• Oh, this is convenient: Kanye West blames booze for his infamous VMA outburst, and now people are saying he's going to go to rehab, but his friends say that's not so. Too bad, because we really wanted to help fuel his martyr complex. [MSNBC]
  
  
• Remember Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic rant following his DUI? Well, he wants you and the justice system to forget: his lawyer will argue next week that since Gibson's completed his probation, the arrest should be expunged from his record. [TMZ]
  
  
• Janet Jackson, who has by far been more dignified than most of her family in mourning Michael, will wear black to show the world just how sad she really is, which is funny, since some people argue Michael hated that color. [The Sun]
  
  
• Kelly Osbourne, once the picture of teenage rebellion, doesn't like that kids these days wear short skirts. [Page Six]
  
  
• Briefly ubiquitous actress Emmy Rossum's husband has filed for divorce. Meh. [People]
  
  
• A "faith healer" claims he has cured Amy Winehouse's insane alcoholism. Even if we thought such a thing possibly, we'd advertise with caution. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Ellen Barkin ran into Matt Damon on her street, where he was filming, and told him to come over when he was done. He laughed. [Page Six]
  
  
• 90210 star AnnaLynne McCord really wants Cosmo to put her on the cover so that she can be on the same celebrity plane as Blake Lively. It's good to have goals, we suppose. [Page Six]
  
  
• Roman Polanski will fight his extradition. Shocking. [MSNBC]
  
  
• Rest easy, America, for police have the second suspect in Lindsay Lohan's burglary in custody. Phew! [NYDN]
  
  
• OK! has spent a total of $300,000 on pictures of Khloe Kardashian's wedding to Laker player Lamar Odom. Who says the days of publishing's excessive spending are over? [Page Six]
  
  
• For reasons that escape us, fashion designer Marc Jacobs will reportedly join the cast of gay network Logo's Kept, which is basically Real Housewives with gay men. Watch A-List become C-list! [NYDN]
  
  
• Dita Von Teese's new Wonderbra ad campaign has been released. It's vampy. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Jude Law won't be winning father of the year: he's demanding a DNA test to prove that Samantha Burke's tot really came from his loins. [MSNBC]

You remember, don't you? I was sitting in the back room of the Beatrice about a year ago, drinking a Stella and checking out the 2 a.m. dance floor scene. You walked over and said, "Did you used to work at Page Six?" I agreed that I had, and you sat down next to me.

I was impressed that you were smoking a Marlboro Red and drinking what looked like a whiskey on the rocks. You told me that you had just filmed an episode of Weeds for Showtime, and asked what I was up to. I said I was working at Maxim, which was true at the time. Or maybe I said that I owned Maxim. Or owned all magazines. Let's just say I was trying to impress you.

I don't recall much about the rest of our conversation, other than you were very sweet, were wearing a lot of black eyeliner, and that your hair kind of smelled like clouds. But I do remember that once we were done with our surreal little chat, you said, "Well, I just wanted to say that you look really good tonight." And then you got up, walked across the room and sat with the friends you came with.

I wondered if I had just been totally goofed on. Because by that point in the night I was most likely a wobbly, red-eyed beast who was only capable of engaging women by doing that magic trick that I do with the handkerchief and the collapsible wand. You know the one.

But in retrospect I think that you were probably just in a really good mood. Had you not been Mary-Kate Olsen, I would probably tried to get your number, or at least asked if you wanted to take a ride in my van. But instead, I just smiled and accepted the compliment. Always wanted to say thanks for that. But I've never been able to, because that was the last time I saw you!

So I thought I'd finally have a chance to tell you in person last night when I saw you at Bergdorf-Goodman, where you and your twin sister Ashley were doing a relentlessly-hyped bartending appearance for Fashion's Night Out.

I knew it was a big deal because my cab driver actually asked if I was going to "the thing were the Olsen twins were bartending." We pulled up to a mob of several hundred eager young women clogging the front entrance. I talked my way into a side door and began to look for you in the oppressively-lit department store that reeked of decades of perfume-squirts and shoppers' flop sweat.

I navigated past the throngs of girls roaming the racks to get on the escalator to the 7th Floor, where you were allegedly pouring drinks. Even the escalator was jammed with squealing humanity, and I started getting claustrophobic and sweating a little myself. Honestly, I hadn't seen that much hubbub since the last time I attended a Jonas Brothers lunch box signing!

But once I got to the 7th floor, you were already gone. Mind you, this was only 7:30, and the event started at 7. When I said, out loud, to no one in particular, "Where are the Olsens?" a sad-eyed teenage girl told me that you had left the building. This was particularly devastating because at this point I really needed a drink.

So I pushed through another mob that was surrounding stylist Rachel Zoe as she was shot by about 20 photographers, towards the nearest fire exit. When I finally made it outside, a black Escalade slowed to a stop in front of the crowd spilling outside Bergdorf's. I thought maybe it was you, but it turned out to be designer Zac Posen, who popped out of the sun roof and waved at everyone.

I went to a few other insanely crowded boutiques before I headed back downtown: The Versace store, where the MisShapes deejayed and Taylor Momsen darted past me wearing a garter belt and a white dress shirt; the Calvin Klein store, where the disturbingly pretty male model Jamie Burke played a set with his band; and Barney's, where so many strangers rubbed up against me that I felt like I owed them money afterwards.

But you weren't at any of those places, so I hopped a cab back downtown and met some friends at the Jane Hotel, which is kind of like the Beatrice was, except not quite as much fun.

Your pal,

Chris

P.S.

Call Me!
Mary-Kate Olsen serves the drinks, for a change.
Sarah Jessica Parker can barely stand the funky music from Oscar de la Renta, Barbara Walters, and Bette Midler. Neither can we.
Fashion Victim.
Grace Coddington is the only Vogue staffer allowed to laugh.
This leatherman is the ghost of the the Meatpacking District past.
Someone tries to mess with The Tinz' perfection.
Radical knitting group tries to take over Barney's handbag department in hopes of reinvigorating interest in wool handbags.
Gossip Girl-on-girl action.
Food! You don't serve food at a fashion party!
Booze. Now that's more like it.
Blake, what if we told you there will be blow at the afterparty.
That's more like it.
Running out of live celebrities, Bloomingdale's hired wax Leonardo DiCaprio to make an appearance.
Fashion's Night Out works! This woman came out to shop for the first time since 1977!
Charlize Theron is beautiful. That is all.
The only way to shut Isaac Mizrahi up is to ask him to sing.
Don't knock these boots.
"Uh, who are we waiting for?"
Give Georgio Armani five.
Rhianna got the dates confused with July 23, which is Fashion's Day Out At The Beach.
Anna Wintour has decided to start talking shit about Sienna Miller to her face.
Jill Zarin inspects her human avatar.
The rare site of Lindsay Lohan shopping.
Last night Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan made that rhino while playing Ghost.
André Leon Talley shows off his latest Snuggie.
Victoria Beckham thought she was showing up for a literacy benefit.
Michael Kors tries to slap Debra Messing when she points out the step and repeat matches his skin tone exactly.

Yes, the New York Observer brings us word of the untrending. The economic downturn has caused TV and movie houses to slash their budgets, and personal stylists are one of the first things to go. So that could explain why It girl celebs like Gossip Girl's Blake Lively have been dressing themselves of late. They'll go to showrooms and fashion expos on their own and pick out what they like, enraging some of the bitchiest of the fashion bunch:

"She's the one that looked like a mess in that Nina Ricci dress at the Golden Globes!" sniped celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch [of Lively], who has worked with Halle Berry and Salma Hayek. "This is why you need a stylist. If you go to a designer, their goal is to get you out the door and on the red carpet in their gown come hell or high water. They're never going to say, ‘This just might not be right for you.'"

Hey girl, hey. Bloch does have a point, albeit a useless one, though it doesn't address the other reason why celebrities might be ditching their highly-paid helper monkeys. As stylists like Zoe, Stacy London, and Bloch become celebrities in their own right—with reality shows and bitchy newspaper quotes—it begins to pull back the curtain on how our favorite stars look so damn fabulous all the time. No, natural acting ability does not come hand in hand with innate fashion sense. Ha! It's all very practiced and calculated, sometimes down to what one wears to the grocery store.

So while the American empire crumbles all around us, celebrities increasingly do not want to be associated with the embarrassing largess of paying someone lots of money to pick out their clothes in the morning. Bloch says this is a cutting out of "the middleman," which is apt and true. And it's an unnecessary middleman! Maybe everything in the entertainment industry just got too overheated, too frivolous and expensive. Now's the time to issue some correctives, so let's start with the people whose jobs are really just entirely made up.

Of course then we'll have to march down the line axing everyone from dog walkers to, gulp, people who recap television shows, but if it'll get America back on the right track, then so be it.

We can't dress ourselves and we're damn proud of it. Won't you join us, rich and famous celebrities? Potato sacks unite!

Image via INF

• This is so not a bury-the-lede thing. You gotta run this one first, you know? Some foreign WireImage photog at the opening of The W in Ft. Lauderdale (which we covered in yesterday's roundup) screamed at Blake Lively, on the photo line: "You look beautiful, like a llama!" He meant to call her a gazelle, but the moment had already passed, and honestly, the Llama is a beautiful animal in its own right. Lively was later heard asking Penn Badgley what the import of that expression was, and did an impression of a llama for him shortly thereafter. Now, when Lively gets lined up for the feature adaptation of The Llama Song, you're going to remember this moment, and smile wistfully. [Page Six]
  
  
• Heidi Pratt was supposedly rushed to a hospital in Costa Rica after suffering some kind of undisclosed medical emergency while shooting I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. Husband Spencer's sister is Twittering about it, somewhere. To be on the safe side: if this isn't bullshit, we hope for a safe and speedy recovery. But to be on the safe side: it's probably, like everything else they do, complete, utter, Grade-A bullshit. Which is why I can't bring myself to report this as news. Let's see who else gets hosed. [US Weekly]
  
  
• Rappers, they're just like us! Some contractor was trying to screw Fitty (50 Cent, for those who aren't "in the know") out of money for house repairs and stuff. Fitty had 21 questions for him, and the contractor could only answer eight, so he did what all hard ass gangsters do and filed a lawsuit, which has now been settled. [NME]
  
  
• Our second Marilyn Manson gossip item of the weekend! Apparently, he's so hooked on drugs, he cries to his tour manager about it, which makes me sad. Also, he once went to an AA meeting and got asked for an autograph. [Daily Star]
  
  
• Amy Winehouse! Right? She's hanging out with some local kids from St. Lucia on a vacation there. The D-Listed writer does this better than I ever could: "When Amy Wino isn't swallowing tequila bottles whole, she's holding court with the locals of St. Lucia and teaching them the ways of the crackie. Seriously, what in Crackie of the Flies Hell is going on here? All I see is Wino sucking her thumb and the locals looking at her with "bitch you crazy" eyes." Seriously, I love D-Listed. Absolute trash, but hysterical. [D-Listed]
  
  
• Megan Fox became so image-obsessed while filming the new Diablo Cody movie (Jennifer's Body) that her hair started to fall out. [Daily Star]
  
  
• Woah! T.I. got married to his longtime girlfriend this weekend before heading off to jail to serve a year for that pesky gun charge. They've been engaged for two years, they've had two kids together (and have three from a relationship previous to this), and they're really cute. Do you know who T.I.'s wife is? It's 'Tiny' from 90s R & B group Xscape! How can you not love this? [NME]
  
  
• A-Rod's new chick, Kate Hudson, showed up at Yankee Stadium yesterday during the team's 9-7 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays. I don't like this, at all. Yes, you're Goldie Hawn's daughter, but why A-Rod? Not...Jeter? Or Matsui? You had to go with A-Rod? Anyway: we're sucking enough this year so please don't pile the whole Jessica Simpson-Tony Romo curse on us with this shit and just, I don't know, go to the NL Central games or something. [NY Daily News] Oh, and, related, I guess: A-Rod left the game and coached some kids in a little league game after the loss; the team he coached beat the team Richard Gere coached, which, oh, whatever. Just read it if you really want to. [NY Daily News]
  
  
• Ron Jeremy is opening up a swingers club in too-granola-for-its-own-good Portland, Oregon, which is the least likely place to open up a swingers club. What about Lincoln, Nebraska or something? [Page Six]
• And just because you made it down here:

  The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Another hand was carrying a bag of breakfast and a travel book of Rome. He hailed a cab, to wake Blake up?

Sure, Lively was joking about a polygamist marriage between her, Letterman, and Julia Roberts, but the electricity between the Gossip Girl star and Letterman as strong and real as that time one year ago when Lively said Letterman was in the same league as Leonardo DiCaprio, and he kissed her hand.

The on-air flirtation this time didn't quite reach Letterman-Drew Barrymore levels, but between the thigh groping, chin touching and hair twirling, Letterman was primed to laugh at Lively's dog story like it was told by Robin Williams.

Lively made sure Letterman knew she was free — some sort of vacation — in a week. One week. Seven days.

Or about how long Letterman has been married, and how long he'll be taking cold showers for.

dandles' new line beats the original, Don't Forget the Trail of Breadcrumbs, Kids!

Bajo-Sea Kitten's new line beats the original, New Boyfriend Had Her All the Way Through the Alternate-Reality Thing, But Lost Her at the Gay Part.

• Glorious, crazy old Oprah has warned Rihanna that her singer boyfriend Chris Brown will definitely hit her again. "On my show, if possible" she added. [Us]
• Gossip Girl's Blake Lively would like to remind you that she's better than you, because you drink and smoke and date paparazzi and she likes to read in cafes and cook food. She added, haughtily, "I'm Blake Lively." [Showbiz Spy]
• Ten vilified, terrible bankers will finally get their chance to speak out and properly defend themselves, explaining why the Wall Street collapse wasn't their fault. While having dinner with Michael Moore. On camera. Look for the ten dumbest vilified, terrible bankers to participate. [P6]
• Scarlett Johansson likes to drink with old men. It's a shame that no old men are willing to drink with her. Not because they don't want to. Because it would likely kill them. [NYDN]
• Britney Spears has lovingly given $100,000 to "clowns with medical training" who will go help sick kids in Miami. This terrifying plan comes courtesy of her zombie psychiatrist. [NYDN]
• Rapper M.I.A. did not, in fact, name her new baby Ickitt. She says she's purposely not released the actual name. But we hear that she and her husband are actually leaning toward A.W.O.L. Either that or Yucky. [NYDN]

So enough already, Hollywood! After the jump, find eight dos and don'ts to keep in mind when striving for the perfect celebrity PSA. You have four years to practice — on your mark, get set, go.

1. DO let Jonah Hill host more PSA's on his own. As much as we appreciate the condescending, autoerotic flavor of Di Caprio, Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Demi Moore and a cast of elite thousands, this Declare Yourself ad proved that all it takes is an actual sense of humor about drugs, abortion and the economy to stir potential interest in the issues.

2. DON'T leave the Latino vote to Carlos Mencia, Cheech Marin and co. At least with Cheech around, however, Mencia can't steal Jonah Hill's jokes.

3. DO emphasize Justin Timberlake if you have a choice between him and Jessica Biel. He's just funnier, a better singer and there's always an outside chance of him "accidentally" pulling off someone's clothing.

4. DON'T give Hayden Panettiere her own spot. Especially not on Funny or Die, where she's neither funny nor dies nor so much as dings the McCain campaign she attempts to swear off — literally.

5. DO give Hayden Panettiere a spot with Jessica Alba. The "Muzzler" commercials are by far the most effective portion of Declare Yourself's multi-phase campaign to register young voters. Which is to say: We're sure the light bondage practiced on nubile, destabilizingly earnest starlets also compelled older men in the electorate to register their own "young voters" all over their keyboards. Remember, guys — you can only register once! No cheating!

6. DON'T let Anne Hathaway dance. Or anyone else for that matter. Perhaps the worst PSA of the season, this Creative Coalition spot is about as fresh as the bumper-sticker rack at a Wasilla scripture house.

7. DO pit Jews against each other. The Jewish Council for Education and Research brought on Sarah Silverman as the spokesperson for its "Great Schlep" — a late spring break of sorts encouraging young Jews to head off to Florida and convince their Nanas that Barack Hussein Obama is not the anti-Israel terrorist the GOP has allegedly made him out to be. Jackie Mason soon fired back on behalf of the Republican Jewish Coalition, smearing Silverman as a "sick yenta" over a saucy klezmer soundtrack. We hate to see such striking discord under the circumstances, but it's either this, or it's Roseanne Barr vs. Jon Voight. Which isn't a choice at all.

8. DON'T rope Blake Lively and Penn Badgley into a PSA together and not insist they make out for the Obama cause. Especially if we have to sit through the whole pasty cast of Fame: The Remake or Emo High or whatever the fuck just to get to Lively's sign-off.

Of course, this being the United States of Defamer, your own suggestion are more than welcome below. Let freedom ring — or at least be less painful to watch on a quadrennial basis.