• Brad Pitt's mom was supposed to move into the Long Island estate where the posse is staying while Angelina Jolie films Salt, but Angelina has reportedly nixed the idea.

She thinks Brad should be able to handle the kids on his own, like she did when he was filming in Germany, according to a source. No word on what is up with the nanny, but that was a Star story and this is from a different source. [National Enquirer]

• Jen Aniston and John Mayer have indeed broken up. [Gatecrasher]
• It's official: Dancing With The Stars is a goddamn health hazard. Now Steve-O has pinched nerves. [ET]
• Injured Jewel will sing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" on DWTS on Tuesday. [UPI]
• Bong boy Michael Phelps's interview with Matt Lauer will air on the Today show this morning and again Sunday on Dateline. [ET]
• Here's what you're gonna hear Michael Phelps say during the interview: "mistake," "bad judgment," "stupid mistake." Wait, do you regret it? [People]
• Last week, four of the celeb weeklies put Rihanna on the cover, and none of them saw an increase in sales. Life & Style had a picture of Jennifer Aniston on the cover, and sold more than sister mag In Touch. [NY Post]
• Chris Brown's image still appears on Sony Music's website. [NY Daily News]
• Details on Mandy Moore's wedding to Ryan Adams: The bride wore a "cream-colored, lacy tea-length dress and flat sandals" and the groom wore "tight skinny jeans, a T-shirt with sport coat and sneakers." The pastor "didn't know who they were." The ceremony took eight minutes. [People]
• The woman is dead but Anna Nicole Smith's legal issues live on: Now Howard K. Stern has turned himself in for providing ANS with prescription drugs. He was arrested and booked yesterday and the charge is a felony. [TMZ, People, Fox 411]
• This report begins, "Let's stop encouraging Joaquin Phoenix's miscreant behavior - the only thing real about this rap act is the beard." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Joaquin's "brawl": "It was a fake fight," says a witness. "Nobody threw a punch. They were just holding onto each other." [Page Six]
• Here's what Hayden Panettiere has to say about that "outburst" she had on the red carpet: "I have tremendous respect for the media and reporters – particularly the press who treat the people they are interviewing with dignity. While in Hawaii, one reporter grabbed me suddenly from behind and frightened me. It happens. Typically, the press has treated me with great respect." [Ok!]
  
• Will Slumdog's Freida Pinto be the new Bond girl? Signs point to yes. [The Sun]
• Kelly Killoren Bensimon may have "beaten up" her boyfriend to make sure she stays on Real Housewives. People are saying the attack was fake. [Gatecrasher]
• Someone is leaving House. Who, who? Also, Judy Greer is in an episode next week. She says: "[My character] works at a nursing home and there's a cat, and whoever's bed the cat sleeps on dies in the next couple of days. And then one day the cat snuggled up to my character and she totally freaks out and goes to see House..." [E!]
• Miley Cyrus wanted to meet Radiohead after the Grammys. She was told they "don't do that." She says: "I left 'cause I was so upset. I wasn't going to watch them. Stinkin' Radiohead! I'm going to ruin them. I'm going to tell everyone." Radiohead responds: "When Miley grows up, she'll learn not to have such a sense of entitlement." [Mirror]
• Feel like doing a *headdesk*? Peaches Geldof will be in a reality show about her "career" at Nylon magazine. [The Sun]
• No one wants you to forget that auction documents show that Michael Jackson's house was filled with sculptures of boys. [TMZ]
• Mischa Barton has a job! She's been cast in a CW show produced by Ashton Kutcher. "Ashton developed it about his life growing up as a model from Iowa, so it's about the whole fashion world that he was in, and obviously I have a lot of friends in the fashion world, so I'm used to being around a lot of people in that," Barton says. "[I play] a bitchy model-type character, like it's a totally different character for me." [People]
• Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson did an SNL skit about Hawaii's tourist industry and now the Governor of that state is pissed. [CBS News]
• Congrats to Cesar Milan, the dog whisperer, who is now a U.S. citizen. [People]
• Hugh Hefner is selling his house. Not the Playboy Mansion — the one next door, where his wife was living. [WSJ]
• OutKast's André Benjamin says it's tough being a fashion designer because people think "hip-hop stars will just throw their names on anything." And: "I'm not a gay man." [Page Six]
• Set your DVR: Tracy Pollan (Mrs. Michael J. Fox) is playing Natalee Holloway's mom in a Lifetime movie. [USA Today]
• Nicollette Sheridan could return to Desperate Housewives after she leaves this season. The show's creator says: "I wouldn't be surprised if that's just a nasty rumour and Nicollette has more Desperate Housewives episodes in her future." [Mirror]
• Vin Diesel says his life has changed in "an incredible way" since the birth of his daughter last year. [Mirror]
• Chris Cornell not only has a new Timbaland-produced album coming out, he has a second career as a restauranteur. In Paris. [Guardian]
• A screenwriter is suing the makers of the Jane Fonda/Jennifer Lopez flick Monster-In-Law, accusing them of stealing her plot. Sorta late, no? [E!]
• Researchers with too much time on their hands have "discovered" that if you listen to U2, you're smart, and if you listen to Lil Wayne, you're not. [The Sun]
• Whatever happened to Mary Stuart Masterson? She's in a new indie called The Cake Eaters. [LA Times]
• Least blind blind item ever? "Which rapper threatened a pal after the buddy mistreated his girlfriend? The icon got in his face, then froze him out on the group's private jet." [Gatecrasher]
• "I certainly try my best not to be a terrible interview subject. But I am tortured. If you've been acting all your life, you can just talk about yourself without ever thinking about what's going on inside the head of the person that's interviewing you. But for me it's different, because I'm constantly seeing it from both sides. I don't think there's any connection between my journalism career and my film career." — Greg Kinnear. [Independent]
• "I think that the best way to judge movies is, like, 10 years after they're released. I think they should actually do the awards that way. I think they should have done the Academy Awards this year for movies from 1998. I think it's better to look at a movie and then step back and look at it again. I don't think that the awards necessarily get it right. I think they get it wrong more often than they get it right." — Matt Damon, to Parade. [MSNBC]
• "For me this thing happened so long ago and I just really wish people could move on from it. I don't live in the past. When I read headlines about me saying 'When she was 15 her mother shot her father' it's very sensational for me.It happened 18 years ago. Since then I've had a complete, full life and, my God, if I've been living the past 18 years in the past because of one event that happened in my life someone should put a gun to my head and put me out of my misery because that's a waste of my life. I am 33 and I have had a much bigger life than that one event." — Charlize Theron. [Daily Mail]
• "I'm probably a lot more boring than I used to be and more tired at night. You can't fake it. It's like when it's bedtime, it's bedtime. I go to bed earlier and I get up earlier. I think being a parent changes everything about you in really little ways and in ways that you don't really understand unless you have kids. It's kind of like describing a guitar chord - it's not really a simple thing to do." — Matt Damon, to Parade. [Mirror]
• "Before we were married, my wife and I used to play a game called Let's Go Get Lost. We'd be driving, and she would just tell me to turn. 'Turn here, turn here, turn here.' I'd say, 'Baby, I know this town too well. I can't get lost.' And she'd say, "Turn, turn, turn." Until we were out in Indian country, and they were shooting at us." — Tom Waits. [GQ]
• "I'm kind of frightened of the red carpet. I really am. And, you know, it gets worse. At one time, you could just come down the line, meet the fans, see the film and hopefully a good night is had by all. It's changed. You have people checking out your dress from the minute you step onto the carpet and then, you know, it's a hit or miss. That can be more frightening than the premiere." — Julia Roberts. [CBS News]
• "I'm currently in the writing process. I'm learning how to play music and write song, but they're comedy songs. Because I can't write music or play very well - actually, I have quite a bit of musical aptitude when it comes to the guitar, but I don't know how to write music - I'm collaborating with different artists who are giving me the music while I provide the lyrics. Two of the people I'm collaborating with will be performing with me at SXSW - Patty Griffin and Amanda Palmer [of the Dresden Dolls]. [The songs] are all pretty dirty. The titles are things like, 'I'm In Love With Someone Else So Fuck You' and 'Eat Shit and Die.'" — Margaret Cho, who is performing at SXSW… as a musician. [Time]

• A Brazilian model I've never heard of left her new agency to go back to her old agency and now it's war. Here she is. Fuck, the Peloponnesian broke out over less, right? Or was that one about democracy and self-determination? Whatever; it's on between Elite and Next. [Page Six]
  
• The bitter battle over the rights to Project Runway, which is switching networks from NBC to Lifetime, is also approaching Total War. Can David Boies deliver Harvey Weinstein the victory he couldn't deliver Al Gore? Is it kind of funny that the Times is now referring to reality show "seasons" as "cycles"? [NYT]
  
• Anna Wintour has been sending little care packages to tennis star Roger Federer for many months now — in a motherly way? a cougarly way? are you really forcing me to think about that? — but last week when Federer was defeated by Andy Roddick, she abruptly canceled her trip to a tennis match. Oooh, nuclear Wintwar! Page Six]

• NYLON got stood up at its own party for cover girl Chloe Sevigny and now they post this image of her severed head on their blog. [Nylon]

• Karl Lagerfeld has had a figurine, a teddy bear, a vinyl doll, and now a character in a bestselling video game made in his own likeness... [Fashionista]
• But the young plebe Chanel hired to "nanny" Karl's collection of 100 iPods is striking back through the press. [NY Mag]
• No real war angle here, but Posh Spice clutching a red bag to her face in ecstasy in the latest Jurgen Teller Marc Jacobs ad is probably enough to make someone go batshit on an archduke, right? [Sassybella]

Welcome to Midweek Madness, our weekly binge on the sort of celebrity content we usually try so fastidiously to avoid every other day of the week. In which we "read" the Wednesday tabs. So you don't "have" to.

Us Weekly ("100% Paris Free!")
•Cover story: "Hollywood Baby Album!" Us clearly put a Herculean effort into coming up with Paris substitutes this week, starting with this eleven-page spread on Hollywood babies — the very definition of "filler topic"! A semi-creepy "My Life So Far!" sidebar on baby Suri (page 45) is written in Suri's imagined first-person voice.
•Although week's "hot story" for all of the magazines was Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake's romantic Scandinavian getaway (pages 30-31). Us isn't as dick-sucky towards Timberlake as the rest of the tabs — early to the backlash, wethinks? — noting that he "turns women into Debbie Downers" and that he threw a tantrum in Sweden when some fans asked him to pose for pictures with them.
•Us also sports a preview of an upcoming interview with Nicole Richie in Nylon (page 56), which is a more refined twist on the "exclusive about an exclusive" feature. Nylon — unlike Atlanta Peach and Genre two magazines whose "exclusives" are reported "exclusively" this week by Page Six — is a magazine we have actually heard of.
•More filler! "Us Investigates" probes deep into the minds of 100 women at Rockefeller Center as to whether they would "rather date Prince Harry or Prince William" (66% said William!); "Have Michael Lohan or Joe Simpson as your dad?" (78% said Simpson, because making inappropriate comments about his daughter's tits is a lot classier than securities fraud!); and "Share custody with David Hasselhoff or K-Fed?" (63% said K-Fed). (Pages 58-61.)
•In more substantive content (not!) Us brings in the big guns of Hulk Hogan to declare "winners" in celebrity feuds (pages 62-63). [SPOILER ALERT: Tom Cruise beats Germany, Samantha Ronson beats Candy Spelling and Elizabeth Hasselbeck beats Rosie on grounds of "Rosie isn't a true friend."] A "bonus section" features LeAnn Rimes' "Hot-Weather Hairstyles" (pages 64-65), which, in our opinion, beats Paris news any fucking day of the week!

Star
•Cover Story: "Hollywood Baby Secrets!" (pages 48-55). More baby filler stories, which include the following huge secrets: Britney might not be the most mature mom (page 50) and Angelina lets Shiloh suck on a diamond-encrusted pacifier (page 52), because nothing says "I Am Africa" like a pacifier mined by child slaves!
•Meanwhile, on page 47, Star reports on more details of Timberlake's tantrum in Sweden, which involved the tossing of water bottles ping-pong balls and spitting on fans who had gathered below his hotel room. Jessica Biel reportedly "watched in horror" but she's still gonna stick with the asshole because this is pretty much the only thing her career is riding on right now.
•In its strangest story Star reports on an AIDS-related, health-coverage scandal in Florida we'd never heard about (page 38). It is, according to an "insider" at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, "the kind of stuff that has Hollywood up in arms." Too bad it, uh, doesn't! The story quotes nary a celebrity, celebrity representative, celebrity flak or Hollywood "insider" professing "outrage" over the scandal, which basically amounts to Florida Governor Charlie Crist awarding a health care contract to a for-profit health care firm.

In Touch
•Cover Story: "World Exclusive! Inside Tom and Kate's Marriage!" (pages 36-39). Could Kate [That's better -Ed.] and Tom actually be living normal and happy lives together? Could Suri's cuteness factor be the reason that the celeb weeklies have decided to flip their opinion on the couple? Or did the editors at In Touch decide to suck it up already and try Scientology? Also, what's up with Katie's [Here we go again. -Ed.] new haircut? It's pretty, right? But isn't it weird when ladies get their hair cut suddenly after having babies?
•Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie's rivalry is back because they're both promoting products at the same time! This could only mean that they are still at each other's throats about Brad Pitt! (Pages 40-43.)
•Shar Jackson gives In Touch an exclusive denying her pregnancy rumors (pages 26-27). Can someone explain to us how this can be "exclusive" when Shar already filed a lawsuit against Star denying the selfsame pregnancy, and lawsuits are public documents, so it's like "exclusively" between her and ALL OF AMERICA? Must be that video of Shar "taking the test" at intouchweekly.com! Wow. It's really hard to make Britney Spears seem classy, but Shar really excels at it.
•Speaking of classy, In Touch documents stars' boobs from smallest to largest (pages 72-73) by guesstimating their sizes with the aid of some dude from The Swan and a random gynecologist. Bonus! Includes the famously creepy quote from Joe Simpson on his daughter's massive sweater puppies!

Life & Style
•Cover Story: "Angie vs. Brad's Family: It's War!" (Pages 28-31). Uh, in case you glossed over the news reported for the past three weeks in the celeb weeklies, Life & Style is here to spell it out for you: Brad Pitt's mom likes his ex-wife Jennifer Aniston! A lot! They hung out recently! At Jen's house! We'd feel like we'd read this same Angie-is-jealous-of-Jen story fifteen times now save for the new sidebar of, "Meanwhile, Jen's Dating" (page 31).
•Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minnillo were photographed nekkid in a hot tub in Mexico, where they went to escape all the media attention from those Lindsay knifeplay photos. (page 24-27). (Question: Why is "knife play" a phrase that just sort of rolls off our keyboards now? Is this even a real thing?) So we guess this means Nick forgave her, right? We can just sort of see him saying, all cheesy-like and whispery: "Next time some sexy photos of you wind up on the internets, baby, it's going to be pulling MY clothes off, got it?" Ugh. Puke.
•Ashlee Simpson spent a reported eight-hours at a salon (pages 52-53), which is controversial because she shouldn't neglect her very promising career in... whatever the hell it is she does!
•Lastly, it looks like the ombudsman over Life & Style is still upholding the validity of Spencer Pratt as a news subject. Who knows, you know: People made fun of the Washington Post for pursuing that two-bit burglary for so long; maybe The Hills is their Watergate! At any rate, Spencer's silicone-stuffed girlfriend Heidi Montag pops up on page 64 (get it? "pops up"?), while Spencer-nemesis and Teen Vogue cover-girl Lauren Conrad is dissed as a "Style Slipup" (page 81) by the likes of Road Rules "star" Theo Von. Ouch!