Britney's $200G Deficit | Madonna and Sean: Shanghai Revisited | Leno-Conan-Fallon: As We Told You | Lindsay Lohan, Scandal-Free; Polo Kick Starts; Todd Returns; Fanboys Is Coming
Britney Spears is in the red, and I don’t mean lipstick or anything sexy.
Her Britney Spears Foundation has a deficit — nearly $200,000 to be precise.
The foundation’s Form 900 tax filing has just arrived, and it shows that Spears came up short $195,445 for the year 2006.
Click here to read: Photos Show Britney Spears Taking Lighter, Cigarettes From Son, 2
Total revenue was $148,614. But total expenses came to $344,063.
Among the expenses were two salaries that each came to a little less than $40,000. One employee is Corina O. Biggar, who’s run Britney’s foundation from her home in Massachusetts. The other is listed as John McMahon, a former New York City cop.
In 2002, according to the Wall Street Journal, McMahon was involved in scandal concerning the Spears fund and the Boston-based Giving Back Fund, the umbrella group managing her donor-advised charity.
According to the Journal, the Giving Back Fund "alleged that the agent for Ms. Spears threatened to move the pop star's charity giving to another firm if the fund manager refused to hire her friend John McMahon, a former New York City police officer. The dispute was concluded with a settlement."
Another $50,000 was listed as a contribution for Britney’s summer camp for kids — although no one seems to know what’s happened to the camp, where it is, or what kids attend it — if any.
Then there’s a big chunk — $214,930 — that’s annotated as miscellaneous grants. Unfortunately, none of those grants is specified. In 2005, the Spears Foundation gave away nearly $600,000 to a variety of arts and AIDS groups and New Orleans relief efforts as well as $30,000 to the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles.
The 2006 tax return is signed by an accountant in Tennessee. Britney’s older brother Bryan, age 30, signed the return in his role as president on Dec. 1, 2007.
The woman who answered the phone at the Tennessee CPA’s office had no comment and couldn’t answer where Spears’ money had gone or whether the summer camp was still in business.
Madonna and Sean: Shanghai Revisited
Sales for Christopher Ciccone’s tell-little memoir, "Life with My Sister Madonna" can’t be so good. The book has dropped to No. 42 on amazon.com and keeps slipping down the chart.
Still, with few actual revelations, somehow no one’s picked up on Chris’ recollections of Madonna’s marriage to Sean Penn. It’s worth a flip-through in the bookstore. No one comes off well. Ciccone recalls that, prior to the Sean-Madonna wedding, Penn slices his thumb and presses the bloody finger to Ciccone’s. Years later, he asks Ciccone if he recalls the moment. "You don’t have AIDS, do you?" Ciccone claims Penn asked.
There’s more, mostly about the shooting of "Shanghai Surprise," one of the worst movies in history. (Madonna is in several of these, including "Body of Evidence," "Swept Away" (remake), "The Next Best Thing," "Bloodhounds of Broadway," "Dangerous Game" and "Evita." All hideous.) There’s also a little about one more, "Who’s That Girl?"
All are disasters, as is the marriage. Ciccone quotes the unit publicist on "Shanghai": "Penn is an arrogant little creep and his wife goes along with him."
Ciccone’s best memory: "At around three in the morning, I wake up to the sounds of furniture being thrown around in Madonna and Sean’s suite next door. He’s screaming at her with all his might.
"I’m the actor, you’re not," Ciccone says Penn yelled at Madonna.
"And you don’t know a f---ing thing about handling the media, you paranoid control freak," Madonna allegedly screamed back at Penn.
Good stuff! I only wish there was more of it throughout the book.
Leno-Conan-Fallon: As We Told You
We told you first, on April 24, that Jimmy Fallon would replace Conan O'Brien in May 2009, when Jay Leno left and O’Brien took over. NBC announced it on Monday.
Jimmy will actually start a little earlier, in March or April, to give O’Brien a chance to get out to the West Coast and get settled. Leno will host the show for the last time on May 29. O’Brien will take over on June 1.
What happens to Leno now remains the burning issue for NBC.
Lindsay Lohan, Scandal-Free; Polo Kick Starts; Todd Returns; Fanboys Is Coming
Last week, I told you about Lindsay Lohan’s new movie. Now producer Rick Schwartz pipes in. Lindsay, he says, was a dream to work with, and he’s looking for more projects they can do together. This on top of reports that Lindsay is happily in some kind of relationship with Samantha Ronson, the DJ daughter of Mick Jones (from Foreigner) and Ann Dexter Jones. Everyone’s happy, including Lindsay’s mom, Dina, and Samantha’s twin sister, Charlotte. Yikes! What do we do now? ...
I’ve never seen "Gossip Girl," and I probably never will. I’m just too old. But you might like to know that the young actor Chace Crawford was the main attraction at Sunday’s Mercedes-Benz Polo launch in Bridgehampton.
Nicky Hilton brought her brother, DJ Sky Nellor was there, so was Samantha Cole, who’s just launched her new party company in Southampton. The photographers went nuts over Stephanie Seymour. There were loads of sponsors who wanted to be mentioned, including Ralph Lauren, Gruen Eyewear and Tag Heuer. Mercedes gave proceeds from the afternoon to the South Fork Breast Health Coalition. Polo must have been played, and someone must have won or lost, but as usual, hardly anyone paid a bit of attention to the games on the field, only in the party tents. …
Todd Rundgren is not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, despite countless hits and lots of important production credits. He doesn’t care. He’s releasing his first new album, called "Arena," on Sept. 29. You can hear some of it now on his MySpace page. Do yourself a favor, download or buy his albums called "Something/Anything" and "A Wizard, A True Star." Then send Jann Wenner a nasty note. …
The Weinstein Company is about to unleash Woody Allen’s first hit film in quite a while, called "Vicky Christina Barcelona." But they’ve first got two smaller gems coming: "Boy A" starring Andrew Garfield, and "Fanboys." The latter is being screened for the first time on July 24 in San Diego at Comic-Con. There’s a ton of buzz, because the fans of "Fanboys" put pressure on the studio to get the film they wanted. …
The great actor Larry Haines has passed away at age 89 in Florida. Larry played lovable Stu Bergman on CBS's "Search for Tomorrow" for the show's entire 35-year run and won two Emmy awards along the way. He was also twice nominated for Tony Awards for his work on Broadway.
A rarity in the patrician, WASP world of soaps, Haines did not hide his ethnicity or his ingratiating personality. ...
FOX411 summer schedule begins Wednesday. Check back in a couple of days for updates as needed. ...
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