So what happens the next time director Bryan Singer tweets out some major casting news, as he has been known to do every once in a while. Will the media ignore the “scoop”?

Entertainment reporters around town are generally being sympathetic to Variety film writer Justin Kroll for rushing first to what turned out to be an erroneous quick-post about Lady Gaga joining the cast of the next X-Men film. That’s because they know it could just as easily have been one of them.

The Singer-Gaga April Fool’s tweet, as you can see, had no clue to help unravel the joke. There was also no quick follow-up “gotcha!” tweet from the filmmaker’s end, which would have still allowed him to have his fun while sparing the likes of Kroll.

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The video compilation runs two minutes, 46 seconds and features initial quick shots of Red Bull space diver Felix Baumgartner, South Korean viral sensation Psy and a deep-sea diving James Cameron. And for the third year in a row, Google’s Zeitgeist: Year in Review was put together by an agency right here in LA.

Released Wednesday and linked on the Google search home page, the slick montage is about to cross the two and a half million views mark. It was directed by WHiRLED founder-creative director Scott Chan and produced by his colleague there Jenna Cedicci.

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On Monday at noon PT, Tom Leykis kicked off his latest Internet experiment: the all-music stream Pure Pop Hits. Aimed squarely at the 12-to-24 demo, it features a DJ-less run of songs from the past three years and is set to play 50,000 of them… in a row.

“We are fully licensed with ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and Sound Exchange as a webcaster,” Leykis tells FishbowlLA. “The total cost of operating Pure Pop Hits is a fraction of the cost of the KIIS-FM receptionist… if they still have one… About $7,000.”

To put that crazy 50K number in proper perspective, it means there will zero commercial interruptions in 2012. Featured artists include Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Usher and Pitbull. Pure Pop Hits also promises to never censor any song lyrics.

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Mario Lavandeira, who makes a good part of his Perez Hilton living ridiculing celebrities, is often caught in the same sort of crossfire. Last fall for example, he placed second on Out magazine’s list of worst dressed gay men, behind Boy George.

Intentionally or not, Hilton added to this wretched reputation when he attended the 45th anniversary bash for The Advocate sporting a Juicy Couture jacket, Longchamp bag, Loudmouth Golf pants and Jeremy Scott shoes. After he shared the photo at right on his site, readers were not amused:

Chrstn7: Sorry Perez but that outfit is a hot mess!! You are trying to be like Lady Gaga by putting on crazy outfits to make a statement but it’s only going to put you on the worst dressed lists.

Alliestp: Do you always have to look like you got dressed in a dumpster?

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With Lady Gaga set to kick off the four-part ITV2 series Perez Hilton: Superfan this Wednesday, the Internet’s original celebrity gossiper has been doing some transatlantic PR.

It’s evident from the lede of John Plunkett‘s article in The Guardian that the reporter is catering to a more erudite British audience. FishbowlLA can’t imagine too many American daily newspaper profile pieces that would begin like this:

Perez Hilton makes for an unlikely Saul on the road to Damascus.

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The Rapture never came May 21. Nor on Harold Camping‘s revised date of October 21. But switch around those numerals and swap out one weird guy for another, and you’ve got the next best thing for Angelenos–Weird Al Yankovic‘s “Alpocalypse” tour performance at the Pantages Theatre this Saturday, November 12.

One big difference between Harold’s Rapture and Al’s ‘Pocalypse is the fact that in the latter case, children under five will not be admitted. From the show’s promotional blurb:

Weird Al’s first full-length studio album in nearly five years debuted at No. 9 on the U.S. album charts, marking the highest-charting album of his storied career. Alpocalypse features the much-talked-about Lady Gaga parody “Perform This Way” as well as parodies of hits by Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, T.I. and B.o.B featuring Bruno Mars. Al and his long-time bandmates were aided and abetted in the recording studio by guest appearances from Taylor Hanson and The Doors’ Ray Manzarek.

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Exactly a week after celebrating the third-year anniversary of a wedding arranged just days before the passing of Prop 8, LA residents Travis and Ian-Mathew attended the November 7 Nokia Theatre premiere and rooftop after-party for the new historical action drama Immortals. They were there as winners of a contest sponsored by this blog. So… how was it?

“I’ve been to many screenings before but never a premiere,” Travis tells FishbowlLA via email. “What a treat. The after-party was even better than I could have hoped for. I thought maybe the stars would be in a roped off VIP area but they were basically hanging around their tables, so that anyone could walk up to them.”

“I told director Tarsem Singh that The Fall was one of my favourite movies,” he continues. “He was very excited that I even knew that film and said, ‘Anyone who is a fan of that movie is a friend of mine!’ We met all the main stars– Henry Cavill, Stephen Dorff, Luke Evans, Kellan Lutz… All of them were SUPER nice!!”

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When it comes to the Los Angeles radio industry, a good guy to have in the Rolodex is definitely Greg Ashlock. Per an item today in the LA Times by Steve Carney, this guy oversees eight different stations for industry giant Clear Channel.

At the top of Ashlock’s list is KIIS-FM. Arbitron ratings released Tuesday show that the station has been number one in the LA/Orange County market this year, January 1 through August 31. So how does Ashlock do it? He says it’s all about breaking the next big musical artist:

As an example, Ashlock mentioned a concert three summers ago that KIIS hosted at Raging Waters, the San Dimas water park, starring rap artist Shwayze. The opening act was Lady Gaga, before the release of her debut album.

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This particular LA Times opinion piece was published July 21. Under the headline “The World’s Biggest Problem: Too Many People,” biologists Mary Ellen Harte and Anne Ehrlich took a look at the egregious lack of media attention paid to one of the key parts of the global climate change equation: unsustainable population growth. Even NPR, they argued, had barely scratched the surface of this topic in recent years, with the number of stories clearly mentioning this aspect of climate change countable on the fingers of a single, sweaty, summer-of-2011 hand.

For more than a week, no media outlet picked up on this provocative piece. But today, both the The Atlantic Wire and New Hampshire newspaper The Keene Sentinel have finally got the daisy-chain ball rolling. Thanks to the former, expect more pick-up to follow.

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Never thought we’d live to write this sentence, but Weird Al Yankovic somehow had us questioning our sexuality after watching the early moments of his new music video. And apparently we weren’t the only ones. The YouTube comment section for Al’s new Lady Gaga parody Perform This Way is loaded with guilt-ridden confessions of uncomfortable sexual arousal. The first few shots are especially disconcerting, before you can really process all the strange and wonderful CGI being employed.

Nice work Al. Please never do this again.

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