6. Olive Garden
14. Texas Roadhouse
19. Outback Steakhouse
24. IHOP
31. Macaroni Grill
72. Longhorn Steakhouse
73. Cheesecake Factory

Lesson: never underestimate the utilitarian appeal of unlimited bread sticks and salad. Related.

Doree was nice enough to stay seated at her computer long enough to stop counting the fat stacks of scrilla her and Love, Mom co-author Jessica Grose are raking in to help me with my mommy issues.

Okay. So: I totally flaked on sending my mom a present. Without plugging your book too hard, WTF DO I DO?! She's Jewish, and she's going to guilt me unless I come up with something solid.
well, the most important thing is to call.

Okay. And I shouldn't call collect, right?
that would be a no.

i was discussing this with my mom this morning in fact

because, even though i have now written a book that is of course the best possible present for mother's day, the irony (i think it's irony?) is that my mom was never a huge mother's day mom

she was like, when you were growing up i seem to remember you guys bringing me breakfast in bed

"but since your dad couldn't care less about father's day i felt like i couldn't make a big deal about it"

(my dad is israeli and doesn't really go in for these newfangled american consumerist holidays)

she was like, i'm fine with just some good wishes.

Okay, so, better question: how do I get my Mom to not care about Mother's Day? Enlist her in the IDF?
hmm, well it also helps for her to have a birthday that's really close to mother's day, like my mom does.

because then it's like kids whose birthdays are really close to christmas

you get a combined gift anyway

True. But let's say, uh, theoretically, I only did so-so with the birthday present.
since your mom neither has a birthday close to mother's day, nor is she married to an israeli, you might be out of luck.

In which case, I call and make a case for myself as a decent son. How do I do that?

then you are a bad son and all you can do is promise to atone for all your misdeeds on yom kippur.

but re: your question

i would call to wish her a happy mother's day and say something to the effect of, now that you're older and wiser you feel like you can really appreciate what a great mom she is, even if you were a little shit when you were younger.

etc.

flatter her

moms love flattery!

esp flattery about their mothering skills!

But I turned out like me.

So I should basically just lie to her?

yes.

Doree Shafrir's book, Love Mom, will make her money and your mom happy if you buy it for her.

First, the inevitable viral Digital Short that happens when Justin Timberlake hosts: Timeberlake and Andy Samberg reunite for the "Dick In A Box" sequel, "Motherlover." Cameos from perennial MILF's Patricia Clarkson and Susan Sarandon, masterful comedy.

The show cold-opened with Will Forte as Tim Geithner in a relatively highbrow sketch about a banking stress test. Forte's Geithner impersonation wasn't perfect - or close, for that matter - but the jokes were both fairly topical and spot-on.

JT opened the show with the old standby I'm-Always-On-SNL shtick repeat hosts get to pull at some point. Typically, this is the kind of staid, old, boring shit SNL's writers lean on to devote energy towards other material that isn't funny, either. But: pair it with a musical bend and an effortlessly, ridiculously charismatic Timberlake, and it floats.

More cameos and Star Trek topicality on Weekend Update: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Leonard Nimoy. Finally, the stars get to slag on the fundamentalist fanboy Trekkies who're trashing the franchise's epic revitalization. Fun: watch Keenan Thompson break character at Nimoy's surprisingly decent comedic chops.

Finally, Jimmy Fallon pops in for another Barry Gibb Talk Show with Timberlake. Slightly meandering at times, but the overall effect of seeing (A) Fallon playing characters again and (B) anything that involves Justin Timberlake singing on the show plays well is a nice reminder of the glory days. It's too bad SNL has to keep dipping into the (fairly recent) past to unearth a quality hour of TV, but we'll take what we can get.

I direct you to this article in the New Statesman regarding the inability of the hyper-respectable, semi-socialist BBC to compete with commercial interlopers like NewsCorp.'s British Sky Broadcasting:

Tough external regulation, forcing the BBC back to its core purposes, might provide the best hope of redeeming its reputation. Left to themselves, BBC bosses seem certain to plunge further into populism and empire-building, just as the opinion-forming classes blow the whistle ever more loudly. Their claim to have renounced croissants and consultants, bureaucracy and waste, is also bound to be rumbled.

Interesting. Surely no one can really believe that giving your mother what amounts to a 19-year-old's tattoo is not kitschy, right? Courtesy of Australian gossip site Crikey:

Here's one crackerjack cover story you won't be reading in Good Weekend magazine any time soon - the revealing inside account of the life and times of Wendi Deng. That's because the story, a vast 10,000-word profile that took its writer three months of research across the world, was killed by Good Weekend's editor (or someone above her) two days ago.

Crikey has learned that Good Weekend editor Judith Whelan commissioned Eric Ellis, a highly regarded Australian freelance journalist based in Singapore several months ago to write the definitive story of Wendi Deng, the Chinese-born wife of Rupert Murdoch.... The story is believed to be the most detailed account ever written about one of the world's most interesting and - through her marriage - most powerful women. It follows a provocative Wall Street Journal profile of Deng in 2000, titled "Rupert Murdoch's Wife Wendi Wields Influence at News Corp", which caused a furore within Murdoch family circles because of the information it revealed about the genesis of the Rupert-Wendi relationship and the sensitive area of the breakdown of Murdoch's 31-year marriage to Anna, the mother of Elisabeth, Lachlan and James.

Last year, Hong Kong's Next Magazine investigated Deng's early years, interviewing teachers, friends and classmates, dredging up some embarrassing childhood snippets (as noted in The AFR). "She had many talents — basketball, badminton, volleyball", said teacher Zhang Shan Li. "Academic ability was just above average."

To finance these acquisitions, Murdoch at times has gone to the brink, piling on so much debt in the early 1990s he needed a major restructuring to survive.... Often he has proved his critics wrong, seemingly going to any length to meet his goal. The publisher once dashed out at midnight in his pajamas to an airport to argue with officials that a fog preventing a newspaper-delivery flight was only a light mist.