· Click the above image for our video recap of last night's various acts of talk-show-host facial hair removal, in which a unibrow is plucked, a Moses-beard shredded, and a drifter-thicket shaved. At least Conan still seems committed to resisting the siren call of his razor until his writers return.
· The Carpetbagger finds the Golden Globes credentialing desk to be the loneliest place in the world.
· In this case at least, The Spy Who Licked Me doesn't refer to some kind of pornographic reimagining of 007's adventures in Her Majesty's sexy service.
· Somehow, we forgot that it's Zahara's birthday. The middle children always get lost in the shuffle.

It's looking more and more like Axium's downfall may have been the result of the brass illicitly dipping their hands into the company cookie jar. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that their president, Ruben Rodriguez, is no longer with the firm AND that the IRS is hot on the trail. To that end, we'd like to share this email from a tipster who used to work with the deep-sixed and Chapter 7'd payroll and accounting service:

Rather than take offense at NBC prom king Ben Silverman's sneering attack on the jealous, unattractive Writers Club nerds who forced the cancellation of the Enchantment Under the Hollywood Sea Dance he'd been looking forward to since last semester, some WGA members instead have generously decided to give the senior class co-chairman the party he so badly wanted to keep alive. Next Thursday, United Hollywood and Hot in Hollywood will throw him the Benjamin Silverman High Winter Prom outside NBC's Burbank studios, hoping that their guest of honor and date Nick Counter will at least drop by to share one spotlight waltz in front of their picketing, tuxedoed schoolmates.

And here we thought The Martha Stewart Show was the only place to tune for a slice of darkly awkward pie: Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe popped by The Rachael Ray Show today to discuss the always-appetizing topic of roadkill removal. It was clearly a sensitive subject for the home-cooking guru, who soon admitted to a past littered with vehicular critterslaughter. Nothing, however, could have prepared the audience for the conscience-clearing admission that was to come, a tale so shocking it was immediately met with an audible gasp from the studio audience, followed by a sneaking suspicion that the secret ingredient in her signature Meaty Mac n' Cheese might not be "lean ground beef" as the recipe officially calls for. The chilling confession after the jump.

NBC 's Ben Silverman has heard your cries for more American Gladiators, TV fans starved for anything that's not a CSI rerun, and is now reportedly mulling how many more episodes of his just-launched hit series to order. (His initial instinct is restraint: "We don't want to order 60 of them.") Also, he's cooking up something so super-secret for the new show's finale lead-in to his upcoming Knight Rider movie that, "If I [told you], Wolf and Hulk would show up at your door." Our best guess: a live WGA Nerds Vs. Gladiators deathmatch between scribes kidnapped from the picket line and his well-muscled minions, during which the prom-ruining meanies he so disdains will be pummeled in front of millions of viewers for his amusement. [TV Week]

· Celebrate the 1935 arrival of the King at Elvis' Birthday Bash at the Henry Fonda Theatre, where acts like I See Hawks in LA, Mike Stinson, Carlos Guitarlos, Jimmy Angel, and the Surfaris will pay musical tribute to rock-and-roll's peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich craving, television-shooting, white-panty-fetishizing monarch.
· Music round-up: Concrete Frequency: Songs of the City (featuring Inara George, John Doe, Sean Lennon, Sondre Lerche, Bob Mould, Zach Rogue of Rogue Wave, and Daniel Rosen of Grizzly Bear, plus others) at Walt Disney Concert Hall; Jesca Hoop at Hotel Café, Jeremy Jay at the Troubadour.
· Police guitarist Andy Summers will be at Amoeba Records to sign I'll Be Watching You: Inside the Police 1980-83, his photographic diary of the band's early-80s adventures.

Sometimes—particularly when we find ourselves creating topic tags like "Sacha Baron Cohen's Junk"—we are prone to having minor lightbulb moments, such as the one just moments ago in which it suddenly occurred to us that the Sweeney Todd star might be inordinately preoccupied with his own manhood. It having already been revealed that it was his idea to outfit his Adolfo Pirelli character with certain below-the-belt costuming enhancements, the NY Daily News delves even deeper into the British comedian's priapic self-fascination, discovering, among other Cohen-bone bits, the reason behind that strategically placed black bar in the Borat movie's climactic naked wrestling scene:

Tips began flooding the Defamer mailbox just minutes ago that Axium International, a leading entertainment industry payroll agency that works with Warner Bros. among other studios, shut their doors overnight and have apparently declared bankruptcy. We called their Los Angeles, Burbank and New York offices in an attempt to get comment, and all three calls went straight to the company voicemail (urging us to "call back during regular office hours"). One of our sources told us that Axium "fired everyone without warning" earlier today and is holding onto over $100,000 in payroll money recently deposited from the DGA. An email chain describing the situation that was sent to the LA Producers Yahoo group follows after the jump.

In a mind-warping instance of teen-sex-comedy art imitating life, actor Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who played Superbad's McLovin, aka the Crown Prince of Fake-Hawaiian-I.D.-Brandishing Illicit Alcohol-Procuring Activities, was spotted by the staff at New York's Diner restaurant: "[One of the friends] had ordered a Stella and wine for himself and [McLovin] was drinking it. I was like, 'I think that guy's 17 years old — you're going to be written up.' He came in again the next night, and I said, 'I think that guy's McLovin — you should card him,' and the same thing happened: His buddy asked for the drink for him." [Grub Street]

With yesterday's news that Nicole Kidman is pregnant with husband Keith Urban's baby (his little Cowboy-hatted fish can swim!), the one irrefutable bit of evidence that Kidman's privacy-guarding flacks used to dispel the circulating rumors ("She can't possibly be having a baby! She's far too busy filming a movie that would render any such dramatic physical fluctuations a major inconvenience!") has now revealed itself to be utterly obsolete. Not only has Kidman left production on The Reader, but People is now reporting that she's been replaced by another A-lister:

Even though Steven Spielberg's disembodied head is still floating over the countdown timer relentlessly ticking off the minutes until Sunday night's One-Hour Golden Globes Press Conference Spectacular on the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's website (really, between the counter and Spielberg's sad little noggin, is there a more depressing corner on the internet right now?), the HFPA has announced that it's sparing the directing deity the indignity of receiving his Cecil B. DeMille award via FedEx by postponing the honor until their 2009 ceremony.

How many producers does it take to put out a Jessica Simpson disaster that earned $1,322 in its opening weekend and has racked up a whopping $6,422 over its first 14 days? Ten, apparently, including Simpson's dad, who probably personally bought the tickets that pushed the movie past the crucial $5,000 box office milestone. [Risky Biz Blog]

· The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. estimates that the cancellation of the Globes "could" cost the local economy more than $80 million; should the Oscars also go down, the organization says L.A. can expect another $130 million to be flushed away. [Variety]
· The DGA announces the nominations for their yearly awards, with There Will Be Blood's Paul Thomas Anderson, No Country's Coen Brothers, Michael Clayton's Tony Gilroy, Into the Wild's Sean Penn, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly's Julian Schabel all earning the official esteem of their behind-the camera peers. [Variety]

It's January in Hollywood, and that means it's time for Mr. Blackwell to once again push aside the heavy marble lid of his flawlessly appointed crypt in the ritzier district of the Hollywood Forever Retirement Community, and deliver the 48th edition of his Annual Worst-Dressed Women List. In a rare display of magnanimity which could indicate he might actually be softening in his third geologic era on Earth, Blackwell has left Britney Spears off completely, showing a Dr. Philian empathy for the singer at a time "when her personal life is in such upheaval." This year's results after the jump:

If you're inclined to believe in the wisdom of crowds (well, in this instance, the wisdom of trainwreck-craving mobs), then perhaps the celebrity-mental-health professionals of Cedars Sinai shouldn't have been so willing to rid themselves of tantrum-throwing, high-profile charge Britney Spears even a minute before the conclusion of the 72-Hour Handcuffed To A Radiator Until She Chills The Fuck Out Watch under which the troubled part-time mom was supposedly being detained. We, however, choose not to share in the bleak prediction of ExtraTV.com's readership, instead trusting that Dr. Phil, even after abandoning his poorly received plans for a nationally televised intervention, will still find a way to deliver the tough love it will take to get Spears' life back on track.

In an internal email issued this afternoon, Los Angeles Associated Press assistant bureau chief Frank Baker notified his staff of a major policy change."Now and for the foreseeable future," he wrote, "virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal." OMG, did you hear? Britney is a BIG DEAL, y'all! Nervous breakdowns are totes the most efficient way to achieve household name status. Memo after the jump.

Madonna and Guy Ritchie popped up in quite the most unexpected of places today—touring the slums of Mumbai, where she was "showered with rose and marigold petals," and dangled bottles of antibiotics in front of the locals' faces which she happily turned over just as soon as they signed a document ostensibly converting them for the rest of eternity to Kaballah. [AP]

The agonizingly slow demise of the Golden Globes ceremony yesterday, death-throes NBC valiantly tried to stave off with some unorthodox emergency surgical procedures that would've left their awards-show patient hideously mangled but still clincally alive, couldn't have been easy on network-topping perfect storm Ben Silverman.
Obviously devastated by the sobering realization that nothing he could do might save the doomed Globes from its strike-mandated press conference fate, he reached out to Ryan Seacrest, always a compassionate shoulder to cry on in difficult times like these, to lament how the "ugly" and "mean" nerd-bullies of the WGA were ruining his Hollywood prom:

What kind of Bizarro Hollywood are we living in, where the Critics' Choice Awards could very well become one of the crowning moments of the 2008 awards season? We've never been so desperately in need of the SAGgies in all our lives! But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First, a round-up of last night's delightfully well-attended Broadcast Film Critics Association honors:
· No Country For Old Men took the most trophies—whose design fittingly looks like some kind of torture device Anton Chigurh might use—including Picture, Director, and Supporting actor. Juno and Hairspray took two lesser awards each. Daniel Day-Lewis and Julie Christie took Actor and Actress, respectively. [AP]
· The last stars to arrive were also the biggest: George Clooney, then Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who managed to pry Angelina away from reporters before she could tell them about her desire to adopt America Ferrera, or any of this year's other Golden Globes orphans. [The Envelope]

As it turns out, the concerns of competing studios that Warner Bros. might have been a little too generous in its Sunday night box office estimate in an attempt to push I Am Legend into second place have been proven valid: following Monday's release of the final numbers, Juno is now officially the Second Highest Grossing Movie in America for the first weekend of January. (Given the current atmosphere of strike-induced belt-tightening, we doubt Fox Searchlight is celebrating the position-shift with a champagne toast, a confetti shower, and the festive dropping of balloons from their conference room ceiling.) Despite this disappointment, there is at least some comfort for Warners in the ultimate figures, as Legend still managed to avoid the indignity of sliding down behind Alvin and the Chipmunks after the correction of their box office exuberance. [Variety, BOM]