· Monty Python legend Eric Idle will join in conversation with Bruce "Hollywood's Most Celebrated Novelist" Wagner ("The Cellphone Trilogy", The Chrysanthemum Palace) at the Writer's Guild Theatre, but you'll need to pony up twenty bucks to experience the magic.
· Noize For Your Earz: Indie popsters Mates of State hook up with local boys Irving at the Troubadour; Vagenius, perhaps the best-named band in all of the land, at Spaceland.
· Art you can fondle (but please, furries and plushies, no spontaneous fur-piles, OK?): Touch Me at Gallery C featuring fur, moveable cubic thingys, walk-through sculptures and, hopefully, well-behaved people in mascot suits with easy access to their naughty parts.

Oh, how the television season can humble even the most highly polished of the network golden boys! At last year's upfronts, NBC's Jeff Zucker practically tore open his shirt to shave a dollar sign in his chest hair to reveal a tattoo of Matt LeBlanc's face:

We're going to level with you. It's taking us a lot longer than usual to shake out of our week-starting funk. That's right, we had a case of the Mondays (if you press your ear to the monitor, you can almost hear our Care Bears crying). But that's all over now. We poured ourselves a tall, cold glass of Robert Evans' swingin' blog-prose, everything is all better now. Pull a chair up to the waterbed and listen as Evans regales us with a story of his sexy sit-down with porno auteur Andrew Blake, will you?

Oh, yeah, lost among the chaos of this morning's NBC official schedule announcement and more Lohan-related news than we could cut with a credit card, was this announcement that Fox picked up Arrested Development for another season. The press release:

The Dude. Man. Phat. blog hears Lindsay Lohan possibly breaking some career news on local LA radio station KIIS FM:

We noticed this raging debate on the tabloid racks while buying our Sunday morning bottle of Mad Dog.
Why does US Weekly insist on tearing asunder what In Touch and Oprah are trying so hard to build?

· THR calls NBC's schedule a "massive overhaul." Also, we forgot to mention the new drama with the most howlingly stupid name, Inconceivable, which takes place in (you guessed it by now) a fertility clinic. Welcome back to fourth place, NBC. [THR]
· The WB and 20th Century Fox TV scratch out each other's eyes over Reba license fees, nearly taking down two of 20th's pilots for the network in the skirmish. Also, Law & Order creator Dick Wolf is pissed that NBC canceled Trial by Jury. [Variety]
· Tired of the actress overshadowing him on the red carpet at Cannes, George Lucas holds down Natalie Portman and shaves her head. The move backfires as the world is now fascinated by the exquisite shape of her skull (see pic on THR homepage). [THR]
· Survivor takes out Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, but the Housewives beat back CBS with a ratings rolling pin. [Variety]
· Michelle Pfeiffer will star in Amy Heckerling's I Could Never Be Your Woman, a romantic comedy "about a successful professional woman in trouble with her love life,"a groundbreaking premise sure to revitalize the genre. [THR]

Since burning down their studios, snuffing all of their executives, and replacing all 24 hours of their daily programming space with a salad shooter infomercial to start over after a disastrous, last-place season was deemed "wildly impractical" by fading NBC golden boy Jeff Zucker, the network instead decided to trot out a revamped Fall schedule for potential advertisers to kick off the upfronts in New York. NBC is launching six new shows in the fall: one comedy (My Name is Earl, with Jason Lee as a crook who wins the lottery), three dramas (including E-Ring, in which NBC attempts to suck at Jerry Bruckheimer's hitmaking teat to keep up with CBS), and two reality shows (one has Amy Grant crossing the country and granting Three Wishes—get it?—to make it seem like NBC loves poor people as much as ABC's Extreme Makeover). Gone are The Contender, American Dreams, Third Watch, and Law & Order: Trial by Jury, while Scrubs and Fear Factor are temporarily shelved until some of the new shows flop and demand immediate replacement with a known quantity.

Time tracks down missing Comedy Central bonus baby Dave Chappelle in Durban, South Africa, where he is apparently not wandering the streets hitting the pipe or trying to bite his way out of a straightjacket. In a nutshell: Getting $50 million makes your friends so crazy that disappearing for some chill-out time half the world away seems like a perfectly logical thing to do:

The Lindsay Lohan Damage Control Party Machine lurched to life in the pages of the LAT this weekend, in the form of a long profile that desperately tries to counteract the bad publicity that doggedly follows the one-woman "pop culture brand" like a dirty old man clutching a bottle of Cristal and an eightball. Lohan seems very well-coached by her publicists, as she nails all the "I swear I'm not so out of control that you shouldn't trust your $50 million movie to me" talking points: I want to do more adult roles...I've cut down on the partying...I'm a professional...if I look tired all the time, it's because I work TOO hard...I'm just a regular girl!:

Another Monday, another morning of J.Lo-induced suicidal ideation:

Nothing melts the little lump of charcoal where our hearts used to be like a press release announcing an old-fashioned celebrity adoption. Click the image to see a larger version that won't induce cataracts quite so quickly.

Friday
· We're not exactly sure what to make of this, but everyone should probably go: "Zombie vs. Vampire: An Unholy Smackdown… of Literature!" The apocalyptic war of the undead has begun — and this time, it’s textual! Taste the dark pleasure of an unrepentant rhetorical assault on mortality! DAVE “Guts” ENG takes on GRACE “Blood” KRILANOVICH in ten judged rounds of brutal undead literary action! Referee JUSTIN “Bones” VEECH keeps the gore flowing! Before the Title Match: STEPHANIE “Fang” RIOUX frames your facile longing for infinity with righteous lycanthropic fury! DJ ETERNAL PAIN OF DAMNATION will extend your suffering into the Nevermore!" Um, yeah! At Betalevel.
· Friday Night Music: Joshua Tree Music Festival (with Victoria Williams and a bunch of acts we’ve never heard of—overcompensate with drugs should you attend); Trashcan Sinatras at the El Rey; Erasure begins a three night stand at Avalon.
Saturday
· The Acme A Day In The Life sketch show (featuring Blogging's Wil Wheaton) threatens to make obscene amounts of funny all over you, but only if you arrive at the Acme Comedy Theatre at the prescribed time.
· Because you don't know shit about this city until you've toured it through the films of Buster Keaton, OK, hot shot?:“Touring Los Angeles Through the Films of Buster Keaton" at the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Sunday
· North Hollywood: It's not just for people who came here for pilot season in 2002 and never left. The 13th Annual NoHo Theatre & Arts Festival invades everyone's favorite artsy pocket of the Valley.
· Sunday Night Music, sponsored by "You're sick of the Housewives": LCD Soundsystem and M.I.A. at the El Rey; The Adored at the Troubadour.

A deeply evil reader just slipped us E!'s summer schedule (and we're pretty sure it's not an E! staffer looking for free publicity), and rather than bore you with the entire thing (suffice it to say that unpaid talking heads endlessly rehashing pop culture/celebrity news in a list format figures prominently), we'll strip it down to the "highlights."

The You Can't Make It Up blog features a report from the 2005 Reebok Human Rights Awards, where a certain globe-trotting A-list actress proved that when she isn't whitewater rafting down the Amazon with Dax Shepherd to raise awareness about the destruction of the rain forests, she's always available to lend her estimable improv skills to help out with a good cause:

Because it's Friday afternoon and the margarita machine automatically grinds to life at noon, here's a fun game: Spot the fake show among the real offerings from NBC's summer lineup!

After naively believing a camera prohibition at a Star Wars preview screening, BoingBoing blogging eminence Xeni Jardin dutifully reproduced some of the move's most mind-blowing scenes via "napkincam," while others flouted the rules and snapped away with verboten phonecams. In defense of our pal Xeni, a LucasFilm rep did get up and practically threaten to destroy her home planet of Alderaan if she unleashed her Treo:

We'd like to thank this week's sponsors for their love, support, and most importantly, their online advertising budgets. Without them, we'd have to go back to "blogging" about FBI mind control on a sandwich board on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer (what are you waiting for, don't you want your business to succeed?) and reach the world's most influential consumers, see this page.

Bet your assistant's kidneys on the following box office predictions:

· Kicking and Screaming and Monster In Law look to "reverse an 11-week weak streak at the box office." Never underestimate the power of Will Ferrell yelling at kids or J.Lo's ass. [Variety]
· Rival networks look to gnaw NBC's carcass at the upfronts, trying to devour the last bits of the Must See TV advertising revenue meat sticking to its ratings-starved ribs. [THR]
· Viacom/Paramount buddies Tom Freston and Brad Grey recycle former Warner Bros bigwig Bob Daly to help the studio pry teenagers away from their Xboxes and rainbow parties long enough to pay attention to their movies and cable shows. [Variety]
· Hilary Duff continues to choose projects that ensure we'll never see her act before we die, signing up for the Cheaper by the Dozen sequel. This is a good thing. [THR]
· Augusten Burroughs sells the movie rights to yet another memoir, this time a still-unwritten one about his fucked up relationship with his father. Don't worry, this will probably be the last one—we think he's finally out of parents. [Variety]