We hear that People magazine paid around $2 million (if not more) for the recent wedding pictures of Barbie-like singer Mariah Carey and younger actor Nick Cannon. People triumphed in a bidding war with OK!. This surely rates as one of the biggest paydays of Cannon's career, if not his wife's. And that figure would make their photos even pricier than the baby pictures of Nicole Richie and Christina Aguilera, though only half as valuable as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's baby shots of Shiloh. Does Mariah still move that many magazines?

So, have there been any updates in the prolonged daily rollout of salacious details about "Preston," the mystery professional athlete who allegedly had a fling with Terrance Dean, former closeted MTV producer and author of the upcoming book on the gay side of hip hop? Well yes there has been an update! Though we must say, he's really trickling this story out slowly. Today, Preston—who we now know is a pro basketball player—reveals his down-low status, and then takes Terrance home to meet his mom:

The Parents Television Council—the shrill right-wing arbiter of entertainment morality last seen reprimanding companies for associating with rappers—is now busy condemning the brilliant, violent, and controversial new video game Grand Theft Auto IV. Unfortunately for the forces of purity, the Council decided to do its condemning primarily by making things up:

Jackie Warner, the personal trainer star of Bravo's reality show Workout and popular fantasy girlfriend of straight women, is facing a fan backlash for acting rude on the show. They're calling for a boycott! Apparently she fired a guy named Peeler (rudely), and now she's being branded as a "negative icon to the gay community." Harsh! Shouldn't that type of forceful condemnation be reserved for, you know, Perez Hilton? [LA Rag Mag]

Everybody listen: Scarlett Johansson is saying stuff. About men. Heroic men! Iconic men! Men she would like to honor! The blonde actress, who insists on putting out an unwanted record, reveals the five guys she considers her "dads": Woody Allen, Bill Murray, Tom Waits, Barack Obama, and Bob Dylan. Suck it, actual dad! While a waggish type might be tempted to point out that none of these "dads" saved her from looking like an alien albino on the cover of Paste, a wiser person would examine her dad choices and ponder the question: Aren't these just a bunch of random old guys that probably don't even know her that well?

MTV Networks is having its upfronts today, where it pitches its new season to advertisers. The network is also trying to sell sponsors on its "podbusting" techniques—i.e., making commercials that are like mini-shows in themselves. The theory, of course, is that making ads more like regular programs will defeat the almighty Tivo, with content so compelling that you cannot help but watch, slack-jawed, as the hypnotic 60-second Mountain Dew Bourne Ultimatum spinoff flickers before your eyes. They're so entertaining! Way better than boring old regular commercials. In one sense, this is corporate America trying to give us what we want. But do we really want better ads?

Hannah Montana, the kids' show starring exploited teenager (or, alternately, picture-posing strumpet) Miley Cyrus, ran its first new episode in two months last Sunday. And the ratings were down 24%! Could this be the end for our hero—done in by Annie Leibovitz, Vanity Fair, and a child-unfriendly wave of bad publicity?

Jordan Carlos, the comedian we once touted as a possible candidate for the Saturday Night Live Barack Obama impersonation position (Lorne Michaels didn't agree, obviously), is getting tired of being pigeonholed as a black comedian without a steady job in television. Although he does have that gig playing Stephen Colbert's black friend. He's been on the NYC comedy scene for years now, and he feels he's not getting the respect he deserves. Specifically, he's a little peeved that the NBC show 30 Rock ripped off his own character idea, and that the Daily Show is one big exclusive white person club!

At long last, the mainstream media stops its glad-handing of Hillary Clinton and pins down her position on the most important issue of our time: Vanity Fair's scandalous Miley Cyrus pictures. Clinton reveals that Cyrus is a "great kid," and vows that this should be a "teachable moment" for parents and children alike. Good work, ET! Then she gets interrogated about her position on Barbara Walters' affairs, her workout routine, and how great her last interview with ET really was. Why the deafening silence on these issues, Obama? Video of the interview is below.

"It's not on Amazon.com as we speak, but there's an unusual-sounding book by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen Falsani arriving in the spring of '09 called The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers. It will look at the 'serious existential and theological questions using the dark, intelligent humor and epic storytelling that have been their trademarks in more than a dozen films during the past 25 years.'"

A New York Times reporter who quite obviously was just poking around on YouTube in desperate search of a workable story came up with this: there are racist cartoons on there! Old, racist cartoons. Anyone who grew up in the good old days (the 80s) surely remembers when the racist Bugs Bunny episodes from the early part of the century used to sneak into the Looney Tunes broadcasts and you were too young to know the difference. So in that sense, this cobbled-together story is a good reminder that your favorite cartoon characters and their owners were all a public bunch of horrible, horrible racists not too long ago. Below, the clip of "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs," that should really have Warner Bros. donating millions to the Rainbow Coalition at this very moment:

How I Met Your Mother nice guy Josh Radnor: "Her head was thrown back, the arms were raised above the body as if in the last moments of her life the girl was desperately defending herself. A deep gash four inches long was in her right cheek. Her neck was cut from the lobe of the left ear to the center of the throat and there was another gaping wound in the right side of the neck."

Those young reporters at the Cypress Bay High School newspaper who are starring on the new MTV reality show "The Paper" better straighten up and fly right before they learn some hard lessons that grizzled journalism veterans already figured out, according to Middle Tennessee State University newspaper writer and senior journalism major Andy Harper. These kids should have known that journalists are here to relay the hard news, not mess around with this reality TV thing—a genre in which "everyone loses." Indeed, they could have asked senior journalism major Andy Harper for a bit of advice before they went and let their on-camera kissing and alcohol sipping leave their "byline tattered with a mixture of mud and shame."

Eliot Spitzer's favorite call girl, Ashley Alexandra Dupre, has finally hired a PR firm. Why she waited so long, we have no idea. If she wanted help fending off media coverage, she would have done well to hire somebody as soon as the story broke; likewise, if she's planning on capitalizing on the scandal to build her own personal brand, she'll need to strike while the iron is hot. Which was about three weeks ago. The Daily News reported that she hired Susan Blond Inc., an entertainment-heavy NYC firm whose client list has included Ice Cube, Britney Spears, David Bowie, and Criss Angel, among many others. I smell a second-rate music career about to be launched! So who is Susan Blond? An Andy Warhol theory come to life.

So how are you celebrating 4/20? Why not catch a screening of comedian Doug Benson's stoner documentary Super High Me, in which the funny man spends a month zonked out of his gord? 1350 screenings have been set up for today. Click here to find one near you! A trailer for the flick, which features a few celebrity cameos, after the jump. [via The Comic's Comic]

Sean Connery might have reprised his role as Indy's dad in the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but Harrison Ford put the kibosh on that noise real quick. "I said no, no no no. I'm old enough to play my own father in this one. Sean's only 12 years older than I am. [In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade] I had to play so much younger than I am in order to make it work for him. It was really a strain." More on Ford's rapidly olding oldness after the jump.

First of all, it's just great that the New York Times has a headline today that reads "Zombie Strippers." It has to, cause that's the name of a new movie. But it would be great under any circumstances. The Times' stuffy assessment is that pretty much everyone "can sit this one out." But would they be saying that if they were facing down Zombie Jenna Jameson who was intent on eating their face? These are the questions that "ivory tower" journalists don't like to think about. The trailer for this thrill ride of a lifetime is below—it looks like it could be good! No it doesn't.

Not being well tuned in to the Catholic outrage circuit, we missed the big controversy this week over Bill Maher calling the Pope the head of a "child-abusing religious cult," and saying "he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats." That sounds fairly accurate, no? Not to Catholic League president and perpetually outraged man Bill Donohue, who demanded an apology on behalf of all Catholics worldwide who care about trivial things. And now Donohue says that he's been assured that Maher plans to apologize tonight for "falsely accusing the pope of once being a Nazi." Because in fact the Pope was just "conscripted into a German Youth organization (from which he fled as soon as he could)." Is Bill Maher now expected to be nuanced when it comes to the objects of his hate? Doesn't really sound like him. If you're reading this, Mr. Maher, and I know you are: just shout "Jesus loved whores!" at the end of your apology, to maintain your cred. The clip of his original Pope rant, after the jump.

Famous Paris Hilton impersonator Natalie Reid is getting so popular these days that paid publicists are spontaneously sending out emails celebrating her overwhelming popularity. Along with photos generously marked "for public display," such as the one pictured! We received this bit of fan mail from Jim Strzalkowski of Xtra Public Relations: "Wow! Natalie Reid was all glammed up on the set of the Wayans Brothers' 'Snowflake.' Natalie was beside herself as she was bestowed the superstar treatment on the set. She had her own trailer, a stand-in and even fans asking her for her autograph" Fans you say, Jim? INCREDIBLE. But what did she tell her close friend?

South America is crazy about "The Simpsons," Fox's funny cartoon for grown-ups. Who knew? And the countries down there are apparently very sensitive to any perceived historical inaccuracies in the satirical show, no matter how obvious the joke. Citizens of Argentina are outraged over an episode in which Lenny and Carl—two fictional cartoon characters—call Argentina's former president Juan Peron a dictator, and joke that he was married to Madonna (who played Eva Peron in a movie) [WP]. Why, it's as if some foreign cartoon insulted Ronald Reagan! Venezuela recently declared "The Simpsons" to be unfit for children to watch, so who knows what official action will come out of this. The offending clip is below.