Don seems to be shacking up with teacher lady on the regular, and it's getting too close for comfort. As much as he seems to show his sly displeasure with her creeping closer into his real life, he secretly enjoys getting so close to the fire.

Don's kid picks up the phone and the caller quickly hangs up, leading both Don and Betty to speculate if the person on the other line is their paramour. The kids! What about the kids?? It's a sad, subtle reminder that in a era before the divorce generation, the kids are always the one in the middle, left with the brunt of the radioactivity after the bomb drops.

Don confronts the teacher on his train on the way to work and she threatens to leave, but he quickly dissolves in her puppy dog eyes when she tells him "I don't care about your marriage, your work or any of that. As long as I know you're with me." Oh Don, you really can't help yourself.

Paul gets a little too comfortable in his office, the scene shifts shortly after he pours himself a drink and unbuckles his belt. Did Paul crank one off? He gets inspiration from a janitor in the office kitchen, goes back to his office and passes out drunk on his couch. He wakes up thinking he had some wonderful notes for the account he's working on with Peggy. His stress to try and keep up with the ambitious rising star is causing him to lose control. Word of advice: stick to the weed, Paul. You'll still fall asleep but you'll always know where the papers are.

London's calling and while Bert Cooper is ambivalent about joining the 40th anniversary party for Sterling Cooper, they drop the bomb on Lane that they're looking to sell the company and "expect all the flowers in the vase." The firm is doing quite well and London wants to leverage the party to drum up interest in finding a buyer, leaving Lane to "pour the honey on" and get Bert to join.

Don is to receive an award "for his humanity" at the party, to the amusement of Roger Sterling, who reveals he saved Don from a job where he was alternating between night school and working at a fur company. A fur company!

Betty rings up her gentleman caller and asks if he ring and ran her the other day. He's annoyed at her accusation, especially since she's put far more distance between them than Don has between himself and his lady friend.

Betty later finds keys in the wash that lead her to find some of Don's deepest secrets. She unlocks a drawer that holds multiple documents and other items in a shoe box, including a deed to a house in Long Beach, California, a divorce certificate for Anna and Donald Draper, dog tags, an Army certificate, and family pictures of "Dick" and his brother, "Adam." Presumably, the divorce certificate is to dissolve the marriage of the "real" Don Draper, not this Don Draper and the pictures are of "Dick" before he became "Don."

Meanwhile, Don offers to drive his lover's little brother to the job she set up for him, but little does she know little brother isn't taking the job. He's worried that his epilepsy will always prevent him from making a real life for himself. Don further complicates things by helping out his lover's brother, giving him his number and telling him to call if he needs anything. Don's life is starting to resemble one of those Russian nesting dolls, one appearance inside of another, inside of another.

Peggy saves Paul's butt, using a seemingly throwaway chinese proverb he uttered, "the faintest ink is better than the best memory" to build it into a brilliant idea to show how a telegram beats a phone call for lasting memories "You can't frame a phone call." Don is sufficiently satisfied with their pitch, virtually absolving Paul from his booze blunder.

The big Sterling Cooper gala concludes the episode, with Cooper presenting Don his award, singing Don's praises and laying it on thick. As the episode closes, we see Betty giving Don a stink eye that could clear a room. She's holding on to something she can hardly contain and it's about to come to a head.

Click any page to see it at full size.

According to Life and Style, the show has inked a deal with socialite Sonja Morgan. Who? Never heard of her. Well, here's the little info we could dig up on her:

• She's married to John Morgan, a great-grandson of J. Pierpont Morgan of, you know, J.P. Morgan fame.
• The couple lives in New York, but also live on an island off the coast of Connecticut and on their yacht. They have one daughter.
• Born Sonja Tremont, she met Morgan while working as the hostess at a Madison Avenue restaurant.
• She executive produced the 2006 movie The Marsh, starring Gabrielle Anwar as a lady who sees ghosts and Forest Whitaker as the ghostbuster who helps her.
• She lost 10 pounds in 2005 and was weighing in at a svelte 125. She did it with the Raw Food Detox Diet. She even wrote a review!
• She's no Bethenny Frankel.

All the rumors from the set this year have been that Bethenny is out with the group, so hopefully she'll have a cataclysmic breakdown which will lead to her storming off the show. Morgan will take her place about episode five of the new season which won't air until next year.

Morgan sounds just like (former?) Countess LuAnn, a lady with the right last name and the right husband, who got to the good life by being pretty and marrying well. She was a working girl before she met her husband, after all. For a prominent New York lady, we don't know much about her, so we can't wait for the floodgates to open. Jury's still out on whether or not this is a good addition, but consider our interest piqued.

Update: Both Bethenny's twitter and a spokesperson from Bravo say that Frankel is going to be on the entire third season of the show. When asked if Morgan was joining the third season, the spokesperson said, that "we haven't released any details for season three." Well, it's not a denial.

[Frankel image via Getty, Morgan image via NY Social Diary]

• The nuns at Lady Gaga's Catholic high school saw her VMA performance and, according to a source, "were not amused." [Page Six]
  
  
• Jessica Simpson has called off the futile search party for her dog, who was eaten by a coyote. [TMZ]
  
  
• Meanwhile, Martha Stewart isn't offering Simpson a sympathetic shoulder. The kitchen queen says the pop star should have been more careful. But those coyotes are wiley! [Page Six]
  
  
• Annoying singer Avril Levigne and her husband, Deryck Whibley are separating. You know what that means? Divorce. [Us]
  
  
• What? We're confused. Amy Winehouse, who once had an appetite only for powder and booze, ate three times in one night. [The Sun]
  
  
• Madonna's pants are invisible! [3am]
  
  
• So is Mena Suvari: door men are having a hard time recognizing the once-ubiquitous actress. [Page Six]
  
  
• Katherine Heigl's adopted baby is Asian, cute and in for one hell of a ride. [Us]
  
  
• Michelle Williams went to a Brooklyn coffee shop and some nosy kid asked her daughter about having daddy Heath Ledger die: "Are you so sad that your daddy died like Michael Jackson?" [Page Six]
  
  
• Sorry, Gawkers: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner won't sell their wedding pictures. But we're sure some will leak anyway. [Page Six]
  
  
• Robbie Williams fears for Susan Boyle's sanity: "It will not take much to push her over the edge. Her head seems like a strange place to be." We can only imagine. [The Sun]

Blog Alaska Report, who's reporting on this, asserts the rumor as truth, in addition to noting that Sarah Palin has purchased land in Montana, and possibly plans to move her family there.

AlaskaReport has learned this morning that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage have confirmed the news. A National Enquirer story exposing previous affairs on both sides led to a deterioration of their marriage and the stress from that led to Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska.

The Palins were noticeably not speaking to each other at last Sunday's resignation speech in Fairbanks. Sarah ditched Todd (MSNBC) right after the speech and left without him. Sarah removed her wedding ring a couple of weeks ago. Sarah has recently purchased land in Montana and is considering moving the family there. Sarah Palin is originally from Idaho.

They're citing a Blogspot Blog, a National Enquirer story, and the tensions between Sarah and Todd at her final press conference as the basis for this report. Not exactly the most credible sources they've got there, but the Enquirer's certainly been right about some things, and Alaska Report also qualifies their story by writing that they were the first to announce Palin's candidacy for Governor and her status as the Vice Presidential nominee. So, there's that.

If any of this turns out to be true, it would explain a great deal: Palin's book deal signing/cashing in, all the talk about tending to her family regarding her resignation, her The-Media's-Been-Mean media offensive, all of it. But most likely: the resignation. Which, in and of itself, is the revelation that she was telling the truth, and bearing down for what's likely to be the hard media rain/scrutiny that's about to be comin'.

UPDATE: It looks like Meg Stapleton, Palin's spokeswoman, responded to these rumors on, uh, Facebook:

Yet again, some so-called journalists have decided to make up a story. There is no truth to the recent "story" (and story is the correct term for this type of fiction) that the Palins are divorcing. The Palins remain married, committed to each other and their family, and have not purchased land in Montana (last week it was reported to be Long Island).

Less than one week ago, Governor Palin asked the media to "quit making things up." We appreciate that the more professional journalists decided to question this story before repeating it.

Meg Stapleton

Todd and Sarah Palin To Divorce [Alaska Report]

Sarah Palin: No Truth to Latest Rumors [Facebook]

Why does George David attract so many of the ladies? Because he is a generous sucker. He bought his mistress thousands and thousands of dollars worth of fancy items at La Perla, though he probably did not foresee the fact that one day he would have to have this exchange about it in open court:

"And La Perla is a women's — uh — lingerie store?"
"Bathing suits," said the mogul.
"High end?" asked the lawyer.
"I don't know enough to know that," the mogul snapped at the well-dressed lawyer, whose brightly colored socks are something of a trademark. "I suppose you know more than I do."
"Well, do you buy clothing for yourself there?" the lawyer asked, apparently trying to pin down just whose posteriors the purchased La Perlas were destined to barely cover.
"As far as I know, not," the mogul answered.
"What does that mean?" asked the lawyer.
"Well, I don't think they have clothing for men."

This is why most fabulously wealthy corporate titans just buy themselves sex trafficking victims and stash them in prison-like apartments in various third world countries, I imagine. Far less legal peril than cheating on countesses. Anyhow Andrea Peyser also reports that George David wears bad suits, is "insane," and is the World's Biggest Pussy.
[NYP. Pics: Getty]

It's bad to be unemployed here in New York, and it's really bad to be unemployed and black here in New York. Although the upside, self-esteem-wise is that you are not alone: in the last year, unemployment rose four times faster among black people than among white people here. And: "By the end of March, there were about 80,000 more unemployed blacks than whites, according to the report, even though there are roughly 1.5 million more whites than blacks here."

It's bad to be getting divorced. But it's really bad to want to be getting divorced, and not be able to, because you're too broke. It's happening more and more these days! Which results in plenty of people living in hellish limbo:

The "kids are OK with it." says Ms. Brewster, a 39-year-old freelance writer and stay-at-home mother. "They just know that mommy lives upstairs and daddy lives in the basement."

Urrrgh. Sadness. Despair. People trapped in desperate situations with no way out. Take heart, poor, oppressed, miserable denizens of American dead ends: Goldman Sachs just made $2 billion. Its compensation is back up to $600K, average! So turn that frown upside down, unemployed daddy in the basement. If Goldman is winning, we're all winning*.

*Only a figure of speech. Cash value of figure of speech is 1/1000th of a cent.

Jon and Kate say they're "separating!" They never mentioned the word "divorce." So does that mean there's hope? Oh, who are we kidding—As if we care!

You all do know what this means, right? TLC will create a Jon and Kate Plus 8 spinoff, so they'll each have their own shows, which will run back to back on the same night. Are you ready for Kate Plus 8 and Jon Plus 8? That's how you maximize advertising baby! And America will certainly slurp it all up, every last drop.

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

Reports People:

"Documents to initiate a legal split were filed in Pennsylvania Monday afternoon."

Yes, shocking. Why do we care anymore? We have no idea.

UPDATE: Video of the big "announcement" from tonight's episode can be viewed here.

Gosselin Divorce Papers Filed [People]

33 years older, in fact. Katie Lee, at a spry 27, has been seen all over the society pages lately. And we guess the failed Top Chef host and irksome blogger's partying ways were just too much for old William Joel, so he's cutting and running.

There's also the embarrassing fact that maybe K-Lee was stepping out with an Israeli fashion designer named Yigal Azrouel. The two have been seen canoodling in Miami (of course), and one time he called her his girlfriend. Oops! And sorta surprising. Apparently the status-crazed Katie found some fashion dude named Yigal to be a better time than a 60-year-old guy who, yes, crashes cars into houses fairly often, but is also very very rich.

For what it's worth, they're supposedly still friends. Oh, and, everyone's pretty sure there's a prenup. Sorry to hear that, Katie.

Image via Getty

Oh, shit. Jon and Kate Gosselin might be lawyering up; Jon gave People an interview from a lawyer's office. This sucks. [Page Six]

• Pregnant R & B singer Kelis managed to Twitter - over a series of five or six Tweets - something about someone being a cheater, and cheaters cheating on people who don't deserve to be cheated on. She's probably talking about Nas, who she's getting divorced from soon. Meanwhile, a few Tweets later, she gives us the following film review of "The Hangover," out this weekend: "P.s there was a cute asian man in the movie. Very rare sighting so had to say it :)" In other news, Hipster Runoff is teaching celebrity blogging courses, somewhere. [P*r*z H*lt*n and Kelis' Twitter]

  
  

• Jim Carrey's in some kind of freaky New Age Eastern Think group. Go, Hollywood? This is kind of 1999ish. [Hollywood Reporter]

  
  

• Evan Dando's about to fuck. Some shit. Up. Except not. The Lemonheads' lead singer is suing GM for using "It's a Shame About Ray" in a bunch of their commercials without licensing it. As TMZ - who, really, is getting great at covering the legal affairs beat - explains, GM's broke-phi-broke, and Dando's lawsuit is kind of frivilous in that regard. Oh well. [TMZ]

  
  

• More of TMZ educating their readership, this time, about California legislative power, by demonstrating how Cali's anti-SLAPP statues are helping Kobe Bryant's maid talk to the press about her lawsuit against the Bryants. Next up: when you should and should not engage in jury tampering. [TMZ]

  
  

• Julia Roberts is in town filming Eat, Pray, Love and she's renting a place at 1 Morton Square in the West-West Village. I'd drop off a basket, say hi, maybe try to get her or Danny Moder to do a guest blog post, but that shit's so far west you need a visa to get there, so forget that. [Page Six]

  
  

• Phil Spector's 28 year-old girlfriend - only three years older than his daughter, it's helpfully pointed out - says that this guy is a sex-crazed fiend, or at least that they did it all the time. [Page Six]

  
  

• Marilyn Manson shaved a swastika into his new porn star girlfriend's ladyparts, and he used a protractor to do it. This sounds like something you do when you're 23 and going through your fifth year in college and the only girl you can bring home for the holidays is this batshit insane freshman goth, and your parents are talking about Republican politics at the dinner table, and you're like, OH YEAH? WELL THERE'S A SWASTIKA IN HER VAG AND I PUT IT THERE, SO THERE! and even the girl is thoroughly embarrassed and dumps you when you get back to school. You should probably graduate and get through that rebellious phase, you know? It's about time. Also, stop pretending to like The Smiths. [Kinda NSFW at Drunken Stepfather]

  
  

• Blake Liveley and Penn Badgley were among the people who the W Hotel in Ft. Lauderdale paid to show up at the opening of their place. Penn's rocking a beard and I kind of dig it, if only because it's very "fuck you" to the teenage-celebrity-industrial-complex. Rebellion! Meanwhile, Ft. Lauderdale's entirely geriatric population is psyched to hit the bumpin' lounge at the Dub. [PopSugar]

  
  

• Ron Weasley's main squeeze, Hermione, is magical in real life: she's doing all these fashion-forward things and the like. How can you not like Emma Watson? Seriously. She probably knows that if the real-life version of Hermione were a drunk moron, it'd be really sad. So she's either saving it until the movies are done, or she's an actual, responsible, image-conscious person in the best way. Which is, come to think of it, entirely possible. [Daily News]

  
  

• Kevin Bacon is a responsible person when he flies the LA to NYC flight. He's nice, courteous, and folds his blankets. And here's where I explain that it's nice to not write something salacious or stupid about this, or him. [TMZ]

  
  

• Bury-The-Lede Obama Bonus! The Obama women visited the Eiffel Tower yesterday while Dad was in Germany on business. It's their first trip abroad, ever since they've been in the White House. U Can Haz Jelusy. [NYDN]

Well, Michael, maybe you like Silvio Berlusconi because, as you point out, he spends his time frolicking with topless women half his age and getting a divorce? Is there anything going on in your life that could cause you to relate to that?

No, the reason Wolff likes Berlusconi is that he lives a life without consequences:

He's been indicted a vast number of times, always escaping through some form of banana republic or slapstick jurisprudence, and doing it with almost no pretense that he's not doing it. Getting away with it has become part of his charm. [Emphasis ours.]

Speaking of consequences: When we got an e-mail last night with a link to Wolff's new column in the July issue of Vanity Fair, we were excited—for once!—to read it. We'd been awaiting what we'd heard would be a lengthy confessional examination of Wolff's affair with a 28-year-old Vanity Fair intern named Victoria Floethe, the subsequent dissolution of his marriage, and the gossip machinery that kicked into gear to publicize the mess. We knew it was coming because Wolff had come by the office to interview our boss Nick Denton for the story—way back in March. It sounded like a nifty idea.

But sadly no. Wolff instead has chosen to write about the Obama press shop, which he finds "brilliant and successful and certainly calculated." But it has a sinister side: With the mainstream newspapers dying before their eyes and the upstart—and partisan—digital media hungry for any old handout, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and his co-horts are "in greater control of the media than any administration before them." That does sound bad, but we wonder if Wolff's column might have come out a little sunnier had he not been forced to write this humbling paragraph:

Even though I've been invited to the White House for a talk with Gibbs, there's an abrupt cancellation when, after some chitchat with Burton, it becomes clear that my interest is in process rather than, per se, message. And then a kind of sudden vaporization-no Gibbs, according to Marissa Hopkins, his assistant, "for the foreseeable future."

That's right—the savvy bastards were on to him. What sort of manipulative power-mongers are these, who don't want to talk about process and insist on substance?

We e-mailed Wolff to ask him when the good-sounding column will come out. He replied, "Right now, Obama administration [sic] seems more pressing than my personal life—an evergreen if there ever was one." That sounded to us like it got killed. But no, he says: "Yet to be written. Will keep you posted." Please do, Michael.

People such as, for example, the CEO husband of Countess Divorceé Marie Douglas-David (pictured), who would prefer that the public not have a right to know all about his alleged divorce sex fetish and cheap ass ring taking-back and other terribly embarrassing dirty (sexual) laundry. For example. But the attorneys for the party trying to get large sums of money from these rich people in their divorces feel the opposite way!

As soon as they find someone on either side without a self-serving motive we'll be willing to listen, but until then: Celebrity sadness is America's Enfamil.
[WSJ. Pic via]

Gigi originally wanted one million dollars a month in child support, a number now winnowed down to $40,000. She'll also get a lump sum of $4.75 million, plus around $9 million additional so she buy a place of her own, that's in her name. So she can get a fresh start! And he has to pay 500k for Gigi's lawyers.

So all told, that's definitely better than coughing up $12 million every year for his two sons' out of control basketball sneaker addictions.

[TMZ]

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

[TMZ]

Image: Getty

Back in 2006, Mel was estimated to be worth $900 million, and since there was no prenup—who got those when the husband was just a weirdo Australian in 1980?—Robyn is legally entitled to half. She's sought joint custody of their one child who is still a minor, Tom, age 9. Mel's publicist has put out a statement for both of them:

"Throughout our marriage and separation we have always strived to maintain the privacy and integrity of our family and will continue to do so."

So, sigh. The sanctity of marriage gets even... sanctityer. Really, the poor lady has put up with a lot. We think she's earned that half a billion bones.

[TMZ]

Musk, the boss of and lead investor in the electric-car startup, was previously the cofounder of PayPal, a payments startup bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. So one would assume he's rolling in it. And cash for silence is the usual barter when the newly wealthy part ways with their first wives. But Justine Musk isn't taking that route. After reading a profile of Elon's current love interest, 23-year-old British actress Talulah Riley, who is 13 years her junior, she piped up:

When you are living part of your life in the public eye anyway — when you blog, when your divorce has been kicked out there for public consumption — when does this whole idea of "taking the high road" segue into this idea of being silent, silenced, even as someone appropriates your words to spin out a certain version of events?

Justine now disputes the notion, previously advanced by Elon, that the two were racing to the courthouse to file divorce papers. She says that she and her husband had completed all of three sessions of marital counseling when Elon gave her an "ultimatum":

"Either we fix [the marriage] today, or I will divorce you tomorrow."

The next morning, Justine found that her credit card had been cut off and thereby learned that he had gone ahead and filed for divorce. This is not the picture she painted last year of an amicable, mutual split.

The unraveling of the Musks' marriage appears to have happened in the space of a few short weeks in July. Elon met Talulah Riley, the star of St. Trinian's, in London on July 3. On July 18, Justine wrote about being "in the midst of some major drama." A week later, Riley escorted Elon to the opening of Tesla's auto showroom in Menlo Park. And soon afterwards, he proposed to her, Riley told the Daily Mail. A couple of weeks later, Justine wrote a biting blog entry about older men who date younger women:

I was thinking about the time a male friend, who is my age (mid thirties), and I had a bit of a spat in the driveway outside his lush hillside home. When I refused to buy into his argument and turned to go inside the house, I heard him say scornfully, "Yeah, that's it, go hang with the twenty year olds."

I thought: Dude, I'm not the one who's dating them.

Not that there aren't some mature early twentysomethings out there capable of dating anybody — just that his comment revealed more about men like him than any group of women. To wit: women that young are like children, and quality interaction happens between myself and fellow successful male peers. And yet that pool of "children" is where these same men go again and again to fish out the new girlfriend. Thus: my girlfriend is a child, but that's okay, because quality interaction happens elsewhere.

The next month, Justine went public with news of her divorce. She subsequently wrote:

We had a good run. We married young, took it as far as we could and now it is over. That's about all I can say for now, other than that it was a very sad and very necessary decision.

So why is she breaking her silence now? It could be her frustration with seeing her own words used to portray Elon as an honorable man who found a new love as his old one foundered. But it could also be that she has literally nothing to lose.

Acquaintances have been saying for some time that Elon is essentially broke, save for his illiquid stakes in Tesla Motors and SpaceX, his rocket-ship startup. We hear that he had to liquidate investments at a loss so he could participate in Tesla's most recent round of funding, and that he's couch-surfing with friends on his frequent trips from Los Angeles, where he lives, to Silicon Valley, where Tesla is based.

One hopes Riley and Musk really did bond over a mutual love of astrophysics.

(Photo of Musk and Riley via Daily Mail)

Page Six had the story, of course, because they're News Corp's dedicated Micheal Wolff Revenge Department, and are just as committed to covering the hell out of any negative Michael Wolff tidbit as the New York Times is to wearily ignoring him.

The bald, trout-pouted Vanity Fair writer, 55, has been carrying on a steamy public affair with intern Victoria Floethe, 28, for months and was finally booted from the home of his wife, Alison Anthoine. He's since been shacking up in hotels around town and hanging out in public with Floethe, whom he took to a pre-opening tasting at Monkey Bar last week.

Now, sources said Wolff and Anthoine will soon begin divorce proceedings. "That is correct," Wolff told Page Six.

Please note: Wolff calmly answered P6's call, gave them a polite, bland confirmation quote, and that was it. His Media Sex Scandal PR chops are still as strong as ever. [P6; Pic via]

To this day, every history of Flickr has an obligatory mention of the "husband-and-wife team" who started the photo site. Indeed, their relationship was a key part of the winsome story that made Flickr so appealing to reporters and consumers. But we've been hearing for some time that Butterfield and Fake are no longer husband and wife.

They have not worked together in years. After they sold Flickr to Yahoo in 2005 for a reported $35 million, Fake almost immediately took an executive role developing new products, while Butterfield stayed at Flickr as the site's often-diffident manager. They did manage one joint launch: the birth of their daughter Sonnet in 2007. Both left Yahoo last year.

Hunch, which we're told is going to be some sort of question-and-answer search engine, could be launching any day. Fake seems to have thrown herself into working at the New York-based as a chief product officer, a demanding job with a bicoastal commute. One of Fake's cofounders recently told an investor not to be concerned with Fake's availability to work, saying she was divorced. If they are, it's not clear if the couple has actually completed the process; a search of public records did not show a divorce agreement, and Fake and Butterfield did not respond to email inquiries. But their friends agree they are no longer together.

Last July, when she announced on her blog that she'd be joining the startup, she noted:

Will you be working with Stewart? No, he's currently weighing various metallurgical opportunities.

And there is this: Fake has posted only one photo to Flickr since last July: a screenshot of the original Flickr homepage. A wave of nostalgia, as she moves on to the new? Butterfield, meanwhile, seems to have no trouble making friends.

(Photo via caterina)