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With her latest stab at relevancy—a new single and a VH1 show—Jessica Simpson is yet again being shoved down our collective gullet. It’s time for this uninteresting, talentless person to take a hike. Forever!

I usually scoff at people who criticize celebrities by saying, “They’re just famous for being famous.” But Jessica Simpson is something worse—she’s famous for trying to be famous. She isn’t defined by any quantifiable event, talent, or success, but by a constant striving, one that often leads to disastrous failure. The same came be said for “Who We Are” her new single (below), which is a indistinguishable amalgam of pleasant electronic bleeps that will float across your brain as amiably and forgettably as a cloud in a bright sky. It’s the theme song for her new show, The Price of Beauty, that starts next month on VH1 and which features her traveling around the world trying out beauty regimens from different cultures. Not a bad concept if we weren’t so sick of seeing her face—plastered over with cosmetics—glaring back at us in the televised version of hell.

When she started, she was just another big-breasted, blonde Britney Spears impersonator with a good voice and very determined father. She had some moderate success thanks to corporate marketing and a naive female fan base, but none of her early hits are that memorable.

We probably would have been rid of her by now if it weren’t for a little thing called reality television. In 2002, MTV debuted Newlyweds, an “inside look” at her recent marriage to boybander Nick Lachey. Her ditsy persona (or was it her real personality?) took off immediately and America tuned in to see her latest bout with sitcom stupidity and her grappling with various food-related mysteries, like what kind of animal a Chicken of the Sea is and where Buffalo wings come from.

Simpson quickly morphed into a marketing robot, hawking pizza and dubious skin care regimens. With the sound of cash registers echoing in her voluminous hair, Americans soon forgot who she was. You never said, “She sings that song,” or “She’s the star of that movie.” You said, “Oh, she’s the stupid girl from MTV.” For a while, Simpson was everywhere and we had no real idea why that was, other than we were told to like her and she was busy pawning stuff off on us.

She tried to be more than that, sure. She wanted to be a real star who could do things other than pitch unnecessary corporate goods. But her albums soon stopped selling and she skipped from dud to dud, trying to act in Dukes of Hazzard and something ineffable with Dane Cook. Then, like Jean-Claude Van Damme before her, her flicks went direct to DVD. She tried to make the switch from pop to country, but even stupid Christians in the Bible Belt didn’t want her at that point. Like a rotten tomato stuck behind the crisper, she was starting to stink up the joint, but no one could clean her out.

Why? Blame the Celebrity Industrial Complex! Even though we were no longer interested in her entertainment products, she’d started a career as a professional girlfriend, going out very publicly with musician John Mayer and then Dallas Cowboy Tony Romo. The rumors are still swirling that she’s inexplicably dating Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan, which would be the most interesting thing she’s done in five years. And when she needs a little career bump she hits the cover of Vanity Fair or Oprah—not to talk about a project, but her personal life. We find it hard to care about either.

Now she’s back for another round through the publicity cycle, as if she might have something new or interesting to share with us. Sorry, Jessica, you don’t. You’re like that sweater we once bought on sale hoping that we would one day fit into it, but we suddenly realized that we will never wear, no matter how hard we try. You won’t ever fit us and it’s better that we donate you to charity and clear you out of the closet. Because we only have room for so much, and newer, prettier things have come along that we like. Yes, Jessica we’re getting rid of you. And since we barely even wanted you in the first place, please do us the courtesy of staying away.

[Image via Getty]

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A judge might send Andrew Young to jail for lying about his handling of the John Edwards sex tape. It seems the tape was distributed more widely than it should have been, like every sex tape ever.

Young swore the only copy of a video of his former boss getting it on with mistress Rielle Hunter was in an Atlanta safe-deposit box, and that Young had shown it only to a select few. But that testimony didn’t square with Young showing the tape to ABC News and also to freelance journalist Robert Draper, the Associated Press reports. Finally, someone is about to be punished for sleazy John Edwards having an illicit love child behind the back of his cancer-stricken wife, and lying to the world about it. And naturally that someone is a campaign aide whose last name is not “Edwards” or “Hunter.”

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This may seem like an easily answered question — people get plastic procedures hoping to look young and beautiful forever — but given a recent spate of cosmetic surgery horrorshows, we increasingly just don’t understand why anyone gets “work done.”

Look at how plastic surgery is trending, right now!

Remember Heidi Montag? She’s a character from MTV’s The Hills who used to be a person. That was many moons and several faces ago, and now Heidi looks like this:

Bahhh! That’s a new highly humorous PSA about credit card regulations or something, the joke being that Heidi is now entirely made of plastic and chemical, just like the credit cards she’s saying bad things about. You know who directed this thing? Ron Howard. What an enabler! But also, why is Heidi joking about her face and not being able to smile and things like that? I mean, she actually can’t smile and things like that. And she seems to know that. So why would she get the surgeries done in the first place?

In her case the reasoning is, yes, fairly obvious. Because she’s dumb and vain and on TV. But she’s also young, only twenty-three years old, and used to look like this. She wasn’t ugly at all! She had nice sorta WASPy, horsey Kennedy features. She’d have fit right in at Hyannis Port! But now… Oh now it’s all an ugly, too-smooth, melony mess. But again, she’s a vain and vapid reality star, one who is paid to be vain and vapid, and who is told by the likes of Ron Howard that if she keeps augmenting herself, we’ll keep paying attention. This is depressing, but vaguely understandable.

But what I truly don’t get is how normal people, regular folks like you and your mom, could see those results and still say “Yes, sign me up!”

How could they hear about Mexican singer Alejandra Guzman winding up in the hospital, severely unwell, after a botched butt injection, and want to go in themselves. Only to be shocked and horrified when something goes awry for them:

Ha ha, a doctor was putting caulk in their ass. (Get it?) I know that people can be, like famous-ish Heidi, vain and dumb creatures (so blinded by vanity they are), but come on. When people found out that Olestra might cause you to poop your pants a little, they dropped that product like a hot potato. Are people really more frightened of the idea of something coming out of their butts than they are with the idea of their butts, in entirety, simply falling off? That’s disheartening. In 2010, that is very disheartening.

Call me naive, but so much noise has been made lately about plastic surgery disasters — a conversation resurrected from the ’90s after a brief lull, it feels — that I’m just staggered that so many people, women especially, are subjecting themselves to the possibilities of, at best, having their faces ending up looking like mangled Laffy Taffy and, at worse, contracting fatal butt fall-offitis.

Watching the Oscars on Sunday, there were some celebrities who have maybe gotten work and pulled it off — Kathryn Bigelow, at 59, can’t possibly look that good naturally, can she? — but those cases were very rare. Mostly, even in Hollywood circles that can afford the most expensive and exclusive doctors, you get Nicole Kidmans and Meg Ryans. Once-beautiful women who now look like sad, Twilight Zone wax versions of themselves. It seems better, more dignified, to admit to America that, yes, you are in fact a mortal who is affected by time, and let yourself look your age (Meryl Streep), than to strut down a red carpet with an embarrassing bulbous death mask of make-believe skin grafted onto your skull.

I guess I just don’t get why, when so much evidence seems to suggest that most of this tucking and stretching and squeezing rarely ever works (the Bravo television channel does a whole series about this fact), we’re still hearing all these nightmare stories about people who willingly went under the knife. I generally like to think that we aren’t that broken of a culture. But maybe we are?

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After a long, long (but not long enough?) winter away, our good friends from the Upper East Side have returned to us, dressed all in black and hunting for ghosts. There is no power in the afterlife.

Well, only one fellow was looking for an actual ghost, but other people were pursuing things that long ago disappeared in the past, trying to reclaim and rekindle old loves.

Guess who’s doin’ it? Yes, of course, it’s young Nate and Serena, whose daring and illicit sexcapade basically kicked off the entire series. It’s doubtful that their new pairing is serving as some sort of bookend and thus the series is ending, so don’t get your hopes up. No, it’s just another excuse for Serena to pout and for actress Chace Crawford to deploy her usual salvo of droning line readings. And for, you know, sexy writhing around.

For her part, Blair has sanctioned the fledgling couple, but doesn’t think that they should rush into anything. Chiefly she didn’t think the kids should be doing sex to each other just yet, mostly because, like the rest of us, she found the idea of those two genital-less HardBodyBots mashing their smooth crotchal regions together unbearably repulsive. Try as they might, and beautiful as they are, Blake Lively and Chace Crawford just aren’t terribly attractive, are they? Or, at least, they simply have no chemistry with together. “Hello, pretty.” “Oh, hello pretty.” “You are looking pretty.” “You are looking pretty too.” “Shall we scissor without purpose for an hour or so?” “Yes, we shall.” Ew.

But of course the wacky lovebirds couldn’t keep their whirring porcelain hands off of each other, so we were subjected to lots of sexy doin’-it music while these two clowns squeaked against each other like vinyl. There was some kind of supposed drama about Nate wanting to take it slow, because he took some stupid advice from the pile of chins that is Dan Humphrey, and Serena getting pissy. But for the most part their portion of the episode was about sexlessly rubbing up against one another, all of us weeping hot human tears at the grotesqueness of the whole thing.

Throwing a monkey wrench into Serena and Nate’s fruitless nontercourse was, as always, little Pirate Jenny Humphrey, quickly evolving as one of the most hands-down annoying characters on television. Remember in the books when Jenny was a nerdy frizz-head with huge cans and was likable? Well, she’s not on this show, she’s just thin and board-like and blonde and wears increasingly bizarre goth clothes. Why are they styling Jenny like this? All these black garments and heavy dark makeup. It just makes no sense. I know trends recycle themselves every twenty years, but are we really at pop-goth again? Oh molasses I hope not.

Anyway, last night Lydia Deetz was still doing drug running with her wicked Eurobrat diplobrat friend, the kid from Airbud. The Kid from Airbud, being a Eurobrat diplobrat, is a total ass. See, the Party this episode (there is always a Party, no matter the episode, always some social Something to attend or muck up or wear special clothing to) was a big French Ambassador’s Dinner. And, as French Ambassadors tend to be some kinky motherfuckers, exclusively teenagers were invited to the occasion. Just wall-to-wall teenagers and the French Ambassador looking creepily content and humming “Les Poisson.” So the Kid from Airbud wanted to do a big drug deal with the French Ambassador’s Daughter and needed Jenny’s help. She came up with the brilliant and spy-level idea of switching coats. Put drugs in a lookalike coat and have the FAD take the one stuffed with drugs home at the end of the evening. Jenny is basically Mary McDonnell in Sneakers. She is that good.

So all was on track with that plan until Nate and Serena fizzed and sparked and said “Malfunction. Malfunction.” and had a fight about the pace of their relationship. Upset about the fight, Serena, as rash and slatternly as Kate Keepdown, ran and asked the Kid from Airbud to go to the French Ambassador’s dinner with her. See, they used to know each other “at boarding school” (a robot factory outside Concord, NH) and he always had a crush on her. But that was in her wilder days and she is different now, but he doesn’t know that!

The Kid from Airbud goes and meanly tells Jenny that shit is off with them, he got Sereneer van der Woolens to go on a date with him, so old Depeche Mode Humphrey can go cram it with cloves. But Jenny is never one to back down, her heart pumps black and relentless in her otherwise hollow chest, so of course she went to the French Ambassador’s sweet sixteen and saw Nate and was all “Let’s be dates.” The couples tried to make each other jealous but really nobody cared and in the end the Eurobrat diplobrat was proven to be a rake and a scoundrel, Serena was pulled into a coat closet and robot raped by Nate, and the French Ambassador’s Daughter got her meth manteau and all was well. The Kid from Airbud will stick around a little longer perhaps, and will maybe live to perform an Inserting upon Jenny, unless she has a Cure cover band concert to go to. We’ll see! Serena and Nate, meanwhile, are happily trying to interlock and interface with each other, sadly unaware that their mutual creator, the wispy and whimsical and wife-grieving white-haired Dr. Lacrimoso made them in such a way that they can never be truly together, because that is his pain, that is all of humanity’s pain.

Another story line happening this week had to do with those old people that sometimes tell Dan, Jenny, and Serena what to do (though it never actually works). Nobody cares about this storyline except for the fact that Dan got in a fight with the old man character and said, as means to a sad/angry thing, “Make your own damn waffles.” Mm. Powerful words. Make your own damn waffles, Rahm Emanuel. Make your own damn waffles, Interrupting Oscar Witch Lady. Make your own damn waffles, scary kids who smoke weed outside my front door. Thanks for that, Dan.

Speaking of Dan, he wants to perform an Inserting upon Vanessa, but she was nowhere to be found this episode. Sadly, unbeknownst to Dan, cavewoman Vanessa has been gored by a woolly mammoth and is using her last strength to draw her pictograph story on the walls of a cave in France. Either that or she thinks he’s gross and chinny and just doesn’t want to call him back.

Finally we turn to Chuck and Blair. Blair was wearing a big furry hat and underpants at one point and made an Anna Karenina joke, which is fine. Chuck was all moopy and sad, scouring the riverbed for silt and other detritus as all good catfish do. One piece of detritus he was especially eager to find was his momz. Remember his mom who died in Chuckbirth but who is maybe secretly alive and putting flowers on Bart’s grave? Well, Chuck sadly tracked this mysterious lady down and she lied and said “No, my dear, I am not your mother.” And Chuck’s face fell three sizes that day, and he shuffled off and went to go throw pebbles into a pond and pick at his scabs and sulk, and you wish you could do something, put your hand on this little boy’s shoulder and tell him that he is good and that there will be better days, but he’s such a stubborn boy and he won’t listen, so you just let him sit there, squinting obstinately at the setting sun, occasionally muttering angry little boy things to no one, to everyone.

After the big mom disappointment, insightful Blair held back and approached the woman again. She knew she was lying. And Blair was right! This lady is Chuck’s mother, if the picture she had of a lady holding a baby is to be believed. (The baby was wearing a purple dandy suit and scowling.) What role will Chuck’s secret mom play on the show? Oh god. I can only imagine.

That’s basically it folks. Oh, except. At the very end of the episode we caught site of Erik, another thwarted and angry little boy, kicking cans all alone down by the railroad tracks. We walked up to him and said “Do you need any help, son?” And he muttered “No…” and kicked another can and so we left him there, train whistles moaning in the distance, this abandoned little fellow not deserving to be lonely and ignored. But that’s just sometimes how the world works, people get left behind, trains miss stations. And trains keep running.

But what did it all mean for their power standings? Our continued tabulations are below.

Dorota:
Power Play: Everything falls to shit when she’s away: +2
Sexual Intrigue: Romantic getaway with her boyfriend Vanya: +1
Total: 3
Season to Date: 58
Power Position: Up

Blair:
Family Secrets: Finds Chuck’s necklace and knows something is fishy: +1
Fashion Points: The Anna Karenina hat and negligee: +2, Her sparkly jacket at the ambassador dinner; +1
Personality Flaw: Stupid enough to think that Serena can stay chaste: -1, Gets back on the “Serena is a skank” train: +1, Knows that Nate is functionally illiterate: +1
Power Play: Cares more about meeting the French ambassador for her secret club than her man Chuck: -2, Is scared of the beautiful girls surrounding her target: -1, Has the balls to approach the French guy on his smoke break: +2, Gives up her chance to talk to him to run off with Chuck: -1, Her high-society coffee klatch idea is stupid anyway: +1, Figures out Chuck’s mother is full of shit and tells her if she doesn’t stay away then she will fuck her shit up: +3
Sexual Intrigue: Gives Serena advice about Nate: +1, Ew, she fucked her best friends boyfriend: -2, Chuck has no interest in playing her aristocratic role play games: -1, Rightly counsels Chuck to be cautious about this woman he thinks is his mother: +2
Social Schemes: Using Chuck to get to M. Doree, some dude who runs some lame secret society she wants to join: +2, Does anyone care about joining her Babysitter’s Club?: -1
Total: 8
Season to Date: 35
Power Position: Up

Chuck:
Family Secrets: Keeping secrets from Blair: -1, Discovers his mother: +3, She lies about being his mother: -2, Has to feel the hurt of losing his mother all over again: -1
Fashion Points: Purple!: -1, Excellent coat with a faux fur (PETA hopes!) collar: +1
Money: Finds the only jeweler in the world with a confidentiality agreement: -1, Pays him for his secrets: +2
Personality Flaw: We knew he had daddy issues, but this new Oedipal Complex is something new and scary: -2
Power Play: Gets to have a fancy lunch with the French power broker Blair wants to impress: +1
Sexual Intrigue: Turns down a date with hot-to-trot Anna Karenina: -2, Makes up with Blair: +1
Total: -2
Season to Date: 27
Power Position: Down

Jenny:
Family Secrets: Doesn’t tell Lily that her dad is avoiding her: +1
Fashion Points: Combines fashion and drugs, her two favorite things: +3, Her drug mule bolero is something you would buy at the Urban Outfitter’s remainders sale: -2, Hello spider web gown at the ambassador’s dinner!: +2
Personality Flaw: Gets called out for her unnatural love of board games: -2
Power Play: Has a drug-dealing best friend, Damien, which is pretty rad: +1, But he knows that she is now a character out of an after school special and can tattle on her at any time: -2, The French ambassador’s daughter knows she is a waste of time: -1, Tells Nate he is a retard for taking relationship advice from Dan: +1
Sexual Intrigue: Gets dissed by Damien for Serena: -2, Gets Nate and Serena back together so she can have her drug dealing man: +2
Social Schemes: Show’s up and forces herself on Nate. Long live the queen!: +2, Saves the druggie sweater: +2
WTF: Fuck, the closer Jenny gets to being the living embodiment of the lyrics to “Cherry Bomb” the more we like her: +2
Total: 7
Season to Date: 8
Power Position: Up

Rufus:
Personality Flaw: Hip enough to video chat: +1, Feeding people: -1, Takes relationship advice from Dan: -3
Power Play: Ignoring Lily’s calls: +1, Ignoring Lily in general: +1, But she is his meal ticket: -2
Sexual Intrigue: Finally comes back to Lily: +1, He’s all angry and calls her a skank: -1, But wait, Lily is a skank: +3, Stops by his new lover’s house: +2 (bow chicka wow wow!)
Social Schemes: That hot black heiress lady totally wants his jock: +3
Total: 5
Season to Date: 1
Power Position: Up

Nate:
Fashion Points: Manbangs looking mangey: -1, Amazing tux shirt: +2
Personality Flaw: Is functionally illiterate: -1
Power Play: Takes romantic advice from Dan: -2, Gets upstaged by Damien, a short jerk with even worse hair: -1, If he had known there were drugs in that coat, he wouldn’t have thrown it away: -1
Sexual Intrigue: Is the 9 millionth person to sleep with Serena: -2, Has to go on a first date with Serena, even though they had sex already: -1, Is getting laid on the regular: +3, It’s by a lady: -1, He is dating his best friend’s ex: -1, Blowing it with Serena: -1, Really? In the coat room? Is he some pervy exhibitionist?: -2
Social Schemes: Let’s Jenny be his date: -2, She brings Serena and him back together, so it’s not a horrible decision: +2
Total: -11
Season to Date: 0
Power Position: Down

Vanessa:
Fashion Points: Wherever she was she still had lady dreads: -2
Power Play: Imagining a world without her is sweet indeed: 0
Total: -2
Season to Date: -10
Power Position: Up

Dan:
Personality Flaw: Gives everyone crappy relationship advice: -3, Owns a Cabbage Patch doll, which we find strangely endearing: +1
Power Play: Everyone keeps invading his Brooklyn pussy den: -1
Sexual Intrigue: Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan! You need to get over this whole Vanessa thing: -3
Social Schemes: His best friend is sleeping with his ex and he wants to sleep with his best friend. Do these people have no boundaries?: -2
Total: -8
Season to Date: -21
Power Position: Up

Lily:
Family Secrets: Both Jenny and Dan lie to her about Rufus’ whereabouts: -2, Her secret is totally lame. She spent the night in a hotel and kissed her ex-husband. Boring: -1, Also, everyone knows now: -1, There must be something more to this story, and if she is convincing people otherwise, good on her: +1
Fashion Points: Does that white dress double as her bathrobe?: -1
Personality Flaw: Continues to neglect her depressed, gay, suicidal son: -1
Power Play: Tells Jenny to keep the door open when she’s in there with a boy, which is sound parenting advice, for a change: +2, Jenny still does what she wants anyway: -1
Sexual Intrigue: Rufus doesn’t believe she could keep it kosher with her ex: -1, She totally fucked her ex, so at least she’s getting some: +1
Total: -5
Season to Date: -27
Power Position: Down

Serena:
Fashion Points: Nice white cowl-neck sweater dress, which is surprisingly not too slutty: +1, The cleavage in her party dress isn’t too outrageous: +1,
Personality Flaw: Someone needs to tell her that her boyfriend is gay: -1,
Power Play: Damien knows she is a skank who can’t keep her clothes on: -1, She gets all huffy and runs off when he says this: +2, But then she ends up taking her clothes off about 72 seconds later, so he was absolutely right: -3
Sexual Intrigue: Her chastity with Nate lasts about -29 seconds: -2, On the floor at the Waldorf’s, on a couch, is she some kind of public sex fetishist?: -1, We’re kind of into that: +2, Is dating her best friend’s ex. Ew: -1, Nate only wants to sleep with her once a day: -1, Her vast sexual appetite is like a black hole, pulling in everything close by and rendering it into cold, dead anti-matter: -2
Social Schemes: Doesn’t need Nate to go to no fancy French embassy party: +2
WTF: After diddling Nate in the coat room, she steals someones coat: -1, It is ugly: -2, And she doesn’t even bother to put her dress back on. God, Serena. You are the worst!: -3
Total: -10
Season to Date: -35
Power Position: Up! This isn’t rock bottom yet, people.

Originally posted here

Sarah Killen, the “someone” Conan “decided to follow at random,” got 17,000 follows, a wedding dress, shoes, an iMac, and raised $2600 for cancer. She also appears to be unaware that Conan is no longer on TV.

Popeater interviewed Killen—or @LovelyButton, as she is known on Twitter—who says that, before he followed her, Conan wrote to ask if it was OK.

If you could send Conan O’Brien a personal message, what would you like to tell him?
I’d tell him that he’s changed my life. Even if the hype stopped now, the last couple days have changed the rest of my life.

Have you been getting any other swag?
We have an iMac computer now. A guy from Hornblasters, a Florida-based online retailer, contacted us and gave us the brand new iMac… I’ve also been getting lots of donations for the 3-Day Walk for the Cure, which helps raise money for breast cancer research… I was going to do the walk and didn’t know how I would raise all this money. I got $2,600 in a couple days.

You started with three fans before he followed you, correct?
Yeah. Three followers. Now I’m up to 16,000+ in just a few days.

Such is the power of fame, even when it’s secondary. Sarah’s upcoming wedding just got a big upgrade, and she is inviting Conan.

I’m getting married on September 25, and we didn’t know if we would be able to afford it. Now I’m getting custom made shoes and a dress from Kelima in New York. They offered a gown in exchange for promoting their favorite charity, the Children’s Hunger Fund. We’re getting a limo, Classic Creations is giving us wedding bands and there’s a vineyard in California sending us wine. We’ve got it all covered now…

Is Conan invited to your wedding?
Absolutely. My fiance wants Conan to be his best man. That would be really cool. And hey, if he wants us to come on his show, we’d get married on there. That would be fantastic.

I’m not sure who should break the news about Conan’s show to Sarah. [Popeater]

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If you were like me, last night you were watching the show with plenty of questions. Why so long? Why so bad? Who is that weird red-haired lady crashing the stage? Well, we found some answers and even more questions.

Mystery: Who the hell was that red-haired lady crashing the stage during the Best Documentary Short acceptance speech?
What Happened: Some crazy lady in a purple dress pulled a Kanye and hopped up to the mic and just started talking over director-producer Roger Ross Williams. She made no sense at all.
Status: Solved. That woman was producer Elinor Burkett. She and Williams had a bitter feud over the direction of the film that resulted in a lawsuit. Salon has the full, awesome story. She accuses Williams’ mother of tripping her with a cane to keep her from getting on stage. The Oscars needed a lot more of this.

Mystery: What was up with George Clooney’s face?
What Happened: The silver fox was acting squirrelier than usual and making strange grimaces at the camera.
Status: Solved: As we told you earlier Clooney was drunk from his secret flask. Who knows if the faces were because he was pissed (drunk) or pissed (upset) but we venture it was a combo of the two.

Mystery: Did the Academy leave Farrah Fawcett and others out of the Dead People Montage?
What Happened: The video collection of dead people highlights seemed shorter than usual this year (if you don’t count the entirely separate shout out to John Hughes who was never once nominated for an Oscar in his life) but they left several people out, like Fawcett, Bea Arthur, and Ed McMahon.
Status: Solved. Yes, it was intentional. The Academy felt that in all three instances their work didn’t qualify them for inclusion, even though Michael Jackson and Brittany Murphy made the grade. They are not apologizing for skipping them either, saying every year some people must be left out. We smell Betty White’s hand in this.

Mystery: Did Sandra Bullock diss Meryl Streep?
What Happened: When she got up to accept her trophy, Sandy B made a move toward Meryl, who tried to hug her or something, and then Sandy walked away and Meryl made the “Oh, never mind” gesture. The video is here.
Status: Solved: Yes, she did. It doesn’t seem intentional, but the hug clearly didn’t connect. Maybe that is why Sandy repeatedly called Meryl her lover in her speech, to make up for causing her to look a fool on television.

Mystery: What was up with those lamp shades?
What Happened: At various points in the broadcast, a giant wall of lamp shades descended from heaven to make the stage look like the party room at a T.G.I. Friday’s in Wilkes-Barre.
Status: Solved: It was a mistake—a very bad mistake.

Mystery: Does Cameron Diaz not know how to read?
What Happened: When she came out to present the award for Best Animated Feature with Steve Carell, they read their little banter and Cameron called Steve “Jude” by mistake before he corrected her and said their skit was originally written for Jude Law and they never fixed the Teleprompter
Status: Solved: It was just a really bad joke, people. See, they talk about how Animated Features keep their beautiful faces off screen, and then we find out that it was supposed to be written for Jude Law, because, of course, no one would ever call Steve Carell attractive. Ha! Jokes. Too bad the show was so lame and riddled with mistakes that their very plausible meaning was a little too plausible.

Mystery: What the fuck happened to Judd Nelson?
What Happened: When a bunch of brat packers, including a radiant Molly Ringwald, came out to pay tribute to John Hughes, it was apparent that all of them had aged, but none as badly as The Breakfast Club bad boy, who was practically unrecognizable.
Status: Unsolved. He’s still working as an actor, so no one thinks he is destitute or drug-riddled or something. Everyone noticed he looked crazy but no one knows why. Yet.

Mystery: Was Kathy Ireland drunk or on drugs?
What Happened: The former supermodel was one of three co-hosts for ABC’s 30-minute red carpet special before the show began. She was horrible. Bad interview followed bad interview, she seemed semi-coherent, and her non-microphone-holding arm barely moved.
Status: Solved. She was not on drugs. Now we have even more questions. Considering she has a billion (yes, that’s a b) dollar design business and we have never seen her host on TV before, what the hell was she doing there? Of all the people that ABC could have tapped to do the gig, why choose an inexperience lady who looks like she has a prosthetic? Is Kelly Ripa too normal or something? And if we wanted some crazy old lady with lots of plastic surgery on the red carpet, why not bring back Joan Rivers? Our mind is still boggling.

Mystery: Will people watch again?
What Happened: Last night’s telecast had the highest ratings in five years with 41.3 million viewers. It was also one of the worst productions in recent memories. Will people bother next year?
Status: Solved. Of course. It’s the Oscars. Maybe not as many, but you know they’ll be there. And please, please, just let Neil Patrick Harris host next year. He promises his tux won’t be nearly as shiny.

Mystery: Why the hell was there street dancing at the Oscars?
What Happened: A troupe of television dancers were given the stage to do strange hip-hop contortions to the classically-influenced music of the Best Score nominees.
Status: Unclear. We solved how it happened—director Adam Shankman who is a choreographer and TV dance show host—but we will forever be asking why. Why, why, why?

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Ben Huh’s media startup is focused on LOLcats and other internet animal memes. Things are less cute behind the scenes, where underpaid and overworked humans lurk, according to several company veterans who answered our recent request for information.

Cheezburger Network might be the internet’s largest “meme aggregator,” according to Wired, with upwards of $4 million per year gleaned from other people’s pet pictures, supplied to the company for free. But that doesn’t mean the 30 or so employees share fairly in the bounty; as we reported last week, Huh has blogged about proudly offering jobs at Seattle’s minimum wage of $8.55 or slightly higher, at $10.

Those low wages permeate the company, insiders and their associates tell us, with some former workers also describing worker misclassification unpaid overtime.

On the bright side, it sounds like people have fun with their co-workers, as even some detractors tell us, and one employee wrote in to say his experience at Cheezburger Network beat the pants off her/his (other?) minimum wage jobs — not exactly a high bar, but, given the state of the economy, a practical one.

After hearing from seven different people, most of them current or former employees or contractors of Huh’s, we’ve broken their comments down into a few categories below (some sources have multiple quotes). We’ve also included a company-wide memo Huh sent to his staff about our original post, saying he wanted to “solve” any labor issues.

Hey Huh: If you’re feeling reformist, we know another Web publisher who might be able to lend you some guidance.

Pay and overtime
Former worker:

In 2009 I made less than $15,000 and would have had to pay a couple hundred dollars to the IRS if it weren’t for a friend who is a crafty accountant/tax preparer.

Current worker:

I’m paid hourly, but am encouraged to never bill more than 30 hours a week, although I routinely work 40 to 45 hours. If I could find a place that would pay me fairly, I would do it .. but right now, you take the work you can find.

Yet another tipster said Cheezburger Network expects staff and/or contractors to work “extensive hours without overtime pay,” a statement we quoted in our last post.

Work status
Former worker:

Huh’s practice of paying “contract employees” is borderline illegal and I’d love to nail his ass to the wall for it. The work that he has his employees doesn’t fall under the qualifications listed on WA state’s contract employee Web page.

Another former worker:

I can confirm you’re right [with statements in prior post]. Not only was the pay slightly higher than minimum (some positions were outsourced to another country altogether[...]), but he’s skating a fine line between employees and contractors—we did have regular assignments, we did have our own desks, and working from home wasn’t acceptable—in short, most of the things that would cause the IRS to classify one as a regular employee. But in a crap economy, who’s going to report this?

Office culture

He is shrewd and cheap and I recommend staying away from Cheezburger HQ if you value your sanity and pocket book… The co-workers at Cheezburger are fun, cool people, but Huh and his wife (who is the HR Manager), have a stifling presence in the office and aren’t shy about letting you know whether or not you’re in good or poor favor with them.

Someone else:

We are expected to be available at all hours, work off the clock and receive very few benefits.

Didn’t work for the company:

I know someone who interviewed for one of their open jobs. Minimum wage, no benefits, a surprisingly hostile interview that asked what the applicant’s “biggest fail” was without also asking them to describe their career successes, might have been a cute reference to failblog but came off like a retail job “personality” test question. The office was a bunch of workers crammed together at long high school cafeteria-looking tables, not even a cubefarm’s worth of personal space.

Happy camper enjoys coworkers, lack of feces and punching:

1. Do I feel exploited, no; 2. Do I work a lot, yes… I love my job, I like coming in to work and I love the people I work with…. Reading through the Gawker article didn’t really anger me; I would describe my response as irritated. The irritation stemmed from the over-inflated sense of entitlement the spy had. I worked crappy retail cause I needed to pay rent and my ever expanding bar tabs, those jobs paid worse, had more hazard and conflict and caused a sense of self loathing that will probably never go away (I imagine it’s a similar sensation with herpes)….. Most of my previous work experience was spent drifting from one retail job to then next, trying to avoid cleaning up other peoples feces, getting punched by the elderly and sworn at by children.

Hypocrisy (alleged!)

Huh is also stingey about giving his employees learning opportunities. Even when there were relevant conferences in the city of Seattle, Huh wouldn’t send his employees, however, he wasn’t shy about bragging to the office that he was flying to San Fran, LA, or New York for the day to do an interview or meet with an investor. If you really want to talk about a slap in the face, you should ask Huh how much money he spent on booze for Fail Blog fans at the FOWA meet-up in London in 2008 and the Fail Blog night in Seattle later that year. Combined, he probably spent more on those parties than what one of his contract employees makes in 6 months.

Huh response

The email Huh sent to staff:

You can also read the CEO’s comments in this contentious TechFlash thread from February. In it, Huh says he has lost (as of February) only four employees out of 30 in the past two years, counting both voluntary and involuntary departures. That’s not bad considering how little Huh pays at least some of his workers, but it remains to be seen if he’ll fare so well when the unemployment rate falls significantly from the present 10 percent. Some excerpts:

(Top picture: Huh and his wife Emily, who also works at the company. Getty Images)

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Twice, actually. Admittedly for about seven minutes in total. But it still counts as the first intrusion in 15 years. Here’s how I assumed various guises, bypassed half a dozen checkpoints, and ended up making chitchat with Rupert Murdoch.

To shamelessly self-promote for a moment, the Vanity Fair party has only been gatecrashed once, at least according to ex-VF staffer Toby Young: In 1996, a reporter for Star magazine brought a pig on a leash and claimed it was the same animal that had played Babe. But that was 15 years ago, and security measures have been stepped up since then. This year it was rumored that, in addition to the scores of regular security guards and bomb-sniffing dogs, there were undercover ex-CIA agents on hand to keep the A-listers safe and the riffraff out. (It’s possible. The security people scared the crap out of me.)

Sadly, I didn’t get to experience much of it. I spent about seven minutes inside the party over the course of a nine-hour ordeal.

To prepare for what’s often described as the most exclusive party on the planet, the police closed down a lane of Sunset Boulevard. Only those with official passes were allowed to drive up to the Sunset Tower Hotel (which is where the party was held). The initial three or four checkpoints were manned by cops. I counted four or five different Vanity Fair checkpoints on top of that, as guests wended their way across the red carpet. The cops blocked off all the surrounding streets, too: the rented Gawkermobile was towed when we parked nearby. Inside the hotel—and all around it—were at least 50 plainclothes guards, each with an earpiece and wrist radio. They were stationed at every vulnerable point and tracked every person who walked in the building.

But. The security is only put in place at around 5pm. Which is why, at 3pm, I walked up to the door and told the one guard that I was there to meet someone in the lobby. I then stole a Vanity Fair-branded umbrella and told the concierge that I had to deliver it immediately to someone in the party area. He believed me, against all odds.

Inside a translucent marquee stretched out over acres of cream suede couches. “VANITY FAIR” was spelled out in 15 foot letters on a hedge that towered overhead. But the place was empty. I just had to find somewhere to hide.

Then a hand landed on my shoulder. The guard was muscled, moved like a soldier, and displayed the menacing courtesy of someone who knows he can kill you with a spoon. Luckily, he got distracted by messages on his earpiece for a moment and he let me go.

I walked into another party room, which was laid out for dinner. This picture, below, sucks because I was immediately kicked out again by another guard who had apparently seen me move from room to room.

What followed were endless hours hiding in the hotel’s stairwells. That garnered these pictures of the red carpet and the marquee. Because there was nothing else to do except count the tiles and text people.

At around 10pm I decided to venture out and check the staff area for opportunities. I found two passes lying abandoned on a table—one expired red pass for now-departed construction workers, and the other that belonged to some dude. (These pictures were taken in the staff bathroom, by the way.)

My dilemma was that I looked nothing whatsoever like Johnny Darakdjian, the man who was unfortunate enough to leave his credentials lying around. So I decided to use the expired red pass and pretend I was checking in on something. I stepped out of the elevator around 11:30pm and noticed Anjelica Huston sprawled on a couch talking to a younger man. “Reeeaaaly?” she intoned coyly to her companion as I sailed past her and she turned to look at me, arching an eyebrow.

Later, Rupert Murdoch told me he liked the hamburgers Graydon served up (not personally), from In-N-Out burger. When he asked who I was working for and I told him Gawker, he immediately explained that he didn’t talk to the likes of us. Captain Chesley Sullenberger was more hospitable. He, too, was a fan of the burgers, and he also said that all the stars were “so nice.”

But I really didn’t get to experience much of it. Crash number two didn’t last long.

“Excuse me sir, can I help you?” a smart, polite and very large man inquired.
“I was asked to go and check something inside.”
“But this pass is no longer valid.”
“Ah. Well, my other one is upstairs. I’ll just go grab it.”

I actually went downstairs to try and steal another pass with a more plausible picture on it. This time they were waiting for me.

“You,” said a short, efficient-looking man in his 30s with a fresh buzzcut. “Show me that pass.” He examined it, and turned to a colleague. “You’re done. Follow me.” They escorted me from the building, onto the street. I was walking away when buzzcut came after me again, wielding the pass.

“Where did you get this?”
“I found it.”
“Did you pay for it?”
“No.”
“Did someone give it to you?”
“No.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“No.”
“Right. Get the out of here. Now.”

He turned to his right and caught sight of a man, who I realized as I walked away was the very Johnny Darakdjian whose pass I’d stolen.

“You!” buzzcut shouted.
“You’re done. Get the hell out of here. You’re done. You sell this?” He held up the pass.
“No! I didn’t! I didn’t!”
“Get out of my sight.”

Johnny continued to protest as I broke into a run around the corner. Coincidentally, I ended up bumping into Kevin, the homeless guy who’s been around Hollywood trying to turn Oscar weekend into cash. I asked him how it was going.

“Shitty. All these millionaires and I got nothing.” I tried to walk up the street but the LA Sheriff’s department had apparently been told about me. “You’re not going anywhere. But have a nice fucking day.”

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Well, how do you like that. After a wild and shaky season, our favorite (and, sadly, only) polygamist drama ended its fourth lap in thrilling and moving fashion.

Yes, I said thrilling and moving! If you didn’t feel some sort of swell of the heart or catch in the throat or pound in the chest or something as the wives all publicly clasped hands and the wind blew their hair (where were they?) then you are a soulless robot zombie from the planet Zorbot. (Is that where Jesus and Moroni live? I don’t remember my theology.) It was great! It was exactly where this ridiculous carnival season needed to end up. I’m beginning to think that the craziness of the storylines this season was the whole point. The juggling and lying and all that needed to reach a fever pitch, so decisions could be made and partnerships ended.

Ended?? Barb sorta broke up with Bill last night, didn’t she? I know in the end she grabbed hands with the family and all, but I think that was just for show. When she said “I needed you for twenty years and I don’t think I need you anymore,” that sounded pretty final, didn’t it? I suppose we’ll have to wait until next year to find out. But of all the shifting narratives of each of the three wives seeming to contemplate leaving the family, that it ultimately turned out to be Barb who made the big decision was supremely satisfying. It had shades of season two, I believe, when we last saw Barb struggling to accept her place in this strangely unequal marriage. Jeanne Tripplehorn did fabulous work as always — I hope somebody somewhere gives her an award. But, they probably won’t.

Speaking of good lady actresses, Sissy Spacek! What a strange, quietly sad character her Marilyn turned out to be, eh? I’m not sure I quite got why she had such an emotional attachment to Bill and his various infidelities, but that doesn’t really matter. Mostly it was just a joy to watch Spacek do what she does so well and to see a ballsy woman throw Bill’s arrogance back in his face. Though, it was kinda strange that the writers chose to have the one woman who ever really stood toe to toe with Bill become a crying mess in the end. That said, it was completely terrific when she said that his polygamy was just another “excuse to fuck around.” Because, yes, that’s exactly what it is. Joseph Smith was a known philanderer who invented the polygamy revelation because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Yay men!

It doesn’t seem like Spacek will be back in any capacity next season, which is a shame. Now that Bill has won the election and come out of the triple-wide closet we’ll have to deal with more political plotlines, but I’m assuming it will all be of the local variety. Ohh and will they move to that big creepy house on the hill? That sounds like trouble to me, going from three safely separate homes to one large shared one. I feel like intimate nights or whatever would be wayyy more awkward. But that’ll be fun to watch, hopefully! The creepy house on haunted hill filled with unhappy public polygamists.

The second most exciting thing to happen all episode was that Mary Kay Place done gone wild. She basically burned JJ and his weirdo bewigged wife alive. Wasn’t that horrifying? I mean, the whole storyline was horrifying. Turns out that JJ was trying to make a pure race by taking Wanda’s eggs and putting them in other ladies, like Adaleen, and then fertilizing them himself. So incest, basically. There were reports coming out of the creepy Kansas compound (I think based on the real-life creepy Texas compound) about inbreeding and developmentally disabled children and it seems that JJ was the source of a lot of it. So, yeah, he’s gross. And now he’s probably dead, as Mary Kay and Chloe staged a daring scissor-stabbing escape, and then Mary Kay tied JJ and his wife together, doused everything with gasoline, and set the whole doctor’s office of horrors ablaze. I’m so glad they didn’t kill her off. She may be my favorite character on this show. Let’s get a spin-off. Adaleen!

Goodness, what else. Bill got Adam Beach and his dad fired from the casino because they were allowing meth to be sold on the floor. This made Barb sad and mad and ultimately caused her to say she wants out. I mean, that wasn’t the main reason, but it didn’t hurt. Don’s kid is angry at the Henricksons because everything’s been messed up for his family since Don was made to take the polygamist fall a couple of episodes ago. Ana and Serbian Matt LeBlanc are still tangled up in all of this, even more so now that Margene made her creepy confession that she has a crush on Balkan Eddie Cibrian and Ana was all “Whatever” and the three of them did a weird hug thing. A new plural family is born!

OK, that’s basically it. I think the finale episode helped to make up for the odd messiness of the past few episodes, and brought this season where it needed to go. Don’t you feel like the wagons have circled a little and next time everything won’t be as spread out and stretched thin as it was this season? Well, that’s my feeling at least. Who knows what will actually happen. I’m happy that, despite a wobbly run, I still can’t wait to find out.

Oh and Nicki straightened her hair. It looks good.

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Did you miss the Oscars last night? Catch up on what you missed with clips of the 10 most memorable moments, pics from the red carpet, Gawker.TV’s five-minute Oscars highlight reel, and our official Oscars post-mortem.

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