Betty White gets top billing, both because she is awesome and because I know she’d appreciate me putting her picture immediately under the heading “The SAG Awards.”

Betty received the lifetime achievement award at the  such-n-such annual Screen Actor’s Guild Awards (do you really care what number it is?) which are being held as we speak. Well, as I type.

And Betty was also the most badass bitch on the red carpet.

Diane Kruger and Helen Mirren both looked lovely and classy as well, while Jeff Bridges cleaned up nice in a sharp tuxedo.  Everyone really classed it up tonight. The worst dressed person was probably Drew Barrymore, and she didn’t really look bad, just disheveled, as she is wont to do.

“I want to just go down there and get some of those babies. If you got a hook up, please get me a couple of Haitian kids. It’s time. I’m ready. I got two arms, I can handle at least two. I can take a third in a backpack, and one in the front, we could just wrap it in some swaddling cloth… give me four.”

–Queen Latifah, discussing her plans to adopt Haitian children.

Last night, George Clooney cobbled together a phone bank whose average adjusted gross income was higher than Haiti’s combined gross national product in all of the 90′s. The celebrity-manned phone lines and musical performances by Madonna, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Chris Martin, Bono, Jay-Z, Rihanna and more,  pulled in over $16 Million dollars.

Did any of you dial-a-celeb and phone in a donation? If you missed your chance, you can still contribute by preordering  any of the songs performed last night  on iTunes.

I applaud the stars’ desire to contribute to a good cause, but groaned when Beyonce inserted “Haiti” into her song “Halo.” I can’t stand it when artists insert words from current events willy-nilly into already established hit songs for the purposes of “tribute”. Bastardizing one of your already established hit singles just seems like such a lazy way out. I cringed when Elton John did it with “Candle in the Wind”, and Beyonce sure as shit ain’t no Elton John.

More telethon clips featuring Robert Pattinson and his facial hair, Madonna, JT, Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift, and Xtina after the jump.

Editor’s Note: As of this morning, the news services have upgraded the amount of money raised by the telethon to an estimated $57 Million!!

(more…)

Katy Perry and her producer discussed some biznass last night on Twitter.

This post is for my sister.

I have never, ever been the “soap opera” type. I find the ridiculously formulaic story arcs (spiced up every now and then with a dash of current affairs or the occasional demon possession) to be extremely frustrating.

But thanks to my sister’s iron-fisted control during the afternoon hours of the lone television in our house when we were kids, I know all about All My Children; at least, the All My Children of 1990-1998. (If anyone who acted on Days of Our Lives ever passes away on one of my weekends, that post will be for my mother.)

Actor James Mitchell, who played Palmer on All My Children for three decades, passed away yesterday due to a lung disease complicated by pneumonia. He was 89.

I only knew him as Palmer, but it turns out that he was a very talented dancer. Before heading to Pine Valley in 1979, Mitchell starred in Broadway musicals and performed with the American Ballet Theater.

He recently appeared on All My Children on January 5th for the show’s 40th anniversary, but in recent years he’s spent time teaching theater students and actors at Yale and Drake Universities.

Though I was forced to watch All My Children– and protested every second of it with as much sass and as many sarcastic comments as I could muster– nostalgia is a powerful and dangerous force that makes you misty-eyed for things that you didn’t particularly like and wouldn’t want to live through again. Thanks to it (and my sister) I can honestly say that I’m  saddened by the loss of an actor whom I hand’t watched in over 10 years. He was a part of my childhood– however unwillingly– and I will miss him.

Andy Dick was arrested in West Virginia early this morning on two felony counts of sexual abuse. Dick had performed at a comedy club called The Funny Bone and then headed out to several bars afterwards.

Dick got arrested in 2008 and is still on probation for sexual assault. I’m not sure how “assault” and “abuse” differ in this situation. The only thing I’m sure of is that everytime I say “Dick,” instead of a skinny, annoying “comedian,” I’m picturing a giant phallus. Especially in the context of this next sentence:

When asked why he was being hauled away by the cops, Dick responded, “People grabbin’ on me.”