Here a Love, There a Love, Everywhere a Love....

STAR BEAUTY SECRETS

Glowing skin, luscious lips, and sexy smiles - the stars always look smashing, but only "Extra" has their beauty secrets.

Jennifer Love Hewitt swears by her favorite product. Hewitt says, "Elizabeth Arden eight hour cream. It's the greatest stuff in the world. You wear it on your face all the time."

While other beauties like Carmen Electra, Ali Landry, and Fran Drescher follow more general good looks guidelines. Landry says, "Self-tanner and concealer. That's all you need."

Electra says, "Sleep. Sleep is so important. You don't really think it affects you, but if you get a good night’s sleep you look rested and feel good."

Drescher says, "I never go in the sun. I love the shade and I sleep with a humidifier."

"Law & Order: SVU" star Mariska Hargitay says her beauty routines are all in the family. She says, "Taking baths. My grandma taught me taking baths gets everything moving. That's my big beauty secret."

With the beauty secrets out, why not try a few so you too can have the glow of a Hollywood star.

Story: © 2002 TTT West Coast Inc. All Rights Reserved.

A snip it from
THE SPY WHO THUMPED ME

by Phillip McCarthy who interviewed JACKIE CHAN for promoting "THE TUXEDO" (Now playing in Australia)

Apart from musical legends, the studios like pairing Chan with younger actors like Owen Wilson in Shanghai Noon two years ago or Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour films. In The Tuxedo he's matched with Jennifer Love Hewitt, who plays Chan's espionage sidekick.

"I liked working with Jennifer because her English is much better than Owen's or Chris's and I like to use these films to help me work on my English," he says.

"I still don't know what language Chris Tucker was using in Rush Hour. It was a pleasant surprise when Rush Hour turned out to be a hit in the West. No one liked it very much in Asia because the action wasn't so great. And also, I think, no one could understand what Chris Tucker was saying."

Story: © 2002. The Sydney Morning Herald. All Rights Reserved.

ROCK CROCK

One man travels through the best of what American music magazines offer -- and needs a shower

by Rob Harvilla

American music magazines suck.

Rolls off the tongue, don't it? Saunter down the length of a magazine rack and scowl at the teen-pop hoochie starlets, the drooling trend-pigism ("The Strokes! The Hives! The White Stripes!"), the vapid rock-star puff pieces, the gutless corporate-hummer reviews. No balls. No brains. No heart.

No shit. Has it really gotten this bad?

Revolver magazine launched in May 2000. It promised intelligence, depth and a sense of history, typified by its first cover subject: Jim Morrison. It kowtowed to the sounds of now (second cover: Fred Durst) but balanced that with biographical overtures on Big Star and other relics. It guaranteed no dunderheaded starlets on the cover, no mercy in its criticism. Enough intelligence to snag rock obsessives. Something for everybody. It was "The World's Most Wanted Magazine."

The concept lasted five issues.

Two and a half years later, Revolver has evolved into "The World's Loudest Rock Magazine." For the January/February issue, the gone-in-60-seconds Slipknot-biting clowns in Mudvayne graced the cover. Porn-star bimbo models writhed on motorcycles. And the editor's note featured a photo of the editor-in-chief posing with two additional porn-star bimbo models grabbing for his crotch.

The original Revolver concept didn't sell well enough. This one does. And you know what? It stacks up just fine against the competition.

And now that there are more music-mag options than ever, the time has come to take stock of the rock rag. What the fuck happened?

The Godfather: The November 14 issue of Rolling Stone -- featuring a mostly naked Christina Aguilera, clad only in knee socks and supine across a red silk sheet, a come-hither glance flashing across her face -- represents everything wrong with American society not related to terrorism.

Music snobs have torched Rolling Stone for years. The mag is 35 years old now and denounced as an irrelevant dinosaur act, like the band that shares its name -- except that the Stones still sell out arenas. That may explain the horror generated by the Aguilera cover story, in which a teen idol raves about the piercing between her legs and says a bunch of really dumb shit ("I don't like pretty. Fuck the pretty").

Old-timers still whining that RS has passed its glory days of Woodstock and Hunter S. Thompson should shut up. It's naive to hold the mag to a standard that doesn't make money anymore. But when Ed Needham -- a former helmsman for the laddish men's mag FHM -- became Rolling Stone's new managing editor, the old-timers groaned. Needham talked about shortening the articles, punching up the 'tude, jazzing up the graphics and ensuring no one utters the phrase "your father's music magazine."

Ed has succeeded. RS is now your 8-year-old brother's music magazine. Needham's reign launched with the September 19 issue. Lo, it has more-Cutting Crew-than-cutting-edge rockers the Vines on the cover, blessed with the headline "ROCK IS BACK!" Within, we got a taste of what the phrase "points of entry" actually means: Every page bursts with headlines and paparazzi photos and graphics and yelping pullquotes and the disembodied floating heads of rock stars. Delightful, but not revolutionary.

Nonhysterical readers also welcomed Needham's enlargement of the reviews section -- 101 discs went under the knife. Of course, that didn't fix one of Rolling Stone's glaring weaknesses: biteless reviews. Critically, the mag's exhaustive but no more opinionated; even a negative two-star write-up spills beer all over itself issuing qualifiers and caveats. Even worse, certain "heritage" artists are more likely to spontaneously combust than endure a discouraging word from Rolling Stone. Bruce Springsteen gets a fawning cover and a five-star "classic" rating for The Rising, a feat of glad-handing that unfortunately pales in comparison to the five-star slobber treatment RS publisher Jann Wenner himself foisted on Mick Jagger's truly awful solo bomb Goddess in the Doorway last year.

The flip side to that equation is even more inevitable. The magazine delights in hunting down our society's most attractive young starlets (Natalie Portman, Jennifer Love Hewitt) and slapping them on the cover in garish makeup applied by a drive-through car wash.

But we're used to all that. Instead, media critics intent on savaging Needham's maiden RS voyage savaged the "good ol' boy with a giant boner" strain that infected the mag's writing. Public enemy number one was a story from the Vines issue described on the cover as "Bound, Gagged and Loving It," in which a writer engaged the services of a yuppie business that literally "kidnaps" you and subjects you to all sorts of anguish, the details of which you specify ahead of time. Published responses ranged from amused to enraged.

The Sneering Contender: "Bound, Gagged and Loving It" felt like a Maxim piece. Financially, that's a compliment. Maxim is the industry success story of the past decade. It's the official magazine for dudes, which means celebrity babes in bikinis on the cover and all manner of guy stuff (sports, beer, gadgets, wiseass jokes, more babes in bikinis) on the pages within. Crass as it is, it's a true master stroke that's cleared the way for a virtually identical spin-off (Stuff) and -- yes -- a music mag. Blender's the name, and it's the hottest competition in town.

Blender closely resembles the two British mags that most music snobs now turn to when they get sick of Rolling Stone: Q and Mojo. A mere 12 issues into the game, Blender also has had a similar influence on its American competition. Shorter articles? Smarmy captions? Flashy, almost childlike graphics? Gimmicky features? (Blender recently surveyed "The Most Disastrous Albums of All Time," declaring Mariah Carey's Glitter the winner.) Exhaustive review sections? If Blender stole its game from Q and Mojo, the regal RoSpin guard is now liberally stealing from it.

It's a bit disconcerting. The "disastrous albums" thing is pretty great, and these clowns are serious when they present "33 Things You Should Know About Tori Amos." Factor in the mother of all review sections (240 discs reviewed, including, for some reason, every solo CD John Lennon ever made), and Blender proves it can slap a topless LeAnn Rimes on the cover and still behave as intelligently as any of its "professional" competition.

The Nerds: There's a certain delight in writing shit that even you can't understand. Spin occasionally revels in it ("When the tapestry of alienation becomes the status quo, disaffection merely becomes fashion"). But if you've got the time and inclination to decipher those statements, they do cut deeper than Jennifer Love Hewitt whack-offs.

Spin panders aplenty, listing the 50 greatest metal albums of all time and so forth. And the mag illustrates the let's-all-pass-around-the-same-editorial-ideas concept: Everyone's tried the "advice column hosted by a smart-ass rock star" thing, and everyone's asked the Eddie Vedders of the world to list their favorite albums and prattle on about 'em. But at least Eddie doesn't prattle on about getting his schlong pierced.

Don't look for "schlong" to appear in Magnet anytime soon, either. Magnet makes you feel dumb. Inferior to your fellow Yo La Tengo-loving man. It specializes in exhaustive retrospectives on whole genres -- power pop, shoegaze -- that allow the editors to drop obscure band after obscure band on your feeble ass. The Summer Suns! (Bam!) DMZ! (Thwack!) But it's probably the most prominent American mag not obligated to report on Justin Timberlake. First question to Aimee Mann: "You used to record for Epic. As a black man, were you frustrated with how the devils there treated you?"

The Niche Artists: Lord only knows whether Revolver's original aspirations to greatness would've panned out, but its rebirth as a party-hearty metal mag suits it just fine. Lord knows the heshers deserve it, and non-headbangers can smirk at all the "No, really, I'm totally badass" poses and maybe even learn something -- you feel better when you know that "suicide metal" is an actual genre.

Hip-hop heads have a far more elaborate network: Vibe, The Source and XXL are rap journalism's Huey, Dewey and Louie -- cute, noisy and interchangeable. Everyone lands the big-deal features with the LL Cool Js and Toni Braxtons of the world, but no one gets much out of 'em. Plow through the interviews in all three mags in quick succession, and it leaves you a bit numb: Everyone's street, nobody's takin' bullshit from anybody, everyone's got something to prove.

All three rap mags dish up breezy, stylish reads, but just like their general-interest brethren, innovation is in short supply. Take the white-hot "Who Killed Tupac Shakur?" controversy -- every mag on Earth runs a reaction to Chuck Philips' September Los Angeles Times stories linking the Notorious B.I.G. to Tupac's murder, but it's a cover-your-ass affair. The formula's depressingly clear: Rehash the Times articles. Deliver the denials from B.I.G.'s camp. Speculate as to the potential violence it could exact on the hip-hop community. And end with Philips' ubiquitous "I stand by my story."

Of every publication that trots this pony out, only Vibe throws a screwball -- an independently researched timeline that checks Philips' facts, asking whether Tupac's killers could've executed the murder according to the chronology the Times stories established. No, concludes Vibe. Now there's a strong, independent statement. Unfortunately, it's a rare one.

The Lemmings: The biggest problem is that everyone's copying and vying for the same advertisers and demographic hot buttons, but no one's trailblazing. CD reviews are virtually indistinguishable from one mag to another. Newspaper obituaries require more creative thought.

How can American music mags bitch-slap their readers back into line? Stop sounding like publicists. Ditch the "celebrity rockers and the cars" brand-name-a-thons. Call windbag interview subjects on their bullshit. Piss people off. Write coherently but critically. And have a fucking opinion, for shit's sake.

Story: © 2002 New Times. All rights reserved.

CAN MAXIM TRANSLATE TO TV?

by David Carr

After conquering the American newsstand, Maxim magazine from Dennis Publishing is now trying the risky transplant of its bawdy brand of humor to television.

The company has two television specials planned in the next six months, to be shown on ESPN and NBC. And the company's owner, Felix Dennis, said the programs were just the beginning of an effort to develop an entire cable channel called Maxim Entertainment Network, or MEN.

This February, Dennis Publishing will take its first steps toward that goal. It is a co-sponsor of "The Maxim N.F.L. Beach Bash," a one-hour ESPN television show that will run after the Pro Bowl and feature the actors Jennifer Love-Hewitt and Orlando Jones as hosts. The special will be partly an awards show and partly filled with parodies of hit TV shows, allowing Maxim writers to apply their fractured fraternity sensibility to a different medium. And in June, Maxim's Hot 100, an issue of the magazine that displays women on the rise in a variety of fields — and poses — will come to life as a one-hour show on NBC.

Story: © 2002 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.

GERRY DULAC'S NFL FORECAST - WEEK 16

By Gerry Dulac, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Last week: 11-5

Season record: 139-85 (.620)

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2002 (And here's one of his predictions...)

Browns (7-7) at Ravens (7-7)

4:15 p.m.

Prescriptions for Valium are on the rise in Cleveland.

The reason: The Browns have been a bigger tease than Jennifer Love Hewitt.

One week after rallying for a dramatic victory against the Jaguars, the Browns blew a 16-0 lead and lost to Indianapolis, just about the time their fans were counting their quarters for playoff tickets. That puts the Browns in the same position as Baltimore - win today or the season is over. The Ravens have the best chance of catching the Steelers because they play at Heinz Field in the regular season finale. But the Browns are likely to tease their poor fans one more time.

Prediction: Browns, 23-21

Story: © 2002 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.

IRISH EYES

by Bernadette Morra

My husband likes to claim that he is a cousin of Pierce Brosnan, though I have a feeling — based largely on a complete lack of evidence — that my darling sweetheart might be stretching the truth. Maybe the Molloys and the Brosnans hung around the same bog back in Ireland, but I believe that's as far as it goes.

Anyway, Brosnan is one of a number of celebrities who have become fans of The Irish Shop at 150 Bloor St. W. The James Bond star and John Cusack both bought white linen shirts ($198), and Cusack also picked up a tweed walking jacket ($698). Jon Voight got the same jacket with some matching hats ($98).

U2's Bono had the manager from the Park Hyatt Hotel run over to get his favourite Barry's Gold Blend tea ($6) AND.....  

Jennifer Love Hewitt snapped up a gold Claddagh ring ($278).

Have a gander at these fine Irish classics at http://www.theirishshop.ca.

Story: © 2002 The Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All Rights Reserved.

From PRNewsWire & Stuff Magazine- December 17, 2002

STUFF MAGAZINE NAMES THE
'SEXIEST WOMEN IN THE WORLD FOR 2003'

Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani Among Those Who Top Stuff Magazine's Annual List

New York, Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Actress Monica Bellucci has been named the "Sexiest Woman in the World for 2003" by men's magazine Stuff. Bellucci, who will next be seen in the Matrix sequel, beat out Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, and last year's #1, Britney Spears, for the top spot. The annual Stuff supplement is included with the magazine's January 2003 issue on stands now.

    Stuff's top 10 "Sexiest Women in the World for 2003":

     10)  Gwen Stefani (No Doubt)
      9)  Krista Allen (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind)
      8)  Cameron Diaz (Charlie's Angels)
      7)  Shakira (singer)
      6)  Britney Spears (singer)
      5)  Shannyn Sossamon (The Rules of Attraction)
      4)  Jennifer Love Hewitt (singer-actress)
      3)  Jamie-Lynn Sigler (The Sopranos)
      2)  Jennifer Lopez (singer, Maid in Manhattan)
      1)  Monica Belluci (Matrix Reloaded)

Other sexy women named to the list include Pink (#100), Kelly Clarkson (#91), Kylie Minogue (#82), The Women of The Real World: Las Vegas (#79), Lucy Liu (#65), Halle Berry (#49), Carmen Electra (#42), Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (#41), The Dumb Whore (#31), Brittany Murphy (#29), Pam Anderson (#17), Kelly Hu (#15) and Jennifer Garner (#11).

Stuff is the second largest men's lifestyle magazine in the country behind brother publication Maxim. Stuff speaks directly and humorously to men about the stuff that matters in their lives -- entertainment, technology, fashion, sex, money and relationships. Plus, they have great recipes.

Story: © 2002 PRNewsWire/Stuff Magazine. All Rights Reserved.

From ITV (London, England) - December 16, 2002

THE STARS COME OUT FOR ELTON

Sir Elton John played an intimate charity show in London last night.

The singer - recently at the top of the charts with boyband Blue - played the gig to raise money for various AIDS charities, including his own foundation.

A star-studded audience including Liz Hurley, Lulu, Cat Deeley, Martine McCutcheon AND

JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT

.....danced in the aisles as Sir Elton played many of his classics, including 'I'm still standing' and 'Crocodile rock'.

It has been a busy fund-raising year for Sir Elton.

Earlier this month he delighted queues of fans when he opened his fourth sale of cast-off clothes at the Out The Closet IV shop.

More than 20,000 items were being sold to raise money for the Elton John Aids Foundation.

In the spring he joined Grammy Award winner Mary J. Blige and Shirley Manson of the band Garbage as the spokespersons for a new range of lipstick from which profits went to a number of AIDS charities.

Story: © 2002 ITV Network Limited. All Rights Reserved.

MOST WANTED ON THE WEB - SPIDER-MAN CLIMBS,
OSAMA SLIPS IN YEAR-END RATINGS

By Chandrima S. Bhattacharya

Spiderman has crawled past Shakira to the top of the Web. J.Lo has outdone Britney, while Eminem is one up on Brad Pitt.

The 2002 Year-End Google Zeitgeist offers flashbacks on the world's major events and hottest trends — taking into account more than 55 billion queries from users of the world's most popular online search engine.

So who or what was most wanted in 2002?

It is a far cry from 2001, dominated by Afghanistan. Spiderman is in the no. 1 slot in the "Top 20 Gaining Queries", with Shakira, the belly-crunching Latino diva whom Gabriel Garcia Marquez has also grown to admire, at no. 2. Then come — this is '02, and the post-9/11 crisis seems to be over — the Winter Olympics and the football World Cup, followed by Avril Lavigne, the 17-year-old Ontario-born "skater-punk" singer, who took the world by storm with her debut CD Let Go.

Nostradamus, Napster (the free online music download site that was shut down by the US authorities in 2000), World Trade Center, anthrax, Osama bin Laden and Taliban occupy the top six slots in the category "Top 20 Declining Queries". (Angelina Jolie is also on this list, at no. 10.)

In the top "news" story category, searches for the World Cup beat Iraq, which was followed by the Washington DC sniper.

Las Ketchup, the Latino singing group that has become a global craze, is at no. 14 on the Top 20 gaining queries. The Google survey also provides a graph on the "global progression of Las Ketchup".

According to Google's "Top Women 2002" category, the most sought-after women are J.Lo, Britney Spears, Shakira, Bond girl Halle Berry and actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, in that order.

The corresponding "Top Men 2002" has singer Eminem, actor Brad Pitt, musicians Nelly and 2pac, and actor Vin Diesel.

The top five sought-after brands are Ferrari, Sony, Nokia, Disney and Ikea. Ryanair, a low fare UK-based airline, finds itself at no. 7.

India is at no. 4 on the list of top destinations, after Paris, Canada and New York, but before Las Vegas, Australia, Hawaii, Japan, Cuba and London.

The five most searched movies were Spider-man, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Jackass and Scooby Doo. The three top television shows were The Simpsons, Big Brother and Osbournes. Sopranos finds a place at no. 7.

The topmost video games were The Sims, Counter Strike and GTA 3.

David Beckham, Anna Kournikova, Ronaldo, Kobe Bryant and Zidane are the most-searched sportspersons.

The most wanted in the "Image search" category were, among women, Britney Spears, then Pamela Anderson, then J.Lo.

Another website, Lycos, also released its list of the top 100 most searched items.

According to the Lycos "Web's Most Wanted", Japanese animation sensation Dragonball is the no. 1 searched topic. "Yes, we know there are still plenty of people who have never heard of it, but Dragonball is immensely popular on the Internet thanks to Japanese animation buffs. It is followed by KaZaA, a file-swapping programme, another Internet sensation. Britney Spears is at no. 4.

Lycos also reports fewer searches on the items listed by Google. World Trade Center, at no. 30, is down by 40 per cent. Last year's top man, Osama bin Laden, is still at no. 60, but down by 72 per cent.

The Zeitgeist results, claims Google, are a mirror to what the world thought about this year. But if that is so, is there much we didn't know?

Story: © 2001 The Telegraph All rights reserved

Does anyone out there have a brain? Has to be #5?! How about #1?!

From Wire World - December 14, 2002

TOP WOMEN

The woman who's toppled Britney Spears from the top slot is the sexy Latino singer-actress Jennifer Lopez. Hardly surprising, since her high profile both on the big and small screen, wedding, separation and engagement to actor Ben Affleck has kept her in the news through the year.

Shakira, the sultry beauty who belted out Wherever Whenever, proved that shapely hips and a good voice can do wonders, as she weighed in at number three. In fact, she has had a consistent run on the search engine's popularity charts through the year, and stands second in the Top Gaining Queries.

Halle Berry is a new entry at number four. Jinx, the character she plays in the new Bond film, Die Another Day, has turned lucky for her. And don't forget the Oscar for Best Actress.

Actress Jennifer Love Hewitt takes fifth place, thanks to her popular music album, BareNaked.

Model Heidi Klum, who separated from her husband this year, runs Hewitt close at sixth. Pamela Anderson, despite her adventures with husband Tommy Lee and romance with Kid Rock, fell five places from 2001 to seventh.

Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the Vampire Slayer, Baywatch girl Carmen Electra, and tennis player Anna Kournikova bring up the rear.

Among the losers are Madonna, the woman at third position last year, who seems to have been 'swept away' from the category along with Kylie Minogue and Maria Carey.

Story: © 2002 Wired World. All Rights Reserved.