• Felix Gillette surveys the recent drama at MSNBC and chats with network president Phil Griffin about the decision to drop Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from anchoring the presidential campaign. [NYO]

· Let Lindsay Lohan, Albert Brooks, Jamie Lynn Spears, and Life Magazine introduce you to the GOP's great vice-presidential hope. · In one of the best TV scraps since Judd Apatow eradicated That 70s Show's Mark Brazill, Greg Garcia branded Alec Baldwin as an "unlikeable, psychotic narcissist" after Baldwin bitched about NBC showing more love to My Name Is Earl than 30 Rock. · David Duchovny taught us all kinds of hilarious euphemisms for "sex addiction." · Madman Nicolas Cage went all the way to Thailand and all he got was this lousy coup. · David Spade might have made a kid, but Matthew McConaughey made a kid cry. · Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Paris Hilton made their respective plans for the Toronto Film Festival. · Do we dare ponder a future without Beijing Ben frolicking on NBC's behalf? · David Cronenberg explained to us that David Lynch is "way weirder" than he is. · All-Trailer Day had a look at Zack & Miri, Labor Pains and Milk. · The likeness to Jason Priestley's facial shrub was easy to place. Robert Downey Jr's, though? Not so much. · The first trailer of burgeoning political pundit Lindsay Lohan's comeback vehicle, Labor Pains, made its way online. Lindsay and her newly remunerative ladyfriend Sam Ronson celebrated with a full-fledged liplock for the paps. · We finally got a taste our first taste of the newer, smilier 90210. It remains to be seen whether Shenae Grimes' shit-eating grin can top Shannen Doherty's bitchy frown of yore, but one thing is certain: we can't wait for the reveal that Brandon was really the Unabomber! · Don LaFontaine, RIP. · And finally, don't forget to check back here on Sunday for our liveblog direct from the red carpet of the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. Britney will be opening and Kanye will be closing, while we're hopeful that watersports-enthusiast Russell Brand will be able to shake off his terrifying experience with an elephant's vagina and be as funny hosting as he was when we interviewed him. See you on Sunday at or around 3pm PDT!

When Californication star David Duchovny announced he was checking into sex rehab, Fox News columnist Roger Friedman suggested it was due to an internet porn addiction — a theory that didn't sit well with our commenters, who remembered a suddenly relevant blind item about a TV star who'd been following extras off the set for some very special "overtime." Today, the NY Daily News rebuts Friedman and confirms the latter rumor, hearing from the National Enquirer that Duchovny's wife Tea Leoni was on to his elaborate scheme to trade sex for SAG vouchers:

• Britney Spears drank at 13, lost her virginity at 14 and started taking drugs at 15, her mom said in a tell-all memoir. By 16 the singer was caught with cocaine and pot on a private jet, and mom was feeling guilty about letting her sleep with Justin Timberlake and make "raunchy" music videos. But releasing a tell-all memoir about Spears six months after Spears's latest trip the psychiatric ward? No regrets! [Sun]

• Star Jones has a new man! Meet Herb Wilson, the executive chef at Manhattan's Soho and Tribeca Grand hotels. [People]

· So this little exchange between Lily Allen and Sir Elton John at the GQ Awards is certainly one for the ages. Team...um...Sting? [TMZ] · A People reporter is suing Splash for the Heath Ledger-doing-blow-at-Chateau Marmont video that surfaced after his death, claiming "intrusion of privacy," but an LA Superior Court judge has dismissed 11 of the 12 claims. [ABC News] · Knowing David Duchovny is the voice of this dachshund wanting you to rub its belly makes us worried that this dachshund may actually be addicted to random belly-rubbing from total strangers. [Videogum] · Speaking of sex addiction, at last—all your naughty celebrities-on-a-telephone desires can be satisfied. [celebrities and telephones] · And to end on a hopeful note, Debi Mazar is totally kosher with Bristol Palin's teen pregnancy. She was the product of a teen pregnancy herself! [E Online]

A little tear, please, for David Duchovny's broadband account. He's willingly severed his high-speed hookup so he can head to treatment for an addiction to Internet porn. Duchovny copped to rumors that he was a "sex addict" when he checked himself in last week.We're not ones to throw a word like "addiction" around lightly at Camp Valleywag, and we'd never rob a nerd icon like Duchovny of some dignity on his way to dry out. But come on, you're wondering too: What kind of Internet porn is Duchovny into? Log your suspect sites in the comments. (Photo by Andy Johnstone/Pacificcoastnews.com)

Most celebrities only announce a stint in rehab after undergoing a very public flame-out, so when David Duchovny offered last week (apropos of nothing) that he was being treated for sex addiction, gossip hounds went wild trying to figure out the reasons why. One columnist hot on the case is Fox News gadfly Roger Friedman, last seen trying to put the blame for the Harry Potter delay on star Daniel Radcliffe's magic wand. After a little digging, Friedman got to the bottom of some of the more scurrilous rumors:

• Lizzie Grubman is spawning once again: She and husband Chris Stern are expecting twins. [P6]

It was announced in a statement released yesterday that X-Files star David Duchovny is the latest star to voluntarily enter rehab, though his stint is a markedly different one than the typical two-week Promises tour accorded most penitent, crisis-managed celebs. No, Duchovny — who played a sex-obsessed character in the softcore drama Red Shoe Diaries, the 2005 film Trust the Man, and currently essays one as bed-hopping novelist Hank Moody on the Showtime series Californication — is seeking treatment for sex addiction. Though currently married to actress Tea Leoni (with whom he has two children: daughter Madelaine West, 9, and son Kyd, 6), the actor has fended off rumors about his sex life for over a decade, according to Us Weekly:

• The war between News Corp. and NBC rages on. Today Page Six reports that Keith Olbermann is so concerned about being "assassinated," he's refusing to cover the Republican National Convention unless MSNBC springs for a more secure location. They also claim none of Luke Russert's new colleagues at NBC News like him, especially since he got to ride around the convention in golf carts while they had to walk. [P6, P6]

• Luke Russert golf-carted around the Democratic convention like some kind of boy king while his bitter coworkers had to hoof it. Obviously this rumor is made up, because everyone knows NBC correspondents air their bitter grievances only on camera. [P6]

All roads led to rapture for fanboys (and girls, we suppose) over the weekend at the LA Film Festival, where Sunday closed with a glimpse at scenes from the forthcoming X-Files: I Want to Believe. It seemed a busy enough couple of days elsewhere in Westwood, but it wasn't like there were shrieking throngs delivering signed thank-you cards to Diane English after a preview/discussion of her troubled updating of The Women, or a geek-to-seat ratio of 1:1 at the Melvin Van Peebles event on Saturday. This was the sort of a climactic bedlam most fests save for their closing nights, not the last screening on a sleepy Sunday.

We'll take any opportunity we can get for a furlough from our shackles at Defamer HQ, so off we go to the Los Angeles Film Festival, which opens tonight with the world premiere of Angelina Jolie's emaciated-assassin actioner Wanted. Maybe not the gritty, funded-by-credit-cards entry you'd expect from fest organizers Film Independent, but that's what the rest of the event is for; running until June 29, this year's LAFF is enticing enough for us to call in sick at least a few days, maybe even all of next week.

After a disorienting Golden Access Globes Press Hollywood Conference Awards that left nominees and audiences alike utterly befuddled (we understand Sally Field was fished out of The Grove's dancing waters fountain at 3 a.m. delivering an impassioned speech about bringing the troops home to two security guards on a golf cart), our traditional Globes parties post-mortem promised to be a similar mess. Still, if there were awards, and there were winners, by God there's going to be a reactions round-up, even if it comes off sounding a lot like the ones you read after the nominations are announced:
· The Atonement crew toasted their win at a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, where the ghost of O.D.'d John Belushi smiled over their WWII romance's win. [Variety]
· Marion Cotillard enjoyed her win for La Vie en Rose from the Four Seasons. "I'm enjoying so much what's going on here, I can't be disappointed in any way," she said, convincingly masking her extreme disappointment. [Variety]

• Britney Spears celebrated her birthday with Paris Hilton, as tradition dictates she must. [Pagesix.com]
  

The date: November 19th

The place: Rockefeller Plaza

Sighted: "Just went to get lunch down in the 30 Rock concourse and saw David Duchovny with his two kids in the Swarovksi store. He looks fiiine. The dream of seeing my childhood crush in person has been fulfilled."

If you came to Californication without knowing much about the Showtime series, you'd be forgiven if you'd have expected the familiar Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Californication" to play under the show's titles; failing that, you'd think at least some reference to the band's hit 1999 album of the same name might figure into the action or back story. As it turns out, however, no permission from the band was secured by the network or the show's creators, who merely saw in the lexical hybrid a catchy, succinct term covering the shows primary themes of fucking and life in Southern California.

· Will Smith re-teams with his Pursuit of Happyness creatives for Seven Pounds, the story of a guy who falls in love while trying to kill himself [Ed.note—Isn't it a little tacky to be announcing a suicide movie so soon after the Owen incident? Just sayin'.], hoping that audiences will shed just as many tears watching Smith nobly overcome personal adversity as they did when he was hugging his kid while sleeping in that filthy Happyness bathroom. [Variety]
· Audiences will get a chance to see David Duchovny try to fuck away the pain of being a writer for another twelve episodes, as Showtime gives Californication a second season pick-up. [THR]
· Apple keeps trying to drive away the Hollywood content partners that just want to love them, proposing to cut the price of TV episodes to 99 cents. [Variety]
· Rupert Murdoch gets a pay raise to $24.3 million per year, but still officially makes less than News Corp second banana Peter Chernin. [THR]
· And in other continuing-cinematic-love-affair news, Joaquin Phoenix and director James Gray can't get enough of each other, teaming up for the third time for the drama Two Lovers. [Variety]

Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee is probably at this moment luxuriating in a bubble bath in his Hilton suite, gleefully using his new best director trophy for a little round of Golden Globe submarine commander. These recent accolades are almost enough to erase the memory of his disastrous last effort, The Hulk, which Lee admits left him "depressed and shaken." But while the production may have been a traumatic one for Lee, and a disappointment at the box office, it still made enough money ($245 million) for Universal to consider a Hulk 2 just don't expect it to be playing anywhere besides a home theater near you: