● In time for the New Year, Angelina has told Brad that she wants to see other people -- oh she still wants to be with Brad, it's just that Angie would like to have sex with other men ... and women as well. [Showbizspy]
● What is a father of six to do with that news? If you’re Brad Pitt, you take your eldest sons (Maddox and Pax) for a raucous round of video games at Dave and Busters in low-key Times Square. [JustJared]
● If things do go south with Angelina, at least Brad has Guy Ritchie, who would like to re-team with Pitt for the forthcoming sequel to Sherlock Holmes. [Popeater]

So once all of you stop spazzing about MTV, you can start spazzing out about how Whitney Houston, whose album I Look to You topped Billboard charts last week, is going to have an intimate chat with Oprah, in front of a studio audience and about twenty seven billion other people. And stories are flitting left and right about Whitney's SHOCKING REVELATIONS. Apparently a woman whose fall from pop titan to crack addict has been highly profiled in the media can still surprise us.

Remember Susan Boyle? She was the penniless Scottish shut-in who went onto become the Queen of Hope and then started losing her mind, as divas are wont to do. So we were all "TTFN SuBo!" and then made hawk-eyes on a parade of dull uncelebrities that must've been part of Middle America's vast conspiracy to bring the gotcha media to its knees. But now that one of our other divas -- Whitney Houston -- really isn't holding up so well, Americans, for all their flaky indiscretions, have defected back to SuBo. So loyally it seems, that well over two months before the official release of what's to be the year's most predictable record, they've pushed her debut to #1, ahead of Houston's I Look to You.

Last night I found myself negotiating a spicy tuna roll with a pair of chopsticks when a friend turned to me and said, "Do you think she's had work done? She's obviously had work done." We were referring to Whitney Houston's radiant new look. And then this horrible tune by Mariah Carey came on over the speakers, so naturally we rounded out the trio by all agreeing that Madonna hadn't done anything respectable since 1998's Ray of Light. And lately, it's been nothing but a slow burn of setbacks, one after another and another. But somehow, we expect that despite three of pop's erstwhile heavyweights unleashing what should be three of the year's biggest records, it all looks set to go down with a dull thud.

Maybe. Perhaps as the gods of pop were weighing the scales, they decided that as one king fell, a queen had to rise up take his place. In their estimation, it was all very medieval. So who better than Whitney Houston? Some crackpot psychologists argue that there are seven stages of grief: shock, guilt, bargaining, despair, the turn-around, reconstruction, and acceptance. And maybe after spending the better part of a decade as a punchline, Houston's the perfect catalyst to make us jump between despair (where most of us have stalled) and the turn-around.