MamaPop™

Julie and Julia Trailer!

The trailer for the upcoming movie Julie and Julia has just been released and (I'm trying to say this in my best Julia Child voice) it looks delightful!

Do Fake TV Couples Need Wedding Registries?

So Derek and Meredith on Grey's Anatomy are getting married.  Cue the May sweeps advertisers and the large scale television promo spots.  And the wedding website.  And gift registry. 

Gift registry?  Granted, it goes to charities like The American Academy of Neurology Foundation, the American Skin Association, and the Alzheimer’s Association — all charities that have a connection to Grey’s story lines.  But these are not real people. 

I find the whole thing odd.

Feminism Is Dead, And We Killed It. Maybe.

Thus spake a Canadian feminist sage the other day: lo, but pop culture is a graveyard littered with the bones of feminisms past, murdered at the hands of lovers of pop culture. Witness television! Books! film! Everywhere is evidence of our faithlessness, we who should have stayed true, we who were seduced by Candace Bushnell and Sophie Kinsella and Real Housewives and Kate Winslet!

Wait, what? Kate Winslet?

Yeah, she lost me there.

Russell Brand to Star in Remake of "Drop Dead Fred"

We need more original work in La La Land, apparently. Universal is set to remake the oddly uncomfortable, slightly annoying, but yet poignant "Drop Dead Fred," a movie made in the 80s which starred Phoebe Cates and some dude who looked like Martin Short's brother. Cates played a woman whose husband leaves her the same day she's fired thus she's forced to move back home and reevaluate her life and POOF! Up pops her childhood imaginary friend, Fred.

Jon & Kate Plus Eight Equals Swirling Rumors!

 I'm sort of insanely optimistic when it comes to reality-show couples. I DO NOT KNOW WHY. Off the top of my head, I can't think of one reality-show couple whose relationship wasn't obviously and very publicly damaged by allowing cameras into their home. Oh, wait. Spencer and Heidi. There you have it. Now doesn't THAT just restore all hope in the cameras-in-your-living-room machine? 

I came to watch "Jon & Kate Plus 8" relatively early (summer of 2007), before The Gosselin's (Jon, Kate and their eight children) popularity and house-size had exploded. I picked a favorite kid (Alexis) and tuned in fairly regularly. And although I thought all the same things about Kate that many, many people thought (perhaps tone down the bitch levels a tad, Mrs. Gosselin),I also believed that they really "were in this together" as the show's intro goes. I would not have guessed that they were in it together ... and so were a few other people.

Chis Brown's Attorney to Ask For Assault Case To Be Dismissed

In what is most likely a futile attempt to get a better plea deal out of the prosecution, Mark Geragos, attorney to Chris Brown, indicated he will be filing a Motion to Dismiss the assault charges.  Yes, THOSE assault charges.  The Motion is based on police leaks in the investigation, apparently a reference to Rihanna's injury photo that surfaced on the Internet, among other details.

"If Geragos makes an issue of leaked evidence, it's unlikely the judge will dismiss the case," says L.A. criminal defense attorney Jeffery Rubenstein, who's not involved in the case. "It's not police conduct at issue here, it's Chris Brown's."

This is a criminal defense attorney grasping at straws and looking for a negotiation tactic.  There is no "chain of evidence" issue here.  It is not like a drug case where the police have to prove nothing was tampered with.  I will be shocked if this is granted.  But Geragos has to earn his fee somehow and just pleading him out, which trust me, is what will happen in this case, will not get him there.

Sharon Stone Will Jinx Your Wedding

  It's crazy trivia time.  White vinegar can clean your coffee pot and your hair.  Binturongs smell like fresh buttered popcorn. And Sharon Stone can perform weddings. But you may not want her to.

TMZ.com reports that the 2004 wedding over which Stone presided is ending:

Almost 5 years after Stone went through the trouble of becoming a mail-order minister just so she could officiate the wedding of restaurateur Michael Bourseau and stylist Brenda Swanson -- the couple is filing for divorce.

The Apocalypse Has Arrived. I Have Proof.

Here at MamaPop, we've been predicting the Apocalypse for a while now. Usually it's Heidi and Spencer who seem to be signaling the arrival of the Four Horsemen, but we're generally pretty equal opportunity about the portents. Heidi and Spencer, Nickelback, Miley Cyrus, Kanye West, Bacon Logs - pretty much all the entrails of pop culture are there to be read for signs of impending End of Days.

I think, though, that with this latest offering from the gossipsphere? We're facing evidence that the Apocalypse is upon us and that we are, all of us, without hope.

Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick Expecting Twins

Well, here's some light and happy news for your Wednesday: Sarah Jessica Parker and husband Matthew Broderick are expecting twins!

American Idol Season 8: Ratz Travel In Packs. Brats Sing In Them.

Last week on Idol, the pressure finally got to Anoop Desai and after he went missing from a few rehearsals, the token lesbian and the guy who touched Tupak once went to his apartment and found him dead in a pool of his own blood.  This week on Idol, my kids are still up.  Because it's 8pm and April and at 8 pm in April it is still fairly sunny out in that way that you know you've lingered entirely too long after the garden party but you haven't quite stayed long enough to interrupt the host and hostess's drunk-off-the-melted-frozen-margarita-leftovers sex.  I dare tell my kids to go to bed with that much sun in the sky, and they find creative new ways to tell me to piss off.

So this isn't guaranteed to make so much as a lick of sense.  Like it ever does.

*Breaking news flash!*  Reports are rolling in that Paula Abdul was involved in a hit and run accident on her way to the Fox Theater earlier this afternoon.  Reports indicate that during her commute from LaLa Land to the Fox Theater in Hollywood, when Ms. Adbul's tricycle failed to yield at a school bus crossing in Townsville, USA she ran dead smack into Blossom Puff.  Blossom' was last spotted splattered all over the front of Paula's dress.  

Creed Reunites; World Weeps

Once upon a time there was this band. They were, in a word, bad. They were a bad band. Unoriginal, so cheesy their CDs should have come with macaroni, "Christian" except when it didn't serve their "image" anymore (read: when they got a bigger contract,) and just...MAN they were bad. But my quarrel was not with the band members, nay! My problem was with their ego-inflated douchebag of a lead singer, one of the most infernally smug and self-indulgent people I have ever had the distinct displeasure of not only hearing on the radio, but in interview after interview, wherein he would ramble incoherently because, and I'm no doctor, but I suspect the douchiness had infiltrated his central nervous system.

The douche I speak of is Scott Stapp, and the band is Creed. They're back.

And the earth died screaming.

Our WINNER of the Sundance Channel eco-Friendly Swag Bag!

Out of 224 entries (holy yowza), I am pleased to announce that our WINNER of the super-cool (and environmentally friendly) haul of free stuff is: Vanessa! Who commented that she's "never won free stuff like this before." Except now she totally has!

Enjoy your swag, but watch out: that Keen bag is mighty coveted by many, many MamaPop readers. You might want to shove a couple bricks in the bottom of it for fighting off disappointed pop-culture addicts (or, you know, ZOMBIES).

Congratulations again, Vanessa!

(As for the rest of you, try your luck again with our latest giveaway. OMG, shoes.)

Speidi Manage to Make Me Both Anti-Heterosexual Marriage & Pro-Swine-Flu All At Once

Blah blah blah Speidi totes got married for real this time except for the parts that had to be re-shot afterward who even knows anymore what with all the running away screaming and bleeding eyesockets. But don't worry that you've missed out on all the excitement before it even began: their current trip to Mexico is not, I repeat NOT their actual honeymoon.

"We're not on our honeymoon technically yet. This is a music-video shoot we're doing this weekend," Heidi said. "The honeymoon's coming in a couple weeks."

Another music video AND another whole vacation full of staged bikini prancing? Do you think they'll let us see some PHOTOS? Or even televise the WHOLE THING? Wow. Speidi is the gift that keeps on giving. Like a certain medical class of rashes, in a way.

By the way, in case you skimmed that first part: they're in MEXICO. Which means:

Study: Conservatives Believe That Stephen Colbert Is Serious

Oh, the deliciousness-ness. Sweet taste of what-the-fuckitude!  According to a study - because a small but busy portion of the human race does nothing but churn out studies - many conservatives do not quite get that Stephen Colbert is making fun of conservatives.

It’s true.

Heroes Recap: An Invisible Thread

Now with the same scenes you saw last week!  The episode starts with an alternate ending to the last episode, except that it isn't actually alternate as much as it is a director's cut.  The only difference is that Sylar is creepier and Noah is smarter.  It was probably a union thing.

Claire still bangs.  It's a hair thing.

Factory Farming Partially to Blame for Swine Flu?

I am already so sick of hearing about swine flu. On the off-chance that this really is the pandemic that wipes us all out, I will gladly accept many I-told-you-sos. For now, I'm leaning toward believing that it's a "glamorous" story that the media can beat to death.

It is a serious issue, though, particularly for people living and working in Mexico, who have been the hardest hit by the illness. As of today, 152 deaths and 1,600 illnesses are believed to be swine flu.

Residents and workers near a Smithfield Foods plant in Perote, Mexico, think that the factory-farming giant may be at least partially to blame for the outbreak.

Carmen Electra is What, What and What? (Could she be pregnant?)

So I was reading this thing about Carmen Electra.

Fine, it was a celebrity gossip website. Don't act so superior, you're reading MamaPop.

Right, so besides the fact that there are rumors that Carmen Electra is pregnant (the speculation is that since she didn't wear a bathing suit to her all-adult birthday pool party in Las Vegas that she MUST be knocked up, dud. Carmen Electra lives to wear bikinis) which is the reason I was reading the post in the first place I learned several other fascinating facts about the former Mrs. Dennis Rodman and Mrs. Dave Navarro.