HI, PARIS! LOOKING GOOD, PARIS! WE LUV YA, PARIS!

There are approximately 2 million pages about Paris Hilton on the web. This is one of them. I am pleasantly surprised to find that it actually does get some hits.

I really don't have anything terribly new to say about her, except that if The Forgotten Liars ever gets made into a movie, there are several roles she might be good for... But check out the rest of my page anyway!

PARIS BOUNCES BACK AGAIN!

Like the New England Patriots, Paris had a bad time at the Super Bowl. She hosted a pre-Super Bowl party for Pontiac, featuring her friend (or perhaps ex-friend) 50 Cent. She spontaneously hopped up on stage during his set to sing along, and he told her to "Get the fuck off my stage." She did as she was told, but she also broke down in tears.

50 (who was in a bad mood because several members of his large and heavily armed entourage had been detained at the entrance to the mall where the party took place) later claimed he wasn't telling Paris in particular to get the fuck off his stage.

Ironically, she bounced back by going to New England and (on the same Super Tuesday morning when the Pat's victory parade didn't happen) accepted the Woman of the Year award from the Harvard Lampoon. She echoed the feelings of ambitious high school juniors and guidance counselors worldwide when she exclaimed "Harvard is Hot!" (Although strictly speaking the weather was cold and damp in Cambridge at the time.)

Also in February, Paris finally confirmed the persistent rumors that her grandfather had disinherited her. However (and this seems to be actually true) she says it had nothing to do with her in particular: Barron Hilton merely decided to donate his billion-dollar fortune to charity. Paris and her family, even after being written out of the patriarch's will, still have plenty of money.

BUT THEN..

The other Barron Hilton in Paris's life did something monumentally stupid a few days after her trip to Boston. This would be her kid brother Barron Hilton. He and at least one friend went careening recklessly at dawn around Malibu in a black Mercedes, sideswiped someone's pickup truck, and drove wildly in circles many times around a gas station out on Route 1. The car knocked an unfortunate clerk down at the gas station who was doing inventory, but luckily the clerk was not seriously injured. Eventually, the cops picked Barron up at a bus stop and busted him for for drunk driving. His blood alcohol level was 0.14% which is twice the legal limit for an adult— but he is just 18 years old so his legal limit is 0.00%. He was arrested at 8:05 am on a Tuesday morning (February 12, 2008.) He is ostensibly still in high school. It is unclear if he was planning to go to class that day.

Paris got a lot of flack for not bailing him out, and for going off instead to Vegas to make an appearance. (She was the only family member he called from jail.) But evidently she was merely abiding by a family decision to let the dopey kid stay in jail and think about what he did. Some of his buds eventually bailed him out.

In April 2008, he quietly copped a plea by pleading no contest. Unlike his sister, he will not be going to jail. He does have to visit the LA County Morgue, however.

May 5, 2008 DUI Daily story

PARIS IS OUT OF JAIL!

So, Paris Hilton really did have go to jail. Yikes! Even though she is guilty as hell, this is still a little shocking. This also seems more than a little unfair, especially while Bush & Cheney — not to mention Lindsay & Britney — are running free. I had a lot more about this on this web page but I moved it to a separate page:

http://www.TimothyHorrigan.com/paris_hilton.legal.problems.html

A Reminder of Happier Times:

On Midsummer's Night Eve 2006, Paris promoted herself by blasting a track on her own car stereo (which turned out to be the single "The Stars Are Blind") with the windows open as she drove away from a crowd of paparazzi (and random admirers) in Hollywood. Her driving is pretty bad (although she didn't hit anything and she is doing her own driving): she isn't wearing her seatbelt and for a few seconds she tries to hold on to the steering wheel with her knees while waving her arms around in the air like she just don't care. But the music was pleasant enough. And she was pleasant enough as well. Less than a year later, she was in jail, Warner Bros. had canceled her record contract, and UB40's music publisher was suing her for plagiarizing the band's 1990 single "Kingston Town":

See the TMZ.com video of her driving away while grooving to her own jam!
See the video of "The Stars Are Blind" (and two videos of some other song)

Some Happier Notes:

The original source of Paris's fame was that she was blonde and svelte and cute and came from a rich family and made a porno movie.

Buy "1 Night in Paris" from WantedList.com!

But there must be more to it than that. Back around the time Paris was born, in the mid 1980's, another heiress made a porn movie— a much better movie than Paris's. Carol Levy, the star of Radley Metzger's classic film The Princess and the Call Girl was every bit as blonde and every bit as svelte as Paris, and she was even richer. But she lacked something which Paris has: call it Dumb Luck, call it Good Timing, call it Lack of Shame, call it simply "It," but whatever It is, Paris has got It. For the time being at least...

Part of her appeal is, ironically, her lack of pretense and fakery. There is very little substance to her, but what little substance there is comes across as totally real. Even her boobs seem to be real.

Refreshingly, she never uses her fame to raise public awareness of important issues (at least she didn't before her prison term); she never whines about her difficult childhood; she doesn't share her deepest feelings with us; she doesn't Support Our Troops; she doesn't call for peace on earth. Even her commercial ventures are not especially pretentious: the most noteable are the Paris Hilton line of inexpensive fashion accessories (exclusively sold on Amazon.com), and (until her business partner fired her) a slightly cheesy disco in downtown Orlando, Club Paris.

(Well actually, she did drag Our Troops into a June 9, 2007 statement issued when she and her lawyers decided not to appeal her incarceration. She ended the statement by saying: "I would hope going forward that the public and the media will focus on more important things, like the men and women serving our country in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the world." But that was a fairly self-effacing and politically ambiguous statement: she (or whoever it is who was speaking) was saying that she's really not that damn important and people like me should shut up and leave her in peace— for a little while, at least.)

Read more about Paris's recent legal problems

Also, there is some lingering controversy over the realness of her boobs. In March 2007, there were a few reports that she had her boobs done. She has indeed been looking bustier as the years go by. However, this seems to be merely a function of her body getting curvier as she matures, and possibly also because of her endorsement of a new line of push-up bras from Victoria's Secret.

Paris with cleavage, in her driveway, March 30, 2007

Paris walking the street, March 30, 2007. This is basically the same body, and the same chest, she's had all along. Ooh la la!

The Paris Hilton Collection: Exclusively on Amazon.com

Speaking of disco, she recently became a recording artist. There are bizarre rumors to the effect that she in fact has formal classical musical training, and that she actually has some talent. Bizarre rumors are Paris' forté, but that one seems just a little too farfetched. But ya never know with Paris!

In any case, it turns out she can actually sing a little. Admittedly, she's no Christina Aguilera but she's no Lindsay Lohan either. She in fact has a rather pleasant voice. For months a single called "Turn It Up" was supposedly about to come out. But in the end the first single was a reggae-flavored number called "Stars Are Blind." (This song was reminiscent of many previous reggae numbers— especially UB40's "Kingston Town." About a year after the single came out, UB40's music publishers finally went ahead and sued her, on the same day she went to jail for drunking driving.)

In August 2006, the album Paris was released, to a certain amount of critical derision. The critical derision was not deserved: the album was not bad at all. (One of the tracks on her album appears to be a torch song for a Presidential daughter, Chelsea Clinton. The official title of the song is "Jealousy" but the chorus is an anguished chant of "Chelsea! Chelsea! Chelsea!")

Check out the real and the Sims Online versions of Paris's music videos!

Paris Gets Exposed!

On January 25, 2007, I got several dozen extra hits, apparently because of news stories about a new web site called ParisExposed.com. This site is put together by a colorful rascal named David Hans Schmidt who describes himself as the "Sultan of Sleaze." For $40/month, you (supposedly) can view the contents of a storage locker which Paris Hilton rented and failed to pay for back in 2004 while she was moving from one house to another. Supposedly she put all sorts of intimate and scandalous stuff in the bin. This scheme is definitely triggering my scam detector (and that sleazy dude Schmidt doesn't even offer a web affiliate program!) but evidently the part about the storage locker is true. She really did rent a bin, she really did default on the payments ($208/month), and she really did have a large pile of stuff auctioned off to a scavenger.

Promotional Video for ParisExposed.com
ParisExposed.com (the actual site itself)
January 25, 2007 New York Post story

PARIS IS ENGAGED! (or not, as the case may be...)

In the Spring of 2005, Paris Hilton ostensibly got engaged— to a guy named Paris. The other Paris was a 27-year-old Greek shipping heir named Paris Latsis. (Frankly, I never heard of the guy before.) They soon broke up. She has had several lovers since then, most notably Stavros Niarchos III, guitarist Benji Madden from the whiney pseudo-indie band Good Charlotte, model Caroline d'Amore and quarterback Matt Leinart. (It's probably a good thing she didn't date Tom Brady instead: she would undoubtedly be pregnant by now if she had dated him.)

I moved the rest of my commentary to its own page, since this is pretty old news:

http://www.TimothyHorrigan.com/paris_hilton.engaged.html

Click here for some video of Paris & Paris cheerfully tolerating some rather boring pursuers. They did make a nice-looking couple, but it must have been tiresome being followed around all the time like that.

Paris's name frequently turns up in news stories about dumb stuff which is in fact not really her fault.

An amusing example is a March 30, 2006 Boston Globe article by TV critic Matthew Gilbert. His think piece about the "stinking rich" on TV was inspired by a silly WB reality show called "Survival of the Richest", which pits a team of rich kids against a team of poor kids. He spends most of the article bashing a rich kid who is not on the show: Paris Hilton, whom he characterizes as "the perfect spawn of the greedy 1980s, a Miss Thing so wealthy that she finds no reason to vote in presidential elections. She's a living, breathing, bartop-dancing ad for money to burn." (I think he might have mixed her up with Jenna & Barbara Bush.)
Another amusing example is a May 22, 2007 commentary by Bloomberg News' Steve Soshnick. He blames Paris for the fact that 35 top NFL draft picks missed mini-camps to do a promotional event for EA Sports, the folks who make the Madden NFL video games. (I suppose there is some connection: Paris does do lots of promotional events and one of her many ex-lovers is an NFL quarterback and former top draft pick. But that's not much of a connection. When you read the whole piece, you see the point of the article is to bash unions, since the event was co-sponsored by the NFL players' union. And Paris is a union member herself. But that's still a tenuous connection...)
Even funnier (hopefully you can find the March 19, 2007 commentary entitled "Amazing Mental Rot" on a long page with several other columns from early 2007) is this comment by the wonderful curmudgeon (and prophet under James Howard Kunstler) where he uses Paris to illustrate the folly of expecting housing prices to perpetually increase. He says, "If the price of houses only went up 10 percent a year, or every half a year, or maybe every month, guys like Mr. Median Income could stay ahead of the game. Of course, sooner or later under conditions of perpetually rising house prices, houses would have to be priced out of everybody's range except for Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, and a handful of other lucky, beautiful people who dwell in the perfumed ethers above the pathetic lumpenprole median zone. Perhaps by then, Mr. Median Income would have won the grand prize on American Idol -- or better yet, crapped out and won an Oscar for best supporting actor instead -- and then he would be a beautiful, rich-and-famous celebrity with the ability to buy as many houses as he ever wanted."

Some useful advice from IslamHelpLine.org on what to do when surrounded by girls like Paris who are always wearing mini skerts.

See also:

August 6, 2004 Hampton (NH) Union story about a local porn emporium's problems with its Paris Hilton sign. Some unidentified motorist (perhaps Paris herself) ran into a curbside sign advertising the "1 Night in Paris" video (amongst other things.) The town tried to stop the owner of the store from re-installing the sign when it came back from being repaired. (Although I look foolish saying this, especially since hardly anyone is interested anyway, I did publish a review a while ago of the live peep shows at the porn shop, which is Leather & Lace in Seabrook, NH.)

Finally, my only other Paris Hilton-related content is a commentary on Paris's infamous Carls Jr. commercial!

Paris Hilton's Soft-Porn Cheeseburger

When I was a student at USC in the mid-1980s, the West Coast-based Carls Jr. chain was one of my favorite fast food joints. At the time, Carls Jr. was best-known for the innovative concept of fast food which actually tasted like food. Now they also seem to be known for edgy commercials. The most recent one features Paris Hilton in a bathing suit simultaneously washing a Bentley and eating a Spicy BBQ Burger. The ostensible connection between the endorser and the product is that she is hot and the burger is hot as well (thanks to "fried jalapeños, onion rings, and lots of barbeque sauce.") Judging by how thin she is, she hasn't eaten very many of these things.

The ad has been denounced as "soft-core porn." I frankly wasn't aware that soft-core porn deserved to be denounced. (By the way, my novel The Forgotten Liars has a few mildly smutty passages, but no Spicy BBQ burgers. Though the characters do enjoy plenty of Sandwiches Cubanos.)

Ironically, this ad is one of Carl Jr.'s milder ones. (Click here to see some others.) The basic marketing concept behind the ads is that Carls Jr. is the place for Young Guys on the Go who need good hot food right now. This concept kind of leaves out Gals on the Go. However, it's good that at least one fast-food chain is something more than just another wholesome place to take your kid's soccer team for a post-practice treat.

In any case, Paris Hilton is overexposed (in more than one sense of the word) but at least it is a reasonably cute person this time who is being overexposed... And eventually she will go the way of the Spice Girls...