There's a great piece in this week's New Yorker (not online, unfortunately) about Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, an advice manual basically designed to teach you how to get over. The book is full of all sorts of asshatty "laws" ("Crush your enemy totally," "Play a sucker to catch a sucker," etc.), and, not unsurprisingly, has become something of a bible for society's most repellent figures (Dov Charney has Greene "on retainer."), many of them from the hip hop community. Nick Paumgarten does a heck of a job drawing out Greene's douchery, and you should pick up a print copy to get the full flavor, but here's our favorite part, which takes place at a party celebrating the new Ludacris record:

By now, it's likely you've come across the likes of Baby Jake, the telegenic toddler who has achieved a certain measure of notoriety due to his being relentlessly pimped out on BuyJake.com as a tiny, human billboard by what we'll assume is either an opportunistic parent, or the Gypsy carnie who won him in a high-stakes game of bocce ball. Now comes word of a huge development in the ongoing Baby Jake saga, as he tells us in his "Blog to Fame!" (pause to shudder at inevitable prospect of 2024 Entertainment Tonight segment entitled, "Baby Jake, All Grown-Up: The Road Back From Hell,") that noted baby welfare advocate Oprah Winfrey has made a sizable monetary offer to ensure Jake never has to again endure being painted to resemble a Jack in the Box Bacon 'n' Cheese Ciabatta Burger:

These days, there seems to be no more reliable way to elicit a sensational media mogul sound-bite than by placing a tape recorder on the desk of antediluvian Viacom potentate Sumner Redstone, prompting, "Tom Cruise...go!" and waiting to see what angry words pour out once the mere mention of the actor's name starts to heat up the blood-dust pumping through the executive's desiccated circulatory system. Page Six reports that Redstone's anti-Cruise campaign will continue in the pages of an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair (you can read the entire article here), where he confirms his wife's rumored role in Paramount's public dissociation with the sofa-stomping star, then throws out a ballpark, nine-figure estimate of what he thinks Cruise's antics cost M:i:III:

We're not exactly sure why the staff of CSI: NY needs a morale boost in early November (the ratings are good, and isn't that all anyone cares about? Are people still bummed about the dead body that turned up on their set?), but this flier hung in an admin building on the CBS Radford lot announces that star Gary Sinise and his Lt. Dan Band are going to rock his co-workers to a more positive outlook for the second straight year this Friday. According to their website, the band has "completed four tours for the USO and performs regulary [sic] for troops stationed around the world," but even cheering up military personnel surely doesn't carry the rich personal rewards of forcibly entertaining a mopey TV production crew.

· Tom Cruise hires a firm called Along Came Mary (please, hold your jokes until the end) to plan his wedding, who will be charged with the difficult task of working some pretty awkwardly written vows into their ceremony.
Breaking: Reality television producers may supply alcohol to their contestants, hoping that shitfaced contestants make for better TV.
The Stallion has a Butterscotch Butt-Double.
Were it not for Brad Pitt's ability to elude drunken Dutchmen on his bicycle, rampant anti-Americanism in Europe may have deprived film history of Ocean's Twelve.
· It's finally happened: Jesus Christ has come out against both stem-cell research and Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic comments.

With the one-year anniversary of former Endeavor agent John Lesher's takeover of Paramount Vantage (n e Classics) approaching, today's LAT looks at how he's quickly built the studio's specialty unit into an operation that's already competing with the "independent film" arms controlled by other huge multimedia conglomerates like Fox and NBC Universal. The Times solicits some anecdotes from Lesher's current filmmaking associates, demonstrating that the "idiosyncratic" executive (whom "detractors say...can be a cocky snob") hasn't lost his old agent's touch for sensing what others need from him, whether that be some good-naturedly melodramatic groveling or a the simple, pure enthusiasm of a fourth-grader first discovering a love of film:

Ours is not to cast judgment upon Bill Maher's choice of costume, nor, for that matter, to say what constitutes an appropriate waiting period before a freak celebrity death becomes fair game for laughs—after all, 40 years still hasn't made it possible to show up to a Hollywood Halloween soirée as a "decapitated Jayne Mansfield" without hearing at least a couple tsks of derision from offended partygoers. Still, if Maher simply had to go to the Playboy Mansion (or whatever monster bimbo bazaar he opted to attend this year) dressed as Steve Irwin with a stingray barb hanging out of his chest, one would have hoped he would have more fully embraced the "tasteless mockery of untimely, recent tabloid deaths" theme by throwing Al Franken in a short, blonde wig, giving him an oversized, prop pill-bottle marked "METHADONE," and introducing everyone to his "bunkmate in celebrity heaven, Daniel Smith."

Kudos to CNN.com's online entertainment editors for pairing a helpful timestamp with this remarkable headline, allowing us all to measure with great precision the interval that passes between today's story about Love's current sobriety and any forthcoming ones about an inventive assault, the reason for the bludgeoning, and another court-ordered attempt at finally halting the new, chemically fuelled cycle of violence.

· Music round-up: OK Go at the Troubadour; The Roots at Avalon; Ladytron at the Devil's Night Masquerade at the downtown Standard; Rocket finishes up their free Monday night residency at Spaceland.
· Writer Barbara Isenberg talks to Annie Leibovitz about her new book, A Photographer's Life 1990-2005 at the Central Library. Though the 2005 cutoff means it's not in the book, we're sure the legendary photographer will be more than happy to discuss her recent experience photographing Tom Cruise's Miracle Baby.
· Prolong your Halloween celebration yet another night, bridging whatever trouble you found yourself in this weekend to tomorrow's West Hollywood parade with the New Beverly's double-feature of Fright Night and the original Friday the 13th. [via flavorpill]

Because we at Defamer at committed to keeping you informed of any disaster, whether man-made or natural in origin, currently besetting your peers, we pass along these two reports of the raging fire possibly still in progress over on the Universal lot:

In a mere matter of weeks, minds will finally be made up over whether Casino Royale's latest Bond incarnation, Daniel Craig, has proven his many, internet-enabled naysayers wrong and was worthy all along of inheriting the superspy's mantle. Still, a little nudge of encouragement from a respected co-star never hurts, such as when Dame Judi Dench recently registered her awed surprise at having caught a sidelong glance at Craig's generously proportioned double-oh-seven.

Not that a television show trying to augment its audience's squeals of applause-sign-prompted delight with piped-in, "sweetened" sound is anything new, but the What I'm Watching blog noticed that this weekend's East Coast feed of SNL— i.e., the live one you don't expect them to tamper with—featured a weird moment of obviously canned applause lingering after the "normal" crowd noise following host Hugh Laurie's introduction finally died down. Whether the initial alteration was by deceitful design or just someone in the audio booth mistakenly touching a button labeled "FAKE APPLAUSE—PRESS ONLY FOR LORNE MICHAELS CAMEOS!", the extra noise was removed from the West Coast feed (watch the "live" version here, and then compare to our professional-quality, TiVo-and-digital-camera reproduction of the Pacific time zone version above), a seeming attempt to keep their West Coast viewers from having their belief in the purity of SNL's live audience response shaken by some stray, tinny sounds of appreciation.

There's still no script for the Superman Returns sequel planned for summer of 2009, but Warner Bros. has decided to give director Bryan Singer another crack at trying to break the $300 million budget mark he fell a little short of in his first attempt. [Variety]
Behind Desperate Housewives (that show's still on? We always thought that series ceased existing after we delete their TiVo season passes), ABC "tramples" the Sunday night ratings competition. [THR]
· Tori Spelling attempts to stave off destitution by renting herself to Oxygen for a reality series, which will chronicle her and her husband's attempt to buy and refurbish a bed-and-breakfast somewhere in SoCal. [Variety]
· The Devil Wears Prada wins its fourth straight week at the international box office. [THR]
Warner Bros. bumps up the release of Blood Diamond to December 8th, setting up a showdown with Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, which the studio hopes to defeat through an ad campaign focused around the phrase, "Hate Conflict Diamonds. Not Jews." [Variety]

Hollywood's apple pie couple—button-nosed screen dumpling Reese Witherspoon and husband Ryan Phillippe, currently featured on the cover of Interview magazine in a portrait sure to stir up your every homopatriotic, tree-climbing-related emotion—have announced through their publicist that they have separated, for "cumulative" reasons. Were we the self-starting and/or technically gifted types, we would accompany this regrettable announcement with a slow-motion video montage of the couple's happiest public moments, set to the wistful strains of Witherspoon's own rendition of "Wildwood Flower." (Or, if there were licensing issues, Bird York's equally haunting and not entirely lyrically inappropriate Crash soundtrack contribution, "In The Deep.") We wonder who, if anyone, will be there to cheer on Phillippe should he be nominated for his Flags of Our Fathers work at this year's Golden Globes, as the sad reality sets in that any hopes of witnessing Witherspoon return a desperate, spine-snapping bear-hug of the sort she absorbed from her spouse at last year's ceremony have essentially turned to dust.

We usually reserve our speculation about Studio 60's chances of being allowed to continue to trumpet the socially redeeming power of unrelentingly serious-minded sketch comedy shows until the disappointing Tuesday morning ratings numbers for NBC's little momentum-stopper come in, but Fox 411 gossip Roger Friedman's report that the network is ready to nail presumed Nielsen Messiah Aaron Sorkin to the crucifix of cancellation forces us to consider the sad possibility that we may have watched our last tortured interaction between Matt Albie and the woman he dumped for singing to Pat Robertson:

Far be it from us to dictate to television's Marcia Cross how best to run her household, but were we to allow our newlywed stockbroker husband to photograph us soaping ourselves down suggestively outdoors and in the altogether, we'd probably put the risqué shots somewhere slightly more secure than the garbage bin for safekeeping, where a rodent/entrepreneur hybrid like "Sultan of Sleaze" David Hans Schmidt might be foraging for his next big find:

On Friday, THR brought word of a multistudio bidding war for the worldwide distribution rights to Sacha Baron Cohen's next movie, Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt, an auction obviously timed to maximize the comedian's take before Borat's upcoming, scaled-back release could threaten a market correction for his guerrilla filmmaking services. Today, they follow up with news that Universal won the Bruno sweepstakes with their $42.5 million offer, which they note covers the film's budget and features a "significant backend component," subtle contractual language that we suspect Cohen himself required be included in any report of his agency's eight-figure buggering of the studio. With this deal completed and his considerable Borat promotional responsibilities dispensed of, Cohen can soon begin the crucial work of devising ways to goad Bruno's homeland into a prolonged public war intended to dispel the notion that Austria's population is wholly comprised of neon-mohawked, fashion-obsessed television hosts preoccupied with sexually menacing American college football teams.

• Good Day, Mr. Kubrick 2006 [YouTube]

As you try to remove the stubborn vomit stains from the front of your "slutty librarian" costume that you don't even remember causing, take some time to review the Halloween weekend box office numbers:

What is wrong with you people? We told you earlier to snatch up tickets for the Kevin Federline show at Webster Hall next Saturday before they sold out, but if today's Page Six is to be believed, the show may be cancelled due to poor sales. Do you not listen to us any more?