Morning Briefing:
Hat's off to Bono: The U2 frontman's got a lot of things to celebrate this week. Not only did his Live 8 duet of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with Paul McCartney shoot to No. 1 on the Apple iTunes charts in seven countries shortly after making its download debut, but he's also set to get his hat back. A judge in a Dublin court has ruled in favor of the band in its battle with stylist Lola Cashman over several thousand dollars' worth of memorabilia she claims to have been given by the band at the end of the Joshua Tree U.S. tour in 1987. The band says Cashman, who wrote an unauthorized tell-all about her time traveling with U2, actually swiped the items, which include a pair of hoop earrings, a Stetson hat, a sweat shirt and a pair of black pants and which she tried to put up for auction on Christie's. And the judge has apparently found the band members' version more credible than the stylist's story, in which she recalled Bono running around backstage in his undies. "It seems to me that Ms. Cashman's version of events, the giving of the hat, is unlikely to have occurred," he said. (BBC News, Sky News)
More Live 8 fallout: Bono isn't the only Live 8 participant celebrating this week: Other performers including Annie Lennox and Dido saw their album sales climb around 500 percent following their performances -- and Pink Floyd, who reunited for the concert, saw their album "Echoes" shoot up an alarming 1,343 percent compared to one week ago, according to British record retailer HMV. "Even allowing for the relative nature of this exercise, this snapshot still shows that the Live 8 concert is having a marked effect on sales of featured artist recordings," said an HMV spokesman. Meanwhile, Live 8-er Coldplay's sales results crept up merely a bit -- though the band's frontman, Chris Martin, can take comfort in the knowledge that his wife, Gwyneth Paltrow, and daughter, Apple, were there to cheer him on. Kate Moss' bad-boy boyfriend, Pete Doherty, who gave what many consider the worst performance of the London Live 8 lineup, had the distinction of watching sales for albums by his former group, the Libertines, drop after the show. (Reuters, Sky News)
Baby talk ... stifled: You can stop knitting those baby booties for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's rumored forthcoming offspring. Jolie has emphatically denied reports that she and Pitt are expecting. "I am not pregnant," she told journalists at one of the Live 8 concerts over the weekend. (Sky News)
And one last Live 8 tidbit: The BBC felt compelled to issue an apology on Monday after about 350 viewers called to complain about foul language in its broadcast of the Live 8 concerts. It seems the British channel neglected to delete a controversial utterance by Madonna and lyrics by Snoop Dogg. "Millions of people enjoyed our 12 hours of live broadcasting," a BBC spokeswoman told the press. "We are sorry if any offence was caused." (Reuters)
Will you sponsor this woman? Paula Jones is looking for a sponsor to pay her to wear a T-shirt carrying the sponsor's logo during her first visit to the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Ark. She says the $850,000 she won in the settlement of her sexual harassment suit against Clinton was gone years ago, most of it claimed by the lawyers who represented her: "I got $151,000 ... I never made bunches of money," Jones told the press, adding enviously, "Mary Kay LeTourneau can molest a child, then turn around and marry him, and make $1 million off their TV wedding!" (Rush & Molloy)
Also: Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" took in $77.6 million over the long July 4 weekend, boosting its take since its Wednesday debut to $113.3 -- not bad, but far less impressive than last year's Fourth of July box office champ, "Spider-Man 2," which took in $180.1 million over the same period of time. (Associated Press) ... Queen has unseated Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the most successful music act in U.K. album chart history. Queen's music has spent 1,322 weeks on the charts whereas the Beatles have spent 1,293 weeks and Elvis 1,280 weeks. (The Guardian) ... The acting governor of New Jersey, Richard J. Codey, has backed up Brooke Shields and condemned Tom Cruise for lashing out at women who take prescription medicine to combat postpartum depression, something Codey's own wife has apparently suffered from. (SiFy.com) ... Tony Danza's "Tony Danza Show" sidekick, one-time "Apprentice" also-ran Ereka Vetrini, is out and his ABC show itself is in danger of cancellation after the next year, possibly to be replaced by a show hosted by Gloria Estefan. (Page Six) ... A rep for Britney Spears has denied that the pop star has signed on to appear naked and pregnant à la Demi Moore on the cover of a major magazine. Spears will be Elle's October cover girl -- but fully clothed. (Page Six)
Money Quotes:
Shirley MacLaine on actress Agnes Moorehead, who died in 1979 and whose role on the classic TV show "Bewitched" MacLaine plays in the new movie inspired by the show: "I never met Agnes in person, but I talked to her recently and she's doing fine." (Toronto Sun via MSNBC's The Scoop)
Disclaimer on the bottom of a new Web site called TomCruiseIsNuts.com: "Our use of the term 'nuts' is meant, as defined in Webster's, as a reference to an 'eccentric' person. That's all. We do not mean to in any way denigrate or belittle anyone with mental illness. In fact, we take mental illness very seriously, which is why Mr. Cruise's ill-informed rant inspired us to create this website. We don't have anything personally against Mr. Cruise, either. We think he's a first-class actor and a humanitarian. We did used to worry that he was a misguided zealot, but that's all. Now we think he's a dangerous, misguided zealot." (TomCruiseIsNuts.com)
Blind gossip item of the day: "WHICH newlywed husband of a TV personality dropped her off at an award show, then went on a tour of gay bars in L.A.? What he didn't realize was that the limo driver had to keep a list of every stop -- and that when network execs got the limo bill, the list 'looked like a Yellow Page ad of gay bars.'" (Page Six)
Or no, maybe it's this one: "WHICH leading man landed his fiancée by giving her a five-year contract for $10 million? Now, she's giving an Oscar-worthy performance acting as if she's really in love with him." (Page Six)
Turn On:
On Tuesday night, MTV airs the premiere of its new series "The 70's House" (10 p.m. EDT), in which 12 young people try to live life as it was in the pre-Internet, pre-cellphone '70s.
-- Amy Reiter
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