In today's New York Times there's an article called "The Ultimate Amenity: Grandparents." It examines the lives of a few young New Yorkers who recently purchased apartments, not for themselves, but for their parents.

Bethenny Frankel and her husband Jason Hoppy have announced that they are splitting up. Jill Zarin is surely snickering.

Here's a picture of Cory Booker reacting to Peggy Noonan on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. This was his expression when he heard her say that video games were to blame for gun violence in America. It's the same look that TV viewers at home have been giving to Peggy Noonan for years. Major props to Cory Booker for putting it out there on national TV.

The trailer for future Academy Award winner Scary Movie 5 is finally here and it features the scene we've all been waiting for. Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen's "love scene." From the early looks of it, it doesn't look that romantic. Allegedly, Lilo was afraid of catching a disease from Sheen's mouth.

Update: The New York Post spoke to a fake Ryan Lanza on Facebook and everyone believed them.

This week's issue of Newsweek is special because it's the last one ever. Yes, as promised, after this issue the magazine is switching to an all digital format.

Since November's election, Mitt Romney has been leading a strange and relatively normal life. He's been spotted pumping his own gas, catching a showing of "Breaking Dawn", having turkey chili with an old foe, and watching a boxing match.

There's more news this weekend of gun stores doing better business in the wake of the Newtown shootings.

The pope met with his former butler today in order to pardon him for turning over embarrassing confidential Vatican papers to an Italian journalist. As official Church pardons go, it was "intense and personal," and was followed by the customary annual anti-gay Christmas address. But compared to other papal pardons, it barely merits notice:

A new California law that planned to put a stop to conversion therapy for gay minors was put on hold this week. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the law could not take effect on January 1st, as was previously planned.

If there is one thing that brings joy to my heart, it is charting the growth of newly invented genres. You can argue over whether trend pieces about "new adult" fiction or "baby boomer" literature are describing truly original developments or ginned-up marketing terms with no relation to measurable changes in book-buying practices (in fact, our very own Katie Baker has already done so in a very neat analysis). But at a certain point the distinction becomes meaningless; talk about "new adult" fiction long enough and Amazon will eventually dedicate a department to it.

Life has some intense photos of Hitler's 1941 Christmas party if you're into that whole Nazi Christmas thing.

Long reviled by Democrats, John Boehner is now getting some hate from his own party. Yes, the tearful and fearless leader of the Republicans in the House is learning the hard way that having a complete disregard for economic principles isn't beneficial to your popularity.

The sequel to the silent Christmas classic The Snowman is set to air this Monday, more than 30 years after the original's premiere. The Snowman was nominated for an Academy Award and is broadcast annually throughout Great Britain. Occasionally shown with an incongruous introduction by David Bowie, it tells the wordless story of a young boy whose snowman comes to life and take him on a series of adventures, only to melt into nothingness by the dawn of the next day.

Mariah Carey sits in front of her new MacBook that Nick bought her for Christmas and holds one of her precious babies on her lap. Is it Monroe? Or maybe Moroccan? Damn, she forgot again. She's wearing a Santa red mini dress and sky high pumps on her feet. Her Santa cap hasn't left her head in days. December is a weird time in the Carey household and everyone knows it. All of her holiday staff is fully aware of what December means to her.

Should you care to hear about the vanishing of bats, islands that melt under the relentless hand of time, and the problems facing modern birds, then this is the week for you. I even managed to scrounge up a bit of cave-related news, although I should warn you now, it isn't very good news. I never promised you I would only bring you rosy-colored cave information; I only promised to talk about caves as much as I possibly could before someone at Gawker Headquarters got wise and fired me.

The great thing about Christmas is you can do it exactly the same as you did last time, every single year. Case in point: 1992's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is basically and openly the same movie as 1990's megahit Home Alone. The main difference is that writer John Hughes and director Chris Columbus moved the setting from a Chicago suburb to Manhattan.

In these last few days of 2012, parting with some of our favorite phrases and trends is proving to be a rough experience. ABC must be having a hard time saying goodbye to one of its most beloved catchphrases. One of the network's top stars, Katie Couric, embraced YOLO, or "You Only Live Once," like a child of her own.

Last Friday night, after hearing about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, I spent the last hour of my son's preschool day in class with him. I feared for his safety. The thought that scared me most wasn't the possibility of some white man draped in a black trench coat, carrying semi-automatic weapons, charging into his classroom; it was, and is, the fact that the nation will eventually try with all its might to cut through my son's spirit. The Sandy Hook murders were a painful reminder of the American tradition my three-year-old son will have to reckon with. This unfaltering reality frightens me because there is no emergency response for that.

The world's largest bread company, Grupo Bimbo, is considering a last minute bid to buy Hostess. In their name we pray.