SALON

Scott Lamb

Wednesday, Apr 4, 2007 1:30 PM UTC

The Fix

Jailed blogger released. Lohan and Duff smooth things over. Plus: Rose McGowan hearts Sanjaya!

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First Word

“Tudors” makes Showtime history: “The Tudors,” starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, is the most expensive series in Showtime’s history, but it seems like the investment is paying off. An estimated 870,000 people tuned in to its Sunday premiere — more than three times the network’s 2006 prime-time average. An additional 404,000 caught the 11 p.m. encore, making “The Tudors” Showtime’s best series debut since Kirstie Alley’s “Fat Actress” three years ago. (Variety)

Knut moves markets: Polar bear cub Knut’s popularity is paying off! Shares in the Berlin Zoo have doubled since the now nearly 4-month-old cub popped up on the scene (watch a video here). Each share currently costs a little more than 4,000 euros, and only 4,000 shares are available. Knut, who adorns the cover of this month’s Vanity Fair with Leonardo DiCaprio, also has his own range of merchandise, which has been selling at record levels. (Bloomberg, Reuters, BerlinerBorse)

Blogger released: Josh Wolf, the San Francisco blogger who served nearly eight months in prison for refusing to hand over a video he’d made of a protest at the G-8 summit in Scotland in 2005, has been released after agreeing to give authorities the tape. In the deal made with prosecutors, he will not have to testify in front of a grand jury. Wolf told the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz shortly after being released: “I’m completely satisfied with the resolution. There’s a very large problem with forcing a reporter to act as an investigator for a government prosecution … It’s absolutely a victory.” (Washington Post)

Talker

Foster, Anderson on Out, kinda: The newest issue of Out is raising the question again of the ethics of outing, with a cover story on “the glass closet” featuring a big photo of Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster, or at least actors wearing masks of Cooper and Foster (neither of whom have come out, though both are widely rumored to be gay). Out editor-in-chief Aaron Hicklin tells Radar he wasn’t just going for thrills with the splashy cover: “The A-list and even B-list gays are mostly in the closet still, and those are the kinds of people we need to have on our cover. This is a way of addressing that.” The issue also lists the 50 most powerful gay men and women in the country, with Cooper at No. 2 behind David Geffen — New York magazine’s Daily Intel has the full list. (Radar, New York)

White noise … Maybe it’s part of Lindsay Lohan’s 12-step recovery program — she and longtime rival Hilary Duff have recently made up, and a source tells Us Magazine they were recently spotted bonding at a Los Angeles club: “They were making fun of Paris!” (Us Magazine) … Halle Berry received her very own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame on Tuesday, the 2,333rd star bestowed since the first one was given to Joanne Woodward in 1960. (Los Angeles Times) … Leonardo DiCaprio may be heading to Broadway — he’s reportedly in negotiations to star in a fall revival of David Rabe’s “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel.” (Fox 411) … Barbara Walters, 77, may have found new love — a source tells Rush & Molloy she has been seeing Robert N. Butler, 80, a gerontologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. (Rush & Molloy) … Rose McGowan wants Sanjaya to win “American Idol” because “he’s horrible,” reports TMZ. Her advice: “Keep on keepin’ on with your bad voice and bad hair. America loves it.” (TMZ)

Judgment

Sign o’ the Times: The New York Observer’s Michael Calderone investigates the new home of the New York Times — it will be moving this year to a new, Renzo Piano-designed skyscraper just off Times Square — and finds the architecture to be a metaphor for what the paper hopes to become. “The old building at 229 West 43rd Street — the noisy, hulking bricks-and-mortar newspaper factory chronicled by Mr. Gelb — is still essentially an industrial building; the new one is an airy, transparent embodiment of Mr. Sulzberger’s post-newspaper newspapering plans for The Times,” which, of course, means his plans for growth on the Web: “Cascading style sheets replace plates; pixels stand in for ink, the virtual for the physical.” Arthur Gelb, the paper’s former managing editor, wonders if the transition from old to new will function all that smoothly: “The new building … is magnificent. But I have no idea how The Times will function in that building.” (“The Times Machine,” New York Observer)

; )

“Christ Getting in Shape for Second Coming” (The Onion)

Buzz Index

“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated, and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared. It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”

— Keith Richards on the strangest thing he’s ever done to get high, though of course his manager says it was “said in jest.” (NME)

Numbers

Last month’s top gossip Web sites:
1. TMZ, 7.9 million unique visitors
2. People.com, 4.3 million unique visitors
3. E! Online, 3.9 million unique visitors
4. Perez Hilton, 2.4 million unique visitors
5. EW.com, 2.1 million unique visitors
(Nielsen Net ratings from Hollywood Reporter)

Turn On

This Wednesday, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” alumnus Thom Filicia debuts in “Dress My Nest” (Style, 11 p.m. EDT), Ryan O’Neal guest-stars on “Bones” (Fox, 8 p.m. EDT), and excerpts from the work of writers from Theodore Dreiser to Saul Bellow are reenacted on “Novel Reflections on the American Dream” (PBS, check local listings) — a part of the “American Masters” series.

Talk

SHOW GUESTS
Regis and Kelly (ABC, 9 a.m. EDT) Diana Ross, Monique Coleman, Jamie Oliver (repeat)
The View (ABC, 11 a.m. EDT) Evangeline Lilly, guest co-host S. Epatha Merkerson (repeat)
Ellen (Syndicated, check local listings) John Stamos, John Mellencamp
Oprah (Syndicated, check local listings) Real-life heroes
Charlie Rose (PBS, check local listings) Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb, Ira Glass
Larry King (CNN, 9 p.m. EDT) Crocodile hunter Steve Irwin’s widow Terri Irwin, Jack Hanna
Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 11 p.m. EDT) Sen. John Kerry (repeat)
Stephen Colbert (Comedy Central, 11:30 p.m. EDT) Madeleine Albright, James Fallows (repeat)
David Letterman (CBS, 11:30 p.m. EDT) Bernie Mac, Paula Abdul, Joss Stone (repeat)
Jay Leno (NBC, 11:35 p.m. EDT) Jennifer Love Hewitt, Robert Rodriguez, Brandi Carlile
Jimmy Kimmel (ABC, 12:05 a.m. EDT) Kurt Russell, Rachael Harris, Elliott Yamin
Conan O’Brien (NBC, 12:35 a.m. EDT) Ice Cube, BJ Novak, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Craig Ferguson (CBS, 12:35 a.m. EDT) Robert Rodriguez, John C. McGinley, Noisettes

 

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Fix contributors: Dipayan Gupta, Heather Havrilesky, Scott Lamb, Kerry Lauerman, David Marchese, Laura Miller, Andrew O’Hehir, Amy Reiter, Stephanie Zacharek

Fix logo by Rhonda Rubinstein

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Scott Lamb is a senior editor at BuzzFeed.com.

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