Lindsay Lohan and Paula Abdul were canoodling last night at Richard Branson’s Rock the Kasbah party — oh who even cares where they were? — and seemed quite chatty.  Can you even imagine what a conversation between these two would sound like?

LL:  Hi, Paula.  I’m a really big fan.  I hope to attain your level of tolerance celebrity one day.

PA:  Linds!  Rock on!  You just *unintelligible slur* need to believe in yourself.  Don’t ever forget that!

LL:  I know.  I’m working too hard.  I’m a workaholic and now that I’m a designer, I just find the work so exhausting.  No rest is really making my *sniff* allergies act up.

PA:  Well … uh … you just gotta believe in *unintelligible slur* who you are and who you are is beautiful.  Don’t ever forget that!

Oh, Paula.

Is there anything sadder than this devastatingly un-funny send-up of the popular, successful, funny, sober woman who took your job? It’s just a bit of goodnatured ribbing with really poor timing, right? It doesn’t at all smack of bitterness.

Oh, Paula.

Paula Abdul has defended her decision to leave American Idol, claiming that the motivation to move on had nothing to do with money.  “I had to stand on my principle.  I’m going to miss the experience of watching young talent evolve into a place where they get to take off and soar.  I stand on principle where many people stand on money.  I’m a hard-working artist. I’ve lasted in this business for 23 years. And you can’t do that unless you are good at what you do.”

Let’s translate:  What she means to say is, “I had to stand on my principle.  I’m going to miss the experience of getting high on national television.  I stand on principle where many people, Kara DioGuardi for example, lay on their back.  I’m a hard-drugging artist.  I’ve lasted in this business for 23 years by a miracle of God.  And you can’t do that unless you know where to get the best painkillers.”  

Paula felt that her territory was invaded — there really was no reason to bring on a fourth judge — and she wasn’t willing to abdicate her Queen Quaalude title.  

As for what’s ahead, Paula is shooting a guest role on Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva and hopes to have a slur talk show.

Well it’s not a permanent job, but Paula Abdul has been tapped to emcee VH1’s Divas special on September 17th.  This comes on the heels of her surprising departure from American Idol.  It seems like an odd choice — “diva” is not a noun or adjective I would ever assign to Paula.  Of course, I wouldn’t call Jordin Sparks a diva either and she’s going to be singing.

Somewhere along the way the divas who demand all white furniture in their dressing rooms and Cristal on ice were replaced with some singing Girl Scout troop.  It’s disappointing, really.  What was VH1 thinking?

The news broke on Tuesday night that Paula Abdul won’t be returning to American Idol, and Wednesday the news outlets scrambled to capitalize on her departure. How many angles can you take? Well, Reuters has a piece on how the Idol ratings are going to continue to slip now that Paula’s gone. E! used it to address the issue of women’s compensation in Hollywood and later did a piece on Paula’s upcoming role in Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva. Not to be outdone, the AP has an interview with Simon Lythgoe regarding whether or not Idol can still be good without Paula (after much rambling, he says it can).

Over here on Evil Beet? We just want to know where we can tune in to play “How drunk is Paula”? Lythgoe says he’s considering her for a job on So You Think You Can Dance. That would give me the first reason to start watching that show. Wherever Paula’s live and on drugs, there you will find my television. (And, yes, that’s a 20-year-old picture of Paula above. I found it and I think it’s funny.)

I heard the news last night about Paula not returning to Idol.  I can’t figure out if I’m just in denial, but I just don’t fully believe that Paula isn’t returning.  It would be like removing the one remaining piece of entertainment from that show, and that doesn’t make sense.

Bonnie Fuller — she’s the exec who has worked at such publications as Us Weekly, Star, YM, Cosmo, and Marie Claire — Tweeted last night about Paula’s non-return to American Idol.  According to Fuller, and she helmed Star so we have to take this with a grain of salt, Paula did ink a contract with AI and Abdul’s Twitter boo-hooing (Twhining?) is all a publicity stunt.

So, I think we have to wait and see on this.  It’s entirely possible that Paula will come back in a week with a “We revisited negotiations and are happy to announce … ” Tweet.  Stay tuned.

UPDATE:  Well, that didn’t take long.  Fuller hit Twitter a few minutes ago to say that her sources felt the deal was done but Paula pulled out at the last minute.  Apparently a 30% raise wasn’t enough for Ms. Abdul.

I’m devastated. Just appalled. Apparently Paula Abdul will not be returning to American Idol because she could not reach a contract agreement with the producers. (Read: They were tired of having to babysit a wasted Paula on live television twice weekly.) I guess we all kind of saw this coming last year, when they brought Kara on board, and later when they were having contract difficulties, but something inside me believed that it would never really happen. I was wrong.

Paula tweeted about this national catastrophe:

With sadness in my heart, I’ve decided not to return to #IDOL. I’ll miss nurturing all the new talent, but most of all..Cont’d…

I’ll miss nurturing all the new talent,but most of all being a part of a show that I helped from day1become an international phenomenon.

What I want to say most, is how much I appreciate the undying support and enormous love that you have showered upon me

I don’t know if I’ll be able to watch Idol without Paula. Half the fun of that show for me is playing the “How high is Paula?” game I invented. Oh Paula. Don’t leave me!

There has been a lot of media coverage about Paula Abdul’s contract negotiations for the next season of American Idol.  She’s even Tweeting about how no deal has been reached.  I suspect that there will be a last minute, hail Mary type deal which will ensure at least one more year of  Paula “I Swear There’s Just Water In My Product Placement Coca-Cola Glass” Abdul.  But if it doesn’t pan out the way I and millions of others hope that it will, I think Jimmy Kimmel has a brilliant idea.

On the opening monologue of last night’s show, Kimmel proposed a new game show vehicle for Paula, called What the Fuck is Paula Abdul Talking About?  It was an idea that started out as a joke, but I would actually totally watch that.  Paula, if the money is there, I say “Go for it!”  

Stay tuned to the end of the clip, where Ryan Seacrest briefly appears with a seemingly afro’d child on a spoof promo for Are you Tanner Than A 5th Grader.  Offensive?

Noooooooooo!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!

They CANNOT kick Paula Abdul off Idol. They simply CANNOT. I will be devastated. Half the reason I watch that show each week is to play the delightful game that I invented. It’s called “Paula Abdul: How High?” And basically the way you play is you watch Paula “talk,” you watch her glazed eyes roll around in her head, you watch her try to slap Simon and practically miss, and then you write down on a piece of paper how many milligrams of Xanax you think are currently in her body. If the number you’ve written down is greater than 10, you move on to the next round. In round two, you write down on a piece of paper how many milligrams of Hydrocodone you think are in Paula’s body. If that number is greater than 30, you move on to the final round, in which you have to guess how many shots of vodka she’s had that day. If that number is greater than five, you are the champion. Needless to say, I win weekly.

But now word on the street is that Paula Abdul has still not been offered a contract for the new season of Idol — and auditions start August 6.

“Very sadly, it does not appear that she’s going to be back on ‘Idol,’” David Sonenberg, Abdul’s manager, told the LA Times. Sonenberg says he doesn’t even have a proposal for a new contract from FremantleMedia and 19 Entertainment, the production companies behind the show. The new season is scheduled to premiere in January.

“I find it under these circumstances particularly unusual; I think unnecessarily hurtful,” he said of the contract holdup. “I find it kind of unconscionable and certainly rude and disrespectful that they haven’t stepped up and said what they want to do.”

Representatives for Fremantle, 19 and Fox all separately declined to comment.

OK, look, Kara DioGuardi won me over a teensy tiny bit on the finale when she showed up Bikini Girl in her own bikini — that was cool — but she can NEVER replace Paula in my heart. I don’t care how difficult it is to work every week on live national television with a drug addict, Fox — figure out a way! We can’t lose our Paula!

(Meanwhile, Ryan Seacrest’s new Idol contract has him earning a cool $45M over the next three years. The hardest-working man in show business is well-compensated, I’ll say.)

Twenty years ago this week, Paula Abdul scored her second No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart with “Forever Your Girl.” This week, she’s back on the charts, with her new single “Here for the Music” coming in at the #87 spot following her appearance on Idol last week. Not an especially embarrassing ranking for a 46-year-old doing dance tracks, but I’d wager money that it’ll be off the charts entirely by next week.

Meanwhile, Chris Daughtry’s “No Suprise,” which debuted on Idol the same day as Paula’s single, is on the charts at #15. That one, I think, will continue upward.

The student has become the teacher, yo.

Just a couple days ago, Beet told you all about how Paula was finally coming clean about coming clean.  She granted an interview to Ladies Home Journal in which she talked about how she could have killed herself, the pain of withdrawal and rehab.

Well now Paula claims that her comments were taken out of context.  Which I can totally see. Have you seen the way those hardcore bastards over at LHJ will twist facts just to sell magazines?  I can’t tell you how many “The Benefits Of Calcium” articles I had to read in their publication before I caught on to their malicious intent.

So the newest episode of Abdulmentia looks like this:  Paula called into Detroit’s Mojo in the Morning radio show today to debunk any addiction talk.  According to Abdul, she never told LHJ that she was addicted to painkillers and never said she went to rehab despite the magazine’s use of direct quotes.

Of course, in the same radio interview, she also said Kara DioGuardi is a “dear friend” so I think that right there proves she’s a liar.

Above:  video of Paula performing her new single ” Here For The Music” on American Idol last night.  Ironically, the performance was lip-synched.  It starts at the one minute mark.

After years of denying her SUPER OBVIOUS pill addiction, Paula Abdul is opening up about it … and it JUST SO HAPPENS to coincide with the release of her new single. Funny, that.

Paula says she’s kicked the pill habit, which I’m almost willing to believe, as she’s been more sober during this season of Idol than any season prior. She talks openly in a new interview about the detox process:

“I could have killed myself,” Abdul, 46, tells Ladies’ Home Journal in its June issue. “Withdrawal – it’s the worst thing.”

Abdul says she checked herself into the La Costa Resort and Spa, in Carlsbad, Calif., last Thanksgiving to help beat her use of medication. “I was freezing cold, then sweating hot, then chattering and in so much pain, it was excruciating,” she says. “But at my very core, I did not like existing the way I had been.”

After taking medication to combat pain from injuries that happened during her grueling years as a dancer – beginning with a back injury when she was 17 and including a neck injury sustained in a plane crash in 1993 – the American Idol judge says, “I’d been working nonstop,” and her desire to carry on with her work led her to take more pain pills.

“I’m an old school professional,” Abdul says of her “Never let them see you sweat” credo.

By 2005, Abdul was diagnosed with reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome, a chronic condition that resulted in debilitating pain. As a result, she wore a pain patch and took nerve medication and, occasionally, a muscle relaxant. The combo made her “get weird,” she says.

Ehhh, I’m not gonna give her too hard a time here. I’m glad she finally got honest about it, because it’s been so ridiculously obvious for years now, and her lies about it were such a punchline. Hopefully she’s really clean and planning to stay that way.