Diamonds, Engagement Rings & Diamond Jewelry in popular culture

On November 17, 44-year-old semi-retired rapper Coolio, as famous for his crack cocaine drug bust last spring as for his music, embarked on a new path.  With the release of “Cookin’ with Coolio”, he is following up a web series of the same name from the website and network aptly named “My Damn Channel”.  Its popularity led him to the world of publishing, which was ready for something a little different in the cooking arena.

You Can't Make Stuff Like This Up.

This ain’t Julia Child.  It certainly isn’t Martha Stewart (no matter how much street cred she got for appearing with Busta Rhymes on the MTV Awards stage a few years back).  Coolio, who says he’s been cooking for more than 30 years—since he was 10 years old—has developed “Ghetto Gourmet”, soul food with a healthy twist that isn’t expensive.

No, really.

In case you missed it (and you know you did), he even had his own show on the Oxygen network, which most people have either never heard of or forgot existed.  The show, which premiered in October of 2008, is a reality show called “Coolio’s Rules” that covers the former mug-shot poster-boy as he launches a catering business, balancing his family life with his 4 children, aged 15-20, and the woman who exchanged wedding rings with Coolio’s former friend David Faustino (Bud Bundy from “Married with Children”).   It’s a gangsta’s life, as seen through the eyes of the post-menopausal women who watch the Oxygen network.

Stop laughing.  This is for real.

“Cookin’ with Coolio” is truly unique collection of recipes, the names of which are most definitely from the mind of the Man Himself.  His “Fork Steak” requires no knife, something that would have come in handy during a jail term.  The Steak goes beautifully with the “Heavenly Ghettalian Garlic Bread”.  “Ghettalian” is ‘Ghetto and “Italian” mixed.  That Coolio.  He’s clever.

He is proud to enlighten us to his gastronomical fabulosity, telling us that he “is gonna teach yo ass how to cook”.  When asked who he thinks of as his TV-show chef competition, he answered, “I like Rachael Ray.  I like Bobby Flay.  I like all them cats.  But they are not the Gourmet Ghetto, baby.  My motto is: I cook better than your Shaka Zulu mama.  And I wash my hands a lot.”

Good to know, Coolio. 

He also teaches us the intricacies of “Soul Rolls”, Banana Ba-ba-ba-bread”, and “Finger-Lickin’, Rib-Stickin’, Fall-Off-the-Bone-and-into-Your-Mouth Chicken”.  It’s worth buying the book just to read his directions on “How to Become a Kitchen Pimp”, “Chillin’ and Grillin’” and “Pasta like a Rasta”.

In “The Ghetto Gourmet”, Coolio explains “Karate Meat” by saying it “ain’t just called Karate Meat because it’s got an Asian kick to it.  It’s called Karate Meat because it will beat you up like a pigeon in prison.”  And who would know better than our neighborhood crackhead who posed for The Mugshot Heard Round the World?    But he embraces his experience in the drug culture by telling is that the best way to make an egg roll is to “Roll it nice and tight like a blunt.”

Anyone who doesn’t know what that means wouldn’t be buying the book, anyway.

He also tells us: “Let me be perfectly clear.  You ain’t cookin’ with fire.  You ain’t cookin’ with heat.  You’re cookin’ with Coolio, mother******!”

Actually, that’s not a bad sentiment from the man who’s best known use of a flame was to light a crack pipe.  Congrats to the man for pullin’ himself up by his crazy dreads, and for showing us how to make “5-Star Meals at a 1-Star Price”.

Windermere, Fla. – At 2:25 a.m. on Friday, the Cadillac SUV of Tiger Woods struck a fire hydrant and tree, and Tiger was said, initially, to have been injured in the accident.  According to early reports, super-wife Elin Nordegren appeared on the scene and, using one of her husband’s golf clubs, shattered the back window to help rescue her bloodied life-mate.  Lovely gesture, considering that, not two days prior, the National Enquirer published a story claiming that Tiger had been having an affair with New York night club hostess Rachel Uchitel.

Would Tiger Woods Give Up Everything For This She-Male?

While most women would be chucking wedding rings and household appliances at a philandering husband, this Teutonic treasure was supposedly dragging the damaged, broken body of her famous husband from a car wreck.  Or not. 

Later reports stated that the Woods were having an argument over the alleged affair, that Elin scratched her husband’s face and then went at her husband’s SUV with one of the golf clubs that made them both wealthy enough to afford a Cadillac SUV in the first place.  At this time, the Florida Highway Patrol has no plans to follow up on any ‘domestic dispute’, despite the fact that there was no blood found in the vehicle, supporting the argument that Tiger sustained his injuries while arguing with Enraged Elin, and not during the accident. 

Because Tiger is famous, the police also don’t seem anxious to look into the problem of the golfer driving while under the influence of prescription pain meds.  Clearly, he wasn’t planning to go for a midnight drive.  He was probably all cuddled up in a diamond-encrusted Snuggie, doped up on painkillers, watching himself on TiVo, when Elin came in and confronted him. 

The evidence is, after all, fairly damning.  While the baby-faced Master of the Masters was in Melbourne, Australia to compete two weeks ago, it seems that Uchitel was seen checking into the same hotel.  Although she adamantly denies the affair, she has a fairly weak alibi.  She claims that she just happened to be there with friends.  After having an affair with “Bones” star David Boreanaz as recently as October, and making no secret of affairs without other famous married people, she is far from an angel.  Her history of dating married men and leeching off of their fame makes her a great candidate for a new scandal. 

And who did she go after this time?  A  guy who is the face of products by family-friendly companies like General Motors, Titleist, General Mills, American Express, Accenture and Nike.  This is someone who gets a cut from every sale of Nike’s golf apparel, equipment, and footwear.  He is the boyish-faced Buddhist who helped launch a high-end Buick SUV, ironically called the “Rendezvous”.  He has his own charitable foundation, hosts golf clinics, and funds the Tiger Woods Learning Center in Anaheim, California.

She is the one who wears low-cut dresses and decides who sits where in popular drinking holes.  She also makes no secret of her love of the rich and famous, saying: “Although I’ve been romantically linked to a famous baseball player, a Broadway star, a musician, and various film and television actors, I will never kiss and tell!”  Um, you just kinda did.  She also claimed to friends that she and Tiger (who she tenderly calls “Bear”) are in love, and that he intended to leave Elin for her.

Yeah, because that’s what all guys with millions of dollars in endorsement deals do: sacrifice everything for someone who maintains a Facebook profile with a picture that is borderline-porn.  Someone who was getting text messages from her married lover David Boreanaz while his wife was giving birth to their first child.  Yuck.

Nonetheless, Brand Tiger has been tarnished by the allegations.  He could lose millions in endorsements—although he’ll still have enough money to live like a king for at least 20 lifetimes.  Brand Elin, however, has finally been firmly established.  The club-wielding Swedish Siren is making her song heard, and it is saying: “I am very, very teed off”.

Awful.

If someone wants to believe in Creationism over Evolution, then FINE.  If he believes that science is for atheists, then FINE.  People are entitled to their beliefs, no matter how silly they may seem to those of us who have been brainwashed by the liberal, Godless educators in our universities.

Curses on you, Liberal and Godless Educators!  Of courses, what do curses mean to those who live without fear of divine retribution?  God, no!  How do you punish an agnostic?

The short answer is: put him in a room with Kirk Cameron.

Creationism is okay, if you’re into that sort of thing, but to blame the Holocaust on Darwin might have taken it a little too far. 

The Years Have Been Kind, Except To His Brain.

Darwin’s “On the Origin of the Species” has, in an exciting twist of fate, become public domain.  Who better to write a new introduction to this classic book than some guy named Ray Comfort?  What better authority on the life-long work of famed Naturalist and father of the concept of ‘Natural Selection’ Charles Darwin than a guy whose main accomplishment is acting as a Pip to Kirk Cameron’s Gladys Knight?

On either November 19, November 21, or November 22 (all were cited by Cameron)—the anniversary of the first publication of “On the Origin of the Species”—Cameron was to hand out 50 thousand copies of his new version of the book with the new introduction “to present the opposing—and correct—information”.  Turns out the right date is November 22, but the books were given out 3 days before, perhaps to prevent any borderline-Creationists from jumping the fence.  Prior to that, in a stirring advertisement by The Way of the Master Ministries, Mike Seaver Kirk Cameron amps us up for the exciting distribution of the books, and, in closing, mentions something quietly about wanting to distribute more…if the funds were available.  Please give now!

No dice, buddy.

Nonetheless, Cameron went out to UCLA with his pretty new book that, in his eyes, is far better than the old, non-Ray-Comforted version for sale in the UCLA bookstore.  And Kirk’s were FREE.  The bookstore, he was quick to point out, sells theirs for $29.99—and that’s without the lunacy.

To try to win over the doubters and haters, the former “Tiger Beat” cover boy points out that the non-believing so-called academics ignored certain truths about Darwin’s agenda.  For example, Cameron assures us, the reign of Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust.  Citing Darwin’s supposed racism and ‘disdain for women’ (nice try to reel in the feminists, kiddo), he says, “You can see where [Hitler] clearly takes Darwin’s ideas to some of their logical conclusions and compares certain races of people to lower evolutionary life forms”.  First of all, very little logic went into a lot of Hitler’s thought processes.  That’s kinda what defines a madman.  And second, you can’t call science “an atheistic endeavor” (as Cameron did at UCLA), using Darwin as your poster boy for the removal of God from Creation, when Darwin himself was a practicing Christian.  He believed in evolution, but thought of God as “the ultimate lawgiver”.

Kirk should stick to his cable-access ministry and the very patient and kind soul who accepted a wedding ring from him almost 20 years ago.  And their six kids.  And the occasional reality TV appearance, you know, to keep the money coming in.

We’re not trying to “remove God from the world view of creation”, Kirk.  We’re trying to remove you from our collective psyches. 

Really, Kirk. Hitler?

Last night marked the first State Dinner since Barack Obama took office, and the elite of Washington, Hollywood, and India were all present.  Instead of serving dinner in the State Dining room as is tradition, First Lady Michelle Obama organized an outdoor experience in a huge white tent on the South Lawn of the White House.  A tent with chandeliers, that is.

Of course, President Obama was his usual dapper self, all stunning in his tux.  Because the dinner was in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the First Lady chose a cream and gold gown designed by Indian-born designer Naeem Khan and made in India. She sat between the Prime Minister and record-producing theater-enthusiast David Geffen.  The conversation had to be awkward, at best.  Indian-themed dancers performed and floral arrangements were put together to invoke images of India’s national bird.

"Mile High Club On Air Force One, Anyone?"

But that’s not what was fascinating about the State Dinner.  Jon Favreau, the President’s Director of Speechwriting and in-house hottie, was without a date.  Although he is rumored to be in a relationship with actress Rashida Jones, she was nowhere in sight.  If they are still dating, she would have felt right at home among all of the other Hollywood-types in attendance.  Steven Spielberg was there, as were Oprah and gal-pal Gayle, Alfre Woodard and Blair Underwood, and M. Night Shyamalan.  The absence of Rashida was exactly what American women have been hoping for.

Sure, Jon Favreau is smart.  Sure, the President refers to him as his “mind reader”.  Sure, he and Obama worked together to create the election winning catch-phrases “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” and “They said this day would never come”.

But let’s focus on what’s really important here: he’s good-looking.  Granted, he’s not Hollywood good-looking, but he supersedes all other Washingtonians (with the exception of the President himself) in general dreaminess.  As soon as Favreau joined the White House staff, he was able to deflect a good amount of the desperate female attention away from the President, and was named by People Magazine as one 2009’s 100 Most Beautiful People. 

At only age 28, he already has the ear of the President and he gets to fly on Air Force One all the time.  Chicks dig that.  He’s been dodging engagement rings since he began working with Obama in 2005, and the panty-tossing has been particularly intense since he moved into a West Wing office a year ago.  So far, Maxim babe Ali Campoverdi and Jones have both been unsuccessful at tying him down.  So massive is the avalanche of adulation for Favreau that he had to delete his Facebook page.  Now that’s serious.  More serious than “de-friending” someone.  More serious, even, than changing a Facebook relationship status.  It was an earth-shattering blow to legions of women who wanted to “friend” him.  If that’s what the kids are calling it now.

A Washington Post intern first tweeted the news that “Jon Favreau DOES NOT have a date for tonight’s state dinner!”  Later, a White House reporter tweeted that “several WH aides—incl Robert Gibbs—didn’t bring dates”.

Um, dude, have you SEEN Robert Gibbs?  Which do you see as a more likely scenario: Robert Gibbs, home on a Saturday night, watching infomercials in his boxers while eating a Lean Cuisine; or Jon Favreau, doing the same?

Apples and oranges, man.

Jon, my number isn’t listed, but you have the CIA.  Do the math.  I’m waiting.

With the release of Shakira’s latest album “She Wolf”, the Colombian singer embraces not only her trademark Latin/Middle Eastern/Pop influences, but takes on hip hop as well.  After the success of the title track and its video, in which the hip-shaking songstress does things with her body that seem physically impossible, she released the single “Give It Up To Me”.  This is a major departure from her normal style, with the track being produced by famed hip hop hit-maker Timbaland and performed with notorious rapper Lil Wayne.  The video features her step-dancing—or “steppin”—which is, again, a change from the belly-dancing that has made her famous.  She showed this live at the American Music Awards on Sunday night, when she performed live with a group of steppers, managing to keep her balance all while lip-synching, wearing a skin-tight micro-mini dress and wearing very high-heeled platform boots. Now THAT’S talent.

The Perfect Couple That Has Yet To Reproduce.

So Shakira has given birth to a major-label, hit-laden album and delivered collaborations with The Neptunes, Wyclef Jean, Timbaland and Lil Wayne.  She has created videos that show that her body is capable of things that normal people simply can’t do.  Yet she hasn’t done the one thing that the world truly deserves from her: made any little Shakiras.  Although she received a monster engagement ring from fiancé Antonio de la Rua in 2001, she seems to be in no hurry to marry, because she feels that they are already as much a married couple as they will be after a ceremony.  She also wears her ring on her middle finger, stating that it is too big for her ring finger and she hasn’t had time to have it re-sized.  Since most brides-to-be would sprint to have their engagement rings fit perfectly on the traditional ring finger, we can deduce that Shakira is not a slave to convention. 

She has said that she does want children, and soon.  “I’m dying to have a baby.  We both are.  I’d like two and Antonio would like three,” she told ContactMusic.  “So probably after my next album, which comes out next year.  I don’t think it could be sooner because in 2010 I’ll be touring as well”.

Since it has been said of her that she was born with the ability to belly-dance, and because both she and Antonio have insanely beautiful genetic material to pass on, we are waiting.  And not patiently.

The One Who Can't Stop Reproducing. What Is Wrong Here?

And while we wait for Shakira to do the baby dance with her fiancé, she is performing in videos next to the ultra-creepy Lil Wayne, whose DNA needs to be locked away somewhere.  Lil Wayne not only had two children already (not the same mother), but managed to get two different women pregnant this year.  Lauren London, a hip hop video dancer, already gave birth to a new Lil Wayne in September.  Singer Nivea is about ready to pop out Weezy’s fourth.  It will be her fourth as well, but the first three came from ex-husband The-Dream, who married singer Christina Milian earlier this year.  It’s all par for the course in the insane little nearly-incestuous world of Lil Wayne.  Ironically, his next album, titled “Rebirth”, has had its release date pushed back several times. 

Why does it seem that the one who should be breeding, isn’t, and the one who shouldn’t be, is?

Shakira founded two charitable organizations, ALAS and Pies Descalzos, both of which focus on educating and caring for poverty-stricken children in Latin America.  Using her childhood experience of seeing her father sell all of their belongings to pay off their debts, she vowed to make a difference to children who have nothing. 

Lil Wayne took his childhood experience of having nothing and used that to fuel his desire to have diamonds permanently embedded into his teeth.

Who should be making babies here?

Please, Shakira, for the love of God, do the world a favor and reproduce.  Your tour can wait.

Forget Match.com, eHarmony, JDate, or even specialty sites like SugarDaddie.com, OnlineBootyCall, ChristianCafe, Meet-An-Inmate, WhiteWomenBlackMen, or VeggieDate.  The most successful way to meet your soul mate these days seems to be going on reality TV.   Don’t bother with those shows like The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, or (God forbid) I Want to Marry a Millionaire.  So far, those shows have produced approximately one couple that has lasted.  Now it seems that the camaraderie that is created when your enormous rear end is sweating it out alongside the enormous ‘moobs’ of a teammate breed something besides sweat: love blooms on the StairMaster.  It’s just hard to hear it over the huffing and puffing.

If You're Willing To Subject Yourself To This, You Deserve To Find Love.

Season 2 of The Biggest Loser, America’s most humiliating weight-loss program, gave us the romance of Matt Hoover and Suzy Preston, with Matt offering Suzy an engagement ring on live TV.  They now have a child together.  After season 3 of the sadistic spectacle, at the inevitable reunion show that follows all reality series, Marty Wolff proposed to co-contestant Amy Hildreth, and the two exchanged wedding rings in March of 2008.  Season 7 gave us Nicole Brewer and Damien Gurganious who entered the competition as a couple, emerging thinner and even more committed to each other.  They married in August of this year.  Alexandra White developed a crush on Antoine during Season 8, and the two spend their dates doing outdoorsy, calorie-burning activities near their New York-area homes.  And now we have Rebecca Meyer, loser of more 100 pounds, gaining a boyfriend in Daniel Wright.  She revealed their romance on the sinking ship that is the Jay Leno Show.  Oprah must have been booked.

Lucky for Rebecca that formerly 454-pound Daniel, the heaviest contestant ever to appear on the show, was brought back this season for a second chance after being booted off only 60 pounds into his slimming process last season.  The two fell in love over cravings for real food and a shared, thinly-veiled resentment for their way-too-cheery trainers Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper.  At least this season, the fantastic plastic duo started off human by dropping so many F-bombs in the premiere episode that producers feared that the show had lost its “uplifting” reputation.

Seriously, do we watch shows like The Biggest Loser or Beauty and the Geek or Celebrity Fit Club (or Celebrity Rehab and on and on) to be uplifted?  No.  We are all semi-sadistic creeps who enjoy watching other people suffer and humiliate themselves.  The success of shows like these is not because viewers find inspiration in them.  It’s because we can feel better about our slightly smaller behinds as we sit in front of the TV eating kettle corn.  We like watching contestants’ eyes grow big as saucers when presented with the possibility of eating pizza or cake or frosting-topped deep dish.  We aren’t sure whether to cringe and cover our eyes or sit up straight and pay attention when the contestants take their first belabored steps onto the cattle-ready scale.  We can’t help but peek between our fingers as we cover our faces, watching pre-exercise women in lycra shorts and men with their moobs out there for God and everyone to see.

But as far as finding love goes, a few months of grueling workouts and endless degradation on the scales goes a long way. 

Alone, a person can eat an entire chocolate cake.  In the presence of a love interest, that same person will eat like a bird.  A hungry bird.  A bird that craves pork ribs and ice cream sundaes.  Bonded by torture and held together by the ongoing battles against gaining it all back, contestants from The Biggest Loser are mating like crazy.  And they don’t have to panic over the moment when their new loves learn that they used to be fat.

Lil Wayne, after facing up to 3 ½ years in prison on a gun possession charge, decided to plead guilty (his DNA on the Louis Vuitton-encased weapon sorta necessitated this) and take a one-year sentence instead.  The actual sentencing is scheduled for February.  Naturally, the first question on everyone’s mind is: What about Weezy’s hair?  Will his trademark dreadlocks be cut off, per order of the New York Department of Corrections, or will there be a special “Famous Rapper” clause added to the penal code (I hear you giggling, Wayne)?

In Lil Wayne's Prison Cell, The Dreads Must Go, But The Diamonds Stay?

Is Wayne not concerned about the $150 Grand worth of diamonds permanently affixed to his teeth?  Considering his borderline-obsessive oral hygiene regimen, one would think that those would be first on his mind when it comes to being surrounded by career criminals.  While he can check his twin pinky diamond rings, diamond studs, $200,000 black diamond chain and $1 million watch at the gates, his teeth go with him.  He is reluctant to have the diamonds removed because that would mean surgery.  He might want to think about it before he heads to the pokey with a mouthful of ice.  Those extra-sparkly whites could go a long way in trading for cigarettes or whatever else is available in prisons.  Some large man called Bubba might decide he needs a Lil Wayne tooth so he can score a few girlie mags, or partake in Wayne’s own beverage of choice “Purple Drank”.  Weezy himself schooled us four years ago in how to “make lean”, an even slangier term for mixing up “Purple Drank”.  Successfully—albeit slowly—using the word ‘promethazine’, he explains that the concoction is promethazine, codeine, and Hawaiian Punch.  Never has the mascot “Punchy” been so aptly named.  Anyway, having his teeth knocked out will only serve to make him more popular in GenPop.  Think about it, Weezy.

Regardless, Lil Wayne, with 2 BET Awards from 2007 and 4 Grammies from 2009 under his belt, will be off to jail, and off to the prison barber.  Unless he gets a pass because of religion.  Any prisoner claiming Rastafari as his religion is permitted to keep his dreadlocks, as they are considered a representation of faith.  First, Wayne would have to prove that he is, indeed, Rastafari.  Although the doctrines are complex, he has one part of it down to a science: the gun for which he will serve time was only found after police officers smelled marijuana smoke coming from his tour bus and subsequently conducted a search.  Is it an illegal search if he was conducting a religious ceremony in the vehicle?  If he was performing a sacrament and not just getting high, maybe the whole case would be thrown out. 

Weezy should’ve gotten himself a Rastafari lawyer.  I and I and Meyer Goldstein, J.D.

Scores of fans lined up five days in advance to try to just glimpse their heroes: actors who play vampires and werewolves and virgins (oh my!) in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series.  The premiere of New Moon in Hollywood brought out all of the stars, but all the girls were waiting to see their grungy hero Edward Cullen.  Although Edward is a character in the series, he is revered as though he actually exists.  Fortunately, the actor portraying him is Robert Pattinson, whose aversion to both bathing and sunlight give him that sort of vampire/rock star look that became popular when Anne Rice wrote about vampires decades ago. 

Ah, Lestat, how we long for you (the way we imagined you, not the way Tom Cruise portrayed you in Interview with a Vampire).

Not To Be Outdone By Edward, Robert Pattinson Does His Best To Look Undead.

Though many of us tried to hide from the hype surrounding the Twilight series, it was impossible to avoid the ‘are they or aren’t they’ rumors about the stars of the films, Robert Pattinson and the ever-sneering Kristen Stewart.  But it wasn’t ever about Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.  It was about Edward Cullen and Bella Swan and their forbidden love.  Life imitating art makes for great press, so seeing the stars together—or not—became the nation’s obsession.  No matter how tight we shut our eyes or how quickly we changed the channel from E! Entertainment Television, we inevitably found out through some weird osmosis what it meant to be on “Team Edward” or to have a t-shirt that read “Mrs. Cullen”. 

And even though the movie Eclipse doesn’t come out until next year, everyone already knows that Edward proposes to Bella, offering her an engagement ring that belonged to his birth mother (not to be confused with his vampire mother).  Although the mere reading of the event caused a shockwave of sobbing, teeth-gnashing, and rending of clothes of biblical proportion, it has a happy upside:

You, too, can own a “Bella’s Engagement Ring™”!  Infinite Jewelry Co. is offering the ONLY Stephenie-Meyer-Authorized replica engagement rings available.  You, too, can pretend to be marrying the undead for $68, $549, or $2,199 (plus shipping)!  It really depends on whether you’re a 14-year-old girl pretending to be engaged to a fictional character, a 14-year-old girl with wealthy parents pretending to be engaged to a fictional character, or a 20-something year old woman who wishes that the normal guy she’s really marrying was a fictional character.

With New Moon still 3 days away from worldwide release, “Eclipse” is already in post-production.  Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart walked the Red Carpet at the Hollywood premiere individually, fanning the flames ever higher.  By now everyone knows that yes, they are together, and no, they aren’t engaged yet.  Will “RPatz” propose to “KStew” before their characters marry in the upcoming Breaking Dawn?

No matter how hard we try not to know, we all will.

Now where did I put that “Bite me, Edward” lapel pin?

When the groom is known for wearing freakish lunatic melting-face-type masks and the bride works with Nu-Metal/Thrash Metal/Metal Metal bands all the time, you hardly expect white doves and Pachelbel’s Canon in D.  When Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor and girlfriend Stephanie Luby slipped wedding rings onto each other’s fingers, it was, possibly, the only semi-traditional moment in a ceremony that was a little odd from the get-go. 

"I'd Like to Marry Your Daughter, Mrs. Luby. If You Don't Mind..."

With the event taking place in front of about 350 guests in the Pearl Concert Theater and Las Vegas’ Palms Hotel, it was clear that there would be musical entertainment afterwards, and it was unlikely to be a DJ playing “Another One Bites the Dust” or “I’ve Had the Time of My Life”.  Billy Morrison of Camp Freddy acted as Minister.  Dave Navarro and Mark McGrath were among the celebrities in attendance who would later jump onstage. 

The wedding party marched down the aisle to the tender musical stylings of Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.  Everyone knows that a direct—yet poetic—reference to death is always a good way to start off a life together, and Corey and Stephanie wanted to get it right. 

Taylor was married once before, but noted that, “After I got sober, I realized that my relationship wasn’t right for me”.  He split with ex-wife Scarlett in 2007 after 3 years of marriage. Since his first wedding took place in a beautiful botanical garden with only close friends and family, it only made sense to do the opposite the second time around.  Vegas.  Metallica.  Friday the 13th.  There’s a recipe for a wedding to remember. 

Leave The Masks at Home, Corey.

 Taylor, despite his “Loveline” appearance in which he slammed Lindsay Lohan and talked about tea-bagging (note: he’s not political), has a highly-developed sensitive side.  Dude LOVES Susan Boyle.  The “Britain’s Got Talent” runner-up has a big fan in the Nu-Metal god.  He was heard to say about the tender British songstress, “When Susan leans into it, she’s great…Anyone who’s worth their salt is a little bit bent out of shape”.  He is as forgiving of Boyle’s meltdown and stint in rehab as he hopes everyone will be of his own. 

He chose not to have her sing “I Dreamed a Dream” at his recent wedding, however.   Or perhaps she wasn’t available.

Either way, mazal tov to the happy couple on their Friday the 13th unusual nuptials.  May this be last time the bell tolls for thee.

When looking for parenting advice, why look further than the famous father of eight, Jon Gosselin?  That’s the thinking of Levi Johnston, babydaddy of Tripp, indian-giver of an engagement ring to Bristol Palin, and soon-to-be Playgirl centerfold.  Although he only met Gosselin on November 8, the 19-year-old already seems to be following the Gosselin Plan for Child-Rearing.

Father and Son, Already Posing Nude.

In an effort to gain joint custody of his son, he has pursued naked modeling and makes paid appearances at events like the Fleshbot Awards.  He has decided that, rather than waste his time on college, he will use his extensive wit and knowledge of the world to do more modeling and, hopefully, some acting.  After seeing him appear with Kathy Griffin at the Teen Choice Awards this year, we all got to witness firsthand his natural demeanor in front of the camera.

He and Al Gore share a similar relationship with the camera: they turn to stone.  That might actually work in young Levi’s favor in his Playgirl shoot.

As for the sage advice he received from chain-smoking philanderer Jon Gosselin, he says, “He was very positive and gave some good advice that I’m going to take”.  He also feels that he and Gosselin are a lot alike.

No argument here.

Levi astutely observed that, “He’s kind of in the same situation I am right now.  He’s a good dad and he gets a lot of bad press.  He’s getting the same bad image as I am and it ain’t true”.  It ain’t, huh?

In his defense, Levi has been working very hard to prepare for his clothing-free job.  He has been exercising regularly and remains calm on the issue.  He planned to “just show up and do my thing…I’m going to go out there and have fun.  People won’t be disappointed”.

Well, maybe a few.  Like your son, when he finds out that a judge in rural Alaska does not look at posing for a skin mag as a viable source of income for a responsible parent.  Also, ‘aspiring actor’ will probably not look good on court documents. 

But Levi tows the Gosselin line, saying: “I’m a good guy and not looking only for fame and attention”.  That’s what all the guys say right before they leave their tighty-whiteys on the floor to pose au naturel for an international magazine.  At least Johnston feels the shoot was a success.  He got to play with a hockey stick.  Like the kind you actually play hockey with.  He has already stated that he can’t wait to get Tripp in his first pair of hockey skates.  What better way to get that ball rolling?

Gosselin, who was advised by fame-seeking Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to break up with his girlfriend as long as he was still married, chose to get the press by appearing in front of thousands to repent for his wicked ways, but not to follow any of the advice given.  He and Hailey Glassman are still together, although it is rumored that Gosselin will spend Thanksgiving with Kate and the kids.

Maybe if Hailey has no plans, and Levi finds himself all alone on the holiday, those two can hook up.  At least they’re in the same age group.

Good luck with the custody hearing, Levi.