I just landed at LAX airport, returning from New York. I turned on my BlackBerry and it started churning out the emails. When it crossed over 50, I knew something was up.

I am shocked, floored, stunned, depressed, bitter, sad but mostly disheartened with the last name Spears.

What is nagging at me the most is the fact that OK! Magazine is rolling out this story. More than any other outlet, OK! routinely pays celebrities for access to their personal life. They usually are very positive in tone and I do not blame them at all for their pay to play approach - it works.

But if OK! paid, then little Jamie Lynn and her camp (which should be one person dealing with Tiger Beat a few times a month) had the instinct to profit at a moment like this.

A sixteen-year-old girl, a baby herself, totally ill equipped to raise a child and become a mother, gets pregnant and already opportunism strikes? It would be a product of what I view as the growing underbelly of Hollywood.

I just finished my travel from Los Angeles to Park City. That's LAX to SLC. I would like to now voice something we very rarely here: A huge thank you to Southwest Airlines (landed 20 minutes early), the TSA (people shuffling through security with every lane open and many handlers to facilitate the flow. The curbside was fast and efficient.

Thank you FAA, TCA, SWA and SDB (Sydney D. Bush, my sweet wife for sitting with our 3 year old who was squirming quite a bit on the flight.

A great success for the Bushes travelling this holiday. I hope everyone experiences the same.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I interviewed Roger Ebert over the weekend at his home in Chicago.

I had never spent time with the legendary film critic before but my impression of him was always one of extreme knowledge, some impatience and a tad of pomp. When you get awarded a pultizer prize for excellence in criticism, you're allowed some pomp, or at least some ego on display.

Roger has been through a lot in the last five years. He beat Thyroid cancer in 2002. He then got salivary gland cancer which later spread to his jaw. In June of 2006, he had surgery on his jaw...a couple weeks later he had a burst cartoid artery and had to have emergency surgery. They gave him a tracheostomy and now he has a tight bandage around his neck, his lip hangs down low, leaving his mouth agape. The man looks a little beat up....but he has LIFE. He is grateful, gracious, kind and the same unabashedly honest critic that he was before.

When I do an interview with an actor whose movie stinks, I ask one question about the movie and move on to something else.

Every morning I wake up and read the synopsis of last night's celebrity happenings. I get the written reports and details on what video is available. It’s amazing how little sleep some of these people need.

Our policy is to buy only the non-invasive footage from the agencies that employ these paparazzi. Honest question is: if we didn't buy any and if every other show and magazine all of a sudden banded together and refused to buy any, wouldn't they all go away? Wouldn't the celebrities be safer and happier being left alone?

I really am lost here. For sure, some celebs would be happier and quite grateful. Not all.

I am convinced Britney Spears loves the attention. When they finally do go away, out of boredom or her finally being passé, she will go into an attention deficit withdrawal...my belief.

There is a lot of great TV out there right now, they just have to save it. If the writers strike happens... if we wake up on Thursday morning and all of a sudden TV is all about Reality, Game Shows and Re-runs, it will be a very sad event. Ratings will plummet. People will get angry with TV... may start READING or something (horror!).

I just saw some great TV. I watched the season finale of "Californication" last night and it was awesome. I think David Duchovny is Emmy bound for his lost soul, fighter/writer, Hank Moody.

But as soon as the credits were finished rolling, they teased a new season "coming soon." It occurred to me, they aren't sure how soon because they may not have their writers to do the job.

The networks on top of the ratings and the cable and pay cable nets on a creative roll, are going to have to lead the way through this mess in the 11th hour. Halloween is doomsday... how ironic is that?

Guys love sports.

When Jerry Seinfeld walked into my interview room, ready to chat about 'Bee Movie,' his early days as an experimental Scientologist, our viability as a gay couple (he brought that one up; I was just flattered), I had the New England Patriots game on.

After telling Jerry I was not an across the board Boston fan (what a great time to be one), I did admit to loving the Patriots and Tom Brady. Jerry wasn't so sure Tom deserved ALL the adulation... he referenced the model juggling act Tom has recently managed in his life - Tom went from Bridget Moynahan, who he later discovered was pregnant, to Giselle Bundchen. I asked Jerry to consider the two models and all that extracurricular activity in his life and how Tom is still laser focused on the field. "We could throw in a third model, and I still think he'd pull it off."

Jerry began to come around.

Paris Hilton is no longer going to Rwanda because the two people who founded Playing For Good have split their ways. Maria Bravo, a dedicated philanthropist who joined forces with Scott Lazerson, a former executive Director of the Larry King Foundation and equally dedicated philanthropist. Paris attended the Playing For Good Philanthropic Summit this past summer in Mallorca, Spain at the behest of Scott who met her through a mutual friend. He came away from their first meeting seeing a woman ready to change. Maria came away hopeful but a bit skeptical.

I was supposed to attend the same summit over in Mallorca and was asked to emcee the final gala on Saturday night. I told Maria and Scott I could not share a stage with Paris Hilton, casting the spotlight on her as a philanthropist, without having the simultaneous opportunity of interviewing her. There were questions, I contended, that she needed to answer.

I wanted to follow up on the many altruistic promises she made on Larry King during that groundbreaking post jail interview. Her words to Larry: "I feel like, you know, being in the spotlight, I have a platform where I can raise awareness for so many great causes and just do so much with this, instead of, you know, superficial things like going out. I want to help raise money for kids and for breast cancer, multiple sclerosis and..."

She's given the world a sex tape, bad movies, jail time; but the appearance in Spain would be her first step into helping others... although it WAS a party. Suffice it to say, I felt like a report card was in order. Still do... and its coming. Although, with it plain and clear that peoples' standards for Hilty are low, why bother, right?

The Malibu fires are awful....while it does sound odd to speak out for "those poor people in Malibu", loss and sadness excludes nobody. I think of Suzanne Somers having to evacuate her temporary house, temporary because the last fire claimed her home, and I feel terribly.

There are other areas where the fires rage on and there are less well-off people suffering. My resolve is to help whomever needs it. Today, I need to find a way.

I still think of myself as an East Coaster but having lived in the LA area for three years, maybe it’s time to understand that this has affected my community. And communitarianism is truly American in my book.

Portia signed the contract for her and Ellen....

The contract states that if the home situation doesn't work out, the responsible owner must return the pup to the adoption agency. Also, that all children in the home must be at least 14 years old. Little Ruby is 12. Statistics show that one half million adopted animals end up in shelters in their lifetime, hence the stringent policy.

So, contractually forbidden to redistribute Iggy the dog via her own discretion, Ellen did it anyway. Is she saying that in HER and Portia's situation the contract should not apply?

She may be right, when you look at the case realistically.

In fact, it’s become pretty clear to me that Iggy would have been happy in the home Ellen found for him. But, have a few pups been misappropriated by people who couldn't deal with it in the past? It’s at least imaginable. So, it’s understandable that this adoption agency would stick by the book and choose to follow their own guidelines, no exceptions. Less headaches. Fewer bad adoptions.

I am 36 today. But I feel young, vibrant and sexy.

Last night, I interviewed Julia Roberts at the American Cinematique Awards. . . .

I found myself hoping to be charming so I could hear that explosive laugh at least once.