With the holidays around the corner, there's a fresh opportunity for Kabbalah-savvy entrepreneurs to make a mockery of your preferred faith with new consumer goods marketed to the holy season. A press release heralds the much-anticipated arrival of Kabbalah candles from the same company that brought us a "collection of Elton John home fragrances," so you know that they've really captured the smell of money burning in wax form (a formula pulled straight from the Bible!). And any press release that name-drops Madonna, Demi Moore, and Ashton Kutcher in its first sentence obviously has a higher-minded purpose—a "portion" of the proceeds will benefit Kabbalah's Spirituality for Kids program. Of course, there's no mention of the Kabbalah Centre itself in the announcement, and the KC already has its own line of magic candles, setting up the possibility of a bloody turf war just in time for the Centre's Fake Hanukkah. Happy Holidays, Light Seekers!

Without a Paddle/Stroker Ace star Burt Reynolds is preemptively suing (indeed, shades of Bill Falafelhands) a former girlfriend whom he says is planning to blackmail him with accusations of verbal and physical abuse. It's the standard he said/she said court filing, but our favorite parts of such papers (excepting, of course, discussion of Joey's potential serial rape career in legal documents) are the dueling descriptions of plaintiff and defendant, i.e. "Reynolds has received international acclaim and won numerous awards" vs. "Seals [the ex-girlfriend] had little to no formal education and was working as a bar maid." We guess Reynolds' lawyers nixed the line about how "her ass really didn't look that great in jeans, anyway" before the suit was filed.

Britney Spears' recent writing bug has really gotten out of hand. During a recent shopping trip on Melrose, she was so gripped with creative fervor that she scrawled some "Graffiti of Truth" on a wall at a vintage t-shirt shop. Someone ought to sneak a camera into the employee bathroom, just in case she penned a secret epilogue to her latest masterpiece. We'd hate for any of her words to be lost to literary history. That would be so un-wicked.

A poster at MetaFilter poses a question to the community to research a writing assignment: Who are the most overrated stars in showbiz? The utterly unsurprising answer: All of them. After spending a while slogging through the responses, we're hard pressed to come up with a name that doesn't appear among the reasoned critiques of certain celebrity's talent-to-hype gaps: "Jerry Seinfeld—[Seinfeld voice]: Talent? What's that all about?" "JERRY FUCKING BRUCKHEIMER" "Helen Hunt. Helen fucking Hunt." We suggest that everyone in SAG immediately call their publicists to demand the next cover of US Weekly (and an accompanying four-page spread of a shopping trip on Rodeo Drive) to let the world know that their talent is exactly equal to their fame.

The LAT holds Hollywood's hair as it kneels in front of the toilet, silently sobbing through the dry heaves of its continuing election hangover. In between its fruitless peristaltic contractions, the celebrity "elite" is attempting some soul-searching as CNN plays in the background, mercilessly rehashing the electoral results. What went wrong? Are they really that out of touch with the red states? Did they really hurt more than help? And, naturally, all such hand-wringing examinations must eventually return to one man:

In the interest of helping the Hollywood community to heal in the wake of Tuesday's crushing disappointment, eighth president and posthumous blogger Martin Van Buren offers some tips for breaking the news to your favorite celebrity Democratic booster:

Page Six says that David Geffen's Gay Mafia Xanadu was where the local Election Night action was hosted. We'd like to think that the PA sent with our invitation met some horrible fate rather than deal with the possibility that we were once again snubbed. We would've crashed, but the events of the night sapped our will to attempt to defeat the Gay Secret Handshake, the Gay Retinal Scan, and the Fifteen Arcane Questions About Cher required to enter. (Nominally "straight" celebrities—if you actually accept the possibility of their existence—are given the answers in advance.)

In an attempt to take our city's mind off of um, current events, Disney has released preview shots from Herbie: Fully Loaded. At least there's one thing we can all agree on: If you're going to drink and drive, you should wear a flame-retardant suit and a helmet. The next four years in Lohan truly are going to be something to behold.

We're still confident that Ben Affleck is going to take the fall for the Democrats' election failures, but in the interest of fairness we're willing to present options for spreading the blame around. A reader wonders what might have happened in the decisive swing state if a certain actor had used his personal transportation options a little more generously:

Well, that whole election thing really didn't turn out the way that Hollywood hoped, did it? Even after the town's left-leaning ambassadors (like dreamy-eyed voting machine Jake Gyllenhaal, cranky Larry David, and—do we even dare mention it?—Ashton Kutcher) invaded swing states to turn momentum towards the Democrats, the CNN scroll tells us that still-Senator Kerry has conceded. The inevitable blame game within the celebrity election contingent will quickly commence and reach this inevitable conclusion: It's Affleck's fault. He coulda been more visible, shoulda tried to lay both Kerry daughters, woulda had more of an impact if he'd thrown up those babies to make room in his gullet for a few more. Every failure has a scapegoat, and this one is canoodling somewhere with Jennifer Garner, wondering what might have been.

We must acknowledge our friends at LAist both for bringing the "Erection Day" marquee at the Tomkat theater to everyone's attention, as well as for their description of the WeHo skin-flick emporium as the "ArcLight of gay porn." We like to think of it as "The Grove of sodomy," but we could play the name game all day, and there are exit polls to watch. Oh, that sounds kind of dirty, doesn't it?

Gay baseball player theatre piece Take Me Out began with debate about star Jeremy Sisto's foreskin, and as the final curtain closes on the production, a reader speculates that all of the cut-or-uncut hubbub might've been a clever way to distract from the real story: co-star Bryce Johnson's huge nuts.

The Church of Scientology has come out kicking and screaming to stop Proposition 63, which would tax Californians making more than $1 million a year to pay for mental-health programs. It seems that combination of increasing taxes on Scientology's high-earning breadwinners and using that money to fund the "same psycho-pharma racket whose proliferation of mind-altering, violence-inducing drugs on our schoolchildren in recent decades has fueled the explosion of school violence fatalities" has put a bee in their brainwashing bonnet.

While the Hollywood No-Fun Police are cracking down on Silly String use with $1,000 fines, stun-guns, and headshot shredding for all offenders, we're pretty sure they'll still look the other way while everyone openly voids their bladders in the middle of the celebrating crowd. There are some proud traditions The Man can't afford to mess with.

The L.A. Weekly's Steve Mikulan survives the local production of the A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant without being thrown in the back of a white van and beaten with bamboo sticks until all of his thetans fell out. He does admit that things seemed a little dicey before the curtains went up:

Celebrity Justice has a video from actor Rip Torn's DUI stop in January, footage that further proves our new theory that actors become infinitely more entertaining once they cross into their 70s. Is there anything funnier than a soused thespian bickering with cops while struggling to maintain his balance? We say: No, there is not. Observe the following exchange that took place when the police asked Torn to submit to a sobriety test, complete with the kind of rat-a-tat banter that wouldn't have been out of place on The Larry Sanders Show:

Retarded Riverdance fascimile not included.

The Buddyhead Gossip blog attempts to democratize the world of celebrity birthday parties, revealing the secret location of a certain troubled rock star's soiree:

Yesterday's LAT [Ed.note—How fitting.] looked at how Deckers Outdoor, infernal corporate incubator of the furry evil that is the Ugg boot, is trying to prevent their disappearance into the the ether of fashion fads, where they'd have to wait to be ironically resurrected by our hipster grandchildren as we sit in an urn on the mantle. The LAT lede:

A writer for the NY Post penetrates the defenses of the Kabbalah Centre mothership on the edge of Beverly Hills and enrolls in two courses to see what all the red string, immortality-graning fuss is about. And, amazingly, after her short course of study and $445 in fees, she still finds herself unable to see into the future, cure her friends' cancer, and develops no appreciable psychic abilities. The experience wasn't a total disaster; she does see Britney Spears' brother and learns the power of giving until it hurts.