Ricky Martin received a star on the Walk of Fame today, the most illustrious Puerto Rican studcake to be bestowed with that greatest of purchasable Hollywood Chamber of Commerce honors since Eric Estrada flicked his trademarked thumbs-up for the gathered fan.

According to third-quarter donation reports, Hollywood is still lavishing cash at presidential hopeful Barack Obama, the candidate Oprah Winfrey recently dipped in honey, heaved into the money pile her friends built at her Montecito compound, and allowed to walk off with the three million dollars in donations that clung to his sticky, glistening form. But we suspect that most of those fickle little political starfuckers will be cured of their Obamamania and climb into Al Gore's hybrid bandwagon the minute the Oscar/Emmy/Nobel triple-threat announces he's running. [HuffPo]

· Music round-up: Jimmy Eat World at the Wiltern; Black Francis at Safari Sam's; Ghostface Killah at UCLA's Ackerman Ballroom.
· Former Mexican president and recent Daily Show guest Vicente Fox reads from his new book, Revolution of Hope, at CalTech.
· At the Central Library, Los Angeles magazine editor Kit Rachlis joins Pulitzer-winning author Susan Faludi for a lighthearted chat about the issues raised in her recent book, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America.

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 Scott Baio: 45, single, and ready to settle down with a new iMac.

Future galactic dictator Les Moonves, having once again tricked antediluvian corporate overlord Sumner Redstone into believing that his plans of world domination will not include the kind of clumsy assassination attempts being plotted by his traitorous daughter, has earned a new contract that will keep him atop CBS Corp through at least 2011. So convincing was the wily Moonves in renewing his pledge of fealty that Redstone willingly handed over the key that opens the chest housing the enchanted dagger imbued with the power to end his immortal life, telling his trusty lieutenant to make sure it never falls into the hands of his scheming, murderous offspring. [THR]

Today on Martha, daytime TV's new home of uncomfortable, tragedy-tinged moments: Actor Joe "Joey Pants" Pantoliano, lightly hypnotized by the calmingly repetitive motion of stirring up a pot of pasta putanesca, shares news of his recently diagnosed clinical depression, the suicide of a loved one, and his long-suppressed affection for his irresistible host. Taken aback by his unexpected soul-baring, Stewart calmly adds a bowl of crushed Zoloft to Pantoliano's recipe, a special ingredient she always keeps handy in the event that one of her guests tries to make an unwelcome emotional connection during their promotional appearance.

If the rapid proliferation of those pastel-striped dispensaries of froyo-like dessert-substance Pinkberry reminds you of a twin-tailed mermaid infestation of a decade before, you aren't the only ones, as Fortune today reports that Starbucks founder Howard Schultz has made a sizable investment in the tangy softserve outfit:

As you may have noticed, a minor redesign of the site has just gone live. Fun, right? We'll leave you discover all the new gizmos, doodads, and what-have-you our design team has whipped up this time around, but if anything seems to be broken in the nip/tucked layout, please drop us a line and let us know (and telling us your browser and OS version always helps).

Despite the fact that he looks nothing like the quarterback who shares his name, dumb people are always mixing up The Comebacks/The Animal/The Hot Chick director Tom Brady with his more famous, Bridget Moynahan-impregnating namesake. Of course, the Patriots jersey probably isn't helping matters. [Boston Globe]

Have the studios finally decided it's time to stomp out the flaming bag of crazy they've allowed to burn on the negotiating room floor throughout their contract talks with the WGA? In a statement posted to the AMPTP's website, they've announced that they're going to drop their plan to recoup their costs before mailing out the little green residuals envelopes that keep now-filthy-rich visionaries like Marc Cherry from starving to death while they dream up their lucrative hits. But for now they're holding their ground on the Guild's proposal to increase their home video residuals, pledging to fight to the death to protect the buggering their shrewd forebears gave the writers on that issue years ago.

There would be no dancing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show today, not when the preternaturally upbeat talk show host offered a rare glimpse inside her tortured, pet-lover's soul: Through deep sobs, she relayed the shocking and sad story of Iggy, a Brussels Griffon mix she adopted from an unnamed local shelter (news reports later revealed it to be the Moms & Mutts rescue in Pasadena).

· The studios and networks are "outraged" with the WGA's strike rules, which AMPTP president Nick Counter says are "filled with threats of fines, punishment and blacklisting," and have threatened to sue the Guild if tries to interfere with its members' contractual delivery of all the rushed material they're trying to stockpile to help them survive a work stoppage. Unsurprisingly, the WGA has told the producers to invest the time they're spending worrying about its rules coming up with less ridiculous proposals. [Variety]
· A&E casts Benjamin Bratt as the lead in its pilot The Cleaner, instantly giving the project a legitimacy on the level of an average network series likely to be canceled after five poorly rated episodes. [THR]

Hollywood and the videogame industry have long engaged in a war for consumer attention span (and dollars), but movie analysts are now using the game phenom Halo 3 as a scapegoat for poor box office performance. Ben Stiller's new comedy, The Heartbreak Kid, snagged a mere $14 million opening weekend, half of what was expected.. Total movie-ticket sales for Halo's opening weekend took a 27 percent nosedive compared to last year. Conversely, Halo 3 broke all sorts of sales records with its $300 million week. Analysts blame youth's obsession with games for the lack of moviegoing. Really? It has nothing to do with the Heartbreak Kid's rotten reviews and the generally poor quality of films opening that weekend?

Actress Carol Bruce, who played Gordon Jump's station-owning mother Mama Carlson on WKRP in Cincinnati, has died at 87. Venus Flytrap and Dr. Johnny Fever have yet to comment publicly on the loss. [CNN.com]

Following the shocking, quickly refuted accusations of handsy uncleness recently lodged against currently imprisoned boy-band assembler Lou "Big Poppa" Pearlman in the pages of Vanity Fair by some disgruntled former charges, it's hard not to let that salacious baggage taint one's interpretation of what was taking place in this innocent photo appearing in the new issue of the National Enquirer.

Should you find yourself (God be with you) working at a Los Angeles talent agency, and should you then have the good sense to quit after one week, try running your "Dear Ari" letter by a sober friend before you send it in. The career you save may be your own. Do note: This advice is applicable to many other places of employment, such as law firms, hedge funds, and Conde Nast. The letter follows.

With nothing but snips of hearsay to cling to until Project Runway returns to Bravo next month, we were pleasantly surprised to learn through Reality Blurred that Canada already has a version of the model-trafficking reality TV sensation on the air. Premiered recently on Slice (the #1 cable network for Canadian women!), Project Runway Canada adheres closely to the original's pattern—only in place of Tim Gunn is some other guy with a hockey 'stache, and in place of host Heidi Klum is the regal Queen Bowie herself, Iman.

When roughly $22 million worth of Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington fans show up at the multiplex on long-gestating, twice-aborted Universal feature American Gangster's opening weekend, not even the succession of credits reading "Produced by Brian Grazer," "Based On An Idea By Brian Grazer To Do A Movie About A Magazine Article About A Drug Kingpin From The 70s" and "A Ridley Scott Film Shepherded By Imagine Entertainment's Brian Grazer, Who Simply Refused To Let This Crazy Dream Die" will give moviegoers an adequate appreciation of the Herculean efforts undertaken by the spikey-haired superproducer to finally bring his passion project to the screen. The LAT chronicles the mogul's heroism in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles (budget overruns! eight-figure kill fees! cost-controlling script rewrites that ripped the very soul out of the story!), here recounting the dark moment when a momentarily defeated Grazer had to tell original director Antoine Fuqua that Gangster had been shelved:

As Oprah bores us with Jerry Seinfeld's wife and her devious methods of burying creamed broccoli inside a powdered donut, Tyra manages to bring Americans news they can use: Ladies, the next time your dinner date spends an inordinate amount of time quoting Kathy Griffin and apologizing for his shameful lack of abs, use this simple finger-measuring technique to determine whether or not he may in fact be a Friend of O'Malley. And if you want a second opinion, there's always the hair whorl test.