New York Times media beat wunderkind Brian Stelter ever so gingerly puffs out 700 words today on how Nikki Finke owns the writers strike story and everyone knows it. Of course, when your subject's this good at tooting her own horn, you might start to wonder why you're bothering to toot it for her: "Since the strike began, Ms. Finke has published 142 posts about it. She said she had worked almost around the clock for three weeks, and had fallen asleep at the computer four times. She estimated she had received 2,000 e-mail messages a day." Quantity is the new quality!

While the Super Bowl halftime show features a star-studded cavalcade of partially armored nipples and 50-foot demonschlongs, the best that Canadian Football League's Grey Cup championship celebration can hope for is a taste of Lenny Kravitz's ass crack. [BlogTo]

As you slowly awaken from your tryptophan-induced comas, only vaguely remembering the pounds of turkey and glasses of scotch consumed over the previous four days, stare bleary-eyed at the weekend box office numbers:

· The Strike: Finally, new hope! And new snacks! Also, fresh videos from scribes who just can't put those pencils down.
· The Bachelor chooses no one, then is made to answer for his reality TV war crimes.
· Tom Cruise: a mystery solved.
· Donda West's plastic surgeon shows up just long enough to tell Larry King he's got nothing to say.
· Did you remember to say a little prayer that Brad and Angie's Thanksgiving holiday would end without hair-pulling?
· A live 30 Rock was awesomely received.
· David Fincher provided a brief guide to breaking the will of difficult actors
· Julia Roberts' baby could probably be cuter.
· How drunk is too drunk to effectively kiss Hollywood ass? The Most Smartest Model team investigates!

Now, officially, we have seen everything: TMZ, perhaps hoping that Britney Spears will suffer another break with reality and head over to The Grove to drown herself in the mall fountain's dancing waters as Black Friday shoppers gape at her latest cry for help, is running a live video feed from L.A.'s most meticulously engineered retail destination. Stay tuned for a cameo by a trolley full of tourists who think they might have just seen Hayden Panettiere duck into the American Girl Place superstore! [TMZ]

Friday
· Music round-up: John Fogerty at the Nokia Theatre; Cold War Kids at the WIltern; Social Distortion at House of Blues; TSOL at Echoplex.
· A Pretenders cover band, playing for free downtown? Sure, why not? Watch Pretentious channel the spirit of Chrissie Hynde at Pershing Square.
Saturday
· The Alex Theatre in Glendale hosts its 10th Annual Stooge-Fest, a big-screen tribute presenting what the Alex's Blue Ribbon Panel of Stoogeologista consider the "best of the best" of Moe, Larry and Curly's groundbreaking work in the pie-splattering, noggin-assaulting arts.

Join us in serving a delicious plate of Thanksgiving leftovers, warmed up through the sheer power of our red-hot love, to this week's sponsors. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and gorge on our reheated expression of gratitude, see this page.

· Brad Pitt, finding himself unable to love the current script for State of Play, ditches the about-to-shoot project, leaving the production up Shit Creek without its A-list paddle. Said Universal in a statement. "Brad Pitt has left the Universal Pictures production of `State of Play.' We remain committed to this project and to the filmmakers, cast members, crew and others who are also involved in making the movie. We reserve all rights in this matter." And by "reserve all rights," the studio means "the right to sue that pretty boy back to his Growing Pains cameo days if we can't find someone to take his place before we lose the rest of the cast to scheduling issues." [Variety]
· NBC will be running "vintage" episodes (read: very old repeats with high-profile guests) of the Tonight Show next week. Relive your favorite, fifteen-year-old talk show moments with stars like Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts! [THR]

Facebook users, beware: if you're not vigilant, the marketing partnerships the site has struck with certain companies could broadcast your bad taste to your friends, resulting in a network-wide humiliation worse than any zombie or werewolf attack: "Mike Mayer, for instance, saw a feed item saying his boyfriend, Adam Sofen, just bought tickets to No Country For Old Men from movie-ticket vendor Fandango. 'What if I was seeing Fred Claus?" said Sofen, 28. 'That would have been much more embarrassing. At least this was a prestigious movie.'" [MSNBC]

Looking for the perfect holiday gift for the fetus who has everything? As you roam the Beverly Center in search of Black Friday deals today, make sure to drop by the Baby's First Cellphone kiosk just outside the Sony Style Store, where you can choose from a variety of miniaturized BlackBerry and Treo models featuring keyboards tiny enough to be furiously tapped by even the most delicate of second-trimester thumbs. (Sorry, folks, no iPhones, as Steve Jobs decided that amniotic fluid would smudge its touch screen, ruining its cutting-edge aesthetics.) Help that future agent growing in your trophy wife's belly get a head start on his show business career!

Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Deadline Hollywood Daily is debuting a series of "Speechless" videos, in which an impressive roster SAG actors (Holly Hunter! Harvey Keitel! David Schwimmer?) , take to these revenue-deficient internets to silently express their solidarity with their WGA peers. Especially mesmerizing is yesterday's clip of the always-outspoken Sean Penn, who, forced into a rare silence by the ongoing strike, seems to calmly mouth a threat to unseen AMPTP negotiators, warning them that he'll be waiting outside Monday's revived contract talks ready to beat some sense into anyone who refuses to bargain in good faith.

· Not to be outdone by SNL colleague Fred "Roger Trevanti" Armisen's strike video, Will Forte and Kristen Wiig demonstrate the many exciting, non-writing uses for the pencils WGA members put down 17 days ago.
· Those strike-related ads in the trades just keep getting nastier and more confrontational, don't they?
· We would've accepted "because that's what eventually happens when you give a trampy 17-year-old millions of dollars" as a reason for why Britney Spears' life has become such a mess, but Dr. Drew has a more detailed theory.
· Ernest Borgnine: still alive. Who knew? It's an early Christmas miracle!
· Because there's no such animal as the "holiday weekend" in the Gawker Media zoo, we'll be here on Friday morning for a half-day of posting before indulging our suicidal impulse to join the Black Friday mob at the Beverly Center, where we will likely die in the mindless pursuit of post-Thanksgiving bargains. Happy Turkey Day, friends!

· Music round-up: Travis at the Wiltern; Suicidal Tendencies at the House of Blues; Queen Latifah at UCLA's Royce Hall.
· The Silent Movie Theatre screens early Hitchcock effort The Lodger, a silent film about landlords who fear their new boarder might be a serial killer.
· At the UCB Theatre's Thanksgiving Feast Show, watch as eight comedians improv a holiday dinner every bit as dysfunctional as the one you'll be sharing with your family tomorrow night.

One night after Brad Womack made The Bachelor history by throwing his final rose into a blender with some ice chipped from his cold heart and whipping up a rejection smoothie for the two lovestruck finalists with whom he had no intention of pursuing a relationship, ABC lured him back before their cameras to further explain his controversial decision not to enter into the easily reversible, faux betrothal that's supposed to end each season of the series.

Apparently still suffering from a paralyzing cognitive dissonance each time he tries to envision a Star Trek project that won't feature his name somewhere on the call sheet, William "They Can Have My Tricorder Back When They Pry It From My Cold, Dead Hands" Shatner reached out to a sympathetic Extra camera crew as he signed copies of his new novel at Book Soup last night, baffled that director J.J. Abrams persists in denying him even the tiniest of pity-cameos:

MySpace's #1 publicity whore's ongoing search for bisexual love continues on A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila. (Word to the wise, Tila: You better pick at least something with genitals, lest you want to face unflattering comparisons to Brad "Brutishly Refuses to Fall in Love with One of the 25 Women He Met on a Dating Reality Show" Womack!) In this clip, Tila has her remaining suitors and suitettes coat themselves in a sinfully rich layer of chocolate, then squat over a bucket, into which they teasingly wring the soupy brown substance.

A Thanksgiving mystery no less confounding than what exactly comprises the "giblets" portion of "giblets and gravy" appears to have finally been solved by none other than third-tier supermarket newsweekly In Touch magazine: After hiring "porn star-turned-P.I. Paul Barresi" to investigate the oft-scrutinized sexuality of an aggressively self-avowed heterosexual superstar (who, it may warrant mentioning, is game for dressing up like a hunky Nazi and a Feed the Bears background player when the part calls for it), the verdict is in: Tom Cruise loves women!

Over at Postsecret, the leading online repository of anonymous confessions, a writer reveals that he or she welcomes the forced respite the strike provides from having to churn out crap that pays the bills. Of course, as discussed earlier, the conflicted scribe is probably also happy to have another excuse to put off filling up a blank Final Draft screen for a while. [Postsecret]

· Hollywood, always more than happy to turn the multiplex into a refuge from your bickering, turkey-stuffed, dysfunctional family, is putting seven movies into wide release this Thanksgiving weekend. Send the bratty kids to Enchanted while you watch Javier Bardem dispassionately slaughter everyone unlucky enough to cross his death-dealing path in No Country for Old Men. [Variety]
· In what may be the most brilliant (or deranged?) voiceover casting in the history of animated film, the following trio are on board for Disney's G-Force, the story of some fuzzy animals who try to thwart a crazy billionaire's dreams of world domination: "[Nic] Cage will play Speckles, a mole; [Steve] Buscemi will portray Bucky, a hamster; and [Tracy] Morgan will voice Blaster, a guinea pig." [THR]

Perhaps a little down that his latest labor of love is making a straight-to-iTunes debut instead of getting a run at the Sunset 5 or the Angelika, filmmaker Ed Burns is already tossing dirt on the fresh grave of art-house cinema: "'This is the year that art house cinema died,' he says. Referring to the box office disappointments that have been Rendition and Lions for Lambs, Burns continued, 'If they're not going to see Reese Witherspoon and Tom Cruise they're not coming out to see me and Patrick Wilson. The audience isn't there anymore.'" [MTV Movie Blog]