January 2-8 - While the celebrity world was waking from its New Year slumber, we crossed the pop cultural Sahara to find the few notables doing stuff this week.

Jennifer Garner overcame the rumors of various infirmities, and toddled onto a Vegas red carpet to introduce her action/adventure movie, Elektra. Why Vegas? We don’t know, but it sure was an adventure getting there through the West Coast storms. Jennifer was not wearing an engagement ring at the premiere, nor was she sporting supposed fiancé Ben Affleck (although reports had him flying into Vegas with her). So no news on the relationship front, but she was holding her stomach - maybe the mystery ailment was morning sickness?

With a new disaster unfolding in Asia, Jennifer Connelly, Vanessa Williams and John Cameron Mitchell joined the beautiful Sophie Okonedo for a screening of Hotel Rwanda, her film about a past horror.

Yet another catastrophe was recalled at the kickoff to a fundraising campaign for a World Trade Center memorial. Robert De Niro and Barbara Walters showed up at the Ground Zero event, upstaging celebrity architect Daniel Libeskind, Time Warner’s Dick Parsons and Disney’s Michael Eisner.

We found a more cheerful scene at the opening night of the Off Broadway musical Under the Bridge, where Frank Gifford and his son talked Super Bowl, Rosie O’Donnell joked about weight and the new TV show Fat Actress, and Donald Trump and Melania Knauss gabbed about weddings. They were all there to support Kathie Lee Gifford, Frank’s wife, who wrote the book and lyrics.