This is what Katy Perry wore last night’s MusiCares Person of the Year Gala honoring Paul McCartney. She wore this to perform, she wore this on the red carpet, and she wore this to watch the ceremony. She wore this all night. I really like the dress: I think it’s simple and elegant, for Katy, anyway.

But I think you all know that I’m not talking about the dress.

That HAT, ugh. To be fair to Katy, I usually hate all fancy hats. It was really hard for me to look at pictures from the royal wedding last year because of all the fancy hats, and my distaste for fancy hats probably has a little bit to do with my feelings for Lady Gaga. I just think they’re dumb, really. That’s all. I think they’re dumb and too “look at me” and the only occasion where you should even be allowed to wear a fancy hat is to an occasion that can in no way be construed to be about any other person besides yourself. If Katy wants to wear a big stupid hat at her own concert, that would be fine. However, if she wants to wear it at a tribute for someone else, that’s show-offy and attention whoreish and a little bit disrespectful.

Also, have I mentioned how much I miss Katy Perry with black hair? Because it’s a lot.

Images courtesy of Celebuzz

I’m going to be real right quick: I kind of hate Katy Perry, so whenever I hear anything about her divorce from Russell Brand, I automatically go into the mindset of “ugh, Katy Perry, what a bitch.” I can’t help it. In my eyes, Russell is a darling angel and Katy Perry is the devil. Do you hear me? She is the devil. So when you read this report about how Katy and Russell broke up because of Katy’s involvement with cocaine, I want you to make your own decisions, because I can’t be impartial here.

From Star via Celebitchy:

Russell Brand may be the recovering addict, but it’s Katy Perry’s exposure to hard drugs and all-night partying that doomed their marriage. Amid reports of cheating, fighting and a fading romance, Star has discovered the shocking reason that [the couple] split a little more than a year after their wedding in India.

Russell, a recovering drug addict, “hit the roof,” says a source, when he found out exactly what was going on in Hawaii. “Katy runs with a really wild crowd,” an insider tells Star. Some of her acquaintances love to do cocaine. “They will party all night till the sun comes up, doing line after line of coke.”

According to pals, Russell felt he had no choice but to instruct his lawyers to put a swift end to the marriage. “How is Russell supposed to feel when he hears that his wife is out till all hours of the night,” says the insider. “He can only assume the worst.” And even though the singer wasn’t doing drugs herself, the source feels it showed really bad judgment. “Ruseell was a truly horrible addict. It’s a day-by-day struggle for him to stay sober and walk the right path now,” says the insider. “He’s really turned his life around, and he couldn’t let it be destroyed.”

Katy appears to have had a long and complicated history with drugs. Although her parents [are] strict evangelical Christians, she revealed in 2009 that even they weren’t always on the straight and narrow. In fact her mom was, in Katy’s words, a “wild child rock ‘n’ roller, pot-smoking debutante,” and her dad was an “acid dealer with long hair.”

There’s no doubt that Katy was exposed to it all, even then. Her Gym Class Heroes singer ex, Travie McCoy, acknowledged his own addiciton and blogged about being in rehab. And a source claims he was a really bad influence on her. “Katy was really struggling when she was with him.” But “she promised her dad she would stay clean.”

According to another insider, Russell saw changes in his wife over the past year. “She went from this sweet, adorable woman that he was madly in love with” to a needy person who surrounded herself with hangers-on who were using her, says an insider. And her behavior was getting increasingly erratic. “She’d throw back tequila shots, chain smoke… and have mood swings. He gave her an ultimatum: ‘Get rid of your hard-partying friends or lose me forever!’” It looks as if Katy made her choice.

This is exactly what I said, remember? Way back when I told you guys all about how Katy and Russell didn’t spend Christmas together, I said that Katy was being immature, selfish, and ridiculous with all the crazy partying while her husband is actively working on maintaining sobriety. And that’s why I have absolutely no trouble believing this story. From Star.

What do you guys think? If Katy was partying with cokeheads all the time, would that be a reasonable dealbreaker?

You know, something about a lot of European folks: they’ve still got some manners left after all these years. And that’s not to say that Americans don’t, because that’s just not generally true, but if an American actor (even an American actor like the revered Ryan Gosling) said something like this in response to a paparazzi’s question, they’d be considered pretentious, vague, and annoying. When it comes from the mouth of someone with a refined accent (and not a chewy US East Coast accent), it’s seen as so much more tolerable. Seriously, as much as I’m not a huge Russell Brand fan, he’s looking better and better as the days go by.

Like I said last week.

And the week before, too.

Also, I love that he’s been educated enough to have read Kurt Vonnegut and is able to correlate ideas from literature and apply their basis in day-to-day events. I mean, that kind of stuff’s probably way over Katy Perry’s reading level. I’ll bet she stopped at Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret or at the very least, Twilight.

Lastly, Evil Beet’s now on Pinterest! If you don’t know what it is, it’s kind of like Facebook, just without all of the annoying people who feel the need to update you on every bodily function that they engage in or do their best in trying offend everyone with their weirdo BS and only end up being looked at with piteous contempt. There’s also more cool stuff to look at than just I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER. And since it’s sort of all about sharing cool stuff, we thought, ‘Hey, why not. If we’re going to do this thing, we may as well do it right,’ huh?

Check us out and if you’re not already hooked up, request an invite straight through Pinterest and get on the cool kid bus.

I don’t know. If I was still reeling from an alleged emotional blow like blindly being dumped by the love of my life (whom I happened to enter into the sanctified pact of marriage), I don’t quite know that I’d be showing up in public places looking like … well, this. The blue hair, the bob (which wouldn’t be all that bad, save for the color), the American-themed – what is that? – windbreaker? Is Katy a very festive Olympian these days? That what it is? Is she trying to win Russell back via impressive athletic feats whilst training for the summer Olympics, which are, conveniently, being held in London this year? Seems all too planned to me, but hell. What do I know about the true nature of Katy Perry.

I don’t know how you guys feel, but all I know is that Russell‘s mum’s-the-word type of crisis management is making him look better and better in comparison to Katy and her … whatever this whole thing is. Bitchy, immature, party-hard, star-spangled avoidance.

And is that saying much? Well, I don’t know. You be the judge.

This is the man who is halfway responsible for bringing Katy Perry into this world. His name is Keith Hudson. And for real, he is so lame. He’s so lame that he wears shirts that are unnecessarily tight, just so you can see a hint of man boob. He’s so lame that the only hair he has on his whole head is in the form of little tiny eyebrows and a soul patch. He’s so lame that he makes horrible anti-Semitic remarks as part of his sermon.

Here’s what he had to say during his preachin’ last week at church:

“You know how to make the Jew jealous?” he said at the Church on the Rise, a nondenominational church in Westlake, Ohio. “Have some money, honey. You go to L.A. and they own all the Rolex and diamond places. Walk down a part of L.A. where we live and it is so rich it smells. You ever smell rich? They are all Jews, hallelujah! Amen.”

But wait, it’s ok! I know it sounds kind of bad, but it’s not like that, it was all just taken out of context!

The Church on the Rise told CNN in a statement on Tuesday that Hudson’s words were taken out of context.

“Keith Hudson was praying for different individuals and groups of people and he asked for business men and women to stand so that he could pray for them to be blessed and prosperous in their business pursuits,” the statement says. “The comment was intended as a compliment, not as a criticism.”

See, now don’t we all feel so much better about it? When Keith Hudson was spouting those tired old stereotypes about Jews, it was intended as a compliment. Get it? Yeah, no one else did either, because Keith had to issue an apology to the Anti-Defamation League:

“I deeply regret the hurtful and ugly language I used in my message in Ohio,” Mr. Hudson wrote.  ”I used images about Jews rooted in the worst anti-Semitism in the past, images that at times led to the persecution and murder of Jews.  I can’t tell you where I picked up phrases and descriptions that became part of my vocabulary.  I used them without ever considering what they meant.  … I apologize for the hurt that I caused my Jewish friends.  With the help of G-d, it will not happen again.”

I’ve done a bit of public speaking in my time, and I’ve always found that a good rule of thumb when giving a speech is to actually know what you’re going to say. I think that when you’re speaking in front of hundreds of people, and a lot of them are actually listening to you, it’s a good idea to consider what you’re saying. Is that crazy?

Really, I think what needs to happen is Katy Perry’s parents need to take a break, and just stop talking. About anything. If they keep going the way they’re going, then it would be most beneficial for everyone if they just stopped talking until they can think about the words that come out of their mouths.

So, as the headline reads, Russell Brand was even cluing in those caught in the skinfolds of entertainment that he was getting ready to gear up and cheat with other American sorority wimminz. If you can’t view the video for whatever reason, here’s really the only thing you need to know:

“I am going to meet people from sororities and fraternities. I don’t know what a sorority is except for what I have seen on Nudevista – that they are sort of sex clubs for women. A week of revolution and, more importantly, I am going to learn first-hand about sororities. [Brand takes wedding ring off] I’m just going to place this somewhere very, very safe for the next week.”

The video was posted on Nudevista, which is a porn site that caters to … well, I don’t know. Here’s my most generic of generic answers: People who look at porn. I was kind of afraid to visit the site, to be honest with you, after hearing that Russell himself had a weird sex fetish involving handicapped men in wheelchairs. Sorry, but that’s not stuff that I want to take the chance of possibly encountering, you know?

So, right. Katy Perry‘s estranged husband, a “reformed” sex addict, was chilling out on porno sites and possibly planning to embark on a US tour of American coed puss. She definitely chose a winner, there. The best thing about all this? Rumor has it that Katy’s traveled to the UK to persuade Russell to give their relationship another go.

But if Brand really did take a tour of the country’s best, would you still want him back? Wait, let’s scratch that from the record. Katy took Russell’s hand in marriage despite this kind of stuff. Maybe we’ll see a special appearance from Katy Perry on Nudevista sometime soon, too – just not for the reasons you might think.

This morning, Jenn told you all about how Russell Brand was uninvited from the People’s Choice Awards because “it will be Katy’s big night” and organizers wanted to “avoid any awkwardness or confrontation.” Jenn called it high schoolish, and boy, did she hit the nail on the head with that one. This is precisely like Russell and Katy getting an invite to the cool kids’ party, but then they get into this fight and they are so over, so the cool kids decide to just have Katy there because OMG she is so much more popular and like wouldn’t that be the greatest?

But you guys. Katy isn’t even going to the party. Check out this Tweet:

Unfortunately I will not be able to attend the People’s Choice Awards. I want to thank u all for voting for me, fingers crossed! #KATYCATS

And now you get neither, People’s Choice Awards.  Did you learn your lesson?

In other news originating from Katy Perry’s Twitter, she has stated that the love and support from her fans means a lot to her – “you guys have made my heart happy again” – and she’s also made it clear that, in these trying times, no one else speaks for her, “not a blog, magazine, ‘close sources,’ or my family.”

But why did Katy specifically mention her family? Why, because her parents are using the publicity from her divorce to get people to visit their church. Sweet, right?

Just as moving vans pulled up to Katy Perry and Russell Brand’s Hollywood Hills home, Perry’s parents discussed their daughter’s impending divorce for the first time, from the pulpit of their evangelical ministry. During a worship service this week, the two said that they believed Perry’s split was God’s way of bringing people to church.

Mary and Keith Hudson saw an unusual surge in the crowd at their Church on the Rise in Westlake, Ohio, during the week following Brand’s filing for divorce from Perry after just 14 months of marriage. The Hudsons advertise being “Kate Perry’s Parents” on the roadside sign for their congregation.

“I’m sure that Katy’s trending on the Internet was to get you here to church tonight,” Mary Hudson said from the pulpit, to a crowd of 300. “I mean all over the world, who knows how God is bringing them in? The most important thing is you are here and God wants to put the fire in you in 2012.”

Keith Hudson added, “What has taken place in my daughter’s life has opened many opportunities to go in and be with guarded and gated people. God has given us a platform to go in and meet people — and they like us because we are cool. We are not threatening.”

He furthered that the couple were not upset with their daughter for getting divorced, often frowned upon by their religion.

“I love my daughter and I will always love her,” Keith Hudson continued. “Stop being judgmental and critical. Do not close the doors to your loved ones, especially your children. Just because they do not like what you do or what you are, they are still praying that you stay in the race. They are counting on you.

“I believe in God, for every one of my children.”

Whoa.  Whoa.  Hold it right there, parents, because you have gone too far. I thought that you went too far with the Katy Perry tell-all, but now, I think I spoke too soon. I think the moment when you decided that any of this was in any way acceptable, that’s the moment you crossed the line.

But seriously, how awful is that? And where do you guys stand now: Team Russell or Team Everybody But Katy Perry’s Parents?

I have already gone on and on about how sad the Katy Perry/Russell Brand split is. It is so depressing.

This bears repeating, though: I think the couple is crazy-in-love with each other. Whatever ongoing fight they are in is so stupid.

But this? This is so much worse. The UK Mirror has the deets:

In a bizarre twist of events [Russell Brand,] the Brit comic, 36, has been mysteriously uninvited from a star-studded awards show to avoid a confrontation with estranged wife Katy.

Katy, 27, is collecting a gong for her hit album, singles and tour at the People’s Choice Awards in LA on January 11 where she’s up for seven awards, including Favourite Female Artist.

It will be her first official job since Russ filed for divorce after just 14 months together and both her and Russell had initially been invited.

A source said: “It will be Katy’s big night, a prelude to the Grammys, and now Russell has been strangely left off the list of attendees for the high-profile event.

“It was always going to be awkward for organisers in any case after their shock decision to split. But in order to avoid any awkwardness or confrontation Russ is no longer on the list.”

This. Is. So Awkward. Seriously. This whole thing used to be depressing; now, on top of being depressing, it is awkward! This has become high school crap. What is even going on, here?

I mean, how is disinviting somebody’s still-husband less awkward than simply letting the two people organically run into each other? People, am I wrong?

From Us Magazine via Hollywood Life:

“Katy was kinky enough during their first times together and he was very attracted to her,” a source says. “When things got bad, if they got a roll in the hay, they were always better after.” But the source goes on to say that despite Katy’s attempts to keep the spark alive in the bedroom by scheduling monthly date nights at swanky hotels, it was “never enough.”

Russell’s sexually fetishes were also reportedly hard for Katy to keep up with. “He likes dirty things,” the source says. “He really gets off on one particular porno with a guy in a wheelchair. He’s attracted to things he can’t imagine happening to him.” Adding that Russell had a closet full of sex toys.

Well hell. You marry a sex addict and you’re, what, surprised that it doesn’t work out in the bedroom after the novelty wore off? Good Lord! If these guys hadn’t split up as soon as they did, I’d have given it another six months before we had another Tiger Woods-like scandal on our hands, complete with seedy porn stars and toothless prostitutes.

Here’re some quotes from Russell’s sex addict “past”:

“To this day, I feel a fierce warmth for women that have the same disregard for the social conventions of sexual protocol as I do. I love it when I meet a woman and her sexuality is dancing across her face, so it’s apparent that all we need to do is nod and find a cupboard.”

“I like threesomes with two women, not because I’m a cynical sexual predator. Oh no! But because I’m a romantic. I’m looking for “The One.” And I’ll find her more quickly if I audition two at a time.”

“I can’t believe I used to have sex 20 times a week, especially now I’m married. My peak was probably five a day. It was a bit much. I was always respectful though.”

They say a leopard doesn’t change its spots and all of that business, you know. Still surprised, Katy?

I have to tell you guys: I have never been so depressed over a celebrity uncoupling as I have been over Katy Perry and Russell Brand‘s pending divorce. Like, I was pretty sad when Lisa Loeb and Dweezil Zappa broke up, pretty sad about the Tim Robbins/Susan Sarandon split, and pretty sad about Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon filing for divorce—that last one coincided with my own breakup, so it was very yikes, is there no true love? Is there no hope for the rest of us?

The erstwhile couple spent the holidays apart after a huge spat, as we all know; Russell Brand filed the paperwork on December 30. So how did Katy and Russell each spend New Year’s Eve?

Katy spent New Year’s looking chipper at a party in West Hollywood (she was “in a great mood,” according to the New York Post). Evidently, Mrs. Brand spent most of the party chatting and dancing with a “long-haired man” who, according to reports, was a “dead-ringer” for her husband. Oh, dear.

And how did Russell spend New Year’s Eve? Was he with some busty blonde supermodel? Perhaps he partied with some tattooed female rock stars?

Nope.

Here’s MTV:

While Perry let her hair down in LA, Brand spent New Year’s Eve alone at the Savoy Hotel in London, with a source telling The Mirror: “He wasn’t up for celebrating and just ordered food to his room. The next morning he was in the gym from 11am and spent two hours there.”

Reports claim when a gym goer at the hotel wished the 36-year-old funnyman a Happy New Year, Brand replied: “Here’s hoping it gets happier.”

Oh, my God. Just, oh my God at both of them. They are both piteous.

MTV goes right on to add the couple had no prenup, which means Russell is expected to get half of Katy’s estimated $44 million fortune. So maybe in a year Russell will get to stay at an even bigger hotel, order better room service, maybe have a whole gym delivered to his room.

Ah! Katy and Russell—they were my new picks for the Couple Most Likely to Surprise and Persevere. I love that Katy is a good-girl-gone-weird, and Russell seemed to be the right breed of bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold to help Katy untangle the mysteries of her own heart. “Projection much, Jenn?” Sure, OK.

Still. You can have all the love and magic in the world, but when magic fades, all you have left is a person to fight with. Why can’t people learn how to fight better? Why can’t couples have more constructive, adult arguments, where the goal isn’t for one person to “win”?

Because every report suggests that this couple started having pissing contents, where one person would be “proud” and the other person, equally proud, would “call the bluff.” That, of the two, Katy is in fact the petulant child, who was so strait-laced and goody-goody in youth (and she’s still so young!) she is only just now working out her jollies, never mind her career.

This couple doesn’t have irreconcilable differences at all: they need to learn how to have a real fight, the scary kind where one person says something in a very low tone and then goes, “Now it’s your turn to respond.”

Russell Brand filed for divorce from Katy Perry because she refused to settle down and have his children, the Sunday Mirror can reveal. The couple had a series of huge bust-ups over her partying and boozy lifestyle in the run-up to the collapse of their 14-month marriage. Comedian Russell, 36, has beaten booze and drugs addictions and wanted to shun the Hollywood clubbing scene and start a family with the Firework singer. But Katy, 27, didn’t want to become a “Hollywood housewife”. A source close to the couple said Katy took off her wedding ring and handed it back to Russell after one last devastating row a week before Christmas. The I Kissed A Girl star thought she had called her husband’s bluff and he would come running back. But it was the final straw for Russell, who simply shrugged his shoulders and flew home to his mother Barbara. The couple spent Christmas 7,000 miles apart – Katy in Hawaii, Russell in Cornwall – before he instructed his lawyers to start divorce proceedings on Friday. … It remains unclear whether the decision to end the marriage was mutual. … When Katy took her ring off he decided it was best he walked away. … “Katy was surprised that Russell didn’t come running back but she had met her match. They are both strong-willed people and there has been a lot of game-playing going on.”

So, OK. I can totally see this. Katy thinks she’s got this big, bad-assed music career going for her, when the reality is that she’s probably got another few years, tops, before she’s a Hollywood has-been that went the route of crap-singer-that-had-a-decent-stage-show-so-that’s-why-she-lasted-so-long, and maybe that fact is slowly beginning to dawn on her. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to settle for kids just yet, because she knew that her 15 minutes were going to be up soon – and probably very soon, at that. Her time has been running out for awhile now, and she more than likely wants to make the best of what she’s done and stretch it out for as long as she’s able to.

However, as for Russell “really wanting kids,” I’m not entirely sure I believe that’s the primary reason for cutting out on his marriage. If he “really wanted kids,” and “really loved his wife,” then maybe he would have, I don’t know, compromised and gave it another year or so to see how Katy‘s career panned (or didn’t pan) out? I’m definitely not siding at all with Katy in any of this, nor am I siding with Brand, because aside from his humor, I don’t think there’s much appeal in either of them, but let’s be realistic. This marriage was over before it began, regardless of the reason, and the fact that it even lasted this long is a testament in trying to stick it out, I guess.

Good riddance one way or the other, I say.

As it turns out, Katy Perry wasn’t at all blindsided when Russell Brand filed for divorce, as TMZ had originally said. No, it looks like Katy was well aware of what was happening, and she even asked Russell to file the papers.

“But why didn’t Katy do it herself?” you might be wondering. “Was she too heartbroken to file the papers? Could she not bear to do the deed herself? Was she too drunk to sign some papers?” All good guesses, friends, but they’re all wrong. Really, Katy didn’t file the papers herself because she didn’t want to disappoint her parents.

From TMZ:

Katy Perry WANTED Russell Brand to file the court papers in their divorce … because she didn’t want to upset her religious parents … sources connected to the former couple tell TMZ.

We’re told … Katy and Russell knew the relationship was on the rocks a couple of months ago — but didn’t want to give up on the marriage without making a concerted effort to work things out.

But the effort fell flat … with both sides feeling “it just wasn’t there.”

We’re told both Katy and Russell were on board with the divorce a few weeks ago — but they didn’t want to be in town when the papers were filed … so he went back to England and she booked it to Hawaii.

Since Katy’s parents are evangelical Christians, we’re told she didn’t want to be the one to “officially” end the marriage by filing the docs … since she was raised to believe divorce is wrong.

“OMG, Russ, pleeeeeeeeeeease?!” Katy asked Russell, anxiously clutching her phone covered in Hello Kitty stickers and rhinestones. “Could you just do me this one solid? You don’t understand, Mom and Dad would be so mad if I were to physically sign papers to end this marriage that I jumped into way too fast! Pretty please? Ok, I gotta go show off my cooter and spray somethin’ out my boobies!”

That’s how Katy Perry talks in my head, and I’m pretty sure that’s how this happened in real life. The thing is, I can’t tell if it’s my current, sort of irrational hatred of Katy Perry, or if this is actually completely ridiculous. The only thing I can tell is that Russell Brand is still a good dude for helping her out.

TMZ also has some insight on why this marriage ultimately didn’t work out, just in case there was any confusion:

According to our sources, Katy and Russell were initially head over heels for each other – each fascinated to be with someone who was an extreme opposite.

But we’re told the two began a regime of constant bickering after they got married — often in front of people at clubs and awards shows. They’re both very stubborn and neither would easily back down.

Our sources tell us … because of the friction and their schedules, they never spent long periods of time with each other.

One big bone of contention  … Russell was much more of a homebody than Katy.  Katy loved going out and partying, while Russell (who is sober) didn’t enjoy the scene at all. We’re told he would often insist on leaving places early and asking her to come with … which would trigger an argument.

But we’re told … as the dust settles, neither hates the other — far from it.   There’s no bad blood between them, and neither of them believes the other cheated.

As one person put it, “It was just a bad pairing.”

Amen, One Person.  Amen.