· Music round-up: Elf Power at Spaceland; Velvet Revolver at Avalon; The Britney Spears Pop Implosion at the House of Blues.
· Obscure Canadian sketch comedy outfit Kids in the Hall kick off a four-night showcase at the Steve Allen Theater aimed at finally getting them some attention from local agents.
· Screen legend Kirk Douglas will read from his latest memoir, Let's Face It, at Book Soup. Note: He'll only be signing this book, so leave that authentic Spartacus armor at home, gladiator-film fanboys.

A week ago, Page Six offered us a preview of Russell Crowe's "Ode to a Beautiful Mind," a love poem commissioned by Time to commemorate creative soulmate Brian Grazer's inclusion on the magazine's list of 100 most influential people, excerpting a stirring verse celebrating the superproducer's otherworldy soul-hearing and alchemist powers. The complete version of Crowe's heartsong is now available on Time.com, but because we fear reproducing it in full would be too much beauty for any of us to bear, we offer only its graceful final stanzas:

With our previous Defamer Job Board highlight posts focusing on humiliation, physical abuse, and thoughts of homicide, perhaps it's time to stress the positive reasons for starting the search for your next gig. Such as: Think about how good you'll feel once you never have to fill another Valtrex prescription for your boss again! See? That's a much happier thought with which to begin clicking through this week's featured listings:

As we approach the end of yet another memorable cycle of American Idol (fare thee well, dreamy-eyed Chris and dreamy-eared Phil!), the country braces for the most devastating rite in the communal search for our next exalted Karaoke Superstar: the singing of the Idol single, in which the two finalists are handed microphones, ordered at gunpoint into a death sphere set up on the stage of the Kodak theater, and are required to sing specially commissioned, unfathomably horrendous songs until someone's head explodes into a cloud of skull and brain fragments. (In the case of a tie, the second runner-up is crowned.)

· Rory and Lorelai will banter adorably no more forever: The CW announces that Gilmore Girls will air its final episode on May 15. We're not too sad, as we're sure the network has alternative MILF-related programming ready to take its place in the Fall. [Variety]
· Chris Von Goetz and Kevin Crotty are named co-heads of the TV lit department at ICM., which had been leaderless since the merger with BWCS. All we really care about: How nice are their shoes? Are we talking Whitesell nice or WMA nice? [THR]
· George Clooney and producing BFF Grant Heslov will co-write a dramedy, about how the CIA used Hollywood to stage a fake movie project (which was so well-faked Var and THR wrote about it) to sneak hostages out of Tehran in 1979, for Warner Brothers. [Variety]
· 28.1 million Idol fans tuned in to watch the final performances of The One Who Thinks He's Justin Timblerlake—As If! and The One Now Free From Being Forced To Wear Funny Hats By Cruel Wardrobe Assistants on Wednesday night. [THR]
· HBO will air a concert featuring the real Timberlake (suck, it Richardson!), its first one in four years. [Variety]

While Extra seems to have been first to e-press with the story of David Hasselhoff's self-produced "cry for help" documentary, we've been informed that the actual video of the actor's darkest moments is exclusive to rival Entertainment Tonight, which has quickly posted the above teaser-trailer to alleviate any confusion over the footage with which ET will ruin millions of family dinners. We can only hope that this ugly custody dispute doesn't hamper the troubled Hasselhoff's attempts at putting his life back together through the redemptive power of syndicated TV programming.

Paris Hilton has faced her share of adversity in the past, but nothing that couldn't be overcome by the snapping open of a compact to remind the wonky-eyed reflection therein, "They're all just jealous, 'cuz you're so hot. Text me, bestie!" But Hilton's latest troubles pit her against a foe so formidable, we doubt even a self-affirmation/nose-powdering will provide solace. We speak, of course, of the L.A. City Attorney, who has filed papers demanding she serve a month-and-a-half for violating probation on a DUI charge:

[UPDATE: It seems that no one has the exclusive on the video. More on this confusing nonsense here.] A frenzied series of press releases arriving in our inbox this morning have alerted us to Extra's latest "get," a "cry for help" video in which "a shirtless and extremely intoxicated" David Hasselhoff "sits on the floor of a Las Vegas hotel room so out of it that he is unable to feed himself a hamburger," footage reportedly commissioned by Hasselhoff so that he could see what he looks like when he's too drunk to enjoy a room service snack, a rock-bottom moment in any celebrity addict's life.

This morning will surely bring disappointment to those excitedly awaiting the results of the bold pilot-season experiment represented by ABC's Cavemen, the network's attempt to synthesize the best elements of auto-insurance advertising and situational comedy into a groundbreaking, hybrid infotainment form: according to a review posted on Ain't It Cool, ABC's half-hour treatment fails to live up to the thrilling promise of Geico's inspired source material. An excerpt:

Recently deadbeat-shedding and unnecessarily rehabbed pop star Britney Spears, as you certainly are aware, will take her comeback tour to the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip tonight, a performance that could be more hotly anticipated only if it was revealed that Jesus Christ himself would be taking a place among her background dancers for a couple of intricately choreographed numbers, then reascending to Heaven during the musical crescendo of "Toxic." The reviews of her first attempt at retaking the stage in San Diego following her extended hiatus to explore her various baby-dropping and head-shaving ambitions were middling at best; things were apparently no better at Wednesday night's show in (please avert your eyes, it's almost too terrible to say) Anaheim, where phones and cameras were confiscated so that Spears's lackluster efforts could not be recorded and archived for all time on the YouTubes. People describes last night's mercifully brief pop carnage:

· Though pretty straightforward, this video's title, Drunk Bill Murray Almost Fights a Guy, still oversells things a bit: The video's so shaky that it's hard to tell if that's actually Murray, what his level of intoxication might be, or how close to fisticuffs the New Orleans encounter came. Still: Blurry video of a famous guy doing stuff! Probably! That's gotta be worth 41 seconds of your time.
·Brett Ratner's reveals his simple, yet effective, strategy for dealing with paparazzi who want to take pictures of the chicks he's nailing: payoffs.
· We don't care what that e-mail says, we still think that's Zach Gailifianakis in the Comcast "Spider-Man-Obsessed Roommate" commercial.
· Hey, unicorns!

Radar has enticed a "well-placed spy on the A-list" to file the occasional, anonymous dispatch detailing the cartoonish (but, sadly, all too factual) superficiality of our fair city, and while their embedded cultural reporter's initial installment offers nothing more surprising than the revelation that low-level celebrities can be found partying in the homes of unknown hosts who are annoyingly anal about their expensive hardwood floors, we are provided a fascinating glimpse into the world of high-level agent footwear. Names are named!

The timeless Hollywood power struggle—studio wants a prestige picture that will appeal to as many moviegoers as possible, director just wants to get his fucking vision on the screen, if you don't mind—is on full display with Warner Bros. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Suffering at points in its post-production phase from a running time as unwieldy as its title, and a general divergence of above-the-line creative opinion, the upcoming Brad Pitt Western has been gathering dreaded Bad Buzz, the LAT reports, as the cavalry is being called in to oversee the cobbling together of alternate, more test-score-friendly cuts:

· Music round-up: Elvis Costello at the House of Blues; Teddy Bears at the El Rey; a fancy-sounding Evening With Chris Cornell at Avalon.
· Rue McClanahan, the second-most doable of the Golden Girls (we're not saying who's first) signs her memoir, My First Five Husbands and the Ones Who Got Away, at Book Soup. (OK, it's Sophia. We have a thing for Sicilians.)
· AFI's music documentary screening series brings Rock the Bells, the story of a concert promoter's quest to book Wu-Tang Clan for a music festival in 2004, to the ArcLight. Q&A to follow.

Defamer is committed to informing its currently unemployed, comedy-writing readers about exciting job opportunities being made available outside of the traditional TV-staffing-season process, and so we pass along this painstakingly detailed Craiglist cattle-call for our town's funniest, least annoying, and most blindly trusting scribes. Sure, trying to staff a union show on CL seems like a strategy only marginally less suspicious than sneaking up behind anyone tapping away at a laptop at a local Starbucks and ensnaring them in an enormous butterfly net, but hey—breaking into the sitcom game has never been tougher, so why not take a potentially fatal risk to get that first gig? An excerpt:

A hangover-nursing Sunday afternoon and A&E's Sons of Hollywood marathon seemed to us like a marriage made in heaven, and in just a few short hours we were able to catch up with the utterly banal yet curiously engrossing misadventures of L.A.-based childhoood friends David Weintraub (the brains), Sean "ben Rod" Stewart (definitely not the brains), and Randy "ben Aaron" Spelling (good-natured heir and failing actor). We've already offered a taste of the boys' patended brand of knuckleheaded dysfunctionality with this spun-sugar disagreement spinning out of control. Now, hot off the editing bay of Gawker Media digital video artisan Alex Goldberg, we bring you this entertaining montage of Stupid Shit Sean Said, including a classic exchange with "spiritual advisor" Baba G. over a family dinner that features some priceless Candy Spelling reaction shots.

Perhaps afraid that the Peter Jackson spec adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones that was offered up for a studio bidding war on Monday might find its way into the hated, LOTR royalty-withholding clutches of New Line and be rushed into a competing production before someone ponies up eight figures for the rights, Jackson's lawyers have issued a friendly cease-and-desist note to an industry assistant tracking board that is sharing the script with its members. The c-and-d is now making the rounds on other tracking boards and popping up in inboxes around town, letting everyone know that Bones is for pre-approved eyes only:

Embattled Grey's Anatomy actor Isaiah Washington may have appeared to have mostly recovered from his rageoholic ways as he gawked sweetly at swollen testicles on a recent episode (ABC's claiming it was the guy's head, but—paging Dr. McFreudy—we still see a pair of hairy cantaloupes), but apparently his gayhab work is not yet done:

· After shattering a number of box office records in Asia, Spider-Man 3 is now making a mockery of European ticket-buying benchmarks. Based on this preliminary data, we now predict a $400 million opening weekend in America, kicking off an eventual $3 billion domestic run. [Variety]
· We much prefer THR's "Tom Poston, master of sidekicks" obit headline to yesterday's weak "clueless everyman" effort. [THR]
· Emma Roberts will star "as a spoiled Malibu princess" in the Universal comedy Wild Child; accusations that Auntie Julia somehow got her the role by promising Universal a favor to follow. [Variety]
· NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg honors late MPAA copyright enforcer Jack Valenti's legacy by announcing a "three-pronged" attack on the city's movie pirates. [THR]
· Still giddy over the huge piles of cash Frank Miller's 300 generated for them, Warner Bros. options the rights to his graphic novel Ronin. They plan to shoot in the same CGI-heavy way, hoping that hordes of well-muscled "gangs of mutants and thugs" with computer-enhanced six-packs will prove as wildly popular as the first project's sweaty, ripped Greeks. [Variety]

With Katie Holmes' recent hiring of her "own" publicity team, we knew it wouldn't be long before the efforts of their Operation Make Katie Seem Like Any Other Totally Normal, Non-Imprisoned Working Actress started to appear in the tabloids. Phase One of the campaign is appearing in the new issue Life&Style, which apparently involves reinforcing the strength of Holmes and Cruise's relationship through public ambivalence about some harmless, on-the-job flirting: