Update: As more information comes to light about Scientology swordsman Mario Majorski, a Defamer operative within the religion writes in to say, "The Church may want to put Mario into the distant past, but he was at Flag in FL in 1993 and did one of their confidential 'New Life Rundowns' called L-XI. He said it cost him $60,000." Quite the budget buster — we hope Majorski at least got a meadow of wildflowers out of it. [Previously: Introducing Mario Majorski, the Scientology Swordsman]

Two weeks after Valleywag stopped believing that President-for-Change Obama might steal Eric Schmidt from Google, Silicon Alley Insider editor Henry Blodget has weighed in with the same speculation. His bullet list of reasons Schmidt might quit isn't crazy, but here's the six-word version of Blodget's post: "We have no inside knowledge here. " I have enough inside knowledge to say this: true Googlers don't see Google as a stepping-stone to a government job. Government is part of the problem. Google is the solution. (Photo by Reuters/Carlos Barria)

Oh we see how it is. First we make Republican ski bum and national bailout chief Neel Kashkari a total object of desire by showing you how Ferrari-tastic he was in high school. Then People magazine goes and names him one of the sexiest guys in the world. And now, Details has named Neel #2 on their "Power List," if you can imagine "Details" and "Power" together in the same sentence. Kashkari kopykats are going krazy! We saw him first. That means we're first in line for some of that sweet bailout money in 09, baby. [Details; pic by ineffable.me]

Amy Poehler pushing her new baby boy, Archie, in a stroller ... John Leguizamo riding his bike down the street ... Kirsten Johnston talking on her cell phone ... Nicole Kidman outside the premiere of Australia, just after Hugh Jackman made his arrival ... Kelly Ripa and husband Mark Consuelos unveiling Cartier's holiday windows ... James Taylor arriving at his hotel, followed by Faith Hill and Tim McGraw ... and Katie Holmes walking down the street with Suri.

If Hollywood is soon to lose Nicole Kidman to motherhood, at least she's going out in a blaze of glory! The actress appeared on Letterman last night to promote Australia (we've seen it, and we feel safe in saying that Kidman's nose gives her finest performance ever), and the host/guest interaction was so uncomfortable that even Kristen Stewart sent Kidman flowers afterward (with a note attached that said, "Damn, girl. Loosen up!").Hard to say exactly what went wrong, but things simply seemed off from the start, as Kidman seemed acutely unable of more than two-word responses, and repeatedly failed to pick up on David Letterman's conversational cues. "I'm just smiling!" Kidman insisted. Oh, so that's what that was!

It's true: a book by lame-duck First Lady, librarian Laura Bush, will really and truly be foisted upon us. She's talking to publishers! [AP]

Twilight's record-breaking opening gross was downgraded to a measly $69.6 million on Monday, which nevertheless failed to deter Summit Entertainment from officially nudging the sequel, New Moon, into the pre-production queue. That was the easy part, though; paying its young stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart a reported $12 million apiece for the second film (and possibly a third) — and locking in director Catherine Hardwicke for millions more — is where the mess might arise.Twilight's budget was only $37 million (plus at least that much in marketing), which should have Summit well in the black by the middle of next month. Stewart and Pattinson came cheap, earning about $2 million each for their roles as vampire Edward Cullen and his dewy teen love interest Bella Swan. Alas, those days are over: Looking ahead, one rumor has the studio adapting New Moon and Eclipse — the second and third novels in Stephenie Meyer's wholesome, bestselling bloodsucker franchise — simultaneously, probably at a combined budget pushing $160 million. Anything to improve the FX, we suppose (there are werewolves in the next one), and anything to make reading New Moon worth it for poor Stewart. Their pricey return all but assured, Summit will move on to Hardwicke, who wasted little time and leverage last weekend pulling Favreau-ish media stunts about her doing Twilight's follow-ups right:

Last night was a corker! Well, as much of a corker as this curiously muted Hollywood travel guide series gets. Lauren and Audrina rumbled and lurched toward each other, hooded-eyes blazing with the passion and energy of a mostly-shut-down power plant in the hazy brown hills of the Inland Empire. Justin Bobby kind of acted like a normal person, Audrina's sister Maudrina really acted like a normal person, and Heidi and Spencer... Well, in strange juxtaposition to their sad loveless marriage, their sad loveless relationship seemed on the brink of a rupture. Seemed. Just seemed. Nothing ever actually Is on this show. It's all Camel Light smoke and compact mirrors. Read all about it after the jump. It appears that Audrina had, while rolling around town in her rickety old shopping cart with her big helmet on like she does, heard a wicked rumor. That her grunting, aloof fellow fair Justin Bobby had—at some point, the chronology was really (deliberately?) unclear—"hooked up" with her best friend in mournful facial expressions, Lauren. What misery! She confronted Lauren and JB alike, off camera, and they both said that it never happened... But she couldn't believe it. The chap who told her the rumor, evidently one of her Claremont hobo friends named Dino, must be very reliable! So the sunny episode meandered, with Audrina pensive and whiny in her comfy new apartment and Lauren indignant and sad and mad in the house they used to share. Of course they'd have to eventually cross paths. Audrina showed up in the kitchen while LC sorted mail, and they briefly chatted. But Lauren, her jaw hard with principle, would not even give the question the dignity of a response, so Audrina angrily flopped out. What would become of these two nearest and deerest friendsies? Justin Bobby was no help to poor sad Audrina either. He at least denied it but, with his hair shellacked to near Elvis doll degree, he needed to get home and lie down because his scalp hurt terribly and those birds were looking at him funny. He did mention the string of "f yous" and "f this"s that she left on his answering machine. So that was kind of funny. But yeah, he skedaddled. So Audrina was left to stir herself in her rumor soup and worry her upper arms into unrecognizable sticks. Srsly. They're tiny. Her sister offered some cold comfort ("Are you going to apologize?" "No, what did I do?" Um...) but Audrina needed to see Lauren one last time. So they chose a great place for talking, the loud black and candle bar Winston's. Lauren keened, shrieking "You did this! You did this!" We assume she meant the ruination of the friendship, because while she did say then that she was no longer "pointing her fingers," Audrina would not back down off her initial suspicion. Lauren said she found Justin Bobby disgusting, which is always a nice thing to say about your friend's disgusting boyfriend. Anyway, nothing was resolved. Lauren wept into her champagne while Lo drunkenly caressed her and whispered things to her and in her head did small pirouettes and jumps because this is what she's wanted all along and it's finally just now happening and you never know how good it's going to feel to get what you want until you get it and oh happy day more champagne. Otherwise... Holly. Spencer. Fight. Holly. Heidi. Fight. Heidi. Spencer. Not really a fight, just a resigned and defeated admission that Spencer will never do anything right or be a good person. The details are too grim and stupid and repetitive to go into, just know that Heidi no longer has her office, just a sad little cubicle and that, when told he is a bad person by Holly, Spencer made a small quiet lost and bewildered face. Just for a moment you could see the dim glimmer of humanity sparking beneath his skin, but then the electricity was sucked back in by that Inland Empire power plant and the lights went out in Spencer again. Towards the end of all of this, after the winds come and the trees go, there will be some Animates left to briefly scare us while we cower in our shelters. They won't have full capacity, they can't walk, because their batteries will mostly be sapped and the water will still be acidic. But they'll occasionally flicker on and move slightly, their eyes glowing softly, a raspy metallic breath escaping their once-ravenous mouths, their joints creaking in the night. Like old porches on a summer evening. That's what that moment with Spencer was like. He's Post-World. He's from the ruined future. And he knows something we don't. Or... eh. Fuck it.

Promises, Passages, Wonderland: We'll forgive you if you can't seem to keep your celebrity rehab centers/resorts straight. The current issue of The New Yorker takes a look inside Wonderland, which is where Lindsay Lohan spent some time and where Mike Tyson spent more than a year. Wonderland isn't cheap—a private room runs $58,000 a month and, obviously, the place doesn't take insurance. But it sure is convenient! You can pop in for as little as two or three days at a time, which is great for celebs who want to drum up a little tabloid attention but don't want to pay for the media coverage with a month of their lives. Wonderland has no problem if you'd like to bring your dogs with you. Assuming the withdrawal process hasn't destroyed your appetite, you won't have to worry about inedible cafeteria food. (How does grilled lobster in garlic butter for lunch and Chilean sea bass with plum syrup for dinner sound?) And you can use your cell phone, too, which is a major plus if you need to dial up your dealer while you're there. Of course, Wonderland is hardly the only option if you're looking to take care of your coke or alcohol problem, and you'd like to mingle with a few B-listers at the same time. After the jump, a list of six other rehab resorts popular with the boldface set.

We thought the deep freeze predicted by the Observer and others for book publishing this winter would result in more boring blockbuster-hopeful books and lower advances for new and middle-range authors. But a publishing company temporarily suspending the buying of new books is even worse. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, reports the NYT, the "publisher of authors including Philip Roth, Jonathan Safran Foer, Günter Grass and J. R. R. Tolkien, has temporarily suspended acquisitions of new manuscripts." Yet another disaster for people who write for a living, and one less option for laid-off and underemployed professional typists who thought that "getting a book proposal together" might be a decent career move.According to Josef Blumenfeld, vice president of communications:

With people scraping together pennies for Kool-Aid, all ads harping on the hard times we're having, and coupons making a comeback, things are getting a little stressful for you, the good ol' American consumer. Well, how would you like some Free Cash? Would you? Would you? Would you do anything? Anything at all? Well shake that ass and empty that wallet, consumers, cause corporate America is making it rain! Cash giveaways are the new advertising trend, according to advertising trendwatcher- in-chief Stuart Elliott. Sweepstakes and cash prizes are a paltry sum for big companies, but for The Poors that now make up 87% of our nation, they're the only thing standing between them and cannibalism. The most ironic contest is CNBC.com's Portfolio Challenge, with a $1 million prize for building a successful mock portfolio. If you can build a successful portfolio these days, you're worth a lot more than that.

Popular nostalgia act Ann Coulter's new book is called GUILTY: How the Liberal Media Is Biased Against the Lizard People. Well, just kidding about that subtitle but you get the basic idea. The book is about how Ann Coulter is still marketable. Maybe her jaw will be unwired in time for the promotional tour. [Drudge, Earlier: Ann Coulter's Top Secret New Book!]

Camelot is over! No one can pay their Rent! The West Side Story these days is that lots of Broadway shows are closing! Ahem. Yes, lots of big glittery plays and musicals are shutting their doors forever because of this creepy, kooky economy. One of the big Goliaths to fall last week was Mel Brooks' much-maligned Young Frankenstein, which will put on the Ritz one last time on January 4th. Thing is, no one's really all that sad to see it go. The show was anticipated like crazy—the Brooks pedigree! Remember The Producers? What a crazy, million Tony-winning smash that was!—and priced accordingly. Premium tickets (a rotten idea pioneered by Brooks and Co. when Producers hit big) reached excesses of $400, group sales seats (bread n' butter, folks) were drastically limited, and, perhaps worst of all, the critics seemed pretty fed up with the whole endeavor. Acidic word-of-mouth spread throughout the industry, from creative types to tour directors, and the show was marked (perhaps not entirely fairly) an arrogant, dead-on-arrival failure. Don't piss off the theatre queens and the cigar-chomping tour company people! They're vicious! The New York Times details the story today, getting show producer Robert F.X. Sillerman to sheepishly admit: “What they perceived as our arrogance was nothing more or less than my ignorance.” Oh, sad. Though, we're not sure we believe that! Sillerman goes on to add that the show will recoup its investment, though just barely. And, well, given the show's astronomical ($11 million to mount, $600,000 a week to keep up) budget, we're not sure we believe that either.

Every November 25, New York celebrates its independence from the British. What, you didn't know about Evacuation Day? It is a much more awesome holiday than Thanksgiving, because it involves gunfire, greased flagpoles, and indignities being visited upon English people, one of the fundamental tenets of comedy. The British never made very likely imperialists because, as we all know, they're a fey bunch of ninnies who enjoy dressing in ladies' clothing and tending to their gardens. But they did run United States for a time, and their terrible despotic rule was marked with grievous injustices like asking that we pay an extra ha'penny (which in modern dollars is nearly a tuppence!) to drink our precious tea. So after some mooks in Boston got wasted, dressed in racist costumes, and engaged in some reckless property damage (some things never change, right?) we all decided that meant war, and a couple years later, the rest of the colonies had beaten the British and all that remained was for them to finally leave New York, where we never really minded their presence that much, as they were certainly preferable to those mooks in Boston. Still, the British were a little bitter about having to leave New York and go back to London, where the ladies all had comically screechy voices and sometimes chased you around at high speed while wearing frilly lingerie. So on their way out of town, they acted quite the cads!

Larry Mendte was the first male host of Access Hollywood before becoming a news anchor in Philadelphia, where he worked with Alycia Lane, a fellow anchor who punched an undercover cop and sent bikini photos of herself to the wife of a sports TV personality, all of which somehow made Mendte jealous, causing him to hack into Lane's email and forward the most salacious bits to gossip journalists, which ended up getting her fired, though his activities eventually came out and got him fired, and then got him sued by her as well as charged in a criminal case. Got that? Well now Mendte has been sentenced: He got six months of house arrest and three years of probation. At his sentencing he apologized, and said this:

♦ Coldplay guitarist Jonny Buckland (left) has paid $3.4 million for a condo at 21 Astor Place. The pad features 2,107 square feet, two bedrooms, and two-and-a-half baths. [NYO]
♦ Leslie Spira Lopez has closed on a four-bedroom, four-bath apartment on the 18th floor of 15 Madison Square Park for $5.5 million. Lopez is the president of Kew Management, the real estate firm her grandfather founded. [Cityfile]

Tanya Hollander, the "hooker booker" who set up appointments for clients of Eliot Spitzer's favorite escort agency, Emperors Club VIP, was sentenced to a year of probation today. [NYDN]

[Lance Bass, former NSYNCer and current Star with whom there is Dancing, on that show's set yesterday; image via INF]

Hey, whoa, BLOW UP your television and get ready for DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT sound and visuals comin atcha from a WIDE SPECTRUM OF NEW HOOKS. This is the future, people. The Tribune Co.'s "Chief Innovation Officer" and craziest dude in the newspaper industry Lee Abrams has some new memo-fied ideas that will have you looking at TV weeded out of your mind a whole new way. Consider: "The old line 'Don't fix it if aint broke' makes no sense. It's like saying: Let it break...then we'll fix it." And that's just the beginning!:

Not that Padma Lakshmi needed any help in ensnaring her next billionaire boyfriend, but this can't hurt: Indian models are apparently the next big thing in the modeling world, an industry that is finally recognizing "their potential and versatility in selling high fashion," reports ABC News. Willowy Brazilians Gisele Bundchen and Adriana Lima? They're so five minutes ago as advertisers and editors book new faces from the subcontinent like September Harper's Bazaar cover girl Kangana Dutta and Ford model Lakshmi Menon, who's been in recent campaigns for Hermes and Givenchy.