IF you're bored and nosy and fascinated by the antics of people who may or may not alert the paparazzi before heading to the proverbial envelope opening only to spin around and rail self-righteously against the infringement upon their privacy when they're caught falling down drunk at the end of the night, THEN you know there are HUNDREDS of sites out there catering to every unimportant move, every hit-and-run, every ill-advised hookup, every pregnancy scare, every cat fight, every bong hit and every fashion misstep these famous people make.
Long sentence.
So, here are a few of my favorite sites - the ones that help me keep track of what jungle beasts turn up at who's wedding (answer: elephant; Nicole Richie), which boring, social climbing starlet is angry at a rival's spot-on SNL impersonation of her (answer: Katie Holmes; Anne Hathaway), which sitcom has-been has some unexpected bedroom preferences (Kelsey Grammar), which college dropout is angling for an adjunct professorship position at the Parsons School of Design (answer: Gaga) and which "are-they-or-aren't-they" new "couple" has yet to be seen doing anything but drinking coffee together out in public (answer: come on, you don't need my help on that one).
Anyway - again, in no particular order (except for #1), my favorite places to celeb-stalk.
#10 - TMZ
This was obvious. They broke news of Michael Jackson's death before any major news media empires got wind of it - they're credible enough that the likes of CNN and MSNBC will actually use them as entertainment sources for hot celebrity stories. In my mind, they're sort of the Twitter of gossip sites - quick little one-bite snippets of exactly what's happening with whom, precisely when it first happens.TMZ gets a gold star for providing first-hand, original gossip, too, versus pieces culled from OK! and Life and Style and People and what not. They've got people in the trenches, so they get the dirt first.
Requires a strong stomach. Or, at the very least, a constitution not easily offended by profanity. Cuz this kid (Michael K) has quite a mouth. But also quite a wit, and there's something about the random pictures of has-beens he gathers for the daily birthday roundup that always makes me giggle. Further - he latches on to the obscure (Phoebe Price! Phoebe Price!) until they're a sarcastic household name. Good site for giggles.
Fashion porn! Fashion porn! Genius, snicker-out-loud-in-the-cubicle writing. Pop culture references that us "10-years-old-in-1990" kids can appreciate. Sweet Valley High, anyone? And pictures - LOTS and LOTS of hi-res pictures that allow makeup-philes like myself to inspect the eyeliner and shadow choices of each and every red carpet outing. There's something self-satisfying about being able to discover Blake Lively had a zit at a premier, or that Halle Berry has weak eyelashes. Meh, I get a kick out of things like that. Also keep an eye out for: hilarious poll questions. Seriously, it's "ell-oh-ell" material.
I usually prefer slightly more off-the-beaten path outlets less-likely to be in any given star's back pocket. And E! is usually a little too....kind to its subjects. HOWEVER: they've got Fashion Police, and that's pretty hard to pass up. Not to mention plenty of more "authorized" content (as opposed to "leaked from US Weekly" friend-of-a-friend hearsay). They've also got the ever-smug Ted Casablanca's "The Awful Truth" filled with fun blind items (like celebrity "Guess Who!") and plenty of "oh honey, PUH-LEAZE" snark.
What began as the "Project Rungay" blog morphed into something much more comprehensive and it's a true guilty pleasure. If it's fashion-related, it makes the cut - if it's celebrity fashion-related, it's even better. Their site layout is particularly user-friendly: with various stories set up on an easy-to-preview grid, you can pick and choose which items you read without having to scroll through pages and pages of text to get to what you want. These boys know fashion, they know famous people, and they make it possible for me to stay reasonably well-informed during the Project Runway seasons without actually watching the shows (those contestants are too irritating for me to stomach).
This site has several things going for it: fairly slick layout, fairly good sources, a fairly diverse cadre of contributing op-ed writers and a fairly logical organization that allows you to choose between celebrity news, movie news, television news, music news, famous couples, etc. So if you're primarily interested in which movie snagged the top spot this weekend and could care less about Jennifer Garner out and about with her kids, you could hop over to Movie News and avoid the rest. My only complaint: Rob Shuter. I whine about him frequently - he has this Naughty but Nice blog bit that's so arbitrary and trite it's hard to read. He claims to have inside sources, but I have to wonder if he doesn't play the part of "contributing friend-in-the-know" himself more often than not.
It's fascinating how many celeb sites incorporate the color pink into their logo.....oh well. Pink evokes bubble-gum, which is pretty much the caliber of what they're dedicated to covering anyway. It works. Radar seems to be the go-to-mouthpiece for most things Lohan - so they tend to be slightly more forgiving of Lindsay's crack-antics than most celebrity sites. However, they also have some mighty diligent photographers on their bankroll, because as far as pictures of the famous out-and-about, Radar has it nailed. Small aside here - an old blog-buddy from my earlier, more "New York-centric" blogging days did some freelancing for Radar and featured me once in a culture piece about Church Camp Kids all grown up. I can't find the article on there anymore, but I got turned onto Radar when I got to be cited as a source. Yippee.
Pictures, pictures, pictures. They've got some good gossip, too, but I tend to think of JJ in terms of galleries of celebrities pumping gas or eating frozen yogurt or grocery shopping. The normal-people stuff. Meh, maybe we don't all care to see what Hilary Duff wears to hit up Whole Foods, but I get a kick out of "celebs on the street." Because it reminds me we ALL have days where we don't wash our hair or take off yesterday's makeup and we head out in the ratty leggings and ugly sweatshirts and Uggs.
I enjoy Huffpo in general for news and editorials - their layout is insufferably bad, but the content is good, and high-profile folks (from politics to business to music and film) will stop by and write guest bits from time to time. Their entertainment news is solid, they post decent movie and film reviews, they have a huge army of contributors pretty balanced perspective. All-in-all, if you can stand the layout, the info is good.
Yep, escapism CAN be smart. And it is possible to feel like you have small community of like-minded friends who spend their work days work-dodging in the comments section of sites like this one. Maybe that's a sick, unhealthy admission to make, but I spend enough time keeping up with minutiae on this site that the writers and commenters start to feel like familiar friends. Like Tom and Lorenzo, this site has a great design - another grid of updates to choose from, so I can skip the LeAnn Rimes/Eddie Cibrian garbage and head straight to the Natalie Portman stuff. Then there's "Hot Guy Friday," an institution in itself. It's not really Friday until we can all cruise through dozens and dozens of pictures of (somewhat, sometimes) good-lookin gentleman. Er, I'm biased these days. Nothing looks as handsome as the real-life boyfriend. Not even Jason Statham. But for celebrity gossip, this site wins, hands-down. Ugh, I shudder to think what my browsing history looks like these days.....oh well. I'm becoming a resident authority on all things completely, uselessly inane. Or slowly driving myself crazy, verdict out.
There ya go. Next up: my ten favorite books read in 2010.
UPDATE: It occured to me it might be worthwhile to toss in some "honorable mentions" (that is, those sites I tool around on from time to time that didn't quite crack the top 10)
The Superficial
Pajiba
In Case You Didn't Know
Lainey Gossip
Hollywood Tuna
Twitter (cuz, you know, sometimes the celebs themselves keep me updated)
I don't like you in that way
Popcrunch
Perez Hilton
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