Battle royal as NYC Housewives prepare to duel NJ Housewives

Bravo TV’s “Real Housewives” of New York and New Jersey will battle it out over which state rules during a showdown at an arts center in Englewood, N.J., this month. In what is bound to be a hilarious, table flipping scene, the Housewives are prepared to battle and already talking trash.

“The New Jersey cast is a knockoff of New York, and our city puts their entire state to shame,” said Jill Zarin, the matriarch of the New York show. “We’ll head over the bridge and tunnel for a few hours just to put them in their place.”

The Oct. 17 debate at bergenPAC will pit the socially conscience, cultured New York diva’s Jill Zarin and Alex McCord against New Jersey’s blinged-out Teresa Giudice and tough-talking Caroline Manzo.

“Jill and Alex are coming to our turf in North Jersey, so you know that we will have the home team advantage,” Giudice said. “Manhattan’s socialites are about to learn that in Jersey, we take no prisoners.”

Ticket prices start at $28 and can be bought by calling the bergenPAC box office at (201) 227-1030. Proceeds go to Table to Table, which feeds the area’s hungry.

Fresh embarrassment for Sarah Palin as the father of her grandson reveals he is to pose naked for Playgirl

The father of Sarah Palin’s grandson is set to pose nude for Playgirl, his lawyer claimed yesterday.

Levi Johnston, the ex-lover of Palin’s 18-year-old daughter Bristol, is training three hours a day, six nights a week at a gym in Alaska with a local bodybuilder in preparation for the shoot. ‘We told him he would have to do what actors and actresses do,’ his laywer said. ‘They get in the gym.’ The 19-year-old aspiring actor has not yet reached a formal agreement with the online magazine, his laywer admitted, but the photo shoot is a ‘foregone conclusion’.

The photos could cause major embarrassment for Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate. But Johnston is making quite a name for himself through embarrassing her: In a recent interview with Vanity Fair he claimed the self-described ‘hockey mom’ neither attended her son’s hockey games nor paid much attention to her children at home.

Shortly after Palin was selected as John McCain’s running mate in August of 2008, Johnston was thrust into the national spotlight after the announcement that Palin’s daughter, Bristol, was pregnant and that the couple were set to marry. Instead, Levi and Bristol broke up after the birth of their son Tripp in December. The relationship between the Palin family and Johnston since then has often been strained, mostly over visitation issues – a tension that can only have been heightened by the Vanity Fair interview.

Johnston has been marketing himself for a possible modeling or acting career, spending time in New York and Los Angeles. His first TV commercial, hawking Wonderful brand pistachios, debuted this week.