The same city that hoists you up can sometimes push you down. Just ask David Blaine.
The hipster magician, who is currently attempting to spend 35 continuous hours precariously perched atop an 80-foot pillar in New York City (sans food, water, sleep or safety nets), says that life on the ground isn't always all it's cracked up to be.
"What Danny Glover says about cabs in New York not picking up black people is definitely true," Blaine told celebrity researcher Baird Jones, referring to Glover's famous gripe.
"I am often mistaken for being black because I have a dark complexion. I'm actually the unusual mixture of one half Russian Jew, through my mother, and one quarter Sicilian and one quarter Puerto Rican, through my father," the showman explained, shortly before embarking on his latest stunt. "Sometimes I wait 10 minutes for a cab and they just pass me by and pick up everyone else waiting who is white, even if I come first. I've even seen black cabdrivers prefer white passengers. I finally get disgusted and give up."
Guess making racism disappear is not in his bag of tricks.
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The ultimate dys
"That would be like getting married to Pamela again. That'd be very dysfunctional."
-- Tommy Lee on how he has no interest whatsoever in getting back together with his Mötley Crüe band mates, in the Toronto Sun.
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The miracles of Saint Angelina
Angelina Jolie: Mother Teresa and two-time mother?
The actress has reportedly seen fit to donate $100,000 -- along with a TV, VCR, electrical generator, sports equipment and clothing -- to aid refugees living along the Thai-Burma border.
Jolie, who is shooting a film in Thailand and just visited a border refugee camp in the line of her U.N. Goodwill Ambassador duty, is also voicing hope that Burma will soon be a democratic nation.
"I'm praying that there will be change [in Burma] in the next few years," she told the Bangkok Post. "I'm optimistic it will happen. So to prepare them for what they're going to be, training will help."
And if that doesn't work, Jolie may just continue to adopt children in dire straits.
"I would love to adopt another child, from wherever there is a need," she told Reuters. "My husband's nervous every time I go to another country."
But no matter if Billy Bob's a little edgy, his wife's not backing down.
"For me," Jolie said, "it makes perfect sense to go to an orphanage and find a child that needs a home."
It certainly makes more sense than wearing your spouse's blood around your neck.
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Snog, next snog
"I did participate in the casting of Bond women once. I spent a whole day snogging different beautiful women. It was rather bizarre."
-- Pierce Brosnan on the particular demands of playing a certain suave spy, to reporters at Cannes.
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The best operating table in town
A "Friends" fan in need can be a picky patient indeed.
At least that's what the staffers at New York's St. Vincent's Medical Center have apparently discovered this past week.
A spokesman for St. Vincent's told the U.K. Sun that, since last week's "Friends" episode, which depicted Jennifer Aniston's character, Rachel, giving birth at the Greenwich Village hospital, aired, his staff has been inundated with calls from pregnant women looking to add a little celebrity glitz to their childbirth ordeal.
"Most said they wanted to have their baby where Rachel had hers," the spokesman said. "They wanted to book her room."
I guess if you're pregnant in New York, no one has to tell you to push.
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