· James Lipton: actor, writer, academic, talk show host, raconteur, French pimp. Excuse us: American pimp living in France. Truly, there is nothing this man cannot do. [NBC.com]
· If this is how the reunited Van Halen is going to sound, we may not bankrupt ourselves buying scalped tickets to the Staples Center show after all.
· The Birds star Tippi Hedren decries Hollywood's inability to generate new ideas.
· There are dozens of dogs in this insane Halloween slideshow, yet not a single one is wearing a Lindsay Lohan costume. Amateurs, the lot of them!
· Tripadvisor can help you plan your stay at the number one beet-related agrotourism destination in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Since we still feel the need to counterbalance earlier stories of rape, murder, and crib death with something a little more light-hearted, we bring you the above video our latest installment of Friday Afternoon Nonsense Theater. (Apologies to anyone who might already be familiar with it, but we were just recently made aware of its existence.) The less we say by way of set-up the better, but be forewarned that if you have an aversion to network-safe synonyms for human excrement, you may want to pass on it.

On this morning's Yo on E! show, DJs Graham Funke and Stone Rokk, frequent masters of record-spinning ceremonies at celebrity-infested local establishments like Area and Les Deux, are induced into talking some smack about the famous clientele to whom the clubs' buzz-craving owners slavishly cater in hopes of keeping their venues from falling out of favor with Hollywood's incredibly fickle starfucking crowd.

· No, it's not Martha Stewart sharing the story of a friend who went "into the wild" and never returned. Nor is it Joey Pants discussing suicide and clinical depression. But the above clip of The View co-host Sherri Shepherd (who, we're discovering, may have something of an anal/genital fixation) and Martha snip-snipping away at parallel Halloween costume while saying the word "crotch" with alarming frequency makes us uncomfortable in a new and exciting way. Are we getting a little weirdly obsessed with this show and Stewart's uncanny recent ability to produce moments that give us the willies? Maybe so. But? Crotch. Crotchcrotchcrotch.
· Good news: Jon Stewart's signed on for another two more years of Daily Show duty.
· For those who feel the Teri Hatcher mask might be too creative a Halloween choice, here are some safer, less imaginative costume alternatives.
· Now Ashton Kutcher knows why he's had unexpected sexual feelings while watching The Osbournes.
· Someone should probably tell the people trying to drop pounds as quickly as The Biggest Loser contestants that all the weight loss on the show is done with CGI and creative editing.

Keeping true to her word that she wouldn't speak out again on the Iggy matter (a 48 Hours-style summation above courtesy of Access Hollywood) until the rescue was returned to what she deemed to be its rightful owners, Ellen DeGeneres opted to cancel today's taping entirely—a vivid indication of just how distraught she is over this national rat-dog tragedy.

In last night's episode of what we thought was the extremely sociologically relevant CW series "Gossip Girl," we noticed a certain... hmm, stultifying dullness and fakey plot-pointness creeping in! This clip shows what we mean. "Gossip Girl" is brand new, and yet we already feel something bad is maybe happening. This is when T.V. shows get weird-desperate. Like when "Melrose Place" went crazy and someone would always kidnap Jo's baby and then Traci Lords would start guest-starring as a cult leader-recruiter? The next step is the insanity that was "Models Inc." and we know how well that turned out. That's right. It gets replaced by fucking "Party of Five." And no one wants that to happen again.

The occasional Barbara Walters anecdote about her bathroom stall misadventures notwithstanding, we've always felt that the ladies of The View spend far too little time chatting about potty-related matters.

For example, Greylock VC David Sze, who lead Greylock's $25 million investment round into Facebook last year. Missing from the party? Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg, rumored to be tied up with the funding deal he's so close to closing. Were you there? See anything else interesting? Please share.

When we sent Defamer videographer Molly McAleer to Friday's kickoff party at the Knitting Factory for Lebowski Fest L.A., a two-night celebration of perhaps the greatest achievement in the history of cinema, we feared that we'd be receiving an e-mail from her on Saturday morning informing us that she'd run off with a guy dressed as Arthur Digby Sellers' iron lung following a judgment-clouding White Russian binge. Instead, she's filed this video dispatch showing us with whom she'd actually fallen in love at the event: Mextasy, the Morrissey-obsessed line-dancing troupe that kept all the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers in attendance thoroughly entertained. Enjoy.

Once again, Internet billionaire Mark Cuban is safe for one more week on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." This one I didn't get — but then again, I didn't really understand why Yahoo paid $5.7 billion for Broadcast.com, either.

They said Barry Diller was out of his mind! And yet, according to this in-house promotional video that we've obtained, his company, IAC, has a giant Frank Gehry-designed headquarters full of young people working their internet brands like Match.com, Ask.com. It's a young company! Everyone there is in the loop! It's happening! They are an endlessly multi-product company! He has a smaller but smarter army! Also we love the part about 1:30 from the end when the guy doing payroll starts screaming at the College Humor staff too. But don't get too comfortable, staffers: "This company will change on a dime and will be able to change its strategy" at the drop of a hat, says some executive guy. Yes, that's when they take you and your once-hot young brand out back and grind you into meat.

Anderson Cooper's appearance on Sesame Street's news network GNN is the André Gide's Si le grain ne meurt of children's television: A text forcing the issue of—let's call it "identity"?—into the public discourse. Speaking from a trashcan (self-loather!), Cooper introduces the letter G. What words start with "g" that might be germane for Cooper? Giggle. Goo. Gastroenteritis? Keep going!

In a sneak preview of tonight's installment of Kid Nation just leaked online, we learn that the citizens of CBS Bonanza City will finally abandon the preternatural maturity that has previously allowed them to choose sensible waste-elimination facilities over a television and soul-nurturing Bibles over a productivity-diminishing mini-golf course, opting for a communal reward too irresistible to pass up in favor of a more practical prize.

Today on Martha, daytime TV's new home of uncomfortable, tragedy-tinged moments: Actor Joe "Joey Pants" Pantoliano, lightly hypnotized by the calmingly repetitive motion of stirring up a pot of pasta putanesca, shares news of his recently diagnosed clinical depression, the suicide of a loved one, and his long-suppressed affection for his irresistible host. Taken aback by his unexpected soul-baring, Stewart calmly adds a bowl of crushed Zoloft to Pantoliano's recipe, a special ingredient she always keeps handy in the event that one of her guests tries to make an unwelcome emotional connection during their promotional appearance.

So far on Dancing with the Stars, Mark Cuban could do no wrong, as far as I was concerned. But last night's performance? A disaster all around. Slow and tepid dancing, and Cuban's expression, under caked-on makeup, looked like the Joker's frozen smile. Not even geek pride could get me to vote for this.