While we were eating Chinese food, Spencer Pratt was following the P.R. Christmas Eve tradition of serving food to the homeless. This was his second highly publicized good will trip to the Los Angeles Mission in two months. What a mensch, this one!

[Photo Credit: WireImage]

Guitar Hero III is already ruining the music industry, and now it has also ruined Christmas for one Canadian dope fiend/curious teenager

After catching his 15 year-old kid smoking pot with his “delinquent friends," a father in Montreal sold his son’s copy of Guitar Hero III on eBay for $9,100 to punish him.

This is just the kind of story that gets parents thinking they can control over their kids’ lives. Add this to the list of reasons we have a disregard for Christmas, right behind our Jewish heritage.

This just in from The Post: The Hills might be fake:

Before Lauren Conrad and her Teen Vogue counterpart, Whitney Port, went to Paris to "work" at the Crillon Ball, producers were "frantically calling publicists to see if anyone knew any guys to set the girls up with in Paris. If they had a love affair there, then it would look better," a source said.

Just because it’s not true doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining.

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In honor of the Festival of Lights (a.k.a. "Christmastime for the Jews") which begins tomorrow night at sundown, we've rounded up a few of the catchiest Hanukkah songs that, for some reason or another, never really caught on.

So the next time all you good for nothing son-in-laws start kvetching about those "Eight Crazy Nights" of family time? Be thankful that you won't be singing along to such modern classics as "Schlepping through a Winter Wonderland," "Deck the Halls with Balls of Matzos" and, of course, "Silent Night? I Should Be So Lucky."

Did Nello Balan really slip Richard Johnson $1,000 in an envelope in order to boost his holiday cheer? If he did, he's not exactly racked with guilt. In an Oscar caliber "damage control" performance, the restaurant impresario nobly defends his right to give unsolicited monetary donations to make-or-break gossip columns—and accuses those of us who fail to grasp his selfless generosity of being Scrooges, Grinches and penny-pinchers who've lost the Christmas spirit.

“If I did, so what?” he wondered in his Romanian accent between bites. “What is wrong with a Christmas gift? What, Americans have to be such Grinches about Christmas?” Americans, not so much. Journalists, maybe. Along with other allegations, the New York Post’s admission that Johnson accepted the cash has sparked a media frenzy. But it’s been too long to remember the details, Nello said. “It was 1997. I was in Aspen.” He wondered if he hadn’t asked his assistant to send over truffles, or possibly scarves, gloves, and ties (Hermès is across the street), and just maybe the assistant got flustered and sent cash instead.

Meanwhile, the NY Times tries to figure out just how beneficial Malan's selfless act really was, asking "was there a quid pro quo?"

[Spoiler: Yes.]

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