Now that Sundance is over, we're getting the impression that the Park City locals don't exactly embrace their yearly Hollywood invasion.

We're going to be candid with you about something: We're spending the weekend breathing through our mouth, pounding as many handfuls of Cheetos and cans of Bud Light as our digestive system can tolerate, and acting genuinely disappointed when the Super Bowl commercials don't live up to our expectations. We do not know, nor do we care, about what's happening at the box office this weekend. Welcome to America!

· Microsoft brings out the million-dollar check to snag Alex Garland to translate the Halo videogames into some kind of coherent script. We get the feeling that everyone's favorite monopoly ain't gonna settle for an Alone in the Dark kind of adaptation. This will probably be a REALLY EXPENSIVE kinda flop. [Variety]
· David James Elliott, star of JAG, the longest-running show that no one we know has ever seen, gets a development deal with ABC and Touchstone TV for his 10 years of service. In the corporate world, you'd get a nice watch. [THR]
· Dustin Hoffman signs on for the Will-Ferrell-hears-hilarious-voices-in-his-head comedy Stranger Than Fiction. He'll play another wacky professor type, a la I Heart Huckabees. [Variety]
· Hey, did you forget that they're still making James Bond movies? They are! The next one will be Casino Royale, even though they don't know which guy with a funny accent will get to wear the golden tuxedo yet. [THR]
· Studios shuffle around the release schedule for their summer-flavored crap. But don't bother paying attention yet, it will all change four or five more times in the next few weeks. [Variety]

Despite the bank account jammed with millions and millions of dollars, the staggering worldwide fame, and the constant security detail keeping crazies from trying to destabilize the state government with a well-placed stab-wound, the Governator's just a chain-restaurant-pizza-chomping guy like the rest of us! Who knew? Let's all get cracking on that "foreigners can be President" amendment and get one of our own into the White House.

Yesterday's LAT visited Studio City's Archstone apartments, where pre-fame actors flock to overpay for luxury-lite amenities and to feed off the crackling energy of communal desperation. (On cold days, we hear you you can actually see the sparks arcing between waitresses' heads as they pass in the hallways.). Not to be outdone, today's NYT heads beachward, where the industry's mid-six-figure set overpays for ocean views and to feed off the communal energy of desperate Hollywood social-climbing.

When we read Rob Schneider's attack ad nuking the LAT's Patrick Goldstein for a Deuce Bigalow joke the reporter made last week, we shouldn't have assumed that Schneider's research was thorough. (We imagine it involved googling "Patrick Goldstein journalism awards.") A reader informs us that Goldstein was the recipient of an award from the publicists guild last year, as noted in Variety last February:

Are there any casting calls in this city that don't require that people pre-screen naked pictures of our city's aspiring actors and actresses? Granted, the following notice is for a scene set at the Playboy Mansion (we're surprised it took this long for the Entourage kids to wind up at Hef's pad), so in the interest of verisimilitude, they're going to need a look at your cans:

We received so many e-mails about Rob "Deuce Bigalow" Schneider's full-page attack ad that ran in the trades today that we actually left the house to purchase a copy of Variety and transcribed it for your reading pleasure. Journalists, you've been put on notice: make an easy joke about The Hot Chick in print and you may find yourself beaten within an inch of your life with a Cable Ace Award.

· The intriguingly named LA Weekly Passion Party (equally intriguingly sponsored by Erotica LA) gets nasty at the Hotel Figueora downtown. Somewhat less intriguing is the $25 cover charge, but such is the price of passion.
· Two concerts for you listening and/or scenester pleasure: M.I.A. plays the Knitting Factory, while Electric Six (whom you undoubtedly know from their hits "Danger! High Voltage!" and "Gay Bar") overtake the Key Club.
· The NYT's Sharon Waxman signs Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System at Book Soup. We read that her feud with David O. Russell (one of the book's subjects) is over now, but that's no reason not to ask her all about it in excruciating detail.

You really can buy anything on Craiglist:

We put out the call for your blind item guesses, and, as usual, you flooded our inbox with the names of suspicious celebrities. Take quick stroll with One Drive-By Blind Vice Has It* *Or One Do-Me Blind Vice Has It (Take Your Best Schtup!) before moving on to your responses:

Our legal background consists entirely of helping Pakistani cabdrivers in the Washington, DC area obtain green cards (it's a long story, trust us), so we're not exactly sure what to make of the threats by Lindsay Lohan's lawyers to sue anyone in the media if they so much as think about recent accusations made by her estranged dad. Shit, we totally thought about it when we typed that sentence! Is that the doorbell ringing? Is a process server hiding in the bushes, waiting to waylay us on our afternoon trip to Starbucks? We're covering the house in tinfoil and never answering the phone again.

Because people like nothing more than to be told what's good by intelligent-seeming fictional characters, the moving, allegorical pinot noir speech delivered by Paul Giamatti's character in Sideways has helped liquor stores move product:

Britney Spears may have finally learned her lesson about wearing shoes in public bathrooms, but she's still deliciously slow on the uptake when it comes to realizing that paparazzi cameras are constantly trained on her balcony. Now that these pictures are circulating over the internets, she might finally cancel her weekly "Naked Jazzercise" session.

Last night, roughly 25 million viewers were treated to the most useless prank in the history of television (and we're including Ashton Kutcher's entire career) when comedian Chris Wylde (of Comedy Central's canceled-after-the-first-commerical-break The Chris Wylde Show) crashed American Idol, pretended to be a nanny, and treated the slack-jawed Fox demo to an impropmtu rap. Oh, and after he was summarily dismissed by Idol's Nurembergian arbiters, he stayed in character and unleashed a stream of expletives to express his disappointment that he wasn't going to be a star. Sweet! We sincerely hope that the buzz from his two-seasons-too-late stunt helps Wylde get that national Pizza Hut commercial he's in the running for so he can pay the rent this month.

· You heard it here first: Boxing movies are hot, hot, hot! Paramount and Sony team up to buy the rights to make the boxing documentary Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story, the true story of the boxer that beat his opponent to death in the ring after he called him a homo, into a feature film. You're not going to get that kind of edge in Russell Crowe's Cinderella Man. [Variety]
· The People's Mandate: American Idol trounces Bush's State of the Union address in the ratings, despite the president's hilariously off-key rendition of "It's Raining Men." [THR]
· It's official: The Apprentice: Martha Stewart is a go at NBC, and Stewart's five-month house arrest isn't even a problem—she'll bring her new prison edge to the show. Instead of merely dismissing contestants who can't hack it in Marthaland, they'll be raped by her former lesbian cellmates. [Variety]
· You just know this one was sold off the pitch, "Antonio Banderas is a ballroom dancer." [THR]
· Jack Nicholson joins Martin Scorcese's The Departed to show young punk co-stars Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio how it's done. [Variety]

Wherein we invite our readers to put on their pith helmets and plunge headlong into the blind item jungle presided over by the Colonel Kurtz of confusingly-phrased celebrity dirt, humpy E! gossip demigod Ted Casablanca. This week, Ted unloads twin items, tempting us with some drug abuse and a little of that casting couch action we love so dearly. Thrust yourself into One Drive-By Blind Vice Has It* *Or One Do-Me Blind Vice Has It (Take Your Best Schtup!):

It was Jean-Paul Sartre who wrote, "Hell is other people." Today, thanks to an LAT profile of the Archstone apartments in Studio City, where the desperately pre-famous temporarily flock while they await their big breaks, we can offer this corollary: "Hell is living in an apartment complex in the Valley with three hundred Olive Garden waitresses, their dreams of sitcom walk-on roles, and their chihuahuas."

From this week's Popbitch newsletter:

After how well-behaved and consummately professional Lindsay Lohan was on the set of Herbie: Fully Loaded (they only threatened to fire her once or twice!), how could anyone have anticipated that Lohan might be a handful on the location shoot for Just My Luck? The wily Lohan blindsides us all: