Britney Spears took the love/hate relationship between a star and the paparazzi to its logical extreme this weekend when she allegedly bedded a photographer who, according to Us Weekly, "regularly covers" the pop star—which means that he either photographs her a lot or that this isn't their first tryst:

A sleepy trade round-up for Christmas Eve:
· I Am Legend continues to clean up overseas, accidentally giving foreigners the impression that Manhattan is a sparsely populated American island with inexpensive real estate and some overzealous homeless people. [Variety]
· Much like the war in Iraq, except with fewer babies on the front lines, the writers strike proves elusive in putting a face on the enemy. [Variety]
· 2007 will go down as The Year the World's Biggest Stars Proved to be Gigantic, Useless Wastes of Hundreds of Millions of Studio Dollars. We're looking at you, Pitt, Cruise, Kidman, and Cera. Oh—strike that last one. Kid's on fire. [Variety]

Oh, sadness: Jazz legend (and, like us, a Montreal boy) Oscar Peterson, widely considered to be one of the greatest pianists of all time, has passed away. We think Diana Krall did a great job of giving Oscar his due, even if she was shilling for Lexus at the time. And we've also thrown in a 1958 performance of "A Gal in Calico." Rest in peace, to the cat from Little Burgundy. [Reuters, YouTube, YouTube]

We're struggling to come up with an interesting angle to the Katherine Heigl wedding story, but the best we can do was this detail: "Heigl's 'Grey's Anatomy' co-star T.R. Knight was part of her bridal party." We hope she went for dark-colored bridesmaid dresses—pastels tend to wash out the already fair-skinned actor. [CNN]

Now they've gone too far: the conflagration known as The Jews Vs. Some Other Jews Vs. Palestinians (come on, U.N., give us a catchier title), has been raging for decades, which was just fine when the victims were hookah bar proprietors, olive cart repairmen, and Lebanese soldiers, but now they've claimed one of our own. A celebrity. Susan Sarandon, to be exact. When will it end? The noted Mid East policy wonks at Page Six have the scoop:

True, celebrity mugshots bring us joy all year round, but there's something about the final few of the year, as reassuring as a Happy Everything card dropped in our mailbox from an old friend, that truly touches us in the most tender quadrants of our hearts: a happy reminder that regardless of what strife is thrown at us, life in Hollywood will go on. And so we share with you this booking photo of stalwart recidivist Michelle Rodriguez, who checked herself into former Hilton-rehabilitating facility Lynwood on Sunday for the first of a Kiefer-eclipsing 180-day sentence for failing to perform court-ordered community service and drinkin' on the SCRAM.

On these final few hours before the sugarplum-gorging orgy that begins at dawn, we dutifully tabulate for you, like a trembling Bob Cratchit scratching figures with a quill pen into the margins of the Scrooge & Marley ledger, the weekend's box office numbers:
1. National Treasure: Book of Secrets - $45.5 million
Frankly, we don't know what took infallible superproducer Jerry Bruckheimer and supermuse Nicolas Cage this long to bring us another Treasure chapter: With Secrets conquering this weekend's box office (and bringing in $10 mil more than the original), the American-history-corrupting adventure serial has now graduated to official franchise&trade status. We're eagerly anticipating all future installments, including National Treasure: Three Dollar Bill, in which Cage and his ragtag band of bookish fortune-hunters discover that the Lincoln Memorial's head spins to the left when a Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony dollar are placed in its orbital sockets, revealing a secret tunnel to J. Edgar Hoover's fabled lingerie closet.

· Jamie Lynn Spears: Pregnant and loving it! TV news reacts, and reacts, and reacts. Rounding it up. Nickelodeon's dilemma. The View weighs in.
· Is Schwarzenegger aching to slip back into his camo for John Matrix, the long-overdue Commando sequel?
· Kiefer, we're still waiting.
· One more chance to see Ashton Claus hump Rudolph the Red-Nosed Cougar.
· Bells and whistles continue to be added to the WGA and AMPTP's official web presences.
· It's official: The late night hosts are coming back, and so are Stewart and Colbert. They have been duly warned.
· Hey, why does Michael Jackson have masking tape all over his face? Oh, that's why.
· Eggnog aficionado Sherri Shepherd doesn't remember any passages in the Bible where it says you can't be a $1000-a-shot-drinking hot ho.
· Mike Malin tumbles from the Les Deux skylight like a starlet-banging Christmas angel.
· Introducing American Gladiators' former gay porn model.
· Facebook Status Updates: "CAA is...totally feasting on delicious take-out baby right now! Yumballs!"

As some readers complained that last year's holiday greeting caused their usual Christmas bedtime visions of dancing sugar-plums to be replaced by nightmares starring a certain mysteriously infantilized—if still festively attired—superproducer, we've decided to soften this year's offering a bit. Who could possibly be troubled by the delightful image of Santa Grazer atop a plush unicorn? Not us, at least. Please accept our warmest wishes and heartfelt thanks for helping us survive another 12 months of largely the same nonsense we all lived through the previous year. We'll be back on Monday for a half-day, off Tuesday for the holiday, then back to a more-or-less regular schedule Wednesday for the always action-packed week before the New Year. (Or, more accurately, Seth will be here—he always puts a vacation until January 2nd under my Christmas tree. And all I got him for a late Hanukkah present was a regifted set of "I Am Legend/I'm With Legend" t-shirts Warner Bros. sent in!) See you in 2008! —Mark

Can we safely confide in you that the one person we've been able to rely upon this holiday season, there to comfort us daily with homemade butterscotch eggnog recipes and the proper shade of Krylon with which to gild our manteltop wreaths, is our rock, Martha Stewart?

Friday
· Music round-up: Busdriver at the Troubadour, Ying Tang Twins at Key Club; Jon Brion at Largo.
· Before you stop by the Vista for a screening of Sweeney Todd, you can head over to the nearby Sweeney Todd's Old-Fashioned Barber Shop for some tie-in deals (like a "cut-throat" shave or a "Barbicide" cocktail) guaranteed to enhance your moviegoing experience.

We're not at all surprised that pint-sized Kid Nation genius Jared (or someone he's contracted to front his e-commerce operation) is indulging a precocious entrepreneurial streak; not only is he auctioning off one of the limited edition, hand-crafted Bonanza City necklaces he can be seen making in a late October episode (subversive product placement!), he's also trying to flip the Wii CBS gave him so he can buy some other games. If he wasn't already our Nation favorite, he certainly is now. [eBay, eBay via Paul Scheer]

We can honestly think of no better justification for the internet than its function as a place where admirers of celebrity peen can share their collections with the rest of the world. Enjoy this impressive NSFW gallery of full-frontal (and some rear-al) celebrity male nudity, featuring everyone from McDreamy to McDorff. [ONTD]

Not since Sharon Stone shrinkwrapped her below-the-belt Basic Instinct co-star for a gala fundraiser has the Make-A-Wish Foundation had such an exciting, celebrity-pants-related opportunity. Kathy Hilton has spent the holiday amassing an impressive collection of celebrity memorabilia for an eBay auction benefiting the dream-fulfilling children's charity, including a pair of stonewashed dungarees worn and signed by Mel Gibson.

Though we caught not a single minute of NBC's gospel-singing throwdown Clash of the Choirs, we nonetheless thought you might like to know that the ragtag group assembled by Nick Lachey (a 20-strong force that "included teachers, a chili server, a nurse, cell phone and software salesmen, choir directors and college students" ) was triumphant on last night's series finale. While we're sure the hard-fought victory was sweet enough on its own, Nick and Dancing with the Stars champ brother Drew have to be pleased that the result has firmly established the Lacheys as the winningest family in the history of televised semicelebrity talent competitions. [Breitbart]

At long last, P.S. I Love You, a heart-string-tugging romantic fable about a gay Spartan warrior and a drag king boxer's inability to make love work, arrives in theaters today. As promising as that setup sounds, the reviews are mostly terrible, with the Hilary Swank/Gerard Butler vehicle inspiring movie critics to some of their most creatively bilious work in recent memory:

Join us as we snuggle up on a reindeer-skin rug with this week's sponsors, warmed by the combination of our love and the flame-licked Yule log flickering on the TV screen in front of us. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and give our readers sudden inspiration for their last-minute holiday gift purchases, see this page.

· The looming threat of a strike-induced cancellation of the Golden Globes ceremony has thrown the party-planning world into chaos: How can anyone commit half a million bucks to fill a venue with chocolate fountains, imposing mounds of peeled shrimp, and ice sculptures of prohibitive best actor favorite Daniel Day Lewis when there's a chance the whole night might be called off? [Variety]
· The WGA has granted a waiver for the Independent Spirit Awards (to be hosted by Guild member Rainn Wilson), freeing the show's organizers from the stomach-churning stress being suffered by their writerless Globes counterparts. [THR]

Realizing that they probably squeezed every available box office dollar from moviegoing families during last weekend's surprising $45 million opening of Alvin and the Chipmunks, Fox has savvily released a new red-band trailer for the film, hoping to lure an adult audience into theaters over the upcoming holiday frame. [iKlipz]

When news first broke that Jamie Lynn Spears, the up-and-coming, 16-year-old sister to down-and-going, 26-year-old Britney Spears, had made up her mind and was keeping her baby, those looking for someone to blame instantly turned to Lynne Spears—a big-league stage mother seemingly incapable of keeping her litter in check. Now, the publisher of what was widely reported to have been a guide to good parenting authored by Lynne leaps to her defense, claiming the book was in fact a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of breeding children for fame—a subject on which Lynne is arguably the world's foremost expert: