Track Palin is a dad, Sarah is a grandma, Levi's sister is naked

Track Palin is a new dad, which makes Sarah Palin a grandmother twice over.

Track, 22, and wife Britta, 21, welcomed a daughter Sunday night, according to Nation Now. The high school sweethearts married quietly in May, with plans for a "long ski weekend" this winter with family and friends to celebrate the wedding. News that Britta was expecting a child leaked in June. The math is up to you. 

"Kyla Grace is great," Elizabeth Hanson, the baby's maternal grandmother, told Radar Online on Monday about the new baby. "She's beautiful." Paternal baba Sarah Palin had no official e-comment as of Tuesday, though she had taken time to weigh in on the whole credit-downgrade thing. 

A twist: The birth announcement came originally from Joe McGinniss, a writer whose rental of the house next door to Palin Central -- it would be his abode while working on a book about the former Alaska governor -- spurred the building of a 14-foot fence by the state's former first family. Probably just coincidental that McGinniss noticed the baby news.

Meanwhile, Mercede Johnston, younger sister of Bristol Palin's baby daddy, Levi Johnston, recently joined the family businesses: posing nude and trashing the Palins.

After Levi paved the way in Playgirl, demurely keeping his naughty bits to himself, Mercede has stripped for Playboy. The four-page photo spread, due Friday, is reportedly accompanied by an interview in which the 19-year-old calls Bristol a "sociopath" and alleges her brother and his future ex-fiancée planned to have a baby and were in fact "trying to conceive for months."

Bristol proved herself no slouch in the name-calling department with her my-life-so-far memoir, which hit stores in June. In it, she said she lost her virginity to Levi Johnston in a tent after too many wine coolers, and classified him as a "gnat" who cheated on her and lied to her and her family.

So, yeah, "All My Children" is ending its run in late September? Fear not -- we have an idea what might take up the slack.

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— Christie D'Zurilla
Twitter.com/dzurillaville

Photo: The Palin family in 2008, counterclockwise from top left, included Track, Willow, Piper, Bristol, Todd and Sarah Palin. Credit: Alaska Governor's Office / European Pressphoto Agency.

Bristol Palin memoir: She lost her virginity after too many wine coolers; Levi Johnston is a lying, cheating gnat

Bristol Palin is opening up about her ex-fiance Levi Johnston, losing her virginity and her mother Sarah Palin’s vice presidential run in her new memoir "Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far."

Among the most personal details Palin reveals is the story of losing her virginity: The 20-year-old writes that she was on a camping trip with Johnston and drank too many wine coolers. She later woke up in the tent alone and could hear Johnston talking with friends outside. She had no memory of what happened.

They both vowed to wait until marriage to have sex again, but that didn't hold. When she got pregnant with their son Tripp, it took eight at-home pregnancy tests to convince her it was really happening, she said. She had been on birth control for cramps and never expected to conceive.

According to Palin, Johnston was less than supportive, saying, "Better be a (bleeping) boy."

Much of her history with her ex-boyfriend, who posed for Playgirl after their split, overlaps with her mother's run for vice president in 2008. In the book, she relives the family’s trip to Dayton, Ohio, where then-Gov. Sarah Palin announced she would be running alongside Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and to the GOP convention, where the media found out Bristol was expecting.

Johnston was along for the ride, and Bristol explains that in her mind, having him there "somehow legitimized us as a couple.”

However, soon after Tripp was born things fell apart. Not only was Johnston cheating, but she and her family found out he was blabbermouth too.

The way she sees it, he is "the gnat named Levi Johnston constantly spreading false accusations against our family” and the guy "who cheated on me about as frequently as he sharpened his hockey skates."

Despite their ups and downs, the two did try to reconcile briefly. He proposed and the couple sold their engagement story to Us Weekly, but they quickly split. It turned out, she writes, that Johnston told her he was having another baby with someone else.

This time they stayed apart. "I'd just made a complete fool of myself and given my family the middle finger," she says.

Since the break-up, Palin has competed on "Dancing With the Stars," worked as a spokeswoman to help prevent teen pregnancy (and made some serious dough doing it) and even has her own reality show coming up on the Bio channel. In her eyes, she's "just a normal girl who couldn't hide her problems and learned a few lessons along the way."

However, more problems with Johnston loom: His book, "Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin's Crosshairs," is due out in the fall.

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-- Emily Christianson

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Photo: Bristol Palin at the White House Correspondents dinner on April 30, 2011. Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

T-Pain dumps Auto-Tune, explores new ways to sound like Cher

T-Pain has promised he will never use Auto-Tune again. Instead, the singer-rapper is developing a new sound he calls The T-Pain Effect.

Do not underestimate the magnitude of this promise, which, for people under 30, is probably the most exciting pledge they’ve fielded since Michael Lohan swore he would shut up. Lohan, of course, did not shut up, and it isn’t likely that T-Pain is really going to abandon his love of lucrative audiocrutches, either. In fact, if you look at the fine print of his announcement, it’s likely that, whatever the new patented T-Pain Effect sounds like, it won’t be T-Pain’s Actual Voice (TM).

Let’s take a look at the fine print of his announcement. The press release, issued Thursday, quotes T-Pain as saying, “I vow right here, right now, to never use Auto-Tune again.” Note the capital letters. Auto-Tune is a brand name, a reference to a product offered by the company Antares Audio Recordings. T-Pain signed a contract with Antares in 2009. It’s safe to say that contract is up.

But Antares isn’t the only company that can make your voice sound like the starship Enterprise under 40 feet of saltwater. Another company is iZotope, and it just so happens that T-Pain has a new deal with that company, to create his upcoming T-Pain Effect. No one knows what the effect will sound like. Maybe it’ll make T-Pain sound like Barbra Streisand, and Streisand sound like Ted Nugent. Maybe it can make my cat -- who is currently going through a phase involving yelling at me at 3 a.m. -- croon like Dean Martin after exactly two highballs. That would make me want to sign a contract with iZotope.

But whatever T-Pain plans to sound like, don’t expect, say, something intimate and natural, like Adele. Contemporary music is being overrun with the distant, angular tone that comes from robotic voice effects. It’s used in various degrees by Kanye West (who doesn’t need it), Kim Kardashian (who probably does), Imogen Heap (who doesn’t) and everyone in between. Right now, the whole world sounds like Cher circa 1998, and people love it.

“It’s pretty prevalent in most genres of music, to be honest,” says producer Kevin Kadish, who has worked with Jason Mraz, Miley Cyrus and Willie Nelson, among others. “I don’t think it’s on its way out.”

In fact, here’s a tip for you: “Everybody uses it,” Kadish says. “Sometimes you might not know it.”

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-- Leslie Gornstein

Photo: T-Pain performs at the Gibson Amphitheater in 2009. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times

Sarah Palin's son Track Palin marries high school sweetheart Britta Hanson

Who knew those were wedding bells we were hearing from up north? Track Palin, the eldest son of Todd and Sarah Palin, recently married high school sweetheart Britta Hanson in a small ceremony, according to a report out Thursday.

The former Alaska governor confirmed the wedding on Twitter, retweeting word from her political action committee that the two had gotten married and adding, "Yes, they did & we couldn't be any more blessed!"

Track, 22, and Britta, 21, tied the knot in Hatcher Pass, Alaska, a site not too far from Wasilla and reportedly filled with family memories of skiing, snow-machining and more, People said. They have a larger celebration to look forward to come winter, when friends and family will be invited for a "long ski weekend" to celebrate the union, the families told the mag.

"Our families couldn't be happier!" the Hansons and Palins said in a joint statement. "These are two hard working, humble, active, studious young adults who grew up together. We're tickled that after two decades of friendship we proudly witnessed their marriage, knowing their new life together will be blessed."

Track, an Army reservist, plans to enroll at the University of Alaska after the commercial fishing season ends, joining current nursing student Britta, People said. Her parents are the Rev. Duane and Elizabeth Hanson.

Track is the first of the Palin children to marry; sister Bristol and Levi Johnston, the father of her son Tripp, were briefly engaged, twice. They ultimately broke off the relationship.

The groom spent a year deployed to Iraq, with his mom -- then a GOP vice presidential hopeful -- a featured speaker at his infantry unit's September 2008 deployment ceremony at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska.

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-- Christie D'Zurilla

Photo: Britta Hanson's new husband Track Palin, left, with Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston, Willow Palin, Piper Palin, Todd Palin holding Trig, John McCain and Sarah Palin on Sept. 4, 2008, at the GOP convention. Track's infantry unit was deployed to Iraq about two weeks later. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

 

Bristol Palin and her jaw surgery: What do you think? [Poll]

Our eyes do not deceive us: Bristol Palin has changed the look of what she called her "chubby little baby face," but she didn't do it with plastic surgery.

Rather, Palin has revealed that she had corrective surgery in December to properly align her jaw.

Oh yeah, she also dropped 5 pounds before debuting the look at the White House Correspondents' Assn. dinner April 30. Hey, couldn't hurt -- but only five, really?

"Yes, it improved the way I look, but this surgery was necessary for medical reasons," she tells Us Weekly magazine for its May 23 issue. Despite wearing braces and a device to correct an overbite while she was growing up, she knew from her dentist that surgery loomed down the road.

[Updated, 6:30 p.m. May 11: We added some profile shots, left. Note that the "before" shot here was taken more than a year earlier than the "before" shot above. The "after" shots were taken within days of each other.]

"I look older, more mature and don't have as much of a chubby little baby face," the single mom told the mag, adding that she wouldn't do plastic surgery unless she "got in an accident or something terrible and got disfigured."

Us Weekly, incidentally, was the mag that Bristol and baby daddy Levi Johnston told about their on-again engagement even before giving parents Todd and Sarah Palin a heads-up about their plan. That engagement quickly became "off-again."

Palin, who took third place last season on "Dancing With the Stars" behind Kyle Massey and Jennifer Grey, just landed her own reality show for the Bio Channel. In the 10-part documentary series about her transition from Alaska to Los Angeles to work with a charity, Bristol and her son Tripp will live with Kyle -- her friend -- and Kyle's brother Christopher Massey.

Forget for a second, if you can, that this is hot-button Bristol Palin, and share what you think of her new face. And if you can't, well, we have poll answers for you too.

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-- Christie D'Zurilla

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Top left photo: Bristol Palin in November 2010. Credit: Charles Sykes / Associated Press

Top right photo: Bristol Palin on May 3. Credit: Michael Reynolds / European Pressphoto Agency

Left photo: Bristol Palin in profile in July 2009, left, and on April 30, 2011, right. Credits: Al Grillo / Associated Press, left; Jonathan Ernst / Reuters, right.

Bristol Palin lands a reality-TV documentary series on Bio

Bristol Palin is coming back to TV this year with a reality show to air on the Bio Channel, Show Tracker reports.

"Bristol is the kind of personality Bio is drawn to," a Bio and A&E exec said in a statement. "Her personal life has been playing out in the media for several years but this will be the first time she's opening up her real life."

Bio, more formally known as the Biography Channel, is home to "Shatner's Raw Nerve," "The Chris Isaak Hour" and "Haunted History," among other programs.

And for those who think this season's "Dancing With the Stars" doesn't have quite the same drama as when Bristol was tripping the light fantastic, there's good news: Palin, 20, and 2-year-old son Tripp will be living with former "DWTS" finalist Kyle Massey and his brother Christopher Massey. Just like old times! Maybe Palin's dance partner Mark Ballas could invite his new lady friend Pia Toscano over to meet the gang.

The documentary series — 10 half-hour episodes — will follow mother and child as they move to L.A. and work for a small charity.

Meanwhile, Palin's baby daddy and fellow aspiring reality-TV star celebrated his 21st birthday in Vegas on Friday, getting a couple of new tattoos and going face-first into a babe with a cake on top. He had little to say about his ex-fiancee's hotter new look.

"I haven't checked her out, so I really wouldn't know," Levi Johnston told RumorFix. "Go on and do your thing, girl, 'cause I'm over it."

One can only hope he'll still be "over it" if her second show hits TV before his first — the one where he runs for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska — sees the light of day.

May we put in a special request for Bristol's season finale, please? We have our fingers crossed that "DWTS" champ Jennifer Grey will waltz in to babysit.

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— Christie D'Zurilla

Photo: Bristol Palin at a Candie's Foundation benefit in New York on May 3. Palin has been working with the foundation, which aims to prevent teen pregnancy. Credit: Eric Thayer / Reuters.

PREACH IT! Seal Levi Johnston's future! Right here! Right now! You betcha! [video, poll]

Barbara Walters once wrote a book. It was called "How to Talk With Practically Anybody About Practically Anything." That was back in the 1970s. She has not lost her touch.

"You became famous for impregnating a 17-year-old girl," Walters told Levi Johnston on Monday's "The View." "You're 20 years old, you don't have a high school diploma yet, you don't have a trade. Now you're running for mayor.

"Would it not be better for you, instead of just seeking publicity ... to learn a trade, to find a job, to get an education and to support your son?"

Couldn't have said it better ourselves. Get a job, you Palin impregnator, you.

But what kind of profession could our boy from Wasilla possibly undertake? Well, we're members of the media, which means we (a) are experts in positively everything and (b) have absolutely no choice but to get up in this child’s business. You know, to make the world a better place. It's what Murrow would have wanted.

And because we're also members of the entertainment media, we simply must turn this whole exercise into a poll. Otherwise, why exactly did we wake up this morning?

So, what sort of career might fit Johnston best? Be aware that he has a background in hockey, so any career involving bench-clearing brawls may prove quite a fit. Phillies baseball comes to mind. We'll also make a few calls and see if there are any spare rooms in the "Jersey Shore" house.

While we're doing that, it's your turn.

-- Leslie Gornstein

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The Ministry will now publicize the new MSNBC show "The Last Word" -- publicity being the most sensible reason host Lawrence O'Donnell would ask Levi Johnston the same questions Katie Couric famously tossed Sarah Palin's way when the former Alaska governor was running for vice president.

(Johnston, of course, is running for Palin's old job, mayor of Wasilla, for an upcoming reality TV show that's in development.)

We're pleased to report, with an assist from New York magazine: Levi does not support abstinence, and doesn't appear to back abortion (the morning-after pill is "the girl's decision"), and while saying his son Tripp is the best thing that ever happened to him, he also imagines what his life would be like (he "was young") had the kid not come along.

No booing was heard in the background during the Johnston interview, and the Ministry does not expect MSNBC to broadcast any outtakes from the show to explain what was actually going on.

See for yourself -- the video is after the break.

Bristol Palin scores a TV show before Levi Johnston does [poll]

What's Bristol Palin got that Levi Johnston only wishes he had? A reality TV show, that's what. Think he's sorry now?

"Dancing With the Stars" has named its next set of contestants -- in addition to Alaska's best-known single mom, we'll also be seeing Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino of "Jersey Shore," David Hasselhoff and Florence Henderson tripping the light fantastic.

"This season, some of the names make you chuckle, others you're surprised about, and others you think you know, but you're going to see them in a different light," casting head Deena Katz told The Times' Maria Elena Fernandez.

Click the photo of recent winner Nicole Scherzinger at right to see the new contestants, and visit our friends at Show Tracker for the "DWTS" casting chief's take on each star.

Here's Katz's take on Bristol Palin, whom she says she's talked to a lot: "She’s very mature for ...

Political hopeful Levi Johnston surfaces at 'ET' Emmy party

Like him or not, it seems fitting that Levi Johnston attend Emmy Awards festivities -- after all, he simply won't stop gunning for a television show of his own.

Attend he did "Entertainment Tonight's" post-Emmy event at Vibiana in downtown Los Angeles, where Cyndi Lauper was tapped to perform for a crowd of winners, nominees and media pros.

Johnston wasn't the only notable pop-culture name to attend -- reality mom Kate Gosselin showed up after appearing in the award ceremony's opening number and even hosted a few segments for "ET's" broadcast from inside the bash. (Click the photo of Emmy-winning writer Dave Boone, with Chris Robinson of "The Office," to launch a gallery of pictures from The Times' Photo Booth at the event.)

Actor Jeremy London stuck to the outdoor patio, gazing at guests like Christina Hendricks and Bryan Batt of "Mad Men," Peter Facinelli of "Nurse Jackie" and "The Twilight Saga," Christopher Meloni of "Law & Order: SVU," LL Cool J of "NCIS: Los Angeles," "SNL" player Ana Gasteyer, "ET" host Laura Spencer, "The Bachelorette" star Ali Fedotowsky and stylist pal Lindsay Albanese.

Guests were treated to a Magnolia Bakery pop-up and a beauty product bar from Neutrogena, and after Lauper's performance danced into the night to the sounds of DJ Samantha Ronson.

-- Matt Donnelly

Twitter.com/MattDonnelly

Left photo: Cyndi Lauper arrives at Vibiana in downtown Los Angeles, where she headlined the "Entertainment Tonight" Emmy after-party on Aug. 29, 2010. Credit: Spencer Weiner / Associated Press

Right photo: Emmy-winning writer Dave Boone with Craig Robinson of "The Office"hit The Times' Photo Booth at the "ET" Emmys after party. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

Get more delicious Emmy Party scoop from the Ministry of Gossip.