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Up next on Idol, feuding divas

People who follow American Idol - you know who you are - are all excited about the big fuss on the set the other day, when Nicki Minaj started ranting, in language you couldn't put on TV, at fellow judge Mariah Carey during filming in Charlotte, N.C.

The N.Y. Daily News says the two have been feuding for a while, and the dispute boiled over when they disagreed about some contestant.

Carey reported called Minaj a "bitch" and Nicki's response was "Don't lose your head. Don't tell me I'm a gangster! So every time you patronize me, I'm-a take it back, and if you've got a (bad word) problem, handle it! I told them, I'm not (bad word) putting up with her (bad word) highness over there. I'm not gonna sit here every (bad word) minute to have you come down and harass me every minute every day," etc. etc.

Carey's 42, Minaj is 26.

Million-dollar advice advance?

If you're following Girls, the latest big thing on HBO, you'll be interested to know that the show's creator and star Lena Dunham has set a floor price of $1 million for a book she hasn't written yet. Working title: Not That Kind of Girl: Advice by Lena Dunham.

Slate website, reporting this, said that in the book of essays Dunham will deal with topics including healthy eating, worrying about death, losing her virginity, and "the most awkward date ever with an older director."

She's 26.

Swift gets last laugh

Remember Taylor Swift getting pranked into playing a concert at a school for the deaf? It was a contest: "vote" online for your school and the one that wins gets a free show. Assorted nasty souls rigged it for the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, in Boston: big joke on Taylor.

Organizers rejected those votes, but now Swift, in her likable-celebrity way, has given the school $10,000, and each student a free tickets to her next Boston show. Various companies will match the donation.

Don't laugh: deaf people enjoy the scene and the excitement, even if they can't hear the music.

Akerman's little cheeseball

Starlet Malin Akerman (Rock of Ages, among other pictures) had a strange way to describe the pregnancy she announced the other day at some awards event:

"It's kind of like when you are hungover ... but it's that kind of feeling where you want to eat everything greasy ... so the diet is great, I love it!" E! News quotes her as saying. She mentioned "french fries, grilled cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese."

Akerman, born in Sweden but raised in Canada, added this: "It feels a little bit like that gut rot you get the next day where you're just craving everything that will just soak (the alcohol) up. But I don't think the hamburgers will soak up my baby."

This will be her first child. She's been married for five years to Roberto Zincone, drummer for a band called the Petalstones. (Man, there are a lot of bands I've never heard of!)

She's 34.

X-Tina loves her booty

Speaking of junk food, here's how Christina Aguilera recounted, to Billboard mag, the history of her weight:

In 2002, while promoting her album Stripped, "I got tired of being a skinny, white girl," Aguilera says. "I am Ecuadorian but people felt so safe passing me off as a skinny, blue-eyed white girl."

"The next time my label saw me ... I had gained about 15 pounds ... they called this serious emergency meeting about how ... I would sell no records or tickets for my shows." She slimmed down.

Currently, however, she is, err, substantial, and content that way. "Actually, the challenge I've always had is being too thin," she told Lucky mag "so I love that now I have a booty, and obviously I love showing my cleavage."

She's 31.

Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy?

Deadline Hollywood says Fox Searchlight is after Portman to star in a movie about the few days after JFK's assassination (Nov. 22, 1963, children).

This project has been kicking around for a while. Rachel Weisz was supposed to do it, with Darren Aronofsky directing, but then in 2010 they broke up, after nine years as a couple; both dropped the project.

Too much information

Talent-show tycoon Simon Cowell loves sheep-placenta facials, says England's Daily Mirror. Sounds like a war crime to me, but he and others think it's good for the skin.

''Simon is forever trawling the health and beauty market ..." don't Usemyname told the paper. ''He's tried vitamin injections, drips, detoxes, smoothies, Botox and massages, but after reading rave reviews about placenta facials, decided he had to give them a go.

''He reckons they take years off his complexion."

He's 52.

Can you say publicity stunt?

This Robert Pattinson -- Kristen Stewart -- Rupert Sanders thing just keeps getting stranger.

Now RadarOnline says Stewart told Pattinson, and Sanders told his wife Liberty Ross, that there is less here than meets the eye. They both claimed that while they did do some serious making out, there were never actually any, err, sex acts. (Parse that as you like. Perhaps Bill Clinton could help clarify the terms.)

Radar also says KStew got RPatz back by giving him all her passwords so he can monitor her telecommunications.

Hmm. Am I the only one starting to think that this whole caper is beginning to sound like one big scripted publicity stunt?

Lil Wayne gives them something to do

Every celeb needs to give back, they say, and Lil Wayne has found a way: last week he opened Trukstop, not a roadside diner run by an illiterate but rather a skate park, in the Lower Ninth ward of New Orleans, his hometown.

"I just want to help out my city, help out the people and the kids, give them something to do," the rapper -- born Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. -- told AP. You'll recall that the Lower Ninth was pretty much wiped out by Katrina.

He's 30.

Arnold Sperminator

Arnold Schwarzenegger has confirmed his 1985 "hot affair" with Scandinavian Amazon Brigitte Nielsen. The admission is in his new autobio, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story. Nielsen reported the same fling in her own autobio last year, but nobody noticed.

Arnie was living with Maria Shriver in '85, but they had not yet married. He and Nielsen were working on a movie together, Red Sonja. Arnie says he never thought their interlude was anything serious.

In the book, Arnie mentions "other affairs" -- plural -- before he impregnated Mildred Baena, the caper which, once revealed, ended his marriage to Shriver.

Nielsen is 49 now. Arnie is 65.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 7, 2012 ??65524