All this week's news about Angelina Jolie.

Publications: In Touch, Star
Date: 27 June 2011

Angelina Jolie is the center of the American gossip solar system and everything revolves around her. This was true long before I started this blog a year and a half ago. While Jennifer Aniston and Sandra Bullock have appeared on more covers than BrAngelina, there are also the solo stories about Angie. If I split every story about the couple into a story about each, instead of BrAngelina being in third place and Angie being in tenth, she would be first and he would be second.

Heck, the gossip rags wouldn't care as much about Jennifer Aniston if she wasn't the modern day equivalent of Debbie Reynolds to Angie's Elizabeth Taylor.

While Brad gets mentioned in passing in one of this week's stories, the focus is on Angelina. Here are the headlines.

• In Touch: Angelina's $500,000 birthday gift
• Star: Angelina's secrets & lies
  tell-all book banned!
  Her secret trial separation from Brad
  Cheating - other men, other women
  Held hostage with a gun to her head
  11 Never-before-seen family photos
  Teen guitar hero
  First wedding
  
  

Brad Pitt in Cannes.

Publication: People
Date: 30 May 2011

Plenty of stories about the Jolie-Pitt clan this week, including a solo story for Brad. People has him on the cover visiting the Cannes Film Festival, where his new movie The Tree of Life, directed by Terrence Malick, was both booed and won the Grand Prize.

The French. Go figure.

Besides playing at the film festival, the movie goes into very limited release next Friday, so this one gets the Planted Crap label as well.

Bells Are Ringing Alert™: Kim and Kris heading down the aisle.

Publication: OK!
Date: 28 March 2011

News is slow on the Kardashian front this week, but OK!, the most optimistic gossip rag if not the most honest, pulls out all the stops and says Kim and her new beau Kris Humphries are not only getting hitched, it's going to be the Wedding of the Century.

Where to begin?

If I could add another label, I'd like to say this is the Name Dropping-est Story Of The Week, but Blogger label software only allows for 200 characters. Vera Wang, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Wills'N'Kate are all named, though only Vera Wang (or at least one of her designs) has any chance of being within 1,000 miles of this shindig, if it ever takes place at all.


If there was unlimited room for labels, I'd also give this cover the prize for Most Blatantly Bad Photoshop of the Week for making it look like the two of them are about the same height give or take three inches. If that picture reflected reality, either Kim would have to have grown to 6'6" or Kris has suddenly shrunk to 5'6".

In reality, he's 6'9" and she's 5'3", which means an 18 inch height difference. If they really remain a couple, she is going to have to be on the lookout for elbows for the rest of her natural born days.

Man Slut Alert: Charlie Sheen's madam may name more names.

Publication: National Examiner
Date: 14 March 2011

Fresh trash on Thursdays! Even if you only pay scant attention to gossip, you had to know this week's most popular celebrity would be the self-destructing Charlie Sheen. All the other stories that mention him this week are actually about him, but the low rent Examiner uses his name to trash others with rumors. They speculate about Sheen's madam's little black book and what names might be in it. They include Brad Pitt, no stranger to malicious gossip about his love life, and Vanna White's husband, also not a surprise given the low rent Examiner's continued claims that she is addicted to "bad boys". The third name on the list is unusual and not previously mentioned in the supermarket rags in 2010 or 2011.

Welcome to gossip hell, Kevin Costner! It surprises me to see his name bandied about in such a sordid way because:

1. He's dull as dishwater, and
2. I didn't even know he counted as a movie star anymore.

I'm cruel, but fair.

Oh, this is awkward alert: Jen runs into Brad

Publication: In Touch
Date: 14 March 2011

Fresh trash on Thursdays! What a difference a year makes. In early 2010, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were manning the phones at a celebrity telethon for Haitian earthquake relief and the supermarket rags had them at it hot and heavy. This week, In Touch says they happened to be in the same place at the same time and they were like, "Uh... hi!" "Um... hi." "You look good." "Uh... you, too." "Um... gotta go." "Yeah, see ya."