• Uh-oh. Mary J. Blige punched her husband in the face at her record release party. Dude was reportedly bleeding. She was heard screaming:

"You're not going to ruin my night!" And "What are you gonna do, Chris Brown me?" What happened to no more drama!?!?!? [Page Six]

• According to this report, Mary J. Blige "smacked" her husband for checking out a waitress. [NY Daily News]
• Have you noticed that Mary J. Blige and Rihanna have the same haircut? [TMZ]
• Miley Cyrus's new boyfriend, Liam Hemsworth, was once in a brawl after an event in Hollywood, so this piece claims he has a "history of violence." [TMZ]
• Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins actually broke up over the summer; they're just dropping the bomb on us now. For Christmas! Sniffle. [Page Six]
• Brittany Murphy's family has hired a security team for the funeral today. [TMZ]
• Vanessa Hudgens is suing the owners of a website which posted and refused to take down nude pictures of her. [TMZ]
• Managers for the kids from Jersey Shore have been trying to get clubs to pay $10,00 for appearance fees, but NYC hot spots are all, thanks but no thanks. [Page Six]
• New Jersey lawmakers want MTV to cancel Jersey Shore. [AP]
• Kristin Cavallari partied with the cast of Jersey Shore and the pictures speak for themselves. [ONTD]
• Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher bought their Christmas presents at a vintage store. [People]
• BREAKING: Renee Zellweger went for Starbucks. [3AM]
• Fox will order more seasons of American Idol with or without Simon Cowell. It's hard to imagine it without, yet surely the show would chug along… The voices are the true stars. [Reuters]
• BTW: American Idol will return to the top 24 format; the top 36 was "too unwieldy." [NY Post]
• Susan Boyle says: "It's been an absolutely brilliant year and I can't thank everyone enough for the support I've been given, not only here but around the world. I am the happiest I have ever been and truly enjoying myself." [Mirror]
• Sometimes people do not want to be linked to Tila Tequila, and the gossip columns should respect that! [Page Six]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Even though Tila Tequila tweeted that she was pregnant, what she meant was she's about to get pregnant. She is ready to be a surrogate. [NY Daily News]
• Glee won four Satellite Awards, which could mean it's got a good chance at the Golden Globes. [NY Post]
• Rob McElhenny, aka Mac on It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, has bought a bar in Philadephia's Old City neighborhood. [ONTD]
• Uh, Tom Waits is in The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus? Didn't realize that. He says he's not an actor, but, "I do some acting." And: "Nobody wants you to be good at two things… They'd rather get a specialist, a guy who just works on eyes or scalp or ankles. Nobody wants a general practitioner. But the arts are such that there's a place where they overlap." Check out his character's pencil thin mustache at the link. [LA Times]
• Avatar is doing okay here in the US, but it's doing much better outside of the country — with a total $285 million at the box office worldwide. Since the movie has a $300 million price tag, it's almost about to break even. [Forbes]
• Seam Penn is dating hot young things. [Page Six]
• Rhoda's Valerie Harper is returning to TV to play Brad Garrett's mom on an episode of Til Death. [Page Six]
• "The secret comic-book origin of Sherlock Holmes." [Reuters]
• "As a little dainty, beautiful baby I just worshipped her, but now she's at an age where we fight, where sometimes she hates me, sometimes I get really mad at her. It's like, 'Oh you must be a bad mother,' No, I'm not a bad mother. I'm a very good mother" — Courtney Love on Frances Bean Cobain. [Page Six via Spinner.com]
• "We ate a lot of chicken, you know, because chicken's cheap, we had so much chicken — chicken backs, chicken everything... to this day, I can only eat small pieces or else I feel funny." — Eating chicken reminds Jay-Z of when he was poor. [Mirror via O Magazine]
• "I'm a firm believer that you can't will anything sooner than it's destined to happen no matter how much you want it. That's the way I live my life, and it's the way I'm able to keep my sanity in this industry."— Law & Order's Anthony Anderson, who used to work the phones for Ticketmaster. [WSJ]
• "I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration. I don't see anything different. On the domestic side, look here: What's so clear is that this country from the outset is projecting the interests of wealth and property. Look at the bailout of Wall Street. Why not the bailout of Main Street? He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black-and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman. But what choices do they have within the structure?" — Danny Glover is disappointed with Barack Obama. [The Life Files via News One]
• "They're just the most brilliant in the world. My fans are fucking really smart — they're art students, they're club kids, and some of them are just normal Top 40-listening kids in high school who don't feel like they have an identity yet and they're searching for one. My dad was at a show the other night and afterwards he said, 'Do you think your fans are smart?' and I said, 'Oh hell yeah, my fans are smart,' and he said, 'You know what, I was thinking the same thing during the show.' Every song I did, they remade on their own, and every photograph that I took, they took their own version of it. They remade my music videos, they designed clothes for me. They wrote poetry and made films and designed all sort of amazing paintings." — Lady Gaga is a fan of her fans. [Mirror via MTV News]

In one of the most in-depth examinations yet of the ins and outs of the Polanski case, The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin explores not just Polanski's crime and its aftermath, but Polanski himself. Polanski the man has, in the words of his agent Jeff Berg, "a very existential approach to life." This existentialism allows him to live without "bitterness," again according to Berg, about the death of his mother at Auschwitz and the murder of his wife Sharon Tate. It also produces some rather upsetting statements. In his autobiography, he wrote that during his time in Gstaad after his wife's death,

Kathy, Madeleine, Sylvia and others whose names I forget played a fleeting but therapeutic role in my life. They were all between sixteen and nineteen years old ... They took to visiting my chalet, not necessarily to make love — though some of them did — but to listen to rock music and sit around the fire and talk.

And two years after his rape of Samantha Gailey, he told Martin Amis,

I realize, if I have killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But ... fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls — everyone wants to fuck young girls!

This last reveals a solipsism (everyone wants exactly what I want!) that may have deserted Polanski in the long years of his rather comfortable exile, many of which he has spent married to actress Emmanuelle Seigner. While Polanski's claim that everyone was so worked up about his rape because of their desire to have sex with thirteen-year-old themselves is idiotic, it's true that others' feelings about the way he conducts his life — whether informed by jealousy, disapproval, or admiration — have influenced the progress of his case.

Toobin notes the now-famous probation officer's report, which creepily praised Polanski for being "solicitous regarding the possibility of pregnancy" (this solicitousness took the form of anal sex). He mentions an "equally smitten" psychiatrist, who reported that prison time "would impose an unusual degree of stress and hardship because of [Polanski's] highly sensitive personality and devotion to his work." Both men were, in Toobin's words, "starstruck" by the famous director. Toobin also notes that part of the reason Samantha Gailey (now Geimer) was unwilling to testify was because of the high-profile nature of celebrity trial. This unwillingness enabled Polanski to plead down to statutory rape, a bargain that not only shortened Polanski's potential sentence but also allowed many people to forget how severe his crime really was.

On the other hand, all the public attention on Polanski's trial may have made Judge Laurence Rittenband harsher. Polanski's prison sentence was stayed (again, a bit of leniency likely influenced by his fame) so that he could finish a film — while in Munich, apparently working on a distribution deal, he was photographed sitting with women and smoking a cigar. The photograph would never have been made public, and probably never taken, had Polanski not been world-famous. But along with public reaction to the case, it made Rittenband consider a longer sentence for Polanski, and possible deportation. It was at this point that Polanski fled.

In the end, Polanski's fame may have done him more good than ill — he'll never have to stand trial for rape, only for unlawful sex with a minor, and he can't serve more than two years. At the same time, Judge Rittenband was under all the pressure of public scrutiny in sentencing, and this may have influenced the result. Amanda Knox's case is obviously much different from Polanski's — for one, the details of her crime are far less clear. But she too may have suffered from a judicial system that wanted to make an example of a high-profile defendant. And on the flip side, she too has benefited from that high profile.

Just a few days after Knox's conviction, a senator from her home state is already advocating on her behalf. The Secretary of State may get involved. While many Americans — and Italians — revile her, many others leap to her defense without ever having met her. Knox isn't a famous director, but she's pretty and young and white, and her story makes better human-interest news than, say, those of the over a million people arrested for drugs in America this year.

Knox and Polanski became cause celebres to different people, for different reasons, but both now enjoy the benefit of supporters far beyond their own families and defense teams. Sadly, many people indicted in America and worldwide don't even have that much support. In the upcoming weeks, we'll be hearing a lot about both Knox and Polanski. We won't be hearing about the countless men, women, and teens represented by overworked public defenders, who will be convicted during that time of crimes they didn't commit, or given unfair sentences for crimes they did. The pressures of celebrity justice may sometimes work against famous defendants, but the pressures of racism and classism and unenlightened tough-on-crime-ism work just as steadily against the anonymous, and the problem that gets less media attention may actually be the more important one.

Image via The New Yorker.

The Celebrity Defense [The New Yorker]

Knox is reportedly on suicide watch, and one of her lawyers has announced that he'll appeal her conviction, focusing on the fact that none of her DNA was found at the crime scene. Meanwhile, some Americans supposedly "vowed to boycott Italian holidays, wine and food," at least according to The Sun. And Sen. Maria Cantwell, of Knox's home state of Washington, says, "I think what happened [Friday] is we had a decision in which it seems the overall impression of Amanda Knox by the press in Italy and the overwhelming amount of attention given this case may have prejudiced the jury." She continues, "I think it's important for both of our countries to make sure that justice is served and that there is a rule of law and a standard that people believe in." Cantwell plans to ask the EU to put pressure on Italy, and she will request a meeting with Hillary Clinton regarding Knox. Says Clinton, "Of course, I'll meet with Sen. Cantwell or anyone who has a concern but I can't offer any opinion about that at this time."

Knox's family members swear she's innocent, and are preparing to begin the arduous appeal process — it could be a whole year before her appeal even goes to trial. Meanwhile, her defenders continue to question the objectivity of the Italian court. Time writer Nina Burleigh tells ABC,

People here in this town [Perugia] have been reading these stories ... 'Sex Game Gone Wrong,' 'Drug Fueled Sex Game. They believe that scenario is real, that it's true. [...] A lot of people think that this verdict has a lot to do with the power of the prosecutor, the power of the police in this town and the fact that once this train started to roll ... the jury and the judge in this case were very leery of stopping it.

Not everyone is so supportive. Says the murder victim's brother, Lyle Kercher, "We're pleased that we got the decision but it's not a time for celebration." According to Libby Purves of the London Times, it's a time for an indictment of "fling culture." Here's her version of the crime:

We live in a transitional age where sexual licence is concerned: those who embrace it enthusiastically (bragging of having strangers on trains, like Knox) remain uneasily aware of old taboos. They can become shrilly angry if anyone seems to disapprove, possibly because deep down they are not sure they wholly approve of themselves. It is not hard to see how hostile Amanda Knox could become to her sober flatmate; and how, assisted by drink, drugs and admiring men, it could lead her into a vicious folie à trois. And thence, confused, to a drunken, clumsy cover-up and a chilling flippancy (even turning cartwheels) at the police station.

Purves says it's inaccurate to portray Knox as "sexually adventurous," and that "these people" (people who have casual sex? People who get accused of brutal throat-slittings? Are they one and the same?) are simply "randy and needy, and afraid or incapable of love." Purves continues,

What is really sad though - see, even I jib at saying "wrong" - is the idea of "adventurousness": sex made "zipless", gourmet, divorced from affection, understanding, wonder or hope. You clock a hot piece, pull, mate and discard with hardly a name-check. It rounds off the evening but blunts your humanity. Many grow out of it and find faithful partnerships. Some find later life haunted by it. Some misunderstand the other party's intentions and are devastated, or become stalkers.

At worst, a few confuse the general tolerance with permission to bully and coerce.

That's right, ladies. Better keep your pants zipped — or you might end up murdering your roommate and spending your life in an Italian jail. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Amanda Knox: U.S. Backlash Grows As Hillary Clinton Is Called In Over Jailing [Daily Mail]
Clinton In Knox Vow [Sun]
Fantasy World Fuelled By Sex, Drink And Drugs [TimesOnline]
Foxy Knoxy On 'Suicide Watch' [New York Post]
Knox "Completely Surprised" By Verdict, Parents Say [MSNBC]

• Rumors are flying that Lindsay Lohan is donating her time (except for any free clothes she snags) as Emanuel Ungaro's new "artistic director." This gossip item, however, doesn't spell "Emanuel Ungaro" correctly, so its veracity may be questionable. [Fox 411]

• Ungaro C.E.O. Mounir Moufarrige says Lohan's pay is "quite enough. It's expensive." Before hiring her, he told the press he asked her how much time she intended to spend in jail this year; her unpredictability, he says, "has been factored in" to her compensation. [ToL]
• The New York Times' Horacio Silva says he just had a talk with Renzo Rosso, who is "thisclose to naming a new designer at Martin Margiela." Margiela's departure from his namesake house was only confirmed recently, after months of speculation. In a follow-up tweet, Silva says Rosso maintains Margiela will still be involved in the house. Haider Ackermann and Raf Simons have been mentioned as possible contenders for Margiela's old job. [Twitter]
• What if a luxury label opened a store, and nobody bothered to turn up? [Shophound]
• Diane Von Furstenberg tweets from Madrid: "I just got robbed in the street in front of the Thyssen museum... My wallet, cash and all my credit cards!!" [Twitter]
• Two Bravo executives described the network as "desperate" to get a reality TV deal with Marc Jacobs. Their pitch? A no-strings-attached everyday doc. "Just live his life, his amazing life, and let us shoot it," said Andy Cohen. "I mean, just go. Just go! Open your eyes, let us put the tape in the camera, and let us go." [The Cut]
• Mo Rocca on the future of fashion? Hell. Yes. [CBS]
• Number of times Time mentions Crystal Renn was a "size-0 model": 3. Number of times Time mentions she had anorexia: 0. [Time]
• Karl Lagerfeld: "My father…was not stingy but he hated unnecessary expense but clothes he saw as the exception — he was of a different generation — if you were well dressed, half of the job was done. So I was told, be well dressed and doors will open." [i-D via Fashionista]
• Can you imagine David Spade, Anthony Kiedis, Fred Durst, and Ron Burkle hanging out at a Zac Posen show? Us neither. L.A. is so weird. [Style.com]
• Oscar de la Renta was presented with an award by Grace Coddington and Hamish Bowles. [Yahoo]
• At the same event, Barneys creative director/author Simon Doonan said, "For years, all my writer friends would say to me, what the fuck are you doing working in a store every day? And now they're saying to me, how can I get a job in a store?" This is because "There's nothing at the moment that is worse-compensated than freelance writing. NOTHING. You can get more money panhandling on the street. It's shocking." We'd agree but we're now too depressed to move. Simon Doonan works for a C.E.O.-less department store with stock about eighteen zillion levels below investment grade, a department store so consistently subject to rumors of bankruptcy that its parent company periodically has to step in to remind everyone that it guarantees the (giant, growing, pile of) debt. And even he has it better than we do. [Daily Intel]
• Meanwhile, Doonan says he finds the recession "a colossal bore." [WWD]
• Martin Lingstrom, a brand strategist, spent three years hooking up over 2,000 people to sensors that monitored their physical and neurological responses to advertising and shopping. He says that, while deciding to buy something, our brains release dopamine. However, then there's the guilt: "It's not very strong at the beginning but increases when you swipe your credit card through the credit-card reader." That feeling is physiological. Instead of reaching the obvious conclusion from his data — shopping is against nature, a pattern of unhealthy addiction and guilt-ridden behaviors, and everyone in fashion is totally fucked — Martin Lingstrom apparently still works as a brand strategist. [WSJ]
• The Wall Street Journal tried out Christian Louboutin and Piper Heidsieck's Le Rituel, the $5,000 glass slipper intended to serve as a champagne flute. The verdict? "It takes some finesse, balance, and you can't fill it very high with bubbly...It has its charm, but drinkers of champagne mat opt to keep their flutes handy." Imagine that. [WSJ]
• Alexander Wang says he staged his first fashion show when he was 15, at his brother's wedding. "It was like 35 looks or something. We hired hair and make-up and everything." [Independent]
• Heidi Klum is launching a fashion line. The footwear collection, all 48 styles, will be available starting next fall; to follow will be swimsuits and casual wear. [WWD]
• Claudia Schiffer, on the supermodels comeback: "One of the logical reasons would be that we sort of went away at the same time and most of us had kids at the same time and then we sort of came back. We've also worked for such a long time, we are reliable and professional and you know what you'll get." [Independent]
• Schiffer, who was once unceremoniously dropped by Karl Lagerfeld, during the grunge days, has been spotted with the designer around Buenos Aires. They, along with Baptiste Giabiconi and Freja Beha Erichsen, are shooting the next Chanel campaign. Local media reports that they ate "rich barbecue" for lunch one day. [Fashionologie]
• Vivienne Westwood made a series of gowns for Leona Lewis. In exchange, the pop star will wear the dramatic metallic corseted creations in all the promotional materials for her new album and single. [Telegraph]
• Odds Costume Rental, which supplied costumes for 22 years to productions like Law & Order and Road to Perdition, has filed for bankruptcy. Rising rent is one culprit — the business was hit with a $5,000/month increase last year — and the willingness of designers to give their clothes away to film and television shows is another. [Crains]
• Salvatore Ferragamo is entering the online retail market. [WWD]

Writing in the LA Times, Caramanica bemoans the lot of Alicia Florrick, Julianna Margulies's wronged-political-wife-turned-lawyer on The Good Wife, and Jules Cobb, Courteney Cox's "older woman" returning to dating on Cougar Town. He says,

[B]y the strictures and bylaws of network television, Alicia, Jules and characters like them essentially are incomprehensible invaders: independent, single (or single-ish) older women seeking change in their lives and succeeding (sometimes, at least). As a result, they're treated like fragile, curious creatures that might implode on contact. Or lash out.

No one wants to accommodate them on their own terms.

Caramanica thinks both Cox and Margulies acquit themselves well in trying circumstances — he writes that "there's a winning quality to Cox's readiness to erode traditional boundaries" and that "what saves Alicia from being reduced to cliché is her gravitas and competence, poses that Margulies has had down cold since her time on E.R." And, as The New Yorker's Nancy Franklin points out, The Good Wife does examine what it might be like to be, say, Silda Spitzer. The show "doesn't hinge on headlines and it isn't restricted by what we can see from the outside-the merely poignant, infuriating, sad awfulness of it all." It deserves some praise for focusing on the actual life of a political wife, not — as so many news outlets have done — on her public shame. Still, this life is heavily circumscribed, and it's hard to tell if life is imitating art here or vice versa.

A more extreme example of the middle-aged-woman-as-alien trope was on view in the most recent story arc of Law & Order: SVU. I cringed the minute Christine Lahti appeared as ADA Sonya Paxton, a Ball-Busting Career Woman straight out of central casting. She snapped at people, she used bad judgment, she was ridiculously abrasive and obnoxious — all because, we soon learned, she was damaged and insecure. And then last week we found out she was also a drunk — when she staggered into the courtroom to prosecute a man who claimed, in a piece of very blunt irony, to have alcoholic psychosis. She left for rehab, completely humiliated in front of the other characters and the audience — who, if they were anything like me, breathed a sigh of relief because her character was so totally repellent.

The idea that single middle-aged women must be totally unhinged isn't new on TV — every time an unaccompanied lady scientist of a certain age appeared on Star Trek: The Next Generation, for instance, you knew who really planted the evil robots in the Jeffries tubes. Of course, Detective Olivia Benson, played by 45-year-old Mariska Hargitay, is allowed to be sexy and appealing as a single woman on SVU — but there's also a suggestion that her continued torment over her mother's rape and alcoholism have prevented her from forming lasting relationships. Rather than hookers, victims, and doormats, unmarried women over 35 on TV are either irrevocably fucked up, irrevocably fucked up and downright evil, or beset by enemies on all sides.

The last category — into which Alicia Florrick falls — may be the most interesting, and the most true to life. While you don't have to be an insane villain to stay single in your 30s, 40s, and 50s, you do have to contend, if you're a woman, with a lot of increasingly nasty criticism. And while few women are publicly humiliated by lying spouses — Florrick and her husband aren't divorced on the show, but he's in jail for his dalliances with prostitutes, and she's forced to support the kids on her own — the challenges depicted on The Good Wife may be a more extreme version of the ones middle-aged women face every day. It will be interesting to see how Margulies meets these challenges as an actress. Luckily for her but unluckily for us, other shows have set the bar pretty low.

Images via gilmoregirlsnews, NBC.

'The Good Wife,' 'Cougar Town': Outsiders In A Man's World [LA Times]
Screwed [The New Yorker]
Episode 11004 Recap [Law & Order: SVU Official Site at NBC]

• Did Ellen DeGeneres try to trick Mariah Carey into admitting she's pregnant? Mariah was a guest on Ellen's show, and after Ellen asked and got a vague response, she busted out the champagne, saying, "You don't have to answer that. Let's just toast with champagne." Mariah got flustered and said, "I can't believe you did this to me, Ellen," and pretended to sip the bubbly. Knocked up? [Yahoo News via E!]
• Someone's not pregnant: Sarah Jessica Parker in the Sex And The City sequel. Carrie won't be having a kid. "It doesn't seem as if that's going to be a choice she'll make… Michael (Patrick King, director) and I never talk about it. That doesn't mean that won't be part of the story. We just haven't figured it out. It feels a little bit manipulative to toss that into the mix, because she seems so pointed in a different direction." [Daily Express]
• Kanye West and hot hot model Sessilee Lopez: Is it on? [The Sun]
• Madonna has hired a specialist to help her "exorcise the memories" of her ex-husband, Guy Ritchie, from her home. The technique seems to involve throwing shit away. [Mirror]
• Madonna and A-Rod are in Miami together right now, having just landed in a private jet. [TMZ]

• What's this? Even though his ex, Cynthia, claimed Rodriguez would be spending Thanksgiving with Madonna, a source says A-Rod "has been in Florida for days" and "always had every intention of spending the holiday" there with his ex-wife and daughters? [People]
• In other news, Madonna's brother is going to direct a "teen thriller" called Twist. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Britney Spears wants to go back on the road again. She and her conservators have asked the court to allow her to go on a U.S. tour next year: She'd need to make deals with backup singers, roadies, venues, ticket brokers, etc., but legally can't make any of the deals herself. [TMZ]
• Britney will be in New York next week — her album drops Tuesday, so she's hitting Good Morning America, but it's also her 27th birthday. So she'll also have a "very private circus-themed" birthday party that night. Waiting for our invitation! [Page Six]
• The chick from The Rules is offering dating advice to Jennifer Aniston. Says Sherrie Schneider, who co-wrote the infamous dating manual with Ellen Fein: "Never mention Brad's or John Mayer's name in public. Also, don't say anything bad about John, like when you said he was missing a sensitivity chip. Never talk about Angelina or call her 'uncool', even if she was uncool. She does not exist in your world. You are going to be 40 soon. You have no time to waste if you want kids." What's that eyeroll emoticon again? [Sydney Morning Herald]
• Lily Allen and Agyness Deyn got strip searched when they went to Dubai. Lily says: "I knew I didn’t have anything on me so I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t paranoid, just terrified." Agyness agrees: "It was really traumatic. It wasn’t the best experience in the world, but it is their culture and you just have to respect it." [The Sun]
• Ivanka Trump sure is fueling those rumors she might get engaged to boyfriend Jared Kushner — she's guest blogging for Brides.com the first week of December, writing about her style and her jewelry line. [WWD]
• Model Jessica Stam is dating Austin Cregg, the son of '80s pop music icon Huey Lewis. He's facing jail time for marijuana possession and scrawling graffiti. [Page Six]
• An upcoming Law & Order episode will have a young male "supermodel" die in a way that is eerily similar to the way Heath Ledger did. [Page Six]
• Ricki Lake is on Match.com. Go Ricki! [Janet Charlton's Hollywood]
• Oh no, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem might be on the rocks: They'd agreed to take a break from movies for a year, then he took a part in a film. She wanted to adopt a baby from India because she "admires Angelina Jolie." [ONTD]
• Pete Wentz freaked out when his wife, Ashlee was about to give birth: "Right before she went into labor, I was like, 'Oh, my god, I think I'm having a heart attack,'" he says. "My heart started beating real fast. You see your wife is in all this pain. And I don't know what's happening right now. She took care of me and made sure I was okay and then went into labor. That's why she's a saint." [People]
• For the second day in a row, a story about how Reese Witherspoon totally got along with Vince Vaughn while shooting Four Christmases. "Vince is the funniest person I've ever worked with. It was a challenge for me to stay there and keep up with him." The lady doth protest too much? [Yahoo News]
• Natalie Portman doesn't understand celibacy. [Page Six]
• Roger Friedman on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: "Innovative, creative, technologically advanced… [Brad Pitt] is Gollum from Lord of the Rings meeting Robert Redford, with a better wardrobe." [Fox 411]
• Rachael Ray's Christmas will be a silent night: "I'm having voice surgery on Dec. 16, so we're going to celebrate very quietly," she says. [People]
• Are Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal's parents broke? [Page Six]
• Audrina Patridge on Heidi and Spencer's elopement: "I am surprised and not surprised at the same time." Haha, because you know that they're contractually obligated to make headlines for Us magazine? She also says: "I do think it's very romantic that they eloped." [People]
• Uh-oh, director John Waters is being sued for adding "Santa Claus is a Black Man" to his Christmas album without permission. [Daily Express]
• Tragic: You know how Kanye West's mom died after plastic surgery? Her nephew, a registered nurse, was supervising her post-surgery care and may have left her bedside to attend a baby shower — he's being investigated. [People]
• Village Voice reporter Michael Musto hit the Milk premiere party, where Marc Jacobs told him he cried and shook his leg emotionally through the whole movie. "I'm for anything gay," the designer said. "The world would be a better place if everyone was gay." "Look, around," Musto urged. "They are!" Meanwhile, Carson Kressley said: "I'm lactose-intolerant, but I loved Milk." [Village Voice]
• TMZ the TV show: Renewed. [Yahoo News]
• File under news you can't use: Katie "Jordan" Price and Peter Andre sunbathe naked; Peter has a "brown willy." [Perez Hilton]
• Carson Daly has a girlfriend? And she's pregnant? [ONTD]
• U2, Jay-Z, Coldplay and R.E.M. are among the bands contributing music to (RED)WIRE, a new download service aligned with Bono’s (PRODUCT)RED campaign. [Rolling Stone]
• Don't know much about country singer Chuck Wicks, but he is "very much in love" with Dancing With The Stars' Julianne Hough, so that's nice. [People]
• Mel Gibson, what hast thou done? A Superior Court Judge wants you to explain why a screenwriter claims he was screwed out of $10 million from the 2004 megahit The Passion Of The Christ [Yahoo News via E!]
• TV chef Gordon Ramsay has made a "groveling apology" to his wife after admitting to meeting his mistress four times. [Daily Mail]
• "There's always someone telling you not to make a movie. When I did Born on the Fourth of July, they said, 'This is going to ruin your career. What are you doing?' Suicide? I’ve committed it. There were people who didn’t want me to make Top Gun. [My character], Stauffenberg, went from saying, 'Someone should shoot that bastard' to realizing, I’m the only one who can do it. You can’t really know until you're under that kind of pressure. I'm not saying this in some chest-pounding way, but I do feel I'd have that kind of courage." — Tom Cruise, defending his Nazi movie, Valkyrie, in Details. [MSNBC Scoop]
• "We came up with the idea Bronx. We've been throwing [ideas] back and forth a while. It's kind of cool to just leave the narrative what it is. People are stoked or pissed or whatever. And you're like, you know what: I don't think anyone really has the real story." — Pete Wentz on why he named his kid Bronx Mowgli. [People]

• NYU has received a $490k grant from the National Science Foundation to promote women and minorities in the sciences. • The Iranian government is looking to decrease elective Cesareans (which make up 40% of births) by educating women and doctors about the benefits and risks of natural births. • In 2005, nearly 4,000 women were treated in a NYC emergency room for injuries inflicted by their partners. • Diet tricks: eat food naked, take pictures of what you're eating, brush your teeth when you are hungry, or wear tight clothes! Basically, try everything but eating healthier, whole foods. • As more women join the field of urology, the culture of the medical field is undergoing a gender makeover that is friendlier and more welcoming to women. • Female condom-makers in India aim market their condoms to female sex-workers through NGOs at a lower cost. • A study in South Africa reveals that over 1 in 4 South African men who have been married or have lived with their partner reported using violence against their current or former female partner. • Cosmopolitan is teaming up with YouTube for StarLaunch, a contest encouraging YouTube female singers to post videos of themselves and win a chance to share the stage with Solange Knowles. Squee! • A luxury boutique hotel in Singapore has set aside a whole floor (5 suites) that are strictly for women only, giving female travelers not traveling with men feel "a sense of peace." • An Australian woman has set up a website to track down a man who viciously beat her outside of a casino. • A new test for a protein called P16INK4A is more effective at catching pre-cancerous cells in women who might have cervical cancer than a normal pap smear. • Women earn roughly two-thirds of the average male income in Brazil in 2006 while blacks earn about half of what whites make.

The Good:
Elisabeth Rohm looks so pretty while pregnant! Also seems comfy in her equally pretty dress.
Jane Kaczmarek keeps it classy in a purple column.
I love January Jones' minimalist and playful dress. This is the exact right way to wear white.
Simon Cowell's main squeeze/Extra correspondent Terri Seymour kept it classy.

The Bad:
Angelica Huston: You are one of the greatest actresses of our time. Not a Vegas showgirl.
Did no one alert Christina Hendricks that her shapeless blob of a dress was the same shade as her skin?
This pattern and cut fails to flatter Ginnifer Goodwin.
If this were Project Runway, Nina Garcia would say that thought she liked the concept of Natasha Henstridge's dress, the execution was poor and the end-result cheap-looking. And I would agree with her.

The Ugly:
Remember that "disco hair-cutting smock" that Ricky made on the Project Runway wrestling challenge? How did Kristen Chenoweth get her hands on it?

[All images via Bauer-Griffin]