Today has been a real downer of a news day, and here at Evil Beet, we’re gonna go to our happy place. Our happy place, of course, is wherever someone is making a total ass of Paris Hilton.

Right now, that place is Sir Richard Branson’s Oxfordshire estate in the UK, where he threw a fantastically expensive 21st birthday party for his son Sam. The theme was “Mad Hatter.” Don’t try too hard to understand why “Mad Hatter” is in any way an appropriate theme for a 21st birthday, just keep telling yourself they’re British.

The Bransons invited Paris Hilton, who wanted to come dressed as Alice in Wonderland, the pill-popping star of any Mad Hatter-themed party. When Branson found out, he secretly saw to it that all 60 waitresses at the party were also dressed as Alice, and when Paris arrived, he pretended to mistake her for a member of the wait staff and asked her for a drink.

Thank you, Paris, for providing a small bright spot in an otherwise gloomy day.

• He’s been hit with a few shells, but apparently at no point with a car insurance policy. Rapper 50 cent is pulled over in his Lambo in NYC for making an unsafe lane change. He’s later handcuffed and taken to a police station on charges of an expired driver license, his vehicle being unregistered in NY, driving an uninsured vehicle and having that brick of heroin in the back seat. And by “having that brick of heroin in the back seat” I of course mean “being black.” Gawker’s got art.
• Jessica Simpson’s management fires her publicist for trying to make it look like leaving Nick Lachey hasn’t become such an embarrassing misstep for the plummeting popstar. But in her defense: John Mayer, dude? Really? And when DJ AM was single?
• How much is In-N-Out burger paying Paris Hilton? Because if I were Carl’s Jr, I’d be fucking pissed.
• Ellen DeGeneres is hosting next year’s Oscars. I’d make one of the 8 gimme jokes here, but Defamer already took all of them.
• Orlando Bloom and Uma Thurman? Wow, I bet that makes Kate Bosworth really hungry.

• Paris Hilton finally gets that elusive DUI. Sorry to those of you who had your money on Lohan. Her spokesperson, Perez Hilton — er, um, Elliot Mintz — says the arrest was “probably the result of an empty stomach and working all day and being fatigued.” During her arrest, Hilton failed to make comments disparaging any particular race or religion, and was released within hours. TMZ has art.
• According to the AP, AmIdol’s Clay Aiken is being considered to be named to the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, the White House said Wednesday. As if this statement alone isn’t funny enough on so many levels, check out the photo the AP chose to run with the story.

  

• Kristin Cavalleri is whoring around with DJ AM, Nicole Richie’s ex. So you, like, totally don’t care about that whole Brody Jenner thing, right K?
• Lionel Richie lies and says a doctor told him Nicole’s not anorexic. The “doctor” said Nicole’s weight loss was “stress-related” and “due to his divorce from her mother and from all the media attention his daughter gets.” So, you know, anorexia.
• Michelle Tanner really needs to ash that cigarette.

  

The girl has brown eyes. She wears blue-tinted contacts.

On occasion, I do enjoy perusing the various celeb photo sites and looking at the great big huge versions of the ‘razzi photos, where you can see every last scar, concealed pimple, and odd tattoo, before they get shrunk and airbrushed for general use. It makes me feel better about myself. Okay?

So today I’m looking through VMA photos, trying to find more things wrong with Paris Hilton, because I do that with my Saturday sometimes when my TiVo’s not working, and I noticed something odd about her eyes. They’re brown. That blue coloring is obviously a contact. You can see the great big huge version of the photo above here (click on it to make it really, really big). She also missed two small hairs in her underarm.

For the love of God, will someone invite me to a party tonight or something?

• Photogs catch Harry Morton purchasing an engagement ring at Cartier. Could a proposal be in the works for his very own Pink Taco, La Lohan? Probably not, but it’s late August and the VMAs haven’t started yet, so let’s just speculate for awhile.
• Paris Hilton has managed, in a mere 24 hours, to be linked romantically with both Lance Armstrong and Travis Barker. What an unpredictable little whorecake she is.
• John Mayer denies the Jessica Simpson romance with his own patented brand of brood and angst.
• Okay, okay, okay. John Travolta just might be gay. Act surprised. Thanks to Dave at Maassive for the push.
• “Jump the couch.” A defining moment when you know someone has gone off the deep end. Know it. Love it. Say it.

• Kendra Wilkinson, Hugh Hefner’s adorable and beautiful girlfriend (no joke! I love her! I love all of them!), was super psyched to appear in her first rap video (okay that’s where my connection with her begins to fade), but her day was ruined when Eminem poured a bottle of water all over her. I have a feeling there’s a lot more to this story, but Kendra is so much fun to watch on Girls Next Door, and she seems like a genuine, sweet person, so I’m just going to link you to the email she sent to MediaTakeOut and let you draw your own conclusions.
• Paris Hilton’s rookie album sells a mere 75,000 copies in its first week, and projections put it at 30,000 for next week. I’ve made a chart:

  

  Are you familiar with the term “asymptote,” Paris? I wrote some code to calculate when, at this rate, your album would go platinum, and it slowed down processing on my computer for a solid five minutes before I stopped it. For comparison, Mrs. Jordan Bratman’s album debuted this week and sold 320,000 copies. Industry-speak for this sort of thing is “flop.” Nicole Richie plans to celebrate by eating the other half of that apple slice.

• John Mayer and Jessica Simpson? I’m concerned; I always end up rolling my eyes whenever I hear either of them speak. This could make me really dizzy.
• How cute are Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy? Sooooo cute.

Notable Amazon.com album rankings from today:

1. Christina Aguilera, Back to Basics [I LOVE YOU XTINA!]
2. Danity Kane, Danity Kane [Yup, that's Diddy's all-girl group from yet another interminable cycle of Making the Band. Today, as the title says, we are putting things in perpective.]
…
7. Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way [Didn't that one lead singer chick say something mean about Texas? Or the Pope? It was something like that.]
…
10. Clay Aiken, A Thousand Different Ways [insert multiple-penetration joke here]
…
12. Justin Timberlake, FutureSex/LoveSounds [tell us again about those talentless AmIdol hacks, JT, and do it without using any spaces!]
…
24. Kidz Bop, Vol. 10
…
28. High School Musical [Amazon has Ashley Tisdale listed as the artist, but I refuse to condone that here.]
…
32. Cheetah Girls 2 Original Soundtrack [even better than the first Cheetah Girls soundtrack!]

and at #33:
Paris Hilton, Paris.

To her credit, she’s been climbing this chart all day, but when your album’s stalling out three times as far down as Clay Aiken on pre-order, something didn’t go exactly to plan.

If it makes you feel any better, Paris, Jessica Simpson’s A Public Affair promises to remain comparatively private, hanging out at the #75 position this afternoon.