“It’s not only celebrities who went for a day. It’s the whole f#$*ing world. It’s all of you. The reason we have Haiti fatigue is because there was never a commitment in the first place. … [This country finally has a chance to reestablish itself and] you see the very tangible success story that Haiti can be.”

So! Sean Penn is talking about how we can better ourselves as human beings and, by virtue, better the world around us.

You know, I like Sean Penn. I admire him for his humanitarian efforts, and any fifty-one year-old man who can lure Scarlett Johansson into his bed is definitely a pretty solid dude in my book. Seriously, though, he’s so right. Whether it’s Haiti or post-Katrina New Orleans or the carnage in Japan after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami … why aren’t we better equipped to be helping these people in need? Why is it that we’re so self-involved—and I’m not even necessarily talking about the people who need their own financial rescue, or relief from personal disaster, I’m talking about celebrities who have the world at their feet, the money in their banks, and the ability to get up and f-cking help. Why is it such a hard thing to follow through with the efforts to begin with? How many celebrities and people of notoriety endorsed the Red Cross and helping disaster victims in the weeks following serious incidents as opposed to how many actually followed the effort through?

I don’t know about you guys, but Sean Penn—despite giving off the creepy-old-guy vibes sometimes—is still pretty high up in my book.

The official trailer for Ryan’s latest movie, Gangster Squad, is here, the movie in which he’s reunited with his Crazy, Stupid Love co-star Emma Stone*. Check it out:

First, let me say that I will probably never look at Sean Penn again without automatically thinking “Scarlett Johansson sex, Scarlett Johansson sex,” and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You know how sometimes someone can be marginal-looking, and then they have this hot piece of ass latch onto them for whatever reason, and that hot piece of ass makes them hotter by association? That’s what we’ve got going on here, I think (but then again, I haven’t had my first cup of coffee yet, so I could be mistaken on that one). Second. Why is Ryan Gosling using his weenie voice to talk throughout this film? Is his gangster name supposed to be Tiny or something? Will all of the other gangsters in the squad look bigger than he is through trick photography? Or did they think that Weenie Voice would be a stark contrast to Ryan Gosling With a Tommygun? I don’t know. Third? It actually looks pretty decent. Way better than I thought it would, anyway.

*Now here’s what I really wanted to talk about: wouldn’t Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling together—in real life—be the hotness? Yeah, I know that Ryan’s all strung out on f-cking Eva Mendes and her stupid crapbag sense of fashion and what not, and Emma’s hung up on that true weenie, Andrew “Spiderman Dick” Garfield (which I really, really don’t get, because I’m not into pre-pubescent-looking dudes), but if we could peel Emma and Ryan away from their respective significant others for a few minutes in real life, I bet they could hit it off. I really, really do. And then you’d never hear me make any kind of snide remark whatsoever about the lady in Ryan’s life, because I love Emma Stone and I think that Ryan’s just as worthy of her as she is of him. And then they all lived happily ever after, the end.

You guys, I almost totally forgot! The Entertainment Lawyer who scribes Crazy Days and Nights is finally “naming names,” as is his hallowed New Year’s Day tradition.

Emily hit on some of the year’s best, most salacious scandals, but you guys! THERE IS SO MUCH MORE.

- Now we know for sure: Lea Michele is starting to behave like a real diva.

- Chris Brown is kind of a dickwad—a “Don’t you know who I am?” kind of dickwad.

- Stars who hate each other: Rob Lowe and Amy Poehler, Evan Rachel Wood and Kate Winslet.

(more…)

And I’m barely exaggerating when I say “all the celebrities.” There’s Ben Stiller, Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Kristen Wiig, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Jack Black, and Kevin Spacey. Did I miss anyone? Oh, Bill Clinton. Goodness

Basically it always tickles me when so many celebrities get together for a good cause, so I figured you guys might enjoy this as well. Also, who doesn’t love it when Jack Black sings?

You know those two hikers who were imprisoned in Iran? The ones who finally returned to the United States just today? OK: Sean Penn helped negotiate their release, CNN.com is reporting.

Wait, what? Exactly. CNN:

The report was first published by the Reuters news agency, which cited a source close to the release process as saying that Penn flew to Venezuela months ago to speak about the hikers’ plight with President Hugo Chavez, an ally of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mara Buxbaum, a rep for Penn, confirmed the Reuters report but declined to provide additional details.

Holy cow. I had no idea actors could even do that sort of thing—request audiences with foreign dignitaries, I mean, and then correct the injustices of the world with some schmoozin’. The very prospect kind of terrifies me. I guess maybe Bono does it, and it’s cool when Bono does it. Everyone loves Bono. But Sean Penn is so temperamental! Should he really be flying around and talking to presidents?

All dumbstruck horror aside: Kudos, Sean Penn.

Do you know what I just mistyped? “Sean Peen.” And then I couldn’t let it go without telling you, because it is the best of all my Freudian finger-slips this week.

Anyway, here’s a photo of Sean Peen, taking a stroll with his new lady, courtesy of People. Meh. We’ll know this relationship is serious once they’re photographed jogging together. (What? Oh.)

Why is this news, you ask? At first, I totally thought Sean Penn was already dating somebody new. Not so!

In fact, Sean Penn’s girlfriend has been misidentified as one Stacey Koplin for the last two months—her identity is now, at last, confirmed as 26-year-old Shannon Costello instead. (All together now: WHOOPS.) As People tells it, the pair met in 2009; young Miss Costello began working for Penn’s J/P Haitian Relief Organization last year.

Twenty-six! Twenty-six! Excuse me while I go crawl into my early grave.