[Former person Michael Jackson shopping in Los Angeles yesterday; image via INF]

Gwyneth Paltrow arriving at JFK with her kids, Apple and Moses ... Michelle Williams getting coffee in Brooklyn with daughter Matilda ... Jessica Szohr eating on the set of Gossip Girl in Astoria ... Katie Holmes carrying Suri in Central Park ... Selena Gomez talking to fans outside CBS studios in Midtown ... Sarah Jessica Parker and son James leaving their West Village townhouse ... Mario Lopez bowling ... Liza Minnelli rehearsing for her upcoming show at a studio in Chelsea ... and Kate Bosworth leaving the Beatrice Inn.

Hahaha. Some New Jersey girls are pissed because they were caught on camera with douchebag Jersey guys! Three "Hot Chicks" are suing the author and publisher of the fine educational volume Hot Chicks With Douchebags, because they were pictured therein. It's destroyed their reputations, down there in Jersey! Because they were depicted as "females who date dubious men." Outrageous! Here are the actual plaintiffs in question:

Sarah Palin has finally gotten around to addressing the $150,000 worth of clothing purchased for her by the RNC. The aspiring veep now says that $50,000 worth of clothes was returned after the convention, and another third "remains unwrapped and packed in the belly of the vice presidential candidate's campaign plane." She'd also like people to know that she's so frugal, she normally shops at consignment stores. Her favorite? It's in Anchorage and it's called "Out of the Closet." [Fox News]

As the stock market continues its long, thumping swan dive into the terrible abyss, sometimes we just need lights! and costumes! and songs! and gay people! to cheer us up. Well, you'll be hard pressed to find such spectacle on the old Broadway come January, as three popular musicals will be shuttering in the next few months. Duncan Sheik's sex 'n pop rock ode Spring Awakening just announced their January 19th closing today, coming pretty quickly after bebop drag show Hairspray and Monty Python mug fest Spamalot made similar announcements. It's just sad proof that this looming recession reaches into even the silliest parts of the American experience. I guess you'll just have to watch TV now or something. I know. I know.

Yesterday you guys talked a lot about the celebrity couple who moves to a new home every time they want attention. Some thought it was TomKat, others Brangelina. Sadly you were all wrong. It was Home Improvement star Richard Karn and his beautiful wife, Tudi Roche. Today we have a Gerri Halliwell blind item!, a secret baby mama, an actor caught doing blow on camera, and an actress who will stop at nothing (nothing!) to get a role. 1) "Which famous celeb tried to pull me by leaving his room key backstage at Top Of The Pops? I turned him down, urgh, it was so tacky!" [Mirror, and ZOMG!, this was written by their guest-editor, Spice Girl Gerri "Sexy Spice" Halliwell!] 2) "Hollywood couple, one more famous than the other, both are household names. Everything looks pretty on the outside, but she has a dark secret. While working on a project, she had a brief affair with another performer with whom she had some history. That fling resulted in a child. She is terrified about what would happen to her relationship and family and reputation and career if her husband found out that he was not the baby’s father. It’s bound to happen eventually, though, because the fling has a very distinctive look, and the child is looking more and more like him with every passing day." [BlindGossip] 3) "Which actor was secretly filmed doing drugs? He thought that the woman was simply a friend of a friend in a partying mood. He didn’t know that during their time together that she was a reporter and that she had secretly filmed him snorting cocaine. The reporter is now looking to profit from the brief but damning piece of film." [BlindGossip] 4) "Which Hollywood actress is using underhanded means to obtain choice roles? She once announced that she had secured a choice role before it was actually offered to her, causing the director’s choice for the role to back off. More recently, she has been spreading nasty rumors about her competitor for another role, which include accusations of plastic surgery, relationship troubles, pregnancy, self-harming, and more." [BlindGossip]

♦ The New York Times has endorsed Barack Obama, not surprisingly. [NYT]
♦ If Bravo loses Project Runway, there's always the copycat show Fashion House to fill the void. [NYP]
♦ Maer Roshan's Radar magazine has folded. [Gawker]
♦ OK! has a brand new editor, publisher and executive creative director. [NYP]

[Update: The hoax has been confirmed.] So poor Ashley Todd, right? She's the woman who says she was mugged in Pittsburgh Wednesday night (the wrong part of the Pittsburgh, with the Italians) by a black man. And the black man became incensed when he saw her McCain bumper sticker, on her car, and he carved a "B" into her cheek. What a terrible story! Oh but the police have re-interviewed Ms. Todd, and now the story is a little bit different, in that the car and bumper sticker part is out. After the jump, the new story of this terrible hate crime, and also, because we are assholes, selections from Ms. Todd's MySpace page! You will not like her very much, we're guessing.

Sad news for fans of sophisticated financial swindles: Raffaello Follieri, the con man ex-boyfriend of pixie-like actress Anne Hathaway, has been sentenced to four and a half years in THE SLAMMER for defrauding various investors in his fake-ass imaginary company out of $2 million or so. The Post scored this sweet photo of Follieri, Hathaway, and the Pope, which the Italian pretty boy tried to use for sympathy. Did not work!

♦ Hilary Swank is reportedly in contract to buy a two-bedroom condo at the Superior Ink building in the West Village for $3.5 million. [WSJ]
♦ Kenneth Siskind, a managing director at Allen & Co., paid $3.15 million for a 12th-floor, three-bedroom apartment at 322 Central Park West. [Cityfile]
♦ Christopher Sinclair, the CEO of Cambridge Solutions in Greenwich, has picked up a four-bedroom vacation home in Palm Beach for $9.68 million. [Palm Beach Daily via TRD]
♦ Real estate investor Adam Gordon has listed his recently-renovated six-floor mansion at 54 Bond Street (which includes retail space on the first floor) for $36 million, just one year after buying the property for $15 million. [Curbed, Corcoran]

If you were unfortunate enough to read all mainstream coverage of the marketing and advertising industries every day, you would—as I have—come to the conclusion that this financial crisis is the greatest thing to ever happen to the reporters on those beats. That's because all they had to do was write three stories: The ad industry outlook is bad. Nobody's buying bullshit ads that don't work any more. And, hey, everyone sure is advertising a lot of sales now! The marketing reporters at all the papers filed these stories weeks ago, and then took off on a leave of absence, probably to become hookers or drug dealers like the other smart people do during recessions. And now: ...their papers just reword those stories and run them day after day, until the Dow breaks 12,000 again. NYT today:

• Madonna has her own Kabbalah counselor on staff to help her deal with her anger at soon-to-be-ex husband Guy Ritchie, who is just a terrible gold digger or something. A gold-digging famous movie director who hangs out with Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. It's sad, really.

• Dallas 5 Islanders 3: This one was over quickly and Mike Ribeiro was the chief reason why. Dallas scored just three minutes into the game on the power play as Ribeiro setup Loui Eriksson. Ribeiro setup two more goals in the first period as the Stars jumped out to a 3-0 lead. Bill Guerin briefly gave the Islanders hope with a goal midway through the second, but Ribeiro struck again, getting his fourth assist on a goal just three minutes later. And, to cap off his night, Ribeiro scored a goal of his own to record his fifth point of the night and put Dallas up 5-1.

If last week’s quiz was like Jeopardy, this week’s quiz is Wheel of Fucking Fortune.

Pizza Moto's Brick Oven At the Brooklyn Flea [Flickr/nycblondieanbrownie]

We're all trying to keep costs down during these turbulent economic times. And have you see how much costumes cost? We figured we'd do you a favor and set you up with your very own Halloween outfit. And for free, too! How does it work? It's simple. You pick a mask, you tell us where to mail it, and it's all yours. And you get to choose between seven exciting variations! Instructions, larger pictures of the masks, and a bit of helpful costume advice below.

Star Jones no longer has a husband to fight with or any co-stars to bash, so now she's going to battle with the board of her condo building at 300 East 90th Street over a mysterious leak that's been soaking her penthouse triplex since 2003. According to a lawsuit filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court, Jones wants $700,000 to compensate for water damage in her apartment, the $17,861-a-month she's been shelling out for a temporary rental since 2006, and the "unhealthy and dangerous" effects the now-moldy pad has had on her asthma condition. Still no word on what caused the leak to begin with, although we're guessing Barbara Walters and Joy Behar are prime suspects.

You certainly saw this one coming. Keith Olbermann reported last night that Joe Wurzelbacher ("Joe the Plumber") is now negotiating a book deal. Another Republican who is even more in demand with agents right now: Sarah Palin. "As more and more polls cast doubt on the McCain-Palin ticket, producers and agents across the entertainment world are discussing possibilities for capitalizing on her fame, ranging from an Oprah-style syndicated talk show to a Sean Hannity-like perch in cable news or on radio." [THR]

"Hearst Corporation... continues to host parties even as it folds magazines like CosmoGirl... It seems excessive." [Page Six]

Fashion star Zac Posen celebrates his 28th birthday today. Actor Kevin Kline is 61. Law & Order's B.D. Wong is 48. R&B singer Monica is turning 28. Shenae Grimes of 90210 is 19. Your favorite bisexual MTV personality, Tila Tequila, is 27. And Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich celebrates his 42nd birthday today. Weekend birthdays after the jump.