· Music round-up: Bloc Party and The Like at the Wiltern; Redcar at the Troubadour; Round-up PSA: Amy Winehouse at Spaceland has been canceled, just in case that's how you were planning to spend your evening.
· World famous, award-winning writer type Jane Smiley signs Ten Days in the Hills, set in a house in Pacific Palisades in the days following the 2003 Academy Awards—a Hollywood angle to make you a little more comfortable!—at Vroman's Bookstore.
· Scott "Kids in the Hall" Thompson and Nick Swardson headline The Happy Show at the Hollywood Improv to benefit the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center.

The press's recent getting all up in the shady business of Media Rights Capital—the non-Endeavor-controlled, totally independent finance entity whose letterhead only coincidentally bears the motto "Making Endeavor Clients And Agents Extra Stinking Filthy Rich Since 2003"—continues today with a Kim Masters follow-up to her MRCMania-kickstarting Slate story of last week, in which possibly fictional company co-CEO Modi Wiczyk's memo-writing past reveals how a clever agency's treading around conflict-of-interest laws in a vaguely MRC-like fashion just might theoretically/potentially make everyone involved a shitload of money:

The onerous search to find an impartial jury to determine whether or not music producer/recent strategic lesbian makeover recipient Phil Spector shot actress Lana Clarkson in the face has begun, with over 100 prospective jurors being subjected to an 18-page questionnaire aimed at determining whether a candidate is either virulently prejudiced against the celebrity race or so naive about the widespread preferential treatment of the famous that their answers reveal a possible diminished mental capacity. We've excerpted the "Attitudes About Celebrities And High-Profile People" section of the questionnaire above (click here for a bigger version), allowing you to take an inventory of your own complicated feelings about your celebrated betters, a handy self-evaluation tool that could help you sail through the jury selection process should you ever be called upon to sit in judgment upon an actor you'd really like to see do some hard time.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so we encourage you to send them in often, regardless of political affiliation. 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 M.C. Hammer lurking for an inordinate amount of time at a movie theater condiments bar.

When the celebrity weeklies come out tomorrow, nearly all of them will have some version of the story of Angelina Jolie's adoption of three-year-old Pax Thien Jolie last week. But only one magazine will certainly have it as a photo-heavy cover. Only one gets the exclusive access to Jolie and her adoptees that the other tabs can only dream about.

Yesterday, we pointed you in the direction of new search engine hotness Search With Kevin, the K-Fed powered portal with the disappointingly selfish aim of promoting the recent Deadbeat Dad & Estranged Househusband Quarterly's Comeback of the Year award winner's floundering music career. Today, our friends at Junkiness have discovered a celebrity-endorsed search site with a nobler aim: keeping onetime Blade star Steven Dorff sufficiently nourished in between increasingly rare and diminishing acting paychecks. The next time you need to find that perfect link, eschew Google to Dorff the Web and help one of our most cherished, underemployed performers stay supplied with enough baloney sandwiches to maintain the strength necessary to get through his next audition without fainting.

An investigation is currently underway to get to the bottom of precisely what occurred last night in Palos Verdes, when "whoa"-intoning matinee idol Keanu Reeves peeled away from a curb in his Porsche and allegedly sideswiped a paparazzo lurking nearby:

· Angelina Jolie will star in Universal's action flick Wanted opposite Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy. Shooting is scheduled to start in May in Eastern Europe, allowing the child-hoarding actress to finally tap that region's relatively underexploited orphan supply. [Variety]
· Oh, how cute: Jolie's boyfriend also has some news of his own in the trades! [Variety]
· NUTS signs The Office's Jennifer Celotta to a two-year, seven-figure overall deal, which the writer candidly admits may help her avoid being hobbled by the bookie owed a massive gambling debt following a bad NCAA tourney pick. Here's hoping she gets out of that dilemma without lasting physical injury. [THR]
· 21.7 million viewers tune in to the fourth season of premiere of Dancing with the Stars, but are ultimately disappointed when no tango foxtrot-related mishap occurs involving Heather Mills' prosthetic leg. There's always next week, sickies. [THR]
· WGA President Patric Verrone taunts the studios by informing Guild members that there's no evidence their saber-rattling adversaries have been stockpiling scripts to prepare for a possible strike. [Variety]

Just a gentle reminder to local movie fans: there is now a mere three hours until After Dark Films' self-imposed 2 p.m. deadline to remove the disturbing Elisha Cuthbert snuffboards looming over the city's roads, leaving you precious little time to wander out to a nearby intersection, gape in disgust at the unapproved images ("Personally, I wasn't going to go with this campaign. I thought it was OTP (over the top)," scandalized printing company mix-up victim [and After Dark CEO Courtney] Solomon told the Reporter. "Nothing like this can ever happen again.") that misrepresent the movie's uplifting message of female empowerment, and then return to your desk to research what you can do to help this country's 850,000 annual kidnapping victims. Hurry, for time is running short to raise your awareness of the important issue being championed by the brave studio.

We doubt we were the only ones anticipating that this headline referred to blubbery Judge Larry Seidlin, for whom a casual marijuana habit would make perfect sense—and Yahoo's accompanying photo served only to confirm that. Sadly, the busted Judge in question is Judge Lawrence Korda, who presided over the Dannielynn DNA test hearings, thereby denying us the opportunity to conjure up a hilarious scenario in which Seidlin, overcome by the emotional weight of an impending child custody ruling, took to a public park with some primo Kiwi Haze, hoping the potent spiritual clarity it imparts to its users would help guide him towards the path of justice.

Today's NY Times looks at the behind-the-scenes battle for control of the creative soul of psychedelic Beatles musical Across the Universe unfolding between Revolution Studios head Joe Roth and director Julie Taymor, in which Roth's helpful trimming of about a half hour from her cut and a subsequent test screening of his shorter version has a "helpless" Taymor threatening to take her name off the picture before it becomes a full-blown Rothian abomination. While Team Taymor carefully chose its words in responding to the Times' inquiry into the flap ("Sometimes at this stage of the Hollywood process differences of opinion arise, but in order to protect the film, I am not getting into details at this time."), Roth reminded everyone not to pay too much attention to the hysterical stage lady who can't take constructive criticism like a Mann:

It seems that not even our fair city's unprotected walls (this one is on Melrose by Harper Ave, according to the reader who sent in these photos) can escape the ubiquity of pure unearned-fame-being Paris Hilton, with graffiti artists now appropriating the debased heiress as the muse-tard for their guerilla scribblings. We have no idea who this "Inners" person is or whether or not Hilton actually fellated him (perhaps he's a bouncer at Hyde?), but that's unimportant, as the creative force behind this piece has now inadvertently provided her with a new medium for disseminating self-promotional gossip; soon, structures all over L.A. will bear the blight of strategically deployed messages like "PARIS HILTON FUKKIN HATES NICOLE RICHIE AGAIN—WATCH THE SIMPLE LIFE: FAT CAMP ON E! TO FIND OUT MORE!"

· Behold, Anna Nicole Sad Clown: The Sparkle Portrait. [via BoingBoing]
· We feel like we totally missed the boat on LAX AirbusMania—correct us if we're wrong, but isn't this just a big, fat plane? Call us when Travolta buys one.
· Mirren's a shoe-in for the lead in The Queen II: Iron Lady.
· Radar updates on the progress to close a deal for Beckingham Palace. Please adjust your stalking plans accordingly.
· On the off chance this obvious joke hasn't been made yet: "My name is David Geffen, and I approve this message."

There have been precious few developments in Angelina Jolie's ongoing attempts to smuggle newest acquisition Pax Thien out of Vietnam with a minimum of governmental meddling since Friday's installment of the AdoptionTracker, but today brings the happy news that her family's International Toy Shortage Relief Committee voted three-to-one to approve a resolution to leave behind their playthings for the unadopted children of Tam Binh orphanage , a decisive, pro-sharing victory that kept mother/chairman Jolie from having to cast an awkward tiebreaking vote that may have alienated the selfish faction who strenuously objected to giving up his favorite Tonka dumptruck. Reuters further reports that Jolie has arrived in Hanoi to obtain a visa for young Pax from the U.S. Embassy, but not before she fell victim to a devilish urchin at the Ho Chi Minh City airport who tricked her into overpaying for the "magic" umbrella pictured above, whose mystical, paparazzi-deflecting properties were vastly exaggerated by the greedy imp.

Our iPhone-spec-fetishizing cousins over at Gizmodo point us to something new: SearchWithKevin.com, a Federline-powered search engine from the same people that brought us such has-been-endorsed threats to Google's hegemony as SearchWithWynona.com and SearchWithMeatLoaf.com. A few randomly selected users will win a grand prize of a trip to attend Federline's private birthday celebrations, where they'll stand hundreds of feet away while the guest of honor gets his Moët and Chandon on in a VIP section, safely cordoned off from any lucky sweepstakes winners who are anxious to approach their hero to tell him, "It's an honor, Mr. Federline. I'm the one who typed 'jailbait + anal!'"

· Music round-up: Bloc Party at the Wiltern; Amy Winehouse at the Roxy (we hear the kids really love this one right now!); The Horrors at the Echo.
· A Very Special Night of Comedy at Largo this evening features Nick Swardson, of hot-panted, roller skating Reno 911 hustler notoriety, and Greg Behrendt, of That Ubiquitous Sex and the City Phrase We Dare Not Repeat Here For Fear We'll Somehow Owe Him A Six-Figure Royalty Check fame.
· As bloggers, we are contractually obligated to mention the following blogowebs-related event: at Skylight Books: editor Dennis Cooper will present Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground at Skylight Books. Be forewarned, meatspace adventurers: there will be some hot f2f action.

Bearing a passing resemblance to Jon Heder probably won't get you much in this town, but it's apparently at least good enough to get some wire service shooting gallery time at a porn-star-studded gala where Coolio is the highest-profile guest. Over on his blog, comedian Marc "The Guy Who Lived In A Reasonably Priced Foreign Car For A Week" Horowitz posts this video about his short, but heady, experience breathing the rarefied air of Napoleon Dynamite-level celebrity at prodigiously becocked thespian Ron Jeremy's recent birthday party, during which he enjoyed the brief attention of some adult performers impressed by the belief that they were in the presence of an actual B-lister. Now that the Hollywood event-throwing world has been alerted to this doppelganger in its midst, we imagine that the security at the upcoming Blades of Glory premiere will be air-tight, with Heder himself a likely victim of a red carpet stun-gunning from a hair-triggered publicist who thinks she's just bagged herself an interloping imposter.

Pictured is Phil Spector, showing up today for the first day of his murder trial jury selection not, as was widely expected, dressed in his trademark Dollytor style, but instead debuting a brand new look—the brainchild of Spector's savvy legal team, who strategized that it would be better for him to present himself as a harmless lesbian talk show host than a guy who would press a gun against a woman's face for objecting to his ashing on her dog.

Sadist/misogynist cinephiles, take heed: you may have less than 24 hours to enjoy the series of 30 billboards erected around town to promote Elisha Cuthbert vehicle Captivity, depicting the "Abduction," "Confinement," "Torture," and "Termination" of low-budget horror movie kidnapping victims, as they're scheduled to be taken down by sometime tomorrow following complaints from concerned citizens who appreciate a little more subtlety in their exploitation flick advertising. So how did these offensive, child-spooking ads get erected in the first place? "Damned if we know!", say furiously buck-passing executives from distributors Lionsgate and AfterDark Films to the LAT:

A Dukes of Hazzard-themed evening at the Cincinnati Pops featuring the vocal talents of Duke brothers John Schneider and Tom Wopat has been cancelled after the local NAACP branch complained about the show's "racist overtones"—namely, the Confederate flag painted on the roof of the General Lee. Coming to their defense is trusted mechanic and ally Cooter Davenport—i.e. intermittently employed actor and one-term Georgia Democratic Congressman Ben Jones—who rails on vanity website Cooter's Place against the censorious powers denying Cincinnatians the experience of Luke Duke being backed by full brass, strings and percussion sections on a rousing, clap-along rendition of "Up On Cripple Creek":