Is she in New York City? Is she in Mexico? Is she at a Shell station in Hermosa Beach buying cigs? These are the kinds of riveting questions that had a nation (and the Defamer staff) glued to the AM radio yesterday, furiously dialing between stations in search of an update on The Animal's whereabouts. While we eventually found out the answers (no, yes and yes), we thought about a few places that the paparazzi would never even THINK to look for Brit Brit.

Even if the cancellation of the Golden Globes and its satellite parties had been precipitated by nuclear, rather than labor, Armageddon, you could be sure that a radioactive, iridescent army of swag suite staffers would still be roaming the smoldering Hollywood hellscape, distributing designer jeans, sunglasses, and coupons redeemable for full-body laser-resurfacing procedures to any semi-recognizable survivors of the blast. Though gifting professionals initially feared that the sober climate of this crippled awards season might dissuade people from turning out to collect their frivolous wares, they soon realized that the siren call of free shit would be far too seductive to ignore:

It's a Tarnished Golden Globes One-Hour Announcement-Of-The-Winners Press Conference Extravaganza Free-For-All! The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has just revealed that NBC no longer has an exclusive on Sunday night's much-anticipated list-reading, inviting any media outlet with 60 or so free minutes and some warm bodies to spare to drop by and cover the event themselves: "After discussions with NBC, Hollywood Foreign Press Association President Jorge Camara today announced that the HFPA will have complete control of its 65th Annual Golden Globe Awards Announcement that is scheduled to take place Sunday, January 13 at 6:00 p.m. PST in the International Ballroom of The Beverly Hilton. Under the new arrangement, there will be no restrictions placed on media outlets covering the press conference." There is no word, however, if refreshments will be served to anyone who bothers to show up. [Variety]

The 200-decibel siren atop Cedars Sinai, which alerts all celebrity tabloid editors within a twenty-five mile radius about breaking celebrity-related medical events taken place within its walls, is currently wailing to signal the imminent arrival of Nicole Richie's baby. "She's going to start pushing soon," said the guy from Good Charlotte who impregnated her; stayed tuned for important overheard updates regarding the exact measurements for her current vaginal dilation. [UsMagazine.com]

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often! Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you saw Randy "S'aight Dawg" Jackson whiz by you on a Segway.

It's time again to express our appreciation for the loyalty of this week's sponsors, all of whom we trust to pry the Dom Perignon bottles from our fingers no matter how forcefully we slur our disapproval. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and help foot the bill for our upcoming, pricey rehab stint, see this page.

· For at least their first three nights back on the air, the writerless Jay Leno has triumphed over WGA-sanctioned rival David Letterman in the Nielsen wars. In another sign that the TV apocalypse may finally be upon us, shows like Wife Swap, Supernanny, The Biggest Loser, and Celebrity Apprentice are so far either posting the same numbers as or outperforming the scripted shows they've replaced for their networks. [Variety]
· Walden Media deems High School Musical star/naughty nudie-photo-scandal victim Vanessa Hudgens still pure enough to employ, signing her on to their coming-of-age dramedy Will. [THR]

Andrew Morton's new "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography" is filled with interesting tidbits about the maniacal Scientologist and professional short person. What are some of the salient plot points? Well, for one, Tom Cruise Is Not Gay. Or so Morton's sources say. One class-act whom Miss Cruise dated in high school says "I was black and blue from the gearshift." (Ew.) But more enlightening are the eyewitness testimonies that, gasp!, Tommy was uncomfortable around gay men! He stormed out of a production of the musical La Cage aux Folles! And he apparently wasn't too keen on hanging out with ex-wife Nicole Kidman's geigh friends, "much preferring the company of jocks," Morton says. Ahem.

It seems the mysterious disappearance of an usmagazine.com blog post on Katie Holmes's participation in the Boston Marathon (again, we refer you to our conspiracist commenters' take on the matter, including their fascinating yet totally gross "missing toenail" theory) might not have been the result of a squad of Citizens Commission on Human Rights mercenaries having kidnapped the article for a grueling, all-night republishing session. Instead, if Us Weekly arch nemesis OK! magazine is to be believed, it was simply a matter of faulty reporting:

Finding it nearly impossible to land quality guests because of talent's maddening unwillingness to run a gauntlet of taunting, red-shirted WGA picketers just to spend six uncomfortable minutes trying to sound enthused about a movie they only took to make a weekend-house mortgage payment, Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel last night paid reciprocal visits to each other's star-hungry couches, hoping that chatting about their strike-related travails might be a diverting way to kill a few minutes of airtime.

Not since the dearly departed Gene Rayburn left this mortal coil have we seen such a spirited display of blankety blank blankness emerge as we did yesterday when we asked you to help us decipher the pickup lines that the Columbian Tony Clifton uses to lure politically inclined brunettes back to his love shack. While we can appreciate the reasons why Vinnie Chase doesn't mince words when he's out on the prowl, the results you turned in were infinitely more interesting than the actual verbiage he used ("fuck" and "shit", for those of you keeping score at home). Pay homage to the Top Ten comments after the jump.

At the tail end of a story announcing the nominees for this year's Flackies, the honor handed out by Hollywood publicists to recognize special achievements in the dark arts of spin and punitive client-access withdrawal, clear evidence that the awards season is an utterly exhausting stretch run for reporters forced to cover every last kudos-related press release: "Noms were also announced for the Maxwell Weinberg Publicist Showman Awards for Television and Motion Picture, which honors union publicists for achievements in publicity and promotion during the previous calendar year. I could add those noms here but I thought this was getting long." [Fishbowl LA Photo: ICG]

Our hopes that VH1's Celebrity Rehab would be a Surreal Life-style romp documenting the antics of hilariously mismatched, semifamous roommates as they argue over neglected chores while soaking in the Pasadena Recovery Center's ten-person hot tub was, as it turns out, profoundly misguided. Other than brief moments of comic relief provided by the confiscation of porn star Mary Carey's penetrative toys and a staffer's attempts at keeping the Guy From Crazytown safely outside of Carey's radius of copulation, last night's premiere was mostly an oppressively bleak look at former Taxi and Grease star Jeff Conaway's debilitating addictions. (Click the above image to play a clip of his arrival at the clinic, accompanied by a freshly drained bottle of Dom Perignon and his enabling girlfriend.)

Tom Cruise-related justice is swift, and it is harsh: Marc Lewis Gittleman, the man who supplied David Hans "The Sultan of Sleaze" Schmidt with the thousands of wedding photos the infamous celebrity-smut-intermediary then used to try to extort $1.3 million from the actor (who immediately contacted the FBI to prevent images of him smashing wedding cake into his new war-bride's face from ever reaching the tabloids), was sentenced to two years of probation and $3,000 in fines. Actually, given the tragic, self-inflicted sentence the troubled Schmidt received during his house arrest, the co-conspirator escaped from the fiasco with barely a wrist-slap. [ABC News.com]

At long last, Cloverfield, Slusho Beverage Corp.'s bold foray into the sci-fi disaster genre, had its first screenings last night. Hours later, members of the fanboy journalist elite lucky enough to have had first, unfettered access to the mysterious creature at the center of all the monument-decapitating mayhem, took to the internets. Below, a round-up of the buzz. [Ed. note: We'll try to avoid spoilers, but promise nothing. You've been warned.]
· If we are to believe the Kingdom of the Fanboys' semi-merciful Lord and Ruler Harry Knowles, it was a watershed moment in giant-fucking- monster-stomping- through-Manhattan cinematic history: "The movie is fucking brilliant. It's what we were told it was going to be. An intimate perspective on an impossibly grand scale human disaster beyond most human levels of comprehension." Slashfilm reminds us, however, that this was a guy who thought the Godzilla remake was peaches. [AICN, Slashfilm]

In an attempt to drain all the suspense from WGA Awards party you've been planning since last March (one that, given the gala-cancellation news of yesterday afternoon, would inevitably be an even more pathetic affair than Sunday's upcoming Reading Of The Golden Globes Winners By Your Favorite Access Hollywood Personalities Extravaganza Presented By NBC), the LAT's Gold Derby blog interprets the non-alphabetical ordering of nominees in the Guild's press release as a spoiler indicating the winners, citing a "goof" that may or may not have happened last year. Those interested in keeping the possible identities of this year's winners a mystery should refrain from clicking on either of the preceding links or the image above; those who'd like to think they're getting a sneak peak at the results—be the first one on the picket line to ruin the surprise for your fellow strikers, then gripe about how over-hyped you feel that particular script was!—should feel free to indulge their baser, WGA-Awards-Christmas-spoiling instincts.

Not everything in the bold sociological experiment known as Wife Swap always goes smoothly: Take for example last night's arranged-marriage lab rats, Patrick (according to his name tag) and temporary spouse, uh, Sasquatch—she of the man-hands and unrealistic household-cleanliness goals. Frankly, we don't know who Sasquatch thinks she is, waltzing into Patrick's perfectly lovely, catshit-laden home and demeanoring him by insisting he dispose of the feline feces.

In a move that's sure to disappoint thousands of Written By subscribers, the WGA West has announced that it's calling off its own awards banquet, a non-televised affair once scheduled to take place at the Bonaventure Hotel on February 9th. Weirdly, however, it seems that the left-coasted outpost of the Guild didn't inform the WGA East of their plans before they put out a press release, a turn of events so disorienting that a THR editor, obviously exhausted by the non-stop barrage of awards-cancellation developments of the past few days, pushed through this amusingly scatological headline in response to the news. [THR]

Of the many conspiracies swirling around Mrs. Kate Holmes-Cruise, none have provoked more heated debate lately—more so even than the one claiming she's L. Ron Hubbard's turkey-basted demon-child receptacle—than the question of her involvement in the New York City Marathon. (Our own voiced skepticism in a recent post instantly turned the Defamer comments section into a makeshift headquarters for the growing movement, where Grassy Stain and Magic Nipple theorists swapped information hungrily.) The mystery deepens after the jump: