OK, now the Golden Globes are really, truly, stick-them-in-the-ground-and- shovel-some-dirt-on-the-coffin dead: The E! network—whose 101 Most Awkward Red Carpet Moments Involving An Actress Being Taken Aback By Ryan Seacrest's Encyclopedic Knowledge Of High-End Women's Footwear clip-show special is a ratings winner even after years of reruns—can't even be bothered to dispatch its starving, celebrity-circling vultures to pick at whatever carrion-morsels are left on the event's bleached bones. And it gets worse:

Having received a tip that the building that formerly housed the 360 Restaurant and Bar is leaning, we threw it open to you, our intrepid readers, to send in photo evidence suggesting whether or not the angle was merely an optical illusion, or if in fact at any given moment There Will Be Blood patrons at the nearby Arclight Dome won't end up seeing far more blood than they had bargained for. More than one of you came through, and after a careful examination, we fail to see a significant tilt to the structure, and we thus really see no need for Hollywood locals to run screaming through the streets, at least any more than they usually do. And while we did request no Photoshop, one reader's submission so awed us with its erotic vision of the CAA Death Star getting the skyscraper-pounding it's long craved, we've included it above. The other photos are after the jump.

How will high-powered members of Viacom's corporate family like Sumner Redstone and Les Moonves be spending some of the days freed up by not having to deal with the boring details of a contract negotiation with the WGA? By heading off for some much-needed head-clearing time early next week at Boulders Resort and Golden Door Spa, an executive-pampering Xanadu located in picturesque, improbably named Carefree, Arizona. And when they finally return from their well-earned post-holiday break, they'll hardly even remember why all those rude people in red T-shirts are walking in circles in front of their studios. [United Hollywood]

• Britney's Drug Dealer Speaks [YouTube]

· Music round-up: Let's Go Sailing at the Hotel Café; Mike Watt & the Missingmen at the Silverlake Lounge; David Garza at Largo; Money Mark at the Troubadour.
· The Hammer screens Sympathy for the Devil, the Jean-Luc Godard film that "mixes footage of a recording session by the Rolling Stones with fictional vignettes about Black Power, pornography, and the political counterculture of the 1960s."
· At Book Soup, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder discusses her book Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade, her tale of how those overpriced designer jeans you just bought get from a faraway factory and into your closet.

It seems the towering structure at Sunset and Vine, an accursed building that's fallen victim to fires and a tragic Transformers mega-billboard mishap last April, is finally getting some windows—but according to a Defamer operative, its biggest disaster is yet to come, and happening slowly before our eyes: "Having taken it down to the structural steel, they've started to put glass on it. There's just one problem: it's LEANING. Go check it out - very noticeable." Before any frantic Chicken Littles run into Amoeba Records to pronounce the sky is falling, we'd first like to throw it open to Defamer readers in the area to send us photographic evidence. And no Photoshop shenanigans—Giant Fucking Buildings Are Falling!

Gawker regular Brian Van shot this picture outside David Letterman's Ed Sullivan Theater. We saw that sketch last night (23 striking writers, a guy in a Spider-man suit, Moses, and a guy in a bear suit all fit in a Jamba Juice—classic stuff) and we still have no idea what this gentleman's sign is about.

After watching the People's Choice Awards clip we posted a little while ago, a commenter points out that Favorite Leading Man honoree Joaquin Phoenix seems to have misspelled his own name—an error that serves to further illustrate the point about how utterly lost actors are without their writers. [Defamer]

From deep within the bowels of Craigslist's Missed Connections section, where crazy hopes that love will somehow find a way are nurtured, a Judge Judy fan reaches out to try and find the courtroom spectator of his dreams: "judge judy lady in audience - m4w
lady in audience sitting behind defendent 1st seat 1st row by walkway wearing black shirt with white trim on judge judy aired in iowa jan 8 08 kristen capozzola white lady vs joshua currier black man seen you on show i found you very very attractive interested in knowing who you are hope to hear from you!" [Craigslist]

As the emotionally devastating cancellation of the Golden Globes has given us a newfound appreciation for every last awards show moment Hollywood finds a way to give us in this strike-crippled year, we'd like to take a minute to relive the silent acceptance speech Favorite Leading Man Joaquin Phoenix (an honor not to be confused with Favorite Male Movie Star) offered on last night's People's Choice Awards.

· With the 65th Golden Globes Awards having succumbed to the strike plague, all eyes turn to its far wealthier and more powerful cousin Oscar, whose coughing up of blood into a lace handkerchief doesn't strike us as a good omen. [Variety]
· The loss of the Globes was the first real sting felt by the film industry since the start of the strike, resulting in studio executives demanding of a supposedly merciful God how He could have allowed them to go about all that For You Consideration campaigning in vain. [Variety]

Is it 2009 yet? The hyperbolic rate in which bad news is proliferating through Tinseltown in the first nine days of 2008 is officially starting to freak everyone the fuck out. If it's not the Golden Globes cancellation putting a $100MM dent in local revenue, it's Warner Bros. getting ready to issue rosé slips to scads of employees. And then there's the sad story of Axium, the payroll company that shut its doors yesterday, leaving hundreds out of work and thousands without paychecks (tip: even if you got a paycheck from Axium, DON'T CASH IT — chances are it will bounce higher than a superball). Tips have been flying into Defamer's virtual P.O. Box fast and furious; follow along for some of the lowlights, including a internal memo issued by Axium subsidiary Ensemble Chimes Global and a firsthand account of the goings-on in Burbank yesterday.

As much of the geeky-gened moviegoing world tries to decode the mysteries of Cloverfield, obsessively connecting the push-pin dots on bulletin boards covered in maps and radioactive monster imagery, our friends at LAist had the novel idea to approach director Matt Reeves directly. It turns out he was extremely forthcoming, offering oodles of fanboynip, including background on the project's history, its buzzy, pre-Transformers trailer, and even the origins of its ambiguous title that sounds like a margarine brand:

Fulfilling the prophecy foretold by octogenarian gossip-oracle Liz Smith in the entrail-reading that yielded her June 2007 item on the couple's trial separation, Paramount's Brad Grey has been served with divorce papers by his wife of 25 years; with the filing, the studio boss now moves one step closer to completing the mandatory Hollywood rite of passage represented by the dissolution of a power-player's first marriage. [CelebTV.com]

Did upward-failing NBC Universal Chief Executive Golden Boy Jeff Zucker, enraged at the galling disloyalty of striking SNL writers who planned to participate in the delivery of a Top Ten list on hated CBS talk-show rival David Letterman's WGA-sanctioned return to the airwaves last Wednesday night, threaten to dispatch a flock of ravenous, flesh-craving demon-peacocks to eat the defenseless babies of anyone who dared betray their corporate family by appearing on a competing network's late-night telecast? Sources tell Slate's Kim Masters that once Zucker got word of the impending treachery, Warnings Were Issued, and a hasty retreat beaten by some of those reminded where their bread was buttered:

Add Tracie Rice, a passenger in the vehicle chased down by Lindsay Lohan's Denali in the infamous high-speed cokepant arrest, to the growing list of traumatized victims suing the road-rage-prone starlet. She's seeking damages to cover expenses from spending "$7,000 on medical bills, including a therapist who charges $175 per visit, and [losing] her $60,000 per year job because of the incident," plus $11.75 for what she spent to see I Know Who Killed Me. [breitbart.com]

According to the helpful countdown clock on their website, the next People's Choice Awards is but 364 days and some-odd hours away, which hopefully will be enough time for them to find their balls again after being castrated behind the awards barn as a sacrifice to the writers strike gods. Still, the ceremony we've not entirely reverentially referred to in the past as Oscar's Chain-Smoking, Lupus-Afflicted Aunt with an Internet Gambling Problem limped its way into American living rooms in an odd, greatly compromised CBS telecast last night, bereft of a studio audience, live star appearances, and awkward acceptance speeches from recently dumped actresses wondering how they can be all of America's favorite if they can't even be Justin Timberlake's.

Though Hitler-hating box office juggernaut Will Smith has long been cagey about whether the "introduction" to Scientology he says he received from Tom Cruise was merely a delicious, innocuous Sunday brunch at the Celebrity Centre, or a more in-depth primer including a grueling, three-day auditing session that ended only when the broken former Fresh Prince star tearfully confessed to murdering Alfonso Ribeiro's career, Smith may have finally tipped his hand about the extent of his alleged involvement with the Church.

While our proprietary, patent-pending VirtuaPhil™ technology allowed you to experience what a showdown between the KingWorld tough-love swami and a Britney Spears well-past the verge of a nervous breakdown might have looked like, the actual footage from their historic meeting will never air. (Save, perhaps, for repeated 4 a.m. screenings on a rickety Super-8 projector in the doctor's home library, popping cashews into his mouth as he obsessively relives every moment of the intervention that got away.) Now the Spears family, whose only means of dealing with a situation involves relaying their problems to the nearest national media outlet, is on the attack, with frayed matriarch Lynne Spears and fecund tween daughter Jamie Lynn having dispatched a representative to The Today Show to insist they had never authorized a Britney-themed Dr. Phil episode.

Safely on the other side of the holiday season, when pink-slips tucked into stockings hanging above smoldering Yule logs would have put a further damper on an already gloomy Christmas in Hollywood (not to mention the SHITCAN CLAUS VISITS WARNER STAFFERS headlines in the trades that would've accompanied such a badly timed move), Warner Bros. has announced to employees that it will kick off the new year with a cheery wave of strike-related layoffs. In a legally mandated, but still heartfelt, letter to studio workers, a WB VP said that an unspecified number of cutbacks—the good news: they may be temporary! The bad news: Did we mention that "cutbacks" means we're firing a bunch of people?— will go into effect by January 18th, according to Variety: