The Skinny on Jennifer Hudson’s New Album

Jennifer Hudson is looking darn hot on the cover of her self-titled debut album!

And I am here to tell you that the Oscar-winner did not have any Mariah Carey-like retouching!

Yes, that’s Hudson’s waist and her ample top half. “She has a tiny waist,” a source insists.

In other words…

Say goodbye to zaftig Effie White from Dreamgirls.

Now, let’s get to the album. Hudson says touring could be next, after it’s released in September.

“I got to get out there and meet the people and the fans,” she told me when we chatted last month, shortly after the release of the album’s first single, “Spotlight.” “To me that is the best feeling in the world.”

And there may be a new musical collaboration in the works, too. There’s talk, Hudson says, of recording a song for the soundtrack of her upcoming movie, The Secret Life of Bees, with costars Queen Latifah and Alicia Keys. “It would be an honor for me to do a song with them,” Hudson cooed.

No word if their fourth costar, Dakota Fanning, will sing backup.

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Deputy Margaret Cho Performing Gay Marriages

Margaret Cho is getting into the wedding business.

The funnylady was recently deputized by the city of San Francisco to perform gay marriages there.

Cho actually married two couples during the Bay Area’s gay pride festivities, she announced last night at the opening of the Outfest film festival in downtown Los Angeles.

“It’s a very empowering thing to be able to preside over these ceremonies,” she tells me. “We’ve been working on this for such a long time.”

The California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages in May. (An initiative on the November ballot seeks to amend the state Constitution to prohibit same-sex unions.)

Cho is currently in the process of being deputized in West Hollywood so she can do the same in the L.A. area.

“I’m very happy to preside over all the ceremonies that I can,” says Cho, whose new VH1 series, The Cho Show, debuts next month. “I’m going to make sure I have the right certification to do it.”

So what does the fashion-forward Cho wear while officiating?

“That’s when you really have to wear really serious clothes,” she says with a laugh. “I’m all about the suits—supersnug ones. And then, you know, little pearl earrings for a little bit of class.”

Nicole’s Roman à Richie Headed to TV

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Nicole Richie is preparing to tell the truth—to an extent.

The former Simple Life star exclusively tells E! News that a TV show based on her 2005 coming-of-age novel The Truth About Diamonds is in the works and she’s gearing up to be a part of the production.

“I would definitely produce and definitely be in the show,” the socialite says, although she stopped short of saying she would play the lead, adding, “I don’t know if I need to be the star of this show.

“I’ve got a lot going on right now.”

Richie’s thinly veiled memoir tells the story of twentysomething Chloe Parker, who was adopted by a music superstar when she was 7 and as a young adult finds herself running with an elite Hollywood party crowd in between run-ins with the police, tabloid rumors and a stint in rehab.

Throughout, Chloe struggles to maintain her integrity and sobriety as the people she thought she could trust angle to get a piece of her.

“The reserved plaque on the table had ‘Rock Royalty’ written on it…all of us had connections to the recording industry, which was the glue that held us together. We were less like friends and more like a dysfunctional support group,” reads one passage.

When Richie penned the book, she still had a few trials and tribulations to go, such as her breakup with then-fiancé DJ AM and her 2006 DUI bust when she was caught driving on the wrong side of an L.A. freeway.

But Richie has added some much more flattering credits to her résumé since then.

She’s still very much in the public eye but has also cofounded, with live-in beau Joel Madden, a charitable foundation to honor their now-7-month-old daughter, Harlow Winter Kate Madden, and she’s currently working on her second book.

Alicia Keys to Take On James Bond?

Alicia Keys as a Bond Girl?

Not exactly.

But I just got word that the songbird is the top contender to sing the title song for the next James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace.

No official announcement has been made, but a source tells me, “I believe Alicia is the winner.”

There have been a lot of rumors surrounding the highly coveted spot to belt one out for 007. A gaggle of artists reportedly submitted songs for consideration to producers of the 22nd Bond film, including Beyoncé, Leona Lewis, Duran Duran, Jack White, Duffy and, most recently, Annie Lennox.

Amy Winehouse was the first singer linked to the movie, but she apparently never finished recording her song with über-producer Mark Ronson.

A rep for Keys declined to comment. A rep for the movie said there was “no info” available right now about a potential title song.

The flick, starring Daniel Craig as the silver screen’s most famous spy, is scheduled for a November release.

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Amanda Peet vs. Jenny McCarthy?

Amanda Peet may want to avoid running into Jenny McCarthy any time soon.

Why?

Well, because the two disagree big-time about childhood vaccinations.

While McCarthy and boyfriend Jim Carrey recently led a march in Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about alleged toxins in children’s vaccines, Peet and her screenwriter-novelist hubby David Benioff have made sure to keep daughter Francis (nicknamed Frankie) up to date on all the usual doctor-recommended shots.

“I was shocked by the amount of misinformation floating around, particularly in Hollywood,” Peet opines about vaccines in the new issue of Cookie magazine, adding, “Frankly, I feel that parents who don’t vaccinate their children are parasites.”

Yikes.

Peet is so commited to the cause that she will soon appaear in a PSA for Every Child by Two, a pro-vaccine organization cofounded by former first lady Rosalynn Carter.

She may sound hard-core, but Peet insists, “I have a lazy, fluffy, actor-y side.” And also a side that’s a sucker for the latest and trendiest baby gear.

“I’m the target market for the onslaught of baby products,” says Peet, who costars later this month alongside David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in the new X-Files movie. “This sling, that sling, Baby Einstein, the idea that your baby will be smarter if she uses these learning toys at the milestone.”

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Paris Hilton & Nicky Hilton

We know why the socialites are so cheerful: Each thinks she is much more fashionable than her sister.

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A-List Secrets: The Cars Jay-Z (and Everyone) Drives

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What is the “it” or hot car for celebrities to have right now? Is it still cool to have the foreign sports cars, or are celebs going green and hybrid?
—T.M.

Hybrid? Sure, if you’re talking about a hybrid that breeds expensive with super obnoxious.

Let’s put it this way: When Beyoncé sang about another woman “in the ‘Bach or the Rolls” for her single “Ring the Alarm,” she happened to be talking about two cars owned by her then-boyfriend, Jay-Z. The rapper, now Beyoncé’s lawfully wedded mogul, owns a Maybach and a Rolls-Royce Phantom. And both are the cars to have, dealers to the stars tell me. That is, if you’re the type of star that can use “dukey rope” in a sentence.

Who else has managed to snag these $450,000 prestigemobiles? And what is inside those things, anyway? Find out—from Fiddy’s car dealer, no less—after the jump.

According to Macky Dancy, who runs the Dancy-Power Automotive Group with two partners on Long Island, “Diddy, Nas, Busta—everyone I just named has a Maybach or Phantom or both.”

Why those cars?

“They’re like planes on wheels,” says Dancy, who also counts Alicia Keys, Christie Brinkley and Bill Murray as clients.

“They only seat two people in the back, so it’s not like you’re getting a tour bus for that money.” But, he adds, you do get all the rest, like TVs, refrigerators and tables.

Fiddy, in fact, has the über-hot Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead. There are only about 100 of them floating about the world. (By the way, it’s a white convertible coupe with white leather interior and a base price of more than $400,000. Just in case you’re making up your Christmas list early. And your first name is Kanye.)

For the record, we’re talking rappers and musicians here, obviously. Movie and sports stars are still leaning more toward sporty models, like Porsche. Anna Kournikova recently got herself one of those via Dancy-Power.

Looks like it’s time to clock out. If you see me on the street, try not to stare. I’m the one rollin’ ‘n’ flossin’ in the Toyota.

Golf Icon Tiger Woods In On Track To Gain?

Looks like Tiger Woods is set to break another record:

Golf icon Tiger Woods in on track to gain the illustrious distinction of becoming the world’s first athlete billionaire. Woods, who won the U.S. Open while playing with a wounded knee last month, could reach $1 billion in career earnings by 2010, according to reports.

“It will be an unprecedented occurrence,” said an article in Forbes’ Wednesday edition. “There are plenty of billionaires who have excelled at sports like Switzerland’s richest man and champion sailor Ernesto Bertarelli. But there are no billionaires who accumulated their fortune by playing sports.”