Rod Townsend (aka our commenter Momo), sometimes receives telephone calls from The Past, a mysterious entity that remembers where things used to be in New York before Starbucks and Whole Foods came to town.

Rod Townsend (aka our commenter Momo), sometimes receives telephone calls from The Past, a mysterious entity that remembers where things used to be in New York before Starbucks and Whole Foods came to town.

The top U.N. drug enforcement official, Antonio Maria Costa, has urged the media to be more critical in reporting on the "shooting, snorting and sniffing habits" of certain pop stars and models. Costa, who heads the Vienna-based U.N. office on drugs and crime, said, "Less focus on coke-snorting celebrities would help governments shift public attitudes and help develop greater social awareness of the dangers of drugs."

I don't think ANY of us saw this coming. There really is no one left to believe in anymore, is there?

Every time a new communications platform comes along — the video sharing site, virtual worlds, the internet itself — the tech true believers persuade themselves that the world's been made anew. But, like stubborn legacy code, evil endures: the family of one cocaine trafficker, who was cooperating with the government, received a video death threat over Youtube. The Google video site has been served with a search warrant for records. It's not like this is the first time a new medium has been poisoned: Al-Qaeda, which uses free email services such as Hotmail to disseminate instructions to operatives, has proven more adept in using the web than the US government.

You know, we've been on the fence for a while about Babble. We mean, do 'cool, urban' parents really need another venue in which to, um, babble about their kids' precocity? They've already got Child, Cookie, and New York Magazine! But can you imagine any of those publications thoughtfully and unpuritanically answering a question from a pregnant mom who signs her letter "Sick of Being Smokeless"? Rebecca Odes and Ceridwen Morris don't come up with a conclusive answer—in fact, it seems that there kinda isn't one—but they also don't shilly shriek about the effect that a few morning-sickness-supressing tugs on, say, a vaporizer might have on a developing fetus. Thanks, Babble—we think we might be able to someday bear children after all!

Just How Dangerous Is Smoking Pot While Pregnant? [Babble]

Rumors are swirling that Britney Spears is checking out of Promises in Malibu two days early in order to attend her estranged husband Kevin Federline's 29th birthday party tonight. Like Britney, Kevin, and everything about their history, relationship, children, careers, and pets, the party is to be ultra classy: according to X17, Kevin is pimping rights to cover his bash for $25,000, a price that reportedly doesn't even include an exclusive interview with the man himself. Still, if Britney will be there, it sounds like a bargain: who knows what wig she will wear! Who can say??

We knew that it was only a matter of time before a news organization with Us Weekly's vast investigative resources would finally marshal the courage to finally expose Hollywood's Drug Problem, a social scourge that threatens to devour our finest, excess-prone famous people, greedily gnaw at what's left of the meat on their malnourished frames, then vomit back up their coke-bleached bones into the nearest luxury rehabilitation receptacle, preferably one with easy beach access. How bad has the crisis gotten? Says a highly placed Us "scenester" who's obviously been to at least one bar in WeHo in the last two years, "Coke is so not a big deal for young stars in Hollywood. It's like having a drink." Indeed, the public consumption of illegal narcotics is now so accepted that many of the city's finer nightlife establishments will deliver punchbowls brimming with blow (in a variety of flavors) directly to one's VIP booth, where parties can unashamedly blow rails at their leisure, eliminating the onetime annoyance of having one's drug use rushed by a bitch with a shy bladder constantly banging on one's bathroom stall door.

Designer and tastemaker Marc Jacobs flew directly to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in Arizona the day after showing his Louis Vuitton collection in Paris, WWD reports. "Marc made the right decision," said Jacobs' longtime business partner Robert Duffy "He'd been sober for seven years. When he relapsed, he wanted to deal with it right away ... Obviously, our prayers are with him." "Great, now the bags are going to be even more expensive," a stylish friend of ours ... um, prayed.

Rod Townsend (aka our commenter Momo), sometimes receives telephone calls from The Past, a mysterious entity that remembers where things used to be in New York before Starbucks and Whole Foods came to town.

Which annoying socialite will earn a place in the gossip columns if that photo of her with a crack pipe ever makes it onto the blogs?

Seriously, who wants to bid on Britney Spears' nasty hair? Bid on a quite probably imaginary bag of "downtown" artist/heir Dash Snow's coke instead! If that isn't enough enticement, let's look at the pitch:

Philip Rosedale compared Second Life to a drug-induced high, but he's not the first to make that comparison. From Adam Pasick's interview with Linden Lab chairman Mitch Kapor:

What happened was we lost it in the copyediting fields of CNN, man. They never gave us a chance.

PAUL BOUTIN - Anonymous tip from a friend in town for RSA:

We might have hoped for a day free of news from Gavin Newsom, San Francisco's sexomatic mayor. However, it turns out that Mayor Newsom's "renewed vigor" involves entering a rehabilitation program to deal with his drinking problem. However, the Delancey Street Foundation program doesn't require residency, so Newsom won't be stepping aside as mayor. Despite Delancey's claims that it's "no lightweight or B.S." program, Newsom may not be getting "counseling" so much as "helping." In future, he promises to not to "screw the brains out" of his employees' wives so much as "get buzzed and cop the occasional feel."

OMG, a Gatecrasher blind item that's actually . . . sort of . . . blind! Amazing!

In an article today about the Cartoon Network promotional stunt turned bomb scare in Boston, the Post displayed the factual inaccuracy and lack of imagination that characterizes much of the tabloid's reporting. In describing the audience of the cartoon show the supposed 'bombs' (actually magnetic lightboxes) were meant to be promoting, the stunningly erroneous article had this to say:

This nosy little "blind" item ran in Gatecrasher today:

As you know, our well-wishes are with Lindsay Lohan, who entered the Wonderland Center rehab clinic yesterday. We respect her privacy during this difficult time. Alas, other media outlets aren't being quite as sensitive as we are. Take the Daily News, for example, which not only splashed Lindsay all over its cover, but used the tattered starlet's film Herbie: Fully Loaded as an excuse to run a mean "Fully Loaded Lindsay Enters Rehab" headline. But that's not all: later in the article, a graph begins: