Paddles down, people. The Scarlett Johansson Snotty Charity Kleenex Auction is over, with the winning bidder wanting no media attention for their offer of $5,300 in exchange for the aloe-enriched celebrity nasal smear.

Something about this time of year really brings out the do-gooder in all of us. Take for example David Spade, who reached deep into his man-purse and pulled out $100,000 worth of new police rifles!

Well, it's come to this:

Big ups to everyone who made it out to VH1 Classic Rock Autism Celebrity Bowl Off at Lucky Strike Lanes last night. You can browse a gallery of them here, a Malta Summit of Z-lister statesmen and royalty including Corey Feldman, Bachelorette dumpee Jesse Csincsak, and Gretchen Bonaduce and Tiffany—posing in the same photo. (Denis Leary couldn't make it, but sent along a message saying that "knocking down pins with a big heavy ball is about as backwoods retarded as your stupid, lazy-ass kids.") But it's attendee Billy Morrison who most caught our eye, less for what we now know are his musical contributions to The Cult and Camp Freddy, but rather for channeling the unmistakable essence of a certain superproducer headshot worshipped 'round these parts like a Shroud of Defamer Turin. Click for your full, glorious view of what Grazerhead hath wrought. [Photo credit: FilmMagic]

While Rescue Me star and Miss Worcester second runner-up Denis Leary may have rankled some with his book's assessment of autism sufferers as being "dumb-ass kids," "junior morons," and "dumb, lazy, or both" ("Totally out of my book's context!" rebutted Leary), one true believer in the disorder—an outspoken activist, in fact—is Jenny McCarthy. Where she veers from her fellow crusaders is in her theory on its cause: She blames the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccination of draining the life out of her young son Evan, and giving him autism. Now she's raising even more eyebrows by claiming on the cover of the current Us Weekly that she "saved [her] son" through "a strict no wheat-and-dairy-free diet." From usmagazine.com:

If your acting career isn't going the way you had hoped, may we humbly suggest you kick start things by buying yourself a role in a summer superhero blockbuster? "But that's impossible," you're no doubt saying to yourself. "Hollywood is the quintessential meritocracy, where with nothing but hard work, talent, and some good luck thrown in, all your wildest fantasies can come true!" Well you keep telling yourself that. We'll be over here, emptying our 401k and cashing our Bar Mitzvah bonds to make sure we win this Spider-Man 4 VIP Experience eBay auction, a bounty including:

Continuing with our ongoing Defamer Decides 2008 political coverage (splashy logo forthcoming just as soon as we figure out how to work out another Photoshop 30-day free trial), we now bring you this new ONE campaign TV spot featuring Hollywood's most likable superstar and enviable nape-haver Matt Damon. The ad features the pedostache-free actor star soberly addressing the camera about their poverty-combating efforts. Fans should be warned, however, that the strange voices that soon emerge from Damon's lips are not the result of any multiple-personality disorders, secret hormone treatments, or Satanic possessions.Rather, Damon was transformed through the magic of A/V editing into the comely mouthpiece for a wide variety of American voices, "among them Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain and Mayor Bloomberg." It's an effective gimmick, if a little unfair to John McCain, who now can't help but hide his disappointment every time he rolls over in bed to the sound of his wife's voice, only to find a smiling Cindy instead of that dreamycakes actor from the Bourne movies.

With legalized same-sex unions already labeled passé, Hollywood discovered its newest cause designed specifically to piss off Arkansas: live, televised, boy-on-boy fox-trotting mayhem. This fall, Lance Bass is reportedly set to join the cast of Dancing With The Stars and partner with a male dancer and cha-cha his way into America's hearts. You know, because he's gay. And it's edgy.

Panic broke out at the OneXOne gala Saturday night in Calgary, when a group of African schoolchildren wearing traditional garb and posing sweetly for the cameras were sent fleeing for their lives as charity-spokesperson Ben Affleck plunged his face—"Like nothing I have ever seen!" one was later quoted as saying, "It was the size of five regular-man's heads!"—into the shot. Once order had been restored, the frightened boys were reintroduced to the star, whose work they were unfamiliar with ("Gone Baby Gone? National Board of Review winner for best director? No? What about Armageddon? They must have that one at Africa Blockbuster?").

There exists perhaps no more potent symbol of 1980s ratings powerhouse The Cosby Show than its star Bill Cosby's signature sweaters. Like the enchanted product of some magical mystery loom, no two inches of any garment was alike. If a plot involving Theo Huxtable's underachieving academics failed to capture your imagination, you could easily have gotten lost instead inside their woven psychedelia: One moment, you were picturing the vomited-up remains of an Uno deck; the next, you imagined an aerial tributary map as interpreted by a colorblind kindergartener. Now, thanks to a charitable eBay auction, some of these surrealist fashion masterworks are being made available for purchase. We guide you to the website now for a hypnotic slideshow of some of the greatest Cosby Sweater hits.

While having yet to really deliver on her post-incarceration pledge to feed the hungry Darfricans of Rwandonia, Paris Hilton did finally manage to make it to the African subcontinent yesterday, accompanying boyfriend Benji Madden to Johannesburg as he toured with his band Good Charlotte. Once there, she refused to step foot out of her Range Rover caravan until handlers agreed to "show me some African orphans like the one Madonna bought or whatever," at which point Hilton was whisked to the Jacaranda Children's Home, where she signed a stack of photographs featuring the humanitarian star of The Hottie or the Nottie striking a seductive pose in a white bikini. (A gesture which only confused some of the younger children, who proceeded to gnaw on the headshot, assuming it was was some kind of flatbread ration.)

It's Oprah's Big Give fever! YOU get to give! And YOU get to give! EVeryBOdy GETS to GIVE! To start the ball rolling, we offer documented Mac-enthusiast Drew Barrymore, who made a donation of $1 million of her personal fortune to an organization that feeds Kenyan children, written out on a giant, Price Is Right-style check and presented on The Oprah Winfrey Show today. It was a gesture of such heartfelt magnanimity that none other than Drew's Charlie's Angels co-star and bestest friend Cameron Diaz (secret, mutual nickname: Poo) called in to congratulate her on the gesture. Lucy Liu, meanwhile, waited patiently on Line 2; unfortunately, time restraints never allowed her to publicly state that she too was all for Barrymore's decision to give $1 million to a very worthy cause.

Having just returned from a trip to Iraq, Angelina Jolie has penned an opinion piece for The Washington Post, in which she assessed her findings on how the war has devastated the people of that region: "More than 2 million people are refugees inside their own country — without homes, jobs and, to a terrible degree, without medicine, food or clean water. Ethnic cleansing and other acts of unspeakable violence have driven them into a vast and very dangerous no-man's land. Many of the survivors huddle in mosques, in abandoned buildings with no electricity, in tents or in one-room huts made of straw and mud." By way of fairness, the paper has opened up their op/ed section to Jennifer Aniston too, whose own column, "Whole Foods: Why Can't They Stay Open Until 11?" should appear early next week. [WashPo]

While the Chinese government has been admirably restrained in their criticism of Steven Spielberg's decision to pull out of the Beijing Olympics, saying only that they "regret" his choice (while secretly making plans to colorize Schindler's List and snip the first 25 minutes off of Saving Private Ryan), the press and public have been less kind, with one editorial calling the director "famous for his science fiction. But now it seems he lives in a world of science fiction and he can't distinguish a dream from reality." [AP]

Yesterday's surprise announcement that Steven Spielberg would not, in fact, be contributing to the Beijing summer games—having enacted the force genocide clause of his contract that allowed him to pull out if he found the host-country to be bankrolling a very unsportsmanlike systematic human slaughter—caused human rights groups the world over to sing the director's praises. (Amnesty International went so far as to issue a statement absolving the director "of all perceived misdeeds, including the last 7 minutes of War of the Worlds.")

Steven Spielberg has long been attached to the 2008 summer games in Beijing, his wizardry over childlike wonder™ secured by organizers for their opening ceremonies. The decision greatly angered Mia Farrow, who blamed the Sudanese-backing Chinese government of helping to fund the Darfur genocide; in a now-famous WSJ op-ed from last March, she likened the Schindler's List director to Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl for agreeing to work with a regime with so much blood on its hands. Minutes ago, news broke that Spielberg would be pulling out of the Olympics, citing Darfur as the reason. His statement follows after the jump:

Madonna and Guy Ritchie popped up in quite the most unexpected of places today—touring the slums of Mumbai, where she was "showered with rose and marigold petals," and dangled bottles of antibiotics in front of the locals' faces which she happily turned over just as soon as they signed a document ostensibly converting them for the rest of eternity to Kaballah. [AP]

Angelina Jolie can add another superlative feather in her cap: she's a poll-topper in the all-important Best Celebrity Humanitarian of 2007 caucus. Voters chose the adoptive mother of several Third World tykes specifically because they believe her charitable efforts not to be a calculated effort to land atop the very Best Celebrity Humanitarian poll. From the Reuters report:

Barron Hilton, Paris's grandfather, has announced today his plans to donate 97 percent of his $2.3 billion fortune to charity. While his similarly philanthropic granddaughter was unavailable for comment, we're certain she would wholeheartedly embrace the rechanneling of the family's vast fortunes to those less hot and/or fortunate, and match the act by pledging a penny from every sale of her mobile phone game sensation Paris Hilton's Jewel Jam to feed the hungry Darfricans. [Reuters]

Not since Sharon Stone shrinkwrapped her below-the-belt Basic Instinct co-star for a gala fundraiser has the Make-A-Wish Foundation had such an exciting, celebrity-pants-related opportunity. Kathy Hilton has spent the holiday amassing an impressive collection of celebrity memorabilia for an eBay auction benefiting the dream-fulfilling children's charity, including a pair of stonewashed dungarees worn and signed by Mel Gibson.