Turn On:
Get into the holiday spirit with "A Home for the Holidays 2004" (8 p.m. ET on CBS), an annual special on U.S. adoption, hosted this year by Jamie Foxx; PBS's "Christmas With the Mormon Tabernacle Choir" (check local listings); or the Discovery Channel's "The Icehotel" (8 p.m. ET), about a real, functional hotel made of ice constructed in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden, every year.
Morning Briefing:
Babs, happy in the sack: Those of you inexplicably concerned about Barbra Streisand's sex life will be pleased to know that it's hotter than ever. "As an older woman you definitely still have sex," the 62-year-old actress and singer, who is married to James Brolin, told Germany's Gala magazine. "You're freer, you savour every moment and have fewer inhibitions. I think it's great. Sex gets better the older you get." (Gala via Reuters)
Who feels pretty? According to several postings on a Web site called the Celebrity Nudity Database, "Trading Spaces" host Paige Davis -- or someone who looks a lot like her -- appears in a homemade sex tape circa 1997 that's making its way to a Web site near you. One poster reports, "What I've seen is a brief clip of her in the shower, shaving her legs and pubic area while singing 'I Feel Pretty.' Her body is incredible. She clearly works out and has no tanline around her breasts. Her pubes are totally shaved." (CNDB.com via Lloyd Grove's Lowdown)
In cold blood? Witnesses testifying yesterday in Robert Blake's trial for the murder of his wife say that the actor didn't cry or go near his wife as she lay dying of a gunshot wound, blood gushing from her head, but that he did make noises that were "very guttural, loud and aggressive" and also vomited on the sidewalk ... "violently." Actor and film director Sean Stanek, who was the first person on the scene of the crime, said that Blake pounded on his front door and yelled, "You've gotta help me. My wife, she's bleeding. They beat her up. Somebody mugged us." Stanek said that Blake appeared "wide-eyed" and "pale" but that "the whole thing was odd, that he wasn't helping her." (N.Y. Daily News)
Good news for lazy Harry Potter fans: J.K. Rowling says the upcoming "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," due out in July, "will be quite a bit shorter than 'Order of the Phoenix.' I am not going to swear on my children's lives that is going to be the case, but I am 99% certain of it." If the books just kept getting bigger and bigger, she says, "book seven would be around the weight of a baby hippopotamus." (JKRowling.com via USA Today)
Also: Snoop Dogg has filed an extortion suit against an unnamed woman who he says threatened to accuse him of assault unless he agreed to pay her $5 million. (Associated Press) ... Vogue editor Anna Wintour, possibly channeling Star Jones, has been asking Teen Vogue editors to call designers and have them send over samples of their work so she can sort through the free swag and pluck holiday gifts for people on her list. (Page Six) ... If you got it, flaunt it: Uma Thurman is rumored to have been selected to play sexy Swedish secretary Ulla in the film version of "The Producers," after Nicole Kidman reportedly dropped out onaccounta a bum knee. (Page Six) ... Kevin Spacey has commissioned a series of oil portraits (cost: $90,000) of himself as Bobby Darin by artist William Quigley. (Rush and Molloy) ... Irish Elvises are smiling? Irish actor Jonathan Rhys-Myers ("Bend It Like Beckham") will play Elvis Presley in a four-part miniseries about Presley's life that will air on CBS. (N.Y. Post) ... The University of Arkansas is planning to buy the house in Fayetteville, Ark., in which Bill and Hillary Clinton lived in in the '70s -- and in which they were married -- for possible use as a museum. (Associated Press) ... Dick Clark's publicist says Clark, who recently suffered a mild stroke, is expected to remain hospitalized through the holidays and possibly into early next year. (Associated Press)
-- Amy Reiter
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