Now that Pat O'Brien, America's modern master of the seductive voicemail message, has finally exited rehab, he's going to do what all disgraced celebrities with access to the sweeps airwaves do: begin a televised redemption tour to convince the viewing public that's he's free of the demons that landed him there. According to that pesky squirrel with the unicorn horn that keeps CrazyTalking in our ear, O'Brien's prime-time confessional ratings-extravaganza with Dr. Phil will air next Wednesday on CBS (gotta keep it in the Viacom family, yo), the two will hug and yell some more on Dr. Phil's daytime show Thursday, and O'Brien will return to his celeb-diddling Insider fiefdom that night. The fucking-going-crazy, drugs, and hookers, we assume, will follow shortly thereafter. But not the booze, as the Devil's party-juice is a no-no for Promises alumni trying to get back on TV.

Unfortunately, dreamy-eyed brother Jake was unavailable to offer his thoughts on America's role in Israeli-Palestinian relations, as he was busy walking his dog in Runyon Canyon.

A reader offers a very, er, specific preview of the upcoming Adam Sandler remake of The Longest Yard, admirably tossing out the useless parts and getting straight to the stuff we all want to hear about:

KABC-7's website reports a tragedy on the set of Fox 2000's remake of My Friend Flicka:

Since Mischa Barton's (sadly ridiculous) lesbian-lite tongue-wrestling didn't set off the expected chain-reaction of spontaneous ejaculation in the the world's real-life Seth Cohens, Fox is bringing out the big guns to ensure the splooging up of fanboy shorts:

There is little in this world more precious than two megalomaniac billionaires engaging in a public dick-measuring contest through the media. On last week's episode of The Apprentice, The Donald bragged that he "killed' fellow professional money-collectors Mark Cuban and Richard Branson when they launched competing reality shows. Cuban, of course, wasn't going to let this primetime volley pass without some retaliatory bitchslappery of his own:

Imagine the other hilarious. orifice-related near-misses that might occur once a gentleman caller escorts Tara Reid home after Happy Hour!

· The government turns Adelphia cable robber-baron James Rigas upside down and shakes him until $715 million falls out. Adelphia must pony up the massive sum before Time Warner and Comcast can complete their purchase of the company and start ransacking the place like Visigoths. [Variety]
· We've received so many signs out of Hollywood that the Apocalypse is nigh that we've stopped counting, but still: Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes will produce a remake of Htichcock's The Birds with Mandaly's Peter "I'm Not In The Hollywood Old Girls Club" Guber for Universal. We can see the killer fowl tangled up in Paris Hilton's hair already. Sigh. [THR]
· Once the final episode of Star Wars is through disappointing fans early this summer, George Lucas promises to disappoint nerds anew by launching two TV shows continuing the franchise. We're totally selling our Darth Tater on eBay right now, before it loses its value. [Variety]
· The studio shuffle continues, as Dimension co-president Brad Weston is installed underneath Gail Berman at The New Paramount™. That sounds filthier than it was meant to. [THR]
· ABC plans to continue its ratings momentum by carpet-bombing the summer months with new reality programming. Why go to the beach when you have fresh episodes of Wife Swap to drool in front of?. [Variety]

In a bout of the kind of movie star largesse that so frequently goes overlooked in the gossip-obsessed press, generous starlet Lindsay Lohan gifted trucker hats bearing the message "Love, Lindsay" to the crew of Just My Luck. Apparently, Lohan chose to commemorate her turbulent time shooting the movie in such quaint fashion because a more accurate remembrance of their time together, which would likely involve kicking a grip in the balls and vomiting a Hurricane onto the first assistant director's shoes, would violate a host of union rules. Thanks to the efforts of a scrappy internet entrepreneur, you can now own a replica of Lohan's token show of gratitude (estimated JML paycheck: $7.5 million), and pretend you were a part of the troubled production; don your trucker hat and play the deliciously simple Just My Luck Home Game, in which you simply stand around waiting to see if the actress is going to show up at your "set" or take another "exhaustion" day.

[Ed.note—We're bumping this post up and dragging it into today's news, for we truly hate it when CrazyTalk is lost during the afternoon commute. Also, has the NY Post heard some CrazyTalk as well?]

Bleep! Censoring Hollywood, a news special focused on companies that offer "sanitized" versions of Hollywood films to the red-state crowd, has Hollywood players doomsaying about the technology's sinister downside. From the LAT:

· Director Brad Silberling, author Daniel Handler, and producer Julia Pistor will appear for a post-screening Q & A following Lemony Snicket's A Series of Somewhat Disappointing, But Overall, We Did OK And Should Kill on DVD Events at the ArcLight.
· Because some "literary agents" deal with "books and whatnot" and actually have little or nothing to do with movie writers and directors: Literary Agents 101: What Writers Must Know About Finding and Working With Representation, a panel discussion at the Veterans Memorial Building in Culver City. More info here. [third item]
· We really need a catchy name for the very brief concert round-ups that appear in this space. Anyway, just thinkin' out loud: The Good Life and the Velvet Teen at the Trouabdour; Damon & Naomi do an in-store at Amoeba in Hollywood; Tori Amos touches a piano in the midst of coeds at UCLA's Royce Hall.

While we were posting silly photos of Ryan Seacrest accepting his star on the Walk of Fame last week and wistfully dreaming up time-travel schemes to prevent the American Idol host's conception, the crap-culture vigilantes at H.O.P.E. (Horrified Observers of Pedestrian Entertainment) are taking the pragmatic approach to protesting this latest aesthetic thumb in the eye. They're urging people to photograph themselves defiling/disrepecting/defecating upon Seacrest's star and submitting the results to their website. While we don't recommend that anyone actually drop trou and deliver a little brown care package on the star (someone's probably already accidentally done it), the non-fecal possibilities for protest are intriguing. How quickly can someone shoot a all-male, guerilla porno over that slab of sidewalk before the Hollywood cops show up? We have a feeling we all just might find out. Happy doggystyling, Seacrest haters.

A reader over at the LA.comfidential blog overhears that Andy Dick, patron saint of drug-addled VIP room antics, might not be allowed to grace this weekend's big music orgy in the desert with his presence:

In what we hope will come to be a recurring feature, Defamer is proud to present the first installment of Inside the Throne Room, a penetrating look inside the water closets of Hollywood's hottest power players. Our opening offering spotlights what appears to be a guest bathroom from Brian Grazer's Pacific Palisades manse, snapped during the recent book release party for the wife of Imagine partner Ron Howard. Judging from this cameraphone shot (click it for a larger version), yes, it's a little small, but cozy enough in its muted tones that we can picture quixotic superproducer Grazer occasionally seeking refuge there from the opulence of his master bathroom; perhaps it's even the place where he gets the kind of thinking done that results in Russell Crowe having "real" imaginary friends in A Beautiful Mind, an inspired filmic shorthand that frustrated schizophrenia sufferers but carried the pic to multiple Oscar wins.

A reader helpfully scanned this Help Wanted ad from today's THR and sent it in to us for analysis (click it to see the full version). Look, everyone knows that to land a good gig in this town, you're have to be willing to "011101" some "1000111." Even we had to bite our bottom lip and endure some "011010001" just to get a PA job a few years ago, and while it was not something we're proud of, we did it. And smiled. But where do these people get off demanding that desperate applicants degrade themselves with "1110000110011100"?! We're pretty sure that's not merely illegal, but that many faiths won't allow you a proper religious burial if you've done that sort of thing. Our recommendation: Pass on this one. Life's too short.

The signs of Arrested Development's long-awaited demise have been there for anyone willing to put aside their thoughts of a blue-paint-slathered David Cross rocking some Daisy Dukes and think about it: Gail Berman's departure from Fox, the rumors of Jason Bateman putting himself on the casting meat market, and last week's announcement that much of the AD gang is getting together for a movie. But now we've heard whispers that new Fox boss Peter Liguori is hot to finally and quietly bury the show in his backyard like a pet hamster that just "went to sleep" while the kids were at school, and the cancellation—excuse us, non-renewal—might not be public until the upfronts next month.

The Church of Scientology maintained its omnipresence at the LAT Festival of Books this weekend, where we encountered at least three COS-sponsored booths. Two of the booths offered e-meter stress tests as a respite from the thetan-attracting activity of perusing books not authored by L. Ron Hubbard (copies of Dianetics were handy for those flunking the test). While Tom Cruise was obviously busy with more pressing missions, the booths were not without their own brand of star-power, as The Sandlot's Patrick Renna (pictured above; IMDb, homepage, favorite Hubbard quote) pitched in and helped administer some of the tests.

· For the next 3-4 years, all comedies will star Will Ferrell. To wit, Universal's bought the rights to beloved early 70s inadvertent-time-travel show Land of the Lost for the actor. Look for Uni to round out the cast with other members of the New Gay Mafia, including Vince Vaughn as a Sleestack and Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson as hairy, grunting ape-boy Chaka. [Variety]
· Huzzah! Incandescent actress-goddess Jennifer Connelly will join the cast of the film adaptation of Tom Perrotta's Little Children. Prediction: Connelly will be both sexy and troubled. [THR]
· Denzel Washington agrees to let the tag-team of director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer attempt to blow him up on-screen in the purposefully-time-traveling-G-man drama Deja Vu. [Variety]
· Even a Desperate Housewives clips show has enough ratings clout to defeat CBS's hilariously titled Locusts! (exuberant punctuation theirs). [THR]
· Scarlett Johansson submits herself to another shoot with Woody Allen, as she'll star in the tentatively-titled Wrinkly Director Perves On A Woman Young Enough To Be His Great-Granddaughter, the latest installment of the cinematic cycle Allen's been working on for the last 15 years. [Variety]

In a shocking turn of events that nobody possibly could have seen coming, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were photographed together while on a Shocking! Sex-tryst! In! Africa! (So alarmingly carnal was their sexual safari that Maddox Jolie was along to chaperone.) Photos of the couple's bumpy Jeep ride through the sweat-drenched jungles of passion appeared in the British Sun and are headed to US Weekly (rumored pricetag: five kajillion dollars and a dozen poached elephant tusks), but are already streaming through the internets. Don't stare too long on the bronzed bodies of the two sand-encrusted lovers, lest your retinas be seared by their smoldering genitals.