Taylor Swift's Reign of Terror Continues

Today in celebrity gossip: Taylor Swift's bodyguards roughed up a Rhode Island diner, Ian Somerhalder is dating Nikki Reed, and Ben Stein "begged" for nude pictures from a pregnant former escort.

Taylor Swift does a lot of good in this world. First of all, she has all those sweet jams. Secondly, she generates enough income to single-handedly keep the American economy afloat. Plus she provides shelter to adorable kittens and celebrities who have nowhere else to go on the 4th of July. Taylor Swift also spends most of her evenings prowling the shadowy alleyways of New York City foiling the crimes of an array of eccentric thieves and villains. Taylor Swift's positive contributions to this world cannot be discounted, but that perhaps makes it all that much more dismaying when you find out that she's just as capable of ruining lives as she is improving them. Fortunately for most of us, she's reserved most of her appetite for ruination for the citizens of Rhode Island, whom she's been terrorizing for a while now via dastardly landscaping schemes. And now Radar reports ("reports") that this past weekend at a local Rhode Island diner, Taylor Swift interrupted an entire restaurant's most important meals of the day by allowing her hired goons to stare at, harass, and physically intimidate anyone who dared touch a cell phone while Swift was eating. "As the seemingly oblivious 24-year-old noshed on eggs covered in hot sauce with a young blond woman and a dark-haired man, her guards ran around the restaurant yelling at guests who touched their cell phones." And it wasn't like the other patrons were getting up in Swift's face while she was noshing: "Some people didn’t notice she was there until the bodyguards created a scene." Anyway, after thoroughly destroying the breakfast vibes of an entire community, Swift still needed to ruin more lives, so she had her team block off a whole section of public beach so that she could "sun privately." "They were turning people away. . . It’s a public beach!" Will part-time villain Taylor Swift never be stopped? [Radar]

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Nobody really knows what "money" is or how it works or what we're supposed to do with it, but we do know that certain people have A LOT of it. That's especially true for Hollywood actors and their Hollywood paychecks. Fortunately Forbes keeps very good track of how much money all these Hollywood actors make. Would you like to know who made the most money last year? Okay, fine, I'll tell you: Kim Wayans. Haha just kidding, she probably did not make the most money last year. No, the actual top earner was Robert Downey, Jr., who really raked in the cash ($75M of it, to be exact) via his Marvel movies Iron Man 3 and residuals from The Avengers. But the #2 earner might surprise you: The Rock "Dwayne" Johnson, who made $52M for appearing in any old blockbuster franchise that would have him. After that is Bradley Cooper at $46M and Leonardo DiCaprio at $39 and Chris Hemsworth at $37M. And there you have it. The rich and handsome just keep getting richer and handsomer. [E! Online]

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It is straight up none of our business who Ian Somerhalder or Nikki Reed are dating these days, because matters of the heart are intimate and private and subject to the ficklest of whims. That being said, Ian Somerhalder and Nikki Reed are dating each other. Or if not dating, then definitely jogging together and cuddling in public:

Cool, thanks for those date-stamps, whichever publicist fed this story to Us Weekly, which then printed it verbatim. Romance is truly in the air! [Us Weekly]

Something Something Win Ben Stein's Money By Being a Pregnant Ex-Escort and Sending Him Nude Pics. That is a joke title I'm currently workshopping, please feel free to give me feedback in the comments below. Anyway, Ben Stein, the titular money-haver of Win Ben Stein's Money has just been so busted by Page Six after 24-year-old performance artist Tanya Ma exposed him as "a manipulative leech"! Explains Ma: "It’s much more than sexting, cyber-escorting or being a sugar daddy — it’s unhealthy and toxic behavior that needs to be exposed." So what did he do, exactly? He "gave her money — and then begged to "touch" her even though she’s pregnant" and she's provided text message screenshots to Page Six as evidence! Including this one in which she asked him to be reasonable:

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Page Six points out that Ma used to be a Chicago-based escort, but it's not clear how that's relevant to this story in that her current job as a performance artist seems way more damning to her credibility. Anyway, when reached for comment Ben Stein defended himself vigorously and probably very sonorously:

That seems like a weird reason to give someone a medal, in my opinion. Anyway, this is just a cool conflict in general, good luck, guys. [Page Six]

Miley Cyrus removed her blouse and brassiere while standing in nature:

Taylor Swift took advantage of some local street art:

Meanwhile Pedro Pascal and Oscar Isaac, uh, I don't know, canoodled? Is this canoodling technically? Feels like they're canoodling here:

Madonna maybe needs to learn her angles better:

And finally, here's Colton Haynes' first ever headshot, what do you think?

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/07/taylor-swifts-reign-of-terror-continues/374845/

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