LATEST NEW STUFF

● Bad/good news -- you'll be reading books on your iPad -- five publishers -- Macmillan, HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster and Hachette signed on with Apple.

● Bad/ sad news -- you'll be paying for reading the New York Times on line in 2011 -- visitors will get a certain number of viewings (not yet disclosed) free, each month before they're asked to pay a flat fee for access. It sounds complicated, indefinite -- but Arthur Sulzberger Jr., company chairman/publisher of the great newspaper that we count on to always be there, said, sort of gingerly, “We can’t get this halfway or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right.”

● Mind boggling numbers -- Obama's $3.8 trillion budget, attacked by Republicans as a reckless recipe for fiscal disaster, though Bush's $3.1 trillion budget created the financial crisis that Obama needs the money to solve.

● IN vocabulary -- frenemy, staycation, waterboarding, apocalipstick, shawarma, neuroprotective. cardioprotective, locavore, vlogs, webisodes, prepone (opposite of postpone), and flash mob, in beta, sock puppet, green collar. Plus carry-overs from last year -- mini good news, teachable moment, shovel ready; toxic assets, too big to fail, linguistics, Czar, apps, transparency, tweet; sexting, stimulus; bromance, chillaxin.'

● Good/bad news on jobs -- unemployment down to 9.7 %, but many job hunters have stopped job-hunting, making the unemployment figures look better, when they're worse or more or less the same.

● Bad, big hero Mel Gibson is making a comeback as a bad-good-guy-violent-hero, but ... well, he's a bit over the hill, and sort of, kind of out of style/out of date.

● New Styrofoam -- it's mushroom fungus -- root-like fibers that form "mycelium" -- a non-toxic, fireproof, water resistant, insulation material, that traps more heat than fiberglass.

● Football -- it's been deemed "deadly" by medical experts-- the 90 million people who watched the Super Bowl in Miami don't realize that guys on the teams often end up brain damaged.

● Weird new female doings -- "Vagazzle" and Vag Rejuventation are among the six things the Huffington Post lists, that women do to "fix" their vaginas -- ranging from cheap, cosmetic deodorants to expensive surgical alterations (vaginal rejuvenation, $20,000.) Actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, in her new "dating" book, devotes a whole chapter to the subject.

Jennifer Love Hewitt appeared on Lopez Tonight recently, to hawk her new dating book. One of her tips: glue shiny things on your "vajayjay" so it shines like a disco ball.

Whewy!

All I can say is "Happy new decade" -- lets save the NY Times and buy it every Sunday, learn the IN words, sigh over Mel Gibson, insulate our houses with mushrooms, hope for the best on the national budget, job-hunters, and brain damaged football players, and brace ourselves -- here's Jennifer with Lopez -- she gets to the revelations at 2: 40.