After viewing the Scarlett Johansson "mystery pic" yesterday (revealed to be a screen capture from A Love Song for Bobby Long), a reader goes scrambling to his pile of screeners, and, predictably, returns disappointed:

As much as we'd like to think that supermanager Brad Grey's union with Paramount is as easy to consummate as a quickie in a bathroom stall at Concorde, the two sides still have to figure out how to buy off his management company, Brillstein-Grey, and pull his sticky fingers out of Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Warner Bros' pies. B-G founder Bernie Brillstein offers some historical perspective:

MSNBC's Jeannette Walls reports that Leonardo DiCaprio is joining the tsunami relief effort. Bully for him, celebrities care, etc etc. (Apparently, he's the only one harboring fond memories of The Beach). The Kabbalah Centre, meanwhile, is rushing 10,000 litres of their magical water to the tsunami victims. Rimshot coming: They've also pledged 50,000 tons of enchanted Kabbalah rubble, 400 tons of blessed Kabbalah splinters from ruined bungalows, and 15 bags of
of wet sand personally touched by Madonna.

· Starved for material and eager to revisit past dirt, Page Six and Jeannette Walls hand out their year-end gossip awards. The winners: Tara Reid, Courtney Love, and Britney Spears. The losers: Tara Reid, Courtney Love, and Britney Spears. Funny how that works.
· LA.com's art director narrowly escapes tsunami disaster, only to return to the Biblical downpours currently offered by our local skies.
· Kirsten Dunst's bathing suit falls off, and, naturally, paparazzi lenses (and hoards of bloggers) are waiting. [via Fleshbot]
· Pierce Brosnan and his Aston Martin face off with a spoiled Ferrari-driving teen on the streets of our fair city. Michael Bay is set to direct the first two movies chronicling their aborted drag race.
· Sandra Bullock donates $1 million to tsunami (really, we must've typed that word a hundred times today) relief; George W. Bush expected to defiantly pony up another billion before others in Hollywood embarrass him.

While we would never suggest that anyone leave their apartments while there's a genuine risk of having to engage their windshield wipers for a purpose other than dislodging a flier for cheap auto insurance, we offer today's To Do list to spite the angry rain gods.
· Local shoegazers Helen Stellar begin their free Monday residency at the Echo tonight with a CD release party.
·The Lost but Found: Assemblage, Collage and Sculpture, 1920-2002 exhibit at the Norton Simon Museum explores how one person’s garbage can become another's art. There seems to be a Jerry Bruckheimer punchline in here somewhere, but we too hungry to think of one just now.
· Any event exhibiting the kind of phonetic gymnastics employed by the Jah-Mak-En Me Crazy Ladies Dance Contest deserves to be patronized.

Media-obsessed sister site Gawker is kind enough to host a video collision of two great tastes from 2004 that taste great together, freelance celebutante vaginalist Paris Hilton and megalomaniac fauxteur Vincent Gallo. You got your on-camera blowjob and 70s art-house pretensions on my publicity-hungry skank! No, YOU got your publicity-hungry skank on MY on-camera blowjob and 70s art-house pretensions! We're not exactly sure of what to make of this supposedly Gallo-directed short, but one thing is for certain: Paris Hilton slowly rotating on a lazy susan is completely hypnotic, and our eyes have gone all swirly like a pair of three-dollar X-ray specs. Also, we've soiled ourselves.

Knowing that he's got no Desperate Housewives or Lost in the programming pipeline, NBC Universal golden silver boy Jeff Zucker reaches into the nightly news for a sure-fire ratings winner. He'd be a fool not to try and turn the event into a Night of the Erstwhile Must-See TV Stars to remind everyone about the time that NBC ruled the world. We can see it now: George Clooney back in his ER scrubs, conspicuously manning the phone bank as the cast of Friends pleads for the public to help tsunami victims..and maybe, if they're really feeling generous, tune in to Joey.

While we were thinking back on the past year (OK, it's more like seven months or so) of Defamer, we came to this conclusion about what we'd like to see here in 2005: more possibly fake pictures of rising A-list actresses who've had sex with Benicio Del Toro in an elevator, barely covering up their surprisingly ample natural assets. Amazingly, Golden Fiddle immediately obliged this need. If anyone wants to clarify where this image originated (assuming, of course, it isn't some impressive Photoshop artistry), we're all ears. If it turns out to be from A Love Song For Bobby Long, we may even be willing to sit through two hours of John Travolta's bloated head chewing the scenery to conduct further investigation.

The first time you discover that your favorite celebrity doesn't live up to your idealized version of them is kind of like walking in on Santa Claus fucking the Easter Bunny; not only are your childlike assumptions about the world shaken, but you've also discovered your parents are into some freaky role-playing. (Those scars last a long time. Trust us.) To wit, Vince Vaughn's bravura performance at Chi, submitted by a trusted Defamer operative who was practically sitting in his lap. Treating your admirers like shit is so money, baby!

Perhaps as fed up with the ridiculous success of Meet the Fockers as the rest of us, the WeHo crowd has their claws out for Babs. A spy relates the chatter:

·"No power player has ever given up as much autonomy and wealth to become the No. 3 man in an entertainment company." So sayeth Peter Bart about Brad Grey's expected move to Paramount, but he's obviously overlooking the valuable opportunity to be Les Moonves' demonic valet (Tom Freston will be long slain) at Viacom when the Rapture comes. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda will open the Santa Barbara Film Festival. This isn't as scary as it sounds—Allen's only creatively dead, not actually dead. [THR]
· Samaire Armstrong, on-screen assistant to Jeremy Piven's Ari Gold on Entourage (and late of The O.C.), is cast as Lindsay Lohan's BFF in her untitled "Lucky" project. Next up for Armstrong: peer-pressure surgery, a drinking problem, and a punitive fling with Fez. [THR]
· Carsey-Werner and Fox will attempt to squeeze every last drop of blood from the dessicated corpse of That 70's Show, formulating plans to keep the sitcom going after Topher Grace bails at the end of this season and Ashton Kutcher makes only token appearances. [Variety]
· Every time a publicist is promoted, an angel gets a scorching case of herpes: Rebecca Marks moved up to executive VP of NBC Universal west coast publicity division. The bad news is she still reports directly to fading NBC-U golden boy Jeff Zucker. [Variety]

A message from the Gawker Media mothership:

While we were all ass-deep in champagne toasts and ill-advised hook-ups while the ball dropped, it seems that Paramount was in serious negotiations to hand over their flop-riddled dream factory to über-manager Brad Grey.

We now refrain from addled tales of forced plastic surgery and half-assed literary allusions to turn our attention to the only place it belongs on a rainy Monday morning: the weekend box office numbers.

Hello all, Mark Lisanti here. I thought I'd spent my entire "vacation" strapped to the Y of the Hollywood sign, letting the transformative waters of our local tsunami (please, hold your hate mail and send your relief checks to the Red Cross) wash away a truly debilitating "eating disorder," but then I realized the whole experience was part of a guided meditation with my "cruise director," Nurse Ratched.

In lieu of our traditional weekend to-do list, I offer you the advice that's always worked for me while in L.A.: start early with the Night Train, drive on the sidewalk a little bit, and "accidentally" bang on your neighbor's door at 3 a.m. until they let you in for some sex.

Seriously, we'll print anything today. New Year's Eve is like a national holiday from our senses. And since all the agents and producers are busy demanding better rooms while checking into Phuket resorts (you know they love a good deal), they'll never know all the fun they missed. An equally-bored tipster sends this in:

· Aviator investor and foreign rights salesman Graham King is the man with the big money—no, the other one, the guy that isn't afraid of Harvey Weinstein. [LAT]
· Paris Hilton takes a faceplant on the social slopes of Gstaad. [Page Six]
· Fuckin' Debbie Reynolds, man. She's the meanest chick in town, as everyone knows—almost as vindictive as Shirley Maclaine and that cruel, cruel Julia Roberts. Now she's backed out of a mall display of Hollywood memorabilia and she's getting sued, the little witch. [AP]
· Anna Nicole Smith's lawyer vows vengeance; will lil' Anna ever get her rightful $88 million? [CNN]

I've always been one to look for the silver lining, but it's taken a few days to find the good news in the tsunami. Finally, the answer comes: those pre-preview Fanta commercials which seemingly play in every theater before every single film, featuring four lithe, prancing she-whores. These four wriggling, thirst-quenching, multi-culti vixens are getting the bloody hell booed out of them in the theaters now, as they embarrassingly endorse a "tidal wave of flavor." D'oh! There are rumors of an anti-Fanta campaign being mounted, and we imagine Coca-Cola execs are crapping themselves as they rush to pull the ads.

A little chart in which top-ranked Best Picture Oscar contenders are cross-referenced with most recent "stock" sale price at Intrade, cross-referenced by number of screens on which the film will play on December 31st, 2004 (as per Box Office Mojo). The number in parentheses after the movie title represents Entertainment Weekly writer Dave Karger's ranking for inclusion in the Best Picture race, because he's both pretty and stupid, just the way we like our men. His number 5 choice, Eternal Sunshine, didn't make our list because we'll eat Dave's sweaty shirt if it makes the Academy's.