TMZ has clearly gone insane with their ongoing efforts to destroy Donda West's suspiciously under-credentialed plastic surgeon, Dr. Jan Adams, having now turned their witchhunt towards daytime deity Oprah Winfrey.

The Smoking Gun has obtained an e-mail circulated by picket-line-crossing late-night talk show host Carson Daly, in which he personally petitions friends, family, and co-workers to call in to a "joke hotline," on which they can contribute some pro bono comic material for him to play on the air.

Congratulations, Los Angeles: Self magazine has named our fair city the 32nd Best Place for Women, a four-spot drop from its position on last year's list. While L.A. boasts an above-average exercise rate, that achievement is more than balanced by our Top Five Depression Score, a citywide malaise probably caused by the dangerously high concentration of aspiring, anorexic actresses who make the rest of the female populace feel like they must spend all of their free time chained to the StairMaster. [Self.com]

· Music round-up: Mike Doughty at Hotel Café; Jose Gonzalez with Cass McCombs at the Henry Fonda; Los Campesinos! at the Echo.
· Actress/architectural preservationist Diane Keaton and co-author D.J. Waldie will sign California Romantica, their book on the California Mission and Spanish Colonial styles as interpreted by a number of noted architects, at Book Soup. (Note: You will need to follow the link to get a ticket to the event as one of the authors is a famous person.)
· The gang from McSweeney's are taking over the Silent Movie Theatre for a screening of work from the fifth edition of their Wholphin DVD magazine, which "will likely involve short films about- and live entertainment from- drunk bees, bioluminescent squirt guns, a crying competition, Satanic nine-year-olds, super-slo-motion tongues, and if we're lucky, a never-before-seen short film by Paul Thomas Anderson starring Elliot Smith as a Rastafarian basketball player with a cameo by Bette Midler."

Don't hold his Spider-Man role as whiny billionaire Harry Osborn against James Franco. He's far more devious than the Green Goblin could ever be. The actor, studying for a master's in creative writing at UCLA, swooped down on Palo Alto High School yesterday seeking short stories from its students about their high school experience — hopefully something other than their schoolgirl crushes on Daniel from Freaks and Geeks. The actor plans to incorporate them into a novel about growing up in Silicon Valley. Where did Franco get such a brilliant idea for YouTube-style user-generated content?

As Live Free or Die Hard co-star Bruce Willis surely could have warned Justin Long, cashing the paycheck for a voiceover in a second-rate animated family film is the easy part of the gig; the hard part is the fulfilling the oft-humiliating promotional responsibilities to support the movie.

A little earlier this afternoon, striking horror writers within the WGA membership organized their own theme-picket at the Warner Bros. lot, where an exorcism was staged to rid the studio of the "demons of greed" that have thus far prevented them from reaching a fair deal with the Guild. A tipster tells us that the mob invoked a chant of "We Eat Scabs" as holy water was sprinkled on the structure, but we're afraid that no combination of prayer and blessed liquid would be enough to overcome the executive-led, ritualistic sacrifice of helpless assistants taking place just inside the lot's walls, an infernal countermeasure which seems like it would be more than sufficient in repelling the throng's evil-dispelling charms.

Surely the author of this posting can't have been the only one to emerge from an Imax theater screening Beowulf thinking of nothing other than the overtly sexualized title character, whose "third leg," as the Danish serving wenches blushingly referred to it, was practically within 3D grasp were it not for a strategically placed mead stein in the foreground. To their credit, however, the anonymous poster took to Craigslist's virtual medieval marketplace to make their warrior-blowing fantasies come alive:

We're not even sure what Star Wars character onto which this Worth 1000 Photoshop contest entrant digitally crafted George Clooney's face, but the resulting, lantern-jawed creature with those unmistakable Old Hollywood good looks is almost guaranteed not to be going home alone after last call at the Mos Eisley cantina. [Worth1000]

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 spotted inner-monologue-addicted serial killer Dexter and his completely clueless sister munching on tortilla chips at Marix.

Now that Imagine's Brian Grazer and Ron Howard have had blockbuster Da Vinci Code prequel Angels & Demons put off indefinitely by the strike, we think we've identified a perfect fill-in project that could hit on many of the controversial religious themes that made Da Vinci such a huge success: The 13th Disciple, a planned "fantasy-adventure" film about Jesus Christ's reincarnated evil twin. We've already cast longtime Grazer muse Russell Crowe in the heretical leading role. [Reuters]

· A brave Carson Daly will be the first late-night talk show host to cross the picket line and attempt to return to work without a writing staff; upon his arrival at the studio, Daly will be awkwardly reminded by a security guard that his show was canceled two years ago. [THR]
· I'm Not There, expected to duke it out in every Oscar category you got with similarly ambitious music biopic Walk Hard, leads the Independent Spirit Award nominations with four. Angelina Jolie flop A Mighty Heart and Ang Lee's artsy, NC-17 fuckfest Lust, Caution received three nods each. [Variety]

If you think you can manage it after having your minds literally blown to smithereens reading about Brandon Routh's super-secret wedding extravaganza, we now have for you the inside track on Katherine Heigl's birthday dinner at Nobu Saturday night. Be warned: It involves T.R. Knight sporting a new hairstyle! We know! [HuffPo]

Now that we've had two weeks to get acquainted with the gays and ladies vying for the title of America's Next Top Project Runway Design Star, we thought the time was ripe to turn to the internets in search of some contestant nudity.

Though the super-secret contract talks that WGA and AMPTP officials are currently conducting in a hidden, maximum-security bunker inside a hollowed-out section of hillside behind the Hollywood sign seems to have temporarily inspired feelings of "cautious optimism" in members of the warring factions who've been starved for hope entering this fourth week of the strike, we fear a major setback is in the offing.

If you're wondering how Kevin Federline made it to the cover of The Details Power 50 issue ("Meet the most influential men under 45,") you probably need to first know that the magazine played fast and loose with their own definition—specifically the "men" part: "Zac Efron, Shia LaBoeuf, and the Disney Kids" come in at #1, the "other F-word" makes a completely baffling appearance at #9, and Iggy—not the punk rocker, but the mangy canine who precipitated Ellen DeGeneres's on-camera meltdown—came it at, we shit you not, #29. So breathe easy—K-Fed's influence still hovers somewhere between that of a Sonic Burger fry-cook's and Erik Estrada's.

Before you pass an unfavorable judgment on Marie Osmond's bizarre performance on Monday night's Dancing with the Stars finale, please remember that she's going through an extremely difficult stretch in her life right now, catty accusations of being an attention-craving drama queen nothwithstanding. After surviving a terrifying fainting spell on live TV, a son being sent off to rehab, and the loss of the Osmond family patriarch, we really can't blame her for succumbing to to the enormous pressure of making the finals by engaging in an act of self-sabotage in donning that ill-considered baby doll costume and flailing limply through "Start Me Up."

Perhaps we're a bit naive when it comes to the things we're told by beauty pageant winners, so blinded by their laser-whitened smiles and duct-tape fastened cleavage that we fail to properly scrutinize unlikely claims regarding commitment to world peace and "feeding the starving Africanese children." So you'll forgive us when we noted without suspicion a news item in which reigning Miss Puerto Rico Universe Ingrid Marie Rivera claimed that an unknown saboteur covered her stage wardrobe in pepper spray. What seemed at first a feat of superhuman, pageant-queen-mind- over-chemical-irritant-matter has now raised questions from incredulous authorities:

Though two stuntmen suffered burns in an on-set accident during a shoot for Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess With the Zohan on the Universal backlot yesterday, the quick-thinking star prevented even worse injuries by immediately dousing the flames with the fire extinguisher he'd wisely stored in his mankini in anticipation of just such a mishap. [Breitbart]

Even if Walk Hard—the Jake Kasdan/Judd Apatow send-up of Oscar-bait musical biopics like Walk the Line, Ray and the upcoming Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds—turns out to be a letdown, we're at least being entertained by their recent For Your Consideration campaign in the trades. Following John C. Reilly/Dewey Cox's bird-flipping invitation for Academy members to recognize his bravura performance is a new ad in today's Variety, in which Cox, obviously in the throes of whatever substance was fueling a creatively fertile, experimental period in his career, even more defiantly demands the recognition of his peers.