Eschewing that pussy, win-for-charity stuff with which the Hollywood card-poseurs of Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown waste their time, Ben Affleck took home $356,400 real American dollars as the winner of the 2004 California State Poker Championship. Congratulations, Ben! We have to admit that we're a little sick of celebs playing poker for orphans, boob cancer, and various subsets of the illiterate community. It gets so depressing. Take your mad-money windfall and get yourself a treat. Maybe the 300 large can pay the salary of a guy to scan your driveway for paparazzi whilst you wander around in your boxer-type shorts and adjust your balls? Perhaps he could even adjust them for you.

OK, this picture of Britney freaking out as a paparazzo snaps her picture is just too good not to post. She seems to scream Can't I just limp around, buy a fucking puppy, and get back to being a homewrecker with my dancer boyfriend? It appears on World of Britney as part of a mini photo-essay on yesterday's pet store dust-up. (You may have to scroll down a bit to see the other pics.)

A Britney Spears fan on the BritneySpears.org fansite reports an incident yesterday in which Britney's mother, Lynne Spears, allegedly drives over the foot of a paparazzo that tries to document the family's purchase of a puppy at a Santa Monica pet store:

We might have had something to say about this LAT article about MTV Jesus-figure Tom Freston, whom Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone has chosen to "reverse a cold streak" at Paramount in his downtime between executive three-ways. But LA Innuendo editor/blogger Richard Rushfield actually reads the Sunday LAT and took care of it for us. Rushfield doesn't quite get what's so genius about Freston's MTV tenure. He recalls a past experience with the network that merely illustrates his simple application of Hollywood's inversely proportional Words-To-Tits Recipe For Success:

From a Craiglist DC posting, a request for a sculptor to immortalize everyone's favorite action star/governor on (yet another) bobblehead doll. This time, Bosley Bobbing Head Doll Company wants to commemorate one of the prouder chapters in our allegedly handsy Governor's career. "Need an experienced sculptor for original art design of the body of a new 'Groping Arnold' satirical bobblehead doll....The 'Groping Arnold' bobblehead will poke fun at a Governor who has problems with admitting mistakes, either in courtroom, a movie set, or the State Capitol."

Is the scorching Hollywood trend of straight actors dabbling with gay roles trickling upwards to the boardrooms of media conglomerates? With just a few added ellipses, this excerpt from the NYT's Sunday Q&A with Sumner Redstone on Viacom's new power structure (CEO Redstone on top of co-presidents Les Moonves and Tom Freston) becomes three buddies drinking some wine over dinner "meetings," then letting their more "creative" sides emerge.

Straight actors playing gay is the new filing a $100 million defamation suit against a mouthy, gay porn star. The NY Daily News' Rush & Molloy have a helpful rundown of avowedly penis-in-vagina thespians taking on roles that were once taboo. Colin Farrell makes the list, playing Alexander the Great, "one of the most powerful bisexuals in history." [Ed. note—Have these people never heard of Andy Dick?]

Defamer is committed to connecting its readers with employment opportunities within the entertainment industry. Today, we spotlight the MPAA, which is looking for an Internet Investigations Manager/Cybercrime Investigator. If you can handle the following responsibilites, you can help protect movie copyrights while enjoying a most competitive compensation package:

According to the LAT's Hot Property column, Ally McBeal creator/anorexia booster David E. Kelley and wife/White Oleander star Michelle Pfeiffer are putting their Brentwood compound on the market for $49 million (stunned italics ours), apparently seeking a "change in lifestyle" at a new ranch in "horse country." In this new lifestyle, Pfeiffer will take up acting and Kelley will force the ranch's skinny livestock to eat until it has no hope for a career in one of his lawyer dramas.

This weekend, filthy-minded sister blog Fleshbot was on the loose at the Erotica LA convention. As he wandered among the porn stars, the neoprene reproductions of porn-star genitalia, and the people that ejaculate into neoprene reproductions of porn-star genitalia, he encountered one Dessarae Bradford. She's the author of the book My S/M Romp With Alec Baldwin, in which she claims "In Sept. 2002, I fu**ed Alec Baldwin in his a** in a hot , sweaty, nasty sex romp." She urges us to "Grab the scoop before my story gets into the hands of the media, and they attemp [sic] to censor it." (And in case our short-term memory is not what it used to be, reminds us that "I had Alec Baldwin on all four's for me, and S/M was involved. ") Miss Bradford sounds just a little bit like Michael Moore, except Moore was whining that Michael Eisner was fu**ing him in his a**.

What the hell happened to America's love affair with Tom Hanks?

Sorkin goes from White House to front line

Many thanks to this week's sponsors, who help us avert the part of our True Hollywood Story where we live in the back of a friend's Corolla. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and reach the world's smartest, most desirable readers, send an e-mail to advertising@gawker.com.

You make the call: MPAA-backed raid of suspected German movie pirates or terrifying anecdote from the Nazi occupation?

The Daily's Daily Spy reports that Vanity Fair contributing editor Steve Garbarino is heading to LA to work on a pilot for HBO, Freak Beat, which the Spy says is poised to fill the Sex and the City void. As far as we know, this has nothing to do with VF editor Graydon Carter, unless he somehow finds a way to "profit" from Garbarino's "relationship with Hollywood." Maybe Garbarino will FedEx Carter a bag of oranges, and the LAT can do a breathless, three-part series on Carter's "Bicoastal Citrus Consultant" fee.

We hear from a well-placed operative within MGM that Sony's rumored $5 billion purchase of the movie studio is a done deal. The news should be announced early next week. In the meantime, we can get back to our favorite pasttime: watching media conglomerates swallow up pieces of Hollywood in pursuit of the ever-elusive "shitergy."

Blogger So Says I prints a letter from a friend who is appalled at the "piddly" salary being offered for an assistant position ("right arm to the president') in an entertainment firm, taking up the cause of the coffee-fetching, grievously-underpaid Hollywood peon class that makes this town run.

You know the following box office numbers are a lock, so why fight it?

By now everyone knows that Madonna has taken the name "Esther" in conjunction with her Kabbalah faith (we guess the Catholics weren't so hot on trying to move copies of her crappy children's book). She says she wants to "attach [her]self to the energy of a new name," but is the name-switch really a cry for help? Blog Towleroad discovers a secret code in the new name; by some mystical Kabbalah process, typing "Esther" in the predictive text entry of your cell phone yields "DRUGS." We knew that there was a perfectly logical explanation for her erratic behavior. Perhaps once she's checked into rehab she'll abandon this cult-y nonsense and get back to the important business of wearing pointy bras and simulating masturbation on stage.

If only there were some sort of objective criteria for measuring success in Hollywood...oh, wait, there is: money. Somewhat adorably, the Forbes Celebrity 100 pretends that other stuff matters as well, but if web hits really counted, Paris Hilton's vagina would have been Number One with a doggy-styling bullet. Since the cash eventually wins out, Mel Gibson triumphs on the back of his graphic torture of his Lord and Savior. Maybe one day, when Kabbalahists rule the world, Guy Ritchie will ascend to the top spot on the strength of his loving big-screen depiction of the disembowling of Madonna.