In an interview with BlackBook, Lois's basic beef is that magazines are trying too hard to make their inside pages look like the Internet, and that editors refuse to take chances on "ideas" covers, like the ones he was famous for at Esquire. And he has a point: As magazine's audiences inevitably become smaller with shrinking newsstand and hard-to-sustain subscription models, now is the time to take chances. Doubling down on what print can do with its visual real estate is a start.

We were curious, though, about how and how much Vogue has changed since Liberman's heyday — he oversaw Vogue's look from the early 40s to the early 60s, and then was editorial director of Conde Nast from 1962 to 1994. It is indeed hard to imagine Vogue doing something like this again (from March 1944, with a somber tone befitting wartime, and a Red Cross shoutout):

Or this famous exercise in restraint:

It seems unfair to compare an era of illustration to a photo-obsessed age, so we dipped into the 1960s. It's fair to say that this Irving Penn pop art cover from 1965 is a far cry from what Vogue does today:

But actually, at least when it comes to covers, you could argue that Vogue has often stayed true to form.

The blonde gamine:

The fresh-faced blonde:

The blonde with interesting choice of headgear:

The "I Have No Fucking Clue What This Is Supposed to Be":

Legacy: Protected.

Legendary Magazine Designer George Lois's Last Round [BlackBook]
Related: Vintage Fashion Magazines
Vogue Archives [On Sugar]

His Rolling Stone cover hits stands now-ish.

Taylor Lautner Covers Rolling Stone In A Wet T-Shirt [JustJared]

Earlier: Can Werewolves Swim?

In a cover story (not available online) in the new issue of Rolling Stone, the pop star says that the pictures were intended for the cover of her latest album:

"I did a photo shoot with Steven Klein for my last album cover, and I painted my face black, except for red lips and white eyes. It was a play on words. Have you ever heard of the Black Madonna? It has layers of meaning, and for a minute, I thought it would be a fun title for my record. Then I thought, 'Twenty-five percent of the world might get this, probably less. It's not worth it.' It happens all the time, because my references are usually off the Richter scale. That's why I have people like Guy [Oseary, her manager] in my life who look at me and go, 'No, you are not doing that.'"

That album became Hard Candy, the cover of which was also shot by Klein, and those "Black Madonna" photos with their unspecified "layers of meaning" never saw the light of day.

Rolling Stone [Official Site]

Earlier: Fashion Photographer Steven Klein Has Done Blackface Before
Oh No The Didn't: French Vogue Does Blackface

• Though Kate Gosselin filed for divorce from Jon on Monday, the filing does not contain custody information at this time. Will Kate ask for primary custody? How much time will Jon get? [Star Magazine]

• By the by, those Crooked Houses Jon & Kate's 8 play in? $7,000 a piece. [ABC News]
• Kate Gosselin is on People magazine, with the cover line: "It feels like I failed." [People]
• New Jon & Kate episodes will include Jon's new girlfriend, 23-year-old Deanna Hummel. [Gatecrasher]
• "Reports this week claim Aniston has been sent text messages by Angelina Jolie demanding she 'back off'." Heh. Hahhaha. Ha. [Daily Mail]
• Is Britney Spears going to be in a Nazi movie? Brain… cannot… compute. [National Ledger]
• Rihanna didn't take the stand in Chris Brown's court case, so now Cover Girl has resumed its ad campaign featuring the singer. It's okay to think she's pretty again! [TMZ]
• Perez Hilton has released a new statement in which he says: "Words can hurt." And: "I wish none of it had happened. I can't take it back." And: "Who I am as a person and what I do for a living are two separate things." And: "Several television and radio shows over the past couple of days echoed the sentiment 'He had it coming'. Would they have said the same thing if I was a woman? Would I have 'deserved it' if I had been stabbed? Or shot? Or killed?" [Perez]
• Anne Hathaway loans her friends designer dresses out of her closet. [Gatecrasher]
• If you work for Oprah, you're going on a trip! She is taking 100 employees - and their families - on an all-expenses paid 10-day cruise around the Mediterranean. JEALOUS. [Gatecrasher via Pop Crunch]
• "Madonna is trying to recreate her beloved Wiltshire manor in the middle of Manhattan." [The Sun]
• "Fitness fanatic Madonna has banned smoking roadies from coming within 50ft of her…" [The Sun]
• Video of Zachary Quinto walking his dog with a friend who is dressed as a giant steak. Quinto falls, curses. The walking resumes. Inexplicable. [ONTD]
• LOL: Ellen's variety show will be called Bigger Longer & Wider. It debuts on TBS this Saturday at 9pm, with Kanye West, David Blaine and Nick Cannon among the performers. [USA Today]
• More drama involving Danielle Staub from the Real Housewives of New Jersey: The Smoking Gun has discovered that in 1986, she was charged with eight felonies, including extortion, cocaine possession, and narcotics conspiracy. And you know how Staub told People she was "never a prostitute. Never"? She told a federal agent she worked for an escort service. [MSNBC, The Smoking Gun]
• Great Q&A with Teresa from RHONJ at the link; she's asked if there's a little too much onyx and granite in her house abd says: "No, I don't think you can ever have too much. I coulda had more." [Newsweek]
• And! When asked, "On a scale of 1 to 10 how much does Danielle annoy you?" Teresa answers: "20." [Newsweek]
• The stuff dreams are made of: James Franco reading Proust. [Page Six]
• Were Megan Fox and Josh Brolin involved in a New Orleans fire? [Page Six]
• Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minnillo: Over. But those hot tub pix live forever! [People]
• Liev Schreiber plays a cross-dresser in Ang Lee's film Taking Woodstock and says: "[Ang] really did like my legs. When I went to his office, the first thing he said to me was, 'Wow, you have really nice legs.' I thought, 'This part is mine.'" [NY Mag]
• Pardon my groan: The Jonas Brothers are on the cover of Rolling Stone (again) looking like they bought fake IDs and are headed to the local leather bar to watch some bear on cub wrestling. [JustJared]
• "Martina Navratilova sued for millions by 'wife' after being 'dumped without warning.'" [Daily Mail]
• Katherine Heigl will star in a romance flick called Life As We Know It, which she is producing with her mother. [Variety]
• Daniel Craig will star in Dream House, a psychological thriller about a man who moves his family to a small town only to find it haunted by the former inhabitants who were murdered there. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Craig Robinson, Heather Graham, Johnny Knoxville and Camilla Belle will join Kevin Spacey in the comedy Father Of Invention, which Spacey is producing. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Julianne Hough probably won't be in Footloose, as her acting is abominable. [Page Six]
• Audrina Patridge of The Hills is getting her own reality show, creatively titled The Audrina Show. [EW]
• Epic Marilyn Manson interview! He talks about how he felt when he and Evan Rachel Wood broke up: "My walls were covered in scrawlings of the lyrics and cocaine bags nailed to the wall. And I did have an experience where I was struggling to deal with being alone and being forsaken and being betrayed by putting your trust in one person, and making the mistake of that being the wrong person. And that's a mistake that everyone can relate to. I made the mistake of trying to, desperately, grasp on and save that and own it. And every time I called her that day — I called 158 times — I took a razorblade and I cut myself on my face or on my hands." [Spin]
• Marilyn Manson also says of Evan Rachel Wood: "I have fantasies every day about smashing her skull in with a sledgehammer." [Spin]
• John Travolta is in South Africa, as a way to honor his late son who loved safaris. [TMZ]
• Is R. Kelly involved in a scam that robbed the elderly of £1million? [The Sun]
• Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai is involved with some kind of illegal purchase of land, uh-oh. [Times of India]
• Michael Madsen owes Pierce Brosnan and Quentin Tarantino money. Not ten bucks — like $25,000 to Brosnan and $1 million to QT. [TMZ]
• "Rachel Hunter devastated as ice hockey player fiancé calls off wedding SEVEN WEEKS before big day." [Daily Mail]
• Come on baby shake your pigskin: Gloria Estefan and her husband Emilio are buying a share in the NFL's Miami Dolphins. [UPI]
• Joan Rivers is moving to L.A. and selling her Upper East side condo and Connecticut cottage, which is "so filled to the brim with campy knickknackery that it almost looks découpaged" and where Joan keeps a photograph of herself next to the bed. [NY Mag]
• Phil Spector is now in the "sensitive needs" area of California state prison, which is separate from the "gen pop." [USA Today]
• Blind item! "Which TV star will absolutely scream when she discovers her husband was chasing girls at an L.A. nightclub over the weekend?" [Gatecrasher]
• Q. Was it fun flipping the table? A: "Fun? It was heat of the moment and it was something that came spontaneously. That was my anger coming out. I just had enough of her. I was just done. I've never done it before. Will I ever do it again? I don't think so because I don't think I'll let someone get to me like she does because in real life I probably would have stopped hanging out with her." — Teresa, of The Real Housewives Of New Jersey. [Newsweek]
• "I'd be a liar if I said it was easy. I think it's very different nowadays for working mothers. Before, a woman could take two years off - a year for her pregnancy and then the first year, but I don't think that's possible for women in showbusiness or in any industry any more. You just have to keep going - keep looking forward. If you stop, you're like, 'Oh God, it's too overwhelming.' And believe me, I've had my fair share of those moments." — Anna Friel. [Telegraph]
• "I really cannot tell you if there will ever be another Batman movie. Chris [Nolan, director] has obviously done an incredible job with it. He's devoted to the movie that he's on right now. I'm none the wiser about we'll ever be revisiting Gotham or not." — Christian Bale. Of another Terminator movie he says: "No conversation has been had about that at all." [Pop Wrap]
• "That song is about when someone said to me, 'Okay, I want to be with you until I die.' And then they gave up. I was at the point in my life where I was like, 'Okay, let's die, but I tell you what, I'm going to kill you first, because I don't trust you.' Honestly. It's hard to look back and see myself as the same person. I'm very objective now. I started to apply this really fantastic rule that they don't teach you in AA or AAA, or any other acronym: Do drugs and drink when you're happy, not when you're sad. It has a great effect. But I can't say that I did that the whole time." — Marilyn Manson, still talking about Evan Rachel Wood. [Spin]
• "She's a lot shorter than I thought she would be, but I was pleased by that. I'm happy there was a flaw. Having said that, I think Angelina is pretty talented. And a remarkable human being, and a great mom. She's definitely not like any other lady I know." — Six foot three Liev Schreiber, on his five foot eight Salt costar Angelina Jolie. [Gatecrasher]
• "I did teach Abby how to say the f-word. I taught her how to drop the f-bomb in every way possible. I said, 'You're a child in an adult's world. I can't be a child for you. When she didn't swear, I said, 'You're starting to offend me Abby. If you don't start swearing every three words then I will fine you.'" — Cameron Diaz, 36 on working with Abigail Breslin, 13 in My Sister's Keeper. [Mirror]
• "I am so often puzzled [by journalists]. Sometimes they go, 'So what's this all about? ... What do you look like when you go home? Do you dress like this all the time?' It's rude! It's not nice… [Lady Gaga] is who I am. Me and my hair bow, we go to bed together. She sleeps where I sleep." — Lady GaGa. [Yahoo News via AP]

• American Idol runner-up Adam Glambert has been vague about his sexuality, but a source says:

He'll come out, officially, on the cover of the next Rolling Stone. [Page Six]

• For the love of Zeus: Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer might be back on. Here is an actual quote from a "source" o the set of The Baster: "[John] wasn't calling her or texting her. But, as she got lonelier and the shoot for her new movie wore on, she started reaching out to him, sometimes very late at night and sometimes after a few too many glasses of wine." Boozy old lonely sad tragic drunk dialing! [MSNBC]
• Jen Aniston's movie is filming near her ex-roommate's restaurant; the roomie is the one who wrote a memoir and depicted Aniston as "weight-obsessed." Unscripted dramz. [Page Six]
• Pierce Brosnan saved Uma Thurman from an out-of-control van on the set of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief! He saw the runaway vehicle "hurtling down a hill" towards Uma and jumped into the drivers' seat and slammed on the brakes. [Daily Express]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Nicole Kidman dyed her hair red and has a "poochy stomach," so clearly she must be pregnant. [Page Six]
• Kate Hudson and Alex Rodriguez have been dating for about a week but she is "already following A-Rod around." [Page Six]
• Order in the court! Al Roker got in big trouble yesterday for snapping pictures while on jury duty. [NY Daily News]
• Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman together on Broadway? Can your ovaries stand it? [NY Daily News]
• The ex-wife of Jon Cryer (aka Duckie Dale) has been arrested for felony child neglect. [TMZ]
• Is Demi Moore going to the UK without Ashton Kutcher? Well that would mean a woman acting independently of her husband! Sound the alarm! [Mirror]
• "Carla Bruni: I feel pain when people criticise my husband... and mock my low-heeled shoes." [Daily Mail]
• Will Susan Boyle bail out of Britain's Got Talent? At this point, she could get a record deal without actually finishing the program. "The producers of the show are going to do everything in their power to make sure she is there on May 30," said a source close to the show. "Whatever Susan wants between now and then, she'll have." [MSNBC Scoop]
• This report says that network bosses will not get rid of Susan Boyle, despite the fears that she's not coping well with her new-found fame. [Mirror]
• Before he joined the cast of SNL, Andy Samberg worked as a writer for the MTV Movie Awards. So the fact that he's hosting Sunday's show means he's coming full circle, in a way. He says: "It's going to be action packed. There's going to be some surprises - nothing I can divulge, but it will involve celebrities. It's going to be great. There's going to be some pre-taped stuff, some digital shorts-style stuff, and a lot of fun collaborations." [AP]
• The rules for I'm A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here state that there is to be "no bullying, nonconsensual touching, racist or homophobic language, romantic advances (at least ones 'which are not desired or returned'), assault or sex in camp." Can Heidi and Spencer abide? [Gatecrasher]
• Four words: Bridget Jones The Musical. [NY Post]
• Is Disney being cheap with Miley Cyrus? She's getting "only" $5,000 for a week of work to guest star on The Suite Life On Deck. [TMZ]
• Jon and Kate Gosselin spent Memorial Day apart: She took the kids on a boat ride in North Carolina; he was seen in an upstate New York bar with two women. [People]
• Here's video of the Gossip Girl cast talking about various things; Blake Lively has been traveled through Asia on her break from the show and is halfway to getting certified for her scuba license. Penn Badgley went with her and grew a beard, saying, "I looked like a homeless person." [E!]
• The Jonas Brothers do not fight, says Nick Jonas. "We get along very well. I think it's just because we have a different kind of respect for one another, being in the band together. We consider each other as equals. There's no picking on the youngest, it's just not that way." Boo. Zzzzz. [Mirror]
• "Her sunglasses gleam. Her skin is scrubbed, her body pneumatic, her vast white teeth dazzling in the sunshine. Meeting Kruger is, in fact, an almost entirely predictable experience. She is pleasant and pretty and punctual […] She looks extraordinary on screen, but disarmingly normal face-to-face. She is not alienatingly gorgeous […] bland, malleable beauty […]" — from a profile on Diane Kruger. [Guardian]
• Lily Allen will have a cameo appearance in the Aussie soap Neighbors. [Independent]
• Cate Blanchett's Sydney Theatre Company is thankful to Tom Stoppard, whose play Rock and Roll sold the largest number of tickets over the last 12 months. [Telegraph]
• So Mayim Bialik is the first celeb on What Not To Wear, but Stacy London and Clinton Kelly had some restrictions: the woman formerly known as Blossom doesn't wear pants or leather. [People]
• Sherri Shepherd will be taking WWE superstar wrestler Montel Vontavious Porter (MVP) to the prom. No, really. [Page Six]
• Dr. Dre appears in a Dr. Pepper ad, and so do eight seconds of his new, long-awaited album, Detox. [LA Times, Reuters]
• Comedian Zach Galifianakis gets a lot of big-screen time in The Hangover, which could make him into a movie star. [WSJ]
• NBC CEO Jeff Zucker says Seinfeld would not make it on TV today, since shows have less time to mature. [CBS News]
• An Australian woman was sentenced to more than two years in prison today for stalking American Idol's Diana DeGarmo over the Internet. [AP]
• Amy Adams will star in Leap, about a very detail-oriented woman who plans to propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day — "and things sort of go off course with the help of a very handsome, roguish Irishman." Matthew Goode is her co-star. [USA Today]
• Break out the jazz flute: Will Ferrell's in talks to do an Anchorman sequel. [NY Daily News]
• Emily Mortimer has purchased a house in Amagansett, Long Island. [Daily Express]
• Chris Martin has lost his voice and Coldplay had to cancel a show in Saratoga Springs, NY. [The Sun]
• Steve Martin's banjo music CD means the actor is on the U.S. pop album chart for the first time since 1981. [Reuters]
• Lucy Gordon, the Spider-Man 3 actress who was found dead in her paris apartment last week, apparently hanged herself, two days before her 29th birthday. She had just finished filming her role as British model-actress Jane Birkin in the biopic of Serge Gainsbourg when she died. [People]
• Phil Spector will be sentenced today. [UPI]
• The Rockabye Baby! CD has hits by Nirvana, Queen, AC/DC, Bob Marley and Pink Floyd — done in lullaby version. With the lights out, it's less dangerous? [The Sun]
• Blind item: "Which former newscaster was so drunk at a recent fete that she could barely remember her own name, never mind what day it was?" [Gatecrasher]
• "There are people who take the quest for youth too far. Madonna – she's from the show-off brigade. She makes my skin crawl. I call her desperate. I know she's got a wonderful willpower and beauty regime but talk about the ‘me' generation wrapped up in one! I think as you get older, you get the face you deserve. I'm hoping that good habits will get me through." — former Dynasty actress Stephanie Beacham. [Daily Express]
• "I tried really hard not to be who I am. I tried super hard. It was a difficult journey for me to come to terms and be whole and happy with who I am." — Kelly McGillis, who says coming out as a lesbian has not been easy, either. [People]
• "It is sad that Linda Hogan continues to attempt to throw her family under the bus to gain publicity. In terms of the ongoing divorce suit, Hulk Hogan and his legal team would gladly take Linda up on her offer to submit to a legally supervised drug test and certainly Terry would do the same. We believe the results would speak for themselves and reveal that Linda's idea of a good time would definitely not be appropriate for Mass or a family restaurant." — An attorney for Hulk Hogan. [Perez]
• "The Tonight Show means everything to me. I'll have good moments and bad, but I'll keep coming at it. At 4 a.m., I do wake up sometimes and go, 'Oh my God, it's The Tonight Show. But nothing funny comes out of reverence. I'll take care of this franchise. The key is to put aside the fear and say, 'Let's just make some people laugh.'" — Conan O'Brien, who plans to host the show "Until I'm 160, because there will be medical advancements. Fallon will take over for me when I retire at 108 to travel with my family. But it won't be Jimmy, it'll be his brain in a jar." [USA Today]
• "As I look around my friends' Tweets I see banality on all sides. I think if people were able to take these 140 characters (allowed in each post) and develop a poetic Western form - a haiku of our own in which all human existence could be compressed into those 140 characters - that would be a satisfying thing, but that's not what I see when I read them." — Hugh Laurie on Twitter. [MSNBC]
• "Tattoos are sexy. I love my name on a woman; it lets me know I'm serious" — Tyrese Gibson to InStyle. [Page Six]
• "I really want to work with Madonna. It doesn't seem a likely pairing, maybe, but I just think that she is so creative and has such vision." — Adam "Glambert" Lambert. [Mirror]

While pointing at a picture of all the cast in bed, she said, "My character was with him; who cheated with her, who's now dating him, but he still loves her. They had a thing; they had a thing; they had a thing; we had a thing; these don't have a thing because they're brother and sister." And really, that is the essence of the show. Clip at left.

Writes Binelli:

In person, Pitt is warm and funny, but is also, at least while he's being interviewed, an extremely fidgety guy. He paces. He musses his hair. He tears little pieces of dried apricot into smaller pieces before popping them into his mouth. He rubs his knee so intensely it brings to mind Lennie from Of Mice and Men petting a rabbit. All of this might have to do with the fact that, despite his repeatedly proven talents as an actor, Pitt remains, for a large number of people, a creature primarily of tabloid fascination. Did he cheat on his ex-wife with his current partner? Will they have another biological child? What war-ravaged destination might they visit next? Does the mustache make him look hot or porn-y?

As for the interview, Binelli gets Pitt to spill about his work, his life, and his thoughts — and there are some revelations.

On Pitt's crappy movies, like The Devil's Own and Meet Joe Black:

"I got lost in the wilderness of fame a bit. There are all of these opportunities you're supposed to be taking. And I got really discombobulated."

On growing up in a religious community:

"I just found it so stifling, my religion. I know it's very comforting for other people. And it was too much of what you shouldn't be doing instead of what you could be doing. I get enraged when people start telling other people how to live their lives. It drives me mental. This Prop. 8 thing just drives me mental."

On his new film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:

"I find Benjamin is about those universal things we all share — that 95 percent that makes us all the same, wherever we are in the world. Our loves, our hopes, but also the loss that we all walk around with and hide very well, and the ultimate notion that we're all expendable. To me, it's a counterstatement to this divisive period we've been in, where we focused on the two, three, four, five percent of ways in which we're different."

On the future:

"I have this fantasy of my older days, painting or sculpting or making things. I have this fantasy of a bike trip to Chile. I have this fantasy of flying into Morocco. But right now, more and more, it's about getting the work done and getting home to family. I have an adventure every morning, getting up."

One has to wonder, is this a man who gets bored easily? Who loves being on the go? Who dreams of never slowing down? Who dreams of never settling down? And with six kids — and possibly two more on the way — is his family "adventure" enough?

Brad Pitt: The Rolling Stone Interview [Rolling Stone]

• Aww, lookit: BritBrit on the cover of Rolling Stone, looking healthy and happy. She says: "I feel like an old person now. I do! I go to bed at, like, 9:30 every night, and I don't go out or anything." Oh! But Britney did go on a date recently, and took her assistant and a manager's friend with her. "Right when we got there, we just knew it was just bad," she says. "He looked like an older version of Harry Potter, but skinnier. So I had to get dessert first." Plus! Her kids "are starting to learn words like 'stupid,' and Preston says the f-word now sometimes. He doesn't get it from us. He must get it from his daddy." [ONTD, USA Today, The Sun]
• With good news must come bad: Amy Winehouse was rushed to the hospital after screaming fight with Blake Formerly Incarcerated. [The Sun]
• Why is Kate Moss all scratched up and bruised? [Daily Mail]
• Click to see Lindsay Lohan sneak vodka into her drink: Caught on camera! [The.Life Flies]

• The Boy George trial has begun! A Norwegian male escort claims he was chained to the wall and beaten by the former Culture Club singer. The court heard about sex toys, leather straps, cocaine: The usual. [Daily Mail, BBC News]
• In his first interview since the plane crash, Travis Barker explains why he has filed a lawsuit: "If something goes wrong that's not supposed to go wrong or you fall victim of it, I think you should be compensated." [Perez Hilton, People]
• Shanna Moakler's been hanging out with Travis Barker lately — and she's been wearing her wedding ring. [TMZ]
• Spencer and Heidi didn't just elope: They got married on November 20. They were able to keep the wedding secret until this week. The ceremony was held on the beach in Mexico, and it wasn't planned. There were no family members present and it took about 15 minutes. [Perez Hilton]
• Spencer's wedding vows: "Heidi, from the moment you came into my life, I knew my life would never be the same without you. You are the light in my life like the sun to the earth! Your loving warmth makes me want to be a better person…" Oy. [Perez Hilton]
• Heidi "couldn't stop crying" after saying her vows. [MSBC]
• Uh-oh, Heidi didn't tell her dad about marrying Spencer. "I would be upset if she got married and didn't invite me!" Bill Montag says. [People]
• Look for all the wedding pictures in Us magazine. More in Midweek Madness today! [Perez Hilton]
• Nicole Kidman is psyched her daughter, Sunday Rose, is "born and bred" in Nashville. "I hope she has a Southern accent." [People, Sydney Morning Herald]
• Number one on E!'s "Top 10 Sexiest Women" list? Belly-button-less icon, Karolina Kurkova. Number 2 is Bar Rafaeli, and Angelina Jolie is a mere third. Scarlett Johansson is chopped liver. [Mirror]
• Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance: Daddy-to-be! His wife Lindsey is expecting a child in summer 2009. A tiny nü-goth emo kid? [NY Times]
• Madonna: "I'm sad about my personal life, but I feel very blessed and very lucky that I have the opportunity to do what I do in my professional life. It would be horrible if I was just thinking about getting a divorce and had nothing to do." Lord, imagine if she had nothing to do??? [AP]
• In an e-mail, A-Rod's soon-to-be-ex-wife, Cynthia, writes: "My 6-foot-3, 220-pound, soul-less, soon-to-be ex-husband is abandoning his kids on Thanksgiving to be with Madonna. She called and he ran on her command back to New York City… Gross!" A source says: "Alex likes a woman with a strong hand. He likes to be told what to do. He's a bit of a cipher." [Page Six]
• Tom Cruise admits that his past erratic behavior was maybe not endearing. "There are things that I could have done better," he says. I was surprised at the criticism but it brought everyone closer together: Katie’s entire family and my family." Also, he says: We’ll have more children, I’m saying this, but Kate’s not here!" On Suri: "She’s happy and fun. She’ll just wave to people in the street." [Mirror]
• Oh, plus: "I have to say some of those paparazzi shots of my daughter are incredible," Tom says. Agreed! These snaps of Suri eating a cupcake are brain-exploding cuteness. [Daily Mail]
• Joel Madden is "thrilled" his friends Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and Pete Wentz have a kid. "They are going to be great parents. They both have really big hearts." [People]
• Evan Rachel Wood and Joseph Gordon Levitt: It's on. [Perez Hilton]
• Reese Witherspoon says she doesn't know why there are rumors that she didn't get along with Vince Vaughn while shooting Four Christmases… not that we ever heard those rumors. She says: "We're very good friends and very much partners on this movie. We decided to produce it together and we re-wrote the script together and every day was like: 'How are we going to do this?' 'What are we going to do now?'" Related: The flick looks shitty. [UPI]
• Celebrities blog. [Reuters]
• Simon Cowell and his ex, Terri Seymour, talk five times a day? [The Star]
• Oh and Terri denies that Simon paid her off after they broke up: "I was horrified when I read that he’s supposed to have given me $10m or whatever. I was like, ‘Why?’ I’ve worked myself since I was 12 years old. I’ve always been very independent and I’m lucky that I still work like I do." [Mirror]
• Jude Law and Sadie Frost ran into each other at a party, but kept a frosty distance, heh. [The Sun]
• Julianne Hough: Looking to be a pop star now that she's hung up her Dancing shoes. [People]
• Speaking of Dancing With The Stars, Joey Fatone talks shit about the contestants: "Kim Kardashian, ugh, she has no personality at all. It was painful to watch. Lance Bass can't point his toe for shit… he had to have two Red Bulls before doing the jive." [Page Six]
• America's Next Top Model is thisclose to getting renewed for a 13th cycle. [Yahoo News]
• Is Paris Hilton in denial about her breakup with Benji Madden? "Right now we’re just taking a break,” she told Life & Style magazine. "We both love each other very much, and we’ll see what happens in the future. My work schedule is out of control, so it’s hard for us to have time for each other. It’s going to be really hard being alone during the holidays, but I’m lucky to have a great family." [MSNBC]
• Paris, who was dumped via voicemail earlier this month, talked about how much she loves Benji on Ryan Seacrest's radio show. She should have dedicated a song to him, old-skool steez. [Mirror]
• Everyone is over Paris anyway, she was booed at a club in Hollywood this weekend. [Page Six]
• Cloris Leachman talks about her health: She's got asthma, but it turned into pneumonia maybe, or bronchitis, but now she says, "I'm better than I've been in years." [ET]
• Kevin Spacey was given a special theater award for rejuvenating one of London's best-loved play houses, the Old Vic. [Telegraph]
• Chinese people are angry that Guns N' Roses called their album Chinese Democracy. [ABC News]
• Jason Lee and Ceren Alkac: Married. Back in July. Guess it was a secret. And they have a baby girl, born in August, and they haven't released her name, but we can only hope it's as, uh, unique as Lee's son's name, Pilot Inspektor. [People]
• Boston Legal: Case closed. As in, show cancelled. [UPI]
• Paul McCartney spills on his new relationship! "I just like being in love," he says. Yawn. [People]
• Legendary producer David Foster says working with Paul McCartney was "a little like being on a bad date. Ten bad dates, maybe." [Rush & Molloy]
• The new show on A&E, Steven Seagal: Lawman, will follow the actor as he fights crime in Louisiana. Did you know he was a police officer??? [Daily Express]
• Bryant Gumbel's 29-year-old son Bradley was arrested for an alleged DUI last week. [TMZ]
• The guy shot dead to the Hollywood Scientology Center had made prior threats, and less than a month ago he was arrested somewhere for swinging an ax at an Auto Club employee who was bringing him gas for his car. [LA Times]
• George Takei's husband is wondering why George hasn't been wearing his wedding ring while on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here: "I can't tell if George is wearing his and that worries me. Maybe he doesn't want it covered in grime," Brad Altman frets. [Mirror]
• Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees had a standoff with security guards and missed his flight after refusing to let security staff search his bag. What do you think was in there? [Mirror]
• James Jagger — son of Mick, with Jerry Hall as his mother — has landed his first film role. The 23-year-old is playing Alessandro Grimani, a pupil, in a biopic of the composer Vivaldi. [Telegraph]
• After she crashed her car and killed a woman two years ago, Brandy was super depressed. "There was a point when I didn't feel like it was OK to live on, because someone else lost their life," she says. "I really didn't know what to do. I was in limbo for a long time. I didn't go outside for months." [Page Six]
• Rapper Nas feels relevant because his album has a song called "Black President" on it. [Rolling Stone]
• RIP screenwriter John Michael Hayes (nominated for Academy Awards for Hitchcock's Rear Window and for Peyton Place), dead at age 89. [AP]
• "Some of the women who became my friends while I was incarcerated have visited with me. There are some very interesting women there of great value to society, and I keep in contact with them. We have some broken systems in this country - one is the prison system." — Martha Stewart. [Page Six]
• "People want to know what Van Damme is. I'm a mass-audience guy. When I go to Russia or Brazil, the people all come en masse, because I'm a guy from the people who made me famous, not the papers or the studios." — Jean-Claude Van Damme. [USA Today]
• "The way I see it is that Peaches [Geldof] is a very lost, sad little girl. And at one point I was like that, so I don’t want to judge. Instead of everyone picking on her, they should try to help. It’s all a bit sad to be honest with you. f she loves him then good for her, but if it was done for attention, it’s a bit sad. I did stuff like that when I was 19 as well, like get a tattoo because it pissed my mum off. It’s just a great big cry for help. Maybe all she needs is a hug." — Kelly Osbourne. [The Sun]
• "I think there is too much of it. You can't turn on the telly without somebody being judged by four people, whether they are on ice, or on the stage or in the jungle. I'm not very keen on it. I watch it — like everybody. It's compulsive viewing but so is a traffic accident. It doesn't encourage creativity." — Paul McCartney, on reality TV. [Telegraph]
• "Beyonce is great, so lovely and down to earth and talented. She’s definitely inspiring. I might go into acting like her if the right thing comes along, like a small movie part. I’m working on my clothing line." — Leona Lewis. [The Sun]
• "Actually I'm not in the tabloids anymore. I am sometimes, but I've watched the culture change. I'm old hat. And I love it. You know what it is with me? This is something I'd like to clarify. I've heard people say, 'Because you hide, it makes you seem ungrateful.' The mere fact that these - I'll use the word piles - are earning money from exploiting my image is the only reason I hide myself or am not a photo-friendly person. I do not like the way they conduct themselves. I think they're disrespectful and dangerous. The reason I don't pose or smile or that I seem mad is that I don't want them to make a living off my private life." — Leonardo DiCaprio on "boycotting" the paparazzi. [Daily Express]

Predictably, Aretha Franklin topped the list, but she and Tina Turner are the only two women in the top 20. Below the top 20, the women are pretty evened out, however most of them seem to be rounding out the bottom fifty.

1. Aretha Franklin
17. Tina Turner
22. Etta James
28. Janis Joplin
29. Nina Simone
34. Whitney Houston
35. Dusty Springfield
42. Joni Mitchell
46. Patsy Cline
50. Bonnie Raitt
51. Gladys Knight
56. Mavis Staples
58. Christina Aguilera
60. Bjork
69. Ronnie Spector
73. Dolly Parton
79. Mariah Carey
83. Patti Smith
84. Darlene Love
93. Annie Lennox
94. Karen Carpenter
95. Patti LaBelle
98. Stevie Nicks
100. Mary J. Blige

Total: 24

Any other women you would have liked to have seen on the list? Any women you think shouldn't have been listed? Rant it out in the comments.

100 Greatest Singers Of All Time [Rolling Stone]

It's not just because she has emphysema, though that obviously doesn't help. It's because she sees nothing wrong with her behavior, and is so far from admitting to any addiction that attempts to help her would be futile. Not that anyone is actually trying to help her, mind you. Hoffman writes, "at Winehouse's place, there's no publicist or manager to be seen, no crisis-management squad deployed to save one of the decade's most successful female vocalists from public shame. That's not Winehouse's style — it's just her and a girlfriend. British singer Remi Nicole pores over the paper, annoyed, telling her friend that all this scandal has to stop."

And even the construction of that sentence: no publicist, manager or crisis management squad — what about the people who actually care about her? Are there any of them out there? At this point, even Britney Spears' famewhoring family swooped in and wrested control of Britney's life and finances. Meanwhile, Amy's parents are talking to the Daily Mail instead of their daughter. And still, with her health in serious danger, Amy breezily says things like, "I've never been to rehab, I mean, done it properly…I'm young, and I'm in love, and I get my nuts off sometimes. But it's never been like, 'Amy, get your life together. '"

But even if someone locked Amy up in rehab, she'd have to want to get better. And the following exchange between Amy and Remi Nicole makes me realize she probably never will. "'I want to fall in love like Amy,'" says Nicole. 'I think I've been in love before.' Winehouse lifts her head: 'No, no, if you had, you'd be dead because you weren't together.'" She's so caught up in the utterly idiotic, sophomoric romantic notion of a Romeo and Juliet love affair, that she's destined for the same star-cross'd fate.

"Up All Night With Amy Winehouse" [Rolling Stone]

Earlier: Amy Winehouse Diagnosed With Emphysema

MOE: Ralph Nader thinks Obama is "acting white" to hone in on "white guilt" which doesn't even make sense but white people are eating it up blah blah blah asbestos. Thought 1: I would really love to hear him discuss all this with Karl Rove. Thought 2: Ralph Nader is supposed to be Arab; where does he get off making payday loans and asbestos his thing???

MEGAN: Nader is Arab, though Christian Arabic. My question is whether he went and, like, looked at Obama's plans on predatory credit or mortgage fraud or Obama's agenda on agenda on poverty before he opened his maw and called him "half African-American" as an insult.
MEGAN: Oh, and payday loans are in there, too, Ralphie.

MOE: And Efraim Diveroli reminds Thomas Frank more of Jeff Spicoli than Andy Samberg. He advises Obama to launch a reverse Grace Commission to examine the "sordid history of privatization in all its details." That would, like, make my crappy hour every day. And yeah re Nader, it's not like he spent his political career in Vermont, move on…the antipathy he inspires from the old guard sanctimonious left is kind of amusing.
MOE: See, why can't all those California lefties be like these guys???

MEGAN: I could see you volunteering to staff that commission, dude. Did I ever tell you my dad's old job was "privatized" when Pataki took office in NY? They contracted out his whole department at the university to get people off the ostensible payroll (though mostly people were just shifted around into departments that were led by the friends of the Republican overseers), and in my dad's case, his boss went to the Powers That Be and showed them that the entire department, salaries, benefits and supplies, cost less than the outsourced gig and pointed out the contract they were about to sign would leave the university without technical support after 4.5 months if the number of calls remained the same. The PTB signed the contract anyway, the contractor met his service quota by the end of the 3rd month and stopped providing service at his initial rate, the university ended up quietly re-insourcing the contract and the Republicans got to claim "credit" for "getting" 10,000 people off the state payroll. Good times.
MEGAN: Re: the George Bush Sewage Treatment plant, a synchronized flush is a waste of water, people. Also, Republicans can't talk about wasting money renaming stuff after Republican Congressman now Libertarian Presidential Candidate Bob Barr's little crusade to name a building in every state after Ronald Reagan, which cost millions and millions of dollars. They can suck a ballot-initiative treatment plant and I can call it NATIONAL airport, fuck you very much.
MOE: Tell it to the Disgrace Commission! And yeah everyone calls it National Airport. Was it Chris Hitchens who was once interviewed and the whole time he spent blusterfully refusing to call it Reagan? Anyway that's something we can all agree on. Here is something else: Irish Catholics in the media really fucking how to embarrass themselves.

MEGAN: Um, wow, it's actually kind of hard to offend me but the person (people?) who wrote that have managed. Irish-Catholics are a "gang of kooks"? They have "the obsessiveness of their ethnic/religious culture"? Irish Catholics at NBC are "a gang of such perfect crackpots"? Patrick Buchanan is "the sane one of these three."?
MEGAN: Dude who wrote that: go fuck yourself.
MEGAN: For real.
MEGAN: With a spiky acid-tipped dick.

MEGAN: Instead of me just being angry, why don't we soothe my ruffled feathers by talking about Russ Feingold and why I really think he should've made Obama's short list. The man's a liberal's intellectual wet dream, a civil liberties god, etc.
MOE: Dude, maybe I am just too Irish Catholic, but I read that whole thing and thought - as I laughed — GUITY GUILTY GUILTY. All the oversharing! The demons! Using the romantic notion that the Irish Catholic are some scrappy disadvantaged minority in the Washington news media as an excuse to look out for the interests of Maria Shriver?? No, that's just kind of funny. But Maria Shriver repeating that story? As Kathleen Matthews said "All of us who are Irish say, Let's purge the dark side of our Irishnessand let's hold on to the good positive side of it." Which I think means get me a drink and I'll tell you the story of this one time a guy shaved off my pubic hair before we fucked and I thought it was really funny at the time because I was on Vicodin but not so much when it grew in. He was Catholic too, but Italian or Portuguese or something. Dark.

MOE: All of which is just to say.

MATTHEWS (6/16/08): So let me ask you about the ethnic piece of this. Why do Irish Catholics make some great cops, such great prosecutors? Michael, I mean, they are!
…
BARNICLE: I think it begins—as just Pat referenced, I think it begins with so many Irish Catholics of a certain age, of a certain generation, with their parochial school education, and they come to life later on with a missionary zeal for the truth because it begins in parochial school.

Maybe when I die you and Slut Machine can have an IM about being Irish and use some of these exchanges as a guide!
MEGAN: I used to have a Irish Catholic boyfriend shave my Bush regularly. But I don't think it had anything to do with us being Irish or him being Catholic or me being formerly-Catholic. I just don't like being called a kook or a wackjob because of the religion that my mother chooses to practice. Like we're all some crazy cult or something? I don't have a lot of lines, but that dude crossed it.
9:25 AM
MEGAN: I mean, a lot of NY and Boston cops are Irish. I don't know that I'd call them all great, though. It's more like a family business for a lot of people, like the military but with less moving.
MOE: It just appealed to my missionary zeal for the truth I guess. The "cooks" part was just a joke pretty much. Okay, so what else? Ralph Nader is also profiled in the Post today. Such charisma that guy:

When an aide relays a young woman's request to stop for a picture, Nader has had enough. "No!" he snaps, walking away. "It's always 'one more'!"

MEGAN: Such a nice guy, that Nader. Can you believe people hate him? They've just been brainwashed by the two-party system! It's not because he's an egotistical, self-centered asshole who doesn't care what actually happens to this country as long as he gets on the teevee.
MOE: Oh god and the media is doing its best to make me squirm today…like did the Obama campaign really have to release his iPod playlist? I mean, sure, it's cute when Meghan McCain does it but…wouldn't it have just been cooler if some girl had been using his same Wifi signal and clicked on "Barry's LimeWire Tunes" and then the world got to know the only natural way how Obama was listening to pirated Ludacris tracks?
MOE: Musical interlude

MEGAN: Well, he totally had to prove that 99 Problems wasn't on it! Also, if I find out that the shitty new Sheryl Crow album is on his playlist, I'm out.
MEGAN: Is is sad that I sort of fucking love Roll Out? The summer that song was out, I was working in Bethesda and driving to work, and I used to blast it in the car with the windows down singing along, even though Move Bitch is a better D.C. traffic song.

MOE: God I fucking love YouTube. And no, "Roll Out" is just fucking irrefutable. My friend Don actually has these games, "The Irrefutables" where you take one artist, and you say totally arbitrarily, "Okay, there are nine irrefutable Billy Joel songs, NAME THEM." And then what ensues is part-race, part-debate over whether "Always a Woman" is indeed irrefutable or whether you should be hanged for even suggesting as much. And then there's another game called "You think you're so cool, but you can't deny…" And that's where you take a cheesy song or artist and then the debate is over whether you can, indeed, deny the merits of, you know, "Maybe I'm Amazed."
MOE: Or in the case of the Obama playlist, "My favorite Mistake"
MOE: You can also do it with other things, such as you think you're so cool, but you can't deny…TIM RUSSERT.
MEGAN: This is probs an Irrefutable.
MOE: Dude that movie was fucking irrefutable. The Stones are a band you never want to get into the Irrefutables with though because everyone's drunk and you can't count that high. You have to break it up with bands like that, like maybe Stones songs set in train stations…

MEGAN: Sorry, I'm now totally distracted by the Stones, damn you
MOE: Also, a final thing, you can't get into Irrefutables unless you have a certain amount of distance from the artist. Like I wouldn't personally attempt it with Neko Case or obviously the Replacements or Pavement, and you probably wouldn't want to get into it with Barack Obama and Stevie Wonder and to that end fucking yes, it is summer
MEGAN: Or, we could bring it all back to Tim Russert, yet again, since I'm a narcissitic Irish Catholic.

Well, quite simply, the "inbred swamp thing" thing was a comment on Britney's dehumanization before our eyes, her media-aided devolution into a somehow more primal, lesser species, someone whose prolonged descent despite her material wealth could only be chalked up to defective genes, whose very bodily functions we suddenly found it perfectly natural to watch in progress, like on the Discovery Channel.

I'd maintain some ethnic stereotypes enable us to heed and joke about and respect one another's differences, which is sort of the essence of humanism. But "inbred" is different: it merely evokes lesser, worse, animalistic, Mr. Rochester's wife in Jane Eyre, although, wait, maybe now I am contradicting myself because she was some blueblood. Anyway, I don't know. It just creeped me out. Maybe I'm oversensitive. Ha.

Film's Casting Call Wants That 'Inbred' Look [Pittsburgh Tribune]

The whole "Rorschach Test" thing is getting a lot of press lately. You see in whatever those things you want to see. Britney is Bush, Angelina is Barack Obama, Barack Obama is Jesus Christ, Hillary Clinton is your mom, Hillary Clinton is your menopausal boss from hell. Nomani knows better than most that none of any of this is true, that it's more complicated than that.

I learned a few things I did not know from the Rolling Stone piece. I did not know that Kevin Federline's lawyers is a "former Israeli operative" who "penetrated the inner circles of Hollyood" in a way "not unlike counterterrorism" or that before he met Britney K-Fed's Chevy was repossessed. Or that the paparazzo who usually manages to get up front during her dramatic car chases is a former Death Row records executive. Or that once upon a time Britney Spears was a polite, well-mannered kid who did all her chores but she was driven to madness in part by two pivotal moments in her life: the trauma of the media mockery following her boob job, and cheating on Justin Timberlake with her choreographer. And there but for the grace of Harvey Levin go all of us?

Is any of this true? It is probably an oversimplification. Is the inspiring tale of Angelina's dramatic turnaround, from troubled self-mutilator estranged from her father to World's Best Person, also an oversimplification? No doubt. Do we tell ourselves stories in order to live? Are the stories in Us Weekly more dangerous than those in the Bible and the Koran? Am I really going to spend another hour I could have spent learning about, I dunno, the fallout of the Pakistani election on that question? I guess I just did.

[Rolling Stone, July 1997]

Look at Ginger Spice! Little Geri Halliwell was the one who should have never been: The oldest Spice Girl with no singing capabilities whatsoever, she became the group's leader and star, in no small part becuase of that Union Jack swimming costume and white platform boots. The Geri of today? Just look at her: A single mom in hippie-wear. (She named her daughter Bluebell!) We assume she sits around, applying cellulite cream in the morning, listening to Joni Mitchell while steaming organic vegetables in the afternoon.

Baby Spice, Emma Bunton, was blonde and young and naive back then. And it sorta worked for her: That little girl face was annoying, to be sure — but it gave her personality. But the blonde, naive thing doesn't really hold when you're in your 30s. And the last time we saw her she was doing a spaghetti sauce commercial. Also, she's gained weight. Posh must love this.

Scary Spice or Mel B as she was known was the wacky one back then — the horns made out of hair and tongue stuck out in every photo. Now she's a single mom, fighting (and winning!) for confirmation of her baby's paternity. So we can't really bear her any ill-will for slutting it up in a fuschia corset and too-tight skirt now. Not her finest look, certainly, but the past year has not exactly been her finest anyway. Why aggravate the tragedy by telling her she looks ridiculous?

Last but not least there is that Sporty one, Mel C (Melanie Chisholm). Mel was the only one who could really carry a tune, but she always looked butch so no one ever really liked her. (But I hear she had a pretty good solo career in England once the group broke up?) Anyway, she certainly wins the most improved award of the bunch! If, that is, 'improvement" is defined as going femme with a better haircut and clothes and not wearing athletic gear to all public appearances!

Lead Photo: London, June 28. Image via Splash