Hey, ghosts and goblins who were born to run: If you've been feeling rather bummed by the news that your old pal Bruce Springsteen decided to cancel the eye-popping decorative Halloween display that draws hordes to his neighbourhood in Rumson, NJ every year, here's something that should help dull the sting.

This little gem is a little bit old, but it was sent to me by a very dear friend of mine last night, and it's so great that I'd be remiss if I failed to share it with Things That Go Pop! readers. In case you couldn't tell from his tour-de-force performance in Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog, Neil Patrick Harris (the former Doogie Howser and current How I Met Your Mother star) is a huge musical theatre geek.

Don't understand how to compute the preceding equation? Then feast your eyes on this fantastic cartoonish send-up of the stylish opening credits of Mad Men, slated to air this Sunday as part of the annual "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween episode of The Simpsons.

Welcome back, 90210. I wish I could say I missed you during your two-week hiatus. Instead, I filled the high school drama void by revisiting my beloved Degrassi: The Next Generation, and realized that, while you may have poached Toronto's Sean Reycraft (a former member of the Degrassi production team) to serve as your producer, we (non-defector) Canadians do angsty adolescent melodrama wa-a-a-a-y better.

Clearly unfazed by the lukewarm response to their revamped 90210 series, the enterprising folks at the CW network (who seem to be applying the green movement's Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra should to popular culture) have announced their plans to revisit cult '90s soap Melrose Place.

In the spirit of our earlier post about the revamped 2008 version of that infamous "Wassup?" ad, here’s another little tidbit that should whet all of our appetites for the upcoming U.S. election night on November 4.

Given the Arts Online team’s collective obsession with all things Mad Men, Jon Hamm’s stint as host on Saturday Night Live this past weekend was a hotly anticipated event around this office.

Remember that iconic Budweiser ad from about eight years ago? Y'know, the "True" one that launched a thousand "Waaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssup!"s?

Breaking news! Soporific singer-songwriter Dido (of Thank You fame) has just announced that she'll be releasing a collection of 11 short films to complement her forthcoming album, Safe Trip Home (out November 18).

This just in: the folks at Saturday Night Live confirm hat the underrated Maya Rudolph will guest on this week's episode. Not only will she mimic Michelle Obama (we knew that was coming) -- she's also planning to reprise her totally hilarious Oprah impersonation and will team up with Amy Poehler for a Bronx Beat sketch.

What is going on with proud Canadian William Shatner? Though his buffoon-for-hire contracts with Priceline and All Bran confirmed that the man has no shame when it comes to choosing fast cash over, y'know, the craft, I still didn't think there was any cause to question Captain Kirk's psychological stability.

Apologies to those who've already heard this earth-shattering news -- our GoogleAlerts for former members of the All New Mickey Mouse Club have clearly been on the fritz. According to MTV, redeemed boy band survivor Justin Timberlake announced at a charity show last Friday that he was officially retiring his 2006 mega-hit SexyBack, the track that more or less helped cement his transition from adorable bubblegum moppet to slick urban Casanova.

Due to a heartbreaking combo of international licensing deals, territory-based internet mumbo-jumbo and the cruel, cruel Television Fates, we in Canada can't actually access NBC's freshly-posted sneak preview of next week's 30 Rock premiere.

Though it's been pandering to the influential hipster-youth demographic of late, with an endless array of stories about trendoid topics like Williamsburg kickball and temporary tattoos, the New York Times is generally regarded as maintaining a rather respectful standard of journalism. But with yesterday's announcement of their new op-ed columnist, the Times has taken a sharp turn toward the sub-par celebrity-penned vanity dreck found in, say, the Huffington Post.

According to Mojo magazine, misanthropic British new wave singer-songwriter Wreckless Eric (born Eric Goulden) wrote one of the top punk singles of all time. Despite those accolades, Goulden was merely a cult curiosity with little mainstream recognition until his big 1978 hit (I'd Go The) Whole Wide World -- the same single praised by Mojo -- was used as a plot point in the wannabe-Charlie Kaufman 2006 film Stranger Than Fiction.

Clearly Canadian chanteuse Leslie Feist's flirtation with the marionette set on Sesame Street was merely one example of a much more substantial puppet fetish.

It's official: Chinese Democracy, the project-turned-punchline that few Axl Rose fans (other than Axl himself) ever thought would see the light of day, has morphed from pipe dream to concrete reality. This morning, the title track -- and first single from the long-awaited album, out November 25 -- made its radio debut.

EW's profile of Cheeta, the grizzled old chimp famed for playing second banana to Tarzan in those pre-WWII jungle flicks, is definitely worth a read, if only for the brilliant headline: "It's Hard Out There For A Chimp."

Over at the LA Times music blog, the very sharp critic Ann Powers has posted a great essay in which she ponders whether certain artists -- those we salute as true pop cultural legends -- should be offered a reprieve from harsh criticism.

If you're into animals in outfits, the cut-ups at Best Week Ever have a downright cruel-but-hilarious gallery of mortified-looking dogs in terrible Halloween costumes.

Remember yesterday's weird and wonderful discovery of A-Ha's Take On Me clip, rewritten so that the lyrics explicitly spelled out what was going on in the video?

Until Saturday, the closest I'd ever gotten to Madonna was watching Truth or Dare on DVD. Actually, considering the scope of her LCD-enhanced stage show set-up and my placement in the 17, 000-strong crowd at Toronto's Air Canada Centre, screening Truth or Dare was likely a more intimate Material Girl experience than seeing her live. Perhaps if I'd been fortunate enough to take in any of the pop icon's previous concert tours -- particularly one from her controversy-courting prime -- I wouldn't've been quite as swept away (no, not in the cinematic sense) by her first Canadian stop on the Sticky and Sweet tour.

To help alleviate the post-weekend blues and ease you into your work week, here's an amusing little internet tidbit. Remember the winsome (if grammatically questionable) ditty Take On Me, by Norwegian synth-pop act A-ha?

The big buzz surrounding this past weekend's episode of Saturday Night Live was almost exclusively centred on the fact that lipstick-wearing pitbull and American GOP VP hopeful Sarah Palin -- who's been the target of countless SNL parodies of late -- was scheduled to appear on the show. Many fans hoped the Alaskan governor would engage in a full-on face-off with her doppelganger, comedy genius Tina Fey, whose Palin impressions have been creepily dead-on.

Trashy rock 'n' roll fans, your prayers to the Great Shredder In The Sky have been answered! According to most sources, Chinese Democracy -- the mythical Guns N' Roses album frontman Axl Rose has been threatening to release since 1994 -- has an official release date. How official, you ask? So official that it's already available for pre-order on the Best Buy website.

The tireless pop culture fanatics at Videogum are right: This sure-to-be-viral video of a cherubic tot's first encounter with a decidedly non-kosher shellfish falls into a category of cuteness that "cannot possibly be exaggerated or even accurately described."

The latest tragic chapter in the geek tragedy that is David Duchovny's troubled personal life: yesterday, Tea Leoni, his wife of 11 years, confirmed that she and the actor have been secretly separated for several months and are officially calling it quits.

Few would contest the fact that Chanel honcho Karl Lagerfeld is nuttier than a quilted leather fruitcake, but it takes a special kind of eccentric to dream up a haute couture rod-and-tackle ensemble ... especially in the midst of a massive recession.

O, Canada. We may have just re-elected a party on the far right of the political spectrum, but fear not: based on their buying habits, the young voters of tomorrow are a group of bleeding heart lefties whose commitment to justice and equality might just be reflected in their passion for emo music. This week, Appeal To Reason -- the latest album by melodic hardcore band Rise Against -- debuted at number one on the Canadian Soundscan charts.

Further to yesterday's assessment of the new Beyonce video, I bring you this troubling news.

Like nobody saw this coming.

Sorry folks -- there'll be no 90210 recap this week. I'd like to think that the dearth of new episodes was connected to Americans delaying the simulcast out of respect for our federal election, but I suspect the week off had more to do with ratings, the confusing logistics of programming prime time TV seasons and the CW's attempts to spread out their banked Beverly Hills stash in the hopes of upping anticipation. (As it stands, episode 8, titled "There's No Place Like Homecoming," is seemingly skedded to coincide with homecoming weekend.)

Attention all Mad Men geeks! This Friday (Oct. 17), the impeccably art-directed period drama further cements its status in the popcult pantheon.

There's something to be said for "realness," that elusive quality so often celebrated by drag queens, America's Next Top Model and '70s disco diva Cheryl Lynn. Trying to pin down a precise definition of what constitutes realness can be difficult, but the general consensus is that it's about straight-up authenticity, a quality product and not some cheap knockoff. To be real, it seems, is to be solid and honest. And I've gotta say, based on Beyonce's latest single, that unstoppable, Irreplaceable diva is all about the realness.

Wow, financial panic can make people do some pretty nutty things. Take, for example, this morning's announcement that FOX has greenlighted a sequel to the seminal '80s film Wall Street, more than 20 years after the era-defining original came out.

If relations between a cat and a dog would fall under the umbrella of inter-species romance, what would one dub the love a man holds for his pineapple?

Not that we needed any additional reasons to love the woman who lit up our lives on The Mary Tyler Moore show and The Golden Girls, but Betty White's recent appearance on Craig Ferguson's late-night show was an unequivocal delight to behold.

Another day, another example of the McCain campaign thoughtlessly pissing off a non-Republican rock 'n' roll act.

Ask and ye shall receive -- huh, 90210? After weeks of whining about the show's narrative stasis, I'm pleased to announce that the folks in Beverly Hills have finally stopped spinning their wheels. Last night's episode was a turbo-charged, stomach-churning drag race through a motherlode of plot advancements, most of which involved that scourge of youth, bad drugs.

New York magazine has a great article this week on the insidious branding strategies developed by corporate sponsors in tandem with some of your favourite television programs.

Before I throw down on the short list for the Giller Prize, which was announced this morning, I'm going to indulge in a little back-patting -- of my own back, that is.

For what it's worth, I was three for five in my Giller short list predictions.

Remember yesterday when we doubted whether Tina Brown's new Daily Beast portal could actually offer anything new in an already-saturated news-and-culture media marketplace? Well, today's posting on the site has us eating our words.

Taking cues from such multidisciplinary television trailblazers as the OC and Beverly Hills 90210 (Original Recipe), the producers of soapy, shlocky Desperate Housewives are attempting to curry favour with the young'uns through a bold boundary-pushing move.

At long last, NYC-based crooner Antony Hegarty and his Johnsons are putting out a full-length follow-up to 2005's Mercury Prize-winning album I Am A Bird Now. The new release, titled The Crying Light, won't be available till January 2009, but Hegarty and co. are tantalizing listeners with an appetizer selection in the interim, in the form of the brand new five-track EP Another World, out today.

Unless you follow the goings-on of New York City's lit scene with the rapt fascination of narcs listening to a wiretap, the thought, "Hrm, I wonder what Tina Brown's been doing with her time" may not have crossed your mind in the last year and a bit since Brown released The Diana Chronicles, her biography of the late princess (who also happened to be Brown's good friend).

Thanks to a nasty change-of-season cold that just won't die, I was sadly not part of the one million-member army who took to the streets of Toronto late Saturday night to marvel at giant park-based Hawaiian driver's licenses and magical wish trees and the cornucopia of other art pieces on offer as part of Nuit Blanche. Instead, I camped out on my couch and was shocked to discover myself actually laughing more than once during a brand-new episode of Saturday Night Live -- an experience that, I assure you, hasn't happened in years.

Today's fascinating internet find, courtesy of the fascinating-thing-finding email list Very Short List, is the charming little blog "Sexy People."

Every so often, the great weather vane of pop culture is pummeled with a great gust that suggests the End Of Days is nigh. This week, we have reason to believe that the four horsemen of the apocalypse are, in actual fact, a cavalry of canines small enough to fit in a Prada clutch.

You know what I'm totally over? Exorbitantly-budgeted commercials masquerading as pretentious art films.

It's hard not to be captivated by viitriolic right-wing talking -- or rather, yelling -- head Bill O'Reilly. Even when the reactionary venom he's spewing is so loathsome it makes you regret having ears, the man's passion and histrionics make for remarkable television, mostly cuz you want to witness every gruesome detail of the trainwreck as it unfolds.

Though the name "Department Of Culture" may have the ominous Big Brother-ish undertone of some abstract bureaucratic monolith, it's actually an exciting grassroots initiative started up by a gaggle of Canadian multidisciplinary artists in response to the Harper government's recent attacks on arts funding.

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki

Canada has a lot of fantastic music festivals, but relative newbie Pop Montreal is the best of the bunch. Like most multi-day music fests, Pop's programming has a lot to do with which bands have tour schedules that match up with the timing of the event; nevertheless, the organizers consistently manage to put together an expansive lineup that -- in terms of diversity, quality and name recognition -- puts the rest of the country's musicstravaganzas to shame.

The more time I spend with the new 90210, the more I realize that the program's chief problem, beyond the stilted dialogue (seriously, I'd kill for even some sanctimonious after-school special homilies in place of this vapid Hills-calibre banter) and the cardboard acting, is that it lacks momentum.