Click to viewMost venture capitalists I know are deeply insecure. Why? Because they're not entrepreneurs. Yes, it's true: The Valley's moneymen have a founder fetish. And the worst of the lot are the former lawyers, who never did anything even remotely resembling building a company, but retain the lawerly suspicion that they're smarter than their companies. I mention this because I've stumbled across August Capital partner David Hornik's intro video from The Lobby, his invite-only Hawaiian vacation masquerading as a conference.In the video, which he posted publicly to his personal blog, Hornik puts on a series of baseball caps — he wears many hats, yageddit? — from his portfolio of startups. A song plays: "You're my superhero, my knight in shining armor." Venture capitalist to the rescue! Hornik's wife and kids also appear. He's a family man! At first, I wondered if Hornik had actually made Lobby attendees sit down and watch this video en masse. Not so, I'm told; instead, it was preloaded on the free iPods everyone at The Lobby received, along with other self-introduction videos. The Lobby's schtick is that it has no formal schedule of presentations; instead of sitting in a room ignoring the video while Twittering, attendees can simply ignore the program outright, as it sits unviewed on an iPod's hard drive. I don't know what's worse: the image of Hornik inflicting his egofest on a captive audience, or the pathetic vision of him wandering around his own conference, wondering how many actually bothered to watch it. And that's why Hornik's a funder, not a founder. He has enough ego to make this video — but not enough ego to force it on people. He lacks the chutzpah an entrepreneur needs — and I suspect he knows it.

Why else would we even go to the movies or turn on the television? Okay, there are a few other reasons, but mostly it's the sex and violence. So. What are you favorite scenes of people getting it on or having it out? Or both at once? Obviously, keep it tasteful and SFW. I'll get us going after the jump.

This is certainly a scary time in America, what with the racist McCain/Palin fans and a liberal response that is still cringing and frightened to offend no matter what crazy shit the Wingers spew. But America has had scary times before—times when racists and rednecks and bullies and other pieces of shit went all out to stop the spread of progress and new ideas and common decency. And we have always stuck it to the man, at least in movies and TV. My opener after the jump.

Season two of everyone's favorite misogyny-fest, Mad Men, ends next week. But good news! AMC just ordered a third. In the meantime, you can't have a TV drama about a bunch of women-hating he-men without women for them to hate. And what are those women like? Video intern Marian Lorraine has compiled the ladies at their super retro bitchiest. Click through for awesomeness!

· Who will keep Madonna's mustache in her bitter divorce battle with Guy Ritchie? · Not enough break-up drama? Can we interest you in a Grazer split? What about David Duchovny and Tea Leoni? · Why didn't late-night pitbull David Letterman pin down John McCain for trying to grab Barack Obama's ass in this week's debate? · Were you born under a Grazer sign? If so, have we got the horoscope for you! · So which is it: Is Dakota Fanning a "diva from hell" or just extra-dedicated to her tween craft? · How many stars has Ben Lyons fucked anyway? · Who has the better cure for autism: Dr. Denis Leary or cleavage-therapy pioneer Jenny McCarthy? · One way or another, will somebody at NBC please put Tina Fey back on the air already? · Can any memoir ever really justify Marcia Brady's shocking, sudden candor? · Have you mailed your last-ever fan letter to Ringo Starr yet? · Which is the more proper artistic tribute to Angelina Jolie: A milk-spurting mall fountain or photos of hamburger-noshing? · From the C-word to the F-word, can you believe the plunging standards on cable news these days? · Is it Spock or is it Katie Holmes? And how did fighting with William Shatner become J.J. Abrams's life, anyway? · Have you checked out our helpful new TV listings, "Watch Tivo Kill"? Well? What are you waiting for?

Layoff, shmayoff –- I was 12 years old when the Loma Prieta quake hit 19 years ago. Sunny afternoon. An average Thursday and no reason to suspect anything was wrong. I had just gotten out of the shower and was about to get dressed when the shaking hit. It was far, far worse than I’d ever felt before. I dove for the doorjamb right about the same time my Dad appeared in another doorway. No time to throw pants on. I had to go commando through the worst quake in Bay Area history.

Having already made it clear that he was less than amused with Andy Samberg's take on him as an amateur goat-whisperer from the mean streets of Mass (an impersonation we've hailed as pure genius—but Marky, if you're reading this, we hated it!), Mark Wahlberg upped the stakes considerably on a Jimmy Kimmel Live! appearance last night.After Kimmel ran a clip from the offending sketch, the actor—in a studied bit of business borrowed from any number of Scorsese-DeNiro collaborations—fastidiously plucked a stray thread off his dress shirt as he pledged to "crack [the Hot Rod star's] big fucking nose." The only thing better than a celebrity feud is a celebrity feud with lightly anti-Semitic undertones and the potential of skull fragmentation. Still, we think his tough-guy bark is worse than his bite, and Samberg needn't start truly panicking until Wahlberg pledges, in a clever twist on one of Samberg's greatest hits, to deliver the young comic his own nuts in a box.

Are you one of those crazy nuts who thinks there's no difference between the parties? Who thinks maybe that a small, elite ruling class just rearranges the nameplates every couple years to keep the rubes happy? Who suspects perhaps that the English Royal Family, along with the Illuminati, run a massive conspiracy to keep American political power in the hands of a secretive class of lizard aliens? Well then you certainly won't be dissuaded from your beliefs by the annual Al Smith dinner, an annual white tie affair at which the supposedly bitter rivals for the presidency swap funny funny jokes at each others' expense. DC has like three of these things every year too. Because partisanship is just a distraction to keep you from learning the truth! The truth that is exposed every year only by the cameras of C-SPAN! Oh, John McCain killed it. He was really funny! His speech is attached. Barack Obama's speech was actually pretty great too, his is after the jump.

The Sun tracked down video of Madonna's mean reference to her husband as "emotionally retarded" at a Boston concert Wednesday night Harsh. Worse yet are the lyrics to the song she was dedicating, "Miles Apart:" "“I’m alright, don’t be sorry, but it’s true/When I’m gone, you realise/That I’m the best thing to happen to you.. I guess we’re at our best when we’re miles away/So far away, so far away.” If Madonna timed her divorce to maximize publicity for her tour and new film Filth and Wisdom, as the conspiracy theorists have it, her instincts were sound.

Here's a preview of John McCain on Late Show tonight. He told host David Letterman, "I screwed up," then laughed and did a little "gee whiz" shrug, and made an awkward joke about being tortured in Vietnam. "What can I say?!" the Republican presidential nominee asked. Um, maybe give a reason why you lied about having to fly back to DC when you bailed on Letterman's show last time? Apparently that wasn't in the cards. Letterman later hit McCain for paling around with Watergate burglar and would-be firebomber G. Gordon Liddy, even though McCain has slammed Barack Obama for an arguably more distant relationship with 1960s radical William Ayers. By the end of the segment McCain appeared to be in full retreat on the Ayers issue. Witness McCain statement at the end of the clip after the jump (along with more bizarre face-pulls).

· We think we got most of the essentials out in the headline. Oh—it's on The Tonight Show. Enjoy. · Oh. Ma. Ga. After what seemed like an eternity of the same "Under Construction" placeholder card featuring an unflattering shot of Britney in a hard hat eating cheesy fries, BritneySpears.com has finally relaunched. · What is e-MANcipate!? "e-MANcipate! is a project to accelerate the acceptance of male pantyhose as a regular clothing item." Even truck drivers are getting in on the act! · Christina is the #1-selling Down Syndrome Doll. · Whooaaaaaa: The Sunnnnnnn.

The Daily Show's Rob Corddry created a new web series for TheWB.com (it lives! Online! So there, The CW) called Children's Hospital. We find it hard to believe they're actually producing this thing, but we've been assured by reps from Warners' online arm Studio 2.0 that about a dozen episodes are on the way. Based on the trailer above—packed with an impressively pedigreed cast including The State's Ken Marino and David Wain, Jason Sudeikis, Ed Helms and Megan Mullally—this thing might actually be worth sneaking in before lunch while your boss isn't looking.After all, any project that manages to squeeze the two lines "50 kids! Badly injured! Broken bones! Some of them retarded, and they're coming here!" and a "I'm challenging you to a Healing Power of Laughter-Off" into one 90-second trailer is worth a shot. And premiering the show on the web provides the added benefit of giving representatives from the American Association of People with Disabilities no specific geographic location at which to stage their angry, R-word protests.

Click to viewGoogle shareholders, here's something to watch as you wait for the company to announce its earnings: Your investment dollars at work throwing a party for the opening of Google's downtown Austin office. "The Googletinis were flowing and the buffet featured Hill Country rattlesnake cakes with pistachio nut crust and lobster risotto stuffed mushrooms," reports the Austin American-Statesman. Then again, it does house some engineers working on AdWords, the only thing at Google actually generating enough revenue to be worth mentioning in a quarterly earnings call.

The dirty secret of YouTube's Chad Hurley: Despite selling an online-video startup whose slogan is "Broadcast Yourself" to Google for $1.65 billion, he's still desperately uncomfortable in front of a camera. Google PR's media training has only turned the millionaire's awkward mannerisms into a hilariously stiff folksiness: "Having the opportunity to sit down with some press, communicate to them the deals we've been working on, meet with partners." Is he consciously imitating our tongue-tied president? Or rather, Will Ferrell's Saturday Night Live version of Dubya? No: I think he's just doing a bad impression of Chad Hurley.

Hey look! That little Bill O'Reilly-impesonating kid is back! This time he's bellowing at my poor bloated Masshole homeboy Barney Frank. The sheer rage that this little fellow is able to tap into is a bit disturbing. Does the wee ankle-biter know what he's parodying, I mean really? Taking on the living, breathing, wall-rattling avatar of right wing dimbulbery is a pretty heady task for a nine year old. Soldier on, brave spirit. And eat your vegetables.

You know what is weird and fascinating and taking up a great deal of our time today? Watching old episodes of The Daily Show from Election 2000. Jon Stewart was so young! And marginally less outraged all the time! (Though it is quite clear that the 2000 election shifted him with surprising speed from the sarcastic MTV alt-comedian of the '90s to the sarcastic outraged cataloger of horrors that he is today.) (Also Stephen Colbert was an amazing performer even then.) So check up on the depressing third debate between Al Gore and George Bush! Or watch with us the prescient "negative campaigning" debate between Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert, after the jump. And weep for your lost youth! Click to view

Though she's a newcomer to the internet, Tina Brown has spent a lifetime honing her ability to self-promote. Which is how the former Vanity Fair editor seemed to have instinctively grasped what was expected of her last night on the Colbert Report: sell the sizzle, not the steak when it comes to her new internet venture, the Daily Beast — and remember that no points are deducted for going a bit over the top, per the self-parodying bloviations of host Stephen Colbert. When it came time to discuss the Beast's central role in getting Christopher Buckley fired from National Review, Brown couldn't just say the incident was exciting — no, she had to claim it turned the whole office into a party! Lest anyone think she was joking, Brown again mentioned how much the firing thrilled her a few breaths later. Brown, who has herself done away with plenty of magazine writers, may be learning the nuts and bolts of the Web on the job, but her gleeful, shameless bloodlust may yet reveal her as a natural for the medium. For proof, click the video icon to watch the attached clip.

Diablo Cody—Patron Saint of Former Strippers Who Did It Just for the Experience but Ultimately Aspired to Something More—is the writer of The United States of Tara, a new Showtime series previewed in the promotional package above. Starring Toni Colette and based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, much is riding on Tara and its tale of an American mom who just happens to suffer from dissociative identity disorder. Diablo defends her lighthearted treatment of the illness as such:

We'll start out by saying we've never really been a Dancing with the Stars person, just like we've never been a cat or coconut person. Not that we aren't amenable to garish talent competitions—but there's something so pungently desperate about this particular affair, so, "Look at me world! I've found my Z-list celebrity purpose again!" that it manages to exceed even our vast capacity for brain-smoothing frivolousness. That said—what a show!It kicked off with the familiar kaleidoscopic opener, the viewing of which lulls the audience into a light trance, rendering them pliable to host Tom Bergeron's kinky sexual bidding whenever he utters the word "Bruno." That was followed by a series of political attack spoof ads, the twelfth as funny as the first, plus an encore performance of Lance Bass's sultry Tango del Eyeliner. Sadly, it was Rocco DiSpirito who danced with Death last night, its rhinestone-encrusted scythe falling on the comely chef who ultimately proved incapable of locating the soul inside a samba the way he does his Mama's Meatballs. At least he can go home with his head held high, knowing Mario Batali would never have been able to pull off that fuchsia sleeveless number.

The sad thing about tonight's debate is that the candidates will be seated, at a table, so we won't get to see McCain wandering around again. But, you know, he will still be speaking, so we imagine we'll get a couple moments along the lines of the ones collected in this video. It's McCain's Lovable Senior Moments, like when he called a questioner "you little jerk" (funny!) and when Joe Lieberman had to whisper in his ear the difference between Sunnis and Shiites (hilarious!). Intern Stephanie Dooley compiled the clip, so please send your accusations of terrible ageism to her. (Or just get over it!)