Weird: Michael Jackson needs a lung transplant and a new eye, biographer Ian Halperin is claiming. “He says Jackson suffers from Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a rare and fatal genetic disorder, can’t breathe right due to emphysema and has gastrointestinal bleeding,” reports The Blemish. Re: the possible lung transplants, Hecklerspray writes, “Hopefully that’s not true because, if he has his lungs replaced, the only parts of Michael Jackson to actually belong to Michael Jackson will be three strands of armpit hair and a fragment of toenail.” And it may not be true: Rolling Stone’s Rock & Roll Daily reports that “at least a few of Halperin’s other assertions don’t hold up. The first line of Halperin’s biography reads ‘Ian Halperin is also a former winner of the Rolling Stone magazine Award for Investigative Journalism.’ This came as news to us, so we looked in our own archives and discovered this claim has been greatly exaggerated: He did win an RS honor, but it was the College Journalism Award in 1985 and it was split among the staff at Concordia University’s student newspaper in Montreal.” Oopsie!

In movie news, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, starring Brad Pitt as a baby born at age 80 who grows increasingly younger, won’t be officially released until Christmas Day, but some bloggers have already seen preview screenings. Film School Rejects says Benjamin Button “had Oscar buzz around it before it even finished filming this year….Films that generate this kind of buzz early on often win over critics rather easily while simultaneously annoying others with their apparent pandering. Fortunately, Benjamin Button has all of the hallmarks of an Oscar contender without shoving its aspirations of Academy gold down your throat the whole time.” But FilmBender writes, “Look…I’m all for gimmicks, but this one is kinda half baked. I’m not sure it lends much to the movie besides hogtie Pitt from being able to show any real ability to act his age.” Useless Jonk, writes about the movie in comparison to the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story on which it’s based: “It is at once more affecting than its source material and more affected.”

Finally, Paris Hilton can now sympathize with those who felt robbed after buying her album Paris: $2 million worth of jewelry was stolen from her Los Angeles home on Friday, Life & Style reports. Hilton has surveillance cameras in every room of the house, so an insider who watched them was able to report that “the thief was wearing a black hoody and knew exactly where to go, like he’s been there before.” Indeed, this LA Times article says that “The individual does not appear to be a professional burglar based on the investigation so far, law enforcement sources said.” Pop Culture Madness notes that “Hilton’s mother Kathy has since reminded her daughter not to attach too much significance to material goods. Heh, somehow I don’t think that’s really going to help Paris recover.”

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