Hmm. Did I have it backwards, and mean Hilton sues paparazzi for lewd celeb photos? Nope.

Often it is celebrities who take paparazzi to court for exposing them in private, usually embarrassing moments caught on camera. The tables are turned this time when paparazzi do the suing, not of a mega-popular celebrity but close. A Hilton is under fire for raunchy celebrity pictures but she isn’t Paris. He is Perez.

Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton is being sued for the unauthorized use of several celebrity photos owned by X17 Inc.

The photo agency based on Los Angeles claims Hilton, whose celebrity blog PerezHilton.com is also based on Los Angeles, has used 51 celeb photos of theirs without permission, payment, or credit.

Perez Hilton is the online alias of Mario Lavandeira. He runs a celebrity blog out of LA, where he posts tabloid-flavored celebrity pictures along with captions often to deride the celebs. He has received a joint letter from seven other photo agencies demanding that he stop using their celeb photos, but they have yet to sue him and X17 was the first to do so.

What are these celebrity photos owned by X17 and allegedly used by Hilton in his blog? See if you recognize any: Britney Spears exposing her tush (There are only a million versions of it out there!), Kevin Federline pumping gas (Why would anyone waste time posting that one?), and a pregnant Katie Holmes (Good luck IDing which one in plenty).

“We’ve had trouble with a lot of bloggers, but he’s the biggest, and the most arrogant and pigheaded about it, frankly,” says Brandy Navarre, who co-owns X17 with her…

Read More » Hilton Sued by Paparazzi for Lewd Celeb Photos

Cellphones pose NO cancer risk to users, for crying out loud. Or anyway, it’s too early to tell.

A study from Denmark is the biggest and strongest yet to come out in favor of the stance that mobile phones do not trigger cancer. It presents more overwhelming proof than previously that heavy cellphone users are no more likely to have cancer than rare to non-users.

It’s just that people have not been using cellphones long enough for experts to know for sure, and for that, we need time.

Questions linking cellphones to health risks have floated for as long as the words SMSing and txts have entered our vernacular. Radio frequency energy from mobile phones penetrates the brain’s outer edge, which may or may not increase the possibility of brain tumors, cancers of the head and neck, or leukemia in frequent and long-time users.

A concern has also been raised recently by a pan-European study regarding genetic damage. And then there is that issue of cellphones causing supermodels to hit their personal assistants or even unknowing passersby. The World Health Organization thus far has no definitive conclusion to these questions.

As you’re picking out who will win Superbowl 2007 for hours over the cellphone, could you be picking up the Big C? It’s all talk, according to the study from Denmark, where there are 5.118 million mobile cellular lines in use compared to…

Read More » Cellphones Don’t Cause Cancer, Wanna Bet?

I hate to say it but Paris Hilton isn’t cheap, and there are billions of dollars of reasons why not.

She is a billionaire heiress, just like sister Nicky Hilton, or cousins Amanda Hearst and Lydia Hearst-Shaw, or Georgina Bloomberg and Holly Branson. Celebutantes of the likes of them have so penetrated popular culture that we’ve started believing we live next door to one of them. Not a chance.

The fact is they belong to the richest Two Percent, which a recent report confirms still owns more than 50% of the world’s household wealth. Your favorite rich b!tch, whose BFFs like to parade their nipples and crotches in pictures, is literally an heiress to father Richard Hilton’s multibillion dollar fortune that includes the chain of Hilton Hotels.

The report comes from the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research. It is a followup to an earlier revelation, in 2000, that the richest One Percent of adults owned 40% of global assets. Six years later, surprise, surprise, they still do.

The original report found that wealth is concentrated — an overwhelming 90% of all the world’s riches — in the United States and North America, Europe, and some high-income nations of Asia-Pacific. Countries like China and India, for example, are getting rich fast, while countries like Bangladesh, due to micro-credit institutions, are helping their people gain more personal wealth.

Average wealth in the US was $144,000 per person in 2000, and in Japan, $181,000. Compare this with India, where it’s a mere $1,100 per capita, or Indonesia, with $1,400. According to…

Read More » Paris Hilton Isn’t Cheap, She’s a Billionaire Heiress

Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan are hands off more than just underwear these days.

The old new best friends (of one another and the paparazzi) have outdone themselves lately with celebrity party photos far skankier than strip poker pictures. The latest pics come not only with nipple slips and drunken walks of shame but the added bonus of Britney’s crotch-exposing upskirts, owing to her new-found love of nights out, undies down.

I can imagine the Crotch Queen’s desperate urge to feel liberated after being married to someone like K-Fed; however, for many of us, the joy of snacking while online is now forever ruined.

It seems the gal pals are stripped beyond panties. Lindsay Lohan, for one, is also hands off booze, or so her mother says. Mom Dina Lohan told Ryan Seacrest on his KIIS-FM Los Angeles radio show that her woozy daughter is attending AA meetings. Make no mistake: she wasn’t outing Lindsay’s drinking problem, saying Lindsay is just going along with friends.

“A lot of people she hangs out with go, and it’s a positive thing,” says Dina, now that she’s made Lindsay’s rendezvous with reforming alcoholics not so anonymous. “She’s 20 and I’m not gonna say, ‘Stay home and don’t go out.’ That’s a ridiculous thing to do.”

Right. I suppose this means visiting American soldiers in Iraq with…

Read More » Britney, Paris, Lindsay Take It All Off (Not Just Panties)

We condemn discrimination against gays, and we condemn sex amongst gays.

The above mixed messages are brought to you by the United States Catholic bishops, who confered Tuesday to draft a document that advises followers of their faith on how to deal with gays, and gayness. The resulting statement contains gay outreach guidelines, which gay Catholic activists find only alienate the very people they attempt to reach.

The statement, Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination, was adopted at a meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops by a 194-37 vote, with one abstention. It is well intended on the outset, encouraging Catholics to make an effort to accept homosexuals; but all the same, discouraging efforts to accept homosexuality.

An example: welcoming gays to the Catholic flock but forbidding those who engage in gay sex to take the holy communion. Seriously, is this still a traumatic reaction to that kiss from one male to another that ended the last supper in bad taste?

Catholic bishops suggest it’s okay to be gay but not okay to live a gay lifestyle, as if the two should be separated. The statement proposes it isn’t a sin to be attracted to someone of the same sex – but it is a sin to act on these same-sex feelings. To wit: fall in love but don’t make…

Read More » Bishops Welcome Gays …with a Judas Kiss

Is it me or did Britney Spears’ divorce launch the new slew of horrors across music genres?

Yes, let’s blame all global problems on Britney because it feels like fun. No sooner than she outed her new bob, new bod, and new irreconcilable diffs did the world plunge back into gossip doom yet again. In the Spears household, dirt is cast by a sex tape, which about-to-be-ex Kevin Federline is dangling as part of his grand blackmailing and golddigging scheme.

On the celebrity front, Jude Law and Sienna Miller split up for what they say is officially the last time, Borat gets beaten up in NYC, Denise Richards hurls a laptop and hits two clueless old women, and Anna Nicole Smith gets kicked out of her Bahamas home. On the music front, Procol Harum fight over royalties 100 years later from the much obscurely worded, LSD-addled song, A Whiter Shade of Pale. And that’s all on the same week as Brit’s filing for divorce.

Music Celebrity Betting Picks

Guns N’ Roses – Will they release new album Chinese Democracy by 2006? Bodog betting props have odds of -200 it’s a yes, +150 it’s a no. The deal with this album is that it’s been 10 years and $15 million in the making, and when it even gets released, would be the most expensive album ever recorded. And here we thought Axl Rose was spending all that free time treating his bipolar disorder, like that explains everything.

GNR isn’t dead, and sports a new lineup with ex-members of Nine Inch Nails, The Replacements, The Vandals, and Axl’s childhood friend, Paul Tobias, whose guitar rivalry with Slash had helped trigger the breakup. After touring in Las Vegas, San Francisco, et. al., the new GNR lent a…

Read More » Music Celebrity Betting: Look Who Did It Again

Celebrity divorce isn’t a product of today’s dime-a-dozen stars but as old as Hollywood.

J Lo, although married a rumored four times, is not the mother of Hollywood divorces. Zsa Zsa Gabor has been married nine times; Elizabeth Taylor and Lana Turner, eight times; Judy Garland, five times; Christie Brinkley, four times. Granted, it’s more lately that stars are marrying and/or getting knocked up by their bodyguards, trainers, dancers, roadies, waiters, nannies.

No stars are spared, including those who were the stuff of fairytale romance. Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise called it quits after 11 years, from 1990 to 2001, while Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston said their goodbyes after five years, from 2000 to 2005. And the saga continues: celebrity betting odds of 1/10 the Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes wedding will be Scientologist, 3/1 Catholic, 100/1 Amish.

Britney Spears on November 7th filed for divorce from two-year husband Kevin Federline. Betting picks were quick to catch up on that one. Will Britney have her kids’ last names changed legally to Spears by…

Read More » Betting on Celebrity Marriages, Divorces (2 of 2)

In movies, a Hollywood ending is a happy ending. In real life, it is the exact opposite.

Did you hear the one about Britney Spears divorcing Kevin Federline, announced only last November 7? Meet two of Hollywood’s biggest excesses: getting married and getting divorced. Unfortunately for the sanctity of the holy matrimony, celebrities wed and split up faster and more times than Angelina Jolie can adopt third world babies, or Ms. Spears can procreate biological ones.

Still, fans and paparazzi are relentless in fussing over who’s popping the question next. At Bodog betting props, the odds are -130 that supermodel Kate Moss and Pete Doherty of Babyshambles/The Libertines will get married by February 28 next year, and -110 they won’t. Celebrity betting odds are +300 ‘Scary’ Spice Girl Mel B and Eddie Murphy will get married by November 30 this year, and -500 they won’t.

What are the chances? Who are splitting up next? For free betting picks, look to some authorities on the subject…

Famously Short-term Hollywood Marriages

Britney Spears to Jason Alexander. We wonder which lasted longer: her first marriage, or the gap between birthing and conceiving her first two kids. Britney and Jason turned…

Read More » Betting on Celebrity Marriages, Divorces (1 of 2)

When director Paul Haggis made the movie Crash, I don’t think this was what he had in mind.

2006 was the year underdog Crash upset an Oscar frontrunner also lashing out on prejudice. Crash, which depicts racial tension, follows 36 hours in the lives of racial stereotypes in Los Angeles – five-time host city to the Latin Grammys since 2000. Oh, and yes: this is the same year Survivor: Cook Islands follows 39 days in the lives of 20 castaways segregated by race: whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics.

Being labelled Hispanic in the US is a funny thing. It casts you into what is perceived as an oppressed lot of Spaniard descendants; historically, the Spanish empire oppressed the Native American Indians. These days, Hispanics are the largest minority group in the US, 14.1 % of the population as of 2004, or like 41.3 million hot-blooded Latinos probably pissed that they aren’t a Survivor betting favorite.

The Hispanic tribe was lately 7/4 odds to win at Bodog betting props, albeit not doing half as bad as the African-American tribe with 13/2 odds. Favorites to win the Survivor prop bets at Bodog have been the White tribe at 13/10 odds as well as the Asian-American tribe at 3/2 odds to win. Telemundo could not be reached for a comment, nor Cameron Diaz who is Hispanic yet very white and blond.

And just when we think this couldn’t get more stereotypey, four of the five Latino castaways come from Cali while the one who isn’t…

Read More » Survivor’s version of amazing race – Will Hispanics Win? (4 of 4)

Asian immigrants took the cushiest tech jobs and left TV work not to the sharpest Americans.

So here we are. Survivor: Cook Islands will have its new 20 castaways segregated by race: whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics. What, somebody’s ego got hurt? The 12.3 million Asian Americans, 4.3% of the US population, do better than Whites in terms of income, home ownership, college degree, with a crime rate less than 1%.

Asian Americans command power in Silicon Valley, whether Bay Area or Bangalore, with founders and CEOs like Jen-Hsun Huang of Nvidia, Jerry Yang of Yahoo!, or Vinod Khosla of Sun Microsystems. But do viewers think they’ll rule over dale where it isn’t only low-tech but zero-tech? The answer, it turned out, was often Yes.

The Asian-American tribe started as a betting favorite, with 13/7 odds, at Bodog betting props. Another favorite was the White tribe at 3/2 odds to win.Longer shots were the Hispanic tribe with 2/1 odds, and the African-American tribe at 8/3 odds to win the Survivor prop bets at Bodog. Hurry, call for reinforcement from all the…

Read More » Survivor’s version of amazing race – Will Asians Win? (3 of 4)