TMZ – Carrie Prejean demanded more than a million dollars during her settlement negotiations with Miss California USA Pageant officials — that is, until the lawyer for the Pageant showed Carrie an XXX home video of her handiwork.

We’re told it took about 15 seconds for Carrie to jettison her demand and essentially walk away with nothing. As we first reported, the Pageant is paying around $100,000 to her lawyers and publicist — a fraction of her bills. She pockets nothing in the settlement.

The Sun – The Fight Club star was reportedly weaving in and out of traffic at a red light yesterday afternoon when he lost control of his two-wheeler and fell off.

He was apparently sent crashing to the tarmac when his handlebar clipped a stationary car.

Brad promptly returned to his feet and moved his bike to the side of the road before taking refuge in an apartment building, according to TMZ.

It’s claimed he waited there until an aide came to pick him up, leaving his bike at the scene.

Starpulse – Michael Lohan has pleaded with his ex-wife Dina to help stage an intervention to save their daughter Lindsay from her alleged prescription drug habit. The Mean Girls star’s father went public with his concerns for the actress after revealing she’s allegedly harboring a secret drug problem at a press conference earlier this week.

Michael explained he worried his daughter would suffer the same fate as Michael Jackson and Heath Ledger.

He said, “I’m going to get her off the prescription drugs that she’s on… When you hug her (Lindsay) she’s like, vacant inside. When she kisses or holds me I get chills, and not in a good way – in a bad way. She’s a different person.”

And now Michael Lohan has appealed to his ex, Lindsay’s mom, to help their 23-year-old daughter kick her alleged habit – by staging a public intervention.

He tells RadarOnline.com, “I had a conversation with her (Lindsay), her mother and everyone…over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be doing things in a pretty public way. But Dina has got to get on the same page with me. It’s a serious situation. You can’t just talk about it and tell me that you want to do an intervention and then do nothing.”

However, Dina Lohan has made it clear she wants no party of a public intervention, telling WENN she’s outraged her ex has used the press to air their daughter’s alleged drug abuse problems – and she’s urging the public to have more empathy for the troubled star.

She says, “If you’ve ever lived a day in the life of my daughter you would probably cry. It hurts and it’s sad that one of her parents goes on television and talks about her personal life – it’s personal. She’s doing fine. Whatever Lindsay’s issues are, they are family issues. If she stumbles, she falls and she gets up.”

source

TMZ – TMZ has obtained the audiotape of President Barack Obama calling Kanye West a “jackass” for hijacking Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech during the VMAs.

The audio was recorded just before Obama went on camera to do an interview with CNBC. Before the interview began, Obama — referring to Kanye’s antics on stage — said “I thought that was really inappropriate,” then adding, “He’s a jackass.”

After making the remarks, Obama said “Where’s the pool?” Presumably, he was worried the joke would go wide. He noted the last time that happened, he got burned for killing a fly.

Obama said, “Cut the President some slack.”

The Examiner – This is the first part of a three-part series. Check back here tomorrow for part 2, and Thursday for part 3.

I don’t know if you heard this or not, but something kind of major happened yesterday. One of the largest media companies in the world announced the acquisition of the largest comic book company in North America. Maybe you read about it.

Yesterday I posted a “Breaking the Internet in half” column discussing some of the knee-jerk comments that popped up after the announcement. I’m revisiting the issue because the comments haven’t gotten any better in the past 24 hours. Some folks have taken a step back to really start thinking about the long-term ramifications of the acquisition, but there are others that are like this, which I just read, and responded to, from Newsarama:

“This is all just terrible. Disney is a souless company that eats up younger more vibrant creative companies… This merger is just terrible. It will come back to bite Marvel, and the industry, over the next few years.”

“This was a money decision. And a bad one. Probably the worst. Marvel has had the best few years of it’s [sic] life.”

Today and tomorrow, I’d like to examine in more detail both extremes of the comments, and inject a little common sense. On Thursday, I’m going to go into more detail into an aspect of the story that isn’t getting enough examination, and one that may end up being the most important.

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Holy Taco – Now why didn’t I think of this. Hmm, maybe the next time I should go to a protest just to do something like this.

LA Times – According to a spokesperson for the Halcyon Co., the following are not amongst its creditors: Christian Bale, Franchise Tax Board, GRIN, Paul Haggis, Internal Revenue Service, Latham & Watkins, Dan Lin, McG, Mario Kassar Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Motion Picture Assn. of America, Bahman Naraghi, Randy Paul, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sitrick and Co., Universal Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca and Fischer.

Three companies belonging to Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek, owners of the “Terminator” franchise rights and producers of May’s “Terminator Salvation,” have filed for bankruptcy just a day after the duo sued their investors for allegedly pushing them into a series of bad business decisions and placing what they claim is an illegal lien on their property.

Even though the movie has sold a healthy $370 million worth of tickets around the world and has yet to be released on DVD and in other post-theatrical markets, Anderson and Kubicek were unable to make a payment demanded by Santa Barbara hedge fund Pacificor, which financed their $30-million purchase of the “Terminator” rights and loaned $9 million for other operating expenses.

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io9 – How will America meet its inevitable end? According to the readers of online magazine Slate, it’s going to be a nuclear apocalypse that’ll do us in. Well, either that or societal collapse brought on by a lack of oil.

We’ve already told you about Slate’s polling of how the experts think the country will collapse, but this latest spate of doomsaying comes as the result of a Choose Your Own Apocalypse feature that allowed readers to vote on which one of 144 possible ends for the US they thought was most likely. While we were very fond of “Space Attacks” and “Robot Overlords” as options, it seems as if the majority of Slate’s readership have more grounded concerns:

The most popular scenario-”Loose Nukes,” chosen by 10.5 percent of Slate readers-combines modern and old-fashioned anxieties. “Taliban fighters wrest nuclear weapons from a destabilized Pakistan. Or al-Qaida acquires a small arsenal of nukes from a disintegrating Russia,” the scenario description embedded in “Choose Your Own Apocalypse” reads. “The nonstate actors launch against the United States in an attack exponentially worse than 9/11.” The presence of terrorists at the top of the charts indicates that we’re still smarting from al-Qaida’s 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon-perhaps the most recent event that raised momentary doubts about the country’s continued existence. The fact that we envision those terrorists hitting us with nukes indicates that we have the same fears as the World War II generation. In the last 65 years, nothing has come along to supplant the scariness of a mushroom cloud.

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TMZ – We were all prepared to shred Dustin Diamond when we discovered he booked a comedy show at a small town pizza joint this past weekend — turns out Screech is the one laughing … all the way to the bank.

TMZ has learned the former “Saved by the Bell” dork got paid $2,000 for a 2-night stand-up gig at Listrani’s — a local pizza place-turned-comedy club in Arlington, Virginia.

Besides the paycheck, the pizza joint also forked over enough dough to cover … Click to find out more

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