[New York, November 18. Image via Bauer-Griffin.]

[New York, July 27. Image via Bauer-Griffin.]

[New York, July 13. Image via WENN]

[New York, July 9. Image via Splash]

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[New York, March 23. Image via INFDaily.]

[New York, March 18. Image via Flynet.]

• Etta James says when she was ripping Beyoncé about singing "At Last" for the President, "I didn't really mean anything…"

"Even as a little child, I've always had that comedian kind of attitude." Sure, sure. [The Life Files via NY Daily News, ONTD]

• The Obamas were reportedly "stunned" by Etta James' remarks. [TMZ]
• The Times asks, re: Heath Ledger, "So how do you run an Oscar campaign for someone who is no longer with us?" [NY Times]
• Angelina Jolie will produce a film called Resilient, in which Mariane Pearl will interview five women who have overcome odds to bring change to their communities. That's right, Saint Angie has six kids and a movie to create, get out of her way. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Ryan Reynolds looks Photoshopped into waxy zombie territory on the cover of Men's Health. But good for him for running a marathon to raise funds for Parkinson's. [Socialite Life]
• Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil's divorce could get nasty: Blake Incarcerated is "compiling a dossier" of all the dudes Amy slept with and wants them to testify to prove that Amy was unfaithful during their marriage. What kind of fuckery is this? [The London Paper]
• Paris Hilton's brother Barron is being sued by a dude he struck with his car at a gas station a year ago. [TMZ]
• Apparently Kate Hudson's new guy, Aussie golfer Adam Scott, is better for her than Owen Wilson, because Owen would "point out her imperfections all the time" and Kate would always seen pictures of Owen with other women in magazines. Also: Adam is hot. [E!]
• Here's the Sarah Jessica Parker story from Bazaar. SJP talks about being Carrie Bradshaw: "I got to wear such incredible things, and you make such mistakes and there's such hits and great triumphs and there's incredible wrong, wrong, wrong. But it's so much fun." Oh! And she wore an Alexander McQueen dress to an SATC event in New York: "I actually had to cut myself out of that dress that night. My husband was out of town, so I was alone when I got home, and I couldn't unzip it. So…I got out the scissors." [Bazaar]
• Oh, God: Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman just signed on for a romcom called The Baster. They'll play best friends, but when he learns she's gonna get pregnant through artificial insemination, he replaces the donor's semen with his own. This is not a joke. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Here's Lily Allen dressed as a boy in a spoof of a chocolate commercial. [Daily Mail]
• In this article, Liv Tyler invites the interviewer back to her house and talks about the "sad parts" — empty spaces where her ex-husband has moved out. [Wonderland Magazine]
• Whoops! The BBC aired Christian Bale's infamous tirade without bleeping out the swearing. [The Star]
• Fantasia plans to get her high school degree — she dropped out of the ninth grade about ten years ago. "I've been talking about it for so long," she says. "I have a lot of young people who look up to me, like my 15-year-old brother and 7-year-old daughter. It's something that I really need to do and that I want to do." [Yahoo News via E!]
• Guy Ritchie: Seen singing show tunes in a gay bar. [Page Six]
• We've heard this before but here it is again: Lily Allen couldn't stay with her 45-year-old boyfriend because the sex was bad. [Mirror]
• Long interview with Justin Long, promoting He's Just Not That Into You. Guess what? He's not like his character. "I'm not good at reading signs - I don't like deciphering. I don't like to play the games, like 'When am I supposed to call?' " he says. [USA Today]
• Paul McCartney and Nancy Shevell are in luuuuuv. [Daily Mail]
• Eva Longoria and Tony Parker are selling their San Antonio home for about $900,000. Take a slideshow tour and check out the pretty pool and basketball court! [WSJ]
• Dev Patel, who has been nominated for a Best Actor Bafta, says of Slumdog Millionaire: "It has never claimed to be a documentary. It is a movie. It is entertainment. I spent five months out here filming and really got a chance to see the slums close up and I think the film depicts them accurately enough. Mumbai really is a city of extreme contrasts. If you step out of a five-star hotel here you can be facing a slum." [Telegraph]
• Speaking of Dev Patel, he and Freida Pinto were about to be on Tyra's show when a woman in the audience had a seizure. They signed a copy of the Slumdog soundtrack and slipped it to her as she sped off in an ambulance. Music heals, you guys. [Page Six]
• Soap operas are wiping out top stars because the economic downturn means they can't pay the actors. Days Of Our Lives lost four couples! [NY Post]
• Another day, another story about John Cleese's package. [Page Six]
• Kelly Cutrone, whom you may have seen on The City or The Hills, is getting a reality show based on her fashion PR company. Expect dramz! [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which young magazine editor dispenses bags of blow to Hollywood starlets so they can be 'extra up' for the photo shoots he arranges?" [Gatecrasher]
• Paris Hilton chatted Fergie up about her wedding and honeymoon, but when Fergalicious walked away, Paris quipped to sister Nicky, "Ha, my engagement ring was bigger!" This paper points out: Yeah, Paris, but which one of you is actually married? [Gatecrasher]
• Russell Simmons has a juicy new squeeze, and she is a grapefruit heiress. [Gatecrasher]
• The new Gossip Girl plotline will be very similar to Anne Hathaway's love life: A hottie swindler will sweep Serena off her feet. [Gatecrasher]
• Jade Jagger is married, according to her Facebook status. Also, she started a music, fashion and art company called, uh, Jezebel. Her middle name. [Daily Mail]
• Will Val Kilmer run for governor of New Mexico in 2010? He says probably! "What I do for a living is listen. If I run, I'm going to be the next governor." [CBS News via AP]
• "I used to have claustrophobia inside the cinema because I didn't like it in the dark. I missed out on films as a kid. Now I'm better watching films on DVD with friends around than on my own. — Judi Dench. And! "The difference between theatre and cinema is that once you've done a film, it's over. With Nine, two days after I'd recorded my singing part, I did the performance I felt I should've done – in my bathroom." [Daily Express]
• "We haven't found any reason to stop yet. It's chaos at times, but there's such joy in the house. We have the capability to give a child a home and, let me tell you, it's selfish too because the reward has been extraordinary. [Twins are] just double the fun. It's surprising how soon their personalities have started emerging. But it's really important that everyone gets their individual time as well as group time together, and that's a big focus of ours. We were four before, and we got into our rhythms and it worked – but everyone's pretty well integrated." — Brad Pitt, on adding kids to his brood. [Mirror]
• "I've tried, but I'm just not into text sex. You only have a few lines to get your point across, and I don't like that. I also don't know who my text-sex partner is showing my messages to. I could be viewed as a text slut through no fault of my own." — Ginnifer Goodwin. [Gatecrasher]
• "Gigi is the closest I've ever come to playing myself. I've never been interested in playing someone so like myself. But I fell in love with her. I humiliate myself on a daily basis. I have been known to Google-stalk. I've certainly caught myself flirting in such a way that I feel nauseous afterward when I think of what I said. And I'm so guilty of the long linger." — Ginnifer Goodwin, on her character in He's Just Not That Into You. [USA Today]
• "You're pretending you're feeling the same emotion as when you wrote the song. I'm not trying to have pretend good sex, I'm trying to have good sex." — Duffy, on her tactic when filming music videos. [The Sun]
• "Angelina and I are together because we can enhance each other. I don't want to waste any time because I'm with company I really, really love." — Brad Pitt. [Mirror]
• "It's a great job, but it doesn't leave time for what's important, like having a family. I want to live in the country and have a walled garden with chickens and pigs." — Lily Allen, on being a pop star. [Mirror]
• "I was kind of seeing this guy and then it was over. So I texted my godmother in Jamaica and told her and as a joke I said, 'Maybe my next conquest should be Simon Cowell.' You know when someone is in your mind and you accidentally text them? He replied, 'Sorry?'" — Lily Allen, on accidentally propositioning Simon Cowell. [The Sun]
• "My son! My husband! Food! Oh, fashion? I don't know. A good bra?" — What Sarah Jessica Parker can't live without. [Bazaar]
• "I think pop culture has done a number on creativity, because for me to make that statement [that I'm into acting], I get the reaction: 'Really?' It's like, 'Yeah, why wouldn't I?' The opportunity is there. It's sort of like, I have a day job, and this becomes a hobby (that) I can plunge into with full creative eagerness." — Justin Timberlake, to Katie Couric. [MSNBC Scoop]
• "I stopped reading all fashion and trash magazines. I don't want to be influenced any more by what's in and what's out and what makes somebody cool or not cool. In the middle of the night I'd go and take a pee, and on the bathroom floor would be a magazine, and I found myself memorizing banal headlines like 500 Best Black Tops. So I read only books – A Farewell To Arms, it's a heartbreaker, oh god – and decoration magazines." — Liv Tyler. [Wonderland Magazine]
• "I have to say really, I feel better than I ever felt in my life. I did have a moment, though, over the weekend my first like huh… I don't want to [turn 40]. I found a really long gray hair and it kind of flipped me out. It's not my first but it's the fact that it was so long. I was like, 'Oh that's been there. How many others are there, and what does that mean? It actually brought me to tears slightly." — Jennifer Aniston, on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. [People]

[Blake Lively & Penn Badgley shooting "Gossip Girl," New York, October 29. Image via Splash.]

[New York, September 30. Image via Splash.]

[New York, September 9. Image via Splash.]

[Blake Lively and Kelly Rutherford on the set of "Gossip Girl" as Serena and Lily Van Der Woodsen, Brooklyn, August 11. Image via Splash.]

[Blake Lively & Penn Badgley on the set of "Gossip Girl," Central Park, New York, July 16. Image via Splash.]

[New York, July 7. Image via INFDaily.]

[The Hamptons, New York, June 20. Image via Splash.]

[New York, April 24; image via INFdaily.com.]

But it's deeper than that. Because the gossip about Gossip Girl is just as interesting as the show: Blake Lively and Penn Badgley play boyfriend and girlfriend on the show, and might be dating in real life! Blake Lively and Leighton Meester play frenemies on the show, and might kind of hate each other in real life! Hotties Chace Crawford and Ed Westwick (Nate and Chuck, respectively) are roommates in real life. But the truth is that the show could be even better — if it stuck closer to the books.

Cecily von Ziegesar, who attended Manhattan's Nightingale-Bamford, a top-ranked private school in New York (Charlotte Ronson went there) has written twelve Gossip Girl books, and, as amazing as the show is, some of the choices Josh Schwartz of The O.C. made in bringing the story to the screen must be questioned. For instance: In the books, the character of Dan Humphrey is an underdog, a poet, a disheveled thinker...an awkward intellectual who doesn't hang with the cool kids. A "nerd". Which makes the fact that he has a relationship with pretty, rich, popular, mysterious, not-a-virgin Serena all kinds of amazing. Who doesn't love it when the underdog scores? (Think of Anthony Michael Hall and the prom queen in Sixteen Candles.) Unfortunately, TV Dan is chiseled and dapper. How can he be an underdog with that confident jawline? (Not to mention that TV Serena is no where near as flighty, carefree or impulsive as Book Serena). In addition, Book Vanessa (Dan's other love interest) — who has a shaved head, wears combat boots and makes short films about how vapid her rich classmates are — is an endlessly more entertaining character than TV Vanessa, who has yet to be interesting at all. And Book Jenny — Dan's younger sister — who has enormous breasts at a young age, the whole reason she catches the eye of older guys like Chuck and Nate — tackles the very real teen issue, of being sexualized too soon, of having your physical and mental states feel out of sync. TV Jenny doesn't get to explore that avenue.

Sure, it's tricky to adapt books for the screen. Hollywood is notorious for making such big changes that the original characters are unrecognizable (See: Breakfast At Tiffany's). But Gossip Girl's strength is in its true-to-life aspects. Despite all the money and freedom the characters on the show (and in the book) have, they still suffer the same teenage angst, the "the delectable tangle of jealousy, loyalty, confusion," as Pressler and Rovzar call it, that we're all familiar with. In a world with fauxmances and pseudo-scripted drama (The Hills), producers of Gossip Girl have a chance to keep it real. If only they would!

The Genius of Gossip Girl [New York]

[New York, April 18. Image via Splash.]

[Blake Lively leaving the set of "Gossip Girl," New York, April 7. Image via Splash.]

[Blake Lively as Serena van der Woodsen on the set of "Gossip Girl," New York, April 3. Image via Splash.]