• It looks like Pat O'Brien might be back off the wagon following his email rant about Lara Spencer to the staffs of both The Insider and ET. [R&M, P6]

• Raffaello Follieri is expected to appear in court later this morning and plead guilty to wire fraud and money laundering, a deal that will land him a jail term of 51 to 63 months. [NYP]

Jerry Ford,* the (dapper!) fellow pictured here, is dead at 83.** Ford founded Ford Models, one of the leading agencies in the seventies and eighties that legitimized the industry and gained renown for discovering Lauren Hutton, Christie Brinkley, Rachel Hunter, Vendela and sundry other blonde ubermodeltypes and OMG I totally forgot about Xuxa. Ford is slightly less famed for its canny picking of future Mouseketeer Gone Wild types: the agency represented Lindsay Lohan and Mischa Barton, Ashley Tisdale, Courteney Cox, Ali Larter and ha ha ha we will forgive him for this but Paris Hilton. Because Jerry Ford was the first genuinely decent boss in a business characterized by predatory "robber barons." A lot has changed since Ford's heyday, and not for the better!The robber barons, for one thing, are back. As our anonymous industry friend and Jezebel contributor Tatiana tells us, most modeling agencies these days are glorified human traffickers that occupy a place on the "usury" spectrum somewhere between Payday Loan shops and actual armed robbers. Agencies stick them in overcrowded model apartments and gouge them on rent. When they are not in "demand," they're forced to work for either clothes or nothing at all; when they are in demand, they're forced to walk 28 shows in a week and that sort of nonsense. Ford was different. He instituted a five-day workweek, paid models every Friday even when clients didn't pay up, and ran a practically Victorian institution wherein models weren't allowed to host gentleman callers. I don't even think he knew how to get coke! Obviously all that shit is gone today. In any case, Ford sold out to a private equity firm in December and his son who is still involved in the company is apparently (duh) a modelizer. We welcome any and all old Ford Model cards, hot Courteney Cox pix, links to that cute Lindsay Lohan-Mischa Barton catalog picture that surfaced sometime last year and/or clips of that retarded Xuxa show. Jerry Ford, Man Behind The Models

After making an unsettling detour to Closeted-Heartthrob Rapesville, the Blind Item Express is once more on the move, this time heading for sunnier, more sapphic waters. How else to explain this provocative post from Crazy Days and Nights:

When it comes to selling treatments that claim to get rid of fat and cellulite, these days doctors and estheticians can impute magical powers to a big slab of metal and plastic, throwing in words like "laser" and "light energy" and "high frequency," and pluck out of the air a price with a vague connection to both how much they paid for the machine and just how desperate/gullible/rich their potential customers are. Women will then eagerly sign up for the treatment, regardless of whether or not it actually does anything. And, according to today's Wall Street Journal, it probably doesn't.

We'd like, if we may, to squeeze one more magazine cover into our When Glossies Attack gallery of unjustly uglified celebrity covergirls—inspired, of course, by a shot of Gossip Girl's Blake Lively taken, apparently, moments after a freak steamroller accident. The Fug Girls point us to this Marie Claire cover, featuring none other than fashion-awkward DUI-haver, Mischa Barton. How she succeeded in landing this cover, with nothing much more to promote than a movie inspired by and starring a faux-lesbian Soviet pop group, is certainly a topic for discussion. However, we'd like to focus for a moment on the photo itself:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our millions of Defamer operatives. We'd like to remind you that this feature is powered by you, so if you want to see more installments of PrivacyWatch, then all you've got to do is to send us your sightings. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you saw Courtney Love pawing through Benjamin Moore paint samples in Santa Monica.

Gossip Girl, the show that the media can't stop gushing over despite the fact that nobody actually watches it or anything, has of course been renewed for a second season. And in an apparent attempt to lure the large audience of celeb voyeurs that's currently interested in the cast members' bi-curious antics off-screen than on, the sultry young things-obsessed marketing crew at the CW has released some "inappropriate" images from the second season’s ad campaign. Thanks to Miley Cyrus and her “scandalous” series of endless flesh-baring spreads, any photos featuring tweenyboppers practically banging each other or doing their best O-face are fine by us. But releasing racy promos like these is a practice long used by GG’s predecessors, and the sleazy plan relying on that old promise that Sex Sells has a history of backfiring in many a series’ pretty little sweat-drenched faces:First, a closer look at the "sexy" ads in question, which include pull-quotes suggesting just how much closer potential viewers will get to the cool kids' table. Watching this show is so dangerous! Your parents will have nightmares just thinking about the (sort of) short skirts Blair wears! Do the nasty!

So earlier this week we suggested tween queen of homemade kiddie porn Miley Cyrus just may have been inspired by a former teen queen of homemade, visually intoxicated porn. And, sordid as it may be, much of the Hannah Montana star's fame outside of the flyover states is quite possibly due to all those "scandalous" photos that keep popping up. Which is a good thing in the world of "All press is...", right? And here to provide some guidance in answering that question are established troublemaker and pot princess Mischa Barton and future troublemaker Hayden Panettiere.

Click to viewIt's shaping up as a cruel summer for drunk, high or otherwise messed up celebrities trying to stay on the straight and narrow. Comedian Andy Dick was arrested this week for groping a 17-year-old's breasts while in possession of marijuana and Valium, in something of a reprise of his bust last year for doing blow in a nightclub. Actress and teen rehab veteran Drew Barrymore is now reported to have boozed her way to a breakup with actor Justin Long. Heather Locklear fled "depression and anxiety" rehab in Arizona after barely two weeks. Even a Rolling Stone, Ronnie Wood, surrendered himself to rehab again after leaving his wife for a 19-year-old cocktail waitress — and two bottles of vodka per day. Maybe all that summer daylight is pushing everyone over the edge! In any case, it's tough to keep track of who's where on the customary arc of high-profile substance abuse: embarrassment, criminality, rock-bottom desperation, rehabilitation and then either another trip around the circle or a break into the freedom of sobriety. That's why we've compiled a guide to once and future inebriated celebrities: 20 actors, singers, models and socialites who hog way more than their fair share of space in the gossip pages — and here on Gawker. We'll update and expand this list over time as a sort of encyclopedia of shame; your comments and tips are encouraged. (The arrows, by the way, indicate trends in drunkenness, so an upward arrow means getting drunker, downward means getting more sober.)

Oh, wow, so have you heard this crazy thing about how female bisexuality is kind of hot right now? And how apparently female celebrities are hooking up with other women to boost their cachet, and TV shows are depicting girls kissing other girls, and there's this cutting-edge idea of sexuality being a spectrum instead of an either-or thing? Yes? The media strapped on lesbian-curious themes years ago and has been ramming them down your throat despite muffled cries for mercy? Well, unfortunately, Harvard-trained medical anthropologist Brittany Blockman, 27, didn't hear about any of these exciting developments in the evolution of American sexuality until Mischa Barton kissed some other actress on The OC, and she's been busy appropriating girl-on-girl sexuality for a documentary called Bi The Way that just came out. Her co-director was another (self-described) naive 27-year-old, Josephine Decker, who told the Times Style section she is totally dying to have one of those lesbian flings that are so hot right now:

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

• Bill Murray's wife wants a divorce and claims the actor is a pot-smoking globe-trotting sex addict who is physically abusive. The Daily News recalls: "At a bash at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Grill in the '90s, we watched as Murray punch-shoved photographer Diane Cohen in the chest."

During this exciting and hectic Cannes season, some lesser-budgeted and hyped projects are at risk, like sand through a topless sunbather's cleavage, of tumbling between the cracks. We therefore take a moment to draw your attention to Killing Fields director Roland Joffe's latest film: You And I, starring Mischa Barton and Anton Yelchin. From it's IMDb plot synopsis: "Two teenage girls, Janie who is American and Lana who is Russian, fall in love after meeting at a t.A.T.u concert and are swept into a dangerous world of obsession, drug abuse and murrrrrderrrr." (Italics and dread-inducing consonant-extension ours.) The movie, originally titled Finding t.A.T.u., has been gathering dust on a shelf for several years (back when Yelchin would still consider acting opposite Barton in a movie about a sapphic Soviet pop group), and is at last ready for its coming out party.

As a matter of policy we leave celebrity cellulite photos to sites such as the Daily Mail's, which specializes in premature wrinkles, embarrassing guts and other physical evidence that decrepitude is inevitable—even for stars. But Mischa Barton's idiotic publicist has decided to turn an embarrassing photograph of the actress' rumpled behind into a fully-fledged photoshop scandal—which gives every gossip site the excuse to run the otherwise stale photographs. And Team Barton can't even get its story straight.

Though the Metropolitan Museum's annual Costume Gala is considered by most to be the Oscars of the fashion world, the truth of the matter is that no one really focuses on the clothes. What really matters is which celebrities show up to WEAR the clothes and, of course, whether or not they're lookin' good. That said, all eyes were entirely focused on the recently friction-laden, reportedly squabbling super-duo of Team Cruise and Team Beckham, who reunited once again for the cameras. And despite the gushing show of admiration and respect that the Beckhams demonstrated for the the Hubbard-lovers on yesterday's Oprah, both Holmes and Beckham were allegedly competing for the spotlight last night. And in the end? The girl with the higher-slit dress tends to win every time. More photos from the event, including our picks for the best and most horrific looks of the night, after the jump.

Last time we had the pleasure of seeing possibly cursed OC alum Mischa Barton in a bikini was, how to put this delicately, during an blatantly and painfully obviously staged photo shoot in Malibu. The shoot was set up to look like a fortunate paparazzo just so happened to come across the unemployed starlet while she was beach reading and picking wedgies. But alas, as new pictures reveal, Mischa isn't so picture-perfect when donning a swimsuit and appearing in public without her handy and trustworthy paid-off photographers around.

· By the WIND, people. Get your minds out of the gutter! Bonus besteverness? Directed by David Fincher. [Creativity Magazine]
· Nerds rejoice! Guillermo del Toro has finally signed on to direct the long gestating LOTR prequel, The Hobbit. He will be spending the next four years (!!!) in New Zealand alternately shooting the film and polishing Peter Jackson's Oscars. [Variety]
· Speaking of hobbits, Elijah Wood's latest movie includes his first on-screen sex scene. Disturbingly, the scene involves spaghetti. No word yet if spaghetti sauce is also involved, but if it were, we hope they used Trader Joe's Organic Vodka Sauce. That's our fave. [Thighs Wide Shut]
· And since we've clearly got sex on the brain, here's video of a topless Mischa Barton straddling what looks to be the poor man's James Van Der Beek. The footage comes from some movie that, thanks to the magic of The Internets, you never have to actually see! [Egotastic]
· And lastly, Amy's Robot asks what could be the most important question of our times (or, at least, the last few hours): "Are you aware that Tina Fey's husband looks like this?" Actually, we did not. [Amy's Robot via Fimoculous]

What's a girl to do when the only headlines she's making involve DUIs and smoking the reefer? Why, pose for highly styled, candid-ish bikini shoot with the photo agency widely known for setting up highly styled, candid-ish bikini shoots of course! Mischa Barton put on her designer bikini best, got her hair did and brought along props like books and hats to the beach yesterday to act her way through a series of paparazzi shots, in an attempt to prove to the world that she can read (!) and pick her own wedgies (!).

After her lawyers used a get out of jail for free, Mischa Barton engaged in some retail therapy as well as some cosplay therapy. While Barton did not walk the streets of Melrose dressed as her favorite character from a Japanese cartoon, she did go out as one of her favorite Molly Shannon characters from Saturday Night Live. Barton told friends that the character (Sally O'Malley) makes her smile, so why not spend the whole day doing something that makes her feel better?