A Bad Week for Scientology

Holy POOT.

First of all, I had no idea that director Paul Haggis was a Scientologist at all, let alone one for thirty-five years.  Bravo to him for standing up against Proposition 8 and the CoS’s support of it.   My usually reliable Hollywood gossip sources are saying that Haggis’s daughter is a lesbian, and thus this has been coming for a while.

 Guess that means the countdown to Fair Gaming starts…. now.  Or is Haggis a candidate for an R2-45 audit?

Meanwhile, in a blow supporting religious freedom everywhere, a French court has found the CoS guilty of fraud.  And high time, too.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the CoS isn’t a religion. It isn’t a cult. It’s a Ponzi scheme masquerading as a church. The sooner they’re shut down, the better for all the religions that really want to help people.

Gossip Gold: TMZ.com

For celebrity watchers like myself, a good gossip web site or discussion group is worth its weight in gold.   One of my favorites, GossipCentral.com, has been hijacked by some public relations types who’ve decided to proclaim themselves technorati and make it a video blog about “the media revolution”  (Beat.tv?  The hell?).   

How lame.  Don’t thes guys know that bubble burst with the rest of the dot-coms?  Hell, the bloom is even starting to come off the podcasting rose.

Well, all is not lost, dear reader.  There’s a proliferation of quality sites filled with the scandal, hearsay, and general tittle-tattle that we all love.  Today I’m featuring one of the best: www.TMZ.com

A relatively new site (they’re only about six months old), TMZ is your one-stop shop for video of celebrities making asses of themselves, and savage commentary on said videos from those of us who live in the Flyover States.   Nothing like seeing Paris Hilton frantically stubbing out what her publicists swears is an everyday, average, roll-your-own tobacco cigarette, n’est ce-pas?   There’s also some decent blog articles on The Biz  (yes, that’s Claude Brodesser of NPR fame) and popular shows.   Best part?  Check out The Sizzle, which covers such rumor categories as Hook-Ups, Break-Ups, and Train Wrecks. 

Brangelina-Free Zone! But drop by for a dose of Scientology-mockery.

I love celebrity gossip, and I plan to discuss more of it on this blog.

But I will be damned if I add to the current Brad-Pitt-Angelina-Jolie frenzy.

I like Brad Pitt, have been a fan for years (although I think he did wrong by Jennifer Anniston). And I like Angelina Jolie. But I am sick to death of hearing about them, their kids, their public appearances, the whole bit. It’s worse than Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.

So I hereby declare this blog a “Brangelina-Free Zone”! There will be no mention of them, at least until the hype dies down to a dull roar. Say, around the time little Shiloh gets out of grad school….

I will probably mention TomKat occasionally, but only in the context of mocking their Scientology beliefs. Sorry, folks, but freedom of religion sometimes means that I’m free to make fun of your religion.

Seriously, I’m all for religious diversity, but to paraphrase South Park, how can anyone take Scientology seriously except for Star Wars convention-goers?

Actually, my favorite South Park quote regarding Scientology is the following from the infamous Return of Chef (10.1) episode:

Kyle: Do you realize how retarded that sounds?

Mr. Connolly: Is it any more retarded than the idea of God sending His only son down to die for our sins? Is it any more retarded than Buddha sitting beneath a tree for twenty years?

Stan: Yes it is! It’s way, way more retarded!

Axl and Tommy

Some entertainment news stories are just so bizarre, they defy description.

I mean, if you picked up a newspaper and saw a headline about Tommy Hilfiger and Axl Rose getting into a fistfight at a club, that’s certainly surreal in and of itself, but you’d probably shake your head and think, “That Axl Rose needs to go back to Betty Ford.”

According to E! Online and other news sources, that’s apparently not the case: Hilfiger, they say, started it.

WTF? Tommy Hilfiger, white-boy clothing designer? Throwin’ down against one of the craziest men in rock-’n-roll? Of all the Celebrity Death Matches one could think of…who dreamt up that catfight?

And in other surreal news…Axl Rose is on tour. With Guns and Roses. But it’s just him and a bunch of muscians he hired–it’s not the original line-up. ‘Course, that hasn’t stopped them from billing themselves as G-’n'R.

Hm. Anybody remember the Supremes Return to Love tour from 2000? I think we can safely say this is a repeat.

I was a G-’n-R fan, back in the day. Now you couldn’t pay me to be in the same ZIP code as Axl Rose.