Is Matt Drudge completely over in the wake of his ill-advised hyping of pro-McCain propaganda?If you're even bothering to ask the question, the answer is self-evidently "No," it can always be argued. It was thus inevitable that someone — Slate's Jack Shafer, it turns out — would emerge to swat down the greatly exaggerated reports (from Media Matters and so forth) of Drudge's demise as an influential blogger. He works too hard and has drawn too much traffic to go away so easily, Shafer argues:

He's not the most trustworthy source, granted, but Fox News host Chris Wallace claims to have heard that CNN is all embarrassed about its election-night holograms, which teleported the likes of singer Will.I.Am and correspondent Jessica Yellin into CNN studios in New York. Wallace, who serves as Fox's ambassador to the Godless liberals at the Daily Show, also maintains ties to CNN, via an old college roommate who is a technical producer there. He called this buddy at 5 pm on election night, resulting in the following exchange, according to Broadcasting & Cable:

· Lance Bass told Jay Leno he came back from Russian cosmonaut training two inches shorter, which is why he tends to wear high heels now. · A riot broke out at a San Francisco mall today where Twilight star Robert Pattinson was appearing, with "one fan was trampled" and another's "nose broken as a result of being crushed up against the front doors to the mall." The event was canceled. TMZ has some video, but it's not nearly at goth-rampage-tastic as we had hoped. · South African Singer Miriam Makeba died on stage in Italy today of a heart attack at age 76. · After 10 years, KCRW music director and Morning Becomes Eclectic host Nic Harcourt is stepping down, though he'll still host a three-hour show on Sunday nights. · Time to take the Wonkette Which Emanuel Brother Am I? personality quiz!

Hollywood PrivacyWatch: 11/7 — I was at La Poubelle Friday night with my BFF. We were standing outside smoking a cigarette when I noticed two attractive girls hanging out with a guy that I believe was wearing Teva-like sandals with socks. This required further investigation and one of the girls was KIRSTEN DUNST. I tried to list her filmography to my friend, but all I could recall was Wag the Dog and Interview with a Vampire. In any event, I don’t think she liked me studying her, but she was wearing a coat that appeared to be made out of Fozzie Bear and jeans that haven’t been popular since I shopped at 5-7-9 in seventh grade. Her skin was quite dewy, however. [Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]

The bitter online video fight between former Enterprise crew mates William Shatner and George Takei today reached what appears to be its penultimate round, with Shatner and his daughter/Star Trek grudge repository Liz discussing what exactly it might take to arrange peace between the actors.We can't be sure if Shatner's professed annoyance with his onetime co-star stems more from his recent accusations on Entertainment Tonight or simply that ET syndicated Takei's grievance while Shatner's crack psychoanalysis episodes wither on YouTube, but in any case, there can be no mistaking the tentative olive branch extended herein. We hope Takei accepts and that together, they may reach the final frontier of detente. Or at least that Shatner can just get a copy of Takei's wedding video and call it good. [YouTube]

Last week, addled ghost flapper Courtney Love celebrated the elections the best way she knew how: with a confused blog entry indicating she mistakenly voted "yes" on the anti-gay Proposition 8. Not one to let Drew Barrymore and James Franco hog all the credit, Love has now posted a series of blog updates meant to rectify the matter:

If you've not yet discovered the LAT "Follow the Donors" feature yet, it's a searchable database tracking every individual who donated to either side of the Prop 8 campaign, alongside their corresponding place of business. It's a great way to check up on that receptionist with the troll dolls on her computer who's always yammering on about how great the new Michael W. Smith album is. You can also plug in celebrity names, of course, and see what pops up.We already found two donations from David Geffen amounting to $200,000, and, confirming reports, another $100k each from a "self-employed" Brad Pitt and Ellen DeGeneres. And what of donations in support of the measure? We managed to ferret out an "unemployed" Mel Gibson living in Cameron Park who gave $250 to the Yes side. Alas, this was probably not the star but a gay-hater of lesser means bearing the same name, as Cameron Park is a community about 25 miles outside Sacramento. Then again, you never know where the Malibu land baron might have a little pied-a-terre. We'll just assume it is the Apocalypto director until we hear otherwise.

Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos, the MIT-educated creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, have earned a $150 million bonus from Viacom, whose MTV unit bought the game. The pair are on track to earn an even bigger bonus in 2009. (Photo by Newsweek/John Huet)

Aliph, the maker of the Jawbone Bluetooth headset, dropped half a million on fancy furniture for its offices, then fired 25 of the 75 people whose seats the purchase was meant to warm. Today's featured commenter, MrMedia, explains why the expenditure was worth it:

A Goatee Too Far: A little more than a year-and-a-half after his infamous leather-bar amateur-night shimmy with Ellen DeGeneres, John Travolta's new look in the thriller From Paris With Love goes about as far as the actor has yet gone to reinforce his straight creds. Stop already, John — you had us with the muumuu in Hairspray! Now we just feel guilty. [WWTTD]

BitTorrent, the troubled file-sharing technology startup, has laid off another 18 employees — roughly half of its remaining staff — and fired CEO Doug Walker, replacing him with CTO Eric Klinker. [Bits]

When it comes to beloved TV childhood memories gone sour, it seems few shows deliver with the consistency and longevity of The Brady Bunch—more specifically, the mother's side of the family. From little Cindy's 8:30 a.m. hangover upchuck on live talk radio, to Marcia's syphilis-fueled cocaine binges at the bottom of a 40-person Playboy Mansion man-castle, it seems these lovely girls with hair of gold have seen their fair share of hard livin'.But what of Jan—the oft-forgotten middle-child, who had seemingly clung to the straight-and-narrow? Well, if this clip from the Brady Week edition of the new, Christopher "Peter" Knight-hosted Trivial Pursuit: America Plays is any indication, Eve—while far from the most badass of the Brady bad girls—can drop a well-placed F-bomb with the best of them. (And yes, the scandalized fellow to her left is Mike "Bobby" Lookinland. According to the show's website, Maureen "Marcia" McCormick—estranged from Plumb since she spread rumors the two had experimented with Bradysexuality—was the only no-show. Hmmm...) [YouTube via VampireHours]

This street vendor in Mumbai has a charming approach to marketing soft drinks. If you've got a better caption than me, post it in the comments. Friday's winner was cgsofly, for "I finally found what we have in common — we're attention whores."

When Vince Vaughn first made his mark with Swingers, he was so whippet-thin that his wild, improvised riffs almost seemed to be a unique form of cardio. Now that a decade has passed, though, things have changed — a fact that Esquire's new issue takes great pains to point out. Vince Vaughn is not thin anymore, each line of its cover story (entitled "The Biggest Man in the Room") seems to say. No, Vince Vaughn is now a fatty, a great big fatty fat person. Think we're joking? Enjoy this opening paragraph, with all the ooky, relevant parts bolded in Defamer ChubbyFont™:

A tipster reports overhearing two Facebook employees bragging about the Jack Spade computer bags bought for them by their employers. Facebook has some 700 employees; the Spade bags retail at the Apple Store for $99.95. If you figure Facebook got them for about half that price, it still shelled out $35,000 unnecessarily. Is this the kind of spending CFO Gideon Yu is trying to persuade Middle Eastern investors to underwrite?

I haven't had a chance to read Mr. Evangelism's latest book, Reality Check, but there's a tidy profile of Guy Kawasaki, the Apple marketer turned startup cheerleader, in USA Today. His biggest flub: Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz tried to hire him as CEO of Yahoo in the '90s. "I'd say that was a $2 billion or $3 billion mistake," the Hawaiian-born hockey nut admits. "Now Michael doesn't call me. I can't say I blame him." Yeah, and I'll bet Carl Icahn hates you now, too. (Photo by USA Today / Michael Mullady)

Typically when a live shot of a plane on a tarmac gets together with flashing "BREAKING NEWS" graphics, it means something truly awful has happened. But, aside from applying Us Weekly-style body-language analysis to the way Barack Obama and George W. Bush greeted each other before their closed-door White House meeting (Obama's press statement called it "productive," while Bush's went with "constructive."), the cable news nets didn't have much to work with. The true star of today's MSNBC coverage? The American Airlines charter plane sitting on the tarmac of Reagan National Airport patiently waiting to ferry the President-elect back to Chicago.

Last week, STV laid down the scoop on the Chappelle-Lipton tilt [8 PM, Bravo], but there's other options for when Chappelle goes not crazy. WATCH Gossip Girl [8 PM, CW] - Cyndi Lauper guests on tonight's episode. Blair (Leighton Meester) tries to break up Eleanor (Margaret Colin) and her new boyfriend (Wallace Shawn). Jenny (Taylor Momsen) bunks with Agnes (Willa Holland). Serena (Blake Lively) learns something unsettling about Aaron (John Patrick Amedori). Dan (Penn Badgely) plans to write an expose on Bart (Robert John Burke), which gets him on Chuck's (Ed Westwick) bad side. Normally, we'd cut the plot summary down to our favorite characters, but we like all these people, unlike the 1,476 characters on Heroes.

Thousands of Germans wave lanterns today for the ecumenical festival Martini (heh!), which honors the Catholic St. Martin and the Protestanty of the Protestant, Martin Luther. A little odd that it's the anniversary of Kristallnacht. But, um, we just think it's pretty, is all. [via AP]

Wall Street types are worried because Michael Dell's company hasn't delivered the new music player that had been in the works for the holiday shopping season. The launch has been canceled, says an anonymous insider. That's the best news I've heard from Dell in a long time. Here's why.Competing with Apple on the iPod front seems like a Formula for Fail. My guess is Dell made an honest effort to develop an iPod competitor, then killed the expensive marketing campaign and production run after deciding that they'd built another Zune. Dell has also fallen behind on its downsized-laptop "netbooks", which have neither the power of a full-size notebook nor the portability of an iPhone. Why bother? The biggest segment of the consumer electronics market is still standard-size notebook computers. Dell has fallen from No. 1 to No. 3 position in sales, but that's still a lot of sales. Instead of diluting the company's resources across smaller, trendier markets, it seems more sensible for Dell to refocus on its core product, the cheap-but-impressive PC. Hey, I'd buy one. (Photo by AP/Manish Swarup)