• Tom Cruise tells the Beckhams how to raise their kids, supposedly. One of the sincerely funny parts of the just-released Funny People is a dick joke involving Tom Cruise, Will Smith, and David Beckham, and this makes that joke exponentially funnier! I'm sure someone will ruin it in the comments - probably me - but honestly, this justifies $7 of the $12 you'll have to pay to see Funny People (or whatever the proportional fraction is for being not being eye-gouged with ridiculous movies prices who live in places more reasonable than Gomorrah New York. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Jude Law's Babeh Mama Of The Month has a name for their new lovemunchkin, and it's going to be "Sophia" as in "I'mma Sophia Ass In Court, Moneybags!" [People]
  
  
• Tyra Banks is going to be on Gossip Girl because she loves to ruin things you love. [US]
  
  
• Emma Watson is related to a real witch, swears People! I want to know what editor at People was like, go through centuries of lineage of obscure witches and Harry Potter cast members and see if you can dig some shit up. Gold star for both of you, srsly. [People]
  
  
• Beyonce wants you to stop taking pictures of her ass, which America is crazy in love with. But who's stupid enough to take a picture of Jay-Z's wife's ass? Also, I heard a great story this week that apparently, Beyonce fucking loves to go to bars in New York incognito with Jay-Z to play Buck Hunter. I hope this is true because if so that's just great, and not because it's oh, Beyonce loves Buck Hunter, that's cute. No, it's awesome because you know they could just buy a Buck Hunter machine but instead they insist on going to bars and secretly getting a thrill out of it. How this item hasn't been reported before is beyond me? [Showbiz Spy and Me]
  
  
• Katy Perry and Rihanna are friends, now, and they've been hanging out in places like Barbados! And...the Meatpacking District! Meanwhile, some internet dork quietly prepares the inevitable "I Kissed An Umbrella" mashup. [Page Six]
  
  
• Leighton Meester's boyfriend, Sebastian Stan - who seems like a legitimately awesome guy, and believe this, is a great actor! Ask anyone who saw him on Broadway in the revival of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio! Seriously. - talks about what it's like to watch her make out with Ed Westwick on the set of Gossip Girl, which is relatively kinky for People. [People]
  
  
• Heroes star Zach Qunito was questioned by cops twice while filming a skit for Funny or Die. The cops were lucky he didn't slice their brains open and take what little powers they have. [E!]
  
  
• Did you know E! has someone cooking up celebrity conspiracy theories? That's kind of sincerely great and something I wish I'd thought of first, but then again, it's only great if someone at E! is doing it. This week: what if Jon and Kate were all a lie? [E!]
  
  
• American Idol winner Kris Allen is subletting the fully-furnished Arkansas apartment he shared with his wife for $600 a month because they're going to be in Hollywood for a little bit. (1) They're subleasing, that's cute and (2) the fact that it's $600 a month, is like, okay, after you live in New York for so long you forget what rent in other parts of the world cost and then, for whatever reason, you see them, and think about what a ridiculous ass you are for paying $900 a month to live in what more or less amounts to a recycling bin (but one that's off of Avenue A!) and that you could do this job from Asheville, North Carolina so why not just do it from there? And then you remember that Asheville, charming as it is, doesn't have Shake Shack. And then you remember that you're willing to stand in line for an hour for a fucking cheeseburger and you should probably just order an Arsenic Shake the next time you're there. [TMZ]
  
  
• The Game - he's a rapper, heh - got into a fight at a funeral. I wonder if he's ever seen Shotgun Stories by Jeff Nichols. It's a great movie about two families from rural Arkansas (speaking of Arkansas!) and the wide divisions between them made more evident by an incident at a funeral of the two family's shared patriarch. It was directed by David Gordon Greene's film school colleague and made David Edelstein's Top 10 films last year and is quite fantastic and incredibly subtle, maybe the most subtle, poetic film I've seen in the last two years. Also, Michael Shannon is genius in it. Anyway. He probably hasn't. Anyway: TMZ helpfully points out that The Game is referred to in the lawsuit of his alleged funeral beatdown as someone who "fashions himself as some kind of rapper, gangster and/or celebrity," haha. [TMZ]
  
  
• Michael Jackson's shady doctor - who, when I wrote the item about him being a sketchball, a bunch of you shithead commenters were like, oh, he's not shady, how can you say he's shady only because he went bankrupt and has a bunch of liens on him in, like, six different states, we know nothing about him, and I was like, listen, people: game recognize game, and this dude is shady - was in dire financial straits and was being paid $150,000 a month by Jackson. The Daily News gets deep into Conrad Murray's financial issues, and yes, they are shady, which leads me to believe that you people that were trying to convince other people that this guy wasn't shady are all tax criminals and I've now recorded your IPs and sent them to the IRS, LOLZ JK. Oh, also, he invested in a Trinidadian energy drink called Pitbull, which is hysterical. [NY Daily News]
  
  
• Paris Hilton is back with Doug Reinhardt. [NY Daily News]
  
  
• I almost didn't read a Page Six item today entitled ASHTON KUTCHER WAS A BIG FAKE either because I figured, fuckit, I could write that one without even looking or secretly some part of me actually didn't care to know which element of Ashton Koosher's existence was fraudulent. But I read it because it's one of those strangely compelling "rainy day" Page Six items that bring philosophical elements of identity into question, like, okay, if Ashton Koosher Was A Big Fake, then what am I? What are you? What is in my cat's cat food bowl? I think Richard Johnson maybe secretly sometimes sits around his desk and thinks of subversive ways to fuck with the gossip-hunting people of the world who think way too far into it, like me. Anyway: it turns out he used to buy fake watches and fake Versace pants and fake Calvin Klein T-shirts to show his family how not broke phi broke he was when he first started out acting, even though he didn't have a place to live. Okay, well, the fake Versace pants thing is just funny, because, like, Versace is an indicator of success? Certainly not in taste, from what little I understand about fashion. And then you get to the bit about fake Calvin Klein T-shirts, and it's like, (A) really? How much is a real one? And (B) where do you go in L.A. to actually purchase fake Calvin Klien T-shirts? Can't you just get the real deal at T.J. Maxx or something? Don't they come 3 to a $50 pack? The guy who sells fake Calvin Klien T-shirts must be the shadiest dude in West Hollywood. Also, when did Ashton Kutcher start acting, the age of enlightenment? Jesus. [Page Six]
  
  
• J-Lo went to Rome and a bunch of people were like AHHHHHHHHH JAYYYYYY-LOOOOO YOUWEREAWESOMEINGIGLI!!!!!!!! And I guess it's like - I know, I know, obvious joke, but - When In Rome, act like people might've acted in 2001? Furthermore, the way Europeans freak out about American celebrities must mean the European celebrities absolutely suck. One thing America will always do right: produce a good movie star. Or at least assimilate one. Related: I once got conned by a smelly chain-smoking photo-opping mime outside of the Pantheon for four Euro. Fucking Rome. [TMZ]
  
  
• Things Chase Crawford apparently isn't afraid of: rain. Things that now make Page Six on a Saturday: celebrities who aren't afraid of rain. Now: I want the list of the ones who are. [Page Six]
  
  
• I'm not entirely sure what this D-Listed post entitled "NeNe Will Choke A Bitch" is about, but it sure sounds entertaining. [D-Listed]
  
  
• Finally, if you watch United States of Tara you know that "Buck" is the best character on the show. Well: Chasing Amy star Joey Lauren Adams ends up in a love affair with Buck in the next season. Fantastic! [EW]

Yes, it's that Glenn Beck, looking and sounding sort of like a normal, non-crazy person, perhaps bolstering our theory that he's nothing more than a crafty modern charlatan in the process, bragging about having a book on the New York Times bestseller list (Isn't it funny when Times-loathing conservatives get positively giddy when their dumb books make its bestseller list?).

Leaning into the camera looking downright thoughtful, pensive even, Beck says that An Inconvenient Book is "deep" and "smart" and that everyone should read it, even if they disagree with everything he says, so that maybe some sort of common ground can be discovered to make America a more tolerant place for all of us to live in. And then, for his closing, Beck plays the "I have a daughter who loves Harry Potter books and wants to go to Columbia" card.

Now, first of all, isn't it heresy or something for the children of conservatives to read stories about witches and warlocks? And secondly, isn't Beck's contrast in style when he's trying to reach out to people on the left, as opposed to his usual wingnut Fox News audience, absolutely striking? It's fascinating really, like watching an elephant mating with a zebra in the wild or something. You just can't look away!

Vid via YouTube

1) G-Force — $32.2. million
As we bemoaned earlier, the success of this film likely means that there will be many, many more awful animation/live-action hybrids to come. Oh, look! Here's one already! The thing about these movies that's really annoying is that because there are live action elements in them, the filmmakers seem to feel like, for some reason, they can be a bit more risque. Because, what?, adults are going to go because they want to see Jason Lee embarrass himself? Whatever the reasoning, it ends up with us having to see poop eating and stuff. Jokes that the classy Pixar and its classy-wannabes would never stoop to. Because animation is art. And live-action is everything else. So live-action/animation is... just pure shit. I mean poop. Eat it.

2) Harry Potter and the Dumbledore Dies — $30 million
Not that this movie is doing bad or anything. It's already grossed like $220 million in the States, not to mention the foreign box office, but still... This thing couldn't beat motherfucking G-Force? 'Tis a sad day for Potterville. Maybe number six is just too dark. What with the gloom and emotions and turmoil and people dying and stuff. Good thing no one dies in the last bo—... Oh. Oh wait. Shit. I mean poop.

3) The Awful Truth — $27 million
Even though this movie seems toxic and horrid, it still did pretty well. Even though Katherine Heigl has, somehow, squandered most of the good will she earned before/during/after Knocked Up, it still did pretty well. Even though Gerard Butler is nothing more than a poorly-accented talking leg of mutton, it still did pretty well. Even though John Michael Higgins and Cheryl Hines were crying all the way to the bank on this one, it still did pretty well. Even though there is no discernible reason why anyone, short of self-loathing masochists, would want to see this apparently dreadful "film", it still actually did really well. Poop. I mean shit.

4) Orphan — $12.8 million
DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE SUPER SECRET SPOILER ENDING. But why wouldn't you want to? Because it is awesome. Orphan is a movie about a secret dwarf who kills people. It is not about a creepy demon kid. It is not about a ghost possessing a child. It is not about a weird cult that pretends to be an orphanage. Nope. Orphan is about a secret hooker 33-year-old dwarf who kills people. It did pretty OK for a horror B-movie in the thick of gushy summer. A movie about a nearing-middle-age Estonian dwarf who kills people did pretty well against a movie about computer guinea pigs who solve crimes for real humans. SHIT.

11) (500) Days of Summer — $1.63 million
Ohhh twee indie success! Though only open on less than a hundred screens, this gimmicky and highly cultivated feature is doing a nice, tidy little business. We here at the Gawkerdrome didn't care for it as much as we hoped to. It just felt... way too forced. And really derivative (in a bad way) of the farrrrr superior Eternal Sunshine. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is like having a delicious chocolate-chip sundae talk to you, and other things look really pretty too, but as a whole it's just a far more conventional film than it seems to think it is. (It clearly thinks very highly of itself. And, sadly, it shouldn't.) Ah well. Good for it anyway.

Having suffered a fall in a room of his meek and humble Alpine vacation chalet, the pontiff underwent a 20-minute operation on his right wrist to heal a fracture. Hilarious bit ensued as surgeons did not see the stigmata that Benny saw on his own hand. Apparently, pappy goosestepped out of the hospital all smiles. Maybe it was the morphine. Uproarious canned laughter as deadpan, dry-humored nurse quipped, "It should have been Diprivan."

Presumably born again after such trauma, the 82-year-old Benny was in an unusually generous mood. His Hoary Holiness, who once condemned the Harry Potter series for its "subtle seductions...that have a deep effect and corrupt the Christian faith even before it could properly grow," has now been enchanted by the magic wand of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Score one for the wizard.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano (the official papal rants and raves board) said this week that the new blockbuster drew

a clear line of demarcation between good and evil, making clear that good is right, and that in some cases this involves hard work and sacrifices.

The article goes on the praise the film's lovely treatment of teenage romance. Awww...it's just like when the Grinch grew a teeny-tiny smidgen of a heart!

Shocking papal plaudits don't stop there. The Vatican, which calls simple same-sex lovin' "a deviation, an irregularity, a wound" and "a destruction of God's work," can nonetheless get tickled by classic gay bitchiness. That same Vatican newsrag now loves that faaaaabulous flamer Oscar Wilde, claiming him a true convert to the joys of Catholic cultism merely because he had a priest at his deathbed! Are we sure it wasn't in his bed?

The newspaper says Wilde was more than "an aesthete and a lover of the ephemeral" ("Ephemeral?" Is that code for late 19th-century E?), but "one of the personalities of the 19th century who most lucidly analyzed the modern world in its disturbing as well as its positive aspects." Again, awww...

Of course, the Vatican's article makes a choice Wilde quote, "the things one feels absolutely certain about are never true." Just like a mother in deep denial as her son dances about the kitchen to "Everything's Coming Up Roses."

Of course, all this could be retracted once Benny's happy-happy-joy-joy morphine wears off and he actually reads his official paper.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince grossed a magical $58.4 million. It pulled in $22.2 million in midnight shows. Can some one talk to J.K. Rowling about giving America an loan? [ Variety ]

Right now, with it being the End of Days and all, what would you do with $240 million dollars? Finance a James Cameron 3D movie about a band of humans pitted against a distant planet's indigenous population? OBVIOUSLY! [LAT]

Tyler Perry makes Forbes' list of 2008's highest-paid men in Hollywood. The children of Israel round out the list. So they control the movies and the banks! How do they do it?[/Film]

Fox's telecast All-Star Game delivered an average audience of 14.6 million viewers, making it the most-watched midsummer classic since 2002 — even without Jon Hamm's sexy hands gripping a bat. [THR]

Nick Hornby's An Education has gotten some pretty rave reviews. It looks to be poised as a real Oscar contender. The trailer, filled with British accents, does like pretty titillating. [Variety ]

So you're in a bar last night and there's a girl in sweater vest, tie, plaid skirt, holding a wand, and she has a zig-zag drawing on her face. You order a drink. She orders one too. She giggles and coos with the rest of her broom-swinging friends. You know this girl.

She's your friend's younger sister and you remember what she looked like when she was 12. And she's in your bar, in costume, getting sloshed while waiting for a kid's movie to start.
What does it all mean? For starters, it means you're old.

Second, as somebody who is stitching together her Slytherin scarf right now, I can tell you that the 25-year-old hipster in the knee-socks does geniunely love Harry Potter! We grew up with him. You guys had Remo Williams or some shit but we have this totally charming, decent, wizard fella who is nice to look at and lives in a world of rich political and cultural complexity!

Order of the Phoenix was obviously a political tome about infantilizing effect totalitarian rule has on its citizenry (also maybe an allegory for torture given Ms. Umbridge's approval of 'hard interrogation tactics'?) And the 'Half-Blood Prince' (which also happens to be my pet name for our weekend editor) is a tale of masculine anxiety in a war time state. It's also about potions. Which is totally sweet!

So Old Person, now you know. And godspeed to those young, underpaid, bleary eyed office workers of today who still can't get that marker stain off their forehead. We'll see you in line for the second round tonight! Be sure to send us your pics!

Pictures Via Flickr

New York's Jada Yuan reported seeing the following interaction at Friday's NYC premiere of the new Harry Potter movie. Harry Potter (muggle name: Daniel Radcliffe) was doing red carpet interviews, charming people along the way. A gaggle of reporters gets in his face. One of them is an 11 year-old cutie from Scholastic.

Radcliffe (to other reporters): "One moment, one moment. I will come back to you. [Locks eyes with Scholastic News girl] Hello!"

Girl: "Hey. I'm Danielle from Scholastic News."

Radcliffe: "Hello, Danielle! Pleasure to meet you."

Danielle: "This is an HONOR to interview you."

Radcliffe: "Oh, thank you. You're very sweet. Thank you."

Danielle: "I've seen the first and second movies and read the first and second book and they are SO good. Especially the movies. I loved them, the movies!"

Radcliffe: "Thank you very much. You're very, very kind. They get even better than that, though, so when you get time or when your parents think you're old enough, you must watch the rest. They're very cool."

And then:

Other reporter: "Daniel, how…"

Radcliffe: "One moment, one moment."

Other reporter: "They told us to group together."

Radcliffe: "It will happen. One second, sorry." [re-focuses on Danielle]

Danielle: "How did Harry change from the first movie to the second? I mean, the sixth?"

Radcliffe: "To the sixth? Well, he grew marginally taller. The films have gotten a lot darker since that first film, so I think he has had to get a lot tougher since then. Thank you very much."

Danielle [holding breath, then nearly dropping mike]: "Oh. My. God. Oh. My. God. That was soooo cool!"

There's a little more where that came from. Why can't all movie stars be like the Harry Potter kids? Maybe they'll start to be. Even though Harry Potter reaps its millions of successes (read: dollars) on the strength of the actual franchise property, it surely can't hurt that parents can find something to enjoy in letting their kids be influenced by its key players. Even Radcliffe didn't have his parent-approval rating hurt by letting his cock hang out on the West End and Broadway in Equus. Who'd of thought? Young, million-dollar movie stars as role models to kids. Magic!

Update: Here's Danielle version of her encounter with the wizard one.

Presenting Your Saturday Morning Gossip Roundup:

• If the cast of Harry Potter could hook up with anyone, two out of three respondents went with Gossip Girl cast members: Daniel Radcliffe to Blake Liveley, Emma Watson to Ed Westwick. Rupert Grint struggled to come up with an answer and just went with Jessica Alba. Weak. [E!]
  
  
• Jon Gosselin is meeting in St. Tropez, France, with Christian Audigier, the uberdouche behind the embarrassment to fashion as well as the idea of anything having any kind of aesthetic whatsoever, Ed Hardy. He might be getting a job with Audigier. For those who haven't been blinded by them yet, they're shirts with rhinestones on them that sometimes have these slits in them and, jesus, I don't even know, they're just so fugly it's far beyond my mental capacity to understand how this is now a multi-million dollar business. Remember Von Dutch? It's like that to the nth degree. Yes, I would rather have, I don't know, a crying eagle pissing in my eye while draped in a neon American flag tattooed to my face than wear one of those shirts (and no, you may NOT use that idea, Audigier). Hopefully he won't dress any of his children in those deadrags of mid-life crisis desperation because that would just be cruel and unusual and then they'd have to be remanded into the custody of Mugatu-esque Karl Lagerfeld and you don't want that. You really don't. 'Cause he'll eat them. [TMZ]
  
  
• Haley Joel Osment would like you all to stop making I SEE DEAD PPL jokes, now. Meanwhile, he's throwing the mack down on girls in the subway. So if he isn't seeing dead people, at least he's seeing game. And game recognize game. (?) [TMZ]
  
  
• Kristen Stewart laughs off rumors of her and Robert Pattinson being pregnant. Things she shouldn't laugh off: the dangerously insane teenage Twilight fans who'd rather see her replaced with a cardboard box. Honestly, I kind of hope she is preggers with his vampire baby, because it'd be a great looking kid, and Twilight fans need to go away. Vampire fetishisizing is for 42 year-old oversized goths, and it should stay that way. [NYDN]
  
  
• You know how your grandfather would make funny faces at you as a kid, and sometimes they'd be funny, and sometimes you'd be like, stop it, old man, you're freaking me the fuck out. Well, imagine if your grandfather was Jim Carrey. Exactly. His 21 year-old daughter Jane is preggers with her husband, fellow musician Alex Santana (important detail: "(Alex is) known as "Nitro" in his rock group, Blood Money."). Meanwhile, Jim's still dating Jenny McCarthy, and the two of them must make the weirdest faces at each other in bed. Do not want. [NYDN]
  
  
• Rachel Ray had vocal chord surgery, and this is one of those things were the joke writes itself, but you don't even want to make it. In this Kangaroo Court, there are far worse grievances against humanity than maybe sometimes sounding annoying while patiently teaching you how to cook better, because you're a moron and don't know an egg beater from a spork. Also, this is sad, 'cause her voice had this strangely sexy Kathleen Turner-when-she-was-hot raspiness to it. Get better, crazy cake lady. [People]
  
  
• Artie Lange got a DUI. Shocker. He rear-ended someone while drunk. I'm sure he'd turn that into a really shitty joke. But this is great: ""He was extremely cooperative," said Capt. Steven Henry. "He was a gentleman."" Love that Artie Lange is probably so familiar with the procedure of a DUI, he probably practically did it for the cop. "This is how you cuff me, my wrists fit this way," etc. Lange was last seen in a hysterical, amazing appearance on the first episode of Joe Buck's new HBO show. Said appearance got him banned from HBO Sports for life. [Page Six]
  
  
• I'm sorry, can we just say it, though? Lady Gaga is a fucking mouthbreather. And when she's not using it to breathe, she's using it to say ridiculous shit like this: "I've gone bankrupt about four times now. My manager wants to shoot me. Every dollar I earn goes on the show. Now we're finally getting to a place where it's not bankruptcy. Then again, with another tour coming up soon I'll probably be homeless again." Also, please click on the link so you can look at the picture of how my mind feels about Lady Gaga. Seriously. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Robert Pattinson is "amazing in bed." Naturally. I don't doubt this for a moment. Thank you, Robert Pattinson, for making the rest of America feel like their sex lives aren't yours. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Justin Timberlake is creating a scent. Besides smelling nice, it will be funnier, more chaming, nicer, come from more humble backgrounds, sing, dance, talk, listen, knit, and play backgammon better than you ever have or will. Also, it will smell like Saturday Night Live at least nine times a year. [E!]
  
  
• Lauren Conrad's book has been on the New York Times' bestseller list for two weeks, now. Aspiring novelists, this makes you feel how? Inspired? Insipid? Funky fresh? [People]
  
  
• Rupert Grint and Emma Watson felt pressure to get their kiss in the new Harry Potter movie right. Emma Watson's going to school at Columbia or Brown, and reports have gone both ways, and I can't even handle Emma Watson going to school in New York because this city absolutely needs more magic and with her exquisite knowledge of magic things should get better for everyone, especially those pricks on 116th. Things will be magical for everyone! Anyway, Daniel Radcliffe also gets a kiss in the new movie with Ginny Weasley, Sister of Ron, and - oh, yeah, sorry: spoiler alert - and gave a wire reporter an awesome quote about it: "I saw the film again a couple of nights ago at the premiere and ... my God, my lips are like the lips of a horse, kind of distending independently away from my face and trying to encompass the lower half of hers." Yeah, still get that feeling sometime. Lesson: none of us are Robert Pattinson. [Reuters]
  
  
• Maura Tierney's going away for eight weeks. Sad, scary, if only because of the ominous nature that her publicist is playing off the way she's probably going to some kind of rehab (an "eight week medical evaluation"). [E!]
  
  
• Jennifer Anniston personally paid for her entire crew to have an extra day off for the July 4th holiday. Nice. [People]

The Wall Street Journal does a little comparative study of the two franchises' marketing strategies, focusing mainly on the about-to-drop (squee!) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. See, there's a little romance in that book, and Twilight is all about romance, so is that vampire story's mega success responsible for the HP posters that front-and-center tout hot, hot teen wizard love? The producers say no!

"With all due respect to "Twilight," the longevity and world-wide success of the Harry Potter franchise speaks for itself," a studio representative said.

Ha. As it should be. Twilight is a blip on the cultural radar compared to the Harry Potter phenomenon—the provenance of chastely horny teenage girls and lonely, approaching middle age hobby LARPers, whereas Harry and Co. have the mass and broad appeal of a Da Vinci Code (only they're much, much better.) Though, if we're honest with our Potter-obsessed selves, it's hard to believe that the smoldering and yearning of Twilight—such catnip!—had nothing to do with the smoldering and yearning poster shown here.

The Twilight producers, for their part, are respectably cognizant of their big brother's long shadow:

"It's the only franchise that we ever pay attention to," says Rob Friedman, chief executive and co-chairman of Summit Entertainment. "We are very cognizant of where they are, and we've always been wary of being in too close proximity to ‘Harry Potter' because we know our fans cross over so much, and we definitely don't want to compete with ‘Harry' for attention."

Damn right. Wizard beats vampire, every time.

• Britney Spears is a woman who is dedicated to her man/agent. So dedicated that she's converting to Judaism to show Jason Trawick how much she loves him. She's been wearing a star of David around her neck and has enlisted a rabbi to tour with her to teach her the religion. As a Cajun/Louisianian, I'd like to offer a trade to the Jews. You guys take Britney off our hands, and we'll take Natalie Portman. Sound good? Sweet. Have fun with her. [UK SUN]
  
  
• Gwyneth Paltrow, faux-lifestyle expert, physician, chef, dietician and Jim Jones in training, sent out a message to her GOOP death cult raving about some detox clease she did where she didn't eat anything for three weeks. In other news, Chris Martin probably isn't an ass man like Barack Obama. [Daily News]
  
  
• Jerry Seinfeld, apparently not content with the billion or so dollars he's banked from Seinfeld, is doing wacky commercials for some bank in Australia. [Page Six]
  
  
• Jeremy Piven says he hasn't eaten a piece of fish in 9 months since his horrible mercury poison thing. Now he's all into yoga and is all about achieving "balance." Whatever. Still a tool. [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• Katie Lee Joel isn't wasting any time since dumping sad old man Billy Joel for some swarthy lothario—Now she's opened up a burger spot in West Village near her townhouse called "Burger County." [Page Six]
  
  
• Jamie Foxx just can't contain his unrelenting cheesedickery. The other night he was at a party at Tao in Vegas when he took over the mic from the DJ and starting taunting Rihanna, who was dining with Jay-Z, to the point where she got up and left. [Page Six]
  
  
• 19 year-old Harry Potter star Emma Watson bought a $3,000,000 London home for her and her boyfriend, some 26 year-old "financier" named Jay. [Mirror]
  
  
• Katy Perry is running around Turkey in a bikini with some mystery guy just putting his hands all over her and we have to admit, we're kind of jealous. She looks damn good! [Daily Mail]

• 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]

• CODE BLUE. REPEAT: CODE BLUE. The only character anyone in the entire Jon and Kate Gosselin saga anybody should care about - Aaden, The Bespectacled One - has been injured. Jon was seen taking him to a medical clinic by the paparazzi who've staked him out. Aaden had some kind of cut on his forehead, and while we're wont to speculate on the barfight which caused Aaden's head injury, we'll be sitting this one out on the sidelines during this sensitive period of healing. Anyway, whenever I cut myself, my Dad would always be like, WTF were you doing smashing a Jolt can on your head? And then he'd laugh and maybe hand me a band-aid and we'd get ice cream or something. So, anyway, Happy Father's Day. [Celebrity Gossip via E!]
  
  
• Aw. David Duchovny and Tea Leoni are sticking it out. Duchovny, if you remember, went to rehab for sex addiction - And really, how much sex do you need to be having or need to want to be having to go to rehab for sex addiction? It sounds like a silly question, but consider the logistics, here. - and Leoni and him "separated." Now, they're having this real life Californication-esque relationship of rebuilding. Dysfunctional Celebrities: they're just like us! Kinda? [People]
  
  
• Madonna's new kid, Mercy James, the one she stole from Africa, is back. It's a cute kid and all, but didn't she steal it from Africa? [P*r*z H*lt*n]
  
  
• Kanyeezey is back with his ex-girlfriend Amber Rose. Dude needs someone to hold him down. Seriously. You know when you tell your friends, maybe you need a girlfriend/boyfriend, or someone tells you, maybe you need a girlfriend/boyfriend, etc, and they mean it? I would sincerely tell Kanye West to stay in a committed relationship. I'm not sure why. [The Sun]
  
  
• So: two Keystone Cops tried to extort SJP and Matthew Broderick over pictures of their kid. A cop in Ohio went to the home of SJP's surrogate mother in Martins Ferry, waltzed in, stole some pictures, tried to steal some voicemails, walked right on out. They tried to sell the photos to a tabloid and got busted. The tabloid was allegedly the National Enquirer, but now we learn, isn't. The best part, though: the tabloid, TMZ now hears, are the ones to turn them in. But what if it's TMZ?! Don't you love how there's no such thing as a conflict of interest in tabloid journalism? [TMZ]
  
  
• Billy Joel and Katie Lee Joel are getting divorced because "William" - 60 years-old - wanted to start a family now, and Kathy wanted to focus on her career, according to a friend of Billy's. Kathy Lee's friends see it the other way around - what? - and this weird he-said she-said is Rush & Malloy's lead item the week after breaking the whole Roger Friedman's Suing Scientology story, and they don't even make an "Only The Good Die Young" joke. Weak. [R & M]
  
  
• Not really gossip, per se, but Daniel Radcliffe has openly suggested that the Harry Potter films be scored by Radiohead, which is *magical*. I definitely see Goblet of Fire as a very Bends-esqu experience while Prisoner of Azkaban might be slightly more In Rainbows. Am I right, or am I right? I could play this game for hours. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Nip Tuck is over, and the finale's probably going to suck, because Ryan Murphy and friends all went to Fox to go do Glee. Also, because they simply couldn't do anything else with the story. [LA Times]
  
  
• Hayden Christensen's family likes Rachel Bilson. What isn't there to like? But Hayden Christensen? If I brought him home, my family would be like YOU RUINED STAR WARS and also Foster why are you dating Hayden Christensen? If I brought Rachel Bilson home, they'd probably be like, meh, but that's just how they are. [Page Six]
  
  
• George Stephanopoulos was named Father of the Year by the National Father's Day Committee, which is funny, because he did a radio broadcast recently and his daughter was all like "I HATE YOU" Stephanopoulos addressed the recent Daddy Misconduct Charges against him by his daughter by noting that he and his wife had donated some of their kids' clothing, and that it was "all about some duckies." [Page Six]
  
  
• British club-owner Clive Kelly talked some smack on Sting for, I don't know, making him go broke or something? I guess this is the other R & M item. It involves Sting going to the rainforest and, you know, whatever, being Sting. [R & M]
  
  
• An E! blog put together a list of petitions written by fans of Robert Pattinson. Some of his fans are absolutely insane. Like, these people are strange and scary and he's not even a real vampire. But seriously - Robert Pattinson? [E!]
  
  
• Susan Boyle canceled another show last night over fears of exhaustion. That's three in a row, for anyone who's counting. Related, Simon Cowell's confession of Susan Boyle culpability in a paper yesterday. Is it time we just give up on this? Serious question. [Daily Express]

Small songstress Lilly Allen Wears Bo-Peep Costume, Exposes Curds and Whey [Daily Mail]

• Plastic Person of the Universe Renee Zellweger, The Only Person In Manhattan To Take Those Annoying Pedicabs [Page Six]
• New York Fashion Week Castrated As Wang and Johnson Pull Out [Telegraph]
• Three Great Puns Used in Fashion Week Gossip Item [See above]
• Socialite of the Spectacles Lisa Loeb got hitched to some guy but will they "Stay" together? [US Magazine]
• Horrible and Inevitable Pun Used In Loeb Nup Gossip Item [See Above]
• Harry Potter Stunt Double Nearly Killed in Deathly Hallows Explosion. [AFP]
• Harry Potter/Junk Shower Daniel Radcliffe, Meanwhile, Invites Sasha and Melia Obama to "A Private Tour of the 'Harry Potter' Set." [Chicago Tribune]

The latest fuss comes after LiveJournal, bought in late 2007 by Sup, a Russian Internet company, laid off much of its U.S. staff, but took days to post a denial-laden explanation of the move on the site, which sparked 2,742 comments in reply.

Who has time to read 2,742 comments, let alone take them seriously? LiveJournal management had it coming, by not promptly acknowledging the layoffs. But the spew is all too typical of indulgent sites which allow users an open forum to whinge. A potential advertiser looking at the behavior of the LiveJournal users who comment on the site's news-posting forum would surely run in horror.

It's just the latest fracas between LiveJournal management and its fractious users. When engineer Brad Fitzpatrick owned the site, paid subscribers rudely accused him of spending the money on "hookers and blow." After blog-software maker Six Apart bought the company in 2005, protests surrounded the introduction of advertising, the removal of pictures depicting breastfeeding, and the banning of accounts involved in child pornography. (Fanatical Harry Potter erotica writers, never the most mentally stable lot, insisted that graphic depictions of a teenage Potter getting it on with Severus Snape did not violate community mores.) And under Sup's ownership, users protested the removal of an advertising-free account.

Underlying all these protests: The notion that users deserved a free lunch — total liberty to do whatever they wanted on someone else's servers and someone else's dime. That their self-expression provided some unspecified, unproven business benefit to LiveJournal, and therefore the site was theirs to run, not the company's.

Of course, the protests never amounted to anything. LiveJournal's fortunes waxed and waned as the vast majority of users, uninterested in the fringe's obsessions, at first gravitated to the site, then moved on to others. The relentness weirdness that infects the site, rather than the protests, seems to be driving away users. The site's U.S. traffic has dropped 25 percent since August, a shift that has had nothing to do with the timing of the protests.

And there's the lesson of LiveJournal: One can crush an online community by cracking down, as Friendster did by deleting parodists' fake profiles. But one can also destroy it by coddling self-indulgent freaks. In Russia, where LiveJournal is a mainstream blogging site and the country's largest social network, Sup doesn't seem to have these problems. Having laid off a dozen U.S. staffers, it would probably be just as happy to lose the site's troublesome American users. Sup executive Anton Nosik put it best to a Russian newspaper earlier this year:

In a situation where people are trying to scare and blackmail us, threatening to destroy our business, there are business reasons for not rewarding such behaviour. This is not just human psychology, which retaliates more the more it is pressed. Problem is that there's never been a successful company whose success was based on bowing to collective resistant forces. No decision — no matter how correct — should be based on pressure.

Nosik, unlike the namby-pamby free-speech believers who used to own LiveJournal, has it right. So Harry Potter porn writers want to boycott LiveJournal? He should only be so lucky.

[CLICK IMAGE TO EXPAND]

• ! OMG, more naked Daniel Radcliffe !! [omgblog].

She was sighted at approximately 10:30 yesterday morning at Quincy House by Chase Russell ’11 and Brian P. Hill ’11. [...]

Hill said he nearly collided with one of Watson’s escorts while leaving the House, before unthinkingly saying he was on his way to class. Watson then went to visit the room of the next student she approached, much to Hill’s chagrin.

“I actually called my mom; I was so distraught,” he said. “It was all I could think about for the entire morning.”

Other unconfirmed reports placed Watson around campus at the Admissions Office, the Barker Center and Annenberg Hall — which is often said to evoke the Great Hall at Hogwarts, the fictional wizarding school at which Hermione studies.

Other unconfirmed reports had sixth-year senior Chris Oberkfell '07 far less distraught after running into Watson on her downlow "pub evaluation tour" of Boston, at the end of which Oberkfell was paid handsomely to delete grainy cell-phone images he had snapped while the young star tested each establishment's wares for quality. Luckily, we'll always have our memories. We can hardly wait to see how the Washington Square News follows this tomorrow.

• ‘Hermione’ Enchants Campus With Visit [Harvard Crimson via CollegeOTR]

Warner Bros. sued an Indian film company for making a movie called "Hari Puttar," claiming that it was a ripoff of Harry Potter. They just lost the case in an Indian court. Home team advantage? Actually, when you hear the facts it seems more like sheer bullying or paranoia on Warner Bros. part:

"Hari Puttar" is not a tale of magic, but the story of an Indian boy and his cousin forgotten at home in Britain where his family has recently moved, in a plot more reminiscent of the film "Home Alone." In the Indian film, 10-year-old Hari Puttar must guard his scientist father's top-security computer chip from bumbling burglars, while his parents are away.

Gee, that sounds... absolutely nothing like Harry Potter. Also, "Hari is a common name in India and Hindi for God, while 'puttar' is Punjabi for son."

Hey Warner Bros, stop that. Bollywood has already stolen Snoop Dogg from us and India has surpassed America in fighting the Axe Body Spray menace. Soon America will have no original culture left and you'll have to steal ideas from India, so don't blow your wad on frivolous lawsuits. [WSJ; pic via Courant]