This time around, dotcom exuberance is a lot more restrained than the first one. Except for Facebook and its legions of workers. Today's featured commenter, Sir Winston Thriller, wonders out loud why exactly Facebook needs so many workers:

This morning's Defamer Attractions was gravely remiss in omitting Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage from its assortment of hot new DVD releases. Our consciences ache even worse after today's revelation of a fascinating production memo by Kinkade himself, the evangelical "Painter of Light" whose 16-point missive for achieving the most faithful adaptation of his woodsy cornball nursing-home art wound up leaked to Vanity Fair.In the video above, featured modestly on the Christmas Cottage Web site, Kinkade promises an autobiographical family classic featuring Peter O'Toole, Marcia Gay Harden and Jared Paladecki, and which holds its own against It's a Wonderful Life. Bold claims all, especially considering Cottage went straight to DVD. Still, considering the explicit directions excerpted here, what could possibly go wrong? Apart from the Kubrick references, that is:

Nicholas Negroponte, the MIT Media Lab director turned non-CEO of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project, is working with Amazon.com to start shipping out the green-and-white laptops that no one really wants to Europeans. It's been a year since they were first offered for sale in the United States via a buy-one-give-one-away program. Thus far OLPC has only sold about 600,000 of its machines. After a brief spurt of interest, most consumers have turned their attention to the cheap laptops known as "netbooks" instead. [BBC]

In honor of the new James Bond film, we're gifting the writers of our five best comments this week with one of our most enigmatic prizes yet: a tablespoon of solace! Typically, we'd be giving out a quantum's worth, but because of the wonky solace exchange rate, a tablespoon it shall be! Naturally, as befits the libidinous secret agent, we've included quite a few sex puns this week. Was the competition stiff? Indubitably. Click through for the winners!· DudleyDion on Look, Everyone! It's Video Of Daniel Radcliffe's Naughties!: I have been hitting "click to enlarge" repeatedly but it doesn't seem to work on him. · naugahydeinplainsight on Fergie Retrofitted With Crotch-Veil In New 'Nine' Promotional Photo: Says Fergie: "That snatch of mine saves Nine." · 92BuickLeSabre on Defamer Exclusive: 'MADtv' Canceled: Where will all the comedians with funny noses go now? · misterdirky on How Dare You Insinuate That Lindsay Lohan is a Lesbian?!: Just because she wishes Deadliest Catch came in Smell-O-Vision does NOT make her a lesbian. · ObamaIsMyPresident on Two Inches Of Lance Bass Lost In Space: Hmm...wonder how many inches his ex Reichen took? Congratulations to our winners! Losers, back to the fridge with ya.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, left, sits at a campaign event for Barack Obama in October. YouTube's growing role in politics makes Schmidt an unelected Washington player. Can you think of a better caption? Leave it in the comments. the best one will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: jasonnellis, for "That's not a sweater, honey." (Photo by cjwoolridge)

• We declared the era of celebrity hedonism dead, which made room for the era of the adorable puppy. Including the blowjob puppy!

[Jim Behrle's kartoon kitties go all Romenesko today with ideas to save their dinosaur friends at magazines and newspapers! Is kokaine the answer? Rotating dildoes? Klick thru and watch for the love of Thomas Friedman.]
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1. Backless Tee Gos Ryan Gosling was snapped yesterday strolling in L.A. in a Thrasher T-shirt with a giant, heart-shaped hole eaten into the back. For Gosling fans who can't get enough of his creamy skin and rippling dorsal muscles, it was a rare treat. For everyone else, it was kind of gross. It got us thinking about some of the Lars and the Real Girl star's other bold fashion statements, leading to this essential compilation we like to call Five Bad Looks For Ryan Gosling. Four more after the jump!

A tipster sent in word that Rearden — an e-commerce startup from Foster City — is rumored to have cut 72 people. We hear the actual number is closer to 50 out of 375. The company provides a "personal assistant portal" that streamlines travel planning, reservations, and general logistics within corporations. Or something. Our tipster's contention is that no one, especially customers, is quite sure just what exactly the company does. Rearden raised $100 million in funding back in April of this year and claims to have signed off service contracts with 1,700 companies. Let us know if there's anything more.

Just because Treasury Dept. Bailout wonderboy Neel Kashkari gets to play with $750 billion in taxpayer money doesn't mean he actually has a good job. He came in looking peppy enough to bore holes in a taxpayer's forehead with only the power of his laser eyebeams; now, he's haggard. His eyes are dazed, plaintive even, and he's putting on classic stress-related weight under his chin. Congressmen yell at him. Old high school teachers talk shit about him. Internet jerks mock his awesome senior yearbook page. And he's really just a front man, taking all the heat for Hank Paulson's decisions and the mistakes of a million greedy Wall Street traders before him. We feel more sympathy for him than any other Ferrari-loving overconfident Republican ski bum Wharton grad in America. Keep on truckin, Neel.

The campaign site for Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu," the Israeli candidate for prime minister, is a mirror-image copy of BarackObama.com, flopped to accommodate the right-to-left Hebrew script. Right down to the icons, it mirrors the website developed by Blue State Digital, reports the New York Times. The new-media touches may not all translate; Israel only has a couple thousand Twitter users, making it an unlikely get-out-the-vote mechanism. The imitation is meant as flattery: Netanyahu and Obama have met twice and are said to get along, and the Israeli candidate is campaigning on a similar theme of change.

We are shocked and pleased to report that the new trailer for the latest Wayans Clan spoof, Dance Flick, hints that the family has made its first legitimately funny film since... we can't even remember. Or at least they've made 90 seconds of a legitimately funny film, with Amy Sedaris, locker-bound toddlers and a few serviceable sight gags redeeming the acute horror of its introductory jokes. It won't make you forget the minor masterpiece that was Pineapple Express's red-band riot, but it may yet portend the rise of director Damien Dante Wayans as the Nephew Who Would Be King. King of what, though, you'll have to tell us. It's hard not to look like you're soaring after White Chicks. [MySpace via /Film]

The week after a vacation is always hard and I found myself missing the West several times over these few quickly darkening days. Luckily I had your wonderful comments to help me soldier on through. Many were good, but we breathe, sleep, and toil in a culture that only rewards the few, and so we'll do our part after the jump. There you'll find the five "best" comments of the week, as chosen by us, and the Party Pick comment, chosen by you.

Breathy, doubletalking word-stringer Peggy Noonan knows how to explain the import and danger of Obamamania out to simple Americans: with football metaphors. Though she herself obviously doesn't watch football. "if he fumbles at this high-stakes time, more than a game is lost," she notes. "If Mr. Obama doesn't catch the pass and cross the goal line, it will mean this election marked a moment, not a movement." Are you feeling her, Red State middle Americans? She's speaking to you in a plebeian language you can understand. Try this: "There is joy to be had in being out of power. You don't have to defend stupid decisions anymore." See the benefit of having the black football fella win is that you can talk bad about him straight out, not just when you think your microphone is turned off. Peggy Noonan is morally and intellectually bankrupt. [WSJ]

Soon, we will all be able to sit in the cold glow of our computer screens and fire up the YouTube for a laptop chat by President-elect Obama, reports the Washington Post. It's part of his technology initiative! What Obama must do now is calm a panicked nation in a similar way that FDR's plainspoken chats did. Obama's will obviously be different than the large-scale, almost churchlike (yes-we-can!) speeches we've been used to seeing during the campaign. He's also done his best to manage the high-flying, paternal-Jesus expectations resulting from weepy election night emotions. FDR's fireside chats were, of course, propaganda, but people wanted reassurance, and he gave it to them in a manner that was bolstering and authoritative. See, if Obama doesn't give us something, we'll be left to the hysterical newsmedia and screaming pundits. Which is actually much worse than feel-good yes-we-can propaganda.

A snippet of Obama's first post-election press conference—mostly business.

Antisemitism in Europe has been on a curious and troubling upswing for the past few years, mostly in central Europe, but now it's moving its way west. Some charming under-21 rugby players at Oxford (that's in England) decided to throw a party with a "bring a fit Jew" theme. The young men put on fake payot and carried around bags of money for the fun, splashy event. The University found out and tried to block it, but the kids sneaked their way around it and had the party anyway. The captain of the team, a lad named Phil Boon, has commented on behalf of the students:

Though it won't come out until the end of July, Universal has already released a teaser one-sheet for Judd Apatow's Funny People. A little too Touchy-Feely People for your taste? Well, Apatow told us himself the movie about stand-ups "isn't about stand-up comedy. It's about a few characters who are having a crisis, but what makes it different is that they are people who make comedy." Whether the similarities to another tender poster grouping—that of Threesome's Stephen Baldwin-anchored bisexual love triangle—are more than coincidental remains to be seen, though we suppose Seth Rogen's repeated hogging of the communal comforters could itself constitute the crisis that sends the plot into motion. [Funny People on MySpace]

Is YouTube making Google a political player? The video-sharing site, with its stratospheric bandwidth bills and questionable new ad formats, may never pay Larry and Sergey back in cash for the $1.65 billion they shelled out to buy it in 2006. But it doesn't have to. YouTube, having conquered online video, is taking over political broadcasting. The conventional unwisdom in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., is that this election made YouTube. Pah! It's true that campaign videos spread faster than ever thanks to YouTube. But they made up a tiny fraction of clips and traffic on the site. Politicians owe YouTube a debt that Google is just starting to collect on — and hosting President Obama's 21st century fireside chats is just a down payment.Google has plenty of business in Washington these days, from the Federal Communications Commission to the Department of Justice. Convenient, then, that CEO Eric Schmidt endorsed Obama weeks before the election, joining his board of economic advisors and appearing in Obama's primetime infomercial. Schmidt doesn't need a government job — he's clearly volunteering to be America's CTO in his spare time. Schmidt is savvy enough to realize that YouTube's growing prominence as a media outlet could help the company become a larger political player — which is why the site sponsored two campaign debates. Traffic? Come on. YouTube hardly needs the help. Schmidt — who attended one debate with a mistress on his arm, like an old-school power broker — orchestrated the events to maximize Google's political influence. The outgoing administration has not been friendly to Google, whose management team tilts strongly to the left. The Department of Justice's threat to sue Google if it proceeded with a deal to sell search ads for Yahoo may have been, at least in part, politically motivated. Google mostly wants a free hand from Washington to cement its lead in online advertising — but it also wants help bullying telephone and cable companies into letting its services and ads flow unimpeded on high-speed broadband lines and cell phones, a cause it has dubbed "network neutrality." Network neutrality is an abstract issue. But YouTube, helpfully, makes it very concrete to politicians, who have long understood the power of the moving image to influence the public. It's easy to picture Google lobbyists pulling up a politician's YouTube videos, and asking them, "Now how would you feel if Verizon slowed down your videos? Wouldn't it be wrong if AT&T didn't let customers view them on their cell phones?" Even in its copyright enforcement, Google can club politicians. The McCain campaign complained about YouTube's takedown policy, which has a mandatory waiting period before videos whose rights are disputed can be reposted to the site. Will Democratic politicians — or any politician who votes the right way on network neutrality — find that a YouTube account manager is glad to make that kind of problem quietly go away? It's a symbiotic relationship, to be sure. Google helps politicians reach young voters on YouTube and hosts their videos for free. YouTube benefits from the free content and the traffic political videos generate; even if it doesn't sell ads directly on the pages, it's estimated that it could make $1 billion a year on search ads — and in that business, merely cementing YouTube's traffic lead helps Google make money. In that light, isn't there something that stinks about handing the president's weekly addresses to a single commercial outlet controlled by a political ally of the president? Obama's YouTube chats amount to a large, unspoken, behind-the-scenes government kickback. Every election has something dirty about it. And there's no question Google won this contest.

No Limitations! It only took twelve years, but the last week of The View finally put the program over the top to become the highest-rated show in daytime. In particular, the November 5 edition attracted the show's biggest audience ever (6.2 million), no doubt fueled by interest in Elisabeth Hasselbeck's concession speech the day after Barack Obama's historic presidential victory. When reached for comment, Hasselbeck responded, "William Ayers?" [Variety]

While we were writing that post about how there are too many layoffs to keep track of, we found out the creative director at BlackBook has been laid off, not to be replaced. Meh. [FWD]