Congratulations to gossip blogger Perez Hilton, whom Forbes has named as the biggest star on the web for the third year running.
Perez, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, beat luminaries such as the Twitter founders, causing some unfamiliar with his work to query whether he deserves the top spot. Perhaps he does. Just as some are joking that, as an aggressive, foul-mouthed cheat, John Terry is the perfect embodiment of English
values, so it is tempting to think of Perez as the man for whom the Internet was made.
The Web has come into its own as a means of gambling, disseminating porn, and seeing whether Paris Hilton was wearing knickers last night; and though its founding fathers couldn’t have predicted their baby would turn out like this, it’s amazing how even an unpromising child can blossom. Britney Spears was the most searched name on the Internet for the fourth year running in 2009, and if you like your up-skirt shots of her augmented with the words “unfit mother,” Perez was the place to go.
For those unfamiliar with his shtick, that’s about the size of it, and in its early years this would have been characterized as its charm. Even Spears used to wear T-shirts advertising the site. It had the flavor of a cheeky outsider pressing his nose against the window of a Hollywood party that was taking itself rather too seriously, panting a while, then writing rude words in the condensation its breath left behind.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact point at which Perez passed through that window, but passed through it he most certainly has. He appears in music videos and on celebrity reality shows. He co-hosted the MTV Europe music awards, and has been touting himself as a candidate to fill Simon Cowell’s soon-to-be vacated chair on American Idol.
In joining the throng of those he mocks, Perez Hilton has completed the transformation from blogger to satirical character. That he presents TV gigs in the manner of someone who has just won a competition to do so must be part of his appeal. The Internet’s biggest star is a man who would trample over his grandmother to get inside the tent he was pissing into minutes before.
Meanwhile, former 1970s teen idol Leif Garrett has been charged with felony possession of heroin after his arrest in a Los Angeles subway station.
The 48-year-old singer and actor was charged on Friday and is free on bond. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Feb. 24.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore says deputies confronted Garrett at the downtown Metro Red Line station on Monday. They say he admitted having black tar heroin in his shoe.
Garrett was also arrested for heroin possession at an LA subway station
in 2006.
A phone message left for publicist Barbara Papageorge was not immediately returned, and it was not clear if Garrett had an attorney.
Garrett had a handful of hit songs and was a constant cover boy on teen magazines in the 1970s.
In Hong Kong, police said on Friday they had released a feng shui master suspected of forgery in his failed claim on the estate of late billionaire Nina Wang (龔如心), once Asia’s richest woman.
Tony Chan (陳振聰), 50, Wang’s former lover and spiritual adviser, spent more than a day in custody before his release early Friday on bail of US$640,000, a police spokesman said.
Chan, who has not been charged, must report back to the police in the middle of next month while the investigation continues, the spokesman added.
“A man surnamed Chan, aged 50, was arrested for forgery and was allowed to get police bail of five million Hong Kong dollars today,” the spokesman said.
On Tuesday, a Hong Kong court rejected Chan’s bid to inherit Wang’s estimated US$13 billion property empire, ruling he had forged the eccentric tycoon’s signature on a
2006 will.
Police arrested Chan on Wednesday evening following a search of his luxury home in Hong Kong’s upmarket Peak district.
The sensational case gripped the former British colony and generated blanket media coverage, with Chan often cast as a charlatan who duped the pigtailed billionaire by promising to find her kidnapped husband and cure her cancer.
Famous for her outlandish dress and thrifty nature, Wang died in 2007 at the age of 69.
Wang’s husband Teddy, whose body has never been found, was abducted in 1990 and declared legally dead in 1999.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist