Perhaps not fully realizing that a star on the Walk of Fame is an honor available to virtually any steadily working actress backed by a deep-pocketed company with something to promote, an overcome Halle Berry prostrated herself in gratitude upon her own slab of Hollywood immortality this morning, and on the last day it would be possible to do so without contracting a communicable disease from the filth of thousand vagrants, pressed her lips against the monument celebrating her myriad contributions to cinema.

Because even the most utilitarian of office furniture becomes highly desirable when you're told it once belonged to a former child star turned helmer of blandly palatable Hollywood blockbusters, we offer for your online bidding consideration this blocky, brown specimen, which, an eBay seller tells us, once sat in The DaVinci Code director Ron Howard's Imagine offices.

Proving once again that the current generation of celebrity drug abusers are nothing but a bunch of dilettante stall-monkeys, first-ballot Rock N' Roll Addict Hall of Famer Keith Richards has admitted to taking his father's tantalizing ashes, "grinding him up with a little bit of blow," and snorting the old man into whatever special part of Heaven is reserved for those whose offspring cheerily desecrate their parents' earthly remains. Things, of course, could always have been worse, as a particularly debauched night easily could have resulted in Richards cooking up his father in a spoon and injecting him between his outstretched toes, a fate even less glamorous than the one he actually suffered.

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 let everyone know about the time you saw Val Kilmer imparting some surfer wisdom to his son at a Santa Monica surf shop.

From time to time, we find it's helpful (we are here for no reason if not to serve) to remind both new readers and grizzled veterans of the comments box alike how one can gain access to the exciting and semiprivileged world of official Defamer commenters. Sound like the next few minutes of your life are going to be fun and informative? Good, because they totally are! So how does one sign up for one of those fancy commenting logins? Here's how:

· U.K.'s ITV and NBC are concurrently developing their own versions of the gameshow The Great American Singing Bee from producers Phil Gurin and Bob Horowitz. But how was such a brilliant concept hatched? "Horowitz 'came to me and said, "Two words: Singing bee," ' Gurin said. 'I said, "Bingo," and we began developing it.'" NBC is also expected to buy the still-undefined, bingo-related concept mentioned in the pitch duo in the coming days, which could involve people shouting at a cage full of numbered ping-pong balls and become a natural companion piece to current hit Deal or No Deal. [Variety]
· EMI makes deal with Apple to sell songs online without digital rights management protection, which will allow iTunes users to download all the copy-protection-free Coldplay songs their iPods can handle. [THR]
· Stephen King's son accepts his birthright of having his horror novel adapted into a feature film, with Neil Jordan directing and Akiva Goldman producing a movie version of Heart-Shaped Box, a spooky tale of a haunted killer suit bought on eBay. [Variety]
· While CBS wins the evening in the 18-49 demo with the NCAA tournament championship game, its final number will probably indicate it was the fourth-lowest-rated one in the last 10 years. Take that, Joakim Noah! [THR]
· MTV greenlights the Ashton Kutcher game show pilot 3 Kings, hoping that their relationship with the star won't fizzle out after Punk'd ends after its upcoming, final season. [Variety]

If I Did It, O.J. Simpson's memoir-cum- homicide-handbook, simply refuses to wander off quietly to the place where tastelessly conceived double-murder confessionals go to die. Fred Goldman won the auction rights to the cancelled project, and has been actively shopping the book around town, with the reasoning that the only way to really get back at the man he is convinced killed his son is to have him watch helplessly as the If I Did It-dollars roll in. Making matters even more bizarre, Simpson is now taking Goldman to court to block the auction:

Hollywood-based homeless advocacy group TMZ.com has video footage documenting sitcom sidekick and Showbiz Show host David Spade in a paparazzi-induced act of charity, in which the actor handed over a ten-dollar bill to a panhandler as he entered a Taco Bell. Unfortunately, when the recipient of Spade's largesse realized he'd been given a mere ten bucks, he quickly returned the money to Spade, explaining that he was unwilling to accept a payment below the Homeless Guild standard rate of $100 for opportunistic fast-food parking lot photo shoots established by noted local philanthrotard Paris Hilton at a nearby McDonald's back in September.

In an honor that is no way connected to Sony Pictures' promotional efforts for her upcoming release Perfect Stranger, junket-suicide survivor Halle Berry will today be granted show business immortality for a celebrated body of work that includes Catwoman, Swordfish, and a particularly poignant turn in B*A*P*S by receiving a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, an honor so rare that tourists spending a long weekend in the city may witness only one or two such induction ceremonies during their stay. Right about now, you're probably experiencing pangs of guilt over your failure to take out a full-page ad in the trades sucking up to the actress on her big day, hoping that your gesture of respect might lead to a future business relationship. Fret not: Her agents, lawyers, managers, and a couple of studios have filled Variety with enough expressions of conspicuous sycophancy that your thoughtlessness will hardly be noticed.

In what Var has dubbed Bloody Monday, but which we will counterdub Mercy-Killing Monday to emphasize the networks' compassionate desire to euthanize a handful of shows languishing in a Nielsen coma from which they are unlikely to ever awaken, Fox's The Wedding Bells, ABC's Six Degrees, The CW's 7th Heaven, and NBC's The Black Donnellys have all entered different phases of the always complex cancellation process. This morning, heavy-handed Donelleys creator Paul Haggis is using his pair of stolen Oscars to wipe away the tears he's shedding over the loss of his primetime baby, his pain compounded by Var's swift kick to the gut during this moment of vulnerability:

· You can say all the mean things you like about Tara Reid, but you can never take away the dignity that comes with trying to cram a pair of mammoth, surgically enhanced breasts into a too-small bikini top.
· Also: Looks like Reid lent Courtney Love her old stomach.
· Hilary Swank fondly recalls the time she got out of a speeding ticket because she was a Good Samaritan, not because the officer in question was a starfucker.
· Starbucks cups revealed to be an excellent place to stash your drugs without detection.
· The KITT up for auction's not street legal, but it's still a total pussy wagon if you can lure an aging Knight Rider fan back to your garage.
· Bravo decides it's still too soon for old Anna Nicole jokes.
· Can't someone do a good horse-fucking movie without getting all socially responsible about it?

• VIDEO HITS ONE: Alanis Morissette Ironically Covers "My Humps" (Seriously, I Swear To God) [BWE]

· Music round-up: Ratatat at the Henry Fonda; Wires on Fire at the Silverlake Lounge; Rooney at the Roxy.
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· Hall of Famer and accidental Canadian seagull killer "Big" Dave Winfield signs Dropping the Ball: Baseball's Troubles and How We Can and Must Solve Them at Vroman's. His shocking proposal: mandatory steroid use for all major leaguers to finally even a playing field forever altered by Barry Bonds.
· The Hammer Museum hosts a screening of Mike White Year of the Dog, in which Molly Shannon becomes unhinged by the loss of a pet.

With the recent plagues of fire and ice sent down by annoyed local landowner God utterly failing to dislodge beach-hogging Malibu squatter David Geffen from his oceanside compound (His view was totally fucking ruined by Geffen's place), residents of the sleepy community now find themselves helpless against the whims of the mogul and the ten-figured pals who seek to slowly annex the entirety of The 'Bu. Yesterday's NY Times discussed Geffen and "software giant" Larry Ellison's acquisitions of the Casa Malibu Inn and Malibu Beach Inn, respectively, which they plan on transforming into the kind of places in which the merely wealthy might feel uncomfortable:

In an interview with Blackfilm.com, Grindhouse actress Sydney Tamiia Poitier reveals how she was cleverly able to exploit Quentin Tarantino's well-documented foot fetish during her audition for the extremity-worshipping, motormouthed auteur:

The list of victims in the aftermath of After Dark Film's decision to grab some easy publicity by erecting offensive billboards to advertise thinking man's snuff film Captivity is a long and tragic one. Among them: the countless impressionable children involuntarily subjected to the graphic, psyche-scarring images looming dangerously close to their schools, After Dark CEO Courtney Solomon, whose more toned-down promotional ideas were ignored by a renegade printer bent on destroying him, and star Elisha Cuthbert, who is suffering from unprecedented levels of awareness about how disappointingly a once-promising career has developed. In the latest chapter of the Captivity billboard story, Slate's Kim Masters talks to a representative of a previously silent class of innocents who will be adversely affected by the MPAA's unprecedented sanctions against the movie: the producers:

· Former child actor Jodie Foster and current preteen It-Girl Abigail Breslin near deals to star in Nim's Island for Walden Media, where they will share touching moments on the set discussing the normal, healthy childhoods they could have had if they hadn't answered Hollywood's innocence-stealing siren call. [Variety]
· Feeling that online sweepstakes Gold Rush's trivia questions were too mentally taxing on contestants, AOL plans to just give away a million dollars to a lucky schmuck in its Million Dollar Bill program. [THR]
· Cavemen CastingWatch: Dash Mihok signs on to play the part of Geico-branded Neanderthal "Jamie"; that we couldn't pick him out of a lineup seems unimportant considering he'll be rendered unrecognizable by Cro Magnon prosthetics. [Variety]
· Susan Sarandon and John Goodman are in negotiations to play Emile Hirsch's parents in Speed Racer, the Wachowski Brothers adaptation of the classic anime series we're having a really hard time caring about. [THR]
· The LAT's parent Tribune company accepts a $8.2 billion bid by Chicago real estate mogul Sam Zell, unless Imagine superproducer Brian Grazer suddenly emerges to somehow spoil the deal. [Variety]

• Snoop Dogg Says: ''F*ck Bill O'Reilly!'' TBOHipHop.net [YouTube via NinjaDude]

Each time Dakota Fanning's handlers promised that their preternaturally talented, thirteen-year-old money-maker was more than mature enough to handle the psychological demands of that rape movie, we really wanted to believe them. But in our heart of hearts, we knew that she was just a Kid's Choice award away from snapping under the immense pressure and emptying an automatic weapon at an after-party in a tragic cry for help.

Today's THR reports that bite-sized DreamWorks mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, in an act of selflessness that will no doubt be adopted by his peers in the entertainment industry, accepted just a single damn American dollar in compensation last year, having waived a generous stock grant that cleared the way for for the company's president and chief financial officer to pull in $7 million for his services. Now that news regarding Katzenberg's ostentatiously modest salary has come to light, we finally realize why he was so heartbroken by the meager $2.7 million he was granted back in February after some faulty Goodyear heating hoses ripped the very soul out of his $28 million Deer Valley chalet; with a mere one-dollar income, he can obviously no longer afford the extensive vacation home repair project on his own, and soon he'll be forced to turn to his billionaire DreamWorks colleagues for loans, which they'll hand over with the humiliating condition that each restored room bear a commemorative plaque touting their assistance. Each time Katzenberg cries himself to sleep in the David Geffen Master Bedroom, he'll regret his ill-advised act of corporate self-sacrifice.