Last seen on the streets of New York and in Bellevue hospital with a collapsed lung and on methadone (and in 2004's extremely awesome Blade: Trinity with Parker Posey which was so good even though Natasha couldn't really walk or anything and Parker was all "Look at me, I'm getting paid bitches!"), Natasha Lyonne is making her major comeback! In a new Mike Leigh play, to be directed by extreme Mike Leigh enthusiast Scott Elliott of the New Group. This is nothing short of miraculous. Welcome back, Natasha, you dog-molestation threatening extremely extremely troubled young person! We're thrilled.

Isaiah Washington, now a member of Bionic Woman's big happy family, is never too busy to shatter the deafening, one-day silence that followed his ouster from Grey's Anatomy at the hands of a shadowy cabal of moustache-twirling gay foes. Speaking to Extra, the actor delivered a curiously roundabout answer to a question about whether or not potential Bionic viewers might be turned off by his year of very bad press:

In the end, there would be no baby dolls dropping from the rafters, giant Jacuzzis filled with writhing background dancers servicing a fading pop star's exhibitionistic sexual needs, or even a female albino python with which Britney Spears might share a same-sex, cross-species kiss to open last night's VMAs.

The rehabilitation of Nirav Tolia is not just complete — it is, at long last, confirmed. The cofounder of Epinions, though tarred by old controversies, will announce tomorrow morning that he has, indeed, landed a long-rumored spot at Benchmark Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence. (Back in March, Valleywag emeritus Nick Denton was told by several people Tolia was heading to Benchmark.) He'll be joined there by Sarah Leary, a former Epinions executive, and both hope to look at startup ideas having to do with online community and user-generated content. (We'll hold our tongue.) Tolia called Valleywag to share the news.

While Access Hollywood has helpfully added some subtitles to the audio of Britney Spears' rumored comeback song so that you can bring along a copy of the clip to Valley institution Sardo's legendary "Celebrity Trainwreck Karaoke Night" tonight, we think they've badly misinterpreted the potential hit single's lyrics. Indeed, "Everyday, I'm a daze," requires no explanation given Spears' half-remembered, topless hot tub encounters with loose-lipped video extras, but "So why do you desert me, baby boy?" is obviously a reference to her still-unnamed second offspring, who's developed a vexing talent for escaping his playpen each time mommy wants to spend some quality teeth-whitening time with the child.

Fortunately for us all, this unexpected house-cleaning turned out to be just a false alarm: Atene has already returned, shirtless and brandishing a bottle of Sam Adams (has he signed a product placement deal?), and reassuring his fans that not only hasn't he gone away ("I'm STILL here. I'M STILL HERE, I'mstillhere"), but that he's on the verge of a prolific period in his creative development. Enjoy his public workshopping of a Brokeback Mountain piece that we're confident will shame the original Heath Ledger performance once he's had a little more time to run through its tricky, bittersweet rhythms.

Everyone was expecting Business 2.0, the Time Inc.-owned tech magazine where — full disclosure — I used to work, to shut down this Friday after staffers sent the September issue to the printers. But that is, as of last night, no longer the case. Time Inc. is giving the magazine an eleventh-hour reprieve, in the manner of the governor calling in a pardon just as a sentenced prisoner is being strapped into the electric chair. Top execs at the publisher are now, instead of arranging funeral plans, sorting through a flood of offers to buy the magazine. Here's what's changed — and why.

Lloyd Braun, the famously inept media executive who flamed out of a gig at Yahoo, is back on the Internet. He's got a "first-look" interactive deal with Pepsi's entertainment arm, according to Kara Swisher at AllThingsD.com. That's Hollywood-speak for saying that Pepsi has the option to use any online-entertainment concepts Braun comes up with. The alliance, of course, just billboards Braun's tech cluelessness. When Steve Jobs recruited John Sculley to be CEO of Apple, he asked him, "Do you want to peddle sugar water for the rest of your life?" Braun doesn't seem to realize that the right answer to the Jobs question was "no."

For people who gambled hundreds of dollars hoping that a series of area House of Blues concerts for mystery act The M+Ms would actually feature Britney Spears's triumphant return to live performance—some good news, and some bad. First the good: As San Diegans in attendance can attest, it was indeed the troubled pop star who had taken to the stage a mere two hours late (despite the best efforts of a speeding tour bus driver), where, accompanied by a quartet of background-dancing skankettes, she gyrated to familiar hits with a shapely figure that bore only a fleshy hint of her recently acquired rehab fifteen. Now the bad news:

LOCKHART STEELE — With due respect to Nicholas Butterworth, the New York internet comeback of 2006 has to go to Jeffrey Dachis. Dachis, you may recall (if your brain hasn't permanently suppressed the memories from that weekend in Vegas), started the web design firm Razorfish in the mid-1990s, took it public, rocketed to glory, then watched the firm crash, burn, and then, after his departure, rise from the ashes as Avenue A Razorfish and become profitable again. Which is why it made a delicious kind of sense that this year, Dachis would also want back in.

LOCKHART STEELE — Internet industry life in New York City is different than in the Valley. People here don't listen to podcasts not produced by NPR, and they don't read Scoble. (If they do either, they aren't admitting it.) And the sine qua non press hit for your new webtacular isn't a TechCrunch profile; it's a story in the Times' Sunday Styles section. Which is why a Styles piece last March by reporter Warren St. John was probably a happy occurrence for Nicholas Butterworth, the former MTVi CEO and Silicon Alley Reporter coverboy, who, like many from Alley 1.0, was suddenly back at the table, buying back in: