CasaSugar

Buttoned & Plaid

tinacolada — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:29:54 -0700

Lauren Conrad in a buttoned plaid shirt by Elizabeth & James (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's line). I especially love how the shirt buttons up in the back so the shirt is more fitted. What do you think of LC's look?

My only concern is...how do you do up the back buttons yourself?

MyPetBirthdays - The Weekend Edition

mypetmug — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:11:15 -0800

1/30/10

Christian Bale is 36 today, nobody does Batman better – definitely our pet pic of the day! Also celebrating Phil Collins, 56; Dick Cheney, 69; Vanessa Redgrave, 73; and Gene Hackman, 80. Those born today share it with our 32nd President FDR.
1/31/10

Happy MPM Birthday wishes to Justin Timberlake who is only 28, he seems to have been around forever! He loves taking his dog wherever he goes, including walks with his then girl Jessica Biel. Minnie Driver, 38; Pitching great Nolan Ryan is 62. Many greats born today, including Carol Channing, Norman Mailer, Zane Grey and Jackie Robinson.
2/1/10

Lauren, 'The Hills', Conrad is 23 today, she and her dog Chloe get our pet pic of the day. You can find her everywhere with this cute pup and we like her especially for getting a rescue dog! Lisa Marie Presley is 41, she gets honorable mention for owning her dad’s plane – the Hound Dog II. Pauly Shore is also 41 today. Turning 44: Sherilyn Fenn, Brandon (son of Bruce) Lee, and Monaco’s Prince Stephanie. Singing greats Rick James & Don Everly celebrate today. Comedians Sherman Hemsley & Garrett Morris celebrate 71 & 72, respectively. The Great Clark Gable was born in 1901 on this date.

Who is the hottest hottie?

khulan — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:26:53 -0800

#1. David Conrad: He is the underdog but i think he is one of the hottest actors. (The Ghost Whisperer)
#2. Ethan Hawke: I know he is old now but i would still bang him if i could! excuse me. (Gathaca)
#3. James Mcavoy: He has a wife but why cant we still dream? (Atonement)
#4. Jonathan Rhys Meyers: the bad boy, or at least he plays one, but he looks quite nice. (The Tudors)

David Conrad

41%

Ethan Hawke

24%

James Mcavoy

24%

Jonathan Rhys Meyers

12%

Best "Walk The Line" Poster

scotlandrulz — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:05:35 -0700

1

2

3

4

5

"The HILLS":How Much Is Set-Up? Lauren "LC" Conrad's EW Q&A. A MUST READ!

miz_ayet — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:13:55 -0800

Since the debut of high school reality show Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County in 2004, most of Lauren Conrad's life has been documented by MTV. But this year, on Laguna spin-off The Hills (its third-season finale airs tonight at 10 p.m.), the 21-year-old and her gal pals became more famous than ever, keeping audiences captivated both on-screen and off: The show averages about 4 million viewers a week, and for proof of their off-screen popularity...well, just scan any celebrity weekly or gossip blog site.

So what makes Conrad's life oh-so-fascinating? We checked in with the California girl to ask her ourselves. Plus, she admits which silly rumor she'd like to put to rest once and for all, and what really went down the night of the infamous ''nail polish-gate.''

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Looking back now on your life since Laguna, did you ever think you would get the opportunities that you've had?

LAUREN CONRAD: None of us knew what we were getting into when we signed up for Laguna, so everything that's followed has been so crazy and unexpected. We were thrown into the spotlight very quickly [this year]. It was a lot more intense than before. We've had to deal with paparazzi following us, and when we go on dates, it's reported the next day. It's very weird.

EW: Did you have to adjust your life at all because of the constant attention? Like now maybe when you go out, you're not just going to wear sweatpants because someone might take your picture. Is there stuff like that you're more conscious of?

LC: I think it helps that [my friends and I] are all going through it together, so we can all relate. But yeah, you do have to take a second look in the mirror and do all those things. But with doing a reality show, it's become a habit to do that anyway because you roll out of bed in the morning, and you're making breakfast and there are cameras in your kitchen.

EW: Is it true you had to move apartments because so many people were coming by?

LC: Yeah. We filmed at an apartment building right next to it, but we filmed the exterior of another building because people found out where we lived and what apartment we had, and so in the middle of the night - whether they were drunk or just crazy - people would come and knock on our door. It was scary for us. So we switched apartments but continued filming in front of the other one so people wouldn't know where we lived.

EW: Does it ever annoy you how meticulous people have gotten when watching The Hills? Take, for example, what everyone is referring to as ''nail polish-gate'' - one scene showed you wearing red nail polish, but then in a scene that was presented as happening a little later that same night, the polish was gone. What happened there?

LC: The Hills is filmed exactly the same as Laguna. So when people started picking out these very little things, it was weird to me because anyone who has worked on a reality show knows how they're filmed. We're not filming The Truman Show, we don't have cameras set up all around our apartment, and they're not with us 24/7. Basically what they're doing is taking our lives and telling a story. For example, the night [of the nail-polish incident, while on a date with model Gavin], the cameras stopped rolling, and I went out to a club with [Gavin]. I went home and called someone [Brody], and the next day talked about it. [MTV] was like, Okay, well, we need to get that on tape, and since they're trying to tell a story the right way, I basically had to go and call [Brody] again, have the exact same conversation on camera. I mean, it's not lying to anyone, it's telling what really happened, but it's just the way they film reality shows.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: It must feel weird having to reenact those things, though.

LAUREN CONRAD: No, I think there are just certain things that have become normal. Like, even when we're not being filmed, if an airplane flies over me, I stop talking. If I'm about to tell someone a secret or sing, I take my finger and feel across the top of my shirt to see if I'm wearing a microphone. Or I'll do it to rub the top of the microphone, because that messes with the sound and they can't hear you when you do that.

EW: Would you say that when you see the show and how it's edited that it feels real to you? It really is your life being portrayed?

LC: Yeah, they're telling exactly what happened. We don't have writers on this show. We make our own decisions; we say what we want to say. That's who we are. People can sit back and say it's real, it's fake, but at the end of the day to me this is real because this is my life. Someone else having a lighting crew coming in to their apartment at 8 o'clock in the morning and set up booms and lights is very weird. But for me, that's real. That's how I live my life.

EW: When it comes to the Heidi situation, how much do you feel that's portrayed accurately? Do you ever think it's maybe overdramatized?

LC: I don't think so. I think that's very real. It's very hard to lose someone who's the closest person to you in your life. That's a very real situation. It was very hard for me to be betrayed by someone who I loved and considered my closest friend. It's especially hard when you're in our situation right now where it's very hard to trust people - then when you have the person you trust the most do something to you, it's very difficult because it makes you question every relationship you have.

EW: It's just funny because you guys end up showing up at the same places sometimes. Is that at all ever planned by MTV?

LC: Well, we don't know about it. There was one event we went to, which we were both going to, and MTV knew it, and we had seen her boss' name on the board of the event, so we kind of assumed she would be there. But there was one incident when we showed up to a restaurant not knowing the other was going to be there, and MTV had set that up. But they only set that up because it was happening off-camera - we were getting into these situations where we were running into [Heidi and Spencer] and [MTV] kept missing them. They just wanted to put us in that same situation and see how we reacted because they didn't have it on camera. [MTV had no comment about Conrad's statements.]

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What do you think it is that makes your life so fascinating to people?

LAUREN CONRAD: That's one of the biggest questions I ask people when they talk to me about the show, what the appeal is, because I don't know. I think people are just fascinated with other people's lives in general. I mean, that's why we watch any scripted show, or when we're in high school and we gossip about other people. People are just obsessed with other people's lives. I don't know whether it's kind of a way to escape their own, or something to follow...I really couldn't tell you.

EW: There must be something drawing so many viewers in each week.

LC: I think we're relatable. We really are very lucky, the lives we live - we get to live in L.A., it's very glamorous, we have great jobs, and we have a lot of fun - but at the same time, no matter how great our lives are, we're still going to deal with the same problems as anybody else.

EW: What is one of the biggest misconceptions about you?

LC: They're usually really silly things, not a big deal.

EW: But is there anything you hear or read about yourself and think, ''Hey! That's not me''?

LC: The only thing that ever really bothers me is that a lot of people think I'm that girl who hates your boyfriend. I'm really not that girl. Some of my friends' boyfriends are my best friends. We just happened to have a very similar situation happen two times in a row on the show [first with Heidi's boyfriend Spencer, then with Audrina's boyfriend Justin Bobby], and people were seeing a pattern. It really had nothing to do with me not wanting my friends to be happy or have boyfriends, but I had two friends in a row date guys who kind of sucked.

EW: Speaking of Audrina and Justin: What do you think about them being portrayed by James Franco and Mila Kunis on FunnyOrDie.com?

LC: I thought it was kind of cool that such big actors would go and imitate the show. I think they were just kind of making fun.

Article From: Entertainment Weekly by Lindsay Soll
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20165361,00.html

A list of Republican Celebs.

letsgetloud21 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:09:32 -0700

Trace Adkins John Elway Bernie Kosar Rick Schroeder
Danny Aiello R. Lee Ermey Yaphet Kotto Curt Schilling
Kim Alexis Gloria Estefan Steve Largent Rob Schneider
India Allen Sara Evans Cheryl Ladd Arnold Schwarzenegger
Neil Armstrong Chris Evert Larry the Cable Guy Jason Seahorn
Scott Baio Brett Favre Nick Lachey Tom Seaver
James A Baker III Bob Feller John "Bradshaw" Layfield Jon Secada
Stephen Baldwin Ric Flair Al Leiter Tom Selleck
Ernie Banks Glen Ford Heather Locklear Paul Shanklin
Carlos Beltran Dennis Franz Davis Love Jessica Simpson
Johnny Bench Crystal Gayle Susan Lucci Ricky Skaggs
Clint Black The Gatlin Brothers Loretta Lynn Jaclyn Smith
Craig Biggio Joe Gibbs Karl Malone Michael W. Smith
Pat Boone Mel Gibson Jackie Mason Chris Spielman
Bobby Bowden Frank Gifford Martina McBride Matt Strong
Bruce Boxleitner Tom Glavine Vince McMahon Rebecca St. James
Lara Flynn Boyle Amy Grant Dina Merrill Roger Staubach
Morgan Brittany Kelsey Grammar Shawn Michaels Ben Stein
Delta Burke Fred Grandy Dennis Miller Kerri Strug
Brooks and Dunn AC Green Zell Miller Lynn Swann
Dean Cain Lee Greenwood Gerald McRaney Joe Theismann
James Caviezel Dorothy Hamill Lorrie Morgan Aaron Tippin
Kirk Cameron Angie Harmon Meat Loaf Randy Travis
Emma Caulfield Elisabeth Hasselbeck Anthony Munoz Travis Tritt
Kenny Chesney Matt Hassellbeck Wayne Newton Janine Turner
Mark Chesnutt Patricia Heaton Jack Nicklaus Ronan Tynan
Tom Clancy Charlton Heston Greg Norman Bobby Valentine
Chris Collinsworth Dennis Hopper Chuck Norris Jon Voight
Robert Conrad Rachel Hunter Ted Nugent Sela Ward
Billy Ray Cyrus Kathy Ireland Tom Osbourne Heather Whitestone
Charlie Daniels The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) Marie Osmond Hank Williams, Jr.
Tony Danza Shirley Jones Joe Paterno Bruce Willis
Robert Davi Naomi Judd Richard Petty Lee Ann Womack
Bo Derek Jim Kelly Mike Piazza James Woods
Mike Ditka Jeff Kent Mary Lou Retton Darryl Worley
Shannon Doherty Kid Rock David Robinson Steve Young
Clyde Drexler Chaka Khan Nolan Ryan Zig Zigler
Adam Dunn Don King Pat Sajak Barry Zito
Robert Duvall Bobby Knight Pete Sampras
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Clint Eastwood

MASTER OF HIS OWN CELEBRITY: Brody Jenner & Spencer Pratt

c0rkie — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 15:57:16 -0700

for those who follow lifestyles of the Hollywood scene, the men on "The Hills", or just plain want something entertainment related to read, i found this article to be interesting. taken from details magazine.

MASTER OF HIS OWN CELEBRITY
Brody Jenner knows just who to screw to sit pretty on the B-list. Plus: A look at the Prince of Malibu’s tabloid-worthy ladies.
By David Amsden

spencer pratt and brody jenner

Brody Jenner knows the look. It hijacks the face of his best friend, Spencer Pratt, whenever Pratt is scheming to “build the brand of Brody.” First comes the manic twitch of the jaw, then there’s the feral lip snarl, and finally the frosty eyes that lock in on you, lit up with visions of red carpets, autograph seekers, and bulimic blondes lounging poolside. What comes out of Pratt’s mouth next is bound to be the kind of unhinged logic that he specializes in as Jenner’s “manager-slash-publicist-slash-agent-slash-stylist.”

Pratt: “Do you trust me?”

Jenner: “Of course I trust you.”

Pratt: “All right, then here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna start dating Nicole Richie. And you’re gonna get that skinny b*tch to eat, all right? You are about to become The Guy Who Got Nicole Richie to Eat. Process that sh*t, bro. You’ll be, like, a f*cking hero to America.”

nicole richie and brody jenner

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you’ve never heard of Brody Jenner. Here are the relevant facts: He is 23. He is handsome (sparkly brown eyes, wavy brown hair, an impressive jaw) and reasonably charming. Like many other kids raised in Malibu, he has massive amounts of family money: His “ex-stepfather,” David Foster, is a music producer who has worked with artists like Whitney Houston. Jenner was once on a reality-TV show-2005’s The Princes of Malibu-which you’ve also probably never heard of, because Fox canceled it after two episodes. His father, Bruce Jenner, was an Olympic decathlete who won a gold medal in 1976-something of a Lance Armstrong in his day, but not exactly a reference point for today’s 18-to-28 demographic. A few years ago, Jenner Jr. snuck into the Playboy Mansion by pretending to be Scott Caan, son of James Caan, figuring his own surname no longer carried any clout: “After they caught me, I tried to go the ‘son of Bruce Jenner’ route, but it didn’t work.” He says this with absolutely no embarrassment.

The plan to get Nicole Ritchie to eat was devised back in August. Five months later, Jenner and Pratt are telling me about it over a $900 dinner at Mr. Chow, in Beverly Hills. Such an idea is many things-perverse, postmodern, proof that apocalypse predictors shouting nonsense on street corners are onto something-but to Jenner and Pratt, it was a business plan.

Here’s how Pratt, also 23, and the son of a “celebrity dentist,” explains it: “What does it take to be famous nowadays? Nothing! Look at Nicole. She’s on the cover of every magazine every week. And why? Because she doesn’t eat. Well, lots of girls in this country don’t eat. That’s, like, my whole philosophy with Brody-make him part of that. Like at first, when he started showing up in Us Weekly, people were all, ‘Who the hell is that?’ Now they’re starting to be like, ‘Hey, do you know who that is?’”

I wish I could tell Pratt (and you) that he’s insane, but it says a lot about the current state of pop culture that he makes even an ounce of sense. After all, I’m here, having flown across the country to meet Brody Jenner. This wouldn’t have happened if Jenner hadn’t tried to get Nicole Richie to choke down a fry. And before Richie there was Kristin Cavallari (the moneyed blonde at the center of MTV’s Laguna Beach), and after Richie there was Lauren Conrad (the moneyed blonde now on MTV’s The Hills, a Laguna Beach spin-off). That these relationships are totally contrived is the point: Manufacturing fake realities is-read slowly here-the only real dimension of Jenner’s and Pratt’s lives.

The Conrad–Jenner union was forged five months ago, a week after Jenner and Richie “broke up.” You can watch the unraveling of Conrad and Jenner’s relationship in a multi-episode arc of The Hills, a show watched by 2.5 million people weekly. Pratt was the Karl Rovian mastermind behing these “branding efforts.” And he benefited too. “Basically, I made it, like, my mission to try to go on a date with every girl on The Hills,” says the guy who will proudly tell you he made $50,000 in high school by selling a photo he took of Mary-Kate Olsen drinking at a party. Pratt ended up “falling in love” with one of the Hills girls, Heidi Montag. Their drama dominates the current season.

brody jenner and lauren conradspencer pratt and heidi montag

In the future, Andy Warhol predicted, we’d all get our 15 minutes of fame; the reality is that we’ll all be sort of famous forever. Jenner is now regularly flown to cities like Vegas and Miami because promoters believe parties will be hotter if he shows up. A personal trainer comes to his $2.4 million condo in Hollywood every afternoon to give him and his friends rooftop boxing lessons. He and Pratt have a fleet of cars (including a Rolls-Royce Phantom and a Bentley Turbo) at their disposal, paid for by Jared Najjar, a member of their entourage they call the Godfather. “He’s the only 24-year-old kid I know who has a Black Card,” Jenner says. As a believer in the Brody Brand, the Godfather, heir to a commercial-real-estate fortune, is helping finance Jenner’s “lifestyle” line, Archangel, which consists of “pieces” like a $92,000 skull-and-diamond wallet chain. Jenner and Pratt also manage a rapper, Ya Boy, who is “blowing up on MySpace.” Neither of these endeavors is generating any real income, but they are turning Jenner and Pratt into obscenely TV-worthy entities-and this, Pratt hopes, will be the income generator. They recently sold a show about Jenner’s love life to MTV.

“Let’s see where Lindsay’s at, get her up in here,” Jenner says, reaching for his BlackBerry and texting Lindsay Lohan. He is seated at a back table in a lounge called Hyde, mixing himself drinks with a $500 bottle of Grey Goose paid for by the Godfather.

Lohan texts back: She’ll be joining us in 20 minutes. Meanwhile, Joe Francis, creator of the Girls Gone Wild franchise, comes by the table to say hello. The 33-year-old Francis is a Yoda-like figure to Jenner and Pratt-someone who got rich simply by persuading girls to flash their breasts. Francis, Pratt informs me, has an estate in Mexico with a device called the “anything button” in select rooms. “You press that and you get anything you want. Anything. How incredible is that?”

A few minutes later, in a particularly bizarre pseudo-celebrity collision, Kevin Connolly, who plays Adrian Grenier’s best friend and manager on the HBO hit Entourage, stops by Jenner’s table. “What’s up?” he says. He grabs the bottle of vodka, pours himself a glass, and meanders over to a platinum blonde about a foot taller than he is. “That guy is a joke,” Pratt says with scorn. “We were Entourage before Entourage.” He’s not joking. To Pratt, the notion that someone would become famous by acting is ridiculous. “Why would anyone act,” he asks, “when they can just play themselves?”

Well, there’s this: While Jenner & Co. will spend $1,000 on drinks over the course of the next two hours, Connolly is drinking for free.

When Lohan arrives a short while later, she is ushered to a table by her bodyguard. Jenner goes over to greet her (tomorrow he will show me a text message he says is from Lohan inviting him to, of all places, Joe Francis’ Mexican estate). When he returns to the table after their brief exchange, he’s in an introspective mood. “This whole scene, this whole town-it’s all so fake,” he says, pulling me aside. “It’s like a movie set, like my life is a movie set. These people, they all think this is real, but it’s not. I wanna meet a girl who has nothing to do with L.A., a nice, normal, real girl.” For a moment, he sounds almost genuine. Then he says, “Actually, you know, that’s gonna be a component of our new MTV show-me leaving L.A. to meet a normal girl. It might be hard, though, with all the cameras.”

The house where Jenner grew up has the distinct feel of an upscale rehab center: fake stucco walls, Spanish-tile roofing, electronic fireplaces set to timers. It is almost always empty. “My mom basically lives with her boyfriend,” Jenner tells me as he picks up a pug sleeping on the couch. “Is this not the cutest thing in the world? I gave her to Kristin [Cavallari], but she never took her home.”

Two minutes away is the family’s other house-a smaller but by no means small mansion Jenner wants to show me too. His older brother lives here with his girlfriend. “How cute is this cat?” Jenner says, pointing to one lounging on a chair. “It’s a Bengal cat-have you heard of these? They cost $1,200. I gave her to Nicole [Richie], but she ended up giving her back to me.”

Admiring the cat, I come to a depressing realization: Jenner’s fake relationships are, in his heart and mind, totally real.

Later, we take a drive with Pratt in Jenner’s Mercedes G55 (MSRP: $105,275) down the Pacific Coast Highway, passing Mel Gibson’s house and eventually David Geffen’s. Pratt spends 20 minutes talking about how he plans to make a tape of himself and Heidi Montag having sex, which he’s thinking about posting online. Plunging ahead to tap the next vein of almost-stardom, he tells me I should have been at Jenner’s the other night after Hyde, at five in the morning. “Guess who showed up,” he says. “Lindsay Lohan. I’m telling you, man, she’s obsessed with Brody. She wrote him a note that says how she could cuddle with him forever. Kissed it and signed her name and everything.” As Pratt speaks, I glance at Jenner, looking for a reaction, but he shows no sign of emotion.

“Hey,” Pratt asks me, “do you think Details would publish that note, like a copy of it?”

Maybe, I tell him, if he gives it to me.

“All right, but only if I can film myself giving it to you. Is that cool?”

http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_5346

Why Paris the Disgrace Is Losing her Inheritance

ILuvShortShorts — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:48:26 -0700

All this week, the confines of an unprepossessing building in North Hollywood have echoed to the sounds of what on first hearing might be taken for the muffled strains of some frightening act of domestic violence. In fact, this nondescript studio in a quiet suburban neighbourhood has been playing host to Paris Hilton as she prepares her latest assault on an unsuspecting public.

If the evidence of an impromptu performance at a karaoke night in a Los Angeles club on Tuesday night is anything to go by, however, the ambitious Miss Hilton might be well advised to book some more lessons. Displaying an unerring knack for mauling the classics, she warbled her way tunelessly through a series of hits including Bette Davis Eyes before launching into her own 'smash' - Stars Are Blind.

It's fair to assume on the basis of this display that any stars in the audience at the trendy Guy's nightclub might have wished themselves deaf, but such incidentals as talent have, of course, never put off the thrusting Paris.

This week the 26-year-old heiress - she of the ever- so- slightly bovine Barbie doll look - has been boasting about how she will earn £100 million this year from putting her famous name to everything from hair extensions to a stuffed version of her 'handbag dog' Tinkerbell.

"I'm developing my own hotels, casinos and clubs and getting into real estate. It's crazy at such a young age. I'm doing so much," she trilled.

They are claims that raise a quizzical eyebrow from those close to the blonde party girl. But, far from being ostracised in America over her DUI jailing last month, business is booming for the socialite.

After her well-publicised histrionics as she was driven to jail, it now appears that a spell behind bars could be the best career move she ever made.

U.S. sources confidently predict she will quadruple the £3.5 million the business bible Forbes estimates she earned last year. Which is just as well because her behaviour has so appalled her grandfather and head of the Hilton clan, Barron Hilton, that he has cut off her £25 million inheritance.

Hilton senior, the only member of the family left with a sizeable stake in the huge hotel chain, has let it be known that he intends to donate to charity the £1 billion he will gain from this month's sale of the company to private equity firm Blackstone.

The money will go to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the charity set up in the name of the founder of the family business. The 79-year-old patriarch is said to have told his high-living family that he is cutting Paris loose - and for good measure his other 11 grandchildren, too, none of whom will now benefit from the windfall. Instead, he is determined to carry on the family tradition for philanthropy.

"He was, and is, extremely embarrassed by how the Hilton name has been sullied by Paris," says Jerry Oppenheimer, the author of House Of Hilton, the biography of the clan. "He doesn't want to leave unearned wealth to his family."

And who could blame him for feeling embarrassed? His fame-hungry granddaughter is known for her nonstop round of partying, her propensity for shedding her clothes and her enthusiastic performance in a home sex video leaked on to the internet.

Then, of course, there was that 23 days she spent locked up in the Century Regional Detention Centre in Lynwood, California, in June after she was caught driving her Bentley on Sunset Boulevard on a suspended license following a drink-drive conviction.

Given her grandfather's disapproval - and the pressing need to support her extravagant lifestyle - Paris has been quick to cash in on her notoriety.

She has just signed up to film the sixth s The American firm has announced it will launch her fourth fragrance in October. In a clear reference to her time behind bars the new line will be called Can Can.

Then there is her £1million deal with amazon.com to market her own jewelery designs, featuring her trademarked letter 'P' encircled by a tiara. Insiders, however, say they are the work of designer Caroline Ballou.

On top of that, she receives upwards of £200,000 a year for her patented Paris Hilton watch, complete with tacky faux diamonds and yours for the special price of £35.50.

You can also be the proud owner of Paris Hilton sunglasses, rubber stamps and the new Bella Paris pet clothes range as modelled by her new Yorkshire terrier puppy Cinderella last week on the beach at Malibu, where Miss Hilton is renting a beach house for the summer.

"Paris is a very sharp cookie and fast becoming one of America's most successful businesswomen," one of her entourage told the Mail. But guiding the financial success is Kathy Hilton, her pushy mother who is feared and loathed by Hilton staff.

She is the 48-year-old former bit-part actress and part-time model who transferred her own failed hopes of fame on to her eldest child. She is said by those close to the family to be the brains behind the industry surrounding her daughter which she ruthlessly oversees from the family's mansion in Bel Air.

Last night a Hilton family source told the Mail: "Kathy is the one pulling the strings. Believe me, she is totally fearsome and utterly ambitious for her kids."

Kathy married husband Rick Hilton - who also stands to lose from his father's philanthropy, but will not be short of money because of his property portfolio - in 1979. She has even traded on her daughter's celebrity to star in her own reality show on U.S. network television called I Want To Be A Hilton.

In the tasteless NBC show, contestants vie for the chance to live like a member of the family for a year complete with a £135,000 trust fund.

Mrs Hilton, who once had walk-on parts in 1970s shows The Rockford Files and Happy Days, launched Paris on the road to stardom at the age of six when she entered herself and her daughter into a fashion show at the exclusive Beverly Hills Hotel. Both were plastered in makeup and the young Paris was dressed provocatively in a bikini.

Mrs Hilton, who gave her daughter the nickname Star, even moved the family to New York and a penthouse suite at the Waldorf Astoria, so Paris and younger sister Nicky, 23, could be introduced into Manhattan's society and party set. She is said to have similar plans for stardom for her two sons 17-year-old Barron Hilton II and 13-year-old Conrad Hilton III.

The go-getting Kathy helped Paris win a contract with Donald Trump's model agency when her daughter was 19.

But it was the release on the internet of those clips of Miss Hilton's sex games with her then boyfriend Rick Salomon four years ago that turned her from posh wannabe to darling of the tabloids.

The explicit footage just happened to materialize a week before Miss Hilton was due to launch her television career with the first series of The Simple Life, in which she and Nicole Richie - the equally pampered adopted daughter of Lionel Richie - have to rough it on a farm.

The suspicious timing of the publicity made the show a hit. Later Miss Hilton sued 39-year-old Salomon, a self-confessed professional gambler, when he began selling the video, now titled One Night In Paris, on DVD.

The couple came to an out-of-court settlement which allowed the home movie to stay on the shelves in return for her taking a cut of the reported £2 million it has earned.

Indeed, following her imprisonment, a new edition of the tape is about to be released complete with brand new 'collectable prison packaging'. Miss Hilton, the distributors say, gets a 'directorial credit'.

Safe to say that shame does not register too highly on the agenda of the celebrity-addicted blonde. Last week, at the same time as she launched her new swimwear collection, her bikini top just happened to slip down as she frolicked in the Malibu surf - all watched by hordes of ever-present paparazzi.

It is all somewhat at odds with her assertion when she was released from jail that she had found God and that her partying days were over.

Two weeks later she was back on the LA night scene at her favourite clubs Les Deux and Hyde, where she receives what she calls 'bottle privileges' - free drinks for herself and her army of hangerson.

But then she did admit on her release that she suffers from attention deficit disorder. Plus she can receive as much as £50,000 a time just to show up for half-an-hour at the latest trendy venue. She is said to have earned close to £675,000 just for waving to a crowd in Australia for 20 minutes.

However, her £600,000 deal to promote the Club Paris chain was scrapped earlier this year after she failed to turn up for a series of planned appearances.

She is surrounded on such trips by a coterie of obsequious hangers- on including best male friend Brandon Davis, himself the heir to a billion-dollar oil fortune.

Evenings generally begin at her gaudy £1.5 million house in West Hollywood where Paris will often treat her fawning friends to pole dancing on the specially installed stainless steel stripper pole she has in her party room.

Her own stylists and hairdressers travel with her to her chosen club and those in her entourage not laughing loud enough at her jokes are summarily dropped. Her friends get their own back, one admitted this week, by privately calling her The Hunchback because of her sloping shoulders.

Nonetheless, she has never been short of male attention. Last week she was seen canoodling on the beach with Tyler Atkins, a hard-up Australian surfer and wannabe fashion designer. By this week, however, she was said to have been seen kissing rocker Cisco Adler, the front man of American outfit Whitestarr. Other boyfriends have included Hollywood actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Edward Furlong and she has been linked in the past to British singer James Blunt. Two years ago she announced she was to marry Greek shipping heir Paris Latsis. That relationship lasted five months before she began dating another scion of a Greek shipping family, Stavros Niarchos III. They split up just over a year ago.

Meanwhile, she is concentrating on updating her best- selling autobiography Confessions Of An Heiress, plus her acting career, which will see her star in The Hottie And The Nottie, about a girl who refuses to marry her boyfriend until he finds a suitor for her ugly best friend.

She is set to star in her own cartoon on MTV and is said to be lining up fellow bad girl Lindsay Lohan to play her in a biopic. However, her most recent performances in two brainless comedies have gone straight to DVD. Even so, Bollywood film director T. Rajeevnath is said to be keen to cast her in the unlikely role of Mother Teresa. The mind boggles.

But her priority, say friends, is resuming her pop career which stalled last year following the release of a much-derided self-titled debut album (one critic described it as sounding "like a Sloane Ranger having an asthma attack").

This time she has left nothing to chance by hiring Madonna's voice coach Seth Riggs for her new album, which is due out in the autumn. If her caterwauling exploits this week are anything to go by, however, the deluded but determined Miss Hilton need not clear her diary for next year's Grammies just yet.

Democrats and their Preferential Mortgages

Cassandra57 — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:00:58 -0700

Obama got a special loan with Northern Trust in Illinois, a reduced rate with no fees. Their "modest" new home: "The couple wanted to step up from their $415,000 condo. They chose a house with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5 1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room. It had a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen."

The head of Obama's vp search committee, James A. Johnson, resigned suddenly when his favorable Countrywide loan was made public. Johnson is a former chief executive of Fannie Mae.

Countrywide also made "special" loans to Democrat senators
Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the banking committee, and Kent Conrad (D-N.D)

Leaked Countrywide e-mails reveal a pattern of preferential treatment for friends of chief executive Angelo Mozilo.

Also from the article:
"Since 1990, Northern Trust employees have donated more than $739,000 to federal campaigns, including $71,000 to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

"Obama's house purchase has been a source of controversy. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that on the day of the closing, the wife of Obama's longtime friend and fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko closed on an adjoining lot that had been the estate's side yard.

"The Obamas bought the house for $300,000 less than the asking price of $1.95 million, while Rezko's wife, Rita, bought the neighboring lot for the full asking price of $625,000. Rita Rezko later sold a portion of the undeveloped lot to the Obamas, enlarging the senator's yard."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/01/AR200807...