Earlier today, we'd expressed a now very naive-seeming wish that WGA members and the Companies they're protesting might find a way to get through the remainder of the strike without further incidents of unnecessary, cause-undermining violence. It is with considerable sadness that we note KTLA's story (video here or here) about a renegade band of Guild picketers, who, upon receiving word of an in-progress Desperate Housewives location shoot earlier today, marched on the set, hoping to disrupt filming.

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 overheard Matthew Perry having trouble understanding movie trailers.

In troubling times like these, we realize that we can always depend on frosted-tipped E!biquity Ryan Seacrest to provide us with some much-needed comfort, knowing that within seconds of hearing his reassuring, silky voice, we'll be gently hypnotized into believing everything is going to be OK.

Less than two full days into the WGA strike, Alexander, Ruler Of The World, the ruby red and fancifully appointed apartment complex situated directly across the street from Paramount's WGA-targeted Van Ness service gate, appears at surface to be suffering from a concentrated bout of attention envy. Alexander, Ruler Of The World has, over the course of six months, forged a sizable Van Ness attention spotlight. By strategically choosing the service gate across the street as a picketing locale, WGA strikers have dimmed that spotlight considerably - one might say they've thrown a wrench into it - and as a result Alexander, Ruler Of The World has received an estimated 60% fewer "Oh My Holy Fuck Would You Look At That Monstrosity" reactions per day.

If it's strike carnage you seek, look no further than today's episode of The View: Stripped of its guild-member producers pumping meaningful dialogue into their earpieces, a Hot Topics segment on the writers strike forced the hosts to explain the labor impasse using their own, barely coherent grasp of the issues. (Particularly immaterial was Joy Behar's "Surveillance Cameras: What's With Them?!" contribution to the ongoing debate.) In moments of total daytime TV chaos like these, we typically rely on Barbara Walters to set this runaway locomotive back on its rails. Oddly enough, however, she remained uncharacteristically quiet during the segment—and, we might add, looking in her old age more and more like Tori Spelling every day.

· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Can't Blame the Writers For the Current Idea Shortage Edition: Jennifer Connelly—an actress we'd pay $14 dollars to watch knitting a sweater or making peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches—will join monosyllabic, paparazzi-punishing superstar Keanu Reeves in Fox's remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. [Variety]
· Big Love polygamist Jeanne Tripplehorn is on board for HBO's movie version of Grey Gardens, playing Jackie O opposite Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore's Big and Little Edies, respectively. THR]
· ABC's Cashmere Mafia might be the first primetime victim of the strike, as the network yanks the new series from its schedule before its originally planned November 27 debut. But good news for those craving Sex and the City-inspired entertainment: NBC hasn't yet abandoned nearly identical project Lipstick Jungle. [Variety]

George Osmond, father of Donny, Marie, Liesl, Friedrick, Louisa, Kurt, Marta, and Gretl, has sadly passed away this morning at the age of 90. The family's official website doesn't yet have anything posted, but if you have even a passing interest in Mormon psychedelia, we highly recommend a visit anyway. [Fox News, osmond.com]

Elevating the fun of celebrity lookalikes to the level of coffee-table art, photographer Alison Jackson poses the rent-a-doppelgängers in a wide variety of scandalous and humiliating poses in her book Confidential (examples include "Brad Pitt shaving Angelina Jolie's legs; a jailed Paris Hilton paying another inmate to scrub her toilet bowl; and a masked Michael Jackson putting lipstick on a crying baby," reports Page Six). We particularly enjoyed the above image, pulled from the book's website, imagining Jack Nicholson taking full advantage of his Hurricane Harbor family pass. It's just the sunny, festive tonic we all could use during these cold days and nights of placard-wielding strife. The uncensored picture can be found at Taschen.com.

Though we've heard no early reports from today's picket lines as troubling as yesterday's attempted vehicular writercide, a tipster from the Fox lot—one whose use of the term "red-shirt" and skepticism about whether or not he was watching someone take a dive indicates he might be a little annoyed by WGA-instigated traffic jams—notes that things are already getting uncomfortable between picketers and the picketed over in Century City:

A Hollywood tribal feud no less contentious than writers vs. producers is the one brewing for well over a century now between celebrities and paparazzi, the first documented incident of which involved Mary Pickford launching a half-eaten pomegranate at the head of a Movieland Tattler illustrator caught sketching the actress's unflattering likeness in her garden. The war rages on, as Keanu Reeves finds himself the defendant in a lawsuit filed by a paparazzo claiming the actor struck her with his Porsche last March:

The United Hollywood blog has taken on the responsibility of debunking several rumors that emerged from Day One of the WGA strike, with no update more crucial than this one about AMPTP bogeyman J. Nicholas Counter III, whom many in the Guild fear—possibly with good reason—possesses supernatural powers he can use to break the will of writers once night falls: "RUMOR: Nick Counter can mentally summon and command coyotes. He can turn himself into a cold mist to elude pursuers. He eats the dreams of sleeping children as he flies above their homes on the back of a giant talking raven named Stormhammer. STATUS: UNCONFIRMED" [United Hollywood]

While we recognize that even though the above video is titled "Writers Strike Dance," it may not, in fact, be the work of a scribe who's using his free time during the work stoppage to pursue more kinetic creative endeavors, we nonetheless feel compelled to share it with you this morning. If nothing else, his unselfconscious gyrations can serve as an inspiration to othewise introverted writers walking the picket line to have the courage to spice up their already-stale sidewalk routines, bringing an energy level sure to intimidate any motorist with thoughts of adding a red-shirted hood ornament to his SUV.

As the WGA strike enters Day Two and the writers once again take their places at the entrances of the studio lots with rewritten picket signs and punched-up chants in hand, we embark upon a Tuesday morning round-up of the news:

· Weekend Update commentator Roger A. Trivanti offered some compelling rhetoric on behalf of his fellow producers, but none quite crystallized the dispute so much as his closing wishes that "all you writers get ass cancer and die."
· This seems fitting for the first day of the strike: Remember the Saddest Bear in Los Angeles, bike-chained to a chair outside a cookie store in the Glendale Galleria? Well, Metroblogging LA found his Sad Bear Soulmate in Hollywood. Sigh.
· We can only hope legions of idle writers don't pick up a nasty fermented-poo-huffing habit.
· But wait! All hope is not lost: The birth of an octobaby in India—possibly the living embodiment of Vishnu—has got to be a good sign, right?
· A palate cleanser: Extra employs cutting-edge aging software to add 25 years to Britney Spears's face. (We think the "after" picture is the one on the right.)

[I]t's clear that they've been studying the ad campaign for "300" very carefully. Among many stylistic and clear similarities between each films' trailers, here are a few highlights:

As noted by a number of commenters on today's previous ChantWatch posts on the reportedly lackluster performance of WGA strikers at Paramount and CBS Television City, the act of shouting slogans at passing cars to elicit honks of approval is inherently silly, and one that runs counter to many writers' introverted, self-conscious natures. Still, we received a couple of subsequent reports of picket teams who did their best to break up the inevitable boredom of endlessly pacing the same stretch of sidewalk with some more enthusiastic or creative chants: "Lots of chanting at gates 2/3 [at Warner Bros] this morning, a mix of the traditional (ON STRIKE! SHUT 'EM DOWN! HOLLYWOOD'S A UNION TOWN!) and the erm, [modern] (singing the chorus to Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It").Best one (if a little precious) 'EXTERIOR. STREET. WRITERS ARE STRIKING.'" And from a picketer at Prospect Studios: "Our chanting was so loud and nonstop, we think Grey's Anatomy had to stop filming this afternoon."

While Jay Leno's gift of Krispy Kremes (and his accompanying public declaration that "without them I'm not funny. I'm a dead man without them.") to the writers striking outside NBC's headquarters this morning probably seemed a warm expression of solidarity at the time, the bar for talk-show host generosity was quickly set a little bit higher by a beloved peer. Tomorrow, if Leno shows up with only another three boxes of the treats as a show of support, he may to endure the passive-aggressive grumbling of an underwhelmed picketer claiming, "I heard that Jon Stewart brought his writers donuts filled with hundred-dollar bills yesterday. Isn't he on basic cable? Any-way, these Boston Cremes are just as delicious. MMMMmm, yum!" [Franklin Ave]

With the writers' strike finally upon us, a nation of panicky couch potatoes nervously scanning their TV Guides in search of whatever available, non-scripted programming might prevent them from succumbing to an organ-seizing bout of TV withdrawal, we bring you a small measure of hope: According to the NY Times, Rosie O'Donnell is in talks to launch a nightly, primetime MSNBC talk show:

· Music round-up: Shout Out Louds at the Henry Fonda; The Pity Party at the Viper Room; Brand New with Thrice and mewithoutYou at the Wiltern.
· Largo unleashes an all-star lineup on a semi-suspecting, comedy-craving public, gathering Paul F. Tompkins, Janeane Garofalo, Dana Gould, and Louis CK on its hallowed Fairfax Avenue stage. (Probably not all at once, but who knows what might happen?)
· Yes, it's the Borders in Torrance, but it's also Slash signing his memoir, which undoubtedly contains stories of a Guns N' Roses' heyday so debauched that you will probably be driven back to hard drugs by their mere retelling.

Hollywood Chantwatch, Serenading Les Moonves Edition: The chanting-related issues at Paramount we noted earlier, it seems, might be a more widespread problem than we'd previously believed, as lackluster efforts have been reported elsewhere: "Picketers in front of CBS Television City weren't chanting this morning, much to the chagrin of one of the organizers. 'Getting a bunch of writers to chant is impossible!" a guild member said to an unidentified party on a cell phone. The scribe later refused to identify himself, citing the WGA's orders to members to not speak with the media.'" If this keeps up, the WGA may need to start appointing cheer captains for each studio to improve upon these discouraging first-day results. (Incidentally, we welcome reports about picket lines that are meeting or exceeding chanting expectations. We're sure many sets of lungs are being pushed to the breaking point elsewhere. ) [Var Strike Blog]