STORY:
Matt's Millennium Stew

Today's Millennium Stew --------
Michael Douglas Proposes, Madonna's Midnight Walkout, Internet Y2K and Bogus Bids

by Matt Markovich
Everything2000 Stewmaster

---Proposals aplenty on New Year's Eve and maybe the most notable in the world of glitterazzi is actor Michael Douglas plege to wed Catherine Zeta-Jones. Douglas, 55, proposed to the 30-year-old Welsh actress on New Year's Eve at his home in Aspen, Colo.

"While no date has been set, they plan to wed later this year. He's now given her a ring," said Allen Burry, Douglas' publicist. Todd Adair, who represents Zeta-Jones, said the marriage proposal came with a "big ol' diamond ring" and that she's "ecstatic, thrilled and very, very happy." Remember..."Greed is good".

---What do you do when someone you don't like show up at your posh table at a posh party on New Year's Eve... you get up and leave. That's what an irked Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and others did when Jennifer Lopez crashed a dinner party at the glitzy South Beach mansion of slain fashion designer Gianni Versace.

A partygoer told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel that a spat erupted about 30 minutes before midnight when singer-actress Lopez infiltrated a dinner for 75 that Donatella Versace was hosting at the Ocean Dr. palazzo where her brother was shot to death in July 1997. Madonna stood and said ''dinner's over'' when Lopez entered, the newspaper reported.

Lopez had criticized Madonna saying she couldn't act. She also said best actress Oscar-winner Paltrow was "hot" only because she was dating Brad Pitt.

--- Overall, the Internet fared well on New Year's Eve, with no major outages, according to Keynote Systems, which tracks Internet performance.

Some sites, such as news and Y2K-related sites, were overloaded by traffic or sluggish because of increased use, but the underlying infrastructure did not buckle, industry watchers say. Some Web sites were overloaded with traffic as users stampeded the Net after midnight Friday in each time zone.

EarthCam, which operated Web sites featuring live coverage of New Year's Eve celebrations across the globe, said its system was overwhelmed by more than 5,000 visitors per minute.

Some sites reported the wrong date and time after midnight. Swissinfo.net, for example, said it was Jan. 1, 19100 in cities such as Auckland, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. Another site, Businesswindow.com listed the date in Beijing and Tokyo as Jan. 1, 100.

---As it turns out that $10 million dollar big for the rights to the domain Year2000.com was a bogus bid on E-bay. In fact, as many as four bids were not legitimate, all delivered by the same person. One apparently legitimate bid for $2-million is still on the table. And now the man who owns Year2000.com, the widely know Y2K doomsayer Peter De Jager is getting death threats.

DATE: 1/6/2000

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