News

1. In the mornings I like to have a long hot shower and scream until my drug therapist arrives with a continental breakfast

Charlie Sheen’s wife Brooke Mueller, after a short stint in rehab, has brought a “team of experts” - according to People magazine, home with her, so that she may spend time with her twin sons Max and Bob. Sheen entered rehab last week, after a fall off the wagon that peaked with a spousal assault incident on Christmas Day. It is not for us to judge the highest paid comic actor on TV, who has lived his entire life getting what he wants when he wants it, from hookers to drugs to male offspring (rumours abound that the couple tried for male children through a medical procedure). Or his wife, an alleged crack addict, who claims her husband held a knife to her throat as a radical alternative to stringing popcorn and singing carols.

Instead, we must simply admire how the rich are always finding ways to make their lives more luxurious. Where is that bellowing Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Robin Leach when I want him to yell obsequiously about the Sheen-Muller’s “lifestyle?” And, is Mueller, seemingly a common pretty blonde, actually a cutting-edge genius? Imagine being able to have a staff of nannies, maids, gardeners, cooks, shoppers, mechanics groomers and licensed addiction therapists? If only we could watch. I see her in a bubble bath that is being stirred by a vacant-eyed maid, eating celery sticks from a platinum tray and quietly sobbing to a man with a notebook perched on her toilet: “I guess I use because deep down, I feel unworthy of love!”

The maid may have children of her own to take care of; she may work 18-hour-days, but she, like we, knows a real tragedy when she sees one. Brooke: That sweet-smelling drug smoke may feel like love, but you deserve better! One hopes that the twins listen at the door, for some quality time with Mom. An inappropriate environment, as some have suggested? As Sheen said, as the young, impressionable soldier in Platoon: “Be that as it may, those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again. To teach to others what we know, and to try with what's left of our lives to find a goodness and a meaning to this life.”

I know I have already learned a lot. Just check out my craigslist ad for “Anger management counsellor/pastry chef.”

2. Nightmare of sadness

American novelist Richard Price uses this phrase in The Breaks, a story about terrible despair. It is a fitting epitaph for this week, for those following the striking story of the disappearance, and ultimately, suicide of actor Andrew Koenig, whose body was discovered in Vancouver’s Stanley Park last Thursday. He had been missing since mid-February and thought to be deeply depressed, based on a letter he left for his father, an actor as well (best known for playing Chekhov on Star Trek.) As Koenig’s celebrity friends expressed their sorrow and urged others to take depression seriously, Marie Osmond’s 18-year-old son Michael Blosil leaped to his death from his apartment window last Friday. Blosil had been deeply depressed also. Both were beloved, beautiful men: What has happened? Depressing people are, well, depressing to be around, and as such, are often ignored. Please familiarize yourself with this illness, and find out how to help. These two deaths represent countless others that pass every day, unlamented, and not spoken of.

3. There’s Liberace and his girl!

Watching Brangelina play the media like a banjo these last few weeks - the romantic photo ops; the highly publicized reunion between Angelina and her father, Jon Voight; the family outings - has been so exciting because one actually gets to feel like those blissful suckers of the 1940s and 1950s, swooning over Rock Hudson’s latest showgirl romance, or how wonderful Joan Crawford is to her adopted children. The fame-addicted couple has gone so far as to offer a public explanation for that signifier of disaster, Brad Pitt’s mangy - now somewhat pruned and bead-less - beard. He has apparently grown it for a film role - as Jake Gylenhaal’s best friend. No, not really - Gylenhaal is straighter than Burt Reynolds.

4. Who are Beth Ditto and Keely Shaye Smith?

You would think they were major stars, as they appear at least four times a year, prominently, on the National Enquirer’s cover. Well, Ditto is the lead singer for the indie rock group Gossip, and Smith is Pierce Brosnan’s wife. Both like taking sunny vacations by the sea. But why are they so notorious? They are obese. And they are in every single “Best and Worst Beach Bodies” issue, a feature the tabloid repeats often. Because most stars look very good in bikinis (it is a prerequisite of the job), the magazine continues to pick on these two, who by now must be feeling like the victims of a shockingly pernicious bully. Can’t the Enquirer at least try to get some new shots? Goldie Hawn tanning her hide? That can’t be a nice sight. Prejudice against fat people, Canadian filmmaker Malcolm Ingram writes, “is the last allowable prejudice.” And we are just revelling in it.

5. Is that a lot?

Brittany Murphy was, briefly, suspected to have taken 109 Vicodin in the 11 days leading up to her death. Her strange, seedy husband has just rushed to her image’s rescue again, claiming to have discovered the missing pills, a common enough mistake. He also continues to maintain the frail actress was drug-free, and is “furious” at such charges and is in outraged denial regarding her toxic stomach contents - six strong, combative drugs without even a peanut, or baby carrot to fight them back.