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.)

I told you a couple weeks ago about Simon Cowell’s monstrous new salary of  $144M to do one more season of American Idol.  Now, Ryan Seacret has hammered out his own deal which will bring him $15M a year for the next three years just to insult Simon Cowell host AI.  This figure obviously makes him the highest paid reality television host on air. 

If American Idol isn’t on the air for another three years, Seacrest would be obligated to host another reality show produced by AI’s parent company, CKX.

Based on these huge salaries, administrative assistants who work in the office of American Idol must make, like, $250,000 a year.

Earlier this week, EB asked for your help identifying the new special lady friend with whom Ryan Seacrest was seen at LAX. Turns out she is neither “Hottie McHotterson”, nor Olivia Wilde, as some of the comments suggested. As one of our readers correctly guessed, her name is Jasmine Waltz, a bartender and “aspiring actress.”

…last week [Seacrest] took time out from his gig as a host of On Air with Ryan Seacrest for a romantic jaunt to Paris with L.A. bartender Jasmine Waltz.

Seacrest, 34, met Waltz during a night out at Guy’s, a West Hollywood lounge. Waltz, who has previously worked at other L.A. hotspots including Les Deux and Italian restaurant Bella, is an aspiring actress, a source tells PEOPLE.

“They’ve been together for a few months now,” says the source.

Some people might consider her a nobody, and might be angry that she managed to snag such a relatively popular celebrity. I say her performances as (ahem) “Kelly” in Cheerleader Massacre 2 and as “Smoking Girl #3″ in Pledge This! arguably give her more of a legitimate claim to fame than Seacrest has.

Ryan Seacrest landed at LAX yesterday with his new girlfriend in tow.

She’s absolutely gorgeous and I hate her already, but I have no idea who she is! Oh well. I’d rather she be sleeping with Ryan Seacrest than with my precious, precious Adam Lambert.

Can anyone ID this chica? There are some better pics of her in the thumbnails.

Nobody’s better at drumming up business than “adult” companies!

The smartypants at a phone sex company were bright enough to buy 1-866-IDOLS-13, and now the American Idol producers have had to come up with a different phone number for their new 13th contestant. LOL!

Ryan Seacrest dialed the number on his radio show Tuesday morning. Bemused and appalled, the “American Idol” host said it’s as if the show “tried to script some kind of joke.”

Seacrest got producer Megan Michaels on the line, and she explained that Tuesday’s show will unveil a special G-rated number for the 13th performer. The show owns 1-866-IDOLS-01 to 1-866-IDOLS-12.

Said Michaels: “We will not allude to the fact of the 1-3, because we don’t even want to endorse that.”

Too funny! I wonder how many kiddos will end up accidentally talking to a phone sex operator tonight. “Mom … uh … it says I need a credit card number to vote for Danny Gokey. Can I see yours real quick?”

Ha!

I’m going to leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine where the commas go in the above header.

Ryan Seacrest got bit by a shark while swimming in the ocean this weekend. “He took a bite, and he left,” said Ryan on his radio show this morning. He said he later found one of the shark’s teeth in him. “It was like finding a splinter!”

You know this is all a total cover-up. Ryan’s sex party got a little out-of-hand Saturday night, and he needed to explain away the strange bite marks. And he didn’t find a shark tooth inside him so much as a giant penis, probably.

Check out this little video of Extra’s Terri Seymour (who also happens to be Simon Cowell’s longtime girlfriend) interviewing Ryan Seacrest at a Details magazine party.

She’s basically trying to get him to admit that he’s banging Holly Huddleston from Sunset Tan, which is Hollywood’s worst-kept secret these days, but he refuses to do it.

Watch at the very end, when Ryan says to Terri — under his breath and without moving his lips — “Sorry about that.”

Interesting.

‘Nuff said.

I can’t stop laughing.

I know I have a habit of picking these random D-listers to fall in love with, but I absolutely adore Holly Huddleston, of “Olly Girls” fame. I love both of them. Holly and Molly. I just think they’re adorable and funny and cute and I want to put them in my pocket and have them jump out to say dumb things in a cute voice when I’m sad.

But here’s Hollywood’s best-kept secret: Holly’s actually quite bright. As is Ryan Seacrest.

And now word on the street is that they’ve been secretly dating for months.

InTouch Weekly is reporting that Holly’s been spotted cuddling with Ryan backstage at American Idol tapings.

Oh, oh, I hope this is true! They’d be really cute together, and it would extend Holly’s 15 minutes a little further. I want her to stick around!

What, no purple vest? No sequined belt? A shirt totally devoid of a snarky witticism?

Is Ryan Seacrest okay?

Also: is it just me, or is he putting on weight?

At Tenjune in NYC.

Britney’s trainwreck of a promotional tour — beginning and ending, she says, with this Ryan Seacrest interview — is now available for your listening pleasure. Click here.

God, I feel bad for Ryan. This thing was such a nightmare. I only got through 2 1/2 minutes, and then it hurt too bad. I’m not a very thorough journalist. Please let me know if anything less painful happened in the remaining 20 minutes.

Britney Spears’ album is expected to be #1 on the charts this week.

The real question is: what isn’t Ryan Seacrest hosting these days?

Ryan Seacrest is hosting the Emmys. Ryan Seacrest is hosting the Super Bowl pre-game party. Ryan Seacrest is hosting American Idol. Ryan Seacrest is hosting on E! Ryan Seacrest is hosting his KIIS-FM radio show.

The only thing Ryan Seacrest still isn’t hosting is a girlfriend. I’d mention that I’m available for the position, if I thought it were available. But, I think he’s looking to fill a different position, if you know what I mean.

“Ryan Seacrest appeals to a broad audience, including the highly desirable young adult demographic, so he should serve as a magnet for attracting a diverse array of viewers to our Emmy telecast,” said Dick Askin, chairman and chief executive officer of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Yeah, right. You could have Barney host the Emmys and it still wouldn’t attract a younger audience, guys. But it’s sweet of you to try.