POPMATTERS SPONSOR—Open Road Media announces the publication of Celebrity, Inc.: How Famous People Make Money by e-­original author Jo Piazza available in both print and digital editions.

What does a celebrity baby picture have in common with a drug deal? Why is Kim Kardashian ten times richer than Paris Hilton? What’s an Oscar really worth? And why does Charlie Sheen keep “winning”? Jo Piazza, a former gossip columnist for the New York Daily News and a seasoned journalist currently writing for the Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post and Fox News, not only brings her unique expertise and personal economics background to Celebrity, Inc.: How Famous People Make Money, but she has obtained access to the men and women who ensure famous people will make 40 times the average American’s salary in a single year. Piazza not only brings the gossip, but the business expertise in her 12 unique chapters, each based on the format of a business school case study (peppered with hilarity and wit, obviously) that examine how celebrity functions as a business model.

Marilyn Manson gave a poetry reading in L.A., in support of The J. Paul Getty Trust. On 10 September, Manson read William Blake’s celebrated poem The Proverbs of Hell. The poem’s most popular line: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” But the best part is Manson’s decision to have a drink of some strange orange liquid at the poem’s conclusion. Fitting.

Radical’s forthcoming illustrated novel, Jake the Dreaming will be available for the iPad (and iPhone) around December 2011. I do know that it’s the story of boyhood, forever tilting at the world, reimagining the world as it adventures its way through. Jake discovers the power to walk into others’ dreams and save them from Nocturnus, the demon that would poison sleep forever. It’s also the story of technological shifts inscribing a new cultural story. And, speculating on 40 years down the line, it seems to be a story that will not need a second act.

[Download the preview of Jake the Dreaming.]

Julie Taymor’s experimental film adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest was quite unfortunate and problematic. Helen Mirren as the female Prospera (not the male Prospero, as in the original play) was brilliant but too underused. The comic bits, which could have been well-performed, basically ruined the film.  But “Prospera’s Coda”, a song that immediately followed the film, was most touching, dark, and brooding. Shakespeare wrote the lyrics, and Beth Gibbons of Portishead fame took over on vocals. Beth Gibbons did an excellent job at illustrating loss, despair, and, finally, retirement, via her singing.

Chris Tarry is internationally recognized for his bass playing and composing, but as his new release, Rest of the Story, proves, he’s an author, too. Tarry has been publishing fiction in Canadian and American literary journals. His smartly titled new CD for Nineteen-Eight Records is a piece of hybrid art that includes 100 pages of his writing. Described on the website as a product “that speaks to a time when album design still mattered”, Rest of the Story is an exercise in the art of the CD from one of jazz’s top band leaders.