FAMOUS, RICH PEOPLE REVEAL THEIR SECRETS

Quentin Tarantino: "Remember that a kick in the ass is a step forward."

The famed writer/director/producer was a former Manhattan Beach video store clerk who lived in his car after he was fired.


Cher: "Failure is not the worst thing in the world. The worst thing is not to try."

Her career took a nosedive after she split from Sonny. Despite paralyzing fear she auditioned her way into an Off Broadway play, got great reviews and began a movie career.
Audiences howled with laughter as the credits for "Silkwood" came on, with Cher's name following Meryl Streep's. Five years later she won the Oscar for Best Actress in "Moonstruck". She was no longer a joke.


THOMAS EDISON: "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time."

This great inventor discovered the light bulb on the 2,001st try. What if he'd stopped at 2,000 failures? We'd all still be in the dark!


Winston Churchill: "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."

This renowned British Prime Minister suffered many defeats, none greater than being voted out of office after leading the Allies to victory in World War II.


Abigail "Dear Abby" Van Buren: "If you want a place in the sun, be prepared to put up with a few blisters."


Whoopie Goldberg: "Failure is success if we learn from it. People can change their lives by changing their attitudes."

This Oscar winner actress and comedian went from former welfare recipient and drug addict to making her daydreams a reality.


Clint Eastwood: "Being defeated is a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent."

A studio exec told him years ago, Get outta town, you'll never make it. Your Adam's apple is ugly, you're gawky and you can't act." Eastwood ledr the country, made some low budget spaghetti westerns for Sergio Leone and became an international phenomenon. He eventually went back to the same Hollywood studio and became its biggest superstar, making them billions of dollars. The studio exec hasn't been heard from in years.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. He also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4 and didn't read until he was 7. (He was thinking!) His teacher described him as "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in his foolish dreams."

Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.

Rev. Robert Schuller, founder of the Crystal Cathedral, adivises us to "turn rejection into direction and to always remember: yard by yard, it's hard...but inch by inch, it's a cinch."


So if you've NEVER failed, you're going nowhere because you're playing it safe. "No guts, no glory." There are five reasons you can never be a failure:

1) Failure is a positive thing.

2) Failure provides you with a pause in which to reassess your motices, your abilities and your opportunities.

3) Failure is often the best way of drawing attention to your abilities.

4) Failure teaches you more than success ever can.

5) Failure is the best school for success.

WHATEVER YOUR DREAM, TAKE YOURSELF AND THE DREAM SERIOUSLY ENOUGH TO RISK FAILURE.

FAILURE IS A GOOD AND NECESSARY THING ON THE PATH TO SUCCESS.

Excerpted from "Cheat Sheets for Life: Secret Shortcuts Used By The Rich & Famous"
(c) 2005, Sistarrs International

MAZEL TOV TO MADONNA'S NEW SON

Little David Banda Ciccone Richie is soon to be blessed with some mighty colorful godparents. Mother Madonna has announced that the ceremony is gonna be a strictly lavender affair with the designated godparents being the openly gay hunky actor Rupert Everett and the gorgeous lesbian Queen of Miami Nightclubs Ingrid Cassares. Madonna and Ingrid had a torrid affair years back and it's nice to see folks can still be friends after a breakup.

We think it's time for everyone to back off and wish the little tyke well in his new plush surroundings. Madonna told Meredith Viera on "Dateline" yesterday that she offered in court to give the father money to support himself and his son and he refused. The Kabbalah kiddie book writer also saved the adorable toddler from certain death after she took him from the orphanage for medical tests and it was revealed he had pneumonia. You gotta ask yourself: "Is David better off today than he was 30 days ago in Malawi?" It's a resounding YES, so let's all bugger off and let the kid get used to a life with no TV, no sweets, British nannies and a mum who will never let ennui creep into his life...

REESE'S MARRIAGE IN PIECES

After 7 years of connubial canoodling, the marriage of barely post-pubescent Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe is kaput. The couple's been in marriage counseling for a few years. They met as actors just starting out, but her career soared while his took a snail's pace to get into mainstream movies. Reports are the divorce could be complicated as Reese now makes $29 million per picture and TMZ reports that there is NO prenup agreement.

Apparently hubby Ryan got a 7 year itch on the set of Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers. He publicly played footsies (and with other body parts) with Aussie co-star Abbie Cornish in an Austin, Texas Asian restaurant. Showing a smidgen of class, the cheater decided not to use "the sake made me do it" defense. According to US magazine, when confronted by Reese, Ryan admitted it was true and said to his wife: "We need to end this." This was no Freudian slip, but marital suicide by tabloid as Mr. Reese openly immolated himself in the heat of passion.

According to New York Post columnist Liz Smith: "Not only have rumors of trouble buzzed around for several years, but the couple disagreed loudly at the recent Flags of Our Fathers screening in NYC...It was very Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(An Edward Albee play showing the loud, violent, abusive, boozy disintegration of a marriage. The movie version starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in a reenactment of their own conjugal life together).

Smith goes on to observe: "Miss Witherspoon, who can be a bit, ah, controlling and edgy under the determined blonde perk, seemed especially preoccupied that night."

We never suspected that Reese Witherspoon was at all like other mere mortals. To us, she's the modern day corollary of Audrey Hepburn: bright, impish, strong, determined, down to earth, yet regal, a velvet steamroller of a pixie. Everyone was rooting for this very young couple to make it despite the odds. May the gods of divorce grant you peace and dignity young lovers.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I want to go to Africa. It's a place where you can really help people. And I'm into safari animals."

Kevin Federline, Mr. Britney Spears and prodigious sperm donor. Warning to anyone contemplating buying K-Fed's album, "Playing with Fire": YOU WILL GET BURNED.

SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR...NOT!!

The Sunshine State's wildlife officials have decided to turn the tables on the alligator population which has been devouring joggers and hikers and sundry other Floridians. The beast bureaucrats are recommending that homeowners be allowed to kill the raging reptiles

that sneakily slither onto their property. There is one caveat: selling the alligator will not be allowed, but having a backyard barbequed alligator luai is kosher under the proposed law.

SURPRISE! BIG BUSINESS TITANS CAN BE CRIMINALS

Forget the Enron gangsters, Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, the crooked CPA head honcho at Tyco, Dennis Koslowski, and the infamous Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom. The groundwork for crooked CEOs has its foundation in the Roaring 20's, when crime bosses Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky rebuilt the Mafia into a corporate structure, a board of directors and a systematic infiltration of legitimate businesses. The Mob became richer than all the Top Ten American Corporations combined.

Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky then teamed up with the U.S. government during World War II. The underworld brokered a deal to get dockworkers, fishermen and hoodlums under Mob control to become the eyes and ears for naval intelligence. As a result, 8 German spies who landed in a U boat off the New York coast were arrested. An imprisoned Luciano got some much need intelligence for the government from his paisans in Sicily for the Allied invasion of Italy. Lucky Luciano was eventually pardoned and deported for his help.

In a somewhat prophetic observation, Luciano said in 1955 he learned much from his experiences. "Next time I'd do it legal. I learned too late that you need just as good a brain to make a crooked million as an honest million. These days you apply for a license to steal from the public. If I had my time again, I'd make sure I'd got that license first."

Excerpted from "Cheat Sheets for Life", (c) 2005, Sistarrs International

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