• Cop-slugging reporter Alycia Lane sued her former employer, saying the Philly TV station pushed her into an embarassing Dr. Phil interview, as though there is any other kind. [AP]
• Someone wrote an entire song about the night he, then a bartender, punched a rude Russell Crowe in the face. Crowe's flack artfully said Crowe may not "know anything about" the incident, except that it's not true. Convincing. [P6]
• Mike Myers is supposedly some sort of tyrant who demands that Late Night With Conan O'Brien interns fetch him Twizzlers, raspberry seltzer and soy milk. That's a joke, right? You can't be a non-child-star tyrant with that list of demands. [P6]
• Toby Young doesn't think his former Vanity Fair boss Graydon Carter will give any magazine love to Young's Carter-slamming movie. [YoungManhattanite via P6]
• Town & Country magazine just loves this little place in Ireland run by a kiddie porn collector. [P6]
• Britney Spears's 17-year-old sister Jamie-Lynn gave birth to a baby girl, Maddie Briann, not via c-section, in case you were wondering.
• The issue of Vanity Fair with 15-year-old Miley Cyrus' scandalous photo shoot is hot in prisons acorss the country, so Cyrus has been deluged with thousands of, uh, supportive letters. According to HollyScoop, "that's what ya get for posing half naked." Yes, she deserves to be hounded by horny felons. [HollyScoop]
• Katie Holmes sent a $2,000 "congrats-on-getting-knocked-up-ps-help-I'm-being-held-prisoner" gift basket to her husband Tom Cruise's ex-wife, Nicole Kidman. [OK!]

• Republican-leaning movie star Bruce Willis opened a yuppie-friendly wine bar in the East Village, which prompted protests from neighborhood lefties and counterprotests from the Young Republicans. Turns out? He's not a partner in the bar, he just lent his name as a favor. Because, you know, wine, action movie star Bruce Willis — the connection is obvious. Plus he totally made those wine cooler commercials in the 80s. [Observer]
• Premium seats for Broadway's All My Sons will sell for $251, as opposed to the usual $100, because of sudden surge in the popularity of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller. Ha ha, just kidding, it's because the play features Katie Holmes, the middling movie star married to insane cultist Tom Cruise. The market works! [E!]
• The threesome involving Scarlett Johansson, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem takes up less than 20 seconds of Woody Allen's new movie, according to Allen, but the marketing department is going to milk those precious seconds for all they are worth, starting with the poster.
• OMG a fashiongay is going to ruin the Obama campaign! "Some Dems fear that in the months ahead, [Andre Leon] Talley, a huge fan of Oscar de la Renta, will steer Michelle into a Bolero jacket or an outfit even more ill-advised." Yes, a big public fight about which expensive outfits Michelle Obama should wear is just what Barack "Elite" Obama needs right now. [P6]
• Miley Cyrus' dad, country music star Bill Ray Cyrus, revealed that he left the Vanity Fair photo shoot before Annie Leibovitz took the infamous picture of his daughter in a bed sheet. "Stuff happens. That's life... It's not a mistake to me." [Daily Star]
• Here's a picture of Kate Moss flashing her boobs in Turkey and setting back Islamic/Western relations 20 more years. [Sun]
• Ashey Olsen went public with her dalliance with movie star Justin Bartha, then proceeded to get way too cutesy: "Told they had a reserved love seat in the theater, Olsen affectionately rubbed Bartha's back and giggled, 'That sounds good!'" Awww... barf.
• Matthew McConaughey's wife is pregnant, so he went "surfing" in Nicaragua alone, which of course means mostly carousing in bars. He denies hitting on various women, but admits to losing his left flip-flop, and even offers a reward, which is JUST bizarre enough to make you forget about the cheating. Smarter than he looks. [R&M]
• Police have been searching for Sam Israel, a hedge funder they think faked his own suicide just before starting a 20-year-prison sentence. But it turns out he thinks he can time travel, so the Post wonders if he "FLED TO THE PAST?"
• If her friends weren't here, Naomi Campbell would totally stab you! And then come back the next day to apologize! And then try to put the incident behind her! [Showbiz Spy]
• Britney Spears is selling her house, which means the paprazzi will leave and broke neighbor Ed McMahon may finally be able to sell his place. Spears will be destroying property values in Encino next. [E!]

«JeffieJeff» I get tickets to the red carpet, I’m happy. Photos of me and Cruise smiling ends the war. Last thing I will say.
«cockysoldier [the Scientologist]» i hate the fucken war guy
«cockysoldier» take care
«JeffieJeff» Cruise calls - I’ll answer
«cockysoldier» he is starting his cable compnay
«cockysoldier» are you pissed at me

If Cruise were, indeed, starting a cable network, it would most likely be through United Artists, the studio he helps operate and co-owns, along with MGM and Paula Wagner, the former CAA agent who formed a production company with Cruise.

MGM, the biggest owner of United Artists, is, indeed, launching a big cable channel to compete with Showtime. But the official announcement of the deal does lists United Artists as a content supplier, not a full partner. That leaves open the intriguing possibility that Cruise is busy assembling something else on his own, perhaps packed with enthusiastic lectures on the adrenaline rush that comes from rescuing car-accident victims.

More likely, as with the United Artists deal, Cruise has been given a role that plays as much to his vanity as to any legitimate business interest, and he is bragging accordingly.

[Jeff Barea]

• Anne Hathaway made a CD of her own songs for her slimy Italian boyfriend's birthday. "I've done things for him I never thought I could do for anyone." [Showbiz Spy]
• The French guy who climbed the Times building the other day would like a congratulatory handshake from New York's technocrat mayor, never imagining he is a cyborg without a human soul. [Post]
• Boy George will play a free concert in Brooklyn for New York sanitation workers Aug. 17. He did community service with them over five days in 2006 and apparently has kept in touch. [Post]
• Katie Holmes may have to end her Broadway run after three months because she may be pregnant, or about to become pregnant, with Tom Cruise's baby. And you've got to start the auditing early. Like, pre-natal early. [Showbiz Spy]
• So it turns out Tatum O'Neal was drinking an iced, non-alcoholic beverage the other day, not white wine as People.com had it. Called it!
• Everyone's been giving the British police hell for letting basketcase singer Amy Winehouse abuse illegal drugs in front of basically the entire world, but it turns out the bobbies actually had a brilliant strategy: Bide their time, then arrest Winehouse's dealers, surely the richest criminals in the entire country ever. Way to shore up your budget! [Daily Star]
• Winehouse is notorious for missing concert dates, but now she's scheduled to play for an oligarch in Russia for $2 million, and something tells me the Russian oligarchs have ways of making junkie divas keep their appointments. [P6]
• Remember how the Associated Press was going to start collecting "high-quality," journalistically-kosher celebrity dirt? It turns out Hollywood gossip is a bit harder to nail down than AP thought. The news wire must be SHOCKED to learn that sources — like the neighbor who told AP Paul Newman had cancer — change their stories at the drop of a hat.
• Historical figure and LA police beat-down victim Rodney King will appear on Celebrity Rehab. [AP]

A lot of people in the public eye who behave strangely have mental illness we can learn from, and much of it is based on childhood trauma, without a doubt. Take a guy like Tom Cruise. Why would somebody be drawn into a cultish kind of environment like Scientology? To me, that's a function of a very deep emptiness and suggests serious neglect in childhood - maybe some abuse, but mostly neglect.

Cruise's high-powered attorney, Bert Fields, a frequent client of convicted wiretapper and racketeer Anthony Pellicano, called Pinsky an "unqualified television performer who is obviously just looking for notoriety," adding, "The last time we heard garbage like this was from Joseph Goebbels."

Cruise has already spoken on record about his abusive father. Strange, then, that he would snap so viciously over speculation he was neglected.

Perhaps the megastar interprets Pinsky's statements as a slam against his mother, the presumptive neglector. More likely, it was the line about Scientology's "cultish" environment that sent Cruise, a church bigwig, into attack mode.

But a slam this over the top only makes Cruise look more crazy while drawing attention to his own deep involvement with the sect.

[Post]

• Lindsay Lohan's mom Dina faces "immediate arrest and imprisonment" if she doesn't show up in court this morning on charges she gets drunk in front of her kids, 11 and 14, and the she missed 15 of 29 court-ordered visitations, and showed up to one inebriated. Ex-husband Michael Lohan also threw in to the court filing that Dina is sometimes mean to her puppy — putting it in a kennel instead of letting Michael watch it — because he knows that will piss people off more than the child abuse or whatever. [R&M]
• Meanwhile, Lohan is way too classy to be on her mother's reality show, and also too busy flashing her panties at the MTV movie awards in a desperate attempt to look like Marilyn Monroe. Tila Tequila wants Lohan to come out of the closet, because think of the moneymaking opportunities.
• Tom Cruise likes to invite big powerful Hollywood men for a ride in the cockpit of his airplane. But only once they've memorized a sufficient number of homoerotic lines from Top Gun. [TMZ]
• Jennifer Aniston's friend Courteney Cox has a husband who is eight years younger, so Aniston introduced Cox to her new boyfriend, John Mayer, who is nine years younger. In case it wasn't totally obvious she was trying to show off, Aniston also wore one of those tops where you can totally see her boobs.
• Naomi Campbell reminded everyone that if Yves Saint Laurent had not gotten her onto the cover of French Vogue in the 1990s, she couldn't have have squander her massive opportunity to become a role model to girls worldwide. [Showbiz Spy]
• Angelina Jolie comes to the same conclusion as much of the moviegoing public, declaring of husband Brad Pitt: "I don't see him as an actor." [E!]
• Robert Downey Junior refused to post for a picture with Office and Get Smart star Steve Carell: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing, cross-promoting?" [R&M]

• 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]

• Bill Murray's wife wants a divorce and claims the actor is a pot-smoking globe-trotting sex addict who is physically abusive. The Daily News recalls: "At a bash at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Grill in the '90s, we watched as Murray punch-shoved photographer Diane Cohen in the chest."
• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are having a housewarming party at their new Beverly Hills mansion tomorrow, all the other Scientologist living gods are sure to be there.
• In the meantime, Holmes conducted a big business meeting at the Carlyle Hotel in New York, which illustrated that she is "a very strong and determined" actual businesswoman who can do important businesswoman stuff. Evidence: During the meeting, which was related to her coming role in a Broadway play, she listened intently, took notes, and when her phone rang SHE DID NOT ANSWER IT. This is the glory of being a "clear," people. [OK!]
• Amy Winehouse if a filthy drug addict with a disgusting skin condition, so logically men are fighting over her. Fellow druggie musician Pete Doherty wrote to Winehouse's jailed husband, Blake, demanding he divorce Winehouse so Doherty can finally seal his bond of desperation with her. Nelson Mandela is also into Winehouse, but only as a performer at his 90th birthday.
• Remember how Kirsten Dunst said she went to rehab for depression instead of for drugs? Now Steven Tyler of Aerosmith insists he checked into rehab to recover from a foot injury. It's amazing how rehab clinics have diversified these days, now that all the stars are clean. [Us]
• Britney Spears' lawyer argued her health is too "fluid" for the singer to participate in the court case over her posessions, now under the care of her father. This may just be a ploy to ensure visitation with her sons until she stabilizes, since the visitation is better protected when her father is acting as conservator.
• John Mayer, former Perez Hilton make-out partner, gets pretty gushy toward fellow musician Pete Wentz on his blog. "I think the world of you." [Showbiz Spy]
• Recent drunk driver Mischa Barton continues to act erratic, and now her legs look screwy. [Rush & Molloy]
• Charlie Sheen may be on his fourth baby. It's the third mom. [Rush & Molloy]
• Clay Aiken, 29, donated sperm to his record producer, 50, and plans to be "part of the baby's life." [P6]
• Bill Cosby's famous Cosby Show sweaters are being auctioned for charity. [NY Sun]

• Oh, hey, Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg might stop snapping at people long enough to play a thinly-veiled, self-mocking George W. Bush in a Broadway play. [P6]
• Anna Wintour didn't like going to South Beach for a Karl Lagerfeld show because it made her sweaty, displeased and "miserable." Sort of like Carine Roitfeld.
• Rapper MIA is only allowed to remain in the U.S. for a few more weeks, so she's considering marrying Kanye West. It's either that or Montreal. [Oh No They Didn't]
• Nicole Kidman said ex-husband Tom Cruise has turned their kids against her. They didn't even visit on Mother's Day. [Showbiz Spy]
• Wesley Snipes enjoyed his remaining freedom at a party in East Hampton. [Rush & Molloy]
• If you snub Harvard's request for your official archives, the university will get ahold of your unofficial sexytime archives. Norman Mailer's estate learned this the hard way. [P6]
• Jennifer Aniston secretly hooked up with John Mayer three months ago. See? It's totally normal for her to be this affectionate. So she's NOT BEING CLINGY, DAMMIT. [P6]
• Naomi Campbell has to return to the Heathrow police station in London to learn whether she will be formally charged with assaulting a police officer. As though slowly going bald wasn't punishment enough.
• One reason you shouldn't attack paparazzi, even if you're insane, basketcase singer Amy Winehouse: They will then publish awful, awful pictures of your "ravaged... heavily scabbed" skin.

• OMG smoking gun: Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are hugging and holding hands and putting their faces close together and everything! It's nearly almost practically lesbian kissing, and thus proof that they are girlfriends in that way. [Egotastic] (Photo via Egotastic)
• Yesterday it was reported that singer Amy Winehouse "fled her home, claiming ghosts were trying to harm her." Today the ghosts kept her from showing up on time to accept a prestigious songwriting award for her tune "Love Is A Losing Game." Wait, I think I know this ghost — kind of smoky, likes to hang around glass?
• Hooker-loving actor Charlie Sheen is — go figure! — having a very nasty divorce from Denise Richards, and yesterday he and his friends spread word about the $52,000 per month in tax-free child support Richards gets from Sheen, plus a disputed email in which she asked for access to Sheen's sperm. Today Richards fired back with a purported text message from Sheen: "I hope you and your worthless retarded father get cancer and join your stupid mom. Rot in hell you [bleeping] whore." [P6]
• Tom Cruise had his lawyers threaten a baby boutique owner for supposedly leaking to the press false info that Cruise and wife Katie Holmes spent upwards of $350,000 on baby clothes for Suri in just two years. That money was specifically earmarked for stuck-thetan dry cleaning, and Cruise has the receipts to prove it! [TMZ]
• Can Miley Cyrus ever say no when asked to pose for racy photos? This time it was fellow teen star Nick Jonas who did the asking, and Annie Leibovitz hadn't even put her under hypnosis yet. [Oceanup]
• The woman who voices Lisa Simpson filed for divorce from her husband. E! Online wrote that the divorce came "despite having all the answers on The Simpsons," while TMZ decided to go with "Lisa Has A Cow."

A spokeswoman for the force said today: "City of London police had received complaints about demonstrators using the words 'cult' and 'Scientology kills' during protests against the Church of Scientology.

"Following advice from the Crown Prosecution Service some demonstrators were warned verbally and in writing that their signs breached section five of the Public Order Act.

Civil rights groups are justifiably outraged. But it turns out the London police have a history of supporting the wacky church:

The City of London police came under fire two years ago when it emerged that more than 20 officers, ranging from constable to chief superintendent, had accepted gifts worth thousands of pounds from the Church of Scientology.

The City of London Chief Superintendent, Kevin Hurley, praised Scientology for "raising the spiritual wealth of society" during the opening
of its headquarters in 2006.

Last year a video praising Scientology emerged featuring Ken Stewart, another of the City of London's chief superintendents, although he is not a member of the group.

[Guardian UK]

Formerly in the Anonymous vs. Scientology battle: Protests, Video attacks, and the church's counterattack.

• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are supposedly in the market for another screamless Scientology birth. [E!]
• Paris Hilton isn't engaged to singer Benji Madden, she's just wearing those two diamond bands on her ring finger in an effort to look extremely desperate. She also claimed, "I cook great lasagna," which pesumably involves toggling between 30, 50 and 100 percent power on the microwave when the Stouffer's is in there. [People]
• Liv Tyler is separating from her husband Royston Langdon, a British musician. [People]
• Defeated American Idol contestant Jason Castro on forgetting lyrics on camera: "I definitely did not do that on purpose." [ET]
• Ashlee Simpson calls fellow singer Britney Spears a "trashy girl" on an excruciating celebrity talk show improbably run by Nokia. Also, apparently a "Britney Spears" is code for "a beer" in some parts of the world. [Sun]
• That painting of actor Heath Ledger, for which he posed just prior to his death, won the people's choice award at the Archibald Prize Exhibition in Australia, where the painter lives. [People]

• Instead of viciously beating people with her cellphone, supermodel Naomi Campbell tried bringing tea and coffee to assistants on the TV show Ugly Betty. Ten bucks says the coffee and tea had, in turn, been bought by Campbell's own assistant, and that Campbell hasn't been into a Starbucks since 1998. I hope someone demanded her drink be brought back with nonfat milk at exactly 195 degrees. [News Of The World]
• Miley Cyrus after some kind of Disney concert in Orlando: "I hope you had an awesome time. I saw a sign back there that said: 'Miley, I'm praying for you.' I could not be more appreciative. Thank you guys for all your support. Without you, none of this would be possible. I love every one of you and I could not be more appreciative. God bless you." I think she could be more appreciative. [Sun]
• Victoria Beckham and husband David were looking forward to a quiet trip to Napa Valley via Tom Cruise's empty-and-waiting private jet. Turns out Cruise, his wife and four Hollywood pals were waiting on the plane to surprise them. See, for Scientologists, the line between "surprise party" and "awful kidnapping" does not exist. [Showbiz Spy]
• Singer Winona Ryder apparently still allowed to shop. [Popsugar]
• Lindsay Lohan is going on Ugly Betty. [People]
• Amy Winehouse, who is Jewish, is wearing rosary beads to support her jailed husband. Further destroying the Catholic church is just a nice side effect. [Oh No They Didn't]
• I can't muster much outrage, but the British tabs sure can: "POP mogul Simon Cowell has been allowed to park his Rolls-Royce wherever he likes — a privilege usually reserved for the QUEEN." [Sun]
• In the wake of testimony against her alleged stalker, Uma Thurman went brunette. This information would be of use pretty much only to... stalkers. [P6]

ON BUYING A SONOGRAM MACHINE FOR HOLMES DURING HER PREGNANCY

Cruise says he and Holmes took great pains to keep her pregnancy private. "We went in the middle of the night, and we were very excited — this is such a private moment," he says.

"My life was already a zoo," he says. When news leaked, "it was off the charts."

As for purchasing a sonogram machine for Holmes, Cruise explains, "When you're having a baby, you just want it to be as safe and as easy as possible."

ON DAUGHTER SURI

"She's spectacular," he says. "She really is just magic."

His two children with ex Nicole Kidman, Connor and Isabella, "were really excited."

• Tom Cruise sent wife Katie Holmes to a three-day Scientology boot camp at "Gold Base" to prevent her from working on her Broadway play in New York without him, said Star magazine.
• Paris Hilton looks frighteningly skinny in this picture. [Sun]
• Miley Cyrus "skipped" a Disney event in Orlando, Florida, which would have been her first public outing since her racy Vanity Fair shoot. [LA Times]
• Druggy singer Pete Doherty is the guy who managed to shoot up not just in jail but in the detox unit of the jail. So the Brits decided to just let him go, one month into a three month sentence. [Sun]
• Former child star Gary Coleman went on Divorce Court with his 22-year-old wife Shannon Price. Coleman failed to support Price in a fight with a stranger about when the world was ending. [DListed]
• Jason Biggs from American Pie married actress Jenny Mollen in a private ceremony last week. [People]
• When singer Lou Reed and performance artist Laurie Anderson got married, they paid $10 to be wed in the "Boulder Mountain marriage license office." [Gigwise]
• Dennis Rodman, the former basketball star, was arrested for hitting a woman in a hotel. [Enquirer]
• Singer Usher denied rumors he wanted to auction pictures of his baby son. [P6]

You could check the recently leaked "bibles" of the Church—we don't have time to go through all 600 pages of drug-addled scifi nonsense. But we do know that "people" are not "people," but rather immortal alien spirits called thetans who will indeed live on well after the dead of their shell bodies, so a Scientologist doesn't need to worry about nonsense like cancer. Which could be why they never bothered to remove it from their fancy ship! The Level 8 Operating Thetans on board will live forever anyway.

Of course, without the training courses for OTs available only on the Freewinds, it'll be much harder for celebrities like Cruise and Jenna Elfman to achieve Cleared Theta Clear level, the point at which they become gods capable of creating their own universes.

Scientology Yacht Sealed and Docked in Curacao [IReport]

One of YouTube's selling points is the ability to embed its videos on other pages. This allows free discussion of those videos, just like excerpting an image or text. But the Church turned off embedding in their clips. In fact, you can't link to just one video by clicking from the Church's official channel. You have to search for their videos.

Then you can find this creepy clip of a ceremony celebrating the Church's "International Way To Happiness Foundation." A South African dignitary thanks the Church (or more precisely, a supposedly secular wing of the Church) for starting a program in his country's prisons. An Israeli publisher thanks the Church for healing the Middle East, as does a Palestinian education official.

In another video, a narrator explains how you are a thetan, not a body or mind. Another clip introduces the auditing process. In that clip, it sounds weirdly like the therapeutic process in the psychiatric field that Scientologists like Tom Cruise have publicly denounced.

But most of the clips are innocent slideshows with a narrator gently listing beliefs that would fit with mainstream Christianity. Every clip has a cheesy grocery-store soundtrack. The net effect is to make the Church look like another dull religion or self-help class and not, as some critics label it, a murderous cult.

Either way, because the Church disabled the option to embed their videos, I can't show you the clips here but can only link to them. I've downloaded some copies, but uploading them here might violate copyright law as long as there's another copy on the Church's channel.

The Church paid for its special channel. Anyone can disable embeds, but a specially formatted user page doesn't come free. YouTube helped the Church integrate its custom menu into the channel, though of course it didn't create any of the content. Nor did YouTube endorse the Church or give it control over other users' videos, and all such accusations I saw provided no evidence.

But I'm baffled why the Church, after putting together such a friendly little propaganda channel, not only disabled all comments (a reasonable way to avoid actually diving into two-way conversation) but disabled embedding and turned its channel into a tidy menu. That guarantees that hardly anyone will stumble onto the videos. I guess the rest of the world should be glad that the Church doesn't get the Internet.

What may piss off some viewers is that the Church is advertising their channel all over YouTube. This might explain the no-embed rule; the Church is specifically targeting YouTube users, not the Internet at large, though I see no reason to specifically hide from everyone outside of the video site. But one user was creeped out by Church ads appearing on popular channels like Smosh, Awkward Pictures, and Playboy, even though any creator can ask YouTube to keep certain advertisers off its page. Guess everyone just needed the money. At least I can still show you the anti-Church videos.

• Carrie Fisher so totally did have take a ride in Harrison Ford's Millennium Falcon during the filming of the Star Wars movies. Fisher: "Once I left the room and came back and he was in the closet not wearing a lot of clothes." The Sun headlined their story, "Carrie: I gave Ford Obi-Wan." [Sun]
• Uma Thurman's stalker, a sometime mental patient, once wrote the actress, "My hands should be on your body at all times." Also: "Butter... chocolate... mouth... twitch... seduce." The stalker fixated on Thurman after elderly film star Carol Channing "broke my heart in the early nineties." Thurman took up "stress smoking" amid the stalking, her dresser said in court. Thurman is expected to testify as early as today. [Post]
• Lauren Conrad of the Hills is dating a 22-year-old minor-league baseball player named Doug Reinhardt, whose sister Carey appeared on Laguna Beach with Conrad in season two. TV host Ryan Seacrest finds him boring. [OhNoTheyDidn't]
• Mel Gibson gets to act in a movie again, for the first time since yelling at police about Jews while drunk. He'll play a heroic police investigator. Who uncovers a conspiracy to fleece society by a conniving, powerful elite. Good to see he's moved on. [Reuters]
• Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer didn't just have dessert after lunch. They had "dessert" after lunch. [Sun]
• Basketcase singer Amy Winehouse might get to sing the theme song for an upcoming James Bond movie. [LAT]
• Singer Britney Spears' perfume took in $84 million last year, because crazy smells delicious. [E!]
• Spears is going to be on that one show again. [Sun]

In the show, to be seen on U.S. television next month, she spoke of Cruise, now 45, as an awkward young man who was struggling to adjust to his new life.

"He was shy," she said. "He said he felt like such a boob in school and nobody talked to him. We went on a date once for dinner in a New York restaurant and the waitress was from his old school.

"He told me she never talked to him back in school, but now he was recognised he got all her attention.

...As she recounted her time with the actor, the audience burst into a frenzy of cheering and whooping, especially when she spoke of one particularly "long night" in his arms.

[Daily Mail]

• Amy Winehouse went on a rampage of terror last week, headbutting and punching people, getting high in the street and stiffing her cabbie. But the addict/singer also made out with some random guy, and maybe that's why she now has a new man named Alex Haynes, who works for Winehouse's manager, and doesn't look nearly fierce enough to handle his insane new girlfriend. Winehouse's mom thinks he's great because Haynes is always "popping out to buy cigarettes, papers, anything she wanted." Other people point out that buying whatever Winehouse wants is maybe not in the singer's best interest.
• Prior to Haynes, Winehouse had a thing with a photographer named Blake. Not the Blake who is her incarcerated husband, obviously. [ShowbizSpy]
• Oprah's new interview with Tom Cruise will indeed include questions about Scientology and that time he jumped on her couch. See, Oprah's not afraid to be hard hitting. That's why she also took a ride on Cruise's snowmobile. [ET]
• Paris Hilton's boyfriend Benji Madden drove over a paparazzo's foot while pulling away from a West Hollywood nightclub with Hilton in the passenger seat. The socialite and musician are accused of a hit-and-run and police are investigating the incident. [Sun]
• Actress Jennifer Anniston met singer John Mayer for a late lunch. WITH DESSERT. This changes everything. [OK!]

• Tom Cruise will appear on Oprah Winfrey's show who for the first time since his couch-jumping insanity the last time he was on the daytime talk program. The twitchy Scientologist will be on the show twice, once May 2nd from home and then May 5th in Oprah's usual studio. The visit coincides with the 25th anniversary of his movie Risky Business. [AP]
• After going on Oprah, Cruise will smother Katie Holmes by following her to New York for six months. Or they were never going to get separated in the first place and the tabloids are looking for a storyline that prevents Cruise's presence from proving them wrong. Either way. [OK!]
• Birthday party for Cruise and Holmes' two-year-old: $100,000. Flowers alone cost $17,000. Plus the stress tests and thetan cleansing were probably also in the five-figure range. [LA Rag Mag]
• Donald Trump "was big on the idea" of having OJ Simpson on his Celebrity Apprentice show "for a few minutes" until NBC executives nixed the idea. That's kind of the opposite of what happened to Norm MacDonald, if I recall correctly. [P6]
• Police incorrectly answered a question from Uma Thurman's stalker about whether he was allowed to have a lawyer present, so now they have to throw out his confession. Wait, you can "confess" to stalking? Well, why not. [P6]
• The solution to Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson's many emotional problems? A child, of course. Owen's idea. [Star]
• Cynthia Nixon is getting married to her partner. [JJ's Dirt]
• Someone invited Jerry Springer to give the commencement address at Northwestern's law school, so of course the students are up in arms. But is the best response they can come up with really just to shout "You suck?" [P6]
• Laugh all you want at Amy Winehouse, she's worth $20 million, according to the Sunday Times. [Showbiz Spy]