FOOL'S GOLD Paris
• Golden showered: Celebutwit Paris Hilton wears nothing but gold body paint in a photo shoot for her new line of champagne, Rich Prosecco. (The secret ingredient is Valtrex ... shhh!)

• Wordplay: Merriam-Webster picks 'W00t' as its 2007 Word of the Year. "It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language. It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other," says M-W pres John Morse. It also shows that some of us are way too into gaming.

• Gift guide: Having trouble figuring out what to get that special man in your life for Christmas? The London Times reports that Tony Blair gave George Bush a blue Burberry jumper last year, while former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi gifted Bushie an electric-assisted bicycle and some Elvis Presley CDs.

• You are not alone: President Bush tells a teenage girl struggling with addiction, "Your president made the same kind of choice, I had to quit drinking," then later tells ABC "I wanted her, this young girl who's struggling with drug addiction, to know that others who might be famous have the same issue, that she's not alone." So, like, famous people have drug probs? Hot!

• Oscar watch: The writer's strike threatens to not only ruin Christmas, but also possibly the Oscar party. "There might be an Oscar show, but I fear that it will look more like your high school graduation than it ever has before," says a former head writer for the awards show.

• A royal pain: Bitter daughter-in-law Charlene Marshall confronts Brooke Astor biographer Frances Kiernan at a Barnes & Noble reading. Marshall is married to Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, who has been indicted for plundering his late mother's estate.