• Angelina Jolie has a "secret family" she's "kept hidden for years."

She's been paying to support seven orphans — three girls and four boys — at the SOS Children's Village in Amman, Jordan. During her recent visit to the Middle East, she took Brad to see the kids, who live together in one house with a foster mother. Image at the link and, as always, consider the source. [National Enquirer]

• Beyoncé threw a star-studded 1920s-themed birthday party in the Dominican Republic for Jay-Z's 40th; Kanye West, Amber Rose, Diddy, Alex Rodriguez, Kate Hudson, Alicia Keys, Lyor Cohen and Tory Burch were in attendance. [Mirror, Page Six]
• As seen in a Snap Judgment, Lady Gaga met the Queen of England last night; the former wore a modest latex gown. On stage, she wore an Elizabethan collar, and played a Dali-esque piano 30 feet in the air from a cushion suspended by chains. The very definition of restraint! [Daily Mail]
• A woman was rushed to the hospital from Tiger Woods' home in Florida this morning. All we know is that she is blonde, and that the ambulance was followed by a car with another blonde woman driving. [Newser, People]
• The assumption is that the person in the hospital is Elin Nordegren's mom. [TMZ]
• TMZ has a random blurry pic of Tiger Woods chatting up a waitress at a Las Vegas nightclub. [TMZ]
• Tiger Woods will not be the best man at Byron Bell's wedding this weekend — Tiger's not even going to the event. [TMZ]
• TMZ saw the admissions chart when Tiger was in the hospital the day after Thanksgiving and paperwork says Tiger was there because of an "OD." [TMZ]
• A Florida trooper tried to get Tiger Woods' blood results from the hospital — suspecting DUI — but was denied. Preferential treatment? [CBS News]
• Tiger's wife Elin Nordegren has purchased a mansion in Sweden; it's on a small, secluded island reachable from Stockholm only by ferryboat. Will she move there? [NY Daily News]
• Tiger Woods' mistress Jaimee Grubbs was given a VIP table next to Lauren Conrad and near Leighton Meester at an LA club. Why? That's unclear. But this column is titled "Tiger's Tails Live It Up." [Page Six]
• FYI: George Clooney and Elisabetta Canalis are still dating, though you may have heard a rumor that they broke up. Her dad says: "My daughter is happy and at peace… There is genuine affection between my daughter and Clooney." [UPI]
• 50 Cent says: "Susan Boyle is hot right now. I got to get her on a track, for real." OMG that could be awesome. Fiddy adds: "She's cool. I'd love to take her clubbing, show her around my world. She'd have a great time." [PopEater via Mirror]
• Lindsay Lohan is headed to India, where she's filming a BBC documentary about impoverished kids. [Page Six]
• LOL: "Madonna stayed away from Courtney Love at the bash for Tom Ford's movie, A Single Man." [Page Six]
• Just when you thought that Tiger Woods had knocked these fools out of the news: Hailey Glassman calls Jon Gosselin "a monster" in this video. She says Jon and Kate Major and told her that Kate Major was going to "pretend" to be Jon's girlfriend to take the tabloid heat off of her. "Stupid me," Hailey says. She explains that then she found out that Jon slept with Kate Major. Hailey also says: "I was with a liar. I loved a liar. I was lied to constantly." [Radar Online]
• Um... Hailey Glassman is still living with Jon. And: "I'm not on speaking terms with my mother because of Jon. He's thrown a huge fork in my family. That's the saddest part about all of this. When all the cheating accusations came out I'd catch him lying, he'd call my mother and tell her 'I love Hailey, I would never cheat on her. Those other girls are whores and they're trying to extort money from me.' At that point I would break up with Jon and tell him to leave me alone. My mom would then come to me and say, 'Jon's a great guy.' He would manipulate my mother because he knew my mother and I were best friends. He would manipulate my mother to get back to me and I would forgive him." For the love of God. [Radar Online
• Jon Gosselin was named the "most provocative" person of the year by HLN. "Jon Gosselin was the tabloid train-wreck gift who just kept on giving!" says Showbiz Tonight senior executive producer David Levine, with glee. [CNN]
• Alexa Ray Joel is recovering at her father's estate in Long Island. [NY Daily News]
• This columnist notes that Alexa Ray Joel is "a piano woman in an age dominated by Beyoncés and Rihannas, a torch singer with a taste for Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, writing her own music, booking her own gigs, and distributing her CDs independently. The fact that she has skills and a couple of famous parents didn't necessarily make her artistic life easier… what happened this weekend was also a poignant reminder of just how dispiriting it can be to be a young artist at a time when record deals only seem to go to reality-show contestants, and radio consolidation has made it harder for niche artists to find an audience." [The Daily Beast]
• ABC may have had issues with Adam Lambert, but not Fox — he'll be singing on So You Think You Can Dance. [Page Six]
• Mickey Rourke will marry his girlfriend Elena Kuletskaya in Moscow in April; his thrid marriage and her first. Mickey and Elena met when she was coaching him in Russian dialogue for Iron Man 2. [Page Six]
• Kate Bosworth will star in Lost Girls & Love Hotels, written by Nadia Conners and directed by Young Victoria's Jean-Marc Vallee. She'll play a woman who tries to forget her past by living in Tokyo, where she's a flight attendant trainer by day and "sex- and drug-addled" by night. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Tori and Candy Spelling are communicating, says Dean McDermott. "Candy has seen the kids, which is what this is all about." Does this mean that they're no longer using the media as voicemail? [People]
• Peeps in LA: Prepare yourselves for a Pee-Wee comeback! He is doing a new stage play — The Pee-Wee Herman Show — with puppets and all of the original characters: Chairry, Genie, Conky, Magic Screen, Miss Yvonne and Cowboy Curtis. All the original actors from the TV show will play their parts on stage, except for Laurence Fishburne, who has a previous commitment. But Fishburne says if there is a movie, he'll get a Jheri curl and be there. [CNN]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Amy Adams would like to know the sex of her fetus. "I thought about waiting and I just don't think that's really my personality," she explains. "It's not about planning a nursery, it's more about I just want to know. I want to be able to relate in that way. That's what works for me, but I totally believe in whatever works for the individual." [People]
• On a German TV show, Hugh Grant embraced a comedian named Anke Engelke, and she recoiled, cringed and made a face. Why, yes, there are pix at the link. [People]
• Joely Richardson says: "I cannot imagine that there will ever be a day when I don't think of [my sister] Natasha." [Daily Mail]
• Russell Brand has returned from a four-day retreat in which he studied the art of transcendental meditation. Now he can stop contemplating the universe and go back to focusing on Katy Perry's assets. [The Sun]
• Leona Lewis was flown to Monte Carlo over the weekend, where she was paid six figures to sing for "one of Romania's richest men." Maybe she changed the lyrics? Keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding cash. [The Sun]
• Porn star Janine Lindemulder lost her request for expanded visitation rights for her 5-year-old daughter with ex-husband Jesse James (who is now married to Sandra Bullock). [LA Times]
• A nude photograph taken by David Bailey of Roman Polanski and wife Sharon Tate — taken shortly before she was brutally murdered — sold for $11,250 at an auction on Monday. [Reuters]
• No weasel jokes: Pauly Shore is suing his brother, accusing him of elder abuse against their mother, who has Parkinson's. [Radar Online]
• "Two physicians accused of over-prescribing addictive medication to Anna Nicole Smith will fight efforts by the state medical board to bar them from practicing medicine," [LA Times]
• The Dallas remake: Coming to a TV near you. [NY Daily News]
• "A judge has dismissed a misdemeanor domestic violence charge against gospel singer BeBe Winans after determining he had seen a counselor as required by prosecutors." [USA Today]
• "On my first day [on the set of Space Cowboys], he came into the hair and makeup trailer, and the 13-year-old girl in me took over. I flung myself across the trailer and hugged him — and I hugged him hard. I said 'Hi, I'm Marcia Gay Harden!' and he said, 'I know, I cast you.'" — Marcia Gay Harden, on meeting Clint Eastwood. [Gatecrasher]
• "[Many young American actresses] have a Nickelodeon quality to their acting, like they're goofing. We needed a girl who looked like she was from 1973 and who got the reality of the story. Saoirse is fiercely courageous. In a way, I like to think that Susie Salmon found us." — director Peter Jackson. He and Stanley Tucci both sing the praises of Lovely Bones star, 15-year-old Irish actress Saoirse Ronan — whom you may have seen in Atonement — at the link. [USA Today]
• "[A bully] calls up my phone and he's like, 'Is Taylor there?' and I just handed it to my bodyguard and I was like, 'John, give him a talking to.' So he's like, 'Yo, you don't ever call this number ever again. I put my fist through your face.' It was really great. It was effective." — Taylor Swift. [MSNBC]
• "If I have to go out on stage and, you know, jump around in a pair of hot pants I better look good, and also when I perform I'm like an athlete, I have to be in good shape. I'm not panicked, I just know what my job is, and I know that if I want to be able to wear whatever I want to wear on stage, then my body better look good." — Madonna. [MSNBC]

• The Tiger Woods case may be closed, but a Los-Angeles based cocktail waitress, Jaimee Grubbs, is telling Us Weekly that she had a 31-month fling with Tiger. And:

Another woman from a nightclub in Las Vegas is expected to be named any minute now. Can of worms, you guys. Can of worms. [MSNBC Scoop]

• More on this in Midweek Madness, but Us Weekly has voicemails from Tiger Woods in which he says: "Hey, it's Tiger. I need you to do me a huge favor. Can you please take your name off your phone? My wife went through my phone and may be calling you. So if you can, please take your name off that. Just have it as a number on the voicemail. You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye." You can listen at the link. [Us Weekly]
• Jaimee Grubbs, the alleged recipient of the voicemail, allegedly bragged about her relationship with Tiger at work and played the voicemail for coworkers. Allegedly. [TMZ]
• Jaimee Grubbs also says she has photos and hundreds of "racy" text messages from Tiger Woods. [NY Daily News]
• More on Tiger's sexting here. One message reads: "I will wear you out... when was the last time you got [bleeped]?" [Radar Online]
• This report claims that Tiger Woods booked and paid for Rachel Uchitel's trip to meet him in Australia in November. [Radar Online]
• Lindsay Lohan was out Monday night, hanging with John Mayer and Samantha Ronson, and was "totally sober and well-behaved." No, really. [Page Six]
• According to this column, John Mayer was "playing relationship counselor" to Sam and Lindsay — getting Sam to talk to Lindsay, whom she initially ignored. The two ended up spending much of the night talking and laughing! John Mayer is magic! [Gatecrasher]
• Caaaaaaashmere sweaters! Oprah's "Favorite Things" episode may be back next year! [CNN]
• Like Taylor swift, Bon Jovi and Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z is suing an establishment for playing his music without paying. [TMZ]
• What's this? Justin Timberlake's new hair looks like his old hair? You don't say. [Gatecrasher]
• Adam Lambert is hoping one of his songs will be in the Twilight movie Eclipse: "It's kind of about vampires," he explains. "It's a great song. It's very theatrical ... very campy." SHOCKING. [Gatecrasher via MTV]
• Tragic times we live in: Britney Spears, Rihanna, David Beckham, Jennifer Aniston and Orlando Bloom were all seen at LAX Monday — and they all few commercial. [Gatecrasher via X17]
• George Clooney's frequent flier tip: Wear slip-on shoes. "The shoes you have to tie, they take forever." But: "I never wear those goofy masks on my eyes. I am too worried about the guy in the next seat taking a picture of me. That is one photo that you can't live down." [People]
• Kim Kardashian has finally reached her "goal" in terms of her body, and you can see what that looks like in a pic at the link. [NY Daily News]
• Another amazing Twitter pic: Tyra and her real hair! [NY Daily News]
• The Russell Crowe Robin Hood movie promises to be "epic" and those involved are looking to "recreate that Gladiator magic." Production is "massive," claims Ridley Scott. Russell Crowe says: "I don't think there is a satisfying Robin Hood and that's one of the key reasons for wanting to make another one." Expect to see Robin with cropped hair and a beard, much like Maximus. [News.com.au]
• Clint Eastwood, who directed the Nelson Mandela film Invictus, says he finds Mandela "Christ-like." "There are just no people like this on the planet." [Showbiz 411]
• Stevie Wonder has been named a United Nations Messenger of Peace, which is a brilliant idea. [UPI]
• Rah rah ah ah ah: Barry Manilow hearts Lady Gaga. "I really think she's got something going for her," he says. [Reuters]
• Barry should know that a teen panel has declared that Lady Gaga and Jamie Foxx songs are the musical equivalent of junk food with "unhealthy relationship ingredients." But: "We aren't telling people what they should or should not be listening to," Barbara Ferrer, of the Boston Public Health Commission, said in a statement. "We are giving them a tool that will help them make an informed choice about what they put in their bodies." Fourteen teens attended a seven-week commission-sponsored institute on healthy relationship promotion and teen dating violence prevention, where they were taught to evaluate music based on themes of power, control, equality and gender roles. [USA Today]
• Sting was asked: "Do you feel uncomfortable travelling between various homes in various continents at enormous carbon cost?" by Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman, who added: You're not being blamed for the global crisis, you're just being called a hypocrite." Sting "squirmed in his seat." [Guardian]
• OMG OMG OMG: Joan Collins is hoping to take her makeover TV show Joan Does Glamour to the US! Hairspray, diamonds and shoulder pads for everyone! [Mirror]
• "Customers who buy a diamond at Ivanka Trump's Bridal Bar, where rings start at $15,000, will get a three-course dinner with champagne and a night in a Trump hotel in Manhattan." Get engaged — get a room. [Ny Daily News]
• Corey Feldman's going through a divorce and wants joint custody of his son and doesn't want to give his wife spousal support. [TMZ]
• Little Richard is out of the hospital after hip surgery and wants to work hard at recovery so he can "get back on the road as soon as possible." Let's hope he's feeling Tutti Frutti ASAP. [AP]
• Norah Jones has won her battle to transform the windowless side wall of her Amity Street mansion in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill by punching out 10 windows. [Brooklyn Paper]
• "Oscar-nominated actor James Woods has settled a lawsuit against a hospital in Rhode Island where his younger brother Michael died in 2006." [Mirror]
• Whatshername and Whatshisname reunited… To watch their son's nativity play. [The Sun]
• "I did show my line at Bryant Park, which is not in this season, but I knew that I had to really prove myself as a designer more than anybody else out there. There are so many celebrity lines and there are so many reality show lines, actually, that haven't really done well and haven't shown much design sense. So I had to prove myself even more, that I really did take this seriously. I think no one ever expected me to put so much heart and soul into it. I guess the verdict is still out regarding what they think of my talent." — Whitney Port. Lots more at the link. [LA Times]
• "We as a family are under a lot pressure. [People want] to make us look bad and wants us to fail. [With the Melrose Place firing, the world], again, always want to make it look like we're failures but we're really just a family that works hard. My children look at ups and downs and rise up above it all and remain strong...We're just normal people, and we always try to be who we say we are." — Joe Simpson on his daughters Ashlee and Jessica. [Us Magazine]
• "They are all different. I have died with my eyes open, which is more interesting than dying with your eyes shut. I can't remember how I died as Tolstoy, but I have done Cyrano de Bergerac on stage and I died with my eyes opened. I think that's marvelous, because in the theater the lights hold to your open eyes and it's kind of marvelously frightening for a second." — Christopher Plummer, who plays Tolstoy in his latest film The Last Station. [LA Times]
• "I think we should say something about class in America. It's the dirty little secret nobody wants to talk about… What about the people at the top who are evil and corrupt and don't want to change and don't want to give up the positions of power that they inhabit to make other people suffer and to make actual real horror in the world? They don't want to change. What do we do about them?" — Roseanne Barr tries to be the voice of the disappearing American middle class on her radio show, "The Tipping Point." [LA Times]
• "I think she's probably quite nervous... She's smart but make no mistakes, this will be a very different kind of show than what you're used to. Obviously everyone wants to sit next to me. I am thinking about pulling names out of a hat." — Simon Cowell on Ellen DeGeneres joining the judging panel on American Idol. [Mirror]
• "You can still contribute even if you are not as fortunate as I am. I've been blessed and I've been over-rewarded for what I do and I'm trying to give my time and my resources but you know, I'm a rich rock star, so shoot me." — Bono, urging people to buy products from the (RED) brand, which funds aid projects in Africa. [Telegraph]
• "A lot's changed since I was on TV. We have a black president now. Actually, Obama called me and asked me to help him with his campaign. He said he had two rules for me — don't use the 'N' word, and stay off TV. Figures the first black president would run on a platform of only taxing the rich, and now I'm rich!" — Dave Chappelle, in a surprise visit to Caroline's comedy club. [Page Six]
• "OK, so I didn't really go to high school parties. I didn't touch pot 'til I was in my 20s. I didn't get flat-out drunk until I went to college [Harvard]. But I think that's a good thing in many ways." — Natalie Portman. [Page Six via Marie Claire]
• "Not only is my performance raw in this film, but through most of the film I am naked from the waist down. So not only am I raw, I'm chafed." — George Clooney, joking about Up In The Air. [People]

• Remember when Nicole Richie was on The Simple Life? She's planning on returning to primetime TV — this time in a scripted comedy.

Nicole is producing and starring as "a professional woman with complicated family relationships" who is "struggling to figure out what role she'll take as her life and her family evolve." She came up with the idea for the show, and Daisy Gardner (Californication) will be writing the half-hour sitcom for ABC. There's no title yet, so maybe we can brainstorm one? Is Family Puts The Fun In Dysfunctional too long?!?! [Variety]

• Jennifer Aniston really loves her yoga instructor, Mandy Ingber. Jen has filmed a personal introduction for Mandy's new DVD, in which she declares, "Mandy brought yoga into my life. This workout will change your body and your mind." Jen works out with Mandy up to five times a week, and even takes her on vacation with her. What have you done for your yoga instructor lately? [Page Six]
• Jake Gyllenhaal's assistant was seeing taking luggage from Reese Witherspoon's house to Jake's house. Are they broken up? Does he have sleepover bags? Is he going on a trip? What does it mean?!?!?! [MSNBC]
• Breaking: Amy Winehouse was sober at her father's birthday party. [The Sun]
• BREAKING! Lindsay Lohan was also spotted sober, while out at a night club. End times? [Page Six]
• "Sources" say the news about Tiger Woods is not surprising: "He's a pro athlete. He's been in a lot of situations with women that would not look good… Most athletes of his stature fall under the same category, it doesn't mean he doesn't love his family." Apparently Tiger was often seen "in the company of women in public places" and "whether he crossed lines - that's not something anyone talks about openly, but I can tell you there are times things look that way." As always: grain of salt. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Roman Polanski will not be released on bail before Friday, according to Swiss authorities. [AFP]
• Ever the nonconformist, Cate Blanchett spent Cyber Monday shopping the streets of Manhattan. [Gatecrasher]
• In LA, George Clooney walked the red carpet at the premiere of his film Up In The Air with his girlfriend, Elisabetta Canalis, and his mom, Nina. [Daily Mail]
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck has been sued AGAIN over her book, The G Free Diet, by the same woman who sued her the first time. Susan Hassett claims Hasselbeck's book is a rip-off of her own work, Living with Celiac Disease. [TMZ]
• Emma Watson: Spotted vacationing in Jamaica with Brit cutie Jay Barrymore, mere days after she attended a hockey game with Spanish rocker Rafael Cebrian. Hermione plays the field! [Page Six]
• Charlize Theron will be the host of a 90-minute live show promoting — and drawing players for — next year's football Wold Cup in South Africa. Only two hundred million people in 200 countries will be watching. No pressure. [Reuters]
• Rihanna was incredibly upset when a man punched Leona Lewis in the face at an event a few weeks ago. I got so mad, like it was me. I couldn't believe it happened to her, of all people," Rihanna says. "It's so disappointing when people behave like that. Why? She's so sweet. She is just a beautiful, beautiful spirit. You don't want any bad things to happen to her." [Daily Express]
• Boys kissing boys and boys in boys' crotches are very much a no-no! ABC is trying to find a way to avoid a repeat of a performance like Adam Lambert's at the American Music Awards: "We certainly don't want to suppress artistry at any level, but we also have to be cognizant of who our audience is," Anne Sweeney, president of Disney/ABC Television Group, says. [NY Post]
• Richard Gere is being called a "tree-killer." [Page Six]
• Sherri Shepherd bribes her son with White Castle. [Gatecrasher]
• In a very graphic video at the link, bounce's from Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Atlantic City punch and beat two "ejected patrons." The bouncers may face criminal charges. [NY Daily News]
• The gorgeous and talented exiled Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo — whom you may have seen in House Of Sand And Fog — is maybe about to ink a deal for her memoir. And this column claims she is the "dark-horse Oscar contender" for her performance in The Stoning of Soraya M, a film we have been keeping tabs on. [Page Six]
• The next Harry Potter movie will mostly take place away from Hogwarts, and Rupert Grint says: "Harry, Ron and Hermione are just camping out in random places, living rough, in regular clothes… Me and Dan actually have some stubble." [USA Today]
• Check out this picture of the very limber Jaden Smith, son of Will, who is currently filming the Karate Kid remake, Kung-Fu Kid. [The Life Files]
• Roger Avary, who won a screenwriting Oscar for Pulp Fiction, sent tweets from jail, and now is under higher security; he had been on a work furlough program but is now back in routine confinement. [NY Daily News]
• Russell Brand met Katy Perry's religious parents! Katy's dad gave Rusty a book about God's intervention, Russell gave Katy's dad My Booky Wook, in which Russell details his former life of drugs and hookers. Everyone is okay with everything and all four of them are on vacation in Austria. [The Sun]
• Congrats to Susan Boyle, who could have the number one album in the US and the UK and whose disc has the biggest opening sales of the year. [NY Daily News]
• Gary Busey has been named the unsexiest man in Hollywood. [Daily Express]
• "Liam Gallagher Brands Noel The 'Kevin Keegan Of Rock." [Independent]
• "Michael Jackson" was the most-searched term on Yahoo this year. [AP]
• ''I would have done nothing differently. I think it worked out really well.
  ''I am really happy with what I am doing now — happy in my personal life and happy with my professional life. 'I apologized for the thing I did wrong to the person I did it wrong to." — Russell Brand, regarding the prank calls he and Jonathan Ross made to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs in October 2008. [Telegraph]
• "[My father] was scary and violent. He beat the living hell out of me, and there was constant verbal abuse. Looking back on it, he probably was disappointed that I was so drawn to the arts. He probably thought I was gay. I wasn't interested in sports. I didn't know the names of any baseball players. I liked films and books and records." — Tom Petty. [Advocate via Rolling Stone]
• "The only thing that came into my mind was a decade ago, when I hit 50, I was onstage in Philadelphia, and you realize, 'OK, this is exactly where I want to be right now. I wouldn't want to be any place else.' You realize there is a finiteness to it. We're playing to an audience now that will outlive us. There will be a seed of an audience out there tonight that's just going to outlive the band. But at the same time, the band is very, very powerful right now. And part of the reason it's powerful is that it's carrying a lot of very strong cumulative history. You come and you see 35 years of a speeding train going down the track and you're going to get to be on the front end of it. We look forward to many, many more years of touring and playing and enjoying it." — Bruce Springsteen. Much more in an extensive interview at the link. [Reuters]
• "I mean, it's fine if that's what they want to focus on. It's a movie that I think is beautiful and was a joy to make. But I can only make it. If people want to make that the thing they want to talk about, it's distressing, but that's their business." — Willem Dafoe wish you would stop focusing on his mutilated genitalia in Antichrist. [New York]
• "I don't have any interest in acting anymore. Movies are a part of my past. It's been 30 years. I'm not young, but I have time to do something else. I consider my entire movie career a complete failure. The goal of movie-making is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that." — Say it ain't so, Alec Baldwin! [MSNBC Scoop via Men's Journal]
• "I hate that. He has such a big mouth. It drives me crazy, and it makes me want to thump him in the side of his head… It's not accurate." — Kimora Lee Simmons, when asked if it's true that Russell Simmons gives her $40,000 a month in child support. [Page Six]

• Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the now-infamous White House party crashers, have "postponed" a planned appearance on Larry King Live in an attempt to instead make "hundreds of thousands of dollars" by selling their story to the highest bidder. [NYTimes]

• Tiger Woods reportedly told a friend he needed to "run to Zales to get a 'Kobe Special.'" (meaning: a giant ring) last Friday after having a fight with his wife. Kobe Bryant, you might remember, purchased a $4 million ring for his wife, Vanessa, after being accused of sexual assault. [TMZ]
• Rachel Uchitel, Woods' alleged mistress, is reportedly meeting with high-profile attorney Gloria Allred. [TMZ]
• Uchitel vehemently denies that she and Woods had an affair, though she notes that even rumors of such a thing might cause drama: "Despite it being completely untrue, it still must have certainly caused some problems at home - if I was his wife, I probably would have killed him. This is nothing to do with me. The claims are completely false. We have never had an affair, talked on the phone or sent any type of text, sexy or not. I'm really upset about it because I'm being portrayed as a home-wrecker, when it simply isn't true." [NewsOfTheWorld]
• Audio of Woods' 911 call after the accident may be released to the public at some point today. [TheSun]
• Rupert Everett says his friendship with Madonna was destroyed after Everett wrote about her in his book, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins. "I think it is very affectionate, and certainly with her I was very careful to only write things that were," he says of the book, "But she felt it was an infringement of privacy." [Guardian]
• "I'm most drawn to characters who are compelling and repellant at the same time, very often right at the same moment, and who are frightening and funny all at once."-James Spader[NYTimes]
• "You know, a day doesn't go by where you don't think about him. It's always there, in every sense. But it will get better. It's not easy, but I know with time it will get easier. But it will never be easy. It's my brother."-Janet Jackson, on losing her brother, Michael. [TimesOnline]
• Alec Baldwin says he's lost his interest in acting and plans to give it up after his 30 Rock contract expires: "Movies are part of my past. It's been 30 years. I'm not young, but I have time to do something else," he says, "It's a difficult thing to say, but I believe it: I consider my entire movie career a complete failure." [ShowbizSpy]
• Heidi Klum has posted a picture of her (adorable) new daughter, Lou Samuel, on her website, writing that Lou is "beautiful beyond words and we are happy that she chose us to watch her grow over the coming years. From the moment she looked into both of our eyes it was endless love at first sight." [DailyMail]
• "Ive always been a businesswoman, because there's no way you can be in the music business and not be a businesswoman. It's always been a part of ever since I began in music, Since I was 16. I've always been very inclined to really just take control of the things that I want to see happen and to really be proactive about it so to extend and to expand into different ventures my entrepreneurial spirit has definitely been calling to me just because there's so many ways to express yourself and jewelry is such a beautiful expression, it's a self expression."-Alicia Keys on her new jewelry line. [WSJ]
• Martha Stewart was spotted at the Four Seasons on Thanksgiving, alongside Barbara Walters, Helen Gurley Brown, among others. Am I the only one whose mind is kind of blown by Martha Stewart going to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner? [PageSix]
• Jay-Z and Sean "Diddy" Combs rented out a $5000 a night room, complete with "padded walls and a couch, eight ounces of beluga caviar and a magnum of champagne," to just have a drink together and listen to some music. [PageSix]
• When the NYTimes pointed out that Lil' Wayne's music "is not necessarily lady-friendly," Beth Ditto replied: "No, but he's such an artist, and he's obsessed with [performing oral sex]. I think that's really cool and really girl-positive in a way. I think for hip-hop that's really rad." [NYTimes]
• In somewhat unsurprising news, Morrissey says he's thought about suicide, and that he thinks "self-destruction is honourable. I always thought it was. It's an act of great control and I understand people who do it." [Mirror]
• Brittany Murphy's husband was taken to the hospital yesterday for what Murphy believes was an asthma attack while on board an airplane. [TMZ]
• Fergie says she watched several Fellini films to get a feel for how Italian actresses carried themselves, in preparation for her role as an Italian prostitute in Nine. [DailyExpress]
• "I kind of became the poster girl for teen angst, which is a kind of crass way of saying it. But the teen roles that I was playing, they were bright and they were atypical. There was room there for that particular kind of character to mature, so I didn't face a great amount of resistance in that respect. But I think everybody has to fight to become a diverse artist because people are inclined to associate you with one thing or are a little unnerved by your daring to do something."-Claire Danes, on her role in My So-Called Life [WashingtonPost]
• Cindy Crawford admits that she used to receive Botox injections, "but I haven't done Botox for ten years. And I didn't do collagen, I don't think." [DailyMail]
• Though Toni Braxton's marriage of 8 years ended just days after she kissed Trey Songz onstage at the 2009 Soul Train Awards as part of a performance, Braxton claims the two are in no way related. [E!]
• Taylor Lautner was a bit shocked when Jamie Foxx approached him on the set of Lopez Tonight to ask for an autograph: "All of a sudden I hear this deep voice behind me: 'Taylor, Taylor!' .... And this guy walks up to me and he goes 'Hey ... my daughter is a huge fan, and I'm a huge fan is there any way I can get a picture with you. I'm Jamie Foxx.' I was like, 'Are you kidding me? Can I get a picture with you?'"[People]
• Interesting news for our SNL live thread crew: both James Franco and Taylor Lautner are set to host Saturday Night Live this December. Thoughts? [EW]
• When asked about Kate Moss' recent comments on how "nothing tastes as good as thin feels," Rihanna replied: "I can't believe she said. That is SO crazy. I love food because I'm from Barbados. If I was a catwalk model I'd be considered fat which I know is ridiculous." However: "I don't think people should discriminate against thicker models OR skinny models. If you're size zero you shouldn't be banned from the runway." [NewsOfTheWorld]
• "I don't care how talented you are: doing things like that is not nice. So fuck off ... Kanye just wants attention. As simple as that. He was like it before his mum died. So let's not make excuses. It's not fair to judge other people and to try to destroy their careers. Come on! Just stop it. Be nice!"-Joss Stone, who also thinks Russell Brand is "a disgusting pig. Mean, mean, mean." [Independent]

• Jon Gosselin attempted to make peace with Kate Gosselin at a divorce arbitration hearing yesterday by bringing roses to the courtroom. Kate turned them down, "but in the end it all came together and concluded on a happy note." [People]

• According to Jon's lawyer, Mark Heller "it's possible" that The Gosselins divorce could be finalized by the end of the year. [People]
• According to ABC, production has temporarily stopped on Courteney Cox's show Cougar Town "in order for Courteney to deal with a private family matter." [People]
• Whoops! Michael Phelps allegedly owes $23,289.16 in back taxes to the State of California. [TMZ]
• "My old agent used to promote me as the male Keira Knightley. (Laughs) I thought: ‘Well, what does that say about me exactly?' Do I pout a lot or something?"-Robert Pattinson [Mirror]
• Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice, says that she hasn't completely ruled out posing for Playboy: "Playboy are always asking me to pose for them. They've asked me on and off for the past five years, which I'm really flattered by, but it's all about timing and right now it's not the right time. But I definitely haven't ruled it out." [Mirror]
• One of Seth Meyers' ways of winding down on Sundays after a long night at SNL is to call his parents: "I've called them every Sunday since I went away to college," he says, "We started this family football pool when my brother and I were, like, 9 and 7; I guess they felt it was a key thing, to teach us the building blocks of gambling at a young age. Or maybe they figured it would always give us a reason to call home. I lost $10 last week." [NYTimes]
• "Not too long ago. my mum ran into one nun at home, who'd known me, and the nun told her, 'Oh my God, I watched the "She-Wolf" video, and Shakira looks phenomenal in it! I love how she looks, how she does the splits, and how flexible her legs are.' This was an 80-year-old nun. Times are changing."-Shakira [Guardian]
• Jennifer Aniston eats french fries. Is it because she's lonely? Because Angelina Jolie "stole" her husband away? Because she desperately wants a child?! Or maybe, just maybe, she eats fries because—gasp!—she likes them?! [E!]
• John Travolta thanked his neighbors in Ocala, Florida at a recent screening of his new film, Old Dogs, for the support they showed his family after the death of his son, Jett: "We know that we have a community. We know that we have friends. And we know that we are loved. We appreciate it. Jett appreciates it. We love you, Ocala." [People]
• Jay-Z reportedly "refused to be photographed with the Victoria's Secret models for fear of upsetting his wife, Beyoncé. [PageSix]
• Sean "Diddy" Combs spent $3 million on his 40th birthday party, which included a "$30,000 orchid display." [PageSix]
• Mariah Carey has also been a big spender lately, reportedly dropping £750,000 during a recent four-day trip to London. [DailyMail]
• New Moon took in 72.7 million dollars at the box office on Friday, breaking the one-day record set by The Dark Knight in 2008. [Yahoo]
• According to Entertainment Weekly, Lady Gaga's performance at the American Music Awards this evening "appears to be her most far-reaching live effort yet, as though she took a look at that bizarre gyroscope dress-to-piano transition she rather botched on Saturday Night Live and said, "Yeah, but what if we made it even harder for me to get to the keyboard?" [EW]
• Stop the presses: Victoria Beckham took her children out for frozen yogurt! And one of them had a tantrum! But then she gave him a talking to! And then everyone got yogurt! Huzzah! [DailyMail]
• "I don't want to be a sex symbol. I'm a geek. Anyway if I was naked on screen it would not be titillating."-Simon Pegg [Mirror]
• Gayle King, whose previous talk show attempt flopped in the ratings, may get a second chance at a talk show after Oprah Winfrey's show goes off the air in 2011. [PageSix]
• "I think there's some artists that are really focused on the music and the artistry, but I also think being a showman and being an entertainer is more than just being a musician. It's everything-it's something to look at and to listen to."-Adam Lambert [JustJared]
• "He has to be good in bed and the size matters. The inner beauty counts as well, but without a toy it doesn't make it fun. Right now I don't want to have a serious relationship, I want to have fun. I love flirting at the moment. I'm single and I'm enjoying my freedom. But I don't give my phone number out that often. But if I'm dating, I check the boy from the top to the bottom."-Rihanna [ShowbizSpy]
• "The day my Britain's Got Talent audition was shown on TV life changed for ever. I was sitting at home watching the show alone. Then, when I came on the telly, I heard shouting outside my window. My neighbours were outside jumping for joy, screaming and and shouting. We ended up having a bit of a street party."-Susan Boyle [Mirror]
• "I'm in the know because I did courses. I like to be known as me, first of all – that's the problem with being associated with any religion. Different things in Scientology have helped me become even more of an individual, not a blind follower. People are like: "What? I thought they steal your money." Nobody's stealing my money."- Juliette Lewis [Guardian]
• Michael Jackson's famous Moonwalk glove was sold at auction yesterday for $350,000, far above its original estimate of $40,000-$60,000. [Yahoo]
• Amy Winehouse is planning on getting a nose job. "Amy's become totally obsessed with surgery since her boob job," says a source, "She wants her nose made smaller to fit with her small face as she hates the fact her nose is so big and she doesn't like the shape. Amy says she can barely look in the mirror at the moment as she hates it so much. She's booked in for January but is pushing to get it done sooner. Her family are dead-set against it and her brother has gone mad at her saying it will ruin her whole look and she will become unrecognisable. They're trying to talk her out of it but Amy's having none of it." [Mirror]
• "Jake is the kind of guy who can do a spot-on impression of someone you work with that will make you giggle. He plays guitar and has a great voice. Kids and dogs love him. He loves his mom and sister and girlfriend. He's perfect. Too bad he's ugly."-Natalie Portman on Jake Gyllenhaal [JustJared]

[Image via INFDaily.]

Earlier: Oprah's Favorite Things 2007: The Audience Freaks Out!

• John Mayer went to a gay club in Palm Springs on Saturday night. According to an eyewitness, a man approached him and "planted a big kiss right on his lips – and John seemed to enjoy it!"

• The whole club cheered, says the source. [Radar Online]
• Farrah Fawcett left $4.5 million to her son Redmond O'Neal in a trust. Her nephew, father, and ex-boyfriend Greg Lott each received $500,000 or less. Ryan O'Neal and her best friend Alana Stewart received nothing. [Star]
• Chris Brown says he isn't ready to date yet. "I've been kinda chillin'," he says. "I mean, I'm Chris Brown. I'm not saying it like that, but it's just, like, girls are gonna be around. I love women. But I would say I've just been chillin'. I haven't really been trying to get into a relationship or trying to date anybody. I've just kinda been working on me. Like I said, just really getting me straight." [People]
• Jon Gosselin's lawyers are demanding that TLC not be allowed to seal his contract with the network in their lawsuit. They claim TLC is "hiding" the contract from the public and said it "will no doubt become a learning tool used in Contract 101 Law School classes as an example of what not to do when drafting an agreement that you want to be enforceable." [Radar Online]
• "I know my haircut takes a lot of flak as far what people call it and whatever," says Kate Gosselin. "But it works for me and I have very thick hair and it's easy and that's what I need." [People]
• Amy Winehouse wants to get a nose job because she says the tip looks "witch like." A source says, "Since her boobs, she's been scrutinising her body. Everyone tells her there's nothing wrong with her nose. But Amy does nothing by halves. Now she's beaten drugs, plastic surgery must not become her next obsession." [The Sun]
• Amy Winehouse was admitted to the hospital last night because she had an adverse reaction to cold medicine. "Amy took over-the-counter stuff for a cold but it didn't agree with medication she takes for her on-going recovery. She felt rubbish when she woke on Sunday morning," said a source. "A doctor came to her house and advised her to go to the hospital to make sure she was all right." [Daily Express]
• The jury selection in the trial of Barry P. Carpenter, one of the two men accused of breaking into the home of Sarah Jessica Parker's surrogate Michelle Ross, began today. The prosecutor announced that Ross will testify against him. [E!]
• Janet Jackson says she thinks Dr. Conrad Murray is responsible for Michael Jackson's death and shouldn't be allowed to practice medicine. "He was the one that was administering," she said. "I think he is responsible." [ABC News]
• In court today, the mother of Dr. Conrad Murray's son said she'd waive the $13,000 he owes her in child support as long as he pays her $1,003 a month from now on. The judge said he didn't understand why she waived the back pay, but it's her right to do so. [TMZ]
• Vivid Entertainment offered Carrie Prejean millions of dollars to distribute her sex tapes but she turned them down. [TMZ]
• The family of the pilot who died in the South Carolina plane crash that DJ AM and Travis Barker survived settled with the companies that operated and owned the plane for $500,000. [TMZ]
• Carrie Underwood says the rumors that she's moving in with boyfriend Mike Fisher are untrue. "I read something recently that a certain someone and I were moving in together. This is beyond not true...just another example of people making stuff up out of thin air!" she wrote on her blog. [Us]
• Lisa Kudrow says there probably won't be a Friends reunion because "everyone is busy" and the original writers and creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane won't do it. "I guess they don't think it's a good idea," she said. [Us]
• 50 Cent and BET are sponsoring 50's Money For Moms's contest, in which single moms can enter an essay contest to win three prizes of $10,000. Or, as the press release puts it: "Amidst tough economic times, 50 Cent is implementing his own stimulus package, specifically to help single mothers." [UPI]
• Jay-Z, Will Smith, and Jada Pinkett Smith have singed on as producers of the new Broadway musical Fela!. [N.Y.T.]
• Ashlee Simpson-Wentz has confirmed that she'll be starring on Broadway in the spring. "I'm honored to be reprising my role as Chicago's Roxie Hart, returning to the stage and joining this amazing cast," she says. "Being on Broadway is a childhood dream come true." [People]
• Ryan Reynolds will perform in the comedy Celebrity Autobiography: In Their Own Words next week. He'll read from Kenny Loggins The Unimaginable Life: Lessons Learned on teh Path of Love. [N.Y. Times]
• Lady Gaga says her performance on Gossip Girl tonight is "a little bit more of a fashion montage... It's very performance art." [People]
• Chace Crawford says of training for his role in the Footloose remake, "I can't get too detailed with it, but it's an all-around training process. It's very intense. But I'm learning exponentially, which is good. I started off in the frustration zone, and now it's gotten to where I enjoy going every day." [N.Y. Magazine]
• Jenna Elfman, who is pregnant with her second child, says, "You know, the main cravings are done with. Now it's just eating in general. I like stuffing food down my face." [People]
• Helen Mirren will receive the Lifetime Achievement award at the Women In Film And Television Awards on December 4. [The Mirror]
• Katie Price is worried that she'll have to eat animal genitalia on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here."I bet I get to eat a willy. I can't eat a willy!" she said, "I have requested that because I have veneers [on my teeth], if there is anything nice and chewy, I better have a knife and fork - otherwise I won't be able to chew it." [The Sun]
• Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag were supposed to be interviewed by Al Roker again on the Today show this morning, but a rep for the show said, "Due to a change in the show's schedule, we had to cancel the interview with Spencer and Heidi Pratt." [Us]
• Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt say they are pitching their own reality show to networks. They want to do both The Hills and their new show at the same time because, Heidi says, "you don't get to see our everyday lives and what we do." [AP]
• "My plan is to maybe stop taking my birth control," says Heidi Montag in a clip from The HIlls. "Spencer doesn't know how much he wants a family. I think we need a family — and I'll make the call!" [Us]
• German cops temporarily detained Dennis Rodman today because he was accused of bailing on a $5,100 alcohol bill at his hotel room. He thought the hotel was picking up the tab and paid when he was pulled over. [TMZ]
• Penny Marshall addressed the rumors that she's "battling for her life" after being diagnosed with brain cancer and liver tumors saying, "I know... there's all that shit. I'm walking and talking and I'm fine." [Extra]
• "I got sober for good on December 7, 2008," says Jodie Sweetin. "I was flying to L.A., and I ended up taking a bunch of Nyquil and drinking a s—-load. When I got home, I got a call that there was an emergency custody investigation because of my drinking. From that day forward, I threw myself into going to AA and avoided people who do blow off their coffee tables." [Us]
• Jessica Alba wrote an editorial for The Huffington Post about her recent trip to D.C. to campaign for 1GOAL: Education for All. "I believe that 2010 is the year for a breakthrough on global education," wrote Alba, "With the World Cup in Africa and the eyes of the world on the continent, we can connect the energy of this global game with the power of the negotiating table at the world's leading forums like the G20, G8 and UN Millennium Development Goals Summit." [Huffington Post]
• Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino says, "I wanted different things for Rory. I wanted her to follow a different sort of path… [go] off on her own adventure, which I guess she sort of did. I haven't [actually] seen the last season, but I heard about it from other people." [EW]
• Reese Witherspoon says, "I like to throw things away. I'm obsessed with garbage." After holidays she'll put some of her trash in her neighbors' cans and says, "I also put on rubber boots if there's too much garbage and I'll stand on the garbage and smash the garbage down... I'm, like, a garbage compactor." [Daily Express]
• Mariah Carey is upset about illegal music downloads. She says: "Frickin' idiots! A lot of big, powerful music industry executives made a giant mistake and now we're all paying the price. They gave the music business away on the internet. If they had just sat back and said, 'Maybe let's figure this internet thing out, it could be something cool,' we could have found a way to distribute music online on our own terms, not somebody else's. Prince had already shown them the way. He was so far ahead of the curve, putting his records out on the web. Everyone else was stupid." [Contact Music]
• Nicole Kidman says she got cast in Nine because she was breast-feeding at the time. "They're not very big, my boobs, so they just became normal size. I loved it!" she said. "I felt very Woman. When you've had a slightly androgynous body your whole life, having breasts is a nice feeling... I wouldn't get cast now." [People]
• In Going Rogue Sarah Palin writes that the line she wanted to say to Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live was, "Hey, Baldwin, weren't you supposed to leave the country after the last election?" He has always insisted his line about leaving the country if George W. Bush won was fabricated. His rep says, "It's a complete fallacy. But then, once Palin knew that, after telling her [it wasn't true], she said, ‘Well, let's say it anyway,' like she needed it to be true." [Hollywood Insider]
• In The Private Lives of Pippa Lee Julianne Moore plays a lesbian who commands Blake Lively to receive a spanking. "Julianne is very professional," said Lively. "I thought it was going to be really awkward, but as soon as they called action she snapped into the strongest character-it made it easy for me not to laugh or feel weird." As for wearing a leash, Lively said she felt, "Scared, but kind of enjoyed it." [Style]

• A baby for Jay-Z and Beyoncé!?! Apparently they're working on it. [Gatecrasher]
• Lindsay Lohan was spotted in an alley behind LA's Crow Bar, talking on her cell phone and crying. And, naturally, there are pictures. [Daily Mail]

• Madonna is supposed to go to Brazil to meet Jesus' parents; people are taking this as a sign that an engagement is "in the cards." This paper points out that Madge is 51 and Jesus' mom is 36. Does that happen when Hugh Hefner dates barely legals? No. [The Sun]
• Britney Spears is "extremely upset" by a report in Australia that fans stormed out of her Circus tour because she was lipsyncing. A rep says that she is "embarrassed" to be "part of the Australian media" that has "totally inaccurate reporting" and that the article about hundreds of fans leaving is "the biggest lie." [News.com.au, Reuters]
• John Mayer on the Britney lip-sync scandal: "If you're shocked that Britney was lip-syncing at her concert and want your money back, life may continue to be hard for you." [People]
• BREAKING: Jay-Z is the new Sinatra. Adjust accordingly. [NY Tmes]
• Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy: On! They attended a rugby match together on Saturday. Last month they allegedly had "a rather grown up, intimate dinner" at someplace called Beach Blanket Babylon. [People]
• Levi Johnston and Jon Gosselin posed for pictures together in Times Square over the weekend and yet the planet did not self-destruct. [NY Daily News]
• Hmm: Jon Gosselin is going to Hawaii for the wedding of Phillies outfielder Shane Victorino. [TMZ]
• Just what your Monday needs: A chart detailing how Nicolas Coppola became Nicolas Cage. [New York]
• It certainly looks like Bruce Springsteen's concert put Glenn Close to sleep. Unless she is blinking? [TMZ]
• Cate Blanchett looks regal — and yet unreal —on the December issue of Vogue. [The Life Files]
• Iman, Donna Karan and Agyness Deyn were seen teary at a screening of Precious. [Page Six]
• Gwyneth Palrow joins Nicole Kidman in The Danish Girl, a film adaptation of the David Ebershoff novel that tells the story of a relationship between the first post-operative transsexual, Einar Wegener, and his wife, Greta. It'll be directed by Thomas Alfredson, who shot the sublime Let The Right One In. [Variety]
• Sacha Baron Cohen has created Four By Two films, a production company which will generate comedies starring Sacha Baron Cohen. [Variety]
• Oh lord. There's a film in the works called Sheneneh and Wanda — which would star Jamie Foxx and Martin Lawrence playing their famous female characters. According to this report: "The project originated as a parody of a movie trailer for a film called Skank Robbers, which Foxx and Lawrence made for the BET Awards." Uplifting! [Variety]
• You know how Randy Quaid was arrested for running out on a $10,000 hotel bill? This story, titled "Randy Quaid's Journey From Actor To Alleged Felon," tells you everything you need to know. Apparently Randy exhibited "oddball" behavior back in 2007; his wife Evi called someone a "Nazi bitch" in 2008. [People]
• At the link, six ways Jon Hamm has an impact beyond Mad Men. [NY Daily News]
• Jim Carrey's website is "trippy," and has a "fantastical, psychedelic vibe." It looks like a Dali painting but from someone who likes Canada, hockey and octopi. [NY Daily News]
• Are you interested in seeing Susan Boyle sing on Dancing With The Stars? [NY Daily News]
• Susan Boyle says she is getting back on track, but things were hectic for a while: "My life ceased to be normal when Britain's Got Talent went live… There were phone calls 24 hours a day. They kept me awake for three weeks until I changed my number. It was totally out of control, like a steamroller. It just got bigger and bigger and bigger until, eventually, it can flatten you." [MSNBC Scoop]
• In her new play, Nightingale, Lynn Redgrave takes a look at "the life of Beatrice Kempson, her maternal grandmother, a woman she barely knew and wanted to know better." [AP]
• Dennis Hopper is undergoing an experimental treatment for prostate cancer. "It has great promise," he says. "Everything's good right now." [EW]
• Whee: The Wanda Sykes Show got pretty good ratings! [Variety]
• Michael Jackson's kids helped a dog named Scooby Roo get some wheels. [TMZ]
• Reality show mini series The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty — which focuses on Jackie, Jermaine, Tito and Marlon — airs on A&E December 13. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Joe Jackson is looking for $15,000 a month from Michael Jackson's estate. [Mirror]
• "People want an answer of when we'll be back, and I think it's impossible… It's unfair to say when we'll do Fall Out Boy again. It's hard to be creative. You just feel compressed all the time. We just want to let ourselves decompress." — Pete Wentz, whose band is releasing a greatest hits CD. [ONTD via Music Radar]
• "I come from the slums, I come from a hard background, I come from a poor family, and I was a soldier. And I was a soldier in a war that was a little bit different, so I know what I am talking about, more than most people do. With this script, it was as though someone had been reading my thoughts." — Michael Caine on new "urban western" film Harry Brown. [Telegraph]
• "I'm my own worst critic, and I don't need any more negativity in my life. So I go to my Web site and see good reviews and things that make me feel good." — Carrie Underwood likes visiting her fan site. [UPI]
• "I can't think of a single romantic thing that I've ever done. I would never serenade someone to be romantic – you have to have so much balls to do that. I put a flower in someone's locker when I was 15 years old, this girl called Maria. She thought that it was someone else and the other guy claimed it as well, which is great." — Sparkle Vamp Robert Pattinson is still trying to get the Twihards off his back. Or front. Whatever. [People]
• "I get quite obsessive about things, and possessive as well. I have very, very specific ideas about how I want to do my work and how I want to be perceived, to the point of ridiculousness sometimes. I don't listen to anyone else. That's why I don't have a publicist — I can't stand it if someone's trying to tell me to do something which might be a mistake." — Robert Pattinson. [People]
• "Outside London where I lived, there was no gay pub or bar you could go to. And even if you found one, it was 'Knock three times and ask for Louis.' It was horrible living this secret life. You could feel a little bit what it was like to be a Jew in central Europe during a certain period. It was horrible." — Sir Ian McKellan. [Metro.co.uk]
• "You adore music more than anything in the world, you have a great passion. But that doesn't mean you had to marry the lead singer of every band you ever had a poster of on your bedroom wall." — Patsy Kensit — who has married Dan Donovan of Big Audio Dynamite, Jim Kerr of Simple Minds, Liam Gallagher of Oasis — in a letter to her teenage self. [Daily Express]
• "It would be interesting for people to see that side of me." — 50 Cent would like to be in a romantic comedy. [Gatecrasher]
• "Desperation. I had a sick mom. I wanted to make her feel better. I used to go in there, aged seven or so, and do impressions of praying mantises, weird things, whatever. I'd bounce off the walls and throw myself down the stairs." — Jim Carrey on the origin of his comedic instincts. [Daily Express]
• "It's not just an old person singing covers, no, thank God." — Marianne Faithfull on her new CD. [AP]
• "Every song that you hear on the album has an element of freedom in it. If it's the way that I'm singing, or the style that I'm explaining something. For me, freedom is a big deal — I think for all of us because we're all looking for our wings to fly, to not be held back, to be free to be who we are. So that's another reason why I called it The Element of Freedom." — Alicia Keys. [CNN]
• "I gained three pounds since yesterday. I weigh myself every day. Today I vowed that I was going to wear flats, and then last second, I threw on some heels. I can't wait to sit down already. It's hard carrying extra weight. I'm over the red carpet being pregnant." — Kourtney Kardashian. [NY Daily News]

• In the December Elle Sarah Jessica Parker (over?)shares her thoughts on her new twin girls revealing, "I love the smell of diapers; I even like when they're wet and you smell them all warm like a baked good..."

• "I love the smell of Balmex. Love it." As for her decision to hire a surrogate to have the girls, she said, "I knew there would be lots of opinions about, ‘Well, why didn't you adopt? Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that?' and the truth of the matter is, it wasn't one or the other for us. We had explored, and continue to explore all options, and this one just happened first. This isn't the period at the end of the sentence." [Just Jared]
• Yesterday ,Lindsay Lohan Tweeted that Michael Lohan used to threatened to kill her mother Dina if she tried to leave him. Today, Michael responded, "That's a lie... I guess Lindsay is on more drugs than I thought to say something like that … No wonder why God is taking her entire career away from her. Because she's forsaken everything He's given her and she's done nothing but misuse all the gifts she's given." [People]
• Lindsay Lohan missed a business meeting today because she was partying into the wee hours of the morning. "This meeting was very important for her career," said a source. "She simply failed to appear and never called to even cancel." [Radar Online]
• Police sources say they searched the Las Vegas home of 19-year-old Rachel Lee and found clothing belonging to Lindsay Lohan and Audrina Patridge, and three personal photos of Paris Hilton. [L.A.T.]
• Justin Timberlake wants his temporary restraining order against Karen McNeil, the woman he says is stalking him, made permanent. Two of his bodyguards filed testimony against her but when the judge said he wanted JT to show up in court on Monday and speak for himself, his lawyer moved to get a different judge. [TMZ]
• Star's cover story this week featured ridiculous stories about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's "secret life of binge drinking, mind games, drugs, lovers, and more!", ostensibly based on Ian Halperin's upcoming book Brangelina Exposed. "I was stunned... I never spoke to [the magazine]," says Halperin. "In fact, I finished writing the book late last night which was hours after the Star story broke!" [Us]
• In "Party In The USA" Miley Cyrus sings about listening to a Jay-Z song, but in the interview at the link she admits, "I picked that song 'cause I needed something to go with my clothing line, I didn't write it... I've never even heard a Jay-Z song." N.Y. Magazine]
• December 14 has been set as the first court date in TLC's breach of contract lawsuit against Jon Gosselin. [Radar Online]
• According to court papers filed by TLC, several of the network's advertisers complained about Jon Gosselin's "erratic, widely publicized behavior." [Radar Online]
• A man named Ronnie Newt who is trying to prove that a 12-year old boy named Prince Michael Malachi Jet Jackson is Michael Jackson's son says the Jackson family is harassing him. He asked for a restraining order against Randy Jackson and Joe Jackson, saying, "I was told to stay out of the M.J. love child story. That some one could get kill [sic] for that kind of money." [TMZ]
• This Is It has only been out for two weeks but it's already passed the $100 million mark at the international box office. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Randy Quaid sent a letter to a judge claiming that he and his wife Evi Quaid never received the hotel bills they're accused of skipping out on. He also mentions that Evi has earned many people's respect, "including Karl Rove, who on a recent visit to Marfa made more than one flirtatious advance toward Evi!" [Radar Online]
• Paula Abdul has reunited with Arsenio Hall, after dating him 20 years ago. "Arsenio reached out to Paula because he thought she needed a friend to talk to, someone she could relate to. Arsenio knows what it's like to leave a hit TV show. One phone call led to another, and the next thing you know, they were making a date," said a source. "This could be the perfect situation for the two of them. Paula and Arsenio know each other inside and out." [Contact Music]
• Carrie Prejean was removed from a conservative "Defenders of the Family" event in New Jersey after word that she made a sex tape got out. [TMZ]
• Usher's divorce from Tameka Raymond was finalized today. [USA Today]
• Joe Francis avoided jail time today when a judge sentenced him to time served,$250,000 restitution and a $10,000 fine for pleading guilty to filing false tax returns. [TMZ]
• Peter Andre and Katie Price saw each other for the first time since their split in May when their son Harvey was taken to the hospital with breathing difficulties. He's OK and has been discharged. [The Mirror]
• "Becoming a parent is the most selfless act, and you need to be at a point in your life where you can give up anything and everything for a child. I don't know if you know how to that when you're in your 20s," says 32-year-old new mom Sarah Michelle Gellar. Her husband, 33-year-old Freddie Prinze Jr., adds, "I'm so happy we didn't have kids in our 20s – I just didn't know a thing. You have so much more patience in your 30s, and I feel like I appreciate this so much more." [People]
• Jemaine Clement says Flight of the Conchords may not return for another season because, "Bret and I are both fathers," Clement told us during an interview to promote his (troubled) new film Gentlemen Broncos. "We know if we take on another season, that means we're not gonna see our family for a year." [N.Y. Magazine]
• Thandie Newton says she "fell madly in love" with her husband Ol Parker in 1997 when she appeared in a movie he wrote. "I'd never experienced that before. Up until then, my relationships had always been more based on people wanting to be with me. When I met Ol, I was dating a really sweet, lovely man and I had to leave him straight away, even though I wasn't even going out with Ol!" she said. "But as soon as I met Ol, it kind of cut off any other blood vessels to anywhere else. We got married about two years later; we've just had our 11th wedding anniversary." [Daily Express]
• In Precious Erica Watson plays a small role as a little girl's abusive mom. When asked if it was hard to scream at the girl she said, "Not at all! The inner bitch in me was finally allowed to come out, and I had a ball! (laughs) But on a serious note, I was a little nervous about being mean to her, but she loved it! She knew that we were just 'pretending' and she made it very easy for me to treat her horribly!" [The Frisky]
• Jon Hamm once said in an interview that he thinks Don Draper and Rachel Menken were soul mates. Maggie Siff, who played Menken, says she agrees: "I think Matt Weiner is an incredibly smart storyteller, and everybody knows from the beginning that this is a guy who's going to go through a lot of women. But I think that the way that our story ended up getting set up within the series is that you feel her absence. She's gone, and then you're like, Well, where did she go? And I think there are a lot of things in that show that come and go, and you feel their echoes. And so in a way I feel like that's probably true between them." [N.Y. Magazine]
• John Slattery says of Roger Sterling, the character he plays on Mad Men, "I think he may've invented a few of his own S.T.D.'s. There has to be some strain of sexual disease out there that he's responsible for. He was patient zero. It's his namesake. His S.T.D. is a Sterling Transmitted Disease." [Vanity Fair]

The study was published in the European Journal of Operational Research, which makes marriage sound like a matter of bolts and widgets. And this is essentially how the research — or at least the coverage thereof — treats it. After interviewing 1,000 couples whose relationships had lasted five years or more, the researchers found that while the man being at least five years older reduced the chances of divorce, when the woman had five years on her partner, divorce was more than three times as likely. Couples were also more likely to split if they'd been divorced before, but, interestingly, the effect was less if both couples had a divorce behind them. As a model of good marital decisions, the Telegraph and the BBC both held up Jay-Z and Beyonce — he's 11 years older than her, and unlike him, she graduated from high school.

Obviously this research has some fairly big problems. For one, the scientists seem only to have studied straight partners — gay couples, good luck figuring out which one of you is supposed to be older. Also, while the researchers say that people choose their mates "on the basis of love, physical attraction, similarity of taste, beliefs and attitudes, and shared values" (awww), they also advise that using "objective factors" like age and education "may help reduce divorce." Their advice has a certain think-with-your-head-not-your-heart appeal — it's probably smart to think about, say, whether you hate each others' families and whether you're going to fight a lot about money before you get hitched. But even these semi-objective factors seem to fall into the "shared values" category, and ticking off boxes about age and educational attainment frankly seems like how a robot chooses its bride.

But some of the blame for the study's obnoxiousness rests not with the scientists, but with the way Ian Johnston of the Telegraph and an unnamed journalist at the BBC have chosen to cover their work. Pretty much every time a study on marital success comes out — and this is not the first — journalists frame it as a referendum on who readers should marry. The Telegraph is the worse offender in this case, with the headline, "Men should marry young, smart women, say scientists," and subhead, "Men should marry a woman who is cleverer than they are and at least five years younger, if they want the relationship to stand the best chance of lasting, according to new research." Both of these make it sound like the success of a relationship rests on men's choices alone, and also conflate intelligence with education — the study itself doesn't seem to say anything about who's "cleverer," just who stayed in school longer. More than that, they turn a descriptive study of what worked for some couples into a prescription of what will work for "men."

This conversion from description to prescription is a huge problem in science journalism — it also rears its ugly head a lot in relation to weight studies, which reporters frequently frame as "thinner people are healthier, so you should be thin." Some editor somewhere has clearly decided that readers like advice about their lives more than they like science, and reporters both here and in the UK have set about turning the latter into the former. I'm not one to discount the legitimate findings of scientists — as David Roberts said in response to a recent poll that found only 57% of Americans "believe" in global warming, "if peer-reviewed science has no special status, then every aspect of human or ecosystem health is partisan." But peer-reviewed science can only tell us so much — it can reveal something about what has worked for other couples, but, fortunately or unfortunately, it can't say what will work for "you."

Men Should Marry Young, Smart Women, Say Scientists [Telegraph]
'Younger Wife' For Marital Bliss [BBC]

• The LAPD has arrested four women in connection with break-ins at Lindsay Lohan and Audrina Patridge's homes.

One of the women, 19-year-old Rachel J. Lee, may also be involved in last year's jewelry heist at Paris Hilton's house, and her team may have also targeted Orlando Bloom. Teen cat burglars? I smell a screenplay! [People, TMZ, TMZ]

• Meanwhile, Lindsay says it's okay for her 15-year-old sister to party because "She's tougher than I am." And: "She has a good head on her shoulders. Maybe it was different for me because I didn't know what to expect and it just happened really fast. I didn't have a big sister." [E!]
• A club that had banned Lindsay Lohan has allowed her back in. [Page Six]
• Word is Rosie O'Donnell's marriage is over for good and Kelli Carpenter actually moved out months ago. [Radar Online]
• Someone dared David Cross to snort coke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner (which was not held in the White House) so he did. "Maybe 40 feet from the president of the United States!" [Newser]
• The United States has officially asked Switzerland to hand over Roman Polanski to authorities in California. [AP]
• Katherine Jackson has changed lawyers in the Michael Jackson estate case. [USA Today]
• Kenny Ortega, the choreographer working with Michael Jackson on the This Is It tour, says he wanted MJ healthy: "Michael had sleepless nights and we had to look after him. [I'd say to him], 'Stay hydrated, have a protein shake - Did you eat today before you came?'" But Ortega doesn't believe rehearsals were wearing MJ down: "Working on this show was invigorating, was nourishing." [AP]
• Alex Rodriguez dabbled in Kabbalah when he was dating Madonna and now he's getting into Buddhism, thanks to Kate Hudson. [Gatecrasher]
• A source close to Balloon Mom Mayumi Heene says she is "totally subservient to Richard and the boys. Whatever they want, they get" And that Mayumi will "go down with the ship." [NY Daily News]
• A pharmacist testified in the Anna Nicole Smith case, saying that when he received a request for drugs from her doctor, he said: "This is crazy. This is pharmaceutical suicide. The dosages are way out of whack." And: "I said I wouldn't fill it, and no pharmacy in California would." [NY Daily News]
• Awesome: Jay-Z and Will Smith are backing Fela!. [NY Post]
• Matt Damon is dealing with a "serious" family emergency. Stay tuned. [E!]
• Denis Leary and his wife Ann have a house in the country with three dogs and two horses; they're profiled in the Times today and also, Ann blogs about their picturesque rural life. [NY Times]
• Pamela Anderson is living in a trailer because construction on her house in Malibu is not going as planned. She says: "I am $3million over budget and I should have moved in over a year ago. I'm tiling the whole pool in platinum - that's expensive!" She also claims: "I'm going to sell [the house]. I hate it. People commit suicide over constructions. Relationships break down over constructions and I can see why. It rips your heart out." [Daily Mail]
• Oliver Stone is using "his uptown friends" as extras in Wall Street 2. Authentic! [Page Six]
• At the link, the amazing Mira Nair — who directed Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake and Reese Witherspoon's VanityFair, talks about her latest, Amelia: "So much about Amelia [Earhart] is so undeniably modern. If she were to walk into a room today in her jodhpurs and her aviation jackets, [with] her ideas about marriage or men and women, she would still be considered an iconoclast." [NPR]
• Is there a backlash against Precious? And is Oprah to blame? [LA Times]
• Vanessa Redgrave is doing a one-night-only performance of The Year Of Magical Thinking — which is based loosely on the Joan Didion memoir and about dealing with unexpected death — mere months after Redgrave's daughter Natasha Richardson died. [WSJ]
• In this video, Tom Green and Tony Hawk have lunch and Tom talks shit about his ex-wife, Drew Barrymore: He has opinions about her photoshoot with Ellen Page and her behavior during their marriage. [Shred Or Die]
• "Magic Johnson blames former friend Isiah Thomas for spreading rumors that Johnson was gay after he announced he had HIV in 1991." [Newser]
• Bronson Pinchot made some… intense statements about Tom Cruise's homophobia and Denzel Washington's unpleasant character, and at the link, he clarifies. [WSJ]
• Earlier this year, Spike Lee slammed Tyler Perry's sitcoms, saying, "I think there's a lot of stuff out today that is coonery and buffoonery. I'm scratching my head. We've got a black president. Are we going back?" Now Perry say: "You know, that pisses me off. It really does. Because it's so insulting. It's attitudes like that that make Hollywood think that these people do not exist and that's why there's no material speaking to them. I would love to read that to my fan base." [CBS News]
• RIP Soupy Sales. [Reuters, CNN]
• "If you took the top five of my CDs and just put 'em away and then you have children, 10 years later, you break these out and put 'em on… you'll be laughing. And your kids will be laughing. ou put The Cosby Show on - there won't be any cellphones and people might be wearing funny sweaters - but that same human behavior will still connect with people." — Bill Cosby, who will received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Monday, and believes good comedy has no shelf life. He also says he doesn't watch TV anymore: "I'm not thrilled with the deliberate onslaught of the public by the major networks in terms of the sitcoms. They still don't get it about race. They still don't get it about gender. Jokes are still about jerks and body parts and sex." [USA Today]
• "I think women really responded to that initially." — Patricia Arquette, on what this column calls her "more womanly, post-childbirth frame" on Medium. She also says: "They'll bring me new outfits, and I'm like, 'No, I need to repeat those pajamas again. And again.'" And! "I'm not one for spending a lot of money on this show, but these people need a new comforter!" [Variety]
• "I cook OK — I cook every night, so every night is not great. I am really not that adept a cook as [Julia Child] was, especially with that rapid-fire knife. If I did that in my kitchen everybody would run because there would be a lot of blood probably." — Meryl Streep. [Mirror]
• "It depends on the kid.  There are parts of it that are pretty intense. When I was 7 years old, I could not have seen this movie.  It would've scared me.  But my younger brother, who's now 7, could've seen this a year ago.  It depends on the kid." — Max Records, who plays Max in Where The Wild Things Are, on whether the film is too scary for young children. [LA Times]
• "Motherfucker took me out of the ghetto. That's my dude, man. He's been like a dad to me. I remember when I was on Saturday Night Live my first year and I wasn't getting much. I was down; I was ready to quit. It was three o'clock in the morning, man, I'll never forget. Makes me want to cry sometimes when I think about it. I love that man. I love that man. [long pause; starts to cry] I'm sorry, man. Excuse me. [another long pause] Son of a bitch… motherfucker's good. I remember one time Lorne took me to his office, and he said, 'Tracy, you are here not because you're black. You're here because you're fucking funny, man.' [bursts into tears again; wipes face with shirt] Changed my whole perspective.... They say every Jewish man is supposed to love one black motherfucker in this life. I'm glad Lorne Michaels chose me." — Tracy Morgan hearts Lorne Michaels. [Playboy via NY Mgaazine]

[New York, October 7. Image via Getty]

• Last night, David Letterman revealed that a CBS News employee is accused of trying to extort $2 million from him because he had sexual relationship with female employees.

The guy threatened to write a screenplay and a book about Letterman unless he was given money. Letterman says: "I was worried for myself, I was worried for my family. I felt menaced by this, and I had to tell them all of the creepy things that I had done." [AP]

• CBS is saying Letterman's accused extortionist was an employee at the news program 48 Hours named Robert Halderman, and he was arrested yesterday. [LA Times, Reuters, HuffPo]
• The New York Post is calling the Letterman incident a "sextortion" plot. [NY Post]
• Kanye West and Lady Gaga's "Fame Kills" tour is dead. Canceled before it ever started. Refunds will be made available. [AP]
• A source says the Fame Kills ticket sales "sucked." Lady Gaga may tour, but play smaller venues. [TMZ]
• They're saying Lindsay Lohan poses on a "stripper pole" in ads for her line of leggings, 6126. But that pole looks structural! [NY Daily News]
• Jon Gosselin says he had "no idea" he was being fired, and that he "found out just like everybody else … saw it on a laptop as an [Associated Press] newswire." His lawyer also says that Jon was going to "pull the plug" on the show weeks before TLC fired him. [People]
• Even though Jon has blocked the TLC crews from coming to the house, Kate Gosselin says: "Jon has never expressed any concerns to me about our children being involved in the show, and, in fact, is on the record as saying he believes the show benefits our children." [Gatecrasher]
• There's a Billboard cover story on Beyoncé, which reveals that she grossed some $53.5 million on her I Am… tour; she was the star and executive producer of the 2009 film Obsessed, which opened at No. 1 and has grossed more than $68.3 million in North America; the Knowles family has donated more than $2.5 million for transitional housing for Hurricane Katrina victims and storm evacuees in the Houston area; Beyoncé works with Feeding America to deliver more than 3.5 million meals to local food banks through fan donations; and, her father says: "Most people don't know this, but she's a really good painter." [ONTD via Billboard]
• WAIT WHAT?!?!? Liza Minnelli will do Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" in Sex And The City 2?!?!? Crap. Now that's something I want to see. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Simon Cowell's 50th birthday party — being held tomorrow at a mansion in Hertfordshire called Wrotham Park (it looks gorgeous!) — will have scantily clad showgirls and boys; tons of flowers; lots of food and cocktails; a smoker's tent; and performances by Rat Pack impersonators, Leona Lewis and maybe Lily Allen. Expect Kate Moss, Kylie Minogue, Donald Trump and possibly Paula Abdul to attend. [Daily Mail]
• Headline Of The Day: "Britney Spears Buys A Parakeet." [People]
• Britney's traveling aliases: Ms. Alotta Warmheart; Mrs. Diana Prince; Queen of the Fairy Dance and Mrs. Abra Cadabra. [Page Six]
• Weird: New York magazine's Emma Rosenblum sat next to Spencer Pratt when she attended a taping of The View yesterday. She writes: "So here are some facts about Spencie that you probably don't want to know, but I will tell you anyway: That necklace he's wearing is made of crystals, and he wears it to protect himself from evil. He has a 200-pound crystal from Peru in his house, which he had excavated and flown in specially. He's very proud of it. He laughs very loudly at anything that's semi-funny." [NY Mag]
• Since the Michael Jackson autopsy shows that the singer was healthy, it could be used against Dr. Conrad Murray: "It clearly establishes that Michael Jackson was a healthy person whose death appears to have been directly caused by the administration of some very powerful sedatives," says criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Werksman. "This autopsy report seems to clear the path for a prosecution that his death was caused by an overdose." [AP]
• "CBS anchor Katie Couric yesterday kicked back at her critics saying she thought the word 'gravitas' — the characteristic she is often accused of lacking — was 'Latin for testicles.'" [NY Post]
• Jay-Z and Alicia Keys: Shot a video at the Empire State Building on Wednesday. [Gatecrasher]
• Lil' Wayne will go on trial next March stemming from the January 2008 incident in which authorities found cocaine, Ecstasy and a handgun on his tour bus. [USA Today]
• Kate Hudson has bonded with Alex Rodriguez's daughters, Natasha and Ella. She's not doing as well with the Yankees, the players wives or girlfriends. [MSNBC Scoop via In Touch]
• Oliver Hudson and wife Erin Bartlett are expecting their second child. [NY Daily News]
• "Mary-Louise Parker certainly isn't ashamed of her new romance with singer Charlie Mars." Why should she be? [Page Six]
• Even though Randy and Evi Quaid have paid their bill for their stay at the San Ysidro Ranch, they still face the charges of burglary, conspiracy and defrauding an innkeeper. Court date: October 19. [TMZ]
• The Tate Modern museum in London has a "Pop Life" exhibit, and director McG hooked up with Takashi Murakami for a four-minute film starring actress Kirsten Dunst singing a cover of "Turning Japanese." Click the link for an insanely colorful picture: Kiki's wearing a bright blue wig! [WSJ]
• "A lawyer for John Travolta testified Thursday that he warned a former Bahamas senator she would not get away with an alleged scheme to extort $25 million from the movie star, and even wore a wire to secretly record their conversations." [AP, TMZ]
• No one likes Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Peter Sellars' production ofOthello at NYU's Skirball Canter: Audiences have been leaving in droves at intermission. [Page Six]
• "Michael Moore, champion of the working class, used non-union stagehands to film Capitalism: A Love Story." [Page Six]
• In a video at the link, Mary Forsberg Weiland talks about her memoir, Fall To Pieces: A Memoir Of Drugs, Rock 'N Roll, And Mental Illness. She talks about the modeling world, being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and how she and Stone Temple Pilots/Velvet Revolver frontman Scott Weiland did heroin and cocaine together. The book contains an anecdote about a Fourth of July party at Leonardo DiCaprio's house in Malibu, where the Weilands arrived in long-sleeved turtlenecks to hide needle tracks and scabs. [Blabbermouth]
• "Workers at an Arizona cryonics facility mutilated the frozen head of baseball legend Ted Williams - even using it for a bizarre batting practice, a new tell-all book claims." [NY Daily News]
• "John Cleese takes a goose-step backwards with one-man show to fund £12million divorce." [Daily Mail]
• "Fame… It kind of kills the humanity and the humility of music for some reason. You're like this product all of a sudden and you have to stay in this Superman costume with people telling you that if you cut your hair, your career is over." — Maxwell, who no longer rocks the giant Afro he once did. [Washington Post]
• "Women don't like the humor when it's combined with inconsideration and insensitivity." — Larry David, on his dating life. [LA Times]
• "There are people that I want to work with but I'm too intimidated. There are a few people that I'd be worried about working with — the greats: Jack Nicholson, Scorsese and Clint Eastwood. So there are still people out there who intimidate me. I think they would catch me out finally. I've got away with murder until now and they would blow that."— Ricky Gervais. [Mirror]
• "I don't think of myself as a typical comedian. I'm just a normal bloke who says things he observes. I don't even really tell jokes with punch lines. But people seem to connect." — Ricky Gervais. [USA Today]
• "One of the things I like about this movie is that my character, for example, is made up all the time. She always looks cute. So she's cute and covered in tats and willing to punch people while wearing dresses and cute shoes. The merging of that: you can be a strong, rough-and-tumble woman, but still be a woman. All of that can be bundled into one. That's definitely a lesson that I currently have been learning the last couple years myself, so it spoke volumes to me." — Whip It's Zoë Bell. [BoxOffice.com]
• Your name is on fans' dream team list for Ridley Scott's prequel to Alien. "Wouldn't that be awesome!? That absolutely has to happen. There was an article where someone CGIed my head onto Sigourney Weaver's body. It's kind of creepy, but I liked it. I sent it to my people and was like, 'Make this happen!' That'd be so sick! That's the kind of stuff I would like to do. Linda Hamilton in Terminator and Sigourney Weaver in Alien-those are the kind of roles we don't have enough of." — Zoë Bell. [BoxOffice.com]
• "I am a hippie girl with anger issues, I get it…" And: "I was so obsessed with happy endings in my 20s. In my 30s, I'm like, a good day is a good day." And: "I do a very serious, disciplined, mature job. That said, I love to go get plastered with my friends on a Saturday night and let it go, but… I'm up on Monday morning at 6 a.m. and I don't stop for seven days straight." — Drew Barrymore. [The Daily Beast]
• "The bride will fight again!" — Quentin Tarantino says he intends to make Kill Bill 3. [Page Six]
• "I think my acting is offensive!" — Lauren Conrad. [People]
• "I just put on a 'Snuggie' and ate a popsicle." — Miley Cyrus, who has strep throat two weeks before her world tour. [NY Daily News]

• Does Jay-Z reference Anna Wintour in his song "Empire State of Mind"? The line in question is: "caught up in the in crowd/now you're in-style/and in the winter gets cold en vogue with your skin out." [Fashion Week Daily]

• Earlier today it was reported that Michael Vick had resigned with Nike two years after the company dropped him when he was sent to prison for dogfighting. His agent said, "Mike has a long-standing, great relationship with Nike, and he looks forward to continuing that relationship." But, now Nike has released a statement saying it has not "contractual relationship" with Vick and it merely, "agreed to supply product to Michael Vick as we do a number of athletes who are not under contract with Nike." [AP]
• Michel Phan of the ESSEC Business School, which runs the world's only luxury brand management MBA program, says luxury retailers in Asia need to focus more on service. He explains: "It's not enough to say 'Our brand is expensive, or known'. You have to make customers connect with your brand, especially during this crisis, when they're more reluctant to buy on the spur of the moment. You have to give people a good reason to buy." [Reuters]
• Peter Copping, the new designer of Nina Ricci, says Ricci's romantic designs are in line with his personal taste and belief that customers want feminine clothes. In his previous job at Louis Vuitton, he says, "whenever we did more feminine-based collections, the sales were always incredible in the stores as opposed to the more austere or hard-edged things... Obviously, one has to find a way to make that contemporary, modern and fashionable." [WWD]
• On Tuesday, Giles Deacon received an award from France's National Association for the Development of the Fashion Arts along with a grant of $233,470 that will finance his spring fashion show in Paris. [WWD]
• Timberland has collaborated with Wyclef Jean to design a line of 16 boots. For every pair sold $2 will be donated to Yéle Haiti Foundation to support reforestation in Haiti. [WWD]
• At the D&G runway show in Milan, the chief executives of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman were put in the second and third rows while the chief executive of Yoox.com was in the front row. Bloggers have been invited to New York shows for a few seasons, but Europe is just warming to fashion bloggers who write for sites like Bryanboy.com, JakandJil.com, and GaranceDore.fr. [WSJ]
• Artist Brian Einersen created a Lady Gaga comic book that's selling at Marc Jacobs stores for $2. [Fashionista]
• Gareth Pugh is considering doing a fast-fashion line. He says: "I have considered it. The offers have come in, and every time we get an offer, I mull it over. I'd like more people to have access to my clothes, but the timing hasn't been right, or the project hasn't been right, or some combination of both those things. The first time I was approached, I wasn't even producing the garments I was showing on the runway. I didn't have a factory. Everything I was making, I was making by hand. Doing a fast-fashion collection seemed a little premature." He says companies should, "Keep asking. And I'll keep thinking." [N.Y. Magazine]
• Robert Lee Morris had to create toned down versions of his jewelry in during the recession in the early '90s, but now his more showy creations are becoming popular again. They were featured in several runway shows this fall and Henri Bendel will open a Robert Lee Morris boutique tomorrow. [N.Y. Times]
• At a party celebrating Sundance Channel's new show Man Shops Globe about Anthropologie buyer at large, Keith Johnson introduced guests to his partner Glen Senk, who fell in love with him in grade school. "I moved next door to him, at age 9, and the first day I saw him, I fell in love with him," Senk said. "It was otherworldly. I felt sparks all over my body. Literally, I saw stars. He was the kindest, sweetest, most wonderful person. I feel like that 44 years later." Johnson said, "It took a few years to convince me... He didn't convince me until I was 12." [N.Y. Times]
• Paolo Colonna, a partner in Permira, the European private equity firm that bought the Valentino Fashion Group, said that though the fund usually exits its private equity investments after four or five years, but, "The various [economic] crises will delay our exit. Still, we are patient money. This is a long-term deal for us. I don't see any urgency to sell at these low valuations." [NY Times]
• Giorgio Armani has reorganized his company, expanding the board of directors and delegating more power to non-family members. He's been suffering with a bout of hepatitis for months and says his illness was worsened by working long hours for decades. The reorganization is raising questions about whether the brand can outlive Armani. [WSJ]
• Pam Grier says, "I'm hoping the Smithsonian will call me for the dress from Foxy Brown. The blue one with the ruffles. I'm holding onto it. Call me, Smithsonian!" [Village Voice]

• Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel: Photographed holding hands on Monday. A source says they've been vacationing together in Santa Barbara; As for Justin and Rihanna?

They're just "working on a track together." [Page Six]

• Mariah Carey stumbled coming out of a restaurant late at night, but was she drunk? Or just wearing 7-inch Louboutins? [Page Six]
• Harvard kids: Stalked Emma Watson when she came for a football game; thought it was hilarious. [Page Six]
• A whole column of unsolicited uterus updates! Kate Hudson: Not pregnant. Halle Berry: Not pregnant ("I've got to stop with the burgers or something!"). Penelope Cruz: asked if she was pregnant, but "answered no — in a rather baroque, roundabout way." [Gatecrasher]
• This column calls Britney Spears' new track, "3," "maddeningly repetitive." [NY Daily News]
• Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson keep being seen in public together, because ZOMG Twilight is real. [People]
• Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil have been writing cutesy notes to each other on Facebook. A sample: "Love you too innit and vairvair proud of youse, know dis lioness civilishous. X" [The Sun]
• Add Penelope Cruz, Harrison Ford, Gael Garcia Bernal and Natalie Portman to the list of people crying "Free Roman Polanski." [Shakesville]
• "John Travolta testified Wednesday that would-be extortionists threatened to go the media with stories implying 'the death of my son was intentional and I was culpable somehow.'" [CNN]
• Kate Gosselin thinks Jon Gosselin's divorce delay is a publicity stunt; I think it has to do with making sure any TLC cash gets split up properly. [MSNBC via Radar Online]
• Wait, what?!?! "Jon Gosselin has put TLC, the cable network behind Jon & Kate Plus 8, on notice to 'cease and desist' any television production of the show and leave his property." [ET]
• Miley Cyrus has a sore throat. Will she be able to do her concert dates? [Mirror]
• Randy and Evi Quaid — who were accused of ditching a $10,000 bill at the San Ysidro Ranch — claim they never got the bill because they moved. They have now paid. [TMZ]
• Kevin Federline: Gaining weight on purpose, so he can get ready for Celebrity Fit Club. A source says: "He thinks that if he goes on the show, loses a ton of weight, and seems really likeable, he'll get more deals afterward." Probably true. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Melissa Ethereridge played on an airplane — 10,000 feet in the air — to help raise money for The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Looks like he peeps in her audience were wearing pink! [People]
• GLAAD likes Glee. So do I! [NY Daily News]
• Jermaine Jackson is going to judge a new BBC talent show called Move Like Michael Jackson. Too soon? [Reuters]
• Joe Francis might lose his house — over a gambling debt. YAWN. [TMZ]
• Alyssa Milano thinks $3 is too much to pay for a Twitter iPhone app; the "iPhone developer community" is amused, yet angry. [Business Insider]
• In a battle between Jay-Z and Fat Joe, Jigga wins. [Page Six]
• Conan O'Brien is sorta banned from Newark Airport. [NY Daily News]
• Two weeks after giving birth, Ellen Pompeo hit a sneaker party in L.A. and announced: "I feel great." [People]
• Congrats to Will Ferrell and his wife, who are expecting their third child. [People]
• Mindy McCready, who was on Celebrity Rehab with Mackenzie Phillips, says she "absolutely" believes that Phillips had an incestuous relationship with her father and "Nobody has the right to say what they do or don't believe unless they know her." [UPI]
• Kevin Dillon: Seen flirting with women who were not his wife. [Page Six]
• Pete Doherty will be on trial in December after being charged with driving a car erratically over the summer. This story notes: "He has yet to plead to a charge of being over the legal alcohol limit while at the wheel." [Reuters]
• Male model Jamie Burke, Mark Ronson, Milla Jovovich, Simon Le Bon and Marion Cotillard are covering the song "Beds Are Burning"for the Time for Climate Justice campaign. [Page Six]
• "Former INXS and Noiseworks frontman Jon Stevens' condition has "deteriorated" nearly three weeks after emergency heart surgery." [News.com.au]
• Get well soon, Dennis Hopper. [Page Six]
• "It drives me crazy… It's just very hard to get a day's work done and concentrate." — Sarah Jessica Parker, on filming SATC on the streets of NYC with mobs of fans. [NY Daily News]
• "Honestly, I never thought I'd live this long. I always thought that I wouldn't be here at this point. I was thinking, 'Okay, I've got another year of my life left. This has got to be the end of it. Finally, [Nick] was like, "Stop talking like that." — Mariah Carey. [NY Daily News via In Touch]
• "I mean, a zombie movie? Come on. There are good zombie movies -I Am Legend and 28 Days Later- but those are the exceptions. Then I read it and I was absolutely knocked out. I thought it was just so funny and compelling." —Woody Harrelson, on Zombieland. [USA Today]
• "I always sort of cringe when people say, you're that creepy guy. Sinister I can live with, that's fine. But creepy is like someone you wouldn't sit next to at a diner. I'm probably being sensitive about it." — Michael Emerson, aka Lost's Ben Linus. [MSNBC via PopEater]
• "I'm a parent, but I always considered that slightly separate from my work. And, suddenly, I'm reading this script that really explores parenting. I felt very involved with it, because I've got two young girls and I could relate to an awful lot of it. Often, I find family movies a little cute and not very real. This felt honest." — Clive Owen on new film The Boys Are Back. [USA Today]
• TOC: You've also said, "I related to a girl who, against all odds, finds her inner strength and believes she can do what boys do." Have you felt yourself working against the odds in a Hollywood boys' club? "No, I really don't, and I actually find those women-I'm like, get that bitter, ugly, unattractive chip off your shoulder. I'm doing what any guy could be doing, and I don't do it by needing to wear a power suit. Women have made incredible strides; we're in a really balanced or better-balanced culture, and we should be celebrating that…rather than, like, 'Oh, men have all the power.' I'm like, 'Oh, boo-hoo, shut up, make it happen for yourself and get over it.'" — Drew Barrymore. [Time Out Chicago]

• Director Roman Polanski has been arrested by Swiss police, at the request of the United States, after he tried to enter Switzerland to attend the Zurich Film Festival, where a tribute to his work is taking place. [CNN]

• The United States has had an outstanding warrant for Polanski's arrest since 1978; after being accused of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl, Polanski pled guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor but fled the country before a judge could sentence him. [CNN]
• According to the Associated Press, the Swiss Ministry released a statement noting that "U.S. authorities have sought the arrest of the 76-year-old around the world since 2005," and that the Swiss would now wait for the U.S. to formally request extradition. [MSNBC]
• Jaime Pressly married lawyer Simran Singh in Malibu yesterday. Pressly split from her previous fiance, Eric Cubiche, last November. [People]
• Gossip Girl's Kelly Rutherford says she's "going through a challenging time" during her divorce from her estranged husband, Daniel Giersch , whom she had to obtain a restraining order against. Her mom is helping her feel better, she says: "She sent me that Christina Aguilera song "Stronger" and that's when I'm laughing and crying at the same time, like, 'Mom, I love you!'" [People]
• "I have a tumultuous relationship with my mother, so obviously that story had a deep emotional interest to me — about women who are empowered and can be athletic and capable and kick ass out on the track and be their own heroes, and I think finding your tribe is everything. I certainly found it with my company. Every aspect of this story including first love and rite of passage, and being able to rock out in the car with your best friend, these are all themes that are crucial to my life. I was able to tell my story."- Drew Barrymore on her directorial debut, Whip It [LA Times]
• Tawny Kitaen, who just did a stint on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, has been arrested for DUI in California. [AP]
• An essay written by a young Paul McCartney over 50 years ago has recently been discovered at Liverpool's Central Library—McCartney had won an essay contest celebrating Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. [BBC]
• "The magazine was even prepared to pay me $500,000 to pose with my clothes on. I didn't want Playboy on my resume at the age of 22. If they ask me when I'm 40 I'll probably say yes."- Nelly Furtado on being asked to pose for Playboy [DailyMail]
• Mashonda, the wife of producer Swizz Beatz has accused Alicia Keys of breaking up her marriage and is posting about it on her Twitter page: "If you are reading this Alicia, let me start by saying, you know what you did. You know the role you played and you know how you contributed to the ending of my marriage. You know that I asked you to step back and let me handle my family issues. Issues that you helped to create." [ONTD]
• Clive Owen says his daughters aren't terribly impressed by his fame: ""My days at home consist of my girls rolling their eyes at me. My oldest one's gotten into the habit of going ‘I wish they could see what you're really like.'" [ONTD]
• Edward Norton plans to run in the New York City Marathon on a team including three Maasai warriors in order to raise money for the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust. [RunnersWorld]
• Charlize Theron says she has obsessive-compulsive disorder and can't sleep unless her cabinets are tidy: "I will literally lie in bed and not be able to sleep because I'll be like, "I think I saw something in that cabinet that just shouldn't be there." [DailyMail]
• Bruce Jenner was surprised when he heard his daughter, Khloe Kardashian was about to get married: "Honestly I thought it was a joke. Then I was on the driving range later that day and someone came up to me and said, 'Congratulations, I hear your daughter is getting married.' Then it was on the news that night and I thought, maybe there is something to this." [People]
• Jenner also says that Khloe and Lamar Odom are marrying today,only one month after they met, "is first they want to, and second Lamar starts camp next week and Khloe has a million things going on. If they're gonna do it, they want to do it now." Also: Khloe is "definitely not pregnant." [E!]
• Meanwhile, Khloe is already on the hunt for a new mansion to live in. [TMZ]
• And she can probably afford it, considering the Kardashian sisters have earned over one million dollars over the past few months, thanks to their high profile weddings and pregnancies. [PageSix]
• News anchor Amy Robach is engaged to marry Melrose Place's Andrew Shue. [PageSix]
• All the lies I tell are white lies. I tell a lie every day, it's the same lie. In answer to the 'Can you come to my wedding/christening?' question, I say: 'I can't, I am busy.' What I wouldn't say is: 'No, it will be a boring day, I would rather sit at home in my pants getting drunk.' That would be a terrible truth."-Ricky Gervais [TheSun]
• "It's one of those situations where she's young, they're both young. It was either a situation where she can grow. … There's a contention of young people who are going through the same things, and no one hears their voice. She can be their hero. Or she can choose not to grow from this."-Jay-Z on Rhianna and Chris Brown [UPI]
• Angelina Jolie says she doesn't read the tabloid reports on her life: ""I don't ask for all this tabloid attention so I never read what they write about us. First I see myself as a mother - that's my priority," she says, "I have a family to take care of, I don't even go out that much, I travel and do a film and that's about it so I don't understand why people want to know more about our lives." [ShowbizSpy]
• James Michael Tyler, who played Gunther on Friends, says that a Friends reunion movie is "definitely on." [ShowbizSpy]
• "My first boyfriend's mother was in wardrobe and I was her assistant. The first film I worked on was Mommie Dearest. I used to measure people nipple to nipple. The first line I heard from Miss Dunaway was: ‘Who is that fat girl in my eyeline?' I was terrified. Funnily enough, when I became a movie star for five seconds [in The People vs Larry Flynt, for which she won critical acclaim], Sharon Stone called me and said, ‘Welcome to the industry. When I got here, Miss Dunaway welcomed me.' And I was like, ‘Miss Dunaway has welcomed me already.'" -Courtney Love [TimesOnline]

• Conan O'Brien landed in the hospital yesterday due to an injury sustained during a Tonight Show stunt. A source says O'Brien was "running down a flight of stairs when he slipped and banged his head, possibly sustaining a concussion." [E!]

• Though the network has not yet released any details about Conan's condition or if he's been released from the hospital, they did release a statement allegedly made by O'Brien himself: ""Last thing I remember I was enjoying the play with Mrs. Lincoln and the next thing I knew I was in bed being served cookies and juice." [NYTimes]
• Conan was also cracking jokes during his ambulance ride to the hospital. Is it wrong that I hope he made a Nomi Malone/Showgirls reference regarding Jay Leno and the flight of stairs? [TMZ]
• The rumors about Lindsay Lohan trashing a hotel room during a fight with Samantha Ronson are apparently untrue, as Lohan was in Texas, not New York, when the fight supposedly broke out. [PageSix]
• Meanwhile, producers of Celebrity Big Brother UK are trying to line up Lohan for the last season of the show. [TheSun]
• Seth Rogen's dream came true when he was asked to co-write and lend his voice to the first episode of the upcoming season of The Simpsons, where he'll spoof his own Green Hornet experience by playing a trainer assigned to whip Homer into shape for a big budget action film. "As a writer, it always just seemed like the Holy Grail," Rogen says, "I can die a happy man now." [AP]
• Randy Quaid and his wife allegedly have their hotel bill-hopping scheme "down to a science," according to a Santa Barbara County Sheriff, who notes that the couple have pulled similar stunts before. [TMZ]
• Miley Cyrus will reportedly be movin her hips like yeah in the Sex and the City sequel: "Miley sees this as a transition from teen stardom to more adult roles," says a source, "We're all wondering how long it will take Kim to have Miley knocking back Cosmos and ogling all the men. Seriously though, all the girls are excited to have Miley on board." I think it will take 5 years, source! Because she's only 16 years old like yeah, so it's a straight edge party on the set in the USA while the cameras are rolling, know what I'm sayin? [ShowbizSpy]
• Afeni Shakur has donated over 150 pieces of her son, Tupac's work to the Robert W. Woodruff Library at the Atlanta University Center. The collection includes handwritten notes, lyrics, and poetry. [AP]
• Mary-Louise Parker is dating musician Charlie Mars. He's 10 years younger than she is, so get ready for 6-8 months of stupid cougar references. [People]
• Ashton Kutcher's The Beautiful Life, starring Mischa Barton, has been canceled by the CW after only 2 episodes. Sadly, no one has canceled the similarly-titled Ace of Base song from my brain since I read this item earlier this morning. [THR]
• Catherine Zeta-Jones and husband Michael Douglas shared a birthday yesterday; she turned 40 and he turned 65. "'When you live in Los Angeles you can't go anywhere without being critiqued - on the fact that you have gained weight or that you have got spots on your face. That's not the life I want," Jones says, "Deciding to live in beautiful Bermuda was the healthiest thing Michael and I ever did. Now that I have kids, that's what my life is about." [DailyMail]
• "I've been afraid of the dark my whole life. If I go into my house at night and the lights have been turned off... I have to run from the door to the light switch to turn it on... I'm just afraid of what I can't see. I watch a lot of paranormal shows, like Ghost Hunters... and they freak me out." -Megan Fox [DailyExpress]
• Brett Ratner had to convince producers to allow an autobiographical sex scene in his short for New York, I Love You, wherein a character loses his virginity to "a paraplegic dangling from a tree." Ratner, who apparently lost his own virginity this way, says "When I sent the original script, which is autobiographical, the producers would not let me film it because, in the original ending, she (the girl) is a cripple, and they have sex as she's hanging from a tree in Central Park. Everyone was freaking out over my short, so I changed it to where she wasn't a cripple, but an actress pretending to be a cripple." [DailyExpress]
• Jay-Z says that he's thankful his mother, Gloria, set up a meeting between him and his estranged father, whose absence caused a great deal of "resentment and anger" in his life, as it allowed him to better understand his father's choices. [ShowbizSpy]
• Michael Jackson admitted in an interview to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach that he was terrified of growing old and that he felt Madonna was jealous of him: "'I think she was in love with me and I was not in love with her." [DailyMail]
• Boteach also says that Jackson had "lost the will to live" and was embarrassed about his appearance, noting that he felt he looked like a "lizard." [Reuters]
• "I just hit 40, so what more can I say? I mean, the fact that I'm 40 is a miracle. I'm on the other side now."- Christian Slater [ShowbizSpy]
• J.K. Rowling has opened a Twitter account. Rita Skeeter has already sent her 82930283 direct messages, asking for scoops. [EW]
• And now for my favorite news ever: Snoop Dogg is a big fan of the 90s British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances: ""They still run the show on BBC America so I think Mrs Bucket must have some sort of cult following in the US. I still watch the show to this day and it makes me laugh so hard. She has to be one of the funniest people on TV." [TheSun]

• One of Jessica Simpson's "friends" claims she's at her lowest point ever after losing her dog because, "Daisy was her baby... It's going to put her into a tailspin. It will put her into the worst place ever."

• Tabloid editors must be salivating over her losing her dog, as they usually claim that heartache makes Jess eat and never tire of critiquing her weight. [People]
• Amy Winehouse has launched her own record label, Lioness Records. According to a statement on her website, "Amy wanted to create a label where she could sign and work closely with a small roster of artists she really believed in. The first release on the new imprint will be "Introducing Dionne Bromfield", the debut album from thirteen year old Londoner Dionne Bromfield." [AmyWinehouse.com]
• Khloé Kardashian and Lamar Odom, who met over the summer and got engaged last week, will get married on Sunday, according to sources. [E!]
• Kate Gosselin taped her new talk show Mom Logic over the weekend. A source familiar with the taping says, "It went extremely well. Everyone there loved it. And Kate did great. There's no question that she was a hit." [Radar Online]
• At the Southern Women's Show in Charlotte, North Carolina, Kate Gosselin said, "I miss Jon, the Jon I used to know." She also confirmed that she's filming a talk show, saying, "I've been given the gift of gab, so why not use it?" [People]
• Paramedics were called and David Hasselhoff was taken to the hospital yesterday after his daughter Hayley called her mom and said he'd been drinking. Hasselhoff's reps say he was just taking Antivert for an ear infection, which mixed with Antabuse, a drug that prevents alcoholics from drinking, and made him feel ill. [TMZ]
• David Hasselhoff's lawyer says, "He lost his equilibrium and it left him dizzy. This was not an alcohol relapse. David was taken to Encino Hospital on Sunday and released within the hour. He's fine now and looking forward to doing his jury duty this week." [People]
• More This Is It concert/movie footage has been released — does Michael Jackson "wobble" during one of the dances in the video at the link?. [TMZ]
• Archway Amusements bought the Ferris wheel from Neverland Ranch when it was auctioned last year because they needed a new one, not because it belonged Michael Jackson."We ourselves really didn't advertise it," said Theresa Noerper, the company's co-owner. "When he died, it kind of blew up. There's no keeping secrets then." It's currently touring the Midwest. [AP]
• Harrison Ford wrote an article on The Huffington Post urging people to join Team Earth, which is "teaming up with the Prince's Rainforest Project to call for swift action and funding to reduce tropical deforestation — and create incentives for a new approach to environmentally friendly economic development." [Huffington Post]
• Mandy Moore wrote an article for The Huffington Post about her trip to Sudan as an ambassador for the child survival program Five & Alive. She says: "My experience in Sudan has convinced me that solutions do exist, and the people most in need are eager to be part of them. There are simple and cost-effective tools out there that can help people living in the poorest communities in the world, and my role is to talk about those solutions, encouraging support and involvement." [Huffington Post]
• Kara DioGuardi on adding Ellen DeGeneres as an American Idol judge: "I think it's a genius decision... I wish I had thought of it." [People]
• Tori Amos' holiday album Midwinter Graces will come out on November 10. [Billboard.com]
• Jay-Z joined Coldplay onstage at Wembley on Friday and gave Chris Martin a bear hug. An onlooker said: "It was a strange moment, Everyone went wild when Jay Z joined the boys on stage but seeing him grab Chris away from the piano and on to the floor was a bit weird to say the least." [Ok]
• Lady Gaga and Kings of Leon lead the nominations for the MTV Europe Music Awards with five each. [Reuters]
• In the video at the link, Mariska Hargitay says of the new season of Law and Order: =SVU, "A lot of making out this year... [our executive producer said,] this is the year. If we don't make out once per episode they're not even going to air it." [Entertainment Weekly]
• When asked about what she thought of the Eric Dane/Rebecca Gayheart nude tape, Chandra Wilson said, "My whole maternal thing comes out and I just [want to] take care of my baby. That's it." [Access Hollywood]
• Yet another Dancing With the Stars contestant is injured. Mya Tweeted: "Went 2 the hospital late last night 2 get stitches . Deep cut from glass. Only caught 2hours of sleep but feel great. Must be adrenaline." She added later that it was just a cut on her finger and she'll be fine. [TMZ]
• John Krasinski says of his engagement to Emily Blunt, "She's a wonderful girl. Someone had to do it...it was a tough gig, but somebody had to do it... So many people are angry at me." [Us]
• Serena Williams has signed an endorsement deal with Tampax and will appear in print and TV ads with the company's Mother Nature character. [Brandweek]
• Alec Baldwin says he wants Paul McCartney to guest star on 30 Rock and, "We're working on it." His daughter Ireland says she'd rather see Robert Pattinson on the show. [People]
• Christina Aguilera says while growing up with her abusive father, "I witnessed a lot of unpleasant things - a lot of pushing and shoving and fighting and quarrelling. Growing up I did not feel safe. Feeling powerless is the worst feeling in the world. I turned to singing as an outlet. The pain at home is where my love for music came from." [Contact Music]
• Dave Matthews says he agrees with President Carter that a lot of the animosity toward President Obama is race related: "Of course it is! I found there's a fairly blatant racism in America that's already there, and I don't think I noticed it when I lived here as a kid. But when I went back to South Africa, and then it's sort of thrust in your face, and then came back here — I just see it everywhere. There's a good population of people in this country that are terrified of the president only because he's black, even if they don't say it. And I think a lot of them, behind closed doors, do say it." [CNN]
• Jeff Foxworthy says, "I had kind of resigned myself to the fact that that was what I was going to be the rest of my life. If I pulled into a gas station, somebody would go, 'Hey! You might be a redneck!' But for the last three years if I'm in the grocery store, invariably, 10 people will walk past me and go, "I'm not smarter than a fifth grader." And I'd say, "Well I'm not either." [Time]
• Maggie Gyllenhaal says of filming Nanny McPhee and the Big Band, "It's funny because in the movie I have an English accent and sometimes I keep it going... Peter and I were saying that we are going home and we are going to say little English things and our friends are going to think we are super pretentious!" [Telegraph]
• True Blood's Ryan Kwanten was the last to realize his co-stars Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer were in a relationship. "I'm always the last to know. My ear is not very close to the ground," he said. "Stephen actually had to come up to me and tell me. He said, 'Ryan I know you're not really up with the gossip side of things. but before you hear from anyone else, we've been dating for the last 10 months.'" [People]

• Jay-Z is one of the few people still on Team Kanye after the VMA incident. "I think it was rude but the way they're treating him..." says Jay-Z. "He's on the cover of every paper. He didn't kill anybody..."

• Taylor Swift's handlers ended an interview on the MJ Morning Show because the DJ wouldn't stop asking her about Kanyegate. She's already briefly addressed the controversy, and then asked him to stop three times when he kept pressing her to say more. [TMZ]
• Nicholas Prugo, who was arrested for allegedly breaking into Lindsay Lohan's house, plead guilty to cocaine possession in February and entered an 18-month drug diversion program. He was also arrested last month on unknown charges. [TMZ]
• The LAPD has a second suspect in the Lindsay Lohan/Audrina Patridge robberies: Rachel Lee. Police identified her by looking at Nicholas Prugo's Facebook friends and matching them to the surveillance video. [TMZ]
• Last night on Chelsea Lately Jennifer Aniston made fun of New Jersey, where she filmed The Bounty saying, "What is with that smell?... You know when you drive from Manhattan, and there's that one area?" Now Real Housewives of New Jersey's Danielle Staub, has invited Jen to tour of her state saying, "Why don't you see more of New Jersey before you say it smells? I would love to hang out with her. I hear she is really fabulous — but she really shouldn't say that... If you land in Newark and leave out of Newark, yeah, you will think NJ smells. But you can't judge it by one part. If it was so bad, I wouldn't be living here for 22 years." [Us]
• FYI: Brad Pitt has a "graying, growing billy-goat beard." [TMZ]
• Police have decided not to file hit-and-run charges against LeAnn Rimes for a minor accident that occurred last month when she was on her way to a rendez-vous with Eddie Cibrian. A LAPD spokeswoman says it was clear that Rimes didn't realized she'd hit the other car. [E!]
• Grounded Music is suing the Black Eyed Peas because they claim the song "Voodoo Doll" is a rip off of "Each One Teach One" by the group Groundation, which is on their label. [TMZ]
• Jessica Simpson is calling off the search for her dog Daisy. "They wanted to feel they gave it their best efforts. They felt chances were slim from the beginning. Apparently [coyotes] are quite an issue in that area," said a representative from the dog finding service Find Toto. "They were upset and hoping to find at least the remains to try and get some closure by this weekend." [E!]
• A shirtless Lego version of Iggy Pop is featured in the game Lego Rock Band. [USA Today]
• Though recent reports claimed Britney Spears propositioned male model Bekim Trenova at a casting session, sources in Brit's camp say the allegations are "completely false" and deny that she's been holding fake music video auditions to find a new boyfriend. [ONTD]
• Michelle Williams confirms in the new issue of Vogue that she and Spike Jonze have broken up saying, "The timing was impossible... I thought falling in love again was the only thing that was going to save me from the pain. This erroneous idea: It just makes things more complicated." [ONTD]
• Oprah's latest Book Club selection is Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them, "a collection of five short stories set in modern Africa and told from the perspective of children living amid war and famine." [N.Y. Magzine]
• In the new movie Precious, Mariah Carey sports dark circles under her eyes and a slight mustache. On today's Oprah she says she thought of her new look, "This is so ugly, man, I don't know what to do." [People]
• Yet another crazy person is suing Michael Jackson's estate, unless you believe Erle Bonner's claim that MJ stole his formulas for the "herpes cure, acne cures and arthritis cures." Bonner also claims ..."someone from the Jackson family came by my house and shot a 22 pistol in the air. They turned around in a neighbor's driveway and drove away." [TMZ]
• Jennifer Hudson says she's looking forward to seeing who her 1-month-old son, "becomes, who he takes after, what he decides to do, if he'll sing." [AP]
• Kate Gosselin guest hosted The View this morning and met Kathy Griffin. She said she saw Kathy's spoof Kate Is Enough: The Kate Gosselin Story and said, "I watched it online and I didn't know what to expect... I caught myself crackign up out loud. You're awesome." [Star]
• Kim Kardashian claimed that her pregnant sister Kourtney had been wearing Khloe's clothes, but Kourtney says, "That is absolutely not true and I told Kim that last night. I go, 'You know, I haven't one time worn Khloé's clothes since I have been pregnant,' and she was like 'I thought you have...I thought you said that; now that makes me look stupid.'" [E!]
• John Legend says it isn't his fault that he got a ticket for driving without his headlights on at night. He Tweeted: "Valet sabotaged me! didn't notice becuz the dashboard lites were on and usually I have my headlights on "auto" so they come on w the car. Valet turned them off. Oh well! More money for the California state treasury. I guess they need it." [TMZ]
• On Monday's Ellen DeGeneres Show Kelly Osbourne discusses her battle with drugs and alcohol saying, "My mom had been in a relationship with my father for years and years trying to get him sober. I was completely ashamed that I would have to go to her and now tell her that her daughter has issues as well... I felt like I let her down – but what I didn't realize was that if I would have went to her a long time ago, she would have helped me no matter what." [Perez Hilton]
• Sheryl Crow says her 2-year-old son Wyatt doesn't like it when she sings. "I want to sing to him, but right now he's like, 'Mommy, no! All done! All done!.. He's really into kids' music and is listening to a lot of Raffi. I think he thinks if I'm singing that I'm going to work," she says. [People]
• "I developed that (a fear of flying) when I turned 20. All of a sudden I got really afraid to get on airplanes. I had to come up with a way to deal with it because I didn't want to have panic attacks every time I get on a plane. I know for a fact it's not in my destiny to die listening to a Britney Spears album, so I always put that on in my (headphones) when I'm flying because I know it wont crash if I've got Britney on." — Megan Fox [Hollywood Rag]
• Anna Faris says after her first marriage ended in 2007 she had a meltdown. She explains: "I tend to be a serial monogamist. But the next thing you know, I'm single and living in an apartment full of potato chips, mustard and tons of beer. I wore this grubby Garfield t-shirt and these baggy jeans all the time. Personal hygiene? Nah. I would talk to my cat, I was drunk all the time. I would go to bars alone. I would talk to guys and be like, 'Sooo, what's your story? You wanna go out?' If they turned me down, I'd be like, 'So, what's your friend like?' It was a very selfish time in my life but also strangely liberating. I felt weirdly empowered." [Hollywood Rag]
• Carrie Fisher found a blog post in which someone said she used to be hot but now she looks like Elton John. She responded on her blog writing, "You see, I was hot when most people are hot— in my fucking 20's & part of my 30's……THEN, in an effort to imitate humans, I had a child &, to further maintain my life like disguise, I took medications for about 9 thousand years, &, despite all my efforts, I continued to get older & older—inadvertently, I assure you——I tried to arrest my development physically as WELL as emotionally, but unfortunately without as much success. I also must confess that I ate food. I'm sorry….. I realize that I promised never to eat anything but lettuce & sun flower seeds, but tragically, I was unable to keep my promise." [Perez Hilton]