considering the other wacky things Jacko has admitted to having, a ruby-ensconced john doesn’t seem that far off. Plus it would make you feel really glamorous when you were using it. And also sort of like you had a rash. I digress.

Of all the awesome, auction-worthy possessions, I have to say the one I’ve always felt least likely to bid on is Michael Jackson’s underwear. Maybe that’s because I spend a good deal of my day doing everything I can to ensure I don’t think about Michael Jackson’s underwear. But someone out there clearly thinks the right bidder (collector? hobbyist?) can be found.

MICHAEL Jackson’s notorious tighty whities are up for grabs. A pair of size-28 Calvin Klein white briefs once belonging to Wacko Jacko will be auctioned on eBay tomorrow, with a reserve price of $1 million. The unwashed underpants have a sensational past. They were part of the evidence confiscated in 2003 by then-Santa Barbara DA Tom Sneddon, who wanted a DNA sample for his unsuccessful child-molestation case against the washed-up King of Pop. The briefs are part of a stash of Jacko artifacts offered by New Jersey businessman Henry Vacarro, who obtained them in a bankruptcy case. For extra authenticity, the briefs come sealed in an evidence bag and wrapped with police tape. Also being sold are the Gloved One’s handwritten note explaining why he wants an annulment from Lisa Marie Presley and a used half-ounce tube of skin-bleaching cream.

[From Page Six]

Wait, Michael Jackson uses skin bleaching cream? You mean he doesn’t look that way because of some genetic skin issue he got from his father like he said? I feel unfairly lied to. The listing hasn’t gone up yet, though according to reports (and there are a LOT of them) it will be online today. And by the way, never search for “Michael Jackson” and “underwear” or “underpants” on eBay. My little bit of free advice for the day.

Jacko’s underoos have quite an interesting legal history. I wonder if it comes with a chain of custody sheet or something. I’d throw in at least an extra (hypothetical) $25,000. And perhaps a pair of salad tongs or some other device for transporting the valuables. No offense to anyone implied: I don’t care whose used underwear it is, it’s used. Underwear. It requires tongs.

I’m going to be genuinely surprised if this nets the required $1 million. It probably will but the deal will fall through. I don’t care what kind of bizarre collector you are: I highly doubt you’re going to display Michael Jackson’s possibly criminal underpants that you won on eBay for $1 million. Mostly because it’d make you look stupid. For about 32 reasons.

Here’s Michael celebrating friend Christian Audigier’s 50th birthday on May 23rd. Images thanks to Fame.

Few word combinations scare me more than “Britney Spears” and “kids.” Perhaps “hatchets,” “kidnappers,” “machetes,” “wells,” and “swiftly moving rivers” – but that’s it. And Britney Spears is just as dangerous to kids as all those other things, and there is absolutely no exaggeration there. Really the only way she could be more dangerous to a kid is if Britney Spears used a hatchet and/or machete to kidnap a kid, tossed the weapons down a well and then jumped with the kid into a swiftly moving river. But the next most dangerous thing would be if Britney were to teach a children’s dance class. And while no one in their right mind would give Britney Spears a hatchet or a machete right now, apparently plenty of parents would give her access to their kids, which is just as dangerous.

For some random and completely unexplainable reason, Britney was allowed to teach a dance class to seven kids at the Millennium Dance Complex yesterday. Yeah, remember those horrible pictures? That’s what she wore to teach little kids. And according to Millennium’s owner Robert Baker, the kids just ate it up. Or were terrified into lying.

Britney looked happy and upbeat, he said. Madonna’s “Material Girl” and “True Blue” were part of her play list. Britney led the class in “her favorite brown cowboy boots, fishnet stockings, a red short skirt, and a bluish greenish top that hangs down past her skirt.”

“She worked out this great little routine for them, they were dancing all over the place, she had them dancing in a circle like a choo-choo train,” he said. “The kids loved it- they are having a ball right now. And Britney- she’s just drinking it up. She’s totally enjoying herself. It’s an amazing class- she and the kids are certainly enjoying the process.”

Parents for the seven kids waited outside while she taught. A little girl, who took the class, gushed, “We had so much fun. Britney was wearing little red shorts and she looked so pretty” as she and her mother headed to their car.

“Britney’s telling me that she likes this so much that she’s thinking about making it a regular thing, possibly every other week. She loves to interact with the kids, and she feels that it’s important to give back to the dance community,” Baker said.

[From Us Weekly]

In related news, a man named Robert Baker lost all his worldly possessions after his dance studio, the Millennium Dance Complex, went out of business. Okay that’s not true yet, but give it time. Seriously, why would anyone align themselves with Britney Spears right now? Or worse, align your business with her? I hope to God those parents’ noses were plastered against the classroom window. If Britney Spears got within a hundred yards of my hypothetical kids, I would commit all sorts of violent acts against her. Which is why it’s a good thing my kids are hypothetical. What kind of parents would let their kid spend time with someone who’s been committed to a mental hospital twice in a month? Who took her own kid hostage? Who speaks in a British accent for no reason, and who, when she gets lost, just jumps out of her car and tells photographers to drive her home? A crazy person, that’s who. Do we let crazy people around impressionable little kids? No. Especially when they’re wearing this outfit.

I think most of us go through a phase where we like to consider ourselves unusual, odd, or subversive. Generally this occurs during the teenage years, but it can last a little longer… or in some cases never go away. For this reason alone, Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter seem to be the perfect pair. There are a bunch of other quirky reasons, but most of them fall under the heading of “Personality quirks of people who never grew out of THAT phase.” Case in point: Bonham Carter says Burton decorates his Christmas tree with dead babies and slime balls. I assume Tim Burton and Marilyn Manson have the same interior designer.

The household of Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter is outfitted for Christmas – just not in the traditional manner. “He decorates it with dead babies and slime balls and things,” Carter, 41, tells Playboy magazine in its January issue, about trimming the tree with boyfriend (of six years) Burton, 49. “It looks lovely and glittery from afar, and then as you get closer, you realize it’s rather gory.”

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, Carter, who stars with Johnny Depp in Burton’s new movie musical Sweeney Todd, says, “We’re not that dark. What I love about Tim is that he retains a certain innocence and a childlike quality.

[From People]

Talk about looking at it through the eyes of love. It is sweet that Helena sees Burton’s eccentricities as adorable. And they’re certainly one of those couples that match and make a lot of sense together. Though lately the two have also looked perpetually terrified together. But at least it seems to be a shared emotion. The couple lives together, but not really together. They have separate houses that are attached. I have to say, once having lived with a boyfriend for two and a half years, I really can’t argue with that logic, in terms of maintaining long-term sanity. I joke, but hey, whatever works for you. They certainly seem happy together. Burton and Bonham Carter are expecting their second child in late December. Helena noted that they’re both unconventional parents. Shocking.

He sort of forgot to grow up. I think I’ve definitely forgotten to grow up, which is great.” Carter, who in 2003 gave birth to the couple’s son Billy Ray… adds with a laugh, “At some point, [Billy] will probably want parents. He’ll have to look elsewhere.”

[From People]

Well as long as you don’t drive with the baby in your lap or use the soft spot on their head as an ashtray (I stole that from a “Family Guy” parody of Britney Spears… but I’m pretty sure she has done that), I guess you’re a pretty good parent by celebrity standards. They’ll probably be fun and weird parents, and hopefully will figure out how to be not-so-fun regular parents when need be. Or they can just play with slime balls.

Picture note by Celebitchy: Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter are shown at the Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix premiere on 7/3/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

The owner of the Burning Shore Lodge where Brad and Angelina holed up with their security force in Swakopmund, Namibia before Shiloh was born has found an enterprising way to cash in on the famous couple’s stay in his resort. For people who can’t afford a full night’s stay on the bed where a nine-months pregnant Angelina struggled to get comfortable, there’s still a way to still have some fleeting contact with the world’s most famous couple. Pay $5 and you can sit in Brad Pitt’s favorite chair in the lobby. For $7 you can get your picture taken there:

Parking your posterior where Brad Pitt once plunked his movie-star butt will cost you five bucks in Namibia, Africa – baby Shiloh’s birthplace! That’s what the owner of the resort where Brad and Angelina Jolie stayed charges tourists who want to sit in a lobby chair frequently warmed by HunkyBoy’s behind – and here’s an update from my on-the-scene source, who reports “If you want your photo taken while you’re in the chair, it’s seven dollars.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, Mike Walker's column, September 17, 2007]

I wonder if that’s five bucks in US funds or in Namibian currency. One Namibian dollar is worth about .14, so that makes a difference in the price of sitting in Pitt’s chair.

At least the owner of the resort didn’t save the sheets Brad and Angelina slept on and try to sell them on eBay. Someone once auctioned air from an event that Brad and Angelina attended, so it seems like their sheets would be worth something.

Here is Brad Pitt warming up another chair with his fine posterior at a press conference for his film The Assassination of Jesse James at the Toronto film festival yesterday. Thanks to Splash News for these pictures.

This is a strange little story, but here’s the skinny:

Allegedly, Mario Lopez stole at least one flower arrangement from the Southern California Home and Garden Show where he was booked as a guest on August 18.

Ben Widdicombe over at Gatecrasher says Lopez took the flower arrangement when HGTV’s “Red, Hot and Green” host Danny Seo was doing organic flower arrangement demonstrations and noticed some of his flowers were missing. According to Seo:

“Mario Lopez was also booked, and he took the flowers with him when he left! He outright asked a stagehand, ‘Can I take these for my girlfriend?’ and the poor kid was like, ‘Sure, I guess.’ He basically took my props as a gift for someone else!”

[Gatecrasher - NYDN]

I’m guessing the “girlfriend” is probably Karina Smirnoff, his “Dancing With The Stars” partner turned love interest, but why would Lopez actually steal flowers? Is he so cheap that he can’t buy a bouquet? At least Lopez had the foresight to ask first, so maybe Seo should be ticked at the stagehand who gave him the go-ahead in the first place.

[Header image: PR Photos]

I didn’t want to report on this story despite how easy a target R.Kelly is, because that might mean I would have to watch some of this lengthy and widely panned R&B soap opera. Up until now my exposure to “Trapped in the Closet” was limited to a brief segment on The Daily Show in which it was all too easy to dismiss the laughable creation of an eccentric pedophile who has inexplicably been able to carry on with his singing career. (I guess Michael Jackson set the precedent.)

Now that Kelly has said that the “Trapped in the Closet” hip-hopera series was dictated to him by aliens that came down from space to show him new music video techniques, I can no longer ignore his extra-terrestrial inspired genius. He is quoted at the premiere of Chapters 11-16 using a kind of metaphor but it comes off like he’s saying aliens visited him and inspired him to create the series.

“Don’t nobody ask me no questions I don’t know how to explain how I wrote it” the singer laughed “I’m tired of people asking me that because I can not explain this. I can explain any other song but I cant explain ‘Trapped In The Closet’.”

Kelly went on to explain “It’s an alien, People ask me why is it an alien and I say it’s come down to show us new genres and new ways to produce movies, magic, song and dialogue which have all been put together, and has never been done as far as I’m concerned. I call that alien. And people ask me when ‘Trapped In The Closet’ is going to end and I say when the aliens decide to leave.”

[From NME.com]

So I read the summary of the first three episodes of “Trapped in the Closet” on Wikipedia and a guy played by Kelly ends up sleeping with a married woman whose husband comes home, so he hides in the closet. The husband and wife then mess around, Kelly’s cell phone rings, and the husband discovers him in the closet. Kelly has a loaded gun, so the husband doesn’t give him a beat down. It turns out the husband is a pastor. Then the husband’s lover comes over unexpectedly and it’s a man and all four people stand there arguing. After that I lost interest in the plot, which keeps getting more convoluted.

“Trapped in the Closet” has been parodied on South Park, Saturday Night Live, MadTv, and in a song released by Weird Al Yankovic called “Trapped in the Drive Through.”

I did watch some of it on YouTube, and it seems to merit all the derision it gets. Kelly sings the same tune in different voices with lyrics explaining the plot twists and it’s hard to believe he’s taking it seriously.

Here’s a link to part one. Chapter 15 is below. All the rest are available on YouTube.

After five years of an odd series of coincidences that delayed his trial for child pornography, R.Kelly will finally face the music at his trial September 17. His excuse for those sex videos that surfaced in 2002 featuring a maybe 13 year-old girl was that it wasn’t really him in the act – just a computer-generated image of him. Maybe the aliens made him make that video too.

Keith Richards has changed his mind again. A sign of early alzheimer’s? Here’s what he has to say now about what he puts up his nose.

“The cocaine bit was rubbish,” he said. “I said I chopped him up like cocaine, not with.

“I pulled the lid off [my father's urn] and out comes a bit of dad on the dining room table,” Richards continued. “I’m going, ‘I can’t use the brush and dustpan for this’.

“What I found out is that ingesting your ancestors is a very respectable way of… y’know, he went down a treat.”

NME

Keith, whatever, anything you put up your nose is kind of gross. Fingers, cocaine, ashes…But I can kind off see your point about the dustpan. I wouldn’t want to mix someone’s ashes up with food scraps and bits of cat hair either. I’m not sure about ingesting your ancestors being respectable though?

Here’s what he had to say before, but he was recovering from a head injury (also discussed in the NME interview) so maybe that was the problem.

“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow.

“My dad wouldn’t have cared, he didn’t give a shit. It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”

NME

When I was in my early teens I discovered the Rolling Stones and played all my parents records. After merciless mocking at school, I then worked out the band were older than my parents. I’m not sure why the fact that the albums were vinyl didn’t clue me in.

Anyway, the Stones still rock pretty hard. As Keith says “They’re the only band I care about, I can’t wait to get back on the road with those bastards, who happen to miraculously be one of the best bands in the world. I dunno how the hell it happened.”

How is it possible that the European Union beat the USA to this one? Shouldn’t Budweiser, Coors, Miller, and Schlemeil, Schlamozzle Haffenereffer Incorporated have had a think tank working on this concept decades ago?

Somebody has dropped the ball … because when America ain’t leading the world in beer and big boobs … well that just ain’t a world I wanna live in.

Combining America’s two favorite pastimes — Breast Beer is the rage that’s sweeping the Euopean Union.

European men are flocking to Bulgaria to buy ‘breast-boosting beer’ after EU accession led to customs duties on the drink being abolished.

The millet-ale called Boza which is made from fermented wheat flour and yeast is being snapped up by bar owners, shopkeepers and shoppers from across Europe.

They are said to be keen for their wives and girlfriends to benefit from its reported ability to make women’s breasts grow.

And to think some folks were leery of letting poverty afflicted Bulgaria into the EU … I think there’s a lesson here for all of us … wealth can’t just be measured in cold hard cash … but cold frosty mug sizes and cup sizes too.