I Ain't One To Gossip But ....

I didn’t watch American Idol last year because, well, it sucked. Idol? Not so much. One hit wonder? At times. Soon to be forgotten hacks? Most definitely. But this year Nicki Minaj is on board and people love her or hate her; I’m in the ‘love’ category because the girl says what she wants and sometimes it’s cray-cray and sometimes it’s high-larious. Like last week when Nicki was giving her critique and Moo-riah Carey started trying to talk over her.

Nicki: Okay okay simma’ down, sir.

Loved.It.

But the real gossip on AI is that, ahem, ALLEGEDLY, the producers grew so tired of Mariah Carey this season that they tried to fire her halfway through the gig. Trouble was, Mariah’s team of Rabid Dawg Lawyers found out and threatened a huge lawsuit and demanded that Mariah be paid her full 20 million for this season and 20 million for next season if the producers tried to dump her. So she's still there and still awful.

And, to make it worse for Moo-riah, is the rumor that producers wanted to fire her and rehire last year's diva, Jennifer Lopez. See, the ratings for the JLo season were higher than this year so the producers thought last year was all, as Carlos calls her, Jello, and this season's Downward Facing Ratings were all Mariah’s fault. Not taking into consideration that the show hasn’t produced a real Idol since Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood almost ten years ago!

But Nigel Lythgoe, the not-gay producer of Idol, denies there was ever an attempted coup, but then says the rumors started when producers wanted JLo to sing—I giggle because I said JLo and sing in the same sentence—at the finale.

But, um, why have an ex-judge come back and sing when three of the four judges—let’s not forget the Adorably Aussie Keith Urban—are singers and maybe they could perform?

I smell a cover-up, and if it covers up Mariah you know it’s got to be big, huuuuge.

Let me clarify this first by saying that sifter she was arrested for disorderly conduct in Atlanta last week, Reese Witherspoon released a statement with a fully realized and real apology for being a bit drunk in public. I admire her for that.

But, still, Good Girl Reese’s people are trying to do damage control for her “Mom image” and yet no one is talking about just how drunk Reese was at the scene.

Until now. According to Atlanta Police, Reese’s unconventional, eyes down mugshot is the most unusual mugshot ever seen. But, as a police officer explained, “She was wobbly. She didn’t need help walking, but she wasn’t at a point where we could get a really clear picture.”

Too drunk to hold your head up?

According to the source—and if it happened in a police station, chances are it was Lohan—the police took more than one photograph and chose the best one: “On another picture, she sort of bent down at the waist and we got the top of her head. She wasn’t being difficult or rude, but her motor skills weren’t what they needed to be.”

Motor skills! Good thing she wasn’t “motoring” the car that night. Still, some folks think she did get preferential treatment: “You can’t look down in the photograph,” says Atlanta criminal defense attorney Peter Odom. “The whole point of a mugshot is for identification purposes. To my knowledge, there is no exception to this rule. When someone is in custody, there isn’t a lot of personal space. They will grab your head and move it into the right position to get the right mugshot. But in this case, protocol was definitely not followed.”

Yet most folks agree that the charges against Reese are so minor that there was no need to grab her by the hair and jerk her head up—a la Diana Ross as Billie Holiday in the opening sequence of Lady Sings The Blues.

I am not really a fan of Beyoncé. I mean, for a hot second I liked Crazy In Love and for a hot half-second I liked Single Ladies, but most of the seconds I find her a little full of herself with the sequins and the wind machines and the hair.

Cut it all out and sing.

I was also annoyed when, after the Superbowl performance, where she sang for a little bit and then strutted like a stripper the rest of the time, that she tried to stop people from posting still photos taken of her performance where she looks, well, unattractive, would be polite. I mean, stop and take a gander at that Superbowl performance pic on the left, and then at the Beyoncé -approved photo on the right.

See, because she wants to control her image in every single moment, she has decided to hire her own personal photographer and videographer to follow her around 24-7 and only release picture perfect-retouches of her tour.

F.Stop. Because you just know now that anyone with a camera—and doesn’t everyone have a camera on their phones these days—will be trying to get a Beyoncé Grunt-o-graph to sell to the highest bidder.

I know I'll post 'em.

Tara Reid—AKA Lindsay Lohan BEFORE We Had the Real Lindsay Lohan—has kind of gone all Reese Witherspoon of late.

Tara has been a hot, drunken, dress falling off mess for years and suddenly Reese &^%*$ing Witherspoon is trying to cut in on her drunken antics? Oh.No.She.Di’in’t.

After Reese got drunk and Don’t you know my name wacky in Georgia, Tara Reid got all drunk and Who am I in LA.

The American Pie ‘star’ was seen shopping at LA’s All Saints boutique last week, where she was overheard berating employees for refusing to give her a discount because of her “fame,” and then was booted.

“She was screaming,” said a source—again, probably Lohan, trying to score coins before rehab. “She had to be escorted out by security. She seemed drunk.”

See, here’s the deal: Tara was off to Coachella, where drunks and sluts go, and decided she needed a new outfit. At All Saints she “demanded a discount” and when the store declined, Reid insisted she deserved the break “because of her fame.”

Let that sink in. Her fame is mostly because she’s a drunken party girl who sometimes let’s her dress fall off while she walks a red carpet to show off her surgically enhanced boobs.

But, after screaming Don’t you know me? Reid was escorted from the store by security.

Tara’s people—and you know it’s a bartender somewhere—said Tara gets a huge discount with All Saints in the UK and Paris because she’s a walking billboard for them: “We told them we get a discount, and they said they’d email the press team.”

Which they did, and the All Saints press team apparently said Tara who?

Like most people.

How does Gwyneth do it? I mean, she went straight from the Most Hated Celebrity in Hollywood--voted on by actual people--to being named People magazine’s Most Beautiful Woman--orchestrated by her publicist because she has a new movie coming out next month. But, while she has yet to mention being The Most Hated, she has commented, of course, on being The Most Beautiful:

“Oh, lord,” said Gwynnie at the premiere of Iron Man 3. “It’s very sweet and I’m so embarrassed, but I’m so happy. “It’s so weird, it’s crazy. It’s very sweet. I’m so flattered. I’m thrilled.”

Well, I'll agree that it is crazy.

But then Paltrow's head swells when asked if her husband, musician Chris Martin, now has to tell her how, gulp, pretty she is--like that wasn't part of their marriage deal to begin with--and Paltrow purrs, “It’s like the American version of a knighthood basically. My title just got longer.”

Okay, first of all, shut up. 

Second of all, I imagine the only thing your husband tells you is to shut up.

Third, shut up.