Even in the days when striking a rolling hoop with a stick was considered a cutting-edge diversion, marketers lured the celebrities of the day to publicize the launch of a faster hoop and stiffer hoop-striking implement. In exchange for their endorsement, free hooch was proffered and images of their delight in the New Product were captured on daguerrotype. Last night, the celebrity-product marketing machine chugged on essentially unchanged, as young stars guzzled free booze, played videogames, and took in some bands to promote the new Xbox, while their fun was recorded for an MTV special. A Defamer operative files a brief report from the celeb-littered Xbox launch shindig: [Spoiler alert! Don't read if you want to wait for the MTV special to know that CC Deville showed up!!!]

Your weekend moviegoing options are limited by the following box office projections. If this feels restricting, please realize that life is wholly predetermined anyway.

Join us in the enthusiastic granting of "the props" to this week's sponsors, whose generous support temporarily keeps us from slinging rock on the Strip. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer (hint: you do, unless you want to go bankrupt) and make your product or service visible to the most affluent, demographically desirable readership imaginable, see this page.

Herb Sargent, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, dies.

Today's release of Paris Hilton's most eagerly anticipated film to date, the much-hyped remake of House of Wax, has the critics polishing their celebutante-eviscerating knives. Here's the obligatory bad review round-up, presented in order of increasingly "dripping" sarcasm:

· American Idol was still huge on Wednesday, Primetime Live's Idol did big numbers, and NBC still can't tell its ratings ass from its Nielsen elbow. [Variety]
· An appeals court throws out the FCC's rules for a "broadcast flag" that would dictate how viewers record and watch digital TV shows, allowing the consumer greater flexibility in how they drool in front of the American Idol results show. [THR]
· Filthiest Variety headline of the day: "Jobs strokes Mouse as Pixar soars." Why exactly the Pixar CEO is masturbating a rodent is anyone's guess, but we're not here to judge. [Variety]
· 20th Century Fox TV is doing its best to prove the overall developmental deal isn't dead, throwing money at Family Guy/Yes, Dear writer Bobby Bowman for two years. [THR]
· Because it's not technically a pointless remake if you replace the original white people with black people: New Line plans a "reimagining" of the Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin pic All of Me, with Wanda Sykes playing the Tomlin role. [Variety]

"Hey, you got your incredibly hilarious, yet stereotype-riddled portrayal of a developmentally-disabled person in my coke and hookers!

By now, you've probably heard that former Frasier star Kelsey Grammer had a little gravitational mishap at Disneyland the other way, and we teased late yesterday that video of the fall exists on the internets. A generous reader just passed along a working link to footage of the stage-dive. Enjoy, and also peruse this account of the event that we were waiting to post once we had the accompany visual material, because we at Defamer are committed to making your multimedia experience of a famous person falling as satisfying as possible:

THR reports that SNL alum/Mom and Dad Save the World star Jon Lovitz is developing a game-show/hidden-camera prank hybrid for CBS, a Punk'd* suitable for the Tiffany network's tapioca-gumming demo (no hunky hosts or big scares to rattle the oldsters), which will be shot in Las Vegas this month. And even though this may completely invalidate the "entertainment for the elderly" premise established by the last sentence, Lovitz will lure a variety of strippers and aspiring actress types into acts of sexual congress, then reveal both the hidden cameras and the fact that he has no ability to help their careers.

"Listen, lady, neither of us is too excited about this arrangement, OK? You're an actress. Just fucking smile for the cameras, pretend that you can't keep your hands off me, and my associates in the cute, little sailor suits won't burn down your parents' house in Toledo. Are we clear? Oh, and my Church has the most effective non-pharmacological solution for oral herpes in the world. We're headed straight to the Centre once these shutter-monkeys have had their fill. Until then, I'm only kissing your ear."

· At Coachella, blog savant Whatevs witnesses the long-awaited reunion of Vincent Gallo and the actress who supposedly blew him on screen. We regret to inform you that Gallo did not bovs all over Sevigny's tees, however. Schmears.
· Moving to LA to make it big? Not so fast, Brandi, unless you've got good tableside manner.
· Disneyland covers stuff in gold to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Amazingly, all of the gold used was harvested from the fillings of people who've died on rides and whose bodies were quietly hidden around the park.
· We really love it when that chick at Gawker taunts Matt Drudge. Fun fact: they're secretly lovers!
· There is supposedly some video of Kelsey Grammer falling on his ass (hilarious!) here, but we can't get it to work. Maybe you will have better luck.

In what we hope will be the final installment in our tracking of Pat O'Brien's publicist-orchestrated, constantly-televised march from coked-up, horny-voicemailing boozehound to temporarily dry, Dr.Phil-approved, redeemed tabloid-TV host, a little gossipy squirrel told us that O'Brien will open his triumphant return to The Insider tonight with the words, "I'm Pat O'Brien and I'm an alcoholic." Once viewers have been properly prepared for having their living rooms converted into O'Brien's one-man AA meeting, O'Brien will then complete the transformation by reciting the Serenity Prayer. We're sure it will all be incredibly heart-warming, America will forgive him for getting caught wanting to party with hookers and blow, and O'Brien will finally return to the important work of pretending to enjoy himself while accompanying Gwyneth Paltrow on a trip to have her poodle groomed in Beverly Hills.

After hiking up our gossip-pants and wading through the flood of your responses, we realized that we should never challenge your dedication to The Game, even after last week's sad showing. Splash on a little more One Comes Around Blind Vice before proceeding to your guesses:

When we joked that the third season of Chappelle's Show was delayed because Dave Chappelle was snuggling up with a "bag of weed the size of a bean-bag chair," we hoped he'd just blast through some hypothetical bong hits and get back to work. Since then, we've heard some ominous whispers from people close to the show about these nebulous "personal issues" that are keeping Chappelle from even showing up to work. Says one of the whisperers:

From time to time, we willfully ignore a story until we receive so many e-mails about it that it will no longer be denied. So now at the risk of appearing blog-Paleolithic by bringing you this quote (its been bouncing around for a couple of days now on the wire), we give you "Paris Hilton Pretends Not To Know What A Blog Is" [cue flourish of horns]:

We have to admit, we thought that Nerve's "Sex Advice from Publicists" feature would be nothing but a string of sternly offered "No comments" and denials that the act of intercourse even exists. But in an apparent effort to humanize the profession, a couple of the publicists even gamely offer ways to get into their pants:

· More proof that if you pray hard enough, anything can happen: Chris Tucker will soon sign a two-picture, $40 million deal at New Line, finally allowing visionary director Brett Ratner the opportunity to be involved with a an aesthetic disaster that may not bomb. [Variety]
· Three of the four big broadcast networks form the TV Watch coalition, which will urge parents to stop their kids from watching "indecent" content before the government starts making those choices for everyone. [THR]
·Chappelle's Show premiere delayed indefinitely, etc etc, but Variety plays the "unspecified personal issues" card. (More on this later shortly—stay tuned.) [Variety]
· News Corp profits fall 8%, causing Rupert Murdoch to temporarily halt the installation of 24-karat gold urinals in the perfect replica of Australia he's building off the coast of Florida. [THR]
· Cameron Diaz will take a break from punching out paparazzi and bungee-jumping in Burma to help reverse the greenhouse effect to star in Nancy Meyers' Something's Gotta Give follow-up, Holiday. Who will save the planet now? [Variety]

Wherein we invite our readers to don their pith helmets and dust off the blind-item bone-fragments unearthed by humpy E! gossip-archaeologist Ted Casablanca. This week, an unpleasant actress suffers karmic payback in the form of her husband's whoremongering. Knead the dough of One Comes Around Blind Vice:

An item in today's Page Six (which has finally been rescued from registration jail, for now) should set off a fresh tremor of panic at Sony, where executives watch helplessly as the star of their biggest franchise—now more Flabby-Godzilla than Spider-Man—continues to terrorize casino patrons with his unexpected girth:

After breaking the news that Dr. Phil would have sit-down with a recently rehabbed Pat O'Brien, we felt somewhat obligated to actually watch the show. And? Even though Dr. Phil roughed up O'Brien for a while, there were no tears, no burly man-hugs, no Dr. Phil putting on steel-toed boots and kicking in O'Brien's grill until he promised he'd never take another drink. The show did have its moments, though, which are lovingly transcribed at Dr. Phil's website: