As some readers seem weirdly obsessed with the specifics of CAA's pastry-dispensing activities at Fox earlier today, we're happy to keep the ball rolling with this reader-supplied anecdote: "It wasn't just pastries, it was Churros. Piles and piles of hot churros. The lady standing next to me took one from the besuited and $400 sunglass bespectacled agent offering them on a silver tray:
Lady: Ooooh, churros. Where are you guys from? What restaurant?
Agent: Creative Artists Agency
Lady: I'm sorry, where?
Second Agent in charge of carrying napkins two steps behind the main Churros-bearing agent: Uh, CAA?!?!?!
Lady: Oh."

For the next leg of her continuing tour of the hottest WGA picket lines in Hollywood, a journey that recently brought her to Paramount to witness the birth of the strike's first sidewalk-theater group, we dispatched Defamer videographer Molly McAleer to today's massive rally at Fox Plaza, as the gates of other studio headquarters were being patrolled only by the usual, non-Guild teams of tourists, vagrants, and sex workers.

Friday
· Music round-up: MIA at the Wiltern, Joanna Newsom at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Of Montreal at the Avalon.
· John Waters, the Mozart of bad taste, signs DVD copies of his one-man show This Filthy World at the Grove Barnes and Noble.
· The Jack Oakie Celebration of Comedy in Film hosts Judd Apatow, James L. Brooks, and Larry Gelbart, who come together to "together to crack the code of contemporary screen comedy," code-cracking apparently not falling under the heading of services writers are forbidden to render during the strike. At the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre.

From an attendee of today's Guild siege of Fox Plaza: "I was at the WGA rally. Assistants from CAA were out in full force with trays offering the writers pastries." While it's certainly generous of CAA to taks some time away from its regularly scheduled evildoing plans to service its striking clients, it's not like the agency might not benefit from the short trip across Century City. For example, if in the course of distributing those delicious pastries, some of the writers became distracted long enough for their infants to escape their momentarily unattended strollers or wriggle free of their baby-bjorns, somehow finding their way into the burlap sacks and butterlfy nets carried by other Creative Artists assistants, well, that's just a happy little side effect of supporting the cause. UPDATE: We're now told that William Morris was on the scene with coffee and bagels and UTA with Power Bars; with such a high concentration of agents bearing gifts for hungry strikers in that crowd, it's a miracle that any parents whatsoever left the rally with their young families intact.

Because we know that it's probably been at least ten minutes since you've tried to kill some time at your strike-stalled place of business by looking at images of thousands of picket-sign toting, red-shirt-clad writers chatting up their new celebrity best friends, we're happy to pass along these photos generously sent in by some readers who were part of today's WGA-sponsored Striking Man event at Fox Plaza. Among the famous faces awaiting you after the jump: Tom Arnold! The Reno 911 guys! A fictional president and a onetime presidential candidate! (Make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom to see some bonus pictures sent in by shadowy strike correspondent "Nick Counter," who was reminded of another historic day by the sight of some Fox employees taking refuge on a rooftop high above the throng.)

The nonwriting staff of The Tonight Show has been told that they will be laid off at the end of next week, an announcement sure to send host Jay Leno's compassionate Krispy Kreme expenditures soaring. But hope remains that they could be back on the job shortly: If they can find guests hosts (Andy Dick? NBCU boss Jeff Zucker? The ghost of Jack Paar?) willing to cross the picket line—Leno has so far refused to do so, having previously acknowledged he'd be like a crippled, unfunny lamb led to the talk-show slaughter without his writers—people could be back on the job November 19th. [B&C/Photo:Franklin Ave]

Ellen DeGeneres has begun to soften on the admirably hard-line stance she took on behalf of Hollywood's striking writers: On today's show (taped earlier in the week) she still refused to do a monologue, but has migrated back to the mark where she typically begins each broadcast. Still, she continues to cross the line, raising the question of whether or not she'll do the same when the Talk Show DJ's Guild talks come up later this year, and she's forced to weather the spittle-flecked invective of its single member, Stryker, fighting for his fair percentage of audience-boogying residuals.

What better way to celebrate Day 5 of the writers strike than by trawling Craigslist—the one place you can find a couch, a job, and a lunchtime quickie within minutes—to see what kinds of opportunities might have arisen from the wreckage:
· Studio executives who failed to get the stockpiling memo: It's not too late. Listing "We Are Saling Our Scripts!" informs deep-pocketed buyers that, "We are saling our scripts to anyone who's willing to purchase at a reasonable price." Bai now before they're all snapped up! [CL]
· The only place you're likely to find more scabs is on Steve O's body. [CL, CL, CL, CL]
· Attempts at humor can be lost entirely on Craigslist's sometimes gullible user base: "RE: SUPPORT THE WRITTERS GIULD...This person states that they are a 'writter', cant even spell his chosen profession! maybe this person is rushing out to get into the strike lines that they just cant be bothered with clicking the spell check button. here are some of the other misspelled words, 'giuld' 'toleraded'" [CL]

In these troubling times, we know that we can always depend on this week's sponsors for comfort, many of whom aren't currently too distracted by the picketers screaming outside their office windows to give us a hug whenever we need one. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and become our emotional rock, see this page.

· The writers strike could result in a windfall for Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who are reportedly in talks with NBC for the acquisition of blogtastic new online series Quarterlife, which is scheduled to premiere on the MySpaces on Sunday. If the alleged deal should fall through, forward-thinking network president Ben Silverman will announce that once he's out of new episodes of Bionic Woman, he'll run an hour of grainy YouTube footage of cheerleading-competition bloopers in its place. [THR]
· Had enough of the writers strike yet? Good news: a newer, fresher walkout by the stagehands union could be on its way, forcing Broadway productions to go dark. As we've said before: Strike fever, catch it! [Variety]
· A two-hour, crossover block of CSI/Without a Trace episodes brought CBS a ratings victory Thursday night, as viewers flocked to the network to enjoy every moment of their last few weeks of barely differentiated crime-procedural programming. [THR]

Michael Jackson was in a far different place when the gates of Neverland Ranch first swung open in 1988: "Bad" had spent a record-breaking year riding the top of the charts, Captain Eo was still thrilling children who marveled at how their space-voyaging pop hero was practically reaching out to grab them, and the term "Jesus Juice" was decades away from entering the popular lexicon as a catchall term for any number of boy-plying intoxicants. Of course, all that was millions of dollars and surgeries ago, and now the fate of Jackson's prepubescent pleasuredome hangs in the balance. Despite what you're hearing, however, the Ebony cover subject won't allow a foreclosure to deprive him of his abandoned estate, even if that means sinking further into debt:

Not long after an aggrieved William Shatner went public with the disappointing news that upcoming Star Trek project director J.J. Abrams decided to place the forcibly retired Enterprise captain inside a coffin-capsule and jettison him out into the endless void of space rather than toss him a token, Trekkie-appeasing cameo, another casting bombshell has been announced: Winona Ryder has signed on to play mom to a Young Spock. Variety identifies Ryder's character as a Vulcan—but, if our fading memory of Trek lore serves, wasn't Spock's mother a human? Is Abrams messing with mythology, or was this just a simple error that will result in the mass delivery of severed, pointy ears to the Var offices in protest? Do let us know, or this will torment us all day long. [Variety]

The Celebslam blog has photos of a cocktail party meeting between Conan O'Brien and his "stalker priest" taking place last year, in which the Conan-obsessed cleric bent space and time to share a martini with the object of his schizophrenia-enhanced affection. Given that the two men once enjoyed an apparently congenial face-to-face meeting, the Padre's later correspondence about his failure to receive VIP treatment from a Late Night usher when he sought to reconnect with his new best friend seems somewhat less unreasonable—though, in fairness, we must admit that the angle of the photo prevents us from determining if O'Brien's eyes reveal any discomfort about being pitched an idea that the Masturbating Bear character would be much funnier if he wore a priest's collar.

As this exciting and eventful first week of striking draws to a close (enjoy it while it lasts, for the picket lines probably won't stay so well-stocked with your favorite out-of-work TV stars a few weeks hence), we offer this Friday morning round-up:

· In yet another one of those uncomfortable Martha Stewart Show moments that keep us coming back over and over again, the host describes her mother's recent stroke in such alarming detail that we now know not only the name of the hospital in which she's recovering, but the exact floor her room is on.
· Borat's book-signing featured filthy children, vanilla faces, and, of course, the requisite dude in a neon nut-sling.
· Grey's Anatomy McPicketing! How did we miss that opportunity yesterday? Maybe we were distracted by the weiners.
· J. Lo knocked up, officially. We know her refusal to disclose the contents of her uterus had really been eating at you.

In its new issue, Esquire profiles compulsively quotable NBC perfect storm Ben Silverman, who apparently has not been too busy monitoring the foreign airwaves for lowbrow, easily importable reality TV formats he can plug into the holes the writers strike will soon blow in his network's schedule to publicly invite his favorite rivals over for a good, old-fashioned dick-measuring contest. We begin with Silverman's dismissal of network nemeses Kevin "The One Whose Job I Was Begged To Take" Reilly (now of Fox) and Steve "I Gave Him A Huge Hit He Didn't Even Want" McPherson as D-girls, fightin' words if we've ever heard any:

Since the ghost of a writer's room presence from Ellen DeGeneres's past has come back to haunt the picket-line-circumnavigating chant-target—and in doing so, reopened the age-old debate about how much writer-abuse is too much writer-abuse when your name's in the title—the first new episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show has aired.

· Music round-up: Of Montreal at Avalon; Ween at the Wiltern; Robbers on High Street at the Echoplex, Mason Jennings at the Troubadour.
· With all of network TV on the brink of strike-hastened extinction, there's never been a better time to revisit the glorious failures that were The WB and UPN, the two netlets whose primetime organs were harvested and plopped into the body cavity of current broadcast abomination The CW. Details here.
· Horror-master Clive Barker shows off his artwork at the Bert Green gallery downtown.

Breaking! Could bite-sized—but volatile—DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg be a secret WGA sympathizer? An operative reports from the Warner Bros. picket line: "Funny story today from the WB Gate 2 strike lines. Jeffery Katzenberg was pulling into the lot in his black Prius right in front of a bunch of us. Someone recognized him right away and in an act of God, he hit the red light. A lot of us starting shouting at him (not hostilely, in good humor) asking for just a leeettle bit of internet money. Trapped at the light, he gave us a few "whaddya gonna do?" shrugs, then right before the light changed we got a thumbs up from him! (at least I thought they were his thumbs) A good omen, right?" While the thumbs-up could be a sign that he's not totally unnmoved by the WGA members' plight, we don't know what business brought him to the WB lot; perhaps he was there to join his fellow moguls in a dark ritual in which the evil cabal sips from chalices brimming with the blood of previously defeated writers that's been aging in the Warner Bros. water tower since the 1988 strike, renewing their oath to win this latest war at all costs. Under those circumstances, the seemingly friendly gesture could be interpreted as somewhat less encouraging.

Hoping to salvage a reputation damaged by the emergence of an audio recording in which he repeatedly detailed his racial preference for potential daughters-in-law, Dog the Bounty Hunter threw himself into the bony embrace of CNN softballer Larry King last night, trusting that the hurt he's feeling would dissipate to near nothingness by the end of the first commercial break.