Ellen Leventry: January 2008 Archives

It seems that Kabbalah super-couple Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher may be distancing themselves from the religion, reports MSNBC.com.

Sources tell "The Scoop" that the May-December duo haven't attended services or Shabbat dinner at L.A.'s Kabbalah Center for months and "that Kutcher was just last week spotted shopping on Robertson Blvd. without his trademark red string." This being the same red string Kutcher decried the digital removal of from his wrist in "Guess Who," his remake of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" with Bernie Mac. (It seems test audiences “'were really annoyed' by the sight of the emblem of the trendy religious movement.")

If you haven't seen it yet, you soon will.

It's making the rounds around the Web faster than Tom Cruise's hyena-esque clip and it's far more disturbing.

A group calling themselves Anonymous is out to expose and "systematically dismantle" Scientology and is throwing down the gauntlet on YouTube after enlisting hackers the world over to shut down the Church's website several days ago.

"Over the years, we have been watching you," says a computer-generated voice over time-lapsed images of a building I can only assume is a Scientology-owned property. "Your campaigns of misinformation; your suppression of dissent; your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed."

If the word "destroyed" doesn't cause the little hairs on your arms to stand on end, then the next line out of synthesizer Sam's mouth--explaining the group's motives--should. "For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind, for our own enjoyment."

Now, I'm no fan of the Church of Scientology, but to destroy it for the sake of one's own enjoyment sounds truly pathological and just downright creepy. At first I thought maybe the video was some Scientologist trying to garner the controversial belief system some ACLU-like sympathy, but the sentiments expressed in the video are so vibrantly malignant that it's hard to believe this is an experiment in reverse-psychology.

A loose confederation of "Internet vigilantes," Anonymous has taken on others, notes Gawker.com. But it was the release of the aforementioned Cruise video on YouTube, followed by threatened legal action by the Church of Scientology, that spurred them into action. Apparently, it's dangerous to meddle with the tech geeks' turf.

Anonymous admits that they are employing some of the very methods it denounces in the Church of Scientolgy itself to battle Scientology, fighting fire with fire so to speak. But does one totalitarian turn really deserve another?

Anonymous promises that the infiltration and destruction will be gradual and protracted, so we can only wait and see what the next move will be. For now, perhaps gossipmeister Perez Hilton summed it up best when he said in a recent post, "This is some scary Matrix s**t!"

The Victorians, for all of their oppressive foibles, knew how to do death right. Sure, the intricate details and prescriptions of protracted mourning periods, sometimes of years, were surely a cause of much consternation, but the Victorians understood what we seemingly do not in this age of immediate access: That grief needs time and space.

Coming across pictures of Heath Ledger's ex-girlfriend Michelle Williams and his daughter Matilda trying to make their way back to the U.S. from Sweden with captions noting that she's "distraught," strike me as not only being unnecessary (obviously she would be distraught over such a loss), but cruel.

I've always been curious as to how "Happy Days" and "Charles in Charge" star Scott Baio managed to nab the hottest women in Hollywood. From Heather Locklear to Pamela Anderson, the perennial playboy never lacked for female companionship; but I could never figure out why. Baio doesn't have typical leading-man looks, hasn't had a hit show in years and stayed out of the headlines, so what was the attraction? I thought that watching last year's "Scott Baio is 45 and Single" -- wherein the Lothario is given an ultimatum by his girlfriend and hires a life coach to help him stop being a commitment-phobe -- would give me some insight into his ability to attract the opposite sex.

While I'm still scratching my head as to why women are attracted to him in the first place, I began to understand why he hadn't managed to snag any of them permanently: Scott Baio is a a giant walking id. He does and says exactly what he's thinking. Which is great for the bachelor life, but not always so good for relationships.

But, having come to the conclusion at the end of '45 and Single' that he did, indeed, wish to marry Renee, he's hit with an even bigger whammy -- Renee's pregnant! So now we find Baio in full freak-out mode. After 46 years of singledom, he finally decides he's ready to settle down and he's hit with an instant family.

'The truth will see you free," goes the famous saying, but apparently the 'truth' itself isn't free, requiring a commercial break every 90 seconds. At least that's what I felt like watching last night's premiere of the highly anticipated new FOX game "Moment of Truth." The premise of the show--to see if people would tell the truth about deep dark secrets on national television for prizes--is innovative and insipid at the same time; but, then again this is the FOX network we're talking about.

Contestants are asked 50 questions while hooked up to a polygraph machine. Later, while they are on the stage in front of a live studio audience, plus three family members or friends, they answer 21 questions chosen from the original 50. If they tell the truth, they work their way up the cash pyramid. They can stop any time and walk off with the money, but if they are caught lying, then they lose all the money they have banked so far. Family and friends can participate by hitting a button if a question has been asked that they absolutely don't want to hear the answer to.

The conceit is to see if there is an honest person left in America, but the cash incentives somehow taint that very idea; it's not really honesty for honesty's sake, but bribery. There's something very discomfiting about a wife cheering on husband to reveal his secret inner-live to America for cash prizes. I know that this is the age of Internet-induced too-much-information-overload, but does Caita think $25,000 will ease the pain of knowing that her husband has been delaying having children with her since deep down he's really not sure that they will be lifelong partners? Especially since he was caught in a lie and lost that $25,000.

To hear about Heath Ledger’s death yesterday evening was shocking, but to hear this morning that the Reverend Fred Phelps, keeper of the God Hates Fags website, announced that his anti-gay group would be picketing Ledger’s funeral because of his...

"Britney's Shocking Decision" tempts the cover of OK! Weekly's cover this week. Apparently, we dear readers are supposed to be stunned – absolutely stunned -- by the fact that Brit-Brit is trying to get pregnant again so that she can...

I can’t say that I watch the Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency with any regular frequency, but when flipping by Oxygen, I will sometimes stop and watch the “world’s first supermodel” frantically trying to run her nascent business. In this weekend’s...

What happens if someone made a reality show and it was too real to watch? That’s the thought that was running through my head last night while watching “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” on VH-1 last night. Yes, the network...

Several days ago, when I asked if Britney Spears would be "saved" by Oprah, I was being facetious. But, as it turns out, I was being prescient. Over the weekend, Spears' parents asked Oprah protégé, Dr. Phil McGraw to speak...

What Halliburton of the spirit will win the bidding for the reconstruction of Britney Spears? The pop star was taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital last night for an evaluation after a bizarre standoff in which she refused to turn over her...