With one of Oscar's biggest players entering the box office ring this past weekend, the most resounding breakthrough rumbled just outside the top ten. The usual brawlers were there: that Michael Jackson documentary, a fantasy movie about a child and some monsters, some film about goats and George Clooney, and of course Disney's latest attempt to reinvent Charles Dickinson, despite Vanessa Williams' success with that initiative years ago. While Disney's A Christmas Carol leads the pack on numbers alone, the $200 million production budget saw only a seventh of that money trickle back with about $31 million opening sales. Many are terming the film a "flop" even though there's still over a month until Christmas. Precious is enjoying the opposite fate.

Well, wasn't that an upset! Last night, all signs were pointing to The Wanda Sykes Show over Taylor Swift's double duty on Saturday Night Live for comedic relief. It seemed like a no-brainer, really. Sykes has a nichey store of acerbic, self-deprecating jokes well-designed to court goodwill in post-Bush America. And last night, she was also assisted by the delightful Mary-Lynn Rajskub, who works full-time at 24, but remains revered for her quirky cameos. Still, somehow the world flipped upside down. Unfortunately Sykes found herself thin with jokes. Meanwhile, Swift pulled off an SNL coup that so top-notch that had it even been an on-day for Sykes, she still would've shined.

As a rule of thumb, the words "promising" and "Ashlee Simpson" should never be situated within close proximity to one another. Unless it's to form a sentence like "Ashlee Simpson is promising to leave showbiz and entering a convent." That said, getting ejected off-screen could possibly be the lift that Simpson's career requires. Especially if it means she'll be tap dancing back to Murderess Row to reprise her role as Roxie Hart on Broadway's Chicago. In fact, for a popstrel who has branded herself with tepid tunes and an unimpressive bit parts on-screen, the relative ease with which Simpson shines as the firecracker is surprising. Somewhere within her is a performer who could always easily transcend poor showmanship. But she was weighed down with substandard material. Sounds like another former pop star-turned-primo performer we all know and hold dear to our hearts.

What a whirlwhind day for rock heroes! Both past and present. The terrifying trichotillomania-inducing bad news first! Steven Tyler, in a diva-ish homage to Geri Halliwell's abrupt exit from the Spice Girls in 1998, stunned his bandmates with news/lack of further explanation of his own departure. Guitarist Joe Perry says that he knows nothing further, while bassist Tom Hamilton glibly offers how Tyler is always angry at the band. And if the parallel plotting of the Halliwell-Tyler trajectory is true, then just about now, Tyler gearing up to spread (testicular?) cancer awareness on various little-seen chat shows. Reasonable people, however, would've been right in assuming that the band split way back when, shortly either after this single or this one. But enough dwelling on the past!

Although we're still a half-day away from Taylor Swift's two-pronged Saturday Night Live assault of blandness, it wouldn't be entirely premature to assume that tonight's episode, so darn full of Swift as it is, to bring out the narcoleptic in all of us. And if the evening turns out one of those decidedly Kristen Wiig-lite episodes, we may just lapse into a coma. Which could be avoided by switching over to Fox. Once home to MADtv and occasionally, reruns of V.I.P., the scattershot network is filling its Saturday late night slot with The Wanda Sykes Show. If this variety show is even remotely as sharp as Sykes' stand-up, channel changers lingering on SNL for an elusive chuckle may find themselves with a high-spirited new option.

Like the cleaning of a house, Rihanna's press circus never ends! Although last night, her 20/20 segment finally wrapped up. The rest of the world sighed a humongous cloud of relief because this sit-down with Diane Sawyer looked promising. It was a humble, pitch-perfect way to close that part of the pop star's life before she fully immerses herself into her Rated R campaign. Face-to-face with Sawyer, Rihanna showed that she has it in her to make peace with this altercation. And despite being well-timed, in case this tabula rasa misfires, here's a considerably more palatable alternative! Regardless, in her provocative interview, Rihanna kept an admirably cool, level head. She wasn't on a mission to point fingers, assign blame, or ravage the last flecks of meat dangling from the corpse of Chris Brown's career. She simply sussed out the events of that fateful February night, picked apart the psychology leading up to those events, and shined light onto a history of domestic violence in her family.

What are the thin people really eating? The British Journal of Nutrition just published a study this month saying that the trimmest people, those who weighed the lightest, flaunted the slimmest waists, and were proud owners of the smallest hip circumference, had the highest levels of omega 3 fatty acids in their blood. After investigating the commonality, I found that these people were in fact not freebasing flaxseed oil. They were, however, loading up on foods that were rich in omega 3s -- grass-fed beef, flaxseed, soy, salmon, etc. No one knows for sure what omega 3s do for the diet exactly ... they may stimulate hormones that make you feel full, and they have been shown to improve circulation, which can also aid in weight loss and reducing inflammation. Whatever the case, you can get slim while you dine in New York this weekend; head to a few of these "healthy" joints to load up on the good stuff.

Michael Jackson is experiencing the kind of renaissance that happens when an iconic figure crosses over from living breathing legend to idolized, exalted hero dead before his time. And the more that the media digs into his past, the more that we find he truly was one-of-a-kind, a unicorn of a performer -- someone who genuinely seemed to be "motivated by a genuine desire to delight his audience." One such motivation manifested itself in a theme park, one that sadly, never came to fruition. The enchanting Peter Pan Neverland theme park was highly conceptual; in the mockups you could see it was possible to enter the park by "flying" on a magic carpet ride, or by boat, through some mysterious caves. Ahem.

Wow. For anyone who has even remotely followed much-hyped model Lara Stone's rapid ascension to mannequin stardom this past year, the latest issue of Vogue UK is a must-read. In it, Stone (who will succeed Madonna as the face of Louis Vuitton this spring) really gets down to the nitty gritty. Fashionologie has posted a few excerpts from the profile of the November cover subject. And, man oh man is it juicy. First off, drugs were never a problem for the confessed recovering alcoholic. "I'd already tried everything in Holland. Anyway, I never wanted to be that model on drugs, the sort who gives head for a line of coke." Booze, on the other hand, was an entirely different issue. Apparently, just earlier this year, Stone went to rehab as a result of her alcoholism spiraling out of control. She's since sobered up and says she feels better than ever.

I didn't go to the Yankees parade today, because as much of a fan as I am, the kind that go to parades are the kind of sports fans I try to avoid in general: people who can get out of work on a Friday and be shitfaced before I even wake up. Well, these were the people who got to watch Yankee mascot Jay-Z perform "Empire State of Mind" for Mayor Bloomberg, the World Series-winning Yankees, and the thousands of drunk people who descended on downtown New York, from the Battery to City Hall, to scream at their favorite team, centaurs and all. Video after the jump. The image of Jay-Z rapping in front of City Hall? Priceless.