TheTodayNews.com

Can we summarize the news of 2009 in one photo? Sure! Lady Gaga’s odd outfits were frequently the topic of 2009’s entertainment news.

This bubble outfit which Ms. Gaga was sporting during an April show is our favorite though. It’s perfect for a concert followed a night job at the strip club. Does anybody have a pin we can borrow?

Happy New Year!

Russia has announced plans to launch a spacecraft to the asteroid Apophis in an attempt to knock it away from Earth.

When Apophis was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated the chances of it hitting the Earth in 2029 at 1-in-37.

Don’t rush off and dig an underground shelter though! More recent calculations now show the asteroid has no chance of slamming into your living room, and will instead miss us by at least 18,000 miles. Whew!

The classic Fox TV show “The Simpsons” has released a new poster for its 20th anniversary. (Click on the image above a couple of times for a large zoom version).

This character-packed poster is an updated version of a similar concept which had been released a couple of years ago for “The Simpsons” movie. The additional characters in this version have been added around the sides and top of the poster.

One of our favorite unexpected additions is the “angel skeleton” from Season 9 (which technically wasn’t a character, but he/she/it does center the photo nicely…)

Howard Stern, who pretty much vanished from pop culture in 2006 after he left free radio to join satellite pay service Sirius, is threatening to leave Sirius XM when his contract expires in 2010.

Although Stern reportedly has earned over $200-million from his historic Sirius deal, a large bank account can’t buy the popularity he once enjoyed on FM. Look for Stern to take a bargain FM radio deal as a means of getting back into the public eye.

Ford has announced that select car models equipped with its SYNC system will be able to use their car as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, allowing passengers (and the car next to you at a stoplight if you so choose) to surf the web via the customer’s USB broadband modem.

Handing the car next to you a Wi-Fi password sure beats handing them a jar of Grey Poupon!

You may think you get some bad blisters raking the autumn leaves off your lawn, but those are nothing compared to what Ohio resident Katie Spotz is sure to chafe up during her attempt to become the youngest person to row across an ocean alone.

The 22-year old Mentor resident will depart around January 1, 2010 (weather permitting) and row 2,500 miles from Africa to South America to support worldwide safe drinking water projects.

You can follow her progress via a marine tracking system and also donate to her cause on rowforwater.com.

Leonardo DiCaprio has long been fascinated with Viking culture, reports Variety magazine, so he jumped at the chance to don some horns for an upcoming Viking period drama to be directed by Mel Gibson.

The untitled film is expected to begin shooting in fall 2010, and will no doubt be as intense as Gibson’s other period directing efforts “Braveheart,” “The Passion of the Christ” and “Apocalypto.”

Can Leo pull off playing a fierce Viking? Although DiCaprio is officially listed at a smidge under 6′, there is much discussion as to whether he is really closer to 5′10″ on a good day, and has been wearing 2″-3″ lifts since appearing as a much shorter version of himself in “Titanic”.

TheTodayNews.com is a fan of big food. So we were excited to hear about the latest concession menu addition of Frontier League baseball’s Gateway Grizzlies for the 2010 season.: “The Beast”

The Beast is a 15-patty super-burger consisting of 5 pounds of black angus ground chuck marianated in steak sauce, complimented by bacon, pepper jack cheese, and all the typical burger condiments.

Is anybody up for a road-trip to East St. Louis this summer?

We just became aware of the recent craze of “bed jumping”, where people take creative mid-air photos of themselves jumping on beds, typically in hotel rooms.

The web site HotelsByCity.com has been fueling the jumpers for years with its Bed Jump blog, containing hundreds of submitted photos of people jumping on hotel beds. And they are not alone; a recent search on photo sharing web site Flickr returned over 17,000 hits using the search term “bed jumping.”

So THAT’s why the beds in our rooms are always so uncomfortable…and we just assumed it was because TheTodayNews.com booked cheap hotels!

You may think your apartment is small, but at 175 square-feet this New York City studio is the smallest one in the city.

Measuring only 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide, this studio recently sold for $150,000.

No doubt owners Zaarath and Christopher Prokop visited the local IKEA for some small-space decorating ideas!