Last night might have been the saddest episode of The Hills that I've ever seen. This is saying a lot because there have been many, many (most?) sad episodes of this dreamy, listless reality romp through sun-soaked corners of lonely Los Angeles. But last night... Well, I guess it was really one moment. One terrible, shattering moment of realization and yearning and desperation worthy of Chekhov. The rest of the episode was silly and dismal in its own right, too. Wander the empty, echoing halls with me after the jump. When the episode began, Lauren and Whitney were working for Kelly Cutrone, who was barking at a scared looking Asian girl to get off the damn phone already. "Stop doing business, we're trying to do business here!" Whitney bulge-eyed her way through the meeting and Lauren smirked next to her. The good news? They were going "Back To New York"! The bad news? They were going back to New York, which meant dumb male models and the depressing realization that, when there are reality cameras around, people in New York can be just as dumb and lamely be-hatted as Angelenos. One world! Whitney is essentially a golden-brown Cornish game hen made animate, so she dimly clucked her way through the fashion job, ogle-eying mens in their undahpantz and having blah conversations with Alex, the smooth-faced young model with whom she had a rendezvous several episodes ago. But alas, there were not sparks. Not between Whitney and Alex—she ended up kinda ditching him at bar and making it with an Australian, slightly more talkative version of Justin-Bobby—and certainly not between Whitney and, well, us. This was like, a preview for her new show, right? I've always liked Whitney for playing the strange and moose-ish supporting role to Lauren's lead blonde. She made all those funny facial expressions and said "shopping" like "shoppink" and we all sort of chuckled with/at her. But having her be in the lead... Well, it kinda just showcases how shallow and maybe, really, not all that smart she is. Which is too bad. I had hopes for her. Meanwhile, in the Dust Bowl of sincerity and cheer that is the Heidi/Spencer household, the miserable couple was griping and grunting about Heidi being fired from her silly PR job. She got fired last week for being drunk and, essentially, being Spencer's girlfriend. So that was sad. The scene was this: Heidi was posed at the nightstand, Spencer was on the bed. So it was basically Cat On a Hot Tin Roof except Heidi wasn't trying to get Spencer to sex her, and Spencer isn't a closeted gay with a broken leg, he's just an asshole. But still. They got to talking about how she got fired and she said she had to work on her resume and Spencer said that she could put him down as a reference. I'll tell them that you're the best employee I've ever had, he said to her. And then that was it. Just right after that was the saddest moment ever aired on The Hills. A brief, but not brief enough, stricken look of infinite abysmal sadness crossed Heidi's face. A haunting manifestation of feeling lost and utterly alone. Really, for a second, the world ended. A murder of crows streaked across the sky, the Earth rumbled with the hum of a million Tuvan throat singers, and our giving but stern Creator turned His/Her baleful countenance upon us as if to say "no more, no more pain ever again." We all climbed to the top of a mountain to watch it all happen—Doug the Burrito Heir was there, and so was Brody, and Jen Bunny, and Kristin from Laguna, and Lauren's foot-faced sister, and the parents! they were there!, and everyone we've ever known and loved and hated and been sad about were all there. We all stood at the top of the mountain as the skies turned deep red and a great wind whipped up and suddenly there was a flood and a famine and a plague and an earthquake and a tornado and a hurricane all at the same time and we shut our eyes tight and held hands and knew it was going to end and then— Well, then the moment passed and Heidi put her Stupid Face back on and she and Spencer were normal enough again. They went to a blue-lit party that was for something called the Ultra Mat™, which is a mat that is far superior to other mats. You can use it for all your mat needs, and then some. And wouldn't you know who was at the party???? Heidi's old boss! Despite her meek protestations (Heidi is, by now, a black belt at these) Spencer went up to consult with the dude and say... I'm not sure. "Yo man, we're not sorry about what happened. It just... happened." Brent Bolthouse (or whatever) was very funny and basically said "I don't know you, I don't want to know you ever, so fuck off." Spencer lurched away and Heidi scooped the tiny remaining almond of her dignity up off the ground and went to talk to Bolt Brenthouse herself. "I'm so sorry, I can't control Spencer, anyway I understand... so... can I have a job again?" House Boltbrent said "maybe," basically and gave her some very sage advice about how Spencer is a piece of shit and she needs to stop surrounding herself with people who are pieces of shit. She, most likely, will not take the advice to heart. So that was basically it. Some more sad Heidi shit is happening next week, involving her Chipper sister Holly, who might be moving in with Lauren. Sigh. As much as Heidi's an odious fame whore, she's clearly miserable while doing it. And no one, not anyone, deserves Spencer. He is the poorest excuse for a man ever forged in the dank, shadowy recesses of deepest Cedars Sinai. And, if we're to believe the brief vision we received last night, he will bring about the end of time. Let's hope it's sooner rather than later.

The Post is hearing rumors that Morgan Stanley plans to lay off 10 percent of the company's 50,000 workforce on Thursday and that "those given the ax shouldn't expect a very generous severance package." [NYP via Dealbreaker]

As if slow-motion footage of filmdom's most adorable puppy wasn't enough to make you race to see Jennifer Aniston's holiday movie season entry Marley & Me, the star has Phase 2 of the film's heart-tugging marketing campaign set to launch any day now. And we hear it's a good one, too, with new promotional partner Vogue signing on for Aniston's first public thwacking of husband-stealing Angelina Jolie.The Daily Mail reports that Vogue's December issue features cover girl Aniston posing along with the quote, "What Angelina did was very uncool" — one of the decade's more reserved understatements, no doubt, coming almost four years after Jolie's trysts with her Mr. and Mrs. Smith co-star Brad Pitt led to his and Aniston's divorce. The rest is clan-breeding, burger-photographing history, but an insider says Vogue will do what it can next month to restore Aniston's pride:

Man-child Norman Mailer's voluminous sexual appetite, among other things, has been posthumously expanded, and the same is true of his squabbles with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A Washington Post Freedom of Information request on Mailer's FBI file was finally granted a year after his death, and in the 165 released pages the FBI ineffectually shadows Mailer throughout his storied career. In the ensuing report, we can only feel sympathy for the sad agent who had to slog through Barbary Shore and The Deer Park:Mailer was a veteran, having served as an Army cook in the Philippines, but in the 60s, that wasn't enough to get you off the FBI's radar screen. The ego-driven writer initially came to the attention of Hoover when he wrote something perfectly innocuous about Jacqueline Kennedy's soft-spokenness. Hoover was extraordinarily sensitive to such things, and demanded agents review all of Mailer's columns and books once he started calling out the FBI in his writing.

The following is a three-paragraph press release sent out today entitled "Nielsen and WPP to Swap Assets," which we have stripped of everything but its acronyms: "WPP AGBNielsen WPP. AGBNMR, WPP: SRDS, PERQ/HCI, IBOPE PDM, IBOPE LA IMI.Com, IBOPE WPP IBOPE WPP’s WPP AGBNMR TNS’s CEO AGBNMR AGBNMR SRDS PERC/HCI CEO AGBNielsen TNS IBOPE, PERQ/HCI SRDS. AGB CEO." Short good! [Thanks J.]

Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's loudest, angriest, not-votingest, network-controllingest personality, just signed a sweet new deal. It's a four-year extension of his Countdown show, with two NBC specials and occasional nightly news "essays." It's also worth $30 million! Good work Keith! It was bound to happen, as MSNBC's ratings were way up this election cycle, and Olbermann's show is now a vital part of the network's brand. But it was also brilliant of Olbermann to get the deal now, because there's a good chance he's peaked. Keith Olbermann became the voice of Bush's second term. After eking out a narrow victory and calling it a mandate, the President really outdid himself. The war went to hell, the lies that got us into the war were further aired out, the details of his various unconstitutional surveillance programs came to light, the ideological disdain for effective governance and the bubble of true believers led to the Katrina disaster, and America basically got a serious case of buyers' remorse. One guy on TV sounded as perpetually pissed off and outraged as you did, from 2003 onward: Keith Olbermann! His newfound glee at casting moral judgment on the mendacity of the lunatics in charge was, you know, refreshing after a couple years of the newsmedia wandering in the post-9/11 desert of breathless Bush-worship. Everyone felt kinda bad for selling that stupid and pointless war, but no one quite wanted to be the first to go whole-hog anti-authority. But Olbermann's voice of the opposition was the best thing on TV, leading right up to the 2006 midterms, when America first wholly rejected the Republican party. But now we've just had an election about Hope and Change, and the new guy in charge is not a fire-breathing pissed-off Howard Dean, but a calm and cool unifier promising to bring dispassionate rationality back to the White House. Meanwhile at MSNBC, Olbermann's charming protege is a Rhodes Scholar who's specifically pledged never to have more than one guest on at a time, because shouting and argument and cross-talk don't actually advance the discussion. Rachel Maddow's ratings are phenomenal, and every month there's a new fawning profile of her showcasing how... normal (and nice!) she is. If Olbermann was the voice of the opposition, Maddow is the voice of the new liberals in charge. It won't necessarily diminish Olbermann's popularity and influence (or even his ratings), but he's not on top of the zeitgeist anymore. Let's pray for a great 2012 race to get him across that next contract renegotiation hump. Gingrich/Palin '12!

Rachel Weisz walking by herself downtown ... Liev Schreiber carrying his son Alexander on Lafayette Street ... Natalie Portman on the set of her new film ... Jeff Goldblum leaving ABC studios after an appearance on Regis & Kelly ... Salma Hayek carrying her daughter Valentina ... Ed Westwick walking to the Gossip Girl set in Harlem ... Jamie Oliver, Bill Cosby, Taylor Swift, and Ted Turner posing for photos outside the Letterman show ... Taylor Momsen walking with friends in Greenwich Village ... and Danny DeVito leaving Da Silvano with his kids.

Forget Nate Silver. A "numerologist" by the name of "Mystical Marcy" says she made the most accurate election prediction when she determined "Obama would win by a landslide, long before polls showed him in the lead" and during the "height of Sarah Palin-mania." Mind you she made her prediction in July, weeks before Palin had even been picked as McCain's running mate and when Obama was already ahead in the polls. But you can read the nutty press release for yourself after the jump.

Vivian Schiller, the General Manager of NYTimes.com, is leaving the Times to become the president and CEO of NPR. National Public Radio, people! This is a huge announcement for lovers of the liberal media. Schiller has overseen lots of evolution at the paper's website—including the rollout of comments—which is the single best thing the Times has going for it. She became famous for her weekly memos and her devotion to slideshows. The Times had better choose her replacement very carefully. Her going-away email to the staff is after the jump:

Hello dear friends! I was away last week and so did not watch, and thus did not get to recap, the Gossip Girl episode in which young Jenny became a fashionz guerrilla and ran away from home. Dammit Dave Pirner, why are you always right about everything! But I'm back this week, and I curled up on my couch last night to watch the ridiculous drama unfold. It was indeed ridiculous. Such intrigue this week, with fires and double crosses and blammo! news scoops and, che?, Wallace Shawn. So read on with me after the jump and we'll pick apart this episode, which was appropriately titled "Bonfire of the Vanity." OK! Where to begin! With boring old Serena, I guess, who is dating the mysteriously stupid Aaron Rose, a scruffy little naif who, though hailing from the Upper East Side, is really a downtown artiste in the vein of Basquiat or the Olsen twins. They had sexy text messages and then he "showed her to the city" or some such drecky bullshit (it involved that favorite hotspot of hip downtown creative types, Times Square) and then slunk off for a photo session at Aaron's breezy loft in which the impossibly blonde and springy Blake Lively tried to act uncomfortable about having her picture taken. It was entirely unconvincing, each pout and little eyelash flutter more assured and kissy-kissy than the one before it. Whatever, they are artist and muse in love! He likes to stay up all night making installation art projects of her out of old bedsheets and some cardboard boxes! Except, sigh. He wants an open relationship. He wants to ferret his mousy little features into other, um, mouse holes and excuuuuuse me if Serena didn't know that. Meanwhile, Dan Humphrey, a one man Woodward and Bernstein, was being commissioned by New York Magazine to do a seeeecret story on Bart Bass, the glowering father of our saddest clown, Chuckles. Dan took to the task with a reluctant ease, if that makes any sense. He was conflicted, but this could really further his career. You know, because there are only so many make-it-or-break-it career opportunities available to seventeen year olds. I remember when I was 17, I had the opportunity to do props for a school play but then I got in a fight with the stage manager and the assistant director and so I wasn't doing props anymore and my career was over, but then it worked out because I ended up doing props! See!! I'm just like Dan. So he went nosing around Bass Manor while poor, dejected Chuckles—rejected by his pops when he offered him father-son hockey tickets—simmered in a corner, watching... Things We Lost In The Fire, Gossip Girl Edition: Bart Bass killed a dude in a fire 20 years ago (which is weird! because the fellow who died, 20 years ago last night, was wearing just the same hat that Aaron Rose was the night he diiiiied... and then the next day Serena found the hat on a grave that said Aaron Rose 1968-1988 and she shrieked and shrieked and shrieked!!!!). Also, Jenny the Hobo's crazy friend Agnes of God torched all of Jenny's fashion design choices! Like the dress with the frilly thing, and the frilly thing with the dress! Also, she was sabotaging their super important business meetings with her bitchiness and her drunkenness. It's like one time when I was 15 and... No, I don't have a comparable story, because 15 year olds don't have fancy fashion meetings. And they (hopefully) don't look like sad tired Heroin Lemurs either. Taylor Momsen must have srsly pissed off the show's stylists. So yes! Dan was conflicted about whether to out Bart Bass as a filthy arsonist, while Jennifer mewped back to Chez Humph with her tale (intentional!) between her legs. But Rufus made a thundering edict and said he would not "No!" support Jenny's venomous lying and conniving, and so she fled again with all of her attaches rattling behind her. She stopped to sit on poor people trash and wept. Oh man did she weep. Her face looked like it was pooping. It sort of hurt my jaw muscles to watch. All in all, Jenny came across super crazy in this episode. Send her to Bellevue! We don't know where little Jenny's headed, but for this week at least it was not to Nate Archibald's flowery loins. Which is fine. He's busy making time capsules of him 'n Dan stuff and writing songs on his recorder and watching fuzzy tape recordings of One Tree Hill. (I guess! He wasn't in this episode.) Will Jenny divorce her parents? Does anyone care? Dan decided he would "kill" the story (such insidery lingo he uses!) and then he sent his sad little "Lonely Chuckles, The Orphan" short story to Bart. Bart felt bad and apologized to his fishy son and they reconciled and made plans to be frienz. Too bad he's going to dieeee!! ("My son was wearing those cuff links when he died, thirty years ago today..." Oooohhhhhh!!!! Halloweeeeen!) Oh, also. When Bart said that it was hard for him to look at Chuck because he saw his mother in him and they panned to the photograph, I desperately, desperately wanted the photo to be Ed Westwick in a wig. Same pose, same dress, everything. But Ed Westwick in a wig. Pleeeeeease Josh and Stephanie? Pleeeeze just once? And then, what else? Oh, right! Serena reminded us (what?) that she'd always wanted to live in the 1960's, so when Aaron came squeaking over (can't wait for his movie!) she decided to throw caution and principle to the wind and go traipsing off with him in just her slip, slippers, and a coat. We were all so proud of her for this completely unearned and out-of-left-field character development. Maybe next week we'll find out that she's a racist who can fly. That would be fun! ("I'm right above you Isabel, you filthy ni—") Last but not least was Blair, who was contending with her mother's huggy, hobbity little love interest, played by esteemed playwright Wallace Shawn. It was funny/sad to see old Wallace playing yet another literate yet urgly fella (remember the window-fall-outty episode of Sex and the City?) I wish Twink Caplan had been in the episode too, 'cause then they could have just done Clueless riffs for the rest of the episode and it would have been way better than this annoyingly twisty, turny, but get nowherey installment. Things We Should Lose In The Fire, Gossip Girl Edition: Jenny's rumble-face cry. It looks like an atom bomb is exploding in her mouth. Dan's whole quest for a job as a writer. There is nothing more boring on God's green Earth than watching writers talk about writing. Like, srsly. Please no more. It pains me so. Also we should lose sad Rufus in The Fire. Not Rufus all together, but Rufus who is lonely and has no children around! What a sad little plot point that is. Maybe they're setting the groundwork for the inevitable Vanessa schtupping. That would be great. Just great. "My daughter was wearing those same enormous day-glo hoop earrings when she died, ten years ago tonight....." BOO!

We're not sure what was going on in Lindsay Lohan's drug-addled mind when she described Barack Obama as our first "colored President" in an interview with Access Hollywood's Maria Menounos. But we're going to take this as a sign that she's gearing up for an appearance on the fourth season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

Neel Kashkari, where has your steely-eyed charm gone? When the Ferrari-loving young Republican banker took on the post as our nation's new Head of All Money, we had such high hopes for him. His eagle-like visage commanded respect; his brash overconfidence meant he was destined for greatness. But yesterday the markets tanked after his first big speech, and now the media is grumbling about his performance. Neel, what's wrong? Allow us to help, my rich bald friend. The Post says reporters and finance people alike were pissed yesterday because he only answered two or three questions, and those with "a tone of impatience." And how do you expect to excite the markets with a speech like this?:

While Ivies like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale are bleeding endowment money in the market downturn, their graduating seniors are facing a decimated job market upon graduation. What to do? "Prompted by inequalities in American society—or sensing that the economic crisis limits their short-term career opportunities—young people are applying in force to such organizations as Teach for America," reports the Columbia Spectator. It's amazing how altruistic the unemployed can get! "With many top firms in jeopardy, Columbia students who in other years would have landed prestigious internships or six-figure jobs are simply out of options." And now they will have to resign themselves to two years of teaching poors, where they will annoy people ad nauseum about how much they "learned" after they finish the program.Meanwhile, Harvard's President Drew Faust told the AP,

It's such a dilemma: You want to acquire several new designer handbags, but in the current economic climate, will it be seen as tacky, insensitive wealth flaunting? As marketing strategist James Chung tells Forbes: "We're way beyond the days of conspicuous consumption," which means it's more essential than ever to know the brands to buy so it doesn't seem like you're showing off.

Good news, Fake America—we've marginalized The South! The New York Times reports today that based on the totally conclusive 2008 election results, no longer will The South have any impact whatsoever on National Politics, and we can safely ignore them. Here, look at this map: it is the counties that voted more Republican in 2008 than in 2004, versus the counties that voted more for Barry Obama than John Kerry. As you can see, most of the country decided they liked Obama more than they liked Kerry, except for this mysterious belt in the old Confederacy that found something... unappealing about this Obama character. What's up with that? After the 2004 elections, a website called "Fuck the South" became popular among us liberal godless coastal elite types. It is a long rant about how the fat idiots who voted for Bush are stupid fat idiots, with some "facts" about how America is basically a giant welfare system whereby New York's money is redistributed to Mississippi for some reason. It was a nice bit of angry post-election catharsis, even if it is indefensibly classist, because, you know, these states we're ranting against are often full of terribly impoverished people and no one has done anything at all to help them since LBJ, basically, and look how well that worked out for him. But! Four years later, the Democrats won the presidency! The electoral map was totally different this time, too! So the Times declares the end of Democrats having to be Southern, or having to hate Welfare. The end of The Southern Strategy too! The Southern Strategy was Richard Nixon's cunning plan to convince racists to support him, helped along by LBJ's cunning plan to be less racist, which lost the South for Democrats for a generation. Now it doesn't matter! The Republicans are finished, forever! Right?

It turns out that Greenwich, the enclave that is home to some of the richest people in the New York metro area (like Steve Cohen, whose mansion is pictured to your left), went for Obama last week: "Perhaps most surprising was the result from Greenwich, Conn. The Versailles of the tri-state metro area, the most golden of the region's gilded suburbs, the childhood home of George H.W. Bush, went for Obama by a 54-46 margin—the first time Greenwich went Democratic since 1964. Who knew the back-country estates and shoreline mansions were populated with so many traitors to their class?" [The Big Money]

Yesterday you guys thought that the show threatened by its actors' egos might be that Sarah Conner Chronicles With The Terminator show that Brian Austin Green is on. I'll take your word for it! Today we have a married star who's steppin' out on the wifey, an A-list star who got dissed publicly, and an actress who's getting sold out by her one night stand. 1) "Which mature married star went home with at least 10 girls' numbers in his little black book? The naughty boy was eyeing up lovelies all weekend." [Mirror] 2) "Even an A lister gets unlucky sometimes. There was some previous discussion whether this individual is actually A list. If he isn't A then he is right on the cusp. Apparently all the women surrounding his table thought he was A list or at least wanted him to think so. Allegedly dating someone everyone thought he was behaving himself except in the drinking department until a model walked by. He immediately ran over to the model and began trying to hit on her. Apparently though she didn't know who he was. When he informed her drunkenly who he was and what he had been in, she said, 'I don't really care. Plus if you need to list your accomplishments to get a date, you really have not accomplished all that much.' It would have been nice if this had been a quiet conversation, but unfortunately for our film actor the entire group surrounding the table all heard it. Nice." [CDaN] 3) "Which married actress needs to do a better job selecting her one-night stands? Unhappy in her marriage to another celebrity, she thought she was being discrete in her selection of boy toys by choosing another actor with a familiar name. Unfortunately, the boy toy has a big mouth and aspirations of superfame, and sees her as his ticket into the big time. He has been making mention of her name and their liaison at multiple auditions in the hopes that it will help him move him up from supporting actor to star." [BlindGossip]

Happy (in a somber way) Veteran's Day. If you're a young American aged 17-24, you might consider honoring the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform by joining the United States Army yourself! Sounds good, no? We all know the Army has been having some recruitment problems lately, what with the hopeless wars we're fighting and the psycho Commander in Chief and the excellent chance of being blown up. But the Army has decided to shift its sales pitch in order to lure you youngsters in. By talking more about Iraq!: They're adding a webcast called "Straight from Iraq" to their website, where soldiers will tell you the real deal about life in the desert war zone. Presumably not too real, though. They're also supercharging their marketing plan with the following changes: - More internet, less "sponsorships of professional rodeos." - The voice of Gary Sinise! - New commercial: "young workers in business attire suddenly start climbing walls. 'This company is filled with dreamers,' Mr. Sinise says." You'll have to join the Army to know how it ends! Of course, all of this is very much deck chair/ Titanic. If more people join the Army it will be because they can't get a job anywhere else since our economy collapsed. And if the Army was smart it would have one simple selling point: "Bush is gone." [NYT]

A group of computer scientists from UC Berkeley and UC San Diego spent a month earlier this year infiltrating a spammer network and studying its operations. The scientists mimicked the methodologies of the spammers by hijacking computers and using them to send out emails soliciting orders for pharmaceutical products. In 26 days, almost 350 million pieces of spam were sent out resulting in only 28 sales — a response of 0.00001% — that netted $2,731.88 in revenue. Extrapolating their data, the researchers estimates the real spammers can make up to $2 million a year with billions of emails. Since they're riding on other people's computing power and bandwidth, they can still make a profit. [BBC]

Glamour magazine's annual "Women of the Year" awards took place last night at Carnegie Hall. Honorees like Hillary Clinton, Nicole Kidman, and Tyra Banks were joined by the likes of Debra Messing, Fergie, Natalie Portman, Tinsley Mortimer, America Ferrera, Jane Krakowski, Salman Rushdie, Condoleezza Rice, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Taylor Swift. Click through for a few photos of the event.