If you enjoyed listening to the Film.com podcast I sat in on a couple weeks ago, you’ll be delighted to know that the Film.com podcasting team of Laremy, Natalie and Garrett once again invited me to be a special guest on the podcast. You can check it out here. The interview with me is in the last ten minutes or so. We talk strippers, American Idol and, of course, my obsession with Toddlers & Tiaras.

“As co-executive director of Miss CA USA and one of the leaders of the Miss CA family, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss CA USA 2009 believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman. Although I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit, I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone. Religious beliefs have no place in politics in the Miss CA family.”

Keith Lewis, the Executive Director of Miss California USA/Teen USA, in a statement regarding this.

In fairness, if we really wanted to keep religious beliefs out of this, Perez Hilton never should have been able to ask that question. It was a loaded gun. Keith works for Miss California USA, not at the national level, so it’s not like he could have had a say in this anyway. But you know that the Miss USA organization approved Perez’s question beforehand. They were asking for a powder keg like this to explode.

Our thoughts and prayers are with brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking and his family, as he has been hospitalized near London for a chest infection he’s been fighting for several weeks. Professor Hawking, 67, has lived with ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s Disease) since the age of 21, and has been almost entirely paralyzed for most of his life.

“Professor Hawking is very ill,” said Gregory Hayman, Cambridge University head of communications. “He is undergoing tests. He has been unwell for a couple of weeks.”

The world would take a huge hit if we lost this man of both genius and wisdom. We hope you pull through this, Professor Hawking!!!

What do we think? I quite LOVE it. Sexy and fun and creative and she looks fantastic. I love everything Kelly Clarkson touches.

I know we don’t normally cover the literati around here, but I’m sure I’m not alone in LOVING Dan Brown’s books. He’s the guy behind The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, and plus I’ve read some of his techno-thriller older stuff and it is like crack too. I haven’t had much time for pleasure reading lately with all the damn work I’ve had on my plate, but I will definitely put down the computer and pick up the Kindle for this new one. I feel like the Dan Brown books are like Harry Potter or Twilight for adults, in the sense that even people who aren’t normally big readers will pick these up and get sucked in.

Six years after the release of his mega-selling “The Da Vinci Code,” the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group announced that Brown’s “The Lost Symbol,” a thriller set during a 12-hour period and featuring “Da Vinci Code” symbolist Robert Langdon, will come out in September.

“This novel has been a strange and wonderful journey,” Brown said in a statement issued Monday by his publisher. “Weaving five years of research into the story’s twelve-hour time frame was an exhilarating challenge. Robert Langdon’s life clearly moves a lot faster than mine.”

The first printing will be 5 million copies, Knopf Doubleday said Monday, a modest number considering that “The Da Vinci Code” has sold more than 80 million worldwide and inspired a spin-off community of travel books, diet books, parodies and religious works.

Are you guys excited or what???

Listen, it’s no secret around here that I’m pro-gay-marriage (which I like to call being pro-equal-rights). So of course I firmly disagreed with Miss California’s decision to speak out against gay marriage in the Miss USA competition last night. I vehemently disagree with Carrie Prejean, but it took balls for her to stay true to her beliefs in a room that you better believe was jam-packed with gay men. I suppose there is a teeeeensy tiny bit of credit due there. She tells Access Hollywood today: “I stated an opinion that was true to myself and that’s all I can do. It is a very touchy subject and he [Perez] is a homosexual and I see where he was coming from and I see the audience would’ve wanted me to be more politically correct. But I was raised in a way that you can never compromise your beliefs and your opinions for anything.” Personally, I think that every now and then it’s okay to compromise your beliefs when they imply that an entire class of citizens should be treated as lesser because of who they choose to love. But that’s just me.

You know what’s even less of a secret than my support for gay marriage? MY LOVE FOR MICHAEL PHELPS. And this is where Carrie Prejean and I are really going to have a problem. She’s dating him. THAT HATEFUL BITCH. Access Hollywood bugged her to talk about him, but she demured. “He is a great man,” she says, adding, “We can talk about that a different day.”

Hey, Carrie Prejean, I’m gonna go ahead and introduce some legislation that bans beauty queens from marrying anyone I have a crush on. I just think it’s so wrong. It disgusts me. That’s just what I was raised to believe, so look for it on your 2010 ballot.