A few weeks ago, sources started muttering that Jessica Simpson and her BFF Ken Paves may have “broken up.” We got a tip last month that they weren’t even speaking to each other, and now media outlets are getting a slew of bitchy back-and-forth quotes from Team Simpson and Team Paves. It’s kind of hilarious. If it wasn’t so tragic, so very Jessica Simpson. I actually got a wave of nostaliga while reading this Us Weekly story – this is always how Jess’s breakups go. There are lies and recriminations and so, so much drama it’s like being back in middle school. It was like that with Tony Romo too! I guess it doesn’t matter that Jess and Ken Paves never f-cked. They were more intimate than that – he did her hair!

Jessica Simpson went out to eat with her boyfriend Eric Johnson on September 17, and a fellow diner claims “She looked super-cute.” But something is missing from Simpson’s life lately – her best friend through thick and thin, hairstylist Ken Paves.

The once ever-present Ken Paves has been MIA for months. Though other pals partied in Capri for Jess’s 30th birthday, he was noticeably absent. Tellingly, it was during that same trip that Johnson, 31, made his debut on her arm. Indeed, a Simpson family source says the friendship of 12 years cooled because of the romance: “Ken is sick of her cycle of dumping friends when she’s with a guy.”

In a pattern dating back to her breakup with Nick Lachey, Simpson goes AWOL when in love, only to return to Paves (and margaritas!) to nurse her broken heart post-split.

“She doesn’t care about the world, only herself,” says a source close to Paves. “All she talks about is men, love and sex.”

At the center of the rift is Johnson, a divorcing NFL player whom the Paves source calls “a user.” A Simpson pal says of the four-month relationship, “Her friends are unsure about his intentions. He doesn’t seem to have his own life.”

Seconds a Johnson source, “He was going to go to business school and instead to live with a famous girl in her mansion.”

Although Paves sent a tweet on the September 6 anniversary of Simpson’s dog Daisy’s death by coyote, Latina actress and client Eva Longoria Parker seems to be his BFF du jour.

“It’s a PR move,” says a Simpson source. “Ken’s launching his hair-care line in Latin American.”

But a Paves pal sniffs, “Jessica isn’t his only client – or friend.”

[From Us Weekly, print edition]

Isn’t this one of the most hilariously bitchy pieces you’ve ever read? To the cut about Jessica’s drinking habits (AND MARGARITAS), to dismissing Eva Longoria as just a brown girl who will help him in Latin America, to the inappropriate comparison of Eva to Jess (“sniff”) to this gem: “She doesn’t care about the world, only herself. All she talks about is men, love and sex.” Durr. Would you actually WANT Jess to talk about anything else? Beyond her obvious limitations (mentally), I’m not really dying to hear what she says about the economy or immigration. Anyway, I’m kind of in love with this story… such weepy melodrama, the epic trauma of a gay dude and his hag breaking up FOREVER. Actually, I don’t think it’s going to be forever. If Ken was really burning his bridges, he would have thrown in some quotes about Jessica’s horrible fashion, or her weight gain. That would have been FOREVER.