We're know we're all still recovering from Kiefer Sutherland's drunken tackling of our collective Christmas tree, but, unfortunately, nothing but more heartache awaits: as noted in the above Today clip, Malibu land baron Mel Gibson, whose despotic control of the sleepy beachside community was undermined by some ill-chosen, tequila-drenched words about his Semitic and sugar-titted subjects, is abandoning our fine city for the badlands of Costa Rica, ignoring the warnings of a government concerned for the safety of our emigrating national treasure.

This morning brings news that will sadden and shock Hollywood (OK, perhaps it won't exactly shock anyone), as universally beloved, pub-crawling, America-saving rogue Kiefer Sutherland was popped for a DUI last night in West L.A., having reportedly fallen prey to the trap that has claimed untold celebrity lightweights unfit to freshen up his whiskey glass: the illegal U-turn in the sightline of a waiting police cruiser.

· A blogger goes completely nuts in side-by-siding stills of The Simpsons movie parodies with images from films to which they refer. Just scroll around, as there are too many individual posts to link here. [via BoingBoing]
· Can Lindsay Lohan wreck a home even while in rehab?
· Unsurprisingly, the networks don't really give a shit if all that screen clutter annoys you.
· A pregnant Nicole Richie in a bikini: Get excited!

Director John McTiernan, of Die Hard, Predator, and paying Anthony Pellicano to illegally wiretap his Rollerball producing partner fame, was today sentenced to four months in jail after a judge decided not to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea based on his new attorney's attempted "my client was too jet-lagged/drunk/medicated to know what he was saying when that FBI agent grilled him" defense, according to the LAT:

• ANDY SAMBERG AND CASS BIRD IN THE MAKEOUT [papermag.com via Gawker]

Even though the clip's ultimate purpose is unclear—unless it's intended to create a viral abomination that will rampage through the internet, destroying every bears-in-hammocks video in its path—it did, like all provocative works of art, cause us to ponder an uncomfortable question: namely, how can we live in a world where LBAG can rack up 9 million views en route to his own possible reality show, while a gifted improvisational performer like Atene is forced to toil in development-deal-free obscurity? God, we are forced to conclude, has turned His back on the YouTubes.

To be honest, we thought the Bahamas' authorities had undertaken their Daniel Smith inquest months ago, having concluded that the substance Howard K. Stern was spotted nervously disposing of down a hospital toilet moments after Anna Nicole's son's suspicious death must have been jars of his own collected tears, in anticipation of the strength he'd be required to show in the weeks to come. As it turns out, the much-delayed inquest is just about to get underway:

· Music round-up: The Editors at the Wiltern; The Happy Hollows at the Echo; Foo Fighters at the Henry Fonda.
· The Egyptian sneak previews Morgan Freeman/Greg Kinnear/Selma Blair/Radha Mitchell ensemble effort Feast of Love, with a discussion with Oscar-winning director Robert Benton to follow.
· Acting coach Lisa Roberston, who's logged time on Russell Crowe's Tenderness (a feature film, not a cologne the actor endorses—though we think we might be on to something here) as well as Showtime and FX series, lectures at Santa Monica College's Academy of Entertainment & Technology.

In a hard-fought exclusive it won over Former Child Actor Reproduction News Weekly , only People can reveal that Family Ties star (let's all pretend that Celebrity Fit Club never happened, shall we?) Tina Yothers has had a baby. [People]

We have a shameful confession to make: Despite the fact that we find the show's characters universally whiny and their monotonously dysfunctional relationships anything but compelling, we've fallen into HBO's clever trap, tuning in to all three of new drama Tell Me You Love Me's episodes just to see how far the show can push the graphic-fucking envelope before the entire network is consigned to the pay-per-view Hot Zone for its transgressions against premium-cable decency standards.

What we had presumed would take a matter of hours—the handing down of a guilty verdict upon Phil Spector, after an endless parade of witnesses took to the stand to testify about his gun-toting and woman-hating rock n' roll-pioneer ways—is now dragging into its second week, the jury still deadlocked 7-5. To muddle matters further, Judge Larry Paul Fidler has revoked a highly technical instruction that rendered the hung tribunal (and us) thoroughly confused. The defense is now asking him to clarify what it is he meant when he said that Spector didn't need to be holding the gun to be found guilty of murder:

Concerned that Hollywood's most interesting voices were being willfully ignored by the mainstream media in the aftermath of O.J. Simpson's daring, if ill-fated, Las Vegas sports-memorabilia heist, we sent tireless Defamer videographer Molly McAleer to Grauman's Chinese Theater's intellectually vibrant public square to document the reactions of some of the insightful cultural pundits who tirelessly patrol the Walk of Fame. Had our intrepid reporter not made the journey, the world may never have had heard fellow incorrigible outlaw Captain Jack Sparrow empathize with O.J.'s vigilantism, or listen as a clearly distressed Homer Simpson laments how the tabloid-industrial complex is unfairly monetizing his distant cousin's troubles.

"An Inside summary last Sunday about The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford misspelled the given name of the actor who stars in the film. He is Brad Pitt, not Bratt." [NY Times via Maroon Voices]

With the dawning of a new TV season comes another cherished fall tradition: the Counting of the Gays, during which GLAAD tallies up the number of same-sex-having characters appearing regularly on the 2007-08 primetime schedule. In keeping with last year's distressing trends, the Gays continues to wane:

· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Unoriginality Is Easy As 1-2-3 Edition: Denzel Washington will star in director Tony Scott's sure-to-be incomprehensible remake of The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3, assuming a role originally played by Walter Matthau and not-so-memorably reprised by Edward James Olmos in a 1998 made-for-TV version. [Variety]
· NBC throws money at big-name screenwriters for its Heroes: Origins spinoff, signing up X2/Superman Returns co-writer Michael Dougherty and Hostel's Eli Roth to script episodes tackling the backstory issues of the hit series' characters, such as why Ali Larter's evil reflection is so angry all the time. [THR]
· Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac will star in the Dimension comedy Soul Men, a project that regrettably is in no way related to the classic, similarly titled C. Thomas Howell/Rae Dawn Chong self-tanning farce of 1986. [Variety]
· The Family Guy's Very Special Star Wars-Themed Episode posts a "strong" performance in its ultimately doomed Nielsen attack against NBC's Sunday Night Football. [THR]
· Kevin Spacey will return to TV (well, sort of) after a 16-year hiatus, starring in HBO's Recount as the Gore campaign chief of staff who challenged the disputed balloting in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. [Variety]

Good news: Despite being involved in a Friday afternoon motorcycle accident that left him with a hairline rib fracture and his ladyfriend-of-the-moment with a broken foot, the quick-healing George Clooney was well enough to mesmerize Nancy O'Dell with his legendary charm. Meanwhile, AH partner Billy Bush's impressive legwork reveals that the guy on the other end of the crash was too stunned to realize that he was supposed to be impressed that he'd pancaked a Hollywood superstar: "My main concern was there's two people on the ground, they just hit me and, you know, I'm concerned for them. They're both bleeding, it's more of a shock than anything, not because he's a celebrity but more to the fact that there's two people hurt on the ground that could have been severely hurt." [Access Hollywood]

Generations of Brady Bunch fans were shocked to learn of the Marcia/Jan lesbian teen romp rumors that set the internets ablaze on Friday, finding it difficult to envision Marcia combing the back of her mullet 100 times before engaging her sister in a vigorous tribbing session beneath a faded Billie Jean King poster. It promised to be the most unforgettable chapter of Here's the Story, Maureen McCormick's upcoming memoir—and one the publisher doesn't remember reading:

On this morning's Today show, early-rising interrogator Matt Lauer broke out the nipple clamps and car battery in hopes of getting some answers out of ex-Britney Spears bodyguard and Spears-Federline Custody Trial of the Century "secret witness" Tony Barretto regarding his shocking accusations that he'd personally observed the twice-rehabbed mother of two abusing unspecified substances in the VIP booth and VVIP bathroom stall of an unidentified L.A. nightclub.

As much as we'd like to believe that we spent the last two minutes and thirty-one seconds of our lives (OK, five minutes and two seconds—we had to watch it twice for purely professional reasons) viewing an actual Meg White sex tape (link NSFW)—whose unexpected appearance has already fueled overheated internets speculation that it was the cause of the "acute anxiety" that led to the recent cancellation of the White Stripes tour—we'll defer to the opinions of our better-qualified brethren at Fleshbot and Idolator about the clip's highly questionable veracity.

On this wintry, late-September Monday morning, take a sip of your cocoa, adjust your scarf, and try to keep warm in these frigid low-60 temperatures as you review the weekend box office numbers: