Recent weeks have also seen Lady Gaga wearing a coat made of miniature Kermit the frogs for German TV, partying with David Hasselhoff, pleading impending poverty and groping her boobs and mooning, in a nightclub. The latter was prt of a gay pride event; this new incident is surely likewise intended as PR catnip for Gaga's gay fan base, offering the opportunity for endless debate on the nature of human sexuality and our society's need to gender cultural icons.

So it's at least a brow above Spears flashing her vag on the way out of a car. It's downright sociological, kinda! And as a viral phenomenon, it could be even bigger; the supposed confirmation is just psuedo enough to be titillating, an unlinked quote of Gaga saying "Yes. I have both male and female genitalia... It's just a little bit of a penis." Given the singer's motor-scooter-shimmy and tiny skirt in the video below, it's hard to imagine she didn't intend to reveal something:

Is hermaphrodism officially the last gender-sexuality combination still reliably considered freaky, in a titillating way, around the world? Quite possibly!

Brin has a personal foundation, funded with some of his Google fortune. One of the largest recipients of his largesse is the Michael J. Fox Foundation, an organization founded by the Canadian actor and dedicated to researching Parkinson's disease, from which Fox suffers.

In May, 23andMe announced that it was signing up Parkinson's patients for its genetic-testing services. The tests would be paid for by a $600,000 grant from the Fox foundation.

Wojcicki described the approach in a Huffington Post op-ed as "Research 2.0." To our ears, this sounds more like a good old-fashioned back-scratching arrangement.

Here are the questions people ought to be asking: Was Brin's donation really a donation, since some of it ended up going into his wife's pockets? And should the Fox grant count as revenues for 23andMe, since the money can be traced back to Brin, the cofounder of Google, an important investor in the startup? If IRS and SEC officials don't start looking into the deals, then they're not doing their jobs.

How can Brin make this right, if he really believes in his company's code of conduct and the "don't be evil" culture he helped foster at Google? Google should immediately sell its shares in 23andMe, at cost. 23andMe should return the Fox grant. And the Michael J. Fox foundation should return Brin's donation.

Brin, whose net worth was recently estimated at $18.5 billion, can easily afford to invest personally in his wife's startup. And there's no conflict in doing so; he'd merely be seen as a supportive, if indulgent, spouse. The problem comes when he starts using other people's money to fund Wojcicki's ventures. Google shareholders shouldn't be funding her experiments; neither should the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Nor should U.S. taxpayers be footing the bill. Especially considering that 23andMe's tests may not even be legal, according to the state of California.

Google's success has persuaded Brin that he doesn't need to listen to other people's advice, or follow their petty little rules; his gut instincts have made him fabulously wealthy, so why should he? He may not have crossed any legal lines in this latest episode of self-dealing — but it shows that he's on a path to do so. Sergey, stop now, before you really embarrass yourself.

Viacom wanted to carve out the records of YouTube employees' video views to show that they knowingly viewed copyrighted content — and in some cases, uploaded it. But Google could easily use its records to show Viacom employees doing exactly the same thing. It would hardly be a shocker: Viacom's Ifilm site is rife with pirated videos, but the site's traffic is too insignificant for copyright holders to get fussed.

Showing Viacom's double standards is an obvious move. What Google's lawyers are probably too naive to contemplate: Scouring YouTube's video logs for truly embarrassing videos viewed by Viacom employees, and leaking them to gossip blogs. That would be a dreadful invasion of privacy, of course — exactly what Viacom was asking for, before it finally backed down.

Hmm, is it really wise to deprive oneself of the substance that so obviously aided in creating nuggets of comedic brilliance like a talking baby, a talking dog, a talking goldfish, and a talking alien?

Especially now, when he needs fresh, weed-inspired ideas more than ever? Not only does MacFarlane have a new animated series in the works, The Cleveland Show, he also just inked a deal with Google to create original material on the web. It's gonna be called Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, and it will feature new characters in 2 minute video clips. According to the New York Times, "Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane's target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a Cavalcade video clip." Of course, MacFarlane will get a percentage of that sweet-ass ad revenue. Too bad he's not smoking anymore, because that would buy him several pillowcases full of kind bud.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Google and Creator of 'Family Guy' Strike a Deal [NYT]

We couldn't help but notice the teacher in the shot: Esther Wojcicki, Sergey Brin's mother-in-law. Google continues to insinuate its way into all media.

Our friends at CurbedLA, meanwhile, guided us to a nifty feature that gives any address its "Walk Score"—meaning how pedestrian-friendly it is to shops, restaurants, parks, and schools. They tabulated some high-profile area residences, and learned that while Brad Pitt and Jen Aniston's Taj Mahal of Lost Love earned highly inaccessible Walk Score of 8, Paris Hilton's WeHo home earned a far more respectable and suspended-license-friendly 75.

• Google Maps Street View hits LA; No Love for Valley, South LA [LAist]
• Walk This Way, Paris Hilton [CurbedLA]

• Google Agrees to Buy YouTube for $1.65 Billion [NY Times]
• Google snaps up YouTube for $1.65B [AP]

Google Inc. co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are making their first foray into the movie business, helping to finance a friend's independent film.

The Internet moguls are the executive producers of "Broken Arrows," the story of a man who loses his pregnant wife in a terrorist attack and then takes a job as a hit man.

A spokeswoman for Mountain View-based Google confirmed Brin and Page's role in the film, but declined to discuss details.

The film is written and directed by Reid Gershbein, a computer graphics designer at DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., who became friends with the Google founders in the late 1990s when they were doctoral students in computer science at Stanford University.

"I can't say how lucky I am," Gershbein told the San Francisco Chronicle for a story Thursday. "They were extremely generous."

Production costs are just under $1 million, Gershbein said. Brin and Page funded about half the film, barely a dent in their personal fortunes, which are estimated at $16 billion each.

Consider yourselves warned: These guys have deep pockets and they aren't fucking around. We give it six months before Google Studios opens its primary-colored Burbank gates, and another six before they start rolling out their randomly generated "I'm Feeling Lucky" production slate.

• Google Founders Help Finance Indie Film [AP]
• Previously: Welcome to Googlewood [Defamer]

But with news that Google has now hired a former entertainment executive to its board of directors, albeit from the very computer-friendly PIXAR, media watchers are saying the struggle for multimedia control of our lovingly crafted product could get bloody:

Ann Mather, 45, a former executive at Walt Disney and Pixar, becomes the first Google board member to come from the entertainment world. Mather, who was Pixar's chief financial officer from 1999 to 2004, will chair Google's audit committee.

Mather's appointment is a "potential harbinger" of things to come, as the major entertainment and Internet companies warily begin to embrace each other, said UBS Internet analyst Benjamin Schachter.

"Mather's appointment gives Google's board a media perspective that it currently lacks," said Schachter. "This is the first person on the board without a purely technological or academic background."

While the payoff potential is great, one must also consider what of ourselves we may lose in the exchange it could be less than a decade before the fanciful illustration above becomes a daily eyesore reality. And yet, as documented in the LA Times Yahoo! piece, Silicon Valley's laid back culture will most probably prove no match for the "Hollywood Way." We imagine within a few months of the media marriage, the once efficient and accurate search engine will start lazily spitting out "reimagined" results to queries that were popular twenty years ago.

• LIGHTS! CAMERA! GOOGLE? [NY Post]
• Can Yahoo Sign On to Hollywood? [LA Times]