Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has strong opinions on what causes poverty: lack of education. For a Stanford dropout, that's remarkably self-reflective. We would add to Musk's list two other causes of poverty: funding a money-losing electric-car company and getting an expensive divorce.

When it was announced that Don Cheadle would be taking on Terrence Howard's role in Iron Man 2, a simple explanation of "financial differences" (as well as an inability to get the War Machine costume sufficiently baby-wiped) was all that was forthcoming from the filmmakers' side. Then, Howard spoke to NPR and compared the Marvel braintrust to a non-singing network of pimps, forcing the filmmaking team to take the gloves off. Now, in a discussion with EW, sources close to Marvel and director Jon Favreau leaked the real details behind Howard's firing, and they involve bad acting and one very surprising salary:

Our house sysadmin, Tim the IT Guy, had the best take on Twitter CEO's Ev Williams open call for a wannabe-CEO assistant:

· Election Eve Music Round-Up: Weave! at the Echo, Lykke Li at the El Rey, Mado Diao, We Barbarians, and The Capshuns at The Troubadour. · Comics Brently Heilbron and Liz Feldman, with specials guests Janeane Garofalo, Jen Kirkman, Erin Foley and Seth Morris, perform what might be the last thing you ever laugh about again: It's Don't Fuck This Up Election Eve Show, at Tangier. · Sergio Leone's 1968 Once Upon a Time in the West screens at the Hammer Museum, with film preservation expert Barry Allen on hand to discuss the restoration of the spaghetti western classic.

Odyssey Moon is an international partnership of guys with space cred on their resumes. They've hacked Google's $30 million Lunar X Prize contest brilliantly: Instead of hiring private contractors to build a lunar rover better and faster than Nasa's risk-averse bureaucracy, Odyssey Moon has hired Nasa to do the job as a contractor. Everybody wins! That is, as long as you think Odyssey Moon's vision of the Moon as an eighth continent paved with solar farms is a win.

You'll be sitting on your hands all night, bristling with excitement for Tuesday's big event: The launch of the new Blackberry Bold! Wait, no, it was something else, something with that black guy and all that hope and something about Tina Fey. (We haven't recovered from pumpkin-shaped jello shots.) WATCH Why I Ran [11 PM, Biography] - Fugitives who led cops on dangerous high-speed chases watch the news coverage for the first time and explain their side of the story. Tonight's episode features a man who robbed a gas station and led cops through Indianapolis after his wife and child left him. This show makes celebrity joyrides seem like driving test practice.

“Crystal meth. Me, personally, that’s how I’m going to do it.” McCain adviser Mark Salter when asked how he was going to make it through the grueling last day of the presidential campaign. [WSJ]

A hearty mazel tov goes out to Will & Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick and new husband Erik Hyman, who married in a traditional Jewish ceremony over the weekend that also incorporated the naming of their month-old baby daughters. While every step of the weekend was carefully planned, no one could have foreseen the soul of Sean Hayes enveloping both bridegrooms during the simchat bat ritual, leading to a last-minute decision to ditch the settled-upon Rose and Evan in favor of two more residuals-friendly monikers that scored higher in key demos. View the slideshow here.

Zack Bogue, the well-dressed boy toy of Googler Marissa Mayer, always looks good in black. But the surprise in SFluxe's coverage of a recent masked ball is that Mayer does, too. Smart of her to adopt a more subdued palette in these dark economic times. Can you think of a better caption for the photo? Leave it in the comments. The best one will become the post's new headline. Friday's winner: Ted Dziuba, for "A final salute to the good times." (Photo by Drew Altizer via SFluxe)

Though Casino Royale provided the James Bond franchise with a rebooted reservoir of goodwill, director Marc Forster says that the follow-up, Quantum of Solace, almost took things in a perilous, Mutt Williams-ish direction. Speaking to New York, Forster detailed how Bond producers clashed with screenwriter Paul Haggis when the Crash scripter wanted to add one considerably more kindergarten-friendly element to the film:

The Barnumesque blather of Facebook's platform evangelists is matched only by the bombastic inclarity of Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. How fitting that the two companies came together earlier today to obfuscate their joint efforts. When Facebook agent obscurateur Dave Morin posted about the incident, his colleague, engineer Luke Shepard, bravely scratched his head in public, on Morin's Facebook profile.

We look forward to that time less than 48 hours from now, when we can finally frame the entirety of the 2008 election season in our smudged rearview mirror and watch it shrink as we head toward the country's other essential round of cutthroat campaigning. But for all the misbegotten PSA's, infomercial filibusters and other punishing effluvia, we admit we'll miss the bits of election-related freakery that arrive with oxygen just in time to save us. And of course, the more unexpected, the better — like Ben Affleck bellowing about his cat after the jump.Or rather, Ben Affleck as Keith Olbermann bellowing about his cat, one of a scorching fistful of issues chafing at the imperious MSNBC pundit last week on Saturday Night Live. His outrage over Miss Precious Perfect's rejection from their Upper West Side co-op represents only the most insistent of his convictions, however, and in turn, only one delicious course of the scenery menu Affleck spent nearly nine-minutes devouring. If we didn't know any better, we'd think all this big-shot director really wants to do is act. And really, we couldn't blame him. [SNL] Click to view

In January, Yahoo launched Yahoo Live, "social TV, where you're the star!" Ten months later, Yahoo Live currently has 1,381 people watching 47 live channels. No surprise that Yahoo's going to pull the plug next month. Boilerplate bogosity by Yahoo techie Keith Thornhill: "Without all of you, Y!Live would not have built the strong community that it has."

Resident Democratic strategist Peter Feld has been telling Obama supporters not to get too cocky all during the campaign (a former Dukakis adviser, he knows a thing or two about how Democrats can blow elections). Tonight, he takes a look at the final round of polls and the voting schedule and concludes... well, we don't want to jinx anything, but if you're an Obama supporter, you might just want to be near a TV at 11 p.m. tomorrow night. 7 p.m.

You've now had several hours to absorb the news that Deanna Pappas and Jesse Csincsak will not spend the rest of eternity together in a state of cross-eyed lovers' bliss—the very thing they pledged to us, the passively interested Bachelorette viewer, during that live broadcast of After the Final Rose. Pappas said in a statement that she "slowly came to realize that we are two totally different people and it wasn't going to work out," but what was Jesse's side of the story?He tells Extra via webcam declaration that Pappas "told some of our business associates" of the breakup before telling him. "She came back to Colorado [after some time away] and told me, ‘I love you, but I’m not in love with you.’…I picked her up from the airport and she told me while I was getting her bags." If there was ever any question whether or not real feelings were involved, wait until you see a tearful and confused Csincsak apologizing to his thwarter "for whatever I did to make you not want to be with me.” Honestly, Jesse? Screw her. You can do way better—and will! On The Bachelor's Revenge: The Revenge-Seeking Bachelorette's Bachelor Bites Back!. Then you'll have your own six-week stab at rooting through a pile of ring-hungry hotties until you find the perfect one. (Of course, you'll have to wait your turn until that other dude she sent packing gets his.)

Tomorrow, America Votes. Most people are fixated on "who will be the next President" and "how many Senate seats will Democrats pick up" but you know what? Real Democracy happens in the insane initiatives that clog local ballots every year. But many of these initiatives are about "taxes" and "redistricting" and other boring things like that. So we've put together a voters guide highlighting only ballot initiatives of interest to drinking, drugging, and whoring Gawker readers. We'll focus on statewide ballot initiatives, which sadly leaves out awesome things like San Francisco's prostitution-legalizing Proposition K but honestly we didn't have time to comb through every damn city in the country's crazy notions. Click through and learn how to vote, oh citizens of this grand experiment! Lady Issues

We hear that the layoffs at Viacom are going to happen, but probably not tomorrow. Viacom just sent an internal email to employees telling them that the Holiday party is canceled—but everyone gets two extra days of vacation instead! To "relax and recharge for the coming year." That's pretty awesome. Unless you come back and get fired. Click through for the full memo.

Chris Clark, 25, is running for a seat on Mountain View's city council. Clark works as a senior operations managers at Loopt, a wireless social-networking startup notable for its large number of gay employees — Clark included. Local techies are pushing to get him elected. We give him good odds, because he'll bring three underrepresented communities to the council — the youngs, the gays, and the nerds.

PRWeek got predictions about the election from 30 flacks around the country. One (1) of them predicted a McCain victory. So be sure to hire Nick Kalm of Chicago's Reputation Partners for strategic counsel on how to horribly embarrass yourself in any large, public group! "Regardless of who wins, however, the level of partisan rancor will be so high, it will make people long for the 'good old days' of Bush's second term," he says. Okay, just for that we will print his entire god damn answer below:

Fashion-dreams-snuffer Heidi Klum hosted her annual Halloween bash in New York over the weekend, and once again went over the top with her costume. Almost as disturbing as last year's Snake-Infested Giant Apple (inset) was this year's decision to come as the Goddess Kali— a sacred Hindu deity that has Hindu-American leaders outraged and demanding an apology: