Lindsay Lohan stepped out in SoCal last weekend with a bright green self-help book in hand which suggests that the troubled starlet may finally be ready to try and fix her woeful life. Lindsay was spotted carrying a book written by Susan Shapiro Barash which is called Toxic Friends: The Antidote for Women Stuck in Complicated Friendships. While some may argue that L. Lo should prolly be burying her nose in a book about addiction control, I’m of the mind that Lindsay would prolly benefit from any self-help book she can get her hands on:

Lindsay Lohan needs all the advice she can get. As the star gets ready to serve time behind bars – she has until July 20 to surrender to authorities – she’s turning to self-help books to assist in turning her life around. Her first must-read: Toxic Friends: The Antidote for Women Stuck in Complicated Friendships by Susan Shapiro Barash, a gender studies teacher at New York City’s Marymount Manhattan College. Lohan, 24, was spotted carrying the book in L.A. Sunday night, just hours before she and her ex-girlfriend Samantha Ronson met up. “A friend recommended the book to Lindsay to help her get through the these tough times, and for her to appreciate who her real friends are,” says a source, adding that even though Lohan was spotted with the book before meeting Ronson, the actress doesn’t consider her famous deejay ex a bad influence. While Lohan is juggling her legal woes, she’s focused on improving her quality of life – particularly her social circle. “Lindsay’s cleansing herself of all the toxic influences in her life,” says the source.

I must say, I’m impressed with Lindsay‘s protectiveness where her reading is concerned. She’s about to surrender to authorities to begin serving a 90 day jail sentence in addition to a 90 day rehab stint so one might think she’d be more interested in holding off on her reading until she gets locked up with nothing else to do. Might this be a sign that she serious about turning around her life? Maybe … but I wouldn’t go celebrating just yet. It’s one thing to be photographed with a book (Paris Hilton used to do it all the time and we know she never read any of those books) it’s quite another to read, digest and act on what’s read. It’s a positive sign, I think. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that L. Lo will finally work toward saving her own life.

Oh yeah, I’m hoping she finds a new lawyer, too.

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Well … that’s it, the end, fini, over … dunzo! The Hills, the reality TV series that was spun off of the original MTV series Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, came to an end last night as the series finale episode aired on MTV. For the past 4 years, The Hills has provided some of the most significant pop culture moments of celebrity/reality TV hybrid programming and provided us with hours of extremely addictive if primarily vapid entertainment. Whether you love the show, hate the show, love to hate the show or whatever … you cannot deny the impact of The Hills. I’ve been with these characters since Laguna Beach debuted back in 2004 and despite some waning excitement over the years, I’ve watched every single episode and for the most part loved the series overall. Here are some photos from last night’s red carpet arrivals at the The Hills Live: A Hollywood Ending afterparty which was held at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, CA:

“The Hills,” the landmark reality soap that cemented Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag and their pals as tabloid superstarlets, died Tuesday at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. It was 4. The popular series’ cause of death wasn’t provided, but MTV president of programming Tony DiSanto previously called it “an organic culmination of this saga.” “I’m oddly devastated that it’s come to an end,” said Ben “B-Side” Mandelker, who blogs about “The Hills” and its New York-set offspring “The City” on bsideblog.com. “My five-year goal was to appear as a sidekick on the show, ideally with a subtitle that defines me solely as the friend of someone else. Sadly, that dream never came to fruition.” After 102 installments, “The Hills” faded into the sunset Tuesday with a goodbye gala attended by the show’s cast and a wink, wink twist ending in the final episode that had friends-with-benefits Kristin Cavallari and Brody Jenner seemingly saying goodbye in front of the Hollywood sign, then appearing in front of a backdrop on the Paramount Studios’ lot. “With ‘The Hills’ off the air, I no longer have to field questions about the show’s authenticity,” said Mandelker. “I can think of about 10 different things I’d rather do than engage in yet another dumb argument about whether or not ‘The Hills’ is staged. I just tell people it’s like professional wrestling: Don’t take it so seriously, and enjoy the ride.” The club-hopping, music-pumping, cat-fighting, mascara-dripping, mouth-dropping, crystal-worshipping drama of “The Hills” debuted in 2006 as a spin-off of MTV’s popular high school reality docudrama “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County.” The series originally documented the journey of bubbly “Laguna Beach” graduate Conrad to Los Angeles. As the show progressed, “The Hills” morphed from a coming-of-age story centering on the budding fashion designer to a splashy soap focusing on a bevy of beautiful people. Andy Dehnart, who has blogged about reality TV for more than 10 years at realityblurred.com, said the series’ lush cinematography and phony authenticity left a lasting impression on the medium. “The legacy of ‘The Hills’ is that it improved the visual language of reality TV while proving that a series could be sustained in an M.C. Escher-like circle where tabloid coverage of the cast members sustained interest in a narrative that largely ignored their real lives, including the intense media coverage that generated interest in the show,” said Dehnart … Throughout its tumultuous six seasons, tabloids and blogs were enamored with the show’s never-ending series of breakups, make-ups and fall-outs, most notably the epic divide between best friends Montag and Conrad, who left “The Hills” in the middle of the fifth season and was replaced by her sassy, raspy “Laguna Beach” adversary Cavallari. The transition from Conrad to Cavallari as the series’ narrator and Montag’s marriage to bad boy Spencer Pratt — the real wedding, not the phony Mexican one — marked the beginning of the end of “The Hills.” Villainous couple Pratt and Montag, who underwent 10 plastic surgery procedures earlier this year, were later phased out of the final season.

It’s amazing to me that a show like The Hills managed to not only define its own section of pop culture but it also managed to create its own mythology that actually took on a life of its own. Despite the fact that Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt annoyed the hell out of me for the duration of their time on the show, I was a bit sad that the villainous Speidi were not included at all in last night’s finale. They had a huge hand in how the show turned out (for better or worse) and that could’ve been mentioned at the very least. THO, Spencer Pratt did manage to crash the afterparty last night … he showed up lookin’ crazy and deranged, which is exactly what you would expect from a guy like Spencer Pratt. After the jump, check out a few more photos including a cute cast photo from the party and some disturbing photos of Spencer …

Um, here’s our WTF? of the day … Bristol Palin and her babydaddy Levi Johnston (who just a few months ago were locked in a bitter and not at all amicable custody battle over their son Tripp Easton Mitchell) have announced to the world on the cover of US Weekly magazine that they are engaged to be married! Yes, it turns out that love can bloom from bitter anger and can flourish in the unlikeliest of places. You may recall that just last week Levi made a huge public apology to the Palin family for all the “untruths” he made about the family and matriarch Sarah Palin especially … I guess that was the first public move toward the couple’s plan to announce their engagement:

Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston reveal exclusively in the new Us Weekly that they are getting married. And, they tell Us Weekly, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been kept in the dark about their plans … until now. “We got engaged two weeks ago,” Bristol, 19, tells Us Weekly. “It felt right, even though we don’t have the approval of our parents.” Bristol and Levi, 20 — who famously called off their previous engagement two weeks after welcoming son Tripp in December 2008 — tell Us Weekly they reconnected three months ago while working out a custody plan for their 18-month-old son. “I really thought we were over,” Levi tells Us Weekly. “So when I went, I had no hope. I think we both just started talking — and then we took Tripp for a walk.” Says Bristol, “When he left that night, we didn’t hug or kiss, but I was thinking how different it was. He texted me: ‘I miss you. I love you. I want to be with you again’ … I was in shock.”

LOL!! Yeah, these two … they absolutely belong together. I always found it so odd how quickly things soured between Bristol and Levi and altho things got really nasty between Johnston and the Palin family, I kinda suspected that he would end up getting back into the Palin family fold. As soon as we found out about the public apology he extended to the family, I knew he was trying to get back into the Palin family’s good graces. The US Weekly magazine story has gone to great lengths to make it clear that while Bristol and Levi are announcing their engagement on the cover of their magazine, mama Sarah Palin was not informed of their decision to wed beforehand. I call bullshizz on that. First, there is NO WAY the couple got on the cover of US Weekly with this engagement story without Sarah Palin‘s blessing. If you consider that Palin will likely be making a bid for the US presidency in 2012, this happy reunion with Levi Johnston would work perfectly for that plan. While congratulations are in order, I think we need to see this happy news as a bit more calculated as they’d like us to believe.

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Um, it must be Celebrity Wedding Week because not only did Carrie Underwood & Mike Fisher, Emily Blunt & John Krasinski and Martin Lawrence (to his longtime girlfriend Shamicka Gibbs) get hitched in the past few days but so too did Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem! Yes, folks, word broke last night that the couple were married earlier this month in a private (and secret, apparently) ceremony in the Bahamas. They got hitched, y’all!

Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem have always kept their romance under the radar – and their intimate wedding was equally low-profile. Cruz, 36, and Javier Bardem, 41, exchanged vows in front of family members during a small, private ceremony held at a friend’s home in the Bahamas earlier this month, her rep confirms to PEOPLE. The bride wore a gown designed by designer John Galliano, a longtime friend of the actress … The couple first met while filming Jamon, Jamon in 1992, one of Cruz’s first films.

Awww, congrats!! This couple is normally very private about their affairs, I’m not surprised in the least that they snuck off to tie the knot. I really like them together and think they make the perfect Hispanic couple. The fact that they are both Academy Award winners only makes their union all the more apt. When I first heard that the couple went and got hitched my surprise was overshadowed by my happiness for the two of them. Let’s send our warmest congrats to the happy couple. Woot!

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