Of course, that was before the show actually aired, and Abdul's dreary, fame-hungry existence—filled in the Idol off-season with QVC appearances and pointless strategy meetings with a staff who respond with icy, death-stare detachment—was laid out for all the world to see. In the above clip, Paula reacts pretty much as one might expect as she learns that she has been forced out of the Bratz movie she proudly plugged in every interview this year. Dramatic? Perhaps, but where some might see a fourth-rate movie inspired by a line of slutty dolls, Abdul saw in the project a raison d'être outside the karaoke ghetto that has come to define her existence.

While it's always nice to read Emmy nominee reactions, attempts at not coming across as too boastful can sometimes make for colorless quotes. Luckily, blogging Bravo executive Andy Cohen is never one to dampen his enthusiasm for anything him-related, and so we take you now to his report from the Bravo offices, where staffers are so ebullient over their nine nominations, they are offering free hand-jobs to all takers:

Andy Cohen, blogger, bon vivant, and high-ranking Bravo network pencil-pusher, is back from vacation, his batteries fully recharged after a whirlwind European adventure that saw him whisked from one glamorous society event to another, as befits a man of his stature. After yesterday's post—an Andy's-eye view of fashion designer Valentino 45th anniversary celebration in Rome—comes today's intriguingly titled meditation, "Things I Learned On My Vacation," which included this valuable life-lesson on the importance of capitalizing on lax international food and drug standards:

No superhero—not even the everyday variety that manages to juggle bionic blogging abilities with extraordinary TV executive powers—comes out of the box fully formed. We therefore turn once again to Andy's Blog, the cheery corner of the internet where Bravo's Andy Cohen lets his thoughts out for air, for what might very well be the origin myth of the world's most spotlight-friendly Super-Exec:

Bravo's Andy Cohen—by far our favorite of all TV programming executives who also happen to maintain a dishy, deeply personal daily journal on their company's website—minces no words whenever airing out his show business grievances on his blog. (We're reminded of the time he issued a Gay Fatwa against songbird Jessica Simpson, about whom he wrote, "I can't stand the sight of her stupid blank face.") Today, Cohen has equally harsh words for a C-list celebrity duo gearing up to dazzle Broadway audiences with some precision jazz-hand choreography:

A vigilant reader (i.e., one who didn't get cross-eyed drunk to celebrate the return of Top Chef) noticed that the new round of commercials for upcoming Bravo offering Hey, Paula!, a serialized documentary on the effects of prescription painkillers on talent-show judges, went to air without adequate proofreading. We suppose that it's possible there is a better reason than mere carelessness for the mistake; at a network where deep budget cuts force their programming executives to assume second jobs generating their website copy, it's not inconceivable that the talent is required to write and edit promos themselves, and that Abdul—busy juggling the demands of self-medicating, dodging the pack of fluffy dogs constantly underfoot, and approving new storylines for her "character"—was simply too overwhelmed by her multiple responsibilities to catch the error.

While fans of comedian Kathy Griffin may be disappointed to hear rumors that she was passed over in favor of Whoopi Goldberg for a regular slot on The View, they can still keep tabs on their favorite Spielberg Shit-List Topper on her Bravo reality show, My Life on the D-List—now in its third, gripping season of chronicling her every celebrity-alienating exploit. The juicy backstory that dominated the first two seasons—regular-guy husband Matt Moline allegedly swipes $72,000 from her, a betrayal that ends in divorce and a surfeit of new material for her act—is still very much a topic of conversation, with a weepy Griffin telling cameras in the season premiere, "I thought he was a nice guy who loved me. Now, I don't think he ever loved me." Moline responds on his blog:

We feel it is our duty to pay semi-regular visits to Andy Cohen—cutthroat Bravo TV executive by day, blogger extraordinaire by night—but after a year of following his name-droppy exploits, we reluctantly have to admit that we're still not entirely sure what his job entails. (It's almost definitely something reality-TV-related.) In today's installment, Andy practically does backflips over Top Chef Day in New York City ("Literally. We have a certificate from the Mayor or Deputy Mayor or someone saying it is so!"), conjuring nightmarish images of a sparsely attended Top Chef parade down Fifth Avenue, featuring Godzilla-sized Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio floats terrorizing children as far away as New Jersey. It's not long, however, before Andy shifts gears to topics far closer to his heart—dermatology and the gym:

Last night's edition of brain-smoothing dinnertime celebrity newsmagazine Extra offered up a crazy-flavored appetizer for the upcoming Bravo reality series, Hey, Paula!!!, in which the American Idol judge unscrews the top of her head and allows the world an opportunity to climb inside and stroll around the church-parking-lot-quality carnival that is her mind. The brief clip reveals little, but now we do know this: her "best friend" is her stylist (always a sign that a famous person has disengaged from reality), there are many fluffy dogs—some of which will defecate on camera—underfoot to provide believable excuses for medication-induced mishaps, and we will get some glimpses of the Idol-related "exhaustion" incidents that are the reason the show exists in the first place. Unfortunately, we have to wait until late June before the star can officially welcome us into her home, a greeting that we expect will be followed by Abdul handing us a shopping bag full of half-empty prescription-pill bottles and urging us to makes ourselves at home.

Instead of merely regurgitating this weekend's escalating war of words between First Widow Candy Spelling—who has found a late-in-life calling penning epistolary diatribes directed squarely at Hollywood's high profile, reckless youth—and fallen flashcore mogul Joe Francis (quick recap: Candy: "You're a boy gone wild!" Joe: "You're a crazy cat lady!"), we thought we'd turn to one of the web's leading opinion-havers on celebrity matters of little-to-no import—Bravo's blogging executive wunderkind, Andy Cohen:

Bravo's Andy Cohen detailed his weekend activities in today's post, which included a screening of Sony's box office behemoth, Spider-Man 3. And while there should have been plenty there to please the blogging executive wunderkind (James Franco, grown men in Spandex...that about covers it), apparently the movie left his stinker senses tingling:

When even Rich Little has to admit this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner could have used a marquee act with some edge ("It's a little bit of a hard room. Next year, they may go back to someone a little more biting," the cuddly, Carson-era impressionist said shortly after bombing to a packed D.C. Hilton ballroom), it fell, as we predicted, to People magazine's guest of honor Sanjaya Malakar to inject the proceedings with a little watercooler-worthy pizzazz. Looking dashing in a blue pinstriped suit and chunky highlights Valerie Plame would kill for, Malakar greeted his throngs of admirers (including a gushing Governor Eliot Spitzer), as lesser celebrity entities at the People table—Valerie Bertinelli, Zac Efron (ask your teenage daughter or new AOL chat room friend), Eddie Izzard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Project Runway's Tim Gunn—simply looked on in astonishment. Gunn describes the scene to his blogging boss Andy Cohen, in a post discomfortingly titled, "Sir Tim Does DC and Sanjaya!":

In the interest of keeping our readers informed about exciting opportunities to achieve the kind of worldwide fame that only participation on a basic cable reality-competition program can afford, we pass along news of Bravo's opening casting call for the next installment of Project Runway being held downtown all afternoon. Glory awaits:

For a reality series set in the not-exactly-profound world of an L.A.-based private gym, Bravo's Workout manages to pack quite a bit into every episode, with omnipresent cameras capturing the exploits of its cast of personal trainers—a diverse group with passionate opinions on topics spanning the gamut from effective crunch techniques to unflattering tanktop cuts. But viewers last night were treated to more than we have ever seen of sexually insatiable Queen Bee Jackie Warner, who remains distressingly oblivious to the zooming lens just inches away capturing her every sapphic seduction. (Watch her go in for the kill here, after a little mood-enhancing bubbly and Chihuahua-assisted foreplay.) She describes her own reaction to the episode on her blog:

We hate to so soon dip back into the bottomless, celebrity-contaminated well that is Bravo executive Andy Cohen's blog, but when every post reads like the conspiratorial oversharing of your almost inconceivably better-connected best friend over a lunch of chopped Cobb, can you really blame us? The appeal isn't in his mere relentless name-dropping; rather, it's the utter randomness of the combination of those names, placed into the gayest environments known to Man, that makes for riveting reading. Take, for example, today's post, in which rainbow beams practically explode from Andy's fingertips as he recounts his experience attending a Diana Ross concert as the guest of unlikely member of the Bravo star stable, Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton:

Forgive us if you detect a slight quiver as we emotionally deliver the news that Andy Cohen, Bravo's dishy blogging executive and now breakout webcast star of BravoTV.com's Watch What Happens, has achieved a gigantic milestone in the life of any frustrated TV suit with a burning hunger for the limelight: Not just a Page Six item, but a Page Six item where his boldfaced name sits alongside the column's honorary cougar and a Hollywood A+-lister:

• Amy Sacco seems to be losing her touch—her new London nightclub has barely made a blip on the radar screen over there. [DBTH]
  

The GLAAD media awards, presented tonight in New York, have come under fire this year for a controversial policy that excludes gay media outlets, such as gay-targeted cable networks like Logo and Here, in favor of "mainstream" ones—amazingly, even networks with a majority of gay-themed programming, like Bravo and ESPN. Their reasoning is that those general interest networks go further towards furthering the gay agenda recognizing positive portrayals of gays and lesbians in the media. Never at a shortage of an opinion on anything, blogging Bravo exec Andy Cohen—whose network, purely coincidentally, is up for three awards—sees no problem with the policy:

· A frustrated, posturing Viacom finally breaks down after months of "unproductive negotiation" about licensing fees for the interweb rebroadcast of its cherished content, suing Google and its infernal YouTubes for "massive intentional copyright infringement" for over a billion dollars in damages, a suit that could be quickly dropped should GooTube come back to the conglomerate with a number representing a fair value for allowing its users to share their favorite clips of crudely animated, foul-mouthed schoolchildren talking to an anthropomorphized piece of human excrement. [Variety]
· Meanwhile, Bravo buys Television Without Pity, proving that media companies and the internet can sometimes figure out a way to coexist. [Variety]
· Questions about the fates of various established shows on the pick-up bubble: Will NBC try to get Law & Order back on the cheap? Will ABC ever get rid of According to George and The Jim Belushi Show? Will ABC swoop in and steal away Scrubs from NBC? We are all atwitter over the intrigue. [THR]
· Studio 60 TimeslotWatch: Paul Haggis' The Black Donnellys continues to flounder in Aaron Sorkin's rightful 10 pm home, getting trounced by a repeat of CSI: Miami. [THR]
· While no one actually wants to buy it, a three-year old script about Michael Eisner and Mike Ovitz's fun-filled time together at Disney is delighting bored studio executives all over town. [Variety]

Andy Cohen, Bravo's in-house executive blogger, has much to celebrate: Variety is reporting that he has finally made the leap to on-air talent he undoubtedly has been plotting since he typed the first sassy words into his BravoTV.com blog: