Star Jones: stretch velvet, a ruff, and matching shoes. Nuff said.


Penn Badgley makes me wonder: which came first, the smug smirk or the smug banker's collar?


Patricia Field, in Pat Field drag.


Natalie Cole: a woman who can do justice to the mini trend.


Perhaps my favorite of all red-carpet couples: Buzz and Lois Aldrin.


Kathie Lee goes Grecian. It's really not her fault that I saw that documentary on sweatshops yesterday in which she figured so prominently.


Jennifer Hudson matches high-sheen tights to a satin dress: bold. Verily, bold.


Ivana Trump looks roguish - which is, I guess, really the only approach, under the circumstances.


Hoda's frock is a touch dowdy, a touch wedding cake, and yet curiously flattering!


Estelle, the hardest-working woman on the red carpet, was an early proponent of the neo-power-shoulder.


Jeez Louise, when she's on, she is so on.


I kind of respect that Beth Ostrosky has never, ever deviated from her Atlantic City good-time-gal aesthetic. The operative words are "kind of."


Aren't you loving Bar Rafaeli's retro-fab shoulder-train?


Alina Puscau's getup doesn't exactly suggest "cancer charity" to me, but that probably just reveals my gaucherie.


Denise Rich takes full advantage of the maxim that she who organizes the fundraiser gets to wear whatever the hell she wants and no one can say anything.

[Images via WENN]

• This morning Lindsay Lohan posted an incoherent rant about Samantha Ronson on Twitter. She writes: "can you make an attempt to not ruin ANYTHI...zG positive that i have FINALLY deserved just to cry myself to sleep with your cheats, errors..."

• ...and thank you...for being a friend before a sell-out...the term "self out" was coined from ME and i gave them sooooooo much insight...For their not only COMPLETE, BUT SUBSTANISAN ***FRIENDS***********"... BUT YOU DID perform to her..you JUST told me that your friends are worth more than i am 2 your family & that i'm gross*thx." Linds hasn't claimed that it's the work of a hacker... yet. [Perez Hilton]
• Courtney Love says she's going to "sue the shit" out of the people behind Guitar Hero because they didn't ask her permission to use Kurt Cobain's image. She Tweeted: "not in twenty JILLION years would i EVER have allowed this and this islethal... we get NO money for this, travesty, Frances gets NO money for the rape." [TMZ]
• John Mayer denied the rumors that he's dating Kristin Cavallari on Twitter writing, "I'm sure she's a wonderful gal but we have never tasted the Skittles Rainbow together." Adding, "How do I put this like a gentleman...I have never high fived Kristin Cavalari with my penis." [People]
• Jennifer Aniston will sing and play the guitar in her new film The Goree Girls. She promises: "I can carry a tune." [People]
• A source says Paula Abdul was shocked by the news that Ellen DeGeneres is replacing her on American Idol. "Privately, Paula is very upset. She's never going to admit it publicly but this stung," said the source.[Radar Online]
• Ellen DeGeneres says of hosting American Idol, "I hope Paula's OK with it. I don't want anybody to think I took Paula's job away." [E!]
• Ellen says the reason she was picked even though she has no music experience is, "I'm just a fan like everyone else... The people choose. Ultimately, it comes down to them, not some executive in the music industry. I hope to be that voice." [L.A. Times]
• Randy Jackson says American Idol "reached out" to Ellen because, "We're all friends with Ellen, and Ryan [Seacrest] and I are pretty close with her. She's just mad cool." [People]
• Natalie Cole performed last night for the first time since having a kidney transplant. "I really do have to say ... it really is a miracle time. It's a miracle night for me," she told the crowd. "I never thought I'd be standing here healthy and whole and 100 percent." [People]
• Though Jermaine Jackson announced Natalie Cole, Chris Brown, and Mary J. Blige were going to perform at the Michael Jackson tribute concert in Vienna they've all dropped out or denied they were ever involved. Yet, their pictures are still up on the concert's website. [TMZ]
• Katherine Jackson, who is reportedly not happy about the Michael Jackson tribute concert, released a statement saying she'll be there on the 29th. The only problem is it's on the 26th. [TMZ]
• Barbara Walters interviewed LaToya Jackson for a 20/20 special that will air on Friday, in which she says of Michael Jackson, "I don't think we'll find a person as talented, a person who thought the way he thought. A person with the heart that Michael had... People aren't that way anymore. He was special. He wasn't God, but he was certainly God-like. He was the closest thing to a god that I knew." [ABC News]
• Movers are taking Michael Jackson's possessions out of his Holmby Hills mansion today. [TMZ]
• The trailer for Michael Jackson: This Is It, the movie made from rehearsal footage from MJ's final concert, will air on Sunday during the MTV Video Music Awards. [AP]
• Oprah says of her upcoming interview with Whitney Houston, "It will leave you gasping. She does not blame Bobby Brown and she takes full responsibility for her engagement in drugs. At one point she says, 'I didn't get out of my pyjamas for seven months.'" [The Sun]
• The hosts and musical guests on the first four episodes of Saturday Night Live this season will be Megan Fox and U2, Ryan Reynolds and Lady Gaga, Drew Barrymore and Regina Spektor, and Gerard Butler and Shakira. [The Wrap]
• Barbara Mandrell has become the first woman to be inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. [AP]
• Edward Norton will be running the New York City marathon this year with a group of runners from the African Maasai tribe to benefit the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust. "The idea picked up traction pretty quickly," said Norton, who turned 39 in August. "Then, I was like, 'Wait a minute. What have I just done?'" [CNN]
• Gavin Rossdale will guest star on an episode of Criminal Minds as "a Goth rock star who has become lost in the frightening alter-ego he portrays on stage — an alter-ego the show's investigative team suspects may be a brutal serial killer." [UPI]
• Paris Hilton appears in the new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations alongside Barack Obama, Confucius, and Oscar Wilde. Paris' words of wisdom: "Dress cute wherever you go, life is too short to blend in."[Daily Mail]
• Dustin Diamond is being sued for more than $21,000 in upaid property taxes and had his car repossessed. [Radar Online]
• Robert Carlyle says that director Danny Boyle is "edging closer" to making Porno, the sequel to Trainspotting, and says he'd be willing to do the movie for free. Ewan McGregor has said the sequel would be a "terrible shame." [BBC]
• Michael Douglas says he's "holding up fine," after his son Cameron's arrest for alleged drug dealing, adding, "It's a very difficult situation and painful, as I'm sure any mother or father of a substance abuser knows. So we're doing the best we can." [People]
• Jon Gosselin just can't behave himself. He got a ticked for going 78 mph in a 55 mile zone near his home in Pennsylvania. [TMZ]
• Joel Madden Tweeted on Wednesday morning, "Geuss who's back ... Oh i'm sorry we were only having a little baby boy." [People]
• Tila Tequila met with investigators from the San Diego District Attorney's office to discuss the altercation she had with San Diego Charger Shawne Merriman. [TMZ]
• Hugh Hefner went to Kendra Wilkinson's baby shower yesterday wearing a black suit and a bright red shirt rather than his customary pajamas. [TMZ]
• Laura Ling reveals that on her first night back from North Korea she ate pizza, and says Bill Clinton has been checking up on her family since her return. [TMZ]
• Melanie Chisholm a.k.a. Sporty Spice is making her theater debut next month in Blood Brothers on London's West End. [The Guardian]
• Geri Halliwell has been in Nepal all week as part of her duties as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund. She's promoting maternal health and women's rights. At a press conference she urged Nepali men to use their power to encourage and protect women saying, "When we empower women and take care of them everyone benefits." [Perez Hilton]
• Here's a picture of Cynthia Nixon on the set of Sex and the City 2 dressed up for the '80s flashback scene. [Perez Hilton]
• More Sex and the City 2 plot speculation here: [Us]
• Apparently there is nothing Sex and the City can't do. On an upcoming episode of her talk show Tyra Banks reveals the show helped her lose weight. "I got rid of one of my couches in my living room and I watched Sex and The City episodes on the treadmill or the elliptical," she says. "So Sex and the City lasts 30 minutes – that's how long I'm on the elliptical." [People]
• Phil Collins says he'll never drum again because, "I've got a condition that means I can't play anymore. After playing drums for 50 years, I've had to stop. Obviously I'm very sad about it. My vertebrae has been crushing my spinal cord because of the position I drum in. It comes from years of playing. I can't even hold the sticks properly without it being painful." [Perez Hilton]
• Kelsey Grammer won a lawsuit filed against him by a contractor who worked on his kitchen. [TMZ]
• At the link are photos from Japanese Vogue featuring Lady Gaga in bondage. [Egotastic]
• Artwork for the Broadway play A Steady Rain shows Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig's faces fused together. [Just Jared]
• In the video at the link George Clooney keeps his cool even when an Italian journalist tells him he's gay, strips down to his boxers, and asks George to "choose him." [ABC News]
• Khloé Kardashian and boyfriend Lamar Odom seem to want to get their picture taken, since they've been hitting all the paparazzi hot spots. [E!]
• Joshua Jackson says Fringe, "has been the total opposite of my Dawson's Creek experience... Fringe has taken a while for the show to percolate in the pop culture. I would never complain about being on a show with the words J.J. Abrams above the title, but the expectations were impossibly high." [Just Jared]
• "[Being 16] is way overrated. I can't even drive in the city. Can you do more at 17? I don't know." — Taylor Momsen [New York Magazine]
• Rebecca Romijn says she and Jerry O'Connell aren't planning to have any more children now that they have twin girls. "We feel like the world was made for pairs. Four feels like the perfect number... Also, we're not interested in overpopulating this world," she added. "So we feel like we don't want to leave more than we are when we leave this planet." [E!]
• When asked if she would ever do a talk show Kathy Griffin said, "The sexism in late night talk is so profound. When you think that Joan Rivers is the first and last woman to do a network late night talk show-I mean, that's appalling to me. I don't know if I can win that battle-it's such a boys' club.... I'd like to do it in some way, but I gotta tell you, I like the freedom of a show like The D-List, where I can take my time with these celebrities and spend more than six minutes with them on the couch." [Publisher's Weekly]
• Drew Barrymore and an uncomfortable-looking Ellen Page are on the cover of Marie Claire. Drew says of Ellen, "She was in her frickin' bra and with an open jacket and hot-pink shorts, skating around the rink with red lips and… and she was sexy as a mother…. a feral creature. It was great. And it's so screwed up for girls to think, Oh because I don't have that cookie-cutter model body, it must mean I don't have the right body shape. And I love model bodies, but I just want women to embrace several body shapes. That's the thing I love about derby. It's really welcoming." [Just Jared]

• Forbes has released the top-earning celebrities over 50, and Oprah is at number one! To put things in perspective, Forbes' Lauren Streib writes:

"Her earnings power is equal to that of the creator of Star Wars and the Material Girl, combined." [Forbes]

• Oprah's O magazine has a power list — with a twist. For example: Venus Williams has "The Power Of Female Strength"; Donna Brazile has "The Power Of Ambition"; Sarah Silverman has "The Power Of Transgression." [Newser]
• Gwyneth Paltrow smells like moth balls. [PopCrunch]
• Michael Phelps was in a three-car accident in Baltimore last night, but he was not injured. A woman in another car was taken to the hospital with head and arm pain. Alcohol was not involved. [TMZ]
• VOM: Heidi Montag says she has 20 to 30 orgasms a day with Spencer Pratt, and claims: "I was never very sexual before I met Spencer. Sex was just something that happened. Now it's something I look forward to every minute of the day… it makes me want to try every new thing, doing it all kinds of ways — indoors, outdoors, upside down." [Page Six]
• Wait, what?!?! "Amy Winehouse has set up a Facebook profile pretending to be her cat as a way of keeping in secret contact with Blake Fielder-Civil… She has created a profile for her pet pussy Shirley and is using it to post messages to Blake at his remote Yorkshire rehab centre." [The Sun]
• "Not only have Jon and Kate Gosselin lost their marriage, they've lost about 7 million viewers since the reality show couple announced their split." [MSNBC]
• Mischa Barton showed up for work with wet hair and a cigarette dangling from her lips, and this paper calls her "messed," "pale and haggard." [NY Post]
• Mariah Carey has pulled out of an appearance on VH1 Storytellers and a concert on the Today show and gone back in the studio as her album has been delayed again. Is she all shook up by Eminem's dis track? [Reuters]
• Sherri Shepherd tried to help Andy Dick find God. "[Andy] said, 'Sherri, can God love someone like me? He needs me, too, Sherri. You ain't the only one who needs a parking space.'" [Gatecrasher]
• Scarlett Johannsson is Brigitte Bardot-inspired in Pete Yorn's new video, and I have three letters for the whole thing: Zzz. [Gatecrasher, JustJared]
• New Moon swoon! Twihards and Team Jacob/Buff Werewolf fans: Video of Taylor Lautner wrestling with Kristen Stewart at the link. [EW]
• Kristen Stewart on Taylor Lautner: "I love that kid. I would do anything for him. I would kill for him, literally." [NY Daily News]
• TMZ has obtained the search warrant used to raid the pharmacy where Dr. Conrad Murray purchased the Propofol that killed Michael Jackson. They're calling it the smoking gun. [TMZ]
• TMZ actually called the manufacturer of Propofol to see what they knew about the case? [TMZ]
• Dr. Conrad Murray says he didn't know about Michael Jackson's "very unusual problems" when he agreed to be his personal doctor, and didn't know what drugs MJ was taking when he accepted the job. [TMZ]
• LaToya Jackson has something to say: "I've been approached to do Dancing With the Stars. The fact of the matter is, I won't be doing it, simply because of the circumstances that [are] going on at the moment. I can't see myself putting myself into there right now, dancing every single day when I'm still trying to find out what exactly happened to my brother." [Access Hollywood]
• LaToya was interviewed while working at AIDS Project Los Angeles, a charity Michael Jackson often helped. She says: "We're doing the best that we can. Everyone has just been going through what they're going through at the moment. It's a very trying time for all of us." [E!]
• Scott Disick is the one who got Kourtney Kardashian pregnant, but you knew that, right? [E!, Page Six]
• Today in bizarre celebrity feuds: Courtney Love vs. The Veronicas. She thinks they stole her clothes; they're calling her a "twat" and "delusional." [Perez]
• For some reason Vanessa Hudgens has haters? But her Bandslam costars say "She's such a sweet person, such a nice girl." So. [E!]
• Whoa: Kate Winslet will star in Mildred Pierce, a miniseries project (possibly for HBO). The 1945 film of the same name won the incomparable Joan Crawford (and her eyebrows) an Oscar. [Variety]
• Aerosmith has canceled its summer tour "with great regret" after frontman Steven Tyler fell from the stage. Quoth he: "I just want to say that I' m plain grateful that I didn't break my neck. In truth, after thousands of live shows, falling off the edge four times ain't too bad." [AP]
• Christie's will conduct a London auction of art and furniture belonging to the late Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant in October. Merchant, along with James Ivory, made over 40 films including A Room With a View, Howards End and The Remains of the Day. [Reuters]
• Jonathan Demme has walked away from directing a documentary about Bob Marley; last May, Martin Scorsese dropped out of the project. [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which recently single celeb wasn't so faithful to her last boyfriend? She'd been sleeping with a big-name hip-hop artist for the last four months of her relationship." [Gatecrasher]
• "It would've been smart to take some time off too, but I'm really glad I did Runaways. If it was Twilight all the time, I would go mad. To just play one character for four years, it's not what I do. I like to have variation. I like to change it up. To live one experience, it would be like I have this weird alter-ego, alternate life, instead of slipping into a character for 6 weeks, sucking it dry, and leaving. It would be like 4 years of living like a fucking psycho person, thinking that I'm like Bella. You know what I mean? It would just be impossible for me. The tabloids would have a lot of crazy shit to say about me in that case." — Kristen Stewart. [EW]
• "[I wasn't] one of the industry kids who they groom on the fucking Disney channel and who do what they are told. [Being a star was like] being strapped to a rocket ship. But some of us weren't built for speed. I was almost overwhelmed by it all. I had this house — not a giant house, but three or four nice rooms, and a jukebox. And it had this laundry room, and I would sit in there with an ashtray that I trusted. It was like the world couldn't get me in the laundry room." — Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. [Guardian]
• "I was doing the Tyler shuffle and then I zigged when I should have zagged ... and I slipped, and as I live on the edge ... I fell off the edge!" — Steven Tyler, on his accident hat left him with a broken left shoulder and 20 stitches on the back of his head. [People]
• "It's remarkable what a new kidney does to your life. I have no complaints…I'm pretty amazed. I have been working on my stamina." — Natalie Cole, who would love to meet her donor, saying, "I would probably kiss them all over the place." [People]
• "I get a lot of e-mails and photos of people that are dressing like [Don Draper]. That was pretty strange. People will say to me, ‘Oh, I just saw you in a mall.' I guess it's pretty easy. Slick your hair back, put a nice suit on, and you're ready to go." — Jon Hamm. [WWD]

• Miley Cyrus and Justin Gaston have split after less than a year together. A source says the breakup was a result of Miley's traveling, and not Nick Jonas, although he and Miley "have been spending time together." [Us]

• Adam Lambert's debut album is set to drop in the fall. He says, "It's going to be ridiculous! Get Ready!!!" [People]
• And Lambert's "official coming out cover of Rolling Stone" apparently includes a disturbingly-placed snake. [Perez Hilton]
• Megan Fox is in favor of legalizing marijuana. If it ever happened, she says, she'd be the "first person in line to buy a pack of joints." [TMZ]
• In what is perhaps the most superficial news item ever, Heidi Montag Pratt is starting a dry shampoo line inspired by her hair care experiences on I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!. [Life & Style]
• Also, Heidi and Spencer have left the show for real this time. Hollywood publicist Michael Levine says, "the audience is also ridiculous for partnering in their absurdity." Well, yeah. [ABC]
• Adam Ant credits his comeback from "his deranged and bloated appearance" seven years ago to regular exercise and his girlfriend Clare, who makes sure he eats "only the finest healthy food." [Daily Mail]
• DJ Jazzy Jeff "stormed off the stage" at Kansas City venue Power & Light District, and later said managers stopped the show "for playin' hip hop." The managers say they just wanted him to turn the music down. [Breitbart]
• Okay, so maybe Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore didn't invite Susan Boyle to sing at their anniversary. [Telegraph]
• On September 9, Natalie Cole will give her first concert after her kidney transplant and her sister's death. [AP, via Yahoo News]
• David Carradine's ex-wife says he once suspended himself from a rope in a crucifixion position while she was giving a party. When she asked him what he was doing, he said, "I really would like a sandwich." [TMZ]
• The Thai police say the FBI can get involved in investigating Carradine's death, but only in an "observer role." [TMZ]
• And photos of Carradine's body show that the rope around his neck was knotted in the front, making it more likely his death was an accident. Apparently people who practice bondage frequently knot ropes in the front for easier release. [TMZ]
• Thirty-four-year-old Enrique Iglesias says he's not yet "mature" enough to father Anna Kournikova's children. [TMZ]
• A new play about Kurt Cobain is running in London, but will it be as good as Christopher Walken's play about Elvis? [Independent]
• Bret Michaels broke his nose and split his lip when he was hit by a falling sign at the Tony Awards, but he was apparently really nice about it. [People]
• Emeril Lagasse helped Jon and Kate Gosselin prepare a meal for their 100th episode. The menu included green bean casserole, chili macaroni, and, oddly, granola. [People]
• A Toni Braxton impersonator accused of telling a Suriname audience she was the real Toni Braxton has been acquitted. WTF. [AP, via Yahoo News]
• Mike Tyson has married his girlfriend after the death of their daughter Exodus. [Radar Online]
• Shanna Moakler surprisingly took the high road in response to Travis Barker's defamatory tweets. She had her reps tell OK!, "Shanna is not going to play out her personal relationships in the media." Her relationship to Carrie Prejean's breasts is another story.[Perez Hilton]
• Depeche Mode has resumed its tour after singer Dave Gahan's cancer surgery. [NYT]
• In potentially disturbing news for St. Lucia's youth, Amy Winehouse has pledged to help them. [Mirror]
• OK! is taking Emma Watson's statement that "there's something going on" between Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart as proof that they are together. [OK!]
• But Watson's publicist says the statement is made up! [Perez Hilton]
• Some sources say Leonardo Dicaprio and Bar Rafaeli have broken up. [People]
• Others say they are still together, but "miserable-looking." [TMZ]
• Paris Hilton loves Doug Reinhardt, but not Kim Kardashian — according to Doug Reinhardt. [E! Online]
• Anika Noni Rose says Jennifer Hudson will be a great mom. "It's been a harrowing year for her and I hope that she finds comfort, joy and support and that she can move forward with her new baby," Rose adds. [People]
• Prince reportedly needs two hip replacements, but refuses because, as a Jehovah's Witness, he can't get a blood transfusion. [Showbiz411.com]
• A tabloid reporter slyly questions whether Brooke Shields's mom really has dementia, then says he and Teri Shields were great friends and that "most of our wonderful afternoons together never resulted in a story." What a saint. [National Enquirer]
• Terrence Howard says the Obamas should go to Prague on one of their date nights, because it is "an untapped resource of love and romance," while Paris is "overused." Russell Simmons thinks they should go to a yoga studio. [Politico]
• "I went to see Andrea Bocelli last night. The first time I've been out in months. The Hollywood Bowl allowed me to use my wheelchair." — Elizabeth Taylor, via Twitter [CNN]
• "I think I'm either naive or insane to play her - maybe a little bit of both!" — Anne Hathaway, on playing Judy Garland in an upcoming biopic [Daily Express]
• "I have a body that girls can look at and go, Oh she's not anorexically skinny. She looks healthy and she's got cellulite, yeah!" — Hayden Panettiere [E! Online]
• "(These shows) are a reflection of our society. You hear kids saying that they want to be famous, and when you ask them what for, they don't know - they just want to be famous. It's like there is this lack of passion in the doing of something that that might bring you riches. When I was little, I never said I wanted to be famous, I said I wanted to be a musician." — Lenny Kravitz, on reality shows [Daily Express]
• "He violated me. I never told anybody. I just buried it as deeply as I could and kept people at an arms length. I never really let a person get too close to me. I could have been married years ago, but I had a commitment issue." — Queen Latifah, speaking out for the first time about her childhood sexual abuse [The Sun]
• "Just know that this too shall pass.… Next week, it will be someone else on the cover [of magazines] and you can go about your life." — the sage Tori Spelling, advising Jon and Kate Gosselin on their notoriety [LA Times]

• Though Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt looked happy on the red carpet in Cannes, their relationship is clearly on the rocks because once the cameras stopped flashing, "Angelina's smile disappeared and she furiously ran up the stairs of the theatre leaving a flustered Brad to run after her."

• Uh, maybe she had to pee? [Daily Mail]
• Ewan McGregor stopped speaking to Trainspotting director Danny Boyle in 2005 when he accused him of passing him up for the lead role in The Beach in favor of Leonardo DiCaprio. But recently McGregor reached out to Boyle, saying of his success with Slumdog Millionaire: "I haven't spoken to Danny for years, I'm afraid. But I thought [Slumdog's Oscar success] was very well deserved; I liked Slumdog very much. I thought it was an excellent film, and it was nice to see him getting all those accolades. It was great." [The Daily Express]
• Natalie Cole has been discharged from the hospital less than a week after getting a kidney transplant and losing her sister to lung cancer. Her rep says, "She is doing well under the circumstances." [E!]
• White Stripes drummer Meg White married Jackson Smith at a double wedding on Friday. The wedding was held at Jack White home in Nashville. The other couple that got married was Jo McCaughey and Jack Lawrence, the Raconteurs' bass player. [AP]
• Due to the success of Twilight, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie is in the work. It's going to be a reboot, meaning that Sarah Michelle Gellar and Joss Whedon will have no involvement. Surely that won't anger fans of the series at all. [E!]
• If you have a spare $2.3 million dollars you can buy the Highland Park, Illinois, home that once housed Cameron's dad's car in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. [TMZ]
• Speaking of Ferris Bueller, ever wondered what happened to the Gummi Bear girl? [Babble]
• Al Pacino will star as Dr. Jack Kevorkian in a new HBO movie. [Variety]
• Mike Tyson's 4-year-old daughter is still in critical condition after accidentally strangling herself in the cord to a treadmill. The family issued a statement saying, "The Tyson family would like to extend our deepest and most heartfelt thanks for all your prayers and support, and we ask that we be allowed our privacy at this difficult time." [People]
• Update: Tyson's daughter has passed away, reports People. Let's send prayers, everyone. [People]
• In this short film for the MTV Movie Awards, Eminem pretends that he actually went back to high school during his hiatus, rather than going to rehab. Rolling Stone describes it as "Strangers With Candy starring Eminem instead of Amy Sedaris." [Rolling Stone]
• Katie Holmes co-hosted the PBS Memorial Day Concert on Sunday. Before the concert, Tom Cruise took son Connor and daughter Suri to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "What an affectionate father he is," said an observer. "He was very affectionate with Suri and he wanted to know what his children were interested in seeing." [People]
• The Jonas Brothers spent Memorial Day weekend in Rio posing with the Christ the Redeemer statue. [TMZ]
• Mariah Carey explains how she decided on her look for her new film Precious saying, "They were doing prosthetic noses and trying to figure it out, and it kept making me break out and screw up my face and I just ripped it up at the end looking horrid, and he was like 'it's perfect!'" She adds, Because Lee Daniels is a great director and he just wanted me to be so far away from myself, from the me that people know." [The Mirror]
• No Doubt is currently touring together after taking a hiatus. Adrian Young says, "There might even be some people that will think that we broke up, and that this is a reunion tour — and it's just not the truth. We went 17 straight years without stopping, and we started having families, and we were burnt and we needed to do our own thing for a while." Each band member is currently traveling on their own tour bus, with their families. [CNN]
• Dustin Hoffman says he took a five year hiatus from acting after receiving a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute in 1998. "Somehow it hit me in my bone marrow – they're saying I've lived a lifetime, and I didn't feel I had," he says. "Not in the work, as much as in life, and I wanted to live life. I realised one thing will remain a constant and that is there is just not enough time." [The Telegraph]
• "Marriage is such a mark of adulthood in my mind," says Mandy Moore, who married Ryan Adams in March. "It still feels not entirely real. Things are wonderful, and there's such a peaceful settledness about it. But sometimes I can't wrap my head around it. It seems bizarre but really cool at the same time, like, 'Wow – I did that!' " [People]
• When an interviewer pointed out that Brenda Blethyn plays a mother in her best known screen roles, Secrets and Lies, Little Voice, and Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, she said, "Well, most women of my age are." However, she is not a mother. "I just never made the decision," she says. "It's no big deal. I have lots of nephews and nieces. But I do get a bit annoyed when people ask why so many of the characters I play are mothers. Nobody seems to notice that a lot of the parts male actors play are fathers." [The Guardian]
• Evangeline Lilly of Lost says: "[Producers] have seen that I haven't picked up on the opportunity to become a big movie star. It frustrates [them] that they've given me this chance to become the next Angelina Jolie." She adds, "Sure, I'd love to be her, but just the humanitarian side." [The Daily Express]
• "For me, it's not a pastime, going out and meeting people and trying to hook up with people. That actually makes me feel disgusting. From a really early age, I was really sensitive to that. Getting your flirt on is the best thing in the world, but when it comes to sharing bodily fluids with a person I don't know - no thank you." - Katy Perry. [The Daily Express]
• "I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life." - Kanye West, author of Thank You And You're Welcome. [Yahoo]

• Jesus Luz went on a Brazilian TV program, Fantastico, and said of Madonna: "She is my friend, only my friend." Hmm. Wow. Okay. He also said:

"Madonna is a person who I admire very much, a friend who has entered my life and [with whom] I keep in contact. I cannot say anything more than I don't have plans of marrying her. I can't say if she is the woman in my life." Dammit! Are they shagging or not? What does it mean? [Gatecrasher, The Sun]

• Lily Allen: Not impressed by Susan Boyle! "I thought her timing was off on Britain's Got Talent on Sunday — no control, and I don't think she has an amazing voice." And! "She seems like a lovely lady but if the show is about talent, then that Shaheen kid should win." [Daily Mail]
• Aww, Kiefer Sutherland and Proenza Schouler's Jack McCollough have kissed and made up! Well there was no kissing, but the two did issue a brief joint statement: "I am sorry about what happened that night and sincerely regret that Mr. McCollough was injured," Sutherland said. "I appreciate Mr. Sutherland's statement and wish him well," McCollough said. Then a unicorn jumped over a rainbow and gumdrops and structured dresses fell from the sky. [USA Today]
• Kiefer's headbutt incident caused some drama on the set of the film he's working on. [Daily Express]
• Guess who was out drinking Thursday night? Kiefer Sutherland. He had his 21-year-old daughter with him. [Page Six]
• Check out the toothless picture Demi Moore posted of herself — from the dentist's chair — on Twitter. Nice glasses. [Daily Mail]
• Charlotte Gainsbourg has won the best actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in Lars von Trier's Antichrist — in which she does unspeakable things to the genitalia of Willem Dafoe. Congrats! [AP]
• Tragic: Mike Tyson's 4-year-old daughter is on life support after she was found with her neck caught in the cord of a treadmill. [AP, NY Post, NY Daily News]
• Cate Blanchett spoke at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen yesterday, saying: "Australia's best climate scientists have been warning us that we'll face many more catastrophic fire days in south-east Australia unless the world acts to dramatically cut greenhouse pollution. We have the ability to kick start the low carbon economies of the future right when we need to, and that's now." [Breitbart]
• Natalie Cole has been released from the hospital five days after getting a kidney transplant. The memorial service for her sister, who died from lung cancer the same day Natalie received a kidney, was held yesterday. [People]
• We've heard this a zillion times, but now it's confirmed by his "people": Mel Gibson's girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, is pregnant. [People]
• "Actress and Scientologist Kirstie Alley is on a Twittering crusade against a bill that would provide money for screening, diagnosis and treatment of postpartum depression." Here are some of her Tweets:"I have to get you all info on THE MOTHER'S ACT. this is this lousy BILL that would give BIG BROTHER the right to force you to drug ur kids" And: "AND MANDATE that when you are pregnant, YOU MUST take drugs if a Dr. tells you to. THIS is BIG BROTHER at his finest. More on this soon moms." Plus: "I am organizing a MILLION MOM MARCH to protest this BILL. It just keeps rearing it's head. BACKED 100% by BIG PHARMA. MOMS UNITE!!" According to a spokesperson, the "Mother's Act," sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Bob Menendez, will not force "expectant mothers or new mothers to do anything." The spokesperson says: "Furthermore, the pharmaceutical industry has had nothing to do with this bill. We frankly have no idea where they get this stuff." [Politico]
• Lindsay Lohan will star in The Other Side, an indie comedy Katie Holmes was supposed to make. Apparently Katie was really into the script, sending notes and stuff, and then there was a scheduling conflict. This is the one with Woody Harrelson, Giovanni Ribisi, Jason Lee, Alanis Morissette and Dave Matthews; Lindsay will play a grad student who goes to spend her summer doing research on a remote island, where she discovers a community of eccentrics who share a secret. [Yahoo via E!]
• While Monica Bellucci was at the closing ceremonies of the Cannes Film Festival, burglars stole about $112,000 worth of jewels, a laptop and such from her Paris apartment. It's so To Catch A Thief! [Reuters]
• Whoopi Goldberg cut her Las Vegas stand up show short on Friday night after a man in the audience had a seizure and collapsed. [TMZ]
• Amy Winehouse's mom, Janis, says Amy drinks because she's bored. "Amy knows her drinking ruined the performance. Of course her band is frustrated, but even they can't stop her. It's just another one of Amy's addictions getting the better of her. It's yet another demon she has to beat. She came off drugs on her own so I know she'll stop drinking too much too. It has to be her decision though, no one else can stop her." [The Sun]
• Colin Farrell will be the best man when his gay brother Eamon Farrell marries his partner Steven later this year. [Daily Express]
• Shocker: Jon & Kate Plus 8 is staged, says Kate's sister-in-law Julie. She blogs: "When the show first started, Kate made a wish list of things that she wanted, and that became the theme of each episode - the carpet, twins' room, bunk beds, cow, hair plugs, teeth whitening, trips, etc. EVERYTHING that you see them do or buy is completely paid for out of the budget for the show or traded for free advertising … The episodes are also staged. Here's how it works ... there is a staff of people reading these blogs and they base the shows around what people are talking about." [MSNBC Scoop]
• The Real Housewives Of New York are getting a raise: Next season they'll get "upwards of $30,000 per episode." Raise your hand if you feel impoverished now. [NY Daily News]
• Lost's Evangeline Lilly says that producers "have seen that I haven't picked up on the opportunity to become a big movie star. It frustrates [them] that they've given me this chance to become the next Angelia Jolie" yet she hasn't gone after it. She adds: "Sure, I'd love to be her, but just the humanitarian side." [Page Six via Women's Health]
• Desperate Doused Wives? Teri Hatcher jumped into the pool fully clothed after performing with her charity group, "Band From TV," at Miami Beach's Shore Club. [Page Six]
• Mandy Moore loves watching the cagefighting mixed-martial arts of the UFC: "It's the best way for me to get out my aggression," she says. "The rush of adrenaline, being in an arena with 20,000 screaming people-it's overwhelming in the best way." [Maxim]
• Kevin Bacon's BlackBerry was stolen at a subway station in NYC on Thursday — and KB totally chased the guy! Unfortunately, he didn't catch him. [Daily Mail]
• Liz Taylor is in the hospital, but it's only a routine visit. Also: La Liz hearts Twitter. [MSNBC]
• "Brooke Shields: 'I was a virgin until the age of 22 because I didn't like the way I looked.'" [Daily Mail
• Rapper T.I. played a farewell concert to an arena packed with 16,000 fans Sunday night; he's due to report at the Federal Correction Institution at Forrest City, Arkansas by noon today. [USA Today]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Model Adriana Lima is reportedly three months pregnant; she eloped with NBA player Marko Jaric on Valentine's Day earlier this year. [Gatecrasher]
• Are you wondering if the Jonas Brothers are fizzling out as a Disney franchise? Here's a 1,114 word story that will sort of, but not really, answer that question. [NY Times]
• In this interview with Michael Bay, he divulges that the new Transformers movie takes up huge chunks of computer memory with its special effects. The first Transformers took up "an astounding 15 terabytes," and the sequel required 140 terabytes. "That breaks every record," says Bay. Also: Did you know he directed that old Aaron Burr "Got Milk" commercial? [LA Times]
• Phylicia Rashad, aka Claire Huxtable, is taking over as the mother in the Broadway play August Osage County. This article notes, "In a notable flourish of so-called nontraditional casting, Ms. Rashad inherits a white stage family of three daughters, a husband, a sister and other relatives." [NY Times]
• Are Kylie Minogue and her hot hottie gonna get married? [News.com.au]
• Not that you care but: "Peter Andre tells Katie Price it's 'too late' to reconcile, as he spends first day back with his kids." [Mirror]
• Morrissey has canceled more tour dates due to illness. [BBC News]
• For the last few weeks, there's been lots of buzz about the book Hollywood producer Jon Peters was going to write — with details about Barbra Streisand and so on — and now his book deal is off. Although he's still going to write a book. [Deadline Hollywood]
• "A Night Out With" Nia Vardalos includes Greek desserts, men yelling out blessings in Greek, and Rita Wilson dipping her tongue in a shot glass of Jägermeister, with Vardolos urging, "Do it, do it, do it." [NY Times]
• Sly Stone — previously reclusive — has been taking the stage lately, to support his 27-year-old daughter Novena Carmel, and her band, BabyStone. [CNN]
• Two Scottish cities are fighting over Groundskeeper Willie of The Simpsons. Is there nothing else to do? [The Sun]
• Grumpy Paul McCartney is reportedly "furious" about the switch to digital cable. "He doesn't think it's right that you have to either go to the trouble of getting an adapter or you have to buy a new TV, which he should do anyway," says a source. "You'd think he'd have an apartment full of flat screen TVs but really, he's got these old clunky sets in this tiny New York apartment." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Attention, Black Magic Women: Tomorrow, Carlos Santana will kick off a two-year residency at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. [USA Today]
• RIP Jay Bennett, former member of the band Wilco. [E!]
• Tony Curtis called Joan Collins a "****" but it's tough to figure out what those stars stand for. [Daily Mail]
• Liberty DeVitto, who played with Billy Joel for 30 years, has sued the singer claiming he's owed overdue royalties. [UPI]
• Do you want to read a quote from Heather Mills' ex-fiancé, Chris Terrill, in which he compares her to a tornado? Then by all means, click the link. [Mirror]
• Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian made a whopping $70 million over the last four days; Terminator Salvation made about $65. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Phish tour: Sold out. Go find your tie-dye. [UPI]
• "Simple Minds return with a new album but the same defiant attitude." [Daily Express]
• Blind item! "What seemingly sweet small-screen starlet is actually so nasty that she won't speak to anyone on set until she 'has her face on?'" [Gatecrasher]
• "It was a divine beginning and it went on becoming more romantic. He took more attention than you can imagine to make sure you were sexually OK, with tiny wee cushions everywhere so one was comfortable. I never knew anyone who gave one such tiny, exquisite attentions. It was like having a wonderful parrot who bites everyone else but you. Everyone said: 'Oh Serge, he's so dangerous.' I said : 'Oh yes, he is,' but really, he was a pushover – very sentimental, very romantic." — Jane Birkin, on Serge Gainsbourg. [Guardian]
• "I don't take myself so seriously. All these people think I do. Look, a lot of people think it's fun to hate on Michael Bay. There's a lot of poison on the Internet. People always try to knock someone who's had a ton of success in movies. Whatever." — Michael Bay. [LA Times]
• "Becoming a mum was the single most profound, self-adjusting moment in my life. I birthed myself. It's like I took back my life. I took back the essence of who I am." — Thandie Newton, who struggled with bulimia before she got pregnant. [Times Of London]
• "Very swiftly we turned into two different people, and it's just hard. He's angry with me that he's home and I'm not. Yet he doesn't really feel great about me, so he wants me to travel. It is so involved I almost can't put it into words. I think the thing that makes me the maddest is: Jon made some mistakes and he was out and whatever, and that made people question him. I'm doing what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing. I'm working and traveling. [which led to reports that she was having an affair with her bodyguard]." — Kate Gosselin. [AP]
• "Since I've played for years, I get a little break. I think if I were doing rock music, there would be more doubt because there's such a great tradition of actors doing rock music so badly." — Steve Martin, on his banjo playing and bluegrass album. [NY Post]
• "I have never tap-danced in my life and I was kicked out of the choir in the fifth grade because I can't sing, but for this movie I had to tap-dance and sing in one scene… when I was supposed to be nine months pregnant. So I had tap shorts over fishnets around a fake pregnancy belly, and when I put my arms up to tap-dance in front of 300 people, my pants fell down. It was like embarrassment laid on top of embarrassment laid on top of embarrassment." — Sarah Chalke, on shooting the Lifetime movie Maneater. [NY Daily News]
• "For me, it's not a pastime, going out and meeting people and trying to hook up with people. That actually makes me feel disgusting. From a really early age, I was really sensitive to that. Getting your flirt on is the best thing in the world, but when it comes to sharing bodily fluids with a person I don't know — no thank you." — Katy Perry. [Gatecrasher]

[Image by Steven Klein via W Magazine.]

• In light of infidelity rumors, Jon and Kate Gosselin are seeing a marriage counselor. They're so committed to repairing their relationship, that they may be letting TLC tape their sessions. [The National Enquirer]

• Last night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Kiefer Sutherland said of his headbutting incident, that he "really regrets having happened." [TMZ]
• Amy Winehouse has cancelled her comeback concert in Britain. Her statement said, "Amy would like to apologise to her fans who bought tickets." [The Mirror]
• As mentioned earlier, Natalie Cole's sister Cookie died this week while Natalie was receiving a kidney transplant. Their sister Timolin explained: "Natalie was there with [Cookie] at her bedside at 4 in the morning on Monday, and she got a phone call from her doctors that a kidney was ready for her. She said: 'What do you mean? I can't deal with that right now! I'm here with my dying sister!' And they said to her: 'No, ma'am. We've got to do it now. You've got to be at Cedars-Sinai in two hours.'" Timolin says she told Natalie: "Cookie would want this for you." [UPI]
• Actress Lucy Gordon left two suicide notes before hanging herself in the Paris apartment she shared with her boyfriend. Her father, Richard Gordon, said one letter included her last wishes about her estate, and the other was for her parents. Her father said: "The whole family is so proud of Lucy, and we always have been. Her death has come completely out of the blue and the entire family is devastated." [The Daily Mail]
• Lucy Gordon and her cinamatographer boyfriend Jerome Almeras reportedly had a fight on Tuesday night in their apartment. He found her the next day. She would have turned 29 today. [The Star]
• Heath Ledger's last film, The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus is premiering at Cannes. Director Terry Gilliam said, "Everybody was just energised by Heath, he was extraordinary, he was almost exhausting because he had so much energy - that just passed onto everyone else, everyone's part grew because they were full of Heath's energy." [The Mirror]
• Sharon Stone donated $50,000 to a fund being set up for AIDS research, which will honor Natasha Richardson. Stone said: "Natasha said that she would go on until a cure was found for Aids - I believe that she will." [The Mirror]
• In this video taken outside a L.A. club Jason Wahler challenges Spencer Pratt to a fight and calls him "a little faggot." [TMZ]
• Things aren't as wild at the Playboy Mansion as they used to be. Cops rolled up to the house because they got a call that shots had been fired nearby. It turned out to be a false alarm. They found Hugh Heffner playing backgammon with his son Marston. [TMZ]
• One of the aphorisms in Kanye West's new book Thank You And You're Welcome is" "If everybody thinks it's right, you're doing something wrong." Newsweek asked if Kanye's ever found the people who said he was wrong turned out to be right?I can't think of a particular example like that. But that is something about being a trailblazer: you won't always take the right track. I'm not a psychic. [Newsweek]
• When asked what interview he would most like to do, Larry King said: "Fidel Castro certainly. Always wanted to interview a Pope. Any Pope. And J.D. Salinger, who is probably the most impossible interview to get. The Catcher in the Rye had a major impact on me. I'd ask him, "Where'd you go? Why'd you stop writing? Did you run dry after four books?" That just boggles me. That's something I could never do. Disappear from the scene." [Time]
• This interview with Whoopi Goldberg is chock full of crazy stories about her past, such as how she decided to become a bricklayer in her youth. Goldberg explains: "I was young, homeless and addicted to heroin. I'd dropped out of high school and into drugs. Simple as that. I was a child of the Sixties so I ingested as many mind-altering substances as I could. It was a rite of passage. And when I got clean I was convinced I wanted to be an actor. I just needed a bit of time to convince the acting profession. So, in between, I needed a job." [The Telegraph]
• When asked what he thought about the American Idol finale on his blog, Clay Aiken went into a rant about how the show is fake now writing, "I think they voted AGAINST an American Idol that has, for four years now, been more about the slick productions and polished contestants than it has been about finding the raw talent that it did in its first three seasons." [Perez Hilton]
• Jessica Biel's new movie Easy Virtue, is based on a Noël Coward's play and she sings one of his songs over the credits. She said: "They were moving forward with [Ben Barnes doing it], but found out by looking into Coward's will and things that he wrote about his music that he said no man could ever record that song again. I guess he was in love with somebody and that was it - no man was going to record that again, so you can only find women singing and recording it. So it was very random. I hadn't planned on it, and it was such a treat to get to do that because - and I know no one really knows this about me - I really started in musical theater, with Annie and The Sound of Music. I mean, I wanted to be Whitney Houston, that was my dream." [N.Y. Magazine]

• ZOMG Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie partied past one am in Cannes! He drank Bailey's! She drank vodka! He had his hand on her leg! They laughed and whispered in each other's ears! [People]
• Brad Pitt says:

"I am in love and I have the most beautiful family — what else can a guy want?" It's almost like In Touch was wrong! [Mirror]

• Someone in Cannes paid $25,000 for a kiss from Robert Pattinson. For that price, some of the sparkles had better rub off. Oh, the money went to AmFar. [Page Six]
• Guess who lost her BlackBerry in Cannes? Paris Hilton. The Daily Fail prints pictures of her drunkenly straddling Doug Whatshisname so you get the impression that she was too busy grinding to keep tabs on her phone. [Daily Mail]
• When getting takeout, Owen Wilson doesn't wait on line with the plebes, he walks straight into the kitchen. [Page Six]
• Jay-Z has left Def Jam records, the label which issued his biggest hits. He went from artist on Def Jam to president of Def Jam and back to artist again, and now, like Madonna, he has a deal with Live Nation. [Crain's]
• Sarah Jessica Parker says Matthew Broderick is reacting strongly to the intense media attention and threats their surrogate is receiving: "He's furious. He's angry." [People]
• Alec Baldwin has penned am essay praising documentary filmmaking. "If you want to see something off the crash-bang-boom thrill ride that Hollywood promises each year, don't rule out documentaries." [WSJ]
• Trudie Styler has written a missive titled "It Is Not Hypocritical To Fly If I'm Campaigning For The Environment." Subtitle: "There's no way I could raise millions for the rainforest if I only travelled by boat or train." [Guardian]
• Patrick Swayze: Releasing a memoir in the fall. [UPI]
• Boo. Rihanna and Aubrey "Drake" Graham are just friends. Boo. The man who was Jimmy on Degrassi told a radio station: "I have the most utmost respect for her. I think she's so talented. I'm being honest- - [She's] just a friend that's all." Although even if they were seen kissing, that doesn't mean it's serious, or that either of them would admit it. [People]
• 90210's AnnaLynne McCord and Twilight's Kellan Lutz: It's on. [Page Six]
• Susan Boyle would be "perfectly happy" with a reality show, says a source. [MSNBC Scoop]
• The woman who choked Terri Seymour after American Idol on Tuesday night was getting revenge for Paula Abdul. Janice Thibodeaux tells Radar Online, "I wasn't cool with Simon Cowell choking Paula Abdul on the show last week and with her crying-out 'help' as he did so. Nobody said anything about that so I wanted to confront him about it because that is not appropriate behavior, is it?" Um, no, but does that mean you should do it? Thibodeaux continues: "[Terri] was taking some photographs with her camera and I knew she was his girlfriend so I went up to her to tell her how I felt. We started arguing and then I put my hands around her neck and started choking her just like Simon had done with Paula. Then I walked away and I was tackled by the police but I don't regret what I did because of what Simon did to Paula, nobody seemed to care about that." Okay, now we're forced to point to our ear and make a swirly motion. You know what that means. [Rolling Stone via Radar Online]
• Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn have recorded a collection of duets, on an album called Break Up. [USA Today]
• Katie Holmes will perform in Sunday's 20th anniversary National Memorial Day Concert broadcast from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. She'll play the sister of an Iraq war vet. Tom and Suri will be watching. [USA Today]
• Wow: Natalie Cole's kidney came from a deceased fan. Cole has been on a long list, and was always looking for donors, and, a spokesperson says, "Having heard of Ms. Cole's need for a kidney, the family asked that one of their loved one's kidneys be transplanted to Ms. Cole if they were a match." [CNN]
• Ugh, sad: While Natalie Cole was undergoing transplant surgery, her older sister died of cancer. [Page Six]
• Breaking news: "Kim Kardashian Is Getting Ready for Bikini Season." [People]
• Mike Judge's new show, The Goode Family, mocks environmentalists and vegetarians. [WSJ]
• Ben Stiller has two films coming out this weekend: he stars in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, but he exec-produced a small documentary, The Boys, about brother songwriters famous for their Disney tunes. [Page Six]
• Jessica Simpson didn't use her longtime hairdresser, Ken Paves, for her Vanity Fair cover, because photographer Mario Testino insisted on his own team. Guess he didn't want big "Texas" hair. [Page Six]
• The Black Eyed Peas are releasing The E.N.D — "Energy Never Dies," but don't call it an album. Will.i.am says: "The album? Whatever. I don't listen to albums. "People don't hear music like that now. When they stopped puttin' CD players in cars, that was when I knew it was over. The tradition of gettin' 15 songs and expectin' people to hear 'em how you made 'em? That's not it any more." The E.N.D. is more like a project that evolves through remixes and fan participation. Or something. [Guardian]
• When he was 16, Simon Cowell was a 'miserable little devil' who was kicked out of school. [The Sun]
• Denise Richards' romantic life? It's complicated. She is "Dating-ish. That means not a boyfriend. When I say dating-ish, I mean no boyfriend." [Yahoo via E!]
• Robert DeNiro is a grandpa! [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which newly attached TV actress got it on with a gawky star from the same network?" [NY Daily News]
• Q: How many pairs of suspenders do you have? A: "Never counted 'em. But my guess would be—there are suspenders in New York and Washington and, of course, at my home in Los Angeles—150. But they can't be clip-ons. Every pair of pants I buy—jeans, anything—we sew in the suspender buttons." — Larry King. [Time]
• "Some people are suing us at the moment and although it was initially a bit depressing, now it's become really inspiring. You think, 'Right, if everyone's trying to take away our best song, then we'd better write 25 better ones.' And so just at the point where I was thinking about getting fat and becoming complacent, I've been finding more inspiration." — Chris Martin of Coldplay. [Rolling Stone]
• "As everybody knows, chicks dig the vampires." — Paul Wesley, star of the new CW show The Vampire Diaries. The show is produced by Kevin Williamson, the force behind Dawson's Creek.

• How did Brad Pitt end up in Inglourious Basterds? Booze and weed maybe:

"All I know is we talked about backstory and we talked about movies into the wee hours," Brad says. "I got up the next morning and I saw five empty bottles of wine on the floor. Five. And something that resembled smoking apparatus, I don't know what that was. Apparently I had agreed to do the movie and six weeks later I was in a uniform." You read that right: He and Quentin Tarantino were wasted and talking about Hitler. [Guardian]

• "'Today' show's Ann Curry can't keep hands off 'Inglourious Basterds' Brad Pitt in Cannes." [NY Daily News]
• Some guy named Kris Allen won this thing called American Idol. Will the Glambert have a career?!?! [Reuters, NY Daily News]
• Simon Cowell has his personal bodyguards watching over Terri Seymour after she was attacked by a disgruntled American Idol fan. [Daily Mail]
• Green Day has the most popular CD in the country, but you can't get it at Wal-Mart; "They won't carry our record because they wanted us to censor it," frontman Billie Joe Armstrong says. The retailer would have offered a "clean" version, but Billie Joe explains: "We just said no. We've never done it before. You feel like you're in 1953 or something." [AP]
• Rihanna was indeed seen kissing rapper Drake, whom you may know as Aubrey Graham, aka Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi: The Next Generation; the guy in the wheelchair. Remember that time he found out he couldn't get it up? Yeah. Anyway click here for a LOL. [People]
• The recent Bruce Springsteen hubub — in which he was accused of having an affair with his neighbor's wife — was actually extortion. The husband thought the rocker would pay "big money" to make the accusations "go away." [NY Post]
• The brother of Jon Gosselin's alleged mistress says: "The rumors are true… Personally, I do think they're going to continue seeing each other. I think they think they can get away with it." [E!]
• Kate Gosselin says the tabloids are making her life hell and she is worried about the kids: . "I don't want them dragged into this. It kills me. I've been saying, 'Let's find a country where our show doesn't air, and let's just go there until this all dies.' I have to laugh about this, or else I'll cry. It's a matter of, when will they stop?" [People]
• Mariah Carey announced the title of her new album via Twitter: "Bcuz I Love U, I want u to be the first to know the title of my new album Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel. It's very personal & dedicated to u." It is not dedicated to proper spelling, however. [Mirror]
• Talent firms William Morris and Endeavor are merging, which is good news for clients like Amy Adams, Keira Knightley, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, but bad news for the 100+ people who have been laid off. [Gatecrasher]
• Chris Brown may be working on a country song called "Trapped In A Dream." Doesn't he mean nightmare? [E!]
• Kim Cattrall has written an essay about making Memorial Day meaningful for The Huffington Post. She writes: "My family has served in the military dating back at least four generations, so I can truly appreciate the sacrifices made by those men and women who have fought so courageously in defense of freedom." [HuffPo]
• Kim Kardashian's Dash stores in Miami and Calabasas CA have both been vandalized — the perps scribbled graffiti on the windows, and the kopykat krime in CA included a note which read, "We love you Kim!!" If you love her, why are you spraypainting her windows? [TMZ, E!]
• Susan Boyle: Namechecked on The Simpsons. [Mirror]
• The head honcho at Disney/ABC is being dragged into Kate Walsh's divorce battle — Kate's ex wants him to testify about Kate's finances. [TMZ]
• Josh Lucas has dumped a gf via text message in the past. "I'm sickeningly embarrassed about it to this day." [Gatecrasher]
• A man in Montana — who was accused in 2005 of trying to kidnap David Letterman's son — was denied appeal by the Montana Supreme Court. [AP]
• Michael Jackson canceled the first four opening shows of his 50-date gig at London's O2 arena, which means 80,000 fans who had bought tickets will have to wait up to eight months to see the concerts. Jackson says the cancellation is due to "technical issues." As in, technically, he is not ready to do a huge concert? [Daily Mail]
• Can you ever, ever get tired of seeing pictures of 50 Cent and Bette Midler together? [Gatecrasher]
• James Cameron's Avatar, described by Steven Soderbergh as "the craziest shit ever," may be shown in theaters for THREE MONTHS. [NY Mag]
• Natalie Cole had a kidney transplant on Tuesday; she had been have dialysis three times a week since September. [CNN]
• "'Meet me man to man and I'll save your marriage,' Katie Price's horse 'hunk' tells Peter Andre." [Daily Mail]
• In case you didn't hear, My Name Is Earl has been canceled. [Mirror, BBC]
• Abbie Cornish is in Jane Campion's new flick, Bright Star, and according to this report, she "dyed her locks chocolate brown, filled out her figure to fit with the era's rounder beauty standards and took diction lessons in order to deliver Keats' poetry just so." [WWD]
• Rosario Dawson will star opposite — ugh — Kevin James in a romcom called The Zookeeper. What is up with the schlubby dudes getting hot ladies? [Variety]
• Hank Azaria plays a reanimated ancient Egyptian bent on world domination in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and says: "It's kind of my niche — semi-naked, accented freak." [LA Times]
• Rapper/producer Swizz Beatz is in a relationship with Alicia Keys. But he's not yet divorced from wife Mashonda. He wants the court to seal documents related to the divorce so the public doesn't know any details. [Page Six]
• Michael Douglas spent Wednesday night moderating a panel of Washington experts on the issue of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. I watched Clean House. [USA Today]
• Phil Spector may get life in prison. [Mirror]
• Congrats to Chad Lowe and girlfriend Kim Painter, whose first child, Mabel Painter Lowe, was born on Saturday. [Star]
• Samantha Harris, the lady with the brown hair on Dancing With The Stars, will play Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway. [Page Six]
• Heather Mills was approached to be the face of a video game (based around someone with a prosthetic arm), but she wanted six figures to get involved with the project, and the producers were like, No. [The Sun]
• Redmond O'Neal was transferred to a new jail, where he'll begin intensive drug treatment. [People]
• "As she exhibits the bloodstained bag John Lennon's clothes were stored in after his murder, why the ex-Beatle's fans are saying 'You're just a ghoul, Yoko.'" [Daily Mail]
• RIP Wayne Allwine, who was the voice of Mickey Mouse. [Reuters]
• Blind item! "Which top model was dismissed from her agency - all because she became a Scientologist?" [Gatecrasher]
• "Batman's a hell of a lot tougher to do because he's all physical. He doesn't use guns. He's completely physical. John Connor uses guns. It's just a matter of picking somebody off and getting a good shot." — Christian Bale. [Mirror]
• "I've joined the millions and millions of women on the planet who are working mums, and I've discovered it's a real balancing act. I think the most incredible thing for me was that I didn't read any books about how to be a mum. Your instinct kicks in, and it's like you're tapping knowledge that you have in your DNA." — Rachel Weisz. [Mirror]
• "Artistically, me and Brad have been sniffing around each other for a while. The longing looks across the room, the little notes, 'I like you, do you like me.' Pretty quickly into writing I realised this is the one for Brad and then I started getting nervous – 'shit, if he doesn't do it, what the fuck am I going to do?'" — Quentin Tarantino, on Inglourious Basterds. he also says: "I'm never going to explain the spelling. When you do an artistic flourish like that, to describe it, to explain it, to take the piss out of it would invalidate the whole stroke in the first place." [Guardian]
• "We interviewed GfE's. They were intrigued by (the film). They were very helpful, very open. They would have to see the film to let me know if it's an accurate depiction of their lifestyle or not. There was only one of them we talked to that was in a committed relationship. That was one of the things we talked about — how do relationships work when this is your job? Most of them said it really doesn't. Most of them said if I'm going to get serious with someone then I'll stop working for a while and play it out. All of them said it never works out with a client. Whenever you move from the client to a real relationship it never works out. Although the one that we met who was in a committed relationship did meet that person as a client and they have been together for a long time. So I guess there are no absolutes. But in general they seem to think that doesn't work." — Steven Soderbergh, on his new film, The Girlfriend Experience. [Reuters]
• "Every time I am making a movie I feel insecure, and I feel scared, and that's part of the way I work.If one day I would be on the set feeling too secure - that would really scare me." — Penelope Cruz. [Yahoo News via AP]
• "I'd like to offer an apology and a clarification to remarks I made recently. While on the David Letterman program, I joked that I might need a ‘mail-order bride' to achieve the goal of having more children in my life. I believe that most people understood that this was a joke and took it as such. (A dated reference, no doubt, and another sign of my advancing age.) However, I do apologize to anyone who took offense." — Jack Donaghy Alec Baldwin. [MSNBC]
• "Showbiz types are people who grew up talking to themselves alone in a room for hours until they found some sort of outlet. Once they found that outlet, everything fell into place, except for the fact that they still never worked out why they still talk so much. So you see, though filled with deep emotional voids that can never be filled, Showbiz Types are an important part of our Nation's tapestry. I'm a Showbiz Type. (cue penny whistle and marching drums) But I am not a douche!!" — John Mayer. [Perez]
• "FRESH ASS PICTURE!!! YO WHY CAN'T ALL PAPARAZZI PHOTOS BE THIS GOOD? WELL OBVIOUSLY BECAUSE MOST CELEBS JUST AREN'T RIHANNA LOL! ... BUT ON THE REAL, THIS PIC IS HARDCORE. PEEP THE PERSPECTIVE SHOT OF THE CITY IN THE BACK. SOMETIMES THE PAPS OVEREXPOSE THE LENS OR HAVE THE FLASH TOO HIGH TAKING ALL THE EMOTION OUT OF THE MOMENT. THIS MOMENT IS CAPTURED IN TIME NOW. I LOOK AT OUR CURRENT SUPERSTARS LIKE LEGENDS IN THE MAKING... LIKE JUSTIN IS THE NEW MIKE , BEYONCE'S THE NEW TINA TURNER, GAGA'S MADONNA, JAY IS SINATRA... WAYNE IS HENDRIX, THOM YORKE IS ROGER WATERS, THESE ARE THE CHAMPIONS AND SHOULD BE DOCUMENTED AS SUCH. THAT SAID, IT WOULD BE DOPE IF THE PAPS OPERATED WITH THE SAME INTEGRITY AND ATTENTION TO THEIR CRAFT AS THE LEGENDS THEY PHOTOGRAPH..... GOOD JOB ON THIS ONE!" — Your friend Kanye West, complimenting a snap of Rihanna. [Kanye Univercity, NY Daily News]

• Susan Boyle's new hairdo, clothes, and "reshaped" eyebrows may actually hurt her image, according to a neighbor: "She looks really nice - nothing like the image that's had the whole world talking about her."[DailyMail]

• X-Factor judge Louis Walsh has clearly been drinking the Susan Boyle Haterade: "Susan is a pretty good singer but she's not a great singer," he says. [TimesofLondon]
• Susan Boyle doesn't have Britain's Got Talent locked up just yet: a 10-year-old named Hollie Stell is giving her some strong competition. [Daily Mail]
• Is Lindsay Lohan's weight loss a cry for help? A source says yes: "She is a self-destructive person. It's all part of her cry for attention. She wants Sam [Ronson, her ex-girlfriend] to see how bad she's hurting and she wants Hollywood to see her as a 'tortured artist' who is wasting away … This is a symptom of something much bigger – a desperate need to be noticed." [People]
• The official promo posters for Bruno have been released. The tagline? "Borat was so 2006." [EW]
• Ugh, Octomom: The Musical? Really? [TMZ]
• Natalie Cole is waiting on a much-needed kidney donation: "In my younger, hell-raising days, I was an active drug user, and heroin was my drug of choice. In the process [I] contracted the hep C virus," Cole says. She is currently on dialysis and hopes a kidney comes soon, "but, at the moment, where it's coming from, heaven only knows." [PageSix]
• Blind Item: "This 80's Heartthrob is finding out the hard way you should never abandon your kids. When they grow up they come back to haunt you and make you look like a fool!" [Blind Gossip]
• Oh no! Henry Ian Cusick, perhaps best known for his role as Desmond Hume on LOST, has been accused of sexual harassment by a woman who used to work on the show. [TMZ]
• John Mayer has been spending a lot of time with a new "gal pal"—a cocktail waitress named Scheana Marie. OMG what does Jen have to say about all this?!? [People]
• Jay Leno has been released from the hospital and is "feeling much better."[USWeekly]
• Katy Perry has reportedly reunited with ex-fiance Travis McCoy "The break-up sucked," Travis says, "We're back together now - you're the first person I've told that to.I keep thinking about if I had to go through it again and how s****y it would be. We were moving way too fast. I was being juvenile about the entire thing. Now it's easy breezy. I'm happy and in love." [TheSun]
• "I love family. It is the best organisation there is, and I'm a great father. Come to think of it, that is my big conceit. If you want arrogance and conceit, I think I'm the best father in the world. I have always put my children first. I never spoiled them but I was there for them. They came on set with me. I got this reputation for saying yes to films only because of the locations or the money. Well, that wasn't entirely true. It was mostly about taking a job that would allow me to support the family and have them with me.-Michael Caine [DailyMail
• "For someone who has missed as much school as I have, I want to go back and discover what else there is. I always loved school - I was a proper, proper nerd. I just want that back again."Emma Watson, who seems to get more awesome by the minute. [ShowbizSpy]
• Is Mel Gibson's mistress expecting a baby? A source claims it may have sparked the Gibson divorce: "Robyn put up with Mel for years but when she found out Oksana was telling friends she was expecting it was the last straw." [TheSun]
• Madonna, Reese Witherspoon, and Gwyneth Paltrow, have all topped Forbes' list of "Hollywood's Hardest Working Mothers." [Reuters]
• Natalie Portman hopes to give viewers an inside look at the movie-making business with her new project, MakingOf. "I always wondered why there isn't a Web site that encapsulated the experience of visiting a friend on a movie set," she says, "Our site is supposed to give access to people who don't have a friend they can visit" - meaning pretty much everyone, and definitely us." [NYMag]
• "I think the best thing in my life is my ability to be in a stable relationship. For anybody who has been in care or moved around a lot, it's very tough to form strong, lasting relationships. And that's what I'm proudest of."-Samantha Morton [Guardian]
• Gwen Stefani has put down 100,000 to make sure that a proper playspace for her sons is built into her recording studio. [Star]
• Rhianna is hoping to retrieve the 1.4 million dollars worth of jewelry she was wearing on the night she was beaten by Chris Brown from the LAPD. [Yahoo!]
• Whoops! Apparently nobody at the Jonas Brothers' record label recognized the potential misunderstandings that might come about due to the Bros new album title, "Lines, Vines, and Trying Times." "Universal only get involved with distribution and promotion when the record is completed," says a source, "And they were stunned staff at Hollywood Records, who the lads are signed to, had failed to spot the ‘lines' reference." The same thing happened when I released my debut album: Crack, Smack, And Scooby Snacks. [TheSun]

• Madonna is making moves in Malawi: This picture at the link shows 4-year-old Mercy, the girl she's trying to adopt, holding hands with possible new sister Lourdes. [Daily Mail]

• Oprah faces yet another scandal involving her Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa; seven students allegedly engaged in "inappropriate behaviors." [Socialite Life]
• This report says that even though girls at Oprah's school were expelled, this is not a sex scandal. [MSNBC]
• Lisa Ling's sister Laura and another journalist being detained in North Korea are headed for a trial on the basis of "already confirmed suspicions," which doesn't sound good. [People]
• Bridget Moynahan is furious with Gisele Bundchen for telling Vanity Fair she loved Tom Brady's son like he was her own. Someone close to Bridget says: "If Gisele loved Bridget's child like he was '100 percent her own,' then she would not talk about him in the press. Discretion and respect are not either of Gisele or Tom's virtues, as was evidenced even when the child was still unborn and they publicly flaunted their relationship without any discretion whatsoever." [Page Six]
• Kate Moss is supposedly in New York to open the new TopShop here and OMGCLOTHESOMG. [Daily Mail]
• Shocker: Britney's Candie's ads have been Photoshopped! Won't someone think of the children? [Daily Mail]
• Josh Holly, the dude who hacked into Miley Cyrus' email and had his apartment raided by the FBI back in October is still being investigated. Special Agent Scott Augenbaum says: "We're still working on it. He hasn't been arrested." Guess what Holly has been doing in the meantime? Hacking celeb MySpace accounts and spamming their "friends." [E!]
• Speaking of Miley, she looks ever so uncomfortable on the May cover of Glamour. [Just Jared]
• Stephen Colbert is warning NASA to name a new wing of the international space station after him or he will "seize power as space's evil tyrant overlord." [CNN]
• Holy crap yay! Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel are expecting their first baby! [Socialite Life]
• Singer Natalie Cole is in desperate need of a kidney; she went on Larry King last night to talk about it and dozens of emails came in, with offers from people saying they would get tested to see whether their kidney could be donated. Sometimes TV redeems itself. [CNN]
• In this photograph, Robert Pattinson looks like a folkie singer with long hair and a guitar. Scarier than a vampire? [E!]
• Kelly Rowland has left Columbia Records, the label she's been with since her Destiny's Child days. Good luck out there! [E!]
• American Idol's emo musical theater rocker, Adam Lambert, has a fan in Neil Patrick Harris: The How I Met Your Mother Star was in the audience last night and says, "No male in this competition has sung so well. He really hit those notes." [E!]
• A TV station in Panama City, FL decided that Osbournes: Reloaded was "not keeping with community standards" and declined to air the show after American Idol. [E!]
• A sneak peek at the new Sherlock Holmes flick: "Leave it to Robert Downey Jr. to turn Sherlock Holmes into a wisecracking action hero who ends up handcuffed naked to a bed." [Yahoo News via AP]
• Rachel McAdams says filming the Sherlock Holmes movie was "cold and dirty." "The 1800s were kind of dirty, I realized. I didn't think about that before." [Mirror]
• Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani will never collaborate musically: "We come from such band mentalities that it's something we've really done well to avoid," Gavin says. [Mirror]
• Dreamworks animated flicks like Kung Fu Panda and Monsters Vs. Aliens will be shown on FX, thanks to a deal between the channel and the distributor. [USA Today]
• Star Jones says her mind and body are not in sync: I'm still 300 lbs. in my head some days," she told Oprah. [People]
• Wanda Sykes and the Fox network are finalizing a deal for a Saturday late-night show. Bring it! [Yahoo News via Reuters]
• Some Slumdog Millionaire DVDs were released without the "making of" feature and "deleted scenes," which were advertised on the box. Buyers are bitching to Amazon about it; Amazon is blaming Fox. [Deadline Hollywood]
• Pedro, a film about the HIV positive Real World castmember Pedro Zamora, premieres tonight on MTV and LOGO. [LA Times]
• The Seattle home where Jimi Hendrix grew up has been destroyed; preservation efforts failed. [Mirror]
• Liam Neeson has completed Chloe, the film he was working on when his wife Natasha Richardson died. [CBS News]
• R.I.P Andy Hallet, who played the demon Lorne on Angel. [Yahoo News via AP]
• Blind item: "Which Academy Award winner, who constantly denies his philandering ways, was outed after sleeping with a publicist who blabbed to everyone?" [Gatecrasher]
• "I'm going to get smashed after doing this." — Ed Westwick, at the Dressed To Kilt show, before which he apparently stripped down to his underwear in a corner to change into his kilt. [Gatecrasher]
• "I break down a couple of times a week, at least. It gets overwhelming. Sometimes I think that I can't take this anymore. I just want to live a normal life. Olivia [Palermo] kind of mothers me and looks at me as a pet project…I'm not some country bumpkin. I'm from Los Angeles." — Whitney Port on The City. [Page Six]
• "If women look like her, that would be the perfect world. She doesn't need to change anything. Who likes stick skinny girls? Where's the flavor? Whoever likes those stick skinny girls never had sex before in their life." — Dancing With The Stars' "star" Gilles Marini, on people talking about Cheryl Burke's weight gain. [E!]
• "I want my dogs to be in my wedding, I am so serious." — Jennifer Hudson. [Mirror]
• "Girls are scary. Large groups of girls scare the (crap) out of me." — Kristen Stewart. [USA Today]
• I haven't read the books, but I saw the movie… I thought the movie was really bad." — Whitney Port, on Twilight. [Perez]

• Instead of appearing at the Grammy Awards, Chris Brown - seen at left with Rihanna at a pre-Grammy party - was arrested for a felony battery.

He surrendered to the LAPD and then posted $50,000 bail. An "unidentified woman" who appeared to have been beaten identified Brown as her attacker. Rihanna did not show up at the Grammys either. [EW, Rolling Stone, People,TMZ]

• Sources say Rihanna's face is "slightly bruised." [ET]
• This report says Rihanna had "multiple bruises" and was in the hospital but has been released. [NY Daily News]
• Cops say that Chris Brown and "the woman" they are not identifying were arguing inside a vehicle after midnight on Saturday; they received a 911 call and when they arrived, they noticed that the woman had "visible injuries." Brown had left the scene by the time police arrived. [TMZ]
• The case is a felony and not a misdemeanor because of the visible injuries. [People]
• The argument took place in a rented Lamborghini after a pre-Grammy gala at the Beverly Hilton. [Fox 411]
• Rapper David Banner says: "One situation doesn't define a man and I really want American to stop doing that to people. As humans, none of us is perfect." Um, yeah, but. You don't hit women. [Rolling Stone]
• Apparently in 2007, Chris Brown told Giant magazine: "[My stepfather] used to hit my mom. He made me terrified all the time, terrified like I had to pee on myself. I remember one night he made her nose bleed. I was crying and thinking, 'I'm just gonna go crazy on him one day…' I hate him to this day." A family history of domestic violence? [Perez]
• Chris Brown's court date is March 5. [USA Today]
• Commenters on the EW boards claim Chris Brown hit Rihanna because he found out she gave him genital herpes, which she got from a backup dancer. Where are they getting their info? [EW]
• Oh, wait. From here. [All Hip-Hop]
• This blogger adds, "Why is all this foolishness taking place during Black History Month?" [All Hip-Hop]
• Meanwhile: Rihanna is looking for a bone marrow donor for a 5-year-old girl. [UPI]
• Uh-oh: Peaches Geldof and husband of six months, Max Drummey, have separated! To her credit, Peaches did say she didn't expect it to last forever. But maybe at least a year? [Daily Mail]
• Amy Winehouse is heading back to the UK after a long vacation in the Caribbean. She plans to present her lawyers with a "secret ex-file," detailing Blake Incarcerated's bad behavior. Ugly divorce countdown starts now! [News Of The World]
• Is there tension in the Beckham marriage as Victoria heads to New York fashion week alone? She reportedly wants to stay in the U.S.: "She feels out of place in Milan and gets frustrated by not being able to understand what they are saying." [Daily Mail]
• Whitney Houston sang at Clive Davis's pre-Grammy bash and sounded "incredible," E!'s Marc Malkin says. "Was she back to the days when she was in top high-note-hitting form? No, but close." [Yahoo News via E!]
• Usher had to cancel his performance at a pre-Grammy party due to a "serious injury in the family" — apparently his wife Tameka experienced complications from plastic surgery in Brazil. Yikes! [TMZ, People]
• A neurosurgeon from LA's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is headed to South America to check on Usher's wife. [Access Hollywood]
• Jennifer Aniston's 40th birthday party took place Saturday night at her house in Beverly Hills. Aniston and John Mayer "danced and huddled close all night," and guests included Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Crow, David Arquette and wife Courteney Cox Arquette, Tobey Maguire and wife Jen Meyer, Laura Dern, Kevin Nealon, and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. Aniston has some kind of pull in Hollywood: the police kicked all the paparazzi out of the neighborhood! [Yahoo News via E!]
• Lindsay Lohan was seen hanging out at a table behind Sam Ronson's DJ booth; while Sam worked, LL was drinking from bottles stashed under the table. LL would flirt with guys but bitch out any woman who came close. This report notes that LL looked "grossly skinny." [E!]
• Director McG says of Christian Bale's "blowup": "The film set is a passionate place, and it happens… It was just one of those moments. I think I can speak on all of our behalf that we've all gotten a little fired up. And if anybody would take that moment and take it out of context, it would seem very, very strange." [People]
• Beyoncé runs around two and-a-half miles every day and is "eating veg and drinking water" because her stylists — and her mom tell her when she's gained weight. As for the diet: "It's boring." [Mirror]
• Here's video of the Jessica Simpson performance in which "every song was a disaster" and she mumbled through the lyrics and talked through tears, if you really want to watch that kind of thing. [ONTD via TMZ]
• Since she is producing a teen TV show for Fox and has a movie in the works, Jennifer Lopez is "putting music on the back burner," which may be for the best. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Do we really believe that Leonardo DiCaprio wants girlfriend Bar Refaeli to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue because it will "piss off" Gisele Bundchen? [Page Six]
• Prince Harry and Paris Hilton were supposed to have a date? And the Prince canceled at the last minute? Did he come to his senses? Should we feel sorry for Paris? [Daily Mail]
• Eddie Murphy has been ordered to pay £35,000 a month until his daughter — whose mother is Mel B. — turns 18. That's a total of about £7million. Another Shrek sequel? Anyone? [Daily Mail]
• What's this? Emma Watson is nervous about kissing Rupert Grint, aka Ron Weasley, on screen? [Telegraph]
• Dave Grohl wore a white knot on the red carpet at the Grammys to show his support for gay marriage and marriage equality. Think we'll see 'em at the Oscars? [E!]
• A man was killed on Justin Timberlake's golf course in Tennessee Saturday in a freak accident involving a tree. [TMZ]
• Minutes into his act at a UK nightclub, rapper Coolio was pelted by plastic bottles and ice cubes. Coolio jumped into the crowd to fight some dudes but was dragged way by security. Not exactly a gangster's paradise… [The Sun]
• The new Dancing With The Stars cast has been revealed! Jewel and her husband, rodeo star Ty Murray, will compete against each other. The youngest contestant ever, 17-year-old Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson will dance; and so will Julianne Hough and boyfriend Chuck Wicks; Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff; Belinda Carlisle; Denise Richards, former NFL star Lawrence Taylor; Lil' Kim; Jackass star Steve-O; Apple computer co-founder Steve Wozniak; actors David Alan Grier and Gilles Marini; and Access Hollywood co-host Nancy O'Dell. [People]
• Remember when Natalie Portman rapped on Saturday Night Live? Uncensored audio can be found here [ONTD]
• Hugh Grant and ex Jemima Khan are so, so back on. [Telegraph]
• Welcome Charlie Axel into the world; he's the first son for Tiger Woods and wife Elin. [AP]
• A reporter calls The International, Tom Tykwer's film starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, a "strange and beautifully made thriller." Tykwer is best known for his 1998 flick, Run Lola Run. [Salon]
• Robbie Williams has been visiting weird websites, stuff like government paranoia and UFOs. [Daily Mail]
• Original Buffy The Vampire Slayer Kristy Swanson and ice skating champ Lloyd Eisler got married on Saturday. This story notes that Swanson "lost 45 lbs. in time for her wedding with the help of The Medifast Diet and regular exercise, including martial arts, skipping rope and treadmill work." [People]
• A tell-all book about Sean "Diddy Combs" by a former aspiring rapper is called Dancing With the Devil: How Puff Burned the Bad Boys of Hip-Hop. It's self-published, naturally. [Page Six]
• Are you ready for a Tricky comeback? [Independent]
• "Straying Alive! Married Bee Gee Robin Gibb has baby with live-in housekeeper 26 years his junior." [Daily Mail]
• "I want to keep learning, I have no ego. I'm blessed to be on one of the great shows. I made a statement last year that I was going to aggressively pursue my acting career… I want to do some television." - Sean "Diddy Combs on his CSI: Miami gig. [The Star]
• Paradise Beach had improbable plot-lines. We were always in bikinis, even at funerals. And someone who was my brother ended up being my father and I pulled him – it was just insane." — Isla Fisher on her soap opera past, to GQ. [Daily Express]
• "Besides being in love with him, I'm his biggest fan. I think my fiancé is hilarious." — Isla Fisher on Sacha Baron Cohen. [Mirror]
• "I've decided I am going to start loving my backside because I don't know anyone who does that. And for my daughter, I want to be able to say to her, 'I love this.' [Young women] look at all of us, myself included, on these magazine covers and they think, 'My God, how does she get skin like that?' And I can tell you, I have so many blemishes under this make-up that have been so fabulously covered, I promise you. I did realise a few years ago that no one actually talks about this retouching thing. It's like a secret or something. I'm damned if it's going to be a secret any more. I really want these young women to know we don't look like this." — Kate Winslet. [Daily Mail]
• "I think I definitely want to go to college… I could always study drama. I think that would be really cool. There's always more you can learn. If I wanted to do something totally different, I love history." — Dakota Fanning. [Newsweek]
• "Sir Anthony Hopkins is in the recording studio with Amy Winehouse, and we are hoping that next week Sir Brad and all the Pitt family will be performing The Sound of Music at the Brit awards." — Mick Jagger, making jokes at the Baftas. [People]
• "It's so invasive. It's not like they're standing 100 feet away. They're in your face, not letting you walk, standing in the way when you're driving. It becomes a situation and it doesn't need to be." — Jessica Alba on the paparazzi. [The Star]
• "I got into a bit of hot water for what I said about Amy Winehouse and I still say it again. I'm an ex-drug addict and I don't take that kind of stuff lightly. It stayed in my body for 25 years and it could still happen to this young woman or other addicts who are fooling around with drugs, especially needles. I would hope that what happened to me does not happen to her." — Natalie Cole, who has Hepatitis C and is waiting for a kidney transplant, on Amy Winehouse. [Mirror]
• "Every time I go for an ultra scan the baby is like in crazy positions with legs star-shaped and stuff. It's not like in a baby position at all. I feel like he is used to base lines and beats and receptive to that, which is cute." — M.I.A. [Mirror]
• "I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and my parents taught me to respect my elders. We'd say things like 'yes, ma'am' and 'no, sir' to adults. But kids in Los Angeles don't do that. I've drawn the line at my children calling adults by their first names. I tell them they can call people 'Miss Shannon' or 'Miss Heather' but that using only the first name is too familiar. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned." — Reese Witherspoon. [Reader's Digest]
• "It's crazy for people to care about him having a bong hit. Nothing's the matter with it - I want to have a bong hit right now. Really, the message Phelps is giving is that you can smoke weed and still be at the top of your game." — Bill Maher. [Gatecrasher]
• "My split with Brad was the hardest thing I ever went through. But it made me strong, superhuman. Now I'm turning 40 and I'm very excited. When they say youth is wasted on the young, it's so true.'" — Jennifer Aniston. [Daily Mail]
• People have called me a sex symbol in the past, but it's very much an effort […] It's been important for me to just do something that's extreme — that really separates me from that public Joaquin Phoenix persona, whatever the fuck that is. Or maybe I'm just lazy." — Joaquin Phoenix on his new, grizzy, bearded "look." [The Sun]

• Ladies! Get your issue of Entertainment Weekly and hold on to it tightly. Daniel Craig looks mighty fine. [Just Jared]
• Daniel Craig showed up at the London premiere of Quantum of Solace with a black sling. He is still injured! (We've seen him in a sling before.) [Guardian]
• When Courtenay Semel — whose dad used to run Yahoo, who was once Lindsay Lohan's roommate and Tila Tequila's girlfriend — was arrested in Vegas in August, she allegedly said to the security guard who was trying to prevent her from entering a club: "Do you even know who I am, fucking idiot? Google me, you dumb fuck." Then she hit him in the face. [TMZ]
• Lily Allen's PR Machine calls her "the Wordsworth of the MySpace generation." Apparently, her new album, It's Not Me, It's You, contains the following couplet: "Now I lie here in the wet patch in the middle of the bed/I'm feeling pretty damn hard done by, I've spent ages giving head." HAHAHA. [Guardian]

• A gun thought to be the murder weapon in the Jennifer Hudson family tragedy has been found. [TMZ]
• William Balfour, the main suspect in the Hudson murders, has refused a polygraph test. [Yahoo News]
• There was a drug raid at the Hudson house in 2002: Jennifer's brother, Jason, allegedly sold crack to a registered informant. [TMZ]
• Nancy Grace spoke with the mother of William Balfour, the man who is being held in the triple murder of Jennifer Hudson's family. His mom says Jennifer Hudson's brother was selling drugs out of the house and her son was with a girlfriend at the time of the crime. [TMZ via CNN]
• Melissa Etheridge blogged about being gay and truing to adopt kids over at the Daily Beast. "I know my preference of lifemate freaks some people out," she writes. "Maybe it is just their fear of sex or intimacy. I know that they hold up the Bible and say that it's wrong… I will never forget the day earlier this year when the news came down the wire that the Supreme Court of California had declared same sex marriage legal," Etheridge recalls. "We told our children about it and all danced around the room in family glee." [Yahoo News, via E!]
• You guys, this country is going to get less beautiful if Obama doesn't get elected: Seal says he and Heidi Klum will leave the U.S. if McCain wins! Seal told this month's Vanity Fair: "If McCain is elected and America staggers on further towards the abyss, then we will leave the country. That is not a problem for us.” It's a problem for us, dude. [LA Times]
• Did you get invited to Heidi Klum's big Halloween bash? Neither did we. Seal, Debra Messing and Christian Siriano will be there. [Page Six]
• Yesterday, Matilda Ledger turned three. It was her first birthday without her dad. She celebrated at home with mom MIchelle Williams and a small group of family and friends. [News.com.au]
• Angelina Jolie was in Afghanistan last week, meeting with refugees who have returned to their post-Taliban homeland. She says: "After seeing real suffering, you never complain anymore." [People]
• Nicole Kidman keeps crying when she thinks of her baby daughter, Sunday Rose. But! "They are tears of joy." Hey, lady: You do have other kids, you know. [The Sun]
• David and Victoria Beckham: Superheroes? Stan Lee thinks so! "They're great looking, talented and colorful. Now, here's the exciting part, just imagine how cool they'd be in a humorous, good-natured show that depicts them as, you guessed it—superheroes," he says. Would they have capes? Skin-tight outfits? Would Posh be able to render you immobile with a mere glare? [Yahoo News via E!]
• This is hard to imagine, but Victoria Beckham has been training for the New York Marathon in secret. She may not run this weekend if she doesn't feel ready, but she's planning to do the one in L.A. in February. As if wearing all those heels did not punish her feet enough? [Perez Hilton]
• Denis Leary is sorry about his autism remarks, you guys. He says: "I apologize for any pain the out-of-context quotes from my book may have caused." [Daily Express]
• After Julianne Hough admitted that she had endometriosis, Lacey Schwimmer from Dancing With The Stars has announced that she, too has endometriosis. And that she never would have gotten it checked out if it wasn't for Julianne. [ET]
• The Keanu Reeves trial continues! His lawyer caused the paparazzo who filed suit to "buckle under questioning." Sorta wish it was televised. [AP]
• Madonna made an "emotional late-night call" to Guy Ritchie and "pleaded" with him to settle their divorce amicably. And by that she means having a mediation with Kabbalah rabbis instead of going to court. [Daily Mail]
• Here's a "rocky" interview in which Guy Ritchie discusses RocknRolla and, um, a Kabbalah documentary he's working on. Bet that's off! [News.com.au]
• Rosario Dawson wants to clear up the rumors that she is engaged. She's not. "Oh my God, I'd be getting calls from my grandmother being like, 'Mija! How come I had to read this first?'" Grandma's reading trashy gossip! [People]
• Jennifer Lopez is an evil genius: She keeps making crappy pilots, which TV networks don't pick up, but she still gets money for them, because they've signed a contract with her. It's twisted. [Jossip]
• Peaches Geldof made a wasted spectacle of herself at her husband's band's gig and there's "trouble in paradise." No one saw this coming. No one. [Mirror]
• Celine Dion has rescheduled a concert in Minneapolis/St. Paul due to "respiratory illness." Wasn't she just on Oprah? And what do you say to taking chances??? [Star-Tribune]
• Is Celine going to try and get knocked up again? [Daily Express]
• Natalie Cole says: "I feel sturdy and strong," despite undergoing dialysis three times a day week. AMAZING. [People]
• Derek Jeter will not admit that he is dating Minka Kelly, and when asked about A-Rod, replied: "Don't start with me about Kabbalah. I went to Catholic school." Dude, so did Madonna. [People]
• Bruce Springsteen is a party pooper! He's not having his elaborate Halloween decorations this year because his cool set-up attracts too many visitors. Boo. No, really. Boo. [AP]
• Bill Pullman's 19-year-old son was arrested in North Carolina for alleged underage drinking and possession of moonshine. No word on whether he was driving a car with doors welded shut called the General Lee. [UPI]
• Courteney Cox will be in a new ABC half-hour comedy called — uh — Cougar Town. Cox stars as a newly single 40-year-old mom. Lemme guess: She goes on dates, sometimes with younger dudes. [Variety]
• This young lady — Andrew Sachs' granddaughter — claims that Russell Brand was a "disappointment" in bed. [The Sun]
• After resigning from his radio show for saying he'd "fucked" Andrew Sachs' granddaughter, Russell Brand says "I hope to go to America now and make quite a lot of films." What kind of films, hmm? [The Sun]
• Now that the FBI has raided the home of hacker Josh Holly, who hacked Miley Cyrus' e-mail account, Miley is reportedly a "nervous wreck," worrying that more personal pictures and info will be made public, despite the government's involvement. [ONTD]
• Zac Efron talked about his hair with Ellen DeGeneres: "I actually modeled it [after] Ellen season 2," he said. "Smart," Ellen replied. "So you're copying me?" Zac confirmed, "I am in fact." [People]
• Nicolas Cage is selling his "haunted" New Orleans mansion, if you have $3.8 million. You could live near Brad and Angie! [Daily Express]
• Whoa. An apology from The Sun: "On 19 June 2007, we reported that David Hasselhoff had celebrated winning custody of his two daughters by getting drunk and making a nuisance of himself in a Hollywood bar. We now accept that David did not drink any alcohol that evening and nor did he irritate other customers. We apologise to David for any embarrassment caused." [The Sun]
• Janet Jackson tamed down part of her concert for Michigan, where state law prohibits simulated sex acts in a public space. Usually, she pulls a male fan from the crowd, ties him down and "molests" him while her dancers mime various sexual acts, including masturbation. *cough* [Yahoo News]
• Speaking of Jacksons, here are Michael and his kids. They are wearing masks, maybe because it's Halloween, maybe because it's Wednesday night. Who knows. [The Life Files]
• Hey! The Jackson 5 are reuniting! For a tour, which would include Michael and Janet! Let's pretend they're gonna look like this, okay? [NY Times]
• Paris Hilton has parted ways with Jason Moore, who has been her manager for more than 10 years. He was the one who walked away. [Daily Express]
• Josiah Leming, a homeless singer whose mother is dying of cancer, might be blocked from releasing the album he recorded because he was a contestant last season on American Idol. Shit, when you sign a reality show contract, you generally screw yourself, huh? [Page Six]
• Peter Andre is NOT leaving Katie "Jordan" Price, so you can all just relax and get a good night's sleep, okay? [The Sun]
• Ice T's wife Coco says of Halloween: "It's my day! I get to get naked! Finally!!!" Ahem. Pardon? Ice T explains: You know, a lot of people comment, but some chicks like to be wild. You come home and they're standing on the couch and they want to jump at you and tackle you. Coco's one of them girls." [NY Mag]
• Melissa Auf der Maur has an "elaborate new project" coming out: OOOM (Out of Our Minds), a "3-D concept album" that includes a CD, a half-hour film, a comic book and website. Oh! And she has a persona in the project: MAdM. Expect a "conceptual fantasy world, spawned from sound." [ONTD]
• E! has ordered a second season of Denise Richards: It's Complicated. Oh, it's simple: Vom. [AP]
• Corey Haim: Getting married. Think Feldman will attend? [ONTD]
• Beatles songs on the Rock Band video game? Yeah, yeah, yeah. [WSJ]
• The Phil Spector retrial has begun; yesterday the prosector told jurors Spector murdered actress Lana Clarkson in a "petulant fit of rage." [Yahoo News]
• Kato Kaelin might be back, on a reality show called 16th Minute. Bascially, it would feature "stars" whose 15 minutes of fame are up — and give them one extra minute. Do you weep for humanity? [mediabistro]
• "I hadn't eaten all day, and I was starving. They were coming around with this bowl of brownies, and I grabbed three of them and just started scarfing them down. After that, every lyric sounded like it was the Cookie Monster yelling in my ear, and I started feeling really shitty, but I had to play through the set. I couldn't just go up to Puffy and say, 'Sorry, I ate a shit-load of hash brownies, I can't do your White Party.'" — Mark Ronson, on the refreshments at Diddy's soirée. [Page Six]
• "If I get married again, then it will be the last time." — Jessica Simpson. [Page Six]
• "My mom's like 'Honey, don't get married.' It comes from a good place, but I'm such a romantic, I'd like to get married one day. It's fulfilling to live with a person you love." — Alexa Ray Joel, whose Mother, Christie Brinkley, went through a nasty divorce with Peter Cook. [Daily Express]
• "I spent most of the year I was 27 toxic, just completely over-medicated. I was stoked to make it past 27. Everyone was really worried. My management company were panicked, because I was out of the office, and 'pharmaceutically engaged.'" — Pete Wentz. [Daily Express]
• "I got into an argument with him. I don’t believe him as much as he believes him. He said something along the lines of, 'I only shag really stupid women.' And I said, 'I guess they would have to be.' I don’t get him at all." — Pink on John Mayer. [The Sun]
• "I can't stand Sarah Palin. I bet a woman like that has no sense of humor." — Grace Jones. [Yahoo News]

• The latest on Madonna: Her rabbi wants her to mediate towards a swift divorce resolution, using a round-table of Kabbalah leaders instead of going to court. It's either genius or a really bad idea. [Daily Mail]
• El oh el. Headline of the day: "Guy Ritchie Cancels Madonna's Order To Fill Swimming Pool With Kabbalah Water." [Telegraph]
• Jennifer Aniston's rep won't clarify whether Jen's dinner with Gerard Butler was business or personal, saying, "It doesn't matter what it was; it is no one's business." Some of us are curious, okay? [E!]
• After suffering a terrible tragedy, is Jennifer Hudson's career at a crossroads? [AP]
• For some reason, Tiffany "New York" Pollard made a video message for Jennifer Hudson: "God is on your side. I'm praying for you." [The Life Files]
• Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul send thoughts to Jennifer Hudson and family. [People]
• What recession? Beyoncé and Jay-Z plunked down $70,000 on a new dining table. Not a dining room. A table. [E!]

• Things were so "lively" that the cops showed up at Kate Hudson's Halloween party at about 1 a.m. Oh, and did you know that Gerard Butler came dressed as a cowboy? An insider says: "All the girls at the party were lining up to talk to Gerard. He left with two very sexy vampires." [Page Six]
• Jessica Biel: "So many friends are getting married and I'm like No! I'm resisting for now." Sorry, Justin! [Mirror]
• The top-earning dead celebrities include Elvis, Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, Heath Ledger, Albert Einstein, Aaron Spelling, Dr. Seuss and John Lennon. Marilyn Monroe is number 9 and the only lady on the list. [Forbes]
• David Beckham rented a flat in Milan and it's awfully close to the red light district. [The Sun]
• Remember Jessica Simpson's flick, Major Movie Star? It never opened in the US, but it debuted as the number one film in Russia. It's called "maybe one of the worst films ever made," which is saying something. It will have a November premiere in Bulgaria, where it might be box office gold! [Fox411]
• Alert! "There is absolutely no validity to the rumor that The Bonnie Hunt Show is in trouble or about to be canceled." You may now return to your regularly scheduled ennui. [E!]
• Katy Perry posed with a knife and some anti-knife group freaked out, so now she has posed with a spoon. [Mirror]
• Last week, Gossip Girl creator Cecily von Ziegesar said that she doesn't like the character of Vanessa in the TV show. Now, Jessica Szohr, who plays Vanessa, says: "I think Vanessa’s much softer than she is in the books. She steps up to [the girls] on the Upper East Side, but she’s too soft in certain situations. But who knows what’s to come in the next 10 episodes? I feel like she keeps getting left by these guys, and she’s always there to help take care of everyone, which is really sweet of her. But I think she needs to step up and be like, 'Screw all you guys. I’m going to Brooklyn and finding a hot guy!'" [MTV]
• Will Trista and Ryan return to reality TV? Do you care? [People]
• Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens are on vacation in Hawaii and you are not. See pictures of the teen dreams strolling on the beach. [NY Post]
• Blind item! "It seems the star of a certain hit series has, to quote my mole, 'a lot of rules' about the conditions under which he will work. None of his castmates like this — it's diva antics, of course — but only the show's female lead has the clout to say she won't put up with it. As a result, the two have gone from acting in few scenes together to acting in none whatsoever. (In fact, despite a story arc that would have made it nearly impossible for their characters to logically avoid one another, so far this season, they haven't crossed paths once.) So, guesses as to the identities of the Mr. Big whose Method is so maddening and the one costar with the stones to rock the boat? I'll give you one more hint, then you're on your own: The show has, I hear, 'already lost one actress' at least in part due to conflicts over Mr. Man and his master thespian baggage. Your turn. Who are the players in this frosty backstage drama?" [EW]
• Tracy Morgan says his character Biscuit is "just me, as a child, with a chip on my shoulder, because my dad wasn't around..." [NY Times]
• Oh, yuck: Remember how Julianne Hough from Dancing With The Stars went to the hospital with stomach pains? It's her appendix, and that sucker's gotta come out. [AP]
• By the by, Kim Kardashian thinks Brooke Burke will win DWTS. [People]
• Karina Smirnoff from DWTS wants Cloris Leachman to win. "She's got so much to offer, and she's so witty and charismatic," Karina says. [Yahoo News via E!]
• Cloris Leachman responds to those who find her antics annoying: "If I've made people mad, I'm sorry. All my life, I've been a cut-up. I'm just having fun." [MSNBC]
• LL Cool J was the opening act on Janet Jackson's tour, but he quit. She had to reschedule dates because her migraine-associated vertigo forced her to cancel some shows; he had scheduling conflicts. Now he needs an around the way girl. [AP]
• The crappy financial climate is a bad time to market a film where a pretty white lady loves to buy things. Will people go see Confessions Of A Shopaholic? [Jossip]
• Elle Macpherson denies that she is romantically involved with former drug trafficker Brian Burgess. [Telegraph]
• Natalie Portman will star in Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, a Don Roos-directed adaptation of an Ayelet Waldman novel. [Variety]
• Paris Hilton: Maybe going to space on the Virgin Enterprise Rocket. She says: "What if I don't come back? With the whole light-years thing, what if I come back 10,000 years later, and everyone I know is dead? I'll be like, 'Great. Now I have to start all over.'" [Perez Hilton]
• El Debarge is in jail, feeling the beat of the rhythm of the night. [StereoHyped]
• Jamie Oliver has landed a deal to design kitchens, gardens and restaurants on a multi-million dollar development in Dubai. [Mirror]
• News that you can't use: The Jonas Brothers may be directed by the Farrelly brothers in a film called Walter The Farting Dog, based on the book. [Ain't It Cool News]
• The trial against Keanu Reeves — a photographer who fell while shooting him claims the car knocked him down — has begun. [USA Today]
• Will Russell Brand get fired by the BBC for making prank calls? [Telegraph]
• Sophia Bush is dating James Lafferty. That's her costar from One Tree Hill. As you may know, her ex-husband, Chad Michael Murray, is also her co-star on One Tree Hill. These people have a small, small world. [Just Jared]
• Prepare yourself: Michael Jackson will go on a 30-city tour in 2009. [Perez Hilton]
• Natalie Cole has been struggling with hepatitis C; this headline reads, "Dialysis in the day, concerts at night." [LA Times]
• Annabeth Gish of Showtime's Brotherhood has a new baby boy, Enzo. [People]
• Bob Geldof has been awarded an honorary doctorate for his contribution to music and humanitarian causes. [BBC News]
• Led Zeppelin on the road! Oh, without Robert Plant. [BBC News]
• Al Gore and B.B. King: Being honored by the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. [UPI]
• "Often I think people haven't experienced the high pressure of a filming schedule. It isn't all celebration and glamour and glitz. The public see all the red carpets and the gossip columns and the fashion side of things. But actually it's very, very, very long hours, quite high risk and expensive, and everyone has to commit. So it's always a huge achievement when anyone makes it look easy making a film." — Ralph Fiennes. [Telegraph]
• "It's funny how things can change. My wife has brought a balance to my life that I could never have described to anyone. She’s the giant beam that I walk across and holds me up. But she’s also my safety net in case I fall. Being married has changed my life more than I could have imagined." — Pete Wentz. [The Sun]
• "Honestly, I'm a wreck, every time I see a camera, I'm a wreck. I don't tend to react as though 'I have to do this, it's my job.' I am reacting as a woman who is five-foot-one whose space is being invaded by a bunch of men whose aggression I can literally feel. In L.A. it is even worse because they are running red lights behind you, and I worry all the time about something terrible happening, someone getting hurt because of me, how I could ever possibly live with that. I can't imagine what it would be like to have kids in the back seat and have to go through this and pretend for their sake that you are not scared." — Ashley Olsen. [Daily Express]

• Angelina and Brad are in New York! Angie will walk the red carpet at the New York Film Festival tomorrow, for the premiere of her movie The Changeling, a 1920s thriller directed by Clint Eastwood. We know Shiloh is here, but as for Knox, Vivi, Zahara, Pax and Maddox? We'll have to wait and see. [People]
• Jimmy Smits grabbed a real knife instead if a prop knife and stabbed a stuntman during a fight scene for the TV show Dexter. The stunt guy says: "For the scene, I was bound in Saran Wrap, duct tape over my mouth. I couldn't say a thing as I saw Jimmy grab at the knife. He picked up the real one by pure mistake. It was a mean looking knife… I had a piece of acrylic clear plastic about the size of a Post-it note over my heart…by a miracle, an act of God, the knife landed at the very edge of the plastic. I really thought I'd been stabbed in the heart, but I didn't have a scratch. Jimmy was devastated and couldn't stop apologizing. I told him, I felt more sorry for him than me." [Daily Star]
• Demi Moore took Michael Phelps out for drinks, but it was a business meeting: She wants him to be in a reality show that she and Ashton are producing. [Janet Charlton's Hollywood]
• JK Rowling is the world's best-paid author. She makes £3 million a week. [The Sun]

• Did Madonna and A-Rod have dinner in NYC the other night??? [Page Six]
• Sharon Stone denies ever recommending that her 8-year-old son get Botox injections for foot odor. Her attorney says: "Sharon Stone never made this statement. It is a complete fabrication." [People]
• Oh, and Sandra Bernhard denies that she ever used the term "gang rape" in a joke about Sarah Palin. What started as an internet rumor quickly became an AP article that reported Bernhard had been cut from a benefit for a Boston women's shelter because of her performance. If you want to know what she actually said, click here. [HuffPo]
• Sandra also says: "I think if you look at the real issues I'm addressing, my intent becomes clear. I am a die-hard advocate for women's rights, and fully support the work of Rosie's Place." [AP]
• Kirsten Dunst was asked about her teeth being Photoshopped on the cover of Bazaar: "I haven't heard about it," she said. "I've had my teeth changed [on a magazine cover] before," she continued. "I wasn't a big fan of that." But she didn't call a publicist to complain. "I'm not that stressed out about that stuff." [NY Mag]
• Oooh, here's Kiki Dunst talking about rehab, sorta: "I don’t want to be hassled about it. Everyone goes through a hard time in their life. They just don’t have to do it in front of tons of people and with our media the way it is. I did, and I’m lucky that I had the resources and the money to take care of myself. I learned a lot." [Mirror]
• Calum Best thinks he turned Lindsay Lohan into a lesbian. [Mirror]
• Clark of ANTM says when she got booted off the show, "It was like watching a boyfriend break up with me! It was heartbreaking! I didn't see it coming. I really didn't." Hey, did you know she had a nose job? Also, Clark says that she sorta knows who will win: "I have a pretty good idea who it is, but obviously can't say anything about that. I can tell you that the whole thing is a shock." [Yahoo News]
• Speaking of Top Model, Isis is being presented with a Visibility Award by Equality Maryland — a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights group. [ONTD]
• Apparently Michael Lohan has determined that he is not the father of Ashley, that alleged love child through a paternity test kit he bought himself at Walgreens. [Perez Hilton]
• Peaches Geldof acted pissy and refused to smile for photographers at a department store photo op — for which she was being paid £5,000 to appear. The photogs asked her to smile and she crossed her arms, scowled and then walked away. Any one willing to smile and attend a store opening for £5,000? [Daily Mail]
• Wow, MTV execs call 19-year-old Peaches a "monster" after collaborating with her on a new documentary in which she attempts to edit a magazine. LOL! Apparently no amount of editing could portray Peaches in a positive light, and one MTV person says: "Everything that comes out of her mouth is horrendous." [The Sun]
• Salma Hayek is part of a UNICEF campaign to eradicate tetanus in mothers and babies. She visited the West African nation of Sierra Leone, where she met with tetanus victims. "I had no idea how much this was going to really personally move me," she says. [AP]
• Ooh, Salma Hayek will be on 30 Rock! [Page Six]
• Jay-Z has been working the Water For Life campaign, bringing clean water to those who don't have access to it. "Many charities, you close your eyes and cross your fingers and hope that the money gets to the people who really deserve it. But with this, I got to go to Africa, see the water pumps. I got to see the kids turn them on." Speaking of kids, do you want some, Jay? "Most people dream of having a family someday. So I'm just a regular American boy." [People]
• By the by, Jay-Z received a Global Leadership Award by the United Nations on Wednesday, thanks to his Water For Life work. [Perez Hilton]
• Heather Locklear's police report has been released. She was "obviously impaired," though alcohol was ruled out. A "Drug Recognition Expert" concluded that she was under the influence of a controlled substance, and could not safely operate a motor vehicle. [TMZ]
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck is not leaving The View. Don't shoot the messenger. [ET, LA Times]
• Madonna is coming to America! Her Sticky & Sweet tour starts tomorrow in New Jersey; then she has four nights at NYC's Madison Square Garden. [Perez Hilton]
• Kanye West's HBO show is on the shelf. It may never air. He had partnered with Curb Your Enthusiasm producer Larry Charles, who says: "It was really good, but...I think it was too hard-core for HBO. HBO doesn't have a good track record when it comes to black shows, and I felt like that may have had something to do with it also." [Yahoo News, via E!]
• Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown is going to renew her vows with hubs Stephen Belafonte in an elaborate ceremony in Egypt. The invitation is 11 pages long. [Page Six]
• Rosie O'Donnell's new live-from-New York variety show will have a test segment which airs Nov. 26, the night before Thanksgiving. [Fox 411]
• Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson! Recording together again! On a track for a tribute album to music legend Quincy Jones! Don't fuck it up, Amy! [Mirror]
• Broadway theaters will dim their lights tonight in honor of Paul Newman, who first set foot on a Broadway stage in 1953. [Reuters]
• 90210 has been yanked off the air in Australia, due to poor ratings. [Perez Hilton]
• Fasten your seatbelts: Annette Benning will star as Margo Channing in All About Eve in a one-night-only staged reading at the Actors Fund benefit. [Variety]
• Natalie Cole is on bed rest after being hospitalized in New York last month due to a setback in her battle with Hepatitis C. [Reuters]
• James Earl Jones will receive the 2008 Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. He was mute as a child because of a stuttering problem, but overcame it to be the most recognizable voice: Darth Vader in Star Wars, Mufasa in The Lion King and spots for CNN. He says: "Through a love of reading, I was able to overcome my muteness and pursue a career in which my voice would be my most prominent asset." He also says: "Luke. I am your father." [AP]
• Dolly Parton will serve as the ambassador for the 75th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. [AP]
• News you cannot use: Marisa Tomei's fake nipple piercings in her new movie took a long time to attach. [Daily Express]
• This paper says Catherine Zeta-Jones had an "off day" and looked orange. She looks okay to me. [Mirror]
• Cameron Diaz paid tribute to her late father, Emilio, at a special screening of There's Something About Mary. "My daddy's in this movie for two seconds," she told the audience. Then she described his scene and did an imitation of his performance. [People]
• Hollywood conservatives Jon Voight, Gary Sinise, Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Miller attended a John McCain fundraiser on Wednesday night in L.A. Zzzzzzz. [E!]
• Robert De Niro and Marty Scorsese are joining cinematic forces for the ninth time. The flick is I Heard You Paint Houses, about the mob hitman believed to have 86'd Jimmy Hoffa. [E!]
• The Writers Guild of America has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against Tyler Perry's production studio. [NY Times]
• Noel Gallagher says Liam Gallagher dyes his hair and wears makeup. [The Sun]
• Uh, this is a UK-specific headline, to be sure: "Geri Halliwell most successful female celebrity author of 08." [Mirror]
• Howard Stern and Beth Ostrosky: Getting married tonight. [Page Six]
• "I had this irrational fear at first that by moving on i would be leaving him behind. But that's obviously what you must do, as a parent. I have grabbed life by the throat and I am packing in as much as I can and trying to keep things fun for the boys, actually." — Natasha McElhone, on the tragic death of her husband. [Daily Mail]
• "Having a girlfriend right now would be out of the question. I would like to settle down and have a family. But I'm only 24. Definitely not any time soon!" — Olympic gold medal swimmer Ryan Lochte. [People]
• "Here’s the thing about hair; I think most people think that I have Lego hair, like I can just take it on and off in one piece, and that’s not quite the case — although pretty close. I refer to this [phenomenon] as Lego hair, when people think that about me. I think hair is just, like, the most important thing about you. Besides your soul, or maybe your heart, or maybe your crotch…. Or maybe the order I just put those in says a little something about who I am." — Pete Wentz. [People]
• "I’m not gay but I might as well be. I’m the [woman] of the group. We live a gay lifestyle. […] I never read tabloids, I never buy books or go on Perez Hilton and I never ever watch the news. All news is bad. You never hear them say, ‘This dog gave birth to six puppies today.’ It’s always negative, like, ‘All these people got killed.’ I stay totally away from it." — Brooke Hogan, noted wit. [ONTD]
• "It's been incorrectly alleged that I'd abuse a romantic attachment as a publicity stunt. That's below the belt. To love and be loved is the most beautiful thing that can happen to a person, and one's own life is more important than all the glamour and fame in the world." — Jennifer Aniston. [Daily Express]
• "People said, 'You looked better than Beyoncé.' Well, that’s not possible. It’s nice that young people hold me up as a model. Beyoncé is elegant and is handling her career well. A lot of new stars go overboard on sex. They’re half-naked up there. My dresses were a bit short, but I stayed respectable." — Tina Turner, whose tour kicked off this week. [The.Life Files]

• Did Sarah Jessica Parker remove her "famous" mole? You know, the one on her chin? (And while we're at it, did she have, as some claim, a series of subtle nose jobs? [This Is London, Awful Plastic Surgery]
• Speaking of procedures, what did Katherine Heigl do to her lips? [Awful Plastic Surgery]
• Natalie Cole has been diagnosed with Hepatitis C. Her doctor says, "Natalie has had a terrific response to her medication and is now virus negative." She is experiencing side-effects of the drugs, like fatigue, muscle aches and dehydration, but she is doing well. The disease is most likely from her past drug use. [People]
• Lindsay Lohan has been satisfying her DUI requirements, including a trip to the morgue. She'll have to do an alcohol education class next. Think she'll ace it? [TMZ]
• Amy Poehler on The Office spinoff? Really? Really? Just as long as she still does Weekend Update. [Reuters]

• Hayden Panettiere has a new song, "Wake Up Call," which you can listen to here and then let me know if I'm right in thinking the reggae-tinged single is a (not so bad) Gwen Stefani rip off. [PopSugar]
• Knox Jolie-Pitt was almost named Rex. [Rush & Molloy]
• Are Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee back to their old ways? Tommy apparently has a "steamy set of photos" of Pam on his phone, and he'll show them to you, if you ask. [Daily Express]
• Is Colin Farrell's girlfriend pregnant? [Star]
• The new 90210 premieres September 2. Producer Gabe Sachs says: "It's not the same show, but we get to have the element of such a cool, big hit. It's an honor to do it or to be able to do it. We'd love to have anyone from the old cast that would like to be on it." [LA Times]
• Gossip Girl gossip! There's a new guy named Marcus, and he's Blair's love interest and Chuck's rival. Although it would be more awesome if he were Chuck's love interest and Blair's rival. [People]
• Bindi Irwin turns 10 next week. "It's so exciting I can't wait. Double digits means double the fun which is so exciting." Gah. Shut up. [News.com.au]
  Dolly Parton fans: 9 To 5 the musical opens on Broadway in 2009!!! [Reuters]
• Alex Rodriguez threw a party and none of his teammates showed up. [Page Six]
• Whoa. Derek Jeter is dating Minka Kelly? Who used to hook up with John Mayer? Does Minka know about the herpes tree? [Page Six]
• Kim Kardashian's boyfriend, Reggie Bush, wants her to "work out hard." Oy. [Page Six]
• Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins are into preservation of their New York City neighborhood, but is it at the expense of a hospital that could save lives? [Page Six]
• Nicole Kidman claims she doesn't want to sell pictures of her daughter, but an editor at a celeb weekly says: "She wanted $3 million and we weren't going to pay that." [Page Six]
• Haha, this paper counts all the ways that Paris Hilton is a liar. Although lying to Page Six is sort of par for the course for any celeb, no? [Page Six]
• Has Paris given up booze and drugs because she wants to have a baby? [The Sun]
• Chris Martin was stopped on his way to a party at the Beverly Hills hotel on Saturday and asked if he was on the list. "A goon at the elevator wouldn't let him up," a source reports. "Everyone's like, 'This is the lead singer of Coldplay.' The goon wasn't rude, but he just asked him if he was on the list." This is how the rifraff lives, Chris. [E!]
• "I still very much love her. I do. I can't lie to you." — Al Reynolds on Star Jones. [Yahoo News]
• Brian Bonsall, who played Andy Keaton on Family Ties, is facing jail time after violating his probation. He pleaded guilty last year to 3rd degree assault in a domestic violence situation. And his mug shot makes him look like Eddie Munster. [TMZ]
• Michael Bay told Megan Fox to gain 10 lbs. for Transformers. "Michael doesn’t like skinny girls," Megan says. Does this mean she is not skinny? Because WTF. [The Superficial]
• Barenaked Ladies singer Steven Page: Arrested for cocaine possession. [TMZ]
• Eva Longoria's short hair cut and "fuller figure" are script-related changes for Desperate Housewives. (One fan commented on this story: "Thank God that she didn’t cut the hair because she actually likes it that way!!! Her hair was soooo beautiful and now she looks so different.") [People]
• Menudo band member Carlos Olivero, 18, was kicked off of a Delta flight for "having an attitude." Kid, you're not the hot shit you think you are. Put your iPod away. [People]
• Michael J. Fox will guest star on FX's Rescue Me. [USA Today]
• The screenwriter for the Passion Of The Christ is suing Mel Gibson, claiming he was underpaid. Apparently Gibson didn't want to make money off of the movie because he considered the film "a personal gift to his faith." Jesus. [Yahoo News]
• "No Robin. Not ever." —Christian Bale on the future of Batman. [Rush & Molloy]
• "We are so proud of our boy." —Heath Ledger's father, after seeing The Dark Knight. [People]
• "I feel like I have no privacy. Just because people are seeing something that was meant to be between me and her. That's the biggest reason that I'm, you know, trying to stop the tape from being released. I broke up with her in the middle of June; it was something probably to do with that. It was basically when she decided to give the tape away." — Verne Troyer on his sex tape. [E!]