Some celebrity hookups are hardly worth the ink used to write them up in the tabloids, especially when they involve two stars who clearly shouldn’t be together, or they end quicker than a sumo wrestling match.

But then there’s Taylor and Taylor. Singer Taylor Swift, the top selling female artist of 2008, and actor Taylor Lautner, the “Twilight” teen idol, have been seen out together, first at a hockey game on Sunday and later this week in Beverly Hills, for what the media has described as a dinner date.

The two Taylors have small roles in the movie “Valentine’s Day,” which is due to come out on Feb. 12. So there’s always the possibility that the whole thing is a publicity stunt. Or not.

Taylor Swift herself spoke about the other Taylor to chat show host Ellen DeGeneres in an interview set to air on Thursday. She said that the two share scenes in “Valentine’s Day” and that they kiss in the movie.

“So is he a good kisser?” DeGeneres said.

“What?” Swift said.

“So coy,” DeGeneres responded.

So how do the two Taylors match up?

In one corner, the 17 year-old Lautner was named by celebrity show “Access Hollywood” as having the best abdominal muscles in Hollywood. And he is giving “Twilight” co-star Robert Pattinson a run for his money in the teen swoon category ahead of his larger role in the sequel “New Moon” due out on Nov. 20.

In the other corner, the 19 year-old Swift was ranked last year in Maxim magazine’s hot 100 female stars list. She sells out concert dates in minutes, and of course she won the 2009 MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Video in that incident that will be remembered as the great Kanye West flameout of 2009.

Of course, as quick as you become hot in Hollywood, you may just as soon find yourself the subject of an embarrassing incident. In the case of Swift, that has come in the form of a photo on celebrity website TMZ.com showing Swift posing for a photograph at a Los Angeles party on Saturday with a fan wearing a shirt with a Nazi swastika painted on it. Swift’s spokeswoman, Paula Erickson, told Reuters that the photo is misleading, because Swift was in a loud and dark party with strobe lights, and that Swift could not see the swastika on the man’s shirt. “She never even looked at what he was wearing, he was one person that came up to her in a whole line of people,” Erickson said. “She took lots of pictures with lots of people very quickly.” On TMZ’s own informal poll, 75 percent of respondents said by mid-day Thursday that they thought Swift was innocent in the whole thing.

As for Taylor and Taylor, Erickson said she had no comment on whether they are dating. Maybe we’ll know by Valentine’s Day whether “TayTay” (??) will rival Brangelina and TomKat.

 The stars of Fox’s “American Idol” expect great things from new judge Ellen DeGeneres , but they are all saying something different about her addition to the judging panel of Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Kara DioGuardi, and her replacement of songstress Paula Abdul.

Host Ryan Seacrest told Fox News at the Primetime Emmy awards on Sunday that DeGeneres, a comedian with her own daytime chat show, is a “superstar.”

“She will change the sexual tension,” Seacrest said of DeGeneres, who is lesbian and last year married longtime girlfriend and actress Portia de Rossi in California, before voters in the state banned same-sex weddings during the November 2008 election.

“Simon and Paula had a specific kind of tension, but this will be quite different…” Seacrest told Fox.

DioGuardi, who only joined the show this past season, told People magazine at an Emmy after-party that “Idol” producers’ recruitment of DeGeneres was a “genius decision,” and that she wishes she had thought of it herself.

One of the most pointed comments about DeGeneres’ addition came from director Bruce Gowers, who won an Emmy for his role with “American Idol.”

“I think there will be a lot more fun on the show than there was before,” Gowers told reporters backstage.

“I think we’re going to get even higher ratings,” he said.

But Gowers backtracked when asked if he meant the show suffered with Abdul in the judge’s chair, saying that was not the case.

Despite drawing more viewers than any other show on television, “American Idol” did not win its first Emmy until 2007, which was six years into the show’s lifespan, and even that was for the relatively unexciting category of best technical direction.

 Will next season’s arrival of DeGeneres, a highly respected figure in Hollywood, change things and get the show more respect from Emmy voters?

“American Idol” producers moved swiftly to replace Paula Abdul with comedian and TV chat show host Ellen DeGeneres  as the new judge on the show which starts again in January.

But is Ellen the right fit for the show?

Fans are split and even media watchers were stunned by the move, which serves the dual function of closing the door permanently on Paula, and making the show talked about all over again after a summer of shock announcements.

For a TV show that’s primarily about finding America’s next instant pop star — and one which is ultimately chosen by the public — there’s been a lot of hoo-hah this year about the judging panel, whether its Kara DioGuardi’s return, Simon Cowell’s future, Ryan Seacrest’s lucrative new contract or Abdul’s ultimately failed contract manoevres.

So what do you think is ultimately the most important and/or entertaining part of “Idol” — the contestants, or the chemistry on the judging panel?

And how will Ellen fit in, and will her presence on the “Idol” panel make you more or less likely to watch next year when the show has finished tossing out all the thousands of hopeless singers and gets down to the Top 20?

Now that actress Lindsay Lohan and celebrity DJ Samantha Ronson are broken up, the “Mean Girls” star seems to be talking more candidly about her relationship with Ronson than when the two women were going out.

In an appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on Thursday, the 22-year-old Lohan told the chat show host that she and Ronson are still friends, even though after their breakup early this month members of Ronson’s family inquired about obtaining a restraining order against the actress. Lohan told DeGeneres that she did not know the breakup was coming.

“I had no idea what was going on,” Lohan said. “I just hadn’t seen her in a week. She like disappeared.”

And Lohan, who as news of her break-up emerged would only admit that she and Ronson were “taking a break,”  told DeGeneres on Thursday that she was not dating anyone new.

“I don’t need to deal with that,” the actress said. “It gets too distracting from everything that I need to focus on. Leaving town, you miss someone too much and you don’t want to go sometimes. But I really care about Samantha and we’ll see what happens. Maybe when we’re fully in the right place … and I love her.”

It was a markedly different version of herself than Lohan presented in a comedy video this month for the Web site FunnyorDie.com, in which she jokingly pretended to look for love through a matchmaking company. Lohan’s relationship with Ronson, 31, has been the focus of constant media attention since they were photographed kissing at the Cannes International Film Festival in May 2008.

Lindsay Lohan’s breakup with celebrity DJ Samantha Ronson is good news for Eminem, who eloquently expresses his passion for the actress in his new video. 
    
The reclusive rapper took a swipe at the couple in “We Made You,” which was released on Tuesday, days after the women broke up.
    
In one scene, Eminem is driving a big rig while Lohan and Ronson lookalikes are making out next to him.
    
“He does not mean to lesbian offend, but Lindsay please come back to seeing men,” Eminem intones in his rapid clipped style. “Samantha’s a two, you’re practically a 10. I know you want me, girl. In fact I see you grin.”
    
Declaring that he’s “looking for more women to torture,” Eminem also claims he would be a better lover for actress Portia de Rossi than her wife Ellen DeGeneres. He also fantasizes about Sarah Palin, while a scantily clad lookalike of the former vice-presidential candidate poses seductively on her desk. 
    
Other targets of Eminem’s rapier wit include tabloid starlet Kim Kardashian, and singers Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and Amy Winehouse.
    
“You think that’s bad. You should hear the rest of my album. Never has there been such finesse and nostalgia,” he promises in the video.
    
That album, “Relapse,” the follow-up to his 2004 release “Encore” is due in stores on May 19.

(Writing and reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

It’s been an eventful year in celebrity news, and even if it has been light on scandals , stars held the attention of fans. 
    
But some big names, notably Michael Jackson and Miley Cyrus, appear to have worn out their welcome, according to a fan poll from celebrity Web site Parade.com.

Some  41 percent of respondents said Jackson, who turned 50 in 2008 with no sign of making good on repeated promises of a comeback,  should officially retire. They also said the pop star’s antics are the most disturbing behavior from any Hollywood star. 

Fans chose Disney star Miley Cyrus as the most overexposed celebrity. At the age of 16.

The wedding of comedian Ellen DeGeneres and actress Portia de Rossi ranked as the year’s most exciting nuptial, with 29 percent of respondents choosing it as their favorite. The wedding was made possible by a California court ruling allowingt same-sex weddings that voters rejected in November,  but not before several gay and lesbian stars were married.

Singers Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale clinched the year’s craziest baby name spot by naming their son Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale. Some 48 percent of poll respondents called the name, which brings to mind famous Zuma Beach in Southern California, the most out-there name of the year. 
     
 Fans thought  pop diva Britney Spears had the most improved reputation. As for the relationship between singer Lindsay Lohan and celebrity DJ Samantha Ronson, only 1 percent of respondents said that couple is “most likely to succeed.” 

How would you have voted?  Have Miley and Jacko really outstayed their welcome or would you still like to have them around for another few years?

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres said she was “saddened beyond belief” at the decision by voters to ban the newly-won rights of gays and lesbians to marry in California.

But singer Melissa Etheridge sounds downright angry.

Etheridge,  47,  who did not get to marry her partner Tammy Lynn Michaels before the Nov 4 ballot,   suggested in a blog post that she would no longer pay her California state taxes because, as a lesbian, she did not now enjoy the same rights as as other Californians.

“Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen,” Etheridge wrote.

DeGeneres and her longtime partner, actress Portia de Rossi, were among the roughly 18,000 gay or lesbian couples who married in California in the five-month honeymoon between same sex marriage becoming legal and then being banned in a ballot initiative known as Proposition 8.

The popular chat show host married de Rossi in August in the most high-profile same sex marriage since such unions were declared legal in California in May.

“I was saddened beyond belief. Here we just had a giant step toward equality and then on the very next day, we took a giant step away,” DeGeneres wrote on her website

“I believe one day a ‘ban on gay marriage’ will sound totally ridiculous. In the meantime, I will continue to speak out for equality for all of us,” she added.

California authorities say marriages of gays and lesbians between June and November will remain legal. Hundreds of gay rights activists held street protests in Los Angeles and San Francisco after the Prop 8 vote and have filed several lawsuits in a bid to overturn the decision.

Brad Pitt has donated $100,000 to fight California voters’ attempt to eliminate the rights of gay couples to marry.

Pitt’s donation to the No on Prop 8  campaign is the largest single donation so far by a celebrity to the bid to defeat the anti-gay marriage California ballot measure in November, organizers said.

“Because no one has the right to deny another their life even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn’t harm another, and because discrimination has no place in America,  my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8,” Pitt said in a statement.

The California Supreme Court struck down a ban on marriage in May but state voters will decide in a voter referendum in November whether to abolish those new rights.

Chad Griffin, political strategist for the No on 8 campaign, said he hoped Pitt’s contribution would encourage other celebrities to put their hands in their pockets. “The entertainment industry should view this contribution as a challenge,” Griffin said.

Many lesbian and gay couples marrying in Califronia have asked friends and relatives to donate to the campaign instead of buying wedding gifts.

Chat show host Ellen DeGeneres and actress Portia de Rossi married in Beverly Hills in August and former “Star Trek” crew member George Takei married his long time partner Brad Altman in September.   

Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres wore a white vest and pants while actress Portia de Rossi was decked out in a lacy dress, as the lesbian couple wed at their Los Angeles home this past weekend in a ceremony caught on camera by People magazine.
    
While the Saturday ceremony was a closely guarded affair, People posted details and images on its Web site.
    
Candles and flowers surrounded DeGeneres and de Rossi as they wed. They sat on floor pillows with Wayne Dyer, the author of books on spiritualism and self-help, who officiated the ceremony.
    
“She’s officially off the market,” DeGeneres told People of her new spouse. “No one else gets her. And now she’ll cook and clean for me.”
    
Just how much de Rossi will be expected to cook remains in doubt, given that People reports the couple has a personal chef named David Silberkleit, who prepared an all-vegan meal for the wedding.
    
DeGeneres hosts daytime talk show, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” and De Rossi has starred in the television shows “Arrested Development” and “Ally McBeal.” The couple started dating in 2004. 
 
The wedding of DeGeneres, 50, and de Rossi, 35, was one of the most highly anticipated same-sex weddings since the California Supreme Court in May overturned a state ban on those unions.
    
A ballot measure before the state’s voters in November threatens to override the court’s decision. Gay and lesbian groups, dismayed at the prospect of losing a hard-won right, have expressed hope that happy same-sex couples getting married will help convince voters to support the unions.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis) 

Is it really a surprise? Simon Cowell, the king of mean judge on U.S. TV talent show “American Idol,” was voted Hollywood’s most obnoxious celebrity in a pop culture poll conducted by Parade magazine’s website, Parade.com.

Cowell, known for acidic comments aimed at contestants on the show after their performance has been less than adequate, topped the list followed by real estate mogul turned reality TV star Donald Trump, “Hell’s Kitchen” cook Gordon Ramsay and “The Hills” star Spencer Pratt, in that order.

While talk show host Oprah Winfrey is easily the most wealthy celebrity as judged by Forbes magazine, Parade.com readers don’t like her as much as Ellen DeGeneres or Tyra Banks. Ellen earned 40 percent of the vote as best daytime talk show host, followed closely by Tyra with 39 percent. Oprah garnered only 11 percent. 

Among other findings in the poll, whose full results are at http://www.parade.com/celebrity/surveys/pop-culture-summer-2008/results.html, comedian Jon Stewart would beat presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama in a race for the White House, 55 percent to 45 percent.  Simon Cowell was not even in the race.