So, this was touched on in yesterday's gossip roundup and again today but I don't think we've quite managed to capture the gravity of the situation: Samantha Ronson wipes herself with the cardboard roll when she runs out of toilet paper and Michael Lohan is possessed by Satan or Scientologists. Now, full disclosure, I have long harbored a personal weakness for Samantha Ronson, who has an awkward paparazzi face and blogs in complete sentences because she was born during the Carter Administration and is also the only celebrity I endorse in white jeans. But I was also counterintuitively fond of Michael Lohan, until he used this nasty little piece of information to ahem smear his daughter's DJ girlfriend in the F-list tabloid press. "Have you ever seen her apartment?" he demanded — I guess not rhetorically? — of someone at the paparazzi agency X17. "For God's sake, when she runs out of toilet paper she tells people to use the cardboard roll. (I was told this first hand)."*It gets worse.

The National Enquirer has the details of what the tabloid dubs its "exhaustive" and "extensive" probe of Sarah Palin's extramarital dalliance this week. It was not with that guy who had his divorce papers sealed, but with a city council member in nearby Palmer (pop: smaller than Wasilla) they say! And from the looks of his facial hair, he is a total Toddpelganger.* It went down in the nineties, when David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Wurtzel were an item, and it involved: snowmobiles, remote cabins, polygraphs, declarations of love, small-town politics and another one of those wackjob ex-brothers-in-law that are such a rich natural resource in Alaska. Full story after the jump!Okay, Brad Hanson. Born in Montana, he grew up in small town Alaska, was a high school jock and is basically the exact same as Todd Palin down to the facial hair but not nearly as totally awesome, which sort of stands to reason why Palin would fall in love with him. A supporter of strip malls and self-professed enemy of "small-town charm" the Palmer football/hockey coach and property developer bonded with Todd over sports and hunting-type activities and ran a snowmobile dealership together until Todd discovered Brad and Sarah had been bonding, according to the Enquirer, over a shared interest in politics. The Enquirer says Sarah Palin told friends the relationship was never "consummated" but you know how they get around that in Islam. Here's their evidence: 1. This guy they picture, Jim Burdett. He's the ex-con former brother-in-law of Brad Hanson's wife Carolyn's brother Craig Bratton, and boy is he a piece of work. Served three years in some unspecified clink for some sort of "theft," he filed for bankruptcy in 2001, he supposedly "turned his life around" and now "speaks regularly with family members" - that may change! - and says that everyone always knew Brad had had an affair but that it wasn't until recently that word went down the family pipeline that the affair had been with Sarah Palin, and that if the Enquirer came calling they had better deny that the affair had been with Sarah Palin. Just to make sure, the Enquirer strapped him to a polygraph and he passed with flying colors. 2. When the Enquirer initially called the Hanson household, Carolyn reportedly said: "I would prefer not to talk about it. It's a nonissue." Then she hung up. Then she called back. And then said, "There is absolutely no truth to this story. It is a complete rumor." 3. Than Brad got on the phone and said, hilariously: "Todd and I are still friends. We own a cabin together. I talked to him four times this week. Does that sound like there was a disagreement?" Um, I have had boyfriends I didn't talk to on the phone four times in a week unless something was SERIOUSLY UP so yeah. Anyway, thoughts: 1. Brad owns a cabin with Todd. Todd also owns a cabin with that other guy with the sealed divorce papers, Scott Richter. The Palins are looking like the Treasury Department with all those ownership stakes in the housing market! 2. Unless it's the same house, in which case, with the affairs and divorces and procreation and prescription pill-popping and Divine Energy Policy Intervention going down, that house is more zeitgeisty than the Real World house circa 1992! 3. I hated the movie American Beauty, so why can I not get it out of my mind with this crew? 4. Sigh, speaking of, as Wonkette pointed out, Peggy Noonan sorta said it best about these scandals back on Friday. Yeah, we will bite on this, of course we will bite, but our teeth are sure getting rotten from the attention deficit drugs..

Sarah Palin increased her foreign policy experience by 475% today and the media wasn't allowed to hear any of it! Because Sarah Palin doesn't really speak to the media much/ever, so they have to follow her around and ask the photographers dispatched to capture the photo ops what they heard her say, as if she is just like her new pal Henry Kissinger and she is engaging in top-secret high-level diplomatic negotiations. Except… at the end of the meetings the ensuing media accounts don't have anything to write about, because nothing actually transpired, so the poor journalists are left to write about how she lipsynched that she "had a good time" meeting the emperor of Tokyo or whatever. So what's a bigger waste of time than following Sarah Palin around while she says nothing about meaningless meetings with foreign dignitaries? Making up fictional event-free meetings with foreign dignitaries for the sake of a pointless quiz to see if you can tell which ones actually (pointlessly) happened!Three of these meetings actually happened, according to the Times website. Three just happened the way I imagined they would were I a reporter assigned to watch various other foreign dignitaries harmlessly shaking hands and exchanging niceties with Sarah Palin before being ushered off to exchange more niceties and possibly a game recipe or two. Guess which is which! 1. Talking Georgia With Kissinger

As we eagerly await this weekend's Nights in Rodanthe to see if Richard Gere and Diane Lane can continue to make old-people sex as hot as it was in Unfaithful, we got to thinking — Nicholas Sparks is a total baller. Sparks, who writes the standard romance novel fare that stocks airport bookstores, wrote Rodanthe and has successfully pandered his schlock to production companies who have turned a number of his books into best-selling films. The Notebook, arguably the biggest success of the adaptations, quickly became that movie girlfriends forced their boyfriends to watch in the hopes of emulating real-life lovebirds Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. But now comes the recent news that Sparks is no longer satisfied with hipster newcomers and wants to hit the big time, so he's selling out and writing both a novel and a screenplay adaptation for a new film which are specifically designated for queen Miley Cyrus herself. Sparks is a smart cookie and he knows women love his shit. So is he the next Nora Ephron?Here are a few reasons why we think his films are so popular: 1.) They're completely unrealistic, and we love it. Clearly, the main reason women love romance movies is that they are ridiculously far-fetched. Sure, our boyfriends would jump on to a moving ferris wheel a la Ryan Gosling to ask us out on a first date! And pale, feeble, Cross-bearers like Mandy Moore could certainly tame popular cool cats like Shane West in A Walk to Remember in real life. We know it's all bullshit, but a girl can dream. 2.) He gets the right people to play the parts. Okay, when you were in high school, you totally thought pre-ER bad-boy Shane West was a fine piece. And clearly whoever is casting these things still has the knack for it: Channing Tatum is set to star in the upcoming adaptation of Dear John, and obviously Miley is in demand. Plus, James Franco cameo as Richard Gere's son this weekend? Do us. 3.) True love can survive anything. Gosling goes off to war. And then McAdams-turned-Gena Rowlands goes totally insane at the end of The Notebook and wanders all over the hospital post-midnight. It looks like the house in Rodanthe is about to rot into a piece of driftwood. Are these obstacles too grand to stop a Sparks plotline? Never! True love prevails over all. 4.) Speaking of houses - the ones in the movies are fucking sweet. Gosling builds McAdams a house. Like, are you serious? It has a ridic balcony so she can paint fields and rainbows and swans on the lake and shit. And though we haven't seen Rodanthe yet, it has blue shutters and is so close to the water the sand stains the windows. We want to live there. 5.) And finally, even old people can get it on in a Sparks flick. We weren't totally repulsed when Rowlands and James Garner made out at the end of The Notebook, and that's saying something.

We've already seen that Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin's hometown, is a mix of wild animals and Jesus freaks. But did you know it has a Taco Bell and a Senor Taco! Diversity. Hollywood liberal columnist Steve Lopez of the LA Times went for a visit to Wasilla, and found one guy who heard Palin say she would "see Jesus" in her lifetime!

After months of open canoodling with celebrity DJ Samantha Ronson, Lindsay Lohan has stopped playing coy about whether the two of them are in a relationship, finally confirming the news on (of all places) last night's episode of the radio show Loveline. And she wasn't even prompted by the harsh interrogation techniques of Dr. Drew, either! No, Lohan — who had the phone passed to her after Ronson called in to discuss her hospitalized friend DJ AM — was caught flat-footed after an innocent question by Dr. Drew's cohost, Stryker.Asked, "You and Samantha have been going out for how long now?" Lohan giggled and demurred, but Stryker pressed on. "Like two years?" he asked. "One year? Five months? Two months?" Finally, Lohan allowed, "A very long time." The MySpace pundit then accepted compliments on her relationship, eventually signing off in a bit of Italian that stumps the hosts (is that how lesbians talk?). Our congratulations go out to the newly confirmed couple. Stryker, you'd better prepare for tonight's inevitable Michael Lohan call-in. [Loveline]

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.

As in his appearance on the View, Bill Clinton offered the most tepid support possible for Barack Obama's presidential ticket on David Letterman's Late Show last night. After repeatedly invoking his vanquished wife Hillary, Clinton said the typical American voter will recall John McCain's heroic torture in a Vietnamese prison camp before deciding to "go the other way" and vote for... whoever that other candidate for president might be. In an inspired feat of booking, Letterman had comedian Chris Rock lined up to follow Clinton and, uh, remind him who won the primary. Video after the jump.

Che is a Belgian men's magazine. So it's not too concerned about pleasing women, or what women think, or not royally pissing off women in general. Here's the only thing Che wants from women: their ass! Amirite bro? Gimme some! The ad pictured at left shows gals strolling around with tags on their ass that say "Please Squeeze Here." Ha, yes ma'am! High five! Whatever the Belgian equivalent of the National Organization for Women is is really asleep at the wheel. Below, three more spots from Che's meat-themed ad campaign, proving once again that Belgian sex advertising is truly a world unto itself:

Though the Emmys are often derided for being boring and predictable, last night's painfully awkward ceremony left us reeling. Whether it was the interminable improv given to stiff reality show hosts, the endless, poorly-chosen clips from shows like Desperate Housewives that segued into The Price is Right-level set recreations, or the vituperative comments from presenters and winners that had clearly turned on the shoddy format, the event was one prolonged cringe after another. Scientists are still studying the side effects caused by watching the ceremony without proper safety glasses (to make it through the whole show, we had to resort to viewing it through a pinhole), but have no fear, our two-minute long recap of the show's most awkward moments is FDA-approved. Enjoy! [Academy of Television Arts & Sciences]

E! just aired an "exclusive" long version of an American Express advertisement involving Tina Fey and Martin Scorsese. That sounds like a cheap gimmick — we're supposed to get excited about first-run commercials now? — but it's actually a funny ad and the most interesting part of the Emmy awards so far, despite all the red carpet coverage. It also manages to make people briefly car about travel agents, even though the vast majority of them were made obsolete by the internet. Click the video icon to watch. UPDATE: With second ad.

Sunday greetings from Defamer HQ, where television's! Biggest! Night! has us shaking off our hangovers for live coverage of the 60th annual Emmy Awards. That's right — we're doing this live, bypassing that silly West Coast tape delay for the straight dirt as it happens on the red carpet, inside the Nokia Theater and wherever else history and fools are being made on this historic evening. You know the subplots to watch for over the long night ahead, so read along and join the party. And heads up: Spoilers (and a few advance clips) follow for anyone who can't bear to know Heidi Klum's hosting benchmarks or how much ass Mad Men is kicking before watching for themselves in primetime. That said, we've already filled you in this year's heroes in comedy and drama; what more is there to know? After the jump, join us on the express elevator into the heart of Emmy hell!10:56 We've never been happier to see Tom Selleck; he's presenting Outstanding Drama to... MAD MEN. Our thoughts exactly! Not a bad way to go out, and not a minute too soon — we're Emmyed out, we think. Thanks for joining us — where's the bar? 10:54 Mary Tyler Moore and Betty White present 30 ROCK with the Outstanding Comedy Emmy. 10:45 Kimmel cuts to commercial before revealing the Best Reality Host award-winner. Clever! We'll take advantage of it: The Yankees are up 5-3 in the sixth inning of the final game at Yankee Stadium. And ... they're back, and the world seems a little lesser place knowing JEFF PROBST is an Emmy winner. 10:37 Look what Rickles hath wrought: Now Kiefer's not even allowed to walk to the podium out of a commercial break; he just materializes Kieferishly to present Best Actor in a drama... who is... BRYAN CRANSTON for Breaking Bad? What? We'll have to come back to this; Craig Ferguson and Brooke Shields are sprinting on to present Best Actress in a comedy... who is... TINA FEY for 30 Rock. Bryan Cranston. Huh. 10:32 This In Memoriam montage is kind of bracing. Charlton Heston, Isaac Hayes, Sydney Pollack... and George Carlin apparently died twice. 10:26 Candice Bergen hands off Best actor in a comedy to ALEC BALDWIN for 30 Rock. Gahhhh! We can't keep up! America Ferrara and Vanessa Williams come out to present Best Actress in a drama... who is... GLENN CLOSE for Damages. 10:23 Glenn Close is just so... classy. She should be hosting! Anyway, she presents Best Actor in a movie or miniseries... who is... PAUL GIAMATTI for John Adams. 10:15 Greg Yaitanes just won an Emmy for directing House. House has directors? Who knew? And Matt Weiner won the dramatic writing prize for Mad Man. Naturally. 10:09 Don Rickles encore! He wins best performance in a variety/music show, telling most of the same jokes he told in Mr. Warmth — the documentary/concert film he just won for. And the circle is complete. 10:01 John Adams wins Best Miniseries. Producer Tom Hanks gets to show off his Da Vinci sequel coiffure; it's good to see the Vatican hasn't gotten him yet. 9:59 Kathy Griffin joins Don Rickles to present, standing ovation ensues. Rickles is killing: "Let's read these funny lines they wrote for us! ... Hey folks, this crap got me no place, I'll tell you that right now." The show resumes, with The Amazing Race nabbing Best Reality Competition. Rickles cuts the producer off and drags him offstage. Sigh. More like this, please. 9:50 We need an intermission! Can we interest anybody in any air sex? 9:45 "This dried up prune has the experience we need!" Even Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are on fumes presenting Best Director for a miniseries or movie... who is... JAY ROACH for Recount. He thanks his wife, ex-Bangle Susanna Hoffs, which promptly gets him thrown off stage. Best writing, meanwhile, goes to John Adams. 9:42 The Emmys has now regressed to CSI's changing of the guard: Laurence Fishburne picks up the keys from Bill Petersen while presenting Supporting Actor for miniseries or movie... who is... for Recount. 9:35 Christian Slater and Christina Applegate present Best Made for TV movie... which is... Recount. 9:31 That whole Piven host-bashing acceptance speech an hour ago got worse backstage, we hear: ""I thought we were being punk'd. [...] I was confused. [In the room] it was like in The Producers when they do Springtime for Hitler. There's a, 'What was actually happening right now?' There was a great line about Sarah Palin that landed. But it was confusing. From Lucille Ball on, television has been so entertaining. And this was a celebration of nothingness so it was confusing." 9:21 Lauren Conrad is presenting an Emmy. With David Boreanaz. On the bright side (as if it gets darker) TINA FEY comes out of it with the Outstanding Comedy Writing award for 30 Rock. 9:15 The most brutal part of this Laugh-In number is that it may very well have imploded its legacy among any viewers who hadn't seen it before. It's appallingly unfunny and beyond depressing. The whole thing leads into the Outstanding Comedy or Variety show... which is... THE DAILY SHOW. Suck it, Colbert. 9:07 Alec Baldwin fails to plug his book while presenting Lead Actress in a miniseries or movie... who is... LAURA LINNEY for John Adams. 9:03 After a start that had us tying a noose, we admit that Josh Groban's opening-theme lightning round is kind of weirdly riveting. He had us at South Park. 8:52 Giving Tommy Smothers a 40-years belated Emmy for writing on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Steve Martin drops "perspicacious, multifarious and placatory" and about 90 percent of the viewing audience in a 10-second burst. Smothers himself loses the rest. But we're back now! 8:48 Jennifer Love-Hewitt and Hayden Panitierre present Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Program to... THE COLBERT REPORT. Shocker! Jon Stewart gets thanked but looks like he's caught on camera reaching for his flask. 8:43 Conan O'Brien: "I would have had better stuff tonight but Katherine Heigl wrote my material." Zing! Then he presents Supporting Actress in a drama ... who is... DIANNE WEIST. 8:36 Ricky Gervais busts Steve Carell's balls in the best bit of the night. Careful, Ricky — Ryan says they're enlarged! And for what it's worth, Louis Horivtz — yes, the Louis Horvitz — won the variety-show directing prize for this year's Oscars. 8:33 Wait — Jackée Harry won an Emmy? These montages are great. 8:26 The ladies of Desperate Housewives present Supporting Actor in a drama ... who is... ZELJKO IVANEK. We missed it, but more importantly: Did Eva Longoria know she'd only get literally six words in? She's a team player after all! 8:18 Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who is wearing a dress made of salmon scales, presents Supporting Actress in a comedy ... who is... JEAN SMART. 2 for 2. 8:11 Tina Fey and Amy Poehler present Supporting Actor in a comedy... who is... JEREMY PIVEN. Naturally he takes his bombed joke out on the hosts: "Thanks to the 11 of you who laughed. What If I just talked for 12 minutes. That would be the opening!" Really, Pivs, you can go the Heigl route any time now. PS: Defamer Emmy predictions are 1 for 1. 8:05 Jeff Probst: "We have absolutely nothing for you." And really, they don't. So who do they turn to? Who else: Bill Shatner. And we guarantee that was the first and last time he'll ever tear off a supermodel's clothes. 8:00 Are we the only ones who don't get the opening monta— OMGZ OPRAH!! 7:53 Aw! Christina Applegate is on hand, looking great and sounding great. That is all. 7:43 Kimmel's ABC special has an OK faux-interview with Salma Hayek, but the real action is back at the Twilight Zone of E!, where Giuliana Rancic points out that Bryan Cranston is the only actor to play both a crystal meth dealer and Frankie Muniz's father. 7:28 Lackluster as Tina Fey's Seacrest interlude was earlier, she's still got a highlight from the E! broadcast. Remember the timeshare Martin Scorsese pushed on her in that American Express spot a while back? Finally, the details! 7:19 Jeremy Piven finally showed up — no date(s) apparently, his Mom is "over it." Aren't. We. All. 7:15 Now here's some news: Eva Longoria and Tony Parker were held up in a bomb scare. Ever the professional, Seacrest segues effortlessly into Housewives' five-year plot jump. Did we mention this award is his to lose? 7:05 "We're joined by the cast of Entourage..." But where is the Piv? Picking up his date(s)? Developing... 6:51 Breaking! Britney Spears wanted to come back to How I Met Your Mother when Sarah Chalke's storyline was reintroduced. Not so fast, alas — the producers will have to get back to her about that. 6:47 Are Seacrest and Steve Carell bonding over enlarged balls? They are! Is it 8 yet? 6:43 More breaking development news! Marcia Cross confirms there will be no Melrose Place revival. 6:39 How the other half lives: On TV Guide Channel, Lisa Rinna has back-to-back interviews with Tony Shalhoub and Zeljko Ivanek intercut with arrivals footage of... Phylicia Rashad. 6:32 That Tracy Morgan interview was the most boring 90 seconds of his career. 6:22 Jenna Fischer looks great, and now she's saying there's no Office spin-off at all — i.e. "cannibalizing the granddady," as Seacrest says. Not that, either, Fischer says. 6:14 Emmy ParentWatch continues! Seacrest shoves aside a weak Kathy Griffin for Rainn Wilson, who brings up his own old man for a chat. After the troubling disclosure about some Wilson/Jason Reitman reunion called Bonzai Shadowhands ("I play a drunk, down-and-out ninja"), a more scintillating update reveals they're holding off a year for the Office spin-off. And three weddings this year. Huh. 6:07 Because the world needs another Sandra Oh interview like it needs another Fey/Palin comparison, Seacrest brought her parents in for the Q&A — Mr. and Mrs. Oh from Ottawa. Fun fact: Her mother is a scientist! 6:00 OMG!!!! Finally — Seacrest, Klum, Bergeron, Mandel, and Probst, all together at once on E! This truly is the impossible dream, and Probst is going tie-less. Slob. Kiss the Best Reality TV Host prize goodbye.

We don't know about you, but were starving. And nothing hits the spot at the end of a grueling week in the mines like a Dirt Sandwich, crafted with loving, homemade goodness by Defamer videographer Molly McAleer. This serving is stacked high with homoeroticism, slathered with Blonsky sauce, dashed with a hint of Sarah Palin and squeezed between two hot slices of Mario Lopez. Garnish with a sprig of Ellen Pompeo/primate-makeout mystery, and serve hot! Now that's living. And because we're generous like that, we'll even share a bite after the jump. Enjoy!

So I was in my bathroom last night, flipping through the "It Girl" issue of Nylon* and the whole thing reminded me of another thing I saw but had no desire to post about earlier this week, the fact that Leigh "Princess Coldstare" Lezark was photographed attending at least 21 shows at Fashion Week. Yeah, no one cares! Blame the Subprime Celebrity Crisis.Of course no one cares about Leigh Lezark and Cory Kennedy and Peaches Geldof and even Julia Allison and no offense but their "zero money down" strategy w/r/t talent! This silly idea of Andy Warhol's about everyone getting to be microfamous is just as silly as the idea that everyone in America needs to own a house when obviously they really don't have the "marketable skills" our society would deem worthy of that sort of security. But we invested then-valuable hours in their crappy fundamentals and look what happened: they and Lindsay and Paris and the pothead socialite tranche and the Kardashian tranche and the reformed rapper concubine tranche brought the WHOLE CELEBRITY MARKET crashing down with them. And now it is up to Us Weekly to make sure Sarah Palin doesn't get elected while we at Gawker educate you in the ways of the new communist regime. Look, it is not like people were paying us to give them "AAA ratings." We hated them all along, every one, but we get paid by the page view. That is how the free market works. Or doesn't, I dunno! Anyway thank you market for rallying in support of us trying to figure out complicated things such as "How fucked are the people who don't actually have any money?" Please celebrate the liquidity while it lasts this beautiful cold weekend!

Back story: I'm lurking around one of the low-rent haunts of the highbrow magazine elite Wednesday and come upon a friend of mine, Jess, who introduces me to Donavan Hohn, a brilliant writer whose recent piece on a Hong Kong toy fair had inspired me to write a handjobby post about how much I love 'Harper's.' Anyway, like pretty much all journalists under 40 who bother with the whole "crafting exquisite paragraphs" thing anymore, Hohn has cash flow issues. So Jess suggests — naively, I'm assuming — he get into the celebrity profile racket. Her friend Mark Kirby does it! He just wrote a profile of Megan Fox for 'GQ' that was really actually a rewarding effort! And I'm thinking, "Oh Jess, guys like Donovan Hohn are just not wired to hustle celebrity profile assignments. Not least because guys like Donovan Hohn probably didn't know who Megan Fox even was when he saw her at a comic book convention at which he was busy jotting down the philosophies of some enchanting small-time hucksterpreneur, and plus, everyone knows celebrity profiles are the lowest form of hackery." Well shit, was I so totally wrong. Jess had just tipped me off to the best celebrity profile in years. Seriously, you know how the celebrity profile is totally dead? This profile could do for the genre what…Megan Fox does for impotence or something!

I cannot say I expected a blog best beloved for its breathless Gossip Girl recaps* would be the blog whose archives I spent the most time raiding to read up on the collapse of capitalism. But this crisis has been full of surprises and one of them is that reading New York magazine's Daily Intel blog could have saved investors a shit ton of money, because they have been paying superclose attention to the saga of America's Crapital Structure and they take very good notes. They reeled me into their archived coverage of what they call the "White Men With Money" beat when they ingeniously dubbed Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein the "Lila Fowler of Wall Street" after the moneyed alpha girl of the Sweet Valley High series. It wasn't a connection I'd think to make, but maybe that's because I'm not as savvy at parsing rumors…1. For instance, they totally rejected the worthless albeit true rumor about Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain's bad toupee and embraced the ex Goldman banker wholeheartedly. He looked like Clark Kent, therefore he would save his company with magical superpowers and common decency and it was really as simple as that. 2. Conversely, they did not like Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld. Did not trust his eyebrows. And seized an early opportunity in June to lambaste him for being a style nazi. He was superficial! And people like that are always way too concerned about what other people think, and they overlook what's inside. Korean Development Bank was no more likely to save him from his deluded sense of reality than Elizabeth Wakefield was Bruce Patman. 3. Early into their shift steering the John Thain love train, they hired a prominent astrologer to see what was in his stars for the year. Just to make sure their instincts were correct. WERE THEY EVER.

Perhaps yesterday's Sarah Palin email hack reminded you of that brilliant engrossing story the New York Times ran back in July about 4chan, the juvenile message board community of hackers, trolls and sundry internet misanthropes that pulled it off? The writer hung out with that molestation victim who wrote the nasty fake blog about that thirteen-year-old MySpace hoax suicide case and got his identity stolen by a hacker with a Rolls Royce named Weev. Well, we found the writer, Matt Schwartz*, on the internet to engage in a brief exchange on hackers, trolls, and why the Lulz Generation hates Sarah Palin. He even gets Weev to weigh in on how he might have done it better! A full interview after the jump.SCHWARTZ: A few random thoughts: 1. The question of whether the email of public servants is public or private is an interesting question. Public servants now have reason to behave as if every email might be read aloud in court. This standard might not actually be in the public interest, in the long run. It might make it harder for public servants to do their job. 2. It appears Palin used passwords that were too weak, and didn't change them often enough. Passwords should not be real words. they should include at least three digits and at least one non-alphanumeric character. Example: foo&&b@x7978. That's what a strong password should look like. 3. Weev's take: i wish they'd done it properly screenshots? should have archived the mailspool and waited a few days for the logs to go away i figure someone is going to get seriously v& for this maybe not the person who actually did it but someone MOE: Uh, v&? SCHWARTZ: What? oh. I dunno. That's what he said. I'm guessing it means "fucked by the national intelligence establishment." If you run that please be clear that he is NOT taking credit. MOE: Pareene wrote that the /b/ hacker didn't really seem to know what he was looking for and should have probably figured that out before sharing the password with the world. Do you think this sort of demonstrates the limitations of 4chan, like, ideologically? This was maybe their chance to get mainstream attention for doing something with a potential public interest. SCHWARTZ: All this demonstrates is that 4chan knows how to break into peoples' email accounts. 4chan has no coherent ideology ... it's more like a series of memes/trends. It might have some sort of ideology but for the fact that it doesn't have a memory. It erases itself multiple times a day. Moot can't afford to archive stuff. Server space is too expensive. So it's really hard for people to follow 4chan for a long period of time. There's no institutional memory. People drop in and drop out. It's like a mosh pit. But I do thinks it's significant that you can have 4chan and other anonymous people breaking national news. MOE: I guess Sarah Palin is the ultimate meme generation politician. SCHWARTZ: What do you mean? MOE: Her absurdity lends itself naturally to Lulz. Her averageness. Her momness. To the kid who doesn't remember Ollie North or Reagan or hear in her rhetoric the echoes of the destructive Reagan-era "culture wars", she is just a clueless lady with a funny accent and a bunch of fucked up kids. And like, of course her password is something stupid, you know? SCHWARTZ: I guess you're right. She doesn't make me that angry, either. Nor am i especially interested in why she makes others angry. I was already angry. I've been angry for a long time MOE: Right, and if she doesn't make us that angry, she is definitely not making 4chan angry. SCHWARTZ: It's interesting that all these pols use Yahoo! Or that Palin does. She writes pretty long emails. Very different from say, [former Philadelphia mayor and federal probe subject] John Street. The Alaskan government seems to have a rather vital textual culture. It has yet to succumb to the shorthand of the handheld thumbwriting favored by John Street, Eliot Spitzer, etc. What her email tells me is: "I am a mom. I write real, substantial, long, single-paragraph email with sincere expressions of my feelings." MOE: Yeah, and those are just the earnest, near universally relatable sort of positive qualities 4chan CAN'T STAND.

When we solicited thoughts on VP candidate Sarah Palin from reality star Brooke Hogan, Brooke's naive response of "Who's that?" initially echoed in our hearts as a poignant reminder of the bygone, pre-Palin media era. You can imagine our confusion, then, when Hogan appeared on today's Howard Stern show and as the subject of the now-notorious Defamer video came up, she coolly denied that we'd ever asked her about Sarah Palin in the first place:Still, her tenuous grasp on the memory is understandable, as proven when Stern and Co. continue to quiz her about presidential candidates (asked Obama's first name, she carefully answers, "'Barack' or something?"), forcing an overwhelmed Hogan to cry out, "There's too many friggin' people in office!" Perhaps that would explain the blank she draws when asked the name of the current Vice President? The answer, dear Brooke, is "Dick Cheney," and it's as plain as the nose on your face (which, if you're not careful, Mr. Cheney will shoot off). [Howard Stern]

Dude, you cannot ignore this anymore.* We are screwed. Oh my god, really really screwed. China is screwed. For Chrissakes, Russia is screwed. Investors are so panicked they are paying the government interest for the privilege of buying their T-bills just to get the hell out of the market. Wait, really? Yeah really. Says Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke "We have lost control." Unemployment claims have already started flooding in. What's next? What's a "naked short"? Is it still cool to detest investment bankers? We scoured the internet for a preliminary syllabus.Can I really figure out the crisis on the internet? Okay, so not really. On Tuesday Slate's new business site The Big Money posted a story on the next dominoes. Morgan Stanley was not even listed. Morgan Stanley was not listed because no one was talking about Morgan Stanley failing on Monday. Well that was all the way back then, and this is now. So yeah, no one writing on the internet really has a handle on what's happening, but that is why it is so important to figure out who can at least tell you what just happened. In that vein, do you mean to tell me the systems of the financial capital of the universe made it possible for these guys to not only put up a hundred bucks to borrow five thousand bucks worth of a company's stock in hopes that the company's stock would plunge on account of all the guys borrowing shares with the intention of having it plunge, but to do all of this without even actually borrowing the stock to begin with? Uh yes? But not anymore because so-called "naked" shorting is being outlawed? Here is how Dealbreaker explained it last month:

At a time when our young people are getting STDs from playing too much beer pong and Christian politicos can't even keep their own kids celibate, America is plainly in need of a useful public sex education campaign. Well, we won't get it; this country can't even tolerate Eva Mendes' nipple yet. You have to go to Belgium, where sex in advertising is a form of art! Below is a new Belgian PSA that is perhaps the single best piece of televised sex ed I've ever seen. That ain't mouthwash, yall: