Not to go all Wall Street Journal on you, but our ears are burning with wildly unsubstaniated rumors that the Viacom Death Star is about to blast Sirius satellite radio with a cash tractor beam (as some media outlets have speculated about and others have largely dismissed) and haul in the company and all of its sexy, newly-acquired debt to keep Howard Stern in the fold at its Infinity Broadcasting division. The crazy chatter further holds that Viacom co-president/future galactic dictator Les Moonves was so despondent over Stern's departure from his loving embrace (and over the possibility that the FM portion of his empire will be decimated) that Stern will now get to do his plain, old, over-the-air radio show in a new, commercial-free format. The upshot: Stern gets to keep his huge audience, Viacom finally shows they aren't taking him for granted, and Moonves gets Sirius' satellite pipleline to eventually deliver mind-control rays for his coming invasion Viacom content into the world's automobiles, assuring there is no place where we will be safe from Real World and Everybody Loves Raymond reruns.

A pharmacologically-assisted tipster encounters one of Defamer's favorite subjects out for some lunch at Hollywood's legendary house of hot dogs, and, fortunately, escapes without a lecture. We don't suggest that the public use illegal substances while celebrity-spotting, as face-recognition processes may be impaired. (If one plans to engage a celebrity in actual conversation, then we advocate as much drug abuse as necessary to survive the mind-meltingly inane chat that will certainly follow.)

Hi! We're back! We apologize for yesterday's abbreviated delivery of the nonsense that at least three wage-slaves in the William Morris mailroom have come to know and tolerate, but there are these magical boxes called "servers" that forgot to snort their web-powering unicorn dust and instead took a long afternoon nap. There are some lingering problems affecting the entire Gawker Misfit Empire, and constantly-wedgied brother site Gizmodo explains them here. (Is he even writing in English?) For those of you who are trying to see Gawker, try this link.

Please excuse us if we've becoming slightly jaded at the prospect of yet another (a third!) instance of Paris Hilton engaging in explicit sex acts in front of a camera. News of the World reports that Paris Hilton Has Sex, Vol. III is "being hawked around America for £30,000 by a three-man consortium," and features "kinky group sex" and "lesbian footage."

Macaulay Culkin's legal team has taken umbrage with a pair of our posts linking to stories on another website (and since taken down) that speculated about Culkin's preference in a partner's genitalia. Thanks to his lawyers, now we know he's exclusively a vagina kind of guy. They helpfully shed light on Culkin's non-relationship with sublebrity Jeffrey Brunner, whom the rumors "linked romantically" to Culkin:

· Without a Paddle multi-hyphenate super-talent Dax Shephard gets a script deal with Revolution Studios and Adam Sandler's Happy Madison for his comedy Guerilla Photographer. [THR]
· NBC resurrects seven-year-old Fox comedy pilot Five Houses, about a gay couple moving into a suburban neighborhood. [Ed. note—Unthinkable!]. This didn't work so well this summer on Fox when the "gay couple" was "Method & Red." [THR]
· Paramount pushes the Alfie release back two weeks, meekly sidestepping a "a crush of upcoming films targeted at female moviegoers." How macho! Couldn't they have gone with the "to better position it for the Oscars" excuse? Maybe they wanted to space out the glut of roughly thirty films featuring Jude Law in release between October and the end of the year. [THR]
· Because they want ALL the Emmys: HBO signs Emmy-winning Arrested Development directors Anthony and Joe Russo to develop the "absurdust noir/dark drama" Motel Novella. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· 20th Century Fox TV is in business with Get a Life star Chris Elliott, giving him a pilot deal for an untitled family comedy in which he'll play the father of a young girl with pop-star aspirations. Creepy! We love it solely based on that brief description. [THR]

Today's Page Six lauds the green tendencies of a couple of the most visible agents in the business, noting that Endeavor's (and Defamer favorite, pictured at left) Ari Emanuel* has been driving a hybrid Prius for like, years, inspiring others at the firm to buy them. And now William Morris' Jim Wiatt has upped the ecological ante by scoring the "only two" Ford Escape SUV hybrids in Hollywood for himself and his wife. We doubt it'll be long before this eco-friendly dick-measuring contest escalates, and we see CAA's Kevin Huvane being pulled down Wilshire Boulevard in a little red wagon by a team of low-emission junior agents.

On Friday, an L.A. jury cleared a dermatologist and a pharmaceutical company of responsibility for an illness that Irena Medavoy (the wife of former TriStar chairman/current Phoenix Pictures head Mike Medavoy) suffered from a Botox injection. Our legal background is admittedly thin, but the jury probably found that injuries suffered from cosmetic operations are assumed "occupational hazards" for the wives of Hollywood moguls. Whew. It's a good thing the jury had the foresight to preserve the system. If they ruled for Medavoy and spooked the locals into thinking that injecting muscle-paralyzing toxins mere inches from the brain is anything less than 100 percent safe, we could have seen panicking actresses, trophy wives, and Garry Shandling age 20 years overnight after knee-jerk cancellations of Botox parties. But no worries, the court said to keep on paralyzin'!

Here at Defamer, we scoff at the idea of taking a three-day weekend to observe Columbus Day. Instead, here are your weekend box office numbers.

Superman is dead. The L.A. Weekly's Nikki Finke reports that Christopher Reeve died suddenly on Sunday, and that his family may make the announcement on Monday. More details as they become available. There's a totally inappropriate Kryptonite joke to be made here, but we're way too involved in Desperate Housewives to bother.

It takes something really special to get us to work on weekends. Dear readers, behold our definition of "really special."

As Matt LeBlanc Day on Defamer winds to a close, Towleroad provides an intriguing coda. They've unearthed the '90/'91 edition of the Spartacus International Gay Guide featuring a young, avowedly gay-sex-with-gay-hustlers-in-the-back-of-a-limo-free LeBlanc. We won't be so narrow-minded as to suggest this cover revelation changes the disposition of his strenuous denials of the rumors about his sexuality, it merely reinforces an opinion we've long held: A man in a letterman's jacket looks pretty gay.

Friday
1. McSweeney's/Believer contributors Stephen Elliot and Josh Bearman (also of the L.A. Weekly) will be at Skylight Books' debate-watching party and discuss Elliot's book Looking Forward To It after the forensic carnage. Also: They promise some cheap beer!
2. Watch the Dodgers cling to their fleeting hopes in their game against the mashing Cardinals. If you don't manage to scalp a ticket, you can always skulk down the hill to the Short Stop and watch the game.
3. Ray Charles channeler Jamie Foxx hosts the tribute “Genius: A Tribute to Ray Charles," featuring appearances by just about every musician that's played with, been inspired by, or pretended to be influenced by the legendary musician at Staples Center.
Saturday
4. Show up, sit down, and drop acid at the Psychedelic Picnic at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. But don't blame us if you spent the next eight hours thinking Rudolph Valentino's zombie is trying to eat your popcorn.
5. The mellow, sexually-suggestive sounds of Norah Jones float around the Hollywood Bowl; Hilary Duff's boyfriend's band, Good Charlotte, is totally doing an obligatory Tower Sunset in-store performance.
Sunday
6. Join porn stars and the people that pay to wander among them and paw neoprene replicas of their naughty parts at Adultcon in the L.A. Convention Center. We're sure Fleshbot will have coverage on Monday if you don't make it out.

[Ed.note—In an attempt to emulate the accountability rituals of some forms of mainstream journalism, Defamer will occasionally bury notes of correction and omission late on Friday afternoon, where most readers will never see them.]

Because the celebrity-related fun on eBay never ends, we bring your attention to a disturbing online auction of "Alicia Silverstone life masks" sure to catch the eye of the world's Miss Match and Batman and Robin fans. In case you can't imagine what you'd use such a latex mask for, the seller helpfully offers suggestions such as "making your sales of your clothing line, sunglasses, etc," as the item is "thin enough for yourself or retail mannequin display to wear." Even after we throw out all of the horrifying, Silence of the Lambs-style permutations that spring to mind involving the mask/mannequin combo and stick to the retail-related uses, it still doesn't seem like that great a value. For the $45 or so bucks the mask costs, one could probably get Alicia Silverstone to stand around in a store window and look reasonably lifeless.

This morning, we heard one of those Raid-huffing kinds of rumors that gave us pause. There was chatter that Matt LeBlanc's week might have gotten a whole lot worse after deflecting gay-sex-with-gay-hustlers-in-the-back-of-a-limo rumors. The whispers had it that LeBlanc wiped out his motorcycle while darting in and out of traffic on PCH a day or two ago, but was saved from grievous injury by his trusty helmet, and is currently convalescing at UCLA Medical Center. We don't know what possessed us to actually check on the story, but we did.

Let us take a moment to recognize our fine sponsors, without whom we'd be forced to accept a low-paid position removing nits from Pamela Anderson's mukluks. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and reach the world's best conspicuous consumers, see this page.

All box office predictions are subject to the following disclaimer: The entrails that we read to divine opening weekend results vary wildly in quality from week-to-week. Please do not use these projections as the basis of any cash wager.

· Warner Bros. throws in some money to get DreamWorks' Ewan McGregor/Scarlett Johansson movie The Island off the ground. Hope they're kicking in a lot—director Michael Bay's nausea-inducing battalion of cameras and constant explosions can really fuck up a budget. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· NBC looks outside of LA for comedy development deals, vacuuming up NYC-based Upright Citizens Brigade, Demetri Martin, and "New Zealand folk parody duo" Flight of the Conchords. New Zealand what? Was the Naked Cowboy out washing his Speedo when NBC was tossing deals off the top of 30 Rockefeller? [THR]
· Arsenio Hall is apparently still alive, and signs a deal to direct/produce a documentary on the black stand-up scene tentatively titled The Other 23 Hours. [THR]
· Jonathan Prince, creator of American Dreams, will write and executive produce a Tara Reid comedy for Fox Broadcasting. The show will feature Reid as a bad girl trying to change her ways to please her parents and friends. And failing miserably, over and over again. (We suspect the show will be heavy on documentary footage from Reid's life to save costs.) Fox has their fingers crossed that she performs better than she did on Quintuplets this week! [THR]
· Tom Hanks' Playtone Productions tries to milk My Big Fat Greek Wedding one-hit-wonder Nia Vardalos again, as she'll write and star in the adaptation of the novel The Wilderness of Monkeys. [THR]

We genuinely feel sorry for Joey star Matt LeBlanc. It's bad enough that he's eternally typecast as a mildly retarded guy, but now he's been forced to go on the record to the National Enquirer to refute rumors that his former chauffeur arranged for him to have gay sex with gay hustlers in the back of a limo.