Two books are coming out about Sully and the dramatic(ally short) Flight 1549 that crashed in the Hudson. One of them is Sully's own book, Highest Duty. Let's be honest: Dude's a great pilot, but maybe not a born writer of dramatic tales. The book is called "Highest Duty." Not "How to Crash Land a Plane in a Motherfucking River and 99 Other Life Skills Every Badass Should Know." Which would have been our title recommendation, but it's not a big thing.

But the other book, Miracle on the Hudson, excerpted in USA Today, is full of passengers talking about how they were all scared out of their gourd, which is really what the public wants to hear after things like this. Scary things! The jet shook after hitting the geese; the engines stopped and caught fire; a lady screamed. The smell of "a mix of jet fuel, burning hair and burning flesh" permeated the cabin. The passengers...acted about how you would probably act, in such a situation. Ridiculously.

Lori Lightner burst out: "Oh, crap, we're crashing." Then she quickly prayed, "Forgive me for everything I've done wrong. I don't have time to go through it all because I'm going to die."

Haha! It's funny because she didn't die. At least one pithy, movie-ready remark came out of this ghastly affair:

In first-class Denise Lockie, an office-supply executive, remained braced in her seat until her seatmate, Mark Hood, an ex-Marine, nudged her.
"Am I in heaven?" she asked him.
"No, and I'm no angel," Hood, a deeply religious man, replied as he urged her to get moving.

Hollywood's calling, Sully. Get ready to play yourself in a movie. Mortal humans don't have that edge.
[Pic: AP]

The transcript shows that in the last 21 seconds of the flight - with cockpit warning systems blaring "terrain, terrain" and "pull up, pull up" - Sullenberger turned to co-pilot Jeff Skiles.

"Got any ideas?" he asked.

"Actually not," Skiles replied.

And then Sully just cold landed the plane in the motherfuckin' river. You can't put badass in a safety manual.
[AP]

Oh, good, because it just wasn't enough he politely requested an extension on the book, or that the volume was about "professional ethics," or that he saved 100+ lives and then advanced journalism education and then made America swoon.

No, he had to go and make a video for the San Francisco Public Library — Sullenberger lives in Danville, right across the bay — about the "fine amnesty" program, May 3-16. Even though the guy will soon have a book to sell, so library use won't exactly help his bottom line.

Sully is like remedial Mr. Rogers, for adults. And most of us would benefit from a few episodes.

Sullenberger has agreed to write two books for the publisher's William Morrow imprint, former Publishers Weekly editor Sara Nelson reports: One a memoir of being an ass-kicking, calm-and-collected pilot who can land a plane on water with no casualties; the other a book of... poems. "Inspirational" poems, of course, in case you're ever hurtling toward your death and need some sort of inspiration not to, uh, die.

(Points to Nelson for landing such a big scoop less than two months after being laid off from PW. Her hero Kurt Andersen would be proud.)

Given the unfortunate cashing-in by Octo-Mom and many, many other dubious celebrities, no one will begrudge a bona fide hero his small fortune. Nor will anyone hold against Sullenberger the probably-inevitable auction of movie rights to the memoir.

Spotted: Capt Sully on Virgin America Flight 11 from JFK to SFO this morning. Was sitting in seat 13F until he got bumped to first class. Everybody clapped!

US AIR FLIES TO SAN FRANCISCO, SULLY. And, last time we checked, is not owned by a foreigner. What a jerk. He thinks just because he managed to miraculously plop a large piece of flying metal down into a near-frozen, boat-crowded river abutted on both sides by the most populous part of the United States and have everyone come out of it alive that he can just do whatever he wants, AND be moved up to first class for it. Well the buck stops here, bub. We're on to you.

[Submit your own Gawker Stalker sightings to stalker@gawker.com]

Sully, who glided a US Airways jet into the Hudson and saved the lives of all 155 people on board, told a Congressional panel today that airline pay cuts were driving the best pilots out of the industry, Bloomberg reports.

US Airways filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002 and exited court protection in 2003. It filed for bankruptcy a second time in September 2004, and emerged in September 2005 through its merger with America West Holdings Corp....

"My pay has been cut 40 percent," Sullenberger said. "My pension, like most airline pensions, has been terminated and replaced by a PBGC guarantee worth only pennies on the dollar."

The solution, obviously, is a bailout for airline pilots like Sullenberger. We knew he'd never be satisfied with Broadway tickets and softball interviews with student journalists. He's having a photo op with deliciously corrupt House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and then he's attending President Barack Obama's big speech tonight.

(Photo by Getty Images)

• That's just a rumor that Page Six is whispering about, so who knows if it's true or not. It's sort of hard to imagine where she would have fit into the ceremony, unless it was during the Original Song performances or in lieu of Queen Latifah singing the sad dead people song. [P6]
• Celebrity people-saver Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger was at Vanity Fair's big Oscar party in Lorst Angrilleez, enjoying the scene with his wife. It sure beat how the hero pilot spent last year's Oscars, which was sitting at a Houlihan's outpost in the Detroit airport, eating a burger, sullenly. (GETTTT ITTTT??) [P6]
• A bunch of old broads attended the New York Oscar Night party at the Carlyle last night, including Helen Hunt's mother from As Good As It Gets, that one lady who's in everything and was really good in Junebug, and the most fabulous woman ever to teeter around on two gams, Elaine Stritch. An old gay ghost sat at the bar and drank a ghost Vodka Collins, remembering the old days and eagerly awaiting these dames to join him in ghostdom. [P6]
• Ever the dignified, awards-nominated gentleman, actor turned brawler turned brawler-actor Mickey Rourke tried to feel up Jessica Alba at Saturday's Independent Spirit Awards. His line, I hope? "This is as close to an Oscar nomination as you're ever gonna get." [NYDN]
• ZOMG! Lonely and miserable actress Jennifer Aniston had the balls to go and present an Oscar award in front of her ex-husband and his current be-lipped squeeze, Angelica Jolson. Apparently the sad, ruined Aniston gazed at Brad Pitt when the lights were dark during her segment, then gave him a pathetic, hangdog smile. The beautiful, cunning witchress Jolson didn't get a smile, but she did slither her snake-like arm around her stolen prize to show the haggard old sack of straw up there in her humiliating little party dress that she had won. After the show, Aniston checked into a motel room near the airport and shot herself. [Us]
• In unrelated-to-the-Oscars-in-any-way "news", Nadya Suleman—that crazy person who has 146 children, some of whom are fortythreetuplets—says that the dude saying he's the father of some of the doomed little ragamuffins isn't actually the father. "He didn't work," she says of his attempts to splooge in or around her baginical area so the little fish that live in his balls could make a baby in her eggs. [Us]

Swoon.

If the Bush years were about winging it, Sullenberger is the refreshing antidote: Someone who knows how to do his job.

And not just as a pilot. Sullenberger, somehow, can handle not only a water landing on the Hudson River but also being elevated from mere mortal to the walking embodiment of a nation's hopes for itself. As he indicates at the end of the clip above, the pilot is fully aware of the projection that's going on and is trying his best to handle it with grace.

He's already ensured himself a distinguished record in that regard, too.

Well, okay, Couric was in on it. Turns out Sully made the "suggestion" of granting an interview with a student journalist while negotiating with 60 Minutes. Couric thought it was such a grand idea that she let Sanmugam interview her, too!

Usually broadcast-news interview subjects negotiate for first-class airfare, hotel rooms, photo-licensing fees, Broadway tickets, and so on — but no, Sully insisted on advancing the state of journalism education in America. (We have high hopes for Sanmugam — note the four separate audio recorders on the table in front of him as he interviews Sullenberger.)

This Sully guy is too good to be true. Speaking of Broadway tickets, did you hear that he got a standing ovation just for showing up at South Pacific last week?

Sure, he saved more than 100 lives on board his plummeting airplane. But one thing was eating at his soul: a library book he'd checked out.

Sullenberger contacted librarians and asked for an extension on the loan and a waiver on the overdue fine. The reason? The book is in the cargo hold of the US Airways plane that made an emergency landing last month in New York’s Hudson River

Ha, uh, just what we all would have done! And in a sickeningly heartwarming addendum, the book was about "professional ethics." Good lord in Heaven. Just let us touch the hem of your robes, Sully. [PublicRadio.org]

Matt Lauer could have told her that.

After all, Couric's former Today show colleague had a promise from Sullenberger and his people that the pilot of Flight 1549 would appear first on Today. After the Today appearance was delayed, Couric swooped in and Stole Sully for CBS' 60 Minutes.

NBC called "foul:"

"Unfortunately, people close to [the pilot] have not acted nearly as admirably [as he] over the past few days. They gave us their word, and then broke their commitment."

Now Sullenberger is running around on Couric, whose 60 Minutes had promised "the first interviews" with him and the crew. He ran into an ESPN reporter at a party for the Super Bowl, which he attended as an invited guest.Sully talked about crying with his wife, and what it was like in the cockpit:

"It was very quiet as we worked, my co-pilot and I. We were a team... But to have zero thrust coming out of those engines was shocking - the silence."

...Asked how he felt inside as his Airbus glided towards the water, the dashing silver-haired Californian said, "Calm on the outside, turmoil inside."

It's sad that a basically fine and decent human being like Sullenberger has to navigate the fierce pressures and guilt wielded by competitive TV news bookers. Outside of a small circle of industry people, no one is going to care that he effectively bumbled through the process of giving interviews to the press. People just want to hear what he has to say.

First hero pilot Chesley Sullenberg dumped the NBC Today show host for Katie Couric, breaking his word. Then the president's first White House interview, which Lauer trumpeted as his exclusive, went to Al Arabiya.

Then Jon Stewart told America about the Arab news network's "get" on the Daily Show, where he also made fun of Lauer's failed booking (see attached clip).

It won't be hard for Lauer to top that sort of week. Heck, at this point he'll probably be thrilled if Obama manages to get his name right, instead of constantly calling him "Tim" like last time.

UPDATE: There were some audio glitches, but otherwise things went smoothly. Obama is in the tank for the Steelers.

NEW YORK (AP) — Katie Couric has landed the first interview with hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger, who brought his distressed plane down in the Hudson River with all his passengers surviving.

The interview with Sullenberger and his crew will be shown on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Feb. 8.

Burn, Matt Lauer! Total Couric burn, on you! Old Sully apparently couldn't resist Katie Couric's charms. Would it be irresponsible of us to encourage wild speculation about just what exactly convinced this man to change his mind? Probably, yes. But you could speculate anyhow.

• Britney Spears has supposedly been offered the sum of $14 million for a three-to-five books about herself over the course of a decade. And yet she still tips poorly.
• MSNBC hottie Dan Abrams is now dating Renée Zellweger. The shady influence broker's conquests have included Elle Macpherson.
• Lindsay Lohan is going to try posing sexy in a New York magazine again and see if it takes her anywhere interesting. [Sun]
• Chesley Sullenberger, the hero pilot, enjoyed a low-key inaugural celebration at a DC restaurant called (yes) Hudson with fellow crew members. [P6]
• Joaquin Phoenix continued to be a train wreck, flashing a Las Vegas crowd through his corduroy pants and yelling at a documentary crew.
• Jude Law wasn't about to go to the Box without his "protective collar." [P6]
• Animal-hoarding monster Paris Hilton was somehow given an award by the Humane Society. [E!]
• Wesley Snipes can't even get free headphones at Sundance without somebody trying to snitch him out for tax evasion. [P6]
• Paula Abdul invented dancing with cartoon animals in music videos. She also invented Beyonce. And Rihanna. And pop music itself. You're welcome. [Showbiz Spy]

Sullenberger had been scheduled to give his first public interview on Monday morning to NBC "Today" show host Matt Lauer, but the appearance was canceled Sunday at the request of the U.S. Airline Pilots Association.

"The Sullenbergers continue to thank their many well-wishers for the incredible outpouring of support," the family said in a statement.

The mayor of his hometown, Danville, Calif., said the pilot and his family were attending President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration on Tuesday.

Okay now look. Sully is obviously a very modest and retiring man. Nobody can accuse him of publicity whoring. So what exactly is the freakin US Airline Pilots Association's problem here? Apparently they don't want him to talk because the investigation is still ongoing, and sure, that's a decent rule for normal situations involving normal, less heroic pilots. But America demands its heartwarming hero worship of Sully, complete with dramatic video montages, a Matt Lauer interview, and hastily printed biographies! These "pilot" friends of yours are harming your brand, Sully.

(Or maybe he asked them to ask him to pull out because he is the last noble non-slave to the media in America. In which case we salute you, sir.) [Newsday]