One of the supreme moments of free-range celebrity gone haywire was when Anne Heche (pronounced "he-she") appeared on Larry King Live. The pretty actress was rambling about having taken ecstasy tablets and being abducted by space aliens. As I sucked on my Dove Bar, I thought, "it doesn't didn't get any better than this!"

That segment of Larry King aired on September 10, 2001. The following day a very bad thing happened. TV was never the same again, and those doom banners began crawling across on the bottom of the screen. The fun was over.

Cut to 2008, at last: Barack Obama has the secured White House, so the great train is going to be engineered by an intelligent and competent leader--which means that all of us can go back to watching TV and return to what we do best: speculating about other people's insanity, and reveling in their failures for our own amusement. We can be mesmerized by a grainy night cam video of a quasi-celebrity tweener puking vodka red bulls in a rented Bentley.

It's what I look forward to returning to because, during hard times, gossip and rumor can bring people together faster than an Amber alert or a DVD sale at Wal-Mart.

This election ripped friends and families apart. Certainly it did in our house, as I am a staunch Democrat while my parents are Republicans. When I told my mom that our country dodged a bullet with Sarah Palin, her eyes narrowed and readied for a fight.

I said, "She didn't know Africa was continent."

Mom responded, "Neither did I, and my life hasn't been that bad."

Let's just say that my mother thinks a continent is something you put on a hot dog, and I grew up in a house where we thought Africa was a character on Good Times.

But that's all ancient history now.

We have more important things to think about, and I am not talking the appointment of the Secretary of State. I am talking about the next "weave pull" on The Real Housewives of Atlanta. That's the stuff that matters, despite the grim outlook for the economy, fundamentalist terror agendas, and imminent global collapse. We do have some scandals to look forward to on the horizon that are as delicious as an Olive Garden breadbasket.

A-Rod and Grandma Madonna: their relationship is playing out like a bus and truck version of Sunset Blvd.

Icy blond Cindy McCain has been outed by the National Enquirer as having an affair! Cindy whose horsey husband is being sent to the glue factory needs to get on with it...Cindy didn't get the White House, but maybe she can make it to the whore house.

A fan/Idol wannabe killed herself in Paula Abdul's driveway. How refreshing that some one killed themselves in the name of Paula and not Allah.

These are exhilarating times, and if we concentrate real hard, it will seem as though George W. Bush, Eva Longoria, and Heidi and Spencer never happened.

So with the comfort of an Obama White House, we can expect a whole new world about to open up, filled with malicious talk about private lives that touch the human heart and remind us all of gentler times. They are, as the magazine says, "just like us": Angelina versus Jen; pistol-packing sports heroes, and of course baby Caylee (who I believe is living at Nancy Grace's Atlanta home).

So Anne Heche, phone home! We want to hear the rest of your story. Sorry for the interruption. We want to know what happened after you got out of the spacecraft. Was there probing? And is Ellen (the dark overlord of the universe) a hitter? a kicker? or a biter?

Any tidbit to distract us from the bigger story, because sometimes the bigger story is just too much take. Now, what time does TMZ come on? I've got to set my season pass.