· No, it's not Martha Stewart sharing the story of a friend who went "into the wild" and never returned. Nor is it Joey Pants discussing suicide and clinical depression. But the above clip of The View co-host Sherri Shepherd (who, we're discovering, may have something of an anal/genital fixation) and Martha snip-snipping away at parallel Halloween costume while saying the word "crotch" with alarming frequency makes us uncomfortable in a new and exciting way. Are we getting a little weirdly obsessed with this show and Stewart's uncanny recent ability to produce moments that give us the willies? Maybe so. But? Crotch. Crotchcrotchcrotch.
· Good news: Jon Stewart's signed on for another two more years of Daily Show duty.
· For those who feel the Teri Hatcher mask might be too creative a Halloween choice, here are some safer, less imaginative costume alternatives.
· Now Ashton Kutcher knows why he's had unexpected sexual feelings while watching The Osbournes.
· Someone should probably tell the people trying to drop pounds as quickly as The Biggest Loser contestants that all the weight loss on the show is done with CGI and creative editing.

Today on Martha, daytime TV's new home of uncomfortable, tragedy-tinged moments: Actor Joe "Joey Pants" Pantoliano, lightly hypnotized by the calmingly repetitive motion of stirring up a pot of pasta putanesca, shares news of his recently diagnosed clinical depression, the suicide of a loved one, and his long-suppressed affection for his irresistible host. Taken aback by his unexpected soul-baring, Stewart calmly adds a bowl of crushed Zoloft to Pantoliano's recipe, a special ingredient she always keeps handy in the event that one of her guests tries to make an unwelcome emotional connection during their promotional appearance.

· On today's Martha: "Hey, Marcia Gay Harden, star of Into the Wild, have you ever actually known anyone who's 'gone into the wild?' No? Huh, that's funny. Because I do, and she never came back. Well, since you don't have any topical stories about tragedy to share, what do you say we get back to pretending to make these cookies or whatever."
· Have you ever noticed that all of the white protagonists in Wes Anderson movies seem to work out their romantic issues with ladies of color? Well, someone did. [via Feministing]
· Beckett Boo, Esq., catspotter extraodinaire, has been to Promises.
· The headline of the day, and it wasn't even close: Sculptor's crack baffles art world. Do we even care what the story's about? No, not really.
· Shooting on David Hasselhoff's new E! show has apparently begun ahead of schedule.

Wenda Harris Millard, the abruptly ousted Yahoo ad-sales executive who left the Internet company for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, reveals that her new employer made a big mistake by designing its website for beauty, not utility. A pretty, video-filled front page made it too hard for users to find recipes and tips. [Reuters]

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Here's what you need to know about Charles Simonyi: He made billions by inventing what later became Microsoft Word and Excel, he paid $25 million for a flight into space, and he's dating Martha Stewart. Oh, about that last bit? We wonder if Stewart knows about Simonyi's dinner plans. He's in Cambridge for Technology Review's EmTech conference, where, we hear, he's meeting with Victoria Gray. Gray is an event organizer and rumored to be an old flame of Simonyi's. Of course, perhaps the dinner conversation will be all business: Simonyi is reportedly an investor in a venture run by Gray. After the jump, a paparazzi snap of Gray by Valleywag intern Jordan Golson.

Apparently Martha Stewart thinks wikis are a good thing. Which strikes me as odd, since the no-longer-jailed domestic doyenne built her multimedia empire pretty much by sitting you down and telling you how things are done, her way or the highway. She's a tastemaker, not some kind of San Francisco-Web-startup "community manager." Asking for readers to email in scrapbooking tips is one thing. But user-generated recipes? Communally edited herb-planting instructions? Heresy. The plans for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia to embrace wikis and other community features on a new website, announced by company president Susan Lyne, suggest to me more an attempt to embrace the bubbly valuations assigned to Web properties like MySpace and YouTube, rather than the egalitarian ideals of Web 2.0 proponents.

"Here's Your Chance to Poke Martha Stewart." Expanding beyond her MySpace presence with a new Facebook profile, the home-style guru puts the "omni" in omnimedia — even if she is a little slow to join the bandwagon. [AdAge]

Martha Stewart is now all up in the Facebook. [Ad Age]

So now we know all the ladies of a certain age love tennis ho/pro Roger Federer. So, like, does Vogue just shut down while the U.S. Open is in session? Does Anna Wintour keep an Airstream trailer off the courts that she shares each night with Martha Stewart? Um is any lady-exec working in this town? Is anyone? (Besides the people blogging the damn thing every 15 minutes, of course.) [Image: Getty]

As new husband Sergey Brin stands watch, 23andMe's Anne Wojcicki, recently married to the Google cofounder, shows photos from her recent wedding to home-style guru Martha Stewart, at this weekend's Science Foo Camp nerdfest. No wedding bells, at the moment, for Stewart, who's merely going steady with early Microsoft employee Charles Simonyi.

We love how Katonah, New York, is going "back to its roots" now that Martha Stewart is trying to brand it as her own for a product line. Umm, actual Katonah is only like 110 years old, because "Old Katonah" flooded and they had to start over. Anyhoo, this rich history won't be mangled by Martha! Today's Page Six notes that local songwriter Marc Black has taken up folksinging to stop Martha. We think he's gonna get the job done, right?

• Ok, so! Paris Hilton has to return to court at 9 a.m. PST because prosecutors are holding sheriff's officials in contempt for releasing her early from jail. And here's some fun ammo: "It isn't wise to keep a person in jail with her problem over an extended period of time and let the problem get worse," Sheriff Lee Baca says. Hmm and eww! [AP]
  

Yesterday's trial proceedings of futuresexcrazyfakefiremanvillain Peter Braunstein brought another frightening peek into his twisted mind. He wanted to kill Vogue editor Anna Wintour! "I'm going to kill Anna Wintour—because I just feel like it," the former WWD reporter scrawled in his journal. Our precious Wintour! But why?

Today's special guest on "The Martha Stewart Show" was none other than belletrist/inhalant connoisseur Lindsay Lohan. Gawker Splicemaster Alex Goldberg has assembled some of the finest moments. Martha kind of comes off like your mom's best friend: She wants you to know that she's cool and hip, but she's also pushing the message that maybe you should cut down on the partying, you know? Gripping stuff.

On today's Martha Stewart Show, unstoppable party juggernaut Lindsay Lohan—who could not even be slowed by a pricey, totally unnecessary outpatient rehab program—finally lets her defenses down (once Martha gets you into her kitchen and has you whipping up profiteroles, you're fucking toast) and reveals the one person who could possibly end her reign of clubbing terror: Georgia Rule co-star Jane Fonda. As reassuring as it is to discover that there's at least one authority figure the troubled actress might actually listen to, we fear that new ET correspondent Dina Lohan might be so deeply hurt that she might use her next Rule assignment to hunt down Fonda for an ugly confrontation, grabbing a fistful of the older actress's hair and screaming, "So, now you're trying to steal my meal ticket, you commie bitch? Don't fuck with a mom from Strong Island with nothing to lose!," a tussle during which a peacemaking Cojo tragically loses an eye to Dina's wildly flailing fingernails.

The season for office summer dress codes is upon us, and leading the way is this extremely impressive in-house email from Martha Stewart Omnimedia that came our way this afternoon.

Tourists and teenagers outside the Time Warner Center last night clutched digital cameras, all hoping to get their very own photograph of John Mayer or America Ferrara as they arrived to celebrate the Time 100—the Most Influential People in the World! (One assumed that crowd was less interested in arrivals such as Dr. Henry Kissinger.) Inside, the scene was more of the same: dozens of professional photographers jockeying for position, a crowd of onlookers. It seemed appropriate that the Time Warner Center is just a big mall. The scene could have been one that gets played out in Tallahassee and Des Moines and Houston every time Miss USA comes to town. We took tourist-photos too, with Nikola Tamindzic, who has even more.

Apparently we ruffled some crafty feathers when we said that Martha Stewart was going to "take another white trash hobby upscale" by staking out her corner of the billion-dollar scrapbooking industry, as per the WSJ. "I have been in the Scrapbook business for six years, and never have I read any article as insulting as yours! I can assure you the hobby of scrapbooking is anything but what a bigot would refer to as white trash!," writes Pat Schiffer, who is the President of Small Town Memories, Inc. (Google is no help!) "In case you are just another reporter who has not done the proper investigative work prior to writing such garbage, I believe you owe myself and the many others who were offended an apology. I'd suggest you pick up a book or magazine on scrapbooking and see the artistic level this so-called white trash hobby has reached." Sorry, Pat! Next time we will consult Scrapbooks Etc. magazine before rushing to unfair generalizations. We also heard from a scrapper named Joanne, who's more upset at Martha Stewart than she is at us or at WSJ writer Brooks Barnes.

It's sort of a top-secret fact about America that between the coasts, pasting family mementos into books and then surrounding them with decorative ribbon borders is a huge deal—ergo, books like Motif for Murder: A Scrapbooking Mystery. But the "problem" with the $2.6 billion/year scrapbooking industry is, as the SVP of marketing for Michael's craft stores tells the Wall Street Journal today, "It's not a very sexy business." Enter sexy, sexy Martha Stewart!

• Tudors hottie Jonathan Rhys Meyers has entered an undisclosed treatment facility. "He felt a break was needed in order to maintain his recovery," says his rep. "What! What was he addicted to, beauty?" asks our Josh Stein. No Josh: Alkie-hol. That's why he was so fun! [People]