To really love Alan Ball's HBO show True Blood, you have to get past a few things. Namely, the wacky special effects, the terrible Louisiana accents, and the fact that in a month or so, most of you will groan whenever you hear the word 'vampire.' We already described of that won the weekend's box office, but in…

Despite my best efforts, I was born in the 1980s. So is the youngest member of Congress, Peoria, Illinois' Aaron Schock, after defeating 50 year old Democrat Colleen Callahan on November 4th. Winning around 59 percent of the vote in his urban district, the young Schock is already a rising star in the Republican party,…

We feel desperately sympathetic towards still-employed members of the media who will have no holiday party to celebrate not being fired at this Christmas. Newsweek moved their party to April, and , , and have canceled their celebrations altogether. But for those richheads who haven't been touched by the grim finger…

Layoffs at newspapers tend to hit the less essential sections first. You're not going to see the sports page disappear, but you might no longer have a local science reporter. To fill in the blanks, editors use wire stories, and when it comes to science reporting, they'll apparently print anything they come across.…

[ Paris Hilton and Avril Lavigne holding hands at the Villa after party in Los Angeles last night, photo by X17, click for the bigpic.]

It's hard to think of a segment of the economy not affected by the recession, but Santa? The sight of the friendly guy is usually everywhere as December nears, but his pricetag is becoming prohibitive. Apparently you weren't aware of how much a hardworking Bad Santa can take down in a typical Christmas season. Things…

Jennifer Aniston's face adorns the cover of this week's New York Times Magazine. Despite her current remarks in the interview therein about when people take camera phone pictures of her and sell them to feed their family, Ms. Aniston would like to reassure you that she loves images of herself as much as you do. After…

There is one heartening thing that we can take from President-Elect Barack Obama's appointment of controversial ex-Harvard President Larry Summers as head of the National Economic Council. In the face of some opposition from those within his coalition, Obama appointed Summers to the role. It follows that the former…

On the heels of reports her megablog Huffington Post has received $15 million in venture capital funding, Arianna Huffington got the SNL treatment last night, and it was...really tame. New performer Michaela Watkins captured the details of the HuffPo founder as well as she did in , but it missed out on so much of…

The outbreak of heroin-related deaths in Fairfax, Virginia is killing the area's best and brightest young people. So says the front page of the Washington Post , which highlights exactly how upscale and surprising teen deaths from heroin in the area were. Nineteen year old Alicia Lannes, at left, overdosed on the drug…

Politics took a backseat on last night's Saturday Night Live. After opening with a less than hilarious satire of the congressional hearing with Detroit automakers, the show tried to squeeze jokes out of country singer and host Tim McGraw saying slightly unexpected things for an hour. Even the most promising concept of…

Celebrities are a good example for the little people, proving that you don't have to be actually attractive to get laid. Age doesn't matter a bit. Everyone wears scarves or flips their collar up and you have enough money to go on vacation into infinity. It's exactly like real life, but with more vacation. It is our…

When the president-elect announced that he'd be making a weekly YouTube addresses, we prepared ourselves for the dulcet tones of Barack's voice soothing us through America's economic crisis. In today's address, Obama channels all the gravitas he can muster as he lectures us on "the survival of the American dream."…

Today is the 45th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, the subject of a new novel and unending, inconclusive debate. We may never know the real answer about what happened that day in Dallas, although the coming years will see more and more declassified documents released to the public, finishing with Jackie…

It's official — the exhaustive presidential show of pretending to consider a public school for the Obama daughters is over. They'll be attending Chelsea Clinton's alma mater, the Sidwell Friends School. Tuition will cost the the family $28,442 for Sidwell's Lower School in Maryland, and $29,442 per annum once the…

Before the Criterion Collection came along, the idea of releasing a film in widescreen format or with a commentary track was silly. Consumers didn't want that extra crap! Now every film eventually gets an overdone production full of extras, and Criterion is having a harder time carving out a niche in the marketplace…

Every Thursday and Saturday, I have the same nightmare. When I wake up in the morning to read the Times on those days, the dream is made real...all over the op-ed page. Her name is Gail Collins. Once the paper's editorial page director, she now writes twice a week, and when those days come around, I'd rather listen to…

As we learned from the lawsuit filed to open Christian dating site eHarmony to homosexuals, everyone wants to take advantage of Neil Clark Warren's methodology that pairs compatible couples. Per the terms of this week's settlement between the dating site and the state of New Jersey, eHarmony Compatible Partners, a…

[ Al Pacino desperately searching his phone for his stylist's number, image from X17, click for the big version]

Teen vampire romance Twilight is finally yours to enjoy in theaters, and one day later, it's the best debut for a female director ever. The first numbers indicate the film has made $32.7 million so far, and online ticket purchases haven't been this hot since . The film will have doubled its miniscule budget by the…