Social networking saviors: Twitter, Facebook used in effort to help save a baby's life

Social networking is helping to save one very tiny baby's life.

Jaeli Brow came into the world last June with an extremely rare condition -- a chromosomal mutation that makes her incapable of tolerating most forms of nutrition, including most formula and breast milk, or to put on weight. For a tiny baby fighting to gain even a few precious ounces (Jaeli weighed just 5 pounds, 4 ounces when she was born), the condition can be life threatening.

Earlier this month, the situation grew even more dire when Jaeli's family found themselves struggling to afford the one type of milk that she can stomach. But thanks to donations from 60 or so perfect strangers who read about her on Facebook and Twitter, Jaeli has received some much-needed meals.

Jaeli's official diagnosis is referred to as unbalanced translocation between short arm of Xp and a duplication of 2q. The condition is so rare -- only three other children have been diagnosed with it -- that it doesn't even have a name yet. "[W]e call it Jaeli's Syndrome," says Angela England, a family friend who is helping Jaeli's family to raise money.

As if the condition isn't hard enough for the youngest of seven kids and her parents, Brandy and Jim, to cope with, Jaeli was also born with a host of health issues including a minor cleft palate and two large holes in her heart. Thanks to a combination of drug therapies, she has narrowly avoided open heart surgery.

But it's Jaeli's inability to tolerate formula, or even most breast milk, that is particularly daunting. Severe reactions to feedings often result in extreme vomiting and bleeding in Jaeli's nose and mouth. One of the only ways Jaeli can eat without such a violent reaction is to consume 24 calorie-per-ounce breast milk that comes from the Human Milk Banking Association of North America. The price tag: $4.25 per ounce. Considering that Jaeli currently needs about 30 ounces a day, it's an an expense that quickly adds up.

Yet, says England, since Jaeli's doctors want to continue to experiment with other, cheaper treatment plans, they refuse to categorize the high-calorie, pre-screened, banked breast milk as a necessity. As a result, the Brow's can't file an insurance claim to help pay for the milk. And since an insurer isn't helping to foot the bill, the hospital refuses to order the milk without "cash in hand."

Earlier this month, Jaeli was down to her final ounces of banked breast milk and losing weight. Desperately hoping to help her friends, England turned to social networking. On her Twitter page and a FaceBook page entitled "Jaeli's Syndrome" she started a campaign to collect donations for Jaeli's milk. "I just knew if other moms knew about the situation, they'd band together and get Jaeli food," she says.

Parents across the country started donating. "In a few hours, we collected over $1,300," she says. The initial effort was enough to keep Jaeli fed for about two weeks. To date, the group has raised more than $3,200 and The Mother's Milk Bank of Ohio has donated an extra box of banked milk, says England.



Last week, Jaeli returned home after a three-week stay in the hospital where she was treated for a urinary tract infection, along with numerous digestive and weight complications. Her parents, siblings and friends are hopeful she's turned a corner (according to her mother, Jaeli now weighs 9 pounds, 2 ounces), but are only cautiously optimistic. They're hoping surgery, growth and time will eventually allow Jaeli to eat solid foods, but her prognosis is uncertain.

For now, "Jaeli's Angels," the growing number of donors, "tweeps" and "friends" willing her to gain weight and thrive, have their sights set on keeping her in pre-screened breast milk until that happens. "I wish I could buy her several days worth myself," says England.

If you'd like to donate, follow Jaeli's progress, or spread the word, log onto Twitter and follow @angengland, @brandybrow and @rarechromobaby. Or, stop by her website.

DVD Review: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

Leoben, that tricky toaster, was right: All of this has happened before, and all of it is happening again.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan retells major events from the first two years of the celebrated sci-fi series through the eyes of the Cylons. It weaves together recycled scenes from the series with new footage to reveal a first-hand account of the Cylon agenda, or "plan."

The result is a film that feels incomplete, episodic and disjointed. It plays less like a movie and largely like a disk full of high quality bonus material. Most of what happens here feels irrelevant to the series -- almost like it was tacked on to the BSG mythos to satisfy completists and hardcore fans. Still, it's worth watching to see Dean Stockwell carry the film with a fearless performance as the scheming and duplicitous Brother Cavil. The veteran character actor takes center stage in The Plan, and your enjoyment of the film will rest largely on how much you like, or dislike, Cavil and his major role in the series.

Stockwell's performance isn't the only thing worth recommending here. The Plan fleshes out a few of the series' more compelling stories, and it makes room for a new one involving Simon (Rock Worthy), aka Cylon Number Four. Worthy is terrific as a Four living with a human family and torn between his human life and his duty as a Cylon. Cylons learning to love other humans and to cherish their own humanity is a repeating theme in The Plan.

We also get more insight into Boomer's (Grace Park) headspace from season one, when she was working as a Cylon sleeper agent. It's not necessary to learn the details of her mission or how the Cylons controlled her, but the new scenes between Park and Stockwell are fantastic. In a scene that foreshadows the Cylon civil war, Boomer tells Cavil that she prefers being human – feeling love, friendship, and even heartache – to being a machine. Cavil responds with a nasty rant about the inferiority of humans to machines, echoing his famous "I want to see gamma rays" speech from the series.

Some small loose ends from the series are tied up here (Whatever happened to Shelly Godfrey? Who was Six waiting for on Caprica before the attack?), but these aren't really questions I was dying to have answered. I would have preferred to learn more about Cavil's past with the Final Five or about Leoben and his obsession with Starbuck. The Plan devotes some screen time to Leoben's story, but his scenes feel rushed and underdeveloped, especially when compared to the Simon or Boomer scenes. The Plan is more interested in showing us how Cavil was directly responsible for a lot of the havoc aboard the Galactica, and how his efforts to destroy humanity were doomed from the start.

Also missing is the biting social and political commentary we've come to expect from Battlestar Galactica. Many of the series' major cast members are MIA as well. Great actors like like Katee Sackhoff, Tahmoh Penikett and James Callis only show up in old footage from the series. Even the Admiral himself, director Edward James Olmos, is mostly seen in recycled clips.

Olmos pulls great performances from his cast, and his film offers some very impressive special effects for a straight-to-DVD movie. The Cylon attack on the colonies is shown in vivid detail and is scored by a hybrid Cylon's haunting play-by-play of the devastation.

The Plan DVD does feature some male and female nudity. Olmos and writer Jane Espenson defend this choice on the commentary track by arguing that Colonial society didn't have the same hang-ups that we do about our bodies (or something like that). Still, it feels a little unnecessary, especially one scene in the Galactica's unisex locker room.

I was hoping The Plan would offer more original content and would be able to stand on its own as a film. Instead, it's an imperfect but welcome love letter to the fans, and it was clearly a labor of love for the cast and crew.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan premieres on DVD Tuesday, Oct. 27.

Janet Jackson recording 'up-tempo dance album'; can she recapture a rhythm nation?

MTV reports today that Janet Jackson’s upcoming 11th studio album, a follow-up to 2008’s Discipline, is focused on uptempo and mid-tempo dance tracks, with a sound “inspired by worldwide influences,” including Brazilian, African and Latin rhythms.

According to producer Rodney Jerkins (Britney Spears, Destiny’s Child, Pussycat Dolls), she’ll also be addressing recent personal events: “You gotta understand, she lost her brother,” he told MTV. “She was in a relationship for seven years that’s over now. There’s things that she told me that I didn’t even realize. You know, certain [things] like self-esteem … I kinda had to persuade her, ‘Let’s just go, let’s talk about that.’ And she’s been doing it, and she’s a pro about it.”

I love me some Janet; I really do. And she’s had what anyone would deem an insanely difficult year. But after the disappointment of Discipline, I’m wondering whether I should just stick with her upcoming greatest-hits collection, Number Ones, due November 17.

Honestly, she still had me hanging on to 1997’s The Velvet Rope (I can take a Joni Mitchell mash-up!), but sort of lost me for good in ‘04 with Damita Jo’s relentlessly same-y sex-me jams. Where is the Janet who took us on an Escapade? That fierce Black Cat in Control who taught us all about the Pleasure Principle? (Requires knee-pads and an empty warehouse, fyi.) And where the Minneapolis are Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis?

If only you would Come Back to Me, Janet! But tell me if I’m wrong, readers. Will love still never do without her?

Andre Agassi: I Used Crystal Meth

Tennis star Andre Agassi serves up a bombshell in his new memoir: In the late '90s he began regularly using crystal meth. "I can't speak to addiction, but a lot of people would say that if you're using anything as an escape, you have a problem," he tells PEOPLE.

Agassi's book, Open, details his descent into drug use, as well as his hair loss, his troubled marriage to Brooke Shields and the love he eventually found with his current wife, Steffi Graf.

Asked how he thought his fans would react if they found out he was using drugs, Agassi, 39, says: "I was worried for a moment, but not for long. ... I wore my heart on my sleeve and my emotions were always written on my face. I was actually excited about telling the world the whole story."

For Agassi's story in his own words – including his ambivalent attitude toward the sport that made him famous – read an excerpt from his book in the new PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday. An excerpt also appears in the new SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

Kate Gosselin Swears Off Dating

Just because she's not wearing her wedding ring much of the time anymore doesn't mean that Kate Gosselin's back on the market. In fact, the reality-show mom says it's not going to happen while she remains the focus of so much media attention.

"I'm not thinking about it, but the thought has crossed my mind at some point [that] it's going to be scrutinized," Gosselin, 34, tells Ellen DeGeneres on an episode of her talk show set to air Wednesday. "Let's not talk about it."

DeGeneres agrees: "Exactly, and some guy is going to have that same concern." Gosselin says she tries to live her life surrounded by cameras – and "the 18 cars that follow me around" – by thinking of her eight children.

"I just know that, on TV or off TV, I've been very much targeted and torn apart," she says. "I'm telling you [from] the root of my heart everything about me: I am a mother first. I will always be a mother and I would die for my kids if need be ... My focus is them. It's not the paparazzi. My focus is not what trip I can go on or what shows I can do as a result of this thing. This is my job. This is my paycheck and so this is what I do."

But the kids, Gosselin says, are getting used to the idea of Kate minus Jon – and a wedding ring.

"At some point, I talked to the kids it came up very naturally and I said I'm not going to be wearing this ring very much longer," she says. "They said, 'Oh, why?' I said, 'Because I'm not going to be married to Daddy anymore,' which, of course, hearing that I don't think was fun for them."

Jon Gosselin And Octomom Set To Date On Reality Show

Kate Gosselin may go back to being a nurse, but her estranged husband's next career move is reportedly to date Octomom Nadya Suleman on television.

In Touch Weekly released the following statement:

According to former Cheaters producer Bobby Goldstein, Jon has agreed to star in a cheesy new reality show in which he'll date Octomom Nadya Suleman, who called Jon "hot" recently. "I heard that Nadya has an insatiable desire to spend time with Jon and to put their families together," Goldstein tells In Touch. "And I had the idea that this could be a very entertaining fiasco." The pilot, to be called Jon - Kate = Jon + Octomom and produced by Goldstein and a former producer of The Jerry Springer Show, will follow Jon "as he contemplates what hooking up with Octomom could really be like," a press release obtained by In Touch states. "He's totally creeped out by the idea that if they got married, they'd have 22 kids." Also creepy is the plotline for Nadya, 33. She will have such an obsession with Jon, 32, that "she's already talking openly about the two of them getting married," the press release explains. "It's so bad that when they finally meet, Octomom's brood may start calling Jon 'Daddy.' If this doesn't make Jon lose it, then Octomom modeling her bikini body for him will."


With Jon's life in a downward spiral, it's shocking that he would sign on for such a sensational project -- especially when he's locked in a nasty divorce with estranged wife Kate, 34, plus involved in a relationship with Hailey Glassman, 23. But Goldstein believes that Jon's quest for fame trumps all. "I think that he wants to remain in the limelight," he tells In Touch. "Notoriety is a component that some humans place a lot of value on." But reps for both Jon and Nadya deny that any show is in the works. Jon may also need money. A divorce court judge ordered him to return $155,000 he drained from a joint bank account he shares with Kate on October 14. With less cash in his pocket, and his bread and butter, Jon & Kate Plus 8, over, Jon is looking desperate and is willing to stoop to just about anything to feed his family. Even Goldstein knows the show is ridiculous -- but hopes it'll get great ratings. "It will be like watching a train wreck," Goldstein adds. "You know you shouldn't look, but you can't turn your head away."

Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009)

Michael Jackson always said that he wished he could live on stage, and in Michael Jackson's This Is It, there isn't a moment when he looks less than comfortably and pleasurably at home there. On the vast, half-empty, often darkened proscenium of the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where we see him in bare-bones videotaped rehearsals for the 50 London concerts that he never lived to perform, Jackson moves lightly and easily, with his herky-jerky demon-marionette grace. On the rare occasions when he's not focused on dance moves and has nothing to do but sing, as in a soaring interlude of ''Human Nature'' or a version of ''I Want You Back'' that he tosses off with affection for his child-superstar pluck, the music pours out of him like sunlight.

This Is It is not in any way ghoulish. It has now been established that when Jackson died, he was, physically speaking, a relatively healthy man. And so we're spared the macabre spectacle of combing the movie for any literal signs that he was knocking at death's door. It should also be said, though, that in This Is It, Jackson shows no telltale signs of a broken spirit, either. From the moment he takes the stage, he's loose, robust, and in control. Maybe a little too in control. In the relative privacy of these rehearsal sessions, which took place from March of this year until his death on June 25, Jackson comes off as his friends have often described him — as a gentle, sweet, but very shrewd soul who was also a painful perfectionist. Coaching his keyboardist and musical director, Michael Bearden, on how to play ''The Way You Make Me Feel'' with the exact right syncopated pull, Jackson says that he wants the song to sound ''like you're dragging yourself out of bed,'' but Bearden can't seem to get it. Though they banter a bit about the word ''booty,'' we get a hint of what a frosty taskmaster Jackson could be. When he's displeased, it stings.

As the last set of images we'll ever have of Michael Jackson, This Is It offers a raw and endearing sketch of a genius at work. The movie was directed, by Kenny Ortega, with enough liveliness to make up for its home-movie scruffiness, and I had a good time reveling in what amounts to a soft-edged vérité scrapbook for Michael-maniacs. By the end, though, This Is It feels like the half-complete experience that it is — a mere diagram of the excitement that Michael, for his comeback, had planned to unleash upon the world.

It's clear from the movie that the London concerts were conceived as a very grand series of onstage music videos, each with a huge, intricate set that at times involved digital projections, and each choreographed as a disco-inferno Broadway showstopper. (''Thriller,'' one of the few songs we watch as it was meant to be, had a full earth-packed graveyard.) The dancers were going to pop out from beneath the stage and crawl over skyscrapers, as Michael shimmied and boogied and got lifted into the air. Watching this without most of the sets, with the gears and pulleys still showing, and from two functional camera angles in front of the stage, we get the flavor of the songs but not the majesty.

And that's not just due to the lack of trappings. Jackson, it's clear, held back in rehearsal. In This Is It, he's singing and dancing, but he's also watching himself sing and dance, stepping out of his performance. What's missing — what the film gives you only a tantalizing glimpse of — is his ferocity. When he does a tamped-down version of his solo whirligig in ''Billie Jean,'' playing air guitar on his crotch (a gesture that elicits a round of cheers from the dancers in the Staples Center), you feel him sketching in the heat without quite committing himself. ''At least we get a feel of it,'' he says.

This Is It is fun, but it's a slightly airless experience. If the movie allows you to bask in Michael Jackson's aura, it also uses his image to foster ''nostalgia'' for a concert epiphany that never quite was. Maybe it was Michael's destiny to leave us all wanting more. Would those concerts have returned him to his magical pedestal? We'll never know the answer, of course. But watching this movie, at least we get a feel of it.