The Daily Bite, September 2011

By Lizzy Wood

This month, the world's best body speaks out, and we follow Obama on his campaign trail. MiNDFOOD reports.

26.09.2011

From the moment we touched puberty, I have no doubt my parents were dreaming of the day my brother and I would up sticks and leave for University. But for one Italian couple, that dream never became a reality.

Apparently tired of feeding and looking after their 41-year-old son, an unnamed Venetian couple have taken legal action in a bid to force their son to do what so many others can’t wait to do: move out.

“We cannot do it anymore. My wife is suffering from stress and had to be hospitalised,” the father is quoted as saying on CNN. Despite having a good job, the son “really has no intention of leaving,” the father added.

Italy is renowned for its population of mammoni (or mummy’s boys) and in 2002 Italy’s highest court, the Corte di Cassazione, ruled that it was the paternal duty to look after offspring until they reach “economic autonomy,” no matter what age that may be.

22.09.2011

For six years they maintained a dignified silence over the cause of their split, but in an interview with Parade last week, Brad Pitt seemingly laid the blame firmly at Jennifer Aniston’s door, labelling his life during his five-year marriage to her as “boring”.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a media outburst ensued – Aniston is, after all, Hollywood’s sweetheart. Now, one week after his remarks and out on the promotional circuit for his latest movie, Pitt has sought to clarify his comments, referring to Aniston as his “dear friend” and a “valuable person”.

Speaking on the Today show in the US, Reuters reports that Pitt found little time to promote his new movie, Moneyball, seeking instead to explain his earlier remarks.

“All I know is that my point was, the best thing I’d done as a father is be sure that my kids have a good mother,” Pitt told Matt Lauer during the interview.

“That’s all I was, or am, trying to say. It has no reference to the past. And I think it’s a shame that I can’t say something nice about Angie without Jen being dragged in. You know, she doesn’t deserve it,” Pitt said.

In an effort to put the media obsession with their relationship to bed, Pitt went on to say “I don’t want them to say anything bad like that about Jen. She’s a dear friend of mine.”

15.09.2011

Waking up to find a stranger in your bedroom is the stuff of nightmares. But for one actor, filming scenes in his latest movie hit close to home.

Nicolas Cage, who has been promoting his film Trespass at the Toronto Film Festival, yesterday revealed that he had lived through a bizarre yet frightening home invasion some years ago.

“It was two in the morning. I was living in Orange County at the time and was asleep with my wife,” he told reporters at the festival. “My two-year old at the time was in another room. I opened my eyes and there was a naked man wearing my leather jacket eating a Fudgesicle in front of my bed.”

“I know it sounds funny … but it was horrifying,” Cage added, as if imagining the headlines that would ensue.

Trespass, which is due for release later this year and also stars Nicole Kidman, deals with the disparity between rich and poor in modern America, and follows a family as their home is invaded, and they’re held for ransom.

14.09.2011

Carrie Bradshaw is set to return to our TV screens, but not everyone seems happy about it.

With rumours abound that The Carrie Diaries, which features Sex and the City’s main character 20 years younger and still in high school, is to be turned into a TV series produced by the team behind Gossip Girl, the creator of the original series has wasted no time in making his opinion about the venture known.

“My Carrie Bradshaw started at 33, and I took her to 43. I didn’t even want to know who Carrie Bradshaw’s parents were because I thought she only existed in Manhattan,” Michael Patrick King is reported to have said at the Television Critics Association’s conference in Beverly Hills.

“For me, the idea of going backwards and making her less evolved is something that I don’t imagine doing.”

The Carrie Diaries was written by Candace Bushnell as a prequel to her best selling book, Sex and the City, and was published in 2010.

13.09.2011

As Victoria Beckham hit the streets of New York with new baby Harper Seven in tow, one actor was spotted wheeling something slightly less expected around in a stroller.

On Monday afternoon (US time), Jeremy Piven, known for his role in Entourage, was spotted walking around Soho in Manhattan with two of his Emmy statuettes strapped into a twin stroller, and a third secured in a Baby Bjorn around his neck.

Although Piven famously suffered from hydragaria, a disease caused by exposure to mercury, New York Magazine suspect Piven’s outing was in fact aimed at promoting the upcoming awards ceremony, which will take place this weekend.

12.09.2011

The Rugby World Cup got underway in Auckland in fine style last week, but it wasn’t the ball skills that captured headlines over the weekend. Rather, a ripped shirt and the equally ripped muscles that lay underneath have caught the world’s attention.

The sleeve of All Blacks second-five Sonny Bill Williams’ jersey was torn during the second half of their opening game against Tonga on Friday night, revealing the full extent of his intricately tatooed biceps. Shortly afterwards, Deb Robinson, the team doctor, stepped in to help Williams replace his shirt to the apparent pleasure of the crowd.

Today, Williams announced his ripped jersey will be auctioned to help raise money and awareness for meningococcal disease.

“I’ve been with a charity back in Australia, the Violet Foundation, since I was a young chap,” the New Zealand Herald quotes Williams as saying. “To give some money back to them is good. Hopefully it gets a fair bit,” he added.

At this stage it seems safe to say that jersey manufacturers Adidas are the only people hoping Williams’ shirt stays on during his next appearance on the field on Saturday, when the All Blacks take on Japan at Waikato Stadium in Hamilton.

07.09.2011

Think you’re pretty cool? Think again, as Australia and New Zealand have failed to rank in the top ten coolest nations in the world.

If you want to gain some ‘street-cred’, therefore, look towards America, as people living in the US have been named the world’s “coolest” in an international survey of more than 30,000 people.

Conducted by social networking site Badoo.com, the survey asked individuals to name the coolest nationality, and not only found Americans to be on top, but named Belgium as the world’s least cool nationality.

“America”, says Lloyd Price, Director of Marketing at Badoo, “boasts the world’s coolest leader, Obama; the coolest rappers, Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg; and the coolest man in technology, Steve Jobs of Apple, the man who even made geeks cool.”

THE 10 COOLEST NATIONALITIES

1. Americans

2. Brazilians

3. Spanish

4. Italians

5. French

6. British

7. Dutch

8. Mexicans

9. Argentinians

10. Russians

FIVE LEAST COOLEST NATIONALITIES

1. Belgians

2. Poles

3. Turks

4. Canadians

5. Germans

06.09.2011

For Gwyneth Paltrow, life imitates art, as she admits to being involved in her very own Sliding Doors moment.

As the world prepares to mark ten years since the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks, Paltrow has shed light on her own activities on the fateful day.
“I had gone to a yoga class very early,” the Oscar-winning actress said in an interview in Venice where she’s currently promoting her latest film, Contagion.

“I was on the way home and it was the morning of September 11 — not that I knew at the time what that meant — and a girl was jaywalking across the street and we kind of both stopped at the same time and waited a really long time,” said Paltrow. After a bit of side-stepping, the women went on her way and Paltrow, it seems, thought no more about the incident – understandably, given the dramatic events that took place later on that day.

“Ten years later I got a letter from her saying that she had been late for work and we had that thing and she went down to the Christopher Street station to catch her train to go down to the World Trade Center where she worked on the 77th floor of the South Tower and the train was just pulling out.

“So had we not had that interaction she feels like her life would’ve taken a much different course. She called it her ‘Sliding Doors moment’,” Paltrow explains.

Concluding the story, Paltrow said “I think a lot of fates were changed that day … and I am very humbly happy to be a part in her story.”

02.09.2011

Last month, the world was up in arms over a range of racy lingerie designed for four to 12-year-old girls. Now, four-year-old Maddy Jackson seems to have taken the debate one step further, appearing on US reality TV show Toddlers and Tiaras sporting fake C-cup breasts and a padded-out behind.

The TV show, which follows participants and their families as they take part in American beauty pageants, has already garnered some criticism, with the Facebook group ‘Take Toddlers And Tiaras off the Air’ attracting over a thousand fans.

However, Maddy’s Mum, Lindsay, who is shown in the program rearranging her toddler’s fake breasts to perfect her hour-glass figure, thinks there’s nothing wrong with Maddy wearing the padding to mimic Dolly Parton for her performance in the pageant.

“To some people, it’s over the top, to us it’s just what happens… It’s just normal. When she wears the fake boobs and the fake butt, it’s just like extra bonus,” Jackson told NBC’s Today Show, going on to compare the enhancements to wearing makeup when competing as a cheer-leader.

01.09.2011

The world rejoiced when Helen Mirren was awarded ‘Best Body’ in a poll conducted by LA Fitness last month, but Mirren, 66, believes she simply received the sympathy vote, and that her award was down to “the kindness of strangers.”

“It’s ridiculous: J-Lo is a thousand times, a thousand million times more of a beautiful body than I am, head-to-toe,’ Mirren said on The Early Show, where she was promoting her latest film The Debt, which opens in the US this week.

‘Maybe I got sympathy votes. But it was a beautiful thing that these fitness people did, I have to say.

‘I think it was recognition of the fact that you don’t have to be perfect.’

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