The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute is presenting its "Superheroes" exhibit, which explores how fashion has appropriated and deformed the comic-book costume for its own nefarious ends. Vulture's Dan Kois headed over to the Met to talk about the exhibit with curator Andrew Bolton. Check out our exclusive video interview with Bolton about the Iron Man body, Spider-Man as femme fatale, and what hides behind a mild-mannered curator's glasses. Plus: lightning fight!

Last night, before a delighted audience of classical-music fans who have apparently not taken the lessons of the Terminator films to heart, ASIMO, a humanoid robot created by Honda, conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a performance of "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha. "The movements are still a little stiff, but very humanlike, much more fluid than I thought," said bassist Larry Hutchinson, blatantly trying to win the favor of the machines in advance of their inevitable enslavement (and probable annihilation) of all humanity. Later in the program, Yo Yo Ma — onstage to receive an award for his work in music education — met the robot, reportedly bending down to its height and shaking its hand. Afterwards, he refused to take media questions about ASIMO, probably because he was on his way to stockpile canned food and build an underground robot-apocalypse shelter (something you'll definitely want to look into).

Video: ASIMO burns as Yo-Yo Ma fiddles [Engadget]
Honda robot conducts Detroit Symphony to warm response [AP via Abilene Reporter-News]

Over the past couple of months, ostensibly to raise awareness of his recent album, Ego Trippin', Snoop Dogg has appeared onstage with Willie Nelson, performed a song in German for a European cell-phone commercial, contributed a track to Lindsay Lohan's upcoming Motown record, and attended the CMT Awards (where he became smitten by LeAnn Rimes, kicking off a glorious two-day romance). Now, to cap off what will almost certainly be remembered as the most awesome publicity tour of all time, Snoop appeared on yesterday's episode of ABC soap opera One Life to Live to do his single "Sensual Seduction" (we'd rather have found out that he'd fathered Gigi's baby — instead of boring old Rex — but, hey, we'll take it anyway).

How can the promotion for his next album possibly match the absurdity? Will he enter a strongman competition? Rap for the Pope? Become an honorary Jonas Brother? Who else is allowed to have a career like this? And is it made any more impressive by the fact that he once stood trial for murder? Anyway, hear Snoop's remixed theme song for OLTL after the jump!

Purportedly shot over the weekend at a concert in Kansas City, the above video would appear to show Barry Manilow enjoying a marijuana cigarette. Or at least pretending to enjoy one, which — considering that he's a role model to millions of young fans the globe over — is probably just as bad. Shame on you, Barry!

Barry Manilow Appears to Smoke Him Some Fine KC Weed [Wayward Blog via Daily Swarm]

Blogger Harry Allen has unearthed a ten-minute video of Margaret Seltzer, whose growing-up-in-the-hood memoir, Love and Consequences, was debunked last month. The video — possibly recorded by Riverhead as part of an electronic press kit to publicize the book — is the first real look we've gotten at the author, whose book was recalled and pulped before she really got out into the publicity world. And what Allen notes implicitly we'll make explicit: How on earth did "Margaret B. Jones" ever think she was going to get away with it? She's not that good of an actress or improviser — as Allen points out, she slips a number of times just in this video, including calling a made-up nephew "it" and a "thing" — and the video reminds us of nothing so much as us, if we were pretending to be an ex-gangbanger. Sure, we watch The Wire and all, but it wouldn't take long for someone to say, "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

EXCLUSIVE! The Video That Her Publisher Hoped You Would Never See [Media Assassin]

Related: Fake Memoirist Dupes ‘Times,’ Publisher; But Thankfully Not Oprah [Daily Intel]
Flava of the Month [NYM]

Last night on American Idol, oft-incomprehensible judge Paula Abdul revealed her impressive, never-before-seen precognitive abilities, adjudicating a performance that had not yet taken place. The Idol finalists each did two songs, and, after all five had sung once, Ryan Seacrest asked the judges to weigh in. Reading from notes, Abdul reviewed not only Jason Castro's first performance, but his second, not-yet-seen one as well: "The second song, I felt like your usual charm was missing for me. And the two songs made me feel like you're not fighting hard enough to get into the top four." When Seacrest pointed out her mistake, she claimed that she'd been looking at her notes for David Cook — but then told Cook, "You're fantastic."

Was Paula having a Lost-style flash-forward? Can she really see into the future? Does she know who wins? (Not Jason, we guess!) Or does this confirm, at last, that American Idol is fixed? Were the producers conspiring against Jason Castro? Are Paula's comments always scripted? If so, shouldn't she be way more intelligible? It's sort of hilarious that now Fox will either have to confess to unscrupulous behavior or admit, finally, that Paula Abdul is just plain nuts.

Sure, it might as well be the sequel to Lost in Translation — what with all the pretty shots of ScarJo staring out car windows as Kevin Shields–y guitars drone in the distance — but the video to "Falling Down," the first single of Scarlett Johansson's album of Tom Waits covers, just confirms what we've been saying for a while: The album sounds good, people. Of course it helps that she's singing impeccably written Tom Waits songs. Of course it helps that her voice is dropped down in the mix, as befitting the specific early-nineties style the album's recorded in. But we're gonna be so snarky as to penalize her for making smart choices? Hell no. We're just gonna watch the video again, enjoy the song, and wonder what the hell Salman Rushdie is doing there. Who knew his acting career would continue to take off, post–Helen Hunt?

Earlier: Confirmed: Scarlett Johansson Makes Best-Ever Album by an Actor
How Helen Hunt Got Salman Rushdie to Give Her a Sonogram

Last night on 60 Minutes, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia sat down for an interview with Lesley Stahl. In addition to nervously laughing at Scalia's jokes, Stahl brought Scalia back to the Queens neighborhood he grew up in and P.S. 13, where Scalia went to elementary school. And it was there that Scalia revealed the true key to understanding this mysterious, brilliant mind: Antonin Scalia is Severus Snape.

Like Snape, Scalia was a clever student, the top of his class, with top marks in every subject. Like Snape, he was driven and unpopular — "I was never cool," Scalia said.

"Were you a bookworm?" Stahl asked.

"I was a greasy grind," answered Scalia.

The parallels were there all along, even before we heard Scalia basically admit to the synchronicity between his life and "greasy git" Severus Snape's. Each holds a position of almost unmatched power. Each is sharp-tongued and famously cruel to those who appear before him — Snape to his students, Scalia to the lawyers who argue in court. And each has publicly staked out a position in the defining battle of his age: Snape in the contest between Voldemort's supporters and Dumbledore's, Scalia in the ideological battles driving American jurisprudence.

It's hard to believe that 1983 happened 25 whole years ago, but it did. And to celebrate this momentous anniversary, zombies and Michael Jackson impersonators alike gathered at the Tribeca Film Festival Drive-In last night for dancing, face-painting, and a screening of Jackson's seminal video for "Thriller," which debuted in December of that year. Vulture's Lauren Salazar and Jonah Green were there.

When an early draft of the script for Oliver Stone's upcoming George Bush biopic, W, landed in our in-box recently, we enjoyed it so much we didn't think we could wait until next year to see the movie. So, with help from friends at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, we shot five great moments, presented above, and improvised a few unscripted scenes of our own, which appear during the credits.

Related: George W. Bush: The Lame Duck of Hollywood