The "Tea Party" movement—a frothy mix of angry white populism and well-funded professional political campaigning—is about taking our country back from the socialists, and also about holding up terribly embarrassing signs. Here's one with a really bad word!

Lloyd Grove reports that Susan Sarandon's mom was surprised to learn of her daughter's split with Tim Robbins, and that, according to mom, Susan has not since hooked up with the her ping-pong friend Jonathan Bricklin. Also:

Is Salar Kamangar the most eligible bachelor in Silicon Valley? Well, he is fabulously wealthy, sleekly handsome, and — all too rare in nerd central — a smooth operator. His downside?

Reading Tad Friend's New Yorker piece about protesting Berkeley students on the plane yesterday, I got to wondering: Why do college kids staging demonstrations piss me off so much these days? Am I stodgy and old, or is Revolution dead?

Merging of the Senate and (superior) House health care bills will be expedited by avoiding a formal conference committee. This is good, because the GOP cannot pointlessly obstruct, and bad, because it once again freezes out the House.

• The cover of Vanity Fair's February issue will likely turn plenty of heads: It features a barechested Tiger Woods pumping iron. The photo by Annie Leibovitz was taken before the Woods sex scandal unfolded, however. [VF]
• Is New York Post editor Col Allan retiring? That's the rumor, although Allan says it's just "wishful thinking" on the part of the Daily News. [NYM, Politico]
• Cable spats: Fox and Time Warner reached a deal in their dispute on Friday. But Cablevision customers are still without the Food Network and HGTV.
• Dick Clark has clearly seen better days, but ABC's NYE telecast was No. 1 on Thursday night. NBC's Carson Daly-hosted program came in No. 2. [Variety]
• Disgraced ex-Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich will be one of the "stars" on the next season of Celebrity Apprentice, you'll be thrilled to hear. [UPI]
• Ten years after he presided over the merger of Time Warner and AOL, Jerry Levin now says it was all a big mistake and he's really, really sorry. [THR]
• Good news! The ad market for newspapers, magazines is looking up. [WSJ]
• Arianna Huffington and Glamour's Cindi Leive plan to sleep a lot in '10. [HP]
• Avatar was once again No. 1 at the box office this weekend. The film has now grossed more than $1 billion around the world since it was released. [THR]

Guinness rang in the new year—and their 250th anniversary— by airing this live fireworks display at 17:59 local Ireland time. Why 17:59? History states that Arthur Guinness signed the brewery's 9,000-year-lease on New Years Eve in 1759.

Maybe it should come as no surprise that Google's Director of Security is also a "mentalist" magician; few can better sell the illusion of ironclad internet security, after all, than a master of deception who fooled thousands of NBC viewers.

And now: "The power is out at Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., bringing flights and security screening to a standstill." They'll get it fixed just as soon as they find the problem, so you folks just sit tight. [AP]

A stimulated Regis doesn't understand "Teenage Lobotomy," but wants to use it later on at the club, and he thinks Joey's leather pants are fancy. Conversely, Kathie Lee sits mum, staring with desire at the impetuous Dee Dee.

Roger Stone—yes, that Roger Stone—has published his apparently annual best- and worst-dressed lists!

who bumped into New York Post columnist Cindy Adams while she was in Santiago, Chile, according to the gossipeuse's recap of her holiday vacation.

When Star reporter Kate Major quit "journalism" in order to pursue love with Jon Gosselin, some questioned whether the move was wise. Well, the haters can quiet down: Kate's made it. To celebrity boxing (refereeing).

This weekend, the New York Times tried to find redeeming value in MTV's Jersey Shore, the most important sociological artifact of our time. Sorry, but trying to find any good in this show is missing the point entirely.

For those of us who feel a void where the Flavor of Love series once filled our hearts- this video won't do much for you. Looks like we have an early contender for "Worst Video of the Year."

Remember Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the couple that crashed the state dinner in November? It turns out they weren't the only uninvited guests who made it inside the White House that evening. [Politico]

This memo just went out to employees of B-to-B publisher ALM (formerly Incisive Media), updating them on the year to come. Furloughs are back, but the outlook is slightly less dire than last year. The full memo:

If New York Post editor Col Allan is indeed contemplating "retirement" at the ripe old age of 57, as New York's Gabriel Sherman reports, his departure would cap off a decade of colossal editorial and business embarrassments for the paper.

You undoubtedly heard about the trouble at Newark yesterday, when a man walked the wrong way through a security checkpoint and the airport was forced to halt all flights for several hours. It seems that some people made the best of a lousy situation. "What do you do when your terminal is on security lockdown and no one can come or go? Well, you burst out in song, of course!" [YouTube via NewTeeVee]