News comes in today that James Van Der Beek, former Dawson's Creek star and beautiful weep-god from teary heaven, has taken a role on a new sitcom pilot, Don't Trust the Bitch in Apt. 23 (soon to be retitled The Girl Next Door or something equally tame, I'm sure). And it's not just any part; he'll be playing the dynamic role of... himself!

First, a Survivor question! After that, there is so much pilot casting news today it's hard to know what to do with it! Some of it is very exciting (Summer Roberts!) and some of it less so (Donna Pinciotti as Chelsea Handler), but absolutely all of it is need-to-know. Or not. Whatever. Here it is.

Yesterday New Jersey governor Chris Christie once again talked shit about the cast of Jersey Shore and said he wants New York to "take them back." He really needs to shut up about this.

Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown's memoir comes out next week, and he'll be interviewed about it on 60 Minutes this week. Among the book's revelations is his admission that he was sexually abused by a camp counselor several times at age 10, and never told anyone. His wife only just found out by reading the book.

Kids these days! Getting smashed is no longer the "cool" thing to do among American collegians—college binge drinking rates (at Purdue, admittedly) have fallen from 48% to 37% in only three years! What are our young people doing rather than downing Colt 45 at racist fraternity sex parties? According to the Wall Street Journal—known as the beating pulse of life on campus—they're doing the following:

Turns out the Nazis were watching 3-D movies years before Americans were. According to the Guardian, Australian filmmaker Philippe Mora recently uncovered two 3-D propaganda films that date to 1936:

Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to strip away public employees' longstanding collective bargaining rights has been met with some incredible resistance from employees and their unions, college and high school students, members of the Green Bay Packers, and other sympathetic Sconnies.

Producers at Late Night with David Letterman got a call from a "friend" of Lindsay Lohan and booked her to appear on the show on Thursday through this intermediary. Too bad the "friend" was a fake and LiLo won't be on after all.

Chicago's likely new mayor, former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, is well aware of his Twitter impersonator, MayorEmanuel, and wants to know the motherfucker's real identity. And he'll pay to find out.

Last night's episode of Glee was titled "Comeback" so I hoped it would continue the return to creative form that started with the Valentine's Day episode. What came back, however, were the nonsensical plots, sloppy character development, and horrible gimmicks—this one involving Justin Bieber.

Former senator and likely presidential candidate Rick Santorum has finally acknowledged his "Google problem," and the fact that there's nothing he can do about it.

Do you know how sometimes you go to buy a pack of gum or some spoons or a pack of washcloths and the person at the register demands that you tell them your ZIP code, in order to be granted the right to hand over money for your purchase? And you're like "Buh? That is so exploitative. Well whatever, I really need these spoons." Yes, well, last week that practice was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court of California. And already, "More than a dozen new lawsuits have been filed against major chains that do business in California, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., Crate & Barrel and Victoria's Secret" over their ZIP Code-asking ways.

Justin Bieber, mop-topped wunderkind of the wooded north, fell into a political booby trap at the hands of Rolling Stone, declaring himself pro-life and pro-Canada: "You guys are evil. Canada's the best country in the world." Uh oh.

The good news is that Anthony Graves was released from prison back in October after serving eighteen years on death row for a murder that prosecutors now say he had nothing to do with. Charges dropped, man freed, name cleared. Good things! The bad news is that Graves is now rightly seeking some financial compensation for the nearly two decades he spent in the Texas hoosegow, but the state comptroller's office is telling him and his lawyers no, because of a technicality.

Yesterday afternoon, CBS broke the news that its correspondent, Lara Logan, was beaten and sexually assaulted while covering the Egyptian revolution last week. It didn't even take a full day for a commentator to ruin his own career over it.

The reason this star isn't talking about her divorce is because her ex has a tape of her doing nasty, nasty things in the sack. This country star's husband hits on models and this actress is sabotaging her husband's weight-loss efforts. Big whoop. It's not like they made a sex tape!

Frankie Muniz's girlfriend said he threatened to kill himself, then punched her in the head. Ryan Phillippe hits on Rihanna, who shoots him down. Pharrell makes goose-stepping cool. Wednesday gossip is all grown up and sort of terrifying.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il turns 69 today—that is, it is the 69th anniversary of his glorious birth on sacred Baekdu Mountain. What kind of events will take place? "Colorful events will take place," Korean News Service helpfully informs the curious. And that's not all!

The Egyptian military cleared Cairo's Tahrir Square of protestors on Tuesday, freeing the plaza for traffic for the first time in weeks after mass demonstrations eventually led to the end of President Hosni Mubarak's regime. Tahrir, which means "Liberation," had been the epicenter of the anti-government protests, with an elaborate occupation camp staffed by volunteers—from doctors and nurses to people running a lost-and-found stand. (The BBC has a nice interactive map.) Here's a collection of photos from the month-long protest and occupation, beginning in late January and ending last week with the announcement of Mubarak's departure. All images courtesy AP.

A new study that compared ecstasy users to non-users found that ecstasy doesn't impair cognitive ability, contradicting the results of earlier studies. This study—published on Tuesday in Addiction—was unique in that its subjects—even the non-users—were all rave-goers, and therefore undergoing the same experience of sleep deprivation, dehydration, annoying guy with the goddamn glow sticks, etc.; even then, researchers "found no ominous, concerning risks to cognitive performance" [CBC]