Click to viewBoomp3.com Environmentalist/female naturalist Jamie Lee Curtis brought back her beloved Uncle Jam character at a Halloween party/charity event over the weekend. Regarding her costume, Curtis said, “Given the current political situation, it just felt right that Uncle Jam came out of the closet and reminded people that an election is coming up very soon.” [Photo Credit: X17] *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.

Still find yourself at a loss for a Halloween costume? Defamer is here to help. Sure, you could be a Texas Polygamist Bride, a Joe the Plumber, or a Sarah Palin, of which we saw several each on Saturday night. But what about something a little off the beaten path? A little...dare we say...Defamer? We'll be sprinkling a few ideas into the mix over the coming days. Every time, we'll arrange the various, fairly easy-to-find components above. Then mosey beneath the jump to find out what the sum of your costume parts will produce!

We usually think of bunnies as docile creatures, but there appears to be a pointy-eared showdown going down at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion, where Hef's original Girls Next Door are being phased out for younger, more arrest-prone replacements. Though Hefner insists the split is amicable, founding bunny Kendra Wilkinson (perhaps emboldened by her recent hate-on for Tom Brady) has a different take on the matter, and she seethed on the record to E!.In a video interview conducted at the mansion's Halloween party (and out of sight from her publicist), a visibly tense Wilkinson interrupted one of the reporter's questions to state, "There will only be the original Girls Next Door. We built this show, and we worked our butts off to be here." Then, gritting her teeth, she added, "These girls are coming here afterwards, which I have no problem with, [but] we've made this for them. I would appreciate it if they would be a little more thankful." When pressed further, though, a suddenly circumspect Wilkinson froze and said, "I don't know if I can open my mouth anymore... Shh. It's a secret!" What girl-on-girl rivalries might be existing behind the scenes at the Playboy Mansion? And, most pressingly, do they involve pillow fights? Developing!

Tesla Motors is now weighed down with a big bag of problems. New CEO Elon Musk is dumping that bag on past CEOs' doorsteps. Lit on fire. Who can you blame? Today's featured commenter, thekevin, shares a parable about this situation:

Hollywood PrivacyWatch: 10/26 — So I dropped a friend off at the United terminal at LAX yesterday at about 12:45 p.m. A cab pulls up in front of my car, and a wiry guy hops out. He in a plain white T and jeans, and just kind of standing there alone for a little while. And I look at his face, and think to myself—hey! I know that face. That's... TOPHER GRACE! I just kind of stared at him creepily from behind my windshield, waiting for something spectacular to occur. Nothing did. [Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]

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· Juiceboxxx, Icy Lytes, and Kid Infinity at Pehrspace, Melody Gardot at Largo, and Rademacher and Western States Motel are at the Echo. · GetALoadA Comedy presents a free show at the House of Blues's Foundation Room, featuring some of LA's best alternative comics, including Maria Bamford, Brent Weinbach, TJ Miller, Rob Delaney, Mike Nielsen, Peter Meadows, and your host, Kevin Robertson. Did we mention it's free? · Wanna put some good karma into the universe? Add some thoughts, prayers, or wishes to Wish Tree—a site-specific art piece by Yoko Ono at One Colorado Plaza in Pasadena. Your wishes will then make their way to the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik!

Even Bono's privacy is an illusion. A picture of the U2 rocker (and venture-capital investor at Silicon Valley's Elevation Partners) with two comely teenagers, Hannah Emerson and Andrea Feick, was leaked to the Daily Mail via Facebook. (The site has notoriously bad security on its online photo albums. Know someone who knows someone who knows someone? You can see their pics, no problem.) We now understand why Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales likes to pal around with Bono; great minds think below the belt. Can you think of a better caption? Leave it in the comments. The best one will become the post's new headline. Friday's winner: kgbeat, who turned Jason Calacanis's two-fingered salute into the answer to the question, "How many rounds of layoffs are planned at Mahalo?"

The Dow finished lower again today and could get below the psychologically important 8,000 mark this week. Wait—there's a show about privileged, beautiful people on? Peace out, troubles! WATCH Gossip Girl [8 PM, CW] - Jenny (throat-bacteria victim, Taylor Momsen) befriends a model who convinces her to buck up professionally and let loose in her personal life. Serena and Dan go to an art opening as friends but things get weird when Serena meets an artist who strikes her fancy. Meanwhile, Blair attempts to seduce all-time genius Chuck. No one looked or talked like this at our high school, but we probably drank as much as them.The Hills [10 PM, MTV] - Details of tonight's episode are pretty hard to find, but we're 100% sure Spencer will still be acting like a douche. Also, Lauren Conrad appears on the After Show to deflect direct questions.

Burn Rate, Michael Wolff's tell-all book about the birth of the Internet business, was a clever read which used the then-nascent medium to best effect. The Web-startup founder posted the index of his book online, driving all the Web insiders to his site to see if they were mentioned — and then to the bookstore to see exactly how. Which makes me surprised to see how clueless he is about Facebook. A tipster points out that his profile reads like an ad for his new book on Rupert Murdoch — but you have to be one of his 438 friends to see it. Which sounds like a good predictor of his book sales.

The last eight years haven't been kind to many, but political cartoonists did have George W. Bush's puffy face to expand, his ears to tug, and his policies to ridicule. The prospect of less easily mocked president is a challenge for cartoonists like Michael Ramirez, who is better than most at finding a way to satirize Obama and his policies without crossing lines real or imaginary. Fortunately, they'll have a long history to learn from.Master cartoonist Thomas Nast proved political cartoons could be used to subvert racism, as in this classic satire of whites congratulating themselves for the emancipation of slaves from an 1863 issue of Harper's Weekly:

Whether you take or leave Coldplay mostly depends on your taste for their brand of overproduced nursery rhymes and moody rock-star glowering. But what of the megaband's performance this past weekend on Saturday Night Live, with frontman Chris Martin bounding through Studio 8A like a sort of atonal Bono? What of that insistent pitchiness and those karaoke-grade moves underscoring his most recent album's title track "Viva la Vida" — the single on which Coldplay's label EMI was counting to help rescue it from certain insolvency in 2009? In a post-Groban world where any court jester who tries hard enough can usurp his king's crown, is Martin's lunacy the un-self-conscious work of a born performer, or just another postmodern, funk-faking harbinger of SNL's obsolescence? We could go either way, though (SPOILER ALERT) the inspired back-bend at the end puts this just over the top for us every time. Team Coldplay? We think? [NBC]

Eyebrows cocked? Smirk at the ready? Then you, sir, are qualified to tack on wry analysis to the day's news at AllThingsD.com. Good thing Peter Kafka, Kara Swisher's latest hire at the Dow Jones-backed tech blog, is a continent away from John Paczkowski, Swisher's incumbent snark machine. Put the two in the same office, and they might just spend all day raising their eyebrows at each other.

Click to viewBoomp3.com Strict parental unit Billy Ray Cyrus enforced a new rule for daughter Miley Cyrus and sort of boyfriend, hunky underwear model Justin Gatson. Father Cyrus based his new rule on the infamous "five seconds" rule and Gatson now has to stand at least five feet away from his daughter when out in public in an attempt to cut down on the creepy factor. Billy Ray said, “I got the idea this morning after I dropped a grape on the kitchen floor. I naturally started the countdown in my head as I bent down to pick it up. Now, if five seconds is all that separates me from harmful bacteria and disease, then five feet or so should keep things from getting creepy and uncomfortable and people getting the wrong idea. They’re not into putting labels on things.” [Photo Credit: X17] *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.

"Some of the tools that allow people to build communities and socialize on Internet sites like MySpace and Facebook are making their way to the living room," reports the Wall Street Journal. Awesome! That means we'll be able to throw a sheep at Tina Fey while watching 30 Rock, right? Wrong. The article actually talks about using Xbox Live as a cheap voice-chat service, a Sony service which doesn't exist yet, and a bunch of startups. Too bad, because I'd love to multitask my two favorite brain-dead activities: watching TV and clicking "ignore" on Facebook friend requests. (Illustration by Jason Schneider/Wall Street Journal)

Zeppelins went out of style when the Hindenburg went down in flames over New Jersey. But Airship Ventures, a startup backed by quirky angel investor Esther Dyson, is trying to bring them back. With a little help from Dyson's friends. Airship's Zeppelin NT, the first to fly over the U.S. in 70 years, has just completed a transatlantic journey and is scheduled to touch down this afternoon at the Nasa-operated Moffett Field, where it will be permanently stationed, operating aerial tours of the Bay Area. Curious — a private enterprise making use of public lands. Nasa's excuse for hosting the zeppelin: It will be used for scientific investigations and other public-spirited purposes. Where have we heard that before?Why, with the Google founders' fleet of party planes, which are also parked at Moffett Field, with the excuse that they sometimes fly scientific missions. (In fact, the Google founders' jets proved impractical for Nasa's science needs; Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt bought a fighter jet to fly those missions instead.) One of Airship Ventures' backers is an entity called Amphitheatre Holdings. Amphitheatre is incorporated in Delaware under the address of INV Tax Group, which Google may have purchased in a real-estate transaction two years ago. Google's headquarters is at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, Calif. This hardly seems like coincidence. Dyson is an investor in 23andMe, the Google-backed startup of Anne Wojcicki, wife of founder Sergey Brin. Has Dyson taken Google's shareholders for a ride, by having them take a hidden stake in a blimp startup?

Ye gods, somehow it will only get worse from here. In Des Moines, as Sarah Palin spun a wonderful science fiction tale about the terrible post-apocalyptic Red Dawn communist future Barack Obama has in store for us, a rally-goer seemed to shout a racial slur. (It sure sounds like "he's a nigger," to us, at about 30 seconds in.) Meanwhile, the ATF says it's uncovered a plot by two neo-Nazis to rob gun stores and shoot 100 black people. Also part of their plan? An almost comical "assassination" of Barack Obama:

Yet more bad news from the abattoir better known as the Los Angeles Times newsroom: Film critic Carina Chocano is one of 75 staffers put down today by butchers at the Tribune Co., bringing to 325 the number of LAT employees laid off since last summer and the fourth full-time film critic to vanish from a Tribune daily since July 2007.Chocano, whom we've admired since her days at Salon, broke the news in a brief note to FishbowlLA; her departure leaves veteran Kenneth Turan as the lone full-timer among a growing pool of freelancers (including Kevin Thomas, whose own contract the paper bought out in 2006). Fittingly or not, Chocano's final feature for the Times addressed the portrayal of hard economic times in the movies: "The pendulum seems to be swinging again from the decadent mainstream art of fat times to the scrappy countercultural art of lean times. For a while, at least, anger and unadorned reality may stage a cathartic comeback." We'd like that, too, Carina — just not like this.

CEO Steve Ballmer's hints at a Windows Web operating system have materialized as Windows Azure. More of a service than an operating system, Azure lets Windows developers write Web-based software that can use existing Microsoft Windows and Office technologies in conjunction with Windows Live websites. See a pattern? No wonder free-software zealot Richard Stallman hates it.

When you're just a lonely regular person, you can always post a personal ad on Craigslist. But what if you're a lonely celebrity person? And not just any celebrity person, but a celebrity person with a medical degree and board certification, who millions turn to regularly for health advice? Well, then it's not so easy. For starters, forget the Craigslist personals, and move over to the help wanted section—because what you're looking for is a PR assistant to help you weed through the available dating pool, smoking out the social-climbers, the gold-diggers, and the butterfacers in search of The One: