• As earning seasons reporting continued, NewsCorp came out on the winning side of the ledger, with profits up 11 percent in the past quarter with the picture for broadcast turning around. "The best results we've seen in seven quarters," is how Rupert Murdoch described the broadcast numbers. The company's dark cloud in the cheer: MySpace, which is failing to meet the deliverables in its deal with Google. "With MySpace, we are in a state of transition," was how NewsCorp's CEO described the once mighty social networking site's search for a new raison d'etre. And you know how those states of transition go online...[Variety]

• Taking those numbers with others from this earnings season, The Wrap is ready to call it a "media rebound." [The Wrap]

• Just when he seemed to be getting a head of steam on a good post-Oscar win bout of paralysis and indecision, one of Hollywood's finest traditions, director Danny Boyle has cut the party short by announcing his next film. And what could be a more obvious story to tell than 127 Hours, the true tale of a hiker trapped under a boulder who eventually cuts his arm off to escape? [Variety]

• The troubled pre-season of The Tourist may now have a A list team attached. Johnny Depp is in talks to star opposite Angelina Jolie in the film. Earlier star Sam Worthington and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck both removed themselves from the project over "creative differences." [Variety]

• Continuing the Jackson watch, the movie has thus far brought in $125 million internationally. [The Wrap
]

• Disney has settled the lawsuit brought against it by the makers of the Luxo Jr. lamp that has become the Pixar trademark. Rather than celebrating the celebrity brought to it by its high profile association, the Swedish company that manufactures Luxo sued for trademark infringement after Pixar included copies of the lamp in special editions of the Up dvd's, saying Pixar's unauthorized use of their product would "cause devastating damage to Luxo and dilute the goodwill which Luxo has built up." [Hollywood Reporter]

Back in March fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir sued Love for libel, invasion of privacy, infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract, and intentional interference with Simorangkir's business—the fashion label Boudoir Queen—as a result of Love's misspelled and unpunctuated rants on the social networking sites—namely saying that Simorgank stole a bunch of clothes from her.

Love and her lawyer have filed a motion to strike the suit. [Note: Page Six reported on her brief on Saturday, which we missed because we were fighting through the hordes at the Barneys Warehouse Sale.] Why? Not anything have to do with free speech, but because Simorgankir is racist, homophobic drug fiend who used to be a prostitute. Oh, well, that makes it OK then. Say anything you'd like, Courtney.

The juiciest excerpts are below, but here is our favorite part:

Simorangkir repeatedly asked me both to partake in and to procure cocaine, Percoset, and other illegal and perscription drugs for herself and her husband. I told Simorangir that my "hard-partying" days were in the past and I declined to use any of her and her husband's drugs.

Screw what she said on Twitter, this is the real defamation. We still don't know what this has to do with the shit she talked on the web, but it does make for a fascinating read. Just wait for the countersuit the Love legal team has in the works.

Plenty of people will be paying attention to this suit, not only because Love is crazier than a meth addict in a fun house, but because it will have an impact on future lawsuits about what people can and can't say about others over the internet. In England, they're already throwing kids in jail for cyberbullying. Damn, Courtney, maybe that move to London isn't such a good idea after all.

Oh, Courtney, you haven't put out a record in five years, but you still manage to provide us with endless entertainment.

The video clip above, from YouTube, is grainy, but TechCrunch's Mike Arrington assures readers it's in the final movie. I hadn't seen the film myself, unaware it touched on social networking, but Arrington writes that MySpace takes up a solid five minutes of the movie.

The treatment is brutal. Early in the clip, MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson asks Sandler if he actually uses the product. The star's reply: "No, no no. I fuck girls, Tom. I don't have time for that." When he goes on stage, the comic greets the MySpace crowd as "nerds" and then trashes their users: "They say the more friends you have on MySpace the less friends you have in real life." .

Sure, MySpace's competitors are insulted, too. But companies like Silicon Valley-based Facebook are fighting hard to avoid Hollywood; Facebook trashed Ben Mezrich's book about the company, The Accidental Billionaires, and by extension the Aaron Sorkin movie based on that book, calling it inaccurate.

But MySpace is based in Beverly Hills, close to Hollywood, and seems to have a better handle on the big picture: Being on the silver screen, in any context, means you're culturally relevant. Why not embrace the opportunity to make your virtual community a lot more real? (Via TechCrunch.)

According to our tipster, who works for one of Sony's Internet service providers, MySpace's security team inadvertently banned Sony employees from accessing its site in the course of going after a spammer:

I just talked to MySpace's head of security and they are lifting the block.

Here's why Sony was blocked. They get their Internet through us. MySpace went after one of our customers for MySpace spamming. We terminated that customer because I hate spammers with a vengence, but then MySpace banned our whole [system]. In essence, MySpace believed we were just a hosting provider and not the actual Internet — i.e. providing transit connectivity where companies go through us to reach other companies.

Oh and it wasn't just Sony... Los Angeles County government along with Orange County government offices use us for transit. So they were also blocked.

We were emailing MySpace for a few days, but they didn't believe we provided anything more than dedicated servers. We believe the only reason MySpace finally unblocked our network was because we sent them a link to your story.

We were scratching our heads as to why MySpace blocked Sony when Sony spends so much money advertising movies and music.

Our tipster speculates: "Revenge for all the crap services that MySpace provided to Sony as a studio? Maybe." There'd be a ha-ha joke about how not being able to log onto MySpace's unusable site is a kindness, except that Hollywood studios, which set up pages for their movies to promote them, actually need to access the site. Here's the memo about the outage:

From: Brian Franke
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 1:32 PM
To: Interactive
Subject: MySpace.com Update

Folks,

Just wanted to let you know that we are looking into the MySpace.com redirect to Google.com issue.

It appears to be on the MySpace end (unexpectedly), and has been escalated to their network team.

No ETA yet on a resolution.

Please contact me if you have time-sensitive MySpace deliverables, and we can discuss options.

Regards,

Brian

—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-

Brian Franke

Executive Director of Technology

Sony Pictures Imageworks Interactive

Update: Brian Franke's colleague Nancy Kim, director of digital communications strategy at Sony Pictures Entertainment, sent us this email:

Hi Owen,

Can you please remove this article?

Not sure where you received that information? As Sony is certainly not "banned".

Please feel free to call me if needed.

Thanks!

Nancy

So now Sony has two problems: A ban by MySpace, and a digital communications strategy which seems to involve denying reality.

(Photo by xurble)

Dawn Simorangkir, who operates the Boudoir Queen label, filed suit against Love on Thursday for "menacing and disturbing" statements she says Love made on Twitter and MySpace, seeking unspecified damages. Besides libel, the charges include invasion of privacy, infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract, and intentional interference with Simorangkir's business.

From the looks of Love's blog posts about Simorangkir, it looks like this was a love-hate relationship. Love called her a "genius" in November for her work on Etsy, an online handicrafts site. And then MySpace user Boudoir Queen gave Love "kudos" after she praised a design with "fucking ankle cuffs with fringe" as being "HOT" in December.

Things quickly soured. In January, Love posted a rambling entry on MySpace which said Simorangkir was charging "crazy money." And then Love accused her of theft on Twitter:

wwd. someone who will NEVER grace your pages the felonious Dawn/Boudoir Queen witnessed stealing 2 MASSIVE army bags out of the chat at 4am

After the news broke today, Love went on a crazy Twitter rampage and accused "Lohan and Kelly" — Lindsay Lohan and Kelly Ripa? — of stealing ADD drugs from her at a past Coachella music festival. (Love has feuded with Ripa before.)

Add to this debacle the litigious comments from reality-TV harlot Kim Kardashian, and Love looks to be in a whole heap of tweet trouble!

All we can say is: Keep up the tweets, Courtney! Things were so lonely when you swore off blogging last year.

(Photo by Getty Images)

Aside from her unofficial role as her husband's consigliere, Deng is the chief strategist of MySpace China. So it's hardly unusual for her to show up at the office. Indeed, since MySpace China's CEO abruptly quit last September and still hasn't been replaced amid ongoing boardroom drama, she might as well be running the show.

Yet MySpace China is more or less a failure, with less than 10 million users at last count, against rival Chinese services with more than 100 million users in the country.

Meanwhile, there is what looks like an ongoing smear campaign suggesting that MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and Deng, who both serve on MySpace China's board, had an affair — one that some claim is spread by Roger Ailes, a rival executive at News Corp. We have to wonder: If MySpace China had a business worth talking about, would anyone be dwelling on this rumor?

Though she’s only been out of rehab for a year, insiders are claiming that “Lindsay's been drinking, doing cocaine and causing all-around mayhem for the past few months…. She quit going to Alcoholics Anonymous and has absolutely never taken recovery seriously. She's gotten progressively worse, and everyone in her life is really scared." Even worse, she showed up at the VMA’s with red scratches all over her arm, leading people to fear she’s started cutting herself again. If you’ll recall, the last time she did that was back in 2006 when she claimed she’d hit “rock bottom.”

Of course, Lindsay’s MySpace blog tells a different story. In an entry dated September 19th, the starlet writes (without using capital letters, just like e.e. cummings):

“my publicist emailed me today saying that star magazine is going to publish another ridiculous story about me- then again it’s not like their track record is up there with the new york times. if anything they printed was true, i’d be married, pregnant with mark ronson’s child and hanging with my sister and her ‘fake’ boobs all this while being dead due to an overdose… wow! according to them i am one busy girl, even more so i am one busy dead girl!!!!"

Hmm. So who are we to believe here, Lindsay herself or a tabloid magazine? At this point, it’s hard to say. Whatever the case, I’m just glad Lindsay has such a supportive family environment to fall back on in times of trouble. Oh wait…

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Lindsay Lohan Relapse:Booze, Coke & Cutting [Star Magazine]
• have a good weekend!!! [MySpace]

According to VH1's clever press release, adorned with just as many giddy enthusiastic announcements punctuated by everyone's favorite online stupidity signifier (the! exclamation!! point!!!), the new Rock Of Love: Bus With Bret Michaels edition is far more exciting than its predecessors because the contestants will face challenges dealing with "the ultimate rock and rollers' test: life on the road!" So, instead of being forced to wear laughably too-tight football uniforms or perform public lap dances in tacky lingerie boutiques for the world's sexiest man to ever wear that much collagen on his face without shame, the troubled young things will get to prove their groupie gusto by, well, playing groupies. "Dodging the warm-up band's advances," "greeting aggressive" fans "with a smile," and, shit — we spoke too soon. In the finest example of what our great nation does best, the busty dingbats will still have the joy of participating in Mud Bowl 3. Why? It's "back by popular demand!!!!!!!!!"

• 'ROCK OF LOVE 3': IT'S ON...WITH BRET! [VH1]

Don't engage a heckler unless you have to.

This is the simplest rule of all, which Dane Cook flagrantly ignores. A rude comment on MySpace? Were any entertainer to take the time to personally respond to all of their online hate, they would have little time to do anything else (unless they were Dane Cook, who would just be chilling, regardless). Restrict your energies to those who are heckling you in front of a large audience.

Turn the crowd against the heckler.

This is accomplished by subtly placing yourself and the crowd together as one group, and positioning the heckler as an outsider who is assaulting both of you. This is key. Don't allow the crowd to merely be a neutral observer, refereeing the spat. If that happens, they may well decide the heckler was right, because—let's face it—you are a jerk. The crowd would never indict itself at the same time as you, though, so be buddies with the mob.

Always be funnier than your heckler.

Goes without saying. If your name is Dane Cook, this could be a problem. If your heckler is funnier than you, just call security and sit quietly.

Don't let your mouth write checks your ass can't cash.

That heckler that just called you a pussy: Can you really kick his ass? If not, don't say so. That literary critic who said you can't string a sentence together: Is he a far better writer than you? Then don't call him a hack. That commenter that pointed out your idiotic error: Are you really going to execute him? (Yes, you are). Always be sure you can back up what you say. Humiliation compounds at a geometric rate.

[pic via ohnotheydidnt]

1. "We met at the cast party for How I Met Your Mother, right? We were both pretty drunk... It was kind of a blackout haze."
2. "It was really cool though. It was you, me, and Alyson Hannigan just kind of hanging. Then we kind of broke off and got to talking about stuff that interested us as people. You know, as human beings."
3. "Then we texted for a while and then we hung out."
4. "I think people's reaction to art is often more about themselves than it is about the art. People really project, and they find parts of themselves in the things that they consume. And so it's always interesting to me sometimes the new ideas that people have about things that I didn't even intend to put in there. And that's what's kind of cool."
5. "And that makes it look like birch trees, isn't that sneaky? Heh. Ha. It's gorgeous."

6. "If you go to like a sports bar, or a place, like, where there's a bunch of aggressive males, and you mix that with alcohol, then it becomes that too. Like an almost psychotic extreme."
7. "As my son Steve says, just smoosh it in there."
8. "I'm used to being a little out of step."
9. "I wrote a horror movie? That's shooting right now? In Vancouver? It's called Jennifer's Body?"
10. "People look at me like I'm a little strange, when I go around talking to squirrels and rabbits and stuff. That's ok. Thaaaat's just ok."
11. "It was pretty interesting because the film shifts from surreality to soap opera to black comedy to sincerity, and we sort of wanted to see what would happen if we did all those shifts but didn't telegraph that they were coming? And not explain them?"
12. "It's such an adventurous pastiche!"
13. "Water's like me. It's laaazy... Boy, it allways looks for the easiest way to do things."

ANSWERS: 1. JC 2. DC 3. JC 4. DC 5. BR 6. JC 7. BR 8. JC 9. DC 10. BR 11. JC 12. DC 13. BR

• Artist on Artist: John Cusack and Diablo Cody [MySpace TV]
• Bob Ross [Wikiquote]

[A] court official said an investigation was under way into a message that was posted Sunday on the Team Spector Web site on MySpace.com.

The message, allegedly posted by Spector's wife, Rachelle, read, "I love Phil Spector!! The evil judge should DIE!!"

This is the first we've heard of an official Team Spector presence in the unlikely MySpace realm, and sure enough, some cursory Googling revealed a virtual shrine dedicated to the defendant's innocence, and steeped in a great many surreal touches. (A spinning happy face lets you know Team Spector's mood is currently "creative.") Among Spector's 228 MySpace friends: Sting, James Taylor, Carol King, and, most telling of all, the very ex-wife he reportedly held as a prisoner in her own home, Ronnie Spector. (Oddly enough, Spector's most loyal, slobbery defender was nowhere to be seen.) As for new wife Rachelle's alleged sentiments regarding Judge Larry Paul Fidler, they have since been removed from the comments section; in its place are countless vows of solidarity from Phil's busty new online friends and some heartfelt gratitude "for the add" from the ghost of Lenny Bruce.

• Note Threatening Spector Judge Posted On MySpace [CBS2.com]
• Phil Spector Official TEAM SPECTOR PAGE [MySpace]

There are two reasons for this. First off, any band that has to put out a press release letting people know that one of its members is, in fact, recovering with Lindsay Lohan is probably doing so out of desperation to actually get noticed, or at least pop up in Google News searches about the troubled starlet. (Not that the Aug. 25 release has helped all that much; so far, the band's MySpace profile has only been viewed about 6,300 times.)

Second, the band is—and this may not surprise you much!—absolutely wretched. Imagine a world in which the evolution of music stopped after Orgy dropped its cover of "Blue Monday," but somehow allowed Hinder to exist in some weird space-time warp, and you might get a vague idea of the craptasticness that is Dead Stays Alive. (They should not be confused with these guys in any way.) Listening to their blend of middle-of-the-road rock, lazy electro beats, and yarling made me reflect on the skilled musicianship and catchy songs that are sprinkled throughout Nickelback's catalog.

Either way, this whole kerfuffle will probably get the guys some sort of record deal, perhaps even with the long-dormant Casablanca Records. After all, the music business is, as an old boss of mine would never hesitate to tell me, "all about relationships," and what sort of relationship could be stronger than two people becoming friends in rehab, and one of them subsequently whoring that friendship out to the press for cheap publicity purposes?

Dead Stays Alive [MySpace]

I just wanna clear some things up for u who read the article on page six in the New York post. ITS NOT TRUE!!! hahahaa!!!! I am very happy in my life and I love Hef with all my heart.

Holly, Bridget and I are perfectly fine and there is nothing wrong!!! I do not have a contract to live here like the article said, I am here because i want to be here and cuz Hef wants me to be here. There was one thing in that article that they got right and that was the spelling of my name hahaha!!! So like i said before, don't believe every stupid article u see cuz most of them are coming from very jealous, evil people! Anyways, I love u all and i wish u all the best in 2007!!!

Maybe you should start a rumor about the Post? since that seems to be what they did to you?

Well consider the source.... it was the media! They love to mess with people's lives.

MODEST MARIAH [NYP]
page 6 article in new york post [Kendra Wilkinson MySpace]

[Photo: Getty]

Monday, November 27, 2006

X-RAY

BLIND ITEM:
What 35 year old raisin face whispers her order of 3 peices [sic] of asparagus for dinner at Chateau everynight, and hides her deathly disorder by pointing the finger at me, and used her last paycheck I wrote her to pay for a publisist [sic] instead of a nutritionist?
HINT: Her nickname is lettucecup...

The blog has gone mysteriously missing some time since that post went live yesterday, leading us to wonder if Richie had perhaps panicked after the meanspirited post quickly spread across the internets, and hastily decided to toss her entire blog out with the bathwater of one ill-conceived entry written in a moment of anger. If that were the case, it would indeed be a shame, as the online diary was a magical wormhole that allowed fans to burrow deep into the innermost thoughts of their undernourished hero, leaving them now with nowhere to turn to learn Richie's true feelings about her raisin-faced, publisist-retaining ex-stylist, or that guy she was dating who she didn't even really like, so it's practically like she dumped him, OK?

• [Nicole Richie's MySpace Page]