On yesterday's edition of AMC's Shootout, chat-happy Hollywood Peters Bart and Guber invited director Wes Anderson to talk about The Darjeeling Limited, inevitably touching on Anderson's understandable reticence at having to address the Owen Wilson Situation each time he fulfills his promotional obligations for the film. (The media, it seems, have an annoying habit of comparing the real-life Wilson to the troubled, possibly suicidal character he portrays in the movie.)

Early Friday evening, the WGA announced that it had received strike authorization from 90.3 percent of its voting members, a victory the organization's leadership touted as an "historic demonstration of unity." What the Guild might not realize, however, is that when it returns to the negotiating table today, emboldened by the ability to take to the streets with the best-written picket signs in the history of labor strife, any renewed threats of a potential walkout on November 1 could be playing right into the hands of an evil cadre of media moguls excited by the prospect of having their fall TV programming mistakes wiped out by a work stoppage.

Just in case you forgot to check The Leaky Cauldron over the weekend, J.K. Rowling dropped a bomb before a crowd of young Potterites who had won an audience with the Harry Potter author at Carnegie Hall on Friday. EW.com was there:

Rejecting a plan to reinforce his white trash bonafides by marrying a 1974 Pontiac GTO sitting atop cinderblocks on a patchy lawn in an economically depressed suburb of Detroit, Kid Rock instead opted to brawl in the parking lot of an Atlanta-area Waffle House this weekend, an altercation that earned him a misdemeanor battery charge and one of the better celebrity mugshots we've seen. Sure, he may be playing it cool, but that smile barely masks the pain of watching his ex-old lady shack up with the Paris Hilton sex tape guy. [AJC.com]

Take a quick peek out of your window: If the surrounding area is not being ravaged by wildfires, proceed to the weekend's box office numbers and begin your week:

· Hollywood StrikeWatch: The lessons of 1988. The studios rattle their sabers with one hand, then produce a giant bouquet with the other. Is it just us, or do the writers totally get the bum end of the deal in this tug-of-pencil-war? Taking the appropriate, assistant-fucking measures.
· IggyGate: Ellen DeGeneres falls apart over a dog. The threatening publicist call. IggyMania grips a nation. A plea to stop the Iggy madness.
· Britney hits sock-bottom.
· The Passion of the Grazer.
· Barry Sonnenfeld steals the show at the HRTS luncheon.
· Defamer hits the High Times Stony Awards green carpet.
· Gettin' Awkward with Martha: Joey Pants's secret ingredient is pain. A Symphony in Crotch-Major.
· Step 13: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of the engorged contents of some guy's pants in a stairwell.
· "We'd rather smother ourselves in a vat of hot kettle corn that see Jorja leave CSI!"
· Frankly, we have no idea what the Kid Nation revolutionaries find so terrifying about lovable Michael Jackson.
· Brokeback 2: The Mountaining.
· This is the dawning of the Age of the Wondershitter, but we doubt that news has yet reached The Phantom Pooper.
· FBI agents raid David Copperfield's warehouse, discover a fighter jet and the Statue of Liberty.

· James Lipton: actor, writer, academic, talk show host, raconteur, French pimp. Excuse us: American pimp living in France. Truly, there is nothing this man cannot do. [NBC.com]
· If this is how the reunited Van Halen is going to sound, we may not bankrupt ourselves buying scalped tickets to the Staples Center show after all.
· The Birds star Tippi Hedren decries Hollywood's inability to generate new ideas.
· There are dozens of dogs in this insane Halloween slideshow, yet not a single one is wearing a Lindsay Lohan costume. Amateurs, the lot of them!
· Tripadvisor can help you plan your stay at the number one beet-related agrotourism destination in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

You know that thing that Jerry Seinfeld does where his voice suddenly gets very loud and high? He may have picked up that trick about invading your earspace when he briefly dabbled in Scientology 30 years ago: "You would just understand that there's this kind of voice, and then there's this kind of voice, and then there's this kind of voice. I wasn't a natural performer at all, so I learned. I was always a pretty good writer in the beginning, but I really had to learn how to perform. Just a little thing like that, understanding that really helped me on stage to understand how you have to invade the space of the audience a little bit." [Parade]

Friday
· Southern Culture on the Skids at the Echo, The Black Lips at the Troubadour, Dios Malos at the Little Radio Warehouse.
· We all have our favorite UCB Offensive Week memory—ours was Greg Fitzsimmons reminiscing about the time he worked as a producer at The Ellen DeGeneres Show. (Don't worry Greg, we'll never tell.) You still have a chance to make your own at the final event of the series, The Dirtiest Sketch Contest.

Are you a sporadically working WGA member with soft, gentle hands, the ability to breathe quietly, and a willingness to explore unconventional employment options to pick up some extra cash for your personal strike fund? Then head to Craigslist right now, for you can be sure that the following position won't remain unfilled for long:

Since we still feel the need to counterbalance earlier stories of rape, murder, and crib death with something a little more light-hearted, we bring you the above video our latest installment of Friday Afternoon Nonsense Theater. (Apologies to anyone who might already be familiar with it, but we were just recently made aware of its existence.) The less we say by way of set-up the better, but be forewarned that if you have an aversion to network-safe synonyms for human excrement, you may want to pass on it.

As we all await the dread-inducing tolling of the bell atop WGA headquarters that will indicate the union has received strike authorization from its membership, it seems like a good time consider the effect that the looming work stoppage is already having on the call-rolling underclass that allows the town to function. Over at Fishbowl LA, a disgruntled employee laments that Fox has decided to cut back on assistant overtime to help lessen the financial burden of a strike while leaving their bosses' expense accounts untouched:

If you're not feeling the 2007-era Michael Jackson/Teri Hatcher vibe, may we guide you to American Apparel's A Hollywood Halloween, featuring costume ideas like Flashdance's iconic stripper/welder and the Scooby Doo crew, achievable using nothing more than the ubiquitous boutiques' multicolored basics.

"You will die in jail," said a Florida judge in sentencing the man who pleaded guilty to inflicting "83 blunt force injuries and more than three dozen stab wounds" upon Curious George co-creator Alan Shalleck to life in prison. Is this one a little too dark for a Friday? We'll make it up to you. [CNN]

Join us in this celebration of this week's sponsors, whom we'd never give away to our hairdressers for peeing on the rug. If you'd like to advertise of Defamer and gain a place inside our loving home, see this page.

· Naomi Watts is on board to star in Universal's remake of The Birds, which, thankfully, the studio isn't rushing into production, allowing time for a possible rewrite of the script still in development that could further address the avian-backstory problems they've previously identified in the Hitchcock original. [Variety]
· While Hollywood eagerly awaits the results of the WGA's strike authorization vote, writers and studios won't resume their tug of war over a giant pencil until Monday morning. [THR]

Isla Fisher and Sacha Baron Cohen had a bouncing baby...um...baby. (Reports are still sketchy.) We've shelved the Borat jokes, so guess it's time to break out the Bruno ones! Here's hoping the little one doesn't grow up to be a Scheißendummführer, and if it's a boy, winds up with a large schwanzenstück like his father. [People]

Most of us are still struggling to make sense of IggyGate, in which a team of rescue-shelter special forces abducted a snoozing Brussels Griffon mix once owned by Ellen DeGeneres. (A helpful reader sent in the accompanying photo illustration.) Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, blogged about the doggie's rights violation today:

In a development that will probably surprise no one save the Hugh Jackman producing partner who counseled the star, "You know what we be an inspired career move, Hugh? Let's get you into a TV project with casinos. But not Vegas—someone's done that already, I think? Oh, also? There should be SINGING! And a murrrrder!," the debut of CBS's conceptually adventurous Viva Laughlin bombed so badly that network corporate overlord Les Moonves may order the execution of everyone involved after its next airing. Reports TV Week on the Nielsen carnage:

Upon noticing that adoption hobbyists Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie appear to have been afflicted with an acute case of wanderlust, a concerned Page Six contacted "psychotherapist/social worker Puja Hall" for her expert thoughts on how their failure to plant firm roots could lead to developmental problems for their pancultural brood: