• Last night, David Letterman revealed that a CBS News employee is accused of trying to extort $2 million from him because he had sexual relationship with female employees.

The guy threatened to write a screenplay and a book about Letterman unless he was given money. Letterman says: "I was worried for myself, I was worried for my family. I felt menaced by this, and I had to tell them all of the creepy things that I had done." [AP]

• CBS is saying Letterman's accused extortionist was an employee at the news program 48 Hours named Robert Halderman, and he was arrested yesterday. [LA Times, Reuters, HuffPo]
• The New York Post is calling the Letterman incident a "sextortion" plot. [NY Post]
• Kanye West and Lady Gaga's "Fame Kills" tour is dead. Canceled before it ever started. Refunds will be made available. [AP]
• A source says the Fame Kills ticket sales "sucked." Lady Gaga may tour, but play smaller venues. [TMZ]
• They're saying Lindsay Lohan poses on a "stripper pole" in ads for her line of leggings, 6126. But that pole looks structural! [NY Daily News]
• Jon Gosselin says he had "no idea" he was being fired, and that he "found out just like everybody else … saw it on a laptop as an [Associated Press] newswire." His lawyer also says that Jon was going to "pull the plug" on the show weeks before TLC fired him. [People]
• Even though Jon has blocked the TLC crews from coming to the house, Kate Gosselin says: "Jon has never expressed any concerns to me about our children being involved in the show, and, in fact, is on the record as saying he believes the show benefits our children." [Gatecrasher]
• There's a Billboard cover story on Beyoncé, which reveals that she grossed some $53.5 million on her I Am… tour; she was the star and executive producer of the 2009 film Obsessed, which opened at No. 1 and has grossed more than $68.3 million in North America; the Knowles family has donated more than $2.5 million for transitional housing for Hurricane Katrina victims and storm evacuees in the Houston area; Beyoncé works with Feeding America to deliver more than 3.5 million meals to local food banks through fan donations; and, her father says: "Most people don't know this, but she's a really good painter." [ONTD via Billboard]
• WAIT WHAT?!?!? Liza Minnelli will do Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" in Sex And The City 2?!?!? Crap. Now that's something I want to see. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Simon Cowell's 50th birthday party — being held tomorrow at a mansion in Hertfordshire called Wrotham Park (it looks gorgeous!) — will have scantily clad showgirls and boys; tons of flowers; lots of food and cocktails; a smoker's tent; and performances by Rat Pack impersonators, Leona Lewis and maybe Lily Allen. Expect Kate Moss, Kylie Minogue, Donald Trump and possibly Paula Abdul to attend. [Daily Mail]
• Headline Of The Day: "Britney Spears Buys A Parakeet." [People]
• Britney's traveling aliases: Ms. Alotta Warmheart; Mrs. Diana Prince; Queen of the Fairy Dance and Mrs. Abra Cadabra. [Page Six]
• Weird: New York magazine's Emma Rosenblum sat next to Spencer Pratt when she attended a taping of The View yesterday. She writes: "So here are some facts about Spencie that you probably don't want to know, but I will tell you anyway: That necklace he's wearing is made of crystals, and he wears it to protect himself from evil. He has a 200-pound crystal from Peru in his house, which he had excavated and flown in specially. He's very proud of it. He laughs very loudly at anything that's semi-funny." [NY Mag]
• Since the Michael Jackson autopsy shows that the singer was healthy, it could be used against Dr. Conrad Murray: "It clearly establishes that Michael Jackson was a healthy person whose death appears to have been directly caused by the administration of some very powerful sedatives," says criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Werksman. "This autopsy report seems to clear the path for a prosecution that his death was caused by an overdose." [AP]
• "CBS anchor Katie Couric yesterday kicked back at her critics saying she thought the word 'gravitas' — the characteristic she is often accused of lacking — was 'Latin for testicles.'" [NY Post]
• Jay-Z and Alicia Keys: Shot a video at the Empire State Building on Wednesday. [Gatecrasher]
• Lil' Wayne will go on trial next March stemming from the January 2008 incident in which authorities found cocaine, Ecstasy and a handgun on his tour bus. [USA Today]
• Kate Hudson has bonded with Alex Rodriguez's daughters, Natasha and Ella. She's not doing as well with the Yankees, the players wives or girlfriends. [MSNBC Scoop via In Touch]
• Oliver Hudson and wife Erin Bartlett are expecting their second child. [NY Daily News]
• "Mary-Louise Parker certainly isn't ashamed of her new romance with singer Charlie Mars." Why should she be? [Page Six]
• Even though Randy and Evi Quaid have paid their bill for their stay at the San Ysidro Ranch, they still face the charges of burglary, conspiracy and defrauding an innkeeper. Court date: October 19. [TMZ]
• The Tate Modern museum in London has a "Pop Life" exhibit, and director McG hooked up with Takashi Murakami for a four-minute film starring actress Kirsten Dunst singing a cover of "Turning Japanese." Click the link for an insanely colorful picture: Kiki's wearing a bright blue wig! [WSJ]
• "A lawyer for John Travolta testified Thursday that he warned a former Bahamas senator she would not get away with an alleged scheme to extort $25 million from the movie star, and even wore a wire to secretly record their conversations." [AP, TMZ]
• No one likes Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Peter Sellars' production ofOthello at NYU's Skirball Canter: Audiences have been leaving in droves at intermission. [Page Six]
• "Michael Moore, champion of the working class, used non-union stagehands to film Capitalism: A Love Story." [Page Six]
• In a video at the link, Mary Forsberg Weiland talks about her memoir, Fall To Pieces: A Memoir Of Drugs, Rock 'N Roll, And Mental Illness. She talks about the modeling world, being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and how she and Stone Temple Pilots/Velvet Revolver frontman Scott Weiland did heroin and cocaine together. The book contains an anecdote about a Fourth of July party at Leonardo DiCaprio's house in Malibu, where the Weilands arrived in long-sleeved turtlenecks to hide needle tracks and scabs. [Blabbermouth]
• "Workers at an Arizona cryonics facility mutilated the frozen head of baseball legend Ted Williams - even using it for a bizarre batting practice, a new tell-all book claims." [NY Daily News]
• "John Cleese takes a goose-step backwards with one-man show to fund £12million divorce." [Daily Mail]
• "Fame… It kind of kills the humanity and the humility of music for some reason. You're like this product all of a sudden and you have to stay in this Superman costume with people telling you that if you cut your hair, your career is over." — Maxwell, who no longer rocks the giant Afro he once did. [Washington Post]
• "Women don't like the humor when it's combined with inconsideration and insensitivity." — Larry David, on his dating life. [LA Times]
• "There are people that I want to work with but I'm too intimidated. There are a few people that I'd be worried about working with — the greats: Jack Nicholson, Scorsese and Clint Eastwood. So there are still people out there who intimidate me. I think they would catch me out finally. I've got away with murder until now and they would blow that."— Ricky Gervais. [Mirror]
• "I don't think of myself as a typical comedian. I'm just a normal bloke who says things he observes. I don't even really tell jokes with punch lines. But people seem to connect." — Ricky Gervais. [USA Today]
• "One of the things I like about this movie is that my character, for example, is made up all the time. She always looks cute. So she's cute and covered in tats and willing to punch people while wearing dresses and cute shoes. The merging of that: you can be a strong, rough-and-tumble woman, but still be a woman. All of that can be bundled into one. That's definitely a lesson that I currently have been learning the last couple years myself, so it spoke volumes to me." — Whip It's Zoë Bell. [BoxOffice.com]
• Your name is on fans' dream team list for Ridley Scott's prequel to Alien. "Wouldn't that be awesome!? That absolutely has to happen. There was an article where someone CGIed my head onto Sigourney Weaver's body. It's kind of creepy, but I liked it. I sent it to my people and was like, 'Make this happen!' That'd be so sick! That's the kind of stuff I would like to do. Linda Hamilton in Terminator and Sigourney Weaver in Alien-those are the kind of roles we don't have enough of." — Zoë Bell. [BoxOffice.com]
• "I am a hippie girl with anger issues, I get it…" And: "I was so obsessed with happy endings in my 20s. In my 30s, I'm like, a good day is a good day." And: "I do a very serious, disciplined, mature job. That said, I love to go get plastered with my friends on a Saturday night and let it go, but… I'm up on Monday morning at 6 a.m. and I don't stop for seven days straight." — Drew Barrymore. [The Daily Beast]
• "The bride will fight again!" — Quentin Tarantino says he intends to make Kill Bill 3. [Page Six]
• "I think my acting is offensive!" — Lauren Conrad. [People]
• "I just put on a 'Snuggie' and ate a popsicle." — Miley Cyrus, who has strep throat two weeks before her world tour. [NY Daily News]

• Oh Christ: Jennifer Aniston "burst into tears in her trailer" while filming in New York.

The "unlucky-in-love actress" was late coming out of her trailer while filming The Bounty a few weeks ago, and allegedly tearfully said to an assistant: "I need a moment. This scene reminds me of Brad and me." A source says: "While she enjoyed flirting with Gerard on set and put a brave face on every day, privately she is still very fragile." Eyeroll! (Note: Her rep says this story is "ridiculous… it never happened.") [Page Six]

• By the by, Jennifer Aniston went to see Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig in A Steady Rain on Broadway on Tuesday. [Gatecrasher]
• Samantha Burke, who had a dalliance with Jude Law, gave birth yesterday in Florida. [Page Six]
• What the what? Renée Zellweger is not going to gain a bunch of weight for the third Bridget Jones flick? A source says she will wear a fat suit, out of concern about the health effects of quickly putting and then losing 30 lbs. [MSNBC]
• Katherine Heigl made the news of her adoption public the same day Ellen Pompeo gave birth to a daughter of her own, and a source says: "It looks like they were trying to one-up one another." There's something very Penelope about this: "Well my kid was born earlier than yours, and is already at Harvard, so…" [Page Six]
• John Travolta took the stand yesterday, admitting that his son Jett was autistic and suffered from a seizure disorder — having seizures every five to 10 days. [MSNBC]
• Travolta also said that the ambulance took 40 minutes to reach his son, and by the time his son got to the emergency room, he was not alive. [NY Post]
• The alleged extortionists in the John Travolta case have been caught on video haggling over money; their lawyers will try to get the videotape thrown out of court on the grounds it was illegally recorded. [TMZ]
• Lily Allen: Quitting the music biz. She blogged: "Just so you know, I have not renegotiated my record contract and have no plans to make another record (applause). I do however remain a fan of new music, so this is not some selfish crusade. The days of me making money from recording music has been and gone as far as I'm concerned, so I don't (at this point) stand to profit from legislation… If you can't sell your music, you can't go on. It's that simple." [Digital Spy]
• Lily Allen will concentrate on acting; she will be in a production of Neil LaBute's play Reasons To Be Pretty in London's West End. [Daily Mail]
• Photos of Kelly Bensimon will be in Playboy. A source says: "Kelly is telling everyone that she might be on the cover." The snaps were taken years ago by Kelly's ex, Gilles Bensimon, but a source says: "They're sexy, but they won't set the world on fire." [Page Six]
• Mackenzie Phillips has revealed shocking details of her relationship with her father, and John Phillips' ex wife, Michelle Phillips (who was in the Mamas & The Papas), says: "Mackenzie has a lot of mental illness. She's had a needle stuck up her arm for 35 years. She was arrested for heroin and coke just recently… The whole thing is timed. Mackenzie is jealous of her siblings, who have accomplished a lot and did not become drug addicts." But Michelle Phillips daughter, Chynna Phillips, who is Mackenzie's half sister, says: "After long nights of heroin use, (Mackenzie is) claiming that she once woke up and that my father was on top of her having sex with her. Was he actually raping her? I don't know. Do I believe that they had an incestuous relationship and that it went on for 10 years? Yes." [MSNBC]
• Christina Aguilera recently traveled to Guatemala with the World Food Programme to see the impact of hunger; . Guatemala has the fourth highest child malnutrition rate in the world. Christina says: "WFP urgently needs donations to keep feeding some 150,000  women and undernourished children – I want to raise awareness and open people's eyes so they can get the funds they need to keep on working… One of the biggest lessons I'm taking away from this trip is the importance of healthy food. If a child under two doesn't get the nutrients they need, we can never fix the damage later on." [WFP]
• Kirsten Dunst will testify today against a man accused of burglarizing her hotel room. [NY Daily News]
• Kanye West is being prosecuted for breaking a paparazzi's camera at LAX last September; last Friday, his lawyer went to the judge and pushed back the hearing until late October. Is he still trying to keep a low profile? [TMZ]
• Hmm: Kanye West has posted a video promoting his "Fame Kills" tour with Lady Gaga. So maybe the tour is on after all. [KanyeUniverseCity]
• "First new Michael Jackson song set for release; posthumous single 'This Is It' to hit airwaves" [Gatecrasher]
• Macy Gray was eliminated from Dancing With The Stars and was too distraught to go on Jimmy Kimmel Live afterward, like most eliminated contestants do. Her partner, Jonathan Roberts says: "She put her whole heart into the show. She feels like she let her fans down." [ET]
• Real NYU students find Gossip Girl's version of NYU laughable. [NY Post]
• Robert Rodriguez and Rose McGowan: Still on. [Page Six]
• Eva Longoria Parker says she wants to go back to school and enroll in a master's program in Chicano studies and political science to learn more about her Mexican roots. She's a Texas native, but her family is originally from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey. [AP]
• In the Anna Nicole Smith case, search warrant affidavits suggest Howard K. Stern put his name on prescriptions for drugs that were given to Smith, and claim that a total of 44 different medications were prescribed for Smith under a number of other names, including Stern's. [NY Post]
• Remember how Suzanne Somers said that Patrick Swayze should have fought his cancer "nutritionally"? Whoopi Goldberg didn't like that, and says: "Patrick did everything and went everywhere to try and stay healthy as long as he could. That he's been gone a week and this statement came out is bad timing and bad taste and Suzanne, you should know better." Now Suzanne says: "In a casual conversation at a private party (with someone who never identified himself as a reporter) at the Toronto Film Festival last week, I was asked about this beloved actor. It was never my intention to make an official statement about his passing. I was not informed or aware I was being interviewed. I would never have been so insensitive as to offer a public statement so close to his untimely passing. I sincerely apologize if my comment has caused any additional pain to his family during this difficult time. I send my deepest condolences for their loss." [Perez]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Jennifer Jason Leigh is pregnant; she and director husband Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) are expecting a baby in March. [ONTD via National Enquirer]
• Michael Moore stirred up trouble on Good Morning America yesterday, exposing the stripped rights of permalancers. [NY Post]
• Survivor winner Richard Hatch was denied his request to serve the remaining weeks of his sentence for tax evasion in home confinement. He'll have to stay in jail. [USA Today]
• "Phyllida Law, mother of the actress Emma Thompson, has had her stolen gargoyles returned two years after they were stolen after announcing she had put a curse on the thieves." [Telegraph]
• Q: How traumatic is it for you to not be wearing tights and poofy britches?
  A: "It's very easy. I do miss sliding off the back of a horse, but apart from that it's all good. It's actually rather wonderful running around, blazing a Glock on my hip." — Joseph Fiennes on his new show, FlashForward. [Washington Post]
• "I'm a bit scared of being single and scared of getting into another relationship, but I'm married to my work right now." — Natalie Imbruglia, who split from husband Daniel Johns in January 2008. [Sydney Morning Herald]
• "I took a couple years off and, during that time, I felt like I wanted to know what was important to me, what I really loved and what I was interested in. And if I even wanted to make films anymore. I felt I had done what I had to do. I contemplated being a hermit. I went to a distant mountain top that you could only walk to. No electricity. No water. I spent about five days there and thought, 'This is fantastic. Maybe I am a hermit.' " — Jane Campion, on life after her 2003 film In The Cut, which critics panned. [USA Today]
• "Once I got the part, I did some work with a coach. Everybody else in the show is doing a modern Southern accent and I wanted something old-fashioned. There are no contractions. Bill never says can't or won't. It's always, 'I did not want you to do that,' which is funny because you then find yourself doing it in everyday life, saying things like, 'I cannot stand pains aux raisins.'" — Stephen Moyer on his True Blood character. [Telegraph]
• "I am fine — happy and healthy. It's irresponsible when people obsess about my shape and size. I appreciate there are young girls and women who look at me as a role model and it is untrue to say I do not eat and I am unhealthy. 'I have a healthy diet, a healthy lifestyle and plenty of energy to run after my three energetic boys and travel the world managing my fashion business." — Victoria Beckham. [Daily Mail]
• "We did have a few moments of friction when we were tired or after a long day of shooting. [Jennifer Grey] seemed particularly emotional, sometimes bursting into tears if someone criticized her. Other times, she slipped into silly moods, forcing us to do scenes over and over again when she'd start laughing. I was on overdrive for the whole shoot - staying up all night to do rewrites, squeezing in dance rehearsals, shooting various scenes - and was exhausted a lot of the time. I didn't have a whole lot of patience for doing multiple retakes. It was horrifyingly, hypothermically cold in that lake, and we filmed that scene over and over. And despite the fact that Jennifer was very light, when you're lifting someone in water, even the skinniest little girl can feel like 500 pounds." — Memories of making Dirty Dancing, from Patrick Swayze's memoir. [Gatecrasher]

• It's going to be Kate Winslet vs. Kate Winslet at the Bafta awards. [Guardian]
• And! Winslet is on the February cover of In Style. [The Life Files]

• The Oscar presenters are a secret, but no one cares. [NY Daily News]
• Ruh-roh: Justin Timberlake was having dinner with Jessica Biel when Britney and her mom walked into the restaurant. A spy says JT and Jess quickly slumped down in their chairs to avoid Brit Brit. [Gatecrasher]
• Patrick Swayze and his wife Lisa are "each other's rocks." [People]
• Random celebs are going to the inauguration! Josh Lucas will attend the swearing-in ceremony, Kal Penn has a ticket, Gloria Reuben is going to the Creative Coalition's pre-inaugural bash, and Ashley Judd is going to a couple of balls and the swearing-in. Of course, Judd will swing through Sundance first. Stars! Just like us. Not. [USA Today]
• And yes, Will Smith will be there too, as an "eyewitness to history." [Telegraph]
• Want to know what Barack Obama will eat for dinner on January 19th, before he takes the oath of office the next day? Click away. [TMZ]
• The new Barack Obama wax figure is vaguely horrifying. [Concrete Loop]
• Oh dear: Mickey Rourke and Bai Ling made out at Chateau Marmont. [Page Six]
• Breaking: Naomi Campbell and Naomi Campbell's maid have settled their lawsuit. Raise your hand if you think the maid got paid. [AP]
• Lost fans! Foxy Matthew Fox is looking foxy on the cover of Details! [ONTD]
• Lost fans! Awesome Evangeline Lilly is on the cover of TV Guide! [JustJared]
• Whoa: Guy Ritchie was in Madonna's NYC apartment on Tuesday, because Lourdes begged them, "Please don’t be mean to each other." Now, says a source: "Madge and Guy are getting along better than they have in over a year." Absence makes the heart grow civil? [Gatecrasher]
• Madonna is flying to Florida for an equestrian festival, and she's having a British riding instructor flown out for her. Six months ago Madonna had a horse shipped to the U.S., how did we miss that? [Perez]
• Amy Winehouse has extended her "well-being" stay at Le Sport Spa in St. Lucia, but she is ignoring the booze ban her management put in place. A source says, "We keep catching her crawling past bars, or hiding behind chairs. She grabs guests’ drinks and runs off, like a squirrel with a nut." [MSNBC]
• Okay, even though this is a picture of Amy Winehouse on her hands and knees outside of a hotel bar, her spokesperson says: "Amy was not stealing drinks off people's tables. She could have been doing anything in those pictures. She is moving out of the hotel and into a private villa nearby. She wants a bit more privacy. Her dad arrived today and she has decided to stay out there for two more weeks. She is just on holiday and enjoying herself." Clearly. [Daily Mail]
• American Idol's Kara DioGuardi is defending her attack on the contestant known as Bikini Girl. It isn't that she has a problem with attractive women: "I love pretty girls," DioGuardi told Ryan Seacrest on his radio show. "The thing with Bikini Girl, to be honest with you — I think she had a better body than her face. But we wouldn’t be talking about the bikini if she killed the song." [MSNBC]
• In this behind-the-scenes video of Beyoncé and Solange's L'Oréal commercial, you find out that they each think the other one looks "beautiful and flawless." Oh, and there's hair choreography. [ONTD]
• This item is about how Daniel Craig admits he's done some "crap" films, and used to go in Blockbuster and throw his bad movies that were on the shelf under the counter. Which is the story he told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, and we posted that clip here. [The Sun]
• We've heard this before, but Whoopi Goldberg is returning to the sci-fi genre: She'll produce and star in Stream, a series which premieres today on horror website and on-demand network FEARnet. [Reuters]
• Filmmaker Michael Moore "misused" a war photograph — in which a U.S. soldier is seen cradling a wounded Iraqi girl — and now there is a lawsuit and a kerfluffle. [Page Six]
• Will Ferrell is learning you can't say "douchebag" on morning television. [Page Six]
• Sharon Osbourne won't go on Jay Leno's new prime-time show in September: "I wouldn't go on it. Fuck no. He had always been a friend of ours, but then Ozzy went and performed on Jimmy Kimmel, and Jay has banned us ever since. So fuck him!" Tell us how you really feel, Sharon. [Page Six]
• By the by, Sharon has just won an apology and cold hard cash from The Sun after the paper falsely accused her of overworking husband Ozzy. [AP]
• Even though Courtenay Semel beat up Casey Johnson and set her hair on fire, the two will go to Sundance together this weekend. Fun! [Page Six]
• Emily Blunt is in negotiations to play femme fatale Black Widow in Iron Man 2. [Variety]
• Kendra Wilkinson says: "Now I'm totally against [Hefner's] way of life, with three girlfriends and all of that." But! She will marry fiancé Hank Baskett at the Playboy Mansion this summer. Moral compass: Askew. [NY Daily News]
• Aww, Lenny Kravitz and daughter Zoe work out with a trainer together in Miami. [Page Six]
• For some reason Craig Ferguson is really protective of Jimmy Fallon, who will take over Late Night in March. Ferguson told a bunch of TV critics: "I challenge you all to this: Give Jimmy a month before you review him. [Fallon] is kind of like the reverse Barack Obama. It's like he hasn't done anything yet, but everybody is commenting on his performance. Give him a chance." [AP]
• Jude Law and Judi Dench are helping save a gorgeous old Victorian church in north London. [Telegraph]
• Blind item! "Which aging action star had a leisurely conversation with a young, hunky co-star on set — all while being pleasured by an extra?" [Gatecrasher]
• Joey McIntyre says of the New Kids On The Block cruise: "Our manager tells us this is not a cheesy thing." But honey, he gets paid to say that. [Gatecrasher]
• Emma "Baby Spice Bunton" says there will be no Spice Girls reunion: "We had the most amazing time. It was a completely different vibe and we had so much fun. But it's done now, and I think we're all going in different directions." Ya think? [Mirror]
• Blur guitarist Graham Coxon says Pete Doherty is a "scumbag magnet." [The Sun]
• Daniel Radcliffe had to change a line in the play Equus because American tourists were laughing. It had to do with someone asking a horse's name and the line "Trojan... and you can stroke him." [Telegraph]
• "Are you sure you want to get this close to me after seeing my show?" — Bret Michaels to a group of "busty, flirty" fans who approached him begging for photos at a NYC bar on Monday. [Gatecrasher]
• "People come up to me and have certain words for me, but you know what I do? I say, 'I'm healthy, I exercise, I believe in myself, and I think I’m beautiful.' You just have to learn how to transform the pressures into something that doesn’t soak into you on a personal level. You see it, you breathe past it, you don’t let it sink into your self-esteem." — Raven-Symoné, who battles body critics, but will host a Dove-sponsored self-esteem workshop today. [People]
• "Honestly, to see how in love with Angelina he is, it was really quite disgusting. Awful in fact. It's in my contract now: I won't ever work with him again." — Cate Blanchett, joking about Brad Pitt. [Telegraph]
• "I got a souvenir. I got his glasses as a present. And it's my treasure. I love those glasses. He only has two pairs and he gave me one." — Penelope Cruz, on what Woody Allen gave her after Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Bet he says that to all the girls. [Hindustan Times via Contact Music]

Send a note to contests@gawker.com with "Mike's Election Guide 2008" in the title and enter to win a copy of the book. The usual rules apply.

Chapter 1 of Mike's Election Guide 2008:

1. Copious quantities of mind-altering drugs: they didn't make Anna Nicole Smith any less crazy and they probably didn't help Steve!
Alexian. Clozaril. Cogutin. Cylert. Depacote. Lithium. Paxil. Prozac. Risperdal. Seroquel. Zyprexa. Look, I alphabetized them for no reason at all, think I'm OCD too??? Anyhow, those drugs garner numerous occurrences of free product placement throughout this story, but curiously Kazmierczak's only respite from his demons comes when he violates his group home's orders and goesoff the meds, cold turkey because he's obsessive that way. Then he turns his life around, aces school, wins a Dean's award, meets a girlfriend who loves him, devotes himself to helping people, etc. But Steve is so obsessive-compulsive that his obsession with staying off meds sort of sets him up for failure, which is to say, repeated Craigslist casual encounters and that SAW movie, which is not such a bad thing in itself, but he has this sort of Puritannical way of obsessing over small infractions, as if his whole life is one long juice fast, which brings me to…

2. Yes, America, We Are Fat. So fat we have somehow turned being not fat into the new American Dream.
And speaking of! It's only subtly addressed in the story, but Steve is obviously waging a personal War On Fat. His parents are to blame; his mom being a "fleshy, enormous" insomniac blob on the couch whose sole contribution to Steve's reserves of cultural capital is an addiction to horror films; his father is an alcoholic who goes into diabetic shock at one point; you know what that means. Steve is skinny but balloons to over 300 pounds on the meds, then loses it all when he gets off meds and enlists in the military. Later he freaks out that Prozac will cause weight gain, even though Prozac actually tends to do the opposite, but Steve, like many members of the progeny of the obese, can't face the thought of losing control of his body the same way. And this is where I really do wish we valued brains a little more in this country, because there REALLY SHOULD BE BETTER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT. But the same way the first American Dream moved us all out to the suburbs only to strand us there alone with our cable and ice cream and placid lawns and sad fleshy dead-eyed moms who can't bother driving us anywhere, this new American Dream of fastidiously monitoring our intake and expenditure of energy units is really just another big distraction from the real problem, which is to say:

3. Wouldn't it be cool if guys like this didn't feel like they had to join the Army?
Raise your hand if you don't have issues with your ratio of control:security! Okay, so all Steve wants to do is be disciplined and focused and work hard and feel a sense of control over his conduct, but he craves structure and order and job security, so where does he look? The only place that really offers that anymore: the Army. They find out about all the meds and discharge him. So he goes to school and immerses himself in studies and people think he's weird at first but things get better and suddenly he gets a Dean's award and later, when his grad school plans get derailed for lack of funding in his program, looks to the prison system for a job pursuing his passion for (the irony!) rehabilitation. But it's kind of hellish and if you're even one minute late you have to start back at day one (the irony!) of training and one day he gets pulled over and that's the end of his whole life. And you can probably relate to that, because I remember being in my early twenties and full of energy and brain power I just wanted to put to use somewhere, and no job prospects. Yeah, looking for a job blows, especially at that age, because at that age all they can judge is how you sell yourself, and any decent twentysomething knows he doesn't have much to sell quite yet. Oh yeah, and so you intern, maybe with the "understanding" there's a job waiting upon the passage of some unclear but finite period of time, or you temp, or you sign on as an independent contractor for three months with no benefits and at some low point if it's peacetime it probably occurs to you that the Air Force might be less soul-wearying than teaching. Because you just can't face the reality of all those kids out there with their fat parents and big cars and psychiatric meds and credit card debt that they can maybe pay off by enlisting.

4. Self-professed libertarian Nietzsche devotees should not derive their greatest pleasure from tutoring dumbasses and rehabilitating prisoners, but somehow, EVERYDAY IN THIS COUNTRY, they totally do.
"[Steve] is extremely patient and calm when tutoring students who are stressed out about statistics and the high standards imposed on them. He has the highest ethical and academic standards, he thinks abstractly and analytically, and relates at an emotional and empathetic level with others,” is what Steve's professor wrote about what a nice good tutor he was. And when he got his job at the prison, it was demoralizing because he didn't feel like he was helping enough. And yet! Steve’s favorite author is Nietzsche. The superman, above moral code. Only the weak let themselves be ruled by morality. "Weak," of course, is what Americans generally are, which brings me to a little thing I learned recently about the Serenity Prayer, which we tend to associate with admitting we are powerless before the temptations of alcohol, but actually it originated in the thirties somewhere and is generally credited to a guy whose main claim to fame at the time was being a prominent Christian socialist. In other words, it's the economy, stupid! You can blame your demons or your addictions or your horror films or your personality disorders or your hundred pounds of excess flab, but really the hardest thing is living in an economy that profits so handsomely from reminding you that you have all this control when the little control will you actually do possess is too busy plotting your next tattoo.

5. Guns need to be banned duh!
When Steve was 16, some girl told everyone he had a small penis. But he was obsessed with guns before that. Then in college he wrote a paper called (No) Crazies With Guns, advocating a ban on gun sales to people on anti-psychotic medications. Here's a crazy idea: what about a ban on gun sales, period? Of course, second amendment defenders would argue to retain the right to defend themselves against such crazies, but maybe for once we should listen to the crazy person telling us he's the one most qualified to tell you that you can learn all sorts of things from statistics but you can't much control whether you become one.

A Portrait Of The School Shooter As A Young Man [Esquire]

Politically Incorrect, Women/ Feminism-Part 1 [YouTube]
Politically Incorrect, Women/ Feminism-Part 2 [YouTube]

MOE: OMG THANK GOD YOU'RE BACK HUGE DAY HUGE DAY. How's your car? And happy new year
MEGAN: happy new year! and, it's not in great shape
i barely passed the inspection i was supposed to have had done last month and, given that cops drive my my place constantly, i didn't want a ticket for a lapsed inspection on top of everything else
MOE: Oh my god srsly. This one time when I lived in LA I was driving around and got, like, arrested for having a missed inspection. Or not arrested but they insisted on towing my car. Whatever. CARS. I hear those come in handy in places like IOWA.
MEGAN: almost as useful as tractors!
MOE: We have like nineteen minutes but annoying michael moore non-endorsement of anyone out. He likes Hillary but she refused to be interviewed by him for Rolling Stone so he doesn't like her. He likes Kucinich but Kucinich is endorsing Obama. He doesn't like Obama because he "doesn't think Wall Street is such a bad place" although that's sort of unsourced. He likes Edwards because he fell hook line and sinker for that fucking "corporate greed" line, which is admittedly a good line, but corporate greed is directly responsible for why John Edwards has made so much $$$$ suing corporations that he can now lavish buying votes in Iowa which he has been doing for the past four years.
MEGAN: At least he's not endorsing Ron Paul?
Also, Hillary Clinton is the love of Michael Moore's life? Way to beat the charges that you traffic in hyperbole, Michael
MOE: Ugh the statement bothered me so much. For one thing, insurance companies are really nowhere near as evil as pharmaceutical companies, they're just an easier target.
And seriously, corporations are not inherently greedy but, ehhhhh, that's another story I guess. Did you read To Be Young And In Love With Ron Paul??? I skimmed.
MEGAN: It doesn't surprise me that they smell bad?
Wait, I'm still skimming? They can't drink, toke or fuck? They're really just high on life?

MOE: Yeah they're total losers now I understand why you hate them in other news what REALLY SERIOUSLY REALLY FUCKING BOTHERS ME about Michael Moore, back to Michael Moore — who I love, by the way — but this statement:

Sen. Obama has a big heart, and that heart is in the right place. Is he electable? Will more than 50% of America vote for him? We'd like to believe they would. We'd like to believe America has changed, wouldn't we?

"A black candidate doesn't want to look like he's only a black candidate," the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, who ran for president in 2004, said in an interview about Mr. Obama. "If he overidentifies with Sharpton, he looks like he's only a black candidate. A white candidate reaches out to a Sharpton and looks like they have the ability to reach out. It looks like they're presidential. That's the dichotomy."

11 minutes
MOE: I forgot about Tawana. That just made me think of Tawana Iverson. That was her name right? Allen's wife. And her weird fruity cousin who made up all this shit about how he was a wifebeater. And how the Philly cops bought it hook, line and sinker. Because Iverson was an ungrateful thug who didn't go to practice. And yeah they were racist, but not irredeemably racist. A lot of black folks thought Iverson was a nogood thugpunk whatever too. And I dunno, I personally think Iverson just had some demons; he was a really interesting wiry little dude who would have been happier playing in the days of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, back when basketball was a true team sport, with honor etc. etc., before the nine-figure sneaker contract he got bc little kids identified w. his realness and little kids had no way to really understand that buying a hundred dollar pair of sneakers is the ultimate way to express one's realness. I'm going off the rails now, but I think the thing that Barack Obama understands that Michael Moore does not is that no one is irredeemably racist. Or greedy. Even corporations. We are all at some level complicit in the system that got us here and the failure is of government to provide an adequate balance to all of it. There is no ENEMY.
MEGAN: The enemy is us? Yeah, that seems about right.
MOE: I mean, if I learned anything from The Devil Wears Prada it's that not even Anna Wintour is the enemy.
MEGAN: Because she brought turquoise back? I'm cool with that. I look nice in blue.
MOE: Ooooh, that reminds me, on New Years I made a frantic shopping trip to Urban Outfitters and I bought a dress with COLORS. I don't really wear colors. But it was on sale.
MEGAN: How very un-New York of you. Virginia must've rubbed off on you.
MOE: I know, right? And I saw my friend Susie last night, who used to be the Beijing correspondent at TIME and is now taking time off to, like, go to SCHOOL and learn new things and shit. And I remembered that living in a society where everyone wears the same fucking thing in the same drab colors... I mean, I might be okay with that, but most people get really bored by socialism.
MEGAN: Socialism, and winter.

Let's see! Both Sicko and Paris are reflections of the side-effects of a system that has swallowed two many years of the juvenile ideology that the market is a fair and efficient and virtuous thing. Sometimes the market fucks up! How else to explain the absurd amount of intelligent manpower dedicated to covering the nonevents of the life of a total retard like Paris? The hundreds of video cameras and telephoto lenses and news organizations and bloggers and... it's not a misappropriation of resources on the scale of, say, the Iraq War, but you see what I'm getting at. At some point the American economy has to stop rewarding people simply for being pretty and hateful and making dudes want to fuck you! At some point it has to look out for its citizens and pay for their hospital visits. Because that is what grown-up countries do.

If nothing else Paris has always consistently been blond and tan and vacant and materialistic and selfish. She upheld the beauty ideal I learned from Barbie and Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs and the notion of the rational homo economicus I learned from Adam Smith. (Which is to say, Adam Smith, Wikipedia entry of.) Paris is what a real hot girl tries to look like and how a real hot girl is taught to act.

And as many of us know, across much of the land, non-heiresses who look like Paris Hilton become pharmaceutical sales reps. Pharmaceutical sales reps canvass the country in short skits and company cars doling out free Viagra and sometimes blowjobs to doctors. No, really. They also bring them candy, notebooks, pizza, beer, wine, money, furniture, vacations, and a weird form of reliable companionship. They are paid a salary and get commissions on the number of prescriptions their target doctors write.

Doctors play along with this because their lives kind of suck. They bought into some semblance of job security when they signed up for four years of medical school, but their days are spent haggling or hiring people to haggle with patients' insurance companies. Balancing the correct number of treatments and procedures and hospital days to maximize the reimbursement a doctor gets on a patient he or she is treating can be a high art. Meanwhile doctors' own insurance, covering the malpractice, usually costs somewhere in the six figures annually. And so it has become popular for those in the medical profession to take freebies from — and throw "bones" to — pharma reps in the form of unnecessary prescriptions, in much the same way it's become popular for them to seek out specialties in which they can avoid insurance. Hence: Pillhead.

Hence: That $65 bottle of alcohol dependence pills I didn't need, to accompany the still patent-protected $85 bottle of name-brand amphetamines I use to cope with this job, which ought to provide health benefits but I still can't figure out the fucking paperwork.

Also hence: Implants!

For years the pharma reps have been worrying about/waiting to pounce on Sicko, and clucking away on their message boards over who among them Michael Moore would mock relentlessly on his film. (I read pharma message boards sometimes, for the sophomoric humor and funny porn.) They'll be disappointed to learn Moore didn't pay them much mind in his film. When he dwells, it's on the American system's more woebegone victims and various European systems' more photogenic and charmed beneficiaries. He almost ignores the pill-making industry entirely, possibly because it's big enough to fill another movie, but mostly because he's not trying to make a comprehensive (or unbiased or, ahem, prescriptive film; he's mainly, as usual, trying to rise above ideology and appeal to Americans' latent long-forgotten sense of decency. Decent citizens, in Moore's eyes, don't object to paying slightly higher taxes for a benefit all humans should have. And some pharma reps, what do you know, are decent human beings:

OP here- former Area manager, national manager, blah blah blah, lots of background in pharmaceuticals .....there is a reason that the feds, Michael Moore and the public in general are getting more militant....the system is breaking down...driven by greed... You can quote Adam Smith, Marx, the PMA, and the AMA...It's of no importence. The economy of America can no longer afford our present system...It's really that simple.

The same could be said for this pop culture we have. Where in the past, my relationship with Paris Hilton had been merely transactional — giving her hits got me hits — the moment she screamed out for her mommy in the courtroom (a scream I didn't actually hear, but it seemed to disturb Greta Van Susteren) the story turned into, well, an actual story. After years of consistent, unabashed, on-message vapidness, Paris gave us a desperate, unscripted, and for once unprofitable moment. Here was a spoiled idiot who really really really did not want to go back to jail, despite the fact that no way was any publisher going to cough up the rumored million dollar advance for a prison diary boasting two days in prison. The idea that she was legitimately afraid, or addicted, or depressed, or capable of feeling anything other than the rational greed of Economic Man, was somehow hopeful. Maybe one of these days, one felt, she would grow the fuck up. In the meantime, we could stop paying such close attention to her and maybe grow up ourselves.

Because when our insurance drops us as a patient once we come down with cervical cancer, crying out for Mommy is... well, our mommy isn't Kathy Hilton.

• Toxic bachelors with toxic butts! Whereas George Clooney gets the runs when visiting Africa, Justin Timberlake gets major gas when in Europe. Poor Jessica Biel. [TheSun]
  
• Ellen Barkin is really slumming it. The actress is hooking up with professional scumbag and emosogynist Ralph Fiennes. [Page Six]
  
• Oh man: How we would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Mary Kate & Ashley professed their love for Bob Dylan to his face. [Rush & Molloy, 3rd item]

• Knocked Up's Katherine Heigl is getting married this December. [Rush & Molloy, 10th item]
• Shocker! A married male movie star is hitting on other women! [Gatecrasher, 6th item]
• PETA calls Sicko director Michael Moore a hypocrite because he eats meat. [Scoop]
• Paris Hilton's trash is up for sale on Ebay... and no one's buying. [USAToday]

The View [ABC]
Star Parker [Wikipedia]

• Because the continent of Africa is not enough, Bono has founded a nonprofit to ensure that our next president makes poverty a key item on his (or her!) agenda. Seriously, is there anything bigger than this guy's heart? Besides maybe his collection of "funky" sunglasses? [CNN]
  
• Female inmates in Florida reach out to fellow jailbird sister Paris, bearing beauty tips (that veer heavy on the Crystal Light reliance. Maybe because it has the word "crystal" in it.) [ABC News]
  
• Jaime Lee Curtis is thisclose to taking her beef with Kathy Hilton and her whiny daughter what's-her-name-the-one-in-jail outside. [HuffPo]
  
• And SPEAKING of incarcerated women, Gloria Allred has appeared on the scene with a client she claims was — holy itshay! — not treated so nice, compared to Paris. [TMZ]
  
• Since Karl Rove et al can't bust filmmaker Michael Moore on charges of, like, being a counter-revolutionary running dog, they instead hope to get him for that cigar run to Cuba. Uh, wasn't that guy supposed to be some shrewd genius of public manipulation? Does this really go down in the red states? Really, we're curious. [USA Today]

• Why we don't ride roller coasters. [CNN]
• Sex offenders: younger, more violent. This would affect us more if we ever left our houses, but for the rest of you, be safe, and maybe carry mace? [CNN]
• Two U.S. casaulties identified. [DoD]

It's a Barbara-heavy clip show this week, because I feel like we should cherish every second we have with her, since she could be leaving us any week now. I don't mean that she's gonna die (although she is knocking on 80), it's just that they might sign a new co-host to The View soon, and then we'll be back to only being graced with Barbara's presence, and her pervy mind, one or two days a week.

Oprah was pretty awesome this week. She had a show about tolerance, on which she interviewed a former Nazi skinhead and his new friend, a homosexual whom he'd beaten up 26 years earlier. She also featured some star-studded interviews with Bono, author Cormac McCarthy, and Michael Moore, who btw, is turning into a butch lesbian.

Nora Ephron, Geena Davis and Diahann Carroll were on the couch discussing how nice, but ultimately shitty aging is. But if I look like Diahann Carroll when I'm 71, I don't think I'd be all that bothered by the process.
Seriously! 71! Can you believe that? Black don't crack, for real.

Speaking of crack...
I'm having major withdrawal issues with no new Tyra episodes. The reruns are functioning as my methadone right now. Check out the clip we posted about the rerun this week where Tyra interviews a lady with a smelly crotch disease that keeps her trapped in her home.

It seems like Kathy Griffin is the front runner for this co-hosting gig on The View. She's been on four times in the last month—three of which have been in the last two weeks since Ro left. I could live with her as a replacement. Her interactions with Babs are terrific and she seems to make Elisabeth incredibly uncomfortable, which is a plus.

Sherri Shepherd guest co-hosted again this week, and holy crap, I hate her so. I've talked about it before.

She started running her mouth off about God and stuff, which is fine, whatevs, but then she started getting into the whole Creationism thing. I am completely baffled by people who refuse to believe in evolution, and dismiss all irrefutable scientific facts. Sherri said, "I absolutely do not believe that we came from primates." Like she was offended by the idea. She seems to think that Darwin implies that a monkey pushed a human out of its vagina one day, and that's how we came to be. Idiot!

Babs laid into her with that. She asked Sherri if she ever read Darwin or if she understands the theory of evolution. Of course Sherri said no. And then Babs was like, "Well, you ought to educate yourself and read the texts because you have a child now, so you should know these things." LOVE HER!

Furthermore, Oprah never uses her medical insurance anymore because once after getting blood tests done she later saw a screaming headline in a rag, she said, with the headline, "Oprah tests negative for AIDS"

• She checks into hotels under the alias "Billie Jo McAllister." But probably not anymore!
• She's going to Africa. And so, apparently, are lots of other celebrities! So many that Vanity Fair has found twenty of them for one of those huge massive celebrity clusterfuck covers on which they always save all the black people for inside the gatefold!
• Some guy's sister thought the Michael Moore movie — It was screened for guests on the show! With complimentary popcorn! — was really good, and she's totally a nurse from North Carolina whose sister is a pharmaceutical sales rep so she was bound to take issues with it. Random, we know! But we were a little weirded out when we heard that Michael Moore was making the point that health care in Cuba is better than here. Isn't there a country in the European Union that could sort of better illustrate that point? Like maybe every single one? Anyway, what we're saying is that it's good to know Southerners are feeling it, you know? Like maybe the terrorists HAVEN'T won?
• No gum allowedin Oprah's studio, and if you are in Oprah's studio audience and you need to cough, you are supposed to alert an usher who will DISPENSE A COUGH DROP. Uh, yeah, like, Virgo much, Oprah?

Oprah Pays Cash For All Her Medical Procedures [Confessions of a Paparazzi]