Consumerist has the deepest Cash4Gold investigation you'll ever want to read. Takeaway: Cash4Gold sucks.

You want serious critics?! You sure you want 'em? How bad do you want 'em? We rose up against the frivolity of Bens Mankiewicz and Lyons. And now meet the This-Is-Cinema dream team — A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips.

GMail is still down. But forlorn users of Google's email service are not without ways of coping with their waking nightmare. Together, we will get through this. Here's how.

These news anchors just love to laugh and chuckle and mock Rod Blagojevich's new book where he compares himself to Jesus. Guess who was also mocked, by primitive Roman "news anchors"? Jesus the first. And history repeats.

Eliot Spitzer is denying a report in today's New York Post that he's planning to return to politics and run for elected office. But he does have a new job and it's related to politics, so perhaps that accounts for the confusion? As of today, he's an adjunct political science professor at the City College of New York, where he'll be paid $98.43 an hour to teach a three-hour law and public-policy class once a week. [LoHud.com via NYM]

You could be the proud new owner of The Madoffs' Montauk beach estate, for the low low price of $8.75 million or so! Click through for a photographic tour of your future party pad—including the sexxxy room!

Wonder what it's like to guard State Department facilities in Kabul? In photos first published by Gawker, security contractors get their kicks peeing on one another, simulating anal sex, doing "butt shots," and "eating potato chips out of ass cracks."

GMail is officially down; Twitter is in full panic mode. Google offered some small hope of salvation:

Eric Schmidt wants so badly for the cool kids in Hollywood to like him. The Google CEO bought that Southern California house. He tried and largely failed to get studio content on YouTube. Maybe if he offers the crown jewels?

[Sarah Jessica Parker waves down an imaginary cab today on the Upper East Side today during the first day of filming for the new Sex and the City movie. Image via X17]

Interviewing Katie Hall, who in 1976 was abducted and raped, by now-notorious kidnapper Phillip Garrido, Larry King let the victim yammer about being picked up, outside a supermarket, forced into a car, before asking what viewers really wanted to know.

The Way We Live Now: Sell! Sell! Sell! Sell it all! Sell it off! Take! Take the money out! Take it! Sorry. Just had to dump stocks from that "rally," ha. Anyhow: loan sharks are back!

• NBC plans to deliver its programming to gas stations. So if you don't tune into Jay Leno voluntarily, you may be forced to do so while you pump gas. [MC]
• Mad Men has been renewed for a fourth season, not surprisingly. [NYT]
• Freedom Communications, the company that publishes the Orange County Register, among other newspapers, has filed for bankruptcy protection [E&P]
• Magazines are having trouble selling copies on newsstands, so now they're going to focus on getting you to sign up for subscriptions. [NYT]
• Don't be surprised when you see Tony Bourdain whip out his Chase Visa card to pay for meals on his Travel Channel show. It's now part of his job. [AdAge]
• The show goes on for Plum TV, the "resort and luxury lifestyle TV network." The company just raised another $5 million from investors. [PC]
• Rachel Maddow says she had swine flu! But she went to the doctor, got "the special swine flu drugs," and is all better now, thankfully. [HP]

Remember the prolonged outrage-masked-as-concern over Mary-Kate Olsen's shrinking body? Well, it's back, but this time its directed toward her fleshy frame. What's the poor thing gotta do to keep the tabloids off her back?

Only about one in eight Wikipedia contributors and editors are women, according to a study by the online encyclopedia's own nonprofit operator. An unfortunate example of sexism? More like an example of the easily conned male ego.

We really hoped we'd live to see the day come when Diana Taylor, the patient, soft-spoken woman who serves as New York City's de facto first lady, would find herself embroiled in messy, embarrassing scandal. It looks like that day has arrived, unfortunately. The New York Post reports that Taylor wore the same dress and the same hat to the Hampton Classic Horse Show in Bridgehampton two years in a row. Could it be true?

In your cooling Tuesday media column: Politico gets the hot scoop on human being David Frum, a public broadcasting station regrets its spending habits, sex and violence soldier on, and a media man passes on.

When we read this morning that a Chicago Tribune intern would be teaching a journalism school class on "investigative" Twitter use, our jaws hit the floor. But then the intern/professor in question sent us a copy of the class syllabus.

There'll be no Mad Men renewal-cliffhanger this year: AMC's announced it's ordering a fourth season.

Joe Francis' storied career has been the Wal-Mart of slime: something to offend the whole family. Tax evasion, child exploitation, assaulting the press — he's got bargains in every aisle. Some wondered, what's left? But Francis has topped himself.