The trades are breathlessly reporting (lots of "breaking," red fonts, and e-mail blast alerts) that the rumored changes at Paramount Television have come to pass. Les Moonves, Viacom co-president and power-mad, utterly irresistible gleaming-tooth'd force of nature, has merged CBS Productions and Paramount Network Television into the monolithically-named CBS Paramount Network TV Entertainment Group. Various CBS personnel will assume leadership positions in the new entity; Paramount TV president Garry Hart will take the standard executive firing package, stepping down from his position and assuming a producing deal in a nice (but very quiet) office, spending Tuesday and Friday nights haunting the craft service table at sitcom tapings on the lot.

Hollywood PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are sent in by our eagle-eyed readers. Send yours to tips@defamer.com and let your favorite sitcom star know that you know he wears sweatpants to eat at The Ivy.

A spy transcribes part of the lunchtime conversation between American Dreams star Brittany Snow and a seemingly-mute friend. And yes, sitting next to an 18-year-old actress at lunch and overhearing her conversation is every bit as painful as you might have imagined. (But how can you not listen in on this golden discourse?) Unfortunately, if you live in L.A., every meal eaten out of the home carries the risk of overhearing this particular kind of indigestion-inducing chatter.

We were shrugging off the after-effects of the Labor Day weekend with the Fall TV preview issue of Entertainment Weekly (don't worry, we were in the bathroom) when we noticed an ad for the DVD release of Jersey Girl. With nothing but time on our hands and the unpleasant alternative of actually having to read the prose in EW, we decided to deconstruct the clever composition of the video box. Our analysis is after the jump; click on the picture at left to see the entire image.

· Delays and disorganization at the Venice Film Festival result in the unpardonable sin of keeping Hollywood's A-list attendees waiting. Don't these motherfucking Venetians know who everyone is? Johnny Depp, Al Pacino, and Harvey Weinstein are not kept waiting. In fact, Weinstein cheerily took the podium and issued a totally hilarious, only half-kidding death threat to the festival's artisic director.[THR]
· John Leguizamo is developing a sitcom based on his life as a performer and family man for 20th Century Fox TV. We can't wait to see the wacky-yet-touching ways in which Leguizamo juggles the burdens of fame and his household responsibilities. [THR]
· Head Viacom glamour hammer Les Moonves is poised to shake up Paramount Television. This probably won't involve actual bloodshed, as Moonves isn't fond of the dry cleaning bills, but Paramount TV head Garry Hart might be stepping down. [THR]
· Michael Moore spins decision to enter Fahrenehit 9/11 as Best Picture instead of Best Documentary as an act of charity (i.e. "let's let someone else win for a change") rather than an opportunity to make another "interesting" speech at the end of the Oscar broadcast. He's so giving. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Germans are still a bit touchy about that Hitler guy, as a movie that attempts to portray his "human side" is stirring up trouble. [THR]
· Comic book legend Stan Lee and nudie mag visionary Hugh Hefner team up for an MTV animated pilot Superbunnies, about large-breasted, crime-fighting Playmates, which will quite obviously be the best television show in history. [THR]

Roger L. Simon reports on his blog that the the Motion Picture Academy has come up with a brilliant idea to combat the supposedly rampant piracy of the screener DVDs that members are sent at awards time. Each Academy member will be issued a magical DVD player that can play enchanted, copy-proof discs issued by studios keenly attuned to the evil sorcery of copyright infringement. We suppose this solution proved much more cost-effective and efficient than an earlier plan to have Academy president Frank Pierson travel the country with a reel-to-reel projector and an armed bodyguard, assuring that viewers weren't transcribing films for later posting on internet bulletin boards.

This reader report from Saturday's UCLA-OSU football game let us know that we definitely didn't party hard enough over the holiday weekend. After all, we didn't horrify an entire stadium full of drunk college football fans. But perhaps we're all better off not making keeping up with Gary Busey some kind of a competition.

While Madonna overturns tables during her audit of the London Kabbalah Centre, let us do our part to affect the bottom line of the Centre's gift shop. The Centre offers the sacred text of the Zohar (pictured at left with Kabbalah scholar Britney Spears) for a cool $415, with a generous payment plan available for actors between gigs. But now, through the life-extending and mystical qualities of the internet, you can obtain a copy of the Zohar for the low, low cost of...free! Of course, as in all things Kabbalah, there's a catch: The texts are in Aramaic. In lieu of some very expensive Aramaic lessons, you can save the Zohar text to your computer and let the immortality begin. Keep it close by long enough and maybe you'll outlast everyone on Earth and get the opportunity to repopulate the Earth with Madonna, Britney, Paris, Demi, and, um, Ashton Kutcher. On second thought, maybe ritualistic suicide is a more appealing option.

Why are we bringing you the box office results instead of adding a day's worth of sun poisoning to the weekend's dose of alcohol poisoning? Have you been outside the last two days? If we'd wanted to spend the holiday baking in 102 degree heat, we would have gone to Phoenix.

—Awful Plastic Surgery reverses course on Jessica Simpson's cleavage, which was once lauded on Good Plastic Surgery. Here's to good boob jobs gone bad!
—Madonna enacts a personal Blahnik embargo after Manolo made disparaging remarks about her acting abilities. If only he'd shot off his mouth about Sarah Jessica Parker's dramatic chops, maybe that debacle that was Sex and the City could have been avoided. Please, no pro-SATC e-mails. By the time you read this, we'll be in Mexico. [via BWE]
—Separated at birth: Unhinged, aspiring duelist/Democratic turncoat Zell Miller and Emperor Palpatine?
—The WOW Report gets Vincent Gallo's John Hancock all over their overpriced Brown Bunny book.
—Cinemocracy reviews the last six months in the intersection of Hollywood and politics. We would've liked more angry pirate talk, but we're admittedly a little fixated these days.

Friday
1. God save your eternal soul if you'd actually attend this MTV Casting Party, but we're passing it along just in case you're a struggling actor looking to get some reality TV face time. Who says we never did anything for you?
2. All Gallo, all the time: The director himself will be on hand at the Nuart for screenings of The Brown Bunny. See you there, controversial on-screen sex acts enthusiasts!
Saturday
3. Hairspray’s run at the Pantages ends this weekend. Go and experience the last time you can see people applauding a fat girl dancing in L.A. anywhere outside of West Hollywood or Jumbo's Clown Room.
4. If VH1’s Behind the Music was an art exhibit, it would be Justin Goldberg's A&Rt.
Sunday
5. Mark Farina @ A.D… because you can stay up all night and not have to work tomorrow. A three-day weekend means more time to shake off your Blue Monday.
Monday
You've been really busy this weekend. How about sleeping in and trying to forget that you'll soon return to the soul-crushing monotony of the work week?

We'd like to take a second to thank this week's sponsors, whose support has allowed us to upgrade from the tequila that causes temporary blindness to the one that merely makes our problems temporarily go away. To learn more about how to reach the greatest readers in the history of the technological interweb, see this.

Following this morning's eye-opening Vincent Gallo news, here's another reader report about being surprised that a celebrity didn't punch someone in the face and run out on his bar tab exclaiming, "Don't you people know who I am?" A post Late Late Show Craig Kilborn puts his trademark smarmy smirk away for a contemplative, solitary drink not far his old offices at CBS Television City:

We at Defamer think that it's important for you to be made comfortable with the romantic company being kept by the Olsen Twins, as we all feel a certain stewardship of their lives after watching them grow up before our very eyes. Today's Page Six introduced us to new Ashley (the "Fat Twin," please stay with us) snuggle buddy Scott Sartiano, and a reader alerted us to some more background info on Ash's older man. Columbia University's alumni magazine heartily endorses Ashley's choice in fleeting partnership, raving "As co-owner of Butter, the acclaimed restaurant-with-a-DJ in the East Village, Sartiano spends nights cavorting with the likes of über-models Carmen Kass and Iman, Teen Beat demi-god Carson Daly and rapper Jay-Z. Not bad for a nice guy from North Carolina." Not bad indeed. If he's good enough for Columbia, well, this Southern gentleman is certainly good enough for us. Good luck, Scott! And don't be afraid of that overblown twin telepathy, either—when MK and Ash are communicating wordlessly, it's only to express what a dreamy hunk you are, not arguing over who forgot to bring the blow.

Drag your beer-bloated bodies off the sand and into your local theater in exactly the proportions listed below.

· Corpulent Last Comic Standing unfunnyman Ralphie May will host a reality pilot centered around "baggin'," i.e., standing around on a street corner and snapping off "Yo Mama" jokes. We want to play! "Yo Mama so fat she wouldn't ever let this ludicrous pilot idea ever make it to series!" Eh, we're so white. [THR]
· Constantly promoted, ridiculous NBC cop drama Hawaii pulls somewhat decent ratings numbers against virtually no competition. We give it four episodes before it's yanked, and that's only because NBC will be trying to save face. Loud shirt/random gunfire enthusiasts will have it figured out by next week. [Variety, sub. req'd.]
· Angie Harmon—rarest of birds, an attractive, Hollywood Republican—signs on to look pretty next to the comic talents of Tea Leoni and Jim Carrey in the the remake of Fun with Dick and Jane. Judd Apatow is writing, so there's hope. [THR]
· Elizabeth Shue, whom we'd long assumed was dead or had gone native in Griffith Park, will star in the DreamWorks nursing-a-sick-horse-back-to-victory drama Dreamer. [THR]
· A routine traffic stop in Los Angeles yesterday led to the arrests of three illegal DVD burning menaces. The men were operating a replicating lab and were planning to distribute releases as recent as The Exorcist, The Bourne Supremacy, and Collateral. It's really refreshing when these traffic stops wind up nabbing pirates instead of ending in videotaped baton-play, although Jack Valenti probably would have wished for a little of both. [THR]

A reader reports from last night's Vincent Gallo signing for his book of still photos from The Brown Bunny, sounding surprised (and somewhat upset) that Gallo wasn't a total asshole. We don't see why erecting a billboard celebrating your graphic, "in the name of art" blowjob has to be preclude someone from being a nice guy. He just might love himself a little bit too much for our tastes.

Today's Page Six offers a fascinating update on the love lives of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Ashley (still awaiting her hard time in Utah rehab) has snagged 30-year-old promoter/restaurateur/former Anne Hathaway paramour Scott Sartiano. Obviously, the guy has earned his celeb-despoiling merit badge. Meanwhile Mary-Kate, her once bright, animated-chipmunk-quality eyes now tainted by the thousand-yard Cirque Lodge stare, can do no better than cozying up to some Sartiano associate named "Ollie" while love-moglet David Katzenberg is up in Boston for school. All caught up? Good. We don't want to confuse the issue by noting that Olsen Full House co-star John Stamos told Sartiano to "take care of [the twins] while they were in New York." We'd expect that creepy pimp action out of Saget, not from Uncle Jesse.

On Wednesday, we passed along a rumor that Kim Masters, Esquire's Hollywood columnist, was let go because "1) she couldn't write and 2) wasn't generating any buzz with what she did write. Also, she kept complaining to them about everything, and they just got sick of her." According to Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger, that rumor was wrong on all counts. Master's column went the way of Gretchen Mol's It-Girl status because "after a while, Hollywood executives are only so fascinating." So true, so true. But give them a snout full of blow and put them underneath a hooker, well, then we're cooking with gas. We digress.

—Dubious Britney Spears ABC Gum Auction Mania Sweeps World! Breaking! Oh, yeah, this is old news. Wake us when the Tampax hits eBay, OK?
—Hottest trend in music videos: depicting scenes from your own life. Britney's already been there, so are we surprised to see Lindsay Lohan jumping on the bandwagon?
—Paris rolled out her junk jewelry on Amazon, so now Nicky Hilton must inflict her clothing line on unsuspecting fashion victims. When will this tiresome one-upskankship end? When Tara Reid endorses designer birth control?
—Bring your baby to the movies...and pray that it doesn't choke on popcorn and die. Or, you know, maybe you've got too many kids and don't want to pray so hard. It's a free country.