In 1998, News Corp. invested $3 billion in Triangle Publications, the then-owner of TV Guide. After a flurry of deals that involved selling off assets for cash, merging the company with Liberty Media (for which it received $800 million, and equity), merging with Gemstar (with News Corp. taking over Liberty's stake in exchange for $6b in stock). Now, with Macrovision's bid for Gemstar-TV Guide, the latter company's stock has continued its slide, leaving News Corp. with an investment worth just $1 billion, or a loss of about six and a half billion dollars. That's more than it paid for Dow Jones. [PC]

…Benicio Del Torro strikes a pose in Miami, fails to realize that he has neither the requisite bling (and intentionally unbuttoned shirt) nor the lobster-tan to effectively assimilate. [Mollygood]

…Kanye West is not an egomaniac. Well, he is, just not the kind who, according to Harper's Bazaar, decorates his house with giant, hand-painted ceiling murals depicting himself as one of God's messengers.

Which explains why WWD reports he's got a sizable bone to pick with the mag. "That pissed me off so bad," West tells GQ's Chris Heath in the new "Man of the Year" issue. "That made me so mad. Because who would want to hang out with a guy with an 8-foot picture of an angel of himself?"

The man-slash-saint raises a good point.*

So what's the real deal, according to Kanye? "'I asked for angels, and he put me in there,’ West explains a bit bashfully." Strange: Sounds like the mural painter had a lot of creative input! Perhaps he was also the one who came up with the idea of putting Kanye as a Christlike figure on the cover of Rolling Stone?

*Although we have heard Seal has quite a rolodex of pals. And he's famous for hanging nudie pictures of himself all over the house. That, and parlaying a song that was wicked popular in the seventh grade into a lasting marriage with Heidi Klum.

…Radar's preemptive efforts at ensuring that Scrubs star Zach "I've made a career out of being awkward" Braff doesn't suffer the same fate of Dirty Dancing star turned nonworking actress, Jennifer Grey. [Mollygood]

Easy there, psycho. It's just one slightly touchy-feely movie, no need to rape and sodomize us with a single, penetrating stare. [Mollygood]

Which is more reprehensible/awesome: The New York Observer product plugs in Gossip Girl, or last night's showcasing of The Box as fictitious club called Victrola?

For all his bumbling around the set of The Price Is Right, Drew Carey's broadcast "premiere week was up 8 percent among viewers aged 25 to 54 and up 10 percent among viewers aged 18 to 49. The program posted gains among both men and women." Whatever; his name still isn't Bob Barker. [TV Decoder]

Upon seeing this week's People cover, is your first reaction "George and Matt are gay lovers!"?

'Cause ours was.

On two separate occasions, two different Jossip editors lunching at trashy BBQ haunts (Dallas BBQ and Hill Country … don't ask) had run-ins with New York's newest resident Tyra Banks. The girl likes her ribs. Evidently, so do we.

Hollywood playboy/international superstar Vincent Chase finds out he has a raging case of genital herpes…on the next episode of Entourage.

Cynthia Nixon goes from playing the angry redhead (a.k.a. the one who gets chlamydia!) on Sex and the City to picking used Ziploc bags out of the public trash receptacle to donning a giant Seuss-inspired hat and reading the most monotonous children's story of all time to an unappreciative audience of spoiled brats at TheatreworksUSA.

And you thought your job prospects sucked.

Is it fair to say this woman should just pack it up already? [MG]

This is Sue Shultz, editor of CosmoGIRL! and confessed soap opera enthusiast, as "nurse Susan Schulz Wuornos" on General Hospital. Somehow this is evidence that her magazine is the perfect fit for the new SoapNet series The Fashionista Diaries. [AdAge]

Is this perhaps the most homoerotic cover Glamour has ever run? Their boobs are touching!

Are we just going to let Dan Abrams walk around East Hampton looking like this? Here he is at a screening of Anne Hathaway's Becoming Jane over the weekend where, clearly, East End sidekick Dave Z had the day off from grooming his BFF.