Celebrities lives are under the microscope 24/7. Doesn’t matter if they’re at a red-carpet event or going for groceries, someone is watching them. That’s why it’s pretty amazing that actress Laura Linney kept her pregnancy secret for the entire nine months.
According to “Good Morning America,” when the “Big C” actress indicated she was taking a break that was at about her fourth month. She’s been such a busy actress, working constantly in film and TV, that I bet everyone thought nothing of it. So when she just announced that at age 49 she gave birth to her first child, a son. Bennett Armistead (which is a very touching tribute; remember she starred in the TV adaptations of Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City”) she surprised many.
Bet Matt Damon is wincing that when he and Michael Douglas were left holding the statue at the Emmys when Linney wasn’t there to accept her award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie, he kinda sniped, “She’s such a good actress she didn’t even need to show up.”
Other stuff on my radar today:
Boy, the interview this morning on “Today” by Tom Brokaw reminded me why I miss that guy on the daily news. Brokaw did the first live interview with embattled “Three Cups of Tea” author Greg Mortenson.
Mortenson, whose “Three Cups” book was a first-person account of building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, came under fire after onetime big supporter/financial backer author Jon Krakauer claimed the Montana-based Mortenson was mishandling the charity’s monies. That led to a piece on “60 Minutes,” where it found the stories in “Three Cups” weren’t all exactly as portrayed.
Mortenson admitted to Brokaw, who kept hammering at him (Brokaw, by the way, has a Montana ranch and acknowledged he and his family had contributed to Mortenson, although a small amount; not like what Brokaw said Krakauer donated, some $17,000) that “the stories happened,” but “not always in the sequence” in the book. He then tried to defend himself by saying the errors/fallacies occurred during the editing, which he was a part of, that took the book from about one million words to 300,000. Well, as a long-time editor, that immediately pissed me off. That’s not what happens in editing. This is what most editors would do in that situation: cut out entire stories. And we don’t add in our own fairytales to a piece. (To Brokaw’s credit, he wouldn’t let him get off with that and kept asking, if you heard alarms in your head, who didn’t you listen to them. Mortenson had no definitive answer for that. (Viking, which published the book, has given no rebuttal yet.) Oh, and let me digress a little: there was a children’s version of the book and from that grew Mortenson’s Pennies for Peace, to which schoolchildren donated millions in small donations. (A Christian Science Monitor piece estimated that in 2009, schoolchildren donated 1.7 million to Pennies for Peace.)
I read Mortenson book (the children’s version; the other one was so ponderous I didn’t want to read it), and this is one thing I remember thinking: this guy sounds disheveled, wildly disorganized. He sounded like the type of guy who would need someone to help him find two matching socks. But a dreamer with what sounded like pure intentions. How much of that disorganization impacted the charity? He had such a weird look on his face during the Brokaw interview, I’m not even sure about the purity of his intentions anymore. Maybe he is what Krakauer’s e-book once called him, a humanitarian who lost his way.
Couple last things: “CBS This Morning” was reporting that wearing shapewear may cause nerve compression, urinary tract infections and with the thigh shapewear (think shorts), blood clots. The ladies (and some men) love their Spanx (they do smooth everything out), but wear them sparingly, CBS medical contributor Dr. Holly Phillips said. And for God’s sake, do not layer them, as many a woman (usually the type who don’t really need them, BTW) has been known to do.
And lastly, also on “Good Morning America, here’s another good reason to stop eating so much sugar: research is indicating sugar may causes wrinkles, just the same way smoking and sunning do! One doc said it’ll give us flimsy collagen. (Uh-oh, that doesn’t sound good, does it?) Instead, try foods that are good for your skin: dark chocolate (sparingly again), blueberries, raspberries and almonds.
— Sue Ontiveros
