[Bali, October 25. Image via Splash.]

(Click to enlarge)

[Ubud, Bali; October 20. Image via Getty]

[New Delhi, September 27. Image via WENN.]

• Julia Roberts is in India shooting Eat, Pray, Love, and security is tight on the film set:

50 local police officers and security officers are guarding Julia; yet kids and villagers are climbing trees and rooftops to get a glimpse of the Hollywood star. [AP]

• Michael Jackson is making money at the box office: This Is It accounted for 71% of all sales yesterday on the ticket site fandango.com. [NY Daily News]
• Madonna might marry boyfriend Jesus Luz, according to reports. She apparently likes how he checks in all the time and understands that she is self-involved — plus, says a source, "the sex is scorching hot." Husband material! [Daily Mail]
• This column claims that Penelope Cruz must be pregnant: She went to an OB/GYN with boyfriend Javier Bardem. Maybe he just tagged along for her Pap smear? [NY Daily News]
• Teri Hatcher, who was a guest on Friday's (canceled) episode of The Tonight Show, says that Conan O'Brien has a concussion: "We did this bit and at the very end, when we ran in to cross the finish line, he slipped as he was crossing the finish line and hit his head… And the thing was, I was in front of him so I didn't see it initially. He didn't get off floor right a way, but then he [seemed] like he recovered and [pulled] it together, and they did an instant replay, and you could really see his head hit the floor. He did go to the hospital and he does have a concussion." [ET]
• Sources say Kanye West has an alcohol problem. "He's been boozing heavily ever since his mother died," an insider says. [Showbiz Spy]
• Kanye West was seen acting "reserved, quiet and humble for once." [Gatecrasher]
• "Roman Polanski's Arrest Could Lead to Extradition."[NY Times]
• "Roman Polanski's arrest in Switzerland could lead to diplomatic row." [Times Of London]
• "Poland, France seek Polanski's release." [USA Today]
• "France, Poland want Polanski released on bail." [AP]
• "'Outraged' Roman Polanski's wife vows to fight extradition to U.S. after he is arrested over 1977 underage sex charge." [Daily Mail]
• "Roman Polanski is weighing his legal options after his arrest Saturday at the Zurich Airport. If he agrees to allow extradition, he could be sent to the U.S. within a few days. If he fights the order, it could take several months for the case to get through Swiss courts." [Variety]
• Khloe Kardashian married Lamar Odom on Sunday at a private residence in Beverly Hills. She wore Vera Wang; the flowers were all white; preparation for the nuptials were covered by cameras from E!. [People]
• The wedding will air on E!'s Keeping Up With The Kardashians, in case you weren't clear on that. [NY Daily News]
• Here's the thing: E! agreed to pick up the $1 million tab for Khloe Kardashian's wedding only if it was staged by Sunday — that way it could open the new seaason of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. But since Lamar Odom's lawyers didn't have time to do a pre-nup, yesterday's "wedding" may not have been legally binding. [NY Post]
• Padma Lakshmi, 39, is reportedly pregnant with her first child by boyfriend Manu Nathan, 27. [JustJared]
• Clive Owen is a Liverpool football (soccer) fan, and watched a game in a NYC sports bar with other fans, only one of whom asked, "What was it like snogging Julia Roberts?" [The New Yorker]
• Amy Winehouse's father, Mitch, will join the cast of I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here. [Ireland Online]
• Kate Moss: Making music her focus? She has registered as a songwriter and publisher with the Performing Rights Society, where artists can protect any future royalties from their records. [Daily Express]
• Not that Kate Moss isn't modeling — she's totally the G in Paris Vogue. [TheLifeFiles]
• Simon Cowell is about to become the highest-paid star on TV — with his deal to bring X Factor to the U.S. (he'll producer, not appear on the show) — Cowell will make $103 million by next fall. That's more than Oprah, if you don't include her "empire" earnings. [NY Post]
• The Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. has checked into rehab; ex-girlfriend Agyness Deyn was seen out with her old flame, Miles Kane, during fashion week. [Daily Mail]
• "[John Travolta's] public acknowledgement that his son, who died in January, was autistic has former Scientologists convinced that he will leave the church-which they say has little tolerance for chronic conditions." [The Daily Beast]
• Rihanna was in Venice for her manager's wedding, and naturally, she posed with and signed an autograph for an Italian monk. He looks incredibly happy. [Daily Mail]
• "Jude Law is refusing to see his newborn daughter until a DNA test proves he is the father, according to new reports." [Daily Express]
• Has Jude Law banned interviewers from asking him about his new daughter? A source says yes, and that's why he didn't talk about it on Regis & Kelly. Jude's rep says "No subjects are banned." [Page Six]
• Jamie Kennedy has reportedly been cheating on Jennifer Love Hewitt with his ex-girlfriend, Shannon Funk. Funk was Britney Spears' assistant for a while. [Prz]
• Megan Fox told Nylon magazine that she thinks she's "really overexposed," which may be one of her most astute quotes ever. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Andrew Shue and the Today show's Amy Robach: Engaged. [People]
• Paris Hilton drove her new pink Bentley to the launch of a jewelry line, where the organizers offered her a free diamond pendant and she "begged and begged to take the matching earrings, too." Vivica A. Fox was at the same event and refused a free diamond bracelet, saying: "I'll buy it myself from my next paycheck." [Page Six]
• Kristen Bell hearts butterscotch pudding. [People]
• 75-year-old Larry King has been interviewing celebrities since 1985; his contract with CNN is set to expire in 18 months. Should he retire, who would take his place? Ryan Seacrest, Katie Couric and Joy Behar are reported contenders. [Page Six]
• Housewife Bethenny Frankel has been "gradually cutting ties" with the other housewives "since news that she'd get her own show on Bravo broke during the summer months." [Gatecrasher]
• Even though Marilyn Manson announced that he has the swine flu, his reps are denying that he is sick, which is just weird. [Gatecrasher]
• Justin Guarini was married over the weekend and the ceremony featured music by Radiohead, Paramore and Peter Gabriel — played by a string quartet. [People]
• Actress/model Angie Everhart denies that British royal Prince Andrew is the father of the baby boy she gave birth to in July. She says: "Just because I've been linked romantically with him in the past it doesn't mean I am still going to bed with him. Whether I am or not is nobody's business but ours… Kayden's daddy is someone who is not in the public eye." [Daily Express]
• This compilation of quotes from Robbie Williams is hilarious. [Guardian]
• "I never tried hard at anything. I was born smart on a very working-class estate. A couple of people I knew went to university apart from me, but all the way through I was the smartest kid in the school. That's luck, but I was proud of it. And I was also proud of doing well without trying. As you get older, and it took me a long time to realise it, that's a disgusting attitude, revolting. It's ignorant and it's a tragic waste, and I realised that the work itself is the reward. The struggle itself is the reward." — Ricky Gervais. [Guardian]
• "I knew my character was going to be pregnant the entire first season, so I figured it was a good time to have another kid." — Jenna Elfman, on being pregnant at the same time as her character in her new show Accidentally On Purpose. [USA Today]
• "The one through-line is the big accent and the in-your-face attitude. I'm definitely stereotyped and I'm very OK with that. I get super bored playing bland, normal girls." — Drea de Matteo, on playing a "tough broad" on Desperate Housewives, who sounds a lot like her Sopranos character. [Time]
• "I just passed my driving test. Took me 60 years, but I did it! For the first time in my life, I'm legal to drive, so watch out!" — Ozzy Osbourne. [MSNBC]
• "When I asked him what he envisioned, he mentioned Serge and Brigitte, Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. So for me, I kind of saw it more as 'he said, she said' duets, as opposed to something that was just two people singing together. It's the kind of interplay between a male perspective and a female perspective, so they were a great example of that." — Scarlett Johansson on her duets with Pete Yorn. [NPR]
• "I wish a happy birthday to Sophia Loren, my splendid twin, and I ask her to stop wearing fur — that is the best gift she could offer me." — Brigitte Bardot, who, like Loren, turned 75 this week. [AFP]
• "She doesn't have a penis. She came to my house in her underwear and I saw no hint of a penis. She thought it was appropriate attire. She can get away with it. She knows what she's doing. She ain't no fool. She's brilliant. I think she's a good role model for girls. She plays with sex and makes it unsexy on purpose - so outrageous it's approachable."— Mika, on Lady Gaga. [ONTD via MTV.au]

Hays once wrote that "few activities, I've found, are less fruitful than dialoguing with feminist scholars," and her general disdain for (straw) feminists is on display in her coverage of Gilbert. Of Gilbert's upcoming book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage, Hays writes, "It seems that Ms. Gilbert, a woman capable of roaming the globe with no male protection (beyond an ample publisher's advance), a heroine who had vowed [...] never to wed again, was - wed." But how will her readers react to this new "twist in the Gilbert voyage of feminist selfhood?" Hays asks, "will they be plotting revenge on the supposedly strong, single woman who betrayed them?" The basic thesis of the rest of the piece is: yeah, they will, but how silly of them, because they all just want to get married too.

Hays writes that "Ms. Gilbert was always going to get a guy" and that "such women rarely remain single - even if they profess to be feminists." It's not clear who "such women" are, though Hays quotes several passages in which Gilbert talks to her friends about men and sex. So maybe the type of feminist who "gets a guy" is the kind who, um, wants to? Except, according to Hays, that's all feminists: Gilbert's fans, she says, "are, in the way that feminists always seem to be but hate to admit, boy crazy and sex crazy."

Hays winds up her essay thus:

Ms. Gilbert knows, according to the Times, "that some knives may be out for her." She senses that loyal readers may well feel that their heroine has deserted them for a man. But women have been doing this to their girlfriends since time immemorial. Sisterhood is powerful, but not that powerful.

All of this actually kind of difficult to pick apart, but what Hays to be saying is that feminists equate strength with singlehood, and view anyone who couples up as a traitor. But all feminists really want a man (lesbians don't exist in the Hays universe), and would cheerfully abandon their feminist values should they find one. Of course, this is based on an outdated and wrongheaded notion of feminist values. Only a very few people still demand that feminists eschew men, and most feminists I know accept the notion that whether or not a woman is in a relationship doesn't determine how "strong" she is. It's true that the idea of taking a husband for "male protection" raises my feminist hackles, but the fact that Gilbert didn't need such protection while traveling the world makes me more sanguine about her marriage, not less. She seems to have gotten married because she wanted to, and because she was in love, and "such women" seem pretty happy to me.

It's actually kind of strange that Hays chose Gilbert as her vehicle for insulting sex-crazed, hypocritical feminists. Eat, Pray, Love isn't really a "voyage of feminist selfhood," it's a voyage of plain-old-selfhood — meaning that it feels self-absorbed at times, but also that it's not too useful as a political football. Gilbert doesn't leave her marriage because she's a strong woman who doesn't need a man — she leaves because she's miserable. And she doesn't stay celibate until she meets her lover Felipe because she thinks men are oppressors and sex is evil — rather, she fully acknowledges having been "boy crazy" her whole life, and decides she needs some time alone after her divorce to figure things out. That's not even feminist, that's just smart.

I wasn't a fan of Eat, Pray, Love, and I certainly don't feel betrayed by Gilbert's latest effort — mostly because I don't think Gilbert made me, or feminism, any promises in the first place. But even if she had, even if Eat, Pray, Love were subtitled A Feminist's Feminist Voyage of Self-Reliance and Feminism, she could still have gotten married without renouncing all she stood for. Because sisterhood is, in fact, powerful — so powerful that it can withstand even (shudder) marriage.

A Feminist Icon Gets Her Man [Wall Street Journal]

[Rome, August 31. Image via INF]

[Rome, August 26. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[New York, August 20. Image via WENN]

Subtitled A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage, Committed tells the story of what happened when Gilbert and lover Jose Nunes — called Felipe in Eat, Pray, Love — tried to enter the United state after their courtship in Bali. They were both divorced, and neither wanted to marry again, but they were told marriage was the easiest way for Nunes to gain legal residency. The book's press release says,

Having been effectively sentenced to wed, Gilbert and Felipe spent the next ten months wandering haphazardly across Southeast Asia waiting for the U.S. government to permit them to return.

During this time, she tackled her fears of marriage by studying it intensely, trying with all her might to discover through historical research, interviews, and personal reflection what this stubbornly enduring old institution actually is. Committed tells the story of one woman's efforts to make peace with marriage before she enters its estate once more.

We've criticized Gilbert plenty of times, and some of the "knives out" for the new book may be ours. I should say that every time I write about Gilbert, several commenters rise to her defense, and it's clear that Eat, Pray, Love has inspired many people. As many problems as I had with it, I did find it calming, especially since Gilbert argues that lasting happiness is available to anyone, even those who have suffered personal setbacks and depression. But Gilbert also undercuts her own claim, probably unconsciously, by presenting herself as a supremely special and lucky person. In a Times review, Jennifer Egan puts her finger smack on my least favorite part of the book:

[M]y one mighty travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody. I can make friends with the dead. . . . If there isn't anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot-tall pile of Sheetrock.

This half-modest admission — "everybody loves me," she seems to be saying, "but it's just a trait, a talent like any other" — has always rubbed me the wrong way. Partly it's just because I can be kind of shy and awkward, and "making friends with anybody" is certainly not one of my talents. But partly it's because, as Egan points out, Gilbert's charm and "personal power" make it seem like a foregone conclusion that everything will go well for her. Her difficult divorce notwithstanding, the world seems full of people who are eager to help her, and it's no surprise that she finds fun in Italy, enlightenment in India, and the perfect man (Nunes) in Indonesia. Gilbert once said, "I had an easier life than [my sister] did because I had an easier personality and it was easier for people to be sweet to me," and Eat, Pray, Love made me feel like Gilbert's life was easy because it was "easy for people to be sweet to her." What was I supposed to learn from that?

But life in Committed may not be as simple. Gilbert tells Rich that she had to scrap an entire 500 page draft because of "a clash of two voices" — the "chatty, witty" one of Eat, Pray, Love, and one that was "more sober and considered and confident and mature." The finished book may well reflect more of the latter voice, especially given what Gilbert has said elsewhere about her marriage. In a Big Think interview, Gilbert said,

You know, Eat, Pray, Love ends on a very romantic note because it ends within the first two months of a very romantic relationship, right? And so, for me, now, I'm 5 years into that relationship so it's always sort of funny to me when people come up and they're… and they still have… just finish the book and they still have this very starry-eyed idea like, oh lovely, you found this very romantic relationship, you know. And that very romantic relationship has now evolved into a marriage, you know, which, like, everybody else's marriage, is complex.

She also said,

[O]ne thing that's been really interesting to me about doing all this research about marriage is just realizing how the expectations that we have burdened in this institution with, at this point in history, are staggeringly huge. [...] Back in the 1920s, there was a survey that asked college women what they wanted in a partner and they listed all these virtues, you know, reliability, honesty, decency, morality, you know. And somewhere down around 6 or 7 on the list came love and passion. These things showed up sort of low on the list. Prudence was sort up high, you know. And then, in the 1970s, they ask those questions again to women and, you know, the very first thing on the list is, like, love, you know, love and connection and intimacy and then, you know, the other stuff they weren't really paying very much attention to. And now, it's even worse ‘cause they ask this question and they say they want a man who will inspire them everyday. [...] I would never sit down with a young woman and say to her, lower your expectations as a piece of advice for life. [...] But that's a good piece of information to know. Because we shouldn't walk around, thinking that this is how people have always thought about marriage or that this is what people have always expected out of their marriages.

Gilbert certainly isn't the first to say that contemporary people have extraordinarily high expectations of marriage. But to her credit, she doesn't present this as an easy solution to relationship problems, or claim that women should lower their standards. And she clearly doesn't think of her relationship as perfect — she seems to be acknowledging that what she once called an "almost ludicrously fairy-tale ending" has evolved into something more, well, real. So it's reasonable to expect that Committed won't be a self-satisfied brag-fest on how marriage is easy because everybody loves her, but rather a meditation on a complex institution that has burned her in the past. I'll sheath my knife, for now.

Eat, Pray, Love. Then What? Get Married. [NYT]
Elizabeth Gilbert's Follow-Up To 'Eat, Pray, Love' Coming In January 2010 [LA Times]
Elizabeth Gilbert Shares Her Thoughts On Modern Love [Big Think]
The Road To Bali [NYT]

Earlier: Eat, Pray, Love Author Talks To Guardian, Engages Gag Reflex

• Lindsay Lohan had a "meltdown" in a club in London, which involved saying:

"I feel so, like, caged. Totally caged." Then Lindsay tried to curl up in a ball on the floor. According to this report. [Mirror]

• Brad and Angie to wed??? Apparently someone sent Angelina Jolie all the press clippings about her "relationship problems," so she has decided that she and Brad should get married and put an end to the stories. A rumor about a Brangelina wedding circulates pretty much once a year, so perhaps we were overdue. [Mirror]
• BREAKING: Mariah Carey has been "stuffing her face" while making her album. "She has put on about 15 pounds, but she loves the curves," says a "source." [Page Six]
• Uh-oh: Pete Doherty was arrested in Switzerland after being found "slumped" in the bathroom of a British Airways flight with a needle. [Sunday Mail]
• The Slumdog kids danced to the movie's hit song, "Jai Ho," in a Hong Kong shopping mall on Saturday to raise money for charity. According to this report, "They sang off-key but drew an enthusiastic response." [Hindustan Times]
• Heidi and Spencer were "tortured" on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, by being held in a dark room with only water, rice and beans. Heidi was rushed to the hospital with what was diagnosed as a gastric ulcer; she has been released. If all of this is part of the Speidi attention machine, it's certainly impressive. [TMZ]
• Spencer claims he was locked up for 3 days with no food or water; producers say it was 8-10 hours max, with food and water. [TMZ]
• This report says Heidi and Spencer were in the Lost Chamber for 14 hours. [MSNBC Scoop]
• The production company behind I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here says that "All allegations of the celebrities being deprived of food and water are completely untrue." [Perez]
• Susan Boyle has signed with Ossie Kilkenny, the manager who made u2 millions. [Mirror]
• Chelsy Davy "can't wait" to see Prince Harry at a party this week. or something, This picture, in which Prince Harry's hand seems to be about to grab Prince Harry's crotch, is distracting. [Daily Mail]
• Even though Christina Ricci has called off her engagement, she and her ex-fiancé, Owen Benjamin, went to the movies Saturday night. [TMZ]
• It's hard to even understand how this is a news item, but here it is: Dancing With The Stars' Cheryl Burke has dropped some "excess" pounds and is "enjoying her new figure." [UPI]
• Brooke Shields and the National Enquirer have reached a settlement over the May incident in which two reporters checked Brooke's mom out of a nursing home to get a story. Also: The mag has agreed to make a generous donation to further research on dementia. [UPI]
• Kirsten Dunst: Returning to the Spider-Man franchise for flick number four. Will there be a Spidey wedding? [E!]
• Will Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and Tommy Mottola all move into the same gorgeous NYC building? [NY Times]
• Cameron Diaz says her costars on My Sister's Keeper helped her deal with the sudden death of her father: "I was really, really fortunate to have these people to come back to." [People]
• The family of David Carradine is asking the FBI to investigate the actor's death. [Us Magazine, People]
• Want details from David Carradine's death? Click away. [TMZ]
• Kate Hudson's mom, Goldie Hawn, is allegedly worried about Kate dating Alex Rodriguez. A source says: "Kate's had a string of boyfriends since her divorce from Chris Robinson and it's always the same pattern – she falls hard and fast, then gets bored or has her heart broken. Goldie hates the idea of seeing Kate getting hurt again." [Daily Mail]
• Katie "Jordan" Price is "drinking heavily, taking sleeping pills and barely eating" since splitting with husband Peter Andre. [Telegraph]
• This report shows Katie "Jordan" Price very calmly shopping with her kids. [Daily Mail]
• Baby-wipes enthusiast Terrence Howard stopped six lanes of traffic in Beverly Hills to save the life of a baby bird. [Page Six]
• Another day, another Kylie Minogue wedding rumor. This time, her man gave her a rose, so, clearly they are getting hitched. [Daily Mail]
• Will Michael Jackson try and turn his London mansion into the new Neverland? [The Sun]
• Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, who were husband and wife in Brokeback Mountain, may reunite in a flick called Love and Other Drugs, an adaptation of Jamie Reidy's nonfiction book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• What, what? A film adaptation of Eat, Pray, Love? With Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem? Oookay. [Variety]
• "In a PawNation poll, 70 percent of animal lovers voted Jennifer Aniston as the celeb they would trust to pet sit their furry friend." Mickey Rourke came in second. [E!]
• Patrick Dempsey has a dream, and it involves having a nice bus so he can bring his kids racing with him. [People]
• Composer Benny Andersson of ABBA has contributed one million kronor ($128,000) to the Swedish feminist initiative. [Independent Political Report]
• "She divides her time between California and Colorado, and in both places she lives 'off the grid,' with her own sources of water and power. Her homes are powered by solar panels, her toilets are compost, her cars run on leftover grease from fast-food restaurants […] She wears recycled necklaces made of boiled-down shotgun casings. She has more than 20 animals - horses, alpacas, chickens, dogs, cows - all of which are rescues…" — from a profile on Daryl Hannah. [Guardian]
• In this interview with Harry Shearer, he talks being part of Spinal Tap and The Simpsons. [LA Times]
• James Caan and Scott Caan play father and son in a new film called Mercy. [LA Times]
• Check out a portrait of Sandra Bernhard by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (and some information about the relationship between the photographer and the comedian) here. [HuffPo]
• Ooky, spooky, kooky: Bebe Neuwirth is working on a play based on The Addams Family. Snap, snap. [Gatecrasher]
• "There is nothing more humiliating for a stutterer than to have their word or sentence finished for them. I didn't have names for these fears." — from "How I Found My Voice," an essay by Carly Simon. [The Daily Beast]
• Evan Dando of the Lemonheads is suing General Motors, saying the company copied one of his songs for an ad. Dude, have you heard? They don't have any money! You're suing the bankrupt. [AP]
• Jon Voight is suing investors who sued him. [TMZ]
• The woman who inspired the Beatles song "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" is seriously ill. [Newser]
• Blind item! "Which once prominent magazine writer/TV interviewer now appears in elegant homes wearing men's clothes and a fedora? Sighed one jaded observer, 'These days, becoming a lesbian is a career move.'" [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which sexy leading man, known for his wandering eye, recently hooked up with a pouty songstress? The raven-haired rocker is a big change from his usual choice of supermodels." [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which actor is on hiatus due to a drug relapse? He claimed he needed time off because of the heartbreak of his public split, but he's actually headed to rehab." [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which heartthrob actor nearly cried bloody murder when he couldn't get into a private lounge?" [Gatecrasher]
• "I don't know him. I've never really seen him in interviews either. [But] yeah, he's cute. I'm a huge fan of the Twilight series." — Kelly Clarkson hearts Robert Pattinson! And she wrote a song, "Empty As I Am," inspired by the characters, which might make it on to the New Moon soundtrack. [Mirror]
• "I have people coming up to me all the time on the street and saying, 'My daughter's gay; thank you for this.' People send me e-mails like, 'My mother was going to take away my cellphone (and this and that) because I told her I was gay. She saw the movie and now she says she loves me.' It's a very powerful response. I get a lot of questions from people saying, when is it going to go to Ireland, to India…That gives me hope, that it's such a powerful story, being the truth, that it will transcend these other cultures and get Mary's message across." — Sigourney Weaver, on playing Mary Griffith, who attempted to save her gay son's soul by religious means before his suicide. [LA Times]
• "It's a mix of curiosity, fascination, respect and bewilderment. Twitter freaks me out. You have followers? It feels so obsessive and proprietary. It has great applications, and it's effective, I get it. But 'I did something, I did something else, I'm at it again.' Why? I'm still getting over YouTube, people. These breakthroughs are coming at such velocity that before you get your sea legs, there's another wave hitting you." — Mos Def. [USA Today]
• "I think she's much more raw in the third season. You see everything that's happening to her, so you see her more open and vulnerable, though she's being deceptive. You see her really desperate, which is a different side to her. I've been playing the character for so long now it comes naturally. [That allows me] to be more confident, take more risks, go bigger. In my film work, I'm scared to go too big — it's projected on the big screen and what not — but on Big Love, I feel I have a lot more freedom." — Chloe Sevigny on playing Nicolette "Nicki" Grant. [LA Times]
• "When I was a child my parents threatened to send me to a convent. I've often wondered how that would have worked out. I'd have made a terrible nun. I'm a good Catholic girl in the way that Madonna is. In the sense that I'm not that good at all. If the church is having a hard time recruiting nuns, I'd make an ideal poster girl. 'Become a nun or else end up like her!'" — Heather Graham. [Daily Mail]
• "I am who I am-a regular guy with a great job. How I'm analyzed belongs to someone else. In a few minutes, I've got a kid's game to go to, and then I'm taking our daughter to auditions. Today, that's my job." — Denzel Washington. [Reader's Digest]
• "The problem with Harry Potter is that there is so little controversy. It would be so great for the press if one of them would go off the rails and end up in rehab, but they are, actually, just really sweet guys." — Jason Isaacs, who plays Lucius Malfoy. [Telegraph]
• "The moment that changed me for ever ... was becoming a vegetarian aged 17; my whole life changed. I spent a lot of time hanging out in the woods near my house and felt a connection to the birds and trees." — Chrissie Hynde. [Independent]
• "I really wish I could play, but I don't at all." — Princess Beatrice, on polo. [Telegraph]
• "I never said (I wasn't returning). I just said that I'm not sure. It's called, um, 'negotiating.'" — Paula Abdul on whether she'll return to American Idol. [UPI]
• "When people talk about reincarnation, I always feel that if there is such a thing, this is definitely my first time, because I'm always amazed. I'm both amazed at how horrifically we can treat each other and all other living things, and also amazed at the wonder and the beauty. I'm like: 'Oh my God, look at that bird!' or 'Look at that flower!' literally every single day. I can't get over how people are putting so much energy and so many resources into going to Mars when everything we could ever dream of is on this planet, if we just take care of it. What do they have on Mars? They don't even have oxygen up there!" — Daryl Hannah. [Guardian]
• "I can never get close. My No. 1 job is always, always, always stand-up. It has to be a no-holds-barred attitude. Let me give you an example. I met Drew Barrymore a couple times. I went to a party at her house. And she said, 'You know, you should come to one of my small dinner parties, we hate the same people.' But if I'm sitting next to Courtney Love and she falls over, I can't not put it in the act. I'm responsible to my audience the way most people feel responsible to their Lord Jesus." — Kathy Griffin. [LA Times]
• "I learned that when you yell, nobody hears you. The best communicators have to live and present themselves in a peaceful manner. And that's going to be a lifelong quest of mine. I don't have a temper. I've never broken everything. I've never thrown a thing. But I have passion. If I feel passionate, you're going to know." — Rosie O'Donnell. [CBS News]
• "It depends where you are in the world. It's not brilliant here in Britain compared to, for example, Scandinavia – maternity leave and everything is different and they're much more clued in to what parents and children need. We still have quite a lot of Victorian principles hanging on, you can see it and feel it." — Emma Thompson, on Britain not being helpful to working mothers. [Daily Express]
• "I'm taking a year off. That's my birthday present to myself. I'm not going to act, write or anything like that. I'll be a mum, teach drama at my daughter's school, I'll cook meals and have fun, go out with my friends, I'll go to movies and not think about working. I'll see what bubbles up after that." — Emma Thompson. [Mirror]
• "I was insane to go on the Spice tour three months after having [my son]Beau. I wouldn't put myself through it again. At the time I was very self conscious about it all. It was awful. I remember being on stage and going numb and thinking everyone was looking at my body and that it wasn't perfect and I was next to the other girls […] Can you believe [Mel B] does 600 [sit ups a day]? That's nuts. Twenty sit ups and I'm done." — Emma Bunton, aka Baby Spice. [Mirror]
• "I'm convinced he plays for the other team. I even had my gay friends assess the situation" — Bethenny Frankel, joking about her boyfriend, Jason Hoppy. [Page Six]
• "I think what Drew and I found was a connection very similar to the connection between the characters. We adored each other; we played off each other. I can't imagine doing it with anybody else. It's two parts of a whole, really." — Jessica Lange, on Grey Gardens. [LA Times]
• "I'm an awkward kid from Long Island who had a dream about going to New York and becoming an actress. That's who I still am in my core… I fell into this phenomenon. Huge. Huge. This doesn't happen to most people. I'm lucky in that the way I look has never gotten me anything." — Edie Falco. [UPI]
• "I haven't done any exercise since October. I haven't done a thing. So who knows how I'm holding it together." — Kate Winslet. [Daily Mail]

Gilbert's mother was a nurse at Planned Parenthood in the '70s, and Gilbert says she spoke these words to girls considering abortion:

Please do me this great service and please do me this great favor and please do yourself this great favor. And try to remember, 10 years from now, when you're second guessing this decision that you made, that you made the very best decision that you could make on this day with the information that you had today. As the years go by, you'll have more information and you might wish that you had done things differently. But just don't forget that on the day that you had to make the choice you didn't know and you only knew what you have now. Don't abuse yourself later for what you didn't know now.

It's sensitive advice for anyone considering terminating a pregnancy, but it also applies to any of life's many hard choices. Gilbert expands, "just remember, when you're in the course of a difficult decision or when you look back on that difficult decision in decades to follow, that you made the best choice you could, given what you had." It's easy for people — but perhaps especially for women — to beat themselves up over decision they made in the past. To honor your past self, to respect the choices she made and understand that she did the best she could, is a difficult thing, but ultimately freeing. It's good that Gilbert — who has probably done and said plenty of things she regrets — understands this.

Big Think Interview With Elizabeth Gilbert [Big Think]
Interview Transcript [Big Think]

Speaking at the 2009 Technology, Entertainment, and Design conference, Gilbert said we put too much pressure on artists and other creative people by holding them responsible for their own inspiration:

Allowing somebody ... to believe that he or she is ... the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, internal mystery is just like a smidge of too much responsibility to put on one fragile human psyche [...] It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all of these unnatural expectations about performance. I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years.

Instead, she advocates a return to a pre-Renaissance attitude in which creativity was believed to come from the outside, from "a magical divine entity" or "mystical fairy juice." Artists would feel better, she says, if they accepted that their creative impulses didn't come from them, but were instead "on loan to you from some unimaginable source for some exquisite portion of your life, which you pass along when you're finished to somebody else."

Focusing too much on one's own greatness or lack thereof can drive anybody off their rocker, but this "mythical fairy juice" smacks of New Age faux-religiosity to us. If you believe in God, then divine inspiration makes sense — but if all you've got is "some unimaginable source," is this vague spirituality really all that helpful? Leaving the spiritual question aside, the biggest problem for most artists/writers/creative people in general isn't crushing societal expectations — it's money. Give me reliable health insurance and I'll believe in whatever fairy juice you want.

TED: Eat, Pray, Love Author on How We Kill Geniuses [Wired]

You'd think someone who wrote a book on self-examination would learn to avoid saying things like, "I had an easier life than [my sister] did because I had an easier personality and it was easier for people to be sweet to me," and following that up with "I'm a physically lazy person. My sister was tougher and stronger and more disciplined. It was easier to do my chores for me than to get me to do them."

Lazy or no, it was Gilbert's early success that made her thirties so difficult for her.

I'd [...] lived a very accelerated decade in my 20s. My career started young and I was really ambitious, and then I had success and I hung out with people who were much older. I think I might have been temporally misplaced, so I thought I was 40. It was a premature midlife crisis.

The only thing less sympathetic than a midlife crisis is a midlife crisis that happens early because — oops! — I thought I was forty. But writers in particular will enjoy this description of Gilbert's early years:

After college, Gilbert knew she wanted to be a writer and also that her modest Connecticut background didn't furnish her with enough material. So she took off to have as many story-inspiring experiences as she could. She went to Wyoming to work as a cowhand; she got a rite-of-passage bar job in New York.

Once she was done providing herself with "experiences" (which some people get just by living), Gilbert sold a story to Esquire, and one to GQ that became the film Coyote Ugly. But she's happy that the big success of Eat Pray Love has come now, when she's "nearly 40 not 22," has "a solid relationship," and is equipped to deal with it.

Annoying as this all is, Gilbert does appear to have been set up. Early on in the piece, interviewer Emma Brockes writes, "there are lots of paths to self-discovery, but most of them don't conflate so many lucrative book markets in one handy volume," and describes Eat Pray Love's genre as "a strain of confessional publishing I once heard described as 'women who write about their yeast infections.'" It's possible Brockes is suffering from a little sour grapes, and to be fair, so are we. Which is (one of the reasons) why we didn't do an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert — we'll just link to it instead.

Lucky Me [Guardian]

Earlier: Did Eat, Pray, Love Sell Millions Because Elizabeth Gilbert Cheated On Her Husband?
Self Editor Follows Eat, Pray, Love Around The World — And Hates It!
You Will Hate Elizabeth Gilbert For Making You Love Eat, Pray, Love

• Actually be convincingly depressed Holly says she got the idea to travel the world while reading a "galley" of the book — she's a women's magazine writer, natch! — and was struck by a scene in the beginning where Elizabeth Gilbert cries in the bathroom and thinks about killing herself. Holly likens that scene to a scene in her own life wherein she crosses the Williamsburg Bridge and gets weepy. There are a few crucial differences between Holly and Liz Gilbert's stories, however: namely, Holly is a 26-year-old unmarried magazine editor who lives in Brooklyn, and Lizzie is a 35-year-old writer who lives in the middle of nowhere in a loveless marriage. Also, Liz has a knife in her hand with which she intends to cut herself; I don't think it's even possible to jump off the Williamsburg Bridge — and you'd probably totally live anyway. During this experience, Holly thinks of Eat, Pray, Love, and her career. Liz prays to God. Which brings us to our second area Holly doesn't seem to take seriously enough.
  
• Involve God You say, "Unlike in Eat, Pray, Love, not everyone is going to find God in an ashram. I got red-eye virus." Um, Holly, ever read the Book Of Job? Elizabeth Gilbert's time at her ashram didn't sound so hot either — getting up at 4 a.m. to meditate every day and eating nothing but non-root vegetables? Nevertheless, God — and enduring shitty, repetitive routines that require waking up at ungodly hours — are two mainstays of Middle America. Otherwise known as "your market." Oh, you just did it for the spiritual growth and self-actualization, you say? Whatever, I saw your blog.
  
• Don't be a "backpacker." Where Elizabeth Gilbert settles down for four months at a time in Italy, India, and Indonesia, Holly's trip knows no such cute first-initial limitations. She goes to Indonesia and India, sure, but also Thailand, Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates, Peru, Brazil, Kenya, Myanmar, Vietnam, New Zealand and Australia. We know, we know, you're just another New York gal trying to "have it all"— but the one thing we've found in our travels is that a lot of times the most-traveled people we know, the "backpacker" types, are also the least satisfied. They're always looking for the next undiscovered beach, the cheapest hole-in-the-wall Thai food, the coolest dive bar/prettiest whores/weirdest extreme sport whatevs. Yeah, Vietnam's okayyyy, Laos is charming, but Bhutan is where you really have to go...blah blah blah. Not only do none of these people actually stay long enough to learn anything about the country they're inhabiting, but they're also too busy "getting stranded in the desert in Peru at high noon with the condors flying overhead or sleeping in a bed infested with cockroaches in Kenya" to have much downtime to think about their destructive patterns and/or poor choices and all the other instrospective shit that makes up the bulk of Eat, Pray, Love, right? Which brings me to:
  
• Don't bring your friends. Hello! There's a reason Elizabeth Gilbert didn't bring her two besties. Traveling anywhere with other Manhattan media people is just a 24-hour-a-day exercise in "Hell Is Other People." Surely at Self you went on junkets and experienced this. How are you supposed to "find yourself" when you're constantly finding out new hateful things about your best friends?
  
• When your little journey of self-promotion comes to an end and you return to life in Manhattan only to find yourself depressed, don't expect anyone to give a shit. Seriously, so you return to a club in the Meatpacking District and find it suddenly meaningless? That is your big takeaway? What about explaining how you managed not to find it meaningless before? Moreover, your relationship was obviously going to fall apart. Who takes a year to explore the world and returns back to their boyfriend in Brooklyn STILL MADLY IN LOVE? No one does, because no one fucking does that if they still love their boyfriend. And oh, you've met another guy you "totally click with" named Bryant? I bet he's toured the world too, maybe with his private equity firm? Well congrats, but that makes it even harder to feel sorry for you. And listen, I hope your blog about the adventures of turning 30 works out better, I really do. But even if it doesn't...
  
• Liz Gilbert was a whole nine or so years older than you when she took on all this stuff. So don't despair! You have decades left to turn your life into a bestseller.

Isn't she a little too nice and funny and likable to be for real? Isn't that a major reason this book is so goddamn popular? Because you're like, well shit lady, you cheated on your husband and now you're charming the bejesus out of middle American housewives all the way to the bank! Or am I just a terrible person? You've gotta read it to decide for yourself! TGIF, right?

From Hardcover To Paper, How A Blockbuster Was Born [WSJ]

me: My theory is that you disliked 'Eat Pray Love' because you were married, happy, fulfilled and in the logical context of a book club when you read it while I was a sobbing, existential crisis-ridden, heartbroken, disconnected mess reading it in the context of the Chinatown bus, which might as well be hell.
Stephanie: um, except that it become really obvious in the first 100 pages that she cheated on her husband. and hello. the whole reason she could take months to go to 3 countries and meditate was that she got a book deal. and the whole not having sex thing in the last part? yeah, self centered. And we all know she made her money from that movie with the girls dancing on the bar
me: OK, agreed on all counts. In fact, now that I think about it, I feel like it's almost sinister that she drew me, the dumpee, into her journey of self-discovery when hello SHE CHEATED.
Stephanie: yeah, if he cheated, i would have been right there eating the pizza with her. Instead, secretly i was happy she was getting fat. I hope her ex took her for everything. Or at least, the house
me: She made it seem like her did.That was actually the most off-putting part. That she harped, a little too much, on her ex's inability to forgive her. Without saying exactly what she had done.
Stephanie: yeah, and then she climbs a tower and "lets him go"... um, that's what his lawyer is for
me: And considering the compulsive-confessional gene that runs through people like that... not that I would know... You know she wrote a lot about whatever infidelity occurred. She probably wrote tomes. And then her publisher said: "Actually, we want to get this excerpted in 'O', so....can you kinda make yourself a little more sympathetic?
Stephanie: What about when she decided to stop taking the anti-depressants? No one that's been dumped goes OFF the antidepressants. yeah, i'm in a foreign country. i know no one. let's let the seratonin go...
me: She also writes almost too precisely about certain huge gushes of emotion for them to have been anything other than, you know, fairly isolated occurrences. Which is why it's so annoying that her book made me cry so much!
Stephanie: so many people loved it. I kept thinking, this woman, THIS woman is speaking for everyone who's ever broken up?
me: Right, I kept thinking, here's this book deal lady, sellout writer of the movie that introduced the world to Piper Perabo, who cheated on her husband with the lead in the play version of another of her astoundly successful books, hanging out in Italy... and she's making me cry. As if I needed another reason. As if I really needed a good fucking cry right now! Because it's been a WHOLE THIRTY MINUTES SINCE THE LAST.
Stephanie: oh no! oh no! think of the vibrator scene... that'll dry you up
me: you mean where she masturbates while thinking of Bill Clinton?
Stephanie: Yes. at that point i closed the book and vowed never to read GQ again
me: Yeah, that's a good point. Do people really masturbate thinking of Bill Clinton? Would you get off on Clinton dirtytalk? Because, as badly as I'd like him back in the White House, I would not want to have his cigar up my cooch. I can't really get off on the idea of known lechers trying to get in my pants. With Clinton I would not feel special. I would feel like the proverbial hole and a heartbeat. Although, for masturbation purposes, that should probably be sufficient. Anyway, whatever, it kind of weirded me out that he was her default fantasy. She's actually got a Clintonesque charisma; I met her once. She came to the office. Everyone LOVED her.
Stephanie: of course. she's blond. how could you not love a peppy petite blond woman. i bet she's super thin, right? that would make sense. She can eat pizza and not worry about it
me: She was wearing a weird asymmetrically cut sweater. She's definitely in good shape but I wasn't like, having an envy attack over her body
Stephanie: oh, that makes me like her a smidge more
me: Her LIFE, on the other hand..Also: she married Felipe or whatever his name was from Indonesia by way of Brazil
Stephanie: of course it all worked out for her. where is her husband now?
me: It's almost too perfect.
Stephanie: i bet her new husband cheats on her. it's like the j. timberlake song. and i'll bet they totally have kids. Because that's the reason she gave for breaking up with her 1st husband. She didn't want kids.
me: So you hated her instantly and reading the book was a masochistic exercise? Or did you only hate it after you were done?
Stephanie: i hated it while reading it. i just don't think the dump-er is entitled to the same misery as the dump-ee. I kept thinking, who the hell does she think she is?! YOU did this, now lay in it. and stop bringing up how much money you make
me: I would not want to know what goes through her ex's mind when he looks at the Book Review bestseller lists every Sunday. I don't think it's a good place.
Stephanie: i think her husband should have burned her clothes like that movie with angela basset
Stephanie: or her books, whichever. God, think of HIS therapy bills