Oh god bless the onion lol
TMZforKidz offers up the latest news on kid stars and stars' kids -- only it's not real.
The fake celebrity news site, ala The Onion, parodies gossip monster TMZ. It mimics the design and tone of the original site, but adds a crayon logo and replaces the bold headline font with something more akin to what you'd see on a kid's birthday party invitation.
"My friend Jean Paul Tremblay and I thought up the site amid barroom banter, and it just seemed like such an apocalyptically bad idea I had to follow through with it," said Guy Cimbalo, Brooklyn-based writer and co-creator if the site.
It's meant to be funny, he said, but it's also a harsh criticism of TMZ's brand of entertainment journalism.
"TMZforKidz feels like a natural extension of the TMZ brand, which already stinks of sulphur and swine. And I suspect that when the TMZ approach is extended to children, it becomes much easier to realize how aggressively dumb that brand is," he said.
TMZ, however, doesn't appreciate being the butt of the joke. Soon after the site launched, Cimbalo and Tremblay received a cease-and-desist letter from a TMZ lawyer claiming they were violated copyright.
"Please act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the entire site," reads the letter, signed Michael Bentkover from Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Cimbalo said he "promptly ignored" the letter. When they sent a second one, he ignored that too.
Eventually, the site's host pulled it offline, but he managed to get back up and running within a few hours.
TMZforKidz is divided into sections like Kewl Toys, Skeevy Seniors, Gamez, Awesome Bikes, Tween Beauty and Candy, though a lot of the links just return you to the home page.
That's where you'll find such scoops six-year-old Suri Cruise reeling over the death of her pet turtle, or six-year-old Apple Martin letting loose a strong of expletives when mom Gwyneth Paltrow refused to let her go on a Legoland ride.
Canadian pop idol Justin Bieber makes the page, with allegations he's un-American because his stars-and-stripes hoodie is a desecration of the U.S. flag.
"Bieber has already gone on record with his vicious anti-American sentiments. 'You guys are evil,' the contemptuous Canuck told Rolling Stone magazine in a recent interview. And now he seems to be adding visual insult to spoken injury," reads the post.
"It's unclear why Bieber hates America so much -- after all, haven't we made him rich and famous? We reached out to his people expecting to hear an apology, but instead, we heard nothing. A big zero. Just like Justin Bieber."
And of course, there are drawings -- messy, crayon-scribbled children's drawings depicting things like teen star Miley Cyrus smoking Salvia.
"Those are done by an assortment of my friends. I charged them with finding a scandalous tabloid shot and drawing it as if they were a 10- to 12-year-old. They're my favorites," he said.
TMZ did not immediately respond to QMI Agency's request for comment.
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