To roll out their all-new level of Black Tie Geek Squad Protection (the geeks arrive in stretch limousines, carry silver trays, and are all named Giles), Best Buy enlisted the celebrity services of "Four Icons of Protection, Steven Seagal, Richard Dean Anderson and Tanya Roberts," according to the press release. (That's just three, but who's counting?) Our Zune-taunting cousins at Gizmodo were there to catch all the excitement. Sadly, despite the best efforts of the emcee urging him to, "Take this pack of chewing gum, a pogo stick shaft, and a box of nail filings, and make something blow up already!" MacGyver proved to be about as mechanically minded as our mom.Seagal, however, was even more of a disappointment, throwing a fit as soon as he mounted the stage over the intensity of the stage lights. You'd think someone with as much experience starring in a string of marginally beloved martial arts movies, and shredding his blues away on the El Rey stage, would be accustomed to the hot glare of theatrical lighting. If we had to guess, however, we'd say his vampiric reaction might have to do with flashbacks to the powerful lamp shoved into his face by overzealous FBI agents trying to connect the actor to the Anthony Pellicano racketeering scandal.

Armed with his own circuitous logic and a disarming smile, Shia LaBeouf has proven himself as masterful at one-handed P.R. spin as he is twirling a stiletto. Remember how he turned his Walgreen's arrest into a hilarious comedy pitch about a young movie star's escalating feud with a drugstore security guard? (Throw in Bow Wow and Martin Lawrence, call it Crunk & Disorderly, it's as good as a slam dunk.) A terrible Indiana Jones installment only seems awful and cartoonish because the audience has devolved (or evolved? We still don't quite get this one), not the movie. And a DUI arrest and near fatal car accident becomes a life-affirming anecdote on The Tonight Show. By the end of the telling, the whole "DUI" part seems but a distant memory, as you're entirely too preoccupied with the closeup of the gnarled fingernail LaBeouf touchingly presents to Leno—a trophy from his ordeal, suitable for mounting—to concern yourself with the details of the case. [The Tonight Show]

· This montage of every "That's what she said" from The Office is a little long but guaranteed to put a smile on your face. (3...2...1...) [YouTube] · Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have entered the 2008 Guinness Book of World Records as Most Powerful Actress and Actor, respectively. In a related item, the Guinness Book of World Records has just been named keepers of the World's Most Shameless Publicity Ploy! [Us] · Morecowbell.dj allows you to upload any MP3 and add as much cowbell or Walken as you like using handy faders. It's just one of those modern conveniences you didn't know you couldn't live without until you finally had one. [Morecowbell.dj] · If you haven't seen it yet, here's the CNN prank in which two guys fake-make-out with each other as a reporter discusses the Lehman Brothers collapse. It doesn't get hot n' heavy until one of them goes for a nipple. Then all bets are off. [YouTube] · Want to know what Sarah Palin would have named you if she was—shudder—your mom? Try the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator and find out! (We're Missle Blunt Palin, which we're perfectly happy with.) [politsk.blogspot.com]

We know that the cast members of The Hills have many outside talents: Lauren Conrad is an acclaimed young adult author, Heidi Montag makes a second living as a fitness instructor, and Audrina Patridge's blog reveals her to be a face cream connoisseur. But before last night, did we have any idea how skilled the Hills women are at cutting a rug? While watching the band White Tie Affair perform at the Roosevelt, Lauren & Co. kicked out the jams with a series of white-girl moves so fierce that they could be worked into common rotation for just about any type of song, no matter the genre. In fact, to test our theory, we tried out their moves to a very 90's backing track that just so happens to be making a Kanye-assisted comeback. Go Lauren, go Lauren, go! [MTV]

Recently bestowed with official "icon" status by the L.A. Architectural and Faded Starlet Landmarks Association, Shannen Doherty pulled up a chair at The Rachael Ray Show table to discuss her recent cryogenic career-defrosting, appearing on a short but heavily promoted arc on the new 90210. She vigorously denied harboring any regrets about her decision to abandon the original series at its peak, explaining how the strain of playing a fictional bitch week-in and week-out was ultimately taking its toll on her real-life, bitch-being pursuits. As for why she chose to return to the fabled zip code, she admits she was hesitant at first; ultimately, it was something she did less for herself than for her fans—those "Brenda!"-chanting masses who have kept both her and her dogs in natural fabrics and macrobiotic vittles since her days on Little House on the Prairie. [Rachael Ray]

CollegeHumor's latest clip mocks the use of Wikipedia in academia. Worth sitting through for the brief appearance of Professor Britannica, and the fate of that popular girl who edits the yearbook.Click to view

One of the final shows on the MTV roster to still fulfill their "M" classification, Total Request Live is at long last drawing to a close. Once the state-of-the-art in boy-band-disseminating technology, it allowed viewers to e-mail, text, and phone in their votes, while offering them the thrill of seeing their feedback—"OMG Tom DeLonge izz zooooo hot. Blink-182 roxx so hard!!! LUV U GUYZZZZ :D BlinkGrl182"—crawl along the bottom of the screen in real time.It had multiple hosts over the years, but it's Carson Daly with whom it will forever be associated: A little-known Bay Area DJ dropped into the gig of a lifetime, he instantly became the fantasy dream boyfriend of billions of American teenage girls—and very nearly avoided early tragedy by calling off his engagement to Tara Reid. Variety reports the show "will depart in mid-November with a two-hour Saturday-afternoon special," replaced by the more popular Feedback New MTV, or FNMTV. We salute its departure with one of its greatest-ever moments: Part 2 of Mariah Carey's infamous TRL meltdown, when she called the show naked from her shower, shattering untold eardrums along the way with a sustained high G.

Yahoo's new marketing push tells us to "Start Wearing Purple." A website created for the campaign features a video of various grungy-looking people, including Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, wearing purple and hollering. We'd show you the video, but it's not very different from a clip a tipster found of Yahoo cofounder David Filo and top exec Ash Patel dancing awkwardly to a Kelly Clarkson cover. The pair flail around like they're in some kind of bizarro-world Apple iPod commercial. That's the problem with Yahoo: It thinks it's an iPod — universally loved and carried around. But it's really a Mac — a fine product nevertheless rejected by many.Click to view Yahoo, triumphant over a host of other wannabe Web portals in the '90s, resurgent in the early part of this decade, has never really gotten used to not being No. 1. Apple, for all its arrogance, recognizes that the Mac is not the best-selling PC brand. Yahoo's marketing department should spend all its time explaining to Internet users why they should use Yahoo instead of its competitors. That's what Apple does with its "Mac vs. PC" ads. Each commercial humorously sticks to its talking points comparing the advantages of Macs over PCs. Apple does this because it remains far behind in the PC market and needs to convince customers to switch from more popular products. That's what Yahoo needs to do in search. But instead of saying why users should, it markets itself the way Apple markets the iPod — as a ubiquitous aspect of a certain way of life. Apple can do this because it already dominates a market full of similar digital music players. A better product helped sell the iPod to the masses. But an advertising campaign which keeps people associating themselves with the brand reinforces Apple's dominance. Yahoo doesn't have that luxury. It still dominates, but in tiny niches. It needs to say why Yahoo News is better than Google News and the New York Times. It needs to say why Yahoo Fantasy Sports games are the most popular on the Web. It needs to say why anyone who owns a digital camera should upload their pictures to Flickr, not Facebook. But instead, Yahoo spends all it's time trying too hard to convince users how wonderfully wacky it is. What's tragic about that is that the brand Yahoo is trying to create isn't particularly attractive. Look, it screams, we're so desperate to be seen as kooky kids, we're willing to hit our top executives in the face with rubber balls! Perhaps the real target of the campaign is Yahoo's own employees. Morale is in the dumpster at its Sunnyvale headquarters. "Bleeding purple," Yahoo's longtime catchphrase for displaying loyalty to the company, has come to refer to the endless exodus of employees. Wearing purple may boost the mood of longtime Yahoos. But it will hurt recruiting for those outside the cult. What adult wants to work at the company which still hasn't figured out what it wants to be when it grows up?

So it was a year ago now that shouting head Jim Cramer completely lost his mind in front of the cameras at CNBC. Cramer screamed that government officials had "NO IDEA how bad it is out there — NONE!!!" and that the economy was becoming "armageddon." It was glorious television. Now that the meltdown is truly molten, it's the former hedge-fund manager's turn to gloat. Last night on his Mad Money, Cramer assailed federal officials as "disgraceful" and "ignorant" for allowing things to get this bad. He also called Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke "in over his head." And he did it all with relative calm — perhaps content that, for once, he was both correct and correctly understood. (Twenty minutes later, Cramer was screaming "booyah!" and triggering cannon sound effects for his "Buy Or Sell... lightning round.") Video after the jump.

· We're not going to lie: Seeing The Soup run our footage of Brooke Hogan drawing a blank on the name "Sarah Palin" on the VMAs red carpet was a real thrill. Enhancing that thrill was knowing E! was temporarily held hostage by our shaky Nikon Coolpix camera work and audio that sounded like it was piped in via two baked bean tins strung together with twine. [The Soup] · After Ellen and Portia's wedding video melted all our troubles away, we were ready for another slice of gay wedding cake. Beam us up a piece, Scottie! [Daily Mail] · Here's a shot of Ben Affleck from the set of Mike Judge's flower-extract-factory comedy (hey—we just work here) Extract, looking as though you could wring a few powerful drops of Jesus Extract from his hair. [Just Jared] · Canadians got the Zack and Miri Enjoy the Pleasures of Reciprocal Oral Sex poster, while all we get is a couple stick figures. They don't even have stick genitalia! [/Film] · Ben Silverman admitted to reporters at the New York Television Festival that the head of HR at his network refers to him as "the Paris Hilton of NBC." He then pulled out a recorder, and spoke: "Memo to self: Ben Silverman's My New BFF. Needs a sidekick and catchphrase. Have assistant see if Jessica Simpson and 'So much much' are available." [broadcastingandcable.com]

Aspiring celebrities about to make your first rounds on the talk show circuit, take note. Earlier this year, we cautioned you regarding the pitfalls of repeating the same anecdote word-for-word on multiple talk show appearances, using Jason Segal's penis-bearing fable as our example. Tonight, we'd like to walk through the subtle art of how to recognize what kind of stories are good for dinner parties versus those that are suitable to be told to a national television audience, showcasing Mad Men star Jon Hamm's disastrously disrespectful appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Friday night.In this clip cut together by our very own Molly McAleer, you'll see two sides of the very same story coming together and then exploding before your very eyes. Here's a quick primer. You see, Mr. Don Draper himself, Jon Hamm, appeared on the Live With Regis And Kelly show on Thursday morning. Little did he know, both Regis and his wife are huge fans of the show Mad Men. They're such big fans, in fact, that the 77-year-old Regis thought it would be fun to spend a little time after the show with Hamm, going as far as to invite him over to the Philbin's apartment. Being the good sport that he is, Hamm agreed to hang with Reege and Joy for a few hours, posing for pictures and making small talk until other obligations rescued him from what was undoubtedly an awkward situation. Up until this point, it was a win/win for all parties involved. Hamm endeared himself to a showbiz legend and Reege got to hang with an actor who likely reminds him of his 1960s glory days. (As you'll see in the clip above, Regis is still beaming four days later.) However, Hamm submarined himself by being unable to hold his tongue about how he really felt about spending time with the Philbins when he came on Kimmel's show on Friday night. Rather than save the story of Regis' wacky behavior for the afterparty in the green room of the El Capitan, he made the cardinal mistake of derisively referring to one of Hollywood's most endearing and popular fixtures as "an elfin force of nature" and a "crazy showbiz guy." Boo! Jon, we know your intentions were in the right place. You were on your friend's show, you had a great story and you just wanted to make the audience laugh. However, poking fun at a beloved institution like Regis is miles apart from poking fun at a tired old windbag like, say, Larry King. Save the barbs about how "crazy" Regis is for when you're kicking back with a few beers at your buddy Kimmel's house, versus sitting on his chair with cameras trained on you and millions thousands of people watching. If you want your career to have legs, that's a lesson you'll want to learn sooner rather than later.

We'd like to introduce you to a new recurring character in the reality series that is Molly McAleer's To Dos: potential love interest, Johnny. Johnny hails from a small town called Wrong Side of the Tracks, CA, and was taken in by Molly's Chihuahua Wagandstuff after the two met on a surf run in Newport beach. Watch the Season One sexual tension simmer as the two bond over their shared love of Pink's hot dogs and the inevitable loose stools that follow. And check out that luscious head of wavy blonde hair—we're pretty sure Johnny also fathered Jennie Garth's love child on 90210. Here are some things to do until the next installment, when Johnny strips to his underwear and poses on spec for a mocked-up American Apparel campaign in Molly's kitchen:· Hip Hop Ya Don't Stop at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater · The Living Room Series at the Second Stage Theater · Joan as a Police Woman at Largo at the Coronet

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, the premier public intellectual of blindly cheerleading globalization, has been wrong about nearly everything, ever. He is hailed as a foreign policy genius, and of course he was dead wrong on Iraq. He is hailed as a brilliant economist, and maybe he is, but his magical flat global future looks increasingly like the wet dream of a guilty rich liberal who doesn't want to hear about inequality that can't be solved by internet access. His most stunning insights are banal cliches, often attributed to cab drivers in exotic (developing) foreign locales. But we have to hand it to him: his joke about Sarah Palin and oil drilling is pretty funny! It is so funny, in fact, that he delivered it 500 times last week, from Letterman on through the Sunday shows. Let's all congratulate Thomas Friedman on his very first joke! Chant with him: CARBON PAPER CARBON PAPER CARBON PAPER!

You might not guess it at first, but in the schema of exotic celebrity baby-adopting, obtaining the child is often the easiest part of the whole endeavor. Especially for Meg Ryan, who regaled David Letterman's viewers Friday night with her tale of baby procural in the farthest-flung reaches of China. As she navigated the teeming metropolis of her daughter's birth, at the mercy of maternal instinct and Google Maps directions 12 pages long, she fielded one e-mail after another recommending potential baby names. Among the most intriguing was a note from an unnamed "bipolar" friend who offered the brilliant suggestion "Oprah Winfrey Ryan." Sadly, after a month of deliberation, Ryan went with "Daisy" — tired, we know, but not for lack of inspiration. We think that celebrity offspring named after celebrities is an idea whose time has come. Hear Ryan's story after the jump, and join us in selecting the top celebrity-celebrity baby names of the future. Help us help her to not make the same mistake twice.

Last week, crazy former New York Mayor Ed Koch delivered the best put-down of Rudy Giulinai since Joe Biden mentioned Rudy's inability to speak a sentence that doesn't have "9/11" in it: Koch noted America's Mayor's "maniacal laugh" and declared that it reminded him of the unsettling giggle of Richard Widmark "carrying out his role in the movie Kiss of Death. I saw once again the scene in which Widmark, playing Tommy Udo, a killer, pushed a wheelchair in which an old woman was sitting and, laughing maniacally, shoved it off the top of the stairs with its occupant still in it." That's our Rudy! In case you're not familiar with either the film in question or Rudy Giuliani, our video team spliced together the relevant menacing giggles. Enjoy!

Pope-hating straight talker Bill Maher is seriously considering putting some money in failing Washington Mutual now that they're offering free blow jobs with every account. Click to watch the sadly plausible series of fake ads that get worse and worse until we're all broke and can't afford a blow job anyhow.

Rejoice, interwebs! After weeks of intense lobbying, Tina Fey finally gave America what it so loudly demanded: a full-fledged, mercilessly accurate Sarah Palin impression on last night's season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Lipstick jokes? Check. Appalling lack of knowledge about the Bush Doctrine? Check. Akaskan accent by way of Fargo's Marge Gunderson? Check, mate, you betcha. And while there was no sign of Maya Rudolph as Michelle Obama (and Barack Obama had to withdraw from his cameo in the wake of devastation from Hurricane Ike), Amy Poehler proved an invaluable scene partner as a seething, sarcastic Hillary Clinton. Enjoy this sketch while you can, for if Sarah Palin ascends to the White House, both performers will be executed for treason. The video, after the jump:Click to view

The new season of Saturday Night Live begins tonight and it may be one of the most anticipated debuts the show has had in a long while. The host is human-dolphin hybrid Michael Phelps and athletes often make surprisingly good hosts, because they (generally) aren't afraid to go along with anything. (That's the secret weapon all great hosts understand.) More importantly, it will (hopefully!) mark the return of Tina Fey to the ensemble, taking on the temporary role of You Know Who. (Or maybe it'll be Kristen Wiig and her Target lady voice? Also promising.) The show definitely lost something when Fey left as a writer, and while a recurring bit role can't recapture all the magic, she will mine that part for every comedic possibility there is. And there are a lot. The last great era that show saw was the fall of 2000, when their political humor was at its peak. Will Ferrell and Darryl Hammond were the dynamic duo of that election season, because Al Gore and George Bush were such perfect foils for each other. The comedic possibilities for Obama/McCain are not nearly as great, but ... whoo-boy do those VPs bring a lot to the table. I would post my favorite sketch from that era here, but NBC has stupidly not provided any clips of it on Hulu. Way to seize the moment, guys! So I'll just throw this one up there, because it's hilarious and then leave you to your own devices. By the way, Barack Obama himself was actually supposed to appear on SNL tonight, but canceled to due to Hurricane Ike. Which brings us full circle. Yay! I'm out for the evening and someone else will walk in the sun with you tomorrow. It was fun! Thanks for having me and thanks for reading! [Hulu; HuffPo, ABC News]

· If you think Brett Ratner, Brooke Hogan and Robert Pattinson were pleased to see us at the VMA's, that's nothing compared to the totally overmotherfuckingwhelming joy we had liveblogging it! · Jeremy Piven's date(s). Anne Hathaway's shoes. Paris Hilton's doc. Mickey Rourke's fans. Just another week in Toronto Film Festival hell. · If pimping out the Catholic vote to a presidential candidate is wrong, than Raffaello Follieri doesn't want to be right. · Wait — did we really just spend a week following Jordin Sparks PurityGate? We did? Wow. Seriously? · Kanye West allegedly brutalized a pap at LAX — ninja-style! · We laid down our bold predictions for Fall Movie Hell. Watch No. 11 come true this weekend. · You know your presidential campaign is in trouble when Barbra Streisand and Adam McKay are your secret cultural weapons. · Dane Cook will always look back at My Best Friend's Girl as the one that got away. At least until he's sued. · Apparently we weren't the only ones stifling our gag reflex during those Two-Face scenes in The Dark Knight · While At the Movies introduced its new critics, its old ones were getting beaten up in Toronto. · Of all the new friends Matt Damon made this week, Sarah Palin was sadly not among them. · At least the Righteous Kill press tour is kind of entertaining. And free! · 90210 dramzzzz!!!! No worries, lady — Molls has it covered. · Boy pants, half-off.

Being a celebrity is hard work — just ask the Republicans! Though they've long claimed to eschew stars, they now have one of their own in Sarah Palin, and the newly minted veep candidate has so much drawing power that she's even crossed over into the world of celeb-focused tabloid television. That bizarre intersection of politics and Hollywood gossip offers a lot to chew on, and so does today's Dirt Sandwich, packed full of delicious ingredients by our intrepid videographer Molly McAleer. Move over, Matt Damon — stars like Meg Ryan, Eva Longoria Parker, and Annette Bening all want a piece of the Palin action! As for the indomitable Cloris Leachman, she may say she's obsessed with John Stamos, but we can tell that what she really wants to know is, "Did Sarah Palin's husband Todd actually wear a wedding veil?" For the answer, let's go to the tape!