With celebrity glossies constantly one-upping each other by trumpeting ever more shocking and outrageous tales of drunken lesbianism and child tooth-whitening abuse on their covers, leave it to supermarket literature stalwart the Globe to trump them all: By simply taking the public's morbid fascination with celebrity misfortune to its natural conclusion, their current issue features a giant, death-clock lottery for some of the world's most recognizable faces.

Fortunately for us all, this unexpected house-cleaning turned out to be just a false alarm: Atene has already returned, shirtless and brandishing a bottle of Sam Adams (has he signed a product placement deal?), and reassuring his fans that not only hasn't he gone away ("I'm STILL here. I'M STILL HERE, I'mstillhere"), but that he's on the verge of a prolific period in his creative development. Enjoy his public workshopping of a Brokeback Mountain piece that we're confident will shame the original Heath Ledger performance once he's had a little more time to run through its tricky, bittersweet rhythms.

Not only did local escape-artist "super gator" Reggie manage to break free of his LA Zoo exhibit, he scaled a five-foot fence to do it. No real angle here, we just wanted you to know that alligators can climb high fences. Sleep tight! [Daily Breeze via LAO]

Somehow, Quentin Tarantino hopping into a pedicab to bypass a flood-induced Manila traffic jam on his way to receive an award is considered "news." Tomorrow: Scorsese abandons a NYC taxi and walks the last three blocks to an appointment! [Yahoo! News]

· These screenwriter people are so hot right now! Fox plans to offer the well-regarded members of the Writing Partners collective (including Ted "Pirates" Elliot and Terry "Of the Caribbean" Rossio, John "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" August, and others) a deal where they accept small upfront payments for their original specs in exchange for greater creative control and gross profit participation. It should be fun the first time Fox begs one the newly empowered writers to fire himself in favor of someone who can solve his third-act problems. [Variety]
· The Emancipation of Gigi continues apace: Gigi Levangie, the soon-to-be-former Mrs. Brian Grazer, will have her novel Maneater adapted into a Lifetime miniseries that the network hopes will put up numbers similar to the ones generated by her previous collaboration with USA on The Starter Wife. We hope we at least get another fun Wac-a-Mole-style game (Eat-a-Grazer?) out of it. [THR]
· The season three premiere of Weeds was the series' most-watched episode to date, boosting the fortunes of lead-out Californication, which became the highest-rated non-Kirstie-Alley comedy debut in Showtime's history. [Variety]
· Michael "George Michael" Cera, for whom we think virtually ever movie made should create at least a small role, will star in the adaptation of the C.D. Payne novel Youth in Revolt. [THR]
· Fox orders seven episodes of Nothing But the Truth, a gameshow in which contestants are hooked up to a lie detector and forced to answer humiliating personal questions as friends and family watch. Also, each detected lie will result in a Japanese man striking the unlucky dissembler in the genitals. [Variety]

The extended saga of If I Did It—the O.J. Simpson double-murder confessional brought dazzlingly to life by the helium-voiced inflections of Sparkle the Clown—has nearly reached its predictably repugnant conclusion. Having won the publishing rights, Fred Goldman has now succeeded in finding a publisher willing to distribute the self-help book for homicidal ex-husbands, to the dismay of Nicole Brown Simpson's sister:

• Thriller - Inmates in Philipines Behind-the-Scenes ABC NEWS [Youtube via Towleroad]

It's been a while since we've checked in with Scriptland (discarded original title: Final Draft Aficionado), the LAT's weekly column on "screenwriters," the mythical creatures sometimes credited with creating the story/dialogue combinations that become movies once producers, directors, and actors collaborate to make sense of the jumble of oddly formatted words called "screenplays." Today's piece looks at a mild Comic-Con controversy that arose over the authorship of the upcoming The Incredible Hulk, Marvel's attempt to reboot a franchise it had brought to the screen as recently as the summer of 2003. Fans needed to know: Was the scribe comic-book-flick go-to guy Zak Penn, writer of X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Elektra, or Ed Norton, an actor—gasp!— with a reputation as a selfless improver of script pages in need of a quick punch-up and who may or may not have generated the uncredited idea that ex-girlfriend Salma Hayek's titular Frida character should have a mustache that would distract from her frequent toplessness? The Times explains:

The conviction with which delightfully eccentric actor Val Kilmer delves into his roles is the stuff of Hollywood legend—the stories from the set of The Doors alone could fill a book, such as the time he climbed naked onto a buffet spread, and, channeling Jim Morrison, proceeded to smear low-fat cream cheese on his privates while declaring himself the "Craft Services King." There's no telling, then, what Kilmer could have done with the part of Adolph Hitler, a role he was set to play in the sequel to The Hebrew Hammer, before mysteriously pulling out:

Though their stranglehold on the best position in the "Britney Spears Is A Bad Mother Literature" section of magazine racks across the nation is unquestioned, Us Weekly's glossy jihad against the baby-fumbling pop star's parenting skills may be losing some intensity if their most shocking follow-up to the classic covers of the last two weeks, HELP! MOMMA PUTS THE SODA POP IN MY FORMULA BOTTLE, Y'ALL! and MY TWISTED HOT-TUB NIGHT PLAYING MOTORBOAT BETWEEN BRITNEY'S BOOBIES is their new issue's BRIT'S NANNIES TELL ALL. (Among this week's crimes: undressing in front of employees, enjoying adult beverages near the kids, nanny bed-sharing).

· YouTube is calling Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert to testify in the suit the comedians' corporate overload Viacom filed against them, perhaps hoping to get one of the hosts to crack and admit that they're secretly uploading unauthorized clips of their shows to the site to spite Sumner Redstone.
· This WowWee Alive Elvis should haunt your dreams for months. Enjoy waking up in the middle of the night, soaked in sweat and begging the undead King not to devour your soul!
· Mark Philippoussis's Age of Love cougar runner-up has a naked past. This is not entirely surprising.
· We remember the dearly departed Scooter from a childhood's worth of Yankee games, but his Money Store spots also hold a special place in our hearts.
· Yeah, 300 parodies are like so Spring '07, but this one's really well done.

We weren't familiar with Red, what appears to be AOL Teen's rebranding attempt at capturing the Zac Efron-obsessed segment of the online market. Now that we have sampled their content, however—in the form of their lovingly compiled slideshow, "Red's 20 Ugliest Celebrities"—we have never felt more confident that the online megacorp is doing all they can to teach their readers some valuable life lessons about how even the most hotness-challenged among them can go on to great, celebrity-related things. And who better to demonstrate that fact than background Hilton sister Nicky, who has never once allowed her physical shortcomings to discourage her various fashion and hotel industry aspirations?

Uwe Boll, Hollywood's go-to director when a studio absolutely, positively needs a video game adapted into a terrible movie that may one day show a profit in the home video market, is among the last of a dying breed of macho filmmakers who are utterly unafraid to fucking fight you if you write a review that displeases them. (Taking out a retaliatory full-page ad in Variety is, as you might guess, the pussified last refuge of the coward.) Upon reading Wired's negative assessment of Postal, Boll's latest contribution to the cinematic canon, he dashed off this love note to Chris Kohler, the piece's author:

• Making Love - the Sitcom! [YouTube]

· Music round-up: Film School at Spaceland; Magic Numbers at the El Rey; Dengue Fever at the Knitting Factory.
· David Lynch will sign your copy of Inland Empire at the Borders in Westwood. (Well, at least the copy you buy to get your fifteen seconds of face time with him.) Nodding in a way that dishonestly suggests you "get" the movie is completely optional.
· AFI's Directors series at the ArcLight tonight screens Right at Your Door, a horror flick taking place in a Los Angeles ravaged by dirty bombs. Fun! A Q&A with writer/director Chris Gorak and actor Rory Cochrane follows.

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 life-altering moment in which you witnessed Chad Lowe eating a sandwich at a diner counter.

Part-time actress and luxury rehabilitation facility quality-control inspector Lindsay Lohan, you may recall, was recently involved in a high-speed chase through Santa Monica that ended with a DUI arrest, accusations of hostage-taking, and considerable confusion as to the owner of the coke-pants that the troubled starlet was wearing at the time. As if the Denali Three's Today show testimony about that evening's events weren't terrifying enough, a lawsuit filed by a passenger in the car Lohan was pursuing has now added details unmentioned by the trio of still-traumatized captives. From TMZ:

As Michael Jackson seeks the perfect patch of Virginia real estate upon which to mount his dream theme-park residence, Colonial Neverlandsburg, his recent past has already come back to haunt him: The Bahraini Prince who sponsored Jackson during his gender-confused time living in the Middle East is now suing Jackson. From Fox411:

Even though Eddie's out of rehab, David Lee Roth apparently spent his guitarist's extended detox time in a spinning class, and Eddie's teenage kid is filling in, the video package of the band's more athletic days of the mid-80s is overpromising what fans might see at their show; if Roth gets carried away and attempts even one of his patented scissor kicks, he's likely to grievously tear his fifty-plus-year-old groin, forcing the guys to unchain Sammy Hagar from a radiator backstage and do a set from 5150 and OU812.

Commenter BusterBluth nails what was bothering us about the John from Cincinatti poster: "Check the pic: [The guy*] looks like he's hanged himself from the nearest tree. At least he went quietly." [BusterBluth]