• Is Sean Penn the unofficial liaison between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez? Penn visited Chavez in Caracas on Wednesday and apparently the Venezuelan president told him:

"They gave [Obama] the Nobel Prize — very well, now he should earn it." [Page Six]

• Britney Spears is using Twitter, Twitpic and Twitvid to promote her new single, "3" — there's a micro snippet of the video at the link. [LA Times]
• Ashton Kutcher's best friend is a rabbi named Yehuda Berg from the Kabbalah center. [People]
• Who will host the Oscars in 2010? Hugh Jackman has turned the job down. These are random choices, but I'd love to see Amy Poehler or Wanda Sykes. Or both. [Variety]
• Nanny Stephanie Santoro says that Jon Gosselin was suicidal at the thought of Hailey Glassman breaking up with him: "He said he was going to kill himself… He said he was going to end it all … he couldn't handle it anymore." Breakdown in 3…2… [Radar Online]
• Jon Gosselin plans to publicly apologize "in a sacred space to those whom I have hurt" at the West Side Synagogue in NYC on Sunday. [Page Six]
• Meanwhile, word is that Jon Gosselin/Nadya Suleman show is "definitely on." A source says:"Both Jon and Nadya are each looking at bringing in close to $1 million for doing it." [Gatecrasher]
• Did you see Derek Jeter kiss Michelle Obama the other night? [NY Post]
• Another day, another Michael Jackson money problem. This time it's Leonard Rowe, who says he was MJ's manager of the singer. He's filed a creditors claim for $51,218. [TMZ]
• Wow, John Landis — who directed the "Thriller" video — says Michael Jackson's estate owes him for $400,000; a production company which dealt with the "Thriller" video says it's owed more than $1,000,000; and the producer of the "Thriller" video wants more than a million as well. [TMZ]
• By the by, the Michael Jackson movie will be up for Academy Award consideration. [Mirror]
• Joe Jackson says Michael Jackson is "worth more dead than when he was alive." [NY Post]
• Taylor Squared: Going strong. [Page Six]
• Wait, what? Ne-Yo sings on The Princess And The Frog soundtrack? How very Jazz Age New Orleans. [ONTD]
• Amanda Peet was burglarized by a sassy character. [Page Six]
• Heroes is winding down; low ratings has NBC thinking a "final chapter" is the next way to go. [NY Post]
• Charlize Theron will star in Mad Max: Fury Road. That's right, a new Mad Max flick! No word on whether Mel Gibson is involved, but Brit cutie Tom Hardy is in the flick. [Variety]
• Reese Witherspoon will star in and produce a screenplay called Rule #1 — about a New York woman who befriends a Puerto Rican girl with attention deficit disorder. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• What the world needs now: Men In Black 3. [Reuters]
• David Spade got $200,000 for that Tommy Boy DirecTV commercial with the late Chris Farley. [Page Six]
• Sad face: Dennis Hopper has prostate cancer. He's canceling all travel plans to focus on treatment and is in a "special program" at USC. Be well! [AP]
• Jackie Collins listens to Mariah Carey, John Mayer… and Jay-Z. [Independent]
• "Whenever I'm in the recording studio or rehearsing and I'm not convinced about the way it sounds, I know because my body doesn't react to the music. So I always ask, Hey, am I moving? Are my hips moving? My hips don't lie." — One of 10 answers to 10 questions for Shakira. [Time]
• "I know it gets sensationalized when I say, 'I was very close to death', but I was. It was a scary time. It's scarier since people like Michael Jackson and Heath Ledger have been popping their clogs. pretty much thought 'Is this worth it?' It was obviously not making me happy. The definition of insanity is repeating the same things and expecting a different result. At the time I thought, with the kicking and the rehab, maybe there's other things in life?" — Robbie Williams. [News.com.au]
• "I haven't gone back since because I'm afraid… I'd never get sober for one thing, and to have to run around in a dress. . . it's cold up there!" — Mel Gibson on why he hasn't returned to Scotland since Braveheart. [Daily Mail]
• "When I did my first album, I was marketed as the singer who would appeal to your grandma. But as each record arrived with more power and confidence, I began to sound younger and younger. Some singers start out as young punks and then make a classics album later in their career. With me, it has been the other way round. I feel as if I've finally started acting my own age. I'm the Benjamin Button of pop. It offends me when people think I only listen to Frank Sinatra. I was born in 1975 and I never wanted to be part of the Rat Pack. As a kid, my biggest idol was Michael Jackson. As a teenager, I wanted to be one of the Beastie Boys." — MIchael Bublé. [Daily Mail]
• "I always felt like the male from the time I was a child. There wasn't much feminine about me. I believe that gender is something between your ears, not between your legs. That is something I discovered in the early '90s. It was just a long process of being comfortable enough to do something about it." — Chaz Bono loves being a man. [People]
• "I was tempted to do it. But I couldn't take it. One smoke of pot and I fall asleep. I don't get much out of it. But that's beside the point. My kids were saying, 'Daddy, you have to try!' That's when I shut down. These were mushrooms ... I said, 'Listen, I didn't go through a sex change operation to direct all these women's movies so don't get me started.'" — Ang Lee wouldn't take acid to direct an LSD scene. [Independent]
• "I just drank an iced tea here with lunch. If next year they say iced tea is worse than steroids, I'll probably quit drinking that too. But at the time it was legal, just like drinking an iced tea is legal. The baseball players, the football players, the hockey players - everybody I knew in every professional sport was using it to up their game, or to heal injuries, or to stay at their peak. And everybody thought it was safe." — Hulk Hogan talks about steroid use in his new book. [Time]
• "I hate them!" — Paris Hilton on the Teen Thieves, who stole clothes and jewelry from her home. [Page Six]
• "I have lots of original ideas that maybe will get made. But everyone... Even if you bring them the most obscure movie that nobody's ever heard of — they want to remake that." — Rob Zombie, who reworked Halloween and Halloween 2 and may remake The Blob, calls Hollywood a "scared town." [CNN]
• "America's the only country where people have said that the New Zealand accent sounds posh or sexy or exotic. Anywhere else, it doesn't. That's why I've been spending a lot of time here." — Flight Of The Conchords' Jemaine Clement. [NY Post]
• "As the mother of my kids, I won't slam Dina personally. But she has expressed to me that Lindsay is in dire, dire need of an intervention. And Lindsay needs to see that her mother is either lying to me or lying to her. Dina says positive things about Samantha when she's talking to Lindsay, but then when Dina talks to me, she blames Lindsay's downfall on the Ronsons. If Dina and her cohorts want to continue lying, I could [keep exposing her] for a year - on so many different subjects. My lawyers told me to keep every single conversation - and I did." — Michael Lohan is taking voicemail tapes to Entertainment Tonight. [Perez]
• "If I go back to my black neighborhood, they'll rob the [bleep] out of me." — Tracy Morgan, promoting his memoir, I Am the New Black, at Barnes & Noble. [Page Six]
• "I always felt that I wanted to help women, period. As a child I [saw] women really, really suffer terrible, terrible situations, and I vowed as a child to want to do something — anything — that can help them have better self-esteem so that they don't have to be subjected to men that wanted to kill them. In my music, that's what I've been doing in my career, and now through FFAWN I'm doing that. I guess what got me through when I was young was something I guess a lot of people don't have and that was just the will. ... I don't know what was driving me. I guess it was something in me did want to die — you know, I guess my spirit didn't want to die, but my physical body definitely was at some point was like I gotta get out of here. ... My physical body was contemplating suicide and all this other crazy stuff, and my spirit is what saved me, I believe." — Mary J. Blige, at the official ribbon-cutting for the Mary J. Blige Center for Women, which was made possible through Blige's Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now (FFAWN), design house Gucci and Westchester Jewish Community Services. [CNN]

Joan Rivers, under the circumstances, was wise to play it safe - or her Nancy-Reagan-as-Trump-Tower equivalent thereof.


I have a certain sympathy for Melissa Rivers as a fellow person with no style or qualifications who still feels confident to hand down arbitrary opinions of celebrities' outfits. The difference is, I have nowhere to wearwouldn't wear anything so utterly expensive predictable as bandage plus Louboutins.


I am confused by Iliza Shlesinger's top. I like high-low as well as the next guy, but this has a middle-school-boy's conscientious tucked-in look.


I'm just gonna say it: I love Kathy Griffin's dress.


Kaylee DeFer is probably taunting Joan Rivers by wearing this getup on a night when she can't criticize it! Ha! Roast, indeed!


I'm so ready for this pajama-onesie trend to end; I have a particular aversion to "comfy" things that actually look really hard to wear. That said, Claudia Jordan looks pretty good.


Rebecca Corry's boot-breakout seems premature to my Eastern eyes, but maybe the seasons aren't acknowledged in L.A.?


Jackie Collins always wears the perfect "Jackie Collins" uniform. You can just smell the "Poison" from here.


As we know, I have a particular aversion to purple, with its echoes of wizards and Lisa Frank. And yet, I like sharp, sleek little cotton dresses like Whitney Cumming.' What to do?


Maybe I'd have gone for a slightly more open neckline on this LBD, but man am I digging on Robin Quivers' shoes - and am unfailingly struck by her commitment to off-air class!


I hate when people's dates aren't identified. Like it would take so long to ask? Not that there's anything wrong with being "Alan Thicke's plus one," I guess, but when one has taken the time to cultivate a careful Easter palette, it seems a crying shame.

[Images via Getty]

[West Hollywood, February 22. Image via Getty.]

While The View was on hiatus, American opera singer Beverly Sills died. Turns out she was B. Dub's BFF, and Babs was understandably broken up about her passing, so she gave a really touching tribute on Tuesday's show, and wore this ring that Bev gave to her when she retired from 20/20.

I was so moved by the idea of inspirational accessories, that when I went to Atlantic City this week, I stopped in a cheapy jewelry shop on the boardwalk, bought a charm for $7.98 and had something meaningful engraved on it:

In case my camera-phone photography is too beautifully artistic for your eyes to comprehend what you're seeing, it's a heart that says "Doritos." Because Doritos are totally my boyfriend. Blazin' Buffalo Ranch. OK, and WTF is up with Mary Tyler Moore? She's like losing it, right? Something about her statistic that one female dog that's not spayed can produce over "76,000 puppies in a seven-year period" rings incredibly inaccurate. And nice frightening BJ face.

Speaking of frightening BJ faces:

I know I keep talking about Tyra and weaves, but that's only because Tyra keeps talking about Tyra and weaves. For real, her two fave topics are herself and fake hair. To be fair, those are now my two fave topics as well. This week she had on Jennifer Hudson (rerun) and asked her if she reuses expensive hair. (Surprise! Cheapo Tyra does!) And then she had an entire episode of giving Warren Tricomi makeovers to women with "America's Worst Hair." For the ep, TyTy donned some wack-ass wigs, I guess to make us laugh? Ty, you don't have to try that hard with us. We always laugh at you.

OK, moving on from BJ faces, how about some gay faces?

How can anyone refute the idea of there being a gay gene after the Huckabys went on Oprah? There are six children in their family, and four of the brothers turned out gay! Only three of the homo bros (hobros?) showed up for the taping. (What kind of a gay man is the fourth brother that he couldn't cancel his previous plans for Oprah Mother Fucking Winfrey? Answer: The kind of gay man I don't want to know.) And lastly, how can anyone refute the idea of a gay gene when this guy so clearly has gay eyes?