Word on the street is that Playgirl will be folding in the near future.

I have purchased Playgirl once. A guy I went to college with was in it, or so the rumor went. He was actually this super-sweet, super-hot, way smart dude who was getting his engineering degree a little later in life, while stripping on the side to support himself and his 10-year-old son. Needless to say, I had a crush on him. So when I heard he was in Playgirl, I dragged one of my girlfriends to Castle Boutique with me, where we poured through the stacks of Playgirl until we found his issue. We sheepishly purchased it, then read it, and it’s probably still in a box somewhere in my mother’s garage. I never told him I knew about it. I have no idea what that guy is doing today. In fact, I can’t even remember his name. I knew him for three years — we had a lot of classes together — and my friends and I always just called him Stripper Boy. So I can’t even Google him. Ha.

Anyway.

Goodbye, Playgirl. Thanks for the memories.

My mom is currently at the Phoenix airport, preparing to fly out to Seattle for her very first visit here since I moved. This means a variety of wonderful things, including but not limited to:

- My dog will get trained
- My car will get fixed
- My closet will get organized
- My fridge will have food in it other than Diet Coke and ketchup

I was at work yesterday afternoon wandering around the office collecting people’s leftovers from lunch to take home to eat for dinner. And MAN did I have a feast afterward (beef taco with cheese, homemade blueberry pie and cinnamon cookies … I’m sure all the food groups made it in there somewhere), but people were like, “Uh … does anybody feed you?” No. Nobody feeds me. And therein lies the problem. So my mom will be here to feed me, hooray!

But anyway she will be here in three and a half hours, which means the cleaning of my apartment must commence NOW. But don’t worry, I’ll be by later to check in with you guys.

Shia LaBeouf debuts his injured hand during a smoke break outside the hospital.

Ouch!

Also, I’m on DAY SIX without smoking! WOO HOO!!!

And somehow this picture makes me want a cigarette. Addiction is so weird. But I’m not going to have one!

So much happy news today!

So many celebrities doing good things that contribute positively to our planet!

Unfortunately, these things contribute significantly LESS to my wallet, since do-gooding isn’t quite the same traffic-driver as, say, vagina, but still. It’s nice to see.

David Spade has saved an Arizona animal shelter from being closed, by donating $10,000 to the establishment.

David Spade has donated $10,000 to save the Humane Society of the White Mountains in his mother’s town of Lakeside, Arizona.

“The shelter was falling apart, and they were going to shut it down, so he stepped in,” says the source. “It was far and above what they needed and ever received.”

David’s from Arizona — like me! — and the article says he also donated $15,000 to his alma mater, Saguaro High School, where the funds were probably used to begin construction on their new state-of-the-art meth lab. Sorry. Arizona inside joke.

Congratulations to Brian May, the founder of the ’70s band Queen, who just completed his PhD thesis in astrophysics at a British university.

Brian May’s thesis examines the mysterious phenomenon known as Zodiacal light, a misty diffuse cone of light that appears in the western sky after sunset and in the eastern sky before sunrise. Casual observers, if they live under very dark rural skies, can best see the light two to three hours before sunrise as they look east, and many people have been fooled into seeing it as the first sign of morning twilight. A Persian astronomer who lived around the 12th century referred to it as “false dawn” in a poem.

Astronomers now know that Zodiacal light represents reflected sunlight shining on scattered space debris clustered most densely near the sun. The millions of particles range in size from tiny asteroids to microscopic dust grains, and extend outward beyond the orbit of Mars.

May’s work focuses on an instrument that recorded 250 scans of morning and evening Zodiacal light between 1971 and 1972. The Fabry-Perot Spectrometer is located at the Observatorio del Teide at Izana in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands.

Uh … I know about the Big Dipper. And that is all I know about. Seriously I’ll look up at the sky and identify every single cluster of stars as “The Big Dipper.” But I say it with such conviction that sometimes people think I know what I’m talking about.

Brian’s thesis has been published as a book called A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, and if you’ve been struggling with insomnia, you can buy it here. It costs $80!!! Jesus, for that kind of money, you could go out and buy some of Lindsay Lohan’s leggings!

The kids at The Dirty tagged along on a casting call for a new show called Guido Beach, I guess about life on the Jersey Shore.

Please, Lord, let this show get made. Every second of these seven minutes is hilarious and amazing. I encourage you to watch the entire clip. I was fascinated. It’s like a whole different species of person. At the very least, it is a subculture with which I am entirely unfamiliar, and it intrigues me.

[via DListed]

Here’s the first cast photo of the new 90210, which will premiere at some point on some network.

The guy standing next to Lori Loughlin looks constipated.

You guys, is it just me, or is this show doomed to total, complete, embarrassing failure? It’s been WAY too hyped up at this point, and it’s just going to end up being another one of those stupid teen dramas that lasts half a season and then gets canned because it’s boring and no one cares. 90210 had a magic that cannot be recaptured. Every time I see new hype for this show, I just shake my head and think “Man, this is all going to be so mortifying for them in retrospect.”