Truth be told, we can't be made to care about who took home the Golden Tap Shoes—by far the most coveted of all the celebrity-based reality TV talent competition trophies—on last night's Dancing with the Stars finale, even after discovering that the heady rush of victory was so overwhelming that the show's new champion was moved to drop his fiancée like she was a tango partner who caught fire in the middle of a dip. The only reason we even bothered to tune in to the fifteen-hour coronation ceremony was to check in on Marie Osmond, America's Emotionally Fragile Sweetheart, whom we weren't sure would survive the defeat her now-legendary Baby Doll Dance of Despair made all but inevitable.

· Var insightfully notes that picket lines full of bored writers marching in endless circles with little else to do but chat, network, and dream up theme events have transformed into something of a "social scene." [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Tom Hanks On A Budget Edition: Matthew Perry will play a grown-up version of Disney superstar Zac Efron in Big-in-reverse project 17, in which a suddenly teenaged, mysteriously overtanned Perry/Efron enrolls in high school so he can hang out with his children, who wonder why the "new gay kid" keeps trying so hard to become friends with them. [THR]

Before you pass an unfavorable judgment on Marie Osmond's bizarre performance on Monday night's Dancing with the Stars finale, please remember that she's going through an extremely difficult stretch in her life right now, catty accusations of being an attention-craving drama queen nothwithstanding. After surviving a terrifying fainting spell on live TV, a son being sent off to rehab, and the loss of the Osmond family patriarch, we really can't blame her for succumbing to to the enormous pressure of making the finals by engaging in an act of self-sabotage in donning that ill-considered baby doll costume and flailing limply through "Start Me Up."

If you're anything like us, you find yourself drifting off in the middle of conversations wondering how Marie Osmond's 16-year-old son is doing. The answer: Not great. ET, who this year purchased the underlying rights to Marie's soul, helpfully mass -emailed the following plea for privacy just moments ago: "My son Michael is an amazing young man shown through his courage in facing his issues. As his mother I couldn't be more proud of him. The press and public has always been kind and gracious in the past and I know they will continue to respect our privacy during this time." [ETOnline]

If there's one potentially happy side-effect of the strike-hobbled, reality-TV-riddled primetime schedules that will soon be necessitated by the writers strike's shutdown of the script pipeline, it's that Richard Simmons will probably enjoy a much-deserved career resurgence as his personal services become coveted by producers desperate for a hit from the stunt-cameo crackpipe.

I can't conceive of what it's going to be like next week without the sight of Mark Cuban kicking up his heels on ABC's Dancing with the Stars. I was so disconsolate that Gawker Media videographer Richard Blakeley cooked up this montage to cheer me up. Let me tell you, Microsoft should be investing $240 million in this guy.

Kicked off of ABC's Dancing with the Stars, Mark Cuban reveals that he's lost 30 pounds in the course of preparing for and performing on the show. That points to his future career: fatblogging, like his good buddy Jason Calacanis, the wantrepreneur who's turned himself into the Richard Simmmons of the Internet.

Alas, Mark Cuban. You soft-shoed your way into my heart — but not America's. Cuban has been booted off Dancing with the Stars. His crime? Letting his nerd flag fly, in high-waisted pants and black-framed glasses. Here's a recap of his brief dancing career:

Give billionaire Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban this much: At least he didn't faint during last night's Dancing with the Stars on ABC. It wasn't his best performance, but I'm betting he'll be safe during tonight's results show: The hypernerdy glasses he donned during an "I Dream of Jeannie"-inspired number played to his core audience of Valleywag readers.

The Z-List celebrity dance competition world was thrown for a loop yesterday when Marie Osmond collapsed on live TV following a performance on Dancing with the Stars: It was a shocking turn of events that elicited gasps from the audience, if not a few snickers of derision from overzealous competitors, at least one of whom was overheard to have said, "Geez, my mother died and yet I still managed to keep it together. Looks like the pressure's finally getting to someone. Team Seymour!" A round-up:
· Marie describes what it feels like to survive a post-Samba, nowhere-near-death experience: "I wasn't quite sure what was going on and then I saw everybody. I saw my kids, I saw TOM [BERGERON] and I think I said, 'Oh, crap!'" [ETOnline]
· Brother Donny helpfully speculates on some of the external factors that might have contributed to Marie's loss-of-consciousness! Health scare! Tragedy!: "Marie is touring, she has 8 children and went through a divorce." If we had 8 sets of crushed eyes staring down at us after falling off the reality TV gravy-train, we might say, "Oh, crap" too. [ETOnline]

Mere minutes ago, millions of east-coasted Dancing with the Stars fans watched as Marie Osmond fainted during judge Len Goodman's appraisal of her samba, a dance apparently so physically draining that it was impossible for Osmond to stay conscious long enough to signal the show's producers to cut away from a coming swoon in time to avoid unnecessarily upsetting America. But don't worry: we're told the Dancing crew returned after the impromptu break to let everyone know she's fine.

Once again, Internet billionaire Mark Cuban is safe for one more week on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." This one I didn't get — but then again, I didn't really understand why Yahoo paid $5.7 billion for Broadcast.com, either.

Despite Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban's tenacity on Dancing With the Stars and his status as Silicon Valley demigod, he is not considered a "who's who" by Activision. He's been left out of the videogame publisher's Wii and PlayStation 2 titles based on the ABC show, which allows you to fulfill your most nerdly ballroom-dancing fantasies in the privacy of your own living room. But sadly, Cuban's hot-trotting shoes and puppeteer-spontaneous jazz-finger outbursts are not part of the package. Instead the adaptations stick you with the likes of Emmitt Smith and Joey Lawrence.

So far on Dancing with the Stars, Mark Cuban could do no wrong, as far as I was concerned. But last night's performance? A disaster all around. Slow and tepid dancing, and Cuban's expression, under caked-on makeup, looked like the Joker's frozen smile. Not even geek pride could get me to vote for this.

Mark Cuban is safe for another week on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." From his grim expression, though, you'd think he was all but convinced he was off the show — note how it takes a few seconds for his win to register. Kym Johnson, his dancing partner, also seems shocked by the voters' choice.

From the tone of his blog post yesterday, I was prepared to see Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban fall down on the dance floor, writhing in pain as his career on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" went up in flame. Instead, the Web's ultimate good-time Charlie kept jazz-handing his way through the number, smiling all the while. Was he hopped up on hardcore pain medication endorphins or what? Still, a lesson for every startup founder: Set expectations low, and then exceed them.

Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban warns viewers that, well, he's going to suck tonight on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars," thanks to a recent hip-replacement surgery that left the muscles of one leg weak. That's okay, Mark — from the very beginning, every vote for you was already a sympathy vote.

Loudmouth Internet billionaire Mark Cuban thanks the "Nerd Hard" [sic] for keeping him on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" for one more week. You're welcome, Mark. And, um, thanks for noticing, I think. [Blog Maverick]

Unafraid to push the limits of breaking celebrity news, The Insider may have been the first media outlet to inform the world that Dancing with the Stars contestant Jane Seymour's mother has died. [The Insider Online]

A tragedy is brewing, folks. The Fort Worth Star-Something — apparently they have newspapers in cowtowns, who knew? — reports that Internet billionaire Mark Cuban risks getting voted off "Dancing with the Stars," due to the low scores assigned him by the judges. This is a clear example of the basest kind of antigeek prejudice. "It was like a bulldog chasing a squirrel," said one judge. Whatever! Who doesn't love bulldogs? And the worst thing: California, again, has been practically shut out of the vote, due to its Pacific timezone. The polls closed an hour ago. The Bay Area's nerd-boy hotbed, Cuban's natural constituency, left out again. So unfair! We'll have to watch tonight to see how this turns out.