In a candid interview befitting her 85 years of Earthly service, gossip matron Liz Smith holds forth in the Observer this week on subjects ranging from the good old docile days of entertainment reporting, her loyal ghostwriters "longtime assistants" Mary Jo and Dennis and the hippie scum that devastated her club-society utopia in the late '60s. Oh, and she's horny:

[Smith's memoirs] made waves because Ms. Smith had admitted to affairs with women, including longtime partner Iris Love, though it's also filled with tales of being hit on and dating and marrying men. "And then some Web site comes along and says, 'Liz Smith will sleep with anybody,'" she said. "And I thought this was funny, and great, but I was thinking, wow, how times have changed! Not very long ago you would never have printed that about somebody unless you had something on them. Because they would have sued you for it. ...

If they think an 85-year-old woman will sleep with anybody, well, then great! But on the other hand, I'm not dead yet, so who knows."

No sooner did we eagerly hop in the shower than we re-read the fine print in the form of Smith's criticism of gossip blogs and, by extension, her employers at the New York Post:

"[I]f I had any news, if I filed it, somebody would give it to the Internet. Frankly, I don't think most of it is worth keeping up with. ... You know, I used to write about entertainment from the '40s on, when there were really big stars. They were stars and they stayed stars, and they were really fascinating, whether you told the truth about them or you didn't."

And just like that, our dreams were dashed, leaving us hormonally atwitter with less-ambitious fantasies of Cindy Adams' come-hither stare coaxing us into a boudoir crammed with lavender candles and freshly groomed Yorkies. And don't even get us started about Nikki Finke.