While we're all waiting to find out about the upcoming suicide bomber in Manhattan, let's keep the focus on what's important:

If I read one more year-end wrap-up or trend prognostications for 2004 I'm going to throw myself off 10 Rockefeller Center. Todd Leopold at CNN says that 2003 is "The year celebrities went bad." Yeah, this whole celebrity drug use, arrest, and sex crime thing is so hot and new. Never had that before.

The Black Table interviews entertaining crackpot Philadelphia Daily News gossip columnist Stu Bykofsky:

The giant whores over at The Smoking Gun have put the pedal to the metal to woo the media this Christmas (like they have to — they've gotten more ink and made more money off pain and suffering this year than Fox's Roger Ailes and the freak who's pimping that damn red Kabbalah string to sad celebrities combined). The always-entertaining TSG's Xmas bribe? A limited edition, not-for-sale deck of playing cards featuring 54 mugshots, including never-before-seen shots of Tupac, Johnny Cash, 50-Cent, and Lil' Kim. (Yes indeed, 54: The jokers are mugshots of Vanilla Ice and John Wayne Bobbitt, naturally.)
Smoking Gun website fires off more rounds [Boston Globe]

The Times's Dan Barry goes in search of the spirit of Christmas, and finds three Floridians living in a car in Times Square. Aww, adorable!

According to New Yorkish:

A girl calling herself "Blackxlight" has posted a number of elementary, baby, and junior high school photos allegedly of Nicky and Paris Hilton. She writes:

Photoshop Contest: Paris Hilton [Worth, via New Yorkish]

Tina Brown meets up with Paris Hilton backstage at Saturday Night Live (and no, the blonde fabric of space and time does not rend upon their introduction, though you would be forgiven for thinking so):

A list of this year's lists: from the "Most Frigid People in Hollywood in 2003" to "America's Best Hospitals" to "Fashionistas & Flops of 2003."
Year In Review [Fimoculous, via bookslut]

Joyce Wadler really does want out of her gossip job at the Times. She writes:

Yes, as alluded to by one of today's stalkers, Gwyneth Paltrow is like totally pregnant. I'm very pleased that Ms. Paltrow has mastered the expensive and arduous process of procreation. And just in time! This green planet is so empty, we must repopulate it.

The internet is just one big hate site. This morning, the NY Post reports that the search "I hate Britney Spears" gets 2000 results. By 9:20 a.m. EST today, the same search gets 2040 results. That's a statistically monstrous increase in Britney-hating in just the last few hours! By 2004, a number of people equivalent to the entire population of Southeast Asia will hate Britney Spears.

No, I have no idea what this freaky chart of 2003's pop culture events means either. I'm sure it'd all swim right into focus with a dimebag's worth of decent weed though.
2003: An eventful year [Norgould]

From Tina Brown's Thankgsiving column in the Washington Post: "One thing to give thanks for this morning is not being Michael or Kobe or Phil or Paris or Martha or any of the other spectacles of the great American circus." Oh, decidedly. I feel an overwhelming sense of charity to them, don't you?

Swamp City asks some serious questions on the occasion of the Patent and Trademark Office's rejection of the "Kabbalah Red String." This mystical string evidently protects celebrities from being caught with hookers, appearing in homemade porn videos, and having their careers become hellish life-sucking nightmares. Or does it?

Please let this Craigslisting be for an episode of Hipster Candid Camera:

Low Culture is hosting a Jonathan Ames Write-Alike Contest. Ames, NYC's paramount boxer/writer/former model is a tough man to imitate, but it can be done. Our tip on how to win: Crib from Ames' new McSweeney's piece, sprinkle in a bit of Hemingway and Gary Indiana, glaze liberally with Penthouse Forum, and you're in.
1st Annual (Ever?) Jonathan Ames Write-Alike Contest [Low Culture]

Slate's Jack Shafer kicks some science: the Globe, the Star, People and the rest are evolutionary-retrograde expressions of our obsession with reproduction.

The best thing about the Michael Jackson scandal is that all the stupid jokes were already written ten years ago. Many of you are as upset now as you were during MJ Scandal Original Flavor; humor can ease your pain and anxiety, and also help you break the ice when explaining to small children what exactly became of their favorite pop star.
Michael Jackson Jokes [William Bader]