TELEVISION: Former Growing Pains star Andrew Koenig’s Body Found in Vancouver Park

February 26th, 2010 | By Rick From Chicago

Actor Andrew Koenig — best known for his role as Kirk Cameron’s pal Boner on the ’80s sitcom Growing Pains — was found dead Thursday in Vancouver, B.C.

At a press conference attended by Koenig’s family Thursday evening, police said the actor’s body was discovered “in a densely wood area … unseen from the path” by “family and friends who initiated their own private search.” (His father, Star Trek actor Walter Koenig, was among the people who joined in on the search.)

Foul play is not suspected.

“My son took his own life,” his father Walter told reporters, adding that his son had been battling depression.

“Don’t ignore it; don’t rationalize it,” he said in regards to depression. “Extend a hand.”

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The 41-year-old actor had been missing since Feb. 16.

After visiting pals in Vancouver, he never boarded his flight back to Los Angeles. (Prior to his trip, he reportedly had moved out of his Venice, Calif., apartment of nine years and sold a number of his belongings.)

His parents phoned police after receiving a disturbing letter from their son.

In an interview with UsMagazine.com earlier this week, his father Walter refused to discuss details on the note. But he revealed that his son was not taking medication for depression.

Asked how his son was coping with depression, Walter told Us, “That is what we are trying to find out … In his point of view, things were not going well.”

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Burlesque artist Jenny Magenta — the last person to see Koenig alive — told Us he “looked healthy” when he arrived in Vancouver Feb. 11 to visit her. “We were talking about old times and friends.” But she told Us he soon began acting “out of character,” insisting on paying her for allowing him to stay at her apartment.

“Think about it — a friend who you’ve known for years comes to visit you and they’re wanting to pay you rent?” she told Us. “That’s just weird.”

When she woke up Feb. 14, Magenta tells Us Koenig was missing.

“No parent should have to deal with anytime like this,” Koenig’s father Walter told Us in an interview earlier this week.

He described his son as “a good human being who has “an awful lot left to contribute in this world.”

[Credit: Us Magazine]

GOSSIP: Lindsay Lohan Comes Clean About Cocaine Use

February 22nd, 2010 | By Rick From Chicago

Lindsay Lohan is coming clean about her past cocaine use, claiming her estranged father Michael, a former drug addict, first got her curious about the drug.

“I was only aware of cocaine because of my dad,” she tells Britain’s The Sun in a new interview. “I was terrified of it. But I tried it because I was stubborn, stupid, and wanted to see what it was like.”

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Police found Lohan, 23, to be in possession of cocaine in two separate DUI incidents in 2007. She went to rehab three times.

“It’s not something I ever want to do again,” she says of the drug. “It made me feel like s***. It became uninteresting to me. I’m hyper anyway and I have that kind of personality so I don’t need something like that.”

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In 2007, after her father began speaking negatively about her in the press, Lohan says she hit “rock bottom” and began abusing “alcohol, cocaine and mind-altering substances” to “mask” her problems.

She still cringes when looking back on one night when she took the sleeping aid Ambien and climbed into a bathtub.

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“I’d run a bath and fallen asleep on the floor and the bath had overflowed,” she recalls. “When I woke up, I was so scared. I called my therapist and said, ‘Can I just go somewhere for a month?’” she says. “‘I’m around bad people and I need to take care of myself.’ I was terrified, so I put myself in.”

Adds the actress, “There was a point when I didn’t know how to say ‘No’ and I was trying to please everyone. “I was doing pop and making films. I was young and thought I could go out, have fun, then go on set and record. I ran myself down and I lost track of who I was.”

These days, she says she’s “in a place where I don’t need to use anything and I can feel emotions because I choose to.”

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Though she says she is still allowed to “drink … I know my limits. There are certain situations where I have obligations. There’s no reason to (drink) because I don’t want to feel like s*** in the morning.”

Says Lohan, “I’ve made some dreadful mistakes but learned from them – that has probably saved my life.”

[Credit: Us Magazine]

GOSSIP: John Mayer Slammed for “Racist” Remarks in Playboy

February 10th, 2010 | By Rick From Chicago

Nevermind his crass remarks on Jessica Simpson.

John Mayer is coming under fire for comments he makes about African American women in his controversial March Playboy interview.

Asked “Do black women throw themselves at you?” Mayer, 32, replies:

“I don’t think I open myself to it. My d*ck is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fu*kin’ David Duke c*ck. I’m going to start dating separately from my d*ck. …I always thought Holly Robinson Peete was gorgeous. Every white dude loved Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Kerry Washington. She’s super hot and she’s also white-girl crazy. Kerry Washington would break your heart like a white girl. Just all of a sudden she’d be like, ‘Yeah, I sucked his d*ck. Whatever.’”

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A rep for Washington, 33, had no comment.

Katheryn Russell-Brown, director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations at the University of Florida and author of The Color of Crime, tells UsMagazine.com that Mayer seems to be saying “black women are not just not his type, they’re not in his class. They’re beneath him.”

Adds Laurie L. Mulvey, co-director of the Race Relations Project at Penn State University: “Both white people and people of color will be offended by Mayer commenting so flippantly about an issue that has caused so much pain in this culture, especially to black women.”

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Mulvey tells Us that Mayer’s comments “create an atmosphere that is unfriendly to building trust and his words once again reinforce the idea that people of color are objects and white people are racist. This has particular impact when such words come from a celebrity who is admired by people of so many different backgrounds.”

Mulvey also says “choosing to invoke David Duke to explain these ethnocentric escapades flies in the face of Mayer’s self-congratulatory claim that he has a ‘Benetton heart.’”

Richard T. Ford, author of The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, tells Us that Mayer is “being deliberately provocative and since he assures us that black people love him — thanks for letting us know — it’s supposed to be okay.”

The problem: Mayer’s “tongue-in-cheek racism satirizes racial stereotypes and but also sort of traffics in them,” Ford tells Us. “Sarah Silverman does post racist very adroitly — she’s both hilarious and thought provoking. Mayer does it badly — he’s offensive and tiresome.”

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Adds Ford, “Tragically, this is what passes for edginess for many celebrities today — someone blurting out the most crude and insulting thing that comes to what we might charitably call his ‘mind.’ Mayer did say one smart in the interview: ‘I think the world would be better off if I stopped doing interviews.’ Amen.”

[Credit: Us Magazine]

MUSIC: Heidi Montag Album Sells Less Than 1,000 Copies

January 21st, 2010 | By Rick From Chicago

Heidi Montag’s debut album may have set a record — just not a good one.

In its first week of release, The Hills star’s album, Superficial, has sold less than 1,000 copies, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

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In fact, industry sources tell UsMagazine.com that the album has sold only 658 downloads to date.

This is likely upsetting news for the reality star, who told Entertainment Weekly last week that she went broke making Superficial but thought that “within the first week, we will definitely make our money back.”

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She told EW, “I put every dollar I have into this. I’ve spent over $1 million, almost $2 million, on this album. It’s cost as much or more than a Britney Spears album because I wanted it to be that quality… The songs will make an impact in pop history.”

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Those songs have collectively sold 6,000 downloads, Nielsen SoundScan also reports.

[Credit: Us Magazine]

GOSSIP: Katy Perry and Russell Brand Engaged!

January 5th, 2010 | By Rick From Chicago

He kissed a girl, and she liked it: Katy Perry and Russell Brand are engaged, sources confirm exclusively to UsMagazine.com.

The wacky pair — who’ve been dating since September 2009 — became betrothed five days ago while on holiday in Jaipur, India. A pal says that Brand, 34, proposed with a ring, and that Perry, 25, happily accepted.

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On Twitter Dec. 29, the pop singer shared a sweet snapshot of her and the British comedian in front of India’s famed Taj Mahal. “He built this for me,” she wrote beneath the photo.

The exotic trip, a Perry insider tells Us, “was his Christmas gift.  She told him how much she loved Indian culture while they were eating curry in England, so he surprised her.”

Hear what a body language expert had to say about a snapshot of Russell and Katy

On New Year’s Day, she shared another tourist photo: her hand being painted with a traditional Henna tattoo. (“Isn’t it lovely?” she wrote.) The day before, she perhaps hinted at spontaneous decisions to come later that week: “In India, the motto…you gotta go with the flow…”

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At November’s MTV Europe Music Awards, Perry paid tribute to Brand via her on-stage underpants, emblazoned with his nickname, “Rusty.”

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Of their romance, a friend tells Us that Perry has “never connected with anybody like this.” As for Brand, the Forgetting Sarah Marshall star “is super into her. She says he makes her laugh like nobody else in the world,” an insider says.

[Credit: Us Magazine]

CELEBRITY: Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Jerry Ferrara Split

December 22nd, 2009 | By Rick From Chicago

Jamie-Lynn Sigler and her Entourage costar Jerry Ferrara have split, Usmagazine.com has learned.

Sigler, 28, showed up solo to a Dec. 15 Los Angeles screening of It’s Complicated.

“She came with a few girlfriends, and they drank wine all night. They looked like they were having a good time,” a partygoer told New York’s Daily News.

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This past Thursday, she also hit Susan Sarandon’s NYC ping-pong bar Spin with pal Lance Bass and went shopping in the Meatpacking District on Friday. Later, they checked out Broadway’s Burn the Floor, which stars Bass’ former Dancing With the Stars colleagues Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Kym Johnson.

See Jamie-Lynn and Jerry and other stars partying at the Golden Globes

Meanwhile, Ferrara, 30, spent this past Saturday night at West Hollywood club Voyeur, where he and costar Kevin Connolly mingled with the ladies.

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“Kevin and Jerry arrived around 11 with a group of girls,” a clubgoer tells the Daily News. “They were dancing and hanging out and didn’t leave until after 2 a.m.”

Sigler and Ferrara have been romantically linked since October 2008, but Sigler (who was previously wed to A.J. DiScala) always kept mum on their relationship.

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“[Jerry Ferrara] is a very special person, and I’ll leave it there,” she told Page Six magazine last year. “I’m not a good dater. It takes a lot for me to even want to kiss someone. I have to have a connection, and those are rare for me.”

[Credit: Us Weekly]

CELEBRITY: Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, Others Mourn Brittany Murphy

December 21st, 2009 | By Rick From Chicago

Following Sunday’s shocking death of actress Brittany Murphy at age 32, her friends and admirers in Hollywood are sharing their grief and memories on Twitter and elsewhere.

Lindsay Lohan: “My deepest condolences go out to all of Brittany Murphy’s loved ones& may she rest in peace….She was a great talent w/a beautiful soul xo”

Kim Kardashian: “I am in shock that [Brittany] Murphy has died! Clueless is my all time favorite movie. My prayers go out to her family & husband”

Khloe Kardashian: “OMG!!!! This is horrible news when anyone passes. I’m so sorry for her family. Send prayers out please!”

Jessica Simpson: “Brittany Murphy was an incredible ray of Light to so many people. Her smile was contagious. My prayers are with her family and loved ones.”

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Russel Simmons: “I met Brittany murphy before her star rose its tough to find peace in fame. I wish her peace and happiness in her next lifetime”

Alyssa Milano: “[Brittany] and I did a USO Tour together in 2003. [Love] She was a sweet soul, with a lot of talent and heart.”

Hilary Duff: “RIP Brittany Murphy forever in our hearts”

Fred Durst: “What a sweet human being. My prayers are with her friends and family.”

Film critic Roger Ebert: “She had a genuine quality.”

Actress Soleil Moon Frye: “I was so blessed to know your grace…I will never forget the beautiful school girl you were and woman you became.”

Jeff Bowler, who produced the just-released film Across the Hall co-starring Murphy, tells UsMagazine.com: “It’s truly a tragedy what happened. She was a great person with a huge heart.”

Celebrity talent agent Mike Heller tells UsMagazine.com, “My heart is broken. She was an icon and an extremely talented actress and a good friend. She will definitely be missed.”

[Credit: Us Magazine]

GOSSIP: Tiger Woods Paid $40,000 a Weekend for “Girls Next Door”

December 11th, 2009 | By Rick From Chicago

Did Tiger Woods pay for the company of women?

That’s the claim of Michelle Braun, owner of a former Las Vegas VIP escort service. She tells E! News that the champion golfer spent $30,000 to $40,000 on “her girls” per weekend. Two of those “girls,” she says, are porn star Holly Sampson and lingerie model Jamie Jungers — both of whom have been romantically linked to Woods. (Jungers has denied receiving money from Woods; Sampson has not commented on claims she received money, though she had acknowledged a relationship with Woods.)

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Woods “had a pretty big appetite for girls,” Braun claims. Any kinky requests? She says that he generally asked for “the college cutie, girls-next-door look.”

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Like most of her clients, Braun says, Woods paid in cash and, ahem, “like to communicate by text message.” Woods last communicated with her in “mid 2008,” she says — and he never, ever used email.

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Why does Braun think Woods paid for her hired ladies? “It’s supposed to be discreet,” she tells E!” “When you pay it’s established that it’s a business relationship. You don’t have a girl thinking he is going to leave his wife for her and they will fall in love and have a fairy tale relationship.”

[Credit: Us Magazine]