We all know that "exhaustion" really means that you're partying too hard (see pic above, taken on June 26 as she exited a London club at 3:30am three weeks before her commitment), but don't want to admit it. Instead, you go with the Molar Defense and try to play us as a bunch of patsies. Even Britney was upfront about going bonkers. In this case, the lie is worse than what she's trying to cover up. Here's what Mischa told Time Out New York in her first Q&A since the hospital.

I went through a terrible surgery-a wisdom tooth surgery, all four removed. It was a nightmare. I've never had surgery before-it all went wrong and I had to have a second surgery and it almost delayed shooting because it was a nightmare to me, because I couldn't deal with the thought of not getting there on time. So with the travel, and surgery and prep for the show-it was hell.

So, was it the surgery that made you look all bloated and strung out in the pictures too? We just want to get on the officially party line here. When asked if it was drugs, she said no. And if asked if her hospitalization taught her how to deal with her emotions or the chronic pain from her botched surgery she says, "Not really."

Just for this, Mischa, we're not watching you play a pill-popping model on The Beautiful Life. Ok, that's a lie, but don't insult our intelligence, OK.

Page Six reports that Barton's publicist can't even get his gonzo client on the cover of any of the tabloid magazines. What, did OK! have the first pictures of Paz Vega's baby instead?

"As sad as Mischa's recent problems are, what seems to be upsetting her representatives even more is that no one really cares," said the editor

Is that because after the head-shaving, chopper-chasing, ambulance-cramming awesomeness of Britney going bonkers, everything pales in comparison? These are just a handful of the covers that were coming out on a weekly basis in 2007 during Britney's spectacular fall from grace. Just a year later, Heather Locklear barely got any when she started acting nuts.

Running concurrently with Britney during the summer of tabloid gold, Lindsay Lohan was arrested for DUI more than once and was in and out of rehab. She even managed to score the cover of the New York Post and the Daily News on the same day!

Or is it, sadly, that neither of these women are famous enough for their mental condition to warrant our concern? It's probably a combination of that and the lack of a really sensational story, like Anne Heche wandering into people's houses in her underwear babbling about spaceships (remember that?!). See, Mischa, you just didn't go crazy enough.

Regardless of the reason, it looks like Barton is going to have to get on the cover of a tabloid the old fashioned way. You know, by being a good actress, getting knocked up, or having her husband leave her and their eight children to chase floozies around Southhampton with Michael Lohan.

Phoenix ostensibly visited New York on Wednesday to promote his new film Two Lovers, but the movie proved secondary to the faux-enigmatic persona that left the actor muttering nothing in particular between long, awkward silences abetted by David Letterman himself. The results speak for themselves, as did Casey Affleck's camera-wielding appearance at the day's earlier press rounds in New York, which we hear wound up having even less to do with Lovers than Phoenix's hirsute, gum-depositing late-night escapades. So enjoy what promises to be the last of the star's half-assed film interests, at least until Darren Aronofsky digs him out of hiding 20 years from now for a moving, Oscar-ready comeback. We'll be waiting. [CBS]

· Placed on a "72-our mental lockdown" (or the more technical-sounding "5150 Hold"), Spears will be under close watch for the next three days in an attempt to ensure that she doesn't try to harm herself, try to escape the hospital to begin a search of local Starbucks for her missing kids, or squeeze her body into a leather bikini and fishnet ensemble to perform a woozy recreation of her career-ending VMA performance for the swarm of paparazzi assembled in the Cedars parking lot. [People]
· During her fun-filled ride to the hospital, "They had to strap her down like a mental patient and she was going between laughing and hysterics." Also, speculates a source: "I guess she has good days and bad days - it's mental instability. All she has is to think of something sad and she goes crazy." [Us]
· Still a little confused about how the tragic events of last night unfolded? Here's a handy timeline! [Us]
· This will inevitably become the defining image of The Night That Britney Finally Hit Rock-Bottom, At Least Until She Figures Out A Way To Drill Through That Rock Bottom, Then Jump Through The New Hole While Clutching Her Kidnapped Children And A Garbage Bag Full Of Pills. [TMZ]
· Oh, did we mention that the kids are safe with K-Fed? We probably should, lest you fear some distracted paramedics forgot to make sure someone would keep an eye on them while mommy was busy being strapped to that gurney. [People]

[New puppy] London pissed and shat all over the place. And who picked up the poop? Britney picked up the poop...allegedly mopping it up with a Chanel dress. A Chanel dress. [...]

Britney allegedly wanders around babbling like a baby - as in baby talk. Half the time her head can't stay straight, lolling around on her neck like a bobble. I'm told she also has no boundaries and allegedly, several times, when she had to pee, even though one of the washrooms was being used as a staging area, she would drop trou and make a tinkle WITHOUT CLOSING THE DOOR and an entire crew working around her. [...]

The girl allegedly can't stop touching herself. As in fondling her breasts, rubbing between her legs...She apparently goes about it absent-mindedly, as if not aware she's not alone and at the same time, genuinely curious about her own body, described to me as "like a 5 year old discovering her genitalia for the first time". Allegedly of course.

While conventional wisdom would suggest the disastrous P.R. op—which OK! is reportedly planning on running as is—could spell the last gasps for any sort of Spears career comeback, we'd suggest the opposite: Unlike Avril Lavigne's trite tongue-piercing and flashing of devil horns, nothing says authentic punk-rocker like rubbing puppy-shit on someone's else's Chanel gown before diddling yourself in the makeup chair. By adjusting her trademark sound to incorporate heavy feedback and dirty needles as a recurring lyrical motif, the Courtney Love-shaped hole in the pop landscape might finally be filled.

• Becoming Sad Smut [laineygossip.com]

Of course, that was before the show actually aired, and Abdul's dreary, fame-hungry existence—filled in the Idol off-season with QVC appearances and pointless strategy meetings with a staff who respond with icy, death-stare detachment—was laid out for all the world to see. In the above clip, Paula reacts pretty much as one might expect as she learns that she has been forced out of the Bratz movie she proudly plugged in every interview this year. Dramatic? Perhaps, but where some might see a fourth-rate movie inspired by a line of slutty dolls, Abdul saw in the project a raison d'être outside the karaoke ghetto that has come to define her existence.

• Paula Abdul Has a Bratz Meltdown [YouTube via BWE]
• Hey Paula [BravoTV.com]