• David Letterman used appropriate scorn while speaking to Lauren Conrad. Tina Fey was not appropriately scornful of Sarah Palin.

Now that teenage girls have finally gotten over their fear of Twilight star Robert Pattinson's chest hair, they can go back to their regularly scheduled, quavery anticipation for the vampire-in-love drama, which comes out in just a few weeks. How intense is the want-to-see factor for the film? For a primer, just check out this excerpt of footage that just leaked from the Rome Film Festival, where the dialogue is no match for the Beatles-worthy shrieking from the audience that greets every single moment. Summit Entertainment's logo? "AHHHHH!" The first glimpse of Pattinson? "AHHHHH!" The arrival of a female supporting player who's maybe tenth-billed, at best? Screams, fainting, and revivals that can only be successfully administered by the Pope himself. We'd pegged this movie as The Dark Knight for girls, but even Bat-mania was never this loud. Clip above (be sure to turn down your volume). [Twilight]

Some readers have told us our Halloween masks were a little too frightening. If you're still scrambling to pull together a costume, here are four options that are more treat than trick. Best of all, you'll be able to get what you need from your own closet.

The lovingly jumbled piles of books at Shakespeare & Co., the famous Paris bookstore, must madden Googlers. All that information, unorganized! In the wake of its $125 million settlement of a lawsuit filed by book publishers, Google is now thinking about turning its money-burning Book Search product into an online store. This will end badly.Remember the Google Video Marketplace? Exactly. Launched months before Google bought YouTube, the video store required cumbersome copyright protections and was a nonstarter with consumers. Google closed the store last year, enraging the dozen or so people who'd actually bothered to buy videos. And Google's Book Search operations are a disaster, overseen by Ramsey Allington, an unqualified IPO lottery winner who joined Google at the right time to get valuable stock options and social connections. He has made a mess of his department, driving out qualified female employees by being a sexist boor. Publishers would do well to steer clear of Google until he's gone. Even if Google Book Search is placed under competent management, I doubt it will succeed. Google lacks a merchant's sensibility, trusting algorithms over salesmanship. But most people do not walk into a bookstore knowing what they are looking for. They seek serendipity — a quality that Googlers, with their overplanned vision of the world, hope to eliminate. There is beauty in an untidy stack of books. But a Stanford MBA's spreadsheets will never capture that. (Photo via Paris Parfait)

Boo! You want a Halloween scare? Go over to RadarOnline.com. Our old friend has been shipped off to an institution by their new adoptive parents and lobotomized, and now spends afternoons staring out a window and mumbling about The Bachelorette and dolphins. We've heard the rumors, we just didn't have the stomach to really face it until today. On the plus side, new tag headings of "Bachelorette, PhotoOp, SeaWorld, and Trista Sutter" should make it all the easier for you to access this empty husk's growing database of stories on those topics, should you care to. [Radar Online]

This has been an epic week, mostly because I feel sick and sorry for myself and my friends got married on Sunday. But you guys also made it a pretty big week, with some excellent Long Comments. We've awarded three of you for your outstanding tomes, and of course named the Party Pick for your favorite comment of the week after the jump.

Studs Terkel, Chicago's beloved author, interviewer, activist, radio host, and historian, died today at 96. Terkel's books Hard Times, Working, and The Good War are essential reading for students of American history in the first half of the 20th Century. He was a legendary storyteller and interviewer, and it's amazing to remember that not only did he publish his first book when he was already 55, but he then lived on to publish a dozen more, including one, P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening, set to be released next month. "Take it easy, but take it." [Chicago Tribune, Related]

As we heard earlier this week, Wenner Media announced editorial layoffs today. No names have been released, but we hear the cuts were spread across Us, Rolling Stone, and Men's Journal. And All Things D has a list of the layoffs at Portfolio today, which include senior editor Ken Wells—even though "Portfolio hosted a book party for him just this week":

Who's Mark Papermaster, the chip guru Apple and IBM are scrapping over? Here's one clue: He's the kind of guy who has no photos online. There used to be a "Mark Papermaster" profile on Facebook, but it's gone. No wonder he wants to disappear: Apple hired Papermaster, formerly a VP at IBM, possibly to run its PA Semi chip-design subsidiary. Apple switched to Intel chips for its Macs years ago, but after it bought PA Semi, speculation grew that it might use some variation on IBM's Power chips for the iPhone and iPod. Papermaster could help with that.IBM is suing Papermaster and Apple over the terms of his noncompete agreement. Apple and IBM hardly compete, which makes IBM's lawsuit a bit puzzling. California law is unfriendly, in general, to noncompete agreements; if anything comes of the lawsuit, it will likely be some kind of settlement. Here's why I think IBM is suing Apple and Papermaster: It just wants to get some idea of what Apple's up to.

Prominent Hillary Clinton supporter Lynn Forester de Rothschild, of the noted international finance and banking Rothschilds, recently endorsed John McCain because Barack Obama was, in her words, too "elitist." How elitist is he? He is so elitist, he would like to raise the marginal tax rate the highest brackets pay by four percent, to 39%. This is elitist socialism. Elitist socialism that leads to free money for elitist non-tax-paying poor people. As Rothschild points out at the Huffington Post today:

The typical formula of two pliant Bond girls per movie tends to serve the 007 franchise well, as in Casino Royale, where Daniel Craig's first at-bat was supported by striking work from Eva Green and that other one. For the new Quantum of Solace, though, things seem to have gone haywire — almost as though it were planned by some shadowy, nefarious league pulling the strings of Her Majesty's empire! First, Bond girl Gemma Arterton unnerved fans with the bizarre revelation that she was born with six fingers, and now female lead Olga Kurylenko is... well, we'll let the Communist Party give you the details:

Why did Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia, an online compendium which includes the world's most detailed article on flim-flams, step down as CEO of Wikia, the for-profit website host which recently laid off some of its employees? The way Wales likes to tell the story, years later, he realized he was a free-flying entrepreneur, not an earthbound bureaucrat. So he hired Gil Penchina, a former eBay executive, to mind the shop. That's not what really happened. Wales was fired from his job as CEO by the company's investors.The cause? The same kind of expense-account hijinks that landed him in trouble at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit parent of Wikipedia. In 2006, Wales was courting Marc Bodnick, a cofounder of Silicon Valley private-equity firm Elevation Partners, in an effort to find a way to profit from Wikipedia, despite its nonprofit status and volunteer contributors. Bodnick and an assistant had traveled to St. Petersburg, Fla., where Wikimedia was then based. The talks went nowhere, but Wales, his wife, Bodnick, and Bodnick's assistant had a $1,300 meal at one of the city's finest restaurants. ($600 of the bill was spent on wine.) At that point, the Wikimedia Foundation had confiscated Wales's corporate card, so he paid for the meal himself. But he then sought to have it reimbursed by Wikia. Michael Davis, Wikia's chief operating officer, became enraged and reported the expense to Jeremy Levine, a Wikia board member and partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, which had invested $4 million into the company only a month before. Levine then told Wales he was fired as CEO, and found Penchina, who had already made a fortune at eBay. Wales must hate that: Every time he sees Penchina, he must ask himself, "Why is this guy rich and I'm not?" Penchina, meanwhile, must be asking why Wikia is still paying Wales a salary.

As AlleyInsider notes today, little online video clips have helped shape the election. And you know who else has helped? Celebrities!! Yes the rich and frivolous famous folks who would like to gay marry the sound of their own voices have been out in force, most supporting a Arab man who drives a fancy Volvo full of explosives named Barack Obama. Though John McCain has had some vocal supporters too, most notably the braying little marmot named The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck. After the jump we'll take a look at Ms. Hasselbeck and several other celebs who have lent their questionable names to their candidates' causes.

Important item: Has billionaire Lazard chairman Bruce Wasserstein, the owner of New York magazine, had some plastic surgery? Cityfile thinks so, after examining a current photo vs. one from two years ago. Then again, two years ago Wasserstein was rumored to be seriously ill. So maybe he just got over that? And is it really worth spending all that money to get plastic surgery when you're already 60 and married and not prowling the clubs for hot young things? I guess if you're a billionaire, you can do what you like, thank you. Click to enlarge the pic. [via Cityfile]

We realize our ongoing Halloween costume ideas series has so far overwhelmingly catered to the mannish among you, so we thought we'd now throw one out to all you sexy ladies in the house. Some old-fashioned roller skates, a period hat, vampishly red lipstick and an assortment of ethnically diverse dolls are the essentials for this ensemble. See the finished product after the jump!

If there's anything more random and inane than work, it's the very randomness and inanity in which we are laid off and/or fired from our jobs. Today is the third installment of Layoff Horror Stories (send yours, or your tales of unemployment-related ennui and depression, to tips@gawker.com—have you put on pants today?) We're about to hear from someone who was informed of their downsizing by the office building's doorman, a layoff that ended up in "one giant ass-fuck, basically," and listen to a rumor that some Conde Nasties have recently resigned themselves to freelancing... web freelancing."no one probably reads either Women's Day Special or Boating"

The influence of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs has finally broken out of the film-school ghetto and into the real-world application where it really belongs: law enforcement. A disbanded troupe of rogue Australian cops was exposed this week in a report citing four decades of skull-cracking work by the "Armed Offenders Squad," which had in recent years taken to amending the conventional cop uniform to include black suits, sunglasses and lyrical poetry talents in lieu of Tarantino's more confusing non-linear storytelling:

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Click to viewBoomp3.com 90210 & Degrassi: The Next Generation star Shenae Grimes was surprised by the attention she received after leaving the Blackberry Bold party on Thursday night. Stepping into a sea of flash bulbs, Grimes paused and said, “Really? All this for me? It’s flattering, but I assure there’s somebody more famous coming out of that party real soon.” A lone snapper stepped forward and explained that they’re actually Blackberry super fans and they just wanted to get a snapshot of the new phone for their respective tech blogs. Another added, “Yeah, we got this really cool shot of Heidi and Spencer licking a Blackberry Storm like an ice cream sandwich. So could you do something equally as wacky?” Grimes retrieved the phone from the gift bag and pretended to take a bite out of it while rubbing her stomach. [Photo Credit: Splash Pics] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Cisco, the San Jose-based networking-equipment giant, is closing its free campus gyms — and replacing them with a new, larger one for which employees will have to pay $20 a month. In explaining the change, Cisco's HR team has claimed it's subsidizing the price of the gym, as well as other health facilities at the same site by 90 percent. So, what, the gym would actually cost $200/mo. at market rates? Must be some gym. Check it out in this video a Cisco source smuggled off-campus, and read Cisco's memo, which touts the loss of free gyms as bringing a "positive return on investment for Cisco." If you're feeling brave, crash the gym's grand opening on Monday.