A reader writes in concerning Joey's new, inevitable fuck buddy (i.e. the "sitcom sex interest"). "After reading your story on the recasting of the Joey pilot I went online to find a picture of Andrea Anders. All I can say is it's a good thing they fired Ashley Scott. Clearly hiring her CLONE was the way to go." We threw together this side-by-side comparison so that you can judge for yourself. In fairness to NBC, the character's been changed; she's now "an uptight lawyer" who "craves sexual tension with an aspiring actor who may or may not be retarded."

The accuracy of our box office predictions is unparalleled in the anonymous Hollywood gossip blog community.

In-house statistician Andrew Krucoff takes two of Hollywood's obsessions, box office dollars and the height of its stars, and translates them into a chart that even we can understand. Click on the above chart to see the full version, which includes separate breakdowns for Hollywood's all-time earners (per picture) and for some of Young Hollywood's up-and-comers. Mike Myers may be a mere 5' 8", but can swing his realtively meager inches with admirable box-office potency, while Leo translates his stature to money with the worst efficiency. Krucoff explains methodology:

· DreamWorks and Paramount win bidding war for Transformers. THR's excellent synopsis of the movie that will move unthinkable numbers of toys: "The Transformers are divided into two groups of robots, one led by Optimus Prime, who believes in tolerance and the sanctity of life, the other by Megatron, who espouses survival of the fittest and the extermination of biological life." Kids will clamor to wield the Darwinist Megatron handgun! [THR]
· NBC replaces chemistry-free Joeypilot love interest Ashley Scott with slumming stage actress Andrea Anders. We hope some of her theater background prepares her for the crackling sexual chemistry that probably won't be acted upon until the first ratings dip. [THR]

BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin wanders the CBS Radford lot (the former home of Seinfeld) in Studio City and snaps some pictures of abandoned TV sets. "Everything you see here is life-sized, but fake (not unlike my city)," she muses. "Here, even the studio sets lie to you about being inanimate." We couldn't help but think the empty sets look like a peaceful, meditative place to tie off or for a quickie between takes.

Here's yet another surefire sign that your movie is headed for the tank: Bloggers are clawing out each other's eyes to do bad review round-ups. There's just so much bad to go around as Halle Berry braces herself for a potentially historic box-office failure. Our favorite phrase comes from Variety, presented here completely out of context to spotlight its magnificience: "arcane pussy power."

In early June, Viacom president Mel Karmazin quit after losing a power struggle with mummified CEO Sumner Redstone and was replaced by twin-headed, executive glamour dragon Les Moonves and Tom Freston. Today's LAT reports that Karmazin's golden parachute was $35.4 million, an amount the LAT characterizes as "generous." Before we get too outraged, let's all remember that Disney once paid Michael Ovitz $109 million (with original reports of $140 million) to fuck off. Nope, we don't feel any better. What do we get to burn down?

Blogger Vividblurry does a more realistic version of US Weekly's misguided, futile attempt at humanizing the famous, "Stars-They're Just Like US!" feature. He's right, though—Britney and Kevin really are just like us, if we're bastard-fathering, deadbeat dancers or homewrecking, Cheeto-chomping, megamillionaire pop-star white trash.

—Whether you're Scarlett or Hilary, a white skirt and pink Chuck Taylors make you seem like you're trying to pick up whiskey-soaked Japanese businessmen in a Tokyo social club.
—Buy your very own KITT, but be warned: It will not safely turbo-boost you away from a DUI. Just ask Hasselhoff.
—Justin Timberlake's lawyers demand a retraction from News of the World for saying he had sex with someone much hotter and much less famous than Cameron Diaz.
—A t-shirt we can literally get behind.
—Kirstie Alley to star in Fat Actress, a "send-up of her own image as well as Hollywood's obsession with weight and beauty," as well as a convenient excuse to never try and lose another pound. Winking at yourself through fat eyelids is still so much easier than cutting out the carbs.

Eat food you'd only ingest while high to promote the opening of a movie you'd only watch while high:

There's nothing like Ted Casablanca dishing about the closeted supposed-gays to bring the guessers out of the woodwork. Your responses to One Redundant Blind Vice follow.

When Joan Rivers bolted E! for piles of TV Guide Channel cash to stuff in the money belt she'd had surgically installed during her last tummy-tuck, it seems she forgot that E! has exclusive live broadcast rights to the Emmys' red carpet. What are Joan and daughter/fellow pre-show fashion-slamming monkey Melissa going to do? Maybe they can parachute in and distract E!'s camera crew by bombing the red carpet area with their sassy QVC jewelry? It's either that or die in obscurity above the TV Guide Channel's scrolling programming grid as their plastic surgeons slowly go bankrupt.

The AP picks up a telephone and calls Andy Dick's publicist to confirm that he's "dating" one of the contestants from The Assistant. We could have done that, but 1) that sounds a lot like "reporting" and 2) talking to publicists gives us gonorrhea. [Ed.note—OK, fucking publicists gives us gonorrhea, but let's not split hairs, they lie in bed too.]

Remember that hilarious harassment lawsuit brought by a former writers' assistant against the Friends writers? It's going to the California Supreme Court for review. The suit in a nutshell: The writers' assistant felt harassed by the writers' incessant, creatively-necessary theoretical discussions about the contents of Courteney Cox's uterus (mystery since solved), banging Jennifer Aniston, and Joey's possible career as a serial rapist. Of course, any of these ideas would have made for more compelling TV than "The One With Rachel's New Haircut and Eternally Erect Nipples" or "The One Where Chandler's Skinny Because He Just Got Out of Rehab," but they probably wouldn't have made it past the network censors.

· SEC filings from the planned DreamWorks Animation IPO reveal salaries of top execs. And scrumptiously bite-sized Jeffrey Katzenberg was paid...nothing in 2003! Maybe his unusual compensation package of a walk-in closet full of elevator shoes and stature-enhancing funhouse mirrors isn't subject to government regulation? Oh. He gets $20 mil in stock options, too. [THR]
· Fuck you, Entourage: Showtime gives its original series Huff a second season pick up four months before it airs. [THR]
· Composer Jerry Goldsmith dead at 75. Guys, this is breaking news? The recent spate of zombie movies notwithstanding, we're pretty sure he'll still be dead when you go to press tonight. [Variety, sub. req'd]
· Will Ferrell to host USC School of Film and Television 75th Anniversary Gala, which will be produced by Steven Spielberg and Brian Grazer. Hey, did you hear about the dead composer? [THR]

Blogger So Says I sends us this dispatch from Andy Dick's belated, aggressively C-list premiere party for his new show, The Assistant. The report once again confirms the history-tested Hollywood maxim: No one more famous than the host will dare show up to a party. Especially one where there's the looming, gender-blind fear that Andy Dick's tongue might find its way into your mouth.

Wherein we invite you, a public that craves dirt like Michael Jackson craves garish vases, to guess the identity of humpy E! gossip-mangler Ted Casablanca's blind item. Caution: We have no fucking idea what he's talking about this week. Is that even English? But the good news is we think it's about a gay actor trying too hard to act straight in public. By now we don't even need to tell you that if celebs aren't doing drugs, they're having gay sex.

A reader spots The OC supercouple Rachel "Summer" Bilson and Adam "Seth Cohen" Brody at a screening for indie film Garden State. Given the couple's distressing public ubiquity, he suggests a new approach to Adam&Rachel sightings:

When spam promising graphic sex between celebrities lands in our inbox, we momentarily get excited. Then we take a deep breath and call our lawyer. But then we examine the goods, especially when they begin thusly: "SHOCKING ! SHOCKING ! SHOCKING ! LISA MARIE, JEFF GOLDBLUM AND PINK THIS NEW OUTREAGEOS [sic] SEX VIDEO IS HERE !"

We asked for your guesses as to the identity of this "mystery" boy band's Craigslist plea for a booking agent. The clues were basically "early 90s" and "Grammy-winning," but you took those meager breadcrumbs and baked them into a marvelous cake of conjecture. Most of you guessed the group on the verge of a massive comeback is All-4-One, whose Grammy-winning single "I Swear" has reliably served as the background music of countless fumbling, post-prom sexual encounters for the last decade. One of your reminisced about the "I Swear" video, in which "the band members kick around a cardboard box on the roof of a tenement." We're going to guess that if one of them kicks around the box these days he's banished to the worst spot in front of the flaming garbage can.