And we're back once again from yet another irksome hiatus, this latest one involving both the mundane-- looming deadlines, refinancing the mortgage on the AtAT compound-- and the not-so-mundane. Those of you who always complain that Katie, AtAT's resident fact-checker and Goddess of Minutiae, never steps in front of the camera will be happy to hear of a meeting in Culver City between our own trivia deity and a certain suave Canadian, where she answered a few questions (or questioned a few answers) to be aired "on another network" on the 29th of May. Check your local listings. And no, we're not telling you how she did.

Anyway, what dragged us kicking and screaming back into production despite our profound depression at shoveling a foot and a half of New England snow after wandering the 68°-and-sunny streets of L.A. (in particular, nine-month-old AtAT intern Anya was thrilled to be outdoors sans pants) was none other than a definitive answer to that age-old question, "How does one cope with both the immediate shame and the forthcoming eternal damnation of shilling for a company like Dell?" Look no further than The Smoking Gun, which not only reports that Ben "Dude, You're Getting Deloused" Curtis got busted for marijuana possession on Sunday night, but also has a scan of the actual misdemeanor complaint.

Dude-- a dope fiend? Consternation! Uproar! Now, we're not going to get into a whole thing about the debate over the health or moral issues surrounding pot use or the controversy over the substance's very illegality-- that's not our place. What is our place is to giggle like maniacs at the thought of Mr. Curtis cooling his heels in a New York holding cell and maybe flashing that cheese-eating grin at some other perp with a short fuse and a home-made shiv.

That said, we have to admire Mr. Curtis's intestinal fortitude; if we were faced with the prospect of selling our souls to peddle bland computer equipment at Middle America by appearing aggressively stupid and sycophantic in front of millions of television viewers, thus torpedoing whatever slim chance we ever had at our dreams of a serious acting career by forever typecasting ourselves as walking catch-phrase-spouting cartoon characters, we'd probably need something a lot stronger than grass to swallow that pill. Say, smack. Or maybe Mexican horse tranquilizers.

Of course, there's always the chance that this was just poor Ben's attempt to get back into the public eye. Remember, last October Dell announced that it would "de-emphasize" the Dude campaign in favor of those lobotomized interns that currently plague our airwaves; that was roughly about the time that Apple's own Ellen Feiss was peaking in popularity. Isn't it interesting that he's now buying pot, given that much of Ellen's mystique stems from the rumors that she was high on that very substance during the filming of her commercial? (Despite Ellen's insistence that she was only on Benadryl, surely by now everyone knows what Google's number one hit for "stoned chick" is.)

One last desperate grab at fame, Mr. Curtis? Tsk, tsk... it's always tough to watch the mighty brought low. Oh, wait, not "tough"... what's the word? "Funny."