I've got my eye on you

Gutsy glamour singer Shirley Manson will no longer be known solely as the hard-assed, lyric-belting enchantress who makes the band Garbage as rousing to look at as they are to listen to.

Manson is said to be collaborating with a former member of Jane's Addiction to record an unnamed John Lennon composition for a benefit tribute album. 

In further Manson news, the Scottish songstress is reportedly deep in the process of producing a solo collection of material, aided in the studio by the likes of the White Stripes' Jack White and Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan.

Shirley solo has every chance in the world of not sucking, especially if she keeps true to her Garbagey roots. 

Ask the typical media-savvy American for two words to describe a typical Fox News on-air personality, and gay-friendly will not be among the responses.

The conservative talk network is perceived as being squarely against same-sex marriage and what liberal perspectives view as equal rights for persons of all gender preferences.

But right-leaning co-host Sean Hannity, of Hannity & Colmes celebrity, has stepped so far outside of the Fox box, that he might be breaking the strong-jawed hetro mold.

Hannity is a born huckster.  His shilling goes beyond masquerading kneejerk demagoguery as reasoned discourse. 

The Sean Hannity's snake-oil genius is revealed in the "Hannidate" section of www.hannity.com.

Hannidate is designed to facilitate romantic sparks between men and women who share a common love for the wisdom and views of Sean Hannity. 

But why stop at men and women?  Sean's Hannidate includes a search option for men seaking men.

Of course, a gay male seeking the companionship of another gay male on a Fox News site is like a chicken walking into a KFC outlet looking for a date.

As if the reputation and orientation of Britney Spears were not imperiled enough by sleazing around with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, now the Louisina popped-tart's vagina has caught the eye of View flabber-mouth Rosie O'Donnell.

O'Donnell took to her View bully pulpit this morning and scolded Britney for spreading her legs, for not wearing panties and for her unfailingly trashy selection of high-class new friends.  Perhaps carried away by a protective instinct, Rosie then announced to the world at large that she yearns for Keven Federline's baby-maker to come live with her.

In her defense, Rosie insisted that her interest in Britney is entirely maternal.  Take a long, unflinching look at any of the many photos of the Spears giblets that have been clogging the super highway lately.  How could O'Donnell's interest, or the interest of anyone other than the most indiscriminate, fatuous, slob-faced gobbler, be anything other than nonsexual?

The scary part in all this is that after Britney's long and twisted string of bad life choices, moving in with Rosie  O'Donnell seems like the best idea to come along in years.

Bunking up in the O'Donnell household would certainly be less appalling than going for date number two with Brandon "Fat Elvis" Davis.

In case there was any doubt about Panic! At The Disco's resistence to being crowbarred into an artificial and confining musical genre, singer/guitarist Brendon Urie has set the record straight.

"Emo is bullshit," proclaims Urie in this week's New Musical Express.

The band refuses to be dismissed as "guys that are weak and have failing relationships [who] write about being sad.... We don't fit the emo stereotype."

Don't be tempted by Panic!'s neo-dandy fashion sense to shrug off Urie's protestations as idle boasting.  His group beat out both Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers for MTV's video of the year.  That's something stereotyped sad-sacks in eyeliner could never hope to achieve.

Erected in the middle of a barren wasteland, Las Vegas is an improbable metropolis of massive neon-trimmed monuments and lavish, wasteful fountains.  Every last lightbulb and stripper's pastie in this brilliant edifice has been paid for by high rollers who stream into Vegas from all around the world to be turned into losers.

My Chemical Romance is changing all that, at least for one night.

Gerard Way and cohorts are scheduled to roll The Black Parade into Sin City on December 11, where they will play a free show and guarantee that a mob of their avid fans will go home winners.

Vegas hasn't seen so excited about a display of power, grace and ferocity since Siegfried's lion ate Roy.

Realizing that divorces can be messy affairs, often even messier than the marriage and whatever affairs led up to the divorce, PETA activist and Borat costar Pamela Anderson has requested restraint from the world press so that the dissolution of her marriage to Kid Rock can proceed with "dignity."

Pam points out that her kids can read and have access to tabloid news sources.

She has a point in blaming the sensationalistic, flesh-hungry media for her X-rated public infamy.

If the snarling dogs of yellow journalism don't adopt a code of ethical conduct soon, Anderson's two sons may end up with the impression that their mother is a booze- and/or drug-addled desperate blonde who manipulates her cartoonishly exaggerated sexuality for attention and mercenary gain, and is addicted to marrying serially promiscuous men who are never more than a slip away from sentencing to a state-mandated 12-step program.

Pam must long for her bygone days of nobility, self-respect and gravity, back before the paparazzi onslaught, when she was the innocent and dignified star of the country's biggest-selling hardcore sex tape of the year.

The absolute free speech guarantees of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution are under assault from two separate ends of the political range this week.

Republican former Congressman Newt Gingrich was in New Hampshire speaking at a banquet to honor people or organizations who stand up for freedom of speech when he announced that "a different set of rules" might be needed to keep America safe.  Evidently, free speach is the terrorists' friend.

Meanwhile, back on the Rainbow Coalition side of the spectrum, the Reverend adulterer Jesse Jackson, reacting to the ignorant and voluble rage of Michael Richards, has decreed that one common word Richards used is "unprotected" by the First Amendment, which is bad news for American artists ranging from 50 Cent to Quentin Tarantino.

The underlying message of what Newt and Jesse are guaranteed the right to spout is that if anybody in the free United States needs to say something unpopular, dangerous or completely contrary to commonly accepted mores, say it now. 

In a few years, that kind of talk may be punishable by an unspecified term of incarceration at a secret prison.

Desperate to stir up any modicum of attention for yet another movie where he is relentlessly punched in the face, Sylvester Stallone is claiming to have given up sex for the sake of Rocky Balboa's fight scenes.  According to Sly, his body contains a limited quantity of energy.  Making love during the arduous filming schedule would have weakened his performance while being beaten to an unrecognizable pulp in the boxing scenes.

Stallone brags that preserving his celibacy was a difficult feat of self-discipline that required strength and determination.

Probably the hardest part for Rambo was telling an associate producer that there was no need to come into the bedroom and unscrew the cap from his Viagra bottle.

Despite the apparent fact that she would not eat an animal to save her life, tabloid talent Nicole Richie has been singled out by the animal-protection league PETA as a particular enemy of the beasts of the earth.

The publicity-savvy activist group faults Nicole for adorning her bones in the skins of less fortunate creatures.

If Nicole's below-the-waist grooming matches the pubic area Internet displays of pals such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, smooth-operating Richie wouldn't have any fur on her body whatsoever if not for her clothes.

So the animal-coddlers should cut pixie-stick a break.

Unlike Britney, Paris and Lindsay, Nicole hasn't been photographed hanging a beaver in public.

Pixie-like British chanteuse Lily Allen is the rare woman who is capable of wearing outrageous sexy shoes and outraged sexual politics all in the same ensemble.

As much outspoken as golden-throated, Lily released an open letter to the world lambasting Conor Mcnicholas, editor of New Musical Express.  The letter protested Mcnicholas's intellectual ghetto-izing of Allen and other female rockers by back-handedly praising the girls  for proving "you can still rock a crowd when you're wearing stilettos."  Male rockers from David Bowie to Alice Cooper to the New York Dolls and all their followers had never lost sight of this stiletto truth.

But the NME's apparent patronizing prompted Lily to ask pointedly and rhetorically: "Is that all we are, stiletto-wearing people?"

And then she went onstage at London's Union Chapel and rocked the crowd while defiantly wearing stilettos.

Lily's current album, Alright, Still, is packed with all the brilliant contradictions and brave assertions of her public opinionating.  Played at the right moment, it heightens everything, like a mean pair of outrageous stilettos.

The winning sound of the Strokes owes as much to its twining guitar helix as it does to the plaintive vocalizing and lyrics of singer Julain Casablancas; so it is fitting, just and indicative of rich harmonics to come that Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. has branched off to compose and record a disc of his own.

Released already in Europe and Australia, the album Yours to Keep is set to light up American shores in time for the holiday season.  The first single from the collection, "101," has already been spread domestically in video form. Hammond is a second-generation music business professional; dad Albert senior wrote the classic "It Never Rains in Southern California."

According to Hate Something Beautiful, Albert Jr. is signed up to ring in the New Year with a six-week tour, starting in Vancouver on January 5, snaking across the continent and ending in Los Angeles on February 11.

The weird thing?  He'll be opening for Incubus.  Hopefully, for the sake of the Hammond family legacy, Eagles of Death Metal/Pigeons of S*** Metal scenarios will be few to none.

There's nothing like a spot of gender stereotyping to reignite skirmishing in the never-ending struggle between the sexes. 

What were reporters at the United Kingdom's Daily Mail trying to accomplish by running a story that claims women talk three times as much as men?

An article like this is capable of igniting deafening bursts of angry chatter in beauty shops and day spas throughout the literate world.  A danger exists that the stream of outraged jabber will leach out from the feminine enclaves and filter into male domains -- strip clubs, sports bars and gas station toilets -- resulting in a rash of incidents in which harried louts exclaim in exasperation: "Will that broad ever shut up and let me crap in peace?"

Reasoned debate on the topic of which gender is the more effective communicator is probably impossible between men and women.

But here are a few questions designed to facilitate the next best thing: biased, acrimonious disputation.

Do women really have three times as much to say as men do?

Are men guilty of listening only one-third as well as women listen?

Does the male mute actually need to be told to be vulnerable and share his feelings three times as often as women do?

When women talk to women, do both women still talk three times as much as two men do?

There must be thousands of other points of contention in this discussion.  Feel free to list and respond.

Unless obvious and crass visual cues are misleading, this photo is saying, "Britney Spears is in dire need of a man who is not intimidated by a larger-than-average circumference."

Photos have now surfaced showing the whole of Ms. Spears in an unfiltered, underwear-free flash that is about as flattering as the light on day-old turkey giblets in a deli case.  Common decency prohibits insertion here of a link to these visuals.

Aside from knowing that girlfriend has been displayed all across the Internet like a patch of dimpled fowl skin, Britney's prospective suitors must also have a high tolerance for the presence of spawn from a retard gene pool and not be grossed out by straw-textured hair extensions or put off by the antics of the Louisiana pop tart's classy new friends.

The world press is awash in news that Paris Hilton has been accepted as Britney's new social-skills mentor.  Any players poised to catch little Miss Spears on the rebound should be prepared for a level of sophistication that her previous spouses could only have dreamed of.

But that doesn't mean the former Mouseketeer isn't still a little bit trashy: she's still the kind of girl who tosses flaming garbage from a moving vehicle.

The Rolling Stones may be the oldest working vampires in all of rock 'n' roll, but they have plenty of fiscal consolation to offset the woes of being geriatric in a young man's universe.

The Stones, through their "A Bigger Bang" shows, have surpassed world-poverty activists U2 in the competition to stage the most lucrative concert tour of the year.

But don't expect Bono to have an easy task persuading Sir Mick to accompany him on a Third World relief mission.  Compared to what Jagger sees in the mirror, those African orphans just have too much meat on their bones to arouse any sympathy.

Pamela Anderson doesn't have to worry about what she's going to buy her new husband, Kid Rock, for Christmas.  And Kid will not need to fight Pammy for the last beer in the twelve-pack as the New Year rings in.  All these two blond lovebirds want this holiday season is to get the hell away from one another.

According to reports published by an AOL/Time-Warner source, both Kid and Pam filed divorce papers Monday morning, with Kid's documents sliding into the courthouse 53 minutes ahead of Pam's.

Pam's notarized version of events listed the date of separation as November 21st, while Kid's papers pinpointed the moment of dissolution at November 27th.  Either way, this year must have brought a Thanksgiving to remember to the Rock household.

Uninformed observers are speculating that either Mom or Dad got caught stuffing or being stuffed by the wrong turkey.

The pair of globe-trotting soulmates stretched out the headline value of their marriage by conducting wedding ceremonies in various locations throughout the world.  No word has been received on whether or not the divorce will be finalized with signature ceremonies at Jumbo's Clown Room strip bar and the Royal Oak Krispy Kreme outlet.

In fairness to Ms. Anderson and Mr. Rock, their union lasted longer than it took being married to Nicole Kidman to drive Keith Urban into rehab.

1. "10 Items or Less" is a serious new comedy television series that does for service-sector workers what "The Office" did for cubicle-dwelling careerists.

2. The first show is Monday at 11 p.m. on TBS, and Monday nights really need something that makes them worth looking forward to.

3. A couple of "10 Items or Less" episodes under the belt will make all future trips to the grocery store opportunities to reenact faorite bits from the show.

4. The Greens 'n' Grains grocery store is located in small-town Ohio; so the people who work there don't have that fake Hollywood plastic surface.

5. The Greens 'n' Grains employees (meet them here) may be paying the bills by making produce look good, but they have bigger dreams.

6. There is a possibility that Greens 'n' Grains will hire Drew Carey on as a bag boy.  He has retail experience after all.

7. Finally, a show recognizes that vegetables are inherently funny.

8. Every new customer is a new chance for a gut laugh.

9. Nobody on "10 Items or Less" is impersonating a doctor or a forensic scientist, and every episode does not include an overstock of disease, trauma and corpses.

10. If "10 Items or Less" turns out to be too good for TV, it's vast legion of rabid followers will form an Internet appreciation community that will last until long after there is such a thing as network TV.

England's  brothers Gallagher, Liam and Noel of the grossly successful pop band Oasis, have adopted a novel strategy for hyping their new repackaging of old material, Stop the Clocks.  The genetically attached duo has been busy promoting product by disparaging the talents of other musical acts hailing from the wee United Kingdom.

First, singer Liam went on record with the New Musical Express that the new so-called Beatles album, Love, is a product of "rubbish" production.  In truth, the new Beatles release, issued the same week as the Stop the Clocks repackaging, might be mistaken for an unnecessary batch-up of old Beatles' songs with smarmy strings added.  Which led Liam to conclude: "I'm all Beatled up."

Sibling Noel, Oasis's guitarist and songwriter, meanwhile supplied a quote to London's Sun newspaper giving the opinion that singer Robbie Williams is a "grossly unhappy person" and offering to to supply a loaded gun with which Williams could shoot himself.

All of this bitterness and anger might be soothed away if the brothers G. would just drop by the local metro-sexual beauty shop for a therapeutic tweezing of the eyebrows.

Before she made her name as the smooth castrator who tamed ladykiller Jimmy Kimmel, stand-up neurotic Sarah Silverman was being hailed in women's magazines, alternative weeklies and lone-gunman blogs as the new "hot chick" of comedy.

So far, Sarah hasn't inspired quite enough hilarity to offset the expenses of her publicist, and her attempts to pass as a new hot chick are less convincing every day.

There is nothing wrong with Sarah's appearance.  She's a reasonably attractive woman of a certain age.  She could easily be mistaken for a slightly dumpy version of what people might expect Sarah Silverman to look like.

The problem is, Sarah has been photographed here on the red carpet at the 2006 American Music Awards, which is a venue rich in genuinely hot chicks of the moment.

There's no saving a Silverman who shows up to a glamour competition dressed as though she's the mistress of ceremonies at a Wal-Mart grand opening.  Right about now, Kimmel must be wishing he could get his gonads back.

Ever since the dawn of the mechanical age, mankind has conducted a love affair of the imagination with robots.

The science-fiction vision of a world in which human-like machines do our drudgery while we lounge and smoke weed is closer than ever.  In Japan, mechanical serfs have begun serving as temp workers, able to greet customers and hand out balloons and DVDs. 

The Hanson Robotics company of Dallas, Texas, has created a prototype that has a face so uncannily human that it freaks people out.  Proprietor David Hanson is a former artist at Disney and hopes to market nuts-and-bolts companions able to dance, make eye contact, talk and recognize an owner's face.

Life, such as it is, is not all frivolity and diversion for man machines.  Medical caregivers are making great strides in using the ambulatory contraptions to aid stroke victims and autistic kids.

Still, nobody wants a machine hanging around as part of the family if it looks and acts too much like a machine.  Which is why scientists are hard at work making their creations behave more and more like humans behave, even programming their products to "play" and take "emotional" cues from their mortal masters.

The scientists will know they have succeeded when their robot refuses to turn off Access Hollywood in hopes that news of a Kevin Federline and Britney Spears sex tape is coming on.

If the hopes of the Fox News Channel's braintrust come true, commentator Bill O'Reilly will no longer be the most ludicrous face on the network. 

Joel Surnow, a co-creator of 24,  is shooting two half-hour pilots designed to replicate the feel of Comedy Central's Daily Show, but with a Republican twist.

Surnow notes that Comedy Central's John Stewart and Steven Colbert have been getting rich long enough off by mocking the antics of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

"The other side hasn't been skewered in a fair and balanced way," observes Surnow, who plans to deploy a team of satirical "correspondents" for a right-leaning spin on topical commentary.

When Surnow's baby, tentatively titled This Just In, takes life, the challenge for Fox viewers will be the same as it always has been:  trying to separate the real news from the mad tirades of raving clowns.

Maybe at the advice of his own lawyer, maybe at the insistence of his ex-wife's lawyer, Kevin Federline has authorized a spokesperson to make the highly unlikely announcement that he and departing wife Britney Spears never made any sex tape. 

This is the same couple that left the camera running as the apparently wasted bride gobbled takeout food and rambled on about her belief that some people do engage in time travel. 

Are we expected to believe that once Britney shoved her French fries aside and wrapped her greasy fingers around her man, that she and Kev paused to turn off the camcorder?

Just because an attorney tells us so doesn't mean it's true.

Celebrities are more than their public personas.  No matter how famous, they are people, like all the rest of us, and sometimes they don't put their best face to the camera.  Sometimes they put something better than their best face forward.

Butt of course, the renowned mounds pictured here belong to Jessica Biel, who is indulging in a 7th Heaven stretch...

One thing's for sure:  Jessica is not anorexic, at least not where she sits down.  That's a good thing.

Anyone who had hoped that Britney Spears scraping off the 160-pound fungus known as Keven Federline was a sign that Brit had wised up is in for a bitter disappointment.  The ink has hardly dried on Britney's sex-tape rumors, and already she is hitting the town in the company of the only human being in the entire tabloid universe who is conceivably more loathsome than K-Fed.

At least Britney is smarter than Shanna Moakler. 

Partying with the Antichrist is better than waiting around at home to learn from Access Hollywood that rappin' Kev has followed Travis Barker and tumbled into the bottomless pit that is Paris Hilton.

The great crime of the information age is that certain particles of data are impossible to avoid.  Such as "songs" from the Paris Hilton "album."  Twenty years from now, trauma survivors will cluster around battered tables in church basements and recall the first time they heard "Stars Are Blind."

"I was in the bathroom, at the Gap.  Remember the Gap?  And I thought something had died in the adjacent toilet stall.  'What's that smell?' I yelled.  Then I realized it was that song, by that Paris Hilton, coming in on the p.a. system.  It stunk so bad, I threw up all over myself, and life has been a downward spiral ever since."

Do not feel alone, tender tummies.  Paris's "music" is so nauseous that even she barfs under its influence.

Singer Joshua Radin claims that Paris took the stage in Las Vegas after a recent Jay-Z concert with the intention of lip-synching two songs from her "album." 

The performance ended abruptly when Paris's sound waves were transformed into Paris's gastric convulsions.  According to the witness, Hilton heaved and left the stage without further comment, never bothering to say she was sorry.

And, really, no apology was necessary.  The poor thing had been listening to Paris Hilton's "music."  Of course she puked.

By the way: This emetic effect helps explain why Nicole Richie continues to hang out with her.

Like any American male who pays to have his eyebrows tweezed, impeccably groomed American Idol winner Clay Aiken may or may not be gay. 

The popular crooner seems to value keeping his sexual preference as his own buisness, but flabber-mouth Rosie O'Donnell has other ideas -- fatuous, pig-headed ideas.

O'Donnell, who proudly and loudly runs on diesel, took Live With Regis and Kelly hostess Kelly Ripa to task from the bully pulpit of the View today. 

Rosie was disappointed that during a recent joint television appearance, Kelly Ripa had objected when Clay Aiken put a hand over her mouth to shut her up.

"Oh, that's a no-no," Ripa had protested.  "I don't know where that hand's been."

As a woman, of sorts, Rosie bristled, but not because another woman was being subjugated through force by a domineering male who resorted to physical brutishness when logic, wit or gallantry might better have served the situation.

What irked Rose was a perceived bigotry.

"To me that's a homophobic remark," proclaimed Rosie to the national View audience.  "If that was a straight man, she would have said a different thing."

A different thing along the lines of, "It smells like you just wiped your ass with that hand"?

In Rosie's defense, she could be forgiven for thinking that all men are gay.  Because when a guy is alone with Rosie O'Donnell, as far as she can tell, he's certainly not into women.

Rupert Murdoch, long the conscience of American journalism, politics and morality with his Fox News network and ReganBooks imprint, has finally seen what the rest of the civilized world is sick to its bowels about.  Murdoch is the man at the top of the pyramid that intended to profiteer off the disgusting publication and television broadcast of acquitted murder suspect O. J. Simpson's book If I Did It.

The book, and a two-part interview that had been slated as a Fox ratings booster, feature Simpson "theoretically" detailing how he would have murdered his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman if he had, if fact, been the person who murdered them.

A clear majority of American's believes that O. J. did in fact slaughter Ron and Nicole, which gives this twisted stunt its nauseous power.

The outrage over the publication of If I Did It was loud, stomach-felt and crossed all party lines.  Condemnation of this vile exploitation was so severe that, evidently, not even Rupert Murdoch  was immune from the wrath of public revulsion.

Murdoch has announced that the book and the TV interview have both been canceled.

Did Rupert search his heart?  Did he have a crisis of conscience?  Or did he simply consider the impact of a NewsCorp boycott on his corporate ledgers?

The world of high fashion is often targeted as both a battlefield and a breeding ground for anorexia and other eating disorders.

Last week, the glamour lost its importance for the loved ones of Ana Carolina Reston.  The 21-year-old model from Brazil died of an infection that her depleted immune system was unable to fend off.  At the time of her death, Ana Carolina weighed 88 pounds.

Insane dieting among celebrities is often the butt of jokes and sarcastic speculation, but there is no humor when a person dies in the prime of youth.  This devastating syndrome crosses all social and economic boundaries.  You may know someone who believes that too thin is not thin enough.  You may harbor a pathological hostility toward your own body.

Don't let the death of Ana Carolina Reston be for nothing.  Talk to someone: a teacher, a counselor, a clergy person, or even to that guy behind the counter at McDonald's.

There is help if you look for it.

Seen here on her way to attend the wedding of her BFF Katie Holmes to monstrous movie star Tom Cruise in the November drizzle of Rome, weird sister Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham's outfit indicates that she is days away from being admitted to a cloister for the mentally unstable.

Or maybe an honest mistake has led Posh to don this Halloween vision of Tinkerbell all dressed up to go turn tricks.

Perhaps Mrs. Becks was under the impression that the Cruises were having a costume-theme wedding.  This misconception might explain why she is attending the nuptials costumed as the cigarette girl at a transvestite bar.

Whether the fashion victim of a ludicrous mistake or of sheer lunacy, Posh proves again there is no substitute for adult supervision in the wardrobe department.

It's not like he's wearing an apron and cap behind the counter at Dairy Queen, but existence may be somewhat sucking for elevator-shoe candidate Kevin Connolly. 

First, the cable-TV star was shucked by his longtime public displayer of affection, heiress Nicky Hilton.  In the aftermath of that widely documented dumping, Kevin is seen looking miserable at the Victoria's Secret runway show in Los Angeles.

Apparently, no one is desperate enough to sit next to the tough-luck kid.

Connolly had better hope that Entourage isn't canceled anytime soon, or his life will be entirely over.

Celebrity and fashion magazines operate in a separate universe.  More than one tabloid publication has attempted to attract customers by promising to deliver the beauty secrets of Sex and the City's Sarah Jessica Parker.  Someone who exists outside tabloid reality might look at the face of Sarah Jessica and conclude, "That woman's beauty is a secret, and I bet it is a secret that will be kept forever."

In the interests of clearing up this mystery of the mass-media universe, here are ten questions aimed at uncovering at least one secret of Sarah Jessica Parker's beauty.

1)  Is it the crows' feet that appear to have been gouged in by the claws of a vulture?

2) Is it the hair pulled back tight enough to create a de facto face lift?

3) Is it the nose hanging crooked and swollen like an old goat's testicle?

4) Is it the piano-key teeth like Mrs. Seabiscuit?

5) Is it the misaligned ears with their odd accumulations of excess cartilage?

6) Is it the mouth set in a perpetual bastardization of smirk and snear?

7) Is it that wart like from a witch's ass?

8) Is it that rag she's wearing around her neck where it can be thrown up at a moment's notice to mask her face?

9) Is it being married to a man who other than being her husband presents no other public evidence of heterosexuality?

10) Is it because of her striking resemblance to Perry Farrell?

The Buzznet community was united in outrage and incredulity a week ago when Fall Out Boy's most high-profile fellow, Pete Wentz, was photographed standing hip-to-hip with accomplished actress and powerful camera magnet Lindsay Lohan.  The picture was denounced in several comments as a photo-shopped fake and sick practical joke.

Hold onto your OMGs and WTFs.  Those days of Pete comingling with Lindsay seem like a nostalgic time of innocence now that Wentz has come face-to-face with Paris Hilton!

This meeting of Pete and Paris may in fact be a sick practical joke, but it's being played by God.

This authentic, non-photo-shopped image was captured at a recent Victoria's Secret runway show in Los Angeles.

Certain primitive tribesmen are notoriously camera shy, believing that every time a person's picture is taken, the camera steals a piece of their soul.

We in the civilized world know that a boy's soul is in much graver danger of being stolen when Paris Hilton is in position to look into his eyes.

There's no mystery about whether or not Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines cyborg Kristanna Loken and killed-off Lost Latina Michelle Rodriguez are engaging in a girls-only romantic tangle.  Kristanna stops just short of confirming to gay-news source The Advocate that she and Michelle are friends with deeper feelings.

The question is: who's on top?

Both girls exude an alpha female vibe.  Kristanna obviously carries a greater mass than Michelle, but mass does not necessarily translate to a more masculine role on the dance floor.  Photos show that Michelle is prone to take the lead.  So far, only Loken and Rodriguez know how far that lead goes.

Although Oscar-winning emoter Halle Berry has not been in the news for smashing her SUV into innocent drivers and then fleeing the scene since February 2000, Los Angeles commuters can be forgiven if they still check their rear-view mirrors to be sure that notorious Halle B. is not barreling down behind them.

In Halle's defense, accidents will happen.  How many people reading this would be able to keep their eyes on the road with that earth-quaking display of cleavage right under their noses?

Still, tragedy is preventable.  If Halle bundles up like Keira Knightley before she gets behind the wheel, she'll greatly reduce the risk of skidding head-on into negative headlines again.

In the modeling world, certain jobs are more coveted than others.  The Guess line of clothing and accessories, for instance, is credited with being instrumental in forwarding the world domination of star faces such as Claudia Schiffer, Drew Barrymore and Anna Nicole Smith.

The Guess account is so coveted that the company, rather than simply hire its models, conducts contests to pick their public representatives.  The selection process becomes a media event in itself, reaping untold global penetration for the company's sexy, taboo-teasing image.

Luckily, all that publicity rubs off on the aspsiring models, which has brought Australian sisters Silvana and Mena Lovin to the attention of intercontinental connoisseurs of female beauty.

The Lovin ladies, aged 21 and 23, are in contention to be the new face of Guess watches.  The siblings are seen here just before the Do Something Sleazy portion of the competition.

How could the Guess watch judges have time for anyone else?

Having arguably the most powerful vocal pipes of her generation evidently entitles a woman to a certain diva-like demeanor.  Only a music hater, or someone who can't appreciate a truly sexy Pepsi commercial, would blame America's sonically booming songstress Christina Aguilera for looking less than ecstatic as she endures an intrusive media presence at the London press conference for her Back to Basics tour.

Sure, Christina is rich, pampered, thin and adored -- the perfect recipe for non-stop happiness.  But that doesn't mean she wouldn't rather be somewhere else.

Such as behind the counter at Dairy Queen.

Because he is on his own show and none of his fawning employees dares to tell him when he exposes himself as a completely out-of-touch throwback to a time that is no longer relevant or present, nobody at his job laughed in Larry King's face when he proudly declared to Roseanne Barr that he has never used the Internet.

That must mean that Larry King is the only clown-ass on the planet who has never seen any of these web-distributed summations of his intelligence and character.  Such as here.  And here.  Not to mention here.  And here too.

And he probably still hasn't seen them now.

Psychiatric wards across America have been besieged by an influx of patients who claim to have been abducted by visitors from other planets.

These victims tell vivid tales of being transported to creepy, sterile rocket ships and sexually molested there by reptilian bipeds from the far reaches of our solar system.  Doctors, until now, have assumed that these accounts of intersteller date rape were all delusional.

Recent photos of former defendant Michael Jackson provide compelling evidence that Earth is being visited by beings from other realms.

To judge by these pictures, taken at the World Music Awards in London, not only has Michael been visited by lizard-like beings from Uranus, he has abducted, molested and ingested so many of them that he has apparently become one.

Once a woman wins America's Next Top Model, her life should be one long gulp at the gravy bowl.  But Eva Pigford, the sleek but well-padded winner of Top Model's season three, has a different story to tell.

Less than fully thrilled with the rocket-like trajectory of her life after the America's Next triumph, Eva has elected to sever ties with co-manager Tyra Banks.

But Pigford doesn't blame all her dissatisfaction on Tyra.  The winner is also severing ties with her last name, which is one letter away from being the word for a type of hoof that can be found pickled in jars on the counter at better-stocked ghetto liquor stores.  From here on out, pretty Pigfoot will be known as Eva Marcelle.

And Tyra will still be known as that lady on TV who is fierce crazy like a ferret on bathtub meth.

Like a parasite that has been detached from the rectum of its host organism, former Britney Spears siphon Kevin Federline is apparently on the lookout for a new intestinal tract to suck clean.

According to eyewitness accounts in the New York Post, Federline was seen mooching food at a burlesque club.

Any bum down on his luck might be forgiven for begging a meal, but Britney's sperm donor does everything big, including his begging.  Witnesses claim that while America's Most Hated was being given a free dinner at a downtown club called Corio, Federline ordered extra meals, then had them boxed up so he could take them away in case he couldn't find someone who would donate something for him to eat later.

Champion leech Kevin was also seen stuffing napkins into the necks of booze bottles and attempting to sneak the filched bottles under his coat.

After that, Kevin can be pictured stooping to pick a half-smoked cigarette from the gutter and lighting up.

Perky brunette Alyssa Milano has come a long way since she melted the hearts of adolescent males and skeevy old pervs as the too-sugary daughter of skeevy old Tony Danza in Who's the Boss?

Many of Milano's fans were unprepared for the tyke of their dreams to turn into a grown-up young lady capable of flashing her underwear in public.  But time moves on.

Only a child of twelve when she first appeared under Danza's Who's the Boss? roof, the world's sweetest daughter was a young lady of twenty before she moved out on her own.

Perhaps it was during Alyssa's brief residency on Melrose Place that she developed the habit of displaying the scarlet thong of shame.

Milano must be hoping that despite exposing her audience to a length of butt floss, they'll all stay Charmed.

In 1996, an 18-year-old wiaf (well, a buxom waif) from a hick town in England made her way to the big city of London.  Alone with her God-given wits and physical attributes, the resourcful lass soon found work displaying her breasts on Page 3 of the Sun tabloid newspaper.

And the legend of Katie Price was launched.

Sometimes going by the single name of Jordan, titillating Katie has maintained her hold on the imagination of the British press for ten years straight.  Thousands of lesser girls have flashed in the sun, then returned to obscurity.

Katie has used romantic dalliances with soccer stars, pop singers and television personalities to keep her name in the news.  She has even launched a recording career, but few if any of you are able to whistle any of her tunes.  So a decade into the fame game, Katie has gone back to the basics.

Years ago, when asked to sum up her celebrity appeal, the blunt Ms. Price responded simply:  "I'm famous for my tits.

And if these views of Katie's personal involvement in launching her new line of bra and panties are any indications, she will be famous for a long time to come.

The art world is the refuge of snobs and stiffs, but occasionally a loose-limbed rebel like Tracey Emin sneaks in.  Born British and geared toward controversy, Emin's mix of mind-reeling drawings, paintings, photographs and installations mix the written word with the instant visual metaphor in a way that leaves a lasting impression.  Of course, that lasting impression may be one of long-term confusion, but there is enough pleasure and revelation in Tracey's mystification to satisfy even the most old-fashioned searcher for meaning.  This limber trailblazer's stunning life's work is featured in many of important museums and private collections, and have also been collected in a new book from Rizzoli.

Tom Cruise may have more money than the Third World has hungry mouths, but that doesn't mean he's willing to risk going broke feeding Oprah Winfrey.

According to People online, Oprah has not been invited to come to Italy and attend the wedding of Tom Cruise and jaunty actress Katie Holmes.

Cruise famously announced his love for Holmes while leaping upon Oprah's sofa, which should have automatically included the talk hostess in the wedding party.  Unfortunately for Chicago's queen of gab, Holmes and Cruise only had three million to spend for food.

In recent years Winfrey has been a comparatively svelte wisp of her former behmoth self, but she seemed to be doing as much gobbling as gabbing during a recent cross-country tour, which revived fears of the old eat-everything Oprah.

The stylish sex appeal of former It Girl Chloe Sevigny appears to have been deeply compromised by playing frumpy Mormon wife-number-two on the HBO hit Big Love.

Concerned observers are wondering what happened to the effortlessly smoldering Chloe of Kids, American Psycho and The Brown Bunny.

Spotted courtside at a recent New York Knicks basketball game (above), Sevigny seems to have transformed into her own spinster aunt, circa 1953.

Viewers with short-term memory impairment are invited to compare this week's drab Chloe to the vital Sevigny in the photo below, captured less than three years ago.

The damage may, in fact, be reversible.  All she needs is a role co-starring with Scarlett Johansson.

Athough inspirational parents Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are mom and dad to a small clan of children between them, including biological descendant Shiloh, the pair has stubbornly refused to make use of a marriage license.

In a stance of solidarity with gay romantics, Brad has stated that he will not marry until everyone who wants to is allowed to wed.

In the absence of a real-world betrothal, Madame Tussauds of Las Vegas had hoped to fill the void by staging a Pitt-Jolie wax-dummy wedding. 

Certainly, the figurine groom would not have appeared any more stiff than half the men who find themselves standing at an altar and swearing away all future pursuit of happiness. 

Nevertheless, the real Pitt and Jolie found something distasteful about Tussauds' planned matrimonial exploitation.  Under protest, the big day was canceled.

And also plans for the possible wax divorce.

Granted, inspirational mother Angelina Jolie's job is to be hot.  If people went to an Angelina Jolie movie, and the star was anything less than scorching, the audience wouldn't know what they were looking at.  Still, Angelina deserves extra credit for sizzling beyond the call of duty.

The flammable Ms. Jolie is seen here in India on the set of A Mighty Heart, the story of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and his wife, Mariane.

Just how incendiary is Brad Pitt's love interest?  All she needs to do is place an iced soda bottle to her lips, and Angelina raises the temperature of everyone in the vicinity.

The co-star behind her is so steamed that he can't even swallow.

Buzznet favorite Pete Wentz is highly praised among music-industry observers for his loyalty to fans of Fall Out Boy.  Pete and the band stay close to music lovers by sneaking new tracks out on the Internet, by posting behind-the-scenes photos and videos and by maintaining a rigid schedule of personal appearances.

But Pete is still a young man.  Can he maintain this fury of self-marketing forty years down the road?  Nearing retirement age, will he be flying around the globe and dragging his body out of bed in the middle of the night to sign autographs for general public mobs?  Even after he has changed the face of pop music forever and sold untold millions of units?

He will be if he follows the lead of Paul McCartney.  Like Pete, as a young man Paul began his career playing bass and writing lyrics for a sprightly pop band that was a sensation among teenage girls everywhere.

And forty years later, despite being knighted, universally beloved and bitterly divorced, Sir Paul is still showing up at the Times Square Virgin Megastore to sign copies of his new DVD, The Space Within Us, and CD, Ecce Cor Meum.

Here's wishing Pete a future that is every bit as long-playing as the former Beatle's. But when Pete arrives at the Times Square autograph line in 2046, let's hope he's signing something a little more fun to play than Ecce Cor Meum.

Loosely termed entertainers Jenny McCarthy and Tom Arnold mugged together while attending a benefit for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.  The fund-raiser was held at a private residence in California's Pacific Palisades neighborhood.

The Brady Center is pursuing a valiant goal.  There is no arguing that far too many Americans lose their lives to preventable gun violence every year.  As long as one single innocent soul is at risk of perishing to a stray bullet, then the Brady Center's work is not done.

On the other hand, a crank with a pistol and an outraged sense of decency might look at Jenny and Tom and conclude that there are exceptions to every rule.

Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose and the greatest heavyweight of all time, Muhammad Ali, came face to face over the weekend.  The singer and the slugger were attending a benefit event supporting a cure for Parkinson's disease.

"What was that lyric you had?" asks Ali.  "Police and who?  You said a bad word; I can't quite remember what it was.  But when they cure this Parkinson's, I just might come and whup your ass."

In Axl's defense, the song in question, "One in a Million," used a racial epithet in the voice of a fictional character, speaking in a grand artistic tradition going all the way back to Mark Twain.

Plus, Axl's soulful braids should be enough to show that he harbors no prejudice based on skin or hairstyle.

Girls of all ages have fallen under the spell of Sex and the City, and the show looks like it will live forever in reruns.  One of its stars, Kim Cattrall, looks like she's been living forever already.

Cattrall portrayed "Samantha" on the original estrogen-drenched HBO soap opera.  For those unfamiliar with the series, Samantha was the menopausal blonde who was forever yearning to lock her ankles behind her ears.

Apparently, Kim grew accustomed to Sex and the City lavishing her with more prurient attention than an aging crone of her ilk would ever receive in real life.  Unwilling to surrender the erotic spotlight gracefully, this old bag has published a book, Sexual Intelligence.

Maybe Kim believes her brains are located in her genitals and up where her bra should be.

Maybe, while shilling her book in London, she's just trying to look smart by allowing potential customers to peek up her skirt and down her shirt.

It's been at least a year since she's had any loving from ex-Newlyweds co-star Nick Lachey.  And her supposed liaison with musician John Mayer was all-too-brief and long gone. 

Single and admittedly "sexually frustrated" Jessica Simpson may be hungry for male companionship, but she's not so starved that she's willing to shell out cash.

According to Australia's New Weekly magazine, one of Jessica's confidantes has revealed that the singer and sister of Ashlee Simpson accidentally solicited a male prostitute after spending months cruising the web for virtual partners.

The thrill of browsing the Internet for fantasy romance apparently grew stale, and she made a move for the real thing.

If the storyteller can be believed, Jessica found an ideal male specimen online.  But dream boy ruined the first date by insisting that Simpson had to pay before he would play.

If Jessica hadn't been so cheap, she might not need all that Proactiv Solution to keep her skin clear.

Popped-tart Britney Spears apparently believes that scraping off the 160-pound fungus known as Kevin Federline has somehow made her classy.  Editors at Vogue magazine have reportedly dashed that misconception.  

Star magazine claims that the fashion Bible, presented in fictional form by the movie The Devil Wears Prada, was approached by Spears.  Britney supposedly offered the magazine first rights on photos of the newly single mom with her latest fatherless kid, Jayden James Federline.

Vogue's response is assumed to have been something along the lines of:  "What are we?  Star f-ing magazine?"

Fashion makes for stange bedfellows.  Or at least it creates unlikely photo couplings. 

Last night's soiree celebrating Genetic Denim's one year anniversary provided three of this week's most unexpected pictures of Lindsay Lohan.

Devout Fall Out Boy fans may see nothing weird in Lindsay posing with lip-synching Ashlee Simpson (below left)-- after all, both young women are seen as fake bitches pushing superficial agendas.  And naturally, lewd-mouth Lohan would be hand-in-hand (below right) with Girls Gone Wild mastermind Joe Frances.

But what is demon-spawn Lohan (above) doing touching soulful Pete Wentz? 

Life is so strange and unfair.

Ever the fashion innovator, lewd-mouthed Lindsay Lohan has followed up her see-you-next-Tuesday summation of Paris Hilton with a sailor-man outfit that hearkens back to childhood innocence.

Except that unlike a toddler romping around pre-school in an H.M.S. Pinafore uniform, Lohan's anchor seems to be suggestively pointing directly down to, and highlighting, that portion of female anatomy that might be best said to sum up Paris Hilton.

The only celebrity in recent memory (or in distant memory for that matter) to go on-stage looking more like a rag-doll acid nightmare than Boy George is Stevie Wonder.  We all know what Stevie Wonder's excuse was. 

Outfits like this one, worn by George in honor of the Soho Revuebar Renaming Party, may be the true reason a Culture Club reunion tour is not expected any year soon.

The high glamour of England's most drug-tested couple, singer Pete Doherty and mannequin Kate Moss, is seen here in a dignified moment of domestic tranquility.  The lovebirds are snapped arriving at Moss's residence after having attended a soiree in celebration of Vogue magazine's 90th anniversary party. 

It's not quite on a par with news of American troops withdrawing from Iraq after assisting in the establishment of a stable governing body, but if Pete Doherty and Kate Moss can be photographed arriving home from a party, intact, at peace, with no bottles, powders, blood or other bodily fluids in evidence, then hope is alive for the bigger miracles as well.

If ever scientists need conclusive evidence that too much sex can cause idiocy, look no further than Denise Richards. 

Having capped off a multi-year marriage to renowned mattress champ Charley Sheen by jumping on the stick with notoriously serpentine Richie "The Snake" Sambora, Denise's skull seems to have taken one too many slams to the headboard.

While in Vancouver, Canada, to perform as a typecast dim bulb in the movie Blonde and Blonder, the mother of Charley Sheen's kids reportedly confronted a pair of photographers and tossed the shutterbugs' laptops from a hotel balcony.

As sheer stupidty would have it, the computers landed on a woman confined to a wheelchair below.

The scary thing about this story is that Charley Sheen now seems to be the responsible parent in their divorce battle.

Daredevil actress Jennifer Garner is seen here in the Brentwood, California, neighborhood she calls home.  Jen seems to be responding to a Borat-influenced heckler who has congratulated her on being such a handsome man.  Jennifer points to her chest as if the bumps there prove conclusively that she is a fine and manly example of the female gender.

Garner's gesture of breast awareness is entirely superfluous.  If Jennifer is a man, then her union with stone-faced Ben Affleck is a gay marriage, making her a homosexual male, which of course is ridiculous.

Jennifer Garner would have been the first gay guy ever to have been in a movie with both Ben Affleck and Colin Farrell (the aforementioned Daredevil) who did not fixate on Colin and leave Ben alone.

The horrifying thing about abusing drugs is that habitual overindulgence in narcotics does not always kill the victim.  In extreme cases, it cruelly turns them into Courtney Love.

Shown here in what must feel like an eternity since her last dose is the self-proclaimed de-toxified Courtney Love.  Courtney is attending a November 7th singing event for her new piece of book-like product, Dirty Blonde.

It's hard to say from her dour facial expression if Courtney's enthusiasm for pitching Dirty Blonde is any less avid than her zeal for a life without intoxicants.  The widow Cobain recently complained in the press that sobriety has trashed her sex life.

Picturing Courtney's sex life should be required therapy for all at-risk kids who are caught dabbling with dope.  If the vision of this rutting Hole doesn't scare them straight, nothing will.