Just in time for Mother's Day, a little something different. MSN has compiled a slide show of the meanest moms to come out of Hollywood. They're fictitious kind of silver screen, of course. Take a look to see if you're familiar with any and all from this compilation.

Naturally, included in the mix is Faye Dunaway's priceless version of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. I remember seeing that film as a child and being absolutely terrified. Even now I can't think about Joan Crawford without flinching (especially after "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane!).

Also included is Norman Bates' mother from the movie Psycho, who haunts and taunts him from beyond the grave. Note to self: Do not be this kind of mother; son will turn out to be a murderer. Oh, and how could we forget Mrs. Robinson? Anne Bancroft, God rest her soul, who never looked better, played cold and calculating to a "T. If you're feeling bad about your own mothering skills, take a look at this list. I can assure you you'll feel a lot better knowing that no matter what you did--put the kid to bed to early, forgot to trim his nails (again), wouldn't let him have ice cream, etc.--you will never, ever be as bad a mom as these mamas. Have fun!

Pic of Joan and the Evil Queen from Snow White (not mentioned but worthy of inclusion!) by Evil Preacher.

Seems Tom Cruise has reversed his opinion about post partum depression. He's also gone public with his change of mind and heart. In a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, for whom you'll recall he jumped all over a couch as he professed his love for now-wife Katie Holmes, Cruise admits what he said about Brooke Shields in his other most-famous moment back in 2006. His harsh comments about Brooke Shields turning to medication--specifically anti-depressants--to treat her post partum depression came under fire from all sides.

Now Cruise confirms that what he said came out the wrong way, that he was raised by four women with babies and that he doesn't want to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't be doing or believing in. He insists what he said about Shields "came out wrong, it's just not true." Cruise has since apologized to Shields several times.

The damage, however, seems to have been done. Cruise was attacked by the media, mothers and feminists everywhere. His career seems to have taken a back seat to his rantings. In the interview Cruise comments that he regrets saying a lot of what he did and talking about Shields at all. Say what you will about Tom Cruise, and perhaps he's just trying to save face, but it does take some guts to come out and say you're wrong about something, especially when you admit it to the whole world.

By the way, remember the Tom Cruise from the pic? The young cutie? Hrd to believe how far he--and we--have come after all these years!

Women in their thirties can wear take-no-prisoners red lipstick without looking like a clownish kid in a candy store. They can wear sky-high heels with panache, easily relate life experience and favorite quotes from famous authors, without sounding laughably pretentious. Many have started families: they finally understand the mind-blowing power of their own bodies. They know what they want and who they are, so much more than they did in their twenties. So why do so many feel inferior to twenty-two year olds when it comes to desirability?

I just finished reading this People blurb about Jenny McCarthy, bubbling over about her relationship of several years with comedian Jim Carrey, 46. McCarthy -- a beautiful and vibrant 35 says of her Carrey:

"He could have any 20-year-old perfect girl with perfect breasts, and he stays. He has really opened his heart and his life to us. I'll forever be grateful."

The insinuation is that a nubile girl barely past her teens is preferable to a beautiful famous Mom in her thirties. She'll forever be grateful? Why, because she is a 35-year-old woman with a child and he still chooses her? Man, I might be too sensitive on this topic, but it makes my heart rumble.

A lot of my friends are skidding up toward the mid-thirties mark, and my stomach catches in my throat each time one of them says wistfully, looking at the skinny waist of a 23-year-old "I remember when I looked like that."

I can't say I've never been envious of a prettier, more dewy-faced girl, but I do realize that I'm in the prime of my life. I've had a baby, learned who I am, understood that my body is more amazing than I ever gave it credit for before. I am finally comfortable in my own skin, understand a little more about the soul underneath it.

I wish celebrities wouldn't perpetuate the notion that youth is better. I wish the tides could somehow gently turn to celebrate motherhood, fine lines and work-worn hands, the wisdom of age and the real beauty that comes from experience.

Sure, Jim Carrey could have any 20-year old with perfect breasts. But he'd sure be missing out.

As a stay-at-home mom, I've had the luxury of being hyper-vigilant about keeping my kids home when they are sick and could possibly contaminate others, which has been approximately 75% of their lives. I've missed family holidays, left vacations early, and home schooled for weeks at time to keep from spreading disease to others.

However, celebrity mom Katie Price decided that the (reality) show must go on. After flying from the UK to California to film scenes for an upcoming reality show, the celebrity personality/model mom discovered her nine-month-old daughter, Princess Tiaamiia, had come down with a case of the chicken pox. Only instead of keeping the child away from the general population and sitting around applying calamine lotion while watching a Yo Gabba Gabba marathon, Princess Tia was drug to various shops and boutiques spreading chicken pox virus in her wake as the cameras rolled.

It's one thing to overlook a slight fever and send a kid with no other symptoms to school and quite another to drag an itchy and pocked baby to trendy stores just to get some footage for a reality series. That's just mean.

Actress Tori Spelling, who is expecting her second child in June, believes that swearing in front of children is fine as long as it is done correctly. Apparently, it's all about the tone of your voice. Angry and loud F-bombs are bad, sweet little baby-talk F bombs are okay.

"I'm kind of a little girl potty mouth because I say it with such vulnerability. I don't have to censor myself in front of my son, it's not that bad."

I am not following Tori's logic here. I think the main reason most parents don't swear in front of their children is because they don't want them learning and repeating those words. If you say an offensive word in a cute way, isn't the child more likely to repeat it? Or maybe Tori's one of those parents who think cursing kids are cute?

Amy Fisher's life story reads like a bad novel. At the age of sixteen, she began an affair with Joey Buttafuco, a much older married man. He helped her get work as a paid escort, but what she really wanted was for her lover to leave his wife. He refused, so she shot his wife. Mary Jo Buttafuco survived, but was left paralyzed on one side of her face. Amy went to prison and served seven years for first degree assault.

She was released from prison in 1999, wrote a book about her life, and in 2003 married Louis Bellara. Together they had two children, Brett and Ava Rose. But getting married and becoming a mother did not end the drama for the Long Island Lolita. During a separation from her husband, a sex tape surfaced starring the couple. When it turned out it was her very own husband who had made the tape public, Amy again chose the low road. She reconciled with Bellara and made a handsome profit from the tape.

Obviously, the reconciliation with her husband went well. Yesterday, Fisher confirmed that they are expecting their third child in October. Children are a blessing and I am sincerely happy for them. I just hope they are saving some of those sex tape profits for therapy for those kids.

Nancy O'Dell apparently has some advice to dispense. The veteran entertainment TV reporter sent a lengthy email to new Mom Halle Berry, filled with advice about new parenting.

O'Dell said: "I wish people had given me this advice They didn't, so I'm going to give it to you. (Halle) was appreciative, really appreciative."

I wonder if maybe she was just being polite, really polite. Though I'm interested in advice from my very good friends and loved one, unsolicited parenting advice from strangers is right up par with toe fungus and sucking leeches.

I read The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy during my second trimester and quite frankly, it made me a little mad. I didn't want to be told that my body would never be the same, no matter what I did. I didn't want to know that I would never have the same social life again. Those tidbits are too scary before the fact: much better dispensed by the gentle words of a trusted friend, in my view. And too: I don't know if it's good to know about the terrible parenting bits you can't control. My friend Jan told me while I was pregnant me that the pain of labour was "like being smashed by a bus ten times, run over and dipped in hell times twenty", and I spent the next sixty days stressing about that sentence.

I'm not sure whether O'Dell filled her email to Berry with words of wisdom about diaper blowouts and binkies, but I do hope she glossed over the really crotchety bits. I think those are better learned personally.

Celebrity DUI's are a dime a dozen, but Richie Sambora added a unique twist to his: by having his ten-year-old daughter in the car with him while he was drunk.

Police pulled over Sambora's Hummer for weaving in traffic and found three other passengers in the vehicle with the Bon Jovi guitarist: an adult female assumed to be his girlfriend, Sambora's daughter with ex-wife Heather Locklear, Ava, and another unidentified juvenile girl thought to be Ava's friend.

The Laguna Beach police department is conducting an investigation and Sambora be charged with child endangerment.

I can't even imagine how furious Heather Locklear and the mother of the other child must be right now. What is the proper way of handling a situation of this sort with an ex?

I always cringe a little bit when I hear about middle aged celebrities getting married to women half their age. Although Demi is a notable exception to the rule, so many second-marriage couplings in Hollywood follow the rule of Older Man and Much Younger Wife.

I know that age is only a number and you're only as old and you feel and blah blah blah bullcrap. So many women devote their twenties and thirties to raising a family, and no matter what the cause or how amicable the separation, it must hurt like a barbed mallet to the face to witness your ex-husband marry a twenty-years-younger supermodel. Especially if you bare an angry c-section scar, baby-widened hips, toddler-induced gray hairs, provoked by raising his children.

I remember hearing several years ago that Billy Joel was set to marry a girl not much older than his daughter with ex-wife Christie Brinkley. Now, obviously Christie is no slouch -- and, in her fifties, is still a knockout. But can you imagine the shrieking of the media if she'd chosen to marry a boy her daughter's age upon her divorce from her ex?

Celebitchy has a very interesting post dissecting the relationship of Billy Joel and his current wife Katie, which I absorbed with guilty pleasure. The post features clips from the couple's recent appearance on Oprah, in which Katie promotes her cooking book and clearly illustrates that, though she is 30 years younger, she wears the pants in the relationship. Billy is silent through much of the interview, nodding tepidly in the right places. At one point he assures Oprah: " I would have married her if she were thirty years older!"
"Oh yeah?" asks a dubious Oprah.
"Oh yeah," he says confidently.

I smell rotting fish carcass. Perhaps I'm cynical, perhaps I'm jaded, but I think the reason so many rich men marry much younger women the second go-around is because they're younger: adaptable, pink, flush with possibilities. What do you think, do you believe Billy?

There are some fairly controversial pictures making their rounds on the Internet today: specifically, Bruce Willis' and Demi Moore's daughter with her butt cheeks hanging out of some scandalously short shorts.

It's not the eldest Willis child displaying a willingness to bare a lot, either -- it's the youngest child, barely 14-year-old Tallulah Belle. And it's hard to say for sure, but I'd venture to guess that the bum creep action is unintentional. Short shorts are trendy this season and I dunno, she looks so otherwise innocent. I wonder if it's another case of the paparazzi just looking for the greasy money shot, but still - I can't help but thinking her Dad must have noticed that she was semi bare-bummed as he was hugging her. And I wonder if he said anything or pretended, red-faced, not to notice.

I remember being obsessed with the TV show DeGrassi Junior High when I was a pre-teen, watching Stephanie Kaye stroll demurely to school in her prim outfit, only to emerge triumphantly from the bathroom stall in all her trashy, short-skirted glory. Her parents couldn't stop her from dressing provocatively, even if she had to go to great lengths to hide it from them. Similarly, I'm thinking Bruce probably can't stop Tallulah, either.

Teens are unstoppable, especially young teen girls, I remember my own short-lived penchant for inch-long shorts. But, oh, I wish someone would put a wrap skirt on that Willis girl.

Singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse may be a big old mess, but according to her father she didn't get that way all by herself. 57-year-old Mitch Winehouse believes his long and not-so-secret extra-marital affair may be partly to blame for the talented young artist's current struggles with drugs and alcohol.

He began the affair soon after Amy was born and it continued for ten years. He eventually left Amy's mother and married the other woman, who his children referred to as 'Daddy's work wife.' "I did not leave home until Amy was ten, so the situation occurred for another eight or nine years before I left home. It was difficult," he says.

When he finally did make the break from his marriage, he thought Amy was okay with it. He realizes now that she clearly wasn't and says it was a song that tipped him off. Amy's debut album, Frank, was released in 2007 and included the song What Is It About Men. The song seems to be about having an affair with a married man and includes a reference to "All the s**t my mother went through."

"It is easy for me to say it is my fault, and that had I been a better parent this would not have happened," Mitch Winehouse says. "But who knows whether it would or not?"

Amy is an adult now and it is up to her to get it together before it is too late. But I don't think there can be any doubt that showing such lack of respect for the mother of your children would negatively impact those children.

Eddie Murphy, who does the voice of Donkey in the Shrek movies, continues to play a jackass in real life.

The number one grossing film star in history ($3.4 billion in the U.S. alone) has still never seen the 11-month-old daughter he had with former flame Melanie Brown. Because he believes the Spice Girl got pregnant by tricking him according to a source, "He says he will have to wait until Angel is older before he can get to know her without any interference from her mother."

According to Murphy, during the relationship Brown said she was on birth control and they only had sex three times. Brown announced her pregnancy shortly after the couple had split. Murphy denied the child was his until a DNA test proved him to be the father.

Perhaps Melanie Brown DID get pregnant on purpose to be able to get some of Eddie Murphy's money, which is crummy. Maybe the birth control failed. Whatever happened, none of it is the fault of little Angel, who is the person being punished and will be messed up the most by all of this.

If Eddie thinks he can ignore his daughter for years and then insert himself into her life at a later date, he's a moron. He has also ruined Shrek for me forever.

A while back, the Ali Forney Center ran an ad campaign in New York aimed at encouraging parents not to stop loving their children just because they might be gay. Well, it seems to me that those posters might have been more in need in Oklahoma where Representative Sally Kern was recently caught ranting about gays, including making the claim that homosexuals are more of a threat to the United States than are terrorists and Islam.

The thing is, speculation is running wild about a recent change made to Mrs. Kern's official web page -- the mention of her two adult sons was removed. The theory that seems to fit the facts is that Jesse, one of her two sons, is in fact gay. Further, the rumour is that Mrs. Kern has actually disowned her son because of it.

I regularly tell Jared and Sara that no matter what, I will always love them. I may not always like the things they do, especially when they do naughty things, but I will always love them. I guess, if the rumour is true, Representative Kern doesn't feel the same way.

Yesterday, news broke about the identity of Governor Spitzer's preferred call girl, Kristen, a beautiful 22 year-old aspiring singer from New Jersey. If you're wondering what kind of girl gets into this business, you can, believe it or not, visit her MySpace page and even hear a sample of her singing.

While I don't much care to hear her sing, I do confess to to being very interested in just how this high-end sex industry works. Luckily, over the last few days, there has been no shortage of ex-escorts on network and cable news shows dishing out the details for moms like me who have no idea how any parent, let alone a father of three who is presumably running the state of New York, has time for illicit sexual encounters. And when I heard the price tag, I knew that no matter how hard of times I fell on, I could never handle the pressure of being worth $5000 an hour.

After seeing more hooker interviews in one day than anyone should admit to, I came across one that actually answered most of the questions I actually had. I liked this interview because the ex-call girl references her mother and the difficulties her choices have had on their relationship. You see, I'm a mom and to me, a 22 year-old girl, any 22 year-old girl, is somebody's daughter. If the Governor had had the same thought, he might not be in the trouble he finds himself in now.

It may only be coincidence, but as Britney Spears rose in popularity from bubblegum princess to queen of pop, so did the popularity of the baby name "Britney." In the early 90s, it enjoyed top 10 status, even reaching a respectable number four. Even as late as 1997, the name was still in the top 20. Today, it's nowhere to be found and has been replaced by names like Ava, Abigail, Cailyn, Madeline, and Isabella.

Of course, the popularity of baby names change with the times, so who knows? Maybe when Britney finally makes her comeback, or at least stops having her saddest moments televised on national TV, we'll find that there's a whole new generations of little Britneys running around.

Did you consult the "most popular" lists before naming your child?