The L.A. Weekly's Nikki Finke runs Michael Ovitz's Hollywood Trial of the Century testimony through her own factchecking meatgrinder, illustrating that the former Ur-agent has some utterly unsurprising (but hilarious in scope) deficiencies in the truth-telling department:

Has the LAT suddenly started caring about Hollywood? They've signed up Time (and, for like, fifteen seconds, Entertainment Weekly) columnist/VH1 talking head Joel Stein to write about this thing called "the entertainment industry" that infests much of the paper's subscriber area. Editorial editor Michael Kinsley explains his interest in owning The Business like a Sony exec's indentured servant:

The Buddyhead Gossip blog attempts to democratize the world of celebrity birthday parties, revealing the secret location of a certain troubled rock star's soiree:

In the interest of promoting the safety of our readers, we pass along this alert about a new menace terrorizing the streets of the Beverly Hills area:

Michael Ovitz took the stand in the Hollywood Trial of the Century yesterday, injecting some star power into proceedings that had been dominated by business academics bickering over the whether Ovitz had been overpaid or lawyers questioning the experts' qualifications. Would they finally get to hard-hitting cross-examinations about Ovitz's secret hooker discretionary fund, or tales of how CEO Michael Eisner and Ovitz clashed over whether to serve Chinese or Bolivian babies at the Disney executive dining room's monthly Eat an Orphan night? Well, not so much, as Ovitz griped about the company's unsatisfying atmosphere:

1. Charlie Kaufman answers your questions about the crackling sexual tension between him and Catherine Keener after a screening of Being John Malkovich at the ArcLight. Tonight's show is sold out, but this Kaufman "retrospective" (for a screenwriter, four produced movies is like, five careers) continues tomorrow with Adaptation and finishes on Thursday with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And yes, it's just like Human Nature never existed.
2. Beastie Boys record-scratcher Mixmaster Mike spins at an Amoeba in-store appearance. Try and be gracious if Ad-Rock and the boys don't show up.
3. Visit the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Pageant at the M Bar where comics Brendon Small, Chris Hardwick, Mike Phirman and Lee Farber put on Tron: The Rock Opera. Is there any way something with that title can't be thoroughly awesome? [scroll down to the comedy listing]

Ashlee Simpson just might be teetering on the precipice of a Britney Spears-like breakdown. Besides a mutual fondness for "guide vocal" tracks during their performances, both pop stars have now recently dabbled in the soul-baring, epistolary form. Simpson reaches out to her aggrieved fans with her own Letter of Truth, trying to embrace the same people who have been mercilessly flaying her over The Great SNL Lip-Syncing Incident:

Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are sent in by our readers. Send yours to tips@defamer.com and let BenGar know that the sign in the Poquito Mas window doesn't protect them from your hungry eyeballs.

· It's official: Rupert Murdoch is packing up his multimedia conglomerate in little cardboard boxes and moving its headquarters to Delaware. You know, the Biggest Little Corporation-Friendly State in the Union, where the Hollywood Trial of the Century is taking place? [THR]
· Miramax tag sale! As they come under increased Disney scrutiny, the Weinsteins are looking to drag their titles onto the sidewalk in TriBeca and make some quick dough. We're totally going to pick up a broken toaster and Prozac Nation for pocket change! [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· The O.C. princess Mischa Barton is in final talks to join the cast of indie feature The OH in Ohio. (Nope, that title is not a joke!) The film stars Parker Posey as a woman who has never had an orgasm. You'd think that with all of her yoga training she'd be a little more in touch with her body. [THR]
· Stephen J. Cannell, legendary producer of The A-Team and The Rockford Files, waits for the go ahead on his TNT series, The Dark. We only mention this because we love the part at the end of all of his shows where, in the thrall of his overwhelming creative energies, he tears a script page from his typewriter and tosses the fresh batch of dramatic gold into the air. [THR]

An operative sends us these cam-phone shots from the window of the Poquito Mas on the corner of Westwood and Olympic, where she often spots her "arch-nemesis" Ben Affleck grabbing some takeout. We suspect the gawker-deflecting signage was a more cost-effective solution than rolling a camera-proof jetway up to the door every time he and JenGar get a jones for a burrito. There's a close-up of the sign (and a transcription for those with subpar computer screens) after the jump.

The Hollywood Trial of the Century marched on in Delaware yesterday, as lawyers continued to parade in pointy-headed academic types to testify about Disney's misguided hiring of erstwhile mega-agent Michael Ovitz. On Monday, an executive pay consultant said that Ovitz's $8.5 million base salary and bonus were "out of line" with that of other corporate "Number Two" guys. The defense argued that the consultant's assessment didn't take into account that Ovitz was earning $20-$25 million a year as head of CAA, where he made sure that his clients were similarly wildly overpaid. The plaintiff, however, failed to land a crushing blow by mentioning Ovitz's weekly "five minutes in the closet with Minnie Mouse" perk, a corporate benfit that was usually reserved for CEO Michael Eisner. Hopefully, this information will be brought to light when Ovitz testifies today.

As far as we can tell by reading today's news and tabloid coverage of Lindsay Lohan's mystery illness, she's still in an unnamed hospital (we hear it's the one that rhymes with "Breeders Get High") and undergoing tests to determine what's laid her out. (Please, the girl is sick, no Fez jokes.) Her rep, the always forthcoming Leslie Sloane Zelnick, is telling everyone that she's running a 103-degree fever; adjusting for PR spin, we can conservatively say that Lohan's temperature is somewhere between 113-138 degrees. Her father also told Page Six that she might have meningitis, but the rumors have it that he hasn't been able to see her because a) she's been admitted under an alias that no one's told him and b) Lohan's mother has a restraining order against him. In any case, he probably shouldn't be floating rumors like that, lest he want the entire Hollywood nightclub community rounded up for quarantine.

Yesterday's LAT [Ed.note—How fitting.] looked at how Deckers Outdoor, infernal corporate incubator of the furry evil that is the Ugg boot, is trying to prevent their disappearance into the the ether of fashion fads, where they'd have to wait to be ironically resurrected by our hipster grandchildren as we sit in an urn on the mantle. The LAT lede:

It's comforting to know that as a day dominated by Ashlee Simpson and Lindsay Lohan news winds down, Paris Hilton still finds a way to get her name out into the discourse. Click the image to see that most fleeting of all photographic phenomena, the slight nipple slip. Really, we didn't want to post this, but we're way too tired after the day's events to fight the impulse.

1. Celebrate Paper magazine's two decades of discussing things that make us feel impossibly uncool and out of touch as its founders read from 20 Years of Style: The World According to PAPER at Book Soup.
2. George Carlin will be at Borders on the 3rd St Promenade to sign his latest book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? Don't expect any Hunter S. Thompson antics—we think Carlin's wilder days are well behind him, but at least he'll probably swear a lot.
3. Music round-up: Helmet thrashes at the Troubadour, while PJ Harvey thrashes somewhat less at the Wiltern. (Both hit the same venues tomorrow night.) And continuing our relentless plugging of free shows for our less liquid friends, Eskimohunter and Marjorie Fair do the shoegazing thing at Silverlake Lounge.

As Ashlee Simpson is savaged by her fans on her own website (sample reaction: "your [sic] a talentless spoiled brat that only got where she is because of who her sister is."), dad Joe Simpson is engaging in some serious damage control before the entire TRL nation burns her in effigy. He jumped on the meal ticket-threatening landmine as he explained to credibility repair specialist Ryan Seacrest exactly why she needed to lip-sync:

A spy snaps a cam-phone picture of Henry Winkler at a Sunday night showing of Take Me Out, no doubt needing to settle the "Jeremy Sisto: Cut or Uncut?" debate for himself. And if we learned anything from Happy Days, it's that the Fonz would never be caught dead in a turtleneck.

Pity newly embattled NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker. His network's slow start in the ratings game has exposed him to ridicule and caused many to forget exactly why he'd ever been a programming golden boy in the first place. Recently, he had to suffer the indignity of a roaster claiming that Donald Trump's applying those pursed lips to 'Lil Zuck, and now Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales slips in a dig in a story about Lorne Michaels and SNL:

With the most important election in the history of people voting for things right around the corner, it's comforting to know that certain members of the Hollywood elite take their civic responsibilities seriously and ensure that their voices are heard before they go out of town to earn their staggering paychecks.

· Greg Kinnear signs on for Paramount's remake of The Bad News Bears. Maybe we're guilty of drinking the Billy Bob Thornton Kool Aid, but we're allowing ourselves to get excited about this one and pretending that Paramount's not going to find a way to fuck it up. We know, we know...they'll pull it out at the last second and release it the Friday before the Super Bowl. [THR]
· Fox gets the best Game 2 World Series ratings in a decade, slowly phases out plans to kidnap the Cardinals and have the Red Sox play a team of teenage leukemia patients to pump up the drama. [THR]
· Indie film producers rejoice as Bush signs a bill giving tax breaks to movies made in the US, momentarily forgetting that they hate the President and his administration.OK, now they're back to hating him again. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Buffy creator/fanboy Messiah Joss Whedon pulls out of his deal with 20th Century Fox TV because he has "run out of series ideas" and saying "I'm not interested in taking money that I don't earn." Did no one explain to him that the whole purpose of an overall deal is to collect paychecks from the studio while pretending to be thinking up new series ideas? The whole system is coming apart at the seams! What's next, agents acknowledging they're parasites and drowning themselves en masse in the Pacific? [Variety, sub. req'd.]