Just in time to blow a second wind into her movie’s $18.2 million opening weekend, Amy Poehler announces she and husband Will Arnett are expecting their first child. Her movie is called, for fuck’s sake, Baby Mama.
Publicist Lewis Kay deserves a jock nod for lobbing that headline perfectly into the news cycle. (Not to mention her Nickelodeon show The Mighty B also debuted this week.)
Staffers at Parents magazine love their celebrity gossip as much as the rest of this TMZ-revering nation, so they were fawning over People’s $6 million Jennifer Lopez baby photos this week, too. Except they spotted something awry with the new mom’s six-figure nursery.
Basically, it’s a baby death trap!
The Meredith Corp.-owned magazine was only too pleased to call out Time Inc.’s tabloid’s nursery pictorial, which includes crib “suffocation hazards” called pillows, stuffed animals, and blankets. The “dramatic draped canopies hanging over the cribs” are cause for “strangulation.” And the “cute bows tied onto the crib slats” are “choking hazards as soon as the babies are big enough to get their hands on them.” And there’s an open window sans window guard. CAN YOU BELIEVE?!
If all goes accordingly, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s baby twins could fetch upwards of $10 million from the right celebrity magazine. The deal will likely be worked out before she’s even in her third trimester, and far before she’s admitted to the hospital under a cloud of security. Placed in the proper high-yield investment fund, those twins could be worth $50 million each before kindergarten.
The Daily Mail, the respected British news source that today leads with Jennifer Aniston in a pink bikini, is picking up a report from Star magazine that Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis and terrible singer, is pregnant with twins.
Funny, because wasn’t the Mail most recently reporting Presley was fat because she was binging?
Yes, actually, they were ??? and it pissed her off so much that she’s suing them under the U.K.’s less stringent libel laws.
Maybe we’re witnessing the settlement agreement in effect?
BABY BEAT Thanks to Djimon Hounsou’s seed, Kimora Lee Simmons is pregnant with a new opportunity to exploit a wee one for a Baby Phat ad. [P6]
WE’RE NOT THAT DESPERATE FOR BABY NEWS, ARE WE? From People.com: “Answering Machine Confirms Julianna Margulies Baby.” That’s right, a real journalist working at People magazine figured out that a 90s actress who most recently had a nice run on The Sopranos gave birth from her mother’s voicemail. People knew she was pregnant. It was just a matter of time before the kid came out. This is a new low.
Union Hall is a fine Park Slope bar. We’ve enjoyed many a beer there. But we???ll say this: It???s the kind of bar people from Manhattan who don???t usually go out in Brooklyn visit and say something like, ???I go to Brooklyn. I went to Union Hall that one time after we went to Al Di L??. Gotta love the Bocce.???
Actually, do you need to love the Bocce? Wii Bowling would take up less space, and really, it appeals to the exact same demographic.
But anyway, in an attempt to maintain its Brooklyn cred, Union Hall has banned Park Slope babies.
That sounds like a good thing. But the fact that Union Hall needs to make such a ban speaks to a larger problem with that bar.
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OH BABY Nicole Richie and Christina Aguilera, along with lesser celebrities Courtney Thorne-Smith and David Alan Grier, had babies over the weekend. Is it tacky to start a pool now about which spawn will enter rehab first? [NYP]
GREAT MOMENTS IN JOURNALISM A freelance journalist from New Hampshire got his five-month baby photographed with every presidential candidate except Mike Gravel, who was deemed ???too creepy.??? That sentiment isn???t too dissimilar to our feelings about this project. [Slate]
Many of us (ourselves included!) have shelved the possibility of having kids until some distant, unforeseeable future when we’re suddenly transformed from immature borderline alcoholics to surprisingly functional adults with longterm career aspirations, non-messy apartments and, potentially, significant others. Which is why we were alarmed to hear about the growing phenomenon of women who become grandmothers before they reach the age of thirty.
Like 29 year-old Leticia Magee, who (as our friends at Stereohyped put it) “had her daughter when she was 13, and the girl, now 15, has just given birth to a baby boy, who will hopefully be taught the virtues of condoms by age 7.” [QCTimes]
• Casting for a slutty blond pin-up girl in Hollywood is like going to a Star Trek convention and looking for a pimply-faced socially awkward guy who’s never been laid. Trying to find a curvaceous size 16 in Los Angeles? Now therein lies the challenge.
• And today in crazy: “Sperm donor ‘dad’ hit up for child support.’” Geez. For that matter, any masturbatory emissions could be termed reckless abandonment.
• Lindsay Lohan may have cheated on her annoying rehab fling with recently divorced womanizer Heath Ledger. Discuss.
• John Edwards has yet to discover how to outshine fellow Democratic rivals Hillary “The Woman” Clinton, Barack “The African American” Obama and Mike “I Remind You Of The Grandparent You Never Call Or Visit” Gravel.
• Ever wondered what the inside of an interior designer’s home looks like? It’s easy! Just picture your apartment, except with rich colors, expensive couches and nothing from IKEA.
…Whether anyone else is less than shocked to hear that Chris Noth and his girlfriend are expecting a child out of wedlock.
CONTINUED »
“Don’t panic. Your weird baby is likely normal.” So begins the intro to an informative (if slightly gross) article on CNN detailing the the myriad of unfortunate-looking ailments afflicting newborns today.
Thought colic was your biggest problem? Think again! Try having an infant with crossed eyes, a third nipple, an alarmingly gigantic belly button, ample baby boobs, acne or, better yet, all of the above.
CONTINUED »
Surgery to remove the extra set of limbs on the Indian toddler who was born with a parasitic twin was a complete success. The parents of the child, along with many people in her village, thought she was the reincarnation of the multi-limbed Hindu goddess Vishnu.
No word yet on how removing the physical evidence of her connection to Vishnu will affect her in the next life.
[AP]
Finally satisfied that she milked her maybe-pregnancy for all it was worth (and even outlasted fellow obviously pregnant singer/album-promoter, Jennifer Lopez) Christina Aguilera has effectively ended months of definitive speculation by revealing that the giant, fetus-shaped protrusion in her uterus is, in fact, a fetus.
Next up for Aguilera: Landing an exclusive designer maternity wear contract, coming up with a suitably embarrassing celebrity baby name and paying her publicist to arm her with a steady string of (predictably) boring pregnancy/new mommy quotes, like “What am I craving the most? Sleep!” and “To tell you the truth, all I want is for my baby to be happy and healthy. And weigh at least 40 pounds.”
Nancy Grace, the acerbic tv pundit best known for her stance on “victims rights, despite all hard evidence to the contrary” has given birth to her twins a month ahead of schedule.
The technical reason? “She developed fluid in her lungs and her doctor determined ‘it would be best for Nancy, and for the twins’ to deliver them ASAP.” The more amusing (but less factually accurate) reason? Not even Nancy Grace’s unborn children can put up with her incoherent, rambling tirades.
Regardless, we’re happy to welcome fraternal twins Lucy Elizabeth and John David into the world. No word yet on which one is “the evil one” yet, but we’ll let you know just as soon as we hear which one looks more like his/her mother.
Remember Ashleigh Banfield? No? Don’t worry, you’re not crazy, you’re just a typical American whose cable news attention span is as paltry as cable news execs think it is. Some of you might remember her as the MSNBC anchor who was a sure-fire rising star … who suddenly disappeared from the network. As of 2005, you could find her on Court TV, that channel that just signed Star Jones and that Nancy Grace just ditched.
Anyhow!
None of that is important, because Ashleigh just had a baby! His name is Ridley Banfield Gould, and it’s Ashleigh’s second son with husband Howard Gould. And through it all – the marriage, the job changes, the babies – we’re just glad to see she’s carried on with her square eyeglass frames. Something’s gotta stay constant.
(Oh, and Norah O’Donnell had twins.)
Andrea Peyser is not happy. Well, not that she ever is happy, but today she is freakin’ livid. Like pissed off. At Madonna, of all people. The least controversial subject in the universe. She is angry because the material media whore went and grabbed up a baby from Africa … a baby who had a family and didn’t really need hers. Except for the whole money thing.
Days ago, she lined up 12 African boys – tots hand-selected for her perusal. She picked out a 1-year-old, David, to take home in her luggage.
Well guess what? The boy selected in this freakish slave auction is no AIDS orphan. He’s got a biological father, plus a granny – but was placed in an orphanage after his mother died. His family loves him. They just can’t afford him.
If Madonna possessed a speck of sanity or shame, she would write a generous check. Instead, the boy’s father says he is thrilled at the prospect of a wealthy American carting off his progeny.
Madonna should nail herself on her crucifix – for real, this time.
Uhh, what? Did Peyser really just say that? We get that what Madonna did was a pretty shallow publicity stunt … we don’t even have a problem with Peyser calling her a whore. But when she starts suggestions celebrities kill themselves via means of sacrificial religious ceremonies, we have to draw the line.
SHAMELESS STAR BUYS AN AFRICAN SOUVENIR [Andrea Peyser, New York Post]
Where in the world are Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt? Why the jet setters are off in Pune, India, where they are doing some baby shopping/movie filming. Ok, no baby shopping has been reported yet, and really it’s just Angelina who’s filming.
The new mom is staring in A Mighty Heart, the story of Daniel Pearl’s death, written by his wife, Mariane Pearl, and it’s Angie who is taking on the role of Mariane in the “socially conscious film.” While we’re sure is thrilled to live her dream of being a non-white person (Mariane is “Afro-Cuban“) Jolie expressed that she was a bit disappointed to be filming in India. She really loves Pakistan more.
Jolie said in a weekend statement that she was disappointed not to be filming in Pakistan, “a country I love and have visited three times.” But security concerns pushed the filming to the western Indian city of Pune, which was chosen because it resembles Karachi, Pakistan.
Plus, after going to Pakistan three times, they finally told her if she comes in brown make-up and a head covering they would just give her a baby.
Jolie and Pitt, with ‘Heart’ [USA Today]
You know, Jann Wenner looked a bit ragged when we saw him on the Today show this morning. And maybe this item from today’s Rush & Molly column could explain why:
That was publisher Jann Wenner and his partner, Matt Nye, pushing their 6-week-old baby, Norah Jasper Nye Wenner, down Central Park West in a stroller ???
Uhhh … whaaat? Dude’s been up with a baby all night for two months and we are just hearing about it?! Shame, shame little gossip mongers. And nobody even pointed us to the Liz Smith item that ran August 23? You always call us out when we miss that crap!
A few things off the bat: note the baby’s name is NOAH and is a BOY according to Smith. Not Norah. Or a girl. (Which makes more sense because, well, Jasper is a boy’s name.)
Whatever, the only thing all of this means is: we need details, Wenner employees. Does Jann keep photos of the baby around? Has he brought him to the office? Has having a little one melted his heart and stopped him from throwing pencils at the interns?
There is always the chance that Rolling Stone and Us Weekly staffers don’t even know the baby was born yet … which would grant you all forgiveness in the hearts of Jossip. Then again we can fall back on the likely option that Rush & Molloy are just totally wrong and there was just a random dude with paint chips stuck in his beard pushing a baby in the park with his boyfriend.
(And here we thought only Us Weekly got the genders of famous babies all wrong.)
Surveillance… [Rush & Molloy, Daily News]