In honor of Presidents Day, our nation's greatest ever president, Richard Milhous "Dick" Nixon, started a blog! Because everyone gets a blog! It's called "The New Nixon Blog" and America's Dead President Hero "would be fascinated by the blogosphere," according to his blog, written by the staff of his presidential library. Because Nixon adored the latest technology, see, giving all his secretaries IBM Selectric IIs and also state-of-the-art audio taping equipment. Of course, we all know how much Nixon adored free speech. And cursing! Blogs have lots of cursing. The blog also will feature contributions from right-wing columnists and authors (like Hugh Hewitt), all of whom should know better than to defend Nixon, as he was not actually particularly conservative, just an amoral sociopath. Also James K. Polk is following you on Twitter and Franklin Pierce has a Tumblr. After the jump, a hilarious 1968 campaign ad from America's drug-addled criminal racist President who probably beat his wife.

As some readers complained that last year's holiday greeting caused their usual Christmas bedtime visions of dancing sugar-plums to be replaced by nightmares starring a certain mysteriously infantilized—if still festively attired—superproducer, we've decided to soften this year's offering a bit. Who could possibly be troubled by the delightful image of Santa Grazer atop a plush unicorn? Not us, at least. Please accept our warmest wishes and heartfelt thanks for helping us survive another 12 months of largely the same nonsense we all lived through the previous year. We'll be back on Monday for a half-day, off Tuesday for the holiday, then back to a more-or-less regular schedule Wednesday for the always action-packed week before the New Year. (Or, more accurately, Seth will be here—he always puts a vacation until January 2nd under my Christmas tree. And all I got him for a late Hanukkah present was a regifted set of "I Am Legend/I'm With Legend" t-shirts Warner Bros. sent in!) See you in 2008! —Mark

Outside, it's been 4 p.m. for the past week and a half, and now the chilly gray perpetual dusk has even started leaking sleety rain. Inside, there is nothing to write about. It's now the season when the Internet traditionally dries up and blows away, and besides, most of us just quit our jobs and are now serving out a one month's notice that we cannot believe ever seemed like a good idea. "Now you'll be able to just relax and have fun with it!" somebody said early on. True, yes, except that how is it possible to have fun when everything you do reminds you of A) why you quit and B) why you are unqualified to do anything else? ANYWAY! This is all to say that it's been tough to come up with a year-end happy-time great list, but here goes!

Inspired by the outpouring of loving correspondence Kiefer Sutherland has been receiving this holiday season, we retrieved this request from our mailbag: "Hi, is it possible to send me a list of all addresses of famous people in Hollywood I know it is sound not really normal ask, but I want to send them all a New Year and Christmas cards. It can be as e-mail, as a normal address. Thank you." Unfortunately, we accidentally deleted our master list of addresses while compiling our own e-mail blast of Yuletide cheer. Whoops! But if any of our readers have access to this information, we'd be happy to forward it along and help this generous individual spread the Christmas spirit throughout Hollywoodland.

On Saturday, the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church had all the ingredients necessary for a successful westside Yuletide celebration: majestic choirs, a rousing performance of Handel's Messiah, and a celebrity supermodel to read the Christmas Story. Happily, not even the last-minute cancellation of planned "special guest" Hunky Santa could damper the spirit of the season; not a soul complained when it was announced to the congregation that the musclebound St. Nick wouldn't be able to attend due to a shift at the Beverly Center that ran too long.

With seemingly so little to be thankful for this upcoming Turkey Devouring Day, at least we have the happy news that Dick Clark will be rejoining the 2008 New Year's Rockin' Eve festivities, where he'll again be accompanied by a virtually strikeproof Ryan Seacrest. There, at the precise stroke of midnight (perhaps an unfortunate choice of wording given the circumstances), Seacrest will finally deliver the noisemaker-blowing go-ahead to his delighted mentor, resulting in the faintest kazoo-squeak signal for "Auld Lang Syne" to begin.

Upon picking up their copies of Variety this morning and seeing the above image, subscribers to the trade publication would discover that today is Brett Ratner, Billion Dollar Director Day, a joyous celebration of the ten-figure gross accumulated by the preternaturally hacky director/local bon vivant's seven feature films, an unassailable record of success that ensures that the still-creatively-evolving 38-year-old will have the opportunity to helm lucrative Rush Hour sequels well into the next decade.

It had completely slipped our minds that today is one of the most important dates on the Hollywood calendar, but thanks to a helpful reader who wanted to make sure we wouldn't forget to note it here, we now gently remind everyone to set aside a moment to celebrate Steven Spielberg's Narrowly Averted Rape Day. Explains DailyRotten.com:

Wow, feels kind of self-indulgent around here this week. That's probably because a) there's no news, and b) we are so completely in love with ourselves and our drama and we are endlessly fascinated with what we write about best, which is us. This post will be no exception. It's all about me. Did you know it's my "Gawker birthday?" It's true! I started here a year ago today. In the intervening twelve months I've worked with six different editors, written approximately 2,500 posts, suffered through three staff transitions, and learned more about Rupert Murdoch than I know about my own family. I developed a case of pneumonia that literally almost killed me, I've never slept more than five hours a night, and, once, Nick Denton gave me the finger. ("It means you've arrived," he explained helpfully.) A man can only take so much.

· Celebration IV at the L.A. Convention Center has officially kicked off. Their blog already has some sneak preview video up, including the above, utterly adorable session of the Jedi Academy, in which a group of half-pint Yodas-in-training (so much for the widely held misconception that Star Wars fans don't have sex) face off against Darth Vader. Those kids are to be commended for their bravery—we would have soiled our cloaks at that age. [Celebration IV Blog]
· Oh no! Jabba the Neck Wattle has enslaved Queen Amidala! [theweeklydonut.org]
· 75 "underground artists" were approached to decorate their own Darth Vader helmet, in something called The Vader Project. [LAT] [CIV Blog]
· While George Lucas won't be in attendance, Carrie Fisher is scheduled to make an appearance. This is a great opportunity for you to demonstrate just how much thunder you're packing by whipping off your belt during your pitch for Episode VII: A New Bulge. [THR]

While it seems that our names were somehow deleted (erroneously, we're sure) from Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' "nice list" this holiday, at least one of our readers maintained good enough relations with Team Cruise to receive a Christmas greeting from America's Most Suspicious Nuclear Family. Happily, our operative took the time to painstakingly photograph the mysterious "card" they received last week, allowing those of us not lucky enough to make the list to share in the Cruise's heartwarming (if concisely expressed) seasonal wishes:

Hi, gang! As even the most of godless of Hollywood heathens is well aware, Monday is Christmas, the day when Christians celebrate the birth of the Messiah by giving each other things they bought on sale at Target, drinking enough rum-spiked glasses of eggnog to make spending time with their families seem bearable, and weeping uncontrollably at overrated Frank Capra movies. In recognition of this sacred occasion, we won't be updating on Monday, but posting will resume on Tuesday. In other schedule-related news, I'll be on vacation until January 2nd starting right about...now, but Seth will be sticking around to ensure that no Blackberried Lindsay Lohan manifesto about her plans to enlist Santa Claus in her ongoing image rehabilitation campaign goes uncovered.

Balk here. Quick note on our schedule next week: As is the case with all Jew-run media enterprises, Gawker will be closed on Monday to celebrate the miracle of baby Jesus' birth. We'll be here for the rest of the week, except for me: I'll be taking an ill-deserved but medically-necessary vacation for the duration of the year. My replacement during that time will be the incredibly capable Rob the Bouncer of Clublife fame. I expect that you'll treat him with the same respect and reverence that I am accorded on a - oh, whatever, just try not to be dicks; he has no clue what he's in for yet and we don't want to scare him off too early. I will see you kids on the other side of the New Year, and if you'll indulge an old man a moment's sincerity, I wish you all happy, safe, and healthy holidays. I will be in a constant state of inebriation myself (oh, how I've missed being able to drink in the mornings), but I'll be thinking about you the whole time. Best, etc.

SCOTT KIDDER — Buying holiday gifts on Amazon.com? For anywhere from $2.99 to $5.99, depending on the item, you can have your item gift wrapped. How convenient!

Well, they definitely have the whole video thing down, but SixApart may still have to work on that whole funny part.

The AP brings up an angle we'd never considered regarding the Michael Richards Racist Tirade Incident: How might the public's lowered opinion of the man once universally beloved for playing Cosmo Kramer affect the sales of Seinfeld-inspired Festivus poles? Sales have been brisk so far this season, leading a representative from the $20,000-a-year unadorned metal rod industry to state that fans are understanding enough to look past the regrettable actions of an actor with rage issues to the real meaning of the fake holiday:

We pass along the above Fox.com promotional clip for 24's upcoming premiere not only because the idea of Santa Claus using CTU resources to infiltrate a chimney-free stronghold is certainly cute enough to waste two minutes of an already useless pre-holiday workday on, but to point out its missed opportunity to appeal to the series' hardcore fans: When the little girl opens that present in the final frames, it really should've contained the freshly severed head of a terrorist (a double-agent elf who sold him out as part of a convoluted plan to divert a toy shipment to the Middle East?) that Santa had to kill to ensure the completion of his Yuletide mission. Still, not a bad effort.

While the above Los Angeles house looks like any other tackily adorned local shrine to all that is commercial about Christmas, it, like a chimney in which the charred remains of an ill-fated burglar dressed as St. Nick are discovered only after an unlucky family returns from an end-of-year vacation, holds a dark holiday secret: it was decorated by Jewish people. Today's NY Times looks at the cultural strife being caused by one defiant woman's decision to erect life-sized Santa Clauses, inflatable Christmas polar bears, and hosts of wire-frame angels in a largely Orthodox Hancock Park Adjacent neighborhood:

Earlier: Who Are The Ad Wizards Who Came Up With This One?

When last we saw Brian Atene, the internet's best-loved, rejected Full Metal Jacket open-auditioner, he had suddenly resurfaced within the YouTubes to prove to the world that the twenty-plus years that had passed since the recording of his inspired try-out tape had done little to blunt his unhinged flair for the dramatic. Atene has returned once again, this time to offer a cheery, Beneath the Planet of the Apes-inspired holiday wish for the eradication of mankind, an ecumenical season's greeting that applies whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa. As we are wont to say upon the presentation of a video clip: Enjoy. Also: Death to all humans.