While comedian Richard Jeni's suicide was obviously hard on longtime friend and frequent Houston's dining companion Chris Rock, he made sure to work up to the Acceptance stage of grief before taking a seat on David Letterman's couch so as not to bring down the show with depressing sentiment. Rock then unexpectedly progressed to the little-known sixth stage of the Kübler-Ross model, This Is Sad And All, But I Have A Movie To Promote, eliciting relieved laughs from an audience eager to know that it's OK for everyone to get on with their lives following a brief, uncomfortable talk show discussion of a recent tragedy.

UPDATE: Perhaps we spoke too soon about the possibility of O'Donnell offering Trump a moving opportunity to reconile on-air. From Rosie's blog:

· Ever wonder what it looks like when someone drives a car into a swimming pool in Woodland Hills? Wonder no more, thanks to the LAFD's Flickr stream. [via Blogging.la]
·Does PostSecret need a little help with the "secret" part of its mission? Gawker thinks so, and maybe Christian Slater, too.
· Who's making network TV programs? You are! And if you're the one who came up with that Are You Dumber Than A Fifth Grader? show, you're fucking fired. Gather your things and wait for a security officer to escort you off the Fox lot.
·Larry Birkhead: Entourage day-player.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, suspiciously muscular fading action star Sylvester Stallone was officially charged with illegally importing 48 vials of human growth hormone into Australia during a promotional trip for career Hail Mary Rocky Balboa, bringing the dangerous fugitive from worldwide fame one step closer to international celebrity justice:

Unlike fellow pretty-faced, effeminate American Idol top 12 finalist Sanjaya Malakar, Mario Vazquez legitimately seemed to belong there two seasons ago, and he shocked the world by pulling out just days before they were about to compete, citing "family reasons." Now, a scandalous lawsuit brought against the singer, FOX Entertainment, and Fremantle Media accuses Vazquez of having "sexually harrassed" the show's assistant accountant:

· This American Life puts on a live performance of the NPR radio staple at Royce Hall, with Sarah Vowell, Dan Savage, Ira Glass, and special guests. Glass promises to discuss what it's like trying to adapt his radio show into a Showtime series, which we imagine entails many frustrating conversations involving the host explaining why every slice-of-life piece can't involve some hot lesbians getting it on.
· Music round-up: The Sword at the Troubadour; Low vs. Diamond at Spaceland; Gosling and Gliss at Safari Sam's.
· Steven Parr's "Psychoactive Cinema" exhibition at Un Urban Coffee House screens material from 1932-1967 such as "offbeat home movies, allergy test films, ethnographic oddities and adult film outtakes." Yup, there's a little vintage porn there at the end to take the edge off the weird stuff.

With help from possible sitcom saviors like Jenna Elfman and the Geico Unfairly Persecuted Cavemen Project not to arrive until the fall season at the earliest, increasingly desperate ABC development executives are looking inward for more radical and immediate solutions to their comedy problems. This Just In has leaked this internal presentation the execs have put together in an attempt to convince boss Steve McPherson to allow them to repurpose the lighter moments from flagging drama Lost as a half-hour summer schedule-filler, which would help both to bridge the gap between Lost seasons and the next generation of surefire sitcom hits that will arrive by the end of the year.

Just moments after we pointed out today's Fox News item about Law & Order's typically swift move to fill the void of dramas throroughly exploiting the rich source material provided by the Anna Nicole Smith story, a helpful operative shared this breakdown currently being distributed to talent companies for Anna Nicole, a much-needed independent film version of the tragic tale of America's much lamented tabloid queen:

Stunningly, The Other Side of Aspen IV: The Rescue—the seminal male-bonding adventure story and thematic predecessor to reigning Hollywood blockbuster 300—was released way back in 1995, anticipating by over a decade the eerily parallel series of perilous events that would befall several popular actors at the same snowbound locale. Interest in the discontinued title has understandably skyrocketed since word has spread about their rescue by Aspen Ski Patrol's hunky, ripped finest, and so we anticipate it won't be long before a commemorative edition soon hits your local Circus of Books shelves, with newly rechristened stars Chad Blowe, Gusher Stevens, and Rod Burrow.

There's really no winning with Christian television-watchdog groups: Write a catchy country-western ditty in which a paranoid cowboy express his fear that Jesus is involved in a little homosexual voyeurism, wind up on the wrong end of an outraged press release; try to dramatize the Creator as a Being who engages in heterosexual relations, ditto. Multichannel News reports that the Parents Television Council is protesting the season finale of The Sarah Silverman Program, angry that the lack of a la carte cable channel choices makes it all too easy for impressionable children to stumble upon blasphemous programming concerning a Jewish comedienne's post-coital rejection of "the sex-obsessed Deity." (Deadpans a Comedy Central spokesman in response: "We've never been terribly popular with the Parents Television Council.") A clip of the offending material is above; after the jump, we pass along the PTC's painstaking, blow-by-blow inventory of each sacrilegious story beat:

FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman reports that one of the properties in Dick Wolf's primetime kingdom, Law & Order: Criminal Intent (is that the one with Lilith from Cheers? We lost track eight spinoffs ago.) will once again plunder the tabloids—this time, one of the greatest stories of all—for their latest foray into the world of lazily conceived gripping, ripped-from-the-headlines procedural drama:

· Naomi Watts will star in a film adaptation of the book Kicked, Bitten and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the World's Premiere School for Exotic Animal Trainers, which is being developed as a romantic comedy that will inevitably feature much discussion about how men are about as trainable as the average red-assed baboon. [Variety]
· Katt "The Pimp Chronicles" Williams will write and star in and Eddie Murphy will produce and co-star in Marshals, a comedy about the first black marshals in the Old West, for DreamWorks. Both are expected to immediately get to work selecting which bits from Blazing Saddles they'll helpfully "reimagine" for current audiences. [THR]
· Feeling an acute lack of Jenna Elfman in its life since Dharma & Greg went off the air, ABC attempts to fill that empty place by trying to reach a deal for the pilot Literary Superstar, in which Elfman will play an adorably quirky book publicist. [Variety]
· In other ABC pilot casting news involving blonde TV actresses whose careers have cooled, Christina Applegate joins the cast of the comedy Sam I Am, centering on an amensiac's hilarious quest to rediscover her life, a project which we assume will be quickly retitled so as not to be confused with an exploitative sitcom version of Sean Penn's I Am Sam. [THR]
· VH1 Classic spins off some Journey and Whitesnake videos into Rock of Ages, an off-Broadway musical about "a Hollywood rock club circa 1986." [Variety]

Above, actors Fisher Stevens (left) and Rob Morrow (right) share a relieved laugh following their rescue by the Aspen Ski Patrol, who safely led the stranded celebrity skiers on a three-hour trip down the unfamiliar mountain after receiving their cell phone distress call. Tragically, the idea to phone the patrol came only after the panicked stars determined that they might be lost for days in the blinding storm that caused them to stray from an approved path, and, after a tense deliberation about the relative health of their careers, decided that the only way they could stay alive long enough to be discovered was to devour the least successful, third member of their party, Chad Lowe, whose picked-over remains were buried under a beautiful tree abutting a spectacular black diamond run by his remorseful, surviving compatriots.

We really don't have it in us to list the brutal and tragic circumstances surrounding stand-up Richard Jeni's death Saturday, so we'll let CNN.com's Story Hightlights box do the depressing work for us. Jeni's official bio lists the comedian as holding the record for most appearances on The Tonight Show, making Jay Leno the most obvious choice for Extra to turn to for the comforting sentiments we all search for after a beloved, veteran entertainer's sudden, violent death:

If you're anything like us, somewhere around the tenth inscrutable story development in this past summer's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, your mind drifted off to a simpler, more satisfying place, where complicated matters involving magical compasses and jars full of dirt gave way to fantasies about the sweaty couplings that must have been going on below decks on the Flying Dutchman (a ship itself named for an arcane sexual practice so disgusting that we will refrain from describing it in this space). Our porn-scrutinizing sister site Fleshbot this morning notes [link NSFW] that the folks at Sinful Comics [link NSFW] have caught the attention of an "outraged" Disney by filling in these egregious plot holes with artistic renderings of all the hot, tentacle-cocked-ghost-on-pirate-wench action the studio's version coyly omitted, featuring a Keira Knightley stand-in bazoomed even more generously than she was in the advertising materials for King Arthur. It's never too early on a Monday morning for some lovingly illustrated slashfic involving a Johnny Depp/Orlando Bloom/Knightley three-way!

Did you know that 300 had the third-best start for an R-rated movie, ever? It did! Learn this and other amazing facts by perusing the weekend box office numbers:

· Katie Holmes clears some room out of her busy, nursery-decorating schedule for her work, as does Tom.
· Steven Spielberg dismayed to learn he owns a hot Rockwell.
· Angelina and Brad lease-to-buy.
· Reese Witherspoon pulls out of her own production, Bunny Lake is Missing, for mysterious, possibly package-fee-related reasons.
· On that illustration of human evolution, right after bipedal simian comes TV comedy development exec.
· Britney Spears finds some headspinning deals on the internet.
· Hatchet Wound vs. Grand Canyon, and other bizarre Tales from the Anna Nicole Crypt.
· CAA's grass is always greener.
· Madonna shows up to the Kabbalah Centre's Purim party with Marcel Waves in her hair, leaves with babies on her lap.
· How the Sahara script got passed around more than some of the D-listers on the Penelope Cruz backup list.
· Zach Braff's crippling depression eased through a combination therapy of banging hot chicks and $350k per episode.
· Warren Beatty caught sampling Hyde's cookies.
· Indy 4 RumorWatch: "Calista Flockhart as love interest" rumor birthed and dies in same Extra headline. "Shia LaBeouf as son" rumor is actually a fact. So's that sinking feeling in your stomach.
· Jared Leto's astounding body modification won't actually make Chapter 27 any more watchable.
· M. Night Shayamalan's latest twist ending: Autocratic auteur actually flexible, decision-by-committee type!
· Rosie O'Donnell battles her dark demons with the greatest of ease.
· Winona Ryder is perfectly fine.

· Get ready to get rich! Donald Trump's in town, and he's giving the greatest wealth-building seminar in the entire world! By the time you step out of that conference room, you'll have ten buildings named after you and an age-inappropriate model wife begging to have your babies—guaranteed!
· This season on Nip/Tuck: Dr. McMahon and Dr. Troy meet with Nicole Kidman, ask her what she doesn't like about herself, then lean in closely as she tries to show them a two-inch patch behind her left ear that's never been touched by a needle or scalpel.
· We hope that this guy at least waits until the tailpipe cools off before going to town on an Audi that's really asking for it.
· Hey, unicorn!

Sensing that audiences are bored by reality TV competitions in which the contestants vie to rise to the top of glamorous professions involving mundane, easily identifiable skillsets like cooking, sewing, or picking out furniture, the TV Guide channel is ready to push the genre's envelope by devoting 10 episodes to a televised deathmatch involving aspiring Hollywood assholes trying to establish who's best at the arcane producing arts of screaming into cellphones, haunting the craft services table, and consistently getting in the way of crew members trying to do their lower-paid, but more essential, jobs:

We have no doubt the response has been tremendous to a recent casting notice for "Halle Berry & Bruce Willis look-a-likes" to participate in a "street marketing/publicity stunt campaign" for their upcoming, memorably titled thriller Perfect Stranger, with every non-equity, balding white guy and Catwoman-type in Hollywood lining up for a piece of the premiere-night swag-distributing action. The last thing the event organizers need this late into the game, therefore, is a lead on a dead ringer delighting Japanese TV audiences with his eerily accurate approximation of John McClane. Still, producers may want to consider the potential of the increased overseas returns were Willis to pose next to his Japanese twin at photo ops—a sidekick no more humiliating than that Over the Hedge racoon.