Consider these weekend box office projections as you stare at your watch, convinced that will help you reach beer o'clock a little faster:

Welcome to another Monday morning. Please stop sobbing quietly into your cup of coffee long enough to look over this weekend's box office numbers.

With our Daisy Dukes fully wedgied into our hindquarters, we're ready to unleash this weekend's box office predictions:

Cling to the weekend's box office numbers, the only things that keep you from taking the money from your Monday morning coffee run and bolting for the Mexican border.

As Friday happy hour hurtles towards you like a runaway train full of pina coladas (What does that even mean? We've already checked out, obviously.), do your best to enjoy the final hours of cubicle hell before giving yourself over to Hollywood's weekend relief.

Confronted with a world that suddenly lacks meaning, a world in which A Michael Bay Film meets with anything less than resounding success, the celebrated fauxteur scrambles for reasons why The Island bombed so resoundingly this weekend:

Spend the next five work days locked in the conference room, killing time until the sweet release of Friday, when you can again give yourself over to the enthusiastic consumption of Hollywood product. Your Monday morning box office numbers:

Here comes the weekend! Whether you're a fan of reimaginings, remakes, or movies that feel like remakes, your local film exhibitor has something for you!

Like manna from heaven, your weekend box office numbers:

It's time to start thinking about which movies are going to steal away your entertainment dollars and save you from the corrosive effects of the summer air. Choose wisely (i.e., in a fashion that makes our predictions look somewhat less pathetic).

· DreamWorks Animation is in trouble with a second straight quarter of disappointing DVD sales, an SEC investigation, and six pending shareholder lawsuits. We're starting to feel like it was a bad idea to sell our car to buy into mogul-in-miniature Jeffrey Katzenberg's Shrek-colored vision. [Variety]
· THR has yet another attempt to explain the downturn on European box office decline on sun-woshipping Germans. Left unexplored is the unpleasant possibility that God kind of hated Bewitched. [THR]
· And you can stick this in your Slump: Summer numbers might be down, but overall, studios are have taken in more money than last year. [Variety]
· On a slow Monday night, viewers prefer the culinary abuse of Fox's Hell's Kitchen to rubbernecking as INXS tries to replace their dead singer on national television. [THR]
· Poker is the new poker: Warner Bros. buys the rights to the book One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey 'The Kid' Ungar, the tragic story of a poker phenom who died of an overdose. [Variety]

· The Agent Dance, Trades Edition: Late Friday, we heard some rumblings about UTA agents Jason Heyman and Martin Lesak bolting for CAA, apparently because CAA was already calling the trades to brag about their poach. Now the question remains: Will Will Ferrell defect along with Heyman, loosening UTA's stranglehold on the New Gay Mafia and ushering in an era of comedies not packaged by The Ooota? Dave Chappelle is also believed to be "in play," should he ever return to commission-earning activities. [Variety]
· "Dissident former board members" Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold drop their lawsuit against Disney and give a vote of confidence to new Head Mouse in Charge Robert Iger. The trio then held hands and skipped down to grab a Fast Pass for a celebratory ride on the Matterhorn. [THR]
· The UK entertainment industry refuses to let the terrorists win, return to work creating hit shows that will one day fail on NBC. [Variety]
· Overseas audiences continue to display their enthusiasm for watching America get decimated by aliens, as War of the Worlds has taken in $201 million thus far. [Variety]
· More international box office: Fantastic Four runs roughshod over the overseas box office, once again proving that we are not alone in our bad taste. [THR]

It's Monday, you've just sat down at your desk, and you're still a good four or five hours from sighing meaningfully and accepting that there's a whole week between you and the freedom of the weekend. Enjoy the box office numbers:

Hollywood implores you to leave your backyard grills to gather dust and spend the summer weekend devouring their box office bon-bons. Do so, but in this exact way:

You've stood on the roof and watched the fireworks. Now it's time to return to the comforting drudgery of the work week, and time to pore over the holiday weekend's box office numbers:

Yesterday's box office numbers for War of the Worlds seem to indicate that (so far, at least) Tom Cruise's Turn Off The World Tour hasn't hurt the movie, which pulled in $21.4 million in North America and $13.35 million overseas in its first day.

As The Slump deepens, theaters are trying desperation tactics (discounts, lame "all Smiths and Herbies get in free!" promotions, etc etc) to lure the public's indifferent heinies into their stadium seats. The WSJ reports that theater chain AMC is so exasperated with the underperformance of the once Oscar-baiting, now bonafide flop Cinderella Man that they're offering a refund to anyone who doesn't like the treacly cinematic stylings of Ron Howard:

Today's LAT looks at how Hollywood's Big Slump has not been confined within America's borders, as some "major" overseas markets have declined at the box office "by as much as 14 percent." Is there a way to blame the Germans for any of this? Why, yes, there is!

Another Monday morning, another week of dire "Hollywood's Box Office Slump" stories...

There is absolutely no reason that these box office predictions shouldn't be 100 percent accurate, if you throw out the fact that we're no good at this unless we're drunk. And, sadly, we are not drunk yet.