Man, Tom Cruise really did not want to answer Jay Leno's questions about musical theater and Broadway. But Leno kept asking! Defensive about something, Tom?

On the Colbert Report tonight, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps confirmed the NIGHTMARE scenario Anderson Cooper only hinted at: He's letting his body go, and soon will be the trashiest Greatest Athlete Ever... ever.

John McCain will tell David Letterman tonight about how corrupt Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was a huge admirer of the former Republican presidential nominee, and planned to model his tenure on McCain's. Mission accomplished!

Greg Gutfeld, the constantly gay-panicked meathead host of Fox's late-night Red Eye show, is miffed that Fox & Friends anchor Steve Doocy won't answer his friend request.

The star of the Times piece is Michael Buckley, a fast-talking and overbearingly gay celebrity commentator — think Ted Casablanca, if Ted Casablanca lived in Connecticut. Buckley says he makes $100,000 a year on YouTube ads. Google sells the ads and splits the revenue with Buckley, as it does with other video creators it has dubbed "partners."

Paula Abdul's Tchochke-Pimping/Fan-Suicide Post Morteming World Tour landed in the Late Show hot seat last night, where Dave—a stalkee's rights activist if ever there was one—advocated on behalf of the Idol judge.

David Letterman, who was harassed by a stalker through the early 1990s, was partly serious when he told American Idol judge Paula Abdul she should sue Idol producers and Fox for toying with her and a longtime stalker, who ultimately committed suicide near Abdul's home.

JCPenney's new terrible, stupid prison ad is probably the future of advertising, sadly. It's been released as a five-minute internet video and was created by Saatchi & Saatchi, the same firm that kinda-but-not-technically created a "yay teen sex" ad for the retailer earlier this year. This seems to be the same sort of play: controversy=attention. And it's working! All Saatchi had to do this time was film some loser husbands crawling around like dogs, in a dungeon, ruled by women. (Yes, it's after the jump.)

All eyes were on Conan last night in anticipation of what, if anything, he'd say about NBC's surprise announcement that Jay Leno would upstage his long-planned ascension to The Tonight Show throne.

Conan O'Brien is considered one of the big losers of Jay Leno's decision to stay on at NBC, because Jay will eat up his audience, steal his guests, and keep him out of the spotlight. How did Conan handle the issue last night? With a simple bit involving newspapers that is way funnier than anything Jay Leno's slackjawed writing staff has ever come up with. Click to watch Conan's moral victory.

David Letterman's rivalry with Jay Leno goes back more than 15 years, to when Leno outmaneuvered Letterman to host the Tonight Show, a job Letterman deeply coveted. Now Leno has ceded the Tonight Show timeslot to Conan O'Brien (rather than fight him from ABC), and accepted to a proffer from network suits to move to 10 pm to make a (still amorphous) show 1/10th the cost of a primetime drama and less likely to be TiVoed. And Letterman isn't about to miss the chance to get in a few digs about how this makes Leno a capitulating loser. (Video after the jump.)

You have to hand it to Jimmy Fallon: He dispensed with the inevitable topic of being called a "douchebag" on the internet (by this guy apparently) very quickly, in the second "webisode" for his forthcoming Late Night. You can totally see the joke coming, but at least he's trying this time! And he's tripled the runtime to four and a half minutes. Which is plenty. Seriously, it's fine. Really. Enough. (Video after the jump.)

Ooh, the city of Chicago is seedy and corrupt again! The Chicago Tribune has gone ruined and bankrupt, giving the city a sense of anarchic lawlessness. And now the governor of Illinois (who, yes, I know, actually holds office down south in Springfield) was just arrested for some shady Chicago-style political dealings. It's like a new Depressiony gangster era all over again! And hey, a big new movie that depicts that depraved Chicago of the past (and present!) is already filming (plus a movie about Al Capone foe Eliot Ness once he moves to Cleveland). It certainly won't be the first film of its kind, though. After the jump take a look at clips of some past films that illustrate the gritty Windy City of yesteryear, and offer us a vision of the city's downward spiral that's begun anew.

Gloria Vanderbilt's youngest son has been using his mother as a foil since he appeared on the Tonight Show with her at age three. Anderson Cooper more recently brought his mother onto CNN to passive-aggressively scold him on Mother's Day and to provide the silver fox some sensible, embarrassing advice on the occasion of his 40th birthday. So when Cooper recently declined to invite his mother on a holiday trip to Egypt — "No! I wasn't going to take my mom," he told a befuddled David Letterman — she was ruthless in her revenge. You might not acknowledge that's what's going on, Anderson, but it's plain as day to the rest of us. (We're speaking of the revenge, of course.) Video after the jump

Expectations were low for Jimmy Fallon's first "Webisode," and the former Saturday Night Live giggler sure met them! Fallon was sporting a stained t-shirt; he couldn't stop throwing up his hands or touching his head like a spastic spider monkey; the 1:36 runtime was far short of the 5 minute target; over that brief period there were no fewer than eight edited cuts of Fallon on the same sound stage — and a preview of the end of the clip, since it was such a long time away.

· "So tell me, Brandy-girl. Did you watch your brother's sex tape?" "Ew! Tyra! No! Did you?!" "No! Well, some of it." It's funnier when you watch it.
· The woman who walked around El Coyote refilling your water glasses has left the restaurant for donating $150 to Prop 8, making the business safe for your gay-wedding-reception dollars once again. Justice is served! We're so glad the person holding this tasteful sign spoke up for all of us.
· Bettie Page is in intensive care following a heart attack.
· Catherine Hardwicke's been having a bad day, so we suppose we don't want to pile on by informing you she's also the person responsible for this monstrosity. Oops—we just did.
· The Academy reversed its The Dark Knight best original score consideration disqualification: A TDK sweep is again a possibility!
· How did they make this toy monster truck rally look so much like real life? Probably because this is real life made to look like a toy monster truck rally.

This weekend's John Malkovich-hosted SNL featured a great many virable moments, if you'll indulge us the coinage of an incredibly annoying e-jective (make that two incredibly annoying coinages), but we'll set aside the toe-tapping pleasures of interslack ejaculation for a moment to focus instead on the work of Fred Armisen. Always a strong SNL soldier, Armisen's star has dimmed of late for what has been deemed a substandard Obama impression—indeed, by Obama himself.

There are two Paula Abduls: The first, a fierce and focused businesswoman, overseeing a growing multimedia empire bolstered by her stratospheric visibility on American Idol. The other is tanked, and the one we actually care about. You rarely get just one or the other, mind you, but instead a glorious spectrum of increasingly blurry...how do you say...shades of Paula.

Though David Letterman's held a late-night career for almost thirty years, he's rarely had as many consecutive buzz moments as he did in 2008. Whether he was expertly dissecting reality show stars, driving the nervous star of Twilight to a pipe for solace, or launching the full-scale Letterman/McCain War of '08, the ornery talk show host never lost his ability to fluster guests into their weirdest possible publicity stops. Thanks to video editor Richard Blakeley and intern Stacey Fitzgerald, we've assembled eight of the most magic moments in one clip. Vera Farmiga, don't fret: there's always next year.