· Confident that Medellin left enough of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's life unexplored to warrant another biopic, the Yari Film Group is fast-tracking passion project Killing Pablo (starring Javier Bardem in the role immortalized by Vinnie Chase), though they likely won't be able to squeeze it in before a possible strike next summer. [Variety]
· Comedy Central thinks that Carlos Mencia has at least ten more episodes' worth of Arab and Mexican jokes in him, renewing its inexplicably high-rated Mind of Mencia for a fourth season. [THR]

A flurry of tanning-bed-related activity has followed Britney Spears' relinquishing of her two sons to Kevin Federline's custody yesterday (a moment to let that sink in like a rusty anchor), which we sum up for you here in an easy-to-skim, round-up fashion:

Even though the network might not want critics to have advance access to its retooled Cavemen premiere (weirdly, as we typed those words, we could've sworn we heard Peter Krause whispering from the sidebar, "The comedy that has everyone talking debuts at 8 p.m. tonight , only on ABC"), they realize the importance of making sure that awareness of the show is high among audiences who expect intellectual engagement from their television programming.

Unafraid to push the limits of breaking celebrity news, The Insider may have been the first media outlet to inform the world that Dancing with the Stars contestant Jane Seymour's mother has died. [The Insider Online]

As our review copy of Rosie O'Donnell's memoir appears to have gotten lost in the mail, we've had to settle for the modest trickle of leaks available in press coverage, where so far we've learned of Donald Trump's molluskan qualities and of childhood tea parties in which the self-exiled former View panelist would horrify her stuffed animal collection by crushing her metacarpals with a croquet mallet. Now USA Today provides the most comprehensive preview yet, including an interactive feature that allows you to click on a celebrity to read what Rosie wrote about them (apparently we all killed Anna Nicole!), and a review:

With any luck, nothing else you read today will be creepier than this sentence from Page Six's item on the way molesty boy-band assembler Lou Pearlman used his hands to mold the talent: "Rich Cronin, lead singer of LFO, recalled Pearlman told him of an 'ancient massage technique that if I massage you and we bond in a certain way, it will strengthen your aura.'" [Page Six]

Yesterday, the leadership of the Writers Guild sent out an e-mail blast asking its scribe army for strike authorization, hoping that letting the entire industry know that they've requested the ballistic launch codes from their membership will force the studios to take their just-revived contract negotiations seriously:

Leave Britney Alone Guy, it seems, fundamentally misunderstands what is expected of him in exchange for the meteoric, disposable fame he's derived from those two minutes of carefully calculated YouTube histronics.

· Earlier today, guest Oprah genitorturer Dr. Oz demonstrated the proper technique for ball-busting. There's a good chance you're not going to watch this one if you've eaten recently.
· Paula Abdul says she's ready for a baby, even if that means adopting. Unfortunately, the interview was conducted before Britney Spears' children hit the market, so no one got to ask if she'd be willing to provide a good home for a pair of Malibu refugees.
· Stallone intimates that the real-life atrocities he witnessed in Myanmar are even more disturbing than the ones you'll soon be able to see in John Rambo.
· Right about now you probably need some unicorns to make the icky feelings from the preceding links go away.

Our uneducated guess as to why the judge forced Britney Spears to relinquish custody of her kids to Kevin Federline proved true, as Spears reportedly ignored every Britney Rule the court laid out for her. Then again, maybe she never even read them, as she apparently didn't bother to sign the judge's order. [TMZ]

After previously teasing us with the kind of reconstructed-hip-shattering, hot sexagenarian action we haven't seen on premium cable since we caught a late-night Cinemax presentation of Emanuelle: Retirement Community Seductress back in college, the producers of Tell Me You Love Me threw us an oddly prudish curveball last night, dramatizing nothing more racy than a chef-on-chef sex act probably not graphic enough to be pixelated by a Fox Hell's Kitchen censor, making us feel we'd completely wasted the hour we spent (we didn't even TiVo through all the tiresome yapping) looking for further evidence of ejaculating-prothesis use or glimpses of envelope-pushing penetration. But we did spend some time reading yesterday's NY Times piece about the ongoing pornification of television and film, in which the director of a competing sex-positive pay-TV entertainment offered a dissenting opinion on how graphic the screwing needs to be to achieve fucking-verisimilitude:

As we struggle to make sense of a world in which one of the most beloved music icons of our era is robbed of her frequently fumbled pride and joy merely because of a two-year, drug and nudity-filled rough patch, we felt we could use some cheering up courtesy of a party report from trusty Defamer PartyWatcher Ann. Accompanied by photographer Maggie Serrano, the two attended Friday's opening soirée for the Just Britney show at the World of Wonder gallery in Hollywood, site of the Golden Girls Erotica Expo. With the fallen pop star the subject of every work on display, it was a unique and exciting happening attended by club kid and club adult alike. Ann's report and an image gallery follow after the jump:

Borderline-insane Hollywood raconteur Steve Guttenberg, who never fails to deliver batshit solid gold when a recording device is activated in his presence, is writing a tell-all book about all the tail he pulled during his Police Academy heyday. Included among the conquests: some lady he tied up and left for dead after he couldn't find her way back to her apartment following a desperate prophylactic run. [Gatecrasher]

· Music round-up: Dave Matthews at the Hollywood Bowl; The Black Angels at the Troubadour; Morrissey sets up shop at the Palladium for a ten-show mope-athon.
· The MOCA's Geffen Contemporary features a huge retrospective of Takashi Murakami's work, spanning 20,000 (!) square feet of exhibition space.
· The Paley Center for Media goes deep "Inside Robot Chicken" with Seth Green and Matthew Senreich.

On last night's Sunset Tan, the unthinkable occurred: the Olly Girls, whose airheaded misadventures in artificial pigmentation are responsible for the most compelling half-hour of tanning-related reality television on basic cable, were let go in a boardroom dismissal ceremony that would make even the heartless Donald wince from its cruelty.

Would anyone like to hazard a guess about Var TV critic Brian Lowry's favorite dessert? For Pushing Daises: "The producers are seeking to offset that fragility by incorporating a procedural element into this tale of love and death, but that only invites skepticism the souffle will collapse by episode four or five." And Five Days: "HBO and the BBC can afford to gamble on this sort of collaboration, but stretching over five weeks simply injects too much stuffing into this character-laden souffle." [Var, Var]

Having found his vanity website was inciting insufficient outrage, Joe Francis has again switched gears, moving away from Phil Spector side-by-sides to a new offensive aimed squarely at the girls suing the incarcerated Girls Gone Wild CEO for marketing their ill-considered, titty-flashing exploits. In new section "You Be The Judge," visitors are invited to watch video of the plaintiffs telling a camera operator that they are of age, before gleefully relinquishing all rights to footage captured in the nearby Suspicious Goings On tour bus.

VH1 executive Fred Graver, the Best Week Ever-birthing programmer responsible for realizing that the pop culture events of a single week could be obsessed over just as effectively as those occurring over an entire decade, is reportedly leaving the network. [Portfolio]

Even though it seems like just yesterday that an L.A. judge was so flummoxed by the fact that Britney Spears and Kevin Federline insouciantly shrugged off his dramatic decree that their two children be cleaved in twain and their truncated baby-halves be shared by the ex-couple with a dismissive, "Whatever. Her moms will stitch 'em back together all new-like for us!" that he allowed their joint custody of the children to continue out of sheer frustration, Us Weekly reports that the court has now reversed course and awarded Sean Preston and their still-unnamed younger child to Federline until further notice.

Miss Moneypenny passes on, having never woken up to find James Bond's tuxedo crumpled up on her bedroom floor. [AFP]