Sideshow: Katy & John, Khloé & Lamar

Let's get something straight: Katy Perry and John Mayer aren't merely hooking up. They're not dating. They are courting.

Katy, 29, tells Entertainment Weekly that the duo went public as a couple only after a "long courtship." Katy, whose CD Prism debuted this week at No. 1, spells it out in an in-depth chat.

"We had a long courtship before anything was [public], just writing letters to each other," she says. Katy says he touched her so deeply that he inspired her soulful love song "Legendary Lovers."

The lyrics are suggestive: "I never knew I could see something so clearly looking through my third eye," Katy sings, "Never knew karma could be so rewarding and bring me to your life."

Katy has traveled far since her 14-month marriage to Russell Brand collapsed in December 2011.

"My self-worth was in someone else's hands, which is never a good idea, because it can be taken from you at any time," she recently told London's Sunday Times. "And it was, and it was shattered."

"We're wonderful. We're unbreakable," beleaguered NBA player Lamar Odom, 33, tells Us Weekly of his reportedly rocky marriage to Khloé Kardashian. "That's why I wear my wedding ring." Odom seems to have returned to Planet Kardashian after walking off the reservation in a reported drug and alcohol binge.

Nick Jonas, 21, tells People he knew that as things stood, the Jonas Brothers couldn't go on as a band. When the moment came to tell his siblings, he went "into a bit of trance."

But he had to say it. "There was sort of a shutoff that happened" once he did. "It took some time, about 24 hours or so, before we could really talk about it."

Joe, 35, and Kevin, 25, were shocked. "Kevin and I thought we were going into a meeting about releasing some of the music we'd been working on," said Joe.

Since the tragedy, reports have been streaming in of worldwide panic among tweens. Be aware: There may be rioting.

Miley Cyrus is carving porno pumpkins. Chris Brown is getting in street fights. But in an interview translated from the original French - no really, someone in this country knows French, dude - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer says he knows what everyone should do! We should all vote?

Read the Constitution? Founding Father Ben's Poor Richard's Almanack?

Nope. Read Marcel Proust, says Breyer. In French!

The interview (it's in French, OK?) appeared in the Paris literary mag La Revue des Deux Mondes (established in 1829). Proust's monument to modernity, the seven-volume In Search of Lost Time, was first published from 1913 to 1927.

Breyer says, "Each of us can find some piece of himself in Proust, at different ages." Once he read Proust (OK, yes, we know, in French), he "immediately" reread it. That'd make, like, 14 books he read. That's, um, like a lot of books. OK, we feel really, realllllly stupid now. . . . - John Timpane

Speaking of Proust fans, Kim Kardashian donned a see-through dress for her chat Wednesday night on Jay Leno's show. Kim addressed the brouhaha around the slutty bikini selfie she recently Instagram-ed. It was a statement, she said, dead serious.

"This is my big, like, middle finger to . . . everyone that called me fat," said Kim, referring to remarks about her weight while pregnant with North West. Was it so bad? "It really hurt my soul," said Kim. Her soul? Kim has proved the haters wrong: "I am 50 pounds down. That made me so excited."

Kim, who is in the news 364.5 days a year, said she has felt so exposed, she was going to avoid the spotlight. "I've definitely tried to live more of a private life because of that," she said. Right. She'll do media only 364.25 days this year.