Best item this morning? Lourdes Leon, beautiful, maxi-eyebrowed daughter of Madonna and Carlos, is going to the city’s Professional Children’s School, which has alums like Sarah Jessica Parker and Scarlett Johansson. That requisite crack about Lourdes learning to act, which her mom never did? We were on it, people, but the News already made it. Moving on, Lindsay Lohan and her friends threw money in the air when Fat Joe’s “Make It Rain” came on at Pink Elephant in Chelsea. Katie Holmes is getting so skinny that people gasped when she walked onstage recently in All My Sons, and at JoJo, she ordered only a salad and some vegetables, so it’s time for us to worry and to urge her to balance high-fiber foods with protein and perhaps even larger portions. Katie Lee Joel loves to stay home in sweatpants and make the whole house smell like the pot roast she’s cooking for Billy, thereby making Donna Reed look empowered.
Bill Murray is staying out late and flirting, drinking blood-orange margaritas and eating pizza with Neil Young. Sean Avery went to Bungalow 8 with his brother instead of his girlfriend, Kelly Klein, because they’re said to have broken up, and hung out with his former teammates from the Rangers Stars, which he got kicked off for saying something X-rated to reporters about his ex-girlfriend. Financial mess Damon Dash has a son named Boogie who is D.J.-ing weekly at the Plumm. Cindy’s back from her holiday break, and at first she seems very subdued reporting on Patrick Swayze’s surviving cancer so far and Brian d’Arcy James’s getting into his Shrek makeup. But then she starts kvetching all about how she ended up home alone over New Year’s with no electricity or phone and you’re like, same old Cin. Hooray, she’s really back! Cin, let’s make 2009 a good, fun, cranky one. Meanwhile, Liz, you need to write a new column.
Dan Clark, the American Gladiators alum, says that doing steroids gave him man-boobs and shrank his testicles. Tom Brady will be on the bench for the Patriots one more season because of his bad knee. American Management Services mogul George Cloutier just spent $2 million on his wedding, which included 4,000 French tulips, centerpieces with mini-fireworks that went off at midnight, and hefty donations to food kitchens on behalf of every guest. Oh, wait, that last part’s a smirking editorial add-on? Oh, we guess the wedding was just excessive, tacky, and tone-deaf. John Travolta breaks his silence on the sad death last week of his 16-year-old son, Jett, who had seizures and may have been autistic, and whom the Travoltas had taken off his anti-seizure medication, but not necessarily just because they’re Scientologists and don’t believe in psychiatrists.
All the fabulous people like T.I., Chace Crawford, and Chloë Sevigny partied and sunned over New Year’s in Miami. Good for them, how glamorous. Gossip mom Kelly Rutherford — yes, the one whose son Hermès is still suckling at her breast — is not only pregnant but also filing for divorce from her German mogul husband of two years … that’s exactly as long as Hermès has been suckling her! Maureen Dowd (who’s looking more and more like Arianna Huffington … just check out the picture!) is having an Inaugural Weekend bash in D.C. for David Geffen, who said things in her column that helped turn the tide from Hillary to O-Man, and MoDo hopes that O-Man will stop by. Ann Coulter has a new book out dissing the Obamas that feels satisfyingly after-the-fact, irrelevant and braying into an indifferent post-partisan abyss, let’s hope leading to many unsold, shredded copies. Ex–Danity Kane girl Aubrey O’Day is getting half a mil from Playboy to “bare her backside.” Just her backside? Huh, we’d show our bum for half a mil, too. We might even Nair it.
