· Viacom co-pres Les Moonves creates the CBS Marketing Group to oversee all marketing activities for CBS and UPN and "maximize [their] promotional power." So why did Moonves order this new "Marketing Group" fifty tanks and enough assault rifles to march into Nevada? Start hording the bottle water and canned food. The invasion is nigh. [THR]
· Showtime, further cementing their role as HBO's retarded cousin, gives a 10 episode order to the Mary Louise Parker suburban-mom-turned-pot-dealer series—get ready for it, because here it comes—Weeds. Possible promotional tagline: "The gateway drug to hilarity!" [THR]
· Shocker: The Simpsons dominates WGA nominations in the animation category. West Wing and Sex and the City also receive props. [Variety, sub, req'd.]
· Universal grabs Harrison Ford to star in the first feature on the current war in Iraq, based on the upcoming book No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah. If they hold off production for some kind of resolution in Iraq, they might have to rewrite Ford's part as an Alzheimer's-afflicted WWII vet who wants to "grab his helmet and get back in the shit." [Variety]
· The Broadcast Film Critics Association continues to set up critics everywhere for an eventual Oscar letdown by nominating Sideways for 8 awards. Why do these people insist on celebrating this excellent film?! Why?! [THR]

Wherein we invite our readers to take their interpretive weed-whackers to the linguistic overgrowth that humpy E! gossip green-thumb Ted Casablanca uses to obscure the identity of his weekly blind item. After a week off, Casablanca returns to the old blind item standby, the supposedly straight actor engaging in gay sex. Roll around in One Helpful Blind Vice:

Blogger Ultratart received this typo-riddled e-mail from the WGA and suggests that the Guild engage in the arcane practice of proofreading before hitting the send button:

Someone on Craigslist is trolling for Michael Jackson's overnight guests (strangely, in the TV/Radio Jobs section), or as most refer to them, "Neverland survivors":

Despite Lindsay Lohan's public re-education effort aimed at getting people to a) stop talking about her chest and b) stress that they are "real," they persist in being objects of fascination. (Our pet theory: She is the first movie star, ever, to have huge breasts. Well, at least the magical kind that grow naturally overnight.) Now, some troublemakers called Lohan Freestyle have penned a love song to America's most notorious rack, a song that will quickly overtake the internets and inevitably wind up blasting out of an Escalade near you. We already can't stop humming it.

· "However, since my involvement, the film has steadily moved away from the realm of fandom and more toward the realm of traditional Hollywood interests. It's not been ideal, in my opinion, but I did what I could when I could, and I stand by that work." Doom screenwriter Dave Callaham tries to appease the video game fans that will soon be calling for his head.
· If this "pitch party" is on the up-and-up, why do they keep (defensively) calling their industry attendees "REPUTABLE"?
· Eventually, Tara Reid's publicist will have no choice but to staple her client's mouth shut.
· Kirsten Dunst ingratiates herself to dreamy-eyed boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal's mother enough to win Jake's hand in marriage. [via goldenfiddle]
· All lesbians should immediately send a thank-you note to Ashlee Simpson's creepy dad for not allowing her to ruin the edginess of their sexual preference forever.

· Webzine Ostrich Ink summons ten of "your favorite (or soon-to-be-favorite) writers from their internet caves for a reading at the Knitting Factory. A mere five spot gets you through the door, which is a mere....ten cents or so per writer? That's value, my friends.
· Drummer Stephen Perkins (Jane's Addiction), bassist Mike Watt (the Minutemen, fIREHOSE, the re-united Stooges), and experimental guitarist Nels Cline (currently in Wilco) perform as Banyan at the Roxy tonight. We love supergroups! And without some very potent voodoo, it's not like the Traveling Wilburys are coming through town.
· Jimmy Carter signs copies of his latest book, Sharing Good Times, at Borders Westwood. For our readers too young to remember anything previous to the Reagan administration: He used to be President.

It appears that Monday night's celebrity clusterfuck at Koi was even worse than the photos led us to believe. An operative reports on the scene:

During the course of The Hollywood Trial of the Century, erstwhile superagent and Disney president-for-a-day Michael Ovitz has been called a "psychopath," a "total failure" who couldn't even lie properly, and a "cancer." With the trial winding down as we approach the holidays, the LAW's Nikki Finke piles on by pointing crotchward at Ovitz and snickering:

If courting celebrities to confer some buzz upon your eatery or nightlife hotspot is an art, then Monday night's Hilton/Lohan/Simpson appearance at Koi was like Bob Ross taking a shit on a Jackson Pollack painting. And we're not even going to further cloud the analogy by mentioning that Fred Durst was there.

A spy offers a sneak preview of Kirstie Alley's upcoming Showtime abomination Fat Actress that indicates the the show is going to be far more cringe-inducing than we'd feared. If you manage to get past the part about "deep-throating a fudgesicle," you have a much heartier constitution than we do. We fainted dead away like a Southern belle succumbing to a nasty bout of the vapours the second our brain maliciously conjured that image.

How soon is too soon to joke about personal tragedy? We don't know if Tara Reid is ready to laugh about her epic, impromptu breast unveiling after over a month has passed, but her flack definitely isn't. Reid was a presenter on last night's Spike Video Game Awards, and her publicist fired off this angry e-mail when the show's producers pitched a gag involving The Tit Seen Round the World.

Defamer is proud to present Hollywood Holiday Cards, a (hopefully) recurring feature in which we share the warm holiday wishes of the entertainment industry's biggest players with the world.

· Columbia hires Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck to write the Will Ferrell beach volleyball comedy, Bronze God. Gregory understands what he's supposed to deliver: "Will's about the funniest guy out there, and he's even funnier shirtless, in a Speedo and with a savage tan." Then again, the phrase "Will Ferrell beach volleyball comedy" probably sold this one all by itself. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· LOTR's Sean Bean will play the bad guy in Michael Bay's The Island, a movie that "centers on a harvested being who becomes self-aware and tries to escape" from a hack director who still thinks he's shooting music videos. [THR]
· Rose McGowan is in negotiations to play Ann-Margaret in the CBS Elvis biopic, undoubtedly because Lindsay Lohan is otherwise engaged dancing on bars and screwing Colin Farrell. [THR]
· CBS picks up Survivor through 2006, but all future runners-up must now spend a ten-year indentured servitude servicing Les Moonves' every whim. High stakes indeed. [Variety]
· Chris Weitz will no longer direct New Line's movie adaptation of the His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass fantasy novel. Weitz denies "creative differences," but probably because he's staying on as a writer. [THR]

Catholic League president William Donohue thinks that Hollywood doesn't like The Passion of the Christ—get ready for it—because the industry is run by Christ-hating Jews:

The LAT reports that NBC Universal head/golden-boy-in-decline Jeff Zucker's been bitten by the acting bug, taking a role as himself (he needs to get his feet wet before tackling something like Streetcar) on Kirstie Alley's Showtime series, Fat Actress:

The WOW Report has a clip from the long-buried 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, that embarrassing blip in the Star Wars legacy that George Lucas has locked away at his Skywalker Ranch, guarded by a small army of criminally-insane little people in Ewok suits. Some Googling will explain the plot of the special much more effectively than we ever could from this three-minute clip, which features Chewbacca's family warbling in their Wookie language and Mark Hamill showing off the acting chops we all came to love in the "first" three Star Wars movies. It's hard to know why Lucas isn't releasing this glorious abomination; if it ever surfaced on DVD, it would easily gross about ten billion dollars in its first week of release. Maybe he's sick of money.

· The Fug Girls turn their fashion hate-rays on the Harry Potter kids. Isn't puberty hard enough, ladies?
· OK, hot shot, pop quiz: You're shitfaced in the VIP section of a hot NY club, and your only two choices are waking up with the stink of whiskey and cigarettes permanently soaked into your freckled skin, or escaping to drunk-dial Fez in between vomiting fits. Yeah, we'd probably take the Colin Farrell option too.
· The MPAA takes a legal poke at BitTorrent. Good luck with that, Glickman.
· Defamer Employment quickie: Minister seeking "Christian fast typist/ writing ass."
· Maria Full of Grace, a musical in brief: Maria!/I've just met a mule named Maria/And she can down a grape/My mouth was left agape/Wow-ee.

· At "An Evening of Ivy League Comedy" at the Improv, comedians from colleges much more prestigious than yours rub your nose in the fact that they are likely both smarter and funnier than you are. Your only defense is to hope that you will one day regain the upper hand in a sitcom pitch meeting.
· Singer-songwriter Michael Penn (yes, the Michael Penn that's Sean’s brother and Aimee Man’s husband) plays at Largo with comedian Patton Oswalt, whom we are obligated to mention (over and over again) once made us nearly vomit from laughing too hard.
· If Michael Penn is too singer-songwriter-y (how's that for a word?) for you, there's always Blackalicious at the Viper Room.

We thought we'd get through the rest of the day without a neurotic actress defending her obviously natural beauty from accusations that she's gone under the knife, but this Access Hollywood press release has brazenly relieved itself all over that idea. It seems that Desperate Housewives' Nicolette Sheridan is so anxious to convince the world that she's never been to a plastic surgeon that... she went to a plastic surgeon. How mindbogglingly Zen!