· Music round-up; Andrew Bird at Amoeba; My Brightest Diamond at the Troubadour; Cornelius at the El Rey.
· Illusionist Criss Angel (surely you're familiar with his fine work on A&E) will be at Book Soup to sign Mindfreak: Secret Revelations from the Master of Surreality; warning: minds will be freaked and panties melted. Come prepared for both.
· The Groundlings are throwing an all-star charity show to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society; among those scheduled to appear: Jai "The One Who Never Had A Real Job To Do on Queer Eye" Rodriguez, MadTV's Phil LaMarr, Mindy "Frau Farbissina" Sterling, Michael McDonald, and...many more than we care to retype on this list. More info here.

Never once in the above clip (thanks to Deadspin for bringing this joy into our lives on a Monday afternoon) do we see any booze cross suspiciously enthusiastic action star and proud New Jerseyian Bruce Willis' lips during this interview at a break in yesterday's Nets-Raptors game, so it would unfair to attribute his slurry, semicoherent endorsements of both his companion's promising career and his new movie to alcohol intoxication; clearly, his potshot at Cybill Shepherd, his seemingly insane claim that this summer's Die Hard sequel is better than the original, and his "Yippee-kai-yay, motherfucker!" sign-off were fueled by the excitement of playoff basketball, and not by enough $14 jumbo Bud Lites to kill an actor of half his tolerance.

Daniel Edwards, the Brooklyn-based sculptor who gifted the world with works featuring a crowning Britney Spears splayed on a bearskin rug, and the gilded "first poop" of Miracle Baby Suri Cruise, is back again. This time, he turns his celeb-obsessed chisel to Hollywood's supreme scenewhore, in an anti-DWI work entitled "Paris Hilton Autopsy":

Sad news: Trader Vic's—Beverly Hills's Polynesian cocktail temple and a cherished relic of swinging, bygone Hollywood era—may have finally served its last mai tais and pupu platters, according to e-mails flooding Eater LA's inbox:

· Frank Langella will reprise his stage role as Nixon for Imagine's big screen version of Peter Morgan's celebrated play, Frost/Nixon. The casting suggests director Ron Howard will remain true to the source material, though that doesn't completely rule out Akiva Goldsman being brought in for an eleventh-hour rewrite that incorporates several make-believe characters that exist only in the disgraced President's paranoid imagination. [Variety]
· In further Imagine news, Ridley Scott signs on to direct Russell Crowe in Nottingham, the "Robin Hood but where the Sheriff's the good guy" movie, hoping the two can reignite Gladiator, not-so-much A Good Year, magic. [Variety]

Last week, Heroes co-EP Bryan Fuller said in an interview that the character of Zach (actor Thomas Dekker) was supposed to have come out as a gay teen, but that his management, concerned that it might affect his casting as young John Connor in a Terminator TV series, balked at the prospect and pulled him from the show. A Defamer reader forwarded us Dekker's own response to the controversy, posted in a MySpace bulletin. An excerpt:

Hoping to reach the next generation of politically minded entertainment industry influencers who one day might achieve enough success to throw him lavish, billionaire-courting fund-raisers at their Carbon Beach compounds and kneecap his rivals in the pages of the NY Times, the Obamamania Campaign Hummer pulled up to the valet stand at Boulevard3 on Saturday night, an attempt to reach Hollywood up-and-comers in the environment in which they're most comfortable: a club the LAT describes as a "one-stop shop for conspicuous nightlife consumption. Variety reports on the scene at Barack Obama's weekend trip to Sunset Boulevard:

Take some time to review the weekend box office numbers, the only thing that can temporarily distract you from your Garfieldian dread of Monday mornings:

· It's not like she's really leaving! She's coming back to do one-hour specials on autism and depression and child abuse and stuff! Maybe we're just in denial.
· Trouble at the Baldwins': 8½ leaks. Parting ways with CAA. The Dora connection. NBC stands by their embattled series lynchpin. Opening up on The View.
· Jack Valenti dies.
· SpectorWatch: They had murder on their minds!
· Agencies jockey for space around Century City food court's In-N-Out Baby.
· Ivy League Ice Cream Day at ABC.
· Val Kilmer's bowel-voiding needs met on set of Echo Park movie shoot.
· What really went down with Heroes' gay-seeming non-gay.
· What really went down with American Idol's gay-seeming non-gay.
· "Yo— Fox Earth Day: Suck my tailpipe."
· Brett Ratner available to judge your parody and sincere filmmaking efforts.
· Joe Francis has 35 days to think about what it is he's done.
· "I'm not drinking any fucking Merlot, y'all!"
· And finally: Hawking flies.

· Spinal Tap reunites, with semi-amusing results.
· There's nothing at all weird about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' marriage, says official Scientology spokesfriend Jenna Elfman.
· Tracy Morgan to saw off own foot, go on bender.
· Thora Birch finds the idea that her dad tried to direct her sex scene absurd. That's not how movie sets work, silly tabloids!
· Warning: Under no circumstances should you refer to Hunter Tylo's rack as shelf-like, as that apparently angers her lawyers. Also: Who's Hunter Tylo?

NBC's website quietly brings good—nay, great, shout-Huzzah!-to-the-heavens-and-slaughter-the-fatted-calf—news to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip's legion of affluent, upscale, and long-suffering fans: The show will return to the airwaves on Thursday, May 24, presumably to burn off the remainder of its first-season episodes, just one day after the end of May sweeps and a week after the network is expected to announce a Sorkin-free Fall lineup at the upfronts. Of course, maverick NBC president Kevin Reilly could shock the world by taking the stage in NY and announcing he's giving the show another 22 episodes, explaining to a room full of disbelieving advertisers, "Come on, it's Aaron Fucking Sorkin! He made The West Wing! I know this sounds crazy now, but If you'd read his breakdown for the second season, where Matt and Danny decide to run in the presidential primary against Obama and Hillary, you'd understand. It's going to work this time, I can really feel it."

Friday
· The Not For Tourists guide is throwing itself a party from 6-9 pm to celebrate its new Los Angeles edition at Footsie's. Free cans of PBR and free guidebooks if you get there early enough.
· Get up close and personal (but not too close! These are stars!) to Erik Estrada, Tom Bosley, Butch Patrick, Henry Winkler, and many, many more famous people of similar quality at the Hollywood Collectors and Celebrities Show at the Burbank Airport Marriott Hotel & Convention Center, today and Saturday.
· Music round-up: It's Gwen Stefani (and more importantly, Lady Sovereign) at the Gibson Amphitheatre; The Cinematics at Spaceland; Grant Lee Phillips at the Troubadour.
Saturday
· Wondernig where you can see a musical about Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's doctor/scientist/poet grandfather? At the Machine Project, that's where.
· Meltdown Comics on Sunset hosts a tournament of War on Terror: The Boardgame, this Saturday and Sunday. The designers of the game will be on hand to make sure participants pay proper respect to their creation.
Sunday
· Want to learn how to put up your own website, all free-like? Then I NEED A WEBSITE RIGHT NOW sounds like it may interest you.
· More music: Travis at the Henry Fonda; Arctic Monkeys at the Troubadour.

A final attempt by Anna Nicole Smith's tenacious, pug-faced mother Virgie Arthur to prevent paternity sweepstakes winner Larry Birkhead from returning to the U.S. with daughter Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern Birkhead (according to her reissued birth certificate!) has been shot down by a Bahamian court:

Having concluded that her popular drag persona wasn't satisfactorily scratching her transgendered itch, Alexis Arquette opted to kick it up a notch and commit to the whole sex-change shebang. Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother, premiering Monday at the Tribeca Film Festival, is the story of that transformation. But, as she told reporters at yesterday's press conference, all the juicy stuff about the actual surgery has ended up, for lack of a better expression, on the cutting room floor:

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 ran your fingers along an apologetically drunk Kiefer Sutherland's abs of steel.

Will & Grace creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan sued NBC Studios for (this might be a good time for any out-of-work sitcom writers to leave the room) $55 million in 2003, claiming the studio negotiated a substandard licensing fee for the series with its sister network. In a stunning turn of events, the judge tossed the verdict and canned the jury foreperson moments before the verdict was to be read:

Join us in celebrating the goodness of this week's sponsors, none of whom would ever berate a 7-year-old animated explorer via telephone. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and bring yourself riches that would make even the Sultan of Brunei's testicles retract in envy, see this page.

· Variety remembers recently deceased MPAA legend Jack Valenti, calling him "colorful," "charismatic," a "prime mover behind the movie ratings system," and the "industry's most ardent cheerleader." Also: "The silver-haired Valenti was a natty dresser and courtly gentleman who enjoyed using five-dollar words and arcane historical and literary allusions as he spoke out on numerous issues, all of which seemed to get him into a high lather." [Variety]
· The Reporter remembers Valenti as an "eloquent, high-level power broker" and recalls the "hump the hostess" anecdote of which we're so fond. [THR]
· In other Valenti news: His memoir, This Time, This Place, will still be released on June 5th, as planned. [Variety]
· American Idol fans overlook the show's unspeakably inhumane gotcha! prank on eventual winner Jordin Sparks, donating $60 million to its Idol Gives Back charity drive so far. [THR]
· ABC rides a penis worm and a set of giant, deformed balls to a Thursday night win to kick off May sweeps. [Variety]

We're just going to be up front about this: We have absolutely no good reason to post the above photo, and we're not even going to bother casting Tim Blake Nelson in the Discovery Channel's Zero Gravity: The Incredible True Story of Stephen Hawking's 25 Seconds of Flight to give ourselves even the flimiest of Hollywood tie-ins as an excuse. On a magical Friday morning like this one, when anything seems possible, just knowing that even a 65-year-old genius astrophysicist's wildest dreams can come true is justification enough.

All-Baldwin Friday Morning continues here at Defamer with the above clip of the alienated, shouty dad's highly anticipated appearance on today's episode of The View, a segment so exhaustively previewed in the media that its actual broadcast was doomed to anticlimax. Still, even if we feel we've read every obligatory, publicly contrite word before, our role in any celebrity's televised Redemption Tour is to patiently listen and nod along as if we're hearing it all for the first time, lest crisis managers decide such desperation moves have lost their effectiveness and deprive of us future talk show mea culpas.