More than ever, that's the answer. Time Inc's People Magazine has secured the first pictures of Nicole Richie's baby, Harlow. The winning bid: $1m, according to someone who participated in the auction. Which is a useful sum for the anorexic former reality star, daughter of singer Lionel Richie. "This is probably Nicole Richie's only paycheck for all of 2008," says the source. Richie's take is impressive, but not as rich a price as that being offered for first photographic evidence of the baby boy born to Christina Aguilera, the singer, earlier this month. We hear that bidding between People and OK! Magazine, which bid $1m earlier this month, has now reached $1.5m. So what economic rationale can there be for such inflation in the cost of baby pictures?

Not three hours after I got married earlier this month, my wife's grandfather pulled her aside. "By this time next year," he said, "I'll hope you'll bring a new baby to visit us." It's the kind of pressure you might expect from grandparents. But Jeff Bezos, too? Get off our backs, Amazon dude, wouldya? We most certainly did not set up a baby registry. And you too, Mark Zuckerberg. I'm sure she matches some sort of ad-triggering demographic criteria being under-30 and married, but Anna would like you to relax with the maternity-clothing ads.

Why the Today Show waited so long to combine massive martinis, Meredith Vieira and Martha Stewart into a segment is beyond us. After watching two of the most regal small screen dames tip back an early morning stiff one, we're ready to hand the producers a Daytime Emmy. The festivities began with Martha calmly asking Meredith if she'd prefer gin or vodka in her martini (no Cosmos for these boozehounds), Meredith got all flustered and said, "Uhhhh, whatever you recommend?!" Martha's suggestion? "I like vodka!"

For the fiancées of ambitious founders, there's a new metric of wealth for their future spouses to live up to: "I don't want you to sell unless you can make Miyake money." That's the amount Google apparently laid out for Jaiku, the Euro rival of Twitter. The exact purchase price hasn't been disclosed yet. But Jyri Engeström just announced that he and his bride-to-be Ulla-Maaria Mutanen are in Tokyo, getting her wedding dress personally fitted by famed designer Issey Miyake. (Girls, note this: She proposed to him.)

A reader with much sharper eyes than ours asked us to go back and review a SAG awards audience reaction shot during the standing ovation for legend Mickey Rooney, feeling that there was something a little lascivious in Hairspray star John Travolta's sidelong glance at Eastern Promises' Viggo Mortensen.

Yes, yes, we know what we said last week (and, um, the week before that) about trying to shake the Celebrity Rehab monkey off our back, but, like the self-destructive guests of the Pasadena Recovery Center (except for Chyna, who's completely faking just to get some more Vh1 screen time), we're powerless against that which is bad for us. Now that the disclaimers about our own human failings are out of the way:

Judith Regan, the maverick publisher fired from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation after she pressed ahead with a book by O.J. Simpson, has settled with her former employer. Regan is not an anti-Semite; Murdoch henchman, Roger Ailes, did not pressure her to keep quiet about her former lover, dodgy Giuliani aide Bernie Kerik; and O.J. is not guilty. Whatever. The only question: how much did Rupert Murdoch pay to make the increasingly deranged Regan Books founder shut up? Answer: not as much as she would would have received before the primaries began. Rudy Giuliani's campaign is faltering and, with it, Regan's leverage. It's moot whether Fox News creator and former Nixon aide, Ailes, pressured Regan to save the Giuliani's presidential bid. It's now beyond saving. Update: A newspaper source says Regan's settlement is $25m. Pah, nothing!

Attached, Gawker videographer Alexander Goldberg and Defamer videographer Molly McAleer explore the murky limits of bad taste while discussing the coverage (of the coverage of the coverage) of Heath Ledger's death. You will be edified. There will be tears. [Previously]

Fired Connected Ventures founder Jakob Lodwick thought it would take a whole 300 or so words to humiliate his ex-girlfriend, Star editor-at-large and Mossberg-esque technology evangelist Julia Allison. All this because Lodwick and Allison's relationship — friends prefer to characterize it as a postmodern art project — went awry. But Jake, there was no need to go over a 100 words.

It's long been known that Apple CEO Steve Jobs fathered a daughter, Lisa, out of wedlock, and did not acknowledge her until later in life. (Apple's ill-fated Lisa is apocryphally said to be named after her.) Now, Lisa Brennan-Jobs is an accomplished magazine writer. Her latest assignment: a story in February's Vogue. But my eyes stopped on the magazine's contributors page, which featured a striking photo of Brennan-Jobs. She is the very image of her father.

Once upon a time, all the townsfolk claimed that Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor made a baby on the set of high-kicktastic Moulin Rouge. Well, maybe not a baby, but they made some placenta, according to a new tome by journalist Andrew Morton called Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography (you may have heard of it). Morton claims that little Placenta lived on, literally, in one of Nicole Kidman's various homes, in the event of a paternity dispute from then-normal (and then-husband) Tom. But wait! No story about TC and baby glands would be complete without a statement from the Church of Scientology!

The Wall Street Journal, in the newspaper's excellent investigation into the ties between Bill Clinton and Ron Burkle, explains why the former president is disentangling himself from the supermarket billionaire, as Gawker mentioned last month. Clinton will put some distance between his wife, the leading Democratic candidate in 2008, and politically toxic associates of the Yucaipa owner such as the Sheikh of Dubai and the official Chinese news agency. But is that all?

Australian-American screen actor Heath Ledger is dead. Ledger was an Oscar-nominated leading man with an admirable career both artistically and at the box office—he may currently be seen in 2007's art-house sleeper I'm Not There and he'll soon be opening across the nation as the iconic Joker, the lead villain in next chapter in the Batman film franchise. He died in Manhattan. He was 28.

Former bonafide heartthrob and current VH1 plaything Scott Baio has resorted to trash-talking every blonde he ever dated in the opening segments of his new preggers show. Whether he's outing meth addicts or calling Denise Richards's feet "flippers," Scotty is sounding less like a 45 year-old daddy-to-be and more like a 4 or 5 year-old rapist-to-be. This week's victim? Nicolette Sheridan, currently engaged to a balding crooner and seemingly happy in her role as one of America's Most Desperate Housewives. But in this video, Scott just can't erase the traumatic memory of an incident involving Nicolette, a nail file and a potential arrest for domestic violence out of his empty head.

Tom Cruise's biographer, for all his embarrassing revelations about the Hollywood actor's fervor for Scientology, doesn't give much credence to the longstanding rumors that the movie star is gay. Tom Cruise is a "conventional, heterosexual man who, more interestingly, never wants to be alone," writer Andrew Morton tells US Weekly. But that's not the conclusion that a close watcher of Cruise's movies might come to. Quentin Tarantino, in Sleep With Me, found homoerotic undertones in the glances between Cruise and Val Kilmer in Top Gun. We see gay, everywhere. So, here it is, the video that the Scientologists really didn't want you to see: Tom Cruise on Tom Cruise, Homoeroticist. It's funny. Watch it.

Tonight marks the beginning of yet another Sundance Film Festival; we'll be covering the proceedings from a safe distance, far from the intoxicating allure of all-night Ketel One-and-Strawberry Hot Tub parties with the juggsiest indie film execs in Park City. Like the breakout hits of Sundance past, such as Once, Little Miss Sunshine, and Hustle & Flow, all your film really needs to get the buyers to come knocking at your condo door is a good antihero (Dublin busker, hip-hop pimp), a major disease or problem to overcome (death, lack of demo CD), an engaging solution (madcap road trip, recording of demo CD), and an unconventional romantic angle thrown in for good measure (love in a piano store, falling for your ho). With that in mind, we've taken the time to break down for you this year's crop according to their fundamental, Sundanciest elements:

Christine Griffin is 26, lives in New York, and works at Cosmopolitan magazine—every girl's dream! But living said dream is not all it's cracked up to be, even if you are working for the publication that pioneered a sex position called the Wanton Wheelbarrow. In fact, she thinks she might actually be "going on 36."

Despite a rearguard effort by a few crusty old editors, the newspapers haven't been able to resist the popular fascination with female celebrities who have it all (ah, aspirational!) and then throw it away in a binge of alcohol, drugs and cheap publicity (ah, such delightful schadenfreude!). Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears — playing the roles of fallen heiress, soused actress and white-trash pop star — have vied with eachother for media attention since they crossed over to the mainstream in 2003. As this chart shows, Paris Hilton was the first to break out into the supposedly serious media, in November 2003, when a private sex tape taken by her boyfriend hit the internet. Lindsay Lohan dominated 2005 with her eating disorder, but managed to get some attention for a movie, Just My Luck. This year's been the most competitive by far, with each of the three girls competing with DUI charges, jail terms, and breakdowns. And any squeamishness at newspapers and news weeklies has been overwhelmed by their need to remain competitive: they may disguise a gossip item in a worthy feature on teen alcoholism, but celebrity gossip is now all pervasive.

As the early episodes of each American Idol season are nothing more than the televised, cattle-call slaughter of talentless attention-seekers anxious for twenty seconds of screen time (in a new twist, a jaded Simon Cowell has taken to dispatching the deranged and tone-deaf with a blast of an Anton Chigurh-style pneumatic cow-pulverizer before they even finish their first, off-key verse), there's hardly a shortage of material for "Look At How Crazy This Guy Was!" clips.

Blogger Harlem 26.2 (whose description, "The chronicles of a Black man running through Harlem in pursuit of rebuilding his business, a sub 3:00 marathon, and a wife - all through the lens of running," is our current favorite) has been following all the Katie Holmes marathon conspiracy theorizing closely, and adds a fascinating insight to the mix that discounts the official "lone runman" theory: