Jacko Exclusive: Third Child Chosen From Catalogue; Lohan, Streep, Tomlin Honor Director Altman
Jacko Exclusive: Third Child Chosen From Catalogue
It’s not a new story today that Michael Jackson’s kids aren’t his biologically. This column told you several times last year what the real story was: that Prince and Paris, the eldest of Jackson’s charges, were “gifts” from wife Debbie Rowe, who was inseminated from a sperm bank.
Not only did we tell you, but during Jackson’s trial one of his attorneys, Robert Sanger, let the information slip out. I told you about that on May 31, 2005. Discussing what could and couldn’t be admitted as testimony from Jackson from a taped interview, Sanger told Judge Rodney Melville: “The circumstances that relate to the birth of the children wouldn’t be admitted for the truth of the matter. Only his love of the children.”
What we’ve never been able to tell you completely though is where Jackson’s third child, nicknamed Blanket, comes from. Sources confirm that his mother was selected from a book of egg donors supplied by Jackson’s physician. Jackson flipped through the book and selected the woman he thought was most appealing. Unlike wife Debbie Rowe, the anonymous woman is said to have been dark haired and Latina-looking, a la Penelope Cruz or Salma Hayek. Once she was chosen, a sperm donor was used to fertilize the egg.
In other words, Blanket was literally “created” for Jackson. You’d think the pop star would have taken more care than to dangle the baby out of a window considering how much effort was involved in inventing him.
The rest of today’s revelations are also no surprise, only that they were finally forced on the public in a new format. Both the New York Post’s David K. Li and New York Daily News’s Michele Caruso — my esteemed Los Angeles colleagues — were shown a book proposal instigated by Jermaine Jackson, Michael’s ne’er do well brother, and written by Jermaine’s former friend, Stacy Brown. Brown is the author of a self-published book with another former Jackson associate, Bob Jones, in which Jones reveals all of Jackson’s secrets regarding his uncomfortable and inappropriate relationships with children. Jones also noted that Michael had purposely undermined Jermaine’s singing career after his older brother had had a surprise hit album and two singles circa 1985—“Tell Me I’m Not Dreaming” and “Do What You Do.”
I don’t know why Stacy Brown decided that this was the right moment to loose Jermaine’s old book proposal on the world. But it’s an interesting time, anyway. Michael has come to depend on Jermaine in the months since his June 2005 acquittal. It was Jermaine who went to the United Arab Emirates country Bahrain and paved the way for Michael to move there and go into business with Prince Abdullah. Everything concerning the business of the last six months, Michael’s involvement there, etc, has been because of Jermaine. If Michael is coherent enough to see today’s papers, or read this column even, he should be shaken to his core. Perhaps that was the goal; I don’t know.
There’s a lot about his brother Jermaine that Michael Jackson doesn’t know or remember. For one thing, Jermaine recorded a song about Michael years ago called “Word to the Badd.” Michael’s probably forgotten, but here are the lyrics:
What up yo, word to the badd
I gave my love
You gave your love
Thought we’d never part
Said you loved me
Then you left me
With a broken heart
You never think about who you love
You only think about number one
You forgot about where we started from
You only think about what you want
You don’t care about how it’s done
You only think about you, your throne
Be it right or be it wrong
It ain’t about your world
It ain’t about the things that you do
If you don’t care, i don’t care ’cause you keep thinkin’ about you
It ain’t about you takin’ my pie
You been takin’ for a long time
If you don’t care, i don’t care
If you keep
Well i ain’t thinkin’ about you
Word up yo, word to the badd
Once you were made
You changed your ways
Even told me lies
Could not trust you
Still i loved you
My mind worried overtime
You know i tried to be there for you
Like a lover i cared for you
It didn’t matter you always play me off
You only care about what you want
You don’t care about how it’s done
You only think about you, your throne
Be it right or be it wrong
Hook
Oh no no, i ain’t thinkin’ about you
Oh no
What up yo, word to the badd
Thinkin’ about that pie that you’ve been takin’ from me
From a lover to another lover hard to believe
Lost and don’t know it yet you still show it
Givin’ seems to be harder than it is to receive
The glass has gotten shady when it should have been clearer
But it’s you always starin’ in the mirror Constantly fakin’ it ain’t no mistakin’ it
Copyright Jermaine Jackson
Lohan, Streep, Tomlin Honor Director Altman
Tonight, director Robert Altman, 81, maybe the most innovative and influential filmmaker of the last 50 years, will finally get an Academy Award. As readers of this column know I’ve said over and over: It’s about freakin’ time.
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Altman, director of such important cinematic classics as “MASH,” “Nashville,” “Gosford Park,” “The Player,” “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” “A Wedding,” “Short Cuts,” “Brewster McCloud,” “Three Women” and many others, will receive his honorary Oscar tonight from Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin, the former stars in his new film, “The Prairie Home Companion.” The latter was an integral part of the greatest Altman film of all, “Nashville.”
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Last night at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, HBO and Picturehouse Films honored Altman with a private reception. Streep and Tomlin were there, as were Lindsay Lohan (also in “The Prairie Home Companion”), Charlize Theron, Lauren Hutton, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Noah Baumbach, Philip Seymour Hoffman, directors Paul Thomas Anderson (“Magnolia”) and Graeme Clifford (“Frances”) and “Nashville” actor the great Henry Gibson.
Also spotted were Roger Ebert, agents JJ Harris and Johnnie Planco and Altman’s longtime publicist, the beloved and legendary Lois Smith.
Altman, accompanied by his beautiful wife of 48 years, Kathryn, surveyed the scene and told me, “I’m happy. I’m really happy.”
He should be: On Thursday the play he directed in London’s West End, Arthur Miller’s “Resurrection Blues,” premiered.
“The critics killed us,” Altman said.
It doesn’t matter. Every advance word about “The Prairie Home Companion” says it’s a hit. And he’s not stopping there.
“I’ve got a couple of new projects to pick from,” he said. “I should be shooting one by the fall.”
Speaking of Anderson: He shadowed Altman in Minneapolis during the “Prairie” shoot as a precaution thanks to the older man’s iffy health last year. (He’s thin right now but otherwise looking and sounding healthy for 81.)
The choice of Anderson made sense. “Magnolia” with all its ambitions is really a version of Altman’s “Short Cuts.” The frogs that rain down in the last scene are easily tied to the end of “Brewster McCloud.”
But I digress: Anderson’s next movie, for Paramount Classics and the new Miramax, will star Daniel Day Lewis. “There Will Be Blood” will center on the Texas oil business, inspired by Upton Sinclair’s famous 1927 novel, “Oil.”
And what of Lohan? This girl gets a daily reaming in all the tabloids, supermarket weeklies, those half-hour entertainment shows at 7:30, etc. I see that she gets roasted on Page Six today. Well, she’s 19, and she’s a hell of a lot smarter than you’d think once you engage her in conversation. She’s a very pretty girl, too. She’s accompanied by a bodyguard and a driver most of the time, and they seem genuinely protective.
Could it be our Lindsay is getting a bum steer by the tabloid press? I would say yes. Among adults she is unfailingly polite, charming, forthcoming and altogether the picture of an up-and-coming star. Good for her!
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