By MARY-LIZ SHAW
mshaw@journalsentinel.com
Posted: April 17, 2008
We've got a great-looking man admitting he does Botox (just for touch-ups, mind you) and a presidential hopeful blaming the intern (as usual).
What else? A woman standing behind her man - way behind. And yet another supermodel waiting in vain for her luggage.
We also have this nobody who's now a somebody because he's trashing Scientology to anyone who'll listen. In our gossip-saturated universe, that means everyone with a pulse, plusTom Cruise.
Celeb-lite hits big
Apparent celebrity Jason Beghe - we'd never heard of him, either - had the gossips in a tizzy this week with his loud and long criticism of his former religion, the Church of Scientology.
A short video of Beghe in full rant went up on YouTube.
Then New York's Village Voice posted a lengthy interview with Beghe, who has acted in the TV series "Everwood," "JAG" and "NUMB3RS."
Beghe called Scientology "just a gossip factory."
Gosh, he makes that sound like it's a bad thing.
Beghe told the Voice that Will Smith was secretly recorded at Scientology offices during initial interviews in a period when the actor was toying with the idea of joining the church.
"And tell him to look them in the eye and see if he believes it when they deny it," Beghe says.
And Cruise?
"He was out for like 10 years," Beghe says, adding the church's leader, David Miscavige, made it a point to bring Cruise back into the Scien-celebrity fold.
Botox for boys
John Barrowman, one of the stars of BBC's coolest sci-fi drama, "Torchwood," says he thinks it's fine for men to get a touch of Botox now and then.
Botox injections, though still popular in Hollywood, have been criticized for rendering actors virtually expressionless, as the process fills wrinkles by temporarily freezing facial muscles.
"I have Botox," Barrowman is quoted in World Entertainment News Network. "The key is not to do the forehead. Men need forehead lines, and doing the forehead makes you look like Nicole Kidman."
In back of the rock
When Denver Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony was arrested on a DUI charge on Monday, it was his fiancée, LaLa Vazquez, who caught the bad bounce.
Gossips accused the former MTV veejay of refusing to pick up Anthony from the police station.
That prompted the lovebirds to fire back via People.com, which claimed a worldwide "exclusive" to this vital-to-world-affairs story.
"I want to make sure the public understands that I fully support my fiancé," Vazquez says. "I will always have his back and never refused to pick him up from the police station."
As for Anthony, he supported her support: "LaLa continues to be a rock in my life . . . "
And the Nugget and the rock lived happily ever after in a quarry outside Denver.
Recipe-gate
Maybe Cindy McCain, the beer heiress with the million-dollar manicure, really can cook. Maybe John McCain and all the various McCain-ettes really do hanker for ahi tuna with napa cabbage salad when they're in the mood for a down-home "McCain Family Recipe."
We don't know for sure.
What we do know is that until David Weiner of The Huffington Post pointed it out, the McCain campaign was trying to fob off seven recipes from the Food Network site as tried-and-true Cindy McCain favorites, subtitled with the cozy "McCain Family Recipe" label, on the McCain page.
At least one of the recipes belongs to Rachael Ray, who, last we checked, is not running for president. She is, however, doing everything else, including lobbying Congress to amend the Constitution to allow for the freedom to whisk.
A lot of wags made a big deal about how the McCain-ers dealt with the posting "error." They followed standard operating procedure for campaign gaffes and blamed it on a low-level intern. She was flogged, forced to write "I will not embarrass the McCains more than necessary" 100 times, then flogged once more. Again - all SOP. Written in the bylaws.
The real joke is that the intern went to the Food Network for her culinary plagiarism.
Everyone knows the best place to crib recipes is Epicurious.com.
Take this Terminal, please
If it weren't also happening to thousands of others, we'd be tempted to call it a conspiracy to befuddle the world's supermodels. Then again, one doesn't really need a conspiracy to do that. Just a sheet of long division, maybe.
Anyway, Kate Moss lost her luggage at Heathrow's Terminal 5 this week. That's the same Terminal 5, you'll remember, where Naomi Campbell had one of her toxic meltdowns after she lost her luggage there last week.
Moss has not responded to a $20,000 settlement offer from the airline. The lost baggage contained samples of her own fashion designs, which she was bringing to buyers in New York.
Based on reports in the Village Voice, Defamer.com, TMZ.com, the Huffington Post and World Entertainment News Network.