Quickies: Tuesday, January 4 2011

Photo: Getty Images

> Madonna is the Noughties' most written about celebrity in the U.K.

> Meanwhile, Gaga was the most "liked" person on Facebook last year with 24,712,169 likes.

> And perhaps most impressive (and unexpected) is Take That recently earning the title of Amazon.com's "top-selling music artist of all time." We love Robbie Williams, too, but really?

> James Franco is making the leap to directing with upcoming films adaptations of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. No word on how he'll gay them up -- but we're confident he will. It's just what he does.

> NewSouth Books' upcoming edition of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will remove all instances of the "n" word and replace it with "slave." "Injun" will also be removed. Some are crying censorship while others claim it's a necessary and important change.