• By pursuing a libel case agains the National Enquirer in UK courts, Britney Spears wins over the tab's claim that she and Kevin Federline are splitting. The British and Irish editions will print a rare apology, which is all fine and good — but why the hell hasn't she sued Bazaar over that frightening cover shoot? [R&M (last item)]
• Aspiring pop singer and experienced Lolita Diana Bianchi can't carry a tune. God thing she still has a future serving as some sort of twat. [Lowdown]
• Justin Timberlake tries to convince the world he's not a pussy by proclaiming that he's "done way too many drugs." [Spin]
• Film critic Joel Siegel walks out of a screening of Clerks II, deeming it smut. The scene that set him off involved a discussion of a woman performing sexual acts on a donkey, which obviously brings up a lot of painful memories for Siegel. [Page Six]
• E! censors Voice gossip Michael Musto when he appears on The Simple Life to interview Paris Hilton. The offending phrase: "Are you a fag hag?" Apparently network execs didn't want anyone to even raise the issue of Hilton's hagginess. [Page Six]
• John Cusack scores a restraining order against his stalker who, we'll have you know, does not appear to have used the Stalker Map to harm Lloyd Dobler. [Reuters]

For those of you who gazed in horror upon the gum-snapping octopod on Dateline NBC that appeared to have devoured Britney Spears, your fears/hopes are unfounded: According to her upcoming Harper's Bazaar interview (the one in which she continues her ongoing campaign to lead a normal life out of the eye of the press by posing naked and pregnant on the cover), Spears says she can hardly wait to regain her taut, serpent-charming midriff and go back on tour:

NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove found himself in the middle of a highly amusing feud between rival publicists after he passed along a "leaked" e-mail to Britney Spears' manager (amazingly enough, it seems she has someone on staff to advise her, "Just stay home, get fat, and squeeze out a couple of rugrats with that deadbeat husband of yours, kid. People will still love you when you're ready to tour again in ten years!") aimed at poaching the embattled baby-fumbler from Leslie Sloane Zelnick, her heroic PR enforcer. Hilarity, as they say, ensues:

• Despite her sharply protruding breastplate, Keira Knightley is not anorexic. She's not eating, per se, but that's a minor detail. Just because you drink water and eat iceberg lettuce until your thighs are as thin as your finger does not mean you're anorexic. Now go focus on Kate Bosworth or something. [People]
• Not even the Gays will shell out $800 to see Barbra Streisand emote; promoters face losing some astronomical amount like $15 million. If Jersey ever reopens, look for for Babs at the Borgata. [Page Six]
• 5WPR — yes, the house of Ronn [sic] Torrossian — tries to steal Britney Spears away from Leslie Sloane Zelnik, who's been getting a little lazy on managing the gum-snapping wonder. Don't try to digest this one: only Torrossian can understand why someone would want the Spears account. [Lowdown]
• Don't you dare think Star Jones drives a Honda. [TMZ]
• Kathy Hilton mistakes Bryant Gumbel for Al Reynolds. Write your own "they all look the same" joke here. Bonus point for insinuating Gumbel's a switch-hitter. [Page Six]
• Meg Ryan takes her fake lips and fake Maddox to Chappaquiddick. [R&M]

• Star fucking Jones, what are we going to do with you? She's forced off The View, then does a surprise, on-air resignation, then tells People magazine that she was betrayed. Barbara Walters locks her out, and now we're subjected to an endless round of interviews featuring Jones passive-aggressively reflecting on the whole thing. And scene.
• Oh, you best believe Radar is alive and kicking and hiring. Lots of hiring.
• Harper's Bazaar allows Britney Spears to take her clothes off; to make matters worse, the mag forces her nudie pics upon our innocent eyes.
• LA Weekly scribe Nikki Finke is SO NOT INSANE.
• Stephen Colbert and Chris Matthews share their intensely physical manlove with the world.
• It's Devil Wears Prada madness; Anna Wintour will be played by Victoria Principal.
• The Bonnie Fuller backlash never goes out of style.
• Here's the thing with our boy Anderson Cooper: everyone loves him. And yet nobody watches him.
• Charlie Gibson leaves morning television, thus forcing us to watch Good Morning America.
• Another Fake Writer, this time at the Post. Which really isn't that surprising or interesting, come to think of it.
• Harper Lee comes out of hiding, all for the love of Oprah. Really, there's nothing the woman can't do.

• There's been an arrest in the case of Brangelina's stolen baby shower photos; still no clue who unleashed those horrid Britney pics, though. [R&M]
• In other Brangelina legal news: a Jordanian man tries to embezzle $23,000 with a fake ID bearing Brad Pitt's picture. [Reuters]
• Josh Duhamel pounds on a bathroom door at Vegas nightclub Bella, the occupant of which was taking too long. The door opens, out comes Tommy Lee, and suddenly Duhamel is on the floor. Never mess with a man's toot time. [Page Six]
• Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's Tahitian honeymoon is crashed by Eva Longoria and Tony Parker, who are staying at the same resort, brining with them plenty of paparazzi. [IMDb]
• The ladies of The View are just a bunch of harpies. [NYDN]
• The Polish-American Congress brands Garry Trudeau a bigot because of a character named Kaminski in his Doonesbury cartoons. It would figure that a bunch of stupid polocks wouldn't get the joke. [Lowdown]
• The Glasgow Hilton refuses to give Paris Hilton a corporate discount. The Scotland tourism board couldn't have bought better publicity. [Page Six]
• A naked Pam Anderson just ain't what it used to be. [TMZ]

If you have an internet connection, chances are you will gaze upon Britney Spears' preggers, unclothed body at least 128 times today, and if at least one of those times did not occur in this space, an enforcer dispatched by our evil Hungarian blogging overlord would be knocking on our door, more than happy to demonstrate how easily nipple clamps can be hard-wired to a car battery.

EIC Glenda Bailey, you've got some explaining to do. Where to start with this? Obviously, yes, it is a pregnant, naked picture of Britney Spears. No, no, it is not necessary. Isn't Bazaar a fashion magazine? Should it not aspire in the direction of Vogue rather than Perfect 10?

· When you play this game, in which the object is simply to pummel Kevin Federline until his skin if flayed from his face, there will come a point when Britney Spears steps in to act as a human shield. And then you will punch her avatar, too, over and over again, wondering why you aren't more disturbed by this act of violence, or by the presence of the baby that your blows occasionally dislodge from her grasp. This is some fucked up shit, yo. [via Kotaku]
· We do not know which is scarier: This one of Maury Povich heartlessly torturing a pickle-phobic with hundreds of little green representations of her greatest fear, or any selection from these series of Scientology orientation videos.
· No matter what you do, famous people will continue to marry.
· Rescue Me's Peter Tolan learned the hard way that not everyone wants to see Denis Leary's fucked-up fireman character rape his ex-wife.

• Jesus lives and saves us all: Star Jones is reportedly announcing her departure from The View, preferring instead to continue her rapid shrinking in the privacy of her own home. If we're lucky, her on-air farewell will be the exact opposite of Katie Couric's: hilarious and laced with blood. [Access Hollywood]
• Producer Dallas Austin has now been in a Dubai prison for one month for trying to bring drugs into the country for Naomi Campbell's birthday party; Campbell has yet to forgive him for ruining her big day. [MTV]
• A sneak peek at a former Playboy Bunny's tell-all, plus her requisite cleavage. [Hollywood Interrupted]
• Best Week Ever comedian Sherrod Small slams the John Mayer report, insists that the musician's use of the n-word was funny. [BWE]
• Extremely loud and incredibly derivative. [The Velvet Blog]
• One block of 103rd Street is renamed Humphrey Bogart Place in honor of the actor's childhood home. Not that it makes the locale any more appealing. [Cinematical]
• Unintentional hilarity: Laura Ingraham as the next Jon Stewart? It's a pilot we'd gleefully kill to get our hands on. [TV Newser]
• Overheard in NY gets its own stalker map. [Overplot]
• Kudos to the generous Daily News editors who allowed Ben Widdicombe to out both Anderson Cooper and Shep Smith in one fell swoop. [Gatecrasher]
• Hipster Swiss Army knives, crafted especially for Bedford Avenue stabbings. [Consumerist]
• Does Us Weekly have a problem with Britney Spears? Is People coddling her? And at what point will we all collectively agree to just look the fuck away? [Media Orchard]

• Stolen photos from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby shower have made their way to the web, prompting lawyers to do their threatening, lawyerly thing. The images may be illegal, but is it so wrong that the people want to see Brangelina wearing the Laurel Touby fertility costume? Marvel at the image here. [TMZ]
• Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban tie the knot; Kidman wears 80's throwback gown by Balenciaga. [Us Weekly]
• After learning that her interview with Matt Lauer didn't do much to help her image, Britney Spears hires someone to take classy pictures. Alas, the pics and an interview were sold to OK! for a mere $5K — much less than Britney's $200K asking price. Only K-Fed fetches that kind of money nowadays. [Page Six]
• Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone bend to blackmail from the National Enquirer. [R&M]
• Steven Soderbergh's former agent, Pat Dollard, more or less calls George Clooney a pussy. [Page Six]

• Britney's ratty brown wig is not a wig. Smart move: split ends are harder to see when you hair's dark. [Us Weekly]
• Remember the Meow Mix House? Every single cat from the "reality show" has since been adopted, except for one: Bambi, who hisses and scratches. Best Post sentence ever: "Some say the cat-dorable cat-estant has yet to be cat-dopted simply be-claws the 7-year-old puss is sporting a little Man-cat-tan meow-titude." [NYP]
• Oh, look — it's Amy Sedaris' apartment. Again. [NYT]
• We are a pain in Steve Cuozzo's ass. Finally, we can rest now. [Belle in the Big Apple]
• Snoop shills for Orbit gum. So sad — remember when there was so much drama in the LBC? Those were the days. [Adfreak]
• An open letter to Nicole Richie, so that she may raise Lupus awareness. [Cobain in a Coma]
• Because your Shake Shack obsession MUST be coddled, do enjoy the Shack Cam dashboard widget. [Works Perfectly]

To celebrate the glory of K-Fed's wildly successful PR appearance in Times Square yesterday, wife Britney Spears took her pennies to Columbus Circle (you knew she was a mallrat). A reader provides the above images and reports that a stroller was on the scene, being put to good use as a shopping cart.

The action unfolded in Times Square, but wrong-coasted, media-whoring sister site Gawker was on the scene with our boss's video camera. "Man! I feel good about the penny. I love it," said one Kevin Federline, the most reviled househusband in all the land, at yesterday's Virgin Mobile-sponsored "charity" event to save the obsolescent coin. The onetime practitioner of the background-dancing arts then invited the world to text him at his ultra-secret cell phone number (310-876-4210, he'd love to hear from you!), and in an act of selflessness that very nearly shook free a tear from our eye (read: open weeping, with immediate phone call to Mom to tell her how much we love her), pushed the lion's share of this week's allowance through a slot on an armored car.

Britney Spears' Dateline interview gave us a rare, publicist-unaltered glimpse into the vast, open plains of her inner consciousness, while shedding some much needed light on what exactly it is that she sees in husband Kevin Federline ("He's very simple...He's so simple...His simplicity..."). That would have been enough for us to declare him the catch of the century, but there's also the matter of K-Fed's tireless philanthopic work. A press release in our inbox announces a live appearance by Federline in Times Square tomorrow, standing alongside the anti-Federline, self-made billionaire Sir Richard Branson. The cause? Saving the penny "in face of its possible legislative elimination," an odd choice to say the least, though we suppose there's no one more appropriate than Federline to stand up for near-worthless space-wasters.

While Britney Spears admirably recognized her shortcomings as a parent by hiring some much-needed back-up, she apparently has not yet had the same light bulb moment about her inability to publicly manage her image. Anyone who watched Spears' weepy, disheveled collapse under Dateline Grand Inquisitor Matt Lauer's pummeling questions will probably not be too surprised to discover that the event was not managed by her long-suffering publicists. Says Page Six:

• Wait, so Britney Spears did her own hair and makeup for last week's Dateline video? Oh, good. We were afraid she actually paid someone to paint her face like an inverted raccoon. [Page Six]
• And, moreover, Brit won't be giving birth in Namibia. She'd rather go somewhere more original, like Angola. [AP]
• Brangelina wants to adopt another fucking kid. [People]
• Former Green Beret John Paulus apologizes to Clay Aiken for selling him out to the National Enquirer. Paulus didn't mean to profit off of their special man-love, and he hopes for forgiveness. No comment from Aiken, who's too busy giving himself another god-awful hairstyle. [Scoop]
• David Hans Schmit, the man who's been auctioning off Paris Hilton's personal diaries and photos after she failed to pay the bill for her storage locker, shows up to Macy's on Friday for Hilton's fragrance launch. She still gave him an autograph. [R&M (2nd item)]
• Blind item guessing game: drugs, infidelity, a break-up. Just another Hollywood marriage. [Gatecrasher (last item)]
• Ted Kennedy drinks just enough to baby-talk to his Portuguese water dogs without scaring any children present. [Lowdown]

• The Village Voice's new EIC Erik Wemple changes his mind, quitting the gig before he had technically started. Not surprisingly, the New Times has fucked things beyond repair.
• Britney Spears assures Matt Lauer and the world that she's just as pathetic as we all suspected, if not worse. (YouTube then slaps us and takes away our video.)
• Finally, Page Six finds someone to accept their job offer, it's just not who you'd expect: Post City desker Bill Hoffman.
• Hour Media buys Absolute; the mag's audience of rich people shrug, go about with their usual, rich-people lives.
• Rite-Aid removes Shock from its newsstands, arguing that the magazine clashed with the drugstore's Danielle Steel selection.
• MTV begins filming its reality show in the offices of Rolling Stone; Men's Journal and Us Weekly staffs are promptly forgotten.
• Rocco DiSpirito refuses to disappear.
• Now that Ellen Barkin has removed her balcony's privacy fence, neighbors are easily treated to a night of watching her kids drink bongwater.
• AMI plans to sell off five of its lackluster titles, if only so the company can afford Bonnie Fuller's driver.
• Beyonce graces the cover of Spin, and it's overwhelmingly clear why Andy Pemberton was sacked.
• Hell has a zipcode, and it's 02138.
• Nothing's the same, not even the simple things.

• Apparently Joe Lieberman has some sort of bet going to determine how stupid voters in Connecticut really are. [YouTube]
• When an outfit like The Nation calls something "the stupidest press release ever" you need to sit up and take note: It's got to be egregiously dumb to stand out amongst all the touts for new bongs and "progressive netroots" conferences. [The Nation]
• American Apparel flack responds to 2005 resignation letter; apparently, Dov Charney is so saintly that if you threw him out of a plane, he'd float up. [Consumerist]
• Philadelphia follows lead of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, bans smoking. Racist cheesesteaks still available. [Philadelphia Will Do]
• Britney Spears has no plans to birth newest Federline in Namibia, decides it's just as easy to sob yourself to sleep here in the U.S.A. [People]
• The Daily News doesn't need a touching quote to make us cry - they can just keep running that unsightly picture of Lloyd Grove each day. [Observer]
• Jack Shafer's not gonna be happy until every single American child is on the drugs. Also, he ran with a tough crowd in high school [Slate]
• Ann Coulter calls for assassination of Pennsylvania congressman; weary nation yawns, wonders who said it first. [ThinkProgress]
• A heartwarming story about respect. [OINY]
• OMG, this is SO. FUCKING. CUTE. [Corporate Casual]