· James Gandolfini and HBO's eight-year relationship is still going strong, as The Artist Who Will Forever Be Known As Tony will star in and produce the movie ABCD Camp, in which he'll play Sonny Vaccaro, the guy who signed Michael Jordan to the first million dollar shoe deal. [Variety]
· The trades eulogize Merv Griffin, but no review of the TV mogul's legacy could be as poignant as three minutes spent watching "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts." [Variety, THR]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, To Crush My Enemies, To See Them Driven Before Me, and To Hear The Lamentations of the D-Girls Edition: Millenium Films pays a seven figures for the rights to make a new series of Conan the Barbarian movies. There's no word about whether Arnold Schwarzenegger would be willing to abandon his political career for a shot at reprising one of his most successful roles. (But wishful thinking on the matter is nonetheless encouraged.) [Variety]
· Joseph Gordon-Levitt still keeping it real, signing on for two more indie features. Don't worry, eventually Hollywood will break him they way it did Sevigny and Posey. [THR]
· All of this strike talk is really fucking up some rich people's summer vacations. [Variety]

If, after reviewing the footage captured by Big Brother 8's exclusive Intolerance Cam, you still find yourself unclear about the specific prejudices of the show's houseguests, we recommend that you study the Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. blog's illuminating, meticulously constructed "Better Know a Big Brother 8 Bias" chart. If we were the betting kind, we'd put our money on Tommy Lee doppleganger Dick to win it all; his position at the center of the chart seems to indicate that he's the best equipped to form a staggering variety of alliances based on ignorance about virtually any race, gender, or creed.

· Offering a tour of the photos lining his office walls, Griffin once indicated he was on a nickname-only basis with the greatest civil rights crusader of our time: "Yes, here I am with John Kennedy...And here I am with Frank Sinatra...And here's Elizabeth Taylor...And Marty King..." [pastdeadline.com]
· The numbers you're probably wondering about: $1.6 billion, one son, two grandchildren. [LAT]
· Merv composed the Jeopardy theme music himself, which he banged out on his piano in less than 30 minutes— a melody he anticipated earned him somewhere between $70-$80 million, or what Merv dismissively referred to as "cabana boy tip money." [National Post]

"After TMZ's, er, scoop about Billy's crappy pick-up habits, the once mullet-ed Cyrus must have felt the pressure building around his recent indecent shortcomings, as he was spotted sackin' a fresh doodie in his Toluca Lake neighborhood over the weekend." [TMZ]

Continuing its award-winning series of segments on recent Britney Spears hit-and-run victims (both sexual and vehicular), Access Hollywood spotlights a CelebTV.com interview with the poor woman whose Mercedes was damaged when Spears decided to show off her parking skills to the throng of paparazzi waiting to assail her on a routine Petco run. She's clearly not as excited about her brush with Spears as the guy who had his fender bent in the Standard's hot tub, but maybe that's because she only got a glimpse of Spears' overexposed ladyflower instead of the little seen, intricately tattooed breasts she only flashes in more intimate settings.

There are perhaps no harder Monday mornings than the ones of mid-to-late August, when we all know we're showing up for work weeks where nothing interesting can possibly happen. Distract yourself from the drudgery with the weekend box office numbers, then put your head down and nap until Friday afternoon:

· Lindsay Lohan gives rehab a third try in Utah, where she has a chance run-in with an operative. Lohan Family Memories, courtesy of their former bodyguard. Just the fucks. The fabled Last Pizza Box turns up on eBay.
· Endeavor sheds 25% of its unwanted fat. Ari Emanuel spreads some Summer Global Discovery among UCLA's student body.
· New Line tries and fails to learn from its Snakes on a Plane mistakes.
· This sex doll is playing Ryan Gosling's love interest. How's your career going?
· The Week in Spector: Michael Bay takes the stand. Gun hostage #5 is allowed to testify. A field-trip to the crime scene. Lily the Great Dane.
· Big Brother is watching you, and you appear to hate Jews.
· "No seriously, dudes, she was totally topless and sucked-face like a feisty piranha! Hell YEAH, I tapped that!"
· Jake Gyllenhaal still looking for that special script to snuggle up with during the cold, WGA-strike winter.
· Charlie Sheen accuses Denise Richards of asking for some make-up sperm.
· Michelle Pfeiffer has a trouble keeping track of her googly-eyed past.
· Courtney Love's weight is a matter of great importance.
· American Idol editors to make us choke on "Baby Idol" coverage.
· The Real World returns to L.A., where its housemates will make sure to recycle the beer cups they accidentally vomit into.

Friday
· Music round-up: 400 Blows at the Troubadour; Great Northern at Spaceland; Rilo Kiley at All Star Lanes in Eagle Rock.
· William Gibson read from his new novel, Spook Country, at Vroman's.
· We're pretty sure this one's self-explanatory: the Los Angeles Beer Chug Championships and Drunken Spelling Bee (featuring Neil Hamburger) takes over the Met Theater. You haven't lived until you've seen a guy stop to vomit in the middle of trying to spell "peristalsis."

Just when the double matrimonial punch of License to Wed and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry threatened to exhaust every conceivable, nuptial-themed pun, comes yet another disastrous-summer-comedy topic for North America's headline writers to tackle: Yes, Daddy Day Camp might mark a nadir in the career of Oscar-winner and Roscoe's Everyday Hero Cuba Gooding, Jr., as well as an inauspicious beginning for Kevin Arnold's big screen directing career, but for the scribe who came up with the line, "Gitmo likely more fun than this camp," we think this Murphyless sequel just might have inspired them to a new career best. Some more highlights from the Daddy Day Camp opening day review files:

So distraught was one of our readers after watching the heartbreaking, lightly scripted Two Coreys moment where Corey Feldman devastates Corey Haim with news that a straight-to-video sequel to Lost Boys would be going forward without him (hell, even the Lesser Frog Brother probably got a call) that our compassionate operative immediately took to Craigslist to try and find the wounded Haim some companionship to get him through this difficult time. And Craigslist, that online lamp inhabited by millions of anonymous genies ready to fulfill even the most outlandish of wishes, predictably yielded help:

The folks at the PlasmaSplasm blog have alerted us to an ongoing and altogether unpleasant issue over at the AMC theaters at Century City. Apparently, an eye-moistening stink—which they've described alternately as "foot sweat," "dog ass," and "like someone soaked a bog-mummy in Killian's and left it in a toaster oven"—permeates the theatres' basement. When their enjoyment of The Bourne Ultimatum was recently ruined by the malodorous fumes, they approached an AMC manager to find out exactly what was being done to rid the megaplex's flagship of the funk of forty-thousand years:

Any guy insensitive enough to the tastes of his fellow bar patrons to karaoke a Coldplay song deserves whatever beating he gets. The victim in question is just lucky that the girl didn't have a broken bottle of Bud Light handy to finsih the job. [TSG]

We still feel terrible about the cheap shot we took at Bea Arthur yesterday, a legendary actress who, for all we know, deserves placement on the controversial list in question no more than Golden Girls castmate Rue McClanahan.

You know who'll be really excited to find out that Jeremy Piven is doing a series of shoe ads? This guy. We just hope he doesn't finish himself off before he gets to the part about what size Piven wears. [LifeLine Live]

This week's sponsors are dead-sexy, insatiable, and, most importantly, utterly discreet—once they've had their way with us in a hot tub, there's no way they'd blab about it to Access Hollywood. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and get a turn in the jacuzzi, see this page.

· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Five Lions, Zero Ideas Edition: With Transformers breaking so many nonsequel box office records this summer, it was only a matter of time before someone put Voltron, the other 80s cartoon/toy series about robots that do cool, transforming-related stuff (no offense to Gobots)—into the adaptation pipeline.[Variety]
· In a tear-soaked promotion ceremony that begins with some lucky trainees tossing coffee in the faces of a new crop of mailroom clerks and ends with the official awarding of their golden shark fins, ICM elevates four staffers to agent status. Oh, happy day! [THR]
· Stardust director Matthew Vaughn will do the feature adaptation of Marvel comic book Thor, the musclebound deity with the nicest hair in all of Norse mythology. [Variety]
· NBC Universal might be trying to buy Oxygen, but Oprah and her group of investors might be turning up their nose at anything less than the $3 billion of "BET money" Viacom paid for that network. [THR]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Diddling Bruce Lee Edition: Warner Independent plans a noirish remake of Enter the Dragon. [Variety]

We're reluctant to even share with you this sad clip from The Two Coreys, A&E's attempt at catching up with conjoined Tiger Beat fantasy-duo Haim and Feldman since their spectacular career flameouts of the late 80s. In it, Feldman is forced to deliver the difficult news that the sequel to the movie that originally introduced the lifelong friends—The Lost Boys 2: Return to Lost Boys Island: An Interactive Sing n' Say DVD Adventure—has been rushed into production. But while Corey F. has been approached by producers for a cameo, Corey H. had not—a fact that hits the beret-sporting former teen idol hard, as he comes to realize that his limited acting gifts will never again be required (outside of highly canned reality shows that rely on the enduring entertainment value of observing wash-ups in their native habitat).

Even though we never did finish that MBA and some crucial data are missing from the chart (it's like The Tuxedo and The Medallion never existed!), we think we understand what Var's trying to say about Jackie Chan's American movie career: Without the support of a certain visionary filmmaker and a high-pitched, fast-talking sidekick, he's just one more Jennifer Love Hewitt vehicle away from domestic obscurity.

This item on the upsetting size and location of the bowel movements of Billy Ray Cyrus's Malamute certainly signals the end of days. Look busy: the Four Horsemen are saddling up, and they'll soon be harvesting our souls with their infernal pooper scoopers. [TMZ]