Celebrity power blogger David Hasselhoff could barely step away from his laptop at breakfast this morning. In between bites of strawberries and toast, Hasselhoff said, "Nobody takes a minute off on the internet. You have to be there every minute of the day looking and hunting for the next big story. So, you have to make it work for you and here I am with my laptop and my wireless card looking to break more stories before I finish my breakfast than Perez does in a week." The Hoff appeared to be unconcerned about the syrup he spilled on his laptop since it's still under warranty at the Apple store.

If there's one thing that you can count on in this wild and crazy world, it's that at the end of the day, Molls will be on hand to ask (and hopefully answer) all the tough questions that life brings our way. As you have no doubt noticed, the Grim Reaper has been swinging his scythe almost indiscriminately of late. This recent spate of celebrity deaths has left our Intrepid Defamer Videographer™ Molly McAleer pondering how, and I quote, "some Oregon Trail shit" could've taken down a titan of comedy like Bernie Mac. So, as you begin your preparations for hitting the town tonight, take some time out of your day to reminisce along with Molls about the lives of those who recently shuffled their way off of this mortal coil.· Red Bull Sound Clash at Crash Mansion. · Philip Glass at the Hollywood Bowl. · Magic Johnson (the band) at The Smell. · Paul McComas at Book Soup.

The backstage drama behind the CW's 90210 reboot is quickly providing its very own season arcs — and all this before the teen soap has even aired! When last we swung by the refurbished Peach Pit, Tori Spelling was bailing on the redo after learning that other original cast members Jennie Garth and Shannen Doherty would be receiving more money. Appraised of the issue, Garth quickly called up EW to give her side of the story:

Apocalypse Commences at MGM Tower: A brave reader sends word and photographic evidence of the third — and by far the most real yet — safety crisis to grip the Century City landmark in the last week: Bees! "They have not yet shut down the building, but the front entrance is now closed due to a swarm of bees huddling over and around their queen," we're told. We're not sure if this is at all connected to the Tower's bomb-y, anthrax-y week of living dangerously, or if perhaps it's just a late public rally in support of UA's beleaguered Paula Wagner, but in any event, we once again advise caution to those working at or visiting the site. And, of course, insert your "Finally — buzz at MGM!" joke here.

Though no one cared enough to actually make it to her funeral, Golden Girls actress Estelle Getty was beloved in Hollywood, where actors and agents whiling down coke benders at 4 a.m. grew to love the misadventures of her sassy Sophia Petrillo during countless late-night Lifetime reruns. Still, that didn't stop the sketch comics at Upright Citizens Brigade from trotting out their impressions of the actress — as well as those of the deceased Heath Ledger and Bernie Mac — during a 72-hour marathon at the theater. According to the NY Daily News, celebrity panelist Brooke Shields wasn't laughing:

Lionsgate is reportedly allocating a portion of its new credit line to therapists after Dane Cook, the co-star of the studio's forthcoming "edgy comedy with a dash of romance" My Best Friend's Girl, lashed out today at the poor souls responsible for the film's poster. As if their mission to sell a Dane Cook film wasn't challenging enough, the actor/comedian assailed everything from the designers' Photoshop skills to his own hair ("actually a close up shot of Tom Selleck's Magnum P.I. mustache," he notes) in a quest for cosmic poster justice. For reasons we'll explain after the jump, we think he's being a little hard on the artists. After all, isn't there a little bit "Brittany Spears' [sic] vagina" in all of us?

What better way to cool down in the summer heat than with a frozen reality turkeycicle, aka High School Musical: Get In The Picture? We had yet to encounter the kids vying for whatever it is this show is promising—we assume some sort walk-on role on High School Musical 5: Pregnancy Pact!. But we figured, "Hey— aspiring child actors competing for our hearts and votes on a competitive talent show, what could go wrong?" A lot, it turns out.The series is presided over by host Nick Lachey, who has apparently been directed to address the contestants as if they were kindergarteners on a field trip to the local industrial bakery. Nick: this is not a step in the right career direction. And speaking of the contestants: Where did they find this many teenage weirdos? It's like they managed to round up every junior high kid across the country who'd tell on you for drinking at a sleepover because it "just didn't sit right," dangled the promise of fame in front of them, then turned the cameras to capture their creepily eager smiles and emphatic head-nods as the world's most patronizing day camp counselor ovvverrr-eeenunnnnciiiiates a lecture about the importance of cooperation. We want to beat them up! Where's our little bendy-toy, Victoria? Ahh—there you are. Better. Much better.

We saw the disgrace that unfolded recently when Scarlett Johansson's putative e-mail relationship with Barack Obama was exposed for the sham it was, so it's with great care that we broach revelations that George Clooney is reportedly the Senator's new Hollywood BFF. As seen in the accompanying video, however, Obama's new Special Envoy for Text-Message Policy (West Coast) drew attacks Monday from the reactionaries at the Fox News institution Red Eye, which touched on Clooney's underqualifications as both a leading man and a filmmaker: "Do you want to take advice from the man who looked at the Batman and Robin script and said, 'Let's do this'?" Indeed, while we admit bristling at last week's GOP smear linking Obama to Paris Hilton, even we must acknowledge that the "nipple suit" is a far-too-sizable albatross for anyone to contend with come November. [Fox News]

· Taylor Hackford is set to direct Tenn, about Tennessee Williams's formative years. It's being financed by the same company that brought you Capote, the second part of their planned Great Sissies of History trilogy that will conclude with the harrowing fitness-empire biodrama, Simmons. [Variety] · Author Plum Sykes is co-writing a sitcom pilot for NBC called Mogulettes, about young, beautiful she-captains of industry. No one remotely suspects what they're hiding in their pantyhose! [Variety] · The End of Ideas: We Can't Even Really Be Bothered To Type Out The Rest of This Etc. Etc. Edition: A TV version of The Witches of Eastwick gets a pilot pickup at ABC. [Variety] · Starz's Vongo and Morgan Freeman's ClickStar both shutter their internet-movie-download operations. [Variety] · Oh, for the love of God: "CBS is saying aloha to a new installment of the Hawaii Five-O franchise from Criminal Minds exec producer/showrunner Ed Bernero." Aloha means goodbye in this instance, we hope. [THR]

Plasticly popular MySpace personality Tila Tequila and Courtenay Semel, the daughter of ex-Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, attended a premiere together last night in Los Angeles. There, the pair confirmed a more successful merger than Semel senior ever managed. “I’d seen the show [A Shot at Love] and just needed to meet her and it just happened,” Semel told People magazine. “It’s true what they say about lesbians," said Tequila. "You meet and then the next day you move in together, because I can’t get rid of her. She pretty much lives at my house.” We think this is the only Yahoo-MySpace deal we'll see happen. (Photo by AP/Steinberg)

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory star Katherine Heigl performed a bit of light calisthenics before embarking on a shopping expedition in Santa Monica on Tuesday morning. You see, Heigl got bit of a charlie horse the last time she went to Barney's in Beverly Hills, which left her in a surly mood for a few days afterwards. Heigl said, "That injury really knocked the wind out of my sails. I could barely walk for a few days afterwards. It was great having everybody helping me out. Joshua make daily runs over to the House Of Pies for the chocolate crème pie. It was nice, but I was bit of a pill and there's no need for a repeat performance."

Hollywood Blvd. doesn't lack for eccentrically costumed self-promoters, but you can have your Spider-Men and Jack Sparrows as long as you leave us Dollhouse Dude. A gadfly who showed up at the Britney Spears custody hearings wearing a dollhouse for a hat, Dollhouse Dude has since become a fixture of both the Walk of Fame and TMZ. Sensing a kindred spirit, gadfly James St. James of The Daily Freak Show put Dollhouse Dude in front of the camera, soliciting his surprisingly erudite thoughts on everything from housing policy (in need of reform), city hall ("Let's go fuck them up!"), and Viagra (just don't feed it to a donkey). Who knew that dollhouse sat atop one of our greatest minds? [The Daily Freak Show]

We took the better part of two days to process the NYT's recent recognition of Warner Bros. as the crown jewel at Time Warner, where Jeff Bewkes, Barry Meyer, Alan Horn and Co. are venerated at length for emphasizing "content" (i.e. their film and TV properties) ahead of "distribution" outlets like AOL, DVD and on-demand services. It's an oddly situational success story; in fact, it opens with WB chairman Meyer literally inhaling the incoming fax telling him The Dark Knight made $66 million on opening day, and namechecks Two and a Half Men among a handful of TV series that are finding lucrative traction internationally. There's also the HBO factor and the Turner channels' flourishing as well. And while we can't and/or wouldn't argue any of these points, a ceremonious Warners rimjob also seems untimely. After all, what did Meyer do with his Speed Racer faxes on opening weekend? That and a few more pressing questions after the jump.1. What about Speed Racer? Warners' legacy is one of adventurous flops and sturdy gambles, not messianic cultural events like TDK. If the point is a "content" state-of-the-union, then it's worth noting that the studio also dropped the summer's biggest bomb. For which, by the way, we love them; Where the Wild Things Are isn't likely to fare much better, but it is nice to know it's there. 2. What about Warner Independent and Picturehouse? The slimmed-down New Line earns a cursory mention, but its return to genre-junk roots is one of Time Warner's signature (and slightly desperate) content revisions since the AOL merger. And the axed Picturehouse — which had a strong summer of Mongol and Kit Kittredge after winning three Oscars in February — was all about "content" that's hit and missed just as regularly as the mother ship. 3. What about Get Smart? Again, the sturdy gamble is the thing: A hit that's grossed $200 million worldwide, will land equally hard on DVD and VOD and has sequels on the way. Screw TDK, really — Bewkes needs more like this, and he needs them recognized. 4. Did you know that Charlie Sheen makes $800,000 per episode of Two and a Half Men? A bit of rehash of an earlier question here at Defamer, we know, but a phenomenon we've come to now grudgingly accept knowing that T&HM is the flagship of a $4 billion television empire. Not that we get it; feel free to continue discussing below. 5. Whither questions and actual answers about new media revenues? Just because Tim Arango is writing all about Warners' precious "content" doesn't mean Bewkes can get away without answering his own query, "[T]he consumption of entertainment products is growing rapidly... The question is how do you offer it, and how do you get paid for it?" And this guy wonders why TW stock still hovers around $16. Come on, Jeff.

We all know the feeling: Burrowing your way through a nightstand stack of forgettable screenplays, you suddenly discover The One. You try to convince your boss the next morning that while we've all seen Rudolph Valentino biopics before, none have captured the meteoric rise and untimely death of cinema's most iconic lover better than this one. Your boss says, "Great. Get me coverage," which you swiftly attend to with the intensity and single mindedness of purpose of a Benedictine monk inscribing indulgences. You present the pages, which your boss loses somewhere between work and a racquetball court appointment. You recover, eventually finding another The One: the greatest Evil Knievel biopic you've ever read! Rudolph falls by the development wayside, never to be heard from again...Until!Almost two decades later, having all but relinquished your Hollywood dreams for a perfectly respectable living managing apartment buildings in the Valley, you overhear a balding industry-type at a Coffee Bean broadcast into his Bluetooth headset, "I DON'T FUCKING CARE IF IT'S FINGERPAINTED IN YOUR OWN SHIT! JUST GET ME THE EDGY RUDOLPH VALENTINO SCRIPT SHOWTIME IS CLAMORING FOR!" The rest you can probably fill in yourself, as all that's really left to do at this point is to sit by your cellphone, waiting for that life-changing text message reading, "Got it. Wtz it wurth 2 u?"

I can't remember any other politician in recent memory who has inspired artists as much as Barack Obama. From the moment I saw the Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster, I knew that Hillary Clinton's presidential bid was toast. Just as she had inspired t-shirts eight years ago that gave an indication she was gaining enough buzz to enable her to win the Senate seat, I knew that Obama had captured the imagination of the general public when his visage turned into iconography. But for all the artists who have been jumping on the Obama bandwagon of late, there's one artist who has been dedicating his time to making art about the politician long before it was trendy. Ray Noland, aka Cro (Creative Rescue Organization), presented a blink-and-you'll-miss-it show at the HVW8 Gallery last weekend. Tag along as I take you on a quick-run through the inspiring exhibition.

They were the Olympic opening ceremonies that wowed the world with their stunning displays of Socialist sophistication— but were they on the level? Allegations are flying that Chinese authorities faked certain parts of the broadcast, even going so far as to replace a singing 7-year-old who organizers deemed not hot enough to serve as the face of young China. Says HuffPo of the last-minute switch:

The untimely death of Heath Ledger left a void in the acting community. In terms of his actual person, yes, but also in what he represented. A subdued, thoughtful actor who shied away from the press, who made a quiet regular guy life for himself when he wasn't emoting really well for lots and lots of money. So, for useless speculation's sake, who will fill that role now, where is our next, uh, sorta-dark knight? Ledger's Brokeback Mountain costar Jake Gyllenhaal is too splashy. Other broody types like Josh Hartnett haven't quite got that leading-man-with-gravitas movie star thing down. So we think it might be James Franco, who is, like Ledger before he died, just beginning the second act of his career.

New mother Jessica Alba found herself momentarily confused while in the dairy section of her local supermarket. Alba was surprised to see how many different types of creamers and non-dairy creamers they have in stock when all she wanted was just to find the one that they serve at her nearby coffee place. After staring at all of her dairy options for nearly five minutes, Alba just blindly selected a creamer and hoped that she would not have to face any more equally daunting decisions for at least another few days.

Feast your eyes now upon those buzzy promo spots for the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards—featuring host Russell "Big in England" Brand, 2007 VMAs catastrophe Britney Spears, and a giant elephant in the room (not white, but you get it). 10 first impressions:1. Britney looks good. 2. Britney isn't chewing gum. 3. Britney is relaxed. 4. Britney doesn't appear to be pregnant. 5. Britney is good at covering up signs of fear and/or repulsion. 6. We're amazed she didn't say, "What's a surname?" 7. That hairstyle is atrocious. (You decide which.) 8. We believe she truly has no idea who Brown/Brand is. 9. She notices a passing resemblance to K-Fed at the :39 mark. 10. The elephant appears to be fantasizing about scraping saucy-British-comic out of his toes. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Jack Black most certainly brought the lightning to the premiere of Tropic Thunder in Westwood on Monday night. Black felt that his electrifying jacket helped with the comedic forecast for the evening: 95% chance of awesomeness, with a high likelihood that you'll be laughing so hard you'll shoot Diet Coke out of your nostrils. Black got the idea for the jacket after walking by a Spencer's Gifts at a local mall. Black said, "I saw this cool black light poster and I thought it would make for an even sweeter jacket. It may be a bit distracting during the movie, though."