A particular idea of New York City is still pushed as a character itself — "Empire State of Mind," Carrie comfortably ensconced as Park Avenue princess. There are giggles over the restaurant table, a shot of that famed closet. Charlotte is surrounded by pink cupcakes. Samantha shoots a practiced flirtatious look at a guy. Big is on his cell phone in his towncar. Miranda... walks purposefully.

But just as the first movie took the New York City-centric girls to Mexico (not that it added much, narratively speaking); this one takes them to the desert, filmed in Morocco. Possibly it managed to wring out the last New York truisms. One hopes that they'll be more inventive with their inevitable camel jokes than the Montezuma's Revenge plotline of the first movie.

One of the best essays on that movie, I think, came out before anyone even saw it. Emily Nussbaum wrote in New York in 2007, "The sitcom terraformed the city in its image, turning Manolos and Cosmos and those damned floppy flowers into icons, then something so clichéd as to be oppressive, almost regimented. Three years later, the Zeitgeist, having writ, has moved on: to milfs and grups, among other things. And Brooklyn."

But it turned out there were still plenty of women, in New York and elsewhere, who were happy to fall in line with the SATC regimen, Zeitgeist be damned. I saw them nearly cut each other to get a seat at an advanced screening, dressed in their best approximations of what it meant to be a successfully glamorous woman in New York. And it made $415 million.

"God, how we need this movie and need it to be good," Nussbaum wrote in her pre-release piece. By its end, the show had lost its early idiosyncrasy — the characters became more caricatured and almost kitschy, the fashion became more self-conscious and brittle, and everything became slicker. It became less light social commentary, more prescription for a particular sort of femininity. The first movie did that trend one better. It wasn't good, really — not at all as it turns out. But I wouldn't mind if this one were.

Sex And The City Official Trailer [YouTube]

Related: What Is The Point, Exactly, Of A Sex And The City Movie? [New York Magazine]

Earlier: I Like Sex, I Like This City. I Hated Sex And The City

Of Sex and the City's supposed enduring relevance, Cattrall tells the WSJ, "Post-feminism has been really confusing. It influenced so many women to leave a lot of their feminine qualities behind and assume the business suit." She says SATC offered something different, which is why "it's captured so many women's imaginations. It's truthful and it's real and it's now; it's not dated, and it keeps evolving. These four women really make up one complete woman." That one woman would, of course, be very very rich, and what with Carrie's shoe obsession and Charlotte's fetish for housewares, she'd need a pretty huge home to hold all her stuff. A home that could be designed by Nancy Meyers.

Daphne Merkin noted Meyers' focus on immaculate interiors in her recent Times Magazine profile (which we wrote about last week), but Nicole LaPorte's Daily Beast essay pays even more attention to Meyers's "decorator porn." LaPorte writes,

[T]he sumptuous details in Meyers' films-the gazillion-thread-count sheets; the Park Regent suites; the glintingly new Porsches (none of which seem solely to be there because of product-placement deals)-are so unrelentingly omnipresent in every, single frame that they actually become distracting. During a screening of It's Complicated, Meyers' latest installment of decorator porn, I became so consumed with the outlandish dimensions of Meryl Streep's (a.k.a. Jane, the film's protagonist) Santa Barbara kitchen and all of its Martha Stewart accoutrements-cake plates with perfectly frosted cakes on them; vases stuffed with plump basil-that I missed whole sequences of dialogue.

But that might be just fine — Meyers's films may be just as much about what the characters sleep on as about what they say. Meyers tells Merkin that her lavish interior decorating "softens the message" of her films, but really it only amplifies that message — that women can have everything they want in bed (a man; good sheets) and out. Merkin thinks the point of Meyers's linen fixation is that "your character is attested to by the quality of your bed linens and where good taste stands not only for itself but for all that it exudes in the way of fast cars, moral turpitude, kinky eroticism and political scandal." But the beauty of Jane's home in It's Complicated may speak less to her character per se than to her independence, even her happiness. Merkin writes that Jane is "a professionally successful divorced mother of three who runs a flourishing Santa Barbara bakery and seems content to be on her own when romance sticks its big foot back in the doorway to her life" — and the beautiful house she paid for with her own money may be the filmic symbol of this contentment.

Cattrall's words (uttered, interestingly enough, at a party hosted by a linen company) point to a similar stuff=happiness equation in SATC. The women of that show did "assume the business suit" metaphorically — they all had high-powered careers. But they chose to exercise their economic independence by purchasing very "feminine" accoutrements, like vertiginous heels. Post-feminism is indeed confusing, and the answer both SATC and the Meyers oeuvre seem to offer is to become the sugar daddy you want to marry, and then give yourself lots of expensive presents.

While being able to afford Manolos and chintz without a man around does have a certain "Independent Woman" appeal, neither Meyers nor Sex and the City totally jettisons the Prince Charming narrative — viewers of the first SATC movie will surely remember the giant closet Big buys Carrie. More significantly, portraying independence through buying power is dated, no matter what Cattrall says, and it's also kind of depressing. LaPorte described Meyers's aesthetic as "aspirational," which is exactly the word that women's magazines use when they depict the ideal life as a collection of stuff outside the price range of their readers. Women's happiness has long been defined by restrictive standards of marriage and child-rearing, and the new standard of expensive-shit-buying is no less limiting, even though the tastemakers who promulgate it are often women themselves.

Of course, what many SATC fans loved about the show was not its glitzy shoes or unrealistic real estate (Carrie had a good job, but not that good), but its depiction of enduring female friendship. And Merkin's depiction of Meyers's movies as pleasant wish-fulfillment for women over 55 implies that nobody actually considers such women desirable — a perception movies like It's Complicated may actually counteract. What women of all ages could use are complex roles that focus on all aspects of their lives — not just what they look like to men. Both Meyers and SATC have taken a step towards this — it's just a shame they had to do it in such expensive shoes.

Nancy Meyers' Decorator Porn [Daily Beast]
Can Anybody Make A Movie For Women? [NYT Magazine]
"Sex and the City 2's" Kim Cattrall On The Franchise's Enduring Appeal [Wall Street Journal Speakeasy Blog]

• Blake Fielder-Civil claims that he and his ex-wife of four months, Amy Winehouse, are back together and engaged once again. "This time we're doing things properly and hopefully that will help our families both come round to the idea. [DailyMail]

• However, Fielder-Civil admits that Winehouse's father, Mitch, might not be thrilled with the idea of the couple's reunion: "Mitch controls most of Amy's life," he says, "I'm fed up with people trying to tear us apart. The only reason me and Amy want to be together is because we love each other." [a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1237098/Amy-Winehouse-engaged-ex-husband-Blake-Fielder-Civil.html?ITO=1490&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailymail%2Ftvshowbiz+(TV+%26+Showbiz+|+Mail+Online)#ixzz0a99AdXKt">DailyMail]
• And he's not wrong—as Mitch Winehouse tells the Times of London: that he thinks Fielder-Civil's family sees Amy as "a fantastic opportunity" and that he hopes Fielder-Civil is out of her life: "It will be a disaster if he's not out of the picture." [TimesOnline]
• Sarah Jessica Parker is working on a "genderless perfume," and she apparently hopes it smells a bit like body odor: "It has taken me three years to decide on the scent because I really like B.O. and I think it's sexy," she says, "I wanted to figure out a way to make it palatable to everybody. I was like, 'How do you get B.O. in a bottle and make an atomiser of it?" [DailyExpress]
• Todd Phillips, director of The Hangover, says he wants Tiger Woods to make an appearance in the film's upcoming sequel: "Mike (Tyson) loved doing The Hangover because he loved f**king with the image people had of him," Phillips says, "He knew we were not making fun of him but of the image people projected on him." [DailyExpress]
• "Women who turn to cosmetic procedures look ghastly. They don't look like themselves. I quite like the way I look, I'm quite happy with the way I look and I really don't want to change it. In front of the camera it (my skin) probably isn't nearly as good as it used to be. But, I mean, what the hell, everybody's got to get older."- Joan Collins [DailyMail]
• Lindsay Lohan and Leonardo DiCaprio were spotted "socializing" again last night, showing up to the same nightclub, and later, the same Christmas party, but leaving both separately. [DailyMail]
• Meanwhile, Jude Law and Sienna Miller have been spotted all over New York City together and are apparently very much on-again. ""They spend every night in the same place together, either his place or her apartment," says a source. [NYPost]
• Charlize Theron debuted her line of Tom's Shoes yesterday: the proceeds from sales of the shoes will go to her foundation, which "is dedicated to improving the health, education, and social development of high school children in the country." [DailyExpress]
• Rachel McAdams attempted to win the cast and crew of Sherlock Holmes over with a slightly weird gift: "I had no time and it was right before work and it was our last day," she says, "so I went in and I was looking around... and then I get to the counter and there are these chocolates, and I was like, 'Oh, those are so cute; they look like little kisses... or bumholes. They're cute little chocolate bumholes!' There was, like, dark chocolate and milk chocolate and white chocolate and I bought all of them... (but) no one ate the buttholes." [DailyExpress]
• Star Trek's Patrick Stewart is set to be knighted by the Queen. [Mirror]
• Former porn star Tera Patrick split with her husband, Evan Seinfeld, after he refused to stop starring in porn himself: "I said to Evan, 'I'm your wife, and that is the strongest bond two people should have, and that should come first. I've moved on from porn. And I want you to stop. You promised me you'd only do porn for a few years. Your few years are up.' " [PageSix]
• Leann Rimes' estranged husband, Dean Sheremet, has officially filed divorce papers. The couple, who have been together since February 2002, have apparently been working on the divorce since September. [Yahoo]
• And in other divorce news: Ivana Trump has announced that she's divorcing her fourth husband, Rossano Rubicondi. [ET]
• Joey Fatone and his wife, Kelly Baldwin, are expecting their second child early next month. [DailyExpress]
• Zoe Saldana says actresses like Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry have opened doors: "Before them, women were just sex pots or mothers. They were never the heroes who saved the day. They've enabled a generation of actresses to have a bigger variety of roles. If I wanted to be part of a story that is amazing and had a lot of sexual openness, that's fine. But I am so grateful to know that, like them, I can open different doors for women." [ShowbizSpy]
• Lil' Wayne was questioned and released last night after U.S. Border Patrol agents found marijuana on two of his tour buses. [Yahoo]
• "Young actresses today don't eat enough. I meet them for lunch, we sit down at the table, they look around and they say, 'Oh, but everything is so good, everything looks wonderful.' And then they eat just a bite of this and a bite of that. They never finish their food, never. I am the only one eating at the table! I get very upset by this. I worry about them because every woman is motherly, no? I tell them to eat more because I worry they will starve to death."-Sophia Loren [DailyMail]
• Michael Jackson's Captain EO is set to return to Disneyland in February. [Yahoo]
• "I like to shop with girls. Buying them shoes, being spoiled by the girls in Chanel when they try things on - I love it."-Hugh Grant, making someone's romantic comedy dreams come true. [ShowbizSpy]
• "Post-feminism has been really confusing. It influenced so many women to leave a lot of their feminine qualities behind and assume the business suit. That's why [Sex and the City] captured so many women's imaginations. It's truthful and it's real and it's now; it's not dated, and it keeps evolving. These four women really make up one complete woman."-Kim Cattrall [WSJ]

• Katie Holmes went with a group of her friends to see New Moon in New York. An eyewitness reports: "Katie talked through all of New Moon. It was unbelievable – they talked nonstop about the movie and everything else."

• The source continues: "Some people wanted to tell them to be quiet, but when they realized who it was, they stayed silent. No one wanted to shush Katie." [Fox News]
• The 17-year-old Michigan girl who claimed a man bit her on the neck after a screening of New Moon on Friday has admitted that the alleged culprit was just kissing her on the neck and she was a "willing participant." She's facing criminal charges for filing a false police report. [TMZ]
• There are three versions of Entertainment Weekly's new cover, featuring either Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, or Taylor Lautner. [Pop Sugar]
• Anderson Cooper is reportedly moving in with his boyfriend of eight months, gay bar owner Ben Maisani. A friend says, "Anderson has found his 'Mr. Right' in Ben. Their relationship is so solid they want to move in together, and they've been looking at Manhattan real estate." [National Enquirer]
• The Swiss court on Roman Polanski's release: "The 76-year-old appellant is married and the father of two minors... It can be assumed that as a responsible father he will, especially in view of his advanced age, attach greater importance to the financial security of his family than a younger person." His previous bail offer of his home as collateral was rejected and the court demanded money instead. Peter Cosandey, a former Zurich prosecutor, said it's unusual for a non-resident to be granted bail, but "cash is king." [AP]
• The Jackson family had an early Thanksgiving dinner on Tuesday. "That's really, really important because we're a family and throughout the years, the managers, the agents and Hollywood have tried to come between that," Jermaine Jackson said. "What they don't know is we were together before we came out here and we're going to continue to be together." [CNN]
• Now that Jon Gosselin and Hailey Glassman have split, he won't be spending Thanksgiving with her family. He can't visit his kids either, because it's Kate's day. "I won't be home," says Jon. "I'm going to my grandma's." [Us]
• Kim Kardashian posted a list of the 10 things she's most thankful for including her family, friends, fans, "Lamar for making Khloe the happiest girl in the world" and "My glam squad for always making me fabulous!" [Us]
• Courtney Love took her Hole bandmates to a strip club yesterday. "Courtney Love brought in a group of guys who all looked like Keith Richards, some of whom were in her band. They arrived about 12:30," a source reports. "She was saying she used to be a stripper and appreciated what the girls do. Courtney left in a limo with a female friend after 45 minutes, leaving the band to enjoy themselves." [N.Y. Post]
• Oprah Winfrey's former rival Phil Donahue says he understands why she wants to retire. "She's a remarkable story," he said, "But you're on air every day. Eventually you think, 'do people really want to hear me talk anymore?'" [N.Y. Post]
• In an email sent to Oprah.com subscribers, she writes: "Fifteen years ago, I wrote in my journal that one day I would create a television network, as I always felt my show was just the beginning of what the future could hold." Also, the Post is calling her "Prah" now, because it's just too difficult to type that "O." [N.Y. Post]
• Fergie experienced Daniel Day-Lewis' method acting while filming Nine. She says: "Daniel is very charming. I'd go into my dressing room, and I'd find this little note. I'd open it, and it would be Guido's stationary. He would write me little notes as Guido. They were very cute and very charming." [Popeater]
• The Real Housewives of New York were frolicking on the beach in St. John over the weekend, where they're filming an upcoming episode. [N.Y. Post]
• Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig raised $7,000 for the charity Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS when they sold the sweaty vests they were wearing after a performance of A Steady Rain. One female audience member yelled, "How much for the pants?" to which Hugh responded: "By pants, we are talking about the trousers right?" [The Star]
• "I didn't fit in in high school and I felt like a freak," says Lady Gaga. "So I like to create this atmosphere for my fans where they feel like they have a freak in me to hang out with and they don't feel alone." [People]
• Kelly Osbourne says she's not upset that Donny Osmond won DWTS "Everyone kept coming up to me and saying, 'Are you okay? Are you okay?'" she said. "And I'm like, 'I never fucking thought I was going to win anyway!'" [Us]
• Levi Johnston has rethought his position on joining DWTS. "I think if my phone were to ring right now, I would probably say yes," he said. "Dancing isn't really my thing but I think I could do it... I mean, I'm pretty athletic so I think I could do just about anything." [ET]
• Kim Cattrall is posing nude to raise money to keep the painting "Diana and Callisto" by Titian in Britain's National Gallery and prevent it from being sold to a private foreign bidder. [Contact Music]
• Good Morning America cancelled a scheduled Adam Lambert appearance this morning, so he appeared on CBS's Early Show instead, along with the man he made out with at the AMAs. [TMZ]
• Liza Minnelli says the greatest moment in her career is yet to come. "I'm a Minnelli, so there's always something to do," she said. "I'll think of something. I always do." [Reuters]
• T.I. and Lil Wayne's daughters have joined with two other girls ages 11 to 13 to form the group OMG Girlz, which is managed by T.I.'s fiancée, Tameka 'Tiny' Cottle. [MTV]
• Sylvester Stallone is facing charges after he was photographed this weekend driving his Mustang with two little girls sharing one seat belt in the passenger seat. [Daily Express]
• John Mayer's new album Battle Studies topped the Billboard chart this week with 286,000 copies sold. [N.Y.T.]
• Erik Estavillo, who is suing the makers of World of Warcraft for creating a virtual environment that he says has given him various emotional problems, has subpoenaed Depeche Mode founder Martin Lee Gore because "he himself has been known to be sad, lonely, and alienated as can be seen in the songs he writes," and Winona Ryder because she'll be able to "explain the significance of alienation in Catcher in the Rye and will also testify to how alienation in the book can tie to alienation in real live/video games such as World of Warcraft." [Game Politics]
• James McAvoy usually won't do films with his wife Anne-Marie Duff, but he made an exception for The Last Station. He said, "We've been offered a hell of a lot of parts playing opposite each other in films and TV and we just turn them down. If you do work together you put yourself up, you make yourself a target and you make your relationship a target and all of that. We're very keen not to do that. But in The Last Station we don't play opposite each other hardly at all. It was nice to spend those two months together rather than spending those two months apart, while she's off somewhere doing God knows what and I'm off doing God knows what. So it was fine. It was quite easy with this one." [Daily Express]
• Viggo Mortensen says his role in The Road was difficult physically. "We had good makeup and all that, but because it was such a tough journey physically and emotionally, as I gradually got closer to [the character], I literally was getting weaker and weaker and it took more energy to just focus — which was right. So it was this gradual decline into character that in some part was real. I mean, I was pretty beat by the end, and so was Kodi. And it shows. There were things that are on screen that are beyond whatever we prepared." [Inside Movies]
• "I was playing truth or dare when I had my first kiss," says Kellan Lutz. "I was probably 7. I learned to hold the girl and I won as best kisser. They picked me because I actually held the girls when I kissed them. I loved kissing them because they had flavored lip glosses on, which was great." [People]
• "Nothing surprises me in terms of reviews," says New Moon director Chris Weitz. "Having been a reviewer myself, there are only two ways to spin this story. You can either be the one guy who says this is a great movie, or more likely, take a more jaundiced view of the whole thing. And given the media blitz that has accompanied New Moon, it's rather unsurprising. I do wish there was more appreciation for cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe. I think he's a genius, and I think he made something beautiful." [Us]
• "I have (my Oscar) in my house in Spain and I still haven't found the right place for it. But for the first month when I won I was so excited about it, I took it everywhere with me. I took it — this is true — I even took it to the beach one day and put it under a towel." — Penelope Cruz [UPI]

• Yoko Ono turned up to the Tokyo launch of Comme des Garçons' Beatles-inspired line. [WWD]
• Christian Lacroix may not have a confirmed buyer for his bankrupt fashion line, but he will design a tower in Dubai. [AB]

• 14-year-old style blogger wunderkind Tavi Gevinson is in Tokyo this week for Comme des Garçons' holiday party. In between expressing her admiration for her idol, Rei Kawakubo, Tavi will do photo shoots with Japanese magazines. [WWD]
• EBay has started doing pop-up designer sales, like Gilt Groupe. It also has a holiday store in Manhattan, selling Norma Kamali's line for the site. [NItrolicious]
• Now that Celine has creative director Phoebe Philo, it wants to open 10 new stores conceptualized by her. Meanwhile, it is closing several of its existing stores. [UK Vogue]
• Philo's debut line for the brand has been so popular with retailers the company has gained new accounts across the U.S. [WWD]
• Forever 21 is getting into the beauty business. This month, its full 145-piece line of cosmetics will hit stores. The products look appropriately glittery. [WWD]
• The ladies at Nylon saw the gorgeous sequined socks on Miu Miu's runway, balked at the $450 cost, and made their own for about $20. Speaking as one who still wears her handknit holey Rodarte fall '08-inspired tights, I approve this DIY message. [Nylon]
• Tom Ford not only financed the $7 million cost of A Single Man himself, and wrote into the script elements of various episodes from his own life, he went so far as to fill the characters' homes with his own furniture. He even painted the paintings on their walls himself. [IndieWire]
• SATC stylist and designer Pat Field and Kim Cattrall did an ad for Bailey's. It features Cattrall wearing a red dress with a bow on it, since Bailey's is being sold in holiday-promo bottles with red bows this year, and everyone involved seems to think they are totally making fashion history, as opposed to doing some rather literal-minded if inoffensive shilling. "This dress is one of the most daring garments I've ever worn," enthuses Cattrall. [SB]
• Christian Louboutin, the shoe designer who once said "comfort is not part of my creative process," maintains he learned the value of comfortable shoes when he left school at 15 to intern at the Folies Bergère, and the dancers sent him out for veal carpaccio, which they used to line their shoes. Now he uses "technical secrets" to make his shoes "easy to walk in." But his biggest enemy in life is the ankle, because, as he puts it, "You can do a design, and it looks good on paper — then when you put it on it makes your legs look fat." We would point out that a design that only looks good on paper isn't really a great design. [Independent]
• Alber Elbaz received an honor with the rather long name the Grande Médaille de Vermeil de la Ville de Paris from mayor Bertrand Delanoë on Friday. When asked what he loved most about the city, the Lanvin designer said, "There's so many things. It's a dream city and it's a city of dreamers...I will be original, and I will say Parisians!" [WWD]
• Look at what Tyra has wrought: 1,500 girls lined up on Saturday in New York, and another 1,000 in Los Angeles, to try to be chosen as America's representative to the Ford agency's Supermodel of the World competition. [UPI]
• Alessandra Ambrosio's "diary" of the week before the Victoria's Secret fashion show is mostly a tale of her yearning for free time to work out, and skipping meals. Don't worry, she has a cheeseburger after it's over! [People]
• "When I was a kid, I remember telling my mom I was going to be the first woman president, an actor, then a veterinarian on the weekends," says Brooklyn Decker, the Sports Illustrated and Victoria's Secret model. "I somehow decided to be an uneducated model instead." [NYTimes]
• Helena Christensen says she dreams of "situations inspired by the work of artists such as Egon Schiele and Carl Larsson, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie book series, and the intricate yet utterly simple compositions in nature." And her dream house would be the late Edward Gorey's place on Cape Cod. Ours too. [Independent]
• This year's Pirelli calendar, shot by Terry Richardson, features no retouching. "A great photographer captures the moment — that's why I shoot without extra equipment and without assistants," claims Richardson, oddly, because he does in fact have assistants. (Perhaps they weren't used for this job?) [WWD]
• François-Henri Pinault, owner of Pinault Printemps Redoute, is looking to spin off several of his company's largest, cheapest chains, like FNAC and the mail-order empire La Redoute, in order to free up capital to invest in mid-market brands that would have both higher margins, and would sit better in a stable that includes Stella McCartney and Gucci. What this means in practice is that PPR might buy Abercrombie & Fitch. [Telegraph]

[New York, October 17. Image via INFDaily.]

[New York, October 12. Image via INFDaily.]

• Frances Bean Cobain has written an open letter to Ali Lohan. Would you like to know what it says? Here goes — and consider it to be [sic]-filled:

"This is my open letter to Ali Lohan.
Your not entitled to anything simply because your sister has a recognizable name. Your idea of fame isn't fame. It's infamy. You want to be famous? Work your ass off and make decisions that could potentially catapult your career into a lasting one. Notariety for who you are and notaritey for the work you produce are two completely differnt things. I understand that you have been brought up in an envirtoment where the idea of fame is easily achievable but, that's not an excuse. You lack the talent, social understanding and credibility to be anything other then infamous. Your careere choices, thus far, will transcend a future career as someone who attempted to be famous, but never quite achieved it. And if you do, it will be the formality of fame that puts you on the covers of tabloids, while the public idly watches you plumit into the murky abyss shared with the likes of Spencer Pratt & Jon Gosslin who, i'm sure, will steal your money whilst there. Fortunately for the world, there are people who have and don't have recognizable names, who have obtained artistic integrity and will one day, hopefully, bring that tangible artisticness into light again. Though, its hard to think thats achievable when people like You ali lohan are rendering the world of true talent by attempting to make your entitled ass noticed. How is this fair to the people who HAVE artistic integrity, or a mind? How is it fair to those who truly have something to offer the human race other then a dwindling last name and a few shitty films, both of which, solidified the idea that your just a celebrities sibling. I recognize that i might come across as harsh and no, i don't personally know you, but its the actions that you take, that speak for you. You blatently don't care how your recognized, its the objective to get famous and that is what makes you replaceable and a recycled idea .Well, im ashamed to have to be grouped into the same category of person as you. I would rather die a most painful death the be assoicated with the kind of careere your trying to make for your self. I hope i'm wrong because generally i'm not a very judgmental person, but in the case of you, that is MY entitlement." Phew! …And scene. [ONTD]

• Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston had a "secret meeting" in New York, yet somehow the Daily Fail knows that the rendez-vous took place in a hotel and that Brad "unloaded his emotional baggage" on Jen. [Daily Mail]
• I wish I'd seen the Madonna and Lady Gaga dance off on Saturday night after SNL; sources say Madonna seemed to be the winner. [Page Six]
• "Madonna and her toy boy Jesus Luz had a bust-up following the pop queen's admission she'd rather get hit by a train than get hitched again." He supposedly feels like a fool and is heartbroken. [The Sun]
• OMG Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart went out for dinner (with friends)! They ate and enjoyed themselves! They were acting like a couple! All together, now: TWILIGHTISREALSPARKLEVAMP4EVA. [People]
• After being in a car accident on Monday, Nicole Richie's been checked out at the hospital, visited by her mother at home, and hired a lawyer. Hope everything is okay. [People]
• Jon Gosselin on that missing $230,000 from the Gosselin's joint account: "I never took any money." [TMZ]
• Lamar Odom has met with his lawyer regarding a prenup in his wedding to Khloe Kardashian, and word is, he will not be giving her half his earnings. [TMZ]
• Spoilers! You know this pic of Kim Cattrall in a wedding dress for Sex And The City 2: Electric Boogaloo? It's supposedly a fake-out; the ones getting married are Stanford and Anthony. More spoilery details at the link. [JustJared]
• SHOCKER: Mariah Carey has been acting like a diva on her new tour. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Click for a pic of Kate Hudson in a wedding dress, modeling for a Bazaar photo shoot. [NY Post]
• Organizers "worked overtime" to keep feuding singers Lily Allen and Katy Perry away from each other at the Chanel show in Paris. [The Sun]
• Kevin Federline's former landlords want $110,661 in unpaid rent and damages — which include spit marks on the exterior paint, gutters full of cigarette butts and beer bottles, broken tiles, a broken dishwasher and dismantled smoke detectors. Popo wow. [TMZ]
• Tyra Banks doesn't drink anymore, and a "source" says, "I guess that's how she ended up dropping 30 pounds." Anonymous weight loss speculation FTW! [Page Six]
• Shannen Doherty is working on a reality show that will highlight her "lighter and funnier" side. [E!]
• Queen Latifah is concerned about the hip-hop scene: "Never in my career do I remember rap being so male-dominated. In videos, women are basically shown as the girl you shake the booty with. They're objectified. There are females out there who can rap, who listen to rap. Missy and Lil' Kim and the young up-and-coming ones need an opportunity to be heard. I think we're all masculine and feminine, and a society can't be right if you don't honor the feminine voice." [USA Today]
• Usher's divorce: Delayed. [NY Daily News]
• "The FBI investigated whether Anna Nicole Smith was part of a plot to kill her tycoon husband's son, whom she was battling for his late dad's fortune, but prosecutors ultimately decided there wasn't enough evidence to charge the Playboy Playmate who died in 2007 from a drug overdose, newly released files show." [AP, LA Times]
• A man who bid in the canceled Michael Jackson auction is pissed he didn't get the stuff he was willing to pay for. He's suing for $5,000,000. [TMZ]
• Honestly, I do not even get why story about Jude Law, Hamlet and someone being upstaged by a skull is "news." It sounds like much ado without nothing. [Telegraph]
• The number of viewers of The Jay Leno Show: In decline. [USA Today]
• Nick Lachey avoided Jessica Simpson while in Vegas and refused to be photographed with on and off girlfriend Vanessa Minnillo. [Page Six]
• No one wants to be on Tinsley Mortimer's reality show. [Page Six]
• "Mel's anti-Jew-spew DWI wiped off books." [NY Post]
• Is Cougar Town a virus? It's spreading. The show will air in territories across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. This is what we export, people. Cougars. Can I go back to bed now? [Variety]
• If you shop at the right consignment stores, you could find clothes worn by Padma Lakshmi, who's given up her pre-pregnancy ensembles for charity. [Page Six]
• Something happened to Tony Roberts during the Sunday matinee of the Broadway play The Royal Family. His daughter reports the actor had a minor seizure and is now "feeling great." [USA Today]
• At the link, you'll find Chris Daughtry's tips for a happy marriage. If you're interested. [People]
• Elvis Presley's grandson Ben Presley, 17, just inked a $5 million record deal but says: "The music will be nothing like Elvis, nothing like him at all." Good luck with that! [NY Post]
• Little Britain star Matt Lucas had tried to get his former husband Kevin McGee off coke, and even paid for rehab; McGee committed suicide earlier this week. [The Sun]
• "I wanted somebody who had a huge presence-charismatic, able to dominate a room [yet] who was very sensitive, whose emotions were right under the surface." — Spike Jonze, on casting James Gandolfini's voice in Where The Wild Things Are. [The Daily Beast]
• "I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They're drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they're not tortured about it. But I think that that's only one side of me. Right now, it's a good story because it makes a tie-in with the movie." — Spike Jonze, on getting labeled an overgrown child. [Daily Beast]
• "I have kissed a lot of rock stars in my time but seriously never so many as the last 24 hours." — Courtney Love. [Page Six]
• "Hanging around with Chris, he always has a video camera, and he's like, 'I'm gonna ask you some questions about hair.' I talked a lot, but that turned out to be, uh, funny, I guess… I had a perm and when guys have it straightened, they put the rollers in their head, you know, so you get that Super Fly look." — Ice-T, who is in Chris Rock's Good Hair and, yes, used to wear rollers. [NY Mag]
• "I'd never been averse to any kind of medication, but you get brainwashed. I started reading all these books and doing pregnancy yoga. By the end, you feel you have to go natural in order to be a real woman. I got myself a doula [birthing assistant] and a water tank and struggled on for 24 hours, and then I had an epidural. I can remember saying to the anaesthetist, 'Oh, I love you, thank you so much.' I don't know what I was thinking." — Emily Mortimer, who is expecting her second child in January. [Telegraph]
• "It was important for me to write that, to get it off my chest. And to discuss it with a therapist, and tell my parents — which I did, eventually, though it took me about 20 years. And hopefully it will be helpful to someone out there who has gone through a similar situation. [The incident] left me not knowing how to deal with certain things. Boys can put pressure on you, and I didn't do so well with saying no. I had a lot to figure out, and I did eventually, but it was tough. We have to do a better job of looking out for our young girls, because there are predators out there." — Queen Latifah, regarding a song on her new album, Persona, about when she was molested as a 5-year-old by a male babysitter. [USA Today]
• "I get offered movies on a regular basis, but most of them are terrible because most of the movies that are made are terrible. I don't think anybody saw Adventureland, but they marketed it as a big comedy, so I get sent these really shitty scripts that I think people assume that was like. So many scripts where people are having sex with each other. Every script starts off with sex… [With Zombieland…they were nervous to hire me because I'm not famous. There were other more famous people who were auditioning for it. I think the main reason I got into it was because Sony really likes Greg Mottola, who directed Adventureland, so he vouched for me, because he directed their biggest movie in the last several years, Superbad. — Jesse Eisenberg. [BlackBook]
• "Guns seem dumb. I felt bad holding guns because I don't know what influence it has on people watching movies. You can make the argument that it lets people take out their aggression so they don't do it in real life. You can also make the argument that it makes guns look fun and people are going take them out and play with them." — Jesse Eisenberg. [BlackBook]
• "I normally get recognized as either a guy from Spring Awakening, or there's this other guy that screams at me all the time, Hey Napoleon Dynamite! I don't go to nightclubs, I don't go to nice restaurants. There's no perk that can be had aside from getting a slice of pizza at interviews. But you could. People really could exploit it. I haven't been single for 7 years, but I know people who are maybe my level of attractiveness or less and they can have sex quite often… That's great, because then they'll tell me about it." — Jesse Eisenberg. [BlackBook]

• Miley Cyrus will indeed be in Sex And The City 2:

The teen queen will have a scene with Kim Cattrall: Samantha Jones wants to look "hot and young" and winds up on the red carpet with Miley — wearing the same dress. Hilarious? [NY Daily News]

• Rumors that Johnny Depp will be replaced in the next Pirates of The Caribbean movie: "Completely unfounded," says a Disney spokesperson. [Mirror]
• Just yesterday, Jon Gosselin's girlfriend Hailey Glassman was on the Gosselin family website. Today? She's been deleted. [RadarOnline]
• Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom's wedding: A circus. A guest says: There were so many helicopters overhead, you couldn't hear the vows." Ok! magazine made a $250,000 deal for "exclusive" wedding pix, so when paparazzi pictures of the bride popped up on Sunday, the mag had to spend $50,000 on the shots to keep them off the market. As you may know, E! paid for the wedding, after insisting that it be held immediately so it could be on the season premiere of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. [Page Six]
• Ryan Seacrest is thinking about doing a reality show focusing on Khloe and Lamar as newlyweds. It worked out so well for Nick and Jessica! [NY Daily News]
• In other Kardashian news, Kim Kardashian is back together with Reggie Bush. Professional athletes for everyone! [NY Daily News]
• A second suspect in the Lindsay Lohan burglary has turned herself in. [NY Daily News]
• Should Kanye West go to rehab as an apology for his MTV VMA incident? Columnist Courtney Hazlett says "no, no, no." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Speaking of rehab: Amy Winehouse met a "faith healer" named Peter Hippolyte when she was in St. Lucia, and she's planning on flying him to England to help her stay off drugs and booze. Hippolyte says: "We will say prayers together and she will drink bush tea with antioxidants." [Daily Mail]
• Video: Amy Winehouse rapping. Sorta. [The Sun]
• "The timing of Roman Polanski's arrest in Switzerland on Sunday on a 31-year-old rape conviction couldn't have been better for Brett Ratner." Hours before Polanski was arrested, Ratner announced he'll be producing a sequel to Marina Zenovich's 2008 documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. [Page Six]
• Mariah Carey says Precious director Lee Daniels helped her shed some insecurities — he made her arrive to the set without any makeup, and forced her to leave the diva act at home. "That was such a freeing experience for me… By making me look so bad he brought out the ability to never be self-conscious again, and that was a gift that he gave me." On the rumors that Mariah and Nick Cannon are trying to get pregnant, she says: "Well, we enjoy practicing." [AP]
• Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss are on the October cover of LA Confidential, and inside Jon says: "The [show] is not meant to be on while you're doing dishes, it's meant to be enjoyed and savored and focused on, and it rewards that attention…" [JustJared]
• At Teen Vogue's 7th annual Young Hollywood party, Kelly Osbourne was overheard telling a friend that she was "shocked" how short the skirts of the young party girls were. [Page Six]
• Randy and Evi Quaid are called "Hollywood's Nightmare Couple" in this extensive piece. Evi allegedly self-medicated with Demerol three times a day, snorting it so it would go right to her brain to cure her migraines. A source says: "She also … believed [Michael] Jackson was murdered along with Heath Ledger, Chris Penn, David Carradine, Natasha Richardson, and other stars who (had been) in movies with Randy." The paranoia that someone was out to get them, and that they weren't safe anywhere, lead to a string of unpaid hotel bills. [The Daily Beast]
• "The enormous sign Evi Quaid made last week — which accused her arresting officer of taking bribes — somehow caught fire this weekend…" [TMZ]
• Emma Watson was "shaken" at the Harvard/Brown football game when security guards had to protect her from gawkers. [Page Six]
• Mel Gibson is asking a judge to remove his 2006 DUI from his record, now that he has completed the terms of his 3-year probation. [TMZ]
• Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has announced that a major US film company has bought the rights to her series of children's books. She says: "The films will run as a series… America has been so good to me. I failed in Britain, and when I gave it a go in America I was ready to fail there, too — but they have really embraced me." [Daily Mail]
• Emmy Rossum, who kept her marriage a secret all year, will be officially divorced in about 180 days. Court documents reveal that she married record label exec Justin Siegel in February, and that he wants Emmy to pay his legal expenses for the divorce and give him spousal support. He's all, "That's all I ask… of youuuuuu." [E!]
• Emmy is currently dating Sideshow Bob Adam Duritz. [People]
• American Idol castoff Adam "Glambert" Lambert's CD is available for pre-order on Amazon, and is currently number 2 — ahead of Madonna and the Beatles. [NY Post]
• Darrell Hammond's name is missing from the opening credits of Saturday Night Live, and a source says: "He's interested in pursuing acting more, but he's loyal to Lorne Michaels, and Lorne will always have a place for him on SNL for as long as Darrell is willing to come back." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Barbra Streisand's new CD is nostalgic, though the recording process was not: "For the first time, she worked with jazz artist Diana Krall as producer, and did it Krall's way. She performed with Krall's quartet of musicians first, then added orchestration later, instead of her usual practice of performing with an orchestra at the outset." [AP]
• Malaysia has banned Bruno because of the gay sex scenes. According to this column, "Gay sex, or 'carnal intercourse against the order of nature,' is punishable by up to 20 years in jail and whipping in Malaysia." Their views on homosexuality suck, but as far as the film goes, they're not missing anything. [Mirror]
• Mary-Louise Parker, 45, is dating musician Charlie Mars, 35. [NY Daily News]
• Jaime Pressley and new hubby Simran Singh got into a huge fight on their wedding night, maybe because Jaime had too much to drink. [Radar Online]
• "The Inside Scoop on Starting in TV" is the story of how Lara Spencer got her start. [WSJ]
• Jon Cryer and his wife, Lisa Joyner, have adopted a baby girl. [People]
• 90210 2.0's AnnaLynne McCord actually wants to be on the cover of Cosmo. [Page Six]
• "A former aide to Danielle Steel is facing time in federal prison after admitting she stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the romance novelist." [AP]
• Al Sharpton and actress LisaRaye: It's on. [TheYBF]
• Police officials now have the hard drive found with Ryan Jenkins when he was discovered dead in a hotel room back in August. There was no suicide note, so cops are hoping the computer will shed light on the murder of Jasmine Fiore. [TMZ]
• Whatshisname does not have an eating disorder. [The Sun]
• "In terms of the stress there's just no comparison. For me, at least, writing a novel is a great pleasure. There is stress but it's a different kind of stress: more mental than physical. In a film you're working nights and 16-hour days. Here I am saying poor me, when I've been paid pretty well for that work, but it's a fact. It doesn't matter how much you're being paid. At my age I just feel I don't want to do that any longer. So, the writing is really a godsend." — Gene Hackman, who has quit acting for writing, He and Daniel Lenihan have written three works of fiction, and their latest, Escape From Andersonville, is a Civil War adventure. [The Daily Beast]
• "I am enrolling in Berklee College in Boston to get my bachelor's degree in music! That's how important education is to me. I plan to work with Rev. Al Sharpton because that's how important stressing the importance of education to children is to me." — Wyclef Jean. [BV Buzz]
• "I wasn't nervous because I'd got my body and mind into shape for it. My aim is to become an iconic sex symbol and the Playboy shoot is the first step. I wanted to be toned and curvaceous with a nice butt–I didn't want to lose weight and look skinny." — Heidi Montag on her Playboy shoot. She also says: "I'm a C cup but I want to upgrade to a DD cup. I have a curvy butt now and bigger boobs will enhance my shape." [Prz]
• "Seriously, I feel exactly the same now turning 50 as I did when I was 40 or 30. I am enjoying myself. I happen to think that I am just extraordinarily lucky. I am doing something that I am passionate about and that I enjoy doing. There are a couple of charities I am involved with that would appreciate a donation. But please, no presents from anyone." — Simon Cowell turns 50 tomorrow and will throw a big party this weekend. [Telegraph]
• "We're having Gore Vidal on. Larry David is booked. Those two are favorites of mine. And the usual suspects: Ann Coulter. Susie [Essman] will be on. Barbara [Walters] might be on the first week because she's the queen. Alec Baldwin- I can't get him on the phone. I saw him recently at a U.N. function. He's the funniest. He trusts me because I'm not out to get him. I'm not. Last time I interviewed him, his daughter was there and they were really close." — Joy Behar on her new HLN show, which starts tonight at 9pm. [USA Today]
• "She speaks like this weird white-person ebonics. She has this weird language. She doesn't technically read. But it's OK; she doesn't have to." — Kathy Griffin on Paris Hilton. [Page Six]
• "Come on over and see me after you finish." — Ellen Barkin to Matt Damon. [Page Six]
• "With ratings falling, this might be the last season of Jon & Kate Plus 8. I'm not sure yet." — Kate Gosselin, on her Facebook page. [NY Post]

• Lindsay Lohan will host concerts coinciding with the Singapore Grand Prix this weekend because Nicole Scherzinger had to cancel. Linds says she's qualified because, "I studied NASCAR for almost a year for Herbie. It was very hot inside those cars..."

• She adds: "I like to drive. I like cars. I like fast cars." When asked about the rumors that she knows Nicholas Prugo, the man arrested for burglarizing her apartment, Lindsay said, "I don't really want to get into the details of that. That's for the detectives to do."[AP]
• Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall are feuding on the set of SATC 2 and refusing to speak to each other. "While the cast is all smiles on the outside, the level of dislike is unbelievable. No-one is having a good time on this shoot," says an insider. "The crew have taken to calling her ‘Carrie Sadshaw'. When she doesn't have to be ‘on' in her scenes, she looks so sad." [Ok]
• "I have great balance and co-ordination," says John Mayer. "Inventiveness. I am a very inventive lover - that's the secret to my success." [The Sun]
• Clive Owen says his new film about fatherhood, The Boys Are Back, is "A different kind of film... Parenting's a big part of my life, so it felt very natural to me." [Style.com]
• Last weekend David Hasselhoff's 17-year-old daughter Hayley called an ambulance because she believed he had alcohol poisoning. He patched thinkgs up by taking her to a lingerie launch party at a sex shop last night. [TMZ]
• In his tell-all memoir Behind the Bell Dustin Diamond claims his Saved By The Bell castmates smoked pot and hooked up. He claims Mark Paul Gosselaar used steroids and "suddenly exploded with manliness, loading 25 pounds of muscle on his once-scrawny frame in, oh, about a month." Gosselaar dismissed the allegations, joking: "We weren't in rehab and Mr. Belding wasn't my crack dealer." [Us]
• MTV will probably air DJ AM's drug-intervention reality show Gone Too Far. A final decision hasn't been made but sources say the network has been talking to his family about airing the show. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Pamela Anderson owes creditors more that $1.2 million after failing to pay various contractors who remodeled her Malibu home last year. [Star]
• Khloe Kardashian met her fiance Lamar Odom on August 27th when she hosted a party at a bar for new Laker Ron Artest and he picked up the $3,000 tab for unknown reasons. [TMZ]
• Today Kirsten Dunst testified against a man charged with stealing her $2,000 Balenciaga bag and $2,000 from a New York City hotel suite while she was on a movie set in August 2007. [AP]
• An arrest warrant has been issued for Randy Quaid and his wife Evi. They have been under investigation for the past week for allegedly stiffing the San Ysidro ranch hotel after running up a $10,000 bill. [Radar Online]
• They are expected to be charged with three felony counts each: Defrauding an innkeeper, conspiracy, and burglary. Bail will be set at $20,000. Sources say they also owe the Hotel Bel-Air $17,000 and stole a Hertz Rent-A-Car. [Radar Online]
• Randy and Evi Quaid were arrested this afternoon. Sources say there was a struggle and Evi had to be wrestled to the ground. [TMZ]
• In his upcoming memoir The Time of My Life, Patrick Swayze reveals that when he first read the script for Dirty Dancing he thought "It seemed fluffy - nothing more than a summer-camp movie." [AP]
• Ashlee Simpson says she's excited that Heather Locklear is guest starring on the new Melrose Place. "We're all really thrilled that Heather is coming back!" she said. "Of course we are - she was kind of the heart of the show. It's been great to have a lot of the original cast, and to have Heather join is really incredible. I'm excited!" [People]
• Sacha Baron Cohen will play a "pretty angry but funny" Israeli tour guide on an episode of The Simpsons that will probably air in March. [News.com.au]
• Whitney Port said MTV is letting her work on her fashion line and have a fashion show on The City while they always made Lauren Conrad hide her real life on The Hills because, "They saw how passionate I was about designing my clothing line and I really told them, 'This is what I want to do - I don't want to work in public relations and what I want to do is design. So please allow me to do this and please show my reality.'" [N.Y. Magazine]
• When Vampire Diaries star Ian Somerhalder was asked if he's worried audiences are suffering from vampire fatigue he said, "Yes. Yes. Yes. But - there is a but - and I think that is that Twilight is a feature, a big franchise. True Blood is HBO. Vampire Diaries is prime-time network. They're all so different as far as their medium. When you're a young teen, you can't sit in a room with your mom and watch True Blood - it would be very uncomfortable for everyone involved. And Twilight you get once a year. This show is every week, and it's fun, it's smart, it's sexy, it's witty, and it's now - and those characteristics slip perfectly into this crazy sort of vampire jigsaw puzzle we all find ourselves looking at. [N.Y. Magazine]
• Is Variety editor Peter Bart trying to stir up a girl fight between Jane Campion and Kathryn Bigelow? The Women & Hollywood blogs asks if this is how he's describe two male directors: "Jane Campion, 55, made a quintessentially romantic picture in Bright Star, but in person she is cerebral, somewhat severe, leans toward post-hippie attire and seems perplexed by the rigors of the award circuit. Kathryn Bigelow, 57, is tall, model thin, a one-time art student whose gracious manner belies her proclivity for tense, even violent films – The Hurt Locker is her contender." [Women & Hollywood]
• Stephen Moyer says when he marries Anna Paquin his dog "Splash, my alpha, will be the ringbearer... My son [Billy, born in 2000] might be unhappy about that." [People]
• Gerard Butler says of his Ugly Truth co-star Katherine Heigl adopting, "She will be an amazing mom... She's incredibly responsible, smart and loving. This is a huge deal for her and she's going to take to it like a duck to water." [People]
• Last night Leonard Cohen performed in Israel for the first time in 30 years. Some Palestinian activists were calling for a boycott of the show. His manager said, "There are a lot of people who don't want us here, and anything done here invites controversy, but we believe freedom of speech is very, very important." [AP]
• Mary J. Blige, who has an adult daughter and two step-children says, "I don't think I'll do foster care or adopt, to be quite honest," at a New York event honoring her for her work with New Yorkers for Children. "I barely have time for my own children. To adopt more children and not have time for them, that [would be] poor parenting on my [part]." [People]
• Drew Barrymore says of her mother, "I believe she will see the film [Whip It]. I believe she does feel pride in me. I used to pull a lot emotionally from all the stuff with my family, but I did not do this movie to cleanse myself of the mother/daughter debacle that happened in my life. I have been much more objective about my childhood and my relationship with my mother in these last few years. I used to be more attached to all that. I won't deny that the baggage was there at one point." [Just Jared]
• "Some days I want nothing more than a brilliant mask so I could look like someone else and go wander the streets and be free," says Drew Barrymore. "I'm very peeved that Halloween only comes once a year." [CNN]
• Rich Sommer, who plays Harry Crane on Mad Men says of last week's episode [spoilers ahead], "When I got the script, I read that foot scene, and I thought it was kind of crazy, and I couldn't really see how it fit in. So I was surprised at how well the episode turned out. I was a little nervous about that scene. For the past few weeks, the writers and the editors have been saying, 'Oh my God, just wait until the lawnmower episode - it's unbelievable! It's unbelievable, it's a great episode,' and I was just like, "Oh, great! Good.' And then I saw it and I was like, "Wow! It is a really good episode." [N.Y. Magazine]

[New York, September 18. Image via INFDaily.]

• Whoopi Goldberg on Patrick Swayze:

"Patrick was a really good man, a funny man and one to whom I owe much that I can't ever repay. I believe in Ghost's message, so he'll always be near." [Extra]

• Jennifer Grey on Patrick Swayze: "When I think of him, I think of being in his arms when we were kids, dancing, practicing the lift in the freezing lake, having a blast doing this tiny little movie we thought no one would ever see. [He was] a real cowboy with a tender heart. It was not surprising to me that the war he waged on his cancer was so courageous and dignified." [People]
• Dirty Dancing's choreographer, Kenny Ortega on Patrick Swayze: "The planet has lost a big heart. And I, a forever friend." [People]
• Twitter tributes to Patrick Swayze here. [NY Daily News]
• Kanye West got a talking-to from Taylor Swift's mom backstage at the VMA awards; a source says she "tore into" him after he interrupted Taylor's speech. Additionally, it was Beyoncé's dad, Matthew Knowles, who arranged the moment in which Beyoncé gave Taylor another moment in the spotlight. [People]
• Here a source claims that the Beyoncé/Taylor Swift moment "was all Beyonce's idea. Kanye embarrassed her by bringing her name into it. She wanted to make it right." [MSNBC Scoop]
• 50 Cent on Kanye West's outburst: "We know Beyoncé's great. Nobody's confused in that area…" Fiddy also says: "I wish he would come take one of my awards so I could black his eye in front of everybody." [ONTD via Much Music]
• Did President Obama call Kanye West a jackass? All signs point to yes, but "off the record." [Politico]
• Anna Wintour went to the US Open and left with a tennis ball in her purse! [Page Six]
• Diddy caused a ruckus at post by standing in the street after a VMA party. [Gatecrasher]
• In this video, Michael Jackson admits that he was on pain medication and spent A LOT of time under the influence of prescription drugs in 2003. [The Sun]
• Russell Brand and Katy Perry made out. Pass it on. [Page Six]
• Kim Cattrall spills about Sex And The City Deux: "Expect lots of fun," she says. And: "It was so much fun to relive the wild and crazy fashions of the '80s. I absolutely loved the four different looks of all of us. We were all so uniquely different that we all couldn't stop admiring our different looks. There was lots of laughing, and it was a blast! Working with the three women is so easy. I mean seven years of doing the series and the first movie and now two years later being back feels like being home. It's so much fun. There is a saying that you can't go home again but on Sex and the City, you can." [People]
• This report says that Sex And The City 2 will see Carrie pregnant; a commenter snipes: "Isn't she like 123 years old by now? And Big should be reaching 156. Why would they have a baby? I hope this isn't the case." [Gatecrasher]
• LOL: Jon Gosselin was overheard saying "please write something nice about me" at an In Touch party. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Mr. Big, aka Chris Noth, is engaged, and it's not to Carrie: Noth has proposed to partner Tara Lynn Wilson, with whom he has a 19-month-old son. [Ok!]
• If you missed Lady Gaga and date Kermit the Frog on the red carpet at the MTV Awards, there's video here. [MTV]
• Kelly Osbourne's dropped about 14 lbs. in just three weeks, thanks to insane training for Dancing With The Stars. She says: "It's so amazing, I've tried so many stupid fad diets to try to lose weight, when all I needed to do was start dancing." And: "‘I'm actually really small, I just photograph fat." [Daily Mail]
• Colin Farrell says he's psyched to have a new kid on the way: "I'm very excited man! Very! There is nothing more exciting really." [People]
• Ricky Gervais has a crush on Rob Lowe. [Mirror]
• Brittany "Bre" Scullark from America's Next Top Model was arrested in New York on Monday for picking up some woman's laptop at a Starbucks — thinking it belonged to a family member — and then cursing out the woman. [TMZ]
• "Jessica Simpson sees dog snatched by coyote and appeals for its return on Twitter (does she think the offending beast can read?)" [Daily Mail]
• Sean Penn and hot model Jessica White: Still on. [Page Six]
• The Seinfeld reunion is really an "anti-reunion." [Reuters]
• Kim Kardashian will appear on the new Fox sitcom Brothers, opposite Michael Strahan and Daryl "Chill" Mitchell. "Even though I'm playing myself, you kind of have to play it up a little bit," Kim says. "I always get a little bit nervous because I am new to acting and I respect it so much, so I just want to do it justice." But, um, you're playing yourself. [People]
• The scene: A VMA party. Champagne! Celebrities! Stephanie Pratt's credit card: declined. [Page Six]
• A New York theater doing The Piven Monologues, comic look at the star's case of mercury poisoning, has received a cease and desist letter from Jeremy Piven. [Page Six]
• Jane Fonda has penned a HuffPo essay about her letter protesting the Toronto International Film Festival's decision to showcase and celebrate Tel Aviv. She writes: "As I said in my recent blog, the greatest "re-branding" of Israel would be to celebrate that country's long standing, courageous and robust peace movement by helping to end the blockade of Gaza through negotiations with all parties to the conflict, and by stopping the expansion of West Bank settlements. That's the way to show Israel's commitment to peace, not a PR campaign." [Huffington Post]
• "It's the last leg of Eddie Izzard's 43 marathons in 51 days. How did the less than athletic comic pull off such a feat of endurance?" [BBC News]
• Home Depot will start selling Martha Stewart stuff in 2010, when her deal with K-Mart ends. [Reuters]
• The late Bea Arthur was remembered at Broadway's Majestic Theatre on Monday. [NY Post, People]
• At the Bea Arthur memorial, Rue McClanahan told a touching story in which Bea said: "Rue, I love. Betty White's a cunt." [Page Six]
• "A famous celebrity raped me and Peter knows who it was. It was years ago before I was with Pete, and my friends and family knew about it at the time." — Katie "Jordan" Price. [Daily Mail]
• "I think music piracy is having a dangerous effect on British music, but some really rich and successful artists like Nick Mason from Pink Floyd and Ed O'Brien from Radiohead don't seem to think so. These guys from huge bands said file sharing music is fine. It probably is fine for them. They do sell out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections in the world. For new talent though, file sharing is a disaster as it's making it harder and harder for new acts to emerge. I don't think what's out there is perfect. It's stupid that kids can't buy anything on the internet without credit, forcing them to steal Mum's credit card or download illegally." — Lily Allen. [Telegraph]
• "No one was injured. In fact, the only one who seemed irritated by the whole affair was a tiny Jewish woman who kept saying, 'I don't care who is in the limo. I have somewhere to be!'" — Joan Rivers, whose limo sideswiped a bus yesterday. [Page Six]
• "I hate when celebrities make a big deal of themselves. When I talk to Diddy, I'm just like ‘Hey Sean, no big deal.'" — Jon Gosselin. [MSNBC Scoop]
• "He slapped me once but he got hit on the head three times by me… [I] was horrified he spit on me, in my face." — Whitney Houston, on Bobby Brown. [NY Daily News]

[New York, September 9. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[New York, September 8. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[New York, September 8. Image via INF]

[New York, September 3. Image via INFDaily.]

• After shooting a fight scene for The Bounty, a source says Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler were "lovey-dovey" and "we saw him give her a little kiss." He was also throwing peanuts and popcorn in her mouth. [Radar Online]

• Jennifer Aniston feels "rejected and upset" because Bradley Cooper chose Renee Zellweger over her. "She wanted to turn her date with Cooper into something...she honestly feels screwed over," says a source. [Us]
• It's only been a few days since Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn announced that they're divorcing, but he's already been spotted partying with two different women. [TMZ]
• Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall are fighting on the set of SATC 2 because Kim's upset that she just broke up with her boyfriend Alan Wyse. "Sarah is too busy to comfort Kim or worry about her problems at the moment, and she basically told her as much," says a source. "Kim has been moping around, feeling sorry for herself and Sarah basically told her to snap out of it and buck up her ideas." [This Is London]
• Ryan Jenkins has been charged with the murder of Jasmine Flore by the Orange County D.A. [TMZ]
• The murder complaint against Ryan Jenkins says his bail recommendation is $10 million and a wanted poster warns that he's "armed and dangerous." [TMZ]
• The police got a "Ramey Warrent" for Ryan Jenkins that lets them bypass the D.A. and go directly to the judge, which is often used in cases when a suspect is on the run. [TMZ]
• Police have confirmed that Ryan Jenkins has entered Canada. It seems he took a boat from Washington State to Canada, then abandoned the boat and entered the country on foot. [People]
• Ryan Jenkins has business ties to Honduras and that may be his final destination. [TMZ]
• A criminal complaint had been filed against Ryan Jenkins for allegedly hitting Jasmine Flore "in the arm with his fist" in June. [TMZ]
• TMZ has an email Ryan Jenkins sent to Jasmine Fiore three weeks before she was murdered. He wrote: "Your [sic] my angel, despite what we've done to each other." [TMZ]
• Joe Jackson says Michael Jackson's burial has been pushed to August 31, two days after what would have been his 51st birthday because there are still things the family needs to get in order, that apparently they didn't get to in the past two months. [TMZ]
• Katherine Jackson asked a judge to let her show a confidential AEG Michael Jackson memorabilia deal to her financial advisors. AEG has threatened to pull out because the company is worried people are losing interest in MJ. [TMZ]
• Tito Jackson and Gladys Knight will do a U.K. tour called the "Midnight Train to Love," as a tribute to Michael Jackson. Tito will perform songs by MJ and the Jackson 5, as well as music from his upcoming album. [Reuters]
• Promoters for the global Michael Jackson tribute concert in Vienna say the web site crashed half an hour before ticket sales were set to star because a million people had logged on. 85,000 passes are available for the September 26 concert. [AP]
• David Copperfield said (through lawyers during an interview because the reporter started asking her, "Who's your favorite Australian..." The manager thought the reporter was going to ask about Australian designer Katie Perry, who Katy was in a legal battle with earlier this year, but the reporter says she just wanted to know who her favorite Australian artist is. [The Sun]
• Snoop Dogg had to poll the audience during Who Wants To Be A Millionaire because he didn't know the name of the character with an inkblot on his face from Watchmen. He said, "Man I seen that movie too and I fell asleep on it." [The Sun]
• Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Oz are suing a websites for products like "Colon Pro Cleanse, Power Colon Cleanse, Colon Max" that feature their images, names, and voices. Their lawyers say the companies are cashing in "on the false premise that [the products] have been tested or recommended by Miss Winfrey and/or Dr. Oz when they have not." [TMZ]
• Oprah Winfrey is planning a huge party for the 10th anniversary of O, The Oprah Magazine, in May. She may hold a concert at Radio City Music Hall or close down New York's West Side Highway for a charity event. [E!]
• At first the owner of the Centerville Pie Co. on Cape Cod denied that she sold Oprah Winfrey's entourage 20 pies, but Oprah herself called the Cape Cod Times to say, "the pie-gate escapade actually did happen." [AP]
• Paula Abdul was in negotiations to play Helen on Ugly Betty but was replaced with Kristen Johnston due to her list of demands, which possibly included a private jet. Johnston said, "I've always considered myself the poor man's Paula Abdul." [Entertainment Weekly]
• Richard Hatch was serving out the end of his sentence on house arrest but was returned to prison on Tuesday when he gave an unauthorized interview to NBC and now the ACLU is getting involved. A spokesman said, "It's appalling to think that he has been sent to jail merely for speaking to the media about his own court case." [AP]
• Bjork and her husband Matthew Barney are buying a co-op in Brooklyn. [N.Y. Magazine]
• Jordan Scott, who wrote an obscure vampire novel called The Nocturne is suing Stephenie Meyer because she says she stole ideas from her book for Breaking Dawn. [Reuters]
• Though it was reported that Lady Gaga would be toning things down when her tour stopped in Israel, at her last performance she faked an orgasm onstage and screamed, "Get your dicks out. Cause I heard there some pretty big cocks here in Israel!" [ONTD]
• Claire Danes is wearing fishnets and a leotard on the cover of BlackBook here: [BlackBook]
• "Life, that's what this record is about... It's so easy for me to do a boy-bashing pop song, but to sit down and write honestly about something that's really close to me, something I've been through, it's a totally different thing." — Avril Lavigne on her new record. [Rolling Stone]
• You can watch the new video for "Run This Town" featuring Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Kanye West here: [Just Jared]
• Jared Kushner asked for Donald Trump's permission to marry his daughter, Ivanka Trump. She says, "I thought it was adorable." [People]
• RHOA's Nene Leakes says despite co-star Kim Zolciak's accusations, she hasn't been cheating on her husband, Gregg Leakes, with NFL player Charles Grant. Nene says, "Charles is not anybody I'm seeing. I want to know where Kim gets the information from." [Star Magazine]
• Bill Cosby will be presented the Mark Twin Prize for American Humor at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts by Jerry Seinfeld in October. [AP]
• Mickey Rourke says of filming The Wrestler, "I'm not 20 years old any more and when they throw your ass down, something is gonna hurt. My back would go out, my knee would go out. I had three MRIs in the first two months. If they would say they want to make Part 2, I would say, 'No, thank you.'" [AP]
• Lucy Clarkson, the model for Lara Croft says she had bulimia. "It makes me angry when I see very thin celebrities who are clearly not their natural body shape denying it. That sends out the wrong message. There are girls as young as five saying they think they are too fat," says Clarkson. "The industry wants you to look a certain way. For Lara Croft they wanted me to be quite muscular, so I was working out with a personal trainer. My curves were in demand from lingerie companies and men's magazines, but the fashion world pressured me to be skinny." [The Star]
• Kourtney Kardashian gives a run through of all the baby gifts she's already received at the link, but says she and boyfriend Scott Disick are also studying up on childbirth online. She says, "We watch these videos together on some random Web site I found called healthguru.com. They have videos which tell you what to expect, like the size of the baby at different stages, what the baby is doing inside. They're cool. Neither of us have read a book, but we're going to." [People]
• Apparently it's standard now to ask pregnant women if they'd pose nude. Kourtney Kardashian said: "I think so. I'd have to think about it." [Us]
• Heidi Klum says she and Seal won't be having any more kids after their fourth child is born. "We're outnumbered," say Klum. "Four is perfect. Three is a lot. But four? It's a lot of work. We're hands-on, and we feel like this is what we can handle." [USA Today]

• Mel Gibson's pregnant girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva says she wants the public to get to know her (now that she has an album coming out), adding, "I thought he was happily married until I was reassured otherwise. And then it happened..."

• "It's not like I was planning to meet Mel specifically. Life happens," she said. "I'd like to be judged if so, by my art, by my music. That's primarily why I'm here. Of course, if the tabloids wrote the truth about most of people, maybe it would be really boring... How can I be judged for falling in love? We live in the same city. I don't control who I meet. I meet many people in art and music and film, but love is inexplicable." [Reuters]
• Jon Gosselin defended his new look on Jon and Kate Plus 8 last night, saying, "It's just the way I've always been expressing myself. Things are just coming out a lot more now... This is who I am and this is who I'm gonna be." He said he's had his ears pierced since he was 15 and just decided to start wearing earrings again. He added, "It's not a midlife crisis. Everyone thinks it's a midlife-I'm nowhere near midlife. I'm 32-years old. I've always liked motorcycles and cars and fast things and I have four tattoos." [E!]
• A source says Kate Gosselin understands she needs Jon and Kate Plus 8 as a source of income, but Jon Gosselin doesn't. "Jon thinks that he's bigger than ‘Jon & Kate,' but he isn't and it's frustrating to her," said the source. "He needs to focus and make sure the show does well so the family can be well." [MSNBC]
• After Miley Cyrus' pole-dancing routing on the Teen Choice Awards she was criticized on Twitter as "the next Britney Spears." Miley responded by Tweeting, "For all the people calling me the 'next Britney,' THANK U. I couldn't ask for a better compliment :)" [MSNBC]
• Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are officially back together. Linds surprised Sam in Chicago this past weekend by taking her out for her birthday. Later they went to a club and an eyewitness saw them "fighting over which drink belonged to whom." [N.Y. Post]
• Renee Zellweger and Bradley Cooper boarded a flight from New York to Barcelona together and have been seen together at hotels in New York and Los Angeles. [N.Y. Post]
• When asked if she'd like to work with Brad Pitt again, Angelina Jolie said, "I would love to, but we have a lot of kids to raise," and added that they will "always" want more children. [E!]
• Naked photos of Twilight's Ashley Greene are going around the internet. Her lawyer has confirmed the photos are real and says she's planning to sue. [TMZ]
• The mayor of Laglio, the Italian town George Clooney lives in, is imposing a €19 on people who stalk Clooney saying, "We've arrived at the point when hordes of people are yelling his name from the street at the top of their voices. Some of the cheekier ones are even going up and ringing the bell." [The Independent]
• Jay-Z will appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show, prompting rumors that Oprah lifted her 10 year ban on rappers and made a deal with Beyonce when she was on the show last season. A rep denied both stories. [MSNBC]
• Oprah has committed the sin of eating, despite announcing earlier this year that she's watching her weight. She took girls from her school in South Africa to New York and ate shrimp fajitas and potato skins at Planet Hollywood in New York. [N.Y. Post]
• Sources say Sadie Frost is furious that ex Jude Law got Samantha Burke pregnant because seeing their dad in the news is upsetting their three children. "It's really hard for the children and they're her main concern," said a source. "She is deep down furious with Jude – not for having the fling but for being irresponsible – and wants him to pay whatever it takes to keep the family protected from further embarrassment." [Daily Express]
• Jessica Simpson's arrival in Tokyo on Sunday coincided with two earthquakes and a tropical storm. She Tweeted: "Thought I was hallucinating. I have never felt anything like this in my life. Laying in bed watching CNN." [The Sun]
• After returning from North Korea, Bill Clinton had his staff call Sony and ask for a screener of The Ugly Truth. [E!]
• ABC's entertainment president has responded to Katherine Heigl's public whining about long days on Grey's Anatomy saying, "I think it's unfortunate... People are going to behave in the way they choose to behave. There are so many people who work so hard on ‘Grey's,' and all of our shows, without any notoriety and those are the ones I'd be concerned about, people who feel like they're being criticized or looked down upon." [MSNBC]
• Simon Cowell is finalizing a deal to continue judging American Idol for at least three years. [Reuters]
• Victoria Beckham got a new tattoo on her wrist to celebrate her 10-year marriage to David Beckham with a tattoo that says "together forever, eternally" in Hebrew. [Daily Mail]
• Lady Gaga got a tattoo on the inside of her upper arm in German. "It says 'In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?'" she said. [N.Y. Daily News]
• The IRS has placed liens on two New Orleans properties Nicolas Cage put up for sale. When the property is sold the IRS must be paid over $6.26 million dollars because Cage didn't pay his income tax in 2007 and didn't pay enough between 2002 and 2004. [Nola]
• Paul Reubens will star in a stage version of The Pee-wee Herman Show in Hollywood. Many of the original cast including Miss Yvonne, Cowboy Curtis, and Jambi the Genie will return. [Variety]
• Katie Price had a ruined the vow renewal ceremony of her make-up artist Gary Cockerill and Phil Taylor by climbing onstage and screaming at the guests, "You're all fucking cunts," then announcing that ex Peter Andre is a "fucking asshole." [The Sun]
• Pete Doherty will appear in court today to face drunk driving charges. He previously plead not guilty to dangerous and drunk driving but admitted to drug possession charges and not having a license or insurance. [The Mirror]
• Candy Spelling says, "I have been trying and I'm never going to stop trying to reconcile with Tori. I love her. She is my child." She also insists that while Tori Spelling's TV show made it look like she just didn't show up to her granddaughter's birthday party, she actually emailed Tori on the day of the party to cancel. [OK]
• When asked about Candy Spelling's claim that her grandchildren are being used as "reality show props," Tori Spelling pretended she hadn't read her mom's recent statement but husband Dean McDermott said, "We don't use our children as props, we take really good care of our children, we love our children... everyone's entitled to their opinion." [TMZ]
• Leighton Meester and Sebastian Stan are getting serious. A friend says they're planning on moving in together soon and this weekend they went to a club with Demi Moore and his Spread co-star Ashton Kutcher. [N.Y. Post]
• The Georgia home of Lisa Wu-Hartwell of Real Housewives of Atlanta and her husband, football player Edgerton Hartwell was foreclosed on last week. Their rep says, "Ed and Lisa are fine. They have settled in their [new] home, that sits on 10 acres and they OWN it!" [TMZ]
• Thom Yorke says Radiohead may release single songs but won't be making another album anytime soon because, "we've all said that we can't possibly dive into that again. It'll kill us." He added, "None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. Not straight off." [BBC]
• Country duo Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn posted a message on their website saying they've agreed to "call it a day" after 20 years of performing together. Brooks & Dunn will release a greatest hits album next month and do a final tour in 2010. [AP]
• Diane Kruger, who is dating Joshua Jackson, said she's not interested in marrying again because her first marriage ended in divorce. She explained, "I felt terribly responsible for someone else's feelings and their life. It's painful to love each other but not be able to be together." [Daily Express]
• "I'm glad I'm not coming up now. I would never be able to deal with that kind of media attention that these actors do now. I really feel fortunate that I lived my life and raised my family and did all of that without being hounded." — Jessica Lange [E!]
• On the show Who Do You Think You Are Kim Cattrall discovered her grandfather was married to two women at the same time. "I knew he was gutsy, but now he's a criminal. Unbelievable," said Cattrall, "I'm quite angry about that. As a woman I find that quite despicable." [Daily Mail]

• A smattering of guy-centric sites have decided that August 4 should be A Day Without Megan Fox:

A Megan Fox media blackout day. Which, of course, makes me want to talk about Megan Fox, say Megan Fox and just Megan Fox Megan Fox Megan Fox. [Gatecrasher]

• More info on A Day Without Megan Fox at the link, and, of course, an intro to the Twitter tag #NoMF. [Asylum]
• A family affair: Madonna's daughter Lourdes will be in Her Madgesty's music video for the single "Celebration." [ET]
• Meanwhile, Guy Ritchie is in Montenegro cavorting with 18-year-old twin models. [Daily Mail]
• If this is true, it is Epic: A Kevin Federline weight-loss reality show. [MSNBC]
• A second act for Courtney Love? She may be moving to New York's West Village and signing with a "youthful" NYC music agency which manages bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco. [Observer]
• Chris Brown's "Forever" is in the iTunes top 10, thanks to that viral wedding video. [Reuters]
• Detectives and DEA agents seized cell phones and a hard drive from Dr. Conrad Murray's house yesterday, confirming suspicions that he is the target of a manslaughter investigation. [People]
• Michael Jackson may have used at least 19 aliases to get drugs; authorities are searching Dr. Conrad Murray's medical records for the names. [TMZ]
• "LAPD detectives and members of the L.A. County Coroner's office are gathering info on various doctors who treated Michael Jackson over the years." [TMZ]
• Tito Jackson says: "I had no clue of what was being done by his personal physician whatsoever… but I feel at times he was [encircled by enablers]." [ET]
• Michael Jackson's personal chef recalls the day MJ died — how Dr. Conrad Murray ran down the stairs screaming, "Go get Prince!" [Yahoo News via AP]
• Josh Hartnett moved out of his apartment and an eyewitness says it was kind of a mess: "Organic food everywhere … All that's left is trash and facial products and stuff." [Observer]
• Even Kim Kardashian's BFF Brittny Gastineau was surprised that KK and Reggie Bush broke up. "I loved them as a couple," she says. "They clicked well together." [People]
• Katy Perry thinks Katy Perry's fake Josh Grobin[sic] tattoo is hilar. [Gatecrasher]
• Eddie Izzard will run more than 1,000 miles around the UK in seven weeks — for charity. [The Sun]
• What will you be watching this fall? According on one research company: Jay Leno, Vampire Diaries, Glee and Cougar Town. [Reuters]
• Elizabeth Mitchell dishes about Lost, V, and Sawyer, at the link. [E!]
• Johnny Knoxville: Officially divorced. [Extra]
• "Rachel Weisz sizes up her beefy co-star." [Telegraph]
• Whoa: Bryce Dallas Howard joins the Twilight cast for the Eclipse film, replacing Rachelle Lefevre as the character of Victoria. Not a sparkle vamp fan? All you need to know is this red-haired bloodsucker builds an army. [Variety]
• Charlize Theron will will produce, develop and star in an adaptation of Christopher Buckley's satirical novel Florence of Arabia. (Plot: A State Dept. employee {Charlize} watches her friend marry the prince of a Middle Eastern country and subsequently get executed, then fights for equal rights for the women of that country.) [Variety]
• From a description of Animal Fair magazine's 10th Annual Paws for Fashion Show: "Real Housewife Jill Zarin carried her tiny Chihuahua, whose red neckerchief matched her gown, and America's Next Top Model Jaslene Gonzalez and her Chihuahua wore Nina Ricci." [Observer]
• Slash and Steven Adler were both granted a restraining order yesterday against a woman who sounds a little… off. [TMZ]
• Prepare to weep: In a study of 5,000 children between the ages of 6 and 15, one in 20 picked former Boom Town Rats singer Bob Geldof instead of Sir Isaac Newton when asked to name the man who discovered gravity. A quarter did not know William Shakespeare wrote King Lear and nearly two thirds did not know when the slave trade was abolished in Britain. One in 20 were under the false impression that Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was written by JK Rowling. [Telegraph]
• ANTM's CariDee English and Semi Precious Weapons frontman Justin Tranter: Makeout sesh in a pool. [Page Six]
• Q: In one scene the female character saws through her husband's leg, and in another the male character ejaculates blood. Is this the darkest film you've ever made? A: "Yeah, it could be. [Pause.] Yeah, yeah. Probably. What am I going to do now? I have no idea." — From a Q & A with Lars Von Trier, on his film, Antichrist. [Time]
• Blind item! "Which hard-partying rockette has so few friends that she calls up her publicist for lengthy four-hour chats every day?" [Gatecrasher]
• "I've butted heads with Ann Coulter many times on TV and I enjoy that. I want it to be a conglomeration of different opinions. I want guests to disagree with me, with each other, and have spirited debates. Not just about politics. I'm interested in everything, except sports and I'm interested in sports if there's an issue involved — rather than, you know, batting averages. [But no yelling.] Even on The View when it gets like that, it gives me a headache." — Joy Behar, on her new talk show for HLN. [LA Times]
• "Personally I think that's one of the most depressing things about the film industry generally today. The writers and directors should be blamed just as much as the studios because really everything seems to be a remake or adapting a 1970s TV show that was never particularly good. Why anyone thinks that it would be a good feature film now, you know, goodness knows why. And I guess it's easy to say it's security that you know a studio is only prepared to put $150 million or $200 million into something if it's a known quantity. But at the same time I'm also aware that audiences are getting fed up with the lack of original ideas and original stories. And if you look back to the great days of Star Wars and Indiana Jones and those sorts of movies, they weren't based on TV shows, they weren't based on comics. They were inspired by them and they had DNA in them which came from years of Flash Gordon and various things in the past but nonetheless they were original. And yet we seem to be incapable as a general industry, which includes not just the studios but the filmmakers and writers and directors, we seem to be incapable of doing that now for some reason. It's a little bit depressing." — Peter Jackson, who is promoting a film called District 9. [LA Times]
• "If one more 'journalist' makes a cavalier statement about me and my band, I will personally or with my fans' help, greet them at their home and discover just how much they believe in their freedom of speech. I dare you all to write one more thing that you won't say to my face. Because I will make you say it. In that manner. That is a threat." — Marilyn Manson. [Page Six]
• "I had a great time when I was young and still feel youthful. But I've no desire still to look as if I'm in my 20s. I don't want to look in the mirror and see The Joker from Batman staring back." — Kim Cattrall won't be getting plastic surgery. [Daily Express]
• "Some people are really passionate about film and some just want to be stars. I'm more interested in film." — Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, who will continue to work with his film company, Oscilloscope Laboratories, despite having cancer of the salivary gland. [Financial Times]
• "I think at first it was odd for the fans when I came on board. There was a question of whether I was going to kind of try to bring some amped up macho mentality … I wouldn't even know how to do that. I think I'm pretty fem. I have a lot of estrogen." — Chris Weitz, director of the next Twilight film, New Moon. [Time]
• Kid Rock does not like Twitter: "It's gay. If one more person asks me if I have a Twitter, I'm going to tell them, 'Twitter this shit, motherfucker.'" [Page Six]

• According to this report, Mischa Barton was taken from her home last week because she was so high on coke friends were afraid she was going to kill herself. [NY Post]

• A source says of Mischa Barton: "She is a mess. She is a suicidal, uninsurable mess." [The Sun]
• Madonna has visited the family of a worker killed in a stage collapse in France and will meet with three other people hurt in the accident. [UPI]
• Someone stole three boxes of clothing from L.A. stylist Jennifer Rade Thursday night. Who was Rade's client? Who was she collecting dresses for? Angelina Jolie. [Page Six]
• "Single Jessica Simpson Keeps A Low Profile." You mean she's not running around in circles chirping "I'm single! I'm single!"? Huh. [People]
• Nick Lachey says there is no truth to the rumor that he and Jessica Simpson might reunite: "I haven't talked to her in probably two years," Nick says. "I wish her happiness. That's where it pretty much ends." [People]
• Prince was spotted on a first class flight from Minneapolis to La Guardia. He was reading Elle magazine, carrying a gold- and diamond-encrusted walking stick and wearing flip-flops with sparkly silver socks. Whoever spotted him has pretty much had the best day of his or her life and it's all downhill from here. [Page Six]
• Gwyneth Paltrow: "Furious" that Scarlett Johansson is upstaging her. See, ScarJo is on the new Iron Man 2 cover of Entertainment Weekly, and in the new publicity shots; Gwynnie is not. [The Sun]
• David Beckham played his first home game with the L.A. Galaxy this year — and was booed by haters. One fan jumped over some seats to confront Beckham and ended up getting arrested. [AP]
• When we saw this Jean-Charles de Castelbajac ensemble, we were like, who the hell would wear that? Well, the answer, of course, is: Lady Gaga. [BuzzFeed]
• Kate Gosselin and the kids were in New York on Saturday to do a photo shoot for TLC; there was some kind of kerfluffle between security guards outside of the photo studio and paparazzi — the guards used umbrellas, styrofoam boards and folding tables to keep the snappers back; the kids had to be hustled into the studio. "It must have been very upsetting for the kids," says one observer. [People]
• Jon Gosselin's girlfriend Hailey Glassman went to fat camp before college, but would cheat by going to Panda Express. Apparently this was before her alleged "coke diet." [Perez]
• Jon and Kate Gosselin have been split up and living separately since last year, and Jon didn't start dating until after the divorce. [People]
• Wait, what? Jon Gosselin is dating a Star magazine reporter named Kate Major? [Gatecrasher]
• Concert promoter AEG is auctioning off the rights to the rehearsal footage of Michael Jackson's "This Is It" tour, and no Jackson family members are involved in the sale. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Looks like Sony Pictures is close to closing a deal to make a feature film out of the Michael Jackson rehearsal footage. [Variety]
• La Toya Jackson penned a "tribute single" after her brother's death and it will be available on iTunes on July 28. [Mirror]
• TMZ reported that Jermaine, Tito and Jackie Jackson would be performing at the Jamaican Reggae Summerfest. But Jermaine says: "TMZ needs to get their facts straight. We're not going to Jamaica." [E!]
• Tito Jackson seems to blame Dr. Conrad Murray for Michael Jackson's death, saying: "My opinion is that he panicked when my brother didn't wake up… He did have a pulse but he couldn't bring him back. I don't know what the time lapse was between the doctor finding him and when he called paramedics. But I believe if he had immediately called for help we might still have my brother here today, he would definitely still be alive." [Mirror]
• An anonymous senior law enforcement official says there will not be a murder charge in the Michael Jackson case. [UPI]
• Is Katherine Jackson trying to object to the executors named in Michael Jackson's will? And if so, why? There's a "no contest" clause in the will, meaning anyone who files objections to the will automatically gets no money. Is she being manipulated… by Joe? [TMZ]
• This report claims that Janet Jackson has offered to raise Michael's children, and loves them like they are her own. [The Sun]
• Russell Crowe is a hero! No, really: He helped out "a real-life damsel in distress" on the set of his new Robin Hood film. A crew member's car went up in flames when she was on her way to work. She told her colleagues about her scary experience, and Russell made a joke about it — but then ended up giving her enough cash to buy a new car. [Mirror, NY Daily News]
• Paula Abdul does not have a new contract to appear on American Idol for another season, which is probably more of a publicity stunt than an actual possibility that she won't return to the show. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Nevertheless, there's a #keeppaula Twitter trend. [LA Times]
• One reason Paula Abdul might not have a contract: She's holding out for more money. Apparently she makes around $2.5 mil a year, compared to the $15 a year Ryan Seacrest gets. [TMZ]
• Gossip Girls Michelle Trachtenberg and Jessica Szohr, as well as Rumer Willis, Ali Lohan and Stephanie Pratt attended a Charlotte Russe event in NYC last week, where a model playing air guitar almost hit a waiter in the head. [WWD]
• 50 Cent has been trying to sell his is giant mansion in Connecticut — the one that used to belong to Mike Tyson — which has 19 bedrooms, 37 bathrooms and a club with stripper poles. He's knocked about $4 million off the price, so if you have $10.9 million, it's all yours. [The Sun, Hartford Courant]
• Emma Thompson is looking frumpy and old-fashioned: She's filming Nanny McPhee 2! [Daily Mail]
• Jon Stewart has sent Daily Show DVDs to a 32-year-old man with leukemia and has offered to give the guy a tour of the set. [UPI]
• When Kylie Minogue and Spanish beau Andres Velencoso were arguing in a NYC club last week, he pulled out a camera and photographed her while she was upset. A source says: "He's making a collage of Kylie and has already got three albums full of photos of her, which he hopes to publish some day." [Daily Express]
• A source says of John Mayer: "Several years ago when he was dating Jessica Simpson, he couldn't go to her birthday party because he was on tour. So the night of her birthday she had dinner with [hairdresser] Ken Paves and a few friends. Everyone thought John would forget her birthday, but then a gift arrived from him — it was a DVD of him in concert. Jessica spent the rest of the night watching the DVD on a loop, 'being with him.' It was so sad." [Page Six]
• Zzzz: Peaches Geldof fell asleep during a TV interview with Fearne Cotton. [The Sun]
• "Kim Cattrall and toy boy split because he 'refused to be a kept man'" [Daily Mail]
• Jay-Z sips white wine as he is interviewed about The Blueprint 3, his 11th studio album, due in September — eight years to the day after the debut of the original Blueprint. "I wanted to bring it full circle," he says. "The first Blueprint was based on soul samples and more of a place where I came from and the records I listened to growing up with my mom and pop. This Blueprint, I liken it to a new classic, simply because we — Usher, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, myself — are becoming the people that we looked up to musically growing up, like Marvin Gaye and Frank Sinatra." [Reuters]
• "Sienna Miller: 'I nearly burnt my breasts making GI Joe.'" [Daily Mail]
• Morgan Freeman is in talks to star with Bruce Willis in Red, based on the WildStorm/DC Comic. [Variety]
• Singer Christina Milian and producer/singer The Dream: Engaged. [NY Daily News]
• Click the link if you'd like to see video of Willem Dafoe talking about Lars von Trier's controversial thriller Antichrist. You know, the one where Charlotte Gainsbourg takes a blunt object to Dafoe's [ genitalia? [Guardian]
• Dazed Digital: There's a lot of nudity in the film so, I have to ask, is that actually your…
  Willem Dafoe: … Penis? No, it's not mine. Lars used a porn actor for those scenes. It was a good decision because, if it was me, then that's all that people would talk about. Obviously Lars wants the characters to have genitals but it would become a distraction: ‘Oh, they really had sex!' If he had asked me to do it, I don't know what I would have said. [Dazed Digital]
• Once, David Byrne almost hit Paris Hilton with his bike. [Page Six]
• RIP Frank McCourt. [NY Daily News]
• Blind item! "Which troubled starlet got her first big break on TV by sending the producer a tape of herself having sex with another girl? The producer thought the ploy was so original, he cast her instead of dozens of other ingénues." [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which perennial bachelor princeling should be more careful? While His Serene Highness was cavorting on a yacht in the Mediterranean with a hunky guy, he thought the servants on board would keep their mouths shut. He was wrong." [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which creepy dude and his posse of pals take photos of their overnight lady guests while the women are sleeping and tack them up on a 'Wall of Shame' afterward?" [Gatecrasher]
• "He put my son to shame! I provided my son with the best martial artists in the world, and he could not be persuaded to try it. In just two months, Jaden had learned so much. He is truly a talented boy." — Jackie Chan says Will Smith's son, who will star in Kung Fu Kid, is better at martial arts than his own son. [NY Daily News]
• "Anderson was just amazing. He said that the seven most horrifying words you can hear from a mother are, 'I'm going to write an erotic novel.' But he's fine with it, and of course I gave it to him before I even sent it off." — Gloria Vanderbilt, on her new book. The 85-year-old also says: "I think it's a work of art. The age of the artist is not what we're talking about. I mean, it's as if you looked at a painting and said, How old was the person that painted this? You really don't think in those terms." [Time]
• "When I started out, I'm not sure I was actually in it for the right reasons. I wanted very much to be famous. I did expect to succeed and I did have faith that I would. In reality, though, it has turned out to be something very different to what I wanted. It's the work and not the adulation that has proved to be the most fulfilling." — Gerard Butler. [Telegraph]
• "I have a boyfriend now, but I've been linked to so many guys I sound like a wanton woman. People say to me, 'Oh, it must be so easy for you, dating and boys.' It's really not easy. I suppose guys are either intimidated by me and have their defenses up, or they take the piss out of me. And I'm surrounded by cute older guys on set. That's my problem. It's a minefield, to be honest. It's stressful." — Emma Watson. [Mirror]
• "I'm sure I would have liked to have seen my parents more, and at that time, we did come second. But I like to think of them in Paris, having fun, not thinking too much ... And it was a different time." — Charlotte Gainsbourg, on being the daughter of free spirits French singer Serge Gainsbourg and the English actress Jane Birkin. [Independent]
• "He was the most important voice in our lives for thirty years. And that voice made people reach for the stars. I hate the world without Walter Cronkite." — George Clooney. [Yahoo News via E!]