Providing my first major laugh of the day (after a vexing morning filled techie difficulties) the Los Angeles Times' op-ednik Joel Stein offers an amusing extortionist pricing plan to various celebrities, with mixed results.

"...I wanted to know how much I could pull in, so I contacted some Burkle-level powerful people and asked them how much they'd pay to stay out of my column. My best offer came from Matt Tupper, president of the pomegranate juice company Pom Wonderful. I have lots of dirt on him from college, during which Mr. Tupper drank things besides fruit juice. Things which made him drunk. Tupper was willing to fork over $137.80, the cost of his yearly L.A. Times subscription, which he only buys to monitor my column for his name. That sounded like a pretty good deal - until I realized that amount was, like, two bottles of his pomegranate juice.

CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper told me he wouldn't pay a cent: "No one knows you have a column, and besides no one reads in L.A. anyway." City Council member Eric Garcetti offered me $5 not to write about him, and $10 to stop writing altogether."

We shudder to think what the 'bowl might get if it turned to the Dark Side.