Sideshow

Canseco part of new B-list project

By SHARON FINK
Published April 3, 2005

AS IF HIS LIFE COULD GET ANY MORE SURREAL: That conspicuous recent silence from Jose Canseco isn't him sitting back to let Mark McGwire take the steroid heat for a while. He is ensconced in a Hollywood Hills mansion embarrassing himself for the next season of VH1's The Surreal Life in September.

Canseco and six other publicity-hungry low-level celebrities are in the midst of living together and being filmed 24 hours a day for the series, which is about publicity-hungry low-level celebrities living together and being filmed 24 hours a day.

Among Canseco's housemates are obnoxious Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth from the first season of The Apprentice; obnoxious former supermodel Janice Dickinson, who's a judge on America's Next Top Model; Pepa from has-been rap group Salt-N-Pepa; and Bronson Pinchot , Balki from the 1980s TV show Perfect Strangers and Serge from the Beverly Hills Cop movies.

SERIOUSLY, HOW MUCH WORSE COULD BARRY BONDS' YEAR GET?: The woman with whom Bonds had a relationship for nine years and who has given information to the BALCO steroids grand jury is primed for her Amber Frey moment.

Kimberly Bell gave more than 37 hours of taped interviews and material she recently handed over to the grand jury to author Aphrodite Jones, whose resulting book, tentatively titled Bonds' Girl, will be released this year, after a publisher is found, Jones tells New York's Daily News.

"It's an expose about somebody who is so powerful and so controlling that the world revolves around him from the time he was born," says Jones, whose other works include Red Zone: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the San Francisco Dog Mauling and The Embrace: A True Vampire Story. "And (Bonds') relationship with Kimberly for nearly a decade is a testimony to the extent to which he is able to make people's lives a living hell."

THE AMERICAN EQUIVALENT IS A "LAW & ORDER" EPISODE: The Swedish coach of Britain's national soccer team, who last year said the country had a "sick interest" in his private life, is the inspiration for a British playwright's new work. A Play in Swedish, English and Italian, by Nick Grosso, is "loosely based" on Sven-Goran Eriksson's freewheeling love life, says a spokeswoman for the Stockholm theater where the play will premiere. Eriksson has an Italian girlfriend and has had affairs with a secretary for British soccer's governing body and a Swedish TV host. "But it's definitely not a biography," Cecilia Johansson says in a BBC report. "It's a relationship comedy that's been twisted into the realm of the absurd."

DON'T FORGET HER NEW BOOK, "THERE IS NO "I' IN TEAM. THAT'S WHY I DON'T PLAY TEAM SPORTS": One report from tennis' Nasdaq-100 Open in Key Biscayne last week said that it didn't take long for poor-playing Serena Williams to start talking to herself in her quarterfinal loss to sister Venus. Maybe she was repeating what she said during a pretournament news conference:

"I don't think you realize, I have a fashion company. I'm working on a really intense line for the fall. I'm an actress. I'm working on an animation series, on different reality series. I'm working on so much stuff. I don't really think about other people, because I have to focus on me."

[Last modified April 3, 2005, 00:10:19]