CREAM OF THE FLOP
Our columnist rounds up the scandal-ridden stars who had a bad 2009
By Sylvia Toh Paik Choo
December 29, 2009
WHO has not had a bad day? Ask Amy and Britney and Heather and Paris and Mel and Tom and Robert Downey Jr.
Who have all heaved a huge sigh of relief this year that they didn’t hit the headlines by going off the rails.
When you and I flip our lids, who cares, but when celebrities freak out, it’s a meltdown, a train wreck, it makes for international news.
It’s power and fame propelling acts of ego and idiocy, the grand delusion that celebrity status guarantees immunity, from the law, your peers, sponsors, judgemental fans.
(Or, like us, stars too can lose their cool, only in hotter fashion.)
Oops, Amy Winehouse did chalk up yet another assault charge in 2009, creating a public order offence just last week at some Christmas show.
But not anything close to what fellow singer Adam Lambert put on show.
It was at the American Music Awards, the biggie showcase for the American Idol No 2 to strut his stuff, and show the world why he’s No 2.
The openly gay Lambert, in his stage performance, kissed a male keyboardist, had a dancer’s head grind against his pelvis, then grabbed the crotch of another.
Look here Adam, when we are pleased with the work produced by our team, we buy them a drink after, we don’t tongue them in full public view.
What will your grandparents think of that exhibition? In their days they licked envelopes, try explaining what pushing the envelope means to the ole folks.
How to redeem yourself? Join Dancing With The Stars, with Donny Osmond as partner.
Staying in the music world, Chris Brown and Kanye West put a new spin on Men Behaving Badly.
The once main squeeze of Rihanna, Brown, in their car en route to the Grammys ceremony, used Rihanna’s face as a punching bag.
She didn’t even have that famous umbrella to protect herself from the brown beast. Maybe she wanted to split from him and he split her lip instead.
Man, that’s it. Hit a girl and you’re toast, burnt toast at that, watch the lights punched out of your career.
And we all thought Kanye West cool. His stage outburst at the MTV awards ain’t the first time he blew it. Coupla years ago, also at an MTV gig, he yelled ‘Give a black man a chance!’
Rude, childish, racist
But prancing on stage to interrupt Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech this year, and then adding that Beyonce should have won, brother, that’s like rude, childish, racist behaviour. The Chinese have a word for it, and it sounds like your name!
Should West be given another chance? We’re big enough to do that, take it from us and keep kool Kanye. Skip 2010′s MTV awards.
Batman has issues, if you know your comic books, but Christian Bale’s uncontrollable rant at some wayward crew member on the set of Terminator Salvation was unforgivable.
Some DOP (director of photography) walked through his take and the rubber suit must have melded into Bale’s brain as he screamed about kickin’ ass.
The man must have quaked and thought his job terminated.
To his credit, Bale did apologise, sorry for his less than savoury tantrum.
We, too, can be Christian about it…
In the case of the less-than-saintly Jude, Mr Law takes his family name to the letter and into his own hands.
We last read he’d clobbered some paparazzi, after a night out with Leonardo DiCaprio in London’s Mayfair.
Shame on you, Jude-rhymes-with-crude, that’s no way to treat a lady (oh dear, that reputation again). Oh yeah, the pap was a female photographer.
Hey, you big girl’s blouse, you, off to finishing school with you then eh wot?
The most watched lady on YouTube did indeed have a meltdown.
Susan Boyle, she who’s got talent in spades and then some, simply broke down in sheer exhaustion after the instant fame, the ensuing fanfare, the fuss over her looks, but the dear girl’s shown them all hasn’t she, with her record-selling first record.
SuBo gives ample hope to everyone who’s ever thought, I can’t go out looking like that. Moral: You don’t have to look a million bucks to make a million bucks.
Speaking of millions, that’s what it’s gonna cost the No 1 of No 1 golfers, Tiger Woods, when he hits 18 holes in the ongoing revelations of Tiger’s girrrls.
Dare we offer wise counsel, late as it is, watch where you swing those balls, Mr Woods. Just don’t blame dad, okay.
Pay them all off, including the missus, and get back to the game, you are going to be needing the money.
Fate of Jon & Kate
More than anyone in ‘reality showbiz’, TV’s cure-for-insomnia couple Jon & Kate are going to need money, any money, from any asinine show they can get their grubby hands on, starring separately of course. Spare us, please.
Is there a more boring couple – Levi Johnston doesn’t count as a couple even if he’s showing off in Playgirl – in lalaland?
And now they’ve played out their break-up, publicly, ad nauseam, can someone take one of the eight kids’ socks and shove it so they can shut up?
To wrap up this year of transgressions, surely the prize goes to Roman Polanski.
The famed and respected director diddled some underage girl all those decades ago and what does he receive, in 2009, for his transgression?
Free indefinite stay in a Swiss ski chalet in the expensive resort of Gstaad!
The NewPaper