the buzz log
Life-Changing or Channel Changer: 10 Wishes on What the Gosselin "News" Will Be
Come Monday, the Gosselins of “Jon & Kate Plus 8” will make a "life-changing" announcement, conveniently timed during its one-hour TLC time slot.
The promised change is supposed to broker a "peace." Considering the couple spent their 10th anniversary on June 12 "150 miles apart," it sounds like time to cut bait. The Gosselin disintegration may have them among the top 25 searched people on Yahoo! in May, but a grumbling backlash makes us feel they've overstayed their welcome.
So, based on pure conjecture, hearsay, and irritation over the whole matter, here's 10 modest proposals on what the reality TV couple might just tell its benumbed viewers:
- The Gosselins will try one more time, and adopt Nadya "Octomom" Suleman’s brood.
- Kate's changing her hairstyle from reverse mullet to 145-degree-off-kilter mullet.
- The children will be starring in a musical version of “Lord of the Flies.”
- Kate will get her tubes tied. Jon will put a finger down so the ribbon’s tight.
- With the crossover success of “American Chopper,” Jon will try “Wife Swap,” then renege on the return policy.
- Inspired by the pregnant man, Jon is going to go for it.
- Kate will revive that 2001 trend, the Surrendered Wife.
- The Gosselins enters the Octagon to face fellow TLC stars of “Little People.” Game on.
- Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt plans to adopt the entire family, mom and dad included. Their buyout offer was better than Madonna’s.
- They’re upgrading from TLC to HBO. Two words: “Big Love.”
Filed under: TV, Reality TV, Rumors, Gossip
Celebrity Catfights in the Twitter Battleground
The upside of technology: the return of the zingy one-liner.
Lily Allen, the Brit singer whose boozy, woozy path was getting a lot of press until Amy Winehouse out-boozed and out-woozed her, is back. She's got a new album and she's luring lots of online attention (searches are up more than 600% in the past 7 days). But her Twitter-wars with online blogger Perez Hilton might just be the thing to restore her to her former catty glory.
Apparently the twosome have had cyberspace arguments before, but they were going at it fast and furious via Twitter on President's Day. Of course, since the microblogging blast only allows 140-character ripostes, the two had to be very succinct. To wit: Calling Hilton a "bitter lonely old queen" and a "little parasite." Youch. The (cleaned-up) response: If he were going to be a messed-up Brit, he'd "rather be Amy Winehouse — whose [sic] got talent." (Lightning-speed retorts don't allow for punctuation.)
Hilton says the sass was out of love (at least, from him). This hasn't been the only rant in techno-haiku: In January, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore fumed about neighbors doing construction work at 7 a.m.
Celebs have been on the Twitter-wagon for a while: The San Francisco Chronicle notes savvy and largely well-behaved luminaries include Erykah Badu (who "tweeted" about her labor), Shaquille O'Neal and, um, William Shatner.
But the chance to sign up and follow rancourous exchanges could give a new oomph to the microblogging site, which right now has 4.4 million users. (By the way, one study describes American Twitterites as "predominantly young [31], poor, blog-centric, social-network-happy urbanites.") Maybe feisty rivalries could encourage modern gems that could've dripped from the pen of Oscar Wilde or the lips of Groucho Marx.
Some people are already pursuing the idea of microblogs as a way to resuscitate literary wit, although maybe with a somewhat different approach than starlets vs. gossipmongers: a Twitter adaptation of "Taming of the Shrew." Oh, best beware the sting.
Filed under: Music, Social Networking, Gossip, Technology, Perez Hilton
Does Duane Martin Have a Secret?
Some rumors start slow and build. Others hit the Web hard, seemingly out of nowhere. That's how the latest zinger came at us. Without any perceptible warning, we were blasted with buzz that actors Duane Martin and Tisha Campbell-Martin were divorcing because he is gay.
Is it true? We have no idea. Media Take Out seems to have inflamed it. Many blogs reject it. TMZ—usually a font of tawdry celebri-news—won't touch it. Regardless, the Web is aflame with the idea. Over the past week, searches for "duane martin and tisha campbell divorce" pitched upward more than 1,200%.
And it didn't stop there. Demand for "duane martin divorce," "duane martin gay," and "duane martin comes out" rushed the Search box like paparazzi at La Lohan. Buzz on "tisha campbell divorce" swelled 225%. Lookups of "duane martin gay rumors" proliferated.
Some searchers did pause to inquire politely: "is duane martin gay" (+130%). Others took the time to investigate what exactly Mrs. Martin looks like, boosting "tisha campbell-martin pics" upwards 266%. Maybe that will clear things up. Or maybe, if Duane and Tisha are lucky, a new rumor will have hit by now—and searchers will be off after a fresher slice of hearsay.
Filed under: Celebrity Couples, Gossip
Gotta Have Gossip
Each of the Web's top 20 gossip blogs posted double-digit percentage increases in Search as another week in the office kicked off. This week's biggest Buzz gainer was "concreteloop.com," which jumped a whopping 104%.
Last time we checked, gossip maven Perez Hilton topped the Buzz. Perez continues to rule our chart and his grip on the top spot only gets tighter. He pulls in nearly four times as many searches as the #2 on our list, and he's become the place to go when Web denizens need their fix of dirt. Here are the current top 20...
Now that you know the top 20 searches, we must ask—where do you turn for your gossip fix? More importantly, do you have all of our top 20 in your bookmarks?
Gossip Blog Watch
This week was fertile fodder for the prolific gossip bloggers of the Web. Lindsay in and out of rehab, K-Fed urging Britney to try rehab, and Isaiah Washington trying to rehab his career.
Those stories were huge, but we all know the axiom about a picture being worth lots of words. Paparazzi snaps of Jessica Biel (in a bikini again), screenshots of Paris's private photos, and Diddy at Sundance with Aubrey O'Day also sent droves of curious searchers to these online dirt diggers.
We wallowed in the mud with gossip blog searches to come up with our top 20 of the week. Here's how the whisper-riffic 20 rank in Buzz right now...
Filed under: Celebrities, Gossip, Blogs
top movers
| Rank | Subject | 1-Day Move |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Worst Airports For Delays 2009 | Breakout! |
| 2 | How To Survive A Recession | Breakout! |
| 3 | Ice Cream Calorie Counter | Breakout! |
| 4 | Jayson Williams | Breakout! |
| 5 | Alexandra Kerry | Breakout! |
| 6 | Chaz Bono | 10707% |
| 7 | Kelly Osbourne | 3298% |
| 8 | Jennifer Hudson | 3218% |
| 9 | Nicole Richie | 2075% |
| 10 | Thierry Henry | 1125% |
top leaders
| Rank | Subject | Move | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Friday | +413 | 1016 |
| 2 | Elizabeth Lambert | -677 | 263 |
| 3 | NFL | +66 | 235 |
| 4 | New Moon | +74 | 213 |
| 5 | Bing | +83 | 209 |
| 6 | Kelly Osbourne | +193 | 199 |
| 7 | Hulu | +7 | 139 |
| 8 | Nicole Richie | +124 | 130 |
what's the buzz?
A subject's buzz score is the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. Weekly leaders are the subjects with the greatest average buzz score for a given week.
For more detailed information, visit our FAQ.