The Rhode Islander who spent 34 years in the Senate and created the Pell Grants passed away in his home at the age of 90 after a long battle with Parkinsons.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who served in the Senate with Pell, called him “one of our nation’s most important voices in foreign policy for over 30 years … Claiborne Pell was a man of extraordinary integrity, grace and decency,” Biden said in a statement. “Because of Senator Pell and the Pell Grant, the doors of college have been opened to millions of Americans — and will continue to be opened to millions more. That is a legacy that will live on for generations to come.”

Thank you, Senator Pell, for all you’ve done to further higher education in this country. You will be missed.

Ashlee left the baby at home and took her new blond extensions and her hubby Pete Wentz to PURE in Las Vegas, where she downed champagne and partied the night away to ring in 2009.

She’s lost a lot of the baby weight, but you can tell she’s still being careful to cover up her arms and her tummy. Which is totally fine by me! It’s such a relief to find a celebrity who’s actually human and doesn’t lose the entirety of her baby weight in twelve days. That shit’s insane anyway.

Heh.

If you haven’t read the full police report related to Charles Barkley’s DUI arrest, I suggest you do, as it’s a doozy (it’s here).

But, basically, Barkley was exceptionally cooperative and congenial with the police officers, and also very hilarious. They’d pulled him over for running a stop sign, but he’d picked up a chick on the side of the street before the arrest. Barkley told the arresting officer that he was going to drive around the corner and get a blow job from that chick. He told the officer that she’d given him a blow job a week ago, and it was the best he’d ever had in his life.

Later in the evening, he told another police department employee that he’d “tattoo my name on your ass” if it would help get him out of the arrest. He then realized his misstatement, and corrected himself: “I’ll tattoo your name on my ass.”

Oh, and the officer says that “the majority of my roadside contact with Mr. Barkley was recorded on a digital audio recorder. A copy of the recording will be impounded into evidence.”

Um, can it also be impounded into my blog? I think yes.

In short, Barkley was drunk and stupid, but it seems like he was pretty generally a decent guy about the whole thing.

I should tell you my Charles Barkley story. A lot of the Phoenix Suns players, back in the day, sent their kids to the private school I attended, which had a very competitive admissions process that could usually be neatly evaded with a generous donation. Barkley wanted his little girl to go to our school, so he donated an aquarium to our science center and was planning to donate a bunch of exotic sea creatures, too. They put the aquarium in the main hall of the science center, but, for whatever reason, Barkley’s daughter didn’t end up enrolling in the school, and we never got the fish. So, for like a full year, we had what essentially amounted to a huge tub of water and seaweed sitting in the main hall of the science building courtesy of Charles Barkley. We’d walk by it on our way to class and be like, “How’s the Barkley Aquarium today?” It was a running joke forever.

I don’t know where Barkley’s daughter ended up going to high school, but I’m sure, wherever she is today, she’s thrilled to hear that her dad got a DUI en route to a blow job.

They’ve been dogged by break-up rumors recently, but Nick Lacey and Vanessa Minnillo looked very much the happy couple at a NYE party in Miami Beach last night.

When are these two going to get engaged???

Come to think of it, when are these two going to do anything?

You guys are demanding all killer no filler … and the music industry hasn’t quite risen to the occasion.

Music sales have continued to slump in 2008 as the increased number of downloads of digital tracks failed to make up for a plunge in the sale of compact discs.

Year-end sales figures released Wednesday by The Nielsen Co. show total album sales, including album equivalents made up of single digital tracks, fell to 428.4 million units, down 8.5 percent from 500.5 million in 2007.

Physical album sales fell 20 percent to 362.6 million from 450.5 million, while digital album sales rose 32 percent to a record 65.8 million units.

Digital track sales, such as those conducted in Apple Inc.’s iTunes Music Store, were up 27 percent from last year, breaking the 1 billion mark for the first time at 1.07 billion.

The report continues a troubling trend for the recording industry, which has a harder time maintaining profits when consumers buy single songs instead of albums. The number of transactions rose 10.5 percent to 1.5 billion, although the figure treats single track and whole album purchases the same. …

“You have to really be right about your hits. If you’re going to invest that amount of time in them and not run as many records, you have to be way more right today than wrong,” Kallman said.

Nielsen SoundScan said album sales fell in every genre. Classical music saw the biggest drop at 26 percent, followed by country at 24 percent and Latin at 21.1 percent.

Taylor Swift was the year’s best-selling artist with more than 4 million albums sold …

“Taylor Swift is a great artist development story that started as organically as you can in the digital age,” said Scott Borchetta, president and CEO of her label, Big Machine Records. “It involved online, non-stop radio tours and strategic TV opportunities which led to non-stop touring. But — most importantly — Taylor connected with her fans like no other artist in 2008.”

I love how you just can’t read about music right now without hearing about how freakin’ awesome Taylor Swift is.

It’ll be interesting to see how the talent development scene changes over the next couple of years based on the kind of success Taylor’s seen this year.

Stay tuned until the very end.

Thanks Matthew!

IS EVERYBODY SO PSYCHED FOR THE NEW YEAR???

Okay, even if you’re not, you should be psyched on Leo’s New Year’s tuxedo, which was purchased at the Build-a-Bear store for $5. And worth every penny.

For the full run-down on the five (??!!) New Year’s Eve parties Leo and I attended over the course of five hours, click here.

I hope you all had a safe and enjoyable New Year’s Eve and have high hopes for 2009!

What are your new year’s resolutions???

Mine is to buy more tuxedos for Leo.