While the German government long ago named acting legend and adult-contemporary pop idol David Hasselhoff its Honorary Chancellor for Cultural Affairs in recognition of his many contributions to the arts, it has largely ignored the work of onetime international megastar Tom Cruise because of his controversial association with Scientology, a faith they narrow-mindedly refuse to recognize as an official religion, even though it has provided many generous American celebrities with a safe place in which to charitably invest their excess wealth. In addition to this ongoing and profound institutional slight, the government is now refusing to allow Cruise's latest movie, Valkyrie, the story of a WWII plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, to film at their military sites, denying exacting director Bryan Singer the Teutonic verisimilitude required to properly execute his cinematic vision:

While we know that it does no one any real good to post notices about the technical difficulties that occasionally prevent us from serving your Grazerhead-related needs in a timely fashion, it nonetheless makes us feel better to let you know that a problem with the evil voodoo-box that holds our blog posts hostage until a proper offering of fresh poultry is made has hobbled us for the last three hours or so. But the required chickens have now been slaughtered, so things should again function properly, and our regular posting schedule will resume shortly.

In a suspiciously incomprehensible promotional performance that recalls Paula Abdul's finest, power-napping junket work on behalf of American Idol, hunky TV doctor and former Full House "cool uncle" John Stamos slurred his way through an ER press appearance in Australia yesterday. The Daily Telegraph reports that the actor and his publicist jointly ascribed his inability to clearly articulate his thoughts on his still-vital relationship with the Olsen Twins to a brain-clouding cocktail of coffee abuse and jetlag, an explanation the paper cynically dismisses by noting that Stamos has "been in Sydney since Thursday." Through the magic of the internets, a worldwide system of info-tunnels through which images of a famous person's every misstep can be instantly disseminated, you can enjoy a clip of the interview, deciding for yourself whether the flack's diagnosis of Stamos's rare Delayed, Caffeine-Enhanced Time Zone Readjustment Syndrome is a valid one.

· Aaron Sorkin returns to Broadway with The Farnsworth Invention, a play about the birth of television, the deliciously flawed storytelling medium he recently sought to redeem with a little-seen primetime serial about the life-or-death stakes involved in producing a weekly sketch comedy show. [Variety]
· Thomas Haden Church is in negotiations to join Sandra Bullock in All About Steve, a romantic comedy that should reinvigorate the moribund genre by focusing on the previously unseen pairing (we think?) of a lady who writes crosswords and a CNN cameraman. [THR]
· Michael Moore's Sicko sells out the single NY screen on which it debuted, bringing in $70,000 over the weekend. [Variety]
· The Agent Dance, Abbreviated Mid-Level Actresses We Can't Get Excited About Edition: Heroes' Hayden Panettiere signs with WMA, while Julia Stiles hooks up with ICM. [Variety, THR]
· Cartoon Network and Hasbro are co-producing a new Transformers animated series, which will reimagine the property as a "superheroes story" with robots featuring "a lot more human qualities, allowing kids to identify with the characters" they will soon mindlessly consume in an all-new toy line. [THR]

Shortly after fainting from delight from reading the phrases "Brett Ratner is set to direct," "Brian Grazer is producing," and "film about the life of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner" contained in the lede of today's Variety story on the progress of a Hef biopic, a quick-thinking intern revived us with smelling salts, allowing us to read about how Hollywood's most lovable fauxteur and its leading, newly single superproducer have come to team up on the dream project. Reports Var:

Rather than get bogged down in rehashing how Paris Hilton's alleged $100,000 dalliance with Barbara Walters and disputed $1 million flirtation with NBC's Meredith Vieira ulitmately resulted in an unpaid chat with basic cable's most popular, semi-mummified inquisitor, we turn you over to CNN.com's Story Highlights box to get you up to speed on the venue change for the Hilton's post-jail soul-baring. She's agreed to one of Larry King's legendary softballings (set those TiVos for 6 p.m. PST Wednesday night), in which we expect the noted underpreparer to lead off the proceedings with something along the lines of, "So, Paris, I hear you've been away on vacation for a month, and everyone's angry about it for some reason. Also, didn't you recently die of an overdose in Florida? Help me out here," before nodding off for a quick nap as the reformed socialite can details her compassionate plan to open a halfway house to ease the difficult transition of other unfairly incarcerated celebrities back into their regular clubgoing routines.

As invigorating as an hourlong, cold Monday morning shower following two sleepless days of binge drinking, your weekend box office numbers:

· Innovative assistants' health benefits are canceled, then are hastily restored in the ensuing shitstorm.
· Paris: The Return: WeHo braces. The $1 million interview. Behind the $1 million interview. Death of a $1 million interview.
· Evan Almighty increasingly looking like it will need a bussed-church-group miracle this weekend.
· Jerry Seinfeld works blue, but the bee-rape material falls flat.
· Ben Silverman passes his drug test!
· Isaiah Washington has not yet begun to fight.
· Things you may not have known about John Travolta: He fancies a wasp's body and turns into a bat when the sun goes down.
· TMZ leaks If I Did It.
· A real, live movie director turns to Craigslist for his red carpet arm-candy needs.
· Brad Grey is testing the single waters.
· CanadaWatch: Kristy Swanson ices Lloyd Eisler's wife. Justice Scalia hearts Jack Bauer. Kiki Cohen marries rich.
· Julia Roberts' agent overheard quietly muttering to myself, "Great, now I have 10% of another fucking baby."
· Bob Barker endorses spaying and neutering pets, and Rosie O'Donnell. Then recants.
· A glimpse of Indy.
· Things That Look Like Other Things: Vinnie Chase and Tony Clifton. Nancy Pelosi and The Creature.
· Benderspink Elevator Terror!

· The Japanese are developing a way to make model train sets even less fun than they already are.
· John Krasinski as the new Fletch? As long as it's not Braff, sure, we're on board.
· George Clooney, cooperative citizen of the quiet Italian lakeside town his tourist-attracting presence is slowly destroying.
· Gay Bomb: The Porno Flick.
· Paris is out on Tuesday. Look busy.

Breaking his silence about his controversial firing from Grey's Anatomy for at least the third time in the two weeks since ABC made showrunner Shonda Rhimes do their dirty work, Isaiah Washington granted an exclusive interview with KeithBoykin.com, further elaborating on yesterday's Houston Chronicle air-clearing about nemesis T.R. Knight's alleged role in orchestrating the actor's dismissal from TV's top-rated, hot-doctors-getting-it-on drama. Said Washington about Knight's behind-the-scenes machinations on the Grey's set:

The weekend of reckoning has finally arrived for Evan Almighty, aka The Most Expensive Comedy Story Ever Told, an occasion marked by dozens of nervous Universal executives kneeling before makeshift shrines and praying that their religious marketing partners are going to deliver the arkloads of Christians they promised. And while the reviews have not been kind, they have most certainly been creative, taking full advantage of the movie's biblical themes in trumpeting, amidst Almighty's zoological bounty, the arrival of the summer's biggest turkey. A smattering of memorable headlines:

Friday
· Music round-up: Sea Level Going Away Party with Division Day at Safari Sam's; Skinny Puppy at the Henry Fonda; Lady Sovereign at Avalon.
· Greg Proops elevates his legendary Chat Show to bonafide Summer Chat Spectacle with guests John C. Reilly, Drew Carey, and Aimee Mann at Largo.
· Join 1,000 of your best assistant pals at Vanguard, where an informal orgy of epic proportions will be hosted.
· The Wizard of Gore world premieres tonight at the LA Film Festival, featuring such recognizable names as Kip Pardue, Bijou Phillips, and Crispin Glover.
Saturday
· David Horvath, mastermind of those Uglydolls the kids love so much, discusses his new book, Bossy Bear, at Vroman's.
· You hardly need us to encourage you to pile into the Hollywood Forever cemetery for one of their summer movie screenings, but they'll be showing The Haunting, a selection that makes better use of the creepy venue than last week's choice, Rebel Without a Cause.
Sunday
· The Troubadour features the only double-bill that could surpass their Friday night Britney Fox/Enuff Znuff line-up: Janeane Garofalo and Patton Oswalt.
· What's that you say? More Crispin Glover items? Your wish is our command: What Is It? finishes up a three-night stand at the Egyptian.

In a full-page ad in today's Variety, Comerica Bank proudly announces the opening of its CAA Death Star branch, a long overdue amenity for any harried Creative Artists drone who found it terribly inconvenient to wander onto Avenue of the Stars to snatch the purses of unlucky pedestrians every time partner Bryan Lourd complained that his petty cash pocket felt "a little empty." While the branch will be open to the public, it will feature a set of services targeted towards drawing the agency's business: a ten percent fee will be deducted from all non-CAA ATM withdrawals and deposited into the company's corporate account, and the branch will feature a state-of-the-art, refrigerated vault, designed to keep all baby deposits fresh for up to a year, guaranteeing that their flesh will remain as tasty as the day they were first harvested from their Bugaboo strollers at the nearby Century City Mall.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and tell the world about the time Ari Gold and his giant, silver Lexus ruined the bohemian tranquility of your favorite Venice coffee house.

Somehow missing an obvious opportunity to invoke the burning of Rome in their exclusive on NBC's cancellation of the upcoming Paris Hilton's One Million Dollar Jailhouse Revelations Spectacular, TMZ declares the project "dead" based on reports relayed from the microscopic spies they injected into the heiress's bloodstream on the eve of her incarceration. The site claims that "no reason was given" for the abrupt move, but we suspect that the sudden appearance of a Fox helicopter dumping $25 million onto the property of Hilton's West Hollywood home figured in NBC's laudable decision to choose journalistic ethics over Nielsen-friendly sensationalism.

Eddie Murphy, who since his soul-crushing Oscar night disappointment has withdrawn inside a fortress of fat-lady-latex solitude and refused to accept visitors, has remained highly skeptical of claims made by former girlfriend Scary "When Can We Drop These Idiotic Nicknames Already" Spice (aka Melanie Brown) that the child she carried to term last April was his own. Now, Brown's camp is telling People that the result of Murphy's June 11 DNA test prove the baby is "110 percent" his:

As a wise man whose name we cannot recall once said, "There is no greater love than one between a web-log and the faceless corporations who wish to entice its readers with their products and services." So true, so true. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and bask in our unconditional affection, see this page

· Paramount Vantage just can't win with A Mighty Heart: They curl Angelina Jolie's hair and slather her in bronzer so she seems less Caucasian-y, and they catch shit. They invite the Council on American-Islamic Relations to co-sponsor a panel discussion on religious tolerance, and a Jewish activist likens it to "David Duke co-sponsoring 'Schindler's List.'" At least Jolie isn't pissing off reporters by asking them to sign waivers demanding they don't ask questions about her personal life, because they hardly need another headache. [Variety]
· On the bright side, Jolie's performance in the movie is already generating Oscar buzz. [THR]
· Exec VP of corporate communications Janet Hill is leaving Paramount after two eventful years of throwing herself upon the steady stream of hand-grenades lobbed at frequently embattled Paramount emperor Brad Grey. [Variety]
· TBS buys the rerun rights to My Name is Earl and The Office, reportedly paying $600k-$700k per episode of each series. [Variety]
· Fox hires former NUTS executive Laura Lancaster as head of drama development, giving her the mandate, "Please, for the love of fucking God—and we don't care how you do it—find us a show that will last longer than Drive." [Variety]

Let the networkwide party begin: today's Page Six reports that allegedly 420-friendly NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman has jumped over the last mellow-harshing hurdle erected by the killjoy suits of his parent corporation, finally taking- his company drug test:

There's a little less than a week to go before Bravo begins airing episodes of Hey Paula, the hotly anticipated reality show capturing the narcotized, eyebrow-waxing adventures of everyone's favorite eccentric Chihuahua lady, Paula Abdul. To hold you over, we offer a brief clip in which Access Hollywood host Billy Bush pays Paula a house call, impressively rattling off the names of several dozen of her rodent-sized companions, before The One They Call Tulip—famed patsy in the American Idol judge's recent nose-shattering mishap—trots onto his lap to deliver a virtuosic backwind concerto.