Overheard in Kirkland Dining Hall...

GIRL 1: Are you going to the formal?

GIRL 2: What's the point? Formals are expensive. I want to have fun if I go. But guys can't dance, so you end up just standing around, mingling with other awkward couples. The only way to have fun is to go with a gay guy since they can all dance.

GIRL 1: So you either look good with a hot date and suffer through the misery of the actual dance or you look lame with a gay date and get to enjoy the party.

GIRL 2: I hate formal season.

TREND-O-RAMA: HOLLYWEIRD

December should be about mistletoe and dreidels, family and friends, giving and sharing, and a steady supply of good old holiday cheer. The season has its immutable rituals-looking for that perfect tree, basting that hormone-injected dinner bird, setting up lighted lawn decorations (in Springfield Fla. this week, one man put up a display of two reindeer getting it on, much to his neighbors' horror-but that's an exception), and frantic last-minute dashes to the mall for almost-forgotten gifts. Ah yes, Holiday Happiness is everywhere-everywhere, that is, except Hollywood, where the promise of even temporary stability makes everyone act even weirder than usual.

If anybody has the right to throw a shameless multi-million dollar storybook wedding that spares no expense, it should be Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. After all, Douglas is a freakin' billionaire and well, he's never gonna get a girl like Catherine again. (Let me say for the record, that I still am floored by the fact that she had a baby. That means they had/have sex. Yikes.) Why, then, did they have to turn it into such a sketchy affair? First, Douglas secured an exclusive $1.4 million deal with OK! Magazine to publish the official wedding photos, knowing full well that every other tabloid would run unauthorized pictures anyway. "I wanted to avoid a media circus," he insisted, but with hundreds of paparazzi barricaded outside the Plaza, it looked awfully like plain greed. Moreover, instead of accepting gifts, the couple requested "donations" into their four-month old son's trust fund. Well, they didn't call it a trust -they used the euphemism, "giving fund" to describe the multi-million dollar account that young Dylan can open up in 21 years to make contributions to charity. "We want him to learn the joy of giving," said Douglas. But can you imagine the awkwardness in the room as celebrities pulled out their checkbooks to give thousands of dollars to a newborn who can't do anything but burp and vomit?