You must have hated that. I almost can see you, queen-like, reading Salon (as you do every day) in the print form we give to celebrities, reading that article with your lovely eyes widening before crumpling it into a ball and throwing it across the steam room where you are currently enjoying a reflexology massage.

"Get me the New Yorker!" I hear you screaming at your personal assistant/GOOP editor (?)/Chris Martin, "I will teach them who is the most grandiloquent food celebrity of modern culture!"

And congratulations, Gwyneth. You did it. Lizzie Widdicombe's article "Gwyneth’s World: Gwyneth Paltrow, Movie Star and Domestic Goddess"so turgidly describes your latest dinner party with Jay-Z, Michael Stipe, the Seinfelds, Christy Turlington and a bunch of other famous people that I wanted to crumple up my edition of the magazine and throw it across a steam room. But I can't. Because I don't have a steam room, and also I don't have a copy of the New Yorker. Some of us aren't made of crisp, lemon-scented money, Gwyneth!

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In Maine, which has a more expansive bottle-redemption law than neighboring states, three people have been accused of illegally cashing in more than 100,000 out-of-state bottles and cans for deposits, the first time criminal charges have been filed in the state over bottle-refund fraud, a prosecutor said.

A couple that runs a Maine redemption center and a Massachusetts man were indicted this week for allegedly redeeming beverage containers in Maine that were bought in other states.

Thomas and Megan Woodard, who run Green Bee Redemption in Kittery, face the more serious charge of allegedly passing off more than 100,000 out-of-state containers -- with a value of more than $10,000 -- as if they had been purchased in Maine.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

An estimated 90 million cans and bottles are fraudulently cashed in each year in Maine, costing beverage distributors $8 million to $10 million, said Newell Augur, executive director of the Maine Beverage Association.

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Last night's seventh season finale offered a particularly tantalizing taste of just how funny the "Seinfeld" cast and its creators still are after all these years. The finale and its fictional reunion show not only found several fun and clever ways to bring these familiar characters into a current landscape -- George invents the iToilet but his fortune is ripped off by Bernie Madoff, Elaine ignores Jerry to read her BlackBerry -- but it also featured some truly memorable scenes between Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld.

The behind-the-scenes bits from the reunion plot have proven entertaining all season, particularly when they didn't involve some tiff with Larry David that we've seen a million times before. Larry's spat with Julia Louis-Dreyfus over water stains on her antiques fell into repetitive territory, of course. (And how many times can Suzie call Larry an asshole and throw him out of her house?)

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Seinfeld's sensibility, so oblique it's concrete, does surface now and then in "Bee Movie": The picture is peppered with jokes that are there, and yet not fully there, like the holes in French bread. There are a few great gags, including one in which Barry, having dodged certain death via a rolled-up shopping circular, explains how every bee learns to fear modest and glossy periodicals alike: "I lost a cousin to a copy of Italian Vogue," he tells the human friend Vanessa (voiced by Renée Zellweger) he's got a crush on.

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But for all of his countless flaws and terrible ideas, the Misguided Idealist has more passion in his little finger than a roomful of Passive-Aggressive Worrywarts, Self-Conscious Ironists, Bloviating Blowhards and Naysaying Neurotics combined. While the rest of us can list a million reasons to do nothing and keep quiet, to sit on the sidelines and whine softly until it's all over and there's nothing left to hope for anyway, the Misguided Idealist sticks his neck out, and this hard, cold world does the chopping. But even as the realities and facts come crumbling down around him, even as his big head rolls across the chopping block, he offers us a brief reprieve from our stagnant lives, where we toe the line and act appropriately and do what's done, all without an original thought in our big, empty heads.

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Here's the situation: I've owned my home for 15 years, and want to sell it soon. Real-estate prices have tripled the value of my property, and I'm ready to cash in. There is an apartment house next door, rented mostly to students. Over the years they've been a pretty quiet bunch (techies and engineers on lite-beer-binge weekends, usually), and any real troublemakers generally leave after the school year. I've resisted putting up a privacy fence between my property line and their parking lot, simply because it seemed unnecessary.

Until now. There's one guy, who isn't a student. He moved in more than a year ago and, as far as I can figure out, is well acquainted with the landlord. Let's call him the Dude, from a small town upstate. He started out with the redneck buzz cut and wife-beater shirt, but has since let his freak flag fly, put on 20 pounds of muscle, and seems to be a permanent fixture in the parking lot late at night, arriving from his stripper job at 4:30 in the morning. He more or less lives in his car.

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For all the storied presence of Jews in the ranks of producers, writers and actors, Dines writes, "when was the last time you saw a richly textured Jewish female character? TV character Jerry Seinfeld, another angst-ridden Jewish man, managed to avoid dating a self-identified Jewish woman in New York for all of the show's eight years. But then why would he date a Jewish woman if his cloying mother was an example of what was on offer?"

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The global warming yuk-fest has an all-star roster, featuring Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Cameron Diaz, Tom Hanks, Steve Martin and Ben Stiller, among many others. Writers from "The Daily Show," "The Simpsons," "King of the Hill" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" conspired to help with the event, which will be staged live at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

Earlier this week, America's favorite curmudgeon, Larry David, talked by phone from his home in Los Angeles, with some inside dish on the show.

What's your 20-second pitch for "Earth to America"?

A 20-second pitch?

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This is not necessarily true of the real Larry David, New York comedy club veteran, co-creator of "Seinfeld" and current star of HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm," although he is rather famously the model for "Seinfeld's" George Costanza. And "Curb Your Enthusiasm" was inspired by a 1999 cinéma vérité mock documentary based on his post-"Seinfeld" life. On the series, which began its third season Sunday night, David spends most of his time putzing around Los Angeles alternately worrying aloud, taking umbrage and pissing people off. Maybe he's more modulated in real life, maybe he wishes he wasn't. "I have a tendency toward catastrophic thinking," he has said. "Sometimes, I'll be in a situation and think, If I'd said this, or done that, that would have been very funny. And I have the luxury of living out that fantasy on the show, where you couldn't have done that in real life."

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"We are adopting four children ... of all races, a black child, a white child ... it doesn't matter at all," Gest reportedly told OK! magazine, which paid big bucks for exclusive photo rights to the lavish nuptials, attended by 1,500 of the couple's very best friends, from Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross to Phyllis Diller, David Hasselhoff and Robert Goulet.

Gest, 48 and a ... um ... bachelor until he headed to the altar at New York's Marble Collegiate Church this weekend, believes the new little missus, 56 and now on her fourth marriage, really deserves to have kids.

"Liza is going to be the best mother in the world," Gest gushed. "She has the greatest heart of anyone I've ever met."

And he's apparently met a lot of people.

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Like Bowie ... only less British and more buff

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Salman Rushdie says there's more to his name than you might think.

"My first name is actually Ahmed," the controversial author told celebrity researcher Baird Jones at the premiere party for the Mexican road movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien."

"I'm not embarrassed by Ahmed or trying to hide it because I think Salman is a more romantic pen name. Not at all," he explains. "It's that my father's name is also Ahmed, and in Muslim culture no one is called Junior. You are always called something separate from your father, so I simply went by my middle name, Salman, which means peaceful."

And though "peaceful" isn't exactly how we'd describe the erstwhile targeted author's life thus far, he hints he might soon be ready for a little domestic tranquility.

"I keep reading that I am breaking up with my girlfriend, Padma," he sniffs. "In fact, we might get engaged. Then, of course, anything is possible."

A lesson he's certainly learned the hard way.

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Mr. Big Mouth

"You don't have to like me, but you can f--- me."

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In the mechanical or structural sense, the modern era has its areas of precision. But these are most often hidden with a patina of sparseness or repetition, as in our great skyscrapers. There are technicians, sometimes acclaimed, at work in film (Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott) but they are emotionally crude and too often manipulative. Indeed, the modern age has come to make us view technical brilliance in the arts a bit suspiciously. Why? Are our artists today just not detail-minded? Do they lack the patience, the imagination, to work on such a precise level? Is detail on that level just not part of contemporary culture?

On the other hand, it's possible that the people in previous eras looked at Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, or gazed on a Bernini statue, and simply took it for granted.

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Witness the rider, posted on the Smoking Gun, spelling out the singer's requirements for participating in the charity remake of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The proceeds from the single, which also included input from Bono and Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, will be donated to victims of the attacks and to the Global AIDS Alliance, but that didn't prevent Lopez from making a few costly demands.

Though J.Lo was at the studio for only 90 minutes, her people insisted on a few "important details" to "ensure a more comfortable stay for the artist and her entourage." Such as? A 45-foot trailer "with triple slide outs and 2 entry doors" (though she'd settle for a 40-footer in a pinch) and equipped with a CD player ("NO EXCEPTIONS"), a TV/VCR, a "hair sink and make-up station" and an assortment of CDs, including the work of artists like Macy Gray, D'Angelo, Toni Braxton and Destiny's Child.

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Grace and Jessie compete for a role in the school play on Once and Again (10 p.m. Fri., ABC). Lara Flynn Boyle hosts a rerun of Saturday Night Live (11:30 p.m. Sat., NBC), with music from Bon Jovi. E! True Hollywood Story (8 p.m. Sun., E!) looks at the ups and downs of the Spice Girls. Tony becomes suspicious of Pussy on The Sopranos (8 p.m. Sun., HBO). On Alias (9 p.m. Sun., ABC), Sydney simultaneously tracks a terrorist and spies on Francie's boyfriend. Patricia Wettig ("thirtysomething") guests as a reclusive star witness on The Practice (10 p.m. Sun., ABC).

Specials

The four-hour Concert for New York City (8 p.m. Sat., VH1) benefits the victims and honors the rescuers of the Sept. 11 attack. Paul McCartney, the Who, Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, Macy Gray, James Taylor, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Gwyneth Paltrow, Susan Sarandon and Denis Leary are among the performers and hosts. The new cable movie In the Time of the Butterflies (8 p.m. Sun., Showtime) stars Salma Hayek, Edward James Olmos and Marc Anthony in an adaptation of the bestseller about sisters who fought against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. Laura San Giacomo has the title role in the new TV movie Jenifer (9 p.m. Sun., CBS), the true story of a young woman diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease and her devoted sisters (Annabella Sciorra, Jane Kaczmarek), who went on a fund-raising tear to help find a cure. The two-part cable drama Victoria and Albert (9 p.m. Sun., A&E) stars Victoria Hamilton and Jonathan Firth as the royal couple, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Diana Rigg and Jonathan Pryce co-star.

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And?

Zappa says fellas won't get any action from her "unless they start sexing me up earlier in the day in the form of listening to me, being nice to me, sharing with me their views on injustices in the world."

Littleford says making love to her is like "waxing a car. Aim to please." Moloney requests that guys "turn off the TV." And Poehler warns prospective partners to watch their mouths: "Choose your words carefully. Never say, 'Nice buns.' Don't say, 'I'm on top of the world, Ma!'"

And as for all-night lovin', Zappa's none too keen on the concept. "I blame Sting," she says. "His tantric-sex bullshit."

Poor Sting. He'll always be king of pain.

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Yadda, yadda, whoa there!

"Go. F***. Yourself."

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Original "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch, for instance, won't be shaking his blurry booty quite so saucily for a little while. On Monday, a judge in Newport, R.I., apparently found Hatch's ends-justify-the-means routine even less charming than TV audiences did and so found him guilty of the domestic assault charges brought against him by his ex-boyfriend Glenn Boyanowski.

Judge Pirraglia sentenced Hatch to one year of probation for allegedly roughing up Boyanowski and pushing him down the stairs during a confrontation in August.

Hatch, however, has vowed not to give up the fight. "It's a ludicrous ruling," he said in a radio interview after the trial, "and I'm not sure what's behind the judge's personal reasons for it, but it's certainly not objective."

But at least Hatch has happy memories of Pulau Tiga to comfort him. Michael Skupin, the boar-butchering contestant who suffered severe burns during the filming of "Survivor II," has apparently emerged relatively unscathed after another brush with death.

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Margot Kidder is the subject of a new Biography (8 p.m., A&E). Paul Reubens continues jacking us around on You Don't Know Jack (8:30 p.m., ABC). The West Wing (9 p.m., NBC) reruns the one where the elderly senator filibusters all weekend, seriously cutting into staffers' leisure time. On Buffy the Vampire Slayer (9 p.m., WB), a lovelorn robot girl wreaks havoc on Sunnydale. It seemed goofy at the time, but now we know this is a pivotal episode, setting up the death of Buffy's mom as well as Spike's fling with the Buffybot. The cable series Soul Food (10 p.m., Showtime) begins a new season. Fresh from last week's triumphant episode in which characters said the word "shit" 162 times to make an anti-censorship point, South Park (10 p.m., Comedy Central) airs another new episode, in which Big Gay Al becomes the boys' scoutmaster. Martin Short dons the fat suit to interview Jerry Seinfeld and Dennis Miller on Primetime Glick (10:30 p.m., Comedy Central).

Specials

The two-part miniseries Gormenghast (9 p.m., PBS, check local listings) is a surreal adaptation of Mervyn Peake's cultish fantasy trilogy about a demented ruling class family. Starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ian Richardson, Christopher Lee, Zoe Wanamaker, Lynsey Baxter and Celia Imrie.

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Well, possibly not for a while, but Jerry Seinfeld says reviving the four whiniest characters in TV history is not completely out of the question.

"That'll be a possibility once all four [of our] careers are definitely in the toilet," Seinfeld tells TV Guide.

And while some of his erstwhile costars have been doing their parts to make old Jerry a man of his word, Seinfeld himself says he's been kicking back and enjoying his own reruns.

Since the show went off the air, he says, "I've gotten to watch the show myself a little bit, which I never did during the nine years ... In fact, when people come up to me now and say, 'You know, I never saw your show when it was on, but I'm really getting into the reruns,' I always say, 'Yeah, me too.'"

I'm sure there's a "master of his own domain" joke in there somewhere ...

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No business like monkey business

"It's flattering to be asked to be a chimp, because you know they haven't cast you for what you look like."

-- Helena Bonham Carter, looking on the bright side of her simian turn in "The Planet of the Apes," in Premiere.

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The Global March for Cannabis Liberation (aka the Million Marijuana March) had just about wound down when, lo and behold, a bona fide mayoral candidate mounted the stage and spun tales of his own vast experience as a pot smoker.

"You know, I used to smoke a lot of pot until I realized it was ruining my genes," the candidate said, then paused. "Yeah, the seeds were burning holes in all my pockets."

Political suicide? No, it's just Kenny Kramer, the real-life inspiration for the erratic next-door neighbor on "Seinfeld." While the TV Kramer never ran for mayor, this one says he's serious about joining the crowd hoping to succeed Rudy Giuliani as mayor of America's largest city.

"I've listened to all the other candidates," Kramer said the other day from his fabled apartment, "and it's all the same shit. Maybe it's a different flavor, different color, different-smelling shit, but it's still crap: humorless, idealess and clueless. They're politicians. It just comes out of their mouths. Their brains aren't involved at all."

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