• Tennis star and lover of Enrique Iglesias Anna Kournikova got into a fight Saturday night at a club in Vegas after some random woman threw a drink at her for "invading her space." [Page Six]
  
  
• Leighton Meester sings and acts in a new Gossip Girl-y video she stars in for Cobra Starship's song "Good Girls Go Bad." And yes, the song was written and the video was shot prior to the news that Meester's talented feet were the star of a new celebrity sex tape to hit the internet. [Daily Intel]
  
  
• Michael Jackson looked frail but appeared to be getting his groove on in these photos taken during a rehearsal at the Staples Center shortly before his death. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Chris Brown was supposed to take part in a Michael Jackson tribute at the BET Awards on Sunday night, but Jay-Z stepped in and torpedoed those plans. [Page Six]
  
  
• Alice Hoffman isn't just attacking people who offend her delicate sensibilities on Twitter—She recently attacked a blogger who was moderating a discussion about her new book at a Barnes and Noble store. [Page Six]
  
  
• Actress Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame is moving to New York to attend school at Columbia, where perhaps she can follow in the footsteps of her fellow thespian James Franco and sleep her way to a degree. [Daily News]
  
  
• Jude Law, currently starring in a London production of Hamlet, strolls through the streets of the city coolly sipping on frappucinos. [Just Jared]
  
  
• Sacha Baron Cohen got a taste of his own medicine last night when a Bruno imposter showed up at the movie's Australian premiere in a pink stretch Hummer filled with a bevy of scantily clad dancers. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick have released the first photos of their new twin girls, who were recently delivered by a surrogate mother in Ohio. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Mariah Carey got done up as an Eminem-type rapper for her new video for her song "Obsessed." We can't wait for Eminem to respond with a video in which he dresses up like a hideous-looking Mariah Carey, because you just know he's going to do it. [DListed]
  
  
• Lady GaGa claims that she's been doing volunteer charity work since she was two years old. [UK Sun]

Turns out the story is true. Here's what Ford, talking about his book The Sportswriter, told the Guardian in a 2003 interview:

"People had written me off. When the book came out it just took a while to make its way. It didn't happen overnight. It got bad reviews — that's the book that Alice Hoffman wrote nasty things about in the New York Times."

Ford's run-in with Hoffman, with whom he shared a publisher, has become legendary. In retaliation for her criticism, Ford shot a hole through her latest book and posted it to her. "Well my wife shot it first," says Ford, rather proudly. "She took the book out into the back yard, and shot it. But people make such a big deal out of it - shooting a book - it's not like I shot her."

We're not sure if we should feel sympathetic toward Hoffman or loathe her even more after learning this? Then there's this other question burning in our mind right now—What the hell is wrong with these people?

The review by Hoffman that provoked Ford and his wife to shoot up Hoffman's book can be read here.

Pic via

Here's what Hoffman, who deactivated her Twitter account after we published her angry tweets last night, said in her statement:

I feel this whole situation has been completely blown out of proportion. Of course I was dismayed by Roberta Silman's review which gave away the plot of the novel, and in the heat of the moment I responded strongly and I wish I hadn't. I'm sorry if I offended anyone. Reviewers are entitled to their opinions and that's the name of the game in publishing. I hope my readers understand that I didn't mean to hurt anyone and I'm truly sorry if I did.

Now, maybe we're nitpicking here, but doesn't this apology seem sort of, well, half-assed? Would it have been that hard to string the words "I'd like to apologize to Roberta Silman" together somewhere in there? Because when you read the statement, Hoffman doesn't really address Silman directly—She mentions how she wishes that she hadn't "responded strongly" and issues a blanket "I'm sorry if I offended anyone" statement, but she doesn't bother to apologize to Silman directly. After crapping all over Silman's literary credentials, which she never took even a second to research, calling her a "moron" and an "idiot," publishing her phone number and encouraging her readers to call and harass her, you'd think that perhaps Alice Hoffman would have felt slightly compelled to offer Roberta Silman a direct apology, no? Or maybe we were just raised differently than she was.

UPDATE: It appears as though Hoffman herself has been the subject of another writer's rage after she wrote a lukewarm review of the author's work in the New York Times.

The most vexing thing about of all of this is that Silman's review wasn't a trashing by any standard, other than inside of Hoffman's obviously delusional mind of course, but it certainly wasn't positive either. Here's a sampling of the most critical statements by Silman we found in her review:

"...this new novel lacks the spark of the earlier work. Its vision, characters, and even the prose seem tired."

"This heavily plotted part of the book becomes more predictable, yet also more unconvincing."

"...the author doesn't deliver."

"There may be lots of readers who crave books that have their feet planted both in reality and fairy tale, complete with mysterious passages like those introducing each chapter of this puzzling, and, in the end, unsettling book."

It should be noted that Silman also said some nice things about Hoffman:

"...one of my favorite books is her "Illumination Night,'' which amply displays her gifts of precise prose and the ability to create sympathetic characters. I especially remember its evocation of the awful condition we call agoraphobia, as it was suffered and mostly conquered by Vonny."

"This section is described with real skill and precision, and my heart lifted as I began to feel some empathy for this eldest child who has caused such pain, and then goes missing."

"...there are some wonderful passages as the book winds to a close."

But Silman's sprinkling of praise didn't stop Hoffman from acting like a petulant child on Twitter.

This was the first of 27 tweets that Hoffman fired off in response to Silman's review, where she immediately took the high road and called Silman a "moron" for having the audacity to criticize her writing.

Then the blissfully ignorant Hoffman displayed a staggering level of intellectual laziness by obviously not even bothering to Google Silman's name, where she would have learned that her reviewer is not only not an "idiot," but someone with a rather long and esteemed literary career.

Hoffman then went one step further and trashed the paper itself.

Hoffman published Silman's phone number and and email address and encouraged her fans to contact her to give her a piece of their minds.

Hoffman trashed Boston, her hometown, which is actually kind of funny.

Hoffman then brought out the smoke and mirrors in a pathetic attempt to disguise her behavior as feminism in action.

Then Susan Orlean, always willing to enter the writerly fray on Twitter, provoked Hoffman to betray Boston in the worst way possible.

For all the criticisms that exist about writing on the internet, this situation is a bright, shining example of one of the best things about writing on the internet—After a while it thickens your skin to the point where you're easily able to easily differentiate between valid criticism and hateful venom-spewing. At some point, the hateful venom-spewing fails to even faze you any longer, while the valid criticisms are accepted and processed rationally and learned from. Too bad Alice Hoffman never had a blog to help her overcome her hypersensitive ego. She'd be a better writer because of it.

In fact, she should come intern for Gawker for one day like James Frey did! We'll let her write a couple of posts and let the commenters have some fun with her. On second thought, scratch that—She'd probably go on a killing spree the first time someone called her out for using an improper pronoun or misspelling a word.

Regardless, we hope that Hoffman comes to her senses after a good night of rest, realizes that she acted like a douchebag and apologizes to Silman. Anything less would be downright shameful.

Via the Head Butler and Alice Hoffman's Twitter

Update: Hoffman's Twitter account is no more.