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’

There’s been a lot of talk in the past few years about the lack of women on late-night TV, from the near-absence of female hosts to the scarcity of ladies in the writer’s room. So it’s positively bizarre to read that Jimmy Fallon’s being sued for sex discrimination… against men. According to TMZ former Late Night with Jimmy Fallon stage manager Paul Tarascio is suing after being fired and replaced by a “totally incompetent woman” in 2010. He’s accusing his former boss of “gender bias,” maintaining that other male staffers suffered the same fate. Apparently, the show’s director explained to Tarascio, “Jimmy just prefers to take direction from a woman.” Huh. We have really been loving Fallon lately and would be pretty disappointed if these allegations turned out to be true. But however the case shakes out, it’s sure to be a fascinating one.

Well, sports fans, the day has come. Someone has finally made us care about Tim Tebow. Not because of whatever football thing is happening. (If you’re still as confused about that as we are, sources tell us Gawker has a pretty helpful intro.) No, we’re paying attention to Tebow today because, last night, Jimmy Fallon mashed him up with David Bowie and took the stage in full Ziggy Stardust-meets-Denver Broncos regalia to perform as “Tebowie.” But Fallon didn’t just look the part — he did a pretty mean Bowie, and rewriting “Space Oddity” as a conversation between the devout Tebow and a Jesus Christ who’s tired of the quarterback bugging him on his day of rest was a stroke of genius.

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Today at Flavorpill, wondered how many pounds you would gain if you ate an entire bacon tree by yourself. We started counting down the days until Mad Men returns next year thanks to these new photos of Jon Hamm on set. We were slightly afraid of a few of these world record setters — particularly the person behind “fastest time to eat a light bulb.” We found out what it’s really like to be James Franco’s professor. We were amazed by this 100-year-old letter to Santa that was recently discovered in a chimney in Dublin. We read a hilarious new holiday-themed essay by Sloane Crosley entitled “How to Start Your Candy-Cane Collection in 23 Easy Steps.” We decided that we’d like to meet the crazed Trekkies who live in this house — as long as there was a chaperone present. We looked forward to hearing 32 more chapters of R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet. We downloaded a new alarm clock app that features fake wake-up calls from Jimmy Fallon. And finally, we were surprised to see how beautiful photos of volcanic activity can be. Prepared to be amazed!

1. José Angel Santana, a 58-year-old former professor at NYU, says that he lost his job after giving James Franco a D in “Directing the Actor II,” and is now suing the university. Apparently the bad grade was attendance related; Franco only showed up for two of the fourteen classes. [via Vulture]

2. Now that Grinderman is “over,” Jim Sclavunos reports that Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds could be releasing a follow up to their 2008 album Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! as early as next year. [via NME]

3. Maya Angelou, who recently collaborated with Common on a track that appears on his forthcoming album, The Dreamer, The Believer, was “surprised and disappointed” to find out that the song “used the ‘N’ word numerous times.” His response? “I told her what ‘The Dreamer’ was about and what I wanted to get across to people. I wanted young people to hear this and feel like they could really accomplish their dreams.” [via ArtsBeat]

4. This weekend’s Jimmy Fallon-hosted installment of Saturday Night Live scored the show’s highest ratings of the season so far. No doubt appearances by former castmembers — including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Tracy Morgan, and Rachel Dratch — as well as a Jude Law cameo (who seemed to be channeling Michael Stipe in that hat), helped out. [via Deadline]

5. Pulling in a respectable $40 million, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows topped the weekend box office, followed by Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked ($23.5 million), and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol ($13 million). When you consider that Mission: Impossible was only playing at around 425 IMAX theaters, that number seems a lot more impressive. [via Digital Spy]

Bonus Buzz: 8 Tyrannical Dictators Still Alive And In Power

The ’90s were back for a whole hour last night on Saturday Night Live — in a good way. Hosted by Jimmy Fallon for the first time since he was a cast member, the holiday-themed episode featured cameos from such legendary favorites as Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, Horatio Sanz, Chris Kattan, Tracy Morgan, and Tina Fey — not to mention an appearance by Jude Law just to keep things somewhat grounded in the present day. All in all, Fallon’s ease with the sketches and obvious, overwhelming glee to be back on the show made the evening a warm, fuzzy, holiday delight. Click through to watch our favorite (and least favorite) skits of the night, and let us know whether you were taken in by the magic of the moment or thought the whole thing was rather ho-ho-hum in the comments.

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We’ll admit that we’re extremely curious about how this week’s special holiday episode of Saturday Night Live will play out. It’s always interesting when a former cast member returns to host the show after striking out on their own, and in Fallon’s case, we’d argue that he has made an even better career for himself as a late night talk host. These promos don’t reveal much about what we’ll see, but they do deliver what has to be the most atonal rendition of “Jingle Bells” that we’ve ever heard. Other than an almost requisite appearance by Barry Gibb and at least one skit where Fallon accidentally breaks character, what are you expecting on Saturday night? Read More »

Today at Flavorpill, we met 100 of the greatest movie villains. We loved this hilarious Thanksgiving-themed spoof on The Hunger Games from McSweeney’s. We heartily agreed with this Thanksgiving Food Pyramid. We found it incredibly endearing that Cameron Crowe made Matt Damon a really sad mixtape to help convince him to take a role in We Bought a Zoo. We couldn’t believe that Jimmy Fallon grounded Questlove for playing “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” during Michele Bachmann’s appearance on his show last night. We decided that this piece on the hushed dangers of startup depression should be required reading for anyone who works on the web. We were thrilled to see this mashup of Calvin and Hobbes and He-Man by illustrator Christopher Tupa. We were hypnotized by this video of flashing faces. We saw what The Walking Dead‘s humans would look like as zombies. And finally, we hoped that this clip is the craziest thing that we see for a long, long time, because it involves the consumption of fluorescent light bulbs.

If you are a fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jimmy Fallon, David Bowie, or Axl Rose — and even, maybe, if you’re not — get ready for the video that will make your day. It turns out that Gordon-Levitt, who was a guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon yesterday, is a personal friend of the host, and the last time they got together, the guys did some karaoke. Because the experience was too wonderful not to share with the world, they re-enacted it for all of America to watch. First, Fallon performed Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” in the voice of a Let’s Dance-era David Bowie. (In our opinion, it was a real improvement over the original.) Gordon-Levitt responded by showing us what it might look like if Axl Rose covered Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone.” And finally… no, we’re not going to spoil it. Just watch the video.

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1. Last night, Justin Timberlake visited Jimmy Fallon to promote Friends With Benefits, and the pair used it as an excuse to debut the second installment of their incredibly awesome collaboration, “The History of Rap.” Watch them pay homage to House of Pain, 50 Cent, Outkast, and plenty of other hip-hop favorites, here.

2. Discovery Channel is planning to air a new reality series this fall called Weed Wars. The show is set in Oakland’s Harborside Health Center — which is home to the country’s largest medical marijuana distributorship — and will star its owner, pot reform activist Steve DeAngelo. [via Inside TV]

3. Ron Howard and Dustin Lance Black are teaming up on an adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven, a story about two Mormon brothers who murder their younger brother’s wife and infant daughter because God told them to do it. Considering that Howard just had his Dark Tower project fall through, and Black has written several episodes of Big Love, this sounds like a good fit. [via Slashfilm]

4. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone just signed on for two more seasons with Comedy Central, guaranteeing that you’ll be seeing new episodes of the series through at least 2013, no matter where their success on Broadway takes them. [via Aol.TV]

5. We find this oddly entertaining: The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and Museum, which is currently under construction in Washington, DC, has signed on Clint Eastwood as its Honorary Chairman — and it sounds like they did it because they need more money to finish the project. [via UnBeige]

Bonus link: Top 10 Comic Book Moustaches