If giving was the spirit in the Douglas household, then stealing was the name of the game in the Madonna mansion. While she was sleeping upstairs earlier this week in her London palace, thieves broke in, nabbed the keys to her Range Rover and drove off. (You get inside Madonna's house and then you steal her car? And I thought the British were revolutionary!) This is the second time in six months that Madonna's house has been burglarized. And to think, she moved to London because it was "safer."
Ghosts of Christmases past haunt Elton John this week as the secrets of his private spending sprees continue to leak out of his legal imbroglio with a former lover. John, of course, is the world's most famous compulsive shopper-he once boasted that he could find a shop in the Sahara desert and has four luxury homes, and all sorts of vintage cars, jewelry, outrageous costumes and clothes. Out of court came the precise figure: John once spent $56.95 million in a 20 month period, more than $468,000 of it on flowers alone. When asked to explain the petals purchase, he responded weakly, "I like flowers."
Meanwhile, Marilyn Manson and Moby won't be sending each other flowers anytime soon. Manson always makes it a point to spoil Christmas with one of his shenanigans-last week, he sent his drummer to the hospital after breaking his collarbone with a microphone during a particularly violent stage performance. Moby took it upon himself to be the voice of reason: "It was disgusting. That kind of violence is totally unnecessary onstage." Manson's response: "On my stage that kind of violence is completely necessary. It's just unfortunate that Moby wasn't injured. My drummer has offered to beat him up with his good arm."
And the cherry on the top of this holiday sundae of good cheer is the fact that Robert Downey Jr. should make it back to jail just in time for Christmas pudding. Hooray.
POP CULTURE 101: BRAD, BEN, AND GWYNNIE WATCH
To those who think pop culture is "fluffy," I make a very bad face at you. I have a feeling that computer science and math majors don't read my column-which is a shame, because pop culture is a very rigorous quantitative science. For example, when Ben Affleck was seen on the New York club circuit with new galpal Shoshanna Lowenstein in tow, I had to go running to my TI-85 to see how this affected the Brad-Ben-Gwyneth status charts. Confused? Check out Arts in print for the data.
IN THE (K)NOW SUPERSTAR!
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