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

• Pregnant rapper M. I. A. did such a good job at the Grammys that Oscars show producers say they're desperate to book the overdue fresh-minted mom to perform "O Saya" from the excellent Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. "We are happy to bring some sort of fabulous bed on stage if that means M.I.A. can be there." (UPDATE: Oh right, she finally had the kid. Sorry for calling you "twisted," Oscars producers!)
• To protect his reputation, Michael Phelps is hanging out in strip clubs. He figures no one can take his picture there. [Page Six]
• Justin Timberlake didn't literally beat away the models with a stick at Fashion Week, but it sounds like it almost came to that. Apparently it wasn't enough that he was making out furiously with Jessica Biel. Models can be dense. [Gatecrasher]
• Angelina Jolie might move to Manhattan. She was looking at a place in Washington Heights. They might already be remodeling the building for her. [Us]
• Jennifer Aniston might run into Jolie at the Oscars. Scientists have various theories on what will happen in the collision, and warn there's no way of knowing anything for certain in advance of the actual event. Goggles, as always, are recommended for onlookers. [OK!]
• Sarah Jessica Parker thinks the next Sex And The City movie will need to be "recession-friendly." Which sounds so implausible it gives us hope the recession might finally kill off the franchise, forever. [Us]
• MC Hammer finally got his own reality show, focusing on his life as a "new-age dad" in Oakland. A&E picked it up. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Guy Ritchie is pissed because he has to re-shoot various Sherlock Holmes scenes, because he was distracted by his divorce from Madonna. As though we all weren't distracted by his divorce from Madonna. [Sun]
• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are suddenly not going to the Oscars, for some reason. Maybe so they can get some press when they do go to the Oscars. [OK!]

• Or at least he was over Christmas, when he was only allowed to send a brief text message to his worried parents. At 50 years old, the man's grandmother is younger than the witch Madonna, who has at press time taken the form of a heap of sand and chicken bones that lurches across the plains. We'll keep you notified if any more children go missing or if, God forbid, she takes her Shadow form and can therefore easily enter any home, at any time. [NYP]
• Lindsay Lohan and her wife of 29 years Samantha Ronson got in a spat on a New York street as they returned to their hotel last night. "Samantha Judith Ronson, why are you doing this to me?" Lindsay called after her lover, who was stomping back to the Bowery Hotel in stony silence. When they got back to their room, Samantha was moodily flipping through the channels and Lindsay said "well fine then." In the car ride back home Lindsay said only one thing: "You missed the exit, Sam." Samantha cursed loudly and hit the steering wheel. Once they'd finally made it home and were sitting eating a painful, silent dinner at the dining room table—do they really need this big table now that the kids are gone?—Lindsay whimpered a bit and said "I just wanted it to be a nice vacation." Samantha nodded her head and said, "I know. I know. I'm sorry." And they went to bed and when they woke up, it was a new day and there were new things to be done. [NYP]
• Ageless actress Ellen Barkin is filming a TV pilot for HBO in which a sassy blond lady divorces a high-powered asshole. So it's basically her Ron Perelman story. In the TV show, Ron dies in the first episode. [Rush & Malloy]
• Rapper M.I.A. has given birth to a baby boy. Insiders at the hospital say that it's kind of strange looking at first but then you see all the crazy eccentricities in him and you start to like him and then you can't get him out of your head and you think he's maybe talking about like immigration or refugees or something? But you can't really tell. After a while, though, you just want him to go away. [Us]
• Now that she's all famous, Slumdog Millionaire actress Freida Pinto has dumped her boyfriend of four years. Citing irreconcilable loserdom, Pinto told courts "he just doesn't get it, you know?" The boyfriend, Rohan Antao, was reportedly last seen at a sports bar, pointing to the TV when an ad for the film came on and glumly saying to the bartender "Yeah, her. No man, I swear." [Showbiz Spy]

The Grammy Awards performance gave the New York Times a news hook on which to hang the issue. The paper noted that the tiger icon featured in the video for M.I.A.'s 2007 hit "Bird Flu" bears a striking resemblance to the logo for Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, described by the FBI as "among the most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world," pioneering suicide bombing techniques and killing world leaders. You can compare the logo above, from the video, with the group's logo below.

The paper also quoted Sri Lankans who say M.I.A., whatever her artistic merits, glorifies the Tigers. Her father is a leader in the Tamil separatist movement.

The thing is, M.I.A. is far from the first rapper to toy with paramilitary or violent imagery. Public Enemy had the Uzi-toting S1Ws; N.W.A.'s first mass album cover had a member of the rap group pointing a gun at the camera; Ice Cube dabbled in the Nation of Islam, incorporating some themes into his music; MC Ren did a song about ethnic cleansing in America. The cartoonish extremism mainly served to help make the music appealing to suburban white kids, but, as the cliche goes, that was before 9/11.

With terrorism perceived as a bigger threat these days, M.I.A.'s music will draw harsher scrutiny. But it will be hard to take her too seriously as a terror apologist now that she's marrying into a very rich family and is cashing big corporate checks from MTV and her record company.

(Below, find a critical cover of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" by Sinhalese rapper DeLon.)

In fact, we can confidently say the singer turned in the best-ever performance by a nine-months-pregnant artist waddling around stage in a bumble bee costume. You try doing that next to Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil' Wayne and TI.

MIA's off-stage outfit also got good reviews. Complaining about too many "tasteful gowns" at the awards ceremony, the LA Times' Monica Corcoran wrote approvingly that MIA "looked like a rock 'n' roll mother-to-be instead of a mother-of-the-bride."

Another key moment: Jennifer Hudson accepting the prize for best R&B album and thanking her "family in heaven."

It's all in the clip above.

Full list of winners

"They say that you're often late the first time, so I'm planning to go," she tells USA Today.

So, good for her? She's already lectured us about how she's going to have a natural birth, like a poor person. So I guess if she just goes into labor right there on stage that would sorta be like a natural birth. Sheryl Crow could be the midwife or something.

Just don't write some headline like "Musician's Baby Drops at Awards Show." She doesn't like the M word: "I still never say I'm a musician - I'm an artist. You're an artist first; the medium is second."

Noted!

Most recently the Sri Lankan-born, Brooklyn-dwelling, Bronfman-marrying musician was interviewed by Touré for The Daily Beast. And she started off laudably, bringing attention to the struggles in her home country and whatnot. But then, as always, the conversation devolves into a series of her trying to reaffirm to us—clinging Eminem style to an old and fading life—that she's entirely keepin' it real.

She says about the gunshots in her big, big hit "Paper Planes":

If you’re an immigrant you left somewhere and most of the time you fled a war. Gun sounds are a part of our culture as an everyday thing. If you’ve been exposed to gunfights and violence and bombs and war then I can use those sounds backing my thoughts, ya know? Look, I’ve been shot at so I’m quite comfortable with gunshot sounds.

Which, OK, fine. First off she must be utterly exhausted with that question, as scared and reverent reporters want to feel a little dangerous enjoying a song with such violent sounds in it. But maybe she should just stop answering it. Because every time she does, it just comes off a bit like she's boasting about some pretty horrible things which have nothing to do with her present life.

Also, she's so tough that she's just having a midwife-assisted, natural water birth. And she'd like to give you a small lecture about it:

You gotta embrace the pain, embrace the struggle. And my giving birth struggle is nothing when I think about all the people in Sri Lanka that have to give birth in a concentration camp as we speak, with no food and shelter and blankets and medicine and clean anything. I think I’m in a bit of a luxury situation. I have a midwife and I have my man. That’s kind of enough to get through.

All right, all right. We get it. Would you like some cave-aged Gruyere with that?

No best new artist for Leona Lewis; Metallica wasn't robbed but will probably feel so with a mere three lesser nominations; Katy Perry got no top category nods despite a huge hit in "I Kissed a Girl."

Apply for your visas NOW, people! And also delay going to rehab, and also avoiding getting arrested for being high out of your mind. Because then you might not get to come to the big party and get high out of your mind!

Full list of nominations

It's kinetic as ever and, unlike when her song "Paper Planes" was featured in Pineapple Express ads, the tales she spins of third-world ghetto kids actually make sense within the context. To the extent that Slumdog feels like it's a different view of the Bombay slums, M.I.A.'s music throughout the film deserves plenty of the credit. "If I was painting a picture of that part of the world, it’s not that I’d make it more glum, but I would try not to involve all the positive stuff from it, like the singing and dancing and easy stuff," she tells the LAT's Pop & Hiss blog. "I think we’re already used to that, and comfortable with that part."

Those Pineapple television spots made M.I.A. a star (not unlike Feist's iPod Nano ads), but when the visuals match the aurals, you can get a better sense of her lyrics and beats and crazy sounds and all that good stuff that almost makes us forget about her cave-aged Gruyère needs. Almost.

When it comes to her inner turmoil between her anti-establishment roots and the decadent wealth of her her new in-laws-to-be, M.I.A. explains how exactly she reconciles the two: "I've always had that [bleep]-the-system mentality, and his dad is so 'the system.' But then, they're the most liberal family - they bootlegged alcohol, for God's sake. They're rich because they threw big, illegal parties, so I don't mind."

She's referring, of course, to the Bronfman's old old family business, liquor company Seagram. So basically the system is awesome when it's netting her $100,000 to play MTV after parties, but otherwise, she's still an iconoclast. Oy. We love the music, but does she know she's making herself harder to like?

[via Smoking Gun]

Nothing will ever top the epic Foo Fighters tour rider from May of this year, but we are somewhat amused by Rihanna's preferences. Hey, when you know what you want, you know what you want.

From the list of what should appear in her dressing room:

How many times do we have to tell you: FLIP TOP.

Apparently they've dealt with some very unsatisfactory square mirrors in the past:

The Smoking Gun also has tour riders from M.I.A. and Daughtry, among others.

[Smoking Gun]

The visual artist and musician tells her friend Wiley that, "Manhattan seems pretty developed, you know what I mean? Like it has peaked in culture. The Village Voice called it McHattan. It's just become impossible for young, creative artists to live in New York." Should she finish that sentence with "and afford to buy my concert tickets?"

Considering the rising hype from this cultural wasteland is what brought the multi-talented musician and artist to prominence in the first place, her subsequent crack that she detects an overwhelming "feeling of entitlement" from the city's denizens is bound to turn off some of her unemployed, struggling supporters.

She recalls attending a recent event at the MoMA:

I performed at a show at the MoMA. There was this big dinner there, and I was seated in this hall with the mayor of New York and all these extremely wealthy art-supporting and art-buying people. There was a piece of work hanging in the hall—it was a fan. This fan was supposed to swing by the momentum of its own propeller. So, while we were having dinner, the fan was stopped, and the guy next to me, a curator at P.S.1, said, "Look, this is what art symbolizes today." Like, that piece of art is supposed to be moving, but just to have dinner we've stopped the art. That's what New York is like today. You can't have real art happen in an institution because rich people can make the world stop.

The conversation drifts towards the subject of authenticity.

That's what I miss, being a real human. Like, I'm just so grateful for the 10 years that I had in Sri Lanka when it was in the middle of a war and I was getting shot at, because now and again I remember glimpses of those times and I just go, "Wow, I'll never, ever see that again in my life. And I'm never gonna feel that, and I'm never gonna feel for a human being like that."

While the pregnant M.I.A. can afford to slam the urban hipster segment of her fanbase, that still doesn't explain why she wants to raise her kid here.

(Warning: I would say this story signifies Nothing, but it probably signifies Nothing-1!)

Once upon the early aughts I lived in Philadelphia with two other soon to-to-be bloggers and a sad young literary journal editor.* When we lived in Philadelphia we were gainfully employed but also bored, so we — well, chiefly Pressler, who had a "gossip" column in the local alternative newsweekly, but also the other three of us, who committed various acts of "journalism" — unconsciously went to work constructing our own memory palace of microcelebrities, proving that a microcelebrity economy can exist even in a city with a crippling five percent wage tax and a severe (SEVEEERE) case of "brain drain"! The key was simply to 1. Zero in on someone trying to get attention and 2. Write about them in such a way that captures/wryly acknowledges/satirizes the absurdity of their endeavor to get your attention. Among them were:

1. A party promoter who was sort of like our Julia Allison named Rachel Furman. Pressler liked to call her "Hotel heiress Rachel Furman" but she eventually started a business not promoting parties but just showing up to them and the business, and eventually she, were called "Rachel Inc."
2. Restaurateur Stephen Starr, who owned all the restaurants in town and dated a much younger woman named January, and another restaurateur Neil Stein, who was a huge cokehead and pillhead and owned nothing but he used to write Pressler from prison, where he had to go on charges of tax evasion and being a big pillhead I think. I believe we pretended they had a "feud" although Neil Stein was too much of a drug addict to really feud with people and Stephen Starr's actual feud was with Jeffrey Chodorow, but Chodorow did not live in Philadelphia so we acted like he did not exist, even though he was actually important.
3. A crew of ambitious publicists who traveled in packs, stole one anothers' clients and marketed themselves by dressing like Julia Allison and sending out Christmas cards with pictures of themselves in Sex & The City poses. At the time we thought they were kind of pathetically trashy but at that time The Hills did not exist, much less The Real Housewives of New York. They all feuded all the time! Then we found out one of them was bisexual and had an "open relationship" with her husband and that was fun too.
4. And speaking of Christmas cards: a prodigiously obnoxious "blueberry heir" named Anthony DiMeo who became a sort of John Fitzgerald Page-cum-Tucker Max sort of character for us. Girls in his apartment building emailed us constantly to attest to his terrible woeful obnoxiousness. Pressler scanned his Christmas card for one of her columns, and DiMeo sued her. Fun times!
5. Gervase. Of Survivor I fame. (Obviously!)
6. A state senator named Vince Fumo who supposedly bought fake tits for his bartender girlfriend and had really amazing hair transplants.
7. An assortment of deejays, because hipsters were very important back then, the most — oh who am I kidding with the "most" -0 notable of whom was Diplo.*

See, it was not too unlike Gawker! Except we sort of hated Gawker in those days, because we read it and assumed the people it covered were somehow less pathetic and more special than the people we covered, which was actually not true. (Also this guy named A.J. who was from Philly but living the awesome New York used to try and get us to move because Philly was so pathetic.) But somehow Jessica convinced everyone that Philadelphia was the "Sixth Borough" and around that time Gawker even noticed us! Then somehow Doree and I ended up working here and Jessica meanwhile got a job working with former Gawker editor Jessica Coen at New York's Daily Intel. And A.J. — following a stint back in Philadelphia! — is also working for Gawker Media. And last I heard:

1. Rachel Furman had some sort of existential crisis wherein she went off the internet and drove cross country to get a nose job.
2. Stephen Starr owns a bunch of restaurants in New York now and he no longer returns our flirtatious text messages.
3. One of those publicist girls told everyone she was a millionaire.
4. Some guys made the TV show we always wished we had made about the whole scene but, who are we kidding, we don't know how to do that.
5. Diplo stopped dating M.I.A. and is still nowhere near as annoying as any of the Misshapes!
6. Vince Fumo was charged in a 139-count, 267-page corruption indictment. (I guess we could have paid attention to that!)
7. Anthony DiMeo sued Tucker Max.***

Anyway, today the same shit keeps happening with a whole new cast of new people! Every time we sit down to devote ourselves to trying to write something a little more pointful, it's…Mary Rambin! Raffaelo Follieri! Tao Lin! Jared Paul St…ill?! See, but it never lets up! Eventually "our Gessen" — he lives here now too! — wrote a highly thoughtful think piece on the subject for the Times Magazine. Perhaps we might direct you to the line:

This seems to spring from something ugly — a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that’s a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There’s a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well.

And trust us, "out there" does not only mean New York. It is like Staphylococcus Aureus…it's actually everywhere, but it's not going to emerge as the bombastic plague of pointlessness until you start cultivating it in the ego-advancing agar of your wholly unwarranted attention!! (It's the microbiology of microcelebrity, doncha know!) (I know! It doesn't ever stop though.) And to that end I will leave you with two quotes from a seventeenth century philosopher I learned about from this N+1 guy:

If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.

It's universal! But… this

To establish oneself in the world, one has to do all one can to appear established.

So what are you waiting for? Go forth and establish! Perhaps I can interest you in Tumbling your endeavors? We'll be most gracious followers.

*One was former Gawker editor Doree Shafrir, another was New York magazine Daily Intel blogger Jessica Pressler, and the literary journal editor — "our Gessen," as Doree calls him fondly — was a guy named Matt "Mattathias" Schwartz. (Everyone was intimidated/repelled by Schwartz's highminded seriousness at first! But I ended up dating him and he turned out to be high-mindedly serious in a good way.
**Philadelphia deejays have a long history of local prominence: we often found ourselves writing about the antics of this one, who is now 67 years old.
***Though alas, Tucker Max won the great douche-off.

Bonfire of Inanities [Eye Weekly]

• Alec Baldwin lashes out at the family court system in his book, not his ex-wife Kim Basinger. He takes care of her at live party appearances: "My ex-wife reaches an almost sexual level of satisfaction when she's in a room full of high-priced lawyers." [Showbiz Spy]
• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had their big house-de-thetaning party in Beverly Hills, and a helicopter or tree-climber showed up to take pictures. In the first shot, you can see Cruise trying to crash the photographer with his Scientology mind powers. Guests included Victoria Beckham, whose terrified husband stayed home so he couldn't be kidnapped again; Oprah Winfrey, who brought her very close personal friend Gail King; Jennifer Lopez, who likely left the babies at home with their security detail; Tobey Maguire; and fellow crazy Scientologists Kimora Lee and Kirstie Alley.
• Leven Rambin: "I have come to an understanding that soap fans are unlike any other; dedicated, passionate, and loving." Actually, all fans are dedicated, passionate and loving. That's the definition of "fan." [Oh No They Didn't]
• John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston continue to hang out. [Faded Youth]
• Diddy and Cameron Diaz held hands. She said he "must" try her "bread pudding," and spoon fed it to him. Then they snuck off into Prince's basement together. They're of course "just friends." [Rush & Molloy]
• Wesley Snipes is confident he isn't going to jail for the tax evasion thing. He is out on bail and plans an appeal. [P6]
• Sulu from Star Trek getting married to his gay partner, has a sense of humor: "He got down on one knee. I said, ‘What are you doing down there?'" [R&M]
• About one-third of Kurt Cobain's ashes were stolen from wife Courtney Love, who kept them in "a pink teddy-bear-shaped bag" that she used to take "everywhere." She said she was suicidal. [News of the World]
• Rapper M.I.A., who was going to have to leave the country, is marrying a media mogul's son right before her work papers expire. So if they catch her at the border, she really will have visas in her name. [Oh No They Didn't]
• Charlie Sheen has remarried, which means he has a new person to apologize to. [Hollyscoop]
• Hugh Grant, the film star once busted for prostitution, was very interested in taking home a "leggy brunette" from a club until he realized photographers were present. [Showbiz Spy]
• Angelina Jolie keeps guns at home, knows how to use them. [Showbiz Spy]
• Awkward: Harrison Ford had to explicitly deny widespread rumors that he will finally marry Calista Flockhart. [Showbiz Spy]