In today's Tech Ticker episode, venture capitalists Sharon Wienbar and Pascal Levensohn explain to Sarah Lacy how entrepreneurs can avoid getting fired during a downturn. We watched and took notes. Below, the clip and notes on the VCs' six essential points:

This is creepy: The preview for the latest installment in the Batman movie franchise, the Dark Knight, looks incredibly similar scene-for-scene to the trailer for the original Batman 19 years ago. It's like the Dark Knight preview editor went frame by frame, trying to come as close to possible to duplicating the old trailer with new footage. Maybe as an homage. Or maybe there's a manual somewhere on how to make action movie trailers. Or maybe we've all been watching the same handful of Hollywood blockbusters over and over again, under different titles and with different combinations of stars, for decades now, and this side-by-side comparison video makes it all too hard to stay in denial any longer. Watch it after the jump. UPDATE: College Humor asked why these two previews were so similar — it appears to be because someone remixed the original movie to resemble the new trailer. So really, this is one trailer, plus one psuedo-trailer.

· Look, if you're going to ask Hollywood's Favorite Crazy™ Gary Busey a question about his upcoming, 3-D horror movie, don't clutter up his head with extraneous flack-prompting. It just confuses him, and then he's forced to tear someone's endocrine system out—and nobody wants that! [Inside Edition]
· Spotted by a Defamer operative over the weekend at the LAT's Festival of Books: the singlet-sporting, love-handle-afflicted Hoboken Beach Diet Man! He even had his own booth. [Defamer]
· 60 years later, YouTube gives us access to really rare, really racist Looney Tunes cartoons. [NY Times, YouTube]
· Cher revealed to Oprah that she dated Tom Cruise for several months at the beginning of his career: "The audience burst into a frenzy of cheering and whooping, especially when she spoke of one particularly 'long night' in his arms." [news.com.au]
· Wants some cute? How about The Shins on Yo Gabba Gabba? [prn.newscom.com]

A clever mashup from CollegeHumor.com suggests Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight—the hotly anticipated, second chapter of his radical re-envisioning of the Batman franchise for Warner Bros.—might be less of a radical re-envisioning than we might have been led to believe. Frankly, they could prove the entire thing was lifted frame-by-frame from an NYU film school thesis project, we wouldn't be any less excited about it. Dark Knight! Whooo! Movie of the summer! The side-by-side "trailers" are after the jump:

Vanity Fair has done it again. In their upcoming issue, famed photographer Annie Leibovitz shot a controversial photo spread featuring Billion Dollar Girl Miley Cyrus, prompting public outrage from the Christian Coalition, Disney and, naturally, the ladies of The View. Leibovitz and VF are being accused of crossing the line between art and pedophilia by shooting Cyrus in what some are calling "topless" photos (shown after the jump). Before the issue has even hit newsstands, Miley has apologized to her fans and Disney, concerned that the spread could affect the Hannah Montana cash cow. But this isn't the first time VF has hired one of their star photographers to use her lens in an effort to reinvent the images of underage starlets by featuring them in a slightly more provocative and mature light...

CNBC David Farber reports that Microsoft will move to getting a new, takeover-friendly Yahoo board elected later this week through a move known as a "proxy fight." How have Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board responded to the news? A Microsoft advisor tells Farber: "They're still smoking dope." Seriously, though, Jerry, have you ever tried succumbing to a hostile takeover on weed?

What would any Coachella festival be without stars of every letter-caste wandering the VIP sections, and perhaps getting mouthy with a security guard who "doesn't care if you're the Queen of England, Mr. Hasselhoff, you're not on Prince's backstage guest list!" A round-up of the celebrity goings on:
· We finally have an answer to the burning question of last week: Hey—what's Sean Penn doing on the Coachella bill? As it turns out, he was not there to shoot some low-budget crowd scenes for Milk, nor was he there, as he joked from the Main Stage yesterday, for an "a cappella cover act of Celine Dion." [Sound of polite audience laughter.] No, he was there for something called the Dirty Hands Caravan, a "biodiesel cross-country bus trip" starting from the concert site and ending in New Orleans on Sunday. The speech, in its entirety, is above—make sure to stick around for the YouTube documentarians' pithy assessment of Penn's oratorical skills. [YouTube, AP]

We've survived our share of bad movies at film festivals, but nothing quite scrapes the all-time low of Towelhead, the directorial debut of American Beauty/Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball. Upon our viewing of the film (then titled Nothing is Private) at last year's Toronto Film Festival, our disdain for Ball's facile mishmash of pedophilia, racism and "edgy" suburban angst provoked us to level a bounty on the filmmaker's pin head — a bounty we'd like to double after viewing the new trailer. Laugh! at the lukewarm tampon gags. Gasp! at Aaron Eckhart's predatory one-liners. Cry! at Toni Collette's decreasing selectivity. This is but a fleck of the steaming horseshit we expect will bury Warner Independent Pictures in its post-New Line fight for life with corporate cousin Picturehouse, but we still think it merits your suggestions for creative, affordable means of cosmic revenge we might exact in the months ahead.

The annual White House Correspondents' Dinner was held in Washington this past weekend. The dinner awards some prizes and serves as an excuse for the corporations that own media companies to reward rich friends and B-list celebrities with seats at tables that are often within 100 feet of the President himself. Then a comedian does a little routine. This year's comedian was late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson. He was ok.

Google's YouTube hosts 11 Warner Bros. cartoons banned since 1968 for their racist content, New York Times reports. Google flack Ricardo Reyes told the paper it is up to users to flag offensive content and up to copyright holders to notify Google when infringing content is uploaded. "The cartoons are despicable," the NAACP's Richard McIntire told the Times. "We encourage the films' owners to maintain them as they are — that is, locked away in their vaults." But hiding the videos goes against Google's mission to organize all the world's information, including — it seems — records of our hateful past. Should the five racially offensive cartoons embedded below be so easy to share? Google never asked.

Since she landed the job last summer, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram has subpoenaed social networks JuicyCampus and MySpace over problems related to sex offenders and other offensive material. Maybe Pennsylvania's governor should go after fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin? In the following clip from NBC's on-going verité series about the company's Scranton branch, Dunder Mifflin Infinity project manager Ryan Bailey Howard explains that yes, the company's online paper store — also a social network — experienced some difficulties with pedophiles, but that police have dealt with the matter. He also explains to staff that the paper company's need for social networking features on its online store will become obvious in version "two dot oh."

From tonight's episode, here's Fox's Family Guy roasting actor Matthew McConaughey to a crisp. The character Stewie tells the perpetually shirtless McConaughey he hasn't made anything worthwhile since Dazed And Confused and "you need to go away." McConaughey takes this as a compliment on his ability to make lots of money on "terrible films." It goes from there. (Thanks to Gawker video wizard Richard Blakeley for the late-night find.)

· 30 Rock's GE CEO Don Geiss sure knows how to stack a board, doesn't he? Wave a little bacon over their noses, they're putty in your hands. [30 Rock]
· This is it! One more night before your appointment with the Demonshlonged One in the desert. We thought we'd put together a little Coachella Survival Kit for you. First, LA.com offers a pretty handy cheat sheet, packing list included. Next, your forecast (hot as a Satan's taint). And finally, a Trip Advisory, of sorts, offering reviews of every strain of ecstasy pill currently found in Southern California. You wouldn't want your Coachella experience to turn into a twin-demonshlong-headed nightmare! [LA.com, Weather.com, Pillreports.com]
· The new The Dark Knight one sheet is cool and all, but we would have gone in a different direction with it. There! That's better! [firstshowing.net]
· We almost completely forgot—it's Daddy Fridays at the Faultline tonight! Thanks, John Travolta at Michael Eisner's Walk of Fame ceremony! [DListed]
· Prince Caspian is a Cylon. [Photoshop Disaster]

How quickly the week rolls by when we know a brand new Dirt Sandwich—Defamer videographer and part-time, uncredited massage therapist Molly McAleer's attempt at making some condensed sense of the week in tabloid television—is waiting for us at the end of it. Today's 6-inch treat comes served on freshly baked jalapeno cheesy bread, overstuffed with slutty Mileys, drunk Lindsays, bear-attack 911 calls, and Brad Pitt in head-to-toe leather undies (kinky!). Most amazing of all, however, is one anonymous TMZ staffer's cracking of the Cheryl Burke Bangs Code, a complex theorem linking the angle of the Dancing with the Stars regular's hair to her blood alcohol level. Watch and learn!

Some might say stage moms get a bad rap. They are, after all, represented by the likes of Dina Lohan, Lynne Spears and Joe Simpson (yes, we know Joe isn't technically a "mom", but we'll gladly take any opportunity to mock him that comes along). But as with so many stereotypes, there may be some real truth behind this one. For all three of you who've had the unfortunate experience of watching I Know My Kid's A Star on VH1, it's apparent that the behavior of real-life controlling, abusive and downright lock-up-worthy momagers makes those pictures of Dina and Lindsay downing Jack D. in their underwear look like a Norman Rockwell montage. Our Resident Videographer Wizardess Molly McAleer has taken the liberty of providing ten examples of what it takes to turn your bundle of joy into a self-hating, bratty little future drug user. Hint: Screaming helps a ton. [Vh1]

• 0:40: WordPress.com has 140 million unique visitors a month, generating 600 million to 700 million pageviews.

As if to say to the world, "You think Indy's too old? Well, how do you like these rippling, 8-pack apples?" as well as, "I'm smiling on the outside, but on the inside, my chest feels like it's being gnawed upon by 10,000 hungry rats," Harrison Ford took to the depilatory chair recently. It had nothing to do with Crystal Skull, but rather some pet cause that involves deforestation and a Spice Girl. Still, we'd hope his co-star and protégé Greaser LaBeouf will follow suit, with an Earth Day season pledge to submit himself to a Brazilian as a means of encouraging better sorting of compostables. [Access Hollywood]

· By the WIND, people. Get your minds out of the gutter! Bonus besteverness? Directed by David Fincher. [Creativity Magazine]
· Nerds rejoice! Guillermo del Toro has finally signed on to direct the long gestating LOTR prequel, The Hobbit. He will be spending the next four years (!!!) in New Zealand alternately shooting the film and polishing Peter Jackson's Oscars. [Variety]
· Speaking of hobbits, Elijah Wood's latest movie includes his first on-screen sex scene. Disturbingly, the scene involves spaghetti. No word yet if spaghetti sauce is also involved, but if it were, we hope they used Trader Joe's Organic Vodka Sauce. That's our fave. [Thighs Wide Shut]
· And since we've clearly got sex on the brain, here's video of a topless Mischa Barton straddling what looks to be the poor man's James Van Der Beek. The footage comes from some movie that, thanks to the magic of The Internets, you never have to actually see! [Egotastic]
· And lastly, Amy's Robot asks what could be the most important question of our times (or, at least, the last few hours): "Are you aware that Tina Fey's husband looks like this?" Actually, we did not. [Amy's Robot via Fimoculous]

Google doesn't serve advertisements against image searches, as it does with normal search results. This costs the company as much as $200 million in annual revenue, Google VP Marissa Mayer told KQED's Michael Krasny in this clip. So why does Google hold back? Mayer says the search engine is looking out for the user: "Our metrics show us that people would actually start using image search less. Not a lot less, but about 1 percent less. We actually value the user so much that we said no." Cute. But what about the shareholders? The plummeting dollar won't save Google every quarter.