What's a tabloid to do when there are no C-list celebrities willing to talk about Jessica Simpson's weight gain? Talk to the woman who designed her wedding dress in 2002, of course! Unfortunately, Vera Wang doesn't actually know much about what Jessica has been up to as of late—and you thought they gabbed on the phone every day!—which is probably why her answer comes off as a little bit vague: "Weight is a very personal issue. I think it has to do with a lot of other conditions. And, you know, I don't know what's going on in her life. I certainly can't comment, but she's a very good girl, so I'm sorry to hear that." Thanks for weighing in anyway! [Us]

The widely circulated images of confusing-exercise-video survivor Jessica Simpson at a Florida chili festival probably weren't what the singer had in mind when she recently told a handler, "I wanna be big again!"

It's no wonder this unreleased "Speedfit" workout video was banned from YouTube: It's as embarrassing as rumored and contains an incriminating recording of her business manager to boot.

Tough as it is to believe, recent leopardskin-belt double-cinching victim Jessica Simpson was once the star of her own weight-loss video.

♦ It's not just creditors going after Donald Trump these days: An employee of Trump's golf course in LA says in a lawsuit that the club prohibited her from taking lunch and bathroom breaks. She's only asking for $15,000, though, so obviously she didn't learn much during her stint working for the real estate mogul. [TMZ]
♦ A lawyer for Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos says there's "not a shred of truth" to the rumors the couple is splitting up. [OK!]
♦ Britney Spears' birthday party didn't exactly go as planned. None of her close friends showed up and onlookers say she spent the whole time looking "vacant" and "empty." [R&M, P6]
♦ NBC is furious that news of David Gregory's Meet the Press promotion leaked earlier this week. The likely culprit? NBC political director Chuck Todd. [P6]

♦ Hockey star/former Vogue intern Sean Avery was suspended from the NHL indefinitely yesterday following "inappropriate public comments" about ex-girlfriend Elisha Cuthbert. "It's become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds," he said referring to Cuthbert's relationship with fellow hockey player Dion Phaneuf. [NYP]
♦ Britney Spears celebrated her birthday and album release yesterday by lip-synching her way through a performance on GMA and then heading off to Tenjune, where she partied with the likes of Heidi Klum and Lance Bass. The comeback may be short-lived: She's still abusing prescription drugs and is "plagued by insomnia and shaking fits," at least according to the Star. [The Sun, ThisIsLondon, Star]
♦ Blake Fielder-Civil, Amy Winehouse's estranged husband, just got out of prison. But now it looks like a return trip is in store. [Mirror, Daily Mail]

♦ Although her life looks like it's finally back on track, a new documentary suggests Britney Spears thinks her new life is like prison and lacks "excitement" or "passion." Hopefully she'll be in a better mood in two weeks when she makes an appearance at the Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony. [The Sun, OK!]
♦ Could Anna Wintour be planning to retire? Page Six says the Vogue editor is thinking about leaving the mag once her contract is up, and she's even been recommending possible replacements to Si Newhouse. [P6]
♦ Kiefer Sutherland may be planning to move to NYC so he can be closer to his girlfriend, Allure style director Siobhan Bonnouvrier. [Daily Star]
♦ Madonna is reportedly making $10 million to appear in her new Louis Vuitton ad campaign. [P6]

♦ A "crazed" Madonna fan stormed the set of Guy Ritchie's new movie this weekend and threatened to kill him with a 12-inch knife before the 16-year-old was arrested. [Mirror, Daily Star]
♦ Is Ashley Olsen planning to marry boyfriend Justin Bartha in a secret wedding on the French Riviera? That's what the National Enquirer claims! Also: She supposedly wants Karl Lagerfeld to design her dress. [Daily Express]
♦ Joaquin Phoenix was acting "odd" and wobbly at an event in San Francisco last week, and now his friends are worried he's back to drinking and doing drugs. [P6]
♦ Beth Ostrosky and Ryan Reynolds both finished the NYC Marathon yesterday, along with about 35,000 other people. [NYDN]

♦ Don't get your hopes up, but supposedly Madonna and Guy Ritchie are hoping to settle their divorce by early next week. Until then, though, we'll be treated to lots more gossip about their wacky marriage, including the set of rules Madonna posted on the wall of their Central Park West apartment and how she wanted to fill up their Olympic-size swimming pool with Kabbalah water. [NYP, Daily Mail]
♦ You think your house is complete chaos? For their stay in Berlin, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have six full-time nannies and a fleet of 20 Volkswagens (provided to them by the car company gratis, of course). [NYDN]
♦ Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former presidential contender John Edwards, was spotted without her wedding ring at an event Monday night. Now the talk is that the couple isn't living together anymore either. [P6]
♦ Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are supposedly feuding because Ashley wants a boob job, but doesn't want to get one unless Mary-Kate goes under the knife at the same time. [Star]

Jessica Simpson heading out on the town after an event at Macy's ... Martin Scorsese outside the Waverly Inn ... Matthew Broderick walking in the Village with son James ... Keira Knightley and Guillaume Canet kissing on the set of their new movie in the Meatpacking District ... Katie Holmes holding an umbrella outside her East Village building ... Pink, Nick Carter, and A.J. McLean posing outside MTV ... America Ferrera and Becki Newton on the set of Ugly Betty ... Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman leaving their hotel ... Mandy Moore standing outside the Waverly Inn ... Marcia Cross posing for photos outside the Letterman show ... Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson arriving at JFK, then leaving Citrine after a night of partying.

♦ You didn't expect to hear that Lydia Hearst actually wrote that column in Page Six magazine by herself, did you? In response to Hearst's accusation that Page Six fabricated her latest column—the one in which she bashed her family's publishing company—the mag now says that Hearst's writing process involved being interviewed by a reporter who then "put her thoughts into cohesive paragraphs." And they have the emails to prove Lydia's trash talk. [P6]
♦ Madonna is reportedly under pressure from the leaders of Kabbalah to reach a divorce settlement quickly, lest the mess cast a negative light on their freaky cult. Guy Ritchie, however, isn't making it any easier now that he's apparently rejected Madge's latest £20 million offer. [Daily Mail, ThisIsLondon]
♦ Michael Phelps got paid $100,000 to swim around at a pool party thrown by a TV network chief's wife. [P6]
♦ It's a match made in heaven: Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Jerry Ferrara, who plays Turtle on Entourage, are dating. [R&M]

Hilary Duff attending a charity event at Roberto Clemente Elementary School on East 4th Street ... Jessica Simpson leaving her hotel with her dog Daisy ... Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts walking on Lafayette Street with son Alexander ... Sarah Jessica Parker leaving an office building in Midtown ... Madonna leaving the Kabbalah Center with her kids ... Katie Holmes leaving her apartment in the East Village ... Tom Cruise leaving Matt Lauer's Friars Club roast at the Hilton in Midtown ... Pink walking in SoHo with her dad ... Access Hollywood's Nancy O'Dell leaving her hotel ... Taylor Momsen on the Gossip Girl set ... Keira Knightley on the set of her new film in SoHo ... and Tim Robbins playing roller hockey in the West Village.

♦ Is Lauren Bush supporting Barack Obama? Maybe. The niece of the president praised the Democratic nominee in a recent interview and she decided against using her family name for her new clothing line, Lauren Pierce, taking her grandmother's maiden name instead. [P6]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are either engaged or splitting up, depending on what you read. [Daily Mail, MSN]
♦ Marc Jacobs is supposedly jealous that his ex, Jason Preston, is dating someone else, even though he has a new boyfriend of his own, too. [P6]
♦ He can't afford a plane, but Diddy did get to upgrade to a new Rolls-Royce last week. [P6]
♦ In a new memoir, Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady from The Brady Bunch) says she used to trade sex for coke. [NYDN]

• Saturday Night Live is supposedly working to book Sarah Palin. Producers figure she's good at memorizing lines. [Scoop]

♦ Harvey Weinstein may be a million bucks poorer today. Or maybe not! After yesterday's email debacle, Harvey says he'll donate $1 million to the Robin Hood Foundation once he can verify that Scott Rudin's email is "authentic," which means he'll probably conduct an "investigation" into the matter until it blows over. [P6]
♦ Janet Jackson has been released from the hospital. But fiancé Jermaine Dupri doesn't seem too concerned. He hasn't missed any of his scheduled party appearances the past few days. [People, R&M]
♦ Britney Spears' lawyers have been working overtime to quash the sex tape she made with Adnan Ghalib. [The Sun]
♦ Salma Hayek was spotted in Paris with her ex Francois-Henri Pinault, which means it's time to start speculating about whether they're getting back together. [Daily Star]

♦ 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]

Any Straight-to-Flopz masterpiece can top out below $100,000 theatrically, but it takes a special kind of crap to do so with a real star above the line. Take Surfer, Dude, the new Matthew McConaughey adventure-in-shirtlessness that found exactly zero takers at Rotten Tomatoes and not many more upon its release in 96 theaters nationwide: $36,497 worth, to be precise, likely prompting the actor/producer/placenta vintner to wonder if perhaps he should have saved the comma in the film's title for the total gross. It's too late for that, though, and in any case, he has good — if slim — company in the so-called Nickel Club: A-listers with recent films that couldn't break $100K domestically before heading off to home-entertainment oblivion. Take a deep breath of equally rare air after the jump.· Jessica Simpson, Blonde Ambition — $6,422 Like several of her fellow Nickel Clubbers, Simpson fared much better internationally. A lot better. As in, 99.6% of Ambition's $1.4 million gross was earned overseas. But things will come around once she pays her dues; it doesn't get much harder than a minty love scene with Dane Cook. · Paris Hilton, The Hottie and the Nottie — $27,696 Another global sensation who nevertheless couldn't hack it at home, Hilton has since moved into documentaries. We salute her new strategy and wish her only the best. · John Cusack, Grace is Gone — $50,899 An oft-told tale of hubris, mistiming and waste: Cusack's award-winning Sundance drama cashed in at Park City with $4 million of Harvey Weinstein's money. The mogul dumped the film and his Oscar-campaign plans by the end of the year. NB: Cusack's follow-up, War Inc., did 10 times the business last spring almost entirely via word-of-mouth, never creeping over 33 screens. Honorable Mention: Katherine Heigl, Zyzzyx Road — $30 Filmed not long before Heigl broke through on Grey's Anatomy, history's lowest-grossing release sold exactly five tickets during a one-week run in Dallas in 2006 — one of which was purchased by its own makeup artist. It has picked up nicely as a cult DVD, on wwhich Heigl receives top billing. [Photo Credit: Getty Images]

Dane Cook is finally playing nice these days on behalf of his Mr. Fix-It remake new film My Best Friend's Girl, getting through an entire interview recently without once mentioning his mildly vagina-like face or those other movie-poster mishaps that so traumatized him last month. In their place, readers are treated to hints about Cook's sweeter, sensitive side — the leading man in him who prepares for onscreen interludes with a grueling two-month training routine for his mouth and hands:

Apparently Jessica Simpson is still doing... things... and one of those things is a new perfume scent, maybe? That's the story she told Rachael Ray, and it seems plausible enough, though we're a little more skeptical of the singer's insistence that she's "completely" in charge of making the product ("Vanilla bean smells completely different than vanilla. It's really weird!"). Still, her unenthused patter briefly comes alive when Ray spritzes some "Fancy" (it is called this) into the air, causing Simpson to point out the perfume's unique bonus: the ability to queef in an elevator without anyone being the wiser. Ladies, do not try this at home. [Rachael Ray]

» The Liv Tyler-hosted party for Hearts on Fire diamonds at the Rose Bar was the hottest ticket in one of the busiest social weeks of the year: Leonardo DiCaprio, Alexandra & Theodora Richards (who DJed), Keith Richards, Elizabeth Banks, Catherine Keener, Mena Suvari, Dave Navarro, Ellen von Unwerth, Tara Subkoff, Alan Cumming, Tinsley Mortimer, Adrian Grenier, Sean Avery, Emma Roberts, Monet Mazur, Richie Rich, Ingrid Sischy, Jamie Burke, Russell Simmons, Lauren Santo Domingo, Diego Garcia, Andrew Saffir and Daniel Benedict all stopped by. [The Daily/Paper]