Nicole's Engagement, Tila's Miscarriage, Madonna's TV Gig

• Nicole Richie and Joel Madden: Engaged.

She admitted so last night on The Late Show With David Letterman. Hasn’t she been engaged for a while? Yes. Joel Tweeted: “Yeah we’ve been engaged for a while so your[sic] all kind of late on that.” Summer wedding, probably. [Us Magazine]

• Tila Tequila is not pregnant. She either miscarried when she hit her head or was never pregnant in the first place. A person pretending to be a magazine editor told her she wanted her for a photoshoot but would use Lady Gaga instead if Tila was pregnant, and Tila suddenly emailed: “I lost my baby. Please don’t announce to the media that I lost my baby. It’s something very private to[sic] heartbreaking to me and I don’t need the media to poke fun of someone who just lost her baby.” Private? Nothing this woman does is private. By her own choice and design. Anyway: She also says, “I am still going to keep trying to have another baby or just adopt one.” [ONTD, Tila’s Rot Spot]
• Awesome: Madonna will be a judge on Jerry Seinfeld‘s show The Marriage Ref. Hopefully she’ll get her own spinoff, How I Met Your Young Brazilian Stepfather. [NYDN]
• Axl Rose was on stage for a Guns ‘N Roses show at a hotel in NYC on Sunday when a man pulled out a knife. Former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach saw the dude, tackled him and got security to throw him out. Allegedly, Sebastian said: “‘Nobody is getting anywhere near my man Axl Rose with a knife.” He probably didn’t say, “I hope the guy gets 18 and life,” but that would have been cool. [Page Six]
• Axl Rose made fans — including Mickey Rourke — wait for hours before taking the stage on Sunday. [Gatecrasher]
• Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt took their kids to Benihana for Valentine’s Day. Onion volcano FTW. [Page Six]
• Quentin Tarantino swears he and Brad Pitt were not stoned during Inglourious Basterds: “Brad doesn’t smoke while he’s acting, and I don’t smoke while I’m directing.” At all other times: High as kites. [Rush & Molloy]
• Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel went on a date together — to see Swan Lake — on Valentine’s Day. Not broken up, then? [Page Six]
• Jenny McCarthy had a skywriter come and write J ♥ J in the big blue above LA for her beau, Jim Carrey, on Valentine’s Day. [Gatecrasher via Twitter]
• Almost 330,000 people are fans of the “Betty White To Host SNL (Please?)” page on Facebook. Betty White says: “I’m just amazed. I would think by now that they’ve had such an overdose of Betty White that they’d be throwing rocks instead.” As for doing Saturday Night Live, Betty’s open: “That would depend on scheduling and all that. But who knows? You can’t ever say yes or no or never-you just wait to see what happens.” And by the by, she is not connected to the Facebook page: “I have no idea where it started, but it just keeps growing.” [E!]
• Wait, maybe Betty White is not so open to the idea of hosting SNL: “[The Facebook page] just came out of left field. It’s ridiculous. I don’t think [SNL creator and producer] Lorne Michaels even knows about it, so we won’t worry about it.” [People]
• Oh, here Betty White says hosting SNL: “Would be great fun of course.” [PopWrap]
• Kiefer Sutherland will be back at work on 24 this week after surgery for a cyst near his kidney. You can’t keep Jack Bauer down! [NY Post]
• Southwest Airlines has apologized a second time for kicking Kevin Smith off of a flight on Saturday, but he says “I’m never going on Southwest again.” [CNN]
• Larry King wants Kevin Smith to come on his show, but Kevin might do The Daily Show instead. He would like to for Southwest to bring seats to Jon Stewart‘s set, so he can prove that he can sit in them. [LA Times]
• Southwest has refunded Kevin Smith‘s airfare and a spokesperson admits: “…We made a mistake in trying to board him as a standby passenger and then remove him. And I told him we were sorry… Southwest could have handled this situation differently.” This is not the end, I think. This story has legs wings. [E!]
• This long-ish piece on Lady Gaga is worth reading, even though it includes this line: “For an international sex symbol, Gaga is not particularly pretty. She certainly knows how to pose, to pull her neck so that it looks like she might actually have a chin and turn her head so that you can’t quite see how prominent her nose is.” The best parts, of course, are the Gaga quotes: “You are assuming, rightfully so, that I would care about the same freedoms that other people care about, but I don’t. I don’t care about going to the grocery store. And I don’t care about going to a nightclub and getting drunk and getting photographed, ’cause I don’t do that. I’m home working. I think people need to put things in perspective. I get to make art and fashion and music for a living. If I have to give up grocery shopping, poor me!” [Telegraph]
• American Idol‘s top 24: To be revealed today. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Mark Indelicato, aka Justin on Ugly Betty: “I don’t HATE Miley [Cyrus]. I don’t even know her. I simply don’t like her music.” [Perez]
• The Charlie Sheen saga is like a never-ending episode of Intervention. Newest headline: “Brooke Mueller Partied With Charlie Sheen Hours Before Going Into Rehab.” The story gets more and more bizarre. The report here claims that Charlie Sheen had a sober coach with him on Christmas eve when he started boozing. (?!?!) [Radar Online]
• Brooke Mueller is indeed in rehab. [TMZ]
• Wait, Brooke Mueller is a crackhead? [Radar Online]
• Remember when Charlie Sheen‘s car was stolen and driven off of a cliff? His Chevron card was in the vehicle, and the thieves have been charging gas and stuff all over LA. [TMZ]
• A source says of Jason Davis‘s appearance on The Millionaire Matchmaker: “They must be desperate.” [Page Six]
• Avril Lavigne and Brody Jenner have been hooking up, but keeping it “low-key.” [E!]
• James Cameron will write a Avatar prequel novel, which will probably sell more copies than Lauren Conrad’s tome, and if you are a struggling writer you are probably crying right now. [NYDN]
• “Exclusive: Jersey Shore Feud: Ronnie & Sammie Hate Each Other.” The reunion show ruined everything. They’re not speaking to each other and can’t even stand being in a room together. [Radar Online]
• Oooh, Lily Tomlin will be producing Leslie Jordan‘s one-man off-Broadway show, My Trip Down The Pink Carpet. Jordan is the hilarious 4’11” actor and playwright from Chattanooga you may know as Will & Grace‘s Beverley Leslie. Prediction: Cocktails and quips! [AP]
• Billy Baldwin is claiming that he doesn’t care what’s said about him in the press, or that people know that his wife Chynna Phillips is in rehab: “I have too many other things to worry about.” [Radar Online]
• “I love having influences because I want people to get excited when they see something in the film or hear me talking about it and then actually go see the movie that inspired me in the first place… For example, the whole opening scene in Basterds is completely and utterly taken from the first appearance of Angel Eyes [Lee Van Cleef] in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. That’s why it has that whole spaghetti western vibe.” — Quentin Tarantino talks about his influences — and his problem with people assuming what his influences are — at the link. [LA Times]
• “I’d like to do a Western. But rather than set it in Texas, have it in slavery times. With that subject that everybody is afraid to deal with. Let’s shine that light on ourselves. You could do a ponderous history lesson of slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Or, you could make a movie that would be exciting. Do it as an adventure. A spaghetti Western that takes place during that time. And I would call it ‘A Southern.'” — Quentin Tarantino. [Rush & Molloy]
• “I will never do nudity. I don’t care how dark and intellectual the role could be, you know. I don’t care if I frickin’ could get an Oscar for it, I’m not going to do it. Those accolades mean nothing to me. I don’t think people deserve to see what’s under my clothing. That’s only for my next husband-ha-ha-ha.” — Jessica Simpson, to Allure. Does she really see herself being cast in an Oscar-caliber film? Ha-ha-ha. [MSNBC Scoop]
• “I was classically trained as a pianist and that innately teaches you how to write a pop song, because when you learn Bach inversions, it has the same sort of modulations between the chords. It’s all about tension and release. But I want to do something that speaks to everyone. To me there is nothing more powerful than one song that you can put on in a room anywhere in the world and somebody gets up and dances. If you put a classical piece on, everyone’s not gonna mobilize. It’s gotta be something that resonates on a visceral level.” — Lady Gaga. [Telegraph]
• “Making lots of money has made me happy. No one else helped me – I’ve done this all by myself, on my own terms.” — Jessica Alba. [MSNBC via Scarlet Magazine]