From the mailbag, regarding Former "It" Boy Fabian Basabe's blog post about his dissatisfaction with his publicist, who we'd assumed was R. Couri Hay: "High priced PR man could also be Bobby Zarem, who was hired after he split from Couri Hay... But of course, it's no one's fault that Fabian Basabe is essentially a d-list y-chromosome analog of Paris Hilton... And of course, the most ludicrous part is that Fabian paid $10K a month. Not a chance. He definitely doesn't have that kind of money."

So we were wrong about two things when we relayed the rumor that James Frey had sold his next book to Harper's Jonathan Burnham yesterday. We were wrong about the amount the book had sold for, which still hasn't been confirmed, but is now rumored to be in excess of one million. Which, actually, makes sense if Harper is assuming that the four million people who bought A Million Little Pieces will all rush out and buy Bright Shiny Morning, too. Don't let that happen, America. We were also wrong about whether the book is a novel or short stories: it's a novel. "I have never written a short story in my life," James told Times book reporter Motoko Rich yesterday when she contacted him about the rumors. "But Mr. Frey published a short story last fall in a catalog for an exhibition by Malerie Marder, a Los Angeles-based artist," Motoko reports. ZING.

Book Deal For Writer Who Fabricated Parts Of Memoir [NYT]

Excellent news today for the Turcotte family, and for fans of, you know, truth and justice: Author Augusten Burroughs has reached an undisclosed settlement with the Turcottes for unfairly describing them as filthy, perverted, Pink Flamingos-style loons in a hugely popular book that was supposedly about his adolescence. Running With Scissors will now be "classified as a 'book' rather than 'memoirs'"—guess we'll look for it in the "books" section at Barnes & Noble!— and Burroughs will include a note in the acknowledgments of future editions of the book. From the sounds of it, it's going to be a bit of a Crap Email From A Dude!

Oh my gosh, but we must be allowed in to cover this momentous, unorthodox fashion event! They have expanded their line to ... something!

Remember the fake Page Six item that Paris Hilton commanded her then-publicist Rob Shuter (pictured in his highlighted glory) to plant back in 2006 about aging heiress and former Stabby Nachos Paris Latsis flame Zeta Graff getting kicked out of a club while 'Copacabana' played in the background? Yeah, us neither, because Paris Hilton has done about four million other retarded things since then. Anyway, rather than subjecting us all to another circusy trial, Paris has opted to settle out of court, and that reliable source Page Six claims she forked over about $2 million. They're just glad that Richard Johnson won't be forced to recite the lyrics to Copacabana on the stand, "as he did during a deposition." And now it's stuck in your head, and that's the only impact this news has had on the world.

Paris Settlement A Real Gem [NYP]

So Courtney Thorne-Smith, who you might recall as the author of The Greatest Celebrity Novel of Our Time, has granted an interview in which she vows that the heroine of her book, Kate Keyes-Morgan, is no mere analog for Courtney Thorne-Smith. "'I know people are going to think it's autobiographical,' Thorne-Smith said. But the cad is not her ex-husband and the dreadful mother is 'so comically not my mom. My mom would crawl over hot coals to have lunch with me.'" Um, okay! We want to believe Courtney, we really do. But it's hard to believe anything in an article that also contains the words, "Looking barely older than when she played Alison Parker on "Melrose Place" in the 1990s ..."

You're shocked, right? Behold, the magic of tabloid weekly Photoshop!

Dina Lohan is Lindsay's enabling mom, a freckly cougar, and... a seriously shady compulsive liar? Page Six levels a serious accusation against the professional stage mom today, claiming that an "exhaustive search" of records at Radio City Music Hall reveals that Dina was never the Rockette she's always claimed to have been. "It's like claiming to have a degree from Harvard when you don't. It's a big deal to be a Rockette," says their source. Well, yeah! This is way more serious of a lie than the ones about whether Lindsay is a drunk (remember "Noooo! She is just a 20-year-old who had to reel it in"?). Now we definitely know that Dina Lohan is not to be trusted.

Vernon Winfrey claims that Things Unspoken, the book proposal with his name on it that we have a copy of, doesn't exist. Wow, that's a big departure from how he characterizes himself, uh, in the book: "Now, I've never been one to mince words. Way I see it, if the good Lord wanted me to bite my tongue He'd have given me soft teeth," he wrote. But now! "There is no book," he told TV Guide.com, adding, "We might think about it later on." Does "we," in this context, refer to Vernon, Oprah Winfrey, and an army of very stern lawyers? Vernon says that's not the case: "So did she talk to him about possibly not doing the book? 'No,' Vernon insists. 'It's just on hold right now, OK?'" For some reason, we're having a hard time believing him.

CONFONZ — The lovely thing about having a relatively well read gossip blog is that people bring the gossip to you. Case in point: the AOL Beta that resembles Yahoo's page. Someone inside AOL, or at least, inside AOL's heating ducts, brings us this report on the words of Ron Grant at yesterday's AOL management summit.

A two-page spread in this week's Us Weekly calling out other magazines for fabricating stories has their competitors scoffing. "I find it amusing that Us Weekly and [editor in chief] Janice Min thinks they are above all else in the celebrity category of weekly gossip magazines. How can she point fingers when Page Six had to run a retraction from picking up her stories in the last year?" a Star spokesman asked WWD today. "We don't say that we don't make mistakes; that is the nature of any news gathering operation. What we don't do is wholesale fabricate stories to sell magazines," a Wenner spokesman responded. No, never! But fabricating controversy is another story, apparently, as a peek at the 2-page spread in question, headlined "Creative Writing: All The News That's Fake!" reveals.

• Byron "Barney" Calame's term as Times ombudsman will not be that paper's last. No word yet on a successor, but we understand that this guy is not in the running. [WWD]
  

The AP ban on Paris Hilton coverage lasted maybe a bit longer than a week. Well to be fair, we suppose this is "major, major news." She was driving not drunk!

Paris Hilton Ticketed In West Hollywood [AP]
Earlier: AP Won't Always Have Paris

More fun at the expense of washed-up former 'It Boy' Fabian Basabe: today, WWD takes a closer look at the website for Fabian's charitable organization, which has the remarkably ambitious (and remarkably vague) goal of "promot[ing] universal cooperation, and advanc[ing] human achievement through support programs in such areas as medicine, education, research and service." That sentence rings a little bit false, sure, but not as false as this sentence in Basabe's bio:

Read the caption and then look at the size of the phone that businessman was talking on "yesterday." Um, what? Is that a special magical phone that can call 1997? Our suspicions (and, okay, the suspicions of a tipster) led us to take a quick spin through Getty Images, which is what we use when Google Images can't help us find a photo of, say, "shit on a wall," and, well, lookee here.

"Part of the reason why I think people may find me interesting is because the age part is very mysterious," MisShapes new addition Jackson "Kids Meal" Pollis wrote on his MySpace profile, where he claims to be 21. Well, we're going to clear up the mystery. But don't worry, Jackson — remember, the age part is only part of the reason.

Notice we didn't say "wrapping up the whole fucktard thing." Because guess what? We can't say "fucktard" in a headline. (We can post a picture of a big black dildo, though. We make the rules!aren't quite sure what all of the rules are yet!) Anyway, thanks to all who voted. Fucktard edged out our obvious favorite, twatwaffle, by a mere 196 votes. This is pretty much the only election result that we're disappointed in, and frankly, it's left us with a nagging . . . how to put this? . . . not-so-fresh feeling. There's really only one solution, and it's made of vinegar and water and floral fragrance. Yes, you called it right, skeptical commenters: we're going to stick with douchebag for now, with an occasional fucktard/twatwaffle thrown in for kicks. But rest assured that we'll always be on the lookout for replacements . . . so keep sending them our way when the mood strikes you.

New York Daily News TV critic David Hinckley inexplicably puts on his philosophical smoking jacket for this "Critic at Large" bit about the joys of telling lies. For example: