You've got to hand it to Ozzy Osbourne for being way ahead of the publicity curve. Everyone else is celebrating Prince William's 21st birthday this week with magazine covers and stamps. But the rocker has gone one step beyond and invited the cute royal to move in with him and his infamous family in Los Angeles. Bet those MTV execs are licking their chops over this one. (WENN)
Has everyone lost their minds in Hollywood or what? Variety is reporting that a biopic of Janis Joplin is set to start filming in early 2004 starring -- are you ready? -- Renée Zellweger. Right. And next up is Matt Damon in the Jim Morrison story. Sheesh.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 65 percent of Americans are overweight (and 35 percent are obese) so why should it be a surprise that someone has come along to make money off that fact? The latest "too strange to be fiction" trend is vacations for large folks. Groups with names like Big Adventures are offering large people a place to let it all hang out -- without having to bear the stares of thin people. The "plus-size travel market" offers such things as "bigger doors, bigger rooms and more hotels with elevators" as well as "broad doorways, reinforced furniture and extra large chairs." And what about getting to your destination? No problem. A company called Extend-It makes seat-belt extenders. America is the greatest country in the world, isn't it? (Fox News)
And Norway isn't such a bad place, either. A Norwegian condom manufacturer is urging people to have sex outside and is giving them suggestions of specific locations in which to do so -- providing maps of tourist sites with arrows pointing out particularly sexy spots. Unfortunately, sex in public is illegal in Norway but the condom company hopes everyone will see the humor and usefulness of the campaign and look the other way. Have a nice summer. (Ananova)
-- Karen Croft
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We may be at the peak of the Harry Potter Book 5 hype, but already the P.R. machine is revving up for Book 6. J.K. Rowling says she's partway through writing the next book, though she has no deadline yet.
The Good Girl has unseated good-girl-turned-bad Britney Spears atop this year's Forbes Top 100 Celebrity List. Jennifer Aniston -- who raked in $35 million last year -- may not have been the list's biggest earner, but she was on more magazine covers than any other celebrity. Meanwhile, Spears, No. 1 on last year's list, saw her star power plummet so far she fell off the list altogether. And Brit can't blame the media. "Good press or bad press, all press is equal in our eyes," Forbes editor Peter Kafka commented. "By dollar value, Britney did not have a big album or a big tour, the proponents that usually land celebrities on the list." Neither did Aniston, but whatever. (Reuters)
Britney's consolation prize: a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. Halle Berry and Kevin Costner are each getting one, too. Then again, so are the Olsen twins.
Martha Stewart's courtroom etiquette, it's a good thing? The domestic diva -- clad in "leopard-print shoes, a brown suit coat, pale lemon slacks and a string of fat white pearls" -- arrived a half-hour early for the hearing at which she was given a trial date (Jan. 12). She waved to fans waiting outside in the rain and greeted courtroom sketch artists, boasting, "No pockmarks, perfect skin, right?" (N.Y. Daily News)
Goldie Hawn is selling her 4,000-square-foot, four-bedroom penthouse condo in New York and looking to trade down to a smaller place. But here's hoping her new pad has a spare bedroom for her grandchild-to-be. Hawn's daughter, Kate Hudson, and son-in-law, Chris Robinson, have announced that they're expecting their first child early next year.
Here's an idea for Fox: When good reality TV shows go bad. Irish journalist Ian O'Doherty informs the Fix that Irish TV's stab at reality programming, "Cabin Fever," in which nine contestants took to the water aboard a 90-foot schooner, ran aground when one of the contestants smashed the boat to smithereens by steering it into the rocky shoreline after a night of televised revelry. (Aye, the crack was mighty.) The show -- a smash hit of the wrong kind -- had to be canceled after just one episode. Now why doesn't stuff like that ever happen on "Survivor"?
-- Amy Reiter
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