Hoax Museum Blog: Celebrities

Celebrity Look-Alikes — image Fake Faces is a UK look-alike agency that represents a huge number of celebrity impersonators. It's kind of fun to browse through its catalog. As John Robinson of Sore Eyes notes, some of the look-alikes are really, really bad. But some are surprisingly good. For instance, would you be able to tell if that's really Joanna Lumley (of Ab Fab fame) in the thumbnail? It's not. (via Sore Eyes and I Love Everything)
Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004.   Comments (2)

Jackson isn’t dead, nor is he touring Namibia — Sam Nujoma, President of Namibia, eagerly waited for the arrival of Michael Jackson, whom he believed was launching a 12-day tour of Africa in his country. Unfortunately, he waited and waited, and Jackson never showed up. In fact, Jackson never had any plans to visit Africa. Nujoma was the victim of misinformation. Jackson isn't even allowed to travel abroad until the case against him is settled.
Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004.   Comments (0)

Michael Jackson Isn’t Dead — Despite the claims of this faux news story, Michael Jackson isn't dead.
Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004.   Comments (1)

Paris Hilton’s Pubic Hair — Celebrity body parts seem to be the thing to sell on eBay. A few weeks ago George Best's liver was up for sale. Now we have Paris Hilton's pubic hair. According to the description on the auction, "This bundle of Pubic Hair was taken from Paris Hilton's bathroom sink at one of her hotels when she visited Australia late last year, Surprise!!!!!!!!!!!!! She isn't a natural blonde!!!!!!!!!!!!" The auction was yanked by eBay soon after it was put up, confirming that it was almost definitely a hoax. But a screenshot of it can be seen over at Fleshbot (safe for work). I just watched American Wedding which has a scene involving pubic hair in a hotel bathroom, and I suspect this auction might have been inspired by that.
Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004.   Comments (8)


Demi Moore’s Wedding Dress Browns — image I remember seeing the issue of Star Magazine with Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher on the cover, both wearing white, as I was standing in the checkout line at the supermarket. It had big headlines about their rumored engagement. Turns out they weren't actually wearing white. Demi Moore was wearing a brown dress and Ashton Kutcher was wearing a pink suit. But the editors of Star digitally changed the color of their clothes to make the image fit in with the whole wedding theme. In the thumbnail you can see Demi wearing the faux white dress on the left (on the Star cover), and wearing the same dress in its true brown color on the right. The Wall Street Journal has an article about this. Meanwhile, editors of rival magazines are clucking about how they would never stoop so low, conveniently forgetting that they stoop this low all the time.
Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2004.   Comments (0)

Oprah Becomes 4th Member of Holy Trinity — image The major Christian denominations have jointly agreed to make Oprah Winfrey the fourth member of the Holy Trinity, thereby broadening its appeal and making it less gender-biased. "Along with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the popular talk show host will be recognized as one person in the sacred and indivisible unity of the Godhead--or Quadhead, as the updated Trinity will now be called."
Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2004.   Comments (2)

The Fake Death of Andy Kaufman — Most people think that the comedian Andy Kaufman died of lung cancer on May 16, 1984. But Enrique P. believes that Kaufman faked his death. And he's put up a website where he argues his case. (Thanks to Julie H. for the link).
Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2004.   Comments (9)

MJ and JR News — Michael Jackson has set up a website that's serving as his Official Press Room. Apparently Jack the Ripper has now done the same. (Thanks to Kentaro Mori for the link)

Update: By the way, don't bother clicking on any of the links on the 'JR News' site. They all lead to spam. Evidently the JR News site is just a front for spammers.
Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2003.   Comments (0)

Michael Jackson, the jokes have begun — In what is sure to be the first of many Michael Jackson-related photos and jokes circulating via email, we already have a 'Free MJ' shop that's now up on CafePress. Plus, there have been quite a few postings today on my message board dedicated to Michael Jackson's Nose.

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2003.   Comments (0)

The Naked Chef — jamie oliverHere's a picture of the 2004 calendar of Jamie Oliver (aka The Naked Chef). Note the suggestively placed piece of bread. This image originally appeared on the website of Boots, which is a British pharmacy. And it quickly attracted attention, at which point Boots cropped the image in order to remove the offending piece of bread. I can't find another picture of the calendar anywhere online to compare this picture to, but I'm assuming that the piece of bread must have been photoshopped in. Probably by a mischievous Boots employee.

Update 2 (11/17/03): David Emery reports that he was able to find the real version of the Jamie Oliver 2004 calendar, and it looks nothing like the fake version that appeared on the Boots website. Oh, and what I thought was a piece of bread was actually a brown paper bag that had been photoshopped.
Update 3 (11/18/03): jamie oliverDavid Emery has done some great sleuthing and discovered that the Jamie Oliver calendar being sold by Boots is absolutely real and unaltered. Boots sent him a full-size image of the calendar cover (which he was kind enough to forward along to me). It shows Jamie taking oranges out of a paper bag and peeling them. Full-size the image looks quite innocent, but shrunk down to thumbnail size, the position and shape of the paper bag becomes rather suggestive. Personally I think that whoever created that calendar must have been aware of the two ways of viewing that paper bag when they chose that image. It's an old advertising strategy: put a bit of subliminal (or not so subliminal) sexual imagery in an ad and watch the product fly off the shelf.
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003.   Comments (0)

Clooney Gets Kaycee Nicoled — While I was gone, George Clooney apparently got conned by a woman who told him that her daughter, Cindy, had cancer. When Clooney offered to visit, he got a call from the mother telling him that Cindy had died. Evidently Cindy had never existed. She was just a ploy on the woman's part to get Clooney's attention. Somewhat parallel to the Kaycee Nicole Simpson case.
Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2003.   Comments (0)

Ben ‘n Jen Marriage Ruse — Oh No! Are Ben Affleck and J-Lo back together? They were sighted together applying for some kind of license at a Georgia courthouse. Their split may have just been a fake. The media waits with baited breath to find out the truth, while the rest of us whimper, 'please, no more.'
Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003.   Comments (0)

Kylie Kidnapping — This is strange: documentary filmmakers stage a fake kidnapping of Kylie Mingoue. Worried onlookers contact the police.
Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2003.   Comments (0)

A Vermont Wedding — The town of Manchester, Vermont is set abuzz when rumors spread that the marriage of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck will occur there. Unfortunately, the rumors turn out to be false.
Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003.   Comments (0)

Julia Roberts on Redbook — julia jennifer Redbook draws fire from Julia Roberts for putting a picture of her on its cover in which a recent image of her head is pasted onto an old picture of her body. Ironically, the title of their article about her is "The Real Julia." Redbook also recently got in trouble for doing the same thing to Jennifer Aniston. The problem, of course, is not in their use of composite images (everyone does that), but in doing such a poor job of them.
Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2003.   Comments (1)

Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2002.   Comments (0)

Britney Spears Phone Prank — A deejay at a Montreal radio station made a successful prank phone call to Britney Spears. While pretending to be Celine Dion, the deejay got Spears to agree to sing a duet with Tiger Woods called Let's Make A Hole in One. All for charity, of course. Read about it here. Or visit the homepage of the radio prankster where you can buy a recording of the actual prank.
Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2002.   Comments (26)

Fake Lettuce — Baywatch star Traci Bingham has been getting a huge amount of publicity for parading around European cities in her bikini made out of lettuce. Her point was to promote vegetarianism. But purists will note that the bikini was made out of fake lettuce.
Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2002.   Comments (1)

Page 5 of 6 pages ‹ First  < 3 4 5 6 >