We've been having some trouble getting psyched up for consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren's Senate run, mostly because the Senate is more or less the modern U.S equivalent of the elephant graveyard in The Lion King. But then we saw this video!

On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart mocked some of the recent statements about taxes uttered by out-of-touch rich men—like Bill O'Reilly and that one Republican congressman who spends $200,000 a year on food—before spoofing Sarah McLachlan's annoying late-night ASPCA ads and asking, "Will you be an angel for a helpless multi-millionaire?"

A year after Simon Cowell abandoned ship on American Idol to produce an American version of his other popular televised singing competition, he returned to Fox tonight—and reunited with a no-doubt hysterical Paula Abdul—as The X Factor made its stateside debut.

Troy Davis, the death row inmate whose guilt in the 1989 murder of Officer Mark Allen MacPhail has been seriously called into doubt, was executed by lethal injection at 11:08 p.m. ET after the Supreme Court refused to stay his execution. With his last words, he reportedly maintained his innocence to the McPhail family.

Getting home with your big bag of Taco Bell only to find that the guy behind the counter forgot your "Border Sauce"—we've all been there, right? The thing is, most of us probably didn't go back to the Bell with a shotgun.

Speaking at a conference in South Africa, Apple board member Al Gore blabbed about "the new phones coming out next month." Now everyone's expecting two new iPhones. Apple'll probably be cool about it. It's pretty laid back about iPhone launches.

Remember that possibly-looming government shutdown we told you about? Well! Today the House "defeated a routine bill to finance the government through mid-November[.]" I might put that October trip to the Smithsonian down in my address book in pencil.

This weekend, Amazon.com was revealed to have repeatedly landed warehouse workers in the emergency room because it refused to open doors amid extreme heat. Now the online retailer is hiring medics to care for workers the next time it refuses to open warehouse doors amid extreme heat. Progress!

We don't mean to scare you, but there is a chance a satellite might fall from the sky, directly onto you this weekend. Oh, who are we kidding? We're definitely trying to freak you out.

Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge since she up and married Prince William, is pretty and poised and seems to the manor born. Well, to us commoners at least. To the royal family she still needs work, so she's taking royalty lessons.

As we type, Wal-Mart is working hard to win approval for its very first Store Numero Uno in New York City. But according to a horrifying and hopefully untrustworthy new study, Wal-Mart would like to have 159 stores here. Gah.

It was fifteen years ago next month that the malevolent force known as Fox News Channel first ruptured Rupert Murdoch's birth-sac and emerged, steaming and foul, onto our television screens. The gang is all getting together to celebrate the upcoming special day with a party tonight at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. Chelsea Piers, right on 11th Avenue around 23rd St. Everyone will be there—Roger, Bill, Gretchen, Steve, Sean, Jesse, Rupert. Go say hi!

The weirdest thing in the whole entire USA Today "economic reporting as well as stories about angels" newspaper today was this alleged propaganda piece about how Americans just keep getting more and more pessimistic about the economy. What's the major malfunction, Americans? Unhappy about the virtually assured prospect of several more relentlessly awful years of your home not gaining value as you foolishly expected, extending the fearsome "lost decade" unto, it seems, infinity? Well I guess that makes sense.

Thousands of sweaty-palmed nerds are super psyched that their favorite place to creep on underage girls has returned. Reddit, the popular message board owned by Advance Publications, Conde Nast's parent company, has decided to revive its forum devoted to aggregating pictures of "jailbait."

Perpetual shit-show Julian Assange has notched another screw-up in his long list of self-undermining failures: The much-vaunted memoir, for which he received a $1.5 million advance, and wherein he was to lay out for once and for all a defense against the malicious attacks leveled at him from all sides, is going to be published tomorrow against his will because he is an impossible human being.

A new IHOP pancake depot is soon to open in Manhattan's East Village, the downtown epicenter of NYU kids and other tight-jeaned menaces. Management is expecting such a deluge of late-night customers streaming in from the bar-heavy neighborhood that they've hired security.

Zooey Deschanel, the hipster labradoodle with bangs, is a sort of love it or hate it proposition. Either people are into her Williamsburg boho approximation of a Lisa Frank folder with giant eyes and twee giggles, or they want to punch her in the face. The same is true for her new Fox sitcom New Girl. So, which side are you on?

In your woebegone Wednesday media column: network news is on the ups, The Source magazine remembered, Harper's Bazaar cuts back, the trickle away from The Daily continues, and ad revenue at the NYT is bad (again, still).

This is all that happens when you let foreign people into the country: unpaid parking tickets, everywhere. Okay, at least that's the case for foreign diplomats, who owe millions of dollars in tickets between New York City and Washington, dating back decades.

After the unceremonious firing of four cast members of Bravo's Real Housewives of New York, fans have been abuzz (positively abuzz!) about who would replace them. It seems now they might have an answer.