2004 is off to a heck of a start! If anyone thought that an increased terror alert level, new security measures, earthquakes, and Bin Laden would take the nations interest away from pop culture nonsense, well, brother, you have severely underestimated just how far pop culture is willing to go! Less than a week into the new year and we already have a month’s worth of scandals. Where to start… where to start…

Well, I’m watching The Simpsons on Sunday night and on comes the local news teaser. You know the ones: they throw out a line about what’s going to be on the news that night to try and entice you into staying tuned. So the local FOX reporterette does a standup in front of a green-screen shot of a Las Vegas wedding chapel (you already know where I’m going with this, don’t you?). And I hear:

“Britney Spears gets married in a Las Vegas ceremony… or does she?! We’ll have the details tonight at 10!”

Oh, the hell you will! I need details right now!

CNN: nothing. FOX News: Nothing. MTV, VH1, E!: NOTHING! AAAUGH! How can there not be 24-hour coverage of Britney Spears getting married??!!

By this time, I’m beginning to doubt what I heard. Surely if Britney, America’s favorite sex kitten/pop tart had gotten married, it would be all over TV, right? Well, if you want the truth, or if you just want something to be true, as always, turn to the internet. So I got online and looked it up.

And sure enough, as you know by now, it was true.

My favorite part of the whole incident is the press release from her record company that said that Britney “took a joke too far”. They sounded mad, like a trick had been played on them and they were actually the injured party in all this. How dare she cheat her record company by squandering this publicity bonanza? Doesn’t Britney know by now that weddings are something to milked over extended periods of time? Planning a wedding is a very complex thing. There’s rumors of break-ups to plant, hounding paparazzi to arrange, strippers to pay for stories of the groom, photo and video rights to auction, helicopters to rent, stories about outlandishly expensive rings and dresses to release, protestations of all the attention to make… seriously, it just can’t be done in a weekend. I mean sure, if you only want to be married, you can have a quiet surprise ceremony like Gwyneth. But how has that helped her career? Not at all. And there they are, out there every day humping this stupid In The Zone album, and Britney is off enjoying the holidays, drinking and dancing and God knows what else in Las Vegas, and she has the nerve, the gall, to go a do something this irresponsible, this wild, like… like… like A RICH SPOILED BRAT! There, I said it! And all without a camera around!

Fucking bitch.

The Crocodile Hunter dangles his one month-old kid around a crocodile pit, and everyone is surprised. We knew this guy was crazy, but that’s just, well, crazy. Hmmm… actually not so much a surprise.

The child also has a one sibling. Or, should I say, one surviving sibling. That we know of. That croc looked big and happy.

After decades of specifically denying it, Pete Rose finally admits to gambling on baseball. But never on his own team! Never from the dugout!

Sure, Pete. Now we believe you.

A cynical person might think that you are just saying, true or not, what everyone wants to hear, in order to get something (publicity, book sales, reinstatement, etc.). That cynical person is me.

Here’s a little celebrity watcher’s gift to you:

Something I have been doing for friends at work, since I often listen to news radio and periodically check internet news sites at the office, is that whenever I hear a breaking story of a celebrity’s death, like Fred Berry or Robert Palmer, I would send out an Email entitled “Celebrity Death Watch”. Some liked it so much that they suggested that I do it more widely, outside the office, like a true Email list that they could subscribe to.

So, I thought I’d give it a go. For 2004. A fresh year, a new project. I did a little planning, figured it out, did some set-up… then reconsidered. This sounds like it could be a lot of work if it took off. And then it struck me. Like every good idea, I bet somebody’s already done it. And sure enough: http://slick.org/deathwatch/
Go sign up. Save me some work. It even has the same name!