Angelina Jolie's mission of orphan-gathering mercy, it seems, is finally complete: Despite a last-minute sprint in which she barely evaded the giant butterfly nets of corrupt Vietnamese adoption officials trying to capture new son Pax Thien in hopes of reselling him to another wealthy celebrity, Jolie managed to board her plane with her precious cargo, safely stowed the child in its urchin-hold, and successfully smuggled him onto the cover of this week's People. The actress exclusively! tells the official in-flight magazine of Air Jolie:

This morning brings terrible—terrible!—news for the Hollywood community, who had been universally atwitter about the Very Special Guest-Edited Sunday Current Section superproduced by Brian Grazer that was scheduled for this weekend's LAT, opinion pages so jam-packed with action, adventure, and quirky material reflecting Grazer's legendarily restless, spongelike intellect that early tracking projected the paper to gross nearly $40 million in its opening frame. Tragically, the blockbuster project is now threatened with cancellation since it has come to light (Grazergate™ courtesy of LA Observed) that the editor of Times' editorial page is dating a publicist whose firm represents Imagine Entertainment, Grazer's movie studio/thinktank hybrid, a potential conflict that has many in the newsroom lighting their hair on fire, poking out their eyes with letter openers, and loudly wailing about having to toil in a town dominated by an entertainment industry bent on hijacking local journalistic institutions for their own nefarious, guest-editing ends.

· We feel like we say this a lot, but the Mii Lebowksi is possibly the greatest thing we've ever seen. (Get a Wii and you'll understand, maybe.)
· Today in lesbian non-rumors: Carmen Electra, not all gay for Joan Jett.
· Vivica A. Fox: Still famous enough (barely!) to get her DUI onto People.com.
· Gawker presents this clip from Larry King's Greatest Moments Involving Famous Gold-Digger Prosthetics.
· Breaking! Jeremy Piven goes unrecognized on shopping trip, except by people who recognized him enough to later note his lack of recognition to gossip website.

We've had only one additional report of a Captivity billboard still awaiting removal since this morning's post ("Big one still up at wilshire and wilton next to the 7-11. It's giving the homeless gentleman out front ideas." And this just occurred to us: should we be asking for tips about ones that have been taken down?), but a reader with a good memory passed along this story from a couple of weeks ago, in which a certain, previously obscure small-time studio head who's spent a lot of time lately trying to explain how some OTP ideas mysteriously found their way into his movie's campaign positively glows with pride about the out-of-the -box marketing for another project he's involved in:

Rita Cosby, MSNBC's in-house champion for Anna Nicole Smith-related justice and any incidental ratings that might haphazardly come out of that crusade, reports (and TMZ instinctively regurgitates like a sparrow feeding its scoop-hungry young) that our national (not that one) might soon be over: Larry Birkhead and the baby he claims is his own both have had DNA samples extracted:

• Larry Bud Melman in a bear suit [YouTube]

· Music round-up: The Bravery at the Troubadour; Sondre Lerche at the El Rey; 400 Blows at the Knitting Factory.
· The Comedy Juice/CollegeHumor night at the Hollywood Improv has Todd Glass, Butch Bradley, Daniel Tosh, and a handful of others totally dedicating to pleasuring you (with their stand-up skills).
· Over at the Hammer, visual artist Leslie Hall screens her music videos and presents a live show with DJ. Dr Laura. Not "that" Dr. Laura, we're sure, though that would definitely be an interesting twist to any evening of performance art.

Studios have displayed an increasing reluctance to call upon the droning, nasal direction of Penny Marshall, who hasn't helmed a feature since 2001's Riding in Cars with Boys. (Her Kazakh tween terror project was, unfortunately, yet another reality-blurring concoction of the Entourage writers' room.) Marshall knows the adapt-or-perish Hollywood drill, however, as TVWeek.com reports that she is returning to familiar territory—and giving it a contemporary, semi-improvised spin—for her next project, throwing employment-challenged former Laverny & Shirley co-star Cindy Williams a bone while she's at it:

Despite the fact that Studio 60 will eventually return from its indefinite, Haggis-enabling hiatus to triumphantly claim the Nielsen validation it so richly deserves, pragmatic showrunner Aaron Sorkin is nonetheless preparing for a post-60 existence. A recent career brainstorming session that may or may not have involved an unexpected psilocybin flashback induced by listening to his favorite Flaming Lips album seems to have yielded inspiration for a new creative direction in his life, as EW.com reports that Sorkin will be writing the script for a Broadway musical based on the Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Even frontman Wayne Coyne, a guy known to cavort with pastel, flashlight-wielding teddy bears, seems a little freaked out by this development:

An explicit photograph circulated the internets recently, featuring what looked to be a kneeling Paris Hilton taking what could only have been a well-deserved break from the rigorous task of attending the needs of an amply endowed, unidentified male. (The photo can be seen here, and if our description hasn't yet made this abundantly clear, it's thoroughly NSFW.) Our initial reaction to seeing the image—that L.A. Superior Courts have rather unorthodox guidelines for what can and should constitute 40 hours of community service—was quickly replaced by skepticism, as something in the trashy manicure, the cheap hotel carpet, the glimmer of enthusiasm behind her lazy eye, said to us, "Photoshop blowjob magic." Still, there will always be a market for this kind of digital artistry, and as the picture wound its way around the web, Hilton's camp became increasingly unamused, ultimately prompting a well-reasoned denial from warhorse flack Elliot Mintz:

The LAT's crack American Idol Showtracker investigative team was backstage at last night's taping, which introduced Fox's latest breakout star to nearly 30 million television viewers: young Ashley Ferl, the girl so memorably paralyzed by the spasms of tears elicited by Idol's resident Destroyer of Popular Music Sanjaya Malakar's eardrum-perforating performance. Reports the Times on how the show's producers came to identify the undeniable talent in their midst:

· After careful deliberation, Tom Cruise decides to insert himself into the WWII-set thriller (from The Usual Suspects team of director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie) he acquired for shiny new toy United Artists last week, taking a role in the ensemble piece as a character who struggles to diffuse his blinding star power for the sake of his fellow castmates. [Variety]
· Blockbuster's CEO is stepping down by the end of the year over a dispute about his bonus. Scintillating! [THR]
· New Line wins the rights to make an inevitably terrible movie from the Xbox game Gears of War; CAA ran the auction, which seems to have been free of messengers wearing elaborate costumes, perhaps in hopes of not repeating the Halo debacle. [Variety]
· Today in bad ideas for potential hero franchises: Columbia options the rights to The Green Hornet in an attempt to prove that the kids will go wild for characters originally appearing in 1930s radio plays. [THR]
· Clear four or so hours (not including that all-important red carpet time) off your calendar on Sunday, February 24th of next year, as the Academy has chosen that now hallowed date for next year's 80th Anniversary Oscars telecast. [Variety]

Nearly one month ago, Britney Spears electively checked herself into rehab-to-the-stars facility Promises Malibu, limbs flailing and unsuccessfully attempting to haul a drag off a Newport as four bulky orderlies carried her inside. During that time, she was rumored to have been visited by a newly sainted deadbeat ex-husband, found a soundbite-friendly spiritual soul-mate, shopped online while vomiting demon pea soup, and induced hyperglycemia through the gluttonous consumption of carbonated cola. But to her credit, Britney managed to hang in there, and she now walks again among us, an honors graduate of the Promises Path to Celebrity Sobriety program:

Yesterday's self-imposed 2 p.m. deadline for After Dark Films to remove the controversial Captivity billboards turning various Los Angeles intersections into gruesome instruction manuals on the capture, imprisonment, torture, and disposal of B-list actresses has come and gone, but buck-passing CEO Courtney Solomon's clean-up crew seems to be lagging a bit behind schedule, as reports of extant snuff ads have come in:

If last week's Ford-sponsored bastardization of Modest Mouse's "Float On" delivered a point-blank gut-shot to popular music vulnerable belly, then Sanjaya Malakar's (whom we previously believed to be just a harmless, tone-deaf—yet alarmingly well-coiffed!—kid, but now realize is the earthbound emissary of some vengeful god sent to destroy us all) Tuesday night Idol performance of The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" stood astride its body as it lay bleeding in the gutter, rolled it over so that it could bite the curb, and then delivered the swift kick to the back of its head that finally ended its suffering. The strong of stomach can relive the harrowing ordeal through the clip presented above, in which an adorable little girl's salty tears stood in for those streaming down the collective cheeks of America on the night of music's grisly televised execution.

The prison we've always imagined for Katie Holmes involves shackles, rusty radiators, salivating Dobermans, exploding wife-retention collars, and teams of deadly accurate snipers ready to cut short any escape attempts with an expertly placed tranquilizer dart at precisely the moment Tom Cruise's war bride thinks she's just a couple of hurried strides from sweet, sweet freedom, but Us Weekly's cover story-worthy conception of Holmes' imprisonment is one of stiflingly omnipresent in-laws, threatened credit card cancellations, and desperate friendships with the British tabloid libertines through which she vicariously lives. In truth, we shouldn't trivialize Cruise's alleged total control over her credit line as somehow less terrifying than packs of attack dogs reminded daily of their potential quarry's scent; the psychic pain of a billion-year sentence without the hope of regularly scheduled retail furloughs to Barneys would be far worse than anything those ravenous hounds could possibly inflict on her body.

· Things had mostly remained civil between Angelina Jolie and the paparazzi during her ongoing orphan-gathering trip to Vietnam, but earlier today the frustrated actress commanded her bodyguard to fire a warning bird at the swarming photographers; luckily, new son Pax Thien was safely behind the curtain with the actress, where the impressionable youngster would be safe from any emotional scarring should the conflict escalate, forcing Mommy to order her protector to press some ham against the passenger-side window to drive away the rude shutterbugs. [Photo: Getty Images]
· Asthmatic Krelboyne wins potentially Pyrrhic victory over greedy manager!
· That Sanjaya kid sure has some funny hair, doesn't he? At least it's not Phil Spectoresque. Oh, we spoke too soon! Silly us.
· A concerned Page Six hopes against hope that airborne cocksman Ralph Fiennes had the presence of mind to use protection even while in the throes of Mile High passion.

Vince Vaughn's love life, since being permanently de-Anistonized just in time for The Break-Up's DVD release, has amounted (publicly, at least) to one unforgettable evening of giggles and shared secrets with a Gamma Chi Delta sister in Budapest. Leading chronicler of suspect celebrity dining behavior The National Enquirer now reports that Vaughn was spotted drowning out his romance woes at a venerable Japanese eating establishment on Ventura Blvd., asking, between greedy chugs of sake and bites of unagi hand roll, why it's so hard to find the love a good woman.

CAA agents returning yesterday from a long weekend of team-building group pedicures at their Ojai retreat arrived back at the Death Star to discover their pampering wasn't yet over: According to Eater LA, popular Valley wiener purveyor The Stand officially opened a location right at 2000 Avenue of the Stars Monday, an outpost on the grounds of the evil agenting monolith's imposing new headquarters. While The Stand initially might not be able to match the offerings of the nearby Century City food court Fuddrucker's, whose delicious burgers made of fresh, thrice-ground infant-sirloin have become an agency lunch staple, if they quickly adapt to their built-in clientele's tastes, the convenience of being able to hastily gobble a baby-leg footlong just steps away from the office should make them an instant favorite of harried CAA drones.

Lucky and Flo, the floppy-eared crimefighting duo currently on loan to the Malaysian government, followed their highly sensitive, polycarbonate-sniffing noses to a pirating operation where nearly 1 million illegal DVDs and CDs were being stored: