1. If you’ve ever been curious about who would win in a potato sack race between Michelle Obama and Jimmy Fallon — well, now you know. The hilarious bit was part of the First Lady’s effort to promote her Let’s Move campaign.

2. Nicki Minaj will be performing her new song “Roman Holiday” at the Grammys this Sunday night before officially releasing her latest Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded single, “Starships,” the following morning on Ryan Seacrest‘s radio show. [via MTV News]

3. Hot on the heels of the Redbox/Verizon deal, Amazon has announced its own plans to partner with Viacom to bring TV shows from all of its networks to the Prime streaming service. [via Slashfilm]

4. Tina Fey is in talks to help filmmaker Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Real Steel) bring an adaptation of the popular children’s series Fancy Nancy to the big screen. While it’s not exactly the followup to Mean Girls that we were hoping for, this is excellent news for little girls everywhere. [via EW]

5. An “ambitious plan” by the design firm OLIN will transform the plaza in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art into “a more efficient, pleasing and environmentally friendly space, with new fountains, tree-shaded allées, seating areas, museum-run kiosks and softer, energy-efficient nighttime lighting.” [via NYT]

Bonus Buzz: Gun-Slingin’ Kristen Wiig Appears On ‘Portlandia’

Today at Flavorpill, we learned that OK Go will be releasing a music video featuring 1,000 handmade instruments. We watched Kristen Bell have a breakdown over a sloth. We guesstimated the fashion trends that might pop up on the new season of Mad Men. We found out that Amazon Publishing’s books will not be carried at Barnes & Noble. We were mesmerized by this blue ice cave in Iceland. We were introduced to a girl who can say any word or phrase backward immediately. We loved this definitive guide to classic cocktails that breaks down 68 drinks into their constituent parts. We watched a washing machine self-destruct. We met some vikings. We felt itchy looking at this bark-style dress. We wondered if a teen art gallery was a good idea. And finally, we saw the return of the scrunchie — but we’re not sure if even a geeky 3D printed Hilbert curve-style one can make us like it.

1. Sesame Street’s YouTube channel was hacked over the weekend, and all of its content was taken down and replaced with a 7-minute hardcore porn. [via The Daily What]

2. If you’ve ever fantasized about Lady Gaga giving Bill and Hillary Clinton a Marilyn Monroe-style serenade, then it’s your lucky day. Watch a clip of her performance at a birthday party/benefit for the former President’s foundation here.

3. In an effort to compete with traditional publishers, Amazon is planning to release 122 fiction and nonfiction books of its own this fall, in both physical and e-book form. Says longtime agent Richard Curtis: “Everyone’s afraid of Amazon. If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you’re an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out.” [via NYT]

4. According to a theory put forth in a new book, Vincent van Gogh didn’t commit suicide. Rather, the famed Dutch painter was shot by 16-year-old Rene Secretan, a local boy who often bullied him. [via The Daily Beast]

5. McDonald’s is planning to launch its own in-store channel. Reality TV king Mark Burnett , BBC America, and KABC-TV Eyewitness News have all signed on to provide content for the new network, which will focus on “local news and entertainment features, such as spotlights on upcoming films, albums and TV shows.” [via LAT]

Bonus Buzz: Fan-Made Opening Sequence To ‘The Adventures of Tintin’

There’s never been a better time to be a music fan. Love obscure Swedish pop music? There’s someone writing about it, easy ways to discover your next favorite band, a variety of services that let you listen to those tunes, and your computer can hold way more albums than a wall of shelves ever could. At the same time, it also seems better for bands as more of them can make a decent living — not on the level of the coke and hooker days or yore, but still akin to a teacher’s salary we’d imagine. So how does a band make their living?

Gizmodo sat down with UK act Uniform Motion to see what they make off of iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Bandcamp, and other digital outlets. Basically, a band makes peanuts when their songs are streamed on a service like Spotify, though more popular bands earn a higher rate. The real money comes from album sales on Amazon or iTunes, which nets them 70% of the purchase. But it also costs nearly $50 to sell their albums at those stores, so a band has to sell about 25 records just to break even. Bandcamp seems to be the best bet as the service only takes $1 per album sold, with PayPal eating up an additional $.50 for the transaction. Anyway, it sounds like a relatively modest band could do fairly well for themselves with a little hustle and a loyal fanbase. [via Gizmodo]

For those who believe that Ikea’s planned redesign of its beloved BILLY shelves to hold things other than books signals the final wheezing gasps of print, here’s some news that could really put the nail in the coffin: The Wall Street Journal says that Amazon is planning to launch a service that would offer customers access to a select library of content (primarily older works) for a monthly subscription fee. While that seems to be about all anyone knows about the rumored project at the moment, certain publishers are reportedly unhappy with the general idea — which could ultimately roadblock the entire scheme (see: the Kindle lending program). We’re curious: What do you think of the concept? [via Mashable]

1. The Smoking Gun has unearthed Katy Perry’s 45-page concert rider, which in general is kind of boring (hates carnations, likes egg chairs), but also includes this misspelled gem for any of her drivers: “DO NOT STAIR AT THE BACKSEAT THRU THE REARVIEUW MIRROW.”

2. In case you missed last night’s Colbert Report, watch John Lithgow gives a dramatic reading of a ridiculous press release from the Newt Gingrich campaign here.

3. Amid all of his current personal drama, Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he’s putting his acting career on hold, which means we’re all going to have to wait that much longer to see Cry Macho. [via ArtsBeat]

4. Google has decided to ditch a project to scan newspapers for publication online because it would have been too expensive, and will instead focus on Google One Pass, “a platform that enables publishers to sell content and subscriptions directly from their own sites.” [via CNET]

5. Amazon is now selling more Kindle books than physical books, at a ratio of about 105 to 100. Says Jeff Bezos: “We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly. We’ve been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years.” [via TDW Geeks]

Bonus link: Watch Katie Couric Sign Off After Her Final CBS Evening News Broadcast

1. Did The Situation go around his Jersey Shore castmates and strike a secret season three salary deal with MTV last night? Yes, he did. [via TMZ]
2. The xx and Dizzee Rascal are among the 12 acts shortlisted for this year’s Mercury Prize. [via Spinner]
3. The American Customer Satisfaction Index has found that users rank Facebook right alongside the IRS tax e-filing system, airlines, and cable companies. [via WSJ]
4. Thanks to a drastic price cut for the Kindle, Amazon says it’s selling 80% more downloaded books than hardcovers. [via LAT]
5. So, thanks to a new heart pump, Dick Cheney is kind of a vampire. [via NYT]

Bonus link: Watch the Cast Reel for K-Town, the Asian Jersey Shore

Music has always been a tool for social change. Critical Beats, a project that promotes preservation of the Amazon rainforest, pairs producers with indigenous artists from the area to, “spread awareness about the critical state of our most cherished environmental resources and the communities which act as caretakers of these places.” Artists including DJ Spooky and L.A.-based electronic musician Jupit3r have remixed tribal sounds and rhythms to create mellow, danceable beats for a new album, Critical Beats for the Climate.

Flavorpill talked to the Jeremy Jensen, co-director of the program, about the dire state of the rainforest and the role of music in activism. Read our conversation, find out more about upcoming Critical Beats events, and learn how you can get involved after the jump.

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Now that we’ve left the hall of mirrors that was the Apple-tablet rumor mill, we can finally take a deep breath and ask: What’s up with the iPad? (Seriously, we’re really all gonna call it that?) Seeing as we’re avid readers, let’s shake our magic eight ball and ask what it might mean for e-books. Our take after the jump.

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In case you missed this story over the holiday weekend: WordBridge Publishing, a Christian conservative publisher concerned with “the phenomenon of manipulation based in white guilt” has given Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of Narcissus a thoroughly modern makeover. Their updated version, bizarrely entitled The N-Word of Narcissus, “addresses the reason for its neglect: the profusion of the so-called n-word throughout its pages. Hence, the introduction of ‘n-word’ throughout the text, to remove this offense to modern sensibilities.”

They only have three fans on Facebook.

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