It's not easy living in Taradise

Busy times indeed in the Celebriverse — TomKat offspring, Jessica Simpson reportedly back on the market — which has made it easy to overlook the doings of our favorite B-list misfit. But at last, after casting our wagers in the Cruise bundle-o'-joy name pool, we again have a moment to set our gaze upon Tara Reid.

In the interval since we last considered her plight, Tara's offered up a virtual emperor's buffet of nuttiness. We'll dive in momentarily, but first we have an admission.

It's our fault.  All of it. Kick us. Please.

Tara said so herself.  She told Steppin' Out magazine: "How many more years are [the media] going to pick on me? There's other new young bad girls. Move on to someone else!"

That wasn't all. “I think there must be a journalist school where students are taught how to kill Tara Reid,” she also said.

Our favorite 29-year-old cultural ambassador continued: "I wish they would just tell the truth. I'm not a drunk ... I don't have a drinking problem. I don't have a drug problem, for sure."

Now, we're not ones to keep a tally of Tara's tippling or indulge in Reid-inspired drinking games, so if the girl says she can handle her liquor, there's no reason (aside from an interpretive review of hours of television footage, paparazzi shots and glossy drink-in-hand photo spreads) not to believe her. 

Just like there's no reason to believe that E! would have chosen her for "Taradise" duties for any reason besides her impeccable acting credentials in gems like "Van Wilder" and "Josie and the Pussycats."

Hooters gone wild
Yet the partying, the Tarantics, the laments about the media's inherent rancor all pale in comparison to Tara's repeated fascination with ... her breasts.

A "Tara Reid's breasts" item can pep up even the most humdrum of Tuesdays, but several of them in rapid-fire succession, in less than a month, demand special attention.

First she 'fessed up to confirm the long-assumed detail that she's had her breasts enhanced, saying, "I mean, everyone does it. I don't know why I'm the one who gets so much attention?"

Jennifer Graylock / AP It was all the jacket's fault -- or so Tara says.

We'll answer that shortly, but not before we note Tara's inability to leave the mammary issue alone. Revisiting her now-defining moment of infamy, the nipple slip at Diddy's birthday party, she ranted to FHM that she couldn't believe the ruckus her implant-enhanced unveiling had caused: "You would think my boob had popped out and shot Gandhi!"

While we tried to conjure up that particular image, Tara continued, hoping to assure us that she had wrangled the errant "hooters ... under control": "I'm taped up now, totally. I'm using double tape. Double, double tape. My boobs are going nowhere again."

But wait, there's more. She told Steppin' Out she had "no idea" her dress slipped off; blamed the whole episode on having taken off her jacket ("the dress came off with the jacket because the jacket was so heavy"); and rejected, with a word I can't reprint here, the premise that it helped her career.

"I was seen as a retard," she said.

It's like watching one of those home videos where a cat falls off a fence, climbs back up, then falls off again (and repeat).

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