When is Britney due again? This is so frustrating. Items being circulated as news today:

• Paris Hilton released the album you and your best friend recorded on an 8-track when you were ten years old. Honestly, I had pretty much made up my mind that I was not going to listen to this album; I was going to hold out for weeks, at least, and possibly months; my resolve was strong and my motives were pure; and around 3:15 pm a coworker dropped it on my desk, and it was all over for me. I’ll write a more thorough review later.
• No one will ever marry Brittany Murphy. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Makeover!
• Kate Hudson thinks she can just skip out on an overseas premiere of a movie nobody cares about just because she’s divorcing a man nobody cares about without it being big news. And any other week, she’d be right.

• After his little traffic mishap on July 20, the LA County District attorney will charge Haley Joel Osment with a DUI. I’m sure the young Mr. Osment knows how to get through this; after all, he spent most of last month being charged by the media with driving a 1995 Saturn.
• Outted Jew-hater Mel Gibson has been sentenced for his DUI arrest earlier this month. He got 3 years probation and 5 AA meetings a week for the next 4 1/2 months, with 3 meetings a week for the rest of the year after that. He also must pay fines totalling $1300, which is about .00043% of what Passion of the Christ netted him personally. The Life Ring blog notes that the U.S. media tend to tiptoe around AA and other 12-step programs, but Britain’s Telegraph tells it like it is: Mel Gibson is even a nutcase about AA, demanding spur-of-the-moment Big Book discussions immediately before a take on the set of Braveheart. So — who’s down to stalk some Melibu AA meetings? I’ll drive!
• That Owen Wilson knows a good publicity train when he sees one. He hopped on board and he’s grabbing a coal shovel, threatening to sue anyone who suggests he might have a role in the demise of the Kate Hudson/Strange Bearded Man alliance.
• Brangelina are moving to Los Feliz, ostensibly because no one in Los Angeles can agree on how to pronounce it, let alone remember where it is.

You’re going to want to be sitting down for this.

Kate Hudson, the attractive, talented and successful half of the Kate Hudson/Strange Bearded Man union, may have been motivated to end her impulsive, youthful marriage because she is falling in love with someone more attractive, talented and successful than the Strange Bearded Man to whom she is married. Luckily this person is no other than the lovably stoned-on-the-Daily-Show Owen Wilson, her You, Me and Dupree costar. See? Something good did come out of that movie. Just not for Steely Dan. Or anyone who went to see it, for that matter.

Finally. Okay, brutal honesty from me: these two drive me insane. She is so young and beautiful and talented and famous, and he is so old and horse-faced and bearded and irrelevant, and I absolutely hated the possibility that true love could have triumphed over all of that.

Phew.

Kate Hudson’s rep confirmed today that the Almost Famous star will be splitting from her not-even-in-the-same-room-as-famous-anymore hubby of six years, former guitarist singer for some band that the kids at your high school who hung out on the grassy knoll and drew anarchy symbols on their Skechers may have heard of, Chris Robinson. Tossed amid the wreckage will undoubtedly be their 2-year-old son, Ryder.

Kate, in exchange for your decision to spare me a lifetime of nauseating interview quotes about the pureness and unquestionable staying power of your love for the man you married at 21, I will end this entry without making any play at all on How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days; this puts me on a road far, far above everyone else who has written about your glee-inducing marital cataclysm in the past two hours. You’re welcome.