Patrick Swayze is battling a reportedly rapidly-advancing disease beyond his control while young heiresses Courtenay Semel is viciously fighting with her heiress ex for no real reason whatsoever.

Who got the final interview with the late Kurt Vonnegut? Depends who you talk to. Strictly speaking, there's no last interview at all. [NYO]

· We really were hoping to find a YouTube clip of Kurt Vonnegut, maybe our all-time favorite writer, making his cameo in Back to School. But this will have to do for now.
· If Lowermybills.com waits a couple of weeks, they can probably get the real deal to do their ads.
· $75,000 was a small price to pay for raising local veterans' awareness of M:i:III.
· Madonna swears she's not in Malawi to adopt another child, but hasn't explicitly ruled out the possibility of just buying one straight-up this time around.

• Anna Nicole Smith and Kurt Vonnegut were both featured in the same issue of Playboy, but only one of them was naked. [Lard Biscuit]
  

Notable in the Times obit today: "The defining moment of Mr. Vonnegut's life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945.... His experience in Dresden was the basis of 'Slaughterhouse-Five,' which was published in 1969...."

My books so far have argued that most human behavior, no matter how ghastly or ludicrous or glorious or whatever, is innocent. And here seems as good a place as any to include a statement made to me by Marsha Mason, the superb actress who once did me the honor of starring in a play of mine. She, too, is from the Middle West, from St. Louis.

• Courtesy of The Daily Show's extra footage, it's author Kurt Vonnegut's unaired list of liberal crap he never wants to hear again. [CC]
• Does even the fashion set find fashion underwhelming? Can we not rally for Fashion Week fabulousness? Or did Katrina wash away our sense of style, too? [NYO]
• NYC IS EDGY, so much so that your Vitamin Water may be made of Drano. [Release the Kraken]
• Not even confetti dares to touch Vogue editor Anna Wintour. [OAN]
• Because sucking off Vincent Gallo in Brown Bunny simply wasn't enough, actress Chloe Sevigny has now taken on the role of a nun-ho. [Cinematical]
• Foxy Brown is being sued by designer Tanya Manderson, who alleges that the rapper falsely accused Manderson of beating the crap out of her in a bathroom. Clearly, the guilty party was actually Naomi Campbell. [KGET]
• And, finally, another devastating blow to The Gays: Central Park's famous homo penguins have broken up, as one chose to explore a relationship with a female. [ChiTrib]

Kurt Vonnegut's response to the NYT's Joyce Wadler at Clive Davis' Grammy party last night: "I'm here because Jill [Krementz] wants to be here."
[Wadler asks,] Would he like to tell us about music he loves?
"No, I don't like your newspaper."
[Wadler asks,] Why?
"You don't like me," he said, walking away.
Don't shoot! That's Aretha's hair! [NYT]