Silver-maned CNN heartthrob Anderson Cooper's New Year's Resolution was to "blog more." And blog more he has, taking time during the commercial breaks of his nightly CNN program to join in the online discussion of the events of the day. But, as he explained last night to Conan O'Brien, this allows his "stalkers" to find him. Stalkers like the woman—"clearly deranged," in the words of Cooper—who crashed his book signing and made him take a crazy letter. Then, King of Comedy-style, she ended up in his waiting limo. Thanks to blogging, and to bloggers like us, and like him, stalking Anderson Cooper is apparently not that hard. It's easier than stalking Conan, as we learn in the anecdote's surprise twist ending. Full clip attached. [NBC]

As many do for the Super Bowl, I find the ads on American Idol more interesting than the show. It's among the priciest prime-time real estate around. Last year, ads cost $600,000 per 30-second spot. So it raised my eyebrows to see Apple purchasing multiple spots for the MacBook Air in tonight's broadcast. I counted two in just the last half-hour. Did Apple shell out more than $1 million for a couple of ads?

Yesterday afternoon, while I was not watching Be Kind Rewind, I wondered, why don't they just make an entire film that's a homemade version of a real one? That seems easier. In fact, that was done to Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark in the magical pre-YouTube age of 1982-88 by three 12-18 year olds — that is, the kids started shooting the film in sequence at age 12, and by the last scenes they were several years older, so they age during the movie, which apparently is not the only reason this feature-length shot-for-shot remake of Raiders is entirely watchable, by complete strangers, for more than art/camp value. That's what every news report (one came out every few months since Spielberg discovered the film in 2002) says. CLIPS GALORE, and a link to the entire remake, below.

Say your prayers, eat your vitamins and vote for Barack Obama! Or so sayeth Hulk Hogan, who suplexed and then leg-dropped an unsuspecting Clinton camp on Jimmy Kimmel Live by pledging his allegiance and his vote to Obama. And although our experience in the art of campaigning begins and ends with our run for Student Council back in high school (which, we might add, was successful ... three times!), we're pretty darn sure that the Obama ticket could really benefit by awarding the Hulkster a spot on to their roster. Perhaps this is finally the way that Obama can silence the critics who claim he lacks experience in foreign diplomacy!

"Watch the sex tape Gene doesn't want you to see," GenesSecret.com promises. The website purportedly hosts a NSFW sex tape of Kiss frontman Gene Simmons. Leave aside the question of whether anyone wants to see Simmons in flagrante. Does Simmons himself really object to the site? Nothing revives the Q factor of an aging rocker like a bit of scandal. Since he's no longer recording, just touring, he doesn't have a skittish label to appease. And thanks to the Internet, he doesn't have to rely on the tabloids to get his name out. Welcome to the age of DIY career makeovers. Is it really Simmons? Judge for yourself from these excerpts in which his face is most visible:

Ah, no one says it like Tim Gunn, revered style swami and champion of dandy diplomacy, who can tell you everything you need to know about the dumpy hunchbackwear you've got on with nothing more than a fist pressed to his lips and a deep furrowing of his Sharpei-like brow. If anyone can get away with skewering the sartorial challenges facing our past and present leaders, it is he. Appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Gun was utterly unwowed by what was going on below President Bush's ankles: Taken separately, a pair of black Crocs and Air Force One socks might work, but there was virtually no excuse for wearing the two together (short of perhaps currying favor with the German Chancellor at the next G7 Summit).

All Hong Kong actor Edison Chen wanted was to get his MacBook repaired. Instead, he's on the front page of all the papers, apologizing for a celebrity sex scandal. See, Chen used his MacBook to store intimate photos of himself and Hong Kong starlets. In the clip above, CNN has footage of the offending MacBook. When Chen took it in for repairs, store workers uploaded the photos to the Internet. And now they're so ubiquitous China has censured popular search engine Baidu because certain keyword searches "have become the platform for displaying and spreading these filthy pictures."

Malcom Gladwell was on precious radio program This American Life recently, telling some stories of his earliest days of "real" journalism at the Washington Post. He apparently had a bet with a colleague to determine which of them could be the first to insert a couple amusing phrases into the venerable paper. First was "new and troubling questions," which is surely already a journalistic cliche. Following that was the more amusing "perverse and often baffling"—a harder fit, but Gladwell managed it. Of course, Gladwell, easily one of the most charming one-trick ponies in media, has been dining out on this story for a dozen years. Despite that, it upset Jossip very very much, as it raises new and troubling questions about the state of respectable journalism. Audio clip attached.

Is there any mid-February tradition more cherished than the announcement of the Dancing with the Stars cast? These dozen brave, ballroom soldiers—of wildly varying Q-ratings and coordination skills—are plucked from every conceivable branch of celebrity, thrown into chest-bearing vests and horrifying baby doll dresses, and shuffled onto a well-greased dance floor. And it's all for America's perverse, compound-fracture-curious pleasures. Revealed last night on Dance War: The Chatterbox Gaytalian Strikes Back, and repeated again this morning on GMA, the sixth season brings Dancing a higher caliber of "star" than ever:

HARDBALL with Chris Matthews pulled the ol' Osama/Obama mix-up last night. In an onscreen graphic, no less! Verbal slips are one thing, but how the hell does this make it from the graphics department to the air without anyone noticing? Is poor Chris the only person running the show? Clip below.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined egoblogger Robert Scoble and Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis for dinner last night. After, the trio took to the streets of Santa Monica for a little street racing. Scoble and Musk in a Tesla. Calacanis in a Corvette convertible. "The Tesla smoked the 'vette," Scoble reports on his blog. Jalopnik editor Ray Wert tells us this mostly speaks to Calacanis's inability to drive. Both Calacanis and Scoble took video, of course, and both streams are embedded below.

It's tough out there for Neil Patrick Harris. First, the evil geniuses behind Harold & Kumar force him to film scenes atop a sparkly unicorn. Now, those nefarious producers at PBS have cast him on Sesame Street as a character called The Shoe Fairy. After telling Conan's audience that he "loves puppets!" and misunderstanding their muffled laughs, Harris goes on to give us a sample of what those sneaky writers put in his script:

(Please forgive the lack of a "YouTube has changed the nature of modern campaigning" think piece here, as we are not Howard Kurtz.)

When you think about it, there was really nowhere else for Matthew McConaughey to go with his career besides fragrance pitchman. Having already drained Hollywood of every last romcom spec requiring frequent toplessness of its male lead, the Texan matinee idol is now veering into entirely new multi-million-dollar payout realms to further explore his torso-exposing art.

We think most of us are in agreement that Where the Wild Things Are—as far as sacred texts go, basically the Koran of childhood—was in safe hands with Spike Jonze, a filmmaker we fear may have at some point been beaten with a genius stick as hard as Kanye gets it with a shovel in his latest Jonze-helmed music video. (It bears noting that he co-wrote the screenplay with McSweeney's founder/ co-genius Dave Eggers, offering further promise that Things won't follow the same road as any number of Seussian big screen disasters.)

In this Tech Ticker segment, correspondent Sarah Lacy laughs and smiles and pitches softball questions — "Salesforce.com is going to become Siebel, and you're going to become SAP?" (Siebel was swallowed up by Oracle, while SAP is Oracle's chief rival.) The flattery is effective: Lacy lets NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson talk, and talk, and talk. He spins a tale of how his company is poised for greatness; Salesforce.com, for obscurity. And then the financials pop up on screen: Salesforce.com is profitable, unlike NetSuite, and has nearly five times NetSuite's annual revenues. A ruthless evisceration. Nelson didn't even know he was being filleted. The full video:

The Obama campaign, which of course is a cult comparable to the Manson family, is now causing people to faint. Breitbart has a string of videos (shown below) of Obama reacting to faintings at rallies. I grew up in a Pentacostal church — preachers "slaying people in the spirit" and all — and these clips took me back. I kept waiting for Obama to start speaking in tongues. Of course, anyone from my hometown church who'd be swayed by this, would also note that Obama makes a perfect antichrist.

To celebrate the return of the beard (I know), the Chicago Tribune interviewed the sketchiest bearded men they could find. "Meeting people and rubbing your fuzzies on them is an extra hello," according to one guy with a half-grown-in beard who'd just finished plucking phone numbers from a Help Wanted board. During the entire interview, the cameras center on the beards, presumably to protect the men's identities while the child molestation charges blow over. That cinematography choice takes this two-minute clip (shown below) from dumb to priceless.

There once was a land — a magical land — where a squarejawed titan named John Tesh and a leggy vixen named Mary Hart reigned supreme. Together, they blazed a pioneering trail in which the worlds of journalism and entertainment converged into 30 minutes of televised bliss each and every weeknight. But much like other creations that were born of the purest intentions (think: The Coreys, Britney Spears and Napster), copycat competitors soon entered the fray and everything quickly turned to shit.

Today, the state of celebrity infotainment is at a crossroads, a crossroads at which the likes of Harvey Levin, Billy Bush and Mark McGrath are honored as the Father, Son and Unholy Ghost of the genre. As new celeb-centric shows spring up with greater regularity than lesions on Paris Hilton's nether regions, we here at Defamer are proud to present a new weekly video feature that we are calling Dirt Sandwich. Culled together by Intrepid Defamer Videographer™ Molly McAleer, each episode will place an unforgiving spotlight on the week's lowest and highest moments (which, as you'll soon discover, are often one and the same). Enjoy!

What do you say about Mark Lisanti that doesn't instantly start sounding like pathetic gushing? Is he one of the funniest, most brilliant writers ever to put fingers to keyboard? Of that there is no doubt. Has he left a mark? Try a Godzilla-sized footprint. Working with him over the last three years has been nothing less than the creative experience of a lifetime. The best part is that beneath that mountain of talent, Mark is one of the most humble, humane, and menschy guys you will ever meet. Also: His career has only just begun.