[Perez Hilton]

Perez Hilton for Hot Topic

The various items in Hilton's much-ballyhooed clothing line (for chintzy, Clearasil-smeared clothing chain Hot Topic) were criticized for many by being ugly and ridiculous. Which is not true. They are heinously ugly and ridiculous. But the people who read his blog and care about his personality enough to actually think about buying the clothes are stupid so the line could very easily sell well. Plus, Perez has been doing a tour of Hot Topic stores, where the clothing is sold exclusively, doing autograph signings and posing for photos in front of the crappy clothes hut. Though, apparently the appearances aren't going well so far. No one showed up! Because nobody cares. It's another story of internet fame being not quite the same thing as actual real-life fame. Plus, a commenter on Perez's blog says he was horrible:

Hello- I work at the HOT TOPIC where this piece of shit appearted on friday ( I was not working that day but showed up for shit n giggles ) ONLY 7 people showed up.SEVEN.That's it.Mario was BEYOND upset texting and DEMENDING the right water,food,ETC he was a rude royal pain in the ass and BEYOND crass.Talking about scat porn,fisting some kid and otherbest left unsaid topics.My manager was trying to get people to come in to meet Perez by handing out $5 gift cards NO ONE WANTED TO MEET HIM! His mother and sister were there and he seemed to take it out on them (they are both fat BTW and smelled nasty!) anyways he left around 8:45PM without saying goodbye to anyone & looked like he had been crying like the little bitch he is. We sold a grand total of $6.45 of Perez Hilton items between 6PM - 9PM. My manager has already talked about discounting his "line" !

The credibility of this anonymous commenter is not terribly high, obviously, but if it is true it's funny and a little sad and mostly gross (scat!) But Perez's PR person has a different story! He sent us an email yesterday:

I know you guys will write what you want, with out any research but I wanted to let you know that this article is no true at all.

I'm helping launch (along with Hot Topic) Perez's new line. We were all very pleased with the turn out, over 100 people showed up to meet and purchase Perez's new line at the Hollywood and Highland Hot Topic Store. The pictures shown on your site are not accurate. Perez was excited to meet his fans and sign autographs. Everyone from the manager of Hot Topic to a "first day of work" employee stayed to meet Perez after fans left. Perez (Mario) stayed late to hang out with them all and personally thank them for their support, taking pictures, signing personal autographs and getting to know them better.

Perez at Hot Topic clothing line is selling very well at all Hot Topic stores.

Who to believe?? Well, it's probably somewhere in between the two, but either way it doesn't seem like a terribly auspicious beginning to the endeavor. If the line really was selling well and a good time was being had by all at the meet-and-greets, we doubt this flack would bother trying to correct us. We asked the PR drone to provide some, you know, proof that the event was such a success, but they only meekly pointed to this Perez post, which doesn't exactly show a big crowd. It mostly just shows that people who like Perez Hilton are crazy people.

Perez the Record Executive

Remember when we said, one sentence ago, that people who like Perez Hilton are mostly crazy people? That rings true for those fans who turn to Perez for music advice. But there are, sadly, so many of them that, like a pasty young Oprah, he has turned into a man who can actually break new bands. So Warner Bros. is paying him $100,000 a year to do so. At least he's keeping his ethical code strict:

If Mr. Lavandeira sets up formal ties to a record label, can he still be an objective taste-maker? He seems to think so. In an interview last month, he said he would still have the freedom to rave about artists on rival labels and had no obligation to praise acts on Warner Brothers' roster...

"There's no need to trash them," he added. "Unless they do something stupid."

This is pocket change for Warner Bros., but quite a coup for the legitimacy of Perez. Also a sad statement on sheep-like musical tastes of the masses, but whatever. That's the internet for you.

Perez the Musical

An obnoxious blogger play? An inherently bad idea, but probably the most stunning sign of all of the pudgy man's brand power. Why? Because he didn't actually produce it himself. Three otherwise sane young men who paid good money to attend NYU's Tisch School of the Arts are rolling out the play Perez Hilton Saves the Universe (or at least the greater Los Angeles Area) in New York, off-Broadway. Pretty smart move from a business perspective though, because their appeal to his vanity got posted on his site, which is like a quadrillion dollars worth of free PR for what can only be—at best—a sedating way to spend two hours.

Hot Topic, Warner Bros., some random dudes in New York. Do you see the common theme here? All of these Perez-branded products might end up sucking, but that's not really the point. The point is that he's his own publicity machine, which makes him bankable. Until interest inevitably wanes, and Perez is left alone, in a Hot Topic shirt, listening to club music alone.

What fame hasn't brought: Hilton dishes that "in 2007, I got laid once. One time. Which, for a gay man, is unheard of. That's like, celibate."

How sad and cringe-inducing. But maybe Perez just got way too picky after his 2006 makeout session with John Mayer. He had at least one really, really desperate groupie sending him a sex tape and everything! Now is no time to start holding yourself to "standards" or whatever, Perez.

[LA Times]

[IsThisHappening]

[Funny Or Die]

Dali's "Death Kitty Gossip Gun"

The Max has exploded.

"I'm sorry m'am, but you can't bring that on the plane." "Why, because of the gun?" "No, because it's ugly."

All photos from WENN

• Jenna Bush will get married this weekend at a ranch in Texas. Oscar de la Renta supplied the gown the presidential daughter will eventually be puking on. (UPDATE: AP may be wrong on bridesmaid count, see first comment.) [AP]
• Singer and Perez Hilton macker John Mayer is — surprise! — acting kind of scuzzy toward actress/hookup Jennifer Aniston. Mayer "was all over some [other] blond girl" at a club in New York recently. [P6]
• Mary-Kate Olsen was left off the Maxim "Hot 100" list, and twin sister Ashley was left on, at number 47. Wait, which one is supposed to feel dissed by this? Ashley, right? [P6]
• Prince is releasing a coffee table book called 21 Nights with photos of his concerts in London last year. And then there will be a "compilation album" in there too, since publishing in just one dying medium is not enough. [E!]
• So now singer Mariah Carey is not just engaged but married to actor Nick Cannon. "Her friends were, to put it mildly, stunned, but happy for her." [P6]

...

...
[Bright Shiny Morning on Amazon]

Chaim_Gnadelstein's new line beats the original, George H.W. Bush Once Again Throws Up.

Bell County's new line beats the original, Eleanor Roosevelt Haunts the Washington Hilton.

• Apparently hungry for attention in London, Paris Hilton declared Kim Kardashian's butt "disgusting, it reminds me of cottage cheese inside a big trash bag." Then she said Jessica Simpson's boobs were too big. Then she flashed her own boobs again outside a hotel; click here for a bigger shot (via WENN) if you're not bored of Hilton's nipples yet. [Sun]
• Christian Siriano from Project Runway said the girls on The Hills have fashion lines that are not "that great... I mean, it's fun and flirty and young, but they're not innovators. None of them will ever be an innovative designer." [Perez]
• Cameron Diaz lost her father suddenly and unexpectedly to pneumonia. Production of the actress' latest movie was shut down. TMZ, which broke the story, has not yet tried to make an awful joke about it. [TMZ]
• So Pete Wentz was lying when he denied Ashlee Simpson is pregnant. People now joins Us and OK! in saying the musicians are expecting a kid, and as the old journalism rule goes, three celebrity media sources is confirmation. Also, Wentz sidestepped a question about the rumors in an MTV interview rather than try and deny them again. [People]
• Now that he's made out with Perez Hilton, every single conquest of singer John Mayer will be second-guessed and possibly ridiculed. Which is kind of how things should be. The press is finally doing its job! [P6]
• This model's 12-year-old daughter wants a boob job, but the responsible mom is making the daughter wait until she's 16. [Sun]
• David and Victoria Beckham are sending their son to a Jewish school in LA. They're both half. Sort of. Not really: David's Mom's family was Jewish, but she doesn't practice. But he has a tattoo in Hebrew, and so does she. [Sun]
• David Hasselhoff's assistant tried to round up groupies for the TV star, then steal them. He failed at both. [Gatecrasher]

Last February, Page Six posted IM chats between the pair in which Hilton allegedly solicits sex videos from Lewandowski in exchange for promoting his unknown blog. "He would tell me he would give me stories for my blog," Lewandowski told Page Six at the time. "He used me."

In a Sept. 1, 2007, Perez told Lewandowski: "you should totally make a sex tape . . . (but not with me)." Lewandowski wrote back, "I will have to make one on here for you tomorrow and e-mail it to you." Perez responded, "Hot! Do it now!" Lewandowski told Page Six he sent Hilton (real name: Mario Lavandeira) videos of himself masturbating and various other sex videos, but that he never received any help with his blog.

In response, Hilton is now suing on grounds of "loss of his reputation, shame and mortification" as well as "mental anguish." He, evidently, is unaware that you can't lose what you didn't have. (And if someone could explain why he's wearing a Hello Kitty shower cap with a fur coat, that would be great.)

The show, "Radio Perez," marks the debut offering from "C" Student Entertainment Corp., a radio and mobile-focused programming provider created by Steve Lehman, former chairman and chief executive of Premiere Radio Networks, and Andy Schuon, former head of programming at MTV, MTV2, VH1 and Infinity Broadcasting, now CBS Radio.

"We're going to prove that [the blogosphere] is a place where you can find talent," said Mr. Schuon.

[WSJ]

Well, most people who gab about him

...are people who ... couldn't name me three songs off one record, but get onto a blog site and go to the comments and say, 'Well, he was with that dog so-and-so. He probably smells like butt.' You know, people try to like do the Perez Hilton syntax, and it's terrible.

The way we rationalize it is this: Perez Hilton, for once in his miserable pink-stained life, doesn't look too bad, and John Mayer is just a cool cat (shoot me) who doesn't really need to defend his sexuality. So this was probably a business discussion. One that ended with a guarantee of good coverage (for a while) for John and the makings of an excellent deb ball for the new Skinny Perez. I guess society is progressing when all this amounts to is a silly little PR stunt, not some shameful closeted saga. Business, pleasure, or whatever else, we make a small, solemn wish: May John continue his journey of making out with generally unlovable 'mos who write for gossip blogs. Some of us currently look resplendent in pajamas and tear-stained cheeks. Possible photo documentation of the make-out foreplay is below. Minds are boggled. [Everything from Perez]

Correction: The alleged makeout supposedly took place back in 2006. So Perez is not newly "svelte-ish." I guess this incident was before the big weight gain. Still though. Ew.

• Blogger Perez Hilton is claiming he made out with a bisexual John Mayer. This disturbing visual comes a few days after singer Mayer posted a long rambling thing to his blog "about a young guy who maintains a celebrity blog... who has wrestled with a lifelong battle for acceptance as a gay man." [Perez] (Photo via Perez)
• OK! Magazine wanted to do a big cover story on Britney Spears' miraculous weight loss, but Brit was too fat or ravaged looking or something, so the magazine just substituted a four-year-old photo instead and implied it was a new shot of Spears "back to her old body." [Huffington Post]
• CNN anchor Anderson Cooper bought some pairs of the Armani underwear touted by soccer champ David Beckham, size small. Cooper had just interviewed Beckham for 60 Minutes and asked Beckham to sign one of his Armani ads. So precious. [AC Effects]
• Actress Lindsay Lohan is not being cooperative about recording her new album. [Daily News]
• Mayor Michael Bloomberg can't stop talking about how he got a table at Waverly Inn the other night. Sad. Tuesday at 10:30? Thought so. [Daily News]
• Chelsea Handler of E! said she really loves boning her boss, or her boss' boss or whatever. [P6]
• Singer Bobby Brown said ex-wife Whitney Houston, the soul diva, got him into coke. [P6]
• Ed Westwick of Gossip Girl was a drunken cad at Beatrice Inn. Guy knows how to stick to the script. [P6]
• To "not deal with the media," movie star Brad Pitt got rid of his publicist. Wife Angelina Jolie's crafty mind is, of course, behind the whole, uh, ingenious plot. [P6]

So, are readers finally tiring of the torrent of shallow news about no-name celebrities, as Salon believes? The reasons for the abrupt decision are more prosaic, and depressing. Pagesix.com experienced its first day with more than 1m pageviews, last week, when the site published a gallery of photographs of Eliot Spitzer's hooker, Ashley Alexandra Dupré. But it was not making sufficiently rapid inroads into a market dominated by Time Warner's TMZ, and gossip blogs such as Perez Hilton. But the decision to shutter the spinoff gossip site likely owes even more to the Australian media mogul's pessimism about the US economy, and advertising spending.

Murdoch, disclosing a slowdown in ad revenue at his Fox television stations and newspapers, has predicted a "temporary downturn for a year or so." Other media companies, such as the New York Times, are also suffering from the advertising downturn, and have cut costs by making piecemeal layoffs.

The News Corporation boss, who has funded a decade of losses at his tabloid, the New York Post, is typically a patient investor. But he can also be decisive. He will be wary of overstretching the company, particularly after stretching to acquire the Wall Street Journal. During the last big advertising downturn, Murdoch nearly lost control of his company.

Anyway, before competitors gloat at News Corporation's reverse, they should remember this: if advertising spending has indeed turned down, the downturn will not spare web sites. The web's boosters hope that newly cost-conscious marketers will simply redirect their budgets from print and television to the web; that was the hope during the last recession, and it was wishful thinking, then and now. Murdoch will be embarrassed for a day; other media groups will be subsidizing loss-making websites for months before they come to the same conclusion.

Here are some theories.

1. Page Six still bears a grudge; before there was perezhilton.com, the celebrity gossip maven published as pagesixsixsix.com. The Post had to threaten a lawsuit to stop Perez's joke on their name. The Post's own website, which launched late last year, is still lagging by comparison with the blog upstart; maybe the gentlemen's rule that protects print competitors doesn't apply in the brutally competitive world of web gossip.

2. When the Post's Paula Froelich is off duty, as she is this week, head honcho Richard Johnson tends to revert to old-fashioned baiting of women and gays. He's the one, after all, that made cheap digs at Vanessa Grigoriadis' supposed moustache when the New York writer dared describe Page Six as "emasculated".

3. The Post is merely pushing its own story forward. Last month, the Post's psychic predicted this turn of events for Perez: "His love life continues to suffer (no soulmate yet) but he will be in a love triangle - i.e. an affair with a very famous celebrity, making scandalous news himself."

But the most likely and least interesting theory? A crank sent in lurid chat transcript in which the world's most successful gossip blogger suffered the kind of embarrassment he's inflicted on celebrities. And that was, rule or no rule, irresistible.

nutmeg's new line beats the original, Completely Naked Perez (Except for Cap) Does Not Want to Take Bath.

ShoplifterOfTheWorld's new line beats out the original, There Must Be a Beautiful Convention In Town. (Because I sadly have a collection of over 300 Archie Comics myself. Oh dear.)

Did you know Canada has something called the Juno awards, for musical Canadians, and Celine Dion is contractually guaranteed at least four every year? Did you know Canadians can't vote for Barack Obama, but a Cannuck named Esthero snuck across the border into the Obama Yes We Can video to corrupt our Election of Freedom? It's all true! Also, Canadian Ellen Page starred in the movie Juno, and is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and everything, and the Canadian Perez is very, very excited. Finally, Taylor has managed to get interesting pictures of otherwise boring Canadians, like Grudge and Batman star called "Edison Chen," hanging out with a friend in the thumb up top and in the original IsThisHappening item, which links to uncensored original, here.

.

This week, she maybe lost Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch, whose many media holdings mercilessly attacked the Clinton family during their last stay in the White House, warmed to the senator once her accumulation of magnate-assisting power began in earnest. Murdoch and the Clintons were suddenly buds! The New York Post actually endorsed her! But things fell apart, according to the New York Times' David Carr. Rupert, who loves anyone in a position to do him favors, may be upset that Hillary's hasn't wrapped up this whole presidency thing yet. (As Rush & Molloy point out, Murdoch donated the maximum allowed amount to Hill six months back.)

Now, though, Hillary has bucked her own party and agreed to a debate held by Murdoch's GOP-tilting Fox News. Last year, liberal activists convinced Dem candidates to boycott two Fox-sponsored debates. But it's 2008, this whole election thing is actually for serious, and a February 11 debate in Washington DC would be a nice opportunity to reach Maryland voters. And make Rupert love her again!

Hill's relationship with ORIGINAL BLOGGER Matt Drudge is even weirder, if that's possible to imagine. Because Drudge needs her. He feeds off of her. Her hideously MSPainted pixilated weepy eye sat at the top of his page all day. He updates when she coughs during an interview. And he seems sadly uninspired by every other candidate in the race. Whether or not Hill's campaign has a special Drudge envoy, they needn't ever worry that he'll ignore them.

The intentions of one last insane internet creation, though, are a bit easier to read. P*r*z H*lt*n endorsed Hillary Clinton!!!

"As we have previously stated," Mario Lavandeira explains, "Hillary wasn't our fist choice." Of course not, Mario. Of course not.

JojoSaysNo's new line beats out the original, Sabrina's Aunt Zelda Stops To Chat With A Gay On The Way Home From Karate Class

Rod's new line beats out the original, Beautiful Flower Blooms In Mountain Air.