As a parked RV full of vigil-standing Defamer commenters idles outside of the Glendale City Jail, Kiefer Sutherland sits in his solitary cell just a few hundred feet away, beginning Day 3 of what will eventually be 48 days in the correctional facility. His only crimes? An illegal U-turn and perhaps loving life too much. Still, a repentant and cooperative actor appears to have accepted his fate, with one jail spokesman going so far as to describe him as a "model prisoner":

Nearly having had the Sex and the City movie ruined for us by the spoiler-riddled publicity photo New Line issued at the conclusion of the first day's shoot, we pledged to pay absolutely no attention to any coverage of the project until it reaches theaters next spring, hoping to preserve the many shoe-shopping, cougar-humping, and everyone-dies-old-and-alone surprises the SATC gang has in store for us.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles restaurant world—nay, the entire world—was stunned by Derober.com's report that billionaire real estate developer/reality TV personality/premium-steak magnate Donald Trump, looking to reward the attentive service of a couple of pasta dishes and eclipse the onetime largesse of comparatively stingy superproducer Jerry Bruckheimer, left a $10,000 gratuity for a lucky Buffalo Club waiter, a move that briefly established the mogul as The Greatest and Most Generous Tipper in the World. Today, Trump went into full denial mode, telling Page Six that he's wasn't even in California on the day of the alleged tipping, and that he's the victim of a vicious hoax he believes was perpetrated by the attention-craving Santa Monica eatery:

· George Clooney is sincerely sorry that he couldn't appear in person for the American Cinematheque's tribute to Ocean's 12 co-star Julia Roberts; additionally, he's sorry to be stuck in a bathroom doing stale Larry Craig jokes, even if his toe-tapping, prospective stall-sex partner is partner-in-crime Brad Pitt.
· Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Tweety Bird are ordered to testify in a counterfeiting case by an Italian court, a summons Disney's local bureau denied on the grounds that the characters are not real.
· Mr. Tumnus denies that he's been tapped to play Kurt Cobain.
· CostCo's casket-and-urn aisle has always been our favorite, though we find the card tables where employees offer free cremains samples to be a little off-putting. [via Boing Boing]

To be honest, we have no way to verify whether or not the following Britney Spears body-double casting notice, which landed in our inbox with only a single, introductory sentence reading, "Check this out - this shiz is real..." is, as claimed, real shiz. Still, the risks involved in not passing this incredible employment opportunity along to our readers seemed to outweigh all others:

News that Bravo's kissing reality cousins Dale Levitski and Jack Mackenroth are dating has spread across the internets like wildfire, conjuring heartwarming domestic scenes involving Dale asking Jack to taste his lamb jus, as Jack measures Dale's inseam for a pair of stripey trousers that will eventually find their way beneath the couple's shared Hanukkah Bush. Not everyone is wholeheartedly in favor of the union, however, as some fans have already registered concern that the openly HIV-positive Runway contestant might put the status-indeterminate Dale in danger, a matter Mackenroth addresses in a statement posted to his blog today:

A Vanity Fair quote in which Katherine Heigl dared to offer her honest, not-entirely-glowing assessment of the movie credited with graduating her to full-fledged stardom instantly became the source of much debate: One faction—let's just call them the "Apatow loyalists," cried, "Katherine Heigl can't say those things! Who does Katherine Heigl think she is? Doesn't Katherine Heigl know Knocked Up made her, and Knocked Up can just as easily destroy her?," while the other—let's just call them "women"—simply replied, "You go, girl behind the questionably motivated character written so as to service the whims of a very peniscentric screenplay!" New York magazine's Vulture blog approached the film's lauded writer-director for his own take:

· Music round-up: Boom Bip and Junkie XL at the Viper Room; Midnight Movies at Spaceland; Bitchfits (an all-female Misfits Tribute band) at the Knitting Factory.
· The Los Angeles Poverty Department, a performance company made up of people who live and work in Skid Row, present UTOPIA/dystopia at the Redcat, their dramatic look at how civic policy has impacted downtown Los Angeles.
· AFI hosts a special screening of Eastern Promises at the ArcLight, bringing in star Viggo Mortensen for a post-film Q&A sure to be filled with fun anecdotes about what it was like to be engaged in a naked fight with Russian gangsters on the floor of a steamroom.

The AMPTP's recent retention of a new PR firm to help them more effectively communicate to the public why the intransigent, greedy WGA should accept the incredibly generous terms of their groundbreaking New Econonic Partnership is paying immediate dividends; while the organization's previous attempt to have studio head Roger A. Trevanti explain the Companies' position was amateurish, unfocused and openly hostile, under the supervision of their new-media-savvier publicity team, their latest effort is a great leap forward.

As long as we're on the subject of a certain high-profile couple and their extravagantly large family: "Los Feliz has the reputation of being a safe and peaceful LA neighborhood. But shortly after 4 a.m. on Nov. 27, gunshots rang out — just 25 feet from where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie live with their four children. Life & Style has learned exclusively that a gunman, believed to be driving a Saab, fired two shots, striking a Range Rover owned by a local resident and hitting the driver's- side window of a camper van used by Brad and Angie's security team. 'It was crazy,' neighbor John Martinez tells Life & Style. 'If anybody had been in the car, he or she could've been killed'." It's certainly a relief that this story seems to have no direct connection to the mag's WHERE'S SHILOH? cover piece; no foul play is suspected in the mysterious disappearance of the The Chosen One from the pages of the supermarket checkout rags, just Jolie's preference for keeping the the boring blob away from the paparazzi until she learns to play to the camera as well as her more interesting siblings. [L&S]

"I'm here with Bart Pitt—Brad—Pitt in tornado-ravaged New Orleans, a city that Brad—Brad! Wait, I got it right that time, stop correcting me in the earpiece—here has pledged to help rebuild. So, Brad. The kids. How many are we up to now? Fifteen? Four.

OMG! SpencerandHeidiandLCarecomingback omgomg! YAAAAY! "Never fear Hills fans, even though the third season of the hit MTV reality series is coming to a close on December 10, In Touch has learned that Lauren Conrad and crew will be back for a fourth round! Will this be the season that Lauren and her former BFF Heidi Montag finally extinguish their feud or will Heidi actually become Mrs. Spencer Pratt? Maybe we'll get to meet a whole new cast of characters. 'I have some friends on [the show], some friends off,' Lauren tells In Touch. Whatever happens, one thing is certain, The Hills will be alive with the sound of drama once again!" [sound of self-inflicted gunshot wound]

Awarded with the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at the 16th annual Women in Entertainment Breakfast Tuesday, Jodie Foster reportedly gave a moving speech, candidly telling the gathered crowd, "I've been working in this business for 42 years and there's no way you can do that and not be as nutty as a fruitcake." Among her many thank-yous, one got a reporter wondering if the veteran actress, so notoriously tight-lipped about her personal affairs and the significance of the "eternity ring" she never removes, had quietly come out to her working woman peers. From the LA Daily News:

· Breakout Superbad actor Christopher "McLovin" Mintz-Plasse takes the next step in his inevitable march towards Hollywood superstardom, signing on alongside Jack Black and Michael Cera (re-team!) for biblical comedy Year One. Judd Apatow is producing, but you've probably already guessed that part on your own. [THR]
· Butching up a resume recently marked by turns as flouncey pirates and singing barbers, Johnny Depp is coming aboard hardboiled™ director Michael Mann's Public Enemies for Universal, in which Depp will play notoriously ruthless, extravagantly well-hung gangster John Dillinger. [Variety]

Now that all of the networks' late-night talk show stars not named Carson Daly have put themselves on the hook (even a straggling Jay Leno!) by agreeing to personally sign their laid-off staffs' paychecks during at least the next few weeks of the strike, the game of "host chicken" has begun in earnest. With their generous pledges expected to cause a weekly low-to-mid six-figure drain on their bank accounts, who'll be financially broken first and have to bring their money-train to a screeching halt?

Our complete and utter disinterest in the Grammys has become something of a Defamer tradition, with the mainstream music industry's most celebratory night of public self-diddling requiring of us zero emotional investment, thus greatly reducing the risks being forced to launch a mug of Kahlua at our TV sets after a particularly unjust upset. The Dixie Chicks are the best band on the planet? Sure, why not. That said, the 2008 nominees have been announced:

Did you and your Malibu property somehow survive the wildfires intact? Well, time to pack up your private petting zoo and temporarily move it inland, because here come the floods, the mudslides, and, if meterological predictions hold up, a 50 percent chance of the kind of frog deluge that hasn't hit the Southland since 1999. [LAT]

A tipster forwarded this cameraphone photo of an unattended WGA picket sign found on the Warner Bros lot this morning; hopefully, its owner has permanently abandoned it in favor of one with a more up-to-date slogan, as no one really needs a reminder that the strike has dragged on so long that references to DeGeneres' pet adoption problems once seemed timely.

Marcus Patrick, the soap star who pitched tent for the cover of the September Playgirl, has actually been relieved of his Days of Our Lives duties. (It came to light several weeks ago, but we're clearly trailing behind the naked Patrick wagon.) The show claims they made the decision before the spread came out, but it's been rumored NBC ordered the axing. Perhaps they didn't realize that by posing for the magazine, the actor joined the illustrious ranks of former celebrity centerfolds Christopher Atkins, Scott Bakula, and Lyle Waggoner. [bgay.com]

The sprouting of a new relationship is always a precarious matter, so it's with a measure of reluctance that we pass along news that Top Chef runner-up Dale Levitski has found in Project Runway's Jack Mackenroth a comrade-in-hunky-arms—someone to curl up with on a bearskin rug on cold winter nights and exchange Padma/Heidi horror stories. Having unwittingly signed a contract that forced them to disclose every intra-network sexual liaison from now until death, Bravo's even-gayer internet arm (if one could even conceive of such a thing) Outzone.com has the saucy scoop: