• Last night's state dinner drew quite a crowd. On hand of the occasion: Katie Couric (accompanied by beau Brooks Perlin), Gayle King (sans Oprah), Brian Williams, Mayor Bloomberg (with Diana Taylor), Ari Emanuel, M. Night Shyamalan, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen (accompanied by his youthful boyfriend). Jennifer Hudson provided the entertainment; Naeem Khan was responsible for Michelle Obama's gold dress. [Politico, Reuters, NYP]
• She may not be in rehab (yet), but Lindsay Lohan is supposedly now in counseling and seeing someone a few times a week. It's a start, isn't it? [MSNBC]
• In what may be the most dubious story ever published by Us, a source tells the tabloid that Angelina Jolie "hates" President Obama because he's "all about welfare and handouts" and is really "a socialist in disguise." Naturally, the source goes on to say that Brad Pitt is still a fan of Obama, which means the two "get in nasty arguments" about politics "all the time." [Us]

• The feud between Al Roker and America's most despicable couple continues. After the Today show canceled an interview with Spencer and Heidi Pratt, Spencer took to Twitter to air his rage: "I thought you were out of town getting your stomache [sic] staped [sic] again... Do you always look like your [sic] about to die?" One thing that's clear here: Spencer should have paid more attention in English class. [Us]
• Brat Packer Anthony Michael Hall—who is about to kick off a guest stint on NBC's Community—has been ordered to stay away from his ex, Diana Falzone, a "relationship expert" who writes for the Huffington Post and hosts a show on Sirius. Falzone was granted a restraining order after Hall allegedly broke down her door last week and "bashed her head against a wall." [P6]
• Nicole Richie and Joel Madden secured a restraining order against two paparazzi who Richie says have been harassing her. Is it just us, or are restraining orders becoming all the rage? [TMZ]
• MTV has premiered Beyoncé's new video for "Video Phone" featuring a special guest appearance by Lady Gaga. In a surprising twist, it's Lady Gaga who looks fairly normal and Beyoncé who looks a little freaky. [MTV, NYP]

• Madonna is supposedly furious with Alex Rodriguez for returning to his ex-wife Cynthia after the steroid scandal broke a few days ago; we're guessing she won't be too happy with the pics of A-Rod partying with a group of girls in the Bahamas the weekend before, either. [NYDN, NYP]
• Mandy Moore and Ryan Adams are engaged. [People, P6]
• Cops will reinterview Rihanna and Chris Brown in the coming days. [NYDN]
• Mort Zuckerman had a nice, long, expensive lunch at the Four Seasons right after slashing benefits at the Daily News. [P6]
• Prince Harry has been ordered to undergo "sensitivity training." [People]

• It's still unclear what set off Chris Brown and Rihanna's fight on Sunday night (and both have been tucked away in hiding since it occurred). Could it have had something to do with Leona Lewis? Paris Hilton? Was a sexually transmitted disease involved? One person Brown might want to consider explaining himself to is Jay-Z, who reportedly "hit the roof" when he found out about the attack and is now telling friends that Chris is a "walking dead man." [Star, OK!, Gawker, NYP]
• Mickey Rourke and Courtney Love have been secretly dating for the past three weeks. Sounds like a perfect match. [Telegraph]
• Prince Harry is in trouble for making racially-insensitive comments. [Sun]

♦ It's the question that has been keeping you up for days now: Where is Alex Rodriguez going to spend Thanksgiving? First it was reported that A-Rod planned to stay in New York. Now People now says he plans to have dinner with his ex-wife and their two kids in Florida. But Madonna is on the scene, too! Maybe in the spirit of the holiday, they'll all just join together and be thankful for what they have? Kidding! [People, TMZ]
♦ The parents of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal are broke, apparently. [P6]
♦ Did Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt really get married in Mexico or was it just an elaborate publicity stunt? [AP]

♦ Alex Rodriguez won't be eating turkey with his tots. His estranged wife Cynthia says her "6-foot-3, 220-pound soul-less, soon-to-be ex-husband is abandoning his kids on Thanksgiving to be with Madonna." [P6]
♦ Amy Winehouse is back in the hospital after yet another "reaction to a medication." [NYDN]
♦ Ann Coulter broke her jaw. And now her mouth has been wired shut! [P6]
♦ Kate Moss was spotted leaving a party with "some mysterious scratches on her cheek." [Daily Mail]
♦ Fashion designer Stacey Bendet and her husband, the son of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, had a baby. [P6]

So the Sun, England's most tasteful, reputable daily tabloid, sent word around late Tuesday that Madonna and Guy Ritchie will officially divorce by the end of the year. ("They can't bear the pretence!") We unpacked our grain of salt while sorting through the months of rumors preceding this one, but with everyone from the AP to Time hitching on and the singer's exasperated rep admitting, "We're not going to know anything until the US wakes up," all public signs indicate this is finally it. After the jump, a quick recap of how we got here, and what's likely next.While split talk had jammed the tabloids essentially since the day they were married in 2000, with Madonna publicly grumbling for years now about her unfulfilled sex needs, the gossip was all so much noise until the fantastic Madgerod Cynthavitz controversy that exploded over the summer. The scandal placed Madonna in Yankees slugger/"fucking soulmate, dude" Alex Rodriguez's comforting, Kabbalah-friendly arms, while A-Rod's wife Cynthia retreated to Paris for an extended stay in an apartment owned by Lenny Kravitz. "Nothing to see here," said Kravitz, who urged calm while Madonna's flack denied that A-Rod had ever charged her client's mound. Fine, then. Except the Rodriguezes divorced soon after, and as recently as two weeks ago Madonna and A-Rod were reportedly spotted dining together again in New York. This while Ritchie fled the spotlight, tapering off press for his new film RockNRolla and jetting back to England to commence shooting Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr.. So last night's announcement seems ideally timed for both him and Madge, who is five shows into her Sticky & Sweet world tour, where nearly half of her 25 American dates have yet to sell out. Oh — and her new own directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom, opens in New York and LA this Friday. Convenient! Not so convenient: The economy of Splitsville. The London Times reports today that the couple didn't have a pre-nup, thus encouraging Madonna to file for divorce in the States, where she'd likely earn a more favorable take from her and Ritchie's $600 million fortune. If Ritchie fights for a London divorce, the legal saga could play out for upward of a year. We don't buy for a second that these details aren't already arranged between the two, but the Times adds that still doesn't guarantee an official split by Christmas, as Madge reportedly hopes for. Certainly there's more to follow, which we'll report as it happens. In the meantime, don't look so down! We'll always have Swept Away.

Perhaps mindful that her McCain/Hitler concert montage went over about as well as a soiled dominatrix outfit, pop superstar Madonna has returned to the well that attracted her the most attention this year: her are-they-or-aren't-they flirtation with New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez. Though Madonna's camp had quelled the rumors before by having her step out with husband Guy Ritchie, the director is now overseas shooting Sherlock Holmes, and Us Weekly says that Madonna seized the opportunity to meet up with Rodriguez once more:

♦ It seems like sending out company-wide emails ripping your co-workers is not a good idea: Pat O'Brien has been fired from The Insider. [R&M, P6]
♦ Brandon Davis has been conning his friends out of cash, but whenever anyone tries to get the money back "he starts crying and gets them to feel bad for him." [P6]
♦ Poor Ivana Trump almost had to fly coach this week. But then someone in first class switched seats, so everything turned out okay. Phew. [P6]
♦ Heather Mills is suing her former publicist—the one who very publicly dumped her and called her a "witch"—for libel. [P6]
♦ Anne Hathaway's been crashing on her parents' couch ever since she got booted from Raffaello Follieri's duplex. [In Touch]

• Alex Rodriguez is expected to file divorce papers of his own in a Miami court today: He's wants his prenup enforced and any charges that he cheated on wife Cynthia removed from the record. [NYDN]

• Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner may be back together, possibly because Ivanka has agreed to convert to Judaism if the relationship gets serious. [Page Six]

• Did Uma Thurman and Arki Busson get secretly married during their engagement party earlier this month? If so, does that mean the European vacation they're on right now is really a honeymoon? [Page Six]

• Cynthia Rodriguez thinks her husband hired private investigators to spy on her and tap her phones, and now she wants his lawyers to hand over whatever they found. [NYP]

• It's two days since Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt were welcomed into the world by Brad and Angelina and it's been just as low-key as everyone expected. The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, signed the birth certificate at a press conference; now the discussion has turned to pics of the babies, which are expected to fetch $15 to $20 million. [People, NYDN]

• Jose Canseco says Madonna once tried to marry him and have his baby, so she could give daughter Lourdes a Cuban sibling with great genes. He joins Dennis Rodman on the would-be Madonna baby-daddy list. [NYDN]

• After weeks of battling in court, Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook negotiated a "surprise" settlement last night, which they announced at 6 AM this morning. Many of the details are still fuzzy—they'll explain more when they get to court this morning—but custody will likely stay as is, and Christie will likely retain ownership of most of the couple's properties. [NYP]

• Billionaire mogul Bruce Wasserstein is leaving his youthful, second wife Claude for an even more youthful "Asian beauty," whom he has been introducing to friends as his girlfriend. According to the Daily News, this practice of old, white men stepping out with younger Asian chicks might just be a trend! [Rush & Molloy]

• Ashley Dupre might be leaving the beaches of New Jersey for the beaches of California to star in a new reality show. Just what the show will consist of isn't clear (or what network is going to pick it up), but there's a possibility it could be a dating show a la Tila Tequila. [E!]

For the first time in our country's history, the epicenter of America's commemorative period of fireworks and independence appears to have shifted to Miami. There, we've learned, the intercoital clusterfuck of Madonna, Alex Rodriguez, Lenny Kravitz and Guy Ritchie has reached its nadir with a Rodriguez divorce now officially on the way — freeing the Yankees slugger to (allegedly) pursue whatever pop paramour his heart desires. Except Madonna and Ritchie are still in matrimonial business — literally — and apparently will be for a while.

Alex Rodriguez's beleaguered wife Cynthia is quickly on her way to becoming the Yankee star's ex-wife: She filed for divorce in Miami this morning. (The divorce docs are here.) Cynthia's trip to the courthouse caps off a busy weekend for the former couple. Cynthia returned from Paris (where she was staying with Lenny Kravitz!) and got down to business, hiring a team of high-priced divorce attorneys; for her part, Madonna issued a statement denying that she and Alex Rodriguez have ever been romantically involved and said she has no plans to divorce her own husband, Guy Ritchie. Madonna's denial came after the news had surfaced over the weekend that the pop star had inducted the Dominican-born star into the cult of Kabbalah, which immediately escalated into a series of bizarre reports: Madonna supposedly used Kabbalah to brainwash A-Rod into believing they're soulmates, and A-Rod's former trainer said that the slugger only listens to Madonna's music while he drives and goes "into a trance" if her videos come on at the gym.