The president-elect is surely familiar with the stages of grief from that time he recently "quit" sweet, luscious cigarettes, forever. Sad, then, that several weeks after he was elected, Barack Obama is still in the "bargaining" stage about losing his Blackberry, which presidents aren't allowed to have, because then the laws would work as they are intended to and the public would know what they're up to. Barbara Walters recently asked Obama about losing the email device, and he laughed to hide the tears (next grief stage: "depression"), and said he's in talks to keep his precious 'berry:

Though Ricky Gervais's version of The Office folded up shop after two six-episode runs, that wouldn't amount to even half of a current season of the Steve Carell-toplined Office, which is continually pressed into service for hourlong episodes, spinoffs, and expanded seasons by NBC. Though the moves have pumped up ratings for the sitcom, the results are not always well-regarded by critics — or by a burnt-out cast, says Rainn Wilson:

Pirates! Pirates! Dangerous Somali Pirates! These poverty-stricken outlaws are now global idols who wallow in media attention when they're not busy pushing the world commodity markets up and down with only some rusty AK-47s and leaky speedboats. Their PR man is surely fielding job offers left and right. Boosaaso is the new adventure reporting destination du jour! The pirates currently holding a huge oil tanker may be reducing their ransom demands. You fools, that would make the situation less dramatic. The WSJ has a solution to keep the pirates top-of-mind: a big naval war! Georgetown professor Michael Oren thinks it would be totally awesome if the US Navy started totally smashing pirate ships with those huge guns. The ones that turn around on turrets and shit? Yea, those. Turn those bad boys loose! History demands it:

Security guards shot dead a man swinging samurai swords at the Church of Scientology's Celebrity Center in Hollywood. The fortysomething man with tatooed arms had gone back and forth to his car before getting "close enough to hurt" the security guards. Sure, Tom Cruise's cult has a history of turning viciously on its malcontents, but this particular ex-Scientologist was "very clear[ly]" threatening rather than protesting , Los Angeles police — still investigating — tell the LA Times. Which presents a bit of a PR dilemma to Anonymous, the ad-hoc anti-Scientology group that can't decide whether to stay the hell away from this story or flog the angle that the sect's three guards killed an innocent unnecessarily:

Muted Screams: Oprah Winfrey's annual "Favorite Things" episode airs this Wednesday, and though struggling people could really use some big-ticket items in the midst of our recession, the cruel daytime doyenne is going to reward her audience members with stuff they probably could have gotten already. "They're some of Oprah's favorite things, but this time there's a twist...they cost next to nothing!" said an Oprah rep in a statement. "You'll meet a mom who shows us how to create a one-of-a-kind treasure that comes straight from the heart. Then, one family talks about their very own tradition that doesn’t cost a cent." What, "love" or some shit? What a rip-off! At least give 'em some sweater-capes and calypso music, O! [Us]

With Heroes currently undergoing a ratings tailspin that even a concentrating, constipated-faced Milo Ventimiglia can do nothing about, one would think that creator Tim Kring would be trying to hold onto whatever fans he had left. Not so much! The Washington Post reports that at a recent Creative Screenwriting panel (where Kring attended solo sans two of the promised guests: Heroes executive producers that NBC recently fired), Kring complained that the Heroes downturn was less his fault and more the fault of people who actually sit down in front of the television on Mondays at 9pm (8pm central):

For most of the rich, the object of charity is to make one's name known. Alberto Vilar, a founder of a once-high-flying tech-stocks fund who stiffed New York's Metropolitan Opera on a $25 million pledge, has succeeded all too well. But his name is in court documents rather than the opera halls and college buildings he had hoped for. A jury found Vilar and his partner, Gary Tanaka, guilty of stealing $20 million from customers of Amerindo Investment Advisors, in a series of frauds dating back to the dotcom bust. He could face 20 years in prison.Vilar, among other things, was charged with $5 million from heiress Lily Cates, the mother of actress Phoebe Cates, and using some of the proceeds to make a donation to Vilar's alma maters. That was one of the few contributions he actually carried out; he had promised some $200 million to nonprofits over the years, including the Met's $25 million. As he failed to come up with the money, his nameplates came down from the institutions he'd promised to sponsor. Plácido Domingo is among the artists he left shortchanged. (A performing-arts center in the ski-resort town of Beaver Creek, Colo., still carries Vilar's name, though.) What brought Vilar down ultimately, was the dotcom bust. He rode big bets on Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo in the '90s to make billions of dollars, and his net worth peaked at $950 million. After the Nasdaq crashed in 2000, though, investors say Vilar promised to put their money in safe interest-bearing accounts — and instead, kept investing it in hopeless tech stocks. All the while, he kept giving away money to charities that he didn't have. Which makes me wonder: Who is the Alberto Vilar of today, and how long will it take to uncover his misdeeds? The quest may be fruitless, if only because there are too many to count, let alone prosecute. The craze for mortgage-backed securities has made Vilars of almost every fund manager out there. A promise of safety which turned out to be false; that is the theme of the meltdown that has touched every market on the planet. The main difference: Vilar was clever enough, the jury that convicted him must have believed, to know he was fooling his clients. His successors were merely fooling themselves.

Citing "several" anonymous people close to Hillary Clinton, Politico reported the Democratic senator is still weighing whether to accept the job of Secretary of State, should it be offered. That contradicts a report in yesterday's Guardian that Clinton planned to accept such an offer from Barack Obama offer once the president-elect's team was done vetting her husband, the former president. Hillary might want to stay in the senate and help fix health care instead, her people tell Politico. Translation: there's no formal offer yet, and also no way in hell Hillary Clinton is going to let people think her future is at the whim of That One's "fairytale" administration:

A classic tech dream: Reinvent every facet of an existing business, from top to bottom. The personal computer industry was built on the impossible dream that there would one day be a computer on every desk — an example which inspires countless attempts to reengineer the virtual world. Most prove to be expensive busts. Like the air-taxi business. Eclipse Aviation, which made small jets which its backers hoped startup airlines would fly from point to point at a cost lower than private jets, failed to meet payroll last week, and only now has scraped up financing to pay its employees.Vern Raburn, the big dreamer behind Eclipse, left the company this summer — a condition without which the company would not have raised a round of financing. He had envisioned Eclipse building fleets for countless air-taxi operators, which would operate from new, small-scale airports — a whole new air-taxi economy, dreamed up from the ether, which he would monopolize. DayJet, the most notable air-taxi startup, shut its doors in September. But Eclipse failed not just because all the component pieces of Raburn's vision failed to come together. It would be easy, surely, for him to pin the blame on operators who didn't deliver on their part of the bargain. It's not clear that there ever really was enough demand for the service in the first place. As much as people complain about commercial air travel, the major airlines move millions of people a year, at a cost its customers pay, albeit with grumbles. Asked how large the air-taxi market would be, Raburn told a magazine in 2007, "The only thing you can say about predicting the size of new markets is that you will be wrong." Give Raburn credit: He was right about that. (Photo by AP)

If there's one thing Chuck Norris is good for, it's the 1995 canine buddy cop movie Top Dog. If there are two things Chuck Norris is good for, we would have to think long and hard to come up with a second thing, as we've already disavowed the campy appeal found in Walker: Texas Ranger (for it led to Paul Haggis) and Norris's political endorsements (for it led to this). Still, Norris continues to press on with the politics, and now he has contributed an article to the conservative website Town Hall that bashes gay people rallying against Proposition 8. It is entitled, "If Democracy Doesn't Work, Try Anarchy." Let's have a look!

Few were surprised when NBC axed Lipstick Jungle, figuring that if a brutal, Project Runway-assisted title indoctrination couldn't help it gain a ratings foothold, nothing could. But wait! insists star Brooke Shields to Us. "It's not true," she said. "Our bosses are saying, 'You’re not canceled, don’t worry. We’re just trying to figure out how to make this make sense.'" Yes, if only a major media conglomerate like NBC could get the word out somehow! Still, James Hibberd writes that even though there's been a fan outcry (really?), there are other factors at play that may doom a new application of Lipstick:

Just because Treasury Dept. Bailout wonderboy Neel Kashkari gets to play with $750 billion in taxpayer money doesn't mean he actually has a good job. He came in looking peppy enough to bore holes in a taxpayer's forehead with only the power of his laser eyebeams; now, he's haggard. His eyes are dazed, plaintive even, and he's putting on classic stress-related weight under his chin. Congressmen yell at him. Old high school teachers talk shit about him. Internet jerks mock his awesome senior yearbook page. And he's really just a front man, taking all the heat for Hank Paulson's decisions and the mistakes of a million greedy Wall Street traders before him. We feel more sympathy for him than any other Ferrari-loving overconfident Republican ski bum Wharton grad in America. Keep on truckin, Neel.

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:

Hey guys! So, we're starting this rumor that, uh... Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (yes, the dreamy president of Iran, who else?) is going to be making a, uh, sweeps-week cameo on, well, let's say Private Practice because why not? What's that? We sound a little unconvincing? Well, congratulations, you just beat out the rumor-sniffing skills of the crack team over at Page Six! Let's take a look at this similar, outlandishly wrong rumor they ran today about Sarah Palin, shall we:

Though many "No on 8" protesters have been talking about a Utah-penalizing boycott of the Sundance Film Festival, we initially wrote the idea off as unrealistic (though it provides a great face-saving maneuver for rejected indie filmmakers!). Now, though, David Poland has brought to light a direct impact that one "Yes on Prop 8" donor — the CEO of the Cinemark theater chain — could potentially have on the festival:

As though it wasn't bad enough that Raffaello Follieri's ex, Anne Hathaway, is now being wooed by some common actor, the Vatican-swindling Follieri has been forced to deal with another unpleasant surprise: prison is totally gross! Currently serving out a four-and-a-half-year sentence devoid of flashbulbs and fast cars paid for with Becoming Jane money, Follieri's lawyer is now attempting to get the con man moved to someplace a little more minimum security. Marvel at Follieri's sad, sad description of prison life:

Everyone's wondering how the new presidential children, Sasha and Malia, will survive the cloistered, scrutinized life of the White House. In fact, in a Daily Beast interview today, FDR's grandson Curtis Roosevelt—who spent a dozen of his childhood years living there—said, "I hope the Obama children are sufficiently prepared to have some grounding and some identity of their own... I hope it helps protect them to some degree from the specialness that affected me all my life.... I was FDR’s grandson, and that was my identity." That's why we're slighting worried that the girls have been invited to be on the wildly popular kids' show Hannah Montana.We don't want to be a buzzkill—it's probably their favorite TV show, and going on it would be every kid's dream. On the other hand: this is how it begins. We don't want them running away and sneaking out, like Amy Carter! Even 16-year-old Miley Cyrus demonstrated her wisdom on the matter, telling Access Hollywood, "I think that would be really cool and if anything, have them visit the set." Yeah. Just have them visit the set.

Now that Daniel Craig's second turn as James Bond has been threatened by critics, the Communist party, and a diaper-craving Paul Haggis, it almost seems unfair to keep piling on. However, nobody's told 81-year-old Roger Moore to hold his tongue, and the former 007 (perhaps peeved that his general standing as "second-best Bond" is in danger of being usurped by Craig) has weighed in with his thoughts on the franchise's direction to Britain's Daily Mail:

After a week of attention-getting protests against Proposition 8, gay activists and allies are ready for their next big target — and some, like blogger John Aravosis, are suggesting a boycott of the Sundance Film Festival. Sure, the Prop, 8-pushing Mormon Church has no direct ties to Sundance, but the Park City fest could be affected by a growing movement to boycott not just Mormon-owned enterprises but the entire, caffeine-fearing state of Utah in general. So, should Robert Redford be shaking in his stylish snow boots? We think not, for these reasons:The boycott talk is coming from outside the industry, not inside. So far, calls for a boycott are mainly coming from bloggers, not influential directors, producers, and actors. We don't see that changing, unless the cash-poor Harvey Weinstein decides to make a dramatic nonattendance statement as a way to save face (and plane airfare). A boycott big enough to matter is unlikely. The young filmmakers accepted into the festival would crawl over their own mothers to be there, and the Sundance hangers-on like Paris Hilton have never been bastions of activism. Without enough straight allies who could bear to part with their tickets to Park City, there's no chance to make a big dent, because... The gay presence at Sundance has waned. Back before your associate editor took up blogging and adopted the royal "we" at Defamer, I held a regular gig as The Advocate's film critic and attended several Sundances working the gay beat (not as hustler-ish as it sounds!). Though the film festival has a deservedly gay-friendly rep, it's gone through some pretty sparse queer years as of late. At the 2007 festival, the gay slate had so little on it that the centerpiece was a Chad Allen movie. If Sundance was boycotted by gay filmmakers and queer-themed films, the lineup wouldn't change that much. We're all about new and novel ways to protest (what's this we keep hearing about "A Day Without a Gay"?), but the Sundance idea seems DOA to us, especially when everybody's already got their plane tickets set for January. Next year might be a different story — there'll be a lot more lead time — but let's hope there won't be reason to protest then, OK? [Photo Credit: AP]

You know, it would be a totally awesome Veteran's Day segment, says the bleary news producer, if we recreated that famous photo of the nurse kissing the sailor in Times Square. We think our ideas sound great when we're drunk, too. But soon, the painful truth sets in. This morning Fox & Friends decided to trot the actual nurse from the photo, Edith Shain, 90, in front of the cameras to kiss one of their interns wearing a paper sailor's cap. Witness the awkward Fox & Friends-intern-on-nanogenarian embrace after the jump.Shain's been through this before, however. Here she is with some actor-sailors from Broadway's South Pacific, recreating the kiss just a bit less awkwardly: