• Did Lindsay really get her appendix out, or was she just extra extra extra "exhausted"? Also, where can we buy a pair of the panties you mention, Liz ? [Liz Smith]
  

Despite a heartfelt plea by Lindsay Lohan's publicist to respect her star client's privacy on the occasion of her much-anticipated, proactive decision to check herself into a local rehabilitation facility, many media outlets persist with probing into the adequicy-seeking actress's life during this difficult time. A round-up of the first wave of reports:

As you know, our well-wishes are with Lindsay Lohan, who entered the Wonderland Center rehab clinic yesterday. We respect her privacy during this difficult time. Alas, other media outlets aren't being quite as sensitive as we are. Take the Daily News, for example, which not only splashed Lindsay all over its cover, but used the tattered starlet's film Herbie: Fully Loaded as an excuse to run a mean "Fully Loaded Lindsay Enters Rehab" headline. But that's not all: later in the article, a graph begins:

In a development that will shock only certain tribes of Amazonian rainforest primitives whose glossy magazine subscriptions have lapsed in the New Year, depriving them of the tale of the starlet's miraculous recovery from imaginary-appendectomy surgery, Us Weekly reports that Lindsay Lohan has finally decided to get serious about becoming a fully adequite member of sober Hollywood, entering rehab earlier this afternoon:

• Dane Cook and Alex Blagg get into an online rumble. [BWE]
  

• No wonder Lindsay Lohan is flashing her funbags everywhere: she's fucking Joe Francis again. [Page Six]
  

Today's LAT "Cause Celebre" column, which covers the hottest do-gooding trends that you'll soon see your favorite starlet promote in the pages of Us Weekly with a Kitson-bought t-shirt bearing a slogan like TEAM ANTI-GENOCIDE, profiles International Crisis Group senior adviser John Prendergast, Hollywood's go-to guy for Africa-related issues. Sadly, when Prendergast returns home from a trip to L.A., he finds that his peers in Washington openly sniff at the unpleasant scent of Show Business he carries back with him:

· The always-reliable National Enquirer reports that Lindsay Lohan's doctors are concerned about her overworked liver, but isn't that exactly why they installed the back-up last week? With that extra organ up and running, she was able to resume her partying almost immediately.
· LAist thinks that Gwen Stefani might fill the suspicious hole in her touring schedule with a Coachella appearance. Do with this information what you will—we'll probably use it to give ourselves another excuse to skip two days of sweating in the desert this year.
· R.I.P. Yvonne "Lily Munster" De Carlo.
· Overeducated and Underemployed offers five easy tips on how not to pose with your newly won People's Choice Award. Sadly, this advice arrives too late to save Jennifer Aniston from looking like she's so lonely that she's going to sleep spooning her trophy for the next three months.
· Studio 60's resident Krazy Khristian on why the show isn't doing better, other than the fact that in any given episode, a senile writer from the blacklist era might show up to teach us all a lesson about history: "The engine was running so long on this baby before it ran out of the gate, I think it just overpowered people," she said. "It was like the audience was being held at gunpoint and the message was, 'You better watch the best damn show on television or else.' That's liable to turn anybody off."

We've always believed that concerns that the widespread publicizing of Lindsay Lohan's hard-partying ways might somehow damage her "brand" are overblown; rather than waste their time fretting about what possibly lucrative endorsement opportunities might be lost each time she emerges from an unexpected, suspiciously timed hospital stay with one fewer internal organ, her team should be trying to match her up with products that can seamlessly integrate with her underage, club-haunting lifestyle.

Stubbornly refusing to have the decency to succumb to some kind of debilitating medical condition and turn over his fashion-critiquing duties to a hungry up-and-comer like Ryan Seacrest or the deranged homeless man who hisses "Frumpy!" at each passer-by while urinating on Gucci's Rodeo Drive storefront, superannuated celebrity style arbiter Mr. Blackwell has once again released his annual list of Worst-Dressed Famous People. Unable to choose between nightclub narcoleptic Britney Spears, whose exposed vagina he probably mistook for a particularly ill-fitting pair of panties, and Paris Hilton, whose sartorial crimes against humanity hardly need to be recounted in this space, Blackwell decided to allow the duo to share his list's top spot, calling them "two peas in an overexposed pod." Also making the list: Lindsay Lohan ("tragically trapped in fashion's fast lane"), Christina Aguilera ("all crass, no class"), and, somewhat shockingly, Meryl Streep, whom Blackwell paranoidly accused of "stealing my adult undergarments and wearing them on her head at the Golden Globes."

• Lindsay Lohan broke up Dita Von Teese and Marilyn Manson? Seriously, what isn't she responsible for? [Dlisted]
  

Prompted by TMZ.com's late Friday afternoon posting of a video documenting Lindsay Lohan's speedy release from the hospital just a day after undergoing surgery to remove a superfluous internal organ (i.e., any one not involved in the metabolizing of alcoholic beverages), we wondered aloud about the customary recovery time for an imaginary appendectomy. But based on this trio of Lohan sightings submitted by our readers, the actress bested even the most optimistic fake-surgery prognosis, hitting the town as early as Friday night in a display of rapid healing that would make the impervious cheerleader from Heroes jealous:

· In the grand tradition of the Village Voice's Pazz and Jop, our music-blogging siblings over at Idolator have compiled the truly impressive Jackin' Pop critic's poll. We get tired even thinking about how much work it must have been to count up 500 ballots.
Perhaps a reader with a fake medical background can enlighten us: How long does it take the average actress to recover from an imaginary appendectomy?
Sad: We were sure that Marilyn Manson would be able to make love stay this time.
We really, really want Pubes Aid to be real, but we've been hurt too many times before by anonymous Nigerian e-mailers offering the mounted curlies of the famous to get our hopes up too high. [via Adrants]

Almost exactly one year after the confetti falling from the ceiling of a Miami nightclub during a New Year's Eve celebration triggered a severe "asthma attack" in the notoriously fragile starlet, Lindsay Lohan again finds herself the victim of another freakish medical emergency, as People, TMZ, and E!'s Marc Malkin all exclusively report that Lohan is being hospitalized today to have her appendix removed. Loyal, embattled rep Leslie Sloane Zelnick, who now has been forced to delete "appendicitis" from the list of excuses that she can use to explain her client's next absence from the set of current project I Know Who Killed Me, assured Malkin that Lohan will "be totally fine" after a couple of days of recuperation, during which the actress's body will adjust to the fresh supply of Grey-Goose-free blood and back-up liver she's having installed during the appendectomy procedure.

For those few Gawker readers who don't have 'em memorized, that's the "admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs" one. And it should come as no surprise, really — we were there, after all, for Step 4 ("Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves"): Lindsay inventoried her morals and encouraged us to do the same in her pithy Altman eulogy. And now, Lindsay is running around town apologizing — yesterday, she made up with the strippers who she'd called "whores" and "cunts," and today, according to Page Six, she reached a similar rapprochement with producer Scott Storch, forgiving him for producing "Brandon Davis's 'firecrotch' song" (what??) and, quite possibly, for the crime against humanity he committed by enabling Paris Hilton to record an album. Brava, Linds — only a week into your recovery, and you've come so far! We're looking forward to step 8: "Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all." We're expecting a fruit basket; that crotch shot scarred us for life.

What Lindsay likely doesn't understand - yet probably wouldn't mind - is that stripping isn't simply about pole-dancing and pole-tricks. A significant portion of a stripper's night is spent in the darkened confines of strip clubs' various VIP and champagne rooms in constant physical contact with any desperate prick willing to fork over enough cash for a lapdance.

Yes, John Edwards has announced he's running for president, and former President Gerald Ford kicked it, but there could be another political shift in the works. We received word that the powerhouse New York State Independence Party, via a member of its executive committee, is attempting to draft a nascent political force into running for office. You've probably heard of her; on name recognition alone, she'd more than have a chance at getting elected. Also, unlike Hillary Clinton, she's actually from New York state, so she'd be able to bring her knowledge of the state to bear on her time in office. Finally, she's demonstrated a keen awareness of the inner workings of politics on a national level, which is quite remarkable for someone so young. Indeed, the New York Independence Party believes that this person could

Having dated our share of strippers - some of us, that is - we know that life "on the pole" can be a bit taxing. From the lecherous management types who'll exploit your every vulnerability to the various wack-jobs with whom you'll share a dressing room, the entire profession is enough to leave a permanent bruise on the inner thigh of every Long Island girl lacking the wherewithal to manage an associates degree. Lindsay Lohan proves our point quite nicely.

• Lindsay Lohan celebrated the eve of the birth of Our Lord at Lotus, but she reportedly passed on booze. Spending 3.5 hours sober in the company of Brittny Gastineau? Maybe there's hope for Lohan's recovery yet. [Gatecrasher]
  

It's a season of Bests Of, so we're hereby nominating this quote as "Best Publicist Denial 2006." It's from an article in the print edition of this week's Star magazine about "plate parties," at which young Hollywood stars are passing around drug-filled plates (!!) and "popping pills, guzzling booze, smoking reefer and snorting whatever they can get their hands on," according to "one Hollywood producer" who has perhaps seen Beyond the Valley of the Dolls one time too many. Anyway, we admire Zelnick's laziness, so this is our official favorite. It's better than Elliot Mintz's genius assertion that the white stuff in Paris Hilton's nostril was "stray dessert," even! Hats off, Leslie — and here's to more Lohan-enabling in 2007.