Rumer Willis: I know I'm not a conventional beauty

Neither did anybody else. According to Isthishappening.com, this was the scene outside the Hot Topic in Hollywood where the gargantuan gossip was debuting his clothing line in person:

Nobody wants to buy clothes from a fat, sweaty gossip blogger? I could've told him that.

Warning: Naughty language!

Background here. L. Ron is not happy right now, on whichever planet he went to.

A woman who showed up Sunday outside John Cusack's Malibu home -- despite a restraining order barring her from approaching the actor -- was arrested on suspicion of stalking, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said Monday...

Emily Leatherman, 33, was booked on suspicion of felony stalking, violating a restraining order and petty theft...

A year ago, Leatherman was arrested outside the Beverly Hills home of Tom Cruise, also on suspicion of violating a restraining order.

Hey, Cusack started it:

Last month a young man received a ticket for "unlawful smoking" in Burbank, CA. Today he was supposed to appear in court but didn't, and now there's a warrant out for his arrest.

That young man? Shia LaBeouf.

On one hand, this nanny-state crap has got to stop. On the other hand, it is Shia LaBeouf...

Writers love to write about themselves. At length. Such as this. You'd think it was the Battle of Normandy. All I want to know is whether the strike is over or not, and when they'll be making more episodes of Lost.

Coroner: Renfro Overdosed on Heroin

TMZ has a live video feed of the doors to the courthouse where K-Fed's lawyer is trying to get him full custody of his kids. Which just got a little easier, now that Britney has been wheeled out of her own home on a gurney and placed under psychiatric evaluation at Cedars-Sinai. And I'm talking about it. And you're reading about it. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find an American flag to salute.

How many can you name?

(thx, PopSugar)

[A]t the end of the day, the amount of economic profit that we could all make together could maybe get us through a day at Starbucks. It’s just not worth it.

I'm pretty apathetic about the strike, especially since I don't have a TV. If anything, I agree with the Techdirt view ("Titanic Crew Strikes Over Deck Chair Arrangement"). But I'm also reasonably certain that Michael Eisner has never haunted the interior of a Starbucks in his life.

Orlando Bloom crashed into a parked car in LA early this morning, injuring his two female passengers. Then he started to flee the scene on foot, leaving the bleeding babes behind, but then thought better of it and went back. Some say hero! What Would Legolas Do?

Universal Studios Hollywood discontinued its Back to the Future ride yesterday. Upon hearing the news, Michael J. Fox was reportedly shaken.

Entertainment Tonight says police are investigating a possible sexual assault at the Playboy Mansion. Isn't this kind of like investigating a possible roller-coaster ride at Disneyland?

Nancy Rommelmann:

Los Angeles will never say, hey, you’re past your freshness date; get out. Like an understanding hostess, she will make room for you even in reduced circumstances; under the stairs, maybe, but you are of course welcome to watch the paying guests eat, and really, she’d prefer if you did. It makes it that much more festive. And there you are, still part of the action.

...Excruciation is of course its own form of entertainment, and one in which Hollywood excels. In young blond imports whose peppiness turns to bewilderment, and then bitterness, but who stay nonetheless, for decades, until they find themselves working at a dry cleaners in Laurel Canyon, but the one where Nic Cage drops off his jackets so, you never know. Of nose jobs and boob jobs and platypus lips and calf implants, each an attempt to make you both better than you were and the same as everyone else, a zero sum game for everyone but the plastic surgeons. Of pretty mommies in expensive yoga-wear, their figures identical to their preteen daughters’, who hang back from the counters at the Japanese bubble-tea shops of West Los Angeles, trying and failing to not appear fragile and spacey and altogether ill-equipped to decide whether they’re hungry. And the couple in line, just ahead of me, at the Malaysian restaurant in the Farmers Market, a 50-something woman and her slightly younger gay companion. She, with so much Botox in her face and collagen in her lips she resembled Cesar Romero playing the Joker in the old Batman TV series. He, in a string tank-top that revealed a Schwarzeneggerian chest, a stunning contrast to hair fringed coquettishly above his eyes, eyes that had been surgically stretched between jubilation and terror, the same expression he might have come by naturally had he opened his apartment door at the end of the day and found sixty people yelling, “SURPRISE!” The couple’s bodies might have been politely scanning the overhead menu, but their psyches were cocooned in some existential web, and I, I could not look away, despite and perhaps because doing so made my stomach hurt.

This is fun - I especially like what they say about LA:

According to TMZ, Wolfgang Puck catered a Valentine's Day party for a bunch of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, including Beyonce, and since then one of his employees has been diagnosed with hepatitis A. I think that's the one that's good for your eyes, whereas hep C helps you fight colds and scurvy. Or maybe I'm thinking of something else. Anyways, now the LA County Department of Public Health is telling anybody who's eaten food this creep (the employee, that is) might have touched within the last 3 weeks to get their shots right freaking now.

You might say those hotties got Pucked! But you probably wouldn't for reasons of decorum.

Jeannette Walls' assistant types:

Britney Spears is rehabbing in style — and privacy.

The “Toxic singer” reportedly booked an entire wing for herself at Promises, the Malibu clinic where she’s hoping to detox.

“She wants all the rooms on her wing,” a source told the London Sun. “It will cost her hundreds of thousands.”

Also, she gets to use as much drugs and alcohol as she wants. Hey, it's rehab, not a gulag!

“Just friends�? in Hollyweird means that she hasn’t swallowed his load yet.

-Michael K, referring to the status of Josh Hartnett and Sienna Miller's "friendship"

Lohan Enters Rehab

Okay, we should keep count. This is visit number: 1.

And now that I got that time-honored hack device out of the way in the header, here's the story:

David Beckham is on Cruise control. The English soccer superstar revealed yesterday he sought the advice of Scientology poster boy Tom Cruise before inking the five-year, $1 million-a-week deal that will bring him from Real Madrid to the Los Angeles Galaxy. "I was on the phone to him for about an hour last night and an hour the night before," Beckham told reporters via satellite from Spain. "He is a very wise man and a very good friend of mine. It's going to be a big help for us to have friends when we arrive in L.A."

I think they should star in a movie together! Here are some possible ideas:

Bend It Like Xemu
A Few Good Balls
Top Goal
Goals of Thunder
Um...

Okay, I give up. There are probably some really good soccer jokes there, but I'm 120% American and therefore know nothing of the game.

Stee's come up with a bunch of them that he thinks cell phone providers should pre-load onto their phones, along with the usual "Need more info" and "On my way".

"Stuck at light at Highland and Franklin"

"Getting colonic"

"Being chased by paparazzi"

"Punched my assistant. Send bail"

"Getting boobs"

"Stuck at light at Sunset and La Brea"

"Stuck at clusterfuck light at Beverly / Temple / Virgil"

"Stuck on 405. Go on without me"

"I have herpes. Get checked"

"Getting carjacked, will call back"

More here.

David Mamet:

Hollywood is like cocaine. You cannot understand its attraction until you are doing it. And when you are doing it, you are insane.

Kitson is a trendy (with a-hole celebrities) boutique. Us Weekly is a popular (with a-hole celebrity watchers...like me) magazine. Kitson is suing Us Weekly for not giving them enough coverage. I hope there's a way they can both lose, because that would be the most satisfying result.

I just landed in LA a few hours ago. I'm shacking up for a few days in a hotel room with my friend, journalist Nancy Rommelmann. On the flight over from London, I re-read Nancy's hilarious memoir (not online), much of which is all about the years during which she dwelled in this beautiful, wretched town. She left LA, eventually, despite what some people predicted:

The things I disliked about LA--the constant idiotic sunshine, the appearance people like to give that nothing matters--became tolerable. Ten years ago, I worked for an insane, old-school screenwriter who, every time I said I was leaving, smirked and insisted, "Everyone says that, but no one ever does." I did not want to believe him; how could a man who wore captain's caps and chewed with his mouth open and screamed at me at the Farmer's Market when I misquoted the box office on "Thelma & Louise" be right about my life?

Well, that dude was wrong: She's been gone for more than a year. If you're the reading type, check out Nancy's story about meeting serial killer John Wayne Gacy on death row, the Bruce Willis exposé that had Marty Singer hurling legal threats all over the place, and the story of a Hollywood welfare motel and the people who call it home.

I am actually thrilled to be back in LA. I love this place. Nancy, who loves it not so much, announced upon arrival at the hotel: "Dammit, it's like I never left!" Can you ever really get this place out of your system? Secretly, for my sake, I hope not. For the millions who come here with big hopes and dreams and leave with nothing but broken lives and what-might-have-beens, I hope so.