The Reluctant Whore

Just as they were with Paris Hilton’s jail exit and with several plot developments with the Anna Nicole saga, TMZ have been on the war path covering the Lohan arrest. It’s exhausting and totally inane but at the same time, it’s there and they’re so earnest and sincere about it that you just want to give them a gold star for thoroughness.

Here’s the rundown:

8:44am ­- So, Li Lo was arrested for drunk driving. It was near Santa Monica beach, she was drunk, she was driving, she was wearing a monitoring device. All basic facts, no inane obsessiveness yet but you can sense the blood lust and hear the saliva pouring onto the ground in the TMZ offices. Yes, even from New York.

9:04am - Lindsay Lohan has a controlled substance on her. Unlike the Hilton story, and indeed unlike Hilton herself, this story actually has marked plot developments. Finding cocaine on Lohan is far more interesting at this point than the equivalent post for the jail exit which was something like “Kathy and Rick get in car”.

9:12am - 8 minutes later, yes, it was cocaine, they found cocaine on her. The cops told TMZ that Lohan’s blood alcohol level was .12 or .13 which is odd. Do they always just tell buzzing paparazzi everything they find out?

9:16am - 4 minutes later the bail announcement. It’s $25K. Should TMZ actually fork out here? They’ll make it back. With Hilton they had larger gaps between postings probably because there wasn’t really any subject matter. This is quality blow by blow (ha!) reportage.

9:20am - 4 minutes later (at this rate who has time to nervously eat and frankly with this level of vicarious gawking, who needs to?), she’s still being held in jail. No developments really but they get to say that she’s in jail and to fill the few extra sentences by speculating about her looming jail sentence.







9: 24 - 4 minutes later – editorial research team B has obviously come back with something because now the back story starts to unfold. She was arrested, it’s been confirmed, her blood alcohol level was .12-.13 which we already knew. Jesus, can’t they give us something else? Oh, wait. The car was white. Ok, that’s going to be enough. But just for now….







9:35 – 11 minutes later – She’s out of jail and she’s angry. She refused to be tested for alcohol levels. I still can’t get over how there’s actual plot in this story. There’s a real story and it’s unfolding. Sometimes there doesn’t need to be that to make the news, this time we get plot which is nice. It’s a nice thing.




9:36 – 1 minute later – Editorial team B are back and they’re claiming that the SCRAM device which monitors alcohol consumption from the skin that Lindsay wore was more or less meaningless because the rep from SCRAM didn’t know she had been arrested. Well, yes, except that the device will only indicate alcohol consumption, not whether or not she’s in jail. Back to the drawing board Editorial B. Get some dirt on the mother for Christ’s sake. What’s she up to? Where was she? Which child was she pimping?




9:45am – 9 minutes later – Lindsay Lohan will not actually be appearing on the Tonight Show tonight to talk about her upcoming projects, presumably because she has none now that she is going to jail. Or, you know, not. Maybe she won’t go to jail. Yeah…there’s …ah…always that possibility.




10:01am – It’s been a full 16 minutes later, the most amount of minutes between posts so far, and the Sheriff’s Department has released Lohan’s mugshot. She looks like she’s got a nice tan and she’s sort of in shape but there appear to be all these scabs all over her head/face. Or maybe they’re not scabs, maybe she’s just been shoveling chocolate into her head. Something’s weird there. She looks vacant and distastefully un-made up.


10:54 – almost an HOUR later – and Editorial B is back, with emergency filler material. Apparently some geek bought http://www.lohaninjail.com/ in anticipation of massive interest in the trial or her sentence. After Hilton, it sort of makes sense. Fundamentally though, it was almost an hour between updates and it was good of TMZ to keep us all in the headspace. It’s hard to keep Lohan on the mind at the moment after all.


11:00am – 6 minutes later – it’s reported that someone in the sherrif’s office thought Lohan was kind of a bitch. Who would have thought? She always seemed like such a nice kid.

11:11am - Finally, a mere 12 posts into the story, as though some metaphor for their parenting techniques, one of the Lohan parents shows up and thankfully, it’s the less coarse Michael Lohan. Dina is still MIA, maybe she’s out white Oprahing or something. Regardless, the father hammers out the Christian angle, claiming partial responsibility. He’s got to be the opposite of the mother to retain cultural clout. Two bickering bad parents won’t do. So, here we have the repentant father campaigning for custody and he’s playing the rational one. TMZ also includes that Michael Lohan is saying that he and Dina should sit down and figure out what to do about the kids. Seems, reasonable. That seems to be exactly what the kid needs. MORE exposure to her freakshow parents.


11:32am – Lindsay’s Assistant quit and in essence, the car chase that ensued, because that’s apparently what happened – the kid quit and the Lohan logically chased her – ended up at the Police station where Lohan was arrested. This story hasn’t really let up at all. We’re 12 posts in and none of them have really been filler. Kudos to Lohan for keeping it engaging.






12:16pm – The court date for her arraignment is August 24 which is also the date her other DUI case is meant to begin. That’s really just to make it more irritating for Lohan. Is there no end to the humiliating yet totally mentionable developments in this story? Lohan must be in heaven this morning with a hangover and a bunch of crap that’s slowly downloading. She’ll need more than a vitamin B supplement and some aspirin today.









12:23pm – The Attorney finally makes a statement in which it’s made extremely clear that the lawyer had no idea until the very last minute that this was all going on. Also, there’s information about how relapsing into addiction is really awful etc





Lohan is now back in rehab. After a while, the words Lohan and Rehab seem to retain very little meaning. What? Lohan? Rehab? I’d like to hear THAT again and I’d also like to know more.