This is how you know it’s a slow news month: World-famous and stunningly beautiful actresses like Halle Berry are photographed and put on the news wires for … looking gorgeous in public. The professional journalist in me says this is not news. Next! But I understand that publicists must continue to work during the summer, as well as agents, paparazzi and entertainment news editors who need to fill space during the summer slump. Therefore, if Ms. Berry is having a particularly good hair, face and body day, then post/publish/broadcast an item about her. That’ll give us everyday folk something to lift our spirits after reading the latest bizarre financial news.

Also, I could never resent Ms. Berry for all the overwhelming advantages she has racked up in life. She has obviously worked very diligently over the last 20 years or so to secure her place among Hollywood’s glitterati. To keep generating headlines at an age when Tinseltown likes to put women out to pasture just shows that she knows what to do with her show-biz savvy! And be honest: Wouldn’t we all like to have a figure as lovely as that?

But just in case you have not been paying attention, there are a couple of other major news flashes circulating the globe about one of our favorites here at the Latte Cafe. Ms. Berry has landed a cameo role on the long-running hit comedy series “The Simpsons”. She also recently arrived in South Africa for a 90-day stint to work on the film “Dark Tide“. It seems like that work itinerary will keep her in the region during her birthday, August 14, when she turns 44.

Ms. Berry will also be the cover model for the September issue of Vogue. Now that is a very big deal! This one caught my eye, as magazines will always be a favorite source of refinement, information and entertainment for me. As you know, Vogue‘s September issue kicks off the fall fashion season in New York, and effectively the world. It’s books are famously huge, and hit a gargantuan 840 pages in September 2007! The book has slimmed considerably in recent years, of course, but there is some reason to hope that its page count will bulge once again in 2010. Conde Nast must think pretty highly of her, hoping that she’ll quite carry away their September newsstand sales.