Not to be outdone by the fanfare of Georgina Sparks returning to the Upper East Side, Nicole Richie is eyeing a role on Gossip Girl. Pre-requisites for the appearance are simple and two-fold: The character must be ruthless and bitchy. It's reassuring to hear that Richie doesn't fear being typecast.

"God's Vagina," said dandy media scoundrel Perez Hilton when asked what it feels like to be a real author. But what else can you expect from the guy who makes a living doodling penises over Lindsay Lohan's face than a line cribbed straight from the trailer of Pineapple Express. Hilton was at Tenjune last night to celebrate the launch of his new hardcover Red Carpet Suicide: A Survival Guide on Keeping up With the Hiltons.

Poor celebrities. They're just like us! Sometimes they eat. They might publicly bicker with their alleged loved ones. They may even have dubious methods of flirtation. Why, A-listers even suffer in times of economic dissolution. Because of the ubiquitous layoffs of civilians everywhere, Hollywood is finding that handing out swanky swag-bags to the richest 1% may alienate more than just a few of their targeted consumers. So they're finding ways to tone down that gratuitous opulence.

● What does fashion pundit Peaches Geldof have to say about Posh Spice? She must be uncomfortable! [TheSun]
● Brad Pitt will grace the cover of February’s W mag for their A-List issue, just three months after his family appeared in their November issue. [JustJared]
● Hugh Hefner is back to having three girlfriends; their combined ages are still two decades younger them Hef himself. [UsWeekly]

Why does an asshat like Bernie Madoff sit swaddled in his Park Avenue penthouse while Christian Wölffer lies lifeless in a Rio morgue? Wölffer's fatal boating accident last week, which swept through the wine biz over New Year's, was a particularly brutal brand of fate. But there you have it. Bid farewell to one of the wine biz's favorite sons. Wölffer, owner of Wölffer Estate Vineyard in Sagaponack and an East End wine pioneer, was swimming in the ocean near Rio de Janeiro when a speed boat skimmed over him on New Year's Eve.

"White-collar boxing is keeping Gleason's open," owner Bruce Silverglade had said. Gleason’s motto is, “You don't have to smell good to train here." Despite the fact that he’s a graduate of Penn State, is well off, and comes from a good family, 25-year-old native New Yorker Tor Hamer is not only the country's number-one ranked amateur super-heavyweight, but also the anti-Rocky (sorry, Philly). Towering over his posse (preppy kids from the UES, the Gossip Girl types) at 6’2’’ and pushing 230 pounds, this charmer with a baby face (still intact -- he’s yet to get hurt, not even the boxer-trademark black eye) has a misleading mug for a bona fide boxing champ and party boy. Hamer’s other homes, besides the ring (he trains six days a week, for three hours straight) are “exclusive” nightclubs: Bungalow, Tenjune, Southside, and the Box. His longtime friend is Southside’s resident DJ, Nick Cohen, who’s dating Keith Richards’ daughter. "You’d think I ‘d get laid more often,” Hamer says.

● Gemma Ward is currently vacationing in her home nation of Australia to center herself before she launches back into modeling. [PerthNow]
● Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson broke up -- oh wait, not according to Lohan. Someone should have told her rep that. [L.L.Myspace]
● WWD predicts what trends will fall by the wayside in ‘09. Among them are celeb lines, young designers, and expensive handbags. [WWD]

Well, that didn't take long! Just weeks after naming the Fleet Foxes' debut album (and their EP) the record of the year for 2008, Pitchfork Media has gone and declared Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion the best album of this freshly minted year, sort of. The notoriously prickly music site published their review of the album today, and gave it an incredibly high 9.6 rating on their make-you-or-break-you rating scale. I dare any other album this year to top that.

This morning I had the following conversation:

The Consumerist: Want to download every Beatles track made, legally?
Me: Not particularly.
The Consumerist: [NRKbeta.no via BoingBoing]
Me: ???

What the recently sold-off consumer advocacy blog was trying to alert me to was the fact that a Norwegian broadcasting company has, thanks to a recent deal, gotten a chance to play the prolific back-catalog of The Beatles in podcasts that, because of this deal, contain less than 70% actual music.

There's something remarkably similar between the P. Diddy-Faith Evans homage to Biggie and the humble hip-hop tribute posted onto YouTube by late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's daughter a few days ago. Justifiably schmaltzy overtones aside, that particular je ne sais quoi is how both elegies commemorate iconic figures who met their end tragically. More so in the case of Benazir, who served as the nation's first and only female Prime Minister -- especially in the face of extremists who balked at taking orders from a woman.