Is Barack Obama finally embracing stoner comedy?

Here's the trailer for A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, which is, yes, the third Harold and Kumar movie to grace our multiplexes. It is, as you may have guessed, a Christmas movie shot in 3D.

Actor Kal Penn recently quit his White House job to return to Hollywood. As a special goodbye, a local resident robbed him at gunpoint early this morning. Ahh, the ol' Capitol Kiss-Off. Suspect is unknown. Though it definitely wasn't lupus.

Kal Penn, famous movie drug-smoker, is leaving the Obama administration. Penn quit the television show House to be the White House "associate director of public engagement." (There is a new Harold and Kumar movie due this Christmas.)

Today is Van Wilder sequel star Kal Penn's first day at his new job. His new job at the White House! TV's Dr. Kumar is "an Associate Director in the Office of Public Engagement," working under Valerie Jarrett.

Michael Moore turns 55 today. Social fixture (and Estee Lauder heiress) Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer is turning 39. Model Jessica Stam is 23. Writer Ken Auletta is turning 67. Former NBC CEO Bob Wright is 66. Actor Kal Penn is turning 32. Model/actress Jaime King turns 30. Former New Line co-chief Michael Lynne is 68. Real estate heiress and socialite Beth Rudin DeWoody is turning 57. Comedian George Lopez is turning 48. Valerie Bertinelli is 49. And Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel is 19.

• Paris Hilton is getting married! Well, sort of. America's original celebutard told reporters that boyfriend Doug Reinhardt is "going to be my husband," and now friends say they're planning a summer wedding in the Bahamas. These two are going to be together forever, just you wait and see. [E!]
• The Lindsay Lohan-Sam Ronson trainwreck rolls on: Ronson seems to have changed her mind and decided she no longer wants a restraining order; LiLo says she's "devastated" by the breakup and that everyone has turned on her. Now Lohan's friends say they're worried she's suicidal. [People, Us, TMZ]
• You didn't expect Michael Lohan to pass up a PR opportunity, did you? He says he's cleared his schedule and put aside his "numerous commitments" to help Lindsay through this crisis. [OK!]
• Madonna isn't taking her legal defeat in Malawi very well: Not only did she send her kids to stay with Guy Ritchie so she could "drown her sorrows" with Stella McCartney, she wore an "uncharacteristically mumsy outfit," too, which can't possibly be a good sign. [Sun, DM]

If you're wondering why his character died on House last night, you now have your answer. Kal Penn (Harold and Kumar) asked to leave the show to take a new job with the Obama administration.

Here's Kal Penn as captured by the LA Times at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. You may recognize Penn: He's the famous pothead "Kumar" from that famous pothead movie series, Harold & Kumar. Apparently someone asked him to be a "political whip," herding delegates while wearing a headset, and he totally went for it. "The majority of kids I've met on the road are struggling," Penn told the newspaper. Well, fine, but when the Republicans want to portray Democratic politicians as of vapid, decadent, amoral Hollywood types, they won't have to go after Paris Hilton and Britney Spears anymore. They've got Penn working the convention floor. And something tells me they won't be emphasizing his role as a physician on House. Anyway, whatever, if you try to mold your self-expression around how political extremists might twist things you'll never come up with culture gems like Harold & Kumar. Enjoy a sampling from their more terroristic oeuvre after the jump.

Now that Scarlett Johansson is finally hitting the road to stump for the upcoming Vicky Cristina Barcelona, reporters have seized on the opportunity to ask her about the important man in her life. No, not her fiancé Ryan Reynolds — we're talking about presidential candidate/father figure Barack Obama. You may recall how the actress made headlines back in June for discussing her email relationship with Obama, a sexy media fantasy that titillated reporters before the Obama campaign itself debunked it. Now, Johansson is claiming that the whole affair got too much attention because of the media's "extreme sexism":

Hey, Neil Patrick Harris on unicorns! Talking to us! [haroldandkumar]

For days now, the most important site on the whole internets has been unavailable due to a server move. We speak, naturally, of I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?, the number one hotspot for relaxing pictures of LOLcats. (Don't pretend you don't know about pictures of cats altered to assert script-kiddy humanoid opinions and actions. Don't pretend!) To get us through this horrible gap in our LOLcat consumption, we've wasted most of the morning assembling our very own set of LOLgays. Mmm, Fridays.

We can almost see the barely concealed look of horror that flashed across the 24 casting director's face when deceptively Anglo-monikered Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle star Kal Penn signed in at his audition for a part as an up-and-coming CTU operative who would play a crucial role in a particularly daring, death-cheating Jack Bauer escape from enemy clutches. Upon discovering that the actor was perhaps not as alabaster-complected as they'd hoped ("Hold on, didn't I ask for Harold? What? Harold wasn't white either?"), much shuffling of script pages occurred as they scrambled to find the sides for the part of the Indian programmer to whom the recently deceased Edgar's job was outsourced, but could finally locate only ones for the "guy who is somehow involved with the Islamic guru running the neighborhood mosque and might be the key to a terrorist plot." The talented Penn, of course, shrugged off the switch and knocked it out of the park, saving the casting department the trouble of sitting through a wasted day of auditions with Latino actors they would deem not "ethnic" enough to be mixed up with terrorists.