• Sad face: Mickey Rourke's 18-year-old chihuahua, Loki, has died. Rourke called Loki "the love of his life." And famously thanked his all his dogs in his Golden Globes speech. RIP little dude! [E!, TMZ]

• Sarah Jessica Parker's been talking about the Sex And The City sequel. She wants the new movie to be a "massive romp." And she's worried about the consumerism: "How do we address these economic times in a franchise that has a lot to do with luxury and labels? You know, there is a lot that we have to think about because times are very different." Indeed. [UPI]
• Lindsay Lohan was seen having a fabulous time in New York while Sam Ronson was in San Diego, what does it mean??!?! [Page Six]
• The lone Asian dude in Miley Cyrus's "goofy" photo has been identified; his name is Chuck Willis, and he is a model/actor/photographer. Who hangs out with Hannah Montana. [ONTD]
• The Guardian's Hadley Freeman spends five minutes with "the surprisingly tall" Justin Timberlake and promptly falls "a little bit in love." [Guardian]
• Oscar producers want M.I.A. to be on the show so badly — even though she just gave birth — that they're willing to let her perform her track from Slumdog Millionaire from a "large bed" on stage. Or she could appear via hologram. The bed idea sounds kind of awesome, but only if there are dancing orderlies. [NY Mag, MSNBC Scoop]
• More Oscar gossip: Hugh Jackman is hosting, but he'll be joined on stage by Beyoncé, Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens and Mamma Mia's Amanda Seyfried for a big song and dance number, directed by Moulin Rouge's Baz Luhrmann. If they do "Dancing Queen," it just might be the gayest thing on TV since Charles Nelson Riley. [Yahoo News via E!]
• John Mayer will be attending the Oscars, and says: "It's my first Oscars. And it's my first being an Oscar boyfriend. After that night I have a deal almost signed in blood that says I must go into the studio and finish this record. So after Oscar Sunday, Monday morning I'm invisible." [PopSugar]
• Bookies who deal with Oscar bets says Heath Ledger is "such an absolute certainty you've got to feel a bit sorry for the fellow nominees. They have no absolutely no chance whatsoever of winning." [Mirror]
• An L.A. Superior Court judge has ruled that Roman Polanski will have to come to the U.S. and face a judge before his 1977 child sex case can be dismissed. Of course, if Polanski arrives in the States, he faces immediate arrest, as he is a fugitive. [Variety]
• Hayden Panettiere, 19, fresh off of her breakup from Milo Ventimiglia, 31, was seen flirting with Gerard Butler, 39. Can you blame her? He's hot! [MSNBC Scoop]
• Seth Rogen will appear on the cover of Playboy, only the 9th time a dude's been on the cover in 56 years. But will he be clothed? [Page Six]
• Rachel Bilson and Hayden Christensen are engaged, by the by. [Page Six]
• Kanye West looks morose on the new cover of Details and inside says the kind of stuff you expect Kanyeezy to say. Like: "Put this in the magazine: There's nothing more to be said about music. I'm the fucking end-all, be-all of music." And! "People ask me a lot about my drive," he says. "I think it comes from, like, having a sexual addiction at a really young age. Look at the drive that people have to get sex-to dress like this and get a haircut and be in the club in the freezing cold at 3 a.m., the places they go to pick up a girl. If you can focus the energy into something valuable, put that into work ethic..." [Yahoo News via E!]
• Also, when Kanye was 12, he produced a video game: "My game was very sexual. The main character was, like, a giant penis. It was like Mario Brothers, but the ghosts were, like, vaginas. Mind you, I'm 12 years old, and this is stuff 30-year-olds are programming. You'd have to draw in and program every little step-it literally took me all night to do a step, 'cause the penis, y'know, had little feet and eyes." [Yahoo News via E!]
• Michael Phelps is so afraid of people snapping his picture, he's had the windows of his home tinted and he's been hiding out in strip clubs, where photographs are not allowed. No, really, that's the only reason. [Page Six]
• Has Kylie Minogue had cosmetic surgery? The latest edition of the UK's Grazia magazine asks on its cover: "What has Kylie done to her face?" A surgeon who does not treat her has the answer: "Kylie's brows look a little higher than usual, which suggests she's having regular Botox to lift them. One of Kylie's brows is slightly more arched and higher than the other, which is often a telltale sign." [News.com.au]
• Boo-hoo: Eva Longoria Parker is sad that Nicolette Sheridan is leaving Desperate Housewives. "I love her so much as a person, and I love the character of Edie Britt, that I can't imagine the show without her," Eva says. [Mirror]
• Here's a video of Benicio Del Toro talking about playing Che Guevara and doing some really good stuff with his expressive eyebrows. [Guardian]
• Kid Rock is making Kid Rock Beer, which is expected to create 394 new jobs in Michigan. Those without jobs will at least have something to drink? [Detroit Free Press]
• Ashton Kutcher is in negotiations to star in a flick called Traded, about a superstar NFL quarterback and a 12-year-old middle school geek who magically trade bodies. Sort of Freaky Friday Night Lights. [Variety]
• Bob Barker "relaxes in retirement with dog and bottle of tequila." He doesn't watch Price Is Right. [ABC News]
• Set your DVR; A&E has ordered 11 episodes of Hammertime, a show which tracks the life of MC Hammer and his family. Can't touch this? [Variety]
• Luther Campbell from 2 Live Crew was arrested for contempt of court last night; he owes $10,233.36 and he'd better pay up. [TMZ]
• Morrissey, who turns 50 in May, says of the chance that he'll still be in the music biz at age 55: "I think it's incredibly slim. For heaven's sake!" [Daily Express]
• Blind items! 1. Which movie producer is finding out bad habits die hard? Despite being married, he asked a gorgeous, dark-haired woman back to his hotel for a "late-night private audition" after a dinner at the Berlin Film Festival. As the actress accepted, look for her to appear in his upcoming pictures. 2. Which kooky fashion figure asked for illegal substances on her contract rider? She said in order for her to appear at a fashion show, she needs two bottles of Cristal and "cocaine - a lot of it." [Page Six]
• Blind item: "Which F-list celeb had an abortion six months ago? We hear she's still not sure who the father was." Wait, why do we care about this? [Gatecrasher]
• "God, I might pass out. Your heart pounds really hard, and just that moment…wow. My grandmother is coming. My mom and my grandmother. Three generations. " — Taraji P. Henson, on being a nominee at the Oscars. [Washington Post]
• "My mother, she was like, 'I don't know if Mama wants to come because she had a knee replacement surgery and she's been going to the doctor and it's a long evening.' I said: 'Mom, you know what? Why don't we just let Grandma make the decision? Let's call her and let her say no.' We called her on a three-way and I said, 'Hey, Grandma, we got an extra ticket for the Oscars, you wanna come?' 'I sure do, baby!' She did not hesitate, do you understand? Grandma is not going to miss it for the world, do you hear me? She didn't want to hear about how long it was going to be. She didn't want to hear about that, she'd moved on to what she was going to wear. She was like, 'Well, I have this outfit and these shoes.' I was like, 'Bring it, Grandma.'" — Taraji P. Henson. [WaPo]
• "It's just something for your eyes to look at. It's just a change from the norm, innit? The problem is, I never buy a piece of art. I don't see the point in buying something because I know my eyes will get bored of it eventually. You know, a lot of museums keep the stuff, they rotate it, because people get sick of looking at it. They shift the art around, don't they? People go, 'I'm sick of that now.' They move it around the world, let someone else's eyes look at it." — Ricky Gervais, on art. [Guardian]
• "I really believe I'm on the very tail end of television as a big money-making business. I think there will always be a certain number of people who make a lot of money, like American Idol or NFL football, but I just think that in 10 years when people have good Internet connections, there are going to be a thousand channels. People will be making money, they just won't be making a lot of money. Even successful shows or programming will bring in small amounts of money." — Jimmy Kimmel. [Broadcasting & Cable]
• "Oh my God, I'm one of the greatest rappers in the world. I'll get on a track and completely ee-nihilate that track, I'll eat it and rip it in half. I wouldn't have to think of it. […] I have, like, nuclear power, like a superhero, like Cyclops when he puts his glasses on." — Kanye West. [Yahoo News via E!]
• "The next chapter of your life has begun. The toughest decisions you will ever have to make lie in front of you. You have shifted the cultural paradigm of America, but now you have to live up to the ideal that fostered the shift and ensure that the paradigm doesn't shift back. You must deliver." — LL Cool J, in an (open, unsolicited) letter to Barack Obama. [Mirror]
• "I am her biggest fan and I can't get enough of her. But wearing my fashion hat, I want to say to Meryl Streep, 'You need to accept responsibility for what you are wearing. I don't know that you do.' The message she's sending is, 'I'm too smart for this and it doesn't matter to me what I'm wearing.' I want to say to her that it should matter to you." — Tim Gunn. [MSNBC Scoop]

[Malibu, January 13. Image via Flynet]

• Lindsay Lohan won't stop blogging on her MySpace page, because she feels it proves she's not an "empty" person: "There's a person in here. And I have feelings too, whether it's about politics, the person I'm seeing, the person I'm not seeing. That's my way of connecting. I don't want people to think that I'm just an empty f**king whatever." [ONTD]

• Meanwhile, it appears that Lilo may have been caught drinking on camera. [ONTD]

• Desperate Housewives start Nicollette Sheridan hooked up with David Spade at her 45th birthday party on Friday night; a source claims the pair "were full-on making out in a booth."[People]

• Rory Gilmore's hero, Christiane Amanpour, is a big fan of Angelina Jolie. "Angelina does an amazing job in terms of her capacity to highlight issues and problems around the world and with her humanitarian and human rights work," Amanpour says. [US Magazine]

• Madonna is handling her divorce by focusing on her music and her children and reaching out to old friends like ex-husband Sean Penn. A source, who claims that Madonna is "not heartbroken" over the divorce, says that the Penn-Madonna relationship is purely platonic: "There's nothing romantic there. They're just good friends." [People]

• Oh, snap! Terrence Howard's baby-wipe obsessed ways are coming back to haunt him: after receiving over 50 letters from concerned women who read of a possible hook-up in PageSix, model Noemie Lenoir now wants "nothing to do with" Howard. [PageSix]

• Angelina Jolie says motherhood helped her self-esteem: "I know this is going to sound corny, but I first became happy with the way I look when I became a mother. There’s this idea that beauty is when someone does your hair and puts a lot of make-up on you and sticks your face on the cover of a magazine. Is that beauty? You know what is beautiful? My mom. She was beautiful to me, and I look more like my mom as I get older. Something else comes out of you when you become a parent and, as you get older, you start to see more character in your face."[DailyMail]

• Are Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds planning a family? A source says yes: “Scarlett and Ryan are madly in love and want to start a family sooner rather than later. Scarlett is keen to be a young mom and does not plan to be the sort of women who leaves motherhood too late and starts worrying about her biological clock ticking.”[PopCrunch]

• The Vatican has finally issued a statement forgiving John Lennon for claiming that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. The Vatican's daily newspaper ran the following: "The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a 'boast' by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up in the legend of Elvis and rock and roll."[Reuters]

• Twilight's opening day haul? 35 million dollars, a bigger opening than the last Indiana Jones film.[E!]

• Uh-oh: the Screen Actors Guild has "announced it will mount a 'full-scale education campaign' to convince its 120,000-plus members to support a strike authorization vote."[EW]

• Michelle Williams is never going to forgive or forget the paparazzi who made her life a living hell this year by documenting her grief over the loss of her former partner, Heath Ledger. "It burns a fire inside of me, the shit that I've seen people do to get at me or my daughter. I won't forget it, and I won't support it. I don't want my daughter growing up feeling spied on or threatened."[DailyExpress]

• Megan Fox, apparently a bit tipsy, confessed to a Page Six reporter at GQ's Men of the Year party that she's "obsessed" with Zac Efron. "What you don't know is that Zac and I are the same person . . . it's like Janet and Michael [Jackson], we are the same person." No word on how Brian Austin Green feels about all this.[PageSix]

• Jennifer Aniston isn't sure if Friends would have a chance on television today: "Hard to tell — that was a different time. Now TV has too much to do with celebrity. We have reality television, where people try to become celebrities and celebrities dancing and past celebrities trying to be celebrities again. I thank God for shows like “30 Rock.”[PinkIstheNewBlog]

• Taylor Swift totally wants to disemvowel all of you: she admits that she reads celebrity blogs, but tries not to pay attention to the "haters" in the comments: "I just try to ignore the ‘I hate her, she’s ugly’ ones. When people can be anonymous, they’re vicious and it’s like sixth grade stuff like on crack. It’s terrible.”[JustJared]

[Us, MediaWeek, People]

The Good:
Hey, remember when Felicity Huffman was nominated for TransAmerica and then at the Oscars everyone was like, "she's every inch the woman tonight!" and, "showing she's a woman!" and "hard to believe she played a transsexual!" ? Yeah, that was annoying.
Kate Walsh: I am sorry to have put you in "Bad" on Thursday, but you left me no choice. I know that's blaming the victim. This is somewhat better, she said severely.
Aw, Swoosie Kurtz just looks like a big ol' bowl of ice cream. You can judge whether that's desirable.
Vanessa Williams = awesome.
Hatcher: Also ice cream-like. I don't love the dress, but I do think Teri looks lovely.
A little Mad Men, a lot nifty, Dana Delany.

The Bad:
I wore something quite like Kimberly McCullough's ensemble two summers ago. But even then I knew it didn't look great.
Sarah Chalke's dress looks like it's backwards. It just does.
I mean, I know elegance isn't exactly Nicollette Sheridan's priority. She seems to be a serious method actor unwilling to depart from the aging-bombshell-cougar thing for even a second.
I know Kristin Chenoweth's all cute and spunky and everything, but her dress looks like a Sweet Charity costume.

[Images via Getty]

[St. Barth, French West Indies; December 25. Image via INF.]