You may not be able to tell one Backstreet Boy from another. But they can. How?
Well, Brian Littrell is the pure one: He refused to pose with a naked woman with the rest of the band for the current issue of Rolling Stone, telling the magazine that he couldn't "disrespect myself and stoop to that level."
And while band member A.J. McLean says he thinks "Nick [Carter] and Kevin [Richardson] probably have the worst temper," he admits that he himself can get a little testy. "I just go off. Like when I broke up with my ex-girlfriend, and our song came on the radio, I just grabbed a baseball bat and beat the crap out of the damn machine. When I get stressed out, I get really violent toward myself and just say 'Screw the group! To hell with everything!'"
But if McLean has self-destructive tendencies, Richardson apparently has issues with self-love, telling the magazine that, while he finds the party scene "empty and lonely," he takes comfort in his hotel room with the occasional pay-per-view porn movie so he can "rub one out."
Richardson insists he's not the Backstreet Boy with the rosiest palms, however. That honor, he says, goes to Carter, whom Richardson dubs a "chronic masturbator" as well as a rampant farter.
"We all fart," counters band mate Howie Dorough. "We're men. We do it loud and proud."
I'm sure there's a musical fruit joke in there somewhere.
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I see London ...
"In everyday life, I am sexy. In Tahiti, I lived in a swimsuit and I'm used to showing off my body."
-- Tahiti-born Mareva Galanter, a former Miss France who may be stripped of her title for posing topless for a magazine, refuting claims that she's brought "shame" on the competition.
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Now that's cold
Is hepcat magician David Blaine's latest stunt, in which he's encased himself in a block of ice for three days smack-dab in the middle of Times Square, just a bunch of hot air?
Fellow magician Penn Jillette thinks so. "All David Blaine is is a good-looking magician," Jillette, the acerbic vocal half of Penn & Teller, icily informed gossipist Baird Jones at the opening of Jason Alexander's flick "Just Looking." "They finally found a magician who did not have to pay a woman to stand next to him."
And having a buff bod, which is very much on display in this latest stunt, performed shirtless, is not Blaine's only crime, according to Jillette. "This guy is incredibly bad," he says. "The tricks that he uses are all the magic stunts that David Copperfield, Siegfried and Roy and [the late] Doug Henning fell in love with when they were in fifth grade. But we moved on."
Blaine's current ice capade is hardly as death-defying as he'd have you believe, says Jillette. In fact, he says, it's "easy."
"The air will completely insulate him just like he was an Eskimo in an ice igloo. The only hard part for Blaine will be standing still for 3 days." How does Jillette know? "My technicians built the ice box for Blaine," he says. "I know every detail about its construction, and he is just conning the media that there is anything challenging about being surrounded by ice like that. He won't even get a chill."
Except, of course, from his fellow magicians.
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Oops!
"Whoever did the tattoo was probably English and didn't know Hindi."
-- Pademesh Gupta, editor of Hindi-language magazine Purvai, on U.K. soccer star David Beckham's new tattoo, which misspells the name of his wife, Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, in Hindi as follows: Vihctoria.
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Reid between the lines
Before "Total Request Live" host Carson Daly gets himself hitched to actress Tara Reid in May, there are a few things he should know.
First off, she's not quite the sex machine she's cracked up to be. "There was a story that said I have to have sex 20 times a day," Reid, who will next be seen onscreen in "Josie and the Pussycats," tells Maxim. But, she says, it's just not so. "What do they think -- I'm a fucking robot?"
Also, steer clear of her pits. They are, she reveals, her most ticklish spot. "I hate being tickled," she says. "Sure, it makes me laugh, but I get pissed off."
But wait, here's the good news for chunkiesque Daly: His fiancée has a thing for flab. "I don't like the typical good-looking guy," she says. "I know this sounds ridiculous, but I like guys with love handles ... I hate a washboard stomach -- does not turn me on."
In other words, she doesn't want a lot of men, just a lot of man.
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Juicy bits
It's not exactly casting against type ... Ellen DeGeneres will play a lesbian in a CBS sitcom set to debut next year. But CBS TV honcho Les Moonves stresses that the new show won't be all gay issues all the time, explaining, "Ellen is going to be a gay woman, but it's not going to hit [you] over the head." The plot? Lesbian Ellen returns to her Midwestern hometown. Culture-clashing wackiness ensues. Now where have we heard that one before?
Someone's had enough of showbiz types. Geena Davis announced Monday that she plans to marry surgeon Reza Jarrahy. Davis, who has counted Jeff Goldblum and director Renny Harlin among her three previous hubbies, met Jarrahy two years ago through mutual friends. "They are very, very happy and excited to be engaged," Davis' publicist told the press. She's 44; he's 29: Then again, she's Geena Davis.
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