[50 Cent caught up with Meryl Streep and Kobe Bryant after the Knicks-Lakers game on Sunday. Said the rapper, "Things got a little gangsta." Image via @50cent/Instagram.]

NBA star (and one-time rapper) Kobe Bryant is the latest sports star to take a firm pro-gay stand publicly.

Lindsay "thinks Paris is the coolest person on the planet," and wants to seduce her. Salma Hayek promises to spoil her daughter. Jay-Z tips $50,000. Tara Reid's mysterious marriage explained. Tuesday gossip yearns.

After he was slapped with a technical foul during a LA Lakers game last night, Kobe Bryant directed a homophobic slur at the referee who made the call, shouting "fucking faggot" at the ref from the bench.

Nike Basketball enlisted Robert Rodriguez to direct a short film about Kobe Bryant's alter ego "Black Mamba", and above all, his shoes. Even better are Kanye West, Bruce Willis, and Danny Trejo starring as Black Mamba's mortal enemies.

The L.A. Lakers won their second consecutive NBA championship, beating the Boston Celtics 83-79.

Today at Gawker.TV, Kobe Bryant appears on the Modern Family finale, Lost creators Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof read Dave's Top Ten, Sam Rockwell puts on dancin' shoes, George Lopez talks nonsense, and Google prepares to take over your TV.

ABC pulled in an NBA ringer for tonight's finale of Modern Family, and Kobe Bryant's brief scene actually ranks pretty high on the scale of athletes who try (and usually fail) to be funny.

Charles Barkley, whose blunt hilarity always delivers, is one of the most entertaining late-night talk show guests. Tonight, Barkley sat with Jay Leno to discuss LeBron James' future, Kobe Bryant's fashion faux pas, and the NBA playoffs. Video highlights inside.

[Kobe Bryant, here dressed as a color-by-number gentleman farmer, is likely to spend the next few weeks wondering what he was thinking when he agreed to a photo shoot with the L.A. Times Magazine.]

Someone dares invoke the earth-shattering wrath of Demi Moore by calling the ageless aged? Indeed! PageSix got porn-y. Sheriff TMZ's busting Maria Shriver and Lil' Wayne. Courtney Love, Jon Gosselin, Kate Gosselin: still suck. Presenting your Saturday Morning Gossip Roundup!

Kim Cattrall turns 53 today. Kelis is turning 30. Heroes star Hayden Panettiere is turning 20. Google co-founder Sergei Brin is 36. Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, is turning 51. CBS Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith turns 58. Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor and now a lawyer, is 53. Actress Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix, Memento) is turning 42. Country music legend Kenny Rogers is 71. C-list reality TV star Brody Jenner is turning 26. And Long Island's very own Amy Fisher turns 35 today. Weekend birthdays below!

Jon and Kate are packing legal heat, now; so is Evan Dando, and Kobe Bryant's maid, which finally gives TMZ the opportunity to teach readers about legislative law. Also, Marilyn Manson and Nazi Pubes. Your Saturday Morning Gossip Roundup:

Hard to believe our nation's star athletes have time to go to the gym and practice jumpshots or whatever, what with all their marketing strategy meetings and reality shows and plotting to invade China like the second coming of opium. Sports stars and their sponsors have known for years that China is the market of the future-"If only 1% of Chinese buy our sneakers, that's $300 million more in revenue blah blah..." just like every other business in the world. But the Olympics have whet athletes' appetites even more. They want to rule China. The question is, why is China letting them do it?

Kurt Andersen, the co-founder of Spy and former editor of New York and Inside.com, turns 54 today. Also celebrating: CourtTV creator Steve Brill is 58, hedge funder Dave Ganek is 45, and 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft is 63. Tori Amos is 45 today. National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry is 40. And Scooter Libby is 58. On Saturday, Kobe Bryant and Strokes singer Julian Casablancas will both be 30. Village Voice fashion columnist Lynn Yaeger will turn 57. Rick Springfield will be 59. DJ Timmy Regisford will be 45. Novelist Nelson DeMille will turn 65. On Sunday, Gawker chief Nick Denton will be celebrating his 42nd birthday. The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik will turn 52. Mel Karmazin will celebrate his 65th. Craig Kilborn will be 46. Dave Chappelle will be 35. Vince McMahon will be 63. Most importantly, Steve Guttenberg will be 50.

Where did John Edwards and Rielle Hunter have their first romantic interlude? At the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, which happens to be one of Edwards favorite hotels in town. (We're guessing, however, that the hotel's owner, Jonathan Tisch, won't be including this little fact in the official hotel brochure in the near future.) But Edwards isn't the only married man who picked the five-star property to carry on behind his wife's back. In 1997, former football star Frank Gifford—the husband of Kathie Lee—bedded nude model Suzan Johnson in suite 521. (Gifford later claimed a tabloid had set him up.) After the jump, a few of the hotels where some of the rich and powerful have cheated on their wives, stashed their goomahs, and/or ran up a huge mini-bar bill.

After coming from way ahead to lose Game 4 of the NBA Finals and leaving a less-than-stimulated Hollywood A-list in courtside development hell, the ultimate indignity of the Lakers' lost season came down to this weekend and one impromptu freestyle session Shaquille O'Neal. The deposed center, who never quite got over Kobe Bryant's comments that he might have avoided that whole rape-charge imbroglio a while back if he'd just followed Shaq's (alleged) lead and "paid his women," took the mic at a New York club and fired off a few of his traditionally clunky rhymes ("You know how I be/Last week Kobe couldn't do without me ... I'm a horse/Kobe ratted me out, that's why I'm getting divorced") before finally delivering the official Feel-Good Anthem of the Summer — and probably the de facto chant for the remainder of Kobe's career road games. It's catchier than Gary Glitter, anyway. [TMZ]

Kobe Bryant, Wee Man, and a pool full of snakes got together for Nike's latest viral marketing campaign, the results of which just hit the Net. Sure, it's an ad, but I can watch anything Jackass-related all day, which I do as often as possible. The same can't be said for that stupid Bam show. Man, I can't stand that kid!

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so do your duty and send them in! 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 couldn't stop giggling thinking about a Tell Me You Love Me star's stunt-cock mishaps at The Grove.

Former Globe editor-in-chief Candace Trunzo has been appointed editor of Star. Most famous for naming Kobe Bryant's sexual assault accuser in 2003 on that mag's front page, Trunzo replaces long-time Gawker enemy Joe Dolce. She'll take her fight against Janice Min's Us Weekly to the streets beginning April 1.