Let's Get This Party Started: Top Stories for Friday 07/14/06

Now that's more like it: Britney Spears says she "can't wait" to perform again, though she might want to rethink a potential musical "collaboration" with hubby K-Fed.

Plus, Spears confesses that her second pregnancy has been difficult, and that she doesn't "feel the most beautiful all the time."

The pop queen tells Harper's Bazaar in its August issue (via USA Today) that she wasn't ready for motherhood and was "paranoid" the first time around, but that with her second child, "I was like, I've just got to wing it. It was weird for me at first because of who I am...I'm not supposed to be this big huge pregnant superstar."

Britney also says she's eager to get back into the recording studio, and will collaborate with her aspiring rapper husband, Kevin Federline. "I'm so proud of Kevin. He's been working so hard on his own album since I got pregnant with Preston." She says she's going to "get really intense" about reshaping her body after her two pregnancies but says, "I really have to take my time and...be safe. Actually, not that safe. When you perform, you have to be dangerous."

Please Keep Naomi Away From Mobile Devices

Hard though it might be to believe, yet another former assistant of Naomi Campbell's has filed a lawsuit against the supermodel, alleging assault, battery, false imprisonment, and infliction of emotional distress during her five-month employment -- and yes, it involves mobile devices.

The ex-assistant, Amanda Brack, 20, says that Campbell allegedly slammed a Blackberry into her face and slapped her three times during a trip to Rio, and then, apparently lacking her own mobile device-weapon, threw a friend's cell phone at Brack after a fight in her Park Ave. apartment, according to Brack's lawyer. Brack says she was hired by Campbell after helping her with her dress in a Paris nightclub bathroom.

Meanwhile, Campbell is in negotiations with prosecutors to settle the original alleged assistant-assaulting case with ex-servant Ana Scolavino, and faces another set of abuse allegations from another maid, Gaby Gibson, filed last month.

Beyonce Has Enough of Controlling Daddy, Makes Record in Secret

R&B superdiva Beyonce Knowles has just about had it up to her well-plucked eyebrows with her famously controlling dad-manager Matthew Knowles, so much so that she made her latest record in secret.

As she tells the upcoming issue of Giant magazine (via Ben Widdicombe), when beginning recording her latest album, she ordered her studio team, "'Don't tell my daddy. Don't tell my mama. Don't tell anybody...So two weeks later, I called my dad and said, 'My record's done.' He was, like, 'WHAT!?'"

Apparently, Matthew had stipulated a long, drawn-out recording schedule, because Beyonce told him, "Don't you ever ask me to take that long to do a record. I'm never doing that again." We'll hear the fruits of Beyonce's clandestine work, called "B'Day," in stores Sept. 5, the day after her own 25th b-day.

Original Blingster Mr. T Renounces Gold Chains

After witnessing the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, Mr. T has shed the yoke of gold chain necklaces that were as much his trademark as his stiff Mohawk. "As a spiritual man, I felt it would be a sin against my God for me to wear all that gold again because I spent a lot of time with the less fortunate," said the actor (real name: Lawrence Tero) at the Television Critics Association confab yesterday.

The former B.A. Baracus displayed anything but bad attitude talking to the assembled scribes about his new TV Land advice show "I Pity the Fool." "Yes, I am qualified to beat people up. But I am pretty intelligent," said the actor, who once gave "about 5" as an answer on "Hollywood Squares" to the question "What is pi?" "That's what throws people off. If you've been through something, that gives you an authority that you can speak on certain things."

Usher To Appear On Broadway

Expect hordes of swooning teens at upcoming performances of the hit musical "Chicago": R&B maestro Usher will be taking over the role of lawyer Billy Flynn in his Broadway debut, the show's producers announced Friday. The multi-platinum recording artist will be starting his run Aug. 22 and playing until Oct. 1. "Being on Broadway allows you to connect to audiences in a whole new way that's different from music and movies," said Usher in a statement.

Briefly: Ellen Pompeo Throws A Fit, Diddy Ditches the Hamptons, Pete Doherty Gets Anti-Drug Implant