Campaign-finance reform
If it's good enough to pick a spouse, why not a president?
"American Candidate," an FX reality show intended to let viewers pick a 2004 grass-roots presidential candidate, has proved too costly, so the cable channel has decided to can the project.
Lord knows you wouldn't want to spend a few extra bucks looking for a presidential candidate, not when there are bachelors, survivors and would-be idols out there to be had on the cheap.
Producer R.J. Cutler, who made the Clinton campaign documentary "The War Room," is shopping the project elsewhere.
The show's application process starts in September. Natural-born citizens who will be 35 by Jan. 20, 2005, are eligible and must submit petitions signed by 250 supporters (you don't need a platform or any ideas, just look at the competition). By the end of the year, the applicants will be narrowed to fewer than 20.
"One of those people will emerge as the people's candidate and decide whether she or he will pursue their candidacy for the president of the United States," Cutler said.
Ain't it school news
Maybe you should look at today's 60 cent Daily News as an investment. After all, copies of Maine's Lisbon High student newspaper from the mid-1960s have become collectors items.
And they were free.
Then again, they have two original stories by "Steve King," believed to be among the earliest published works of best selling horrormeister Stephen King.
The papers were discovered last year when retired teacher Prudence Grant cleaned out her files. She sold the copies on eBay for up to $800.
Grant remembers King as "a goofy guy who went on to do far, far, far better than any of us."
The new Hamptons?
More than you need to know about Ben and J.Lo's new Georgia love nest(s):
* They're the first two houses on
2,300 acre Hampton Island, 35 miles south of Savannah.
* The houses are new construction, but designed to look old.
* The main home is a
10,000-square-foot, antebellum-style mansion with a columned veranda connecting two wings. The facades are identical on the front and rear of the house. (You'd think J. Lo's house would have a more pronounced rear.)
* House No. 2, the rustic Oyster
House, also is 10,000 square feet but with hammocks, rockers and picnic tables on the porches. It's for casual entertaining.
As anyone who casually entertains knows, it's so much easier when you have a separate house.
Prince of the city
Prince William may still have two years left of "university," but he's already decided what he wants to do when he graduates.
Move to New York.
According to Britain's Sunday Mirror, William will pursue a postgrad degree or a job with a U.S. art auction house or gallery.
"William is determined to maintain a degree of anonymity and feels America offers him the best chance of that," an anonymous palace source said.
* The London Sun reports that
William may have a girlfriend, Kate Middleton, 20, a fellow student at St. Andrew's. The Sun deduced this because the pair had the couples body language thing going, they chatted earnestly with each other and she cheered loudly for him at a rugby match.
Wow, it must be serious.
Musical Tattbit
Marking the 40th anniversary of The Beatles' first No. 1 hit, "From Me to You," BBC Online reports that "Star Trek" star William Shatner's version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" has been voted the worst Beatles cover of all time. *
