Et tu, Julia?

Roberts accused of snaking someone's man; Billy Bob's country album doesn't suck; Debbie Gibson worries about the youngsters.

Published August 27, 2001 4:10PM (EDT)

Julia Roberts: pretty inconsiderate woman?

So contends the wife of cameraman Danny Moder. Moder's wife, Vera, a makeup artist, has told the National Enquirer that her husband has left her for the Oscar-winning actress, who recently split with longtime beau Benjamin Bratt. Friends of the couple say Vera first got wind of the affair when she discovered a series of calls to Roberts on her husband's cellphone.

"I don't have the whole story. Julia Roberts has the whole story," Vera reportedly told the tabloid. "Why don't you call Julia and ask her what she's done?"

But since neither Roberts nor Moder would respond to the charges, it's pretty safe to say we don't have the whole story either.

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A touching death

"I don't really like being touched. I'm unbelievably claustrophobic, and I have really bad anxiety. There were a few moments when I was very dramatic and thought, 'I'm not going to live through this. I'm going to hyperventilate and just die. Right here in jail.'"

-- Shannen Doherty on the 10 hours she spent in a Ventura County sheriff's department holding cell after her arrest for drunk driving last December, in TV Guide.

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Billy Bob sings

Um ... OK, yeah, so you know how Billy Bob Thornton is releasing his country album on Sept. 11, and ... um, like ... going on tour with it?

Well, the thing is ... the album ... doesn't suck.

Wait, let me be clear. Some of the album sucks. The title track, "Private Radio," for example, includes the following words sung in a monotone:

And you squeeze my body tight
And forgive me of my sins
And I know I'm not insane
If I am I'm not to blame
It's just this damned old hungry pain
Like a drug inside my veins
And I've sown just what I've reaped
And my thoughts are mine to keep

Not very chipper stuff, to say the least. (You can hear it yourself here.) But "Angelina," written for you-know-who, is actually kind of catchy. And a few of the other songs, such as "The Starlight Lounge," a moody duet with Grammy-nominated songwriter Holly Lamar (Faith Hill's "Breathe") and cowritten with Lamar and Dwight Yoakam, are sort of ... haunting.

Not that Thornton, with his fear of ghosts, would like to hear his music described that way, of course.

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Puffy or ... Poofy?

"It doesn't mean a guy is gay just because he wears a skirt. Men can look very masculine in skirts -- sexy and cheeky."

-- Sean "Puffy/P.Diddy" Combs offering some surprising fashion advice in the German magazine Bunte.

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Electric youth today

Debbie -- excuse, me ... Deborah -- Gibson (currently touring with 'N Sync) is holding forth about kids these days yet again.

"I hope it's not all too-much-too-soon," the former bubblegum-pop star says of teen singers who followed in her path. "I just wish kids would allow themselves a little more time to be kids while they can, because they're gonna have so much time to flaunt their sexuality later, and they don't realize that yet."

But while Gibson tells Sonicnet.com she suspects that Britney Spears "knows to a degree that she's playing a role" onstage, Christina Aguilera has her a bit concerned.

"I get the idea that Christina lives and breathes the sexual image, which frightens me," Gibson opines on the music site. "I look at her and go, 'Ooh, she's gotten a little ahead of herself.'" In other words, Christina, you're lost in her eyes.

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Miss something? Read yesterday's Nothing Personal.


By Amy Reiter

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