Bounced from E!, the TV Guide Channel, and even Stylelist.com, times have been tough for red carpet commentators Joan and Melissa Rivers. For this week's Emmy ceremony, the two were reduced to vlogging for MyHollywood.com, though the deal came with one potential upside: their patter was supposed to receive a link from AOL. However, higher-ups at AOL changed their minds when they got a gander at the footage where Rivers calls some of Hollywood's most beloved stars (including Tom Hanks, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Heidi Klum) "Nazis." Said Rivers to Page Six:

We were so wrapped up in all that Letterman/McCain business, we almost forgot about this nice little surprise from last night’s Conan. Fresh off his best actor Emmy win for 30 Rock, Alec Baldwin stopped by the Late Night set unannounced for a brief round of “In The Year 2000.” It seems like Alec’s been rocking those Buddy Holly glasses even more these days, which is always fun. Plus, he actually gets off a couple of decent jokes. Check in after the jump to hear his zinger about li’l Bristol Palin (with a bonus Kirstie Alley-is-fat chestnut by Conan thrown in for good measure). [Late Night With Conan O'Brien]

While David Letterman spent the better part of his Late Show last night ripping into John McCain, things were no less political over on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Leno's guest was Dr. Phil, and talk turned not to negligent parents or feuding spouses but to the government bailout of Wall Street. Turns out: Dr. Phil? Not really a fan of that plan! Oh, how we long for the halcyon days of mid-January, when Dr. Phil was merely a Britney Spears-chasing charlatan and not a needed, sober voice on economic matters. Enjoy your Great Depression, America! [The Tonight Show]

The first half of Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric aired tonight and it's already making the wrong sorts of headlines. This is looking a lot like Palin's train wreck sit-down with ABC News' Charlie Gibson. (Video of the most damaging moments — this time around — after the jump.)

· Last night on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, John "Leatherheads" Krasinski broke out his heretofore unheralded ability to demonstrate his "Muppet arms." Which, naturally, reminded us of Eric Stoltz's legendary (at least to us) "Muppet walk" from Mr. Jealousy. Whose impression is better? We'll leave that for you to debate in the comments. [CBS, YouTube] · Don't hit the beach this weekend unless your will is up-to-date. Because, if you haven't already heard, sharks are developing legs. [BuzzFeed] · In order to help ensure the Academy Awards don't befall the same fate as the Emmys, burgeoning comedy writer Nikki Finke makes an uproarious recommendation for who should produce next year's Oscars: the Chinese government! With a few more zingers like that, she just might land herself an offer to join Bruce Vilanch's writing team. [DHD] · Aspiring reality show participants, pay heed: Slate has cobbled together nine ways in which you can ensure you're not the first contestant to get kicked off your show. [Slate] · Finally, we can think of no better way for you to end this evening than by spending the next 30 minutes watching Dave Eggers interview Chris Elliott. You are welcome. [Goldenfiddle]

Hollywood may be a youth-obsessed industry, but that doesn't mean we can't find it in our hearts to celebrate a salty old battle axe like Cloris Leachman. In fact, now that the Oscar-winning octogenarian has been added to the cast of Dancing with the Stars, we may have to start watching with regularity — especially if she continues to curse up a storm on the family show, as she did last night. Presented with what she felt was a low score by judge Carrie Ann Inaba, Leachman muttered an epithet that went unheard by most, but couldn't escape Defamer's crack Profanity Investigation Team. Sounds like someone thinks she's still at the Bob Saget roast! [ABC]

America, let's face it: KITT from Knight Rider is kind of a bitch. Though he's a car designed for adventuring, KITT is also a big scold, always crying, "Do this!" "Do that!" "Miiiichael, the risk factor is too high!" It remains to be seen whether the Val Kilmer-voiced vehicle in tonight's Knight Rider reboot will prove less neurotic over time, but until then, we thought we'd take a trip down memory lane and give props to the "smart" cars we'd prefer to take a ride in. With the help of Molly McAleer, we've created this loving tribute to five of the best onscreen autos to ever rev their engines. Sorry, Herbie — better luck next time? [NBC]

Click to viewBoomTown's Kara Swisher paused in making ribald jokes about Joost's London office to report that the online-video purveyor will be offering six full seasons of NBC's former hit Friends. With this, Joost will reach an audience who prefers New York City when there's no black people, just like in dated sitcoms and Woody Allen movies. But I digress. NBC-backed Hulu only offers snippets of Friends episodes. Joost isn't exactly going to take off with syndicated reruns you can watch on dozens of cable channels. For those of you desperate to relive Ross and Rachel, the site will relaunch in mid-October — no plugin required.

With the low weight of its lead actresses firmly on everyone's mind, you'd think producers of the new 90210 would be a little more vigilant when it comes to eating scenes on their show, placing a thick, juicy hamburger in the hands of Shenae Grimes and allowing Jessica Stroup to update Silver's blog with a basket of hot wings alongside her laptop. Last night's episode, however, only added more fuel to the ravenous fire. When the much-scrutinized actresses sat down to lunch in the school cafeteria, neither ate a single thing on their plates (the only food consumed was a measly two fries by interloper Naomi). Then, with her meal still visibly untouched, Stroup's character rose up at the end of lunch to throw her tray away. At least take your leftover salad to the women's shelter, Silver! Gosh, do we have to write all the plotlines around here? [The CW]

Today has been quite the day for famous people going on record with their sexual preferences. This morning, we heard the big news about Lindsay Lohan's personal predilections, and this afternoon brought us the glorious news of Clay Aiken's sexual liberation. Well, we thought it was only fair to continue this grand tradition by exclusively revealing to you, the Defamer reader, what team our very own Molls plays for. And by exclusive, we mean "exclusive to those of you not listening to local radio in Austin, Texas this morning." Get in on the action with this evening's To Do's found, as always, after the jump!· CSS at the Mayan Theater. · Cold War Kids at Fingerprints. · Architecture and Seduction at the Hammer Museum. · Brazilian Girls at The Wiltern.

San Francisco artist Walter Kitundu's website is slammed today. The builder of the hybrid turntable/harp instrument he calls the phonokora — a kora is a West African instrument with 21 strings — has received a $500,000 MacArthur grant. Kitundu talked about his art with LAist last year. After the jump, a video demo of the phonokora.

While controversy isn't something we'd normally associate with Conan O'Brien, apparently NBC's Los Angeles-area station disagrees. After performing last night's monologue on Late Night, O'Brien repaired to his desk to begin what sounded like an innocent joke about "celebrity douchebags" like Spencer Pratt and Dog the Bounty Hunter. That's when Channel 4 News abruptly cut in, with anchorwoman Colleen Williams warning the audience that "right now in New York," O'Brien was about to make a joke about colliding trains, and that KNBC found it inappropriate to air in light of the September 12 train collision that killed 24 people in Chatsworth. Williams then showed excerpts from John McCain's speech yesterday about the economy, which was funny, but not really ha-ha funny. Watch the weirdness happen up above. [NBC]

T-Mobile today launched the G1, the first phone loaded with Google's mobile operating system, Android. (Just don't call it a "Googlephone"!) Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page showed up late to the press conference and Brin began his speech with an excuse: "We had to rush here a little bit today from the Google Transit launch, and, uh, you know with all the streets being shut down and all, I don't think wheels were the best way to go." The pair winged it from there on.Brin told the crowd how tinkering with the G1 gives him pleasure: "It's just very exciting for me as a computer geek to have a phone I can play with and modify." Page mostly stood there with a silly grin on his face. Contrast the willy-nilly performance with Apple CEO Steve Jobs's meticulously planned iPhone announcements. It serves as a convenient illustration of the differences between the Apple's mobile strategy and Google's. Apple's iPhone offers millions of consumers a simple, structured experience — just as Jobs's bullet-point keynotes focus on marketable sound bites. The G1 is an open, developer-friendly phone that — like Brin and Page's slapdash appearance — thousands of geeks will appreciate and few consumers will bother to decipher.

This Friday marks the first presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Debate previews are available pretty much everywhere (this one's fine) but honestly you should probably just watch this clip. It's from the 2004 Illinois Senate race, when Barack Obama was up against Maryland talk show host and certified insane genius Alan Keyes. Keyes is talking about gay adoption, and how it leads inexorably to incest. Nothing on Friday will be this entertaining. Oh, those debate preps they're doing? Obama is practicing against some ancient lawyer dude. This is maybe a mistake because the lawyer dude is probably way more well-spoken and, frankly, Obama-like in his answers than McCain will be, but whatever. McCain is debating Michael Steele, who is entirely unlike Barack Obama in every way except for one important thing: his time spent as a college professor. Ha ha ha, just kidding, it's because he's black. This is to teach John McCain not to seem quite as contemptuous of the black guy as he actually is. (Oh wait, update—McCain says now they won't use Steele! We're sure Alan Keyes is available! Do it!)

Who knew going back to school would be so much fun? Last night's episode of bitchy teen soap Gossip Girl saw the children of the New York elite returning to their fancy pants school after a summer of lazing about Europe and the Hamptons, and a true return to form for the show's writers who were... I dunno, lazing about their couches all summer. Relationships crumbled, secrets were revealed, and, most importantly, there was drinking. There's this imagined New York that I adore, in which 16 and 17-year-olds can sidle up to the toniest bars north of 14th street and just order up any damn drink they please. Half-full martini (perfect for sexy sloshing!) for Serena? Sure! Scotch on the rocks (or whatever) for lunky Larry Lacrosse from Dalton? Absolutely. It's hysterical and I love it. I just hope the real kids don't think it works that way. Anyway, yes, there was a bar. It was the culmination of a series of bitchy miscommunications involving a dopey girl with bangs named Amanda and Serena's bitchy former posse of friends. Newly broken up, Serena and Dan were awkward on their first day of school. Then The Troubles began. Dan was seen chatting with Bangsmanda, Serena got sad, her friends got mad. Bangsmanda was invited into the crew by a be-field-hockeyed Blair, then instructed to stay away from Danny. Bangsmanda said no, dragged Dan to a bar, Gossip Girl found out, everyone was mad and sad and Dan was confused and such a boyyyyyy about it. So Serena said "eff it, let's the three of us go out" and so they did but Bangsmanda was acting the fool about Rilke and Dan was guffawing along with her so Serena—a woman after my own heart—decided to get wasted and hit on people. Meanwhile those two little lackeys (the black one and the vaguely Mediterranean one) decided to be wicked and pour Nair on Bangsmanda's beautiful nest of hair. It started falling out, Serena acted innocent, Dan flipped out and said that she was, at heart, a Mean Girl, and that was the end of that. Bitchy Serena was back. "From now on, everything goes through me" she said icily to Token and Jimmy the Greek. Oohhh. It was wonderful! Though, Serena's character is written so hilariously inconsistently. I think she maybe has some sort of personality disorder that will haunt her terribly in her later years, but for now it's fun! Meanwhile Chuck was scheming about something. Blair, in her yearly tradition, was interviewing the new crop of wannabe lackeys (one was a black girl whose father was the doctor for the Knicks! did anyone else think of Blair Underwood's character on Sex and the City? is he her father? no? just me? gunshot!). Chuck handed her Amanda's dossier, which Blair assessed as "Dan with boobs." Which is true, except that at the end we found out that Bangsmanda was a secret agent, working nefariously for Chuckles the Clown to get the Bitchy Serena back so Blair could be dethroned as queen bee. This is all, we assume, some convoluted way to win back Blair's pulpy heart. It was nice to see the writers laying groundwork for an extended plot line. Though, I'm sure it will be resolved next week. Blair was busy with other things for most of the episode anyway, namely learning from a snooping Vanessa that—gasp!—Catherine, The Last Living Civil War Widow, has been putting the skins to her stepson Lord Foppington, Blair's fey fake-British lord of a boyfriend. It was a funny moment that we probably all saw coming. Blair was teary and furious when she saw the camera photos, and told Vanessa to shut up and stay out of it. She'd take care of it. Of course Vanessa didn't fully understand Blair's technique, so she went and blabbed to the Duke, ruining the deal that Blair had arranged with Methuselah With Boobs—that she would pay for Nate's dad's restitution (is that the right word?) and leave town, thus solving everything. Nate was sad with Vanessa and Vanessa was wearing brightly colored clothes and I wanted to urge her to get back to the set of Roundhouse before it disappeared for another 15 years, like Brigadoon. I suppose I can mention Jenny because there was a tiny bit with Erik last night. He was having breakfast with the family (oh! Lily's back! Kelly Rutherford is good as ever, even when paired with Singles extra Matthew Settle!) and Chuck was talking to Serena in front of him and said to Serena "you're a born queen" to which I shrieked "just like your brother!!!" and my roommate didn't think it was that funny but I laughed a lot. So yeah, there he was. So I can say that Jenny is still being tormented by Token and Jimmy the Greek. I'm curious to see what Jenny's Phoenix from the Ashes moment will be. I suspect it will be in next week's Fashion Week episode. Because, you know, Jenny does fashion. (That's her thing. Everyone needs a thing. In high school, my thing was smoking. Still is! What was your thing?) Anyyyyway, it was a great episode, full of twists and turns and intrigue and barely any Nate (though sadly, no bare Nate) and, again, the teeny bops getting drunk at Swanktown Bistro. I hope they can keep this pace up. They really seem to be hitting their stride—like Bart Bass walking in flip flops on some faraway sand. Uncomfortable and looking at his feet at first, then eventually getting the hang of it. Secure in his flip flops, in his new comfortable rhythm, as he strides gaily down the beach.

· We leave you today with a Defamer PSA emphasizing the perils facing anyone who dares so much as hint at the irrelevance of Dolly Parton. [NBC] · Credit where credit is due, even if it goes to Tom O'Neil: The awards freak changed his Dramatic Emmy prediction for best actor to Bryan Cranston last Friday. [Gold Derby] · Whoops! We take it all back: O'Neil actually bothered to report that Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell prearranged their Emmy "stunt" before the broadcast. [Gold Derby] · Because three Tyler Perry films per year aren't enough, the filmmaker/mogul has launched a new shingle to develop movies for both other directors and new, alternate actors who can play Madea. [Variety] · Warner Bros. lost its litigious warm-up for next year's Watchmen trial, failing to convince an Indian court that the film Hari Putter: A Comedy of Terrors infringed on its Harry Potter franchise. [NYT] · "The vomit shot out of Megan Fox like water from a geyser." Being a little hard on Diablo Cody's dialogue there, aren't you, John Horn? [LAT]

NEW YORK — We've heard plenty about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's management style without ever seeing it firsthand. Until today. Before joining an Advertising Week panel on stage at the Paley Center for Media, Sandberg rounded up a coterie of Facebookers in the lobby and gave them something of a motivational speech. I was there with my handy Flip camera to capture the two-minute speech. Unfortunately, the lobby was loud and unless any of you are lipreaders (email us if you are), we won't know what Sandberg said. Still, I think there's plenty of body language to examine as Facebook's real boss holds court with her minions and their heavy bags. Does their silence speak of admiring attention, resentment or fear?

When faced with the difficult decision as to whether to watch the Emmys or go to the grocery store last night, our Intrepid Defamer Videographer™ Molly McAleer weighed all of her options carefully before making the final call. As you might expect, there were pros and cons on each side. For instance, the Emmys are only on one night a year, whereas the local Ralph's is open 365 days a year. However, the grocery store has iced coffees, whereas the Emmys has Josh Groban making a fool of himself. So how did Molls end up spending her Sunday night? Find out in tonight's riveting installment of Defamer To Do's!· Alex and Sam at the Tangier. · Festival of California Poets at the Hammer Museum. · Human Giant presents Crash Test at UCB.

The W. news cycle is picking up again in advance of its Oct. 17 release date, and this time around no one even had to go to jail: A few days after Vanity Fair showcased a fresh family photo from the Shreveport set, a new, more irony-embracing TV spot is circulating online. View it after the jump, and tell us if Defamer's finely calibrated crystal ball didn't see the George W. Bush and Friends Variety Hour vibe coming a mile away. And if you still don't believe Oliver Stone had a laff riot in mind from the belated start, a new interview with GQ not only confirms it, but introduces a fantastic, regrettably retroactive casting rumor that would have elevated our expectations beyond W. simply backfiring in Democrats' faces next month:

Dave Hill is a legitimate funnyman who got famous on the internet with his Black Metal Dialogues, and continues to float around New York being funny in various funny places. The latest of those places: Fashion Week. Dave digs for the answers to questions like, "What does Anna Wintour put behind her ears to be more attractive?" and "Have you heard of that new designer Trig Palin?" The answers will shock and amaze you. This is the best fashion show-related comedy (yes, it's an easy target) since Ali G's Bruno. Japery!: