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Moms can be embarrassing, even—or maybe especially—if you're Oprah Winfrey.

Luckily, the big O's mama is once again leaving the headline-grabbing to her daughter, thanks to the recent settlement of the lawsuit filed against her for failing to make good on a $155,547 debt at a Wisconsin clothing boutique.

Valentina Inc. filed suit against Vernita Lee in July 2008 after the Oprah-birther failed to make good on her minimum monthly payments. Attorneys for Lee played the blame game in their defense, saying the store was at fault for extending her a line of credit in the first place, what with her history of less than stellar repayment practices.

Still, the suit has now been settled and will remain sealed, giving some credence to the report that it was Oprah herself who stepped in to bail out her mother. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the store will receive a partial payment of what was owed.

"We're happy with what transpired," Valentina co-owner Tony Chirchirillo told the paper. "We can get on with our lives; they can get on with theirs."

A judge still needs to sign off on the secret settlement, and a hearing to do just that has been scheduled for Dec. 7.

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Did you hear? Oprah's gonna be out of a job soon. And by soon, we mean in 22 months.

Rihanna almost brought a little too much to her TV concert comeback on Good Morning America.

Two days after performing solo at the American Music Awards, Rihanna made her much-anticipated way to the morning show's outdoor stage in NYC this morning to sing a whopping three tunes: "Wait Your Turn," "Russian Roulette," and fan (and remix) favorite "Umbrella."

But what about that slight lag between new besties Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts announcing Rihanna and the singer's appearance on the stage?

Two words: wardrobe malfunction.

"I'm a little too fat right now, my dress…the zip busted in the back," the svelte-as-always Rihanna explained. "They're like, 'A minute to live,' I'm like, 'Oh my god!' They wanted to stitch it up, but I couldn't."

But it wasn't all body talk. After performing her new single, "Wait Your Turn," the superstar paid her now usual lip service to the oh-so-perfect timing of her new album, Rated R.

"It came very natural, only because it was my place of peace, being in the studio, just venting," she said of the post-Chris Brown-attack process of recording the album.

"It was the one place where I didn't feel judged or criticized, I just wanted to sit and make great music. Every emotion that I was going through at the time throughout making the record went into that album, and you can hear it in the songs."

The album, a surefire No. 1 if ever there was one, was released yesterday.

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Rihanna looked good at the AMAs. Check out who didn't (hint: everyone else) with our Fashion Police roundup.

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With friends like these, who needs tabloid reporters?

Jon Gosselin is the latest victim to fall prey to Michael Lohan's seemingly ever-present recording devices, with Lindsay's father now leaking audio from a phone call earlier this year with the reality dud dad.

We'll give him this, Lohan certainly managed to get Gosselin talking during the nearly four-minute call, spouting off on his exclusivity contract with TLC, dishing on his relationships with Hailey Glassman and Kate Major, pronouncing he will not—repeat not—be "scare tactic'd," and...one more thing...what was it?

Oh, yeah. Pedophiles.

"I mean, I put my kids out there to every pedophile on the planet and they never got paid for it?" he said in the tape obtained by Radar Online. "It's disgusting."

It's disgusting all right...

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At this point, there's almost nothing we don't already know about Jon and Kate Gosselin.

He likes Ed Hardy, ticking every box off the midlife crisis checklist and demanding privacy from the paparazzi, unless of course they want to patronize his lemonade stand or capture him bringing flowers to his ex-wife. His dislikes include spell-check and Nancy Grace.

She, on the other hand, enjoys employing ghost writers to pen cookbooks on organic food, berating her personality-challenged husband and recouping hundreds of thousands of dollars that were rightfully hers to begin with. She's not such a fan of anything less than industrial-strength pomade.

This much we know.

But TLC is reminding us of a few other Gosselin truths that have gotten lost along the way in the torn-apart family's reality swan song, as Jon & Kate Plus 8 comes to its confessional- and montage-filled series end tonight.

Like, no matter how heinous you think their parents are—and at this point it is just a matter of degrees—those Plus 8 are downright adorable (and, lest we forget, the reason viewers flocked in the first place).

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The doctor is in. Heaven help the patients.

The increasingly cash-strapped Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson's infamous M.D. and the doctor at the center of authorities' still-pending investigation into the pop icon's death, returned to work Friday.

"Because of a deteriorating financial condition and prompting by many of his beloved patients, on Nov. 20, 2009, Dr. Conrad Murray resumed his cardiology practice in Houston, Texas," Murray's attorney, Ed Chernoff, said.

And he's wasting no time in expanding his services to the full scope of his former clientele.

"Dr. Murray plans to attend to patients in both Las Vegas and Houston. His decision to first return to practice in Houston was made because of the greater need these low-income patients have for his services and the prohibitive cost of reopening his clinic in Las Vegas."

And if you think people may be hesitant to get treated by the doctor who may or, slightly less likely, may not have had anything to do with Jackson's death, well, think again.

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When Miley Cyrus' infamous slant-eyed photo leaked online, we knew there was going to be trouble. When a Los Angeles woman filed a class-action suit against the Disney star on behalf of her Asian brothers and sisters, we knew it was going to be a lengthy battle. But when it turned out she was seeking roughly $4 billion—yes, billion—in damages from the teen, we knew what outcome was inevitable.

In a win for common sense everywhere, an L.A. judge today threw out Lucie Kim's lawsuit, saying that while the photo may have been offensive, it didn't break any state laws.

Especially not the one Kim claimed it did.

In her complaint, Kim accused Cyrus of violating a statute that prohibits businesses from discriminating against minorities, specifically in terms of offering equal access to public accommodations.

And while Miley's clearly a budding empire, she's not, strictly speaking, a business. Or, so far as we know, offering shelter.

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Not paying your taxes for five years? Understandable. Going to prison for three years as a result? Totally unreasonable. At least according to Wesley Snipes' crack (but not that crack) defense team.

Attorneys for the Uncle Sam-dodging Blade star have filed an appeal against the actor's would-be imprisonment, calling the sentence "unreasonable" and claiming that his tax-evasion trial—which came to a close last February after Snipes was convicted on three misdemeanor counts of failing to file a return—should have taken place in New York and not Florida.

Nevermind that the 47-year-old actor's housing records showed that he lived in both states or that his legal team had ample time prior to the years-in-the-making trial to seek the location swap.

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On the eve of New Moon's opening, it's only natural O.G. cinema vamp Brad Pitt would want a share of the spotlight.

And what Pitt wants, Pitt gets, this time courtesy of the news that he's set to develop—and most likely take the lead role in—a big-screen adaptation of Dark Void, a forthcoming shoot-'em-up video game.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Pitt would ostensibly star as Will, a cargo pilot who finds himself in a parallel universe after crashing in the Bermuda Triangle. He and his outnumbered crew, along with their mysterious, unnamed "powers," end up fighting aliens that were previously presumed to be extinct.

The film-inspiring game is released in January.

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Check out who else is making the big-screen rounds in our Casting Couch gallery.

If you can't take the heat, get out of Martha Stewart's kitchen. That means you, Rachael Ray.

While it was just a week ago that the dueling domestic divas made nice by making their first joint appearances on their respective daytime chatfests, apparently a few days are all Stewart needed to make up her mind about Ray's culinary prowess. Or lack thereof.

In an interview set to air tonight on Nightline, the high priestess of homemaking shuts down any would-be comparisons with her long-rumored younger rival.

"Well, to me, she professed that she could—cannot bake," the ice queen begins. "She just did a new cookbook, which is just a reedit of a lot of her old recipes. And that's not good enough for me.

"Rachael is different," Stewart goes on. "She is more of an entertainer…with her bubbly personality, than she is teacher, like me. That's not what she's professing to be."

And lest there be any confusion, that's not a good thing. That sound you hear? That's the sound of it being on.

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Nicolas Cage clearly felt he owed one to the pirate community. Either that, or he was hoping they'd help him out with a much-needed booty haul.

The financially drained thesp and, as it happens, U.N. Ambassador on Drugs and Crime, paid a visit to Kenya this week where he met with imprisoned Somali pirates to find out what exactly is fueling the swarthy ones' increased—and increasingly dangerous—criminal activity.

And if they should have slipped him a treasure map on his way out of the prison gates, so be it.

Sadly, that was not to be. Though he didn't walk away from the meet-and-greet empty-handed, having armed himself with a new understanding of their plight.

"I'm in a position where I can actually make some sense and talk about it when I go back to the States, where I [will] talk to different U.N. councils and discuss the matter," he told reporters at the Shimo-la-Tewa facility, which, incidentally, he dubbed the "warmest prison in the world."

If he gives them the Somalis the same good P.R. he brought to the people of Australia recently, well, we're all in luck. Still, good to know the screening process for the U.N. ambassadorships (for drugs and crime, no less) is still as rigorous as ever.

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Hey, did you hear? Pirates trump vampires. Condolences, R.Pattz.

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All was quiet on the Gosselin front—for a few days, anyway—but not anymore. And you have Kate Major to thank.

The tabloid reporter turned comically contracted personal assistant/romantic interest of Jon Gosselin is ready to launch a battle royale against the reality douche dad.

"One day this nightmare will hopefully end," she tweeted today. "If he would have told the TRUTH we wouldnt be in this position…."

You don't have to strain too hard to figure out the "he" to whom she's referring.

Major has already lawyered up in advance of a potential lawsuit, which, per RadarOnline, will include claims of breach-of-contract, fraud and loss of wages.

She claims that Gosselin apparently failed to make good on the hand-scrawled, half-baked terms of their contract, which promised Major a salary commensurate to her Star paycheck and "a percentage of accounts for payment based upon involvement."

Hey, Jon, ever feel like your best just isn't good enough?

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Ever wonder why Jon just can't keep his mouth shut? You're in luck, 'cause so did Answer B!tch—and she somehow got to the bottom of his bottomless trap.

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A.J. Jewell's death may have been an accident, but it was a preventable one.

The death of the former fiancé of Real Housewives of Atlanta's Kandi Burruss has been declared a homicide by Georgia's Fulton County medical examiner's office, which confirmed earlier speculation that the street fight Jewell got into on the night of his death was exacerbated by his sickle-cell anemia.

"Although Mr. Jewell died of complications of his underlying natural disease conditions, the complications would not have occurred if he had not experienced the extreme exertion that was part of the physical altercation," stated the report, obtained by the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

"Due to the active involvement of another person, the manner of death is classified as a homicide."

But if you think the report brought any sense of closure to Jewell's still-grieving family, well, think again.

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