Home > Blog > » TMZ

TMZ on The Cracked Blog

Spears is Spifflicated on Giggle Juice? I’m On It, Chief!

Monday, February 18th, 2008

One of the many onerous burdens placed upon the Cracked blogger is that of wading through countless vapid, hastily-written web articles dissecting the minutiae of celebrities’ lives to the point that one wonders if there wouldn’t be profit in the attainment and sale of Lindsay Lohan’s solid waste.

But of all the terrible places on the web dedicated to destroying the lives of our former idols for the sheer lulz of it, I’ve gotta hand it to the reporters at TMZ.com: at least they try to dress up their dreck by pretending they’re fast-talkin’ journalists from the forties. Aside from my daily ether rag, it’s the only thing that makes my job bearable.

Take this article about Britney Spears’ latest run-in with the law (something involving an industrial combine and that nice man with the big eyebrows from The OC, I believe).

In three paragraphs, the reporter manages to insert the phrases “will the judge be buyin’ what he’s sellin’,” “all things Britney,” “the whole magilla,” “take a hike,” and my personal favorite “smells like it.”

In light of this, I have a personal request for the reporters over at TMZ: as someone who relies on your “news” on a daily basis, it would really mean a lot to me if you’d go even further in dressing up these stories. Reporting on Britney as Jennifer Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy is a good start, but the possibilities are truly endless.

Here, I’ll toss out some sample sentences from possible future TMZ stories, and I think you’ll get a better idea of what I’m talking about.

  • I was taking a belt of mystery liquor from my hip flask when another kind of poison, the dame kind, strolled into my office like a runaway freight train. It was Amy Winehouse, and she was higher than a kite on Sunday.
  • James Gandolfini enters from stage left, exasperated. Paparazzo 1 enters right and crosses down, oppressively friendly. A brief scuffle. Exuent.
  • Clemens could break down and cry
    For wanting his trainer to lie
    But McNamee claims
    “When I couldn’t find veins,
    I injected it straight in his eye.”
  • Paris Hilton. Stop. Showed vagina. Stop. Link. Stop.
  • Dearest friend,
    I write to inform you of a most unusual happening that occurred whilst I was away in the country under doctors’ orders (they feel the dry climate will do wonders for my rubella). From what I’ve gathered during my evening jaunts to the local tavern, and, I must admit, by purchasing rounds of ale for the stablemen and smith’s apprentices who frequent it, Tom Sizemore was raped in prison.
  • I expect all future TMZ articles to be written in a format at least as colorful as those above. Please see that this is done.


    When not blogging for Cracked, Michael makes period videos as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

    Oops, I Did it Again… is the Least Clever Title I Could Have Possibly Chosen for this Post

    Monday, November 5th, 2007

    Spears, or B. Spiddy as I affectionately call her, is either the most brilliant self-publicist ever or the most ridiculous buffoon our sad culture can produce. This week she’s in the spotlight for doing what so many pulled-over motorists have dreamed about for years: running over the feet of a police officer. This wouldn’t make her any more extraordinary than most women drivers (ba-zing!) if not for the fact that she already did this less than three weeks ago. Here’s a video of Britney running over the foot of a TMZ photographer in mid-October:

    Admittedly, a TMZ photographer is number three on my list of people who I’d like to see publicly maimed (numbers one and two being Hitler and Joey Fatone), but that makes it no less hilarious that Spears can’t make her way through a simple, swarming crowd of rabid press representatives without crushing someone’s feet. I know if I were losing my kids and having every moment of my life scrutinized, I’d do my best to keep from adding misdemeanor charges to the list.

    Or, alternately, perhaps Spears is doing this all on purpose, in a bold attempt to divert attention away from the more personal facets of her harrowing life. If so, may I suggest some of the following diversionary tactics?

  • Using a racial slur in a leaked phone conversation
  • “Accidentally” spilling scalding coffee onto the lap of the judge hearing your custody case
  • Circling the globe in a hot air balloon
  • Publicly maiming Joey Fatone
  • In other interesting/unbearably sad news, the TMZ guy who got his foot run over sold his sock on ebay for upwards of five hundred clams. This has inspired me to sell some of the items I’ve got laying around the house. Feel free to email me if you or someone you know is willing to pay me hundreds of dollars for any of the following:

  • The remnants of a lawn ornament run over by Billy Joel
  • The t-shirt of a man whose cab was stalled in traffic behind Jessica Simpson’s limo
  • A condom once worn (but never used) by Danny DeVito
  • Margot Kidder’s left index finger
  • That’s right, two pithy lists in one blog entry! The CRACKED Blog: your one-stop shop for comedy in bulk.