Second in a pair of essays today on Louis C.K. Previously: The Louie Bubble. READ MORE

First in a series of two essays today on Louis C.K. Next: Super-Stud in Divorceland. READ MORE

It happens all the time in New York City. You're churning away in your new cubicle, and then, with one fervent IM from a buddy, you discover that you work with a child of the rich, famous or rich and famous. It could be almost anyone! For instance, if you toil at the AOLington HuffPost, perhaps you are sitting near some dude named Theo, who is the son of Steven Spielberg. This exchange, which did not happen, is definitely how you should handle that situation best. READ MORE

1) I've had ice-cream four times this week
2) I've had diarrhea four times this week
3) I saw Something Borrowed in the theater twice
4) I've been wearing the same socks since Tuesday
5) I brushed my teeth with just water this morning
6) I clipped my toenails in the bed and I'm pretty sure I didn't find all the parings when I tried to sweep them up
7) I watched both cases in an episode of "Judge Judy" yesterday while eating peanut butter and Nutella straight out of the jars with a spoon
8) The cat threw up on the couch and I just turned the cushion over
9) A piece of cheese fell down into the crack between the counter and the oven
10) I peed in the plant again
11) I was eating the peanut butter and Nutella with the same spoon, and some Nutella got mixed into the peanut-butter, I saw it there, but I closed the jar and put it back into the cabinet like that anyway

Spawned by a stern former Nazi Sturmabteilunger who disliked him and believed that he was someone else's son, Arnold Schwarzenegger spent years torturing his body into an exaggerated caricature. This expression of dysmorphia led him on a path to riches in America's film industry, much as dysmorphic expressions of emaciation do for women. After accumulating tens of millions of dollars, it seemed a convenient parlay of attention and cash into running the whole state in which the film industry resided, and he announced his campaign for governor of California on the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno." READ MORE

Had I bothered to put “walk through Moscow in a tuxedo” on my list of things to do in this life, I could now safely check it off. The sidestreet in front of the theater was a static maze of Benzes and Bentleys, with no place to pull up. Arriving as I was in a regular taxi, the jam gave me a face-saving chance to get off around the corner and hoof it to the red carpet from there. READ MORE

On Fridays, we take requests. A reader writes: "It's sad that I rely on your blog so much in order to have relevant things to say in conversations about recent viral videos. And I understand—one day is pretty quick to come up with something to say about this amazing tome of teen angst that picked up seven million views yesterday. But come on." READ MORE

The twelfth highest-grossing film in America this past week was Country Strong. In it, Goop plays Kelly Canter, a boozed-out, decrepit country star just looking for another chance. Tim McGraw tackles the role of James Canter, the long-suffering cardigan that also happens to be her husband, manager and occasional tormentor. Leighton Meester is Chiles Stanton, a sweet young thing making the leap from pageants to the music biz. Garrett Hedlund is Beau Hutton, a dreamy rehab janitor who lives to play the honky-tonks. It's the second film from Shana Feste—not a stage name—and Tobey Maguire snagged a production credit. READ MORE

This weekend's walk-about with Courtney Love in the Times was both excellent and at the same time fundamentally indistinguishable from any other long-form profile of Love written in the last twenty or so years. There is a simple and straightforward reason for this. Courtney is the Dorian Gray of the American celebrity-industrial complex. Her public face shows us exactly what we want to see, while her private face is revolting (and even aging) and seeing the two in close proximity unsettles the viewer on an almost biological level. There's no denying that Love can be personally unpleasant; a former co-worker who went on to be Courtney's assistant said her favorite part of the job was going home at night, because "that's when the screaming stops." But despite a decade of so of not accomplishing much that would justify continued attention (two good-to-great albums, neither of which sold well), and despite a public that more than likely finds her, at best, unsavory, she remains in the spotlight in a way none of her cohort have managed or, more likely, desired. Love's persistence in the public's field of vision testifies to a fundamental truth of her character: she is the dark mirror of our desires, reflecting not our more self-serving excuses for following gossip, but the gross reality of our appetite for stories of fame pursued and lost. READ MORE

Hoda Kotb READ MORE