Awards season's most reliably confusing nominations broke this morning, with the 2008 Independent Spirit Award nods recognizing everything and everyone from Anne Hathaway to Towelhead to Woody Allen and self-distributed Sundance darlings.

In-the-tank ad industry people have, in a Time "The Person of the Year is YOU"-style ripoff, named Barack Obama "Marketer of the Year." He even beat out Zappos.com. Wrap your mind around that, America. [Ad Age]

Though the Emmys are often derided for being boring and predictable, last night's painfully awkward ceremony left us reeling. Whether it was the interminable improv given to stiff reality show hosts, the endless, poorly-chosen clips from shows like Desperate Housewives that segued into The Price is Right-level set recreations, or the vituperative comments from presenters and winners that had clearly turned on the shoddy format, the event was one prolonged cringe after another. Scientists are still studying the side effects caused by watching the ceremony without proper safety glasses (to make it through the whole show, we had to resort to viewing it through a pinhole), but have no fear, our two-minute long recap of the show's most awkward moments is FDA-approved. Enjoy! [Academy of Television Arts & Sciences]

Gosh—are the Emmy Awards here already? While we make the last arrangements for our fabulous Emmy Awards Liveblog Extravaganza and eco-themed after-party Sunday (hey—who seated America Ferrera next to Blake Lively? There's gonna be so much eye-rolling going down, it's gonna be like it's all Scanners up in he-yuh!), we thought we'd do our part for anyone else out there scrambling to pull things together in time. We dutifully pass along, then, this Craigslist ad seeking a highly specific brand of companionship for the big show:

The Emmys, Oscar's Paste-Eating Cousin™, will broadcast live on ABC this Sunday, presided over by a Frankenhost monster conceived in a test tube by devious tinkerers from the science wing of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The Creative Arts portion of the awards, however, were held Saturday at the Nokia Theater. It was an evening for some of the year's more specialized TV achievements—from those of Matt Damon-fornicating singer-songwriter Sarah Silverman to the hairdo Michelangelos of Mad Men, spinning beehives into gold—to receive their due. Kathy Griffin took best reality program for her second year in a row, this time eschewing acceptance speeches commanding the Prince of Peace to "suck it" in favor of less blasphemous shows of appreciation. From Gold Derby:

So Mad Men creator/EP/spiritual shepherd Matthew Weiner realizes he's sitting on something pretty special with his cast of desk-hopping, Brylcreemed creatives over at Sterling Cooper. Perhaps it was the 16 Emmy nominations that tipped him off. ("Don't think of them as Emmy awards," his inner Don Draper will intone on the big night, "Think of them as tiny angels, flapping their pointy wings to a place where fear doesn't live. They're saying, 'You are OK, Matt...It's all...OK.'") Weiner's contract with the show's studio, Lionsgate TV, is up at the end of this season, and Variety reports he's been shopping himself around town to the highest bidder:

Comeback Comeback: Britney Spears's ongoing flirtation with this year's VMAs has progressed past the stage of hanging out near an elephant while Russell Brand played Itsy Bitsy Spider up her inner thigh. She's going to open the show—though great care is being taken not to have a repeat of last year's performance, a still of which now appears next to the word "train·wreck" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Instead, MTV Networks Music Group President Van Toffler said it will be something "fun and unexpected." Britney said in a statement, "MTV has long played an important role in my career. How can I not be there to kick off their 25th VMAs? I'm excited to open the entire show, to say hi to my fans and to be nominated." [AP/Yahoo]

A recently unearthed artifact from 1988 offers a mass celebrity humiliation on a scale so staggering, the mind quite simply reels. The setting was that year's Academy Awards ceremony—and what better way to celebrate the most glamorous evening in entertainment that with a nine-minute-long musical number peopled by Hollywood's "brightest young stars," in which they express through singing, dancing, fencing, and moonwalking their, um, desire to become a "super duper pooper scooper" Oscar winner.Along this journey through Satan's lower colon, you'll spot some recognizable faces— Blair Underwood, Christian Slater, McDreamy, Ricki Lake, Chad Lowe, and Corey Feldman, whose bedroom walls we can only imagine were covered in "Bad" posters at the time. You'll also spot some lesser-knowns: Keith "Adventures in Babysitting" Coogan, Melora "Jan from The Office" Hardin, Carrie "Carol Burnett's deceased daughter" Hamilton, plus an elegant pas de deux featuring Tracy "Ricky's daughter/Seinfeld's twin" Nelson and someone by the name of D.A. Pauley. Have we sold this yet? Did we mention Feldman gets a dance solo at the 4:45 mark? Enjoy.

· Attack of the Show producer Gavin Purcell is leaving G4 to co-produce Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. He'll presumably user-test some of his edgier, hot-dog-deep-throating ideas on the web-only show before Fallon's NBC debut. [Variety] · Bad news: Stargate: Atlantis will not get a sixth-season order from SciFi Channel. Good news: Stargate: Universe, a whole new Stargate series, is set to begin. Even better news: Stargate: Babies can't be far behind! [THR] · Neil Patrick Harris and Sarah Chalke will host the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards Sept. 13th, to be aired on E! one week later. Britney Spears will be a last-minute guest-patterer, in a performance Harris will backhandedly compliment on the talk show circuit. [Variety] · Nicolas Cage will star in Kick-Ass, to later be renamed Awe-Some in pursuit of an all-important PG-13 rating. [THR] · Freeze, sucka! Regina King, Kevin Alejandro and Michael McGrady have been cast in NBC pilot LAPD. [THR]

Feast your eyes now upon those buzzy promo spots for the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards—featuring host Russell "Big in England" Brand, 2007 VMAs catastrophe Britney Spears, and a giant elephant in the room (not white, but you get it). 10 first impressions:1. Britney looks good. 2. Britney isn't chewing gum. 3. Britney is relaxed. 4. Britney doesn't appear to be pregnant. 5. Britney is good at covering up signs of fear and/or repulsion. 6. We're amazed she didn't say, "What's a surname?" 7. That hairstyle is atrocious. (You decide which.) 8. We believe she truly has no idea who Brown/Brand is. 9. She notices a passing resemblance to K-Fed at the :39 mark. 10. The elephant appears to be fantasizing about scraping saucy-British-comic out of his toes. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

While walking the carpet at the Teen Choice Awards, popular singer/actress Scarlett Johansson bent over when she noticed that someone had dropped a stack of business cards on the ground. The Scoop star bent down in a ladylike manner to pick up the discarded business cards, much to the dismay of the surrounding lensmen hoping to score a gossip blog friendly shot. A group of men ahead of Johansson dropped another set of business cards, but Johansson just stared at cards, shook her head and moved her fingers using the universal sign for "naughty naughty."

Though Steve Carell is a perennial Emmy nominee for his work on The Office, he's never taken home a trophy of his own (even as the show itself won the Outstanding Comedy Award in 2006). Now, the LAT's easily excitable Tom O'Neill thinks he's nailed the reason why: Carell is just too darn creepy in the role.

After last year's Ryan Seacrest-in-the-round extravaganza, today comes more exciting news about a significant shakeup in the Emmy Awards format: This year's ceremony, scheduled for September 21 at the roomy Nokia Theatre, will be presided over by the five nominees in the new category of best reality host. (The shape of the stage is still under wraps, but we hear ABC is toying with an M.C. Escher-inspired endless staircase design that will provide raked seating for days!) Seacrest, nominated for his hosting duties on American Idol, will be joined by Survivor's Jeff Probst, Dancing with the Stars's Tom Bergeron, Deal or No Deal's Howie Mandel, and Project Runway's Heidi Klum. We've run promotional photos of all five hosts through our Defamer Combine-O-Tron 2000 (patent pending; any similarities to Late Night's If They Mated completely coincidental) to see what the host would look like if they melded them into one. The result? A not-particuarly-telegenic überhost, and distant cousin of the rare and wonderful pigkey! [Photos: LAT]

Our heartiest congratulations to Alec Baldwin on earning his amazing seventh Emmy nomination—and the second for his consistently inspired work as 30 Rock's Jack Donaghy, whom last we saw hovering over Rip Torn's hospital bed and praying for a coma-rousing miracle. To honor the man who is well on his way towards becoming the country's first Baldwin President, we provide this excerpt from a new THR.com interview.

Bloomberg News has failed to win an award, and that is obvious proof of fraud! So goes the logic of Bloomberg boss Matthew Winkler, the bow-tied tyrant and enemy of humans. Bloomberg ran an epic investigative piece on the insurance industry that generated both acclaim and a lot of pushback. The industry said the piece was full of errors; an investigation found no errors; the Deadline Club of New York eventually named the story as a finalist for several awards, but it didn't win any. Right that second, Matthew Winkler's bow tie perked up. He knows a setup when he sees it!:

Let's say up front that the super-prestigious Cannes advertising awards are, like most awards, a bit of a scam. They're a for-profit operation that charges ad agencies a lot of money to enter, and in return bestows something that the agencies can use in their own marketing materials. Plus they gave an award to those crazy sexist beer ads this year, so their judgment is obviously fallible. Still, the ad industry considers them a big deal, and they're a good guide to what's considered important in the field. So it was extremely groundbreaking when an online campaign (rather than a TV campaign) won the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes this year. On the other hand, maybe it was just because people love Japanese dancers?

· We defy you to watch Tyra Banks's Daytime Emmys acceptance speech for Best Talk Show (Informative) without getting a little bit moist-eyed. We especially liked her shout-out to Oprah, whose crown she's clearly claiming. You usurp, girl! [Tyra]
· Well, that was fun while it lasted: "This site has been closed. LucasFilm has asked us to remove this site. We have enjoyed seeing the tens of thousands of users over the past several days, and thank you for your interest." [StarWarsCrawl.com]
· Vassup! 105 people were invited to become voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, including Sacha Baron Cohen and Judd Apatow. [oscars.org]
· Dody Goodman, aka the fumbling Rydell High P.A.-system-xylophonist Blanche from Grease, also passed yesterday, at age 93. [USA Today]
· Heidi Montag has a single called "Fashion." It's the "greatest song of my life," says partner Spencer Pratt, who suffers from a rare neurological disorder which causes him to love the sound of a cat being cranked through a Vocoder-equipped meat grinder. [Us Magazine]

When not proposing Entourage cameos to some of the world's greatest hell-to-the-divas, Jeremy Piven can often be found sidling up to one of our city's endlessly replenishable starlets with a patented ice-breaker ("So, have you been to India?"). The desired result is frequently achieved, and within minutes the two are zipping off in a hydrogen-powered Bentley to his place for a better look at his dhoti collection. Sometimes, however, Piven shoots a little too high, and his hottie-air balloon comes crashing down to the ground. Take, for example, a recent run-in with America's #1 fanboy-bait-object:

This ad for Cooper's Beer just won an award at the prestigious ad festival in Cannes. I guess because of its sophisticated message: No Fat Chicks. The copy reads "Only 2.9% alcohol," meaning you won't get too wasted to notice this pretty girl is totally not skinny, and if you take her home, dude, whoa, watch out in the morning! I would really like to hear some Jezebel input on this thoughtful campaign. Click through for the second terrible award-winning spot, which has the equally important message: No Nerdy Chicks With Freckles Either, Broheim!:

It's been two days now since our relatively peaceful, reacharound-loving community has been rocked by "I Do Not Feel I Was Given the Material This Season to Warrant a Nomination"-Gate. For those late to the party: Gold Derby blog had noticed polarizing actress-figure Katherine Heigl's name missing from a list of contenders; approached for comment, she explained that she had knowingly compromised Emmy-nominating protocol—and by extension, the very fundamentals upon which this great country is based!—by gallingly withdrawing herself from Best Actress consideration. And for what? For what she deemed to be substandard character arcs for her character on Grey's Anatomy. (In Heigl's defense, in Season 2 she was curled up in a hospital bed with her expired fiance; this season, she had a brief dalliance with her gay best friend followed by a torrid affair with a homicidal caribou.) Still, according to one series insider who spoke to EW.com, the thanklessness is beyond belief: