The Simple Life 2 is on the air and, once again, poor, heroin-posessing Nicole Richie is overshadowed by the bleached, depraved celebrity of Paris Hilton. Nicole is chubbier, shorter, less famous, less obscenely wealthy. She has neither chihuahua nor sex tape, and without that head-tilted, lowered-lids, jaunty-but-aloof pose that Paris adopts the second a camera approaches, Nicole winds up frequently looking awkward, like the tag-along, the "friend." But just like in high school, the one you've written off is the one you find yourself thinking about long after the star cheerleader has ceased tossing her perfect golden hair in your longing- and sun-drenched memory. Last week on Late Night with David Letterman, Paris insisted that the way she comes off on the ostensible reality show — as a languid, sheltered, self-involved princess — is merely a role she's playing, an acting exercise. But it's clear from the show that Nicole is the one who's created the more dramatically challenging part for herself — shallow, reckless, oversexed — and it's also clear that she's the one who's really making things happen in these little towns. She brazenly calls a pimply thirteen-year-old boy "sexy," unnerving everyone within earshot. In fact, she calls almost everyone variations on her favorite word ("hot"), because she has discovered that it makes people nervous and making people nervous is apparently what she lives for. She is the one who gets drunk and wrecks the pool table in a blackout, who flirts so intently that the show's production team has to keep reaching for ever more wha? reaction-shot sound effects. And unlike Paris, when Nicole talks to reporters, she doesn't tell them she's a serious actress; she tells them she's a virgin. And for that she is our crush of the week. — Ada Calhoun

"I did spend, you know, at least a decade taking my clothes off and being photographed, saying bad words on TV, and, you know, that sort of thing ... I don't regret it, but it's just ... I mean everybody takes their clothes off now. And then what?" – Madonna

At the Museum of Erotica in St. Petersburg, a remarkably calm visitor examines Rasputin's penis.

Two British women clad in stylish pink racer suits will drive 4,000-miles through Eastern Europe in a 3-wheeled Reliant Robin styled to look like Lady Penelope's pink FAB1 Rolls Royce. The vehicle will be chock full of condoms and sex toys and will be accompanied by other cars, including Starsky and Hutch's cruiser and the Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee. The journey, sponsored by British sex toy company LoveHoney, starts on July 2nd is expected to last two weeks. "We want to spread the safe sex message as far as possible. We think we can fit about 10,000 condoms in the boot of the FAB1 Robin Reliant," says Jenny, 27. Follow the crusade's progress here.

Anita Hill gloats over her morning paper: Justice Clarence Thomas is the lone dissent in the recent 8-1 Supreme Court decision making employers more liable for sexual harassment.