· Kevin James and Adam Sandler will join Chris Rock, Rob Schneider and David Spade in a Columbia comedy about "five best friends from high school who reunite 30 years later on July 4th weekend."

Many people watched the first couple episodes of Big Love and decided it wasn't for them. But, based especially on the third season's first four episodes, those folks should rent the DVDs and play catch-up.

• Doubledown Media, the publisher of magazines like Trader, Cigar Report, and Dealmaker, and other titles aimed at the Wall Street set has shut down. [Folio]
• Those Pepsi ads that resembled a "MacGruber" skit from SNL? It was part of a deal between the soft drink company and Lorne Michaels, naturally. [NYT]
• The final Nielsen numbers are in: 95.4 million tuned in on Sunday. [MW]
• Bob Costas is leaving HBO to join the MLB Network. [THR]
• There's a boycott of CNBC today for some reason. [Jossip]
• HBO has acquired the rights to Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean's forthcoming book about "the meltdown and the reason it happened." [Variety]
.• CBS has ordered up a new show from the producers of Top Chef "that puts lovelorn singles into arranged marriages." We love it already. [THR]

Ellen Barkin has found a wonderful way to bridge the gap between the drama she's experienced in real-life and the sort that usually gets cooked up by unimaginative writers in a conference room in Hollywood. The most recent ex-wife of Ron Perelman has signed with HBO to both star in and executive produce her first TV series. What's it about? The as-yet-untitled drama revolves around a woman in her early 50s who is "famous for her high-profile marriage," but who "divorces and re-enters the singles market and finds herself developing a close, platonic bond with the 24-year-old son of her ex-husband." Sounds fabulous, although we're guessing Perelman's (slightly older) sons, Steven and Josh, may be wondering how they got dragged into it. [Variety]

· Universal's remaking The Thing, with Battlestar Galactica EP Ron Moore to write the script and commercials director Matthijs Van Heijningen set to direct. If you've forgotten how amazing John Carpenter's version was, watch this.

• Fourth-quarter profits at the New York Times Co. were down nearly 50 percent compared to a year ago; the company also announced that it has retained Goldman Sachs to sell its 17 percent stake in the Red Sox. [NYT]
• More on Condé Nast's decision to close Domino. [NYT]
• Because there isn't enough choice with the 364 different iterations of HBO you already have, another premium cable channel is headed your way. [WSJ]
• How al-Arabiya got the first post-inauguration interview with Obama. [Time]
• Hurry up! There are only two spots left for the Super Bowl on Sunday. You can make the $2.4 million check payable to NBC. [THR]

Ted Haggard became a "complete heterosexual" following a meth-fueled gay-prostitute romp in 2006. But the former Colorado Springs pastor can't quit homosexual scandal, which means HBO's new documentary is suddenly timely.

Sheila Nevins, HBO documentary films president and overall entertainment industry big shot, was very mad she couldn't watch Obama's inauguration live from her first class airplane seat. But were the cops and lawyers necessary?

· Broadway and Dan in Real Life star Norbert Leo Butz and William H. Macy have swooped in to save Speed-the-Plow, following Jeremy Piven's abrupt departure due to an acute case of eight-shows-a-week-is-really-putting-a-damper-on-my-skank-banging-schedule-itis. [Variety]

Hung—HBO's titillating new comedy about an endowed high school football coach who uses his horse-geezer to his own advantage—has been picked up to series.

The new season of weirdo comedy series Flight of the Conchords, about two singing and bumbling boys from New Zealand, is coming back soon. The first episode is already online! And it is very funny.

With seemingly so little left to live for (or is that just us?), the second season of Flight of the Conchords, and all the "Foux de Fafa" frivolity that implies, seems like it can't arrive quickly enough. But wait! Put down that kebab skewer pressed to your temple! You needn't wait until the January 18th premiere to catch your Brett and Jemaine fix, nor do you even need to hold out until this Monday, when the first episode streams on HBO.com. That's because it's already streaming, at this very moment, courtesy of FunnyorDie.com. We'll see you in half an hour.

• As expected, Barack Obama has been named Time's person of the year. [Time]
• Oprah has negotiated a deal to produce movies for HBO. [Reuters]
• It appears the end is near for Lenny Dykstra's Players Club magazine. [NYP]
• News Corp. is moving its listing from the NYSE to the NASDAQ. [NYT]
• American Idol was the most time-shifted show in primetime in 2008. [Reuters]
• Cutting web staff seems to be a popular way for magazines to keep their print titles afloat. [NYO]

Ever think that Oprah Winfrey's potent brand of self-actualization could use some more bare breasts? You're in luck!

Many companies have been busy cancelling their holiday parties in recent weeks. But if your firm is still searching for a little entertainment to spice things up (and you're not interested in having a losing contestant from Top Chef make an appearance), here's one more option to add to the list. Donald and Allison, who operate a site called SopranosLookalikes.com and claim they served as James Gandolfini and Edie Falco's photo doubles on the HBO show, say they still have some availabilities for upcoming holiday events. The couple promises to offer up quite a show if you hire them. They'll happily meet and greet your guests, "present awards," and "do toasts." They're also willing to "argue with each other" and "Tony can humiliate those you want made an example out of," which, come to think about it, might come in handy if the CEO of your company just slashed the budget and fired a big bunch of people.

Entourage last night offered a fairly brisk half-hour that balanced the science fiction of Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Turtle displaying palpable screen chemistry with a fairly easier-to-swallow story involving Vinnie getting fired by a Wolfgang Petersen-type on the set of the extremely timely Smoke Jumpers. As Ari desperately tries to get the director replaced, loyal assistant/stapler target Lloyd runs through a list of names, offering only commode-demolishing Zack and Miri director Kevin Smith as being available. The suggestion tees up another Ari sledgehammer—we won't give it away except to say Red Velvet gluttony is involved—which elicited this reaction from Smith on his message board:

Last night's True Blood finally gave us some hard answers as to why hunky, lovelorn bar owner Sam Merlotte occasionally will pause from restocking the beer case to scratch behind his ear with his foot: He's a shapeshifter! "Shut the fuck up," you're likely saying, much as vampire-sexing cocktail waitress Sookie did when she first beheld her boss's amazing trick. (She was equally blown away by his ability to balance a biscuit on his nose without eating it, and say something that sounds a lot like "Obama!")Yes, it seems vampires aren't the only supernatural B-movie entities the population of Bon Temps has to mingle with on a regular basis. Sam was kind enough to lay out the shapeshifting rules: 1. He can turn into any animal, but leans towards dogs, because everyone loves a dog. 2. He needs an actual animal to use as the shapeshifting blueprint. 3. He can't do humans—too complex. 4. He can usually control the impulse, except on a full-moon night, at which point he can only turn back into a human once he falls asleep. 5. But that DOESN'T make him a werewolf—got it? But yes, werewolves do exist. 6. There's several thousand other shapeshifters out there, but he hasn't found them, and he doesn't know if it runs in genealogy because he was adopted. (And abandoned.) That still leaves a lot of questions unanswered: Should you feed your shapeshifter gluten-free kibble? What do you do if your shapeshifter doesn't get along well with other shapeshifters at the shapeshifter run? With only two episodes left, we doubt we'll learn everything there is to know about the ductile species. In the meantime, enjoy the above montage of Sam doing what he does best. Good boy! Attaboy, Sam! Whozagooboy? Yes you are!

♦ More pain at 4 Times Square: Condé Nast is shuttering Elegant Bride. [Jossip]
♦ Despite the fact Portfolio fired 32 staffers last week, a spokesperson confirms the mag is going ahead with a soirée at the 21 Club later this month. [Page Six]
♦ Not surprisingly, Fox News has landed the first post-election interview with Sarah Palin. Greta van Susteren will sit down with her in Alaska over the weekend; the interview will be broadcast on Monday. [THR]

♦ Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson says the paper's newsstand sales have risen 20 percent in the last few weeks. [Portfolio]
♦ Fox Business is keeping up its attack on CNBC's Jim Cramer. [NYP]
♦ Comedian D.L. Hughley has signed on to host a show on CNN. [Variety]
♦ Colin Callender, the president of HBO Films, is leaving by the end of the year to start his own entertainment production company. [NYT]
♦ The Atlantic has launched a redesign and a new ad campaign. [AdFreak]
♦ Indian author Aravind Adiga won the 2008 Man Booker Prize for The White Tiger. [Time]
♦ The National Book Award nominees for fiction and non-fiction are in. [NYO, NYO]

It's Not HBO Without Colin Callender. Colin Callendar, the president of HBO Original Movies since 1999, has announced he'll be stepping down from his post to "return to my entrepreneurial roots." After Carolyn Strauss, he's the second of the Chris Albrecht regime to resign since Albrecht himself was squeezed out following an embarrassing domestic assault arrest in Las Vegas. Callendar was the man behind HBO's prestige longform productions like Angels in America, Wit, Recount, and John Adams. He plans on forming his own production company next year, but has one swan song before he goes—the $200 million WWII drama The Pacific, from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. With his exit, however, so closes the chapter on the once untouchable cable network's golden era. It's all bottled blood substitute from here. [LAT]