American Idol returned last night. Did you do your civic duty and watch it? If you did, you probably thought the same thing I did: Good lord but that new judge is annoying.

After yesterday's fleshy collection of Steve Martin/Martin Short beach photos, we were feeling charitable toward seaside man-duos (we are not going to say "bromance"...we're just not.) Then, Ryan Seacrest came along.

Yesterday was the official beginning of midseason TV! Starting with Gossip Girl. Now all your other favorite shows are coming back, plus some new ones. Let's a take a look.

It's hard to picture a loosey-goosey institution like American Idol—a longtime proponent of talentless T n' A-havers' rights—coming down hard on a flattering copycat contest for undiscovered pole-abouts.

• As expected, Barack Obama has been named Time's person of the year. [Time]
• Oprah has negotiated a deal to produce movies for HBO. [Reuters]
• It appears the end is near for Lenny Dykstra's Players Club magazine. [NYP]
• News Corp. is moving its listing from the NYSE to the NASDAQ. [NYT]
• American Idol was the most time-shifted show in primetime in 2008. [Reuters]
• Cutting web staff seems to be a popular way for magazines to keep their print titles afloat. [NYO]

So many things are changing about American Idol this season! Like Cousin Oliver before them, could these changes spell the doom of the increasingly creaky, 8-year-old singing competition? Let's look at what's changing:

Paula Abdul is now freely admitting she was scared shitless the day she came face-to-face in the Idol audition room with a longtime obsessive fan who'd later commit suicide outside her home.

David Letterman, who was harassed by a stalker through the early 1990s, was partly serious when he told American Idol judge Paula Abdul she should sue Idol producers and Fox for toying with her and a longtime stalker, who ultimately committed suicide near Abdul's home.

Maybe it sounded like Paula Abdul was "chiding" Fox on her satellite radio show Monday, as the AP headline has it, but the charge was quite serious: That the network purposely gave Paula Godspeed a slot on American Idol to irritate singer/judge Abdul. In other words, Fox put Godspeed on the show, repeatedly, not because they were ignorant of her history as a mentally imbalanced stalker, but precisely because they knew this history. Godspeed's 18 years of letter to Abdul and her stint on the show were capped, infamously, with an apparent suicide near Abdul's home.

There are two Paula Abduls: The first, a fierce and focused businesswoman, overseeing a growing multimedia empire bolstered by her stratospheric visibility on American Idol. The other is tanked, and the one we actually care about. You rarely get just one or the other, mind you, but instead a glorious spectrum of increasingly blurry...how do you say...shades of Paula.

When Radio Station Photo-Op Ideas Go Wrong: David Archuleta Glimpses Horrifying Vision of His Possible, Justin Guariniesque Future Edition! Someone at Oakland's KHOP 95.1 FM thought it would be a good idea to have Archie work the Drive-Thru/sign autographs at fourth-tier fast food franchise Del Taco (seriously, they couldn't trade him up to a Quiznos or something?), which the preternaturally upbeat, tweensy Idol phenomenon smiled through without complaint. (His father was just out of camera range, barking, "Goddamit the blue Tercel said NO sour cream. Get in the GAME, son.") Enjoy a gallery of photos here, including one of Archuleta sweetly taking the time to sign the back of Pugsley Addams's T-shirt. [ONTD]

At a Cedars-Sinai benefit last night at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, the animated woodland creatures that typically accompany David Archuleta wherever he goes were shooed away by idol-feeding succubus Priscilla Presley, who quickly drained the rosy tint from his cheeks. Hours later, he arose from a shallow dirt grave to take on his new, immortal form—as ELVISULA, Hip-Gyrating Prince of Darkness. [NY Post]

With just a little over a month before Fox parts the 200-foot-high bamboo gates of Karaoke Island and unleashes their gargantuan ratings beast upon an eager-to-be-trampled public, the American Idol publicity machine is in full swing.

With Thanksgiving over, we'd like now to officially ring in the Archie season. Won't you sing some Archie carols and standards with us?

With its eighth season—begins in January!—lumbering towards us like old Randy, American Idol remains so big that it's hard to quite figure out the size and shape of it. What makes up the pop corn 'n bubblegum singing competition? And, more importantly, who's watching? Well lots of people are, but we suspect a smaller number are doing the rabid voting, making the signs, and wearing the t-shirts than ever before. It's become clear that the obsessed Idol fan demographic has, over the years, been distilled into two core groups: scary/crazy adults with lots of problems and, you know, little kids who are allowed to be a little nutty because, well, they're kids. As a visual example of a mix of the cute kid and the borderline crazy, we present you, after the jump, with a video of The Worst Idol Day Ever, as witnessed by some of its most devoted fans. We just think it's really funny. In particular the girl in the middle.

Finally coming out to the world as a David Archuleta fan has made a huge difference in our day to day lives—we just feel lighter and happier, as if we can finally start being the real us, instead of keeping up some ridiculous charade of what society expects a grown man living in Silver Lake to have on his iPod. But never, in our wildest Archie-loving dreams, did it ever occur to us that he might actually...know we exist.Well, apparently he does, as an interview conducted by Kathy Griffin backstage at The Bonnie Hunt Show today revealed that Archuleta read our track-by-track review of his debut CD, or at least glanced at the video of girls reacting to his real-time defeat at the top of the page. (A reader tells us Kathy also name dropped us on the air, so we feel we owe her something in return: "Your rack is banging in that Hello Kitty shirt." There.) According to Arch, he was led to the post by his bestubbled vanquisher, David Cook—suggesting Cook reads Defamer as well. Enh, whatever. That's cool, we guess. [Kathy Griffin's MySpace]

Remember when the music industry said MP3s on the Internet were going to destroy music? Here's an inside glimpse at how much things have changed since Napster. Today, publicists contact me to try to arrange stories about songs their clients have intentionally "leaked" onto the Internet. American Idol David Cook is the latest in a long line. David, I love your act, but next time bypass the "mobile-only social network" and upload yourself straight to YouTube. Here's the pitch, minus the name of the hanger-on tech company trying to ride along with Cook's fame:

The identity of the Paula Abdul obsessive found dead in a car outside Abdul's home last night has been revealed to be Paula Goodspeed, who Idol-watchers might recall as being the contestant who showed off a portfolio of "life-sized Paula drawings" and miscellaneous Paulapernalia. (Video after the jump.) She was then led before a judging tribunal that included her hero—certainly not an easy feat—before launching into a brain-scrambling rendition of "Proud Mary" that elicited predictable humiliation from Simon Cowell over "all the metal in her mouth." Following that was a disturbing interview (editors underscored it with a horror movie soundtrack) in which Goodspeed pledges that, "It's not over. I'm not just going to step singing just because you don't like my voice."

A bizarre discovery turned up outside America Idol tastemaker Paula Abdul's home last night: a dead body propped over in a car. Even more confusing was that the body belonged not to the klonopin chip brownie-loving singer/choreographer/karoake-feedback-deliverer herself, but rather a rabid Abdul fan, whose car bore a vanity license plate reading "ABL LV," ("4VR URGL" had already been taken) and Paula-scented air-fresheners dangling from the rear-view mirror. More details follow after the jump:

♦ More pain at 4 Times Square: Condé Nast is shuttering Elegant Bride. [Jossip]
♦ Despite the fact Portfolio fired 32 staffers last week, a spokesperson confirms the mag is going ahead with a soirée at the 21 Club later this month. [Page Six]
♦ Not surprisingly, Fox News has landed the first post-election interview with Sarah Palin. Greta van Susteren will sit down with her in Alaska over the weekend; the interview will be broadcast on Monday. [THR]