• It looks like Pat O'Brien might be back off the wagon following his email rant about Lara Spencer to the staffs of both The Insider and ET. [R&M, P6]

• Jennifer Lopez competed in a triathalon in Malibu, then flew to New York to throw Marc Anthony a birthday party at the Bowery Hotel. It's unclear, though, if she ever had an injured foot, which was the reason she gave for pulling out of the Project Runway finale last week and now some are wondering if a fight with Harvey Weinstein over a movie role was the real reason she cancelled. [People, NYDN, MSNBC]

• Lindsay Lohan called Sarah Palin a "narrow minded, media obsessed homophobe" on Lohan's MySpace page, citing a conference her church on "converting" gays. "She can suck it." [MySpace, Daily News]

• It's no fun living near Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Neighbors in the West Village say the two are "spoiled brats" since they have bodyguards posted outside their apartment on West 13th Street who make neighbors get off the stoop whenever the twins are arriving home, and the twins keep SUVs idling in front of the building for hours at a time. [P6]

• Lindsay Lohan is turning down a $700,000 offer to pose nude for Playboy, even though she took her top off for New York for free earlier this year. Maybe Hugh should call Dina Lohan? [P6]

• Lizzie Grubman is spawning once again: She and husband Chris Stern are expecting twins. [P6]

• A visiting Kim Kardashian was rushed to New York-Presbyterian late last night after she cut her foot on a glass coffee table at her hotel. [TMZ]

• No one is buying tickets to go see Katie Holmes' big Broadway play even though she's basically killing herself trying to do the play and jet back to LA to see Tom Cruise and work out and raise her daughter. "She looked pretty groggy."

• Courtenay Semel, daughter of former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, spent the night in jail after a night of carousing with her semi-girlfriend Tila Tequila and with Kourtney Kardashian. Semel apparently got into a fight with a security guard from Pure in Caesar's Palace, because what is there to do, other than be ANGRY at the world and at an underpaid hotel staffer, when you're a billionaire's daughter, on vacation in Las Vegas, leaving a glitzy nightclub with your smoking hot lesbian girlfriend? [P6]

• Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi officially tied the knot in front of 20 guests at their Beverly Hills home on Saturday, exchanging handwritten vows and Neil Lane rings. Ellen wore a pants suit; De Rossi opted for a Zac Posen gown. [NYP]

• Lindsay Lohan is either converting to Judaism for Samantha Ronson, Ivanka Trump style, or about to leave her for a man.

If the recent VMAs promo made you wonder "Who's the Brit next to Brit-Brit?", then meet Russell Brand. We asked the British funnyman (and Forgetting Sarah Marshall star) to sit down with us in an effort to prove his pop culture bona fides before hosting the VMAs on September 7. Already a famous ladykiller in the U.K., can Brand prove equally charming as the emcee of MTV's biggest event? We solicited his thoughts on Miley Cyrus, Christian Bale, and hermaphrodite presidents in a bid to find out. DEFAMER: Russell, since American audiences are still becoming familiar with you, we wanted to see how familiar you are with the tastes of the American audience. RUSSELL: Right. DEFAMER: So we're going to give you the Defamer American Pop Culture Literacy Test. I'm just going to throw out famous names and you tell me whether you know them and what your take is on each. RUSSELL: OK!

• Jay-Z is in talks to sell a stake in his 40/40 club to the owners of Las Vegas' Venetian and Palazzo hotels for $44 million. The deal would also allow the club to expand to Europe, a continent clamoring for overpriced Cristal. [Page Six]

Though producers for the upcoming James Bond film Quantum of Solace eventually settled on Jack White and Alicia Keys to record the series' first duet, there is one wronged woman who will not go away quietly, and her name is Amy Winehouse. The crack-smoking chanteuse was the first singer approached for the project, and though producers claimed that recording sessions yielded nothing, Winehouse begs to differ — in fact, she told New! that she plans to put her own Bond theme out when the film premieres:

• Supposedly, Mary-Kate Olsen could get drawn back in to the Heath Ledger investigation "should new information become available... 'She's somebody they still have their eyes on.'" [The Awful Truth]

• If nothing else, all this new Heath Ledger investigation press may help generate interest, to the extent that's possible, in the Olsen Twins' coffee table book in which they interview their influences. [Scoop - third item]

• Mary-Kate Olsen's lawyer said she had nothing to do with the drugs found in Heath Ledger's home or his body. The feds don't seem to be entirely satisfied, though, because they've now planning to get a subpoena to force Mary-Kate to testify. [NYP]

It seemed too good to be true, and indeed, it was: after rumors surfaced that Amy Winehouse had been tapped to sing the theme song for the upcoming James Bond film Quantum of Solace, the troubled songstress fell out of the project (having recorded nothing but confused shrieks of "Oi! Blaaaake" over a propulsive string quartet). Now, Bond producers have turned to an unlikely pair to record the series' first duet:

• Kate Hudson totally finished her first Tour De Lance! Congratulations! [P6]

• New revelations from the legal battle between The Weinstein Co. and NBC over Project Runway: It turns out that Tim Gunn didn't get paid a dime for his participation during the show's first season (he got paid just $2,500 per episode for the second), Harvey Weinstein hates Bravo chief Lauren Zalaznick, and Bravo didn't send Heidi Klum a respectable thank-you gift, even after the show became a major hit. [R&M]