Weeks on Chart: 15
Peak: No. 2 on Billboard's Hot 100, January 12, 2013
Current Radio Play Frequency: No. 1 on KIIS FM's Playlist
YouTube Hit Count: 45,262,468 at time of publication
John Mayer & Katy Perry & Adam Levine: Katy Perry went to Adam Levine's annual Halloween party and the two were flirting nonstop. "Adam was touching and hugging Katy affectionately while they did shots together for a half hour, even though his girlfriend model Behati Prinsloo was at the party too. It was kind of uncomfortable." Perry is show-business buddies with Levine, who is also BFF with Katy's rumored beau, John Mayer. Mayer once dated Jessica Simpson, whom Levine was once said to have tooted and booted.
"Adam texted Jess that he 'needed space.'" WHAT? "Then he avoided her calls. She phoned him several times, but he didn't answer." While Katy and Adam's flirtation is probably innocent, there's no doubt that she knows a potential fling with Levine is her ace in the hole should John Mayer's wandering eye and life-ruining dick get the best of John and Katy's relationship.
"Everybody is a complicated character." —Taylor Swift in Rolling Stone
Taylor Swift has a libido, and it's raging, y'all! On her new album Red, the 22-year-old Swift finally sort of admits to experiencing the fleshly desires that she has heretofore shunned singing (or even admitting to thinking) about. This is, after all, the person who once told an interviewer that the very idea of being thought of in a sexual way made her ill. But if Liz Lemon can have a sexual awakening on the final season of 30 Rock, certainly Taylor Swift can admit she wants to do more than slow dance in the rain under the moonlight with the tall, handsome, dark-haired men she favors in her private life.
Nevertheless, it's shocking the first time you hear Taylor telling her unnamed lover "I'll do anything you say if you say it with your hands"
Clint Eastwood, as Grantland recently attempted to passionately convince you, is a pretty cool dude in totality. It's maybe been hard to remember ever since he talked to a chair, but it's true. For right now, though, we may just have to do the whistle-and-avoid-eye-contact thing a little bit longer. Trouble With the Curve, Eastwood's first onscreen role since 2008's Gran Torino, didn't hit big at the box office this weekend, managing an underwhelming $12.7 million. In a regular year, that might not make much of a difference when it came to Clint rallying Oscar votes. In this year, the year in which Clint talked to a chair, the lackluster numbers means his current "downward slope" narrative sticks. The worst part of all of this? With Curve playing to semi-vacant theaters, a nation of movie bloggers must resist, with all their might, the undeniable lure of a solid "Eastwood/empty chair[s]" formulation.
Taylor Swift's Fatal Attraction: Her relationship with rising high school junior Conor Kennedy continues at warp speed. "Swift is certainly taking her one-and-a-half-month romance rather, well, swiftly. Since meeting the 18-year-old Kennedy in July, the six-time Grammy winner, 22, has rearranged her schedule to spend as much time with him as possible." Although the rumor that she bought a house across the street from the Kennedy compound has been debunked, she is still giving off some serious Stage 5 Clinger vibes. "Swift loves that her new guy (son of Robert Kennedy Jr. and the late Mary) gives her entrée to the storied political family. She says it's a fantasy come true. She's very smitten." Isn't she always, though? "Pals are concerned she's repeating a troubling relationship pattern," citing the insanely fast pace of her monthlong fling with Jake Gyllenhaal, which ended when he dumped her unceremoniously. "She's always rushing into love. We all wonder why she can't take it slow." Because she thinks fairy-tale, love-at-first-sight romances are real, and always decides that whomever she is dating at the moment is The One (regardless of what the dude might think). "For years, Swift has harbored a not-so-secret infatuation with Conor's iconic family. One insider says Conor's cousin Ted Kennedy Jr. even calls the crooner a Kennedy groupie!" Well maybe Conor Kennedy is a Taylor Swift groupie! And they're not groupies, they're Band-Aids! She started collecting Kennedy memorabilia last year, after reading The Kennedy Women. She met Rory Kennedy at a screening of a doc about Ethel Kennedy, and was invited to spend her Fourth of July at the compound in Hyannis Port. She and Conor Kennedy have been inseparable ever since, although that may change in the fall when he goes back to, uh, high school.
Taylor Swift announced yesterday, via a mildly creepy live fan chat/“G+ hangout"/fake-slumber party, that she's dropping a new album on October 22. It's called Red, but that does not mean it's a full-album tribute to Bruce Willis's 2010 old-people-assassins sleeper hit of the same name. Rather, Swift made clear, with Red she'll be continuing on her stated trajectory of melodically airing out every nook and cranny of her fraught, charged, highly publicized romantic adventures. Taylor explained, "All the different emotions that are written about on this album, they're all pretty much about the kind of tumultuous, crazy, insane, intense, semi-toxic relationships that I've experienced in the last two years ... There's nothing beige about any of those feelings, so I called the record Red." Sounds great!
Michelle Williams and Jason Segel: Four years after the death of her ex Heath Ledger, "If anyone deserves a little chivalry and happiness, it's Williams," who is "finally moving on with Segel, 32. After years of platonic friendship, the two have turned up the heat, meeting for several intimate dates in New York and L.A." An insider says "Romantically, this kind of happened overnight!" He won her over by being good with her daughter Matilda, prompting her to tell a friend "I love him!" Let's hope Segel isn't just trying to promote The Five Year Engagement with this romance, since "Michelle doesn't do flings. Every person she gets involved with is someone she can entertain the possibility of spending the rest of her life with." No less of a cad as Russell Brand has spoken of envying Segel's rampant cockmanship, calling him "a falcon among gulls when it comes to womanizing." But supposedly "Jason is trying to be more of a grown-up lately. He is taking care of himself more, exercising, eating right and dressing better. Basically, not acting like a frat boy anymore." He thinks Michelle is "the kind of girl he can bring home to his mom." Segel has been perma-single with side trips to the Isle Of Lohan since splitting from Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini) while Williams has weathered failed relationships with hipster directors Spike Jonze, Cary Fukunaga, and other "assholes who didn't treat her right" and were "just looking for an unserious situation." Let's hope "puppet collector" Segel can step up to the plate. "Jason can be a bit of a playboy. The only way this will work is if he completely devotes himself to Michelle." "She wants a good guy who will give her a stable family life."
Seal And Heidi: Despite a romantic proposal ("in an igloo he constructed on a glacier") and their "elaborate yearly vow renewals," behind closed doors Seal could get a little crazy. Seal's "mood swings" and "jealousy about Klum's skyrocketing career" doomed the couple. They got tired of being "a robot family" in public and after seven years "couldn't fake it anymore." They had a Gothic romance, befitting the "Kiss From A Rose" singer, full of "crazy fights" and "tempestuous love." Seal told a paper they "deal with the same issues as everyone else, only ours are more extreme. There are greater highs and greater lows." Tellingly he also slipped that "success doesn't solve anything." Klum is an optimistic ball of energy, while Seal is "a very difficult person" who endured "a sad life" and grew into a "volatile and moody" man. His uncontrollable temper led him to "talk down to Heidi in public" (but she is so tall!) and speak her "like she was the help. It was so degrading." He got mad at her for "holding court" during a Victoria's Secret show, and "as demands on her time increased, he seemed to want to make all the choices for her." A confidant of Klum's says "I would say controlling is a fair assessment." He reacted by focusing on his own career, touring nonstop and leaving his family for months at a time, including on holidays. Klum meanwhile was a picture of German efficiency, juggling her two TV shows and being "a hands-on mom." Seal hated Heidi eclipsing him in fame and "it made Seal crazy when photographers asked him to get out of the way so they could shoot Heidi alone." A family friend says "it's difficult for a man if his wife is more successful than him." I mean, yeah, if he sucks.
