Idolator

Anticipation is building steadily for the release of Lynne Spears's Through The Storm: A Real Tale Of Fame And Family In A Tabloid World, a sort of My Life by Bill Clinton for the absentee parenting set. As luck would have it, the National Enquirer has secured an advanced copy of the three-time grandmother and world class permissivist's memoir, in which she weighs in with astonishing honesty about her powerlessness over her teenage daughter's extra-curricular activities:

Art-eschewing, mainstream-tentpole- project-maker Brett Ratner's love for the video game sensation known as the Guitar Hero knows no bounds. His obsession with the instrument sim and its groupie-nailing expansion packs stems back to his formative years at NYU film school, when he'd busk in Washington Square Park, playing as many Police songs as he could using the four notes he was capable of eliciting from a harmonica. The first time he picked up Hero, it gave him the same quaternary musical thrill ("Smoke on the Water," for example, became a four-color kaleidoscopic "red red blue/green green blue blue/red red green/ yelllooowww"), and he since has gone about incorporating the game into many of his smaller projects—everything from Miley Cyrus videos to Mariah Carey videos. But an actual Guitar Hero movie? He'd love a crack, he told MTV Multiplayer:

Heya! It's me, Joshua David Stein. I'm back briefly to talk about Bravo's study in sartorial mediocrity dubbed "Project Runway." We're now deep in the heart of Season 5. Some of the people—term loosely used—on last night's episode were familiar faces. Other faces we saw were strange and stranger. Laura Bennett was a familiar one. The once-pregnant redhead from last season (the season with Hung and Marcel and Capricorn) was a guest judge. It was nice to see her Paltrowian mug. Then there was this thing called a RaytchillZoh (sp?) who was also a guest judge. Earlier in the episode we met a funny-talking cargeigh named Christopher Webb. Where was he from? HE WAS FROM SATURN! And by Saturn of course we mean Torbay, an east-facing bay and natural harbour, at the western most end of Lyme Bay in the south-west of England. But more than a cavalcade of stars and seams, the show was about one thing, a thing with four doors and an EPA estimate of 32 MPG Highway: SATURN.

Welcome to August, where besides you and that weird dude in the mailroom who collects signed photos of the Howard Stern Wack Pack, the office is eerily devoid of life. Comfort yourselves with some box office numbers:

Los Angeles mail order catalog Pack Central may have found the last untapped pocket of consumers willing to pay retail for their music on physical formats—the cellblocks of our great nation's prisons. And not just any format—turns out, music on cassette is the only way to get tunes that isn't screened out as a potential deadly weapon. Wait, they still sell new music on cassettes?

A front-line act with a months-old album decides to push his most obvious hit-bound song to radio—a song heavily reliant on a prominent sample of a deathless pop hit. But, bucking the day's prevalent trend, he decides not to release the song on the most popular singles medium, forcing most customers to buy his album.

It's a risky move, because the Billboard Hot 100 is dominated by songs that scale the chart by amassing sales as well as airplay. But the song is so mindlessly catchy, the act's people figure it'll be a big chart hit anyway with radio alone.

I could be talking about M.C. Hammer's 1990 smash "U Can't Touch This," the "Superfreak"-sampling hit that made the Top 10, even as Capitol refused to issue it as a cassingle.

But I could also be talking about Kid Rock's "All Summer Long," a mashup of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" and Lynyrd Skynrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" that debuts on the Hot 100 this week at No. 80 despite his lack of interest in releasing it digitally.

Can the erstwhile Robert Richie pull off in 2008 what one Stanley Kirk Burrell pulled 18 years ago?

Mariah Carey has gotten us through tough times with her song "We Belong Together." That's why it's so unfortunate to see her unwittingly star in the worst Photoshop job we've seen in a long time. "Her New Body," exclaims the Elle cover line. It certainly is! It's not even hers. Sure, she slimmed down—but not that much, as you'll see from our photo gallery. Also: her head has been re-attached to her body crookedly, making her resemble a Bobblehead. Come on, Elle: it's like you're not even trying. The many Photoshop horrorshows trotted out before the magazine-buying public is astounding for two reasons.

Blake Lively's people are throwing a hissy fit over the Gossip Girl star's cover shot on this month's Seventeen. And before assuming this is just another case of some publicist overreacting and getting their La Perlas in a twist over nothing, one quick look at the cover in question actually makes us side with the flack this time. Lively's gone out of her way recently to make sure no one confuses her with Paris Hilton, but her puffy eyes, hollow cheekbones and vampire chompers on the Seventeen cover aren't helping her case. Which begs the question: why is it so hard for a magazine to shoot a decent celebrity cover? Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Sarah Jessica Parker are all recent victims of the same unflattering cover treatments, and all kinds of oddly unglamorous shots have hit newsstands for years.

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week's Billboard charts:

If you're trying to guess what might end up as Billboard's top song of 2008, you might take a gander at this week's Hot 100, where a prime contender is still sitting in the top three after peaking months ago.

That would be Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love," the neo-diva ballad that's outlasted anything her role model Mariah Carey has released so far this year. According to Nielsen SoundScan, which released its (mostly dismal) midyear report this week, Lewis' smash is the top-selling single for the six-month period beginning Dec. 31 and ending June 29.

That doesn't necessarily make the Lewis track a lock for the year's top prize, due to some technicalities which I'll discuss momentarily. But there is one thing that makes "Bleeding Love" emblematic of 2008: it's an undeniable smash single which has proven tough for the artist to follow up.

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week's Billboard charts:

In the last two years, we've seen several impressive feats on Billboard's Hot 100 by Disney Channel-groomed pop acts, and this week, we see another.

Four songs from the Jonas Brothers vehicle Camp Rock, which premiered on the channel last week, debut within the Top 40. And separately, Miley Cyrus previews her first album unattached from the Hannah Montana brand—and quickly scores her second-ever Top 10 hit.

Dig below these impressive numbers, and it becomes apparent that this is not necessarily another short-lived High School Musical-style chart blip. One week into summer, teenpop may be launching one of its once-a-decade all-out assaults on the pop charts—the kind of siege that will make even you, person over 18, forcibly aware of these songs faster than you can say "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)."

Shouldn’t single actresses know by now that giant diamonds worn on a particular finger shouldn't be flaunted in public? Cameron Diaz was photographed sporting an ostentatious sparkler yesterday in Santa Monica, suspiciously displaying the gory piece on her engagement ring-reserved finger in a very blatant manner. But considering she’s just barely started dating former cokehead/Jennifer Aniston ex Paul Sculfor, and has been linked to half a dozen other canoodling partners in the past few months, we’re not jumping on the “Diaz Engaged!” bandwagon quite yet. The notoriously anti-paparazzi actress might have just wanted to fuck with her camera-flashing enemies. Still, whenever a star makes the decision to debut a big ol’ gem there, it’s proven tough to gage those inevitable engagement rumors’ validity. We looked back at celebrity diamond-spotting of the past, from the most firm denials that led to splashy weddings, to the sure things that turned out to be false alarms, after the jump.