• Texas gal Renée Zellweger will spend the holidays in Philadelphia with Bradley Cooper's parents. Sounds like the plot of a romcom. But it's real! [NY Daily News]

• Award season has begun! Precious star Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe and Hilary Swank both won Hollywood Awards (given by the Hollywood Film Festival) last night. [AP]
• The father of one of the teenaged girls arrested in the Lindsay Lohan burglary case says that his daughter "was in the wrong place at the wrong time, associating with the wrong people." [People]
• In this story about the teen burglars, attorney Blair Berk, who represents some of the victims, blames "paparazzi shots and magazine coverage" for "increasingly prying into the private homes, schools and personal possessions of stars. Another lawyer says: "It would be fun to do capers. It was all about fun. It was one of those cases of you get bored, and it was something to do with a little technology." The young women arrested were classmates at Indian Hills High School, which is "set atop a leafy incline in an upscale neighborhood" where there are BMWs and Audis parked in the student lot, and nearby roads have horse trails for equestrians. Seriously, people: This is a screenplay waiting to happen. [LA Times]
• Congrats to Jennifer Esposito and tennis player Mark Philippoussis, who are engaged. Did you know they were dating? [People]
• BREAKING: Madonna planted a tree. [NY Daily News]
• Hugh Jackman's four-year-old daughter wants to be a chocolate chip muffin for Halloween. His nine-year-old son wants to be Al Capone. And Hugh? "I'm going as James Bond," he says. [NY Magazine]
• Sources say Balloon Mom Mayumi Heene may have confessed to the hoax to keep her children from being taken away from her, or to spare them from having to testify against her husband. [CBS News]
• The Balloon Boy case has been handed to the District Attorney's Office, and the DA has requested more information before making a charging decision. [TMZ]
• Heartbreaking: La Toya Jackson says that Paris Jackson is dealing well with her father's death ("Paris thinks and talks about her father all the time… She's doing very well, writes a lot and she wears his shirts every day. They still smell of him and it helps her feel close to him."), but Prince Jackson "just doesn't want to speak about it" and Blanket is "just a very sad little boy" who cries and cries. Luckily, La Toya says, "They all go to therapy." [MSNBC via Daily Mirror]
• The woman accused of stalking Justin Timberlake has already been served with a restraining order from Metallica and was sentenced to a year in prison for violating a court order to stay away from Axl Rose. [TMZ]
• Henry Ian Cusick, aka Desmond on Lost, has settled a sexual harassment suit with a former production staffer whom he allegedly grabbed and touched inappropriately. [TMZ]
• Bill Cosby was honored with the 12th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor last night, and stars like Phylicia Rashad, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Jerry Seinfeld, Sinbad, Chris Rock and Willie Nelson were in attendance. [USA Today]
• Suzanne Somers has a new book in which she reveals she was misdiagnosed with "full-body cancer." Her book promotes alternative medicine and avoiding chemotherapy; she says: "It's easier to try the traditional route and then, if it fails, go to the alternatives, but often it can be too late. My friend Farrah Fawcett— would she have made it if she had gone alternative first? There is no way of knowing." [NY Daily News]
• Egads. The Anna Nicole Smith trial is still going on. An expert psychiatrist has testified that Anna was an addict. [NY Post]
• Alec Baldwin knows how to spell. [Page Six]
• Black people on Gossip Girl? What is the world coming to? [Page Six]
• Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom have "romantic" new tattoos. [People]
• Uh-oh: Mel Gibson's pregnant girlfriend is refusing to sign a pre-nup. [MSNBC via National Enquirer]
• Some guy sniffed Pamela Anderson's underwear. [The Sun]
• This Mary J. Blige track from the Precious soundtrack is powerful, sad. [The Life Files]
• It's been 25 years since U2 released The Unforgettable Fire. It was recorded at an Irish castle; producer Danny Lanois says: "Bono was looking for a different kind of location, a building that had ghosts in the walls and some kind of a sense of history… So that we weren't just in an empty modern warehouse, that we were actually feeling the presence of goings-on from the past." [Reuters]
• Eric Clapton has pulled out of a Rock and Roll Hall concert to have gallstones removed. [AP]
• Bruce Springsteen has canceled a show in Kansas City after his cousin — who was a roadie — was found dead in a hotel room. [USA Today]
• After his stint on Dancing With The Stars, next Tom DeLay plans to be an "expert" on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. [MSNBC Scoop]
• "You owe it to yourselves and your loved ones to see this again and again. Memorize it and say to yourselves, 'I saw genius in my lifetime.'" — One of Liz Taylor's 20 Tweets about the Michael Jackson movie This Is It. [CNN]
• "I've been on the road for pretty much five years now and I'm tired. I've kind of written about everything that has happened in my life for the past 10 years so I think I need to live some more before I start writing more." — Lily Allen, on quitting the record biz. She also says she might do musicals in London's West End: "It hasn't been confirmed yet but I'm keeping my options open." [Telegraph]
• "Reading about somebody else's tough experiences of being a mother, you're suddenly like, ‘My God, I've got a kid and I don't have time to read this. I've got to go do it.' There's no time. If he's sleeping I'm trying to sleep and when you're breast-feeding you're the milk machine. There's no time to pick up the guitar, much less go for a walk or have a beer. The first year of Henry's life has been just an insane earthquake for me… I waited a long time to have children because I had this career that was kind of like my kid, it required as much nurturing. There's no amount of hassle that could be bigger than my love of Henry." — Minnie Driver doesn't have time to read parenting blogs. [Daily Express]

• It girl, celeb spawn, columnist and designer Peaches Geldof's design inspirations: “I looked at icons like Siouxsie Sioux and Robert Smith, and took notes from Gothic novels like 'Dracula' — the cape came about while I read this.” [WWD]
• Eric Clapton apparently has a custom Hermes, alligator-skin guitar case. It's "lined in blue silk velvet and is rumored to have cost more than $100,000." [Fashion Week Daliy]
• Marc Jacobs has designed a stroller. It's black, exorbitant, and will turn your baby into the biggest snob in the world. Luckily, there are only 15 in existence. [Racked]
• Matthew Williamson is doing not one but two lines for H&M! [WWD]
• In her Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute voiceover, Sarah Jessica Parker "talks about art history with the same breathy relish and melodic rhythm she might deploy to deliver a pun-soaked voice-over as Carrie Bradshaw." [New York Times]

• Some designers are staying out of the presidential inaugural fray: Michael Kors hasn't submitted designs, while a rep for Carmen Marc Valvo says, “we feel that she’s probably being inundated by designers." She is! [WSJ]
• Zac Posen to guest-star on Ugly Betty. Is this considered compulsory? [New York]
• "It’s practically impossible to turn on a TV without seeing a designer." [WWD]
• Should you need to soak your clothing in water for two months straight (and surely some kind of marine scientist must), you're in luck: a new nanotech fabric, "made from polyester fibres coated with millions of tiny silicone filaments" that cause water to roll off, awesomely, like marbles, is the most water-repellent clothing-appropriate material ever created. [New Scientist]
• Too bad fast fashion makes up 30% of Britain's landfills. [Daily Mail]
• In addition, a new study finds that abuse of garment and textile workers is rampant. [WWD]
• Downtown darling Imitation of Christ (Chloe S was a creative director) is folding. [Racked]
• What does Salvador Dali have to do with breast cancer? Not much, but when has that stopped fashionistas? 12 designers have designed Dali-inspired pieces which will be auctioned for Fashion Targets Breast Cancer. [Telegraph]
• Stacey Bendet Eisner has given birth to a girl. "The alice + olivia designer, who spent the day before doing yoga and getting a pedicure, was supposed to deliver on Thanksgiving but got induced early because, 'If I wait 'til a holiday no doctors will be around!'" [New York Post]
• Coco Rocha: “There are enough models out there who are gorgeous and good looking, but have nothing to bring...They can take good pictures, but after that, when you take the pictures, what do you have to say for yourself?” [WWD]
• Italian designer Alessandro Dell’Acqua is launching a capsule collection, Alessandro Dell’Acqua Black Dress, composed exclusively of LBDs. [WWD]
• A stylist who worked on Annie Liebowitz's Disney shoot is suing the famed lenswoman, claiming she wasn't compensated. [New York Post]
• Fashions at the Crillon debutante ball seem undimmed by the economy. And that's what's important! [WWD]

But I'm interested in the book, just as Zacharek is, not just because it's a "cultural history" from a summer of love insider, but also because I, too, was once obsessed with the allure of the artist.

For a three year span I only dated fine artists. There was a painter and a photographer and a sculptor, and while I would not have admitted it at the time, I wanted so badly to inspire them. Mostly I wanted them to make art about me so I could put it up in my dorm room and then when people asked about it I would say nonchalantly, "Oh that old thing? Yeah, that's just something my boyfriend made about me." Anyway! After a few years of dating complete narcissists (which most artists are) I realized what took Patti Boyd several decades to figure out:

"[Boyd] tells the story of the song "Wonderful Tonight," which [Clapton] wrote as he was watching her take forever to dress for a night out: 'It was such a simple song but so beautiful and for years it tore at me. To have inspired Eric, and George before him, to write such music was so flattering. Yet I came to believe that although something about me might have made them put pen to paper, it was really all about them.'"

Layla [New York Times]