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With the passing of the Memorial Day holiday and the annointing of another "American Idol" champion, it's time to get down to the serious business of fall. I mean summer. I mean fall TV, in summer. Clearly put, "Wipeout" is back.
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As the entertainment editor at msnbc.com, it's my job to keep up on the latest celebrity news, from Heather Locklear's arrest to Britney's tour plans, possible move to New York, continuing court appearances ... well, you get the idea. And while gossip and celebrity news are not the only stories we produce for our section, it is among the most viewed content on the entire msnbc.com site.
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A year and a half ago, as the birth of my first and only son was bearing down on me, I kept hearing from know-it-all friends how much my life was about to change. "You'll never do that again," they'd say about any of the number of random activities I considered entertaining.
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The photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's twins, Knox and Vivienne, hit the newsstands on Monday in the latest issue of People magazine (the cover photo went live on the magazine's Web site Sunday afternoon and can be seen here). People paid a reported $15 million for the photos, which will be featured in a 19-page spread in the magazine.
The magazine's editors hope interest in the celebrity babies will be strong enough that folks will plunk down their diminishing discretionary dollars to buy the issue. Will you? Do you plan to buy the latest issue of the celebrity magazine? Or will you merely look at the photos while standing in the check-out line instead of buying a copy?
Rodney King famously asked during the 1992 Los Angeles riots: “Can we all get along?” Despite the fact that his iconic plea was made so close to Hollywood, and has since been mockingly uttered by every meathead within earshot of a disagreement, apparently the phrase is lost on the modern-day celebrity.
A few examples of recent, public celeb-on-celeb nastiness have me wondering what else these people need in life since fame and money apparently aren’t enough to satisfy their easily bruised egos.
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There are two groups of people in this world who take delight in watching people fall down. One group is probably teenage boys. The other is Japanese television audiences. I don't belong to either of these groups, but I might as well because when it comes to moving pictures of people, nothing's better than when those people leave their feet.
I've spent a good deal of time on the Internet (YouTube specifically) watching videos of people accidentally slipping and tripping. I've laughed at people falling off treadmills and others crashing hard on buttered floors. I also laugh pretty hard every time I come across "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge" on cable, which basically answers the question, "What would happen if that guy lost his balance while jumping over that moving thing 8 feet above that muddy water?" Sadistic? Perhaps. Hilarious? Indeed.
Tuesday night ABC brought "Wipeout" to American audiences and for an hour I laughed while 24 mostly talentless people humiliated themselves on national TV (kind of like "American Idol" only with a lot of slippery water hazards). For my money, the entire hour could have been filled with the obstacle where contestants jump from a stable platform onto a big, bouncy ball suspended above water -- Boing! Splash! Repeat.
Hosts John Henson (E!'s "Talk Soup") and John Anderson (ESPN's "Sportscenter") managed to come up with enough nicknames for those involved to keep my wife laughing. I like that there's no sappy backstory to the contestants. It's pretty much all action. We know their names, what they do for a living and what they look like before, during and after a nasty fall. What else is there?
I've been stumbling across a lot of fun videos on YouTube lately. So in a kind of cousin to Multi-link Monday, here's YouTube Tuesday -- five videos that you might enjoy. Note: All links go directly to the videos, so if you're at work, have your headphones on.
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