1. Based on “public safety and quality of life concerns,” Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer has rejected a permit request from MTV to shoot upcoming episodes of a Jersey Shore spinoff featuring J-Woww and Snooki in her town. Smart lady. [via Fox News]

2. In other MTV-related news, the network is teaming up with Logo on It Gets Better, an hour-long special on the struggles of LGBT teens; hosted by Dan Savage, the show will chronicle the stories of three young people and include appearances by celebrities like Zachary Quinto, Margaret Cho, and Chaz Bono. [via EW]

3. Rumor has it that after the stock market closes today, Facebook will submit its paperwork to regulators for a $5 billion IPO, making it one of the biggest market debuts in US history. (For reference, Google’s IPO was a mere $2 billion.) [via The Daily Beast]

4. Taran Noah Smith — aka gawky Mark, the youngest and most forgettable of the Home Improvement brothers — was arrested last night and charged with a DUI and possession of hash. This is what happens when you’re a child star who grows up in the enormous shadow of Jonathan Taylor Thomas. [via Gawker]

5. It looks like Ridley Scott is interested in directing The Counselor, Pulitzer-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy’s first attempt at a spec script; given that the “disturbing and powerful” story features two women in its leading roles and is set in the Southwest, we think that the Thelma and Louise helmer could be an excellent fit. [via Vulture]

Bonus Buzz: NASA Engineer Reveals Secret Of Space Cats

Today at Flavorpill, we filled our New Year’s Eve shopping list with selections from The Hairpin’s roundup of great champagnes that cost less than $13. We discovered which celebrities people would least like to have as neighbors — and agreed that The Situation would make a particularly awful addition to our building. We relived the year’s best pop quotes and prayed that “adorkable” and “winning” would both disappear in 2012. We tried to make ourselves care about an Andrew Lloyd Webber-backed Jesus Christ Superstar reality show. We enjoyed io9′s list of the year’s best and worst sci-fi and fantasy movies. (Their #1 pick, Attack the Block, was one of our favorites, too.) We were grateful to The Wrap for solving the mystery of why we got an email about our New York Times home delivery subscription when we don’t even have one. We watched a surprisingly fascinating video about the journey checked airline baggage takes (you know, when it actually makes it to the correct destination). We read the most excruciating run-on sentence in the history of the Internet, and it made our head hurt. We weren’t surprised that 2011′s ten most pirated movies include very few films we would have paid to see in a theater. And finally, we thought this Neutral Milk Hotel skirt was really… something. Right?

1. Tyler, the Creator — who, along with his Odd Future cohorts, made our list of the year’s most controversial cultural icons — is in trouble again. The rapper was arrested in Hollywood last night for destroying sound equipment at the Roxy, where he had performed. Also, his mom was there. [via TMZ]

2. South Carolina can’t afford to run a Republican primary in 2012, so an unlikely Charleston native has stepped up to foot the bill: Stephen Colbert has announced that his Colbert Super PAC is willing to provide the $500k the party needs. But state GOP officials seem less than thrilled about taking contributions from the comedian, and it’s unclear whether it’s even legal for a PAC to fund a primary. [via AP]

3. The creators of Jersey Shore are targeting an (in our opinion) infinitely more interesting subculture with their next reality show: nerds. Called Fandom Rising, it’s described as an “experimental documentary series that takes a deeper look at the lives and relationships of people who love fantasy, fiction, cosplay, comics, gaming and science.” [via Jezebel]

4. Today in dirty, sexy Christmas presents, Rihanna has released the music video for “You Da One.” According to Vulture’s Willa Paskin, it’s pretty steamy, even by RiRi standards: “Possibly no male performer has ever grabbed his crotch this much in a concentrated period of time, and they certainly haven’t done it in leather overalls, fishnets, and shorts, or in Clockwork Orange-homage gear.” Watch it here.

5. We’ve been a bit worried about Cameron Crowe‘s comeback film, We Bought a Zoo, which comes out today. Now the reviews are in, and at 59 percent on the Tomatometer, it looks like critics aren’t loving it.

Bonus video: The history of glitter

Talk about striking while the iron’s still hot (or lukewarm, if we’re being honest): There’s already a new season of Jersey Shore heading to MTV, and it premieres on January 5. Judging from the newly-released trailer that we just spotted over on Vulture, the fifth season will attempt to shrug off that whole Florence trip like a bad dream, replacing the language barriers and discotheques that ruled more recent episodes with a return to form: ie, Snooki inexplicably dressed up in a bunny costume; Snooki popping a squat on the back porch; Snooki telling the camera without a hint of irony that this is the best time of her life. The only real storyline we see (other than more of Mike’s “secret crush” on Snooki) comes about midway through the clip, when Vinnie decides to leave the Seaside Heights house, and the search for a new roommate must begin. We’ve got but one hope going into this: please don’t let the whole “Hurricane Situation … heading right for Snooki Island” thing actually pan out. We’d be oddly devastated. Read More »

Jersey Shore character Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino and mall store Abercrombie & Fitch have a complicated relationship. Although their audience would seem to be fairly similar — as evidenced by such Abercrombie T-shirts as “The Fitchuation” and “GTL… You Know the Deal” — back in August Abercrombie offered to pay The Situation to stop wearing their clothes. Sorrentino, in perhaps his first recorded reasonable response to anything, dismissed the move as a publicity stunt — but apparently, Abercrombie’s contrived derision got to him. Now, The Situation is suing the clothing company for $4 million, claiming that those Jersey Shore-inspired T-shirts infringe on his trademarks. That’s right, readers: “The Situation” and “GTL” are registered trademarks of Michael Sorrentino. The more you know… [via Digital Spy]

Ever fantasize about sleeping in the bed Jersey Shore’s Ronnie threw out onto the deck that one night? Or cooking in the kitchen that the girls can never be bothered to clean? Perhaps you’d like to use the toilet that was so famously clogged by a wifebeater? Well, friend, The Daily is here to tell you that dreams really do come true: You, too, can live like a guido if you’re ready to throw down $2,500 to spend a night at the notorious six-bedroom, three-bathroom Seaside Heights house. Apparently, MTV rents the place out in the off season.

Call us ungrateful, but we probably wouldn’t be tempted to stay at the shore house even if it were free. The duck phone is cute and all, but we can’t imagine that the novelty of it all would outweigh the squickiness of laying our head in a place where so much hair gel-and-Bacardi-lubricated sex has taken place. Besides, although unscripted series have featured more than their share of tacky homes, there are plenty of gorgeous reality TV dwellings that we’d be thrilled to rent out (if only we had the money). Check out eight such houses after the jump.

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1. This year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will feature a new balloon designed by Tim Burton; according to the character’s crazy origin story, he was created “from the leftover balloons used in children’s parties at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London” and is “forbidden from playing with other children because of his jagged teeth and crazy-quilt stitching.” [via ArtsBeat]

2. Sarah Silverman is putting together a comedy fundraiser in Ricky Perry’s home state of Texas that will be titled, “Live From N*****head: Stripping The Paint Off Of Good Ol’ Fashioned Racism,” and plans on donating all proceeds to the NAACP. [via EW]

3. Michael Bay has signed on to executive produce Outsiders, an hour-long drama for The CW that follows a “quirky [male] sociology professor” who teams up with a young female detective to “solve crimes involving youths and subcultures in Los Angeles.” And, we’re guessing, things that go boom. [via Vulture]

4. Hot on the heels of last night’s Season 4 finale, MTV already has your first look at Season 5 of Jersey Shore, which sees the cast returning to Seaside Heights and their beloved club, Karma. [via Perez]

5. If you can’t wait for it to hit shelves, here are some details from Walter Isaacson’s highly-anticipated Steve Jobs biography, including the fact that Jobs initially refused potentially life-saving surgery on his pancreatic cancer because he felt it was too invasive. [via Huffington Post]

Bonus Buzz: Vampire Moths Discovered In Siberia

Recently we read yet another article about the word “like” as used by those darn kids today. We feel like we’ve been reading incarnations of this article since we became aware of the phenomenon, a verbal tic that, like it or not, has been more or less embraced by youths and even adults since the ’60s. However you characterize it — a “filler” word, a nonsense qualifier, or, as we used to insist to our parents, a way of tempering whatever you’re talking about — it’s like, pretty much here to stay.

For proof, we’ve put together a brief history of the most prominent appearances of the “like” craze in pop culture, from a 1920s New Yorker cartoon to Clueless. Indeed, almost as soon as the word rose to prominence, the pop cultural references began to be self-aware, if not flat-out self-mocking. Shaggy’s surfer-dude lingo is already half-ironic, and of course by the time Zappa got his hands on “Valspeak” in the early ’80s it was already something to be cruelly satirized. However, this hasn’t staunched the flow, and teenagers continue to use the word willy nilly, no matter how their teachers wail. Click through to see some of our favorite ‘like’ abusers in pop culture, and let us know how you feel about the word in the comments.

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1. Do Silicon Valley tech geeks have as much reality TV potential as the gorilla juice heads who inhabit the Jersey Shore? A casting call for a new show — which is rumored to be for MTV as well — suggests that someone out there thinks so. [via AolTV]

2. The Emily Haines-led Canadian band Metric is teaming up with Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore to score David Cronenberg’s film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel Cosmopolis, which tells the story of a 28-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager who will be played by Robert Pattinson. [via The Playlist]

3. Here’s a closer look at iPhone 4S’ new voice interface, Siri — including the really important stuff, like what happens when you tell her that you love her. [via Gizmodo]

4. We regret to inform you that Tom Hanks’ younger son Chet Hanks (a.k.a. Chet Haze) is back with another rap video. If you’re feeling brave, you can watch it here.

5. Beyoncé’s publicist says that the rumors that the pop star is faking her pregnancy — most recently sparked when her stomach “appeared to fold when she sat down” during an appearance on an Australian talk show — are “stupid, ridiculous and false.” [via Rolling Stone]

Bonus Buzz: Heterosexual Guys Who Like Glee

Do you know a kid? Does that kid need a Halloween costume? Are you cool with casually exploiting said kid for your own trick-or-treat amusement? Take a break from the princess and superhero aisles at your local holiday superstore and consider these silly costumes that are meant to make grownups chuckle. True, these outfits might go right over the wearers’ kiddie heads, but who wouldn’t love finding a tiny Mr. T or a baby Bob Ross at their doorstep? We wish we could give these youngsters’ parents high fives. Enjoy some adorably mini versions of grown-up pop culture figures after the jump.

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