On Friday evening, John Mayer publicly apologized to a gathered "at capacity" audience for the recent kerfuffle over his Playboy interview. We would like to now take this time to finally extend a formal employment offer for Mr. Mayer.

Letters to the Editor: they're fun. But the New York Observer doesn't run many of them online! If they did, people would know how unhappy Mos Def is with the New York Observer. But the voice of the people...

You would think kids who are extraordinarily smart have enough on their plate. Not so much! argue parents whose kids' intelligence they have nothing to do with, as evidenced by the way they not-at-all reluctantly put them on game shows!

So! The Hope For Haiti Telethon was last night, and if you're like everyone else, it was Friday night, and you were out, you selfish fuck. Or all TEAM COCO. Either way, music happened. Timberlake! Beyonce! Swift! Hova! Gospel Choirs!

I must've missed the Benjamin Spock chapter on it, because I don't remember there being anything in the book on child-rearing like this. Then again, I don't have kids, and I've don't read parenting books. So I could be wrong...

A found-everywhere band of the last two years, Brooklyn-bred Vampire Weekend's back with a new album, and new press lines to go with it: they've transitioned from their "prep-chic" Ivy League linage image into ostensibly different "California"-style brand identification.

Will Lady Gaga supersede athletes as the new go-to endorsement deal? The Gags is gonna be the "Creative Director" of Polaroid, who revitalized the brand by dying and getting awesome investment capital. She's also got her own Dr. Dre headphones.

"Another fucking Bono op-ed," a tipster astutely notes! The U2 frontman has Ten Ideas to Change the World, and they're in the Times' Op-Ed section "in the spirit of rock star excess." So how 'bout ten ideas to change Bono?

The internet causes all kinds of ruckus for rock stars. It can make people who aren't dead die! Or as is Diddy's case, married. Or, as is Van Morrison's case, born.

Why's this so important? Because Soundgarden kicked ass, is why. Sure, there are people who will go in the comments thread and be like "You didn't like Audioslave WTF is wrung w/you man?!" and others will note how much better Temple of the Dog is than Soundgarden ever could be, so how can Soundgarden ever be good? And…

Battle Studies, indeed! TMZ recently ran video of someone harassing James Cameron to sign an Avatar poster, the highlight of which: Cameron calling his "fan" a "fucking asshole." Typical TMZ. But Cameron's surprising public advocate nailed the story.

"Guerilla Radio," indeed. Remember angry 90s WTO-protest mascots Rage Against the Machine? Well, they and their fans decided to take on British holiday radio playlists dominated The Pop Music-Industrial-Complex Machine. And they won, pissing off Simon Cowell in the process.

So, there's this band, Owl City, and they have songs, and teenagers like them. The song is basically a complete ripoff of the Postal Service, a great act. Given the chance to speak? More music dumbquotes to the Times, GO:

There's an entire Sunday Styles item on Jay-Z's nu-New York anthem, which has now been performed at the VMAs, the World Series, City Hall, your son's bris, and everywhere else. Should Hova step off, or should Sinatra step over?

I'm not a huge Oprah fan, but there's something about Jay-Z and Oprah walking around the Marcy Projects right now, chatting about whatever, that's really quite wonderful. In other news, thanks, Oprah, for stealing my dream profile assignment. H8Uagain. [RapRadar]

The arrest of Harvard's star African-American studies professor Henry Louis Gates has reignited national conversation about things like racial profiling! The important part of the conversation, however? What the best of pop culture has to say about it, naturally.

So: Bret Easton Ellis is on the cover of expensive Amsterdam-based magazine Fantastic Man, drinking a Diet Coke. In it, he calls the soul-sucking experience that is The Hills "the greatest show that I have ever seen in my life."