Navigation Salon Salon People email print
Arts & Entertainment
Books
Comics
Health & Body
Media
Mothers Who Think
News
.People
Politics2000
Technology
- Free Software Project
Travel & Food
_______
Columnists

- - - - - - - - - - - -


Salon People is sponsored by Lexus

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Also Today

For a full list of today's Salon People stories, go to the People home page.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon


  
Advanced Search  |  Help

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Salon Columnists
Follow these links for the most recent column by:
Susie Bright
Robert Burton, M.D.
Joe Conason
Sean Elder
David Horowitz
Garrison Keillor
Anne Lamott
Greil Marcus
Joyce Millman
Camille Paglia
Amy Reiter
Mary Roach
Scott Rosenberg
Ruth Shalit
Michael Sragow
Virginia Vitzthum
Sarah Vowell
Cintra Wilson
Burt Wolf

+ Columnists' schedule

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon People

People Feature
The colorful dissenter of Benetton
Oliviero Toscani of Colors and Talk magazines talks about media hypocrisy, corporate responsibility and why fashion makes us stupid.

By Debra Ollivier
[04/17/00]

Nothing Personal
Life on disco ball planet
Hello, Gonzálezes! Elián's dad and stepmom sure are cute! Boy George: The case of the rapidly descending balls. Plus: Lucy Liu and Bill Murray engage in less-than-angelic on-set behavior!

By Amy Reiter
[04/15/00]


Anthony Powell
In his 12-volume masterpiece, "A Dance to the Music of Time," he manipulated hundreds of characters through seven decades, creating a social history of the 20th century.

By John Perry
[04/15/00]

Nothing Personal
They're no angels
Lucy Liu and Bill Murray engage in less-than-angelic on-set behavior; Tom Green and Drew Barrymore make a deposit; and Monica Lewinsky ... coming soon to a theater near you?

By Amy Reiter
[04/14/00]

People Feature
A visit from Ricky Martin and Selena
Whoa! That's not you-know-who and you-know-who riding up the beach on a palomino, is it?

By Carlos Amantea
[04/14/00]

Complete archives for People

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -




Amy Reiter

A good idea at the time
Oh, joy! Dixie Chicks' ode to O.J. pulled from playlists. Britney Spears covers "Satisfaction" ... trust her, she says; and everything you ever wanted to know about panda sex but were afraid to ask.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Amy Reiter

April 17, 2000 |  O.J. Simpson's got an unlikely batch of fans: The Dixie Chicks.

Why, the Grammy-winnin' gals have even dedicated a song to him. Lead singer Natalie Maines tells the upcoming issue of TV Guide that she and her band mates call their song "Goodbye Earl" (about a woman who plots with her best girlfriend to murder her abusive husband) their "ode to O.J. Simpson."

"Initially when we heard it, we just thought it was so funny," Maines says.



Amy Reiter

Amy Reiter's column appears daily on the People site, Monday through Friday.

+ Biography
+ Archives


Got a hot tip? Tell Amy!



She's a little baffled by the rash of radio stations that have pulled the song from their playlists. "We're not saying kill your husband if he touches you," explains Maines. "It was more [like], 'This is a bad character, and these girls are going to do something really bad to him, but don't take it too seriously.'"

Maybe, but if I were O.J., I'd stay away from any funny-tasting black-eyed peas for a while.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Bedeviled

"I don't know anyone who isn't scared of her. She has very high standards for everything, and anyone who doesn't live up to them suffers."

-- Hugh Grant, explaining why he considers girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley's role as the devil in "Bedazzled" to be "typecasting," in Glamour.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Britney one more time

Is it just me, or were Britney Spears' PR people working overtime last week?

First they had the singer spinning her decision to record a cover of (cover your ears, Stones fans) "Satisfaction" for her second album -- as, like, this great flash of ingenuity on her part. "I had this idea to do a remake of 'Satisfaction,' and the record company was like, 'No, we can't do that!'" Spears told the U.K. teen pop mag Smash Hits, adding that she refused to take no for an answer. "I just said, 'Trust me, it's gonna be hot!'" Like, totally.

Then there she was, baby, one more time on Friday, when the Associated Press reported that fans would soon have their chance to watch the navel-flashing phenom get leied. She'll be filming a one-hour Fox TV special next month in Hawaii that will feature her giving a free concert in Waikiki, swimming with dolphins, dancing hula and making leis. Where's Don Ho to lend some gravity to the affair when you need him?

But the best is yet to come. We're waiting for the Spears camp to respond to royals reporter Peter Archer's nasty slight in People magazine. Prince William, he says, does think Britney is "good-looking, but he doesn't like her music -- I think he gave the CDs she sent to Harry."

Spin that!

- - - - - - - - - - - -

As long as it's for a good cause

"I'm naked and I'm covered in fake blood and it makes you contemplate: 'Am I doing this for a good reason?'"

-- Guinevere Turner on how glad she was to "actually experience the faux-killing feeling" while shooting "American Psycho," in the Winnipeg Sun.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Is that a bamboo shoot in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Move over, Mr. Dole. The next Viagra spokesman may be a whole different animal -- and a much cuter, furrier one at that.

News out of China is that scientists will soon give pandas the famous impotence drug to boost their sex lives and rescue them from extinction.

According to the Beijing Youth Daily, "The male panda can only mate for 10 to 20 seconds at a time, and hence the chances of getting the female pregnant are very low. With Viagra, the male could mate for up to 20 minutes."

Well, OK then!

But the Times of London reports that the other pharmacological attempts to increase male pandas' interest and staying power have failed miserably. "We tried to give them Chinese medicine in the mid-1990s," Zhang Hemin, a panda center director, told the paper. "As a result, the sex drive of the pandas did improve but they also became hot-tempered and attacked the females. That obviously wasn't so good and we had to end the experiment."

"The real problem," Zhang explained, "is that many pandas don't know how to mate."

Maybe a nice candlelit dinner for two, a couple of glasses of wine and some Barry White on the CD player would do the trick.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Juicy bits

Not all made-for-TV movies are equal. "The Marge Schott Story," USA Network's planned flick about the personality-challenged former owner of the Cincinnati Reds, is proving to be a bitch to make. In fact, USA's Adam Shapiro told USA Today that it might not happen at all. "We're not out to trash her," Shapiro said, "but portraying her in a sympathetic light is difficult." Sounds like it's time for a letter-writing campaign.

This is Christina Aguilera's head on pot ... er ... pot on head. The U.K. Sun reports that a flowerpot plummeted from a balcony onto the young Grammy winner's head during a night out at the New York club Pastis. (Oh my God, you guys!) Enrique Iglesias reportedly helped Aguilera to her feet. "Christina's fine, but she had a lucky escape," a spokesman told the paper. Quips one NP reader, "I'd happily take a flowerpot on the head for Enrique." How sweet!

Nike's PR troubles are not over. The BBC reports legendary bluesman Bo Diddley is suing the company because it used his name and image without permission when it peddled thousands of T-shirts that said "You don't know Diddley." "This is a clear case of the big bully picking on the little guy," Diddley's manager Margo Lewis told the press. "Apparently Nike really doesn't know Diddley." Just do it? Sounds like they just blew it.
salon.com | April 17, 2000

 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Amy Reiter is a staff writer for Salon People. For more columns by Amy Reiter, visit her column archive.

Table Talk
Attention, gossipmongers Talk idly about movie stars and show-biz.

Sound off
Send us a Letter to the Editor

Send e-mail to Amy Reiter

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Print this story  Get a printer-friendly version

Email this story  E-mail a friend about this article

Backflip This Story  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon


  
Advanced Search  |  Help

 
Illustration by Zach Trenholm




Salon | Search | Archives | Contact Us | Table Talk | Ad Info

Arts & Entertainment | Books | Comics | Life | News | People
Politics | Sex | Tech & Business | Audio
The Free Software Project | The Movie Page
Letters | Columnists | Salon Plus

Copyright © 2000 Salon.com All rights reserved.