A tipster (unconfirmed) relays the following, from inside the Conde mothership:

— Seven layoffs at Glamour today.
— All layoffs were on the sales side, source unclear if edit will be affected.
— Affected employees were either based in NY or Atlanta offices.
— One of the laid off employees is Danny Roberts, from "The Real World: New Orleans," who was a sales assistant in the Atlanta office.

Wikipedia says that after the show Danny Roberts "returned to Atlanta, Georgia, where he works in publishing." So by internet standards this is totally possibly true! Danny, email us at once. Our readers want to know that you're okay.

UPDATE: One of Danny's Facebook friends emails us he current FB status:

Jason Daniel Roberts is officially part of the Conde Nasty scrap heap...thank God ole mighty, i'm free at last!!"

1.) Adderall!

2.) The Stanky Leg

3.) Lil' Monkey

4.) Big Brother's Impeccable Montage Editing

5.) NYC Prep Schadenfreude

6.) Fox News' "Liberal" Views On Pole Dancing
(It doesn't count as "pole dancing" if you're using the pole for balance. Fair and balanced.)

7.) Good News for Gays
They have your kind in Wasilla, and Levi doesn't mind 'em.

8.) Gay Bitch

9.) La Toya: "There's Not Enough Aid For AIDS."
She is manic!

10.) A Hooker/Pimp Relationship Gone Awry?

Whoa, time warp. Remember those glittery old 1990s nights when you'd watch 90210 and then, right after, there would be Melrose Place waiting for you—a bitchy, bruised little giftbox. Well, in my case, in the early years at least, that only happened if the babysitter let me stay up. But still! We will soon get to relive those old days, only in a way shittier way! At the CW's upfronts yesterday they revealed that, yes, in fact, the new MP reboot will air on Tuesday nights right after the new, horrible 90210. So let your kids stay up late. Who knows, one day they could grow up to be gossip bloggers. Proud parents! [Variety]

Oh this sounds good. Rosario Dawson has just signed on to play opposite Kevin James in the romantic comedy The Zookeeper. The film is a about, um, a zookeeper whose animals teach him how to meet the ladies. Leslie Bibb from Popular is gonna be in it too. [Variety]

TNT is making a play to become the sixth major network, even though it's still stuck with that ugly basic-cable label. They held their own upfronts yesterday with notables like Dylan McDermott on hand to plug their cop dramas. In the upcoming months we may also see a Steven Spielberg-produced drama about aliens, a drama about a "down-on-his-luck" attorney, and a Kyra Sedgwick/Kevin Bacon-produced drama about a small town Texas sheriff called Zapata, Texas. TNT knows drama! Especially if it's half-baked brooding crime drama. [THR]

Roadside Attractions has picked up distrib rights to Happy Tears, which stars Demi Moore, Parker Posey, Rip Torn, and Ellen Barkin. Seeing as it's an indie and it's called Happy Tears, any guesses what it's about? Yep. You guessed it. It's about a wackily dysfunctional family. It comes out early next year. [THR]

Ohhh girl, get your reality on! The 22nd installment of MTV's syphilis-ridden warhorse The Real World will premiere on June 24th. The season is set in beautiful Cancun, Mexico and, since we haven't read any news reports about a tanned body full of booze turning up in a ditch outside Puerto Morelos, we'll just assume that Bryannica's case is still considered a "voluntary disappearance" by the Mexian authorities. [Variety]

The Sag Wars are heating up again. Which side will you fall on? Will you side with history? Are you willing to die by the SAG sword? Kate Walsh says vote yes. Do you really want to be on the losing side if Kate Walsh is victorious? She's a bloodthirsty maniac, hellbent on creating nothing less than global chaos and misery, after all. I mean, have you seen that show Private Practice? [Variety]

There was a prank war and the girls decided to fuck with the boys' food and there was much spitting and sputtering out of milk and cereal and suspicious chicken. (My new detective-themed restaurant idea: Dr. Mystery's Suspicion Chicken. Investors?) Naturally, the boys had to freak out and blow things wayyyy out of proportion until JD had another crazy blowdown and got all ups in Sara's face, yelling at her like she hadn't jumped through the hoop or waved her sad little flipper at the money-paying Seaquarium guests well enough. So it suddenly became embarrassing. As Ryan raged and said hateful things and JD stormed around with a shotgun, picking off anyone he could find.

In the morning, though, on their last day... Everything was peaceful and forgotten. You really got a sense that the girls had bonded. So that was nice. Everyone said their goodbyes and MTV orchestrated their always-cruel-but-soaring-and-poetic one roommate leaves at time thing and there were tears and sad, hopeful songs about growing and experience and you think, because you've had a gallon of wines to drink the night before and here you are in your pajamas in Brooklyn eating toast, you think... This is why people are alive! To miss each other.

Not much else really happened in the final outing. Pranks were pulled, voices were raised, quiet and burning loves were shuttered up and sheet covered, like old summer houses. (I had a writing teacher in college who would kill me right now for using all those passives, but evs! I ain't in college no more!)

Indeed no one is in college no more. Scott and Devyn and Baya all decided that they wanted to stay in New York and that they love each other more than the stars and the moon and the planets and the heavens so they'd like to marry and live together in a beautiful New York City apartment. And they found one! These crazy youngsters. They pooled together all their wrinkled dollar bills in an old top hat and set off, skipping and dancing like some street-wise urchins in a musical, to conquer that great Big Apple. Worms! They were worms! And they found a place. A little corner. A little ground to stake a claim. A piece of the pie. Where? "On fifteenth and first street," was what Scott said. Which. Hah. That doesn't exist, Scott. There is no 15th Avenue. I wish there was! It'd be a party every day on 15th Avenue, where the girls are pretty and the boys don't come back from war in pieces and there's always bossa nova playing and we all wear hats, on 15th Avenue! On 15th Avenue you'll find the love of your life and days won't be soggy and full of worry anymore, and sometimes there will be ice cream. All the kids play baseball and the old-timers die together, here on the one five.

So that's where they're going. Katelynn will disappear into the occluding dusk of Montana, where she will do computers and various men, her soft, horsey hair billowing in the stiff mountainy air. Almost to Canada!, it will seem to say as it reaches North. Sara will continue her bumbling days over in cloudy San Francisco, a city of hills and bridges, of tunnels and turnarounds. A place where you don't have to be gay if you don't wanna be, but man oh man does it sure ever help. JD will go on to feed fish to more squiggly, waterlogged mammals. And when he's not dating, he'll work with dolphins.

Chet will still be hopelessly in love with Ryan. The final episode was just jam-packed with tearful declarations of boy love for one another, all thumpy embraces and gay panic jokes. And while Ryan—who as a military vet has seen his fair share of tough times bromancery—can easily laugh it off, something small and true and hard has lumped in Chet's ribcage. Something's come loose and is rattling around that body, which Chet tries to keep all tight and orderly and contained with his skinny jeans and form-fitting T-shirts. But passion and desire are inescapable witches, dear Chet. Even for someone who's been blessed by the angel Moroni. What sad ephemeral lives we lead! Chet, seize the day. Just kiss him. Just to see what it feels like.

And Ryan. So, OK. There was a reunion special after the finale? And everyone showed up? Including Ryan? In short hair and fatigues? And swoon? It was terrific. That wicked dancing minx Baya has apparently snatched him up. See RyRy and Bella broke up, because she ran off with a vampire. But Ryan has been visiting his friends a lot in NYC and one thing led to another and now he and Baya are bumpin' uglies like no two roommates ever should. Ryan ships out back to Iraq two weeks from yesterday. Scary.

Also on the reunion: JD is still crazy, Katelynn still likes to talk in blackspeak, and Chet doesn't like it when you make fun of Jesus. Because Jesus is a real-life space angel who talks to people in Utah and tells them to send money to a place a few states over where two loving, committed people are trying to get married. And you need to send that money so you can stop them. Because if you don't, then Jesus Space-Angel is going to get mad and he won't send you any more nourishing Moon Rays or Calamity Pies. So that's that. Don't make fun of that hallowed and precious religions, Sara.

These are the extremely hungover ramblings of a crazy person at this point. So I'm going to wrap it up. But before we go, before we fritter off into the remains of this spring day, lost and alone as always, let's ask ourselves: What did we learn? How did we grow from watching this curious, muted, issue-y, reinvigorating, possibly game-changing, but more possibly just plain dull season of The Real World?

We learned that love is a universal language. That everyone can speak it, and that anyone, if they want to, can understand it. And no barrier—political, ideological, or otherwise—should ever come between that. We learned that being an ex-lesbian hippie punker chick from SanFran doesn't make you automatically cool. We learned that dolphin trainers have the shortest tempers, because theirs is a dangerous, yet terribly, terribly necessary, profession. We learned that people who don't know how to spell the names Devin and Caitlin correctly will often yak your ear off with little to no point. We learned that beefy boys from New England are basically like beefy boys from anywhere else, just with funny accents. We learned that Dance (and groove) is in the heart. But if it's not also in the feet, you won't make it as a professional (sick beats!). We learned that TRL was canceled.

And we learned that war is tough, and that war sucks, and that war is what old people wage on the young because they are cruel and jealous and drunk with meaningless power. We learned that war swallows up not just those it kills, but those who survive it. We learned that Change doesn't always come immediately.

We learned that the name of Brooklyn is best not whispered in whitey cafes, but rather chanted and yelled by choruses of African Americans. We learned that Red Hook is perched atop a beautiful, glittering sea. We learned that the world is neither real nor made-up, but is absolutely worth being a part of. We learned that Wednesday nights could definitely have been spent better. But they also could have been spent worse.

And we learned the word "blowdown." And that, I think, is the most important thing.

Until next time! Until Cancun! Mexico!

The company, which has produced all 257 seasons of Real World as well as other reality dreck, has put an ad on EntertainmentCareers.net looking for a "FULL TIME" production accountant for an as-yet-unnamed reality series filming in the Beltway area:

Really this makes complete sense. Ever since Barry O. came shuffling up to politics, his groundswell populist hat in hand, DC is a cool, inspiring, exciting place to be. You couldn't have been a bigger square in squaresville if you lived and worked in the city during Bush's millennium kick-off reign of terror. But now everyone wants in. The cast mates could be, like, political volunteers or something! Imagine the effect! The change! The hope!

For those in need of refresher, the 22 seasons thus far have been: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Miami, Boston, Seattle, Hawaii, New Orleans, Back to New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, Paris, San Diego, Philly, Austin, Key West (srsly), Denver, Sydney, Hollywood, Crooklyn.

So:

Drew Barrymore and her on-again, off-again puppy-ish ex-boyfriend Justin Long are set to star in a romantic comedy together, this one about long distance relationships. And if by "long distance" they mean the distance between canyons, like troughs of a wave, and how far away the isolation of fame can make you feel even when you're standing right next to someone, then I'm sure they'll both really bring something to their roles. [Variety] State of Play director Kevin Macdonald will travel a long distance... back in time, to direct The Eagle of the Ninth, a Roman-times story starring Jamie "Billy Elliot" Bell and possibly Channing "Shut Your Mouth and Drop Your Trousers" Tatum. Promisingly, the logline begins as such: "a wounded Roman soldier and his loyal Celtic slave..." Hm. [Variety]

Some British lad has joined the cast of the new Twilight movie, called Staking 2: Hectic Hullabaloo. Jamie Campbell-Bower, from Sweeney Todd, will play one of the Voltrons, an Italian clan of vampyrs. [Variety] Zack Snyder's "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns" Sucker Punch has found its lead. Emily Browning, that little girl from Lemony Snicket, will play an asylum inmate who creates a violent fantasy world in her head. She's joins such acting luminaries as Abbie Cornish and Vanessa Hudgens. [Variety]

Those tangled up in the flailing New York City film industry can step back from the ledge for just a second. New York State legislature has voted to extend the lucrative tax break program that buoyed the local industry for another $350 million worth of tax credits. TV shows looking to film in New York may be deterred by the new conditions of the program, though, as the credits are not open-ended. There are also strict limitations on how much of a break each production can receive. But still. Good news. [Variety]

The still reliably-employed Lucy Lawless has landed a new gig, one that returns her to familiar ground. She'll again be working with Xena: Warrior Princess creators Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi, this time on a series (for Starz, sigh) called Spartacus. She'll play the tough bosslady of a camp of gladiators. This comely fellow will play the title role. [Variety] Speaking of comely fellows, NBC and DirecTV have renewed their laboriously-praised joint venture Friday Night Lights for two more seasons. So more of Riggins and Hoodad and Whatshisnuts, ladies. Go team! [Variety]

The Wackness director Jonathan Levine is directing a movie for Fox Atomic about a babysitter. No, it's not some big-breasted young lady who gets horribly taunted and murdered, it's a boy who has funny things happen to him! The Sitter, which "will harken back to Adventures In Babysitting", is about a college student suspended for a semester who returns home to live with his moms. Then he has to babysit. Hilarity ensues. [THR]

MTV has ordered four more seasons of its crazy old coot of a series The Real World. This will bring the total for the 17-year-old reality thing to a haunting 26 cycles. The producers are currently filming a Cancun-set season, so where will these four new installments take place? Atlanta? Dallas/Houston? St. Louis? Orlando? Adamsville, RI? Emblem, WO? What do you think? Oh, also... four more seasons of Road Rules, too. So. [THR]

What I'm trying to say is that last night's installment of MTV's venerable old warship was a masterclass in reality TV editing; a multi-layered trip into strangers' brightly-lit lives that didn't involve drinking (well not really). There was adventure and intrigue and sorrow and joy and pole dancing. This is still The Real World, after all.

Our journey began (and ended, really) with Katelynn. I'm not sure if you knew this, but Katelynn is something called a Transgendered. A Transgendered is a creature from the southern slopes of the Andes who once subsisted on grubs and assorted berries but now exists mostly in captivity. You can identify a Transgendered by the distinct teeny-tiny-underpants markings on its lower torso. Another trait of the Transgendered is that it likes to constantly remind you that it is a Transgendered, issuing its shrill-yet-guttural hoots into any ear that comes its way. In short, shut the hell up Katelynn. We get it. We support you! Enough.

Katelynn decided to help AIDS, so she and her little friends went to the AIDS n' Gay place and offered their services. Not wanting this lumbering, terrifying creature (Devyn) scaring the locals, they shipped everyone off to Gettysburg, PA to wave flags at a gay AIDS bike parade. Ryan was excited because that's his hometown. So, after some early morning dumbness with everyone waking up and Katelynn going into Berzerker Mode and throwing Ryan's alarm clock out the window, they were off! In their teeny-tiny cars. Stuffed in there like clowns or transgendered sardines.

Because boys and girls will never get along—like old people and garage door openers—Chet, Shithead, and the Gang rode in one car, while Claudia, Jessi, Mallory, and Little Sister Karen rode in the other buggy. Those dumb bitches got to Gettysburg all right but missed the tour bus they were supposed to take, while the girls were just driving 10 mph and showed up the next day. The boys made a run for the bus (JD fell down!! JD fell down!!! Hey everyone, the gay guy fell dowwnnnnn!!!!) and made it on. There they sat all smug with their big headphones while Chet swooned and said things about how great it is to be just guys with each other, with all those hard, muscly body parts gently brushing up against each other, the smell of sawdust and beer farts mingling in the purple Pennsylvania air. Transcendent.

Once Chet's Tunnel of Love riverbus tour was over, Ryan took everyone to the fanciest restaurant in town to meet his family. They all looked like nice, salt-of-the-earth folks. And because Katelynn is a slug, she reacted badly to it. "Everyone was nice, but I was bored," she dribbled. Luckily the family portion of the evening ended and the "hey let's feel awesome because we're on TV and no one else here in Shittington Corners is" part began. Because it was the fanciest restaurant in town, just beyond a small dividing wall was a low-ceilinged bar that had a teeny-tiny DJ record-spinning table. Because she's basically a glorified roadie at this point, Baya was made to go over and yell things into a microphone and play music. And then the worst thing happened, the thing that pulled the sweater string of this season and began to unravel it.

Katelynn did a stripper pole dance. On a pole that wasn't a stripper pole. At a family restaurant. In Gettysburg PA.

She lurched and twirled around and everyone in the room was horrified. But odd, loosey-limbed sexuality is all Katelynn seems to think femininity is about, so she was allowed to go about her business. Earlier in the episode Devyn and Sarah were all "you can't wear your teeny-tiny underpants and nothing else around the house" and Katelynn didn't understand because she's a sexy woman now and has to be sexy. Incorrect. It's sort of a sad indictment of our current socio-sexual political landscape that a boy who finally gets his wish and blossoms into a woman—a hard-won, expensive battle—takes her new, lovely wings, embarks into the world of Womanity and... slumps around on a non-stripper-pole stripper-pole in some dumpy restaurant in Pennsylvania. Ah well. Oh, and she fell down. While on the pole. And blamed it on a lack of grease. The clip is above. Words can't do it justice.

So everyone was upset and JD was playing both sides by making tranny jokes but also still trying to seem with-it and then there was some sort of Incident at Owl Creek that involvd Chet flirting with JD by tickling his ear with a gay AIDS flag at the gay AIDS bike ride party. Katelynn and the self-righteous, almost-molested-to-death Sarah got all upset. Some sniping ensued, the boys said more nasty things about trannies in the car ride home, and then there was a fight.

All the boys called Sarah self-righteous and annoying, which was her cue to go to the confessional and act self-righteous and annoying. Meanwhile Katelynn was walking around rubbing her vagina on various corners of the furniture, because she can do that now. Chet was helpfully wearing his big purple Chet hat, in case you forgot his name was Chet. Chet. His name is Chet. First Chet called the girls immature, which is insane considering who he is. Then he was all "your big vocabulary and liberal stances don't mean you're right" and I was all "you're an idiot, Chet. You have a rat tail," and then Mallory moved away to boarding school and everyone cried and made her an honorary member for life.

So there was some fight about that and then a calm and then JD and Devyn got into it. I have no idea how the fight started but they were arguing about the difference between "the psyche of a little girl and the psyche of a little boy." Devyn said she'd studied psychology on the "collegiate" level and therefore knew there was a difference between the two. JD said he is friends with dolphins so he knows they're the same. Then JD dissed Devyn for being a "college dropout," to which Devyn replied "I am not a college dropout." Except she is. Because she dropped out of college. Devyn said she can still say she is "college educated" because she has two years of collamajig under her belt. To which I say no: you are not fully college educated until you have stayed up for at least 24 hours straight, drinking the whole time, then have to sit for hours in the rain while some damn fool drones on and on about choices and roads and writing letters. That's the education: that the rest of your life will be cold and rainy and hungover and full of people telling you to do things. Sorry Devyn, but if you didn't get that in college, you didn't get anything.

So everyone exploded and said they were double majors in things while only saying one major ("I double majored in Psychology." And...?), while Katelynn taught her vagina to sit and roll over and then she told everyone that she was a Transgendered and everyone said "duhhh." Ryan was nice enough about it, if not a little unsettled. Little Scotty Mouthbreather made weird jokes about dicks in jars and Chet thought "what a fantasy!" and then Baya walked by in the distance hauling some lighting equipment, weeping.

Finally, Katelynn played pool with the boys and made tranny jokes with them and gender identity was solved.

So much happened and it was exciting! Good for everyone for fighting and saying things like "the ladies are off trimming their vagina hairs" (10 points to Gryffindor, Scotty). It's just a shame that at the very end of the episode, Katelynn found a little box insider her, um, box and opened it and all the ills of the world came spewing out and devoured everyone in a haze of misery and discord.

Until next week.

They're sending the next batch of toned and tacky youngsters to Cancún.

Cancún is an ancient village situated on the coast of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. It's widely known for its rich tequila aquifers, its official sport, Wet T-shirt Contesting, and the haunting ruins that belch, vomit, and moan in the Senor Frog's parking lot.

This will be something of a return for the Real World producers, who sent cameras to the Spring Break mecca to film the searing documentary The Real Cancún in the early aughts. That film is perhaps most famous for the touching moment when the nerdy, very-recently-converted former teetotaler Alan said kindly to his pals "I just want a girl who's right there so I can butt fuck them." Terrific!

This round of kids will work for a tour company, helping other brahs and coeds plan fun vacays during which they boff anonymously and hopefully don't die and stuff. "They're going to help give people a safe and fun vacation," co-creator Jonathan Murray said. "They also might have to bail somebody out of a Mexican jail, stuff like that." Haha, yes! Mexican prison. A lark!

We're a bit surprised that they're reverting to the tired old "drunk n' doin' it formula" so quickly, though. The earnest, decidedly un-boozy Brooklyn season has so far earned higher ratings than the most recent slurry outing that went staggering by. Maybe it's an application of the old movie adage "one for me, one for them." Though in this scenario, we're not sure who "me" is. Or who "them"...uh, are. We can't figure it out. We're too shitfaced. WOOOOOO.

The area was tight with security that kept curious onlookers out during production. But once MTV left, Maher and a student surveyed the area. "The place looked like a trash dump," Maher said, with evidence of felled trees, wooden structures, and pages of scripts (revealing that the reality show is actually, well, scripted).

Hah! Scripts! Oh I wish they'd kept some of the pages and maybe scanned them and sent them to us. If you still have them, anyone out there, please send them to us.

MTV, for what it's worth, denies the mess:

A spokeswoman from Bunim/Murray — the production company of the Real World and Road Rules shows for MTV — said that no trees were cut down for the filming of The Island, and that the pictures were taken before crews had a chance to clean up the area.

Seriously guys, jeez. Give them a minute, man. They'd just finished dragging the sweaty corpses of BrieChanta and Dustin into their shallow, sandy graves—after they'd gurgled softly following that last rum shot, crossed their eyes, and collapsed. That takes time, brah! [Portfolio] Photos of the mess are here.

If you're curious, an episode of the show lies below.

We think he's cute, sure, but there's something so cultivated about his look. It just seems a bit forced. Maybe too forced...

And, hah! These kids are really making the rounds. A funny tipster saw them at East Village shit hut Angels & Kings last night:

So I'm chillin, tryin to enjoy my Ciroc open bar for Gym Class Heroes record release party at Angels & Kings, and this camera crew add 3 total douchey douchingtons roll up with their fucking fluorescent horizontal beam of hellish light to film. It was confirmed to me that it was the Real World. So, they DO leave Brooklyn. Apparently they've been coming to Angels and Kings, probably cause it's one of the only bars that'll actually let them, like...film there. All my life I've wanted to cause a ruckus, but in the midst of the camera crew and others who would judge, I simply threw some lime wedges and, on their walk out, an elbow jab. How pathetic. But it would've been more pathetic had I caused a ruckus. "Look at this loser trying to get attention" the people would cry.

Anyway it's not much of a story but blonde faux hawk boy was there, and this dude that looked like Blake Sennett from Rilo Kiley except he was wearing a tilted, fully curved frat boy hat. Now THAT's a story!

Again, his name is Chet. He's a Mormon with "spiky blonde hair." On the evening that the NY Press caught up with him, he was wearing an H&M scarf and "Elvis Costello glasses," and was drinking a Shirley Temple. He apparently loves glam rock and was "gushing" when some slinky male rocker put something around his neck and whispered in his ear. And, yes, he is engaged (as all Mormons are, from birth. That's just science). But, um, doesn't that above description sound a little well, um, un-fishy, if you catch my brine shrimp drift? So who's going to fuck this kid? Will youuuuu? The above photo, from NewYorkology, seems to offer the best known glimpse of the mysterious Mormon.

1. Revamp Daria for the Hills crowd: By spotlighting Daria's popular sister Quinn, the show could be retrofitted to attract iconoclasts and super sweet sixteens alike! As commenter Jill Tyrrell said, "They could totally put Daria back in syndication on MTV, and re-name it Quinn or Fashion Club. It'd be like The Hills, in cartoon form! All the LC-Conradettes out there would go crazy for it. 'I love Quinn! She is lyk soooooo awesome! I soooo wanna be in the Fashion Club! But why is that four-eyed lesbo bitch Daria always being to mean to her????'"

2. Hire new casting directors for The Real World: Commenter Antonella fondly recalled that in its early seasons, The Real World "was less about drunken hook ups at celebutard wannabes and more about...well, real people." MTV has proven that ordinary people can still be compelling — just check out the gangly, awkward teens of The Paper — so why does The Real World have to be cast exclusively with musclebound meatheads who can hold a barbell longer than they can hold our interest?

3. Don't Be Bashful About Stoking Nostalgia: VH1 Classic is all well and good, but how about this suggestion from Dave J.: "They should have a 'MTV: Origins' channel or whatever, and only show original programming from back in the day (pre-Real World) and actual music videos from start to finish, and then see how it does ratings wise vs. the actual MTV. It probably wouldn't do as well, but I bet it would do better than Viacom thinks." Dave, anything that might presage a Sifl & Olly revival is OK by us.

4. Leave music video commentary to the professionals: Virtually the only time you're assured of seeing music videos on MTV is during the show FNMTV, which premieres the videos alongside instant viewer feedback sent from MTV.com. While that's all well and good, the peanut gallery isn't likely to provide masterfully crafted insults a la Julie Brown or Beavis & Butthead. Commenter derby reminded us of the amazing special MTV Lame, when a countdown of the network's worst videos ever was hosted by a dream team of comedy including Jon Stewart, Janeane Garofalo, Denis Leary, and Chris Kattan. FNMTV may be interactive, but only on a special like MTV Lame can you see Vanilla Ice menace Jon Stewart with a baseball bat.

5. Begin a Lionel Richie channel: Could it be that MTV had the means to their salvation all along? As floated by crescentia and seconded by 30f, a Lionel Richie channel (with marathon reruns of the music video for "Hello") could be an epic ratings win. Hey, it would at least outdraw Buzzin'.

• PREVIOUSLY: 7 MTV-Defining Stars Who Wouldn't Be Allowed on MTV Anymore [Defamer]

Pedro Zamora: Before The Real World became principally concerned with two things (castmate hookups, and acting as a feeder for the better-rated Challenges), it was filled with the sort of people who had never been seen on TV before — something reality TV can excel at, if it wants to. One of those people was Pedro Zamora, a gay, HIV-positive educator who died the day after his last episode aired on MTV. No less than President Clinton praised Zamora for giving the country a personal look into those living with the disease.

Why He Wouldn't Be Allowed on MTV Now: Who would he be able to hook up with?

Daria: It's hard to imagine, but MTV used to relate more to outcasts than potential prom kings and queens — and there was no one more acerbic than Daria Morgendorffer.

Why She Wouldn't Be Allowed on MTV Now: Not willing to make out with other girls.

Julie Brown: No, not the VJ famous for saying "Wubba Wubba," but the comedienne who hosted the outlandish Just Say Julie from 1989 to 1992. Absolutely everything on the network was fair game to her (long before Beavis & Butthead, she was playing music videos just to mock them), and she satirized sacred cows like Madonna and her own Valley Girl image with impunity.

Why She Wouldn't Be Allowed on MTV Now: According to this site, Brown was born in 1954, which meant she turned 35 during the first season of her show. 35! Can you even imagine MTV handing a show to a 35 year-old woman now? They'd sooner give the VMAs back to the Wayans brothers.

Tabitha Soren: It may be hard to believe, but there was a point when the MTV News reporter pictured above was derided as nothing more than a shameless attempt to sex up the news. Nowadays, even your local news anchor resembles Jenna Jameson.

Why She Wouldn't Be Allowed on MTV Now: Only male news personalities are allowed to grow old gracefully on MTV. And by "gracefully," we mean that despite pushing fifty, they are expected to dye their hair and dress like members of Good Charlotte.

Kurt Cobain: The frontman of Nirvana ushered in an age devoid of pop singers and boybands, where nerdy, unconventional acts like Radiohead and Bjork were given common rotation for their groundbreaking videos.

Why He Wouldn't Be Allowed on MTV Now: It's hard to break out as a music video star when you're relegated to 30-second clips playing alongside the end credits for Run's House.

The Kabel typeface: There may be nothing better associated with MTV than this iconic typeface, which was used to intro and outro every single video (and was phased out last year).

Why It Wouldn't Be Allowed on MTV Now: No more videos to intro and outro. Which brings us to our last item...

Music Videos: When Justin Timberlake won an award at last year's VMAs, he finished his MTV-dissecting speech by yelling, "Play more damn videos!" Sorry Justin, you're going to have to get your music videos the same way the rest of us do now: on YouTube, at 3am, after a drunken search for Arrested Development's "Tennessee" ends with a lonely, mangled singalong.

Remember when Danny's mom passed away on Real World: Austin? It was terribly sad and awkwardly on camera, but it also transformed Danny from complete drunken buffoon into actual, sympathetic person. I'm not saying that he needed his mother to die in order to become "real," rather that we on the on the other side of the glowing box can be pretty jaded—we forget that, beyond the silly feather ruffling and preening, these really are people with lives and mortality and family. It's a bitter little pill to swallow, sure, but I think it lends an air of legitimacy to a landscape that is, for the most part, lacking in that department.

Well, except for Beauty and the Geek which is sweet and lovable and all about feelings and makes me happy. That show is pure gold. But these other ones, especially this Bigg Boss where I hope Ms. Goody makes a speedy and full recovery and that maybe she's helped raise awareness for vigilance in detection and prevention, shouldn't be at fault, in my opinion, for airing these difficult moments. Reality show "stars" (contestants? participants? guinea pigs? victims?) may mostly be signing up to have their drunkenest hot tub kadoodle flicker on their horrified parents' television set, but once in a while something true and difficult and all-too-relatable will happen and you remember that, despite all the silliness and Jell-O shooting and gonorrhea having, in the words of High School Musical, we're all in this together. And that's a good thing.

(Also you should really just read the article because it's sort of crazy and reads like a book about magic. India!)

Yellow Shirt: Michael, 19, Houston. Talks with a lisp and seems a bit light in the loafers, but is totes straight. Just ask his long-suffering girlfriend back home who spends her days woodenly hating the game, not the playa. Michael has snap-happy arguments with one female roommate who needles him about his latent homosexuality. Think Irene and Steven from Seattle.

Black Shirt: Jeremy, 21, Fresno. Has a hip, fresh, depressing white boy funk style. Seems actually capable of talking to women for three and a half seconds without trying to hump them, but revels in his horndog dirtbaggy ways when out with the boys. Meets a girl named Mashley from Staten Island at a clurrb one night, sorta has an on-again-off-again fling with her, but eventually decides he needs to be a free agent.

Pink Shirt: Danica, 24, Nashua, NH. From a New England town, the hoarse-voiced Danica went to big ol' party school ASU and drank and slopped her way through four years, managing to graduate with degrees in Spanish and finance. She rasps loudly about how drunk she was allll the time and falls in love with every boy who gives her three and a half seconds worth of attention (with or without trying to hump her.)

Blue Shirt: Broderick, 22, Apopka, FL. Just finished FSU, where he studied history. Seems like one of those cool laid back guys who'd make a swoony young high school teacher, but is actually a drunken debacle. After threatening to punch out some weasely hipster in the premiere episode, Broderick's narrow meatheadedness spirals out of control until he sobbingly admits to having stubbed his toe once when he was six. He'll decide to go home after this shocking revelation.

Magenta Shirt: Ninjizza, 23, Miami. Went to Emory, has a degree in French and Political Science. Is overbearing, bossy, demanding, and secretly very sad. Has one drunken night where she keeps saying she's going to "throw my damn self off the New York Bridge." Deftly recovers when the job challenge emerges—creating a Brooklyn bus tour—and she can take control of that. No one is sad when Ninjizza leaves at the end of the season.

Striped Shirt: Misty, 20, St. Louis. Shy and nerdy, Misty will be very much the shrinking wallflower of the season. She'll harbor a quiet, sad crush on Broderick, who will lead her on mercilessly. She will, of course, get very drunk one night and stab Ninjizza. She'll have to go home.

(OK, I know there's one cast member missing, and that if you look at the other photos on NewYorkology there are other people who could be cast members and Jeremy could totally be gay, but whatever, I'm on a fucking bus.)

Reportedly the exact address of the building is 204 Van Dyke St., so if you live nearby, shutter your windows and blood your doors, because the Lord's wrath is on its way. Luckily, though, you ought to get a pretty clear idea fairly quickly of where the gaggle of idiots will be hanging out, because MTV usually signs preemptive filming waivers from one or two bars/restaurants before shooting so they don't have to worry about getting clearance at a bajillion different places. So find out which two bars those are, and avoid them like the plague for the next six months or so. Come on up to Park Slope in the meantime. We have strollers! And a park! And, uh, a slope!

• The Real World season one, obviously. I mean, zeitgeisty to the extreme.
• He was a writer for Vibe magazine. All about pop culture things!
• He wrote a famous cover story about Tupac Shakur. You may have Tupac on one of your t-shirts!
• Headlining a Powell for Congress fundraiser tonight: Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. Beat that, bitch.
• He's the preferred candidate of AfroPunk skaters.
• "Mr. Powell’s campaign has advertised a mixtape they created featuring excerpts of his campaign speeches remixed on top of songs by Tupac, Talib Kweli, Mobb Deep and Kanye West."

Needless to say we're fuzzy on what Mr. Powell stands for politically, since we've already made our judgment in his favor based solely on his pop culture history. But he does support Barack Obama—the same guy that cool young people elsewhere support! Fuck you, Jesse Helms' ghost! We knew Kevin was in for big things way back when he was the most businesslike guy in the house:

As cinematic as Sarah's tour de puke through Hollywood appears, things get far more interesting back at the apartment, when Greg replacement Nick takes Sarah's face-in-a-bucket moment of fame as an opportunity to snap some pictures. Sarah's comeback? "Who do you think you are, Charles Barkley?!" Yeah! Um, wait. Charles Barkley? The Round Mound Of Rebound? If we were attempting to dis someone by drunkenly shouting out the name of a marginally talented photographer, we would've likely screamed out William Wegman, Anne Geddes or even The Cobrasnake before spitting out the name Charles Barkley, but that's just us.

• GOOD GIRL GONE BAD [AOL]