Sean Avery has long relished his role as the National Hockey League's miscreant-in-chief, but the Dallas Stars forward's internship at Vogue seems to have sharpened his instincts for provocation to razor precision. Avery was just suspended indefinitely by the NHL for talking smack about two ex-girlfriends, actress Elisha Cuthbert and model Rachel Hunter, who ended up in the arms of other players. His own team said it would have suspended him had the league not done likewise. The truly insane part of the whole incident is that Avery sought out TV cameras so he could broadcast his self-destructive diss. (UPDATE: Video after the jump.)

Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that Liz Smith lit after Madonna's ex so brutally in the Post today; she seems to just love Madonna. The singer's ex-husband Guy Ritchie, not so much: Smith writes that all three times the director worked with Madonna, Madonna played some kind of abused character, and so everyone should wonder if this "reflect[ed] home life — a meek and conciliatory Madonna." After implying Ritchie is a wife beater, Smith moved on to painting him as a gold digger; though the Times of London said Ritchie's divorce settlement would include "not a penny" of Madonna's fortune, Smith said he got much more:

Barristers in England are calling Guy Ritchie's freshly-minted breakup settlement with superstar wife Madonna a "model divorce." But cynics could just as easily call it a model victory for aggressive flackery: It was Madonna, according to some gossipy press reports, who initiated and most viciously perpetuated the post-split war of words with her husband; witness her public declaration her husband was "emotionally retarded." If Madonna's objective was to bully Ritchie into a fast divorce — and thus into relinquishing any claim on the singer's $450 million fortune, ten times his hoard — it worked. Ritchie is said accepting not a penny of Madonna's cash, telling the Mirror, "Thank God" it's all over. Madonna promptly got her drink on, said Page Six:

It was kind of an awkward joke to begin with: CNET News.com writer Caroline McCarthy publicly imagining how her fameball buddies David Karp and Charles Forman would be mocked by Perez Hilton if the celebrity blogger worked for Valleywag. Hilton would, of course, call the cuddle-buddies gay, as McCarthy made clear in a mockup posted to her Tumblr Wednesday night. But throw in the fact that McCarthy and Karp very recently, we heard, broke up, and the image takes on an entirely more vicious, passive-aggressive sheen.

You've now had several hours to absorb the news that Deanna Pappas and Jesse Csincsak will not spend the rest of eternity together in a state of cross-eyed lovers' bliss—the very thing they pledged to us, the passively interested Bachelorette viewer, during that live broadcast of After the Final Rose. Pappas said in a statement that she "slowly came to realize that we are two totally different people and it wasn't going to work out," but what was Jesse's side of the story?He tells Extra via webcam declaration that Pappas "told some of our business associates" of the breakup before telling him. "She came back to Colorado [after some time away] and told me, ‘I love you, but I’m not in love with you.’…I picked her up from the airport and she told me while I was getting her bags." If there was ever any question whether or not real feelings were involved, wait until you see a tearful and confused Csincsak apologizing to his thwarter "for whatever I did to make you not want to be with me.” Honestly, Jesse? Screw her. You can do way better—and will! On The Bachelor's Revenge: The Revenge-Seeking Bachelorette's Bachelor Bites Back!. Then you'll have your own six-week stab at rooting through a pile of ring-hungry hotties until you find the perfect one. (Of course, you'll have to wait your turn until that other dude she sent packing gets his.)

It's official: Sumner Redstone's second marriage is finished, confirming our exclusive from Friday. Court papers were filed at the end of last week, according to the Los Angeles Times, and now the Viacom chief has issued a statement saying the split is "amicable" and that "we remain close and supportive friends." In other words, wife Paula Fortunato has finally, 14 months after divorce rumors surfaced, agreed to leave, perhaps because she got something beyond her "iron-clad prenup," once thought to be worth a flat $1 million, or because she's actually now earned $5 million, with the prenup now pegged at $1 million per year of marriage. Or maybe the former public school teacher is just tired of living with the mean mogul, 40 years her elder, and of hearing rumors he's been calling some famous comedian's wife. Whatever happened, Redstone is reaching into his pocket at a time when he can least afford it. Writes the LA Times:

Madonna's messy divorce from Guy Ritchie gives the pop star a chance to recast herself for the better, but at the moment her public image is that of a voracious celebrity monster, steamrolling Ritchie and turning Alex Rodriguez into a glaze-eyed cult follower. The Sun is reporting for tomorrow's paper that Madonna is supposedly spying on her ex, "using her huge staff to report his every move," and that director Ritchie is desperately trying to counter gossip spread by the singer's PR machine that he's a bad father. Over at the Daily Mail, the dirt is about how Alex Rodriguez is said to be spending 40 million pounds (which sounds high) to buy an apartment two blocks away from Madonna, after pleasing her with his dedication to Kabbalah:

It's typical for aging entrepreneurs in mid-career to acquire a fancy new set of wheels. Elon Musk has instead acquired a job running a fancy carmaker — Tesla Motors, the electric-car startup he has backed from the get-go with the millions he made selling Internet companies. He is also getting a divorce, according to a blog post by his wife, fantasy novelist Justine Musk. This is no mere tawdry personal detail.Do the geographical math. Until Justine threw him out this summer, the couple lived in a Bel Air mansion with their five children. Los Angeles is clearly a better locale for Justine to pursue her writing career. Tesla is based in the Bay Area. Word swept the Tesla office of a pending divorce after Elon showed up to the opening of Tesla's Menlo Park showroom with a "twentysomething actress," one attendee said. How he managed to pursue an affair while meddling in the affairs of Tesla and his other company, space-exploration startup SpaceX can only speak to Musk's off-the-charts time-management skills. His decision to fire Tesla's CEO and take over the job himself just means more time away from his family. Only Elon and Justine know all the reasons why they are divorcing. And which came first — did Elon decide to throw himself into his work after realizing his marriage was a failure, or did his obstinate workaholism jeopardize his marriage? Either way, it beggars belief to think the divorce wasn't a factor in the uproar at Tesla. That will be no comfort to the employees who will soon be laid off by a CEO going through a midlife crisis.

It's Official: The AP is reporting that the Madonna's publicist has confirmed the singer's rumored split from Guy Ritchie: "A statement e-mailed to The Associated Press from Madonna spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg says the couple has agreed to divorce, and asks the media to respect their privacy." Especially this week in Boston, where excellent seats are still available for tomorrow's Madonna concert at the TD Banknorth Garden. Seriously, people — back off! [CNN]

BREAKING! Natalie Portman Hippie-Free! After six months at Devendra Banhart's aromatic side, Natalie Portman is reportedly making a clean break from her hirsute paramour's patchouli-stinking grip. "Natalie and Devendra will remain friends but need some space and time away," a Banhart source says, but our own spies near Portman's New York base insist the actress will begin washing that man right out of her hair — after a V For Vendetta-style shearing and 48-hour delousing quarantine, naturally. Welcome back, Nat! [ITW]

Another failed relationship, another awkward online parting of ways for Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia. Just a few months ago, he was squiring new-agey PR impresario Andrea Weckerle, a self-described "global nomad," around the world. Now, insiders say, Weckerle has dumped Wales — you can tell, because she no longer follows his Twitter updates. The puzzle here: How does he put so much energy into chasing women when he's supposedly leading the world's largest collection of unfactchecked assertions backed up by hyperlinks, and taking on Google with Wikia, his for-profit offshoot?Oh, right — because he's not doing any of his jobs well. Sue Gardner, the executive director of Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, has made it clear she's running the show there. And Wikia? Its search engine, the project on which Wales has said he's focusing his energies, has 0.000079 percent of the market. The common thread: Wales is incapable of sustained attention on anything, or anyone. He once signaled his coupledom by tweeting thanks to an admirer from "Andrea and I." Weckerle has left a coded retort for Wales with this quote from Roy Disney: "It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are." Not as rough a farewell as Rachel Marsden, the conservative Canadian pundit. She auctioned Wales's clothes on eBay after he posted a note on Wikipedia stating that they were no longer an item. Too much trouble, too much effort, for Wales to repeat that kind of drama with Weckerle, we guess. Breaking up on Twitter? Far more suited to Jimmy's attention span. The only question: When are Wales's backers at Wikia — Bessemer Venture Partners and Amazon.com among them — going to lose interest in him, too?

So remember how heiress Courtenay Semel made out with reality TV star Tila Tequila in a bar recently, and famous lesbian couple Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson sat there laughing at them the whole time? No?? Your loss. Anyway, the whole thing is sort of funny in retrospect, because it turns out Lohan dated Semel before she famously edged out of the closet recently with public displays of affection for Ronson. And Ronson kind of stole Lohan away, according to a salacious British tabloid report:

The passive-aggressive love story of Vimeo employee Patrick Moberg and his subway crush, Camille Hayton, has drawn to a close. The couple, you'll recall, met after Moberg spotted Hayton on the subway, then used his website to solicit help tracking her down. Romance bloomed, or seemed to. Rumors later swirled about a breakup, but then the couple was in a magazine for olds inspiring everyone with their love. But then someone ran into Hayton while she was waitressing and asked her about being the subway girl and she was all, "that was SUCH a long time ago" in her Australian accent. It sounded like a bad sign and, as it turns out, it was.

The last time we checked in with Lindsay Lohan and her lesbian lady friend Samantha Ronson, the couple was embroiled in a scandalous toe-stepping scandal that culminated in Lohan ditching Ronson and Ronson shouting "Are you leaving," scandalously. Fellow patrons at the Waverly Inn were, well, scandalized. Possibly shocked fans may also have been distraught that the relationship ended mere weeks after its explicitly acknowledgement in the tabloids and a mere year after they started cavorting in public together. Well, prepare to cry more tears of loss, LoRo lovers, because, according to an emailed stalker sighting, the couple are acting like they're just friends — no graphic make-out sessions or whatever we expect celebrity lesbian couples to do when we see them in a public place.

We've been remiss in informing you of this: Cal Henderson, the eminently scalable Flickr engineer, and Leah Culver, the shrill-voiced cofounder of Pownce, San Francisco's favorite way to share MP3 files while evading copyright cops, broke up some time ago. (We hear it wasn't exactly his idea.) But don't feel sorry for Henderson, or Culver. She has no shortage of suitors — including, it seems, Technology Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin, who was taken enough with Culver to put her on his magazine's latest cover. Pontin's married, but a man can dream, can't he? Sorry, Jason: We now hear Culver's hooked up with a Googler. (Photo of Henderson by magerleagues)

The gossip has been coursing into our emails in various forms and tones for several weeks now: former Gawker editor (and newly minted NYT Mag essaysist) Emily Gould and n+1 editor and newly minted novelist Keith Gessen are no longer boyfriend-girlfriend. OK? We'll spare you the overlong analysis of possible root causes. So all you ladies who have been whispering about Keith's hotness from the back of his readings (I was there, I heard you!) can now say it to his face. Gessen's take on the situation? It was casually buried in his article in The Stranger last week:

"Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, and his wife, Gail Gregg, have decided to separate, they said in a statement issued Friday. Mr. Sulzberger, 56, who is also publisher of The Times, and Ms. Gregg, also 56 and a painter and writer, said the decision to end their marriage was amicable."

Former Gawker editor Doree Shafrir wonders today about the Jeffrey Dean Morgan/Mary Louise Parker split. Specifically, the sentence: "A source close to the couple tells the Associated Press they had differing lifestyles." What would these "differing lifestyles" be? Geighness? Drug use? Who knows! No matter how you parse it, though, MLP has had some nasty luck. Sure Weeds is a hit and all, but remember the whole Billy Crudup debacle? (Billy is, incidentally, one of the top searches in Google Trends today). When will one of my favorite actresses find happiness? More importantly, when will I stop giving a shit? [Doree Chronicles]

At times I pity Sue Decker, Yahoo's embattled president. She disappeared from sight after Microsoft bid $44.6 billion for Yahoo. Her roadshow to win back investors to an independent Yahoo flopped. She's been reduced to begging her new Microsoft overlords for a job. And now, even husband Michael Dovey, whom she's divorcing, has told her he doesn't want any help from her. Court records obtained by the Wall Street Journal show that he's not seeking alimony. Surely a matter of pride over pragmatism: At a dinner party, Dovey told one tablemate that he didn't work, not because Decker supported him but because he was independently wealthy.

Cute li'l real-estate magnate and newspaper-owner Jared Kushner broke up with oddly attractive-despite-her-family Ivanka Trump! This is according to Page Six, who note that Ivanka has gone to parties by herself, which is irrefutable proof. They've been together for almost exactly one year, which is, if you ask us, suspicious. What's Jared up to? Why is he breaking up with his hot, brand-name girlfriend? Why is he pretending he's going to buy Newsday? Is he just toying with us??