The book went to press within 48 hours after the King of Pop's death, and rocketed to number one on the New York Times bestseller list last week. Hastily thrown together, Unmasked is rife with typos and questionable "anonymous sources." Shoddy, shady, and sleazy, I think I read it almost as quickly as author Ian Halperin typed it up.

Halperin claims that he started the project a while back because he was out to prove, once and for all, that Michael Jackson was a pedophile, but in his research, discovered that he was not. (The resulting work is pretty biased, but some evidence presented makes for some decent-albeit comparatively crude-rebuttals to Maureen Orth's thorough and persuasive reporting on Michael Jackson for Vanity Fair.)

Much has been made of Jackson's infamous sleepovers with young boys at his Neverland Ranch, and Mark Ronson, along with his friend Sean Lennon, participated in some of them. One anecdote of Ronson's - which he originally told on a British TV show - appears in the book:

We used to watch the porn channel because we were like, ten, and, 'Oh my God, tits!' So Michael was in bed. And me and Sean said, 'Michael, do you want to see something cool?' We turned the dial to the porn channel and there were strippers shaking their tits around. We were like, 'Michael, Michael, how cool is this?' We turned around and he was cringing, saying, 'Ooh, stop it, stop it, ooh, it's so silly.' We were like, 'Michael, you have to look, maybe you're not seeing it right, it's naked girls!' He was not down with the program whatsoever! I think he had really strong feminist views on porn.

He's cute. Anyway, while the story doesn't prove that Michael always behaved appropriately around his young guests, it does kind of point to something that I always thought: He was probably gay. Halperin thinks so, too. In fact, in his book, Halperin actually claims that Michael hit on him at a pizza parlor (more on that in sec).

Halperin claimed to have spoken to two of Michael's "gay lovers." (Redundant term!) One was a "Hollywood waiter, the other an aspiring actor." He claims to have seen photos "corroborating" the relationships. The best bit comes from "Lawrence," the actor:

He was very shy, but when he started to have sex, he was insatiable. He was a bottom, but he was so thin, I worried that I would break him. The very first time he blew me, he said, 'The King of Pop's going to lick your lollipop.' I still laugh thinking about that.

Me too.

One of Halperin's sources was supposedly someone who worked in Jackson's camp. The source tipped him off that Jackson and his children were going to a Hollywood pizza parlor, so Halperin "got in [his] hairdresser's disguise" and sped over there. Of the encounter Halperin said:

We talked about old Hollywood movies and hairstyles, which I had researched for months before I took on this undercover persona. Michael went on and on about the Hollywood hairstyles of the silver screen during the forties and fifties. 'No one has come along with such class and style since Deborah Kerr, Dorothy Lamour, and Susan Hayward,' he said…At one point during our conversation at the pizza joint, Jackson put his hand over mine. I then wondered if the singer was hitting on me. After staring at me for over a minute in complete silence, he told me my blue eyes reminded him of Frank Sinatra…It was one of the most intense moments I have ever experienced looking into another man's eyes.

This was also good:

I had been trying to persuade [Jackson] to change his look to a platinum blond wig with a streak of ocean-blue down the middle.

But my absolute favorite passage was in regards to Liza Minnelli. After failing to score an interview with Jackson's best friend Elizabeth Taylor, Halperin, again, went undercover as a gay hairdresser, and hung out at a dance rehearsal studio he knew Liza frequented, cornered her, and told her he had been Ava Gardner's hair and makeup artist before she died. That was the clincher, and Liza invited him to hang out with her in the back room of the studio, where she shared a joint with him and some other dancers. Despite the fact that she was stoned, Liza didn't really give up any of the goods on Jackson, but she still sounds like a fun hang:

I told her that Ava was a huge fan of Jackson and used to practice some of his dance moves. At that, she let out a trademark Liza Minnelli laugh. It proved to be infectious…especially after Liza stood up and did an impression of Ava Gardner attempting to moonwalk.

As it turns out, these two suicide attempts have very little to do with the Britney we’ve recently begun to muster up a bit of pride for — after romping around new father figure and sobriety expert Mel Gibson’s Caribbean retreat all smiles and apparently dating a guy who neither wears wifebeaters nor makes a living taking pictures of stars flashing their, well, Britney, we’d joined the Package on her most recent recovery train. And after reading excerpts from the not-so-shocking story itself, we’re still aboard. Despite the source being Celebrity Undercover author Ian Halperin, the scribe who spent years undercover in the COS as a gay actor impressively revealing the inner workings of Scientology’s bizarre practices, the dates Halperin supplies for Britney’s alleged suicidal tendencies are ancient in Hollywood years.

As a Spears family insider chimes in, “the singer regularly hinted at suicide...her suicidal tendencies began after the birth of her second son Jayden James in September 2006. 'It really became an issue once Jayden was born and it became clear Britney's marriage to Kevin was crumbling.'” 2006?! Two years ago, Bald Britney, Umbrella Swinging Britney, Pink Bobbed Britney, nor Gurney-Riding Britney had yet to even make their thrilling debuts! Who wouldn’t consider taking one too many sleeping pills after realizing you’d wasted years with a poor man’s Vanilla Ice and kinda, maybe, probably shoulda waited a few years or never to pop out babies prone to matricide? Revelations, shmevelations indeed.

[Photo credit: Life & Style via Daily Mail]

• TROUBLED STAR BRITNEY SPEARS 'ATTEMPTED SUICIDE ON TWO OCCASIONS' [Daily Mail]

"Tonight I received a call from an unknown number saying, 'If you enjoy breathing, shut your fuckin' mouth,' and then they hung up. Tomorrow I think I'll go stay at a friend's place up in the mountains for a while until it all dies down."

Yikes! While we sometimes wake up in fear that crazed LRH disciples have left the severed head of Kirstie Alley in our bed, we are beginning to have some suspicions that perhaps Halperin is getting a wee bit paranoid during his fifteen (well, to be fair, thirty) minutes of bold-faced fame. That said, you can never be too careful.

RELATED: BATTLE OF THE SCIENTOLOGY SCRIBES [DEFAMER]

"A lot of people I met when I was undercover insisted Cruise was the number 1 man. Cruise is the star there, and, like in his films, no one at the Church got top billing over him. Church officials told me that everyone, including David Miscavige [scientology's Chairman of the Board] do whatever Cruise says. Basically, they act as his puppets."

Beyond Halperin's argument that Morton got the actor's ranking wrong, he claims Morton "didn't even bother to interview Scientology. Even after the church invited him to go on a tour and [offered] an interview, Morton, for some reason, refused to do it." Oddly, Halperin says the church and Tom Cruise are "pissed off at [Morton]." But ... they're not pissed off at Halperin for faking his identity in order to unveil specific, straight-to-gay tactics? We're waiting to hear from Morton, whose Placenta Hijacking story still holds a place in our heart, regardless of its authenticity.

After joining the church under his homo guise, Halperin discovered it wasn't mainly sexual reparation that scientologists wanted; it was their cash. Former scientologist Michael Pattinson, who joined hoping to 'straighten' out, spent over 500k over 18 years, with no results. He's since sued. This 'auditing' process is vaguely "based on the weird science fiction theology espoused by Hubbard," says Halperin. "Members are expected to take very expensive courses" in order to be "cured." "I found that just about everything about the Church is about money, which makes them not much different than most religions."

But on to the actual celeb scoop. After a 1991 article in Time came out claiming John Travolta was being held hostage in the church, scared that by defecting, they'd reveal everything he'd confessed to them about his homosexuality, he announced his engagement to Kelly Preston two days later. 17 years later, he's still a proud card-carrying member.

As for Tom Cruise?

"The cure was certainly not reserved only for gay men. I was told that the Church would occasionally marry a lesbian celeb off to a gay male celeb, thus killing two birds with one stone. As for names, that shouldn't be too hard to figure out."

The good news? Anna Nicole Smith wasn't as dumb as we thought she was!

"Anna Nicole wanted to join the Church and was strongly considering it until a friend told her about the Church's attitude toward gays. Anna, who was bisexual, decided not to join in fear the Church would reveal her most intimate secrets if she defected."

• Hollywood Undercover [Amazon.com]