The American Music Awards might have had a chemically incapacitated Anna Nicole Smith stealing the show, but last night's Vibe awards in Santa Monica had Dr. Dre in a fistfight, violent chaos, and a stabbing. Advantage: Vibe (But only a slight one until it's conclusively proven that Anna Nicole didn't have a beef with Dre and was nowhere near Santa Monica.) The LAT reports that the stabbing victim is in stable condition, so the possibility of a paranoid Nick Broomfield documentary remains comfortably remote.

—Page Six sets its gossip-ray to "righteous indignation" and blasts "fork-tongued flack" Robert Garlock for a pattern of dishonesty. We're shocked—shocked—that a publicist might not be totally forthcoming with a reporter. What's next, agents lying about offers from rival studios? Waitresses taking acting classes? The Weinsteins ordering dessert?
—Lindsay Lohan shakes off the whole Fez breakup thing by learning a neat trick. The link's safe for work, but relatively unsafe for our sense of personal worth. [via Fleshbot]
—LAist interviews Heather Havrilesky, Rabbit blogger and Salon's resident boob-tube savant. She loves her some Tyra Banks.
—Yet another actor is digitally exhumed and made to dance a little jig(metaphorically speaking) in the name of advertising.
—We're well aware that OBD/Dirt McGirt/Big Baby Jesus died this weekend, but now it looks like it's going to require a census taker to account for all of his kids.

Jake Gyllenhaal tells Elle magazine that Brokeback Mountain's cowboy-on-cowboy action wasn't all stolen glances on horseback or lightly-strummed prairie ballads around the campfire. He reckons that sometimes a man's gotta put on the chaps and the six-shooters and get down to the dirty business of cowpoke love:

· TV on the Radio, Dizzee Rascal, and piano-tinkling hip-hop moppet Nellie McKay play the Shortlist Music Prize Concert at Avalon. And if you're into surprises, (who doesn't love a surprise?) there'll be a special guest from the Shortlist in the mix as well.
· Tom Wolfe will pick up his trademark white suit from the dry cleaners and head over to Dutton’s Brentwood to read from his new college novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, at 7 p.m. It's mandatory that at least one attendee ask him to discuss the "the keg stand as academic coming-of-age ritual."
· Buddhist scholar (and (Uma daddy) Robert Thurman talks about Anger: The Seven Deadly Sins with with congenitally chatty director/metaphysical mentee David O. Russell at 7 p.m at the Central Library.

With the Alexander the Great action figure, you can bring all of the fun of Oliver Stone's Alexander home before the film hits theaters on November 24th. The toy's a little pricey (a reported $150 million, without accounting for studio budgetary trickery), and early reviews indicate that it falls apart after about an hour and a half of play. Note: Even if you order it now, they can't guarantee that the shipping won't be delayed for two weeks as the designers tinker with his skirt, fearing that the "adventurous" Alexander will try to play with both your Barbie and Ken dolls. (They wouldn't want to turn off toy collectors in the red states or hurt their chances at awards time.)

The LAT finally gets around to covering the harassment lawsuit filed against some Friends writers by former writers' assistant Amani Lyle. There's the expected litany of quotes from writers trying to preserve the filthy sanctity of The Room for sitcoms staffers everywhere. (If this is what we get with total freedom, imagine what would happen if people lost their ability to speculate about Courteney Cox's genitals.) At least the article (and possibly the lawsuit) might improve a defendant's sex life, as the proceedings afforded one of them an opportunity to dispel the rumor that he's inattentive to his partners:

A reader passes along this conversation overheard at a Beverly Hills production company. Really, no further commentary is necessary:

A spy notifies us of a fire in the same building as Miramax's offices on Sunset Boulevard. Fortunately, it seems that Harvey's West Coast fiefdom escaped damage, allowing him to reserve the right to initiate any destruction within Miramax's walls. An e-mail tells the folks at the Max not to worry about the lingering stench:

It's only fitting that the American Music Awards, the Grammys' Retarded Cousin™, would dredge up "special" presenters to take the podium during their broadcast. Anna Nicole Smith apparently decided to dull her already less-than-Nobel-quality faculties with something before stepping up to the mic to introduce Kanye West. She eventually got around to executing the introduction after a bizarre, slurring attempt at articulating the words on the teleprompter—an onerous task for her under optimal, unimpaired circumstances—and some awkward pauses to stroke her breasts and ask the crowd if they liked her body. We can't say for sure that Smith was high on anything but the excitement of the moment, but we hear that after the show the Tijuana Pharmacists Association called her to ask if she'd like to move to Mexico to open a drug store in her cleavage.

· Tom Hanks is in negotiations to star in the adaptation of The DaVinci Code, with director Ron Howard attempting to de-intellectualize the bestselling source material (all those words!) into an Oscar contender. [THR]
· Oscar-baiting biopics Kinsey and Finding Neverland get off to a strong start in limited release. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· NBC Universal Chairman and CEO Bob Wright sounds like a baseball owner, urging patience while Jeff Zucker tries to rebuild their schedule from promising players in development. Also, Wright says the light-hitting rookie Joey "is doing just fine." We suspect he'd like to trade Matt LeBlanc for Teri Hatcher and a situational left-hander. [THR]
· Denzel Washington, floating down on a $20 million parachute from the aborted American Gangster project, can afford to play Brutus in Julius Caesar on Broadway for a mere $1200/week. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Writer-producer Victor Fresco will ditch Paramount TV in June for a huge overall deal at 20th Century Fox TV. Fresco's bolting to Fox because they're "constantly willing to take chances." Sure, that's one way to put it. Another way is, "Hey, Fox put My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss on the air. They'll let me do anything!" [THR]

On this Saturday's Weekend Update on SNL, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler recreated Tara Reid's legendary boob-slip incident with uncanny detail, using only a Barbie doll and a couple of well-chosen props. Top left: Reid helpfully cleans a mirror smudged with a messy white powder. Top right: Reid makes sure a bottle of champagne hasn't turned. Bottom left: Reid's left breast breaks free. Bottom right: A publicist scrambles futilely to cover up the exposed breast before dozens of cameras capture the moment for all time. Not pictured: Paris Hilton emerges, sans underwear, to comfort Reid by making out with her.

In Saturday's NYT, hack auteur nonpareil Brett Ratner admits that he didn't really know what he was doing with the just-released "one last heist" flick After the Sunset until he got into the editing room. Still, he managed to fool at least one cast member into thinking he wasn't totally lost:

Take refuge in the box office numbers that help you forget that when you woke up this morning, your wife was gone, and she didn't even have the courtesy to take the kids with her.

Friday
· Alicia Keys signs her book Tears for Water: Songbook of Poems & Lyrics at Book Soup tonight and at Barnes & Noble at The Grove on Saturday. Wave from the trolley!
· We continue our service of providing the hipster community with free indie-rock options: The Golden-Arms, Helen Stellar, and Foreign Born play El Cid (no cover before 10:30 pm).
· Not as free, but still a good option if you're not seeing Guided by Voices: The Gay-Gays (an all-dude Go-Gos tribute band), Tommy Keene, and the Ex-Boyfriends hit Spaceland.

Let us pause to thank this week's handsome array of sponsors, whose munificence allows us to occasionally make the leap from grande to venti. If you'd like to join the well-heeled ranks of Defamer advertisers, see our ad info page.

A gritty, ripped-from-the-headlines story...an actor badly in need of a hit and a change of pace. They might even get the Peterson story out of the MOW ghetto and into the theaters with Affleck above the title. Patrick Whitesell's phone at Endeavor must be ringing off the hook.

As the folks at LA.comfidential reported last night, it looks like Lindsay Lohan and Wilmer "Fez" Valderrama have indeed split up, ending their roughly six-month romantic odyssey. The break-up further cements Valderrama's place as this generation's Scott Baio; he'll almost certainly tie a bandana around his thigh and drown his sorrows with a three-week orgy at the Playboy Mansion. Meanwhile, Lohan is now free to chase her first love, the emotionally-distant-yet-darkly-smoldering Captain Morgan.

A reader informed us that if you call (916) CALL-TURK, the cell phone number that Donald Faison's character excitedly procured on a recent episode of Scrubs, you'd get a recording urging you to keep watching the show and vote for it in the People's Choice Awards. Cute. Naturally, we immediately called the number to hear the recording. And because we didn't research it beforehand, we were genuinely surprised when a live person answered the phone. A brief transcript of our call:

Let the casting for the inevitable next wave of made-for-TV movies begin. Casting directors: Back to the drawing board. You can't use Dean Cain again (the double-jeopardy career suicide rule), even though Clubhouse was cancelled.

US Weekly didn't exactly attract A-list firepower at its "shopping party" at Smashbox Studios last night, ultimately settling for the smaller-caliber, B- through-D-list set. A reader recounts the low-watt carnage: