• Tom Cruise gets political with 'Lions For Lambs' [LiveVideo.com]

We're going to have to give the cast of Jimmy Kimmel Live this year's Best Talk Show Costume trophy, with Jimmy, the band, and the security team decked out as every significant cereal mascot of the past 100 years (video here).

Last night on CBS's Kid Nation, the show on which unaccompanied minors live in a ghost town, learn autocratic values and do immature things to each other with only an apathetic camera crew to watch, hilariously evil baby-oligarch Sophia filled a bucket with what looked like crap (really rotting vegetables, oatmeal and baked beans) and told everyone there was 50 cents in it. You could see the brief apprehension in those juvenile eyes as they weighed values: Dignity? Or some nickels? (Look fast, it was a very fleeting moment!)

Yesterday, we noted that a controversial recording had surfaced, featuring Dog the Bounty Hunter railing against his son for dating an African-American woman in a despicable, racist rant that fell just short of tearfully demanding, "Why, just once, can't you bring home a nice, Jewish bounty hunter girl I can take to dinner at my producer's house?" In case you haven't yet heard it, TMZ TV helpfully transcribes the contents of the offensive phone call; simply follow the bouncing, sunglass-wearing KKK hood and swear along to your favorite bigoted reality TV star!

In the current contract, writers only get paid when viewers actually buy the content online, like from iTunes, for example. Problem is, the broadcast networks aren't exactly enamored with the online-retail model. Just ask NBC CEO Jeff Zucker. The broadcast business has always been ad-supported, which is why NBC and News Corp are comfortable with Hulu and the Disney-ABC Television Group signed a deal with AOL Video. And naturally, writers want a cut of the ad dollars, too.

Alex Goldberg and I went and harassed the last-minute lunch break costume shoppers outside the big Halloween store on lower Broadway. They are all being either a "pirate" or a "sex instructor" basically! Also a lot of people were being "assholes who are too important to answer one simple question." Halloween: High stress, low stakes!

In all the strike deadline hysteria, we've barely had a moment to acknowledge that today is an (egregiously not nationally recognized) holiday. It's Halloween, everyone—the spookiest, scariest celebration of the year! And on The View, that usually means stuffing Barbara Walters into some sort of sex-kitten outfit. This year's theme—which we think was Ill-Fitting Cotton Club Costume Rentals?—gave Walters an excuse to talk about her club impresario father Lou Walters, a touching, grandmotherly reminiscence about a simpler time, when you could get a steak, a sidecar, and an unobstructed view of a showgirl's rack all for a nickel.

We must now relay sad news, as crooner and showbiz veteran Robert Goulet has passed away today at the age of 73 while awaiting a lung transplant at Cedars Sinai. We know we recently highlighted his short-lived sitcom achievements, but for a more fitting tribute, we guide you to this medley of the buttery baritone's considerable vocal talents, as well as to his more recent self-parodying work in the memorable Super Bowl spot above. Sadly, it will no longer take just the "natural energy of Emerald nuts" to keep a mischief-making office-gremlin Goulet away.

Robert Scoble is a very important blogger. So important that he shot a video of himself with his camera yakking about some silly meeting he had. Not only that, but he did it while driving, putting everyone on accident-prone Highway 280 in Silicon Valley in danger. And you thought blabbering on the phone was dangerous? All this for "Blah blah blah I had lunch with a big TV producer well no really it was more of a meeting and the TV people are all worried for their jobs so they're reaching out to .... guess who!" See the video after the jump. The only danger you'll face is deadly boredom.

Calacanis realizes that if search isn't putting butts in Aeron seats, he can always try to boost geeky traffic with popular entertainment. He lays this strategy bare by orchestrating the amusing Belmont through an unamusing series of popular video show parodies: Ze Frank, Rocketboom, Ask a Ninja, Tay Zonday, Diggnation, and Lonelygirl15. The only problem? Calacanis's hamhanded directorial approach destroys Belmont's charm. (On the bright side, there is a bulldog!) The parade of references to one-hit wonders of online video past is telling. All of them had buzz that quickly sputtered. Fortunately, talent will out. Mahalo may end up a flash in the pan, but Belmont's star, we suspect, is only beginning to rise.

In the unlikely event that it's slipped your mind, today marks the official release of the most anticipated comeback in the history of music, Britney Spears' Blackout, a record that the erstwhile pop-star, her label, and the intermittently estranged children who want their momma to start earning a living again desperately need to make the public forget about the vagina-flashing, VMA-trainwrecking desperation of her post-In The Zone life.

On Fox 5's Shame Shame Shame, Arnold Diaz traipses around "uncovering people who are involved in potentially shady dealings" and gives them guff. Ostensibly he's protecting the consumer, but as our expert clip compiler Nick McGlynn demonstrates, he's often just being a jerk. How about that!

Though onetime NBC ABC News Now correspondent Merry Miller's fifteen minutes of YouTube-derived fame has expired by now, the always-generous ladies of The View today invited her to fill the chair temporarily vacated by the pregnant Elizabeth Hasselbeck, offering Miller a long-delayed shot at TV redemption.

Appearing on Late Show last night to promote a small, low-profile animated movie soon to make its way into select art houses across the country, Hubbardian dabbler Jerry Seinfeld used the opportunity to try out a tight, three-minute set of new material based entirely around the everyman premise, "So a billionaire comedian's wife writes an Oprah-approved cookbook about hiding brussel sprouts in your kids' mac and cheese, and some celebrity-stalking lunatic accuses her of plagiarism, just because the book she already wrote on that topic contains 15 identical recipes!"

· Defamer videographer Molly goes deep inside slow news day victim Barbara Walters' beef with her TMZ TV tormentors, stringing together the show's speech-impediment-based attack and Walters' subsequent Airing of the Grievances on today's The View. Enjoy the feud while it lasts!
· Brad Pitt's publicist patiently explains that just because someone at his production company may be looking at Unambomber script doesn't mean that he's wandering around the office trying on hooded sweatshirts, sunglasses, and various crazy-person beards quite yet. After all, he may eventually realize that Benicio del Toro is a much more natural fit for the part.
· David Beckham will attempt to save his adopted home from the wildfires through the power of soccer.
· An angry father accuses a strip club of fraudulently lapdancing and champagne-rooming his son into $53,000 worth of charges, threatening to diminish what was obviously the greatest day of his kid's life.

Ever since it was reported that irresolvable scheduling conflicts brought on by two years of unemployment prevented Katie Holmes from taking on a seven-figure gig reprising her Batman Begins character in The Dark Knight, we've eagerly anticipated getting a look at her big comeback project, Mad Money, in which Holmes joins up with gal pals Queen Latifah and Diane Keaton to rob the Federal Reserve. (Hilarity, as it invariably does in such high-concept situations, ensues.)