Any week that starts off with God getting into a serious car wreck–in a hardly worthy-of-a-deity 1997 Nissan, no less–is bound to be fraught with disaster. And indeed this was a particularly bad week to be a celebrity: Stars were plagued by illness, injury, and embarrassments on a public stage, while a rash of deaths culled the drowsy herd–and yet all America seemed to be able to talk about was weed. Way to focus, dudes. Pick it, pack it, and fire it up: This is a particularly potent strain of Friday Buzzkills.
– While Freeman already seems to be on the road to recovery–after dispensing folksy wisdom to the nurses about the true meaning of life, and entertaining his fellow patients by narrating the rich, detailed history of everything on his breakfast tray, he finally left the hospital yesterday–the accident responsible for breaking his arm and elbow apparently also broke something else: The veil of secrecy surrounding his marriage, which "a friend" confirmed to the tabloids is in far more critical condition, and that Freeman is indeed in the midst of divorcing his wife of 24 years. Naturally, this has only intensified those whispers about the nature of Freeman's relationship with the other passenger involved in the wreck, described only as a "female friend"–and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how one of the last scandal-free actors left in Hollywood found his way into the Access Hollywood abattoir. When Morgan Freeman becomes a tabloid target, all bets are off, folks. Tune in next week, when Tom Hanks is caught pouring boiling coffee on a 10-year-old child just for kicks.
– As if to drive home the point that God (the mythical one that even atheists invoke when they're looking to blame someone, not the guy from The Dark Knight) kinda sorta hates celebrities right now, several other high-profile names turned up on the sick list this week. Comedian Bernie Mac–fresh off of knocking them dead with a lesson in ho-related semantics at a Barack Obama fundraiser–has been hospitalized since August 1 with pneumonia, further complicated by an inflammatory lung disease he's had for years. Lucky for pundits eager to use him as evidence of the Obama campaign's lack of decorum, Mac is expected to make a full recovery–as is Christina Applegate, who this week announced that she was diagnosed with cancer in her exquisite breasts. Unfortunately, things seem much more dire for professional asshole Mr. Blackwell, the reliably bitchy fashion critic who publishes the annual "worst-dressed list" and whose pithy, poetic dismissals of celebrities in 10 words or less–not to omit his epic efforts in the forgotten field of abnormally abundant alliteration–are an in-house inspiration here at Friday Buzzkills. Currently, Blackwell is battling a deathly serious infection and, while he recently regained consciousness, he's yet to muster the strength necessary to snipe, a pain we know all too well. (And which probably explains why Katie Holmes feels safe trying to bring back pegged jeans.)
– If there's one silver lining to enduring a medical crisis, it's that you can use it to turn a tidy profit by selling it to creepily obsessive fans with far too much disposable income: Take, for example, Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine, who recovered from a career-threatening compressed radial nerve to reform his band, and is currently seeking a little extra scratch by auctioning off his old wrist splints. You may be asking, "Who in their right mind would want to own Dave Mustaine's musty old Ace bandages just because he scrawled his name on them? I mean, Jesus, aren't we in a recession? Couldn't he at least bottle some of the tears he cries every time he thinks about getting kicked out of Metallica? At least that would be a conversation piece." Wait–did we mention it comes with a "certificate of authenticity"? And that you should hurry if you want to top the current $300 high bid, placed by a guy who apparently looked at the state of the economy and said, "Fuck the warnings of the Federal Reserve–I'm-a get me some cast-off medical supplies"? Perhaps you need further convincing; allow Mustaine himself to peddle his garbage with a straight face in one of the saddest "celebrity memorabilia" sales since Corey Haim tried paying the rent with his wisdom tooth.
– Of course, if you really wanted to own a piece of medical waste tainted with the aura of desperate celebrity, may we present to you what will someday become the Holy Grail among smart-assed collectors: Verne Troyer's "reaching sticks," which the diminutive actor reportedly used to hit both ex-girlfriend Ranae Shrider and her dog during one of his many drunken rages. That's the word from Shrider, anyway, who fired back at last week's lawsuit alleging that she had thrown Troyer around like a rag doll without the common courtesy to provide a longwinded set-up full of dwarf puns with her own litany of embarrassing accusations. OK, so now that we've had a sex tape, the story of Troyer nearly drowning in a bubble bath, allegations of dog abuse, and now the introduction of the phrase "reaching sticks," this particular scandal has finally reached maximum humiliation, and we can all go back to not caring, right? It's over, right? Please say it's over.
– If you thought that celebrity feuds couldn't possibly get more any blown out of proportion or play any more fast and loose with the definition of "celebrity," you obviously missed out on the brouhaha surrounding a fight that recently erupted between Hairspray ingenue Nikki Blonsky and America's Next Top Model contestant Bianca Golden in a Caribbean airport. Apparently sparked by an argument over the saving of seats in an airport lounge–and not, as one would assume, over whose grasp on fame was more tenuous and fleeting–Blonsky and Golden got into an all-out, hair-pulling, face-punching brawl that resulted in both women being arrested, and Golden's mother being admitted to a hospital for neurological damage. Now that Blonsky's father is facing charges of grievous bodily harm, he's been denied bail until his trial begins on Aug. 19–denied because, as a foreigner, he is considered a flight risk. Seeking sympathy from the judge, Blonsky's attorney tried the classic "embarrass the fuck out of my client" appeal by pointing out that Blonsky is "not a wealthy man. He works in a sewage plant." And because no scandal is complete without a cringe-inducing video, TMZ was lucky enough to score this eyewitness account with bonus narration, so everyone can see the aftermath of the day that "Tracy Turnblad done decked the girl out." What an incredible age we live in!
– Ah, crappy cellphone video cameras. How did we ever get by without you? Before you came along, we had to rely solely on the achingly dull, analog words of Old Media reporters to, say, find about the ongoing trainwreck that is the Stone Temple Pilots' reunion tour–like the Arizona Republic's Jim Louvau, who was there to go on in boring, black-and-white detail that requires reading and stuff about Scott Weiland ("now officially the Amy Winehouse of rock 'n' roll") and how he mangled his group's show at the Dodge with forgotten lyrics, incoherent between-song patter, and otherwise erratic behavior. But fortunately for you, someone was there to capture the whole thing on video so you can see for yourself without shelling out for a ticket. Bear witness to Weiland's bizarre, mumbled non-sequiturs as he's drowned out by an impatient and clearly embarrassed Dean DeLeo! Wonder aloud to yourself, "Did he really just change the lyrics to 'Big Empty' from 'Conversations Kill' to 'Masturbation Kill'?" (He did!) And then thrill to the spectacle of Weiland stumbling drunkenly (smacked-ly?) into Eric Kretz's drum kit! Only twentysomething more dates left! What could possibly go wrong?