TVSquad

There's a better reason for watching How I Met Your Mother tonight than to see Britney Spears reprising her role as Abby, the receptionist who may or may not be Barney's next conquest. On the episode called Everything Must Go, Lily and Marshall face their financial troubles head on. With Marshall out of his evil corporate job, their future tied up in an apartment that's in desperate need of renovations because it was built on an incline, and Lily's credit card debt nearly $100,000, the Eriksens are in trouble. It's been building for weeks and it reaches a boiling point tonight when they realize everything must go.

They set up an online auction at a site called lilyandmarshallselltheirstuff.com. The twist here is that the website auction is for real, reports USA Today (sorry, no link... the story is only in the print edition). The creators of the show have set up the site and will raise money for the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles by selling Lily and Marshall's props and costumes. The auction site will last two weeks. The site is part of charityfolks.com and you can register now to take part once it goes live this evening.

According to The New York Post (the business page, not Page Six), an eBay auction promising the winner a magical New Year's Eve with some of the secondary players on The Sopranos, isn't doing as well as hoped. The auction, done in conjunction with the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square, promises a great evening watching the ball drop from the Hard Rock's marquee, and sharing the night with Stevie Van Zandt (pictured), Tony Sirico, Vincent Pastore, and others. The reserve for this "Wiseguy's New Year's Eve?" $100,000. I'm sure you're scrambling to eBay as we speak, right?