Last night, the promo for next week's Real Housewives of New Jersey said the secret to Danielle Staub's shady past could be found in an out-of-print book called Cop Without a Badge. Well, that's been tracked down and a "coke whore" named Beverly Merrill bears an awful close resemblance.

Well well. If you didn't get enough of Scarlett Johansson's ruinous crooning with her thoroughly unnecessary vanity album of Tom Waits covers, it is your lucky year: she is putting out a musical album, again!

I can't with this show. I really just can't. I mean, these are people? These are people? Last night an alien was murdered while her friends watched, two teenage girls fell off a cliff, and then everyone died. I mean, that's basically what happened.

The voting machines were tampered with! By "voting machines" we mean the mindless finger-dialers from Arkansas who were tricked by the nefarious AT&T syndicate into voting for, successfully, Miss Kris Allen, the straight white corn boy who defeated, in an upset, gay Frankenstein. The New York Times now cries foul.

Today we have a celebrity who's had secret abortions, a lothario actor, a summer movie star who is concerned about his penis size when he makes it with other dudes, and a secret lesbo acclaimed actreeese.

We got so carried away today with the Prop 8 and Sotomayor nonsense that we totally forgot to peer into the trades and see what showbiz news there is that you need to know about. So here you go now, late afternoon edition.

Washington is all the rage these days! What with the politics and all. MTV's Real World series might be heading down that way, and Newsweek did that DC-set Hills parody. Well now Bravo's following suit. With—yes you guessed it because, really, what else?—an upcoming installment of Real Housewives.

The pen is indeed mightier! In fact, the pen is ultimate. Which is to say, last night was the second-to-last episode of The Hills this season, calloo callay. As any good second-to-last episode is, it was all setup for the dramatic finale next week. So let's sift through the setup.

This is a pygmy jerboa, a little rodent who likes to jump. He already looks like one of Pixar's creations, what with his long tail and comically oversized feetses. Don't you just want to see him in some sort wry yet heartwarming adventure about identity politics? [via Neatorama]

That's the lesson for this big boffo box office Memorial Day weekend, which saw the further ascension of the Stills, as well as screenwriters/Reno: 911! costars Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, who just keep churning out the hits. Poor skull-busting Terminator, a film that seems to be in trouble.

What does one pop culture horrorshow do when he wants to publicly mock another, even more terrifying pop culture horrorshow? He goes on the soon-disappearing Jay Leno show. Today we have drunken Judaica scholar Mel Gibson vs. horrifying swamp breeder, Nadya 'Octomom' Suleman.

Just two little items today, because it's a short week, so we'll start off... short. We have a TV starlet who seems nice on camera, but in reality is a vain crazy person. And we have a TV lesbian and her surprised costar.

Are you sick of Twitter yet? Probably! But if not, wait patiently because the spunky little messaging service is teaming with a group of Hollywood geniuses to bring you an "unscripted show" that would "harness Twitter to put players on the trail of celebrities in an interactive, competitive format." Yeah.

The Twitteratti are pecking away the wins at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival that don't involve Jean-Claude Van Damme getting freak-ay with some fan(nes). Michael Moore, pictured, wasn't there. This year's winners:

As previously reported in tell-all novel form, superproducer Brian Grazer has split from his wife of 11 years, The Starter Wife author Gigi Levangie. Well now the divorce is final and, because of an ironclad prenup, ol' Grazerhead wasn't taken to the cleaners.

Last night, New York Times LA bureau chief Jennifer Steinhauer had a party for her new book at the home of Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton. The additional drama: Her husband Edward Wyatt covers television for the Times! So what happened?

It's just a near-summer Friday, so not all that much is happening. A Trainspotting author turns to directing. Jim Carrey will soon be steaming into your town. And terrible TV series and movies still get made, every day, in this old place of ours.

Today we have a cheating TV actress, a celebrity boyfriend who cried because he lost his cocaines, a celebrity wife who's so obtuse that she didn't know a drag performance was men dressed as ladies, and a reality show whose integrity has been compromised.

This week, not without controversy, the television industry held its "upfronts," the annual circlejerk of advertisers, TV executives and media that everyone talks about, even though it's rare that anything newsworthy happens. But what wasn't discussed this week is that television as we know it is dying, and here's why.