Barkin is an enduringly sultry actress and ex-wife of Ron Perelman.

• Britney threw an addled tantrum in LA's Hustler store. They wouldn't let her bring underpants into the fitting room, so she tried them on in the middle of the store. [Us Weekly]
  

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you saw Mike Tyson requesting earlobe-consistency mochi topping on his Pinkberry frozen dessert.

Ellen Barkin, already the reported recipient of a eight-figure divorce settlement, grabs billionaire ex-husband Ron Perelman by the ankles and shakes him until the $3.4 million she says he owes her production company falls out. [TSG]

To: Ron Perelman
From: Ellen Barkin
Re: In your ass

• Remember a time when you would have been excited to see a picture of Britney Spears' naked boob? Us neither, really. [Egotastic]
  

The date: May 13th
The place: 79 Greene Street
Sighted: "Ellen Barkin with 14-year-old daughter Romey at upscale sex toy emporium Kiki de Montparnasse. Only Hollywood stars can bring in their kids to adult stores without losing custody of them."

· Just in case the recently unveiled "Paris Hilton Autopsy" didn't fulfill all of your Hilton-related ironic-sculpture needs, we direct your attention to "Suicide Socialite," on display this weekend at the Venice Contemporary. [Photo: TheVeniceContemporary.com]
· Today, a fairly gross "news of the weird" item; tomorrow, a misguided viral Spider-Man marketing campaign aimed at raising awareness among 9-year-olds.
· Ellen Barkin laments her decision to become billionaire arm-candy.
· Celebrity charity endorsements: worth all the substance-abusing, bisexual make-out trouble? Of course they are.
· Maggie Gyllenhaal's breastfeeding ignites online momtroversy.

• Paris Hilton is so tired of getting hit on by cops. That's why they pull her over, don't you know. And poor long-suffering publicist Elliot Mintz gets kicked to the curb. [NYDN]
  

• This may be hard for some of you to believe, but the reunion of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie may be less about friendship and more about haggling with Simple Life producer Jon Murray. Don't look for BFF necklaces anytime soon. [AP]
• Meanwhile, the Hilton sisters get drunk and sing in Vegas. Just another day ending in "y". [TMZ]
• Diane Sawyer skips a Good Morning America party, signaling to staff that she's so over that shit. [R&M]
• Janet Jackson is apartment hunting, eyeballing a $30 million residence in a Columbus Circle tower. It's a small price to pay for the proximity to Whole Foods. [Scoop]
• Ellen Barkin stands to make about $15 million selling off the jewelry given to her by ex-husband Ron Perelman. And she's not selling because she wants to move on or anything — she just wants to make some cash without actually having to work again. Don't we all? [Page Six]
• Jimmy Buffett takes to his blog to explain the his "ecstasy bust" at French customs: he was just hauling vitamins. Happy, loving, glowing vitamins. [Page Six]

• The Village Voice's new EIC Erik Wemple changes his mind, quitting the gig before he had technically started. Not surprisingly, the New Times has fucked things beyond repair.
• Britney Spears assures Matt Lauer and the world that she's just as pathetic as we all suspected, if not worse. (YouTube then slaps us and takes away our video.)
• Finally, Page Six finds someone to accept their job offer, it's just not who you'd expect: Post City desker Bill Hoffman.
• Hour Media buys Absolute; the mag's audience of rich people shrug, go about with their usual, rich-people lives.
• Rite-Aid removes Shock from its newsstands, arguing that the magazine clashed with the drugstore's Danielle Steel selection.
• MTV begins filming its reality show in the offices of Rolling Stone; Men's Journal and Us Weekly staffs are promptly forgotten.
• Rocco DiSpirito refuses to disappear.
• Now that Ellen Barkin has removed her balcony's privacy fence, neighbors are easily treated to a night of watching her kids drink bongwater.
• AMI plans to sell off five of its lackluster titles, if only so the company can afford Bonnie Fuller's driver.
• Beyonce graces the cover of Spin, and it's overwhelmingly clear why Andy Pemberton was sacked.
• Hell has a zipcode, and it's 02138.
• Nothing's the same, not even the simple things.

How can you not love Ellen Barkin's 2nd floor balcony? When she first moved in to her West 12th Street townhome, Barkin erected a miserable privacy fence around the balcony, blocking her neighbors' courtyard view. Then she had a change of heart, and the fence has since been removed. Alas, without a privacy fence, one doesn't get much privacy. A reader writes:

We've an important, feel-good Friday update for the little people! Ellen Barkin, who had erected a privacy fence on her second-floor balcony and thus destroyed the courtyard views of her less-moneyed neighbors, seems to have come around:

Yesterday, a reader alerted us to an injustice surrounding Ellen Barkin's new townhouse on West 12th Street: The actress had reportedly erected a privacy fence around her second-floor balcony, thus blocking her neighbors' courtyard views. Today we have visual confirmation of Barkin's mission to ruin the happiness of neighboring proles, one ugly wood fence at a time. We're not quite sure what sort of privacy Barkin needs, but building a fence like that is akin to sending an engraved invite to the press to catch you sunbathing topless.

With her overly publicized divorce from billionaire Revlon guru Ron Perelman pending, actress Ellen Barkin has moved out and found property elsewhere. A reader so fortunate as to be Barkin's new neighbor writes:

• Following in Mel Gibson's footsteps, Vin Diesel says he'd really, really love to do a three-part epic based on the life of Hannibal. Featuring men in togas and sandals. In the ancient language of Punic. This is possibly the most ridiculous thing to have ever come out of Vin's mouth — aside from the time he went on TV to say he was straight, that is. [The Scoop]
• Turns out it was Tom Cruise who forced Comedy Central to cancel plans to re-air the South Park episode that takes shots at Scientology. America's most favorite OT-VII threatened to skip the publicity circuit for MI:3 if the network went ahead with the broadcast. We should be so lucky. [Page Six]
• Just how generous is Kevin Federine? He chopped off 10 inches of his precious hair to send to Locks of Love! Now do you see what Britney sees? [Lowdown]
• Paris has been dating Stavros Niarchos for, like, three decades — well, in Paris years anyway. Which means it might just be time for some fresh meat. Rich sports stars and Eurotrash: Watch your backs. [Page Six]
• Ron Perelman has selected an appropriate Ellen Barkin replacement: editor Kelly Killoren Bensimon. If history is any judge, she'll get royally screwed over sometime in early 2010 but at least she'll get lots of free shit from Revlon until then. [Page Six]

Sensing an opportunity to linger in the fleeting spotlight of a cameo in yesterday's Page Six item about CAA agent Kevin Huvane saving actress Ellen Barkin from a pre-Oscar choking death, former action star Sylvester Stallone today set the record straight on his non-intervention in the esophageal blockage:

If the death that soon followed CAA bigshot Bryan Lourd's pre-Oscar party last year didn't prove that socializing with agents the night before the ceremony is a potentially fatal undertaking, this item from today's Page Six should serve to remind us of the spectre of imminent doom that accompanies each encounter with the ten-percent class: