With its eighth season—begins in January!—lumbering towards us like old Randy, American Idol remains so big that it's hard to quite figure out the size and shape of it. What makes up the pop corn 'n bubblegum singing competition? And, more importantly, who's watching? Well lots of people are, but we suspect a smaller number are doing the rabid voting, making the signs, and wearing the t-shirts than ever before. It's become clear that the obsessed Idol fan demographic has, over the years, been distilled into two core groups: scary/crazy adults with lots of problems and, you know, little kids who are allowed to be a little nutty because, well, they're kids. As a visual example of a mix of the cute kid and the borderline crazy, we present you, after the jump, with a video of The Worst Idol Day Ever, as witnessed by some of its most devoted fans. We just think it's really funny. In particular the girl in the middle.

Steven Soderbergh's four-hour, two part epic Che will screen at next month's New Latin American Film Festival in Havana, reports the New York Post. Since the festival's president had said that any anti-Castro sentiment in the film would be grounds for exclusion back in July, we can assume the finished film skirts the controversial questions and lionizes Guevara throughout its elongated running time. "Cinematically we're making a demand on the audience that's very similar to the demands Che made on the people around him," says Soderbergh, which begs the question: did Fidel just fall asleep halfway through the screening?Guevara's image adorns countless tee-shirts of people who have no idea who he is, and elite fascination with the guy has a long history, including a loving Oliver Stone documentary and more recently, The Motorcycle Diaries. More than a person, the CIA-killed Guevara is a martyred symbol for resentment of imperial America. The film will be shown both as one complete feature, and also in two parts as Guerrilla and The Argentine, with Benicio Del Toro in the titular role, and Mexican actor Demián Bichir as Fidel Castro. Fear that the film will be a fantasy of the real Che Guevara has the conservative journal Commentary hopping mad to point out the more murderous aspects of Guevara's life, as depicted in Carlos Eire's Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy:

Last week's SNL had no less than eight sketches featuring gay themes or gay content. The comedy in these sketches, without exception, derived from one of three premises: 1. Men kissing or otherwise enjoying each other's bodies. 2. Men acting effeminately. 3. Men describing the sex they've had with other men. And then there was that part where Seth Meyers silenced the anti-Prop 8 audience by telling then, "OK. Vote's over." All this led us to describe the proceedings as a gay minstrel show. The Advocate approached Meyers to defend the episode. Unfortunately, the one question we really wanted the head SNL writer to answer—what was up with that "Vote's over" thing?—is never addressed. He did have lots of defensive things to say about the rest of the show. Here are the greatest hits, in no particular order.

We're hearing from a good source that Tom Curley, the head of the Associated Press, just held a town hall meeting to tell employees that the AP "will lose 10% of its staff next year." At a current headcount of over 4,000 employees, that would translate to at least 400 jobs lost, which could theoretically come through either layoffs or voluntary buyouts. Several cash-strapped newspapers—including the entire Tribune Co.—have recently announced plans to drop their AP subscriptions. Still, this would be a massive cut for what has always been one of the steadiest possible realms of journalism. AP employees with more details on this, email us. UPDATE: The AP has sent us a statement, which doesn't contain any numbers but acknowledges that cuts may be coming—though mostly through attrition, they hope:

Fox News mastermind, old Nixon image reformer, and all-around American democracy-damaging propagandist Roger Ailes leaked the news to Drudge that Roger Ailes is getting a contract extension at News Corp. Developing! Ailes, the president of Fox News, has been focused on launching and building the Fox Business Network for the last year, which he failed at, miserably, and meanwhile Fox News itself has begun a long-overdue tailspin into delusional irrelevance, with cranky Brit Hume retiring and Shep Smith the channel's sole voice of reason as Hannity and Greta Van Susteren run wild. So hey, Ailes will remain at the wheel through Obama's first term, probably. Maybe he can right the ship and transform it into a coherent (if still nutso) voice of opposition? Or maybe it will continue to be a madhouse of feverish conspiracy and paranoia. Either way, Roger, like his Fox Business Network, will not sweat the recession.

It's increasingly difficult for us to find supporting evidence for the "Stars: Just like us!" meme that sustains us in our windowless dungeon HQ, but Twilight star Kristen Stewart may yet hold us over for the rest of the year. The young actress confides in a new interview that even she can't figure out the intense appeal of the teen-vampire romance saga — but she can apparently spot the appeal of never doing Bella Swan again as long as she lives:

Desperate to train employees in the way of their customers on the other end of the world, Indian tech outfits teach them American accents, the names of local football and baseball teams, and slang expressions. Nativists wring hands about this crushing local mores in favor of Western culture. But sometimes the importation of Western culture proves outright deadly. In Gurgaon, India, a suburb of New Delhi filled with offshore-tech outfits, police are investigating the death of a 22-year-old employee of Nokia-Siemens at the company's office.Nokia-Siemens officials held a pie-eating contest for workers in the company cafeteria. Saurab Sabharwal started choking and ran to the bathroom. No one thought to follow him. A coworker found him dead an hour later. His father is now asking why medical personnel weren't on hand; doctors in India question whether such contests should be held at all. The point of such contests is to spur competition between employees, in a culture which fosters cooperation. That one proved deadly is perhaps the best lesson about American culture, if not the one the bosses intended. (Image via Machias Wild Blueberry Festival)

This past summer, the Evil Food Conglomerates of America agreed to "limit" advertising that "targeted children," though their definition of that is loose enough to keep selling a lot of Pop-Tarts to 13-year-olds. They did this to try to preclude some kind of rule that would outlaw their advertising to children altogether. Unfortunately for the Hamburglar, a new study is out that has people actually talking about banning youth-targeted fast food ads, which would really be an incredible thing. "No fatties," the study proclaims:

♦ Roger Ailes (left) has renewed his contract with News Corp., which will keep him by Rupert Murdoch's side for at least five more years (and keep him running the show at Fox News for at least one more presidential election). [NYT]
♦ New York has fired longtime restaurant critic Gael Greene. [Feedbag]
♦ The Runway battle continues: Lifetime has sued NBC over claims it is blocking the cable channel from airing future episodes of the reality TV show. [NYP]

Unreconstructed Liberals have their own reasons for disliking the Clintons, and movement conservatives obviously have even more, but what the hell explains the pathological antipathy the Washington Press Corps still feels for President Bill and Senator Hillary Clinton? The roots of it go back 16 years or so, but what's amazing is to see it still in such pristine condition, as if we haven't had eight terrible years to get over it. Now, as the Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State job offer becomes yet another press-driven telenovela, with the Clintons as, I dunno, the country's presumed dead ex-lover who just turned up on the day of our wedding to Barack Obama, or something, it's instructive to see how the press corps still sees the former first family. Christopher Hitchens comes at the Clinton issue as an old-timey Leftist (leftists hate liberals!) and also a drunken contrarian, but his comments and criticisms have been accepted by the resolute centrists of the DC press corps as a, bizarrely, an argument against Clinton with a great deal of popular support. The opinion of Chris Hitchens represents the views of precisely one person on this planet. He is representative of no one on the left, right, or in the center. You wouldn't know that from listening to Joe Scarborough:

· Finally, we've learned "what happened to Andrae": he's been busy watering his dress from Season 2 of Project Runway. · When told she would be attending Gucci’s Tattoo Heart Collection launch event, Madonna instead heard, "Gucci's Skin-a-Muppet Fantasyland Spectacular."· Madonna dares to push the envelope with her latest, sexually provocative reinvention as a furry. · A-Rod likes 'em hairy. Actually, hairier. · Weedwhacker, Guy, weedwhacker.

We've been getting lots of angry e-mails from various freelancers with coverage in the Freelancers Union, which I mainly ignored until I realized it would negatively affect me, too. The oft-reported insurance provider for the creative underclass is—wtf—starting their own insurance company called the Freelancers Insurance Company. And members have no choice but to join it! The takeaway: if my shrink isn't in the new "Freelancers Insurance Company" network's koverage, no amount of generic Klonopin will be able to kwell my krazy!First of all, let's cut the bullshit with the name and starry-eyed, fake labor-organizing rhetoric of their ads—Freelancers Union—and call it what it is: a healthcare company. Freelancers aren't going on strike or picketing as part of the Freelancers Union—they're joining it for the health plan, so that their teeth won't fall out of their head—which would limit future job opportunities. And guess what: just like other healthcare companies, the Freelancers "Union" mostly sucks! Past practice indicates that the Freelancers Union has trouble simply administering enrollments for their outside plans, making this change appear even more worrisome. In fact, they pulled almost the exact same stunt last year, complete with a cutely-worded memo: ""If you want to wake up with insurance on New Year's Day, you have to let us know which of the plans from Empire or PerfectHealth you want." (This was their way of announcing that coverage under their current health plan, HIP, would end December 31 of 2007 in favor of more expensive coverage under Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield.) So they've done it again this year—and of course, the new FIC plans are even more expensive, with reduced benefits. The expense increase isn't entirely their fault—but the bait-and-switch is. Why bother joining the Freelancers Union if they're going to pull the rug out from under you every year? One freelancer complained to us, "Problem is, the new plans offer considerably fewer benefits and significantly higher costs, but were presented as a fait accompli, complete with a bunch of solidarity rhetoric. With just a few weeks to decide, many FU members feel that their safety nets have been ripped out from under them." Members are blogging angrily here and here! Wrote another tipster, "Can a PPO really be called a PPO without OON coverage?" We have no idea, but you know people are getting desperate when they start writing things like, "I'm going to check out Mediabistro's insurance plans."

The recession didn't put a damper on Sol Kerzner's plans to throw one of the most lavish parties in recent memory. The South African casino mogul threw a $25 million fête in Dubai this evening to celebrate the opening of the Atlantis, his $1.5 billion hotel on the man-made island of Palm Jumeirah. (It's modeled on his Bahamas resort by the same name.) A long list of stars put in appearances (Lindsay Lohan, Mischa Barton, Robert De Niro, Charlize Theron, Mary-Kate Olsen, Albert Hammond Jr., Agyness Deyn), Kylie Minogue was paid in the neighborhood of $4 million to perform a 60-minute set, and a bunch of famous chefs (like Nobu Matsuhisa) were responsible for assembling the menu. Now Kerzner just has to figure out how to get people to rent rooms that begin at $800 a night (and go up to $25,000) and he can start making his money back. [WSJ, Daily Mail]

Fashion, they tell me, is ultimately supposed to be about feeling good about oneself—be your best every day! your clothes are your calling card! All that miserable shit. But really, or at least according to Stylista, the stultifying bungle of a fashion editor competition show, it's about being cruel to yourself and to others until you've been declared the harried, bedraggled victor. It's about people scratching their nails into themselves and others and holding on for dear life, no matter how much blood everyone loses. But most importantly it's about not being fat. Not convinced? Read on for a recap of this, the fifth and worst, episode of muck. The first mini-challenge was to pick out a little gift for Amy Sacco (right?), who runs Bungalow 8 or something. The teams paired up and dashed off to stores to find fun gifties! Wicked grumble-chin Megan paired up with Chinese-speaking Brown University cliché Johanna. They got a cashmere scarf or something. Another team, Dyson the Vacuum Cleaner and Barbie bobble-head Katie, bought a fancy Vintage Chanel brooch. And team Token (the Angry Black Lady! the Sad Fattie!) cobbled together a huge basket of toiletries and passed it off as a "Travel Survival Kit" or some such nonsense. Naturally Team Token came up the losers, and because why the hell not, Grumble-chin and Johanna won. But then they were split up to be team leaders! The big challenge was to go to a party at Bungalow 8 (synergy!) and act—in a scene so ripped from Devil Wears Prada that I hope someone, anyone, who works at the show just threw their clipboard up in the air and stormed out while yelling "I fucking quit!" when the "idea" was proposed—as Anne Slowey's (she of the wobble heel) field guides. You know, remembering everyone's name and stuff. You remember that scene. Emily was sick. And then the real sad part began. Before they rushed home to "learn" flashcards of all the guests' faces and personal details, they were told that they could each wear an outfit plundered from the ramshackle little fake Elle closet that the show has put together. Squeals and gay-claps abounded and everyone raced in to get their grubby little mitts on some top-drawer threads. Except for one. I am, of course, referring to Sad Fattie, otherwise known as Danielle. I don't call her Sad Fattie because I think she's that in real life, but that's how she was presented on the show and it was just cruel. Of course nothing fit her in the closet, and the producers had to know that would happen. The weight issue was going to come up eventually, and I guess they just decided that they would dictate when. So of course she got really upset, because who wouldn't, and didn't want to go to the party at all and no one knew what to say. Well, Johanna calmly lectured her (and us) that skinny and tall is what's beautiful no matter what and that's just that. Sorry, Fattie. And then Dyson said, I shit you not, that the issue "has been the elephant in the room." Poor. Choice. Of. Words. (Though, darkly, darkly funny.) Then there was a whole scene with her eating pizza and talking about not having much of an appetite and close-ups of puzzled looks and I just... It was just terrible. Thankfully, Danielle collected herself eventually, put on her best dress and steeled herself for the party. Meanwhile her teammates Johanna and Katie were trying to memorize names and faces and details. Well, Johanna was, obsessively. With fancy flashcards. Katie was just eating popcorn and expressed no interest in doing anything else. Everyone, including the good Lord above us, sighed resignedly and just did a "boing boing" fist bump on those tig ol' bitties. The day of the party! It was so planned out and fake! The teams stood next to Anne, who appeared to be trying to hide the fact that she was slowly farting, and whispered (read: shrieked) names and details into her ears. Team Johanna failed epically. Johanna apparently has some brain problem that doesn't allow her to translate what people look like in a photograph to what they look like in real life. Too bad. Katie? Katie, who was wearing a little black blouse as a dress, brazenly admitted that she just spent all her time looking up at the mirrored ceiling to see if her lip gloss was smudged. "I didn't study at all," she cheerfully admitted. Nice. Way to go. Boing. Boing. Team Grumble-chin, ugh, did really well, and then it was time to make the page layouts. I don't really ever pay much attention to this because it's really just not done well enough to be remotely interesting, so I just stared at the mirrored ceiling we have here at Gawker HQ (watched it in the office this morning) to see if my lipgloss was on straight (boing boing) and then paid attention when the judging started. Whatevs. Obviously Johanna and company lost, though, GRRRRRRRRRRR, Katie got off the hook by doing "a good layout" even though it looked like the Brayton Road Times newspaper that my sister and I used to make on the home computer. Whatever, Anne said she was safe, motorboated her for a while, then sent her off. So we were left with China and Fattie, and, well, of course it was time. Danielle was told much nicer things than other eliminees— because you can't treat overweight people like normal adult people! their feelings are fragile like Jell-O and if you make them sad they will get even fatter!—and was asked to leave. And, sigh, what of course is Anne's catchphrase send-off line? "You're not the right fit." Fucking figures.

Stateside critics have finally seen Australia, and the reviews are in! Kind of, anyway; we've mostly been sorting through first impressions, rough blog sketches and less-then-soaring anti-summaries ("Some kind of lethargy virus had taken over my system," wrote Jeffrey Wells), but we think we have enough to go on to figure out where Baz Luhrmann's epic may sit among this fall's most anticipated releases. Your one-stop cheat sheet follows the jump.· It's... OK! Todd McCarthy has the most substantial review so far in Variety, starting off:

Everyone's getting laid-off these days, what with the economy and all, and now we want to know what you'll be doing for money while the dust settles. There aren't any media jobs left and desperate times call for desperate measures. Depressing stories have already been trickling in, like the two longtime Jersey Star-Ledger newsroom employees who, after refusing a buyout, were banished to the mailroom! Or the Longmont, CO, Times Call staff who were invited to be valet parking attendants for their (probably soon-to-be ex) boss's fancy Christmas party. And, perhaps worst, a Hachette memo to staff inviting them to participate in the saddest thing of all, a holiday crafts fair. You know, so they can practice a trade before they inevitably get canned! "You will have the opportunity to show or sell your craft such as jewelry, accessories, chocolates, knitting and crocheting," it says. Sigh. Send us your post-axing, new job tales (depressing or not!) and we'll publish some of our favorites in the coming dark days. In the meantime, read the full dismaying Hachette memo after the jump.

"Would you like to live naked, warm, safe and whole, any time of year?" YES. "Please visit cambiumbene.com to find out more. You can acquire a substantial plot of land for less than the price of a car, where you can build your own eco-friendly lodge in this beautiful protected domain, where the wearing of clothes is not required, all year round." OKAY.

Members of Soho House will have a new place to mingle with Eurotrash by the end of 2009: The private club's parent company, Soho House Ltd., has acquired the The Sovereign Hotel on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach and says it plans to turn the property into its latest outpost, with a boutique hotel, rooftop bar, pool, spa, and screening room. [GlobeSt via TRD]

After we went to all the trouble of offering Spitzer hooker Ashley Dupre seven—seven!—different career choices yesterday, what does she do? She goes and tells Diane Sawyer, "I want to go after my music and do what I love. And not lose track of who I am on the way. I'm trying to pursue my music. I'm still living for it. I'm not gonna give up my dream. I'm not going to change. I'm not going to let this change who I am. And what I love." All of those short declarative sentences do not change the fact that your song "All We Want" is just the sort of generic R&B bullshit blathering that has already largely destroyed our nation's airwaves. We say this as a friend! Regrettably, Ashley is listening to her other friends: her MySpace friends. Like Whitney Houston, and "Fin" from Williamsburg:

Good morning. My name is Joshua David Stein. Please join me in a discussion of the most important (reality television competitive culinary) show of our time (between 10 and 11 pm on Wednesdays), Bravo's Top Chef Like a bunch of drunken bums we've stumbled into Week Two of Season Five, full of giddy apprehension, eager to feel and having to pee. What would await us? What could possibly surprise us? Why is Padma still single? Has Tom lost weight? Why does Gail Simmons looks like a train wreck? Soon enough, the annoying shhhhhSHHHHHP knife sound signaled that all our questions would be answered. From the outset, the episode looked pretty good. The quickfire challenge was hot dogs. I, who at this point was actually quite drunk, had just eaten the Chang Dog and the Wylie Dog at PDT (the former, a bacon-wrapped hot dog with kimchi, the latter a "deep-fried Crif Dog wiener nestled against a baton of WD-50 deep-fried mayo with tomato molasses and freeze-dried onions") so was already juiced for wieners. Instead of pimping out the quickfire like some James Lipton-like mac to Oscar Mayer, the segment featured Angelina D'Angelo, an independent Queens hot dog cart purveyor. The hot dogs were okay. Fake Italian Fabio I think won? (Maybe it was the little tattooed blonde lesbian.) Lex Luthor made a stab at a world dog that fell flat. You like that, Thomas Friedman, you jealous ignoble Ionic fifth columnist? [OH! Before I forget: Did anyone catch that weird mini-segment hidden inside a commercial break where Leah, the lady from Centro, clearly wants to hump Hoseah "Far Side" Rosenberg? She says something like, "I am into relationships. I'm boy-crazy!" and then she is cuddling with him on the sofa and being coquettish? "I want to sit here!" she says. The moment lasted all of thirty seconds then went straight back to some Housewives commercial. Transmission screw up or uncanny foreshadowing of love to come?] Anyway, ever onwards. Those sadistic and cynical Top Chef producers are, let's admit it, sometimes genius. Their ability to milk, nourish and capture human misery rivals Dante's formulations of contrapasso in the Inferno. In this week's episode, the contestants had to cook for the 50 failed contestant/chefs, the people who didn't even make it on to Top Chef. Needless to say, they were all—save one or two—vindictive anal worms. It was like when corrupt cops go to jail. One upside: The chefs worked out of the restaurant Craft which Chef Tom Colicchio owns so the man was in the kitchen, expediting. It is always a pleasure to see actual cheffery happening on the show. He's no-nonsense, exacting and demanding and at the same time level-headed, doesn't yell and is well-organized. So dishes and mistakes were made by the dozen. At the end of the day, Gail Simmons looked bad but made up for it by calling Jersey housewife Arianne Aryan. Aryan, for her part, totally blew it with her "cherry surprise" (Trust me, I've had a lot better cherry surprises—some courtesy of James Lipton!). It was so sweet even Padma (as seen above) expectorated the sweet load from her mouth into her napkin. It takes a lot to laugh, a train to cry, and one overly-sweet bite to make Padma spit. Strangely, it wasn't Aryan who went back to Jerz but rather it was the female Stephen Malkmus who was sent packing back to B-more [(Do you want to see her in a bikini? Click here) Maybe there'll be a sixth season of the Wire and it'll be about illegal kitchens and she can have a second career. Here's to hoping.] To sum up: I'm really excited for this season. I think it'll be great. It is already pretty wonderful. It's true, I despise Toby Young who replaces Ted Allen as judge and everything that he does. He'll be cruel and witty because that's what he does and he'll do it for the camera and without the slightest thought that what he says actually has consequences for the contestants, so deep is his narcissism. But Padma will be there to be drunk and cute and slurry and Tom is always there to slice through the bullshit with his limpid eyes. As far as the contestants go, Emile from Ratatouille, the guy with the horrendous facial hair, might actually be sweet. Fabio and Stefan actually seem to be in love. Urkel—though to be fair, she more closely resembles Where's Waldo?—is crazy town and God Bless Her for it. And shorty-wanna-hump Leah is so clingy that one wonders if she was brought to us by the makers of Glad. All in all, the ingredients are there for a well seasoned season. Let's just hope Bravo doesn't fuck it up too much.