We'd long assumed that the title of Most Powerful Man in Hollywood belonged to the velvet-hooded, anonymous potentate who presides over the monthly Gay Mafia induction ceremony held in the secret, well-fortified sub-basement of a certain Malibu compound, and who wordlessly orders the ritualistic removal of each new member's pinkie toe by pantomiming a scissor motion with two of his fingers. (The shaving, oiling, and branding pantomimes are far too involved and horrible to describe here.) The AP, however, informs us that the person who truly holds sway over the entertainment industry is superstar Hollywood fire inspector Robert Gladden, whose ability to cancel the Oscars—and, by extension, all of existence—by stepping into the green room and declaring, "If a spark from a cigarette lighter comes within a hundred yards of Harrison Ford, everyone in the Kodak Theatre will perish in the ensuing whiskey-fume fireball. We're shutting it down," makes him a figure of unparalleled local influence:

Radar interviews a handful of the private coaches who tutor the spoiled children of Hollywood in demanding athletic activities like "catch" and "swimming," a subset of the babysitter caste whose efforts allow stay-at-home moms and busy, powerful dads to spend more quality time fucking the pool boy and their call-rollers, respectively. And how do these privileged kids act during their lessons? According to the pseudonymous coaches' anecdotes, they're pretty much the don't-you-know-who-my-daddy-is mini-tyrants you'd expect:

Sure, you've snorted it off the cleavage of a new, busty friend delightfully incurious about why someone who's supposedly the "head producer" of Grey's Anatomy wants to party in the back seat of a 1994 Honda Civic, but have you ever really took the time to think about where your favorite recreational drug comes from? This instructive video passed along by our friends at LAist details the gasoline (both recycled and fresh varieties), coca, quicklime, and sulfuric acid cocktail used to produce your powdery friend in distant jungles, yet stops short of showing the step where the strawberry flavoring is added, allowing you to go right on blowing rails of the finest bathroom stall Quik your dealer has to offer without unpleasant thoughts about the artificial additives giving your high its delicious, fruity flavor.

As we continue to lob posts out into the ether addressed to a readership we realize is by now standing in LAX security lines, waiting to return to the cramped childhood bedrooms where they first conceived their plans to spend the rest of their lives writing largely meaningless notes in screenplay margins, we thought we'd take this opportunity to share a feel-good, Hollywood Thanksgiving moment that is sure to lift the dejected spirits of any of you unfortunate enough to still be with us:

Defamer is committed to bringing together readers who may have some unredeemed SAG vouchers laying around with individuals so desperate to obtain the golden ticket of union membership that they're willing to sacrifice their lucrative days jobs in the pursuit of their Hollywood dreams. Somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley, a struggling actor is offering to swap his power over criminally inflated sticker prices for some career assistance on Craigslist:

The idea that a hit TV series could affect the fashions of the times is hardly new, as anyone who has ever attended one of those Miami Vice-inspired sock-burning protests of the mid 1980s can attest. But current ABC ratings juggernaut Grey's Anatomy has added yet another wrinkle to the concept of primetime-influenced style, by transforming traditionally conservative hospital dresscodes into hotzones of skirt-hiking, five-o'clock-shadow-growing medical professionals hoping to score like their McHorny TV counterparts:

Springboarding off the just-released Fast Food Nation's dramatization of how burger chains and Hollywood conspire to bloat America's children by inducing them to gorge on diabetes-inducing meat slabs en route to the plastic Shrek toy contained in their movie tie-in meals, the LAT's Patrick Goldstein calls out studio chiefs for happily endorsing a variety of social causes (AIDS, the environment, any other issue involving a charity dinner with an open bar) while ignoring the damage that McRibs are inflicting on advertising-prone kids:

The Weak Nights blog had some fun with the 100% legal, identity-thieving-lite leisure activity of plugging famous people's names into the California Unclaimed Property Search website, and seeing what sorts of outstanding credits might be lying in wait of any celebrity broke enough to consider bothering retrieving them. Among the stunners: Kimberly Stewart has actually earned wages (presumably for having done work of some kind!), Perfect Strangers bought Balki a house in Malibu, and Linda Evangelista is still not getting out of bed for less than $10,000. (Well, definitely not for less than $40.) Enjoy perusing the gallery of unwitting beneficiaries, then plug in your own favorite stars to find out who's too busy lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills to collect a two-figure residuals check for some long-forgotten Baywatch Nights extra work.

It's a little bit off our usual beat, but this video of a UCLA student being tasered in the school library computer lab by campus cops after failing to produce his identification card is certainly worth your attention as you return from lunch. If for some reason you need a Hollywood angle to make yourself spend the six or so minutes required to watch the whole thing, consider that a similarly upsetting scene could easily unfold in the Paramount Studio Store, where guards have been instructed to immediately stungun any patron attempting to exploit the employee discount without first displaying appropriate ID.

As anyone who has ever worked on a sitcom can tell you, the writers room is not just the inner sanctum where a dozen scribes gather to brainstorm the theoretical contents of Courteney Cox's uterus or share their disdain for foreplay into the wee hours of the morning, it's also the place where metric tons of Red Vines, Balance bars, and production-supplied feasts from local restaurants are ritualistically devoured as part of the creative process. This weekend's NY Times Magazine comedy issue devoted a piece to gluttony in the Room, including this anecdote from a doomed spinoff that generated as many potential diabetes cases as episodes:

This week's NY Observer profiles the founders of Fortress Entertainment, the company behind the upcoming Terrence Howard film Pride, using the twentysomething showbiz aspirants to illustrate the industry's recent infestation by producers looking for projects upon which to lavish hedge-fund cash. Of course, not everyone in town is particularly excited by the prospect of this new kind of player gaining influence in Hollywood:

In industry known for its blind adherence to its centuries-old caste system, there is perhaps no group more woefully disenfranchised than its Armani-clad, blood-extracting agent underclass. (See? There we go reinforcing the kind of systemic bias keeping them down.) Sure, they get their ten percent of the hard work of the creative types who actually "make" the movies, but what they really want is respect, the one aftermarket option they can't buy for their BMWs, no matter how effectively they sweet-talk their dealer. The Envelope calls attention to their struggle to finally gain the awards season voice that the Motion Picture Academy has cruelly denied them for so long:

Today's front-page story about how 'special sales' — a term we've never really loved, are other sales unspecial? sad — are becoming a bigger slice of the bookselling pie details what we think are actually two distinct trends. 1. Books as accessories: "A pop-up book called One Red Dot echoed a display of polka-dotted canvas sneakers, while another title, The Persistence of Yellow, perfectly matched a strategically positioned yellow sweater" — a trend that won't be unfamiliar to anyone who's seen a ribbon-belted preppie reading Prep on the subway and 2. Megachains as cultural arbiters, a trend that won't be unfamiliar to anyone who read this article about Starbucks's choice of Mitch Albom's For One More Day as the newest recipient of the coffee monolith's coveted "halo" effect: the perception that any product they offer will convey their signature "quality, good will, trust [and] intelligence" to their "hippyish, rockish" core consumer base. (Our personal favorite aspect of this promotion is the 'personal' staff reccommendation, pictured above, that's in every Starbucks. Classy.)

By now, it's likely you've come across the likes of Baby Jake, the telegenic toddler who has achieved a certain measure of notoriety due to his being relentlessly pimped out on BuyJake.com as a tiny, human billboard by what we'll assume is either an opportunistic parent, or the Gypsy carnie who won him in a high-stakes game of bocce ball. Now comes word of a huge development in the ongoing Baby Jake saga, as he tells us in his "Blog to Fame!" (pause to shudder at inevitable prospect of 2024 Entertainment Tonight segment entitled, "Baby Jake, All Grown-Up: The Road Back From Hell,") that noted baby welfare advocate Oprah Winfrey has made a sizable monetary offer to ensure Jake never has to again endure being painted to resemble a Jack in the Box Bacon 'n' Cheese Ciabatta Burger:

You'd think that in a town where a significant percentage of the population spends the other 364 days of the year slicing, injecting, and restuffing themselves beyond recognition, by the time All Hallow's Eve rolls around, they'd have no energy left for yet further modifications—but you'd be wrong. Something about L.A.'s highly plasticized nature, paired with the bloodcurdling showbiz tales of terror we all know so well, make Hollywood and Halloween a nearly perfect complimentary pairing, resulting in a holiday of heightened horror: Hollyween. In honor of your pre-Hollyween weekend festivites, a round-up:
· The LAT details how the studios have been cashing in on a healthy chunk of what has become a $5 billion-per-year industry, through the licensing of their characters to costume manufacturers. Long ago having outgrown the Disney character kiddie-sector, you can now buy fully authorized costumes of all your grown-up screen favorites, including a Nacho Libre Spandex get-up sure to give everyone at your office party love-handle-related nightmares for weeks. [LAT]

A Defamer operative sent in this World! Exclusive! Photo! of a needlepoint pillow featuring the unmistakable likeness of perpetually put-upon screen comic Ben Stiller—an expertly executed craft set for prominent placement in the upcoming Farrelly Brothers production, The Heartbreak Kid (aka The Seven Day Itch). No background prop this, the painstakingly hand-stitched cushion plays a vital role in plot advancement, setting the star off on one of his trademark meltdown scenes that audiences—perhaps "love" is too strong a word here, but certainly expect—to see in a Ben Stiller film. Our operative explains all, after the jump:

Radar has devoted an entire feature to highlighting the screen-horror inspirations for some of the truly monstrous handbags currently rolling off designer production lines—a clever designer's trick, which, not unlike the slimming effect of vertical lines, transforms whatever plastic surgery disaster happens to be carrying it into a radiant beauty by comparison. While Miu Miu's textured earth tones clearly owe a tip of the hat to Night of the Living Dead's zombie allures, it's Charm and Luck's Sedona bag that manages to overstep the line of homage and teeter on the precipice of outright plagiarism. So reminiscent is it of Predator's titular menace, an unwitting attendee sporting the bag at a recent gubernatorial campaign stop was startled when the Governor, upon spotting the other-worldly accessory, instantly dove behind the podium, then placed an index finger to his lips to silence his concerned handlers, assuring them in an urgent whisper, "If that over-the-shoulder bleeds, we can kill it."

In the interest of easing our way into this Friday morning (sssssh, please don't speak above a whisper until about noon), we'd like to share the Fast Hugs blog's excavation of this vitally important cultural artifact from 1986, How Can I Tell If I'm Really In Love, a star-studded PSA that aimed to better inform the sexually awakening children of the 80s when it was totally OK to finally "do it." Blueballs alert: This is just Part I, where the sage advice eventually to be delivered by a reclining Ted "Sam Malone" Danson (assumed topic: how to know when it's time to take that drunk Red Sox groupie home), Jason "Derek Taylor" Bateman (topic: On Getting Ricky Stratton's Sloppy Seconds), and Justine "Mallory Keaton" Bateman (topic: "I made Nick wait until the third date. Here's how you can hold off your horny, monosyllabic boyfriend too.") is only teased, leaving us to wait in tense discomfort until they finally put out in Part II.

Ever since yesterday's Variety opened our eyes to the heart-wrenching plight of industry event attendees who find themselves idling in their cars for unacceptably prolonged stretches of time due to a widespread valet understaffing crisis, we've hardly been able to think about anything else. But in an attempt to be a part of a solution rather than merely a helpless observer of this tragedy, we're spotlighting this comment from yesterday's post, in which a reader who attended the Fulfillment Fund gala cited for its shocking parking problem describes their organizers' novel way of speeding the deep-pocketed through long valet lines:

• Dumbo continues to celebrate itself via a four-day dance extravanganza featuring a whole lot of dance companies, troupes and choreographers. Can't afford tonight's $100-per-person gala? Pose as a bar attendant. [NY Mag]