The AMPTP's recent retention of a new PR firm to help them more effectively communicate to the public why the intransigent, greedy WGA should accept the incredibly generous terms of their groundbreaking New Econonic Partnership is paying immediate dividends; while the organization's previous attempt to have studio head Roger A. Trevanti explain the Companies' position was amateurish, unfocused and openly hostile, under the supervision of their new-media-savvier publicity team, their latest effort is a great leap forward.

This week on the most important television series ever made about New York, we met Serena Van der Woodsen's grandmother, a drinky dowager who is not only mean and classist but also a Shatnerianly terrible actress! How did she give birth to Serena's mom, who is a fantastic actress? Maybe acting skills skip a generation in their family, thus explaining Serena. Also on last night's episode, Blair and Nate got back together, breaking the heart of Chuck Bass and causing him to skip town, all turtlenecked, for parts unknown. U.E.S. teenagers waltzed gracefully at cotillion and "hipsters" milled about at Dan's mom's opening at the 'Bedford Avenue Gallery.' Now we understand how people who live in Orange County, California felt about "The O.C."

In another demonstration of how well she's coping without the services of her striking writers—and one that was far more effective than Monday's bongo-enhanced effort—Ellen DeGeneres welcomed First Daughter Jenna Bush onto the show, whom she quickly challenged to try and reach her parents live via telephone, a stunt sure to send her ratings skyrocketing and make everyone forget about the show-offy on-air call Oprah Winfrey recently placed to God to get his opinion on her Favorite Things Special.

Sadly, as the show hasn't aired new episodes in seventeen years, we assume that the Fun Kit's makers have long exhausted their inventory; still, as we've always believed primetime's favorite butler was an otherworldy being dispatched from Heaven to bring happiness to his TV family—both onscreen and off— we're sending in our postcard anyway, confident that Lynn Aloysius Belvedere will somehow deliver us a magical birthday surprise from the great beyond. (Or, at very least, one of those totally sweet iron-on transfers.)

While we never know exactly what to expect each time Defamer videographer Molly McAleer takes her camera to Hollywood Blvd. to have a chat with one of the Walk of Fame's Polaroid-proffering superheroes (for example: who knew that Reasonably Passable, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has such a hard time with handsy tourists?), we were especially surprised to hear that Zorro, a legendary defender of the powerless against the rich and strong, might see the strike as a great time to launch a writing career.

Apple has been slapped with a $360 million patent lawsuit over the iPhone's visual voicemail feature. But don't expect that to diminish the Christmas spirit at Cupertino North, here tastefully documented in an OfficeMax ad. Maybe they heard Apple could one day be worth more than Google.

· If anyone knows where we can pimp our gas-guzzling ride with the words "Clean Energy" along the sides in massive blue letters, we're all ears. We hear it's foolproof horny-starlet-bait. [via TMZ]
· Congratulations to Lindsay Lohan, whose first post-rehab gig appears to be selling $5 Polaroids of herself to tourists with the rest of the Chinese Theater Justice League!
· Is it a coincidence that on the day reports emerge that #1 Yahoo search topic Britney Spears failed to show up to her "Piece of Me" video shoot, MTV and Jive Records announce their Make Your Own 'Piece of Me' Video Contest? Wethinks not.
· We defy you to resist these photos of injured hedgehogs with brightly colored scrunchie casts.
· It's the first night of Hanukkah. Has linking to Adam Sandler's "The Hanukkah Song" become a cliché? Yes. Yes it has. Do we care? No. No we don't.

A family dinner on last night's I Love New York 2 quickly descended into an ugly face-off between the mothers of Grand Prize Ho New York (so named for challenging both Port Authority and Penn Station's claims to being the East Coast's most traveled commuter hub) and her Italian stallion suitor, The Entertainer.

Startup investor Peter Thiel warns CNBC's Maria Bartiromo that the current economic situation is dire. Inflation, economic bubble, deflation, blah, blah, blah. But unsurprisingly, the former PayPal CEO turned venture capitalist sees one bright spot: Facebook, the social network where, uncoincidentally, he's a board member. According to Thiel, "it's the one part [of the economy] where there is no bubble at all." Sure, Peter, as if we really needed the disclaimer you add: "Of course, I'm biased." Not even the well-trained Maria "Money Honey" Bartiromo could keep a straight face at that.

Never ones to shy away from incisive discussion of the most pressing issues of the day, the ladies of The View tackled the sensitive, hot-button topic of Jennifer Love Hewitt's ass, an embattled posterior famously made the latest casualty of the celebrity/paparazzi war by the combination of a zoom lens, less-than-optimal lighting conditions, and an unflattering bikini bottom.

Click through for our community calendar. Send your events to calendar@gawker.com and we'll look at them on our iPhones and then we'll call that whore Felony on the very same iPhone.

It was an odd venue for a tech party — a greasy diner by day, the Grill sits on a corner near the ballpark, neighborhing Border's, McDonald's, and dozens of men in Giants windbreakers asking passerbys if they need a ticket. They say open source is about software that's free as in "free speech," not "free beer," but the open bar featured plenty of the latter.

Late-night host Carson Daly, somehow still on television after making his name on MTV's TRL, here explains his decision to cross the writers'picket line. Hollywood writers are refusing to work because they want to be paid for content distributed over the Internet. A question: Would anyone even be able to tell the difference if Daly's show lacked professional writers? Did it even have them before the strike?

About a week after the controversial announcement was made that Carson Daly would cross his writers on the picket line and return to Last Call, the highest-rated late-late night talk show among graveyard-shift convenience store clerks looking for a break from watching closed circuit video feeds of their empty parking lots, the embattled host finally returned to the airwaves Monday.

On last night's episode of 'The Hills,' Spencer and Heidi continued to keep us all guessing and hanging about whether or not they'll get married. Will Heidi's tactical mistake—telling Spencer's sister, not Spencer, about her cold feet—derail their nups for good? Whatever, who cares! The real fun is, as usual, to be seen through the wide, darting, endearingly rodentish eyes of Lauren Conrad, who took her sometime boy-thing Brody to task for having a lot of sluts in his iPhone. Seriously, Brody, if you have more than one 'Amber' in your phone it means you have a problem.

If you missed 60 Minutes's fawning profile of Will Smith last night—"This charming kid's just charmed!" seemed to be the main thrust of Steve Kroft's piece—we've included an outtake, in which the I Am Legend star describes how early on in his career, he and his manager looked at the top ten grossing films of all times, found some common themes (creatures, special effects, and love stories), then used those findings to map out a blueprint with which to conquer Hollywood.