Evans Above

As soon as it was revealed that American Idol contestant Nikki McKibbin once had a job as a stripper in a Texas strip club, you can be sure that millions of horny fans headed (and are still heading) towards the search engines to blow their time looking for “nude photos of Nikki McKibbin”.

I’m bored right now, so by typing this up, we just may end up as the end destination for this search and I’ll chuckle and spend the resulting ad money on a coffee.

Thanks.

The 27th Toronto International Film Festival is over. I’ve had my sleep. I think I’m rested after the 10 days, but I still have the urge to stand and photograph red carpets.

The Festival was a little low key this year, but that’s only fitting considering it straddled the first anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks.

High point: Watching the amazing chemistry between Moonlight Mile stars Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon.

Low point: Dealing with a snotty young photographer from New York who was loud, obnoxious and insulting. His good point: He united all the other photographers who all thought he was an idiot. He said he won’t be coming back. Let’s hope that’s a promise.

We’ll be fleshing out our daily TIFF reports with some press conference anecdotes ASAP.

Covering a film festival is wacky. Lot of activity — running to screenings at one location, a photo op at another and a press conference at another — followed by periods of waiting on red carpets to guarantee a great shot when the limos arrive.

It just occurred to me that I should be blogging the Toronto International Film Festival. As I’m waiting on the red carpets, or quickly downing a coffee, I could be sending off a quick update on some handy dandy PDA or something.

One problem: I don’t have a handy dandy wireless device. If there’s a company out there who’d like to loan us one for two weeks I’ll eagerly place a “Remote updates made possible by” link on our postings.

Requirements: A light, portable device that a) will enable me to use a small web browser or send email, b) come with a free access account and c) work in Toronto obviously.

The Festival starts on September 5th. In these days of FedEx, this shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re interested, drop us a line.

Blackplanet.com is a community site that allows members to create personal homepages. They’re such good corporate citizens that every single one of their homepages has a link on it allowing you to report abuse. Abuses like copyright violations, harassment, etc. Every personal homepage site should make it this easy.

It’s great to see companies acting like good corporate citizens. Too bad we’re not seeing it.

Several of their members are directly linking to images on our site. Even if you ignore the copyright issue, the fact remains that they’re taking the images off of our server, costing us money for bandwidth to pretty up their pages.

You’d think that informing their customer service dept. would get some results. Nope. Apparently it’s our problem and we should modify our server configuration to stop it. According to their manager of member services, that’s their “position” on the matter.

Call me crazy, but when a company has been informed that illegal activities are taking place on their premises and they don’t do anything about it…aren’t they in fact participants?

Todd Dominey’s whatdoiknow blog comments on a piece done by CNN’s Howard Kurtz. Kurtz points out that the death of Elvis Presley was not the lead story on the three major networks back in ’77.

Flash forward to the present. Despite all that’s happening in the world around us, look at how the news frequently leads with celebrity stories. I was perturbed back in April when the Robert Blake arrest led the news over the death of four Canadian soldiers killed by a US bomb in Afghanistan.

Look, I’ll lead off with Blake, Aaliyah, who won what and who married who. But that’s my beat. The real newscasts shouldn’t morph into Access Hollywood.

We’ve had a lot of traffic recently looking for American Idol results. It appears at the moment (these things change) that DigitalHit.com has spots 1 and 2 when you search for “American Idol results” on Google.

I have to admit I’ve had to watch this show — I’m an entertainment writer after all — and I can’t believe the response it’s getting. The producers have done a good job of creating fake drama on the show that seems to have fooled the predominantly squealing teens that watch it.

The hosts and other judges all pick on Simon. First off, they all pick on Simon because he’s British (nothing like picking on your wartime allies). Even the two talentless hosts make comment after comment about the guy. The kids on the message boards think this is real, honest emotion. I guess they forget the fact that Simon is best buddies with show producer Simon Fowler and that this is all manufactured drama.

Still, I hope that Sideshow Bob (Justin) doesn’t win. Not that I’m watching that closely. Really.

It’s hot and humid in Toronto and I have to go find a cool place to write two reviews: Signs and Master of Disguise.

The two films couldn’t be further apart. Signs is a great film with wonderful performances. Master of Disguise is an awful, awful film.

I’ll have the reviews up shortly.

The Oscars® are planning to move to late February in 2004. This is causing mayhem for other award shows like SAG, DGA and BAFTA as they try to move even earlier to try and keep the influence over the Oscar® voters that they think they have.

This is causing havoc for the networks, the venues, and of course, LA hookers, as schedules have to be rearranged and rearranged again to try and keep up.

The big joke too is that the Academy may decide to keep their 2004 shindig in March after all.

So if you’re a major awards show producer and you’re stuck for a venue in 2004, perhaps you can hold your show at my place. Just let me know early enough so I can get some sandwich fixings in.

And remember it’s BYOB.

Trista Rehn, the lucky runner-up who avoided the doofus on The Bachelor, has just been announced as the star of The Bachelorette.

Why? Wasn’t the public humiliation of the first one enough? Sure she gets to pick this time, but c’mon, why does she have to do this in the first place?

Let’s examine the facts:

• she’s darn attractive
• she’s a Miami heat dancer
• she’s not as loose as the winner, but they did discuss “compromising positions” before they turned off the camera on the last night

So, she can’t find a man in the real world? Or does she just want a second 15 minutes?

I see Darva Conger’s going to make an appearance on Dog Eat Dog.

I’m so glad she has her privacy back. The question is, can network television get a restraining order against her?

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