You know when you're drunk and trying to have some sort of heated discussion about topics and you just keep repeating the same thing, slurry verbatim, over and over again? Well slogging your way through a presidential campaign is much the same! John McCain, for example, the flailing senator blown in by the desert winds of the American Southwest, is basically giving the same speech time after time. The wizards at The Daily Show, who tend to skip the mortal plane and transcend to god-like heights during election seasons, have mashed-up McCain's speech from the Republican National Convention and his most recent nü-McCain stump oratory. And they overlap almost perfectly. I'm sure the same could be said for Obama, but we're not going to harp on it because we're just so proud of him for being so articulate. Watch the clip above.

Marc Santora, the New York Times reporter who appears in ads for Dell's DigitalNomads site, says he received no compensation for the ad, which came from an interview Santora did for Big Think, a website backed by Facebook investor Peter Thiel. What appears to have happened: Dell or its ad agency, Federated Media, created the ad for Dell's DigitalNomads, using a clip from Santora's Big Think video. In a comment, Big Think cofounder Peter Hopkins says that Dell is a sponsor of his site, but the ad does not mention Big Think. (The Big Think interview was also published to YouTube, and DigitalNomads' producers embedded the clip in a blog post.) From what Santora's saying, no one asked him or the Times for permission to run the endorsement. If so, Dell could be in rather big trouble — and not just with the Times.FTC rules forbid deceptive advertising — such as an ad from Dell which suggests a New York Times reporter has endorsed its vision of mobile technology, when he hasn't. The agency also has strict rules governing endorsements, not all of which seem to have been followed here. Bottom line: Santora seems to be the victim of a sleazy new Internet-enabled advertising tactic. He does offer this amusing side note: The one time he wrote about Dell was when the computer maker's "Dude, You're Getting a Dell" spokesman was arrested on pot charges. Here's his note to us:

· Well, Cloris Leachman killed it on Dancing with the Stars last night. We'll now hand the mic over to Bruno, who has a much better way with words on such matters: "The grrrrrandma from hell has become the grrrrand duchess of lussst." · How to Beat Up Anything offers tips on pummeling Tom Hanks. You never know when that might come in handy. · Raffaello Follieri's lawyer asked that his client get three years in prison for his God-swindling crimes, adding, "To say his hopes and dreams of building a thriving business in the United States has been a disaster is an understatement...There is no danger he will ever return to this country." (Unless it's for the Oscars! He has his tux all picked out.) · Quick! What are three of your Favorite Things? Steve Martin, Meryl Streep, and Alec Baldwin you say? Well, guess what? You're about to get a Favorite Things smoothie! · Here's your sneak peek of Patrick Swayze in A&E's The Beast. You know you want it.

Why is Marc Santora, a respected war correspondent for the New York Times, appearing in ads chattering about mobile technology? Click on the ad, running on sites like VentureBeat, and you're taken to a site, DigitalNomads, which appears to be a collection of blog-filler pablum about the wonders of the wireless Internet. Buried at the bottom is a tiny disclaimer: "Powered by Dell." Dig under the ad-placement code, and you'll see that the ad is sold by Federated Media, John Battelle's online-ad network. Battelle's outfit grew infamous last summer for getting some of the bloggers for whom he sells ads to recite a sponsor's slogan. That last time, it was Microsoft.At no point does Santora mention Dell's name. But his underlying message, that new technological gear helps us all do our jobs better, certainly serves Dell's purposes. I would have thought that the strict Times ethics code would forbid such an endorsement, paid or otherwise. Why bloody the reputation of someone who's taking a bullet to get stories for the newspaper? I've asked the Times what's going on, but haven't heard back yet. Update: Marc Santora has written in to let us know he had no involvement, financial or otherwise, with the ad — which just adds to the headscratching.

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The radical ups and downs afflicting the stock market would be enough to make anyone curse a blue streak — especially Dennis Kneale, the Media and Technology Editor at CNBC. One of our eagle-eyed tipsters was kind enough to pass along this priceless (silent) moment where a split-screened Kneale reads a note that's been passed to him and drops an f-bomb that he visibly regrets, then tries to cover up with the dorkiest "Wait, am I still on camera? Nothing to see here!" face imaginable. Oliver Stone, you can thank us later.

Maureen McCormick stopped by The Today Show this morning in support of her new autobiography, Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice. We were prepared to settle in for the old former-child-star song n' dance: the typecasting, the self-loathing, the drug binging, the weight-loss reality show comebacks. What we weren't quite ready for was the McCormick Family Ugly Secret, which the actress reveals without a much-needed warning to first shoo your children out of the room: Syphilis, you see, destroyed her family.It led her grandmother to die inside the walls of an asylum, which in turn caused her grandfather to take his own life a week later. Her mother then contracted the social disease. McCormick herself—while playing the perfect all-American girl on screen—was also secretly terrified that she too had caught it, counting down her last moments of sanity as she brushed her hair an obsessive 100 times. If that hasn't ruined The Brady Bunch for you forever, perhaps you'll be just as thrilled to learn that McCormick came thisclose to losing her virginity to Barry "Greg" Williams, that she also harbored a crush on her gay father, and that a casually tossed off comment about having kissed Jan (and liking it) has led to her estrangement from Eve Plumb. Harsha, harsha, harsha! The interview: Click to view

See the problem with YouTube? You spend hours and hours making a brilliant remix, or maybe it's a mashup. While you're busy editing, the market rockets 936 points. Were you prescient, or did you miss the bus? All I know is by the time the layoffs are done, this clip won't be funny anymore.

What is The Hills? Is it comedy? Is it tragedy? Is it some Paula Vogel dream play mix of the two? I'm not quite sure. This season of the MTV Los Angeles reality gloop is continuously mystifying, as it strikes chords of utter falsehood and mundanity one minute, and then little trillings of truth and feeling the next. It's like we're teetering between two concert venues, one where KT Tunstall is warbling tonelessly, the other where Joni Mitchell is pouring her scratched heart out all over the stage. Know what I'm saying? No? Oh, who cares. We'll pick apart last night's episode after the jump. Oh to be a fly nowhere on those walls. You don't need to be, anyway! There are the cameras. There they are swirling around Audrina and her latest boy, an Australian lad named Cody or Colin or Colt or Cobalt or Coxswain or Catastrophe or Carlsbad Caverns or Crispix or something. You see, Audy is sad about Justin Bobby, the lurking on-again-off-again feet to her perpetual doormat. So she's decided to step out with other fellows, namely this boy from Oz with tattoos and who did nice things like look her in the eye and show up for scheduled dates. Just imagine! Lauren sagely knew Carburetor to be just the right Kangaroo to hop in Audrina's pouch, if only she knew that too! Instead we were brought to a windblown, sun-splashed Malibu pool party where Lauren and Whitney gazed sedately while Audrina flirted with Corbin Bernsen in the pool—all the while you could hear the distorted toot-TOOT-toot organ grinder music emanating from the various holes in her face, creating a sonogram of the grim Dark Carnival Barker Justin Bobby. Frankie Delgado, a person whose existence has never quite been satisfactorily explained to me (not even by his shambling clusterfuck of an embarrassingly quickly canceled reality series Twentyfourseven), had to jump in the mix and be all "yo, blonde girls who won't sleep with me! I mad invited Justin Bobby to Cabo, hella. Ill. Fresh. Frankie. Zima. Boyyyy. Dope. Ill. My boy's gran' paps invented Toaster Strudels, yo. Tight. Wait, check it. I seem to have misspoke previously. I illed in error. My boy's dusty old gran' paps invented frozen burritos. Siiiiick!" So what was Audrina to do? She'd already invited Carl's. Jr. to Cabo, too. Both boys couldn't come!! But Justin Bobby made her so mad and sad, she explained to Frankie and Doug, who seriously couldn't give two shits what this crazy bitch was yapping about. Audrina apparently didn't even know what she was yapping about because she later guzzled white wine with JB in what will live in infamy as the Sexiest. Hills. Scene. Ever. Well not really because it was sort of oily and gross, but Audrina took her top off and swam around coquettishly and then Justin Bobby disrobed and hopped into the pool and they mashed genitals. JB said that if he went to Cabo he'd be using his "hall pass," meaning he planned to slither his way into some senoritas' pantalones with complete impunity. Audrina meekly agreed. It was sad and decidedly unsexy and I just felt bad for everyone involved. Speaking of feeling miserable, there were Heidi and Holly and Spencer doing their hellish roundelay that no one cares about. Ron Perlman wants the girl with the big teeth out! That flat tire with the blonde hair doesn't know what to do! I don't even remember how it was resolved! Was it resolved? Did the one with no job get a job? Oh wait. None of them have jobs. I has a confuse. Spencerina showed up at some point, at that sad coffee shop that rents itself out to the reality show. Things were said. And I looked at Spencer. I really looked at him and I realized why he's so off-putting. It's because somewhere, deep under that plastic veneer, under that silly rich white boy balla bravado (why does that exist? where does that come from?), lies the tremulous beating heart of a very unhappy soul. Take another look at Spencer. As long and hard as you can stand to. You'll see what I mean. Spencer is deeply, deeply unhappy. Unhappy that this is what he's reduced to, mugging and twirling his mustache in the B-plot melodrama of a reality show. Not quite the caviar dreams you'd hoped for, huh Pratt? Go to therapy, move to Oregon, get a dog. You'll be happy you did for the rest of your life. Anyway, then the episode ended. Next week they go to Cabo. Should be completely uninteresting. Oh, and, I'm at my folks' place in Boston and they don't have DVR which means that good Christ I was subjected to these hideous people that yap at me during the commercials and then after the show. Are you aware of these people? This sad, definitely-older-than-she's-trying-to-look lady and her disastrous Hindenburg of a male cohost? With his shitty glasses and hideous shirt? You know who I'm talking about, the people who debase themselves beyond recognition for that Hills Aftershow. Oh it's a high holy disaster. My eye is still twitching. (No, actually it is. Should I see a doctor?) Um, ok. Recap over. I watched an episode of Degrassi last night that featured Natasha Bedingfield. She sang "Unwritten." Which means I heard it twice last night. That says something. But I'm not quite sure what.

The Gossip girls are off to college! Well, for the weekend at least. Yes, last night's episode of the one and only New York City teen soap bitchery carnival brought the floppy youngsters to storied Yale University, a role poorly played by Columbia. And what did they find in this little Amazon excerpt preview of the next chapter of their lives? Serena and Blair found their inner Alexis and Krystles, Chace found a lady to make out with, Chuck found some new boy friends who like it rough, and ol' Gabbo there Dan Humphrey found that he wasn't always comfortable with his choice of underpants. Take the full campus tour after the jump. Twas young Blair's dream to attend Yale, because it is the most prestigious and be-named-after-a-lock-company'd of all the Ivies (well, not all. Blair contends that there are only three: Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. I hate the Ivy system so I don't really know or care. I do know that Cornell totes doesn't count though.) She had her whole plan in order to nail the interview then to get invited to the dean's secret teenage fuckfest sex party cocktail reception, during which he'd ask the students to take the ball gag gently in their mouths and think warm thoughts name who they'd most want to have dinner with, dead or alive. Blair picked George Sand, a fuckin' French feminazi who used to bone that fruit Chopin. Typical uptown elite choice. But Sand was the foppish dean's favorite author, so it was, in fact, perfect. Everything was going according to plan! Until... Until the wicked Serena, reeling from a Blair attack in which she (rightly, sorry Dad) called S's first choice school Brown a filthy haven for even filthier rich wannabe hippies who don't want grades (srsly, they don't give out grades.) Serena naturally flipped on the competitive switch and decided to haul ass up to New Haven instead. She nailed her interview, making Blair feel sad and insecure, causing her to bomb her own tête-à-tête with Dean Sexdungeon. Oohhh that rascally Serena! To add insult to (impending) injury, Serena got a little tip from Chuckles about the George Sand thing, and stole that answer. At the the little ultra-selective potential students party (to which Blair weaseled her way an invitation, using ceramic kitty kats as bribery), the wax was slowly dripped on the students' tight, tawny flesh Ultimate Dinner Choice names were read, and wouldn't you know it? Blair pulled a fast one on Serena, switching out Sand for that dude what Serena done moidered. Or left for dead or whatever. So they raced out to the porch, yelled a lot, then actually fought. Like physically. That "sproingggg" you heard at about 8:40 PM EST last night was the sound of a thousand 14-year-old boys becoming men. Meanwhile! Chuck and Nate lay on the grass, two young demigods, languid in their Waughness and comfortable in the delicate yet sure way in which they planned to take over the world. Rich boys on holiday! Chuck was waiting for the Skull & Bones society (which is maybe just nerds) to whisk him away into the shadowy depths of lifelong entitlement, while Nate was unconvincingly cruising... for chicks. He found one! But before he could work his buttery way into her pantaloons, she participated in a little Nate Archibald bashing. You see, the Captain had ruined a bunch of people's trust funds, so they were totes hoping to snow Nate once he got to campus. Simple solution, Nate pretended to be Dan, leading to some dormroom nookie. Though, Gabbo was busy being shot the eff down by Dean Putyourhandsoveryourhead,doit!, and told to get another recommendation. So for some reason he sought out the same exact pixie haired dink that Nate was sucking mug with. Hilarity and mistaken identity ensues! And it doesn't stop thereeee. Chuck was abducted by his new intensely homosexual lovers Skull & Bones friends. He was made to take a party test, which Chuck passed with flying colors by bringing some non-English-speaking hookers to the creepy lair in which the the cult members live, like common vampires. Well done, Bass. But there's one more tasssss...k. Bring us the throbbing, purple head of Nate Archibald! Ruh roh, Changes for Chuckles. What to do? Well, tell Gary, Lance, Gideon and the rest of the fellas that Dan is Nate. So they abducted Gabbo, tying him to a column in his underwear, eventually getting worked over pretty hard by Dean You'regettingitalloveryourface,ladyboy rescued by Nate. Penn Badgley doing comedy and embarrassment is epically squirmy to watch, I must say. Anyway, the two boys became the best of friends and Nate got mad at Chuck for what he'd done to Dan who, as it turns out, is "pretty cool." Sweet! Let's go to the arcade, my mom can pick us up afterward! Do you like pizza? Like an embittered, scorned husband, Chuck said tersely and desperately to Nate "let's talk about this in the car," which made me laugh very very loud. So yeah. At least Chuck got some satisfaction (heh) with the S&B boys in the end, by saying "fuck off, Yale" and showing the lads the incriminating hooker photos taken by lipstick cameras. "I own you now," he said as he sauntered off. "Daaammnnn," said the S&B boys as they hated to see him go but loved to watch him leave, like in Martin except they didn't say "Gina," they said "Chuck." Blair and Serena decided to make up (not make out, sorry boys!), though Blair totes had her pinned with that chicken wing and would have won the fight. In the end, Serena got the call and not Blair, though they only wanted S for her increasing Page Six status. Right, because Yale has a PR problem. Feh. So everyone left Yale, while the Dean went to let the Laotian boy out of the crawlspace to teach him his "lessons" penned some acceptance letters and went home. Back in Nueva, Jennifer was trying to convince Pa Humphrey that a fashion career was the way to go, instead of traditional schooling. She brought him along for a day at the atelier, but he was not convinced. Until they went to Bass Manor and—sproingggg!—he ran into Lily slinking around the apartment in Serena's little black dress. She told him that he should let his daughter pursue her dreams of fashions, like he pursued his dream of muziks. Frankly terrible advice, in my estimation. Oh! And it was funny because she was like Oh yeah, I'm totes Kevin McAllister tonight. S and Chuckles are at Yale, and "Erik has a new friend, I'm told," which means he was probably sexing with a dude right at that moment. Hah! What a meager plot bone to throw at Erik fans. So that's the way I seen it. Dorota being proud of Blair in the beginning was weird and wistful, as was the fact that Chace Crawford continues to insist that he's more than a devastatingly handsome face. I loved the porch fight and continue to firmly attest that this show sings only as comedy. As drama it's usually muddled and mawkish, but o' Josh Schwartz! As comedy! Such beauty. The My Fair Lady dream sequence opening? No words. Simply none. What'd you like?

BREAKING: Ringo Starr gets fan mail! Oh but also, the Beatles drummer gets so much of it that after 45 years he won't accept any letters that are postmarked after October 20. The Associated Press has issued an advisory about this, to be sure everyone has the opportunity to tell Mr. Starkey how much Yellow Submarine changed their lives or whatever. Memo to other exhausted celebrities: While it's all well and good to use the Web to take control of your relationship with fans, you don't ever want to sound as vaguely bitchy and threatening as Starr does in the attached clip, originally posted to his website. Click the icon to watch.

· For the record: Peter Cook did NOT have a $3000-a-week internet porn habit. He had a massive hole in his self-esteem that needed to be plugged with $3000-a-week's worth of life-affirming online flirtation. [ABC News] · Marcia Brady always seemed like she had it all, but it turns out she battled a cocaine addiction and was severely depressed. Yeah, yeah—get in line, Marcia. [CNN] · Alan Cumming would like to know why America is so content with mediocrity, to which we reply, why is he so content with Son of the Mask and Tin Man? [HuffPo] · Well we finally have a comedy one-sheet motif to replace the guy's-head-on-color-background popularized by The 40-Year-Old Virgin: It's now all about male/female stick figures and bathroom door symbols. [Cinematical] · We hope those rims weren't Hamburgled. [Plan9]

Defamer's enduring fascination with Attack of the Show host Olivia Munn, and her ongoing explorations of the strange worlds lying towards the far reaches of her personal shame-threshold, continues: In her latest escapade, Munn communes suggestively with a variety of aquatic wildlife. Surely you require no more explanation that that, but we'll offer some anyway: Says the AotS website:

Not only is Joseph Gordon-Levitt a gifted young actor, he's also a budding filmmaker in his own right: Perhaps you recall his fine work in Pictures of Assholes, a short documentary in which he attempted to delve into the unknowable psyche of the paparazzi. His latest project, currently screening in YouTube-directed browsers everywhere, is a political memoir, tracing his roots back to his years as an impressionable young MTV watcher, through the last eight rancorous years, to his present-day love affair with a man from Honolulu. Say what you will about this Obama rhapsody: it's a gritty affair, more likely to feature repeated shots of a cow relieving itself than the flossy celebrity dance-offs favored by some of his peers. The choice is yours. It's after the jump:

Roundtrip tickets to Larnaca, Cyprus: $1,300. Lodging at your pal's dad's pad on the Mediterranean: Free. Getting your goofy video turned into a symbol of generational excess: Priceless. I'm starting to feel some sympathy for the Camp Cyprus 20, the crazy Internet kids who filmed themselves cavorting poolside at Wall Street big Bob Lessin's gleamingly white vacation home, to the tune of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." The charge: That they lacked self-awareness. Hence, for example, this remix of the video set to "Highway to Hell."Are you kidding? These guys had two hours a day of poststructuralist textually-agnostic confabulism theory before lunch in college. On the surface, "Don't Stop Believin'" sounds like an anthem of cluelessness, a party song to get your frat-rock dance on. Listen closely, though, and you'll see that it's actually a nihilistic, no-future tale sung by a senselessly addicted gambler. The schadenfreude crowd is bent on telling these happy-go-lucky Facebookers and Googlers and Blip.tvers and Drop.ioers how they're gonna sing the blues. Guess what, guys? These Cyprussians have figured out that some will win and some will lose. Here are the lyrics to the song, annotated to further your understanding of the video's wit; deconstructionist comments welcome, but only if you're showing your wasted liberal-arts education to best effect.

While we found Andy Samberg's SNL impression of Mark Wahlberg as a sort of less-successful Dr. Doolittle overly preoccupied with sending his regards to farm animals' mothers to be flat out hilarious, not everyone was as amused. For starters, there was Wahlberg himself, who was asked about the sketch several times on the Max Payne interview circuit. In the audio clip above, set to a series of modeling shots and film stills by Defamer videographer Molly McAleer, the Robitussin-abusing star of The Happening seems mildy irritated by the caricaturization:He tells them, "Maybe it was a little jab because I refused to do the show so many times...[It's] not as funny as Hot Rod, but the kid's gotta do what he's gotta do to make a living. I ain't knockin' it. It's all good." Wahlberg hits official Pissed Off levels, however, in an interview with the NY Post:

The deep mystery of the Camp Cyprus 20: What were they thinking? The most common theory floating around is that the 20 or so Internet-employed twentysomethings who filmed themselves cavorting by the Mediterranean, even as the markets imploded and Silicon Valley shuddered, were simply drunk. Oh no, my friends: This was planned. The beer cans were expertly placed props. Think about it: The Cyprus vacation home of Wall Street power broker Bob Lessin screams "music-video set." His son, Sam Lessin, invited a number of people, including his girlfriend, Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Vascellaro. She and the other bathing beauties all brought identical black-and-white checkered swimsuits. A single-take video like this doesn't just happen; in fact, it's something of an art form. It doesn't require the cinematic talent of a Welles or Scorsese, but it does require a stunning amount of free time. Here are three videos which likely inspired the Cyprus hill gang:Vimeo, the IAC-owned video-sharing site, is widely believed to have popularized the form. Here's their single-taker:

We've now seen and heard enough of The Wrestler—the Darren Aronofsky-helmed, Mickey Rourke comeback vehicle—to predict with some confidence that come the big night, the hard-knocked star with the lived-in face will have Oscar in a full nelson and begging for mercy. But for those who just can't wait until the Golden Lion-winner's December 19th release date to live for a precious few hours in aging wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson lace-up boots, we offer now a preview scene from the film: In it, The Ram attempts to apologize to his estranged daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood, in a one-sided, seaside soul-baring that reminded us of Jack Nicholson's Five Easy Pieces peace-making monologue with his mute father.

Ah, the Burbs. So many good times. Sadly, with the collapse of the economy, they'll probably disappear along with the middle class. The rich will live in inaccessible luxury high rises like in Land of the Dead, or on well-guarded manses like in a Philip K. Dick novel. The rest of us will hunker down in urban hell-zones, disaster-prone trailer parks, and underground bunkers. Actually, no, that won't happen. But, still, the suburbs figure so prominently in so many fine movies and TV shows that they deserve a dedicate clip-fest. I'll get us rolling after the jump.

What do you do when the world's economy is falling apart and God only knows when things will get better? Duh! You get together with your friends, pretend that you're six, and start building some sofa-and-blanket forts stat! Dig deep into your memories for the days when food and shelter was someone else's problem, and find some clips that hearken back to those warm and cozy—and lost—times. They don't have to be cartoons, but they do have to be from childhood. That's all. I'll start with my biggest childhood hero.