When we last saw Donald Trump, it was at the Bridgehampton Polo Club. A stream of long thin bilious beauty queens trailed behind him. They were shooting a show for MTV called Pageant Place. In it, Miss Universe, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA and former coke-loving party girl Tara Conner, ex-Miss USA, learn to live, love and learn together. Well, learn not so much. It's kind of like 'The Hills' meets 'Gossip Girl' meets 'Kid Nation.' In this scene, Miss Universe is aghast to learn that you need photo ID to get on an airplane. Good thing she brought her sash! [Video by Slut Machine]

While we've already paid one visit today to Kid Nation—by way of some exclusive Junior Miss cheesecake glamour shots of Taylor, or "Queen of the Yellow Hankies" as she insists her disciples refer to her— we thought we'd return once again to the outhouse-deficient Shangri-La, this time with clip in tow. In last night's stunning turn of events, the citizens of Bonanza City were again offered a choice as steeped in moral implication as the TVs vs. Poop-Shacks vote of the debut episode.

Last night, some wily publicist (or someone) got a mention of Radar magazine into the "Conan O'Brien" opening monologue. Conan explains the cover of their new issue, which features a naked Photoshop of Hillary Clinton and a partially nude Rudy Giuliani. He has a prediction for how well that will do on newsstands.

Do you have a pesky baby stuck in your tum tum? Want to get it out of there? Then follow Dr. Tracy Morgan's advice and eat a New York City pushcart hotdog, stat! Here he is, from last night's Late Night with Conan O'Brien, proving that even if the courts won't let him drink alcohol anymore, his ability to bring the crazy will not be impaired.

Howard K. Stern dropped by Larry King Live last night, his first time swinging at the fossilized CNN inquisitor's legendary softballs since he appeared shortly after Daniel Smith's death to assure the world he was indeed Dannielynn's father. (He now explains that minor oversight away to some confusion over ovulation schedules and Anna Nicole hand-off times.)

Last night's episode of "Gossip Girl", which is a retelling of the Bible through the hurlyburly lives of rich Upper East Side teenagers, sorta good girl Serena once again finds herself in sorta evil girl Blair's poor graces. Blair was supposed to model for her mother's clothing line, Waldorf! But Serena was recruited too. Through this Medean maneuvering of Blair's mother, Blair feels somehow less than. And so what could have been a rapprochement turns instead into another wedge in their friendship. Sad! In this Dreamgirlian scene, Blair chastizes Serena for improperly seizing all that was hers. Serena is the Deena Jones figure; Blair, the Effie White. At any rate, Serena's love interest Dan hears the argument and gets upset. These two drifters seem destined to float down the Moon River, after the same rainbow's end and the same pot of gold.

"TMZ TV," the most important development in television since Mary Hart first plastered on her face for Entertainment Tonight, continues to blow our minds. But they're not just an advance in the medium of television! We think you'll agree that their assault (demonstrated ably here) on the artificial public constructs and confusions of contemporary personhood is the best-articulated since Roland Barthes' Death of the Author!

What better way to ring in T.R. Knight-endorsed National Coming Out Day than with this TMZ TV tribute to hinge-jawed songbird, actress, and gay icon, Bette Midler. In it, she's first called a "tree murderer"—we're offered several scintillating details about a scandal involving Hawaiian zoning laws and driveway construction—only to have the accusations of arborcide retracted seconds later, in a touching endorsement of Midler's ahead-of-their-time "tree hugging" efforts, strikingly depicted by Midler humping one like a lemur in heat. Thankfully, however, the crack-filled IV drips to which the TMZ editors are permanently hooked had fully drained before they could accomplish an animation depicting the star of The Rose fertilizing her park-revitalization project using nothing more than what Gaia gave her.

· Are things getting a little testy between Joy and Whoopi? Maybe we're reading too much into some rude interruptions and a couple of possible stink-eyes, but we could be looking at the beginning of a Hasselbeck/Rosie kind of dynamic developing on The View. It's been way too long since blood has been spilled on that set.
· It took much longer than we anticipated for Bobby Brown's heart to break after losing Whitney.
· Esquire names its Sexiest Woman Alive (Until Next Year), prompting Maxim to retaliate in a rather uncharitable fashion.
· Nora Ephon has made us rethink everything we thought we knew about egg-white omelets.
· NBC's perfect storm never mises a chance to work a party.

As a single venti Americano tossed at a swarm of paparazzi quickly escalated into the Great Britney Bel-Air Riots of 2007, the young woman at the center of the destruction continues to chug along with what remains of her career: Jive Records announced today that Spears's new album, "Blackout" (funny—we don't remember seeing that option on the shortlist), would be released two weeks ahead of schedule.

To the outsider, being a part of Deal or No Deal's army of briefcase-opening models might seem like an easy gig, requiring little more than standing on a riser and offering the occasional, sheepishly sympathetic smile to a contestant whose dreams of financial independence they've just destroyed by revealing a dollar amount with too many zeroes.

So as we mentioned, last night's L Magazine Nightlife party was a real touchy-feely affair. There were two cowboy strippers. One of them accosted this lady. One of them accosted me. VideoboyAlex Goldberg was there to capture the incredibly confusing portrayal of sexuality. The part where the first stripper does a handstand on the lady's chair and rubs his crotch in her face? That might be Not Safe For Work. All of this is leading us to a theory which we'll be exploring more over the next week: Are things dirty in New York again?

"meerkat manor" "funerals"

Mark Cuban is safe for another week on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." From his grim expression, though, you'd think he was all but convinced he was off the show — note how it takes a few seconds for his win to register. Kym Johnson, his dancing partner, also seems shocked by the voters' choice.

Truth be told, the contents of Jennifer Lopez's uterus don't particularly interest us, though we do harbor a suspicion that she's been parading around with a false, early-term baby-bump in which she stores a self-authored script for prospective comeback vehicle Enough II: Never Enough and the ostentatious engagement ring she received at the height of the Bennifer craze, hoping that the conspicuous bulge might revive some interest in her career.

Hatemongers like Media Matters, the watchdog site, take stories from the media out of context (the context of people speaking to like-minded people), our enemy Stephen Colbert of "The Colbert Report" points out. It's a compelling argument! For instance, for centuries, Gentile people have been addressing themselves to other good Christians—so is it somehow now their fault if the Jews overhear on the T.V. what they perceive to be antisemitism?

· On today's Martha: "Hey, Marcia Gay Harden, star of Into the Wild, have you ever actually known anyone who's 'gone into the wild?' No? Huh, that's funny. Because I do, and she never came back. Well, since you don't have any topical stories about tragedy to share, what do you say we get back to pretending to make these cookies or whatever."
· Have you ever noticed that all of the white protagonists in Wes Anderson movies seem to work out their romantic issues with ladies of color? Well, someone did. [via Feministing]
· Beckett Boo, Esq., catspotter extraodinaire, has been to Promises.
· The headline of the day, and it wasn't even close: Sculptor's crack baffles art world. Do we even care what the story's about? No, not really.
· Shooting on David Hasselhoff's new E! show has apparently begun ahead of schedule.

So you can imagine how excited we were to see the new trailer for Confessions of a Superhero, a documentary about the people inside those ill-fitting spandex unitards that might actually satisfy our weird hero-jones in between the maddeningly infrequent times Angry Chewbacca gets liquored up and goes on a tour-guide headbutting spree. Or one of the Dueling Jack Sparrows gets so upset over his competitor's craft-debasing nonchalance about pirate-verisimilitude that he pulls out his dreadlocks with his bare hands. Really, we're not that picky about the specifics if it draws the KCAL9 van to the scene of the crime.

Even though Showtime's Weeds doesn't lend itself to fun gimmicks like fountains bubbling with the blood of the freshly slaughtered, the series is doing what it can to lure in new subscribers with promotional stunts of its own, like casting a recently decoupled Olsen Twin as a fledgling drug-dealer who believes Jesus has sent her forth to get the world really, really high.