Yes it was an evening of beginnings and endings last night, as dear friends departed for near-foreign shores, as other non-friends departed for actual foreign shores, and our listless heroine sat still in the middle like some dying star, repelling away all moons, planets, and other celestial matter with her pulsating anti-gravity. Srsly. I thought this show was about Lauren?

Well, it wasn't last night! Whitney, our cow-eyed once-supporting fashion friend, learned (shock!) that she did in fact get the sweet gig at Diane von Furstenberg in New York. So she has to move to The City, where she'll learn to navigate both The City its physical self, and The City of her own complex heart. "Should I take a cab to the grocery store?" she wondered, as if she will ever buy groceries. Of course, as you know, this is all preamble to her new show called... The City, so it wasn't so much of a "goodbye" as it was a new, strange hello. She'll no longer be casting her saturnine gaze upon Lauren while she rattles off the latest social injustice, but she will be still visible, striking out on her own. With a camera crew. And producers. And Olivia Palermo. See you in two weeks, Witz.

And of course the other, major story of last evening was the celebrated nuptials of one Heidi Montag and one lump of Silly Puddy named Spencer Pratt. The barely-acquaintances-at-this-point couple zipped off to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for a be-bathing suited drinking party. There was Heidi teetering out onto the veranda in her teeny-tiny orange bikini, champagne in hand, like some sort of bad rap video or gangster movie. Ol' Fleshbeard leered in his way, and they nestled into a gnarly embrace. Meanwhile back at home, Spencerina was worried to the point of further dumb-face about the two, who had mysteriously disappeared. She went to Audrina's house, for some inexplicable reason, to discuss it. And Justin Bobby was there. "Maybe you should put some posters up," he deadpanned, in what was probably the best ad-lib of the whole season. Well done, JB!

But no, instead Audrina went clomping off to Whitney's goodbye party (where her moms cried, for like real, it was human) and muttered to the other girls, "so Heidi and Spencer went missing" (I pictured, upon their return, Angelina Jolie pounding her chest and saying "No, I wan't MY Fleshbeard. MY Fleshbeard!!"), and Lauren just basically went "pfft," and the subject was closed.

Didn't matter anyway, because the tanned and hided couple was gargling stupid old Patron while Spencer spoke awful pidgin Spanish to the waiters and tried to coax his drunken beloved into tying the knot. Eventually, after getting the nodding go-ahead from Cindy the line producer, Heidi slurred a slurpy yes ("I'll show you what a wife does," she said vomitously). And off they were.

Because they're such retiring people, we didn't actually get to see the wedding. (ThankfullyUs Weekly did!!) What we did get to see was the aftermath, while Spencer lay on the bed watching the ceremony on vidja cassette, and Heidi, "so hungover," roamed the hotel room looking like a person lost entirely.

So now we've nearly (almost there!!) come to the end of this thing what was. And what, if anything, is the sum of these last four months when added together, all slushy and gummy? What have you done in your life, while all of this played out? Since August 18th, 2008, what love has been shared? What secrets kept and slipped? What dreams had, what bills paid, what lovely views looked upon? What car rides, what meals? What laughing friends warmed you, what sad starry nights made you wonder? What people wandered away forever, who inched their way closer, who made you feel whole, and peaceful?

And are we to graft any of this wealth of experience onto these Hills, these well-lit characters? Or are we to take something off of them and apply it, like a decal or a button, onto our lives? Should we be listening to the notes they're not playing, imagining the negative spaces created by the circular rooms of (fake) memory and (fake) feeling built inside all these square boxes?

Really, I think we're just supposed to watch these carelessly led lives so we can learn, somehow, to protect our own meandering existences. What's fake about everything shown here—the Burrito King, the pool party fights, the sunshiney grimaces, the Sisters—is maybe just a muddled reflection of what's real out there. Maybe this is a study in opposites, meant to teach us that while these people lay their lives out to bake and bleach under the harsh faux-sun of camera lights, maybe we should learn to hold ours scared sacred, to use them well. What terrific, scary things these lives are! What ancient yet fragile gifts!

Or maybe, you know, we're meant to watch as Heidi and Spencer make slurry vows and devilish bargains with an off-screen collector of souls, the mighty ocean churning forever beneath their window—as true and eternal a thing as ever there was in this old blue world—and say to ourselves:

Man, I really hate these people.

Hah, Update: Not actually the finale! Wishful thinking on my part! But I'm not watching it next week. I don't think. So, have fun.

Audrina continued to muddle her way through her relationship with the sweet and maybe-a-little-dim Cory, an Australian lad of genuine kindness but none of the dangerous joie de vivre exhibited by her badboy beloved Justin Bobby. But because none of these people are allowed to listen to their hearts until the producers tell them it's OK to do so, Audy kept poor Cory flopping around on the dock before she whacked him with her mallet, sending his brains squirting and sluicing out onto the planks. O bringer of life Audrina, O taker awayer. At least she wasn't willing to jeep on both of 'em and date them at the same time. No, only one fellow at a time can ride the ghostly Victorian carousel that turns unendingly inside her skull.

In a litter box across town, Spencerina was diddling around with Cameron, a whiny little elf of a gent who had plans to have words with Brody, the tormentor and cry-maker of Spencerina's nightmares. So they were all at the clurrb, Spencerina & Cameron, Lo & her potato-ish unnamed boyfriend, Lauren & the quiet sadness of her singledom. Oh, and then Brodes todes showeds up, and Cameron played a scaredy cat game of Link while his beak-nosed Zelda shifted awkwardly in the leather banquette. It was a sad scene of people breaking softly under the weariness of living, like that part in Half Nelson where the girl walks into the party to sell crack for her cousin and there's Ryan Gosling on the floor all fucked up and waiting for his drugs and she looks at him and he looks at her and this expression of every minute of his life finally catching up to him—and of every sad story of drugs in America choosing him as their conduit—crosses his face and it just ruins you. That was sort of like the Hills scene last night. I mean. Sort of.

Spencerina went bungling off to Fleshbeard and Gumby. They henpecked and nagged and needled and basically continued their sad cannibal work of stripping the very flesh of vitality from Spencerina's bones, sucking the marrow out of her life. It's how they survive, these two end of days vultures. And, I dunno, call me crazy but I'm sort of starting to enjoy Fleshbeard's sour little scenes. It's become like clockwork, as reliable and ornately silly as the Glockenspiel. I mean it's awful, yes, but it's also respectably audacious of Spence and the crew to serve us the same bitter gazpacho every week and expect us to take it. We take it! We take it! And we, eventually, choke on it, I think.

Audrina continued to poke at the flopping, briney soon-to-be corpse of Cory, her shallow puddle eyes glinting not with recognition, but only with empty reflection. She went to "work" at a recording studio with Brandy. No not the drink! The singer lady who used to be famous for such hits as "The Boy Is Mine" and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. She was recording a song and choosing a photo for her album cover and desperately trying to forget 1) that she used to be like the biggest star in R&B like 10 years ago and now she's reduced to meekly peddling her wares on The Hills and 2) her brother Ray J sexed Kim Kardashian on camera. Anyway, Justin Bobby called and like the good employee she is, Audrina ran outside to talk with him.

"I want you to be with me," muttered JB. Audrina didn't know what the eff to say other than that she didn't know. We'd have to see. We'd all have to see. And then WHACK! SQUISH! BLECHHH! she dashed out Cory's frippering life at a restaurant shortly after. And he'd just given the meowing sheila a little koala bear toy. "Ohhh, I'll keep this forever," she said, immediately before breaking up with him. Sadly he'd also invited her to visit him in Australia. But nay, she loved the coffee and Jack Daniels-marinated Justin Bobby just too much. She longed for his leathery arms and gruff purr of a voice at that very moment. Off with you Cory, into the chum bucket with you! Back to the sharks of Bondi Beach!

And that was that. Lauren didn't do nothin' all episode except have a tired conversation with Spencerina. Maybe she's figured out how to live her life and she's decided this whole reality game is for the birds. Let Audrina squirrel her way through a series of dainty men, let Spencerina be constantly emotionally abused by her brother and his girlfriend, let Brody call people "homie" even though he is the whitest whitey to ever be white. Lauren's gotten so good at this game she doesn't even need to play it to win it. And that, I must say with a phrase I never thought I'd used in one of these recaps, I can respect.

I can. Sigh. I can.

it takes a lot to laugh's new line beats the original, "Sorry Did You Say 'Famous' Or 'Shameless'?"

• Heather Locklear's DUI bust? Called in by an ex-Us Weekly staffer who now runs a paparazzi agency. She watched Locklear get into the car, then snapped pictures as she was taking her sobriety test. TMZ paid her more than $27,000 for the shots. And, uh, for ensuring road safety or whatever. [Scoop]
• Lauren Conrad's flack said the reason her clothes are clogging up store racks is because they are selling so incredibly well. Same with the buy-one-get-one-free offer. [P6]
• Mary-Kate Olsen's flakey artist boyfriend doesn't get along with Ashley Olsen's much more blue collar boyfriend, whose occupations is "famous movie star." Such enormous differences to overcome with these four! [Star]
• Lindsay Lohan is presently feeling interested in headbands and human child adoption. [The London Paper]
• Britney Spears visited some kids in the Bronx and looked cleaned up and sane. Apparently getting that way involved banning her cousin and former assistant Alli Sims from her entire life.
• Adnan Ghalib said there is no sex tape with him and Spears, and he's going to sue someone to prove it. [Sun]

Where Audrina will go, there's just no way of telling (until the photographers and everybody finds her again). Maybe she'll end up at that big-windowed downtown loft that she looked at last season. That way Audrina could imagine herself in some dystopian future world, where she is the brave heroine, not some blonde floozy. I picture her standing looking out the windows at the glittery lights of downtown LA, finally happy, the muddled cricket hum of Beverly Hills just a dream of landscape she had one night.

The gears started turning when Heidigger, Heidi's prodigal older sister—now back living in LA after an indeterminate time spent banished in Crested Butte or whatever—expressed an interest in seeing her old friend Lauren, now Heidi's wistful arch nemesis. Spencer forbade Heidigger so see LC, but something in the chipper (and Daler) faced young lady suggested that she may go—daringly!—behind her younger sister's fake boyfriend's back and rekindle the connection.

And so they did, meeting for lunch at some sort of "bistro place," talking about old times and how they used to be the Three Musketeers. Which is sort of true. Dissatisfying, poop-like bars of nougat that are tossed aside from a child's Halloween bounty like so many Zagnuts. Lauren expressed some temerity about embarking on friendsies 2.0, because she didn't want to drive a wedge between the Sisters Rosenmontag, as she did with Spencer and his dim sister Spencerina. Lessons learned, LC! This is what the show is all about!

Meanwhile Audrina, charged with packing an LA coming-out party for some silly, whiny band called The White Tie Affair (do you get it?), invited her oft bobbing and swaying man friend Justin Bobby. He seemed reluctant to attend, but said he would for her. Of course, the party rolls around and he didn't show. Audy smiled in that softly devastating way that she does, years of disappointment and time spent in the shadows streaking, however fleetingly, across her face. At least Lauren and Lo and Spencerina came, jamming along to the band and flirting with its pierced-nippled members at the poolside after party.

And then, in the end, it came back to Heidi and Lauren. Heidi spoke with Heidigger about the past and her hope for the future. "Maybe by some miracle," Heidi hoped, they could be friends again. Lauren chatted with Spencerina (at their computer class!) and said that she didn't want Heidi to get her hopes up (oh you wicked editors). But when Spencerina asked if Lauren missed her old friend, LC made a face bordering on a genuine seriousness, a sudden realization of time's relentlessly ever-churning wheels. She said she did. And then the music swelled and the same sun swirled somewhere above both of them and it seemed for a moment that there was reason to hope still.

But the "scenes from the next" didn't show any Heidi/Lauren reconnection, just some nonsense about Spencerina going out with Doug the Frozen Burrito Heir. Perhaps the producers are keeping that storied reunion in their back pocket, in case this is the last season of the show. For now we'll have to wait and, like so many moments spent at that age, wildly wonder.

Yes, Whitney finally began her bi-coastal Kelly Cutrone adventure, and boy did it start with a bang! Or, at least the potential for a bang. Yes, Whitney's first assignment was to help a casting for male models, impossibly-abbed lads with tousled hair and lazy, ambling gaits. And it made her wonderful dinner plate eyes bug out even more than usual. She was freaking out, albeit in the saturnine, slow lake ripple way that she freaks out. Kelly, schooling her on "multitasking in the power-bitch world," slyly arranged a date for Whitney with one of the models, a scruffy Columbia grad called Alex. Of course Kelly and company were mysteriously absent for the planned evening drinks, so it was just Whitney and the Morningside beau, left to wander the flat and blocky streets of Soho, making canned cute. That said, I would totally watch Whitney's show if it became a, heh, reality.

Oh, and yes, Lauren did end it with Doug the Frozen Burrito Heir, leaving him to contemplate the nature of loss in his well-designed bachelor pad perched high atop the Hollywood hills. At the end of the episode, Lauren pensively navigated those mounds of earth to which her success is owed, perhaps doing some moral arithmetic. "And this relationship ending equals this. And that equals this. And he equals this. And her times him equals me divided by... something." It looks as though things with Spencerina and the boys will teeter into the deep end next week, perhaps providing the final "It's a second pair of legs! A whole second lady!" magician's fumble that will once and for all put this show to bed.

Now it's time to get in bed and cuddle, my dear. [Shudder]

ColonelMustard's new line beats the original, Reality Star Ignores Signs About Her Chosen Profession.

There was, like any good Chekhov play, a party. Lauren, our reluctant and vaguely sad hero, threw a rocker-attended birthday blowout for her cabana-banished roommate Audrina. She had hoped it would put the friendship back on track, but as always Lo was a Maleficent-level bitch and holed up in her room and then hah! blamed Audrina for not making any effort in the faux friendship (see above clip). Lauren then looked sad and went on a date with a guy named Doug ("...Douggg...") who my sources tell me is the heir to a frozen burrito fortune. No fucking joke. Frozen burritos.

Meanwhile in the cartoonish world of Heidi and Spencer, the Piaf-esque singer had her might-as-well-not-have-a-name-she's-so-useless (on the show! she is a real person with feelings!) sister over for an extended visit. Ol' Fleshbeard was none too happy about it, because... well, it wasn't exactly clear what his problem was. Shared airtime? A worry that his sister, Spencerina, might have to cede some coverage? I'm sure we'll see the conflict explored further, because the buckiest Montag ominously intoned that she'd like to move to LA because she had nothing going on back in Colorado (what about the skiing and mega churchgoing???) and Heidi turned to the producers and made sure it was OK and then said it sounded like a good idea.

If something else happened, I don't remember. I guess Whitney made some spot-on facial expressions and Justin Bobby looked pretty decent with his short hair and did I mention the frozen burrito heir? My sister called me right after and declared that, based on the scenes-from-the-next, it was going to be a good season. I agreed and we chatted for a moment, but when I hung up I realized that I had no idea what actually looked "good" about this season. I couldn't remember anything in particular, but I did feel that way at the time. And I'm not sure why. It's a mystery I'll be unpacking for months, if not years, I'm sure.

In the meantime I'll grudgingly watch—pen in my hand, ending unplanned.

• Paris Hilton either added implants to "her A-cup" breasts or wants to spread gossip that she did so she can sell her stupid "push-up" bra. (Yes, you can click the thumb if you need a closer look. Yes, you will feel dirty. But don't you kinda feel that way already?) [P6]
• Graydon Carter's wife Anna gave birth to a baby girl, Isabella Rose Carter, who can already get better reservations and invitations than you. [P6]
• Oppressive Hollywood people will not let Danny Glover make a movie funded by beacon of tolerance Hugo Chavez. [P6]
• Heath Ledger's daughter Matilda will receive money otherwise destined to the actors who completed Heath Ledger's turn in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell are all donating their proceeds from the movie. [Fox]
• Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt plan to marry on live TV and also wrest the Hills from Lauren Conrad.

Well, first off, Audrina will die. While hang gliding with Justin Bobby, her erstwhile mumble-mouth boyfriend, she'll suddenly look directly at the sun. She'll blink furiously and lose control and spiral down toward the gleaming blue Pacific. Justin Bobby will mourn her by grunting a bit, then hitting on a girl. So yeah, Audrina is dead. Or is she? Lauren will start finding strange bits of detritus on her doorstep. Seashells, bits of glass, the severed head of Frankie Delgado. Is Audrina secretly alive, or is she exacting undead revenge, like the watery Ted Danson zombie in Creepshow? Tune in to find out!

While dealing with the bloated undead, Lauren will also be struggling with her next computer class. Expect lots of footage of LC swatting at the computer and sort of chirp/meowing. Spencer's sister, Spencerina, will be there too. Once Lauren leaves, Spencerina will make out with Lauren's computer. Traitor! Also, Heidi will become a prize at a carnival. She'll be hung up at the back of the booth until she is won by an acne-faced boy from Ohio who fills a balloon with water the fastest. She'll be passed off to the lad's girlfriend, who will absentmindedly leave Heidi in her cousin Dorine's Ford Probe when she gets dropped off at home that night. Spencer will cope with the loss by painting another vroom vroom! mural on the walls and then doing a slow, mournful jig. Then Whitney will come out reading a large, ancient book. She'll close it slowly and say, beatifically, "all has ended." Then she'll disappear into thin air. The credits will roll as Jenn Bunny croons Just the Way You Are.

Or, you know, this stuff happens.

• Kate Hudson totally finished her first Tour De Lance! Congratulations! [P6]
• Donna Karan is going to Africa with Calvin Klein and two Vanity Fair editors to try and find inspiration for her new collection, "Urban Zen." Because when you think of Zen, you think of the continent of Africa! [Observer]
• Despite rumors that Matthew Broderick cheated on Sarah Jessica Parker with a 25-year-old youth counselor, everything is totally fine in their relationship. You can tell by how hapy they look in the attached photo. [OK!]
• In jail for soliciting a 14-year-old prostitute, billionaire scuzz Jeff Epstein "has a cell to himself and spends his days at the library e-mailing various models he befriended in New York." I'll bet he does. [P6]
• So, wow, it turns out Amy Winehouse didn't go to the hospital due to legal addiction-busting drugs after all! Go figure. It turns out ecstasy was somehow involved. Also there was a four-hour drinking game and 11 prescription pills. Now her father is trying to figure out which devious soul slipped drugs into her drink. Um, gosh, no idea.
• Ben Silverman, onetime NBC golden boy and close friend to Rupert Murdoch's daughter, may be done for at the network if his fall shows do as poorly as his summer shows. [P6]
• OMG Lauren Conrad cried at home recently once. This means the Hills star is an "out of control... emotional train wreck" who is "wallowing in the misery that she feels her life has become." Someone stop her before she cries again! [Star]
• Though probably drunk, Shia LaBeouf may also have been the victim of a red-light-runner and thus not at fault in his big accident. [People]
• Britney Spears spent $22,000 per month to go from 144 pounds to whatever pretty hot weight she's at now. [Mail]
• The doorman who won $5 million in the lottery has been fired. [Post]

• In the wake of his big, possibly violent fight with his mom and sister, everyone's trying to figure out what ever happened to Christian Bale. The Daily Mail notes that after Bale became the family breadwinner at 13, his father tried to make him into a Hollywood star while Mom advocated a normal childhood in Britain. Also, he's been angry all the time since forever. The Post passes along the news that he hates press tours and is known as "robo-actor" because of his "steely focus."
• Silda and Eliot Spitzer "made only two seconds of eye contact during dinner" at Gabriel's. [P6]
• Anna Wintour is basically holding the Bill Blass fashion label together with he sweet talking and so forth. I guess in some circles she's known for that? Odd. [Post]
• Was Madonna's brother's nasty tell-all book about Madonna published by a secret cabal that includes... MADONNA HERSELF?? From what I've read of that book, she's just devious enough to try it. [P6]
• The entire celebrity media convinced themselves that Lindsay Lohan was sideswiped by a motorcycle while on foot outside a club. But apparently that was entirely fabricated, presumably by a very unambitious prankster. Also, she and Samantha Ronson were headed to Boston the other night instead of breaking up forever.
• Wham! might reunite. Because what would those songs be without Andrew Ridgeley... standing there... smiling? [Sun]
• Charlie Sheen wants full custody of his daughters after batting down apparently false molestation charges from Denise Richards. Please don't say a divorce can't get any uglier than this, because then it totally will. [Sun]
• Ha ha, try dodging the Post and they'll take a picture of you without your shirt on, even if you are some big shot Catholic who totally bro'd down with Anne Hathaway's ex. [Post]
• Mario Lopez's biceps are replacing not one but both Extra hosts. [Post]
• LA boutique Kitson has dropped Lauren Conrad's collection due to poor sales. [OK!]

• Madonna heard about her brother Christopher Ciccone's tell-all book, so she emailed him "Call me." He was all, "Hello? I don’t respond to commands anymore." Besides, writing the book "was like a giant fucking orgasm." [Observer]
• The (supposed) backstory on the Christian Bale assault investigation: He was depressed about the death of Heath Ledger, and exhausted from the movie, and his Mom said "some very outrageous things about him, and his wife," according to a Mail source. Bale yelled at her but didn't touch her or the wife, supposedly. Bale also reportedly lashed out recently on the set of Terminator 4.
• Lorne Michaels, the Saturday Night Live producer, won an initial court decision against a man who keeps trying to contact him because the Long Island man claims Michaels is eavesdropping on his private conversations, "singing and/or other utterances." [Post]
• Socialites Tinsley and Topper Mortimer might get to join the very exclusive Southmampton Bathing Competition. It was in Bonfire of the Vanities and everything! Think good thoughts, so that the Tinz and her sis might some day be cordoned off from rabble like yourself. [Observer]
• Banking heir Matthew Melon promised, in writing, to pay his girlfriend and business partner $1 million if he ever did cocaine again. Now, of course, they've broken up and she's trying to enforce the contract. He was definitely high at some point! [P6]
• Actor Balthazar Getty acknowledged that he has separated rom his wife, in case the pictures of him groping Sienna Miller topless weren't confirmation enough. [P6]
• Lauren Conrad was two hours late to a paid appearance, even though there was a helicopter to ferry her to the party. [P6]
• Here's a picture of Matthew McConaughey's brand new baby. [OK!]

There's some gobbledygook about Perez Hilton gurgling that she left "promptly" after the red carpet, but original source Emily Brill disagreeing. Brill says that Conrad lingered backstage for a while but, yes, ultimately decided to blow that pop stand prematurely.

So I guess, what, this makes Conrad a true celebrity now? Now that she's accused of being temperamental and moody and likes to disappear unannounced from charity events, it can only be a matter of time before she's embedding Bluetooth units into people's skulls, right? It must be nice though. The last time I angrily stormed out of work I had to clammily give two weeks notice beforehand. I guess the mystery of the whole event, if there is any at all, is what exactly set her off. Maybe she suddenly realized that her life would soon be an anonymous husk of the glamorous existence she now enjoys, so she ran off into the night, got herself a Slushee, and wandered around the East Village for an hour or two, listening to the Mountain Goats, and thinking about maybe going back to school, for real this time. Or, you know, she just yelled at her manager from the backseat of a Town Car.

Though! Hmm! Maybe the real fault lies in Animal Fair magazine's editor-in-chief Wendy Diamond. That noble publication was hosting the charity event, and a tipster tells us that Diamond is often demanding and less-than-kind to all involved in these galas. Supposedly she has a history of tirelessly haranguing "famous" people to come to this event until they just can't stand it anymore and relent. Maybe Lauren's just a victim.

Top image via Splash]

• Madonna did not show up to her alleged lover/disciple Alex Rodriguez's All-Star party, nor did his bitter teammates, so he hung out alone in the club with his mom and two "kabbalah buddies," including a woman spotted leaving his house the next day.
• Page Six detailed all the lies noted liar (and animal-hating monster) Paris Hilton has told them, although you never with the Post, really. One of the more bizarre ones is that Hilton smoked marijuana in front of Page Six staff and then promised to take a drug test, but never did. [P6]
• CNN's Washington, DC assignment editor is on the cover of Muscular Development, a magazine featuring guys with obscenely large muscles, and with a website hawking all kinds of, uh, "supplements." Fox News Channel's buddies at the Post think this makes him a "CABLE BULLY." [P6]
• A cat named Anderson Pooper was just named "Best In Show" on Daily Paws. And he's silver! [OMG]
• Lauren Conrad fails to bring dog to bitchfest, ends up crying and somehow flaking. [Emily Brill]
• It's not so much that Jesse Jackson thinks Barack Obama is "talking down to black people" when the presidential candidate tells black men to take responsibility for their children. It's that he thinks Obama is talking down to him, says the mother of Jackson's love child. [Enquirer]
• Cityfile, which profiles Gotham's rich and famous, is trying to take pictures of wealthy people coming in and out of their fancy apartment towers, and is getting harassed by goons and hangers-on. Genius. [P6]
• NBC Universal is eyeing new offices at 7 World Trade Center and 11 Times Square, a total of roughly 500,000 square feet. [Observer]
• Tatum O'Neal's crack dealer feels abandoned. And that's a bad thing? [Enquirer]
• Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were maybe going to name their baby boy Rex Leon? But didn't? And an embroidered play matt somehow proves that? Something like that. [R&M]
• Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson probably just bought a Tribeca duplex fo $17 million. [Observer]
• OK! magazine is finally showing those Jessica Alba pictures it paid so much for! Actually, $1.5 million is a bargain these days. [Sun]
• Michael J. Fox will return to TV for four episodes of Rescue Me. [Us]

The Starlet: Heidi Montag, "Out Loud 'n Proud"
The Endorsement: "I'm a Republican, and he has a lot of experience."
The Effect: Not much, except for clueless old man hilarity. When asked about the Hills star's endorsement, McCain claimed to be a big fan of Montag and her show, calling her "a very talented actress." Heidi later showed up at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, further embarrassing politics.

The Starlet: Lauren Conrad, "Secret Republican?"
The Endorsement: Not exactly clear cut. After costar Heidi's earthshaking declaration, Conrad was pressed to throw her support behind a candidate. She officially said "no comment," (though she did speak up about her support for gay marriage). But, at the White House Correspondents' Dinner (yes, she was there too) she reportedly clapped loudly when emcee Craig Ferguson asked if he should vote Republican, then did a little crinkle frown when he asked if he should go Democrat.
The Effect: McCain has not yet acknowledged this tacit endorsement, so her effect on his morale and vote corralling is yet unknown. She has managed, though, to further embarrass politics.

The Starlet: Leven Rambin, "The One Who Likes Funny Things"
The Endorsement: Having just recently become a legal voter (and approved sexual being) when she turned 18, the soap star/socialite's thoughts have naturally turned to politics. Which candidate, after much thorough research and contemplation, has she allied with? McCain of course, because the old timer mumbled and yukked his way into her heart with his recent SNL appearance. She called him "shockingly coherent and comical" in a little blog post.
The Effect: None yet! Though, we can only imagine that McCain will benefit from being called "shockingly coherent and comical," as that never describes people who are old. Also, we suspect, Rambin has further embarrassed politics.

So, there you have it. McCain (the last living Civil War widow) is skewing big in the famous-for-no-reason starlet demo. All he needs now are a few American Gladiators and a Canadian to endorse him and he's looking at a smooth ride to the White House.

Actually, it's here.

• 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]

Spirit Fingers' new line beats the original, "Oh No... You Don't... Buster... There's No Way You're Taking... Our... Picutre... (Honey, Pose Hot!)"

She and Lauren were interns at Teen Vogue's Los Angeles office, and Whitney had enough brains to say yes to a chance to spend the summer working in Paris, after Lauren, incredibly, turned it down to be with her boyfriend. That boneheaded decision, her boss tells her later, means that she's "going to always be known as the girl who didn't go to Paris."

The gist of the article is that the critic herself, Nancy Franklin, can hardly understand the appeal; possibly nobody can. "I think people watch it mostly to figure out why they're watching it."

I believe the appeal is that the viewer is not required to look for a deeper meaning. There is no deeper meaning, and that's comforting. In this way, The Hills is the Zen Buddhism of TV. We watch and accept the moments that Lauren Conrad gives us; the reward is the journey, not the ending. As critic Nancy Franklin says, the world of reality TV "has a surface but no volume."

Most of the conversations start with one or another of the girls asking Lauren what she did the night before, and, constant as the questions are, they seem to be asked not out of curiosity but out of obligation, as if the girls were being paid to ask—as, indeed, they are.

ChaimGnaldstein's new line beats the original, Reality Stars Overhear Someone Talking About Working Really Hard for a Masters.