• Robert Pattinson's going out partying in Vancouver with Kristen Stewart. So, all you crazy, insane teenage stalkers, get your Canadian visas ready, go forth, and when you're deported for being fucked up and insane Robert Pattinson stalkers, at least pocket some of that BC Kush on your way home for me. I did, after all, tell you where he was. [Ed. Okay, no, but really: the Showbiz Spy item was about a "low-key" party in Vancouver. The title of the Showbiz Spy item was about Pattinson "partying hard" in Vancouver. You know why Robert Pattinson gets written about at all on the internet? Because teenagers use Google, and SEO Sandwich Making Magic is wonderful. Robert Pattinson could take a shit and I'd get at least 12,000 hits about it. Actually, probably far more than that, because we have yet to breach the fourth dimension where we report on Robert Pattison's bowel movements, which, yes, his fucked-up bloodthirsty teenage fans would be interested to know. To Mr. Pattinson, I suggest you eat as many segmented vegetables in the following months as you can. Specifically, anything that would go in a hearty winter soup.] [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Michael Jackson didn't like Pepsi. No shit. As the sole proprietor of Jackson's only assassination attempt, I wouldn't expect Jackson to be anything but a Coke fan, either. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Some guy saw Mike Myers at a basketball court in New York and was like, hey, you're Dr. Evil. Which, well: yes. Correct. [Page Six]
  
  
• Chelsea Handler and her network exec boyfriend are still very much together. They were spotted in Atlantic City—Atlantic City?!—being together. Why, of all places?....Jesus. [NYP]
  
  
• Erin Lucas from The City and Leven "Sister of Mary" Rambin (from Days of Our Lives or whatever shitty soap she's doing these days) went out to Goldbar and saw cameras and Kelly Cutrone and freaked out and ran away. Cutrone, who's hysterical and awesome, had this to say to Page Six: "I think people were partying too hard to pay attention, because those cameras weren't there for me." Which basically translates to "If those bitches weren't so coked up they would've realized that I was just there to get a drink, sans TV crew." [Page Six]
  
  
• Lukas Haas and Miranda Kerr were dancing for an entire night at the Jane Hotel while the dude from Kings of Leon kept staring at them, and oh yeah, she's supposed to be dating Orlando Bloom, whoops. [Page Six[
  
  
• Amy Winehouse got her teeth fixed because in the great tradition of British Teeth, they were sincerely fucked up. Of course, they gave her really strong drugs to deal with the pain, so while she might have nice teeth, now, she's still very much a crackhead, this time, with a doctor's endorsement. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• One of those Real Creatures from Dirty Jersey, Danielle Staub, told Jennifer Aniston not to judge New Jersey and make jokes about it smelling, which she did on Chelsea Handler's show the other night. Honestly, though, most people from New Jersey know that New Jersey smells. But it's like a bog out of which emerges wonderful creatures like Bruce Springsteen, Danny DeVito, and seminal emo bands like Saves The Day, who actually have a song about the smell of New Jersey reminding them of their mediocre lives. If anything, Staub can't smell New Jersey because she's had her nose buried in something—the shit? Blow?—for far too long. [US]
  
  
• Ouch, Ashley Dupré: you got sold down the river for Tommy "Agent Nilla" Hilfiger by Russell Simmons. Simmons was going to take Dupré to Hilfigah's party and Tommy dis-invited her. Simmons, who's not famous for anything other than once inventing Def Jam and nowadays, doing yoga and possibly young men, dis-invited Dupré to the party. But really: who wants to a Tommy Hilfiger party? Oh. Wait. It was at the Jane Hotel. Well, Dupré: sucks! [Page Six]
  
  
• Broadway gossip: Chris Rock was supposed to be in David Mamet's new play, Race, but the word being preemptively put out on the street is that his schedule had too many conflicts. Which, note smirky husband and wife gossip duo Rush & Molloy, is not at all about his wife hating Kerry Washington, or trying to deal with the threat of Kerry Washington on her mans. Not at all. Meanwhile, Chris "Smack Her With The Dick" Rock has a new book coming out, and it's probably pretty good. [NYDN]
  
  
• Uh oh. As cool as Jay-Z kept his shit when Lil Mama burst on stage with him and Alicia Keys at the end of the VMAs, he apparently freaked out when he got backstage, screaming at producers about security. I like that Jay-Z's biggest security threat these days is now Lil' "Lip Gloss" Mama. My, rap community, how times have changed. "He went ballistic. He was screaming at the MTV producers about the lack of security. He apparently thought at first she was just a fan. Beyoncé finally calmed him down." [NYDN]
  
  
• Same R & M item: did you know Warren Buffet drinks five cans of Cherry Coke a day? I'll be attempting to do this over the course of the day in order to make more money than I did yesterday. By drinking ten. We'll check in on me around 4PM, when I'm out cold from the meanest sugar high crash ever. [NYDN]
  
  
• Celebrities doing nice things: Sienna Miller apparently did really, really well in her first day on the job, not only impressing theatergoers, but greeting her fans outside the theater to sign programs and be generally nice. [NYDN]

Cohen, the senior vice president of original programming and development at the channel beloved of gays and their hags, started inserting his pretty little face on the tube by hosting the reunion shows of various incarnations of the Real Housewives franchise. Their high ratings naturally lead him to believe that he was the reason viewers were tuning in and decided to give us a weekly dose of wankery on Watch What Happens Live, where he interviews celebrities (about himself) and Bravo mainstays (about how much they love him). It's horrible and we can't stop watching.

Last week featured the sharpened-pencil face of "real" housewife of New Jersey Danielle Staub, finally shedding light on the horrible thing she did to fellow housewife Dina Manzo that made sister Caroline cry on the recent reunion show. We also got a booty call with Andy's close personal friend Sarah Jessica Parker. He asks her questions about the Sex and the City episodes he guest-starred in, and she rightfully doesn't remember. Don't worry Andy, we'll kiss your bruised ego and make it all better.

Our favorite bit is when he says he's going to send SJP some fried chicken so that she can put it in the blender and feed it to her newborn twins. That, right there, is why Florida won't let gays adopt children.

What we love is that everything about him and his show is as obvious as Michael Kors' fake tan. This Thursday he has on his friends Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos and designer Isaac Mizrahi, who is cashing his Bravo paycheck when he's not making $10 frocks for Target. So, yet again the show will be all about Andy and his network.

And that's with us. We haven't haven't seen such boldfaced buffoonery on television since Britney and Kevin: Chaotic and look how well that turned out!

Fergie's husband Josh Duhamel was there, though.

Danielle Staub On "All My Children" [SoapNet]

1.) Moms and Their Boxed Wine
After staging an intervention for her son, this woman's family then staged one for her over her Xanax addiction. She didn't want to go to rehab because of the its strict no-alcohol policy.

2.) Does Joan Rivers realize that perhaps she's gone too far with the cosmetic procedures?

3.) Did you like the Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion shows?

But it sucks that they never revealed what exactly Danielle "tried" to do to Dina that Caroline was freaking out about. From the way Caroline told it, Danielle took a hit out on her. But that doesn't seem realistic. Danielle sort of hinted at what it might on her blog:

I had no idea at the time what "disgraceful" acts she was referring to. I only found out later what she was talking about, from someone in her own family. I simply gave a phone number to her ex brother-in-law to contact proper people with questions that he had concerning something that was absolutely none of my business. I was asked to give this information to him.

4.) Cop Without a Badge Guy Talks
Danielle's ex-husband, Kevin Maher, who gave up all the dirt on her in "The Book" was on The Insider talking about how Danielle is "a bisexual." She didn't really deny it though.

5.) Promise Piercings
Kids are expressing their love for each other in new and different ways, like piercings…

…And emails.

6.) More Kid Stuff
NYC Prep was alright, but not great, IMO. But I did really like this girl, who is friends with one of the cast members, but not part of the cast herself. She's down town/to earth.

She seems tipsy.

And I love the way she communicates.

7.) Snoop's Statement On Michael Jackson

8.) Snoop Getting Off The Phone




9.) Larry King And "My daddy, P. Daddy"

10.) Reading: With Kathie Lee & Hoda

An interesting/funny/depressing/oh-God-when-will-this-stop bit of news from this whole thing? The guy trying to sell the damn fucktape was none other than "26-year-old" Stephen Zalewski, the fellow from the show who was only dating Staub for the, to quote mighty Teresa, "blow jobs."

The rough outlines of the case are known: Staub's drug-dealer boyfriend kidnapped a client, and Staub ratted him out, cutting a deal with federal prosecutors. That deal was brokered by her boyfriend, professional informant Kevin Maher, who knew the U.S. Attorney in Miami. But the details in the documents are spectacular.

In 1986, Staub went by the name Beverly Merrill, but her working name as a high-end prostitute was "Angela Minelli." She was living in Miami, and one of her clients was Daniel Claudio Aguilar, a cocaine dealer for the Medellín cartel. According to a federal indictment, Aguilar was selling two kilos of cocaine to a group of men for $48,000 in June of 1986. The deal was being "brokered" by Staub's neighbor, Carmen Centolella. Before it was consummated, Staub accompanied Centolella to his apartment down the hall from hers with one kilo to "test" it. When they got there, four men jumped Staub and ran off with the cocaine.

Aguilar blamed Centolella for the robbery, beat him, kidnapped him, and repeatedly called his father demanding $25,000 and threatening Centolella's life. Interestingly, one of those threatening phone calls was made by Staub—we mean "Angela"—herself.

Centolella's father called the FBI, who arrested Aguilar and another man with a 9 mm pistol in their car. They picked up Staub at Aguilar's house with six kilos of cocaine and $16,000 in cash.

After talking to Maher, Staub turned on Aguilar. She pleaded guilty to one extortion charge and cooperated with prosecutors.

This made Aguilar mad! Maher told us a couple weeks ago that Staub was crazy to appear on a reality TV show, because the guy she put away might want to know where to find her: "The guy she locked up was a high-level drug dealer from Medellín," Maher said. "Now he's out. What do you think he's gonna do when he sees her face on TV and knows exactly where she lives? She's got to be out of her fucking mind." That makes even more sense now, because according to court documents, Aguilar orchestrated threats against Staub back then: After she started cooperating with the government; Aguilar's mother called Staub to yell at her, another woman called to say "Your life is at an end, honey,"; her apartment was broken into; and a male called her to say he'd seen her walking her dog and that she shouldn't take "risks" like that. Aguilar was released from prison in 1994.

During and before the trial, Aguilar's attorneys tried to attack Staub's credibility by pointing out repeatedly that she was a prostitute.

And two years after the trial, while Staub was out on probation, a doctor wrote the court to advise that, given her "drug history and her former drug lifestyle," she should remain in a court-mandated rehab program.

And that's the story of how New Jersey's sweetheart used to be an extorting coke whore. Read the whole thing here. Really.

In an interview the sleazebag gave to Star, he said that he has lots of footage — the two of them together, Danielle by herself — that he's looking to unload in order to recoup some of the money that he gave her while dating:

"She tries to look affluent, but sometimes she couldn't pay the household bills or buy food. Even then, she'd want to borrow 20 grand from me to buy jewelry!" Now Steve is considering recouping some money by selling steamy naked videos of Danielle! "I'm definitely weighing my options as far as selling them and getting them out there. She cost me so much money, why shouldn't I make a few dollars?"

Ugh. He also tells the mag that Danielle loves having sex in public (which we kinda knew already), and the locations included her patio, public bathrooms, a police firing range, a park... and a church.

How did Danielle not think this sex tape would surface? It's one thing to want to try and suppress your shady past (even though it's been widely noted), but making a sex tape while your filming a reality show with a guy you end up dumping on television? She must be incredibly naive, or know exactly what she's doing, as far as marketing herself. Either way, it's unsettling.

More on this in Midweek Madness, and the Real Housewives finale recap.

RHONJ's Danielle: Sex Tape Bombshell [Star]

Maher told Gawker that Staub claimed to have slept with Don Johnson. Which pretty much makes sense, given Maher's accounts of coke-fueled orgies in Miami in the late 1980s. Miami Vice shot on location there, and the woman Maher describes —the bisexual "paid escort" and stripper who was "messed up on cocaine"—certainly sounds like the type who might find a way to snuggle up to a nearby TV star.

We asked Johnson about the claim—like he'd remember!—and here's what he said:

Not every guy who drove a Ferrari and didn't shave was me.

So true. It could just as easily have been Philip Michael Thomas.

Maher, whose career as a paid informant for DEA, FBI, and NYPD was memorialized in Charles Kipps' Cop Without a Badge, sold the torrid, seedy, and exclamation-pointed story of his marriage to Staub to the tabloid weekly. Here's the good stuff:

Maher met Staub in Miami in 1986. "[She] was a paid escort with a local service, says Kevin, and claimed that she had been with numerous celebrities. She was also a 'raging nymphomaniac.'"

They met cute a party that sounds exactly like you'd imagine a party in Miami in 1986 would be: "Everyone was having sex out in the open in the suite. Beverly was on top of a guy on the couch, but she was looking at me. Afterward, when she went into the bathroom to shower, I followed her in—we had sex on the floor!"

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Unsurprisingly, Maher says they "were both messed up because of all the cocaine we were doing," which naturally led to marital discord. "We'd have big arguments, she'd kick and punch and the cops would come," he told Star. "They arrested me four or five times. Once, they arrested both of us after she slashed my arm with a knife."

As a stripper, Staub did some pretty neat tricks: "She was like a gymnast! She could do anything! One time, on her birthday, she came home with $6,000—and I was sure there were some sexual favors involved."

Sorry, Kevin, we don't believe this one: "Having sex six times a day wouldn't even satisfy her!"

The couple married in 1988, while Maher was still married to another woman. They split the next year. Maher also told Star that Staub was dating a high-level Colombian cocaine dealer and out on $10,000 bail related to an extortion charge when they met. Her boyfriend had held one of his clients hostage for nonpayment, and she was got caught up in the arrest. She pleaded guilty and did five years' probation.

On last night's show, Staub vaguely denied the charges laid out in "the book," saying she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when her boyfriend was arrested and refusing to answer anything else. "Even if I was that person, that monster they portrayed me to be, wouldn't they have picked up on that?" We guess, maybe, sure!

"This book has come to haunt me," she said, "and I have to do a lot of damage control about things that I lived in my life and things that have happened. [But] there's dialogue and dialect written everywhere about everyone."

We were curious so we called Maher and got some more information. He told us that Staub actually put her boyfriend and an accomplice away, and that he's worried they might come looking for her. "She locked up two people," he said. "That was part of the deal." When Maher found out Staub was out on bail, he used his law enforcement connections to cut her a deal.

"You give this guy and another guy," he says he told her, "and I'll go to the U.S. Attorney and get you a supervised release." Staub cooperated, and her boyfriend was sentenced to 15 years.

"The guy she locked up was a high-level drug dealer from Medellín," Maher said. "Now he's out. What do you think he's gonna do when he sees her face on TV and knows exactly where she lives? She's got to be out of her fucking mind." She probably is. But Bravo is not, and Maher says the network should have known that, given Staub's past, letting her pursue her own aggrandizement on their air might have consequences: "How culpable is Bravo going to be when this woman gets killed?" It's a strange argument coming from an informant who put plenty of people in jail and went on to participate in a book about his exploits, but he would know.

Maher also said that Staub is a bisexual, which we guess makes sense in a porny kind of way. "Let's talk about her bisexuality," he said. "She liked strip clubs for two reasons: The fast money, and the availability of beautiful young women around her."

And Maher told us the names of those "celebrities" Staub claimed to have slept with. We'll let you know who they are soon as we give them a chance to respond.

"I've decided to give an exclusive to Star," Maher said when we called him. "That comes out Tuesday, so I can't talk until then. But yes, I was married to her. She did a lot of things that I think will put her life in danger. She was involved with the drug cartels in Cali and Medellín." That much is already clear from the promos Bravo has been running for Tuesday night's episode and Cop Without a Badge, the 1995 book about Maher's life as an informant.

Speaking of which, copies of the out-of-print title are currently going for upwards of $100 on Ebay, and Maher says negotiations are underway for a new paperback edition. And Maher's exclusive interview with Star comes out on Tuesday, the day of the next episode of Housewives. Everybody wins!

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.A representative for Bravo did not immediately return phone calls and e-mails asking for a comment as to why a television network would gleefully (and profitably!) air details of the woman's life under the pretense of a "reality" show when those details may piss off some of the violent people Staub used to run with. On the other hand, it's likely that all those details have already been aired, by Maher himself, in Cop Without a Badge (we haven't seen a full copy yet).

Bravo's bio on Staub says "she prides herself on being one of the first women in New Jersey (and 14th person in the country) to have a Black American Express Card and her history of celebrity hook-ups is one for the record books." She was also the millionth woman in New Jersey to be a stripper and get involved in the cocaine business. Other details of Staub's past are set to be revealed on the show next week.

UPDATE: A Bravo rep got back to us with their stock response to the Staub controversy, the most delightfully absurd work of flack lunacy we've encountered in a long, long time: "Bravo does not comment on the personal lives of our talent." Eleven words, three lies: Guess what they are!

The book, by about felon-turned-informant Kevin Maher, describes Merrill as an 80's coke queen who stripped for a living, and may have been naked dancing it as late as 1992. And her stripper name was, well, Danielle. When they meet at a drug dealer's party in Miami, he describes her thus:

She was brunette. Long, perfectly shaped legs poked out of her leather hot pants just as provocatively as her braless breasts strained against her low-cut blouse." And no, she wasn't wearing any underwear. After she and Maher have "explosive sex," he thinks to himself, "This is a good person. She has no morals, but she's a good person.

Beverly turns out to be a "coke whore." That's okay at first, because Maher likes coke too. But he really doesn't like her sleeping with other guys. So Maher confronts another one of her boyfriends at the Bennigan's in Saddle Brook, sticks a gun in his crotch, and makes him confess. By this time, Beverly Merrill is now dancing at various North Jersey establishments under the name Danielle. Maher, deciding he wants to have a kid but that Beverly isn't "mother material," eventually splits up with her. According to the epilogue, Maher last saw her in 1992 dancing at a club called Shakers in Carlstadt.

So, yeah, sigh. The book also says she was also apparently hanging out, Alpha Dog style, with a drug dealer who kidnapped a rich kid who owed him money.

A quick public records search shows that Danielle Staub indeed used to go by Beverly Merrill, as well as both Danielle Maher and Beverly Maher, as in the Maher who's in Cop Without a Badge. Or at least that someone with the same Social Security number went by all four names at dozens of addresses in New Jersey and Miami.

And via ONTD, someone has scanned two of the pages in the book that discuss Merrill. Read them and weep. No, really, weep.

Eventually the lady decided to shape up and marry rich and start a new life with her two young daughters. But of course then she got greedy and wanted on TV so the truth came out, as it inevitably would. Lessons learned, perhaps.