For people who gambled hundreds of dollars hoping that a series of area House of Blues concerts for mystery act The M+Ms would actually feature Britney Spears's triumphant return to live performance—some good news, and some bad. First the good: As San Diegans in attendance can attest, it was indeed the troubled pop star who had taken to the stage a mere two hours late (despite the best efforts of a speeding tour bus driver), where, accompanied by a quartet of background-dancing skankettes, she gyrated to familiar hits with a shapely figure that bore only a fleshy hint of her recently acquired rehab fifteen. Now the bad news:

Bay Area land baron George Lucas dropped by to chat with Conan O'Brien on last night's show from San Francisco, stoically enduring a procession of cheaply revised Star Wars characters meant to elicit a chuckle from a creator who wasted untold millions developing his own ridiculous affronts to the 'Star Wars' legacy. The unamused Lucas did offer a grudging thumbs-up to R2-Mr.T2 and seemed indifferent at best to Liposuctioned Jabba the Hut, but we think we detected a flash of annoyance at the appearance of Jewbacca, whose unexpected embrace of Judaism makes a mockery of the Wookiee's deep-seated faith in the Force.

If the number of full-page Variety and Hollywood Reporter suck-up ads purchased in one's honor on the day he receives Walk of Fame immortality is a reliable metric of an individual's popularity in the industry, then we could quickly conclude from a quick survey of recent star-on-a-dirty-sidewalk honorees that everyone in Hollywood is trying to get into Halle Berry's pants (in fairness, she did pretty much invite the whole town to get all up inside her), while no one but Warner Bros. would much mind if erstwhile hairstylist and Superman Returns producer Jon Peters decided to give up the moviemaking business and open a salon in Beverly Hills. Today's Page Six reports:

· We're number one! We're number one!
· RIP, Tom Poston. Couldn't they have gone with something a little better than "TV's clueless everyman"? At the very least, how about "TV's lovably clueless everyman"?
· A recovering Ebert speaks.
· Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields are really overdoing it with the BFF act. We get it, he's totally OK with her choice to use dangerous street drugs to treat her depression now.
· You see, it's funny because a bitch is a female dog. She's shopping for a dog! LOL.
· Toronto gets 999 Borats.

In a season of The View that gave us much to talk about, one of the most noteworthy appearances came when Danny DeVito staggered onto the set and was refreshingly upfront about the all-nighter he had pulled with George Clooney: "I knew it was the last seven limoncellos that were going to get me," he admitted, thus thrusting a heretofore marginally popular Italian lemon liqueur upon the world stage. Now, through a press release, Danny proudly announces his own line of artisanal, cirtrusy hangover-inducers:

When first we viewed these photos (obtained by trusty Intern Kate and a shutterbug sidekick) of Saturday night's Assistant Beer Pong Tournament at Melrose Ave. binge-drinking mecca El Guapo, the event seemed as drunkenly care-free as we'd expected, carrying on the proudly crapulent tradition of the throwdowns of the previous two years. But after learning that the cherished Beer Pong Trophy had been snatched before the champions from Team Gold Circle could rightfully claim it, these images now take on an added poignancy as reminders of a simpler, more innocent time, when people could connect by chugging cheap beer and screaming at each other across folding tables instead of a telephone line. Damn you, anonymous trophy-jacker, for tainting the desk-slave equivalent of the Super Bowl with your selfish disregard for something so pure.

· Music round-up: Mastodon with Cursive at the Wiltern; Rufus Wainwright at the El Rey; The Supersuckers at the Viper Room; Sloan and Sea Wolf at the Troubadour.
· Serious Actress Sarah Polley is now Serious Director Sarah Polley; see her feature debut, Away From Her, at LACMA followed by a Q&A about her move behind the camera.
·American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes editor Molly O'Neill leads a panel on food writing at the Red Cat. Gourmet snacks will be served; we're sure they'll look the other way as you fill your pockets with goodies to be devoured back at home.

It's always a sad affair when the relationship between high-earning talent and their people sours to the point that litigation becomes necessary, but at least the lawyers for Handprint Entertainment, the management company currently suing Ghost Whisperer star Jennifer Love Hewitt for money they believe they're owed, are having some fun with it. In addition to the zingers about Hewitt "having troubles resolving unfinished business with the living" and "listening to the tortious whispers of her new manager" you can see excerpted above from the complaint posted at THR ESQ, there's also one claiming she "knows what she did last season" in not turning over the 10 percent the prodigiously breasted actress "racked"* up in commisions.

With the major studios about to release roughly five-thousand big-budget sequels (among them Pirates 3, Shrek the Third, Harry Potter the Fifth, Ocean's 13, Die Hard 4, and, of course, Fantastic Four 2: We'll Just Netflix 'Into the Blue' If We Want to Ogle Jessica Alba) into a marketplace so overcrowded with product that multiplex lobbies will be clogged like the streets of Calcutta from May until August, at least one "sure thing" is bound to bring in a disappointing™ number and have its executives contemplating a suicide pact rather than suffer the humiliation of having to explain what went wrong to the media. Since Spider-Man 3 might already be The Most Expensive Movie Ever Made, Slate wonders if it might be this summer's little web-slinging underachiever even if it shatters Aquaman's opening weekend record:

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) and tell everyone about the time you spotted Napoleon Dynamite doing comparative breast pump shopping.

NBC Universal reportedly paid $1 million for exclusive access to Dannielynn Hope Marshall Birkead, a deal that is now culminating in her Journey to America, as well as an honorary godfather title and round-the-clock blankey duty for Access Hollywood reporter Tony Potts:

· 3,000 attend the Spider-Man 3 Tribeca Film Festival premiere in Astoria, Queens, uncharitably described as "roughly the east coast equivalent of Van Nuys." We hope nobody from Var is planning any trips to that borough in the near future, as we fear for their safety after that slight. [Variety]
· The U.S. Trade Representative puts China and Russia on notice, naming the two nations as the world-leaders in copyright theft, and threatening them with visits from DVD-sniffing wonderdogs Lucky and Flo should they not demonstrate a commitment to stopping movie piracy. [THR]
· "Magic" screen test chemistry lands 26-year-old Australian unknown Luke Ford a key role in the next Mummy movie, a casting move that may allow Universal to jettison Brendan Fraser after this installment and continue the franchise with cheaper talent. [Variety]
· Steven Spielberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fox's Peter Chernin, Disney's Bob Iger, and dozens of others pull honorary pallbearer duty at Jack Valenti's Washington, DC funeral. [THR]
· Peter Jackson is shopping around his spec adaptation of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones; predictably left out of the bidding war fun: New Line, whom Jackson is suing for untold millions in Lord of the Rings royalties he claims to be owed. [Variety]
· In a move meant to recognize the breadth and quality of the original programming that plays above its famous scrolling grid of television listings, the TV Guide Channel boldly rebrands as TV Guide Network. [THR]

Is there any better way to start one's day than with the discovery of a press release in one's inbox trumpeting the marriage of the Venezuelan renaissance man behind MTV's Yo Momma to the local outpost of the global TV production conglomerate responsible for popularizing the phrase, "Seacrest, out?" (Answer: Yes. Many.) Still, we feel the need to note the latest baffling developments in Wilmer Valderrama's death-proof career:

We've been so overcome with worry ever since we learned that an anonymous fiend had kidnapped the Assistant Beer Pong Tournament trophy from under the noses of dozens of intoxicated revelers on Saturday night that we haven't been able to sleep, eat, or even drink ourselves into the typical stupor we use to cope with emotional trauma. Finally, however, we've been afforded a glimmer of hope that the trophy will find its way back to its rightful caretakers, as the event's organizers have issued this defiant (if Ransom-plagiarized) statement announcing their intention to turn the entire assistant underclass into a bloodthirsty legion of bounty hunters:

Because we are contractually obligated to pass along all shaky video footage involving actors publicly indulging their frustrated dreams of rock stardom, we spotlight this clip of Scarlett Johansson singing back-up for The Jesus and Mary Chain at this past weekend's Coachella festival, a performance that satisfied the Lost in Translation star's longtime wish to sing a single, off-key phrase in front of thousands of music fans so delirious from a day spent baking in triple-digit heat that her presence on stage would barely be noticed.

We've long felt that the only thing standing between extravagantly talented actress and criminally mislabeled "party girl" Lindsay Lohan and a record-setting string of Oscar wins is the ongoing and coordinated efforts of the tabloid media to destroy her once-unimpeachable artistic credibility; for example, had the press not developed an untoward fixation with the sudden shrinkage and then re-bazooming of her her breasts, her subtle work in Herbie: Fully Loaded almost certainly would have received the awards attention it deserved. Lohan confirms our theory about the media's frustrating interference with her professional development:

· Thighmaster Records proudly announces the forthcoming greatest hits package from Andy Bernard, The Office's beloved rageoholic crooner.
· As fun as standing in a field and roasting in 100-degree weather sounded to us, we somehow never got around to buying tickets for Coachella. But here are a shitload of videos from the festival, and a link to LAist's exhaustive coverage.
· Haley Joel Osment gets behind the wheel again.
· A former American Idol contestant is in legal trouble. Must be Monday!
· Lionsgate will find out if a post-Virginia Tech America is ready for some fresh torture porn.

For a third straight year, controversy has rocked the annual Assistant Beer Pong Tournament*, an ostensibly peaceful affair aimed at promoting unity with the local call-rolling community through the reliably combustible combination of friendly competition and binge-drinking. A little while ago, an anonymous e-mailer identified only as "Beer Pong" (what this fiend lacks in creativity he makes up in brazenness) informed us that he has "hijacked" the trophy earned by upstart Gold Circle on Saturday night when they defeated the evil minions of CAA (we're told their bosses forced them to undergo experimental surgery to equip them with secondary livers to ensure victory), a hostage that will be returned only after an undisclosed ransom is paid by the event's organizers. We pass along this photo of the kidnapping victim to assist in its speedy recovery; should you see the trophy on your assistant's desk and wonder why he's suspiciously short on details of the supposed heroics that brought him the championship, please contact the authorities immediately.

The testimony in the Phil Spector case took an unforeseen hiatus today, as defense attorney Bruce "Murder on Their Minds" Cutler has fallen ill. (In other news, high stress and hopelessness have been proven to wreak havoc on the immune system.) While we wait for the next disturbing chapter to play out on the witness stand, Radar Online provides a handy chronological compendium of half a century's worth of Phil Spector's patented brand of violent, gun-brandishing batshit insanity. It makes for stunning reading, beginning with a possibly formative 1958 incident in which the producer was urinated on by four pranksters in a public restroom, continuing to his days of fatherhood in the 1970s, when he'd allegedly lock his sons in their rooms, occasionally allowing them out so he could blindfold them and subject them to humiliating sex acts. Here's an entry about former wife Ronnie Spector née Bennett, the lead singer of The Ronettes:

Recovering perfection addict Courtney Love (who recently combined forces with one of the world's most talented airbrush artists for this NSFW nude portfolio in Pop Magazine) has told the music website Spinner.com she's tired of holding on to Kurt Cobain's mildew-gathering collection of grungy sweaters, flannel shirts, novelty sunglasses, and the like, and has decided to put the entire collection up for auction at Christie's: