Some ignorant folk don't think "public speaker" Sarah Palin deserves her outlandishly steep paycheck. Eddie Furlong's hitting the coke pipe. And Penelope Cruz enjoys kissing both Charlize Theron and Scarlett Johansson. It's your Wednesday morning gossip roundup!

Nicky Hilton talking on her cell in Midtown ... Rachel Bilson and Hayden Christensen watching the US Open ... Matthew Broderick walking on East 61st Street ... Taylor Swift posing for photographers outside her hotel ... Mickey Rourke walking his dog in SoHo ... Keri Russell going to Starbucks with a friend ... Ne-Yo walking outside his hotel ... Kate Gosselin getting out of a limo ... Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale watching the US Open ... Bar Refaeli walking in the meatpacking district ... Mary-Kate Olsen leaving her townhouse with a friend ... Blake Lively walking in Midtown ... Cynthia Nixon walking on the Sex and the City set ... LaToya Jackson arriving at the Trump International Hotel ... Ed Westwick leaving his trailer on the Gossip Girl set, and going to dinner at Avenue with Jessica Szohr ... Courtney Love leaving the Mercer Hotel ... Oliver Stone standing on the set of Wall Street 2 on Park Avenue ... and Amber Rose shopping at Barneys on Madison Avenue.

Gwen Stefani getting out of an SUV in the meatpacking district ... John Mayer walking in SoHo ... Adam Levine and girlfriend Angela Bellotte going through security at JFK ... Steven Spielberg walking with wife Kate Capshaw in SoHo ... Lindsay Lohan leaving the Bowery Hotel, and later changing her shirt on the street in SoHo ... Ed Burns hanging out in SoHo ... Ashton Kutcher arriving at his hotel ... Venus Williams walking with her mom in front of Bloomingdale's ... Colin Powell leaving his hotel ... Smokey Robinson walking by himself ... Rachel Zoe getting out of a car in front of her hotel ... Shia LaBeouf standing with Frank Langella and Oliver Stone on the set of Wall Street 2 in Central Park ... and Rihanna sitting in an SUV in front of Soho House.

Fashion's Night Out, Anna Wintour's faux charity event to make people shop, is well underway. What's Anna up to? We followed her to the Macy's in Queens to find out. Too bad we were the only ones there for her.

Olivia Palermo walking in SoHo ... Eliot Spitzer passing by the set of Sex and the City in Midtown ... Lindsay Lohan getting out of an SUV in front of the Bowery Hotel ... Jennifer Connelly arriving at JFK with her kids ... Lourdes Leon walking with her dad Carlos in SoHo ... Kate Hudson carrying an empty Tupperware container in Midtown ... Shia LaBeouf astanding on the set of Wall Street 2 downtown ... Rihanna leaving her hotel ... Sarah Jessica Parker filming scenes from Sex & The City 2 in front of the Plaza, and walking son James to school in the Village ... Victoria Beckham arriving at JFK ... Tony Bennett walking with his wife ... Dr. Phil posing for photos outside his hotel ... and Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale heading to dinner at the Standard Grill.

Katie Holmes appears on So You Think You Can Dance (Video!), Gerard Butler is getting fat, Travis Barker and Shanna Moakler reunite, Gwyneth Paltrow cooks a chicken, Avril Lavigne parties really hard and Gwen Stefani looks pretty damn good.

Megan Fox affirms that she's single and looking, Sienna Miller claims to have never been on a date or had a one-night stand, Susan Boyle is suffering from exhaustion, and Jon and Kate celebrate their anniversary apart.

[Gwen Stefani and that old band she used to play with on the Today Show; image via Splash]

Lyor Cohen and Al Sharpton are both celebrating today: The Warner Music chief (and boyfriend of Tory Burch) turns 49; the rabble-rousing clergyman is 54. Others marking the special occasion: socialite Alexis Bryan is 32. Clive Owen is 44. Jake Shears is 30. Gwen Stefani is 39. Ashlee Simpson is 24. Composer Steve Reich is 72. Tommy Lee is 46. Neve Campbell is 35. Actor Sean William Scott is 32. And the notoriously precise Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley is 53. Weekend birthdays after the jump.

• 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]

• Two waitresses at 1Oak say they were fired from Scott Sartiano's club so that they could be replaced with white girls. Now they have a lawsuit in the works. [P6]

The pitter-patter of little feet is getting kind of annoying today at Defamer HQ, where news of not one, not two, not three, but four celebrity pregnancies and/or births have us hand-delivering sex-ed pamphlets to front desks everywhere from CAA to ICM. Even in this uncertain era of creative gas-rationing and looming SAG strikes, Hollywood seed is flying, and nowhere is it landing more conspicuously than in the always-competitive sphere comprising Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner; just when Damon and wife Luciana had welcomed Gia Zavala Damon into the cruel, cruel world, Garner confirmed her pregnancy with her and Affleck's own second child. Then, as the rivals regrouped to plot their escalation, Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale went and blobbed at Cedars-Sinai:

This probably won't come as a surprise to anyone who witnessed her seemingly hating every minute she spent pregnant, but new mom Jessica Alba has joined that elite niche of stars who lost all their baby weight at insanely rapid speeds. But the methods some celebrities have confessed to using when it comes to accelerating the path towards reclaiming their old figures don’t sound entirely sane. From suffering through cabbage soup diets to dropping $50,000 on gym equipment in an effort to slim down at paces up to 14 days after giving birth, the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Richie and others have some highly unique and scary track records. Which stars drunk themselves into wine-induced oblivion and trusted online blood tests to reach their goals, after the jump.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by the loyal readers of Defamer. We'd like to remind you that this feature is powered by you, so if you want to see more installments of PrivacyWatch, then all you've got to do is to send us your sightings. 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 Britney Spears huffing smokes while eating poolside chicken fingers.

Last week, Victoria Beckham celebrated her 34th birthday alongside new friends Eva Longoria and Kate Beckinsale, but supposed close friends Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were nowhere to be seen. Naturally, we presumed that this was either a result of Tom's edict for Katie to stop spending so much time with Posh or an early warning sign that Team Cruise's controlling ways were too much for the Beckhams to handle. But at last night's star-studded birthday party for Posh, not only were Tom and Katie in attendance, but her Katie's choice of gown left us wondering if her curious absence earlier in the week was simply a means to hide the fact that Suri Jr. could possibly be on the way.

• Gwen Stefani is still breastfeeding Kingston, and apparently Page Six finds this shocking. Um? He's only one? Now we know what's wrong with the Page Sixers: weaned too soon! [Page Six]
  

Tonight's guest coach on American Idol is Gwen Stefani, who, we anticipate, will come to rue the day she besmirched her resume by joining the same mentoring program that until now has been occupied by plastic-surgery-disaster musical relics like Kenny Rogers, Barry Manilow, and some guy from Herman's Hermits. Our stereo-hogging cousins over at Idolator, however, have found rumors on an American Idol fans' message board suggesting Stefani is already deeply regretting her involvement in the monolithic karoake contest, dreading the thought of one of her beloved No Doubt compositions finding its way onto "Sanjaya's Greatest Butchered Hits."

• "Kingston is so chill. He goes with me everywhere, 'cause I'm still nursing." [Elle (not online), via TMZ]
  

• Gwen Stefani is one cold bitch. [TMZ]