With the sting of being named Hollywood's official scapegoat for John Kerry's election failure finally starting to fade, Ben Affleck is now taking heat for the bad career moves he didn't make. Affleck sensibly wanted to keep a low profile and rejected director Kevin Smith's overture to star with him in the Canadian teen soap opera Degrassi: The Next Generation, yet still winds up getting flogged for the very mention of his name. At this point, it might take five years on a media blackout vision-quest in the Himalayas to make the poll numbers even out. And even then he'd probably have to spend the first three years explaining Gigli to some Buddhist monks with an US Weekly subscription.

In his final day of testimony in The Hollywood Trial of the Century, Disney CEO Michael Eisner expressed regret that the trial's more sensational elements might have painted an unflattering picture of the entertainment business that he loves so dearly.

Put off all thoughts of drowning yourself in your Monday morning bowl of Fruit Loops until you've had a therapeutic run through the box office numbers.

The people who bettered with the world with Mary-Kate Olsen's Crack-Man have continued their pop-culture philanthropy with the just-released Paparazzi Punch-Out!! With Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. Now everyone can relive a renegade celebrity shutterbug's recent, vicious, flashbulb-popping attack on one of Hollywood's power couples! Unfortunately, we haven't beaten Diaz yet, and don't know if her shoe flies off in defeat.

Friday
· Strictly for the nerds (i.e., us): Ever seen a cockroach drive a robot? OK, maybe you have, but what about a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach? Hmmm? Didn't think so.
· Wilco rocks the Wiltern. Or rather, Wilco plays with rock/country/folk conventions to make some kind of point about alienation. That isn't as fun to say, but it's still kind of great. Good luck finding tickets.
Saturday
· The Futureheads are at the Troubadour. We've never heard any of their songs (see above re: we're nerds), but we hear the cool kids are totally into them.
· Se habla sassy? If so, the Sassy City Chicks sample sale can be found at the Area 101 Art Gallery.
Sunday
· Cinespace hosts the cult Ed Wood classic Plan 9 from Outerspace so scifi kitsch lovers can overdub the dialogue, a la MST3K. (Nerds again.) After-party to follow.
· Metallica: Some Kind of Monster documentarian Joe Berlinger signs Metallica: This Monster Lives at Book Soup. We're sure a discussion about whether or not Kirk Hammett's 80's hairstyle was a sly homage to Cher's curls is inevitable.

We've received yet another report of intrusive preview screening anti-piracy practices, this time hitting WGA members out for a night viewing Joel Schumacher's latest exploration of his mask fetish. We creep ever closer to the day where an affirmative answer to the question "Are you on the list?" is immediately followed up with a brusque, "Grab your ankles, and please don't yelp when you feel the cold latex."

Last night's episode of The O.C. featured the clever name-dropping of several Endeavor employees, as "favorite" physics teacher Ari Greenburg (agent) asked whether students Adriana Alberghetti and Phil Raskind (agent, agent) were in attendance at an AP science class. (Endeavor, of course, packages the show.) As hard as the gang at The O.C. might try to make these handjobs seem funny or ironic (we know this sort of thing happens on TV all the time), at the end of the day someone's still got an agent's dick* in their hand.

We pause for a moment to recognize this week's sponsors, who've only had to post our bail three or four times. (Thanks again! The next one is on us!) If you'd like to give us money in exchange for advertising your product to the world's sexiest blog audience, see our ad info page.

A reader sends in yet another account of a paranoia-tinged screening. From the sound of last night's over-the-top security measures, it won't be long before the body-cavity search becomes a regular part of the preview experience—who knows what kind of recording equipment someone might have "accidentally" fallen on before the movie? We suggest viewers learn some anal Kegel exercises to prepare for this inevitability, with a self-administered, rubber glove dry-run in between sets.

Enjoy the weekend box office predictions, which have a margin of error of approximately +/- 35% per film.

· Mel Karmazin becomes CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio, enabling him and BFF Howard Stern to continue with the important work of heaving slices of bologna at strippers' asses. [THR]
· Les Moonves implants a subcutaneous microchip in the neck of Joe Roth, forcing him to sign a three-year sitcom development deal with CBS. At the end of the contract, Moonves will flip a switch that tursn Roth into a ruthless killing machine, invading ABC's offices and slaying everyone in his path. Moonves will then flip a second switch, making Roth's head explode. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Because Robin Williams in drag is box office gold: Fox2000 plans a Mrs. Doubtfire sequel, written by fat-old-lady prosethetics expert Bonnie Hunt. [THR]
· Sony wins bidding war to release a new Dave Chapelle concert DVD. He's Rick James, bitch, etc etc. [THR]
· Director David Yates has been chosen to helm the fifth Harry Potter movie. Yes, the David Yates, of The Tichborne Claimant fame. It's OK, you can IMDb him now and figure out who the hell he is. [Variety]

The fourth day of Disney CEO Michael Eisner's testimony in The Hollywood Trial of the Century featured Eisner proving that it's not only agents that lie, as he and about-to-be-executed president Michael Ovitz attempted a face-saving, investor-appeasing appearance on Larry King Live in 1996. The two did everything short of an on-air tattooing of heart-encircled "Mike & Mike 4-ever" pledges on each other's chests to make their relationship seem copacetic.

The promotional website for the Kabbalah Centre's creepy how-to manual, The 72 Names of God, has a form for discovering your personal "72 Name," the "secret weapon for facing major life issues and difficult situations connected to our destiny." Unfortunately, the form doesn't seem to use a computer program to determine one's magical Name. We plugged in our info and e-mail address over an hour ago and have yet to receive an answer—it probably takes time for the request to reach the basement of the Kabbalah Centre, where a Name-determining sweatshop staffed by indentured mactress servants open The Big Book Of Kabbalah Names, insert a cramped, overworked finger, and then e-mail back the result. We really hope our 72 Name is Steve. We always wanted to be a Steve.

Superpublicist Leslee Dart was fired by publicity juggernaut PMK Wednesday night, sent packing after coming up on the short end of a power struggle with Head Flack in Charge Pat Kingsley. From Variety's account:

As always, we love how you turn our Thursday inbox into a repository of outrage, bemusement, and possibly actionable hearsay with your responses to the Blind Item Guessing Game. Take a quick refresher course in One Traditional Blind Vice:

The publicist denial is a delicate artform; a well-articulated naysaying by a practiced image craftsman can have the impact of a two-page spread in People (complete with candid photos of snuggling with a loved one on a couch and rolling in the grass with a favored pet). Compare Lindsay Lohan's flack's subtle and effective denial of a reported diva shit-fit at a recent Jane cover shoot with that of the magazine editor's attempt:

OR: Hey, Mike, the game's called "Got Your Nose."

· Hollywood's remake fever has jumped to a higher plane of pointlessness: Sam Raimi looks to remake his own well-loved, perfectly good (and not that old) movie, Evil Dead, with a new director. Why, Raimi, why? Has all of that Spider-Man cash finally driven you insane? [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Bryan Singer and Vin Diesel get together...for a new video game franchise, Secret Service. Get your mind out of the gutter before someone from a red state starts reading your e-mail! [THR]
· Ali G creator/troublemaker Sacha Baron Cohen looks to play British comic book detective/degenerate aristocrat Charlie Mortdecai for Warner Bros. Interesting...but this in no way gets him off the hook for Borat: The Motion Picture. [THR]
· · Broadway out of ideas: Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick to continue their evil domination of all things theater in a revival of The Odd Couple. [Variety]
· Jessica Simpson will star in chick-lit adaptation Room Service. Thank God someone is finally ready to really let her talent breath on a movie screen. [Variety]

A reader reports that anti-piracy shock troops were stationed at last night's screening of Ocean's Twelve. The MPAA and studio need to be absolutely certain that this paean to the crackling chemistry between Brad Pitt and his abs doesn't get seen even a minute before its release date—viewers need to experience the longing glances at his own six-pack on the big screen, not hunched over a computer monitor.

Wherein we invite our readers to pin the preschool crayon word-portrait scrawled by humpy E! gossip paste-eater Ted Casablanca to the fridge and stare at it until they can divine the identity of his weekly blind item. We were forsaken by last week's blind-item-free column, but Ted offers us redemption in this week's beatific return to form. Revel in One Traditional Blind Vice: