Yesterday's Tom Freston-kebabing powwow was an event the likes of which we rarely see, with the world's greatest media titans gathered beneath the roof of the Pierre Hotel in New York to toast their associate with a steady stream of laughter and uncensored ribaldry, interrupted only by the occasional jab at the lukewarm Cornish game hen taunting them blandly from a luncheon plate. We return now to Variety's coverage of the historic event, with a detailed account of how the crucial rook of Sumner Redstone's expertly plotted chessboard—Paramount head Brad Grey—told a group of executives about the strategy behind his savage capture of Tom Cruise's vulnerable queen:

Upon closer inspection, we came to realize the red banner alerting us to "BREAKING NEWS" was in fact referencing a wildfire in Palm Springs, not any recent emergency efforts to undo the damage wrought by an unnatural disaster of dissimilar proportions, Tara Reid's self-described (and described...and described...) "plastic surgery nightmare." And while we couldn't be happier for the—actress? Is it?—that recent surgical improvements to her mangled torso have given her the confidence she needed to spring back into life, we'd also caution her that by having played her last card of possible media interest so loudly and so often, she may have painted herself into the kind of unfortunate career corner that could very well find her taking regular road trips to Tijuana to re-botch her no-longer-funbags, all in a misguided effort to land back on The View.

· Hollywood's abuzz about Tom Freston's roast in New York last night, where the terminated, terminally nice guy managed to get a few good ones in, too: "I've been, what do these kids do? Swimming the Internet. Check this out. MySpace.com — one word not two. I'm telling you, one day this is going to be worth a bundle." Make sure to read his instant message conversation with Tom Cruise, in which the two discuss their enthusiasm for something called "MEGA-ATOMIC IMPALER." (Which we'll assume is a video game and not...um...a mega-atomic impaler.) [Variety]
· Charlize Theron will star with Nick Stahl in Ferris Wheel, an indie drama that will mark Bill Maher's directorial debut. Yes, that Bill Maher. Nope! Not that Bill Maher—another Bill Maher who comes out of visual F/X. [Variety]
· Nerd-hot director Wes Anderson collaborates again with his Life Aquatic co-writer Noah Baumbach on Fantastic Mr. Fox, a mostly stop-motion adaptation of the Roald Dahl book for Fox. [Variety]
· NBC 2.0 continues its unstoppable march of radical innovation by putting its four most promising comedies into a two-hour programming block on Thursday nights, then bestowing this chunk of appointment television with an as-yet-undetermined, catchy catchphrase. [Variety]
· Forbes hosted a two-day media conference at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where the genuine sentiment among execs was one of "consumer fatigue" amidst the plethora of platforms currently available. Finally, however, one lone voice stood up and yelled, "Well?! What are we going to do about it?!" whereupon everyone in attendance instantly jumped off their seats and shouted "Fix it!!!" They then worked together well into the next morning drafting the Pledge of Convergence. [THR]

In today's New York Times, Alessandra Stanley points out to us the uncanny parallels between the television appearances by Madonna and George W. Bush.

A Defamer reader grew momentarily confused upon receiving their latest issue of National Geographic: What on Earth was the officially sanctioned portrait of Hollywood superproducer Brian Grazer doing on a magazine that usually covers the kinds of far-reaching and globally significant topics that Grazer himself regularly mines for Oscar gold? The answer, of course, lay in plain view, with a subhed that read "3.3-million-year-old bones discovered," which merely hinted at the sumptuous payoff that lay inside: 13 full-color pages of the most exciting paleontological discovery to come along in a while, featuring a perfect specimen of what researchers are now calling the "Earliest Producer," found lodged for undisturbed millennia at the discovery site, a corner table at The Grill on the Alley.

Whatever you thought of Madonna's appearance on Oprah yesterday, it seems to have subdued the outrage somewhat, filling in the comic frame images we've been seeing lately of the pop icon on her dark-baby shopping spree with at least a few dialogue bubbles indicating she hasn't completely lost her mind. We were too transfixed by her accent to really form an opinion on the matter—could that possibly be what humans will sound like in 500 years?—but others were far less indecisive. A Madonna-on-Oprah fallout round-up:
· Leading the "screw Madonna and Oprah and their army of motherfucking hair and makeup people and their misguided, self-serving Third World charity efforts"-cavalry is the NY Post's Andrea Peyser, who questions Oprah's softball-lobs (but that's what Oprah does!), as well as Madonna's sniveling condescension towards David's "simple man" father. Worth a read—if only for the anti-Oprah blasphemies. Heavens! [NY Post]
· The "simple man," meanwhile, is now claiming he's worried the controversy— including the last chapter where he expressed genuine surprise that goodbye meant forever— would cause the rich white lady with man-muscles to back out of the agreement. [ABCNews.com]
· Reuters managed to get a quote from the father as well, in which he stated his clear opposition to the consortium of 67 Malawian human rights groups seeking to legally block the adoption. And to this we say: There's 67 Malawian human rights groups? [Reuters]
· And finally, to end on a cheerier note, CityRag blog offers a quick, inexpensive and easy costume idea for Halloween: "Celebrity Baby Smuggler." [CityRag]

It was less than two months ago that ex-Viacom president and CEO Tom Freston exited the company, forcefully nudged out the doors by a doggedly determined Sumner Redstone applying steady pressure to the joystick of his luxuriously appointed mobility scooter. Yesterday, some of Freston's greatest allies gathered to pay irreverent homage to their fallen (if you call a $59 million severance package "falling") idol with one of those outrageous "roasts" those kids who run 99.7% of the world's mass media love so much:

• Good Day, Mr. Kubrick... [YouTube]

· Is Channel 7's Eyewitness news anchor Marc Brown just being paranoid, or has he been getting funny looks around the studio's donut table all day?
· Isaiah Washington apologizes! Okay, McFaggot-hater, we'll alert the media. (Oh wait—we kind of just did.)
· Did Dixie Carter publish her personal phone number on the internet? And more importantly...do we care? [Third from the end.]
· "Queen Elizabeth has 10 times the lifespan of workers and lays up to 2,000 eggs a day." We missed that scene in The Queen, though we did love the sequence when Helen Mirren reached over for a cup of tea, then sucker-plunged her tailbone into James Cromwell's abdomen and sucked him dry. [via Regret The Error]
· And as our parting gift to you, please enjoy the many Paris Hilton-themed jokes this headline might afford you.

The always entertaining Copyranter blog noticed this ad in a recent "diversity" themed advertising supplement in Fortune magazine, in which TimeWarner proudly touted the many shades of their workforce rainbow using two of their most recognizable franchises. That's right: Work at a TimeWarner company, expect to see everything in their halls from a recently whacked Italian-American to the members of the Justice League.

· Recurring subject of our non-erotic dream fantasies (well, except for that one time) Amy Sedaris will be at Book Soup to offer live demonstrations from her Martha Stewart-style guide to entertaining, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence. Amy: Call us. Seriously. Everything's negotiable.
· Music Round-Up: Cursive and the Thermals play the Troubadour, Snoop Dogg and the Pussy Cat Dolls skank up the Greek (why does that sound really fun to us at the moment?), and the Kooks are at Spaceland.
· Rock-N-Roll Bingo is a fundraiser for local green group TreePeople, with members of Fishbone and the Dead Kennedys calling out numbers. $5 per card, and a guarantee that no Daryl Hannahs will be injured being forcefully shaken out of a walnut tree.

A giant horsefly has landed in the ointment Borat has been enthusiastically slathering upon his neon-benutslinged body in anticipation of his movie's imminent release: The LAT is reporting that the initial plan of a 2000-screen opening is being scaled back drastically to a not-so-is-nice 800 screens, a tactical move Fox explains away using the kind of creative, textural jargon that trips effortlessly off the tongues of studio suits forced to save face whilst simultaneously massaging the outsized egos of their Kazakh superstars:

Moments ago, the all-too-familiar image of Madonna's moving lips were beamed across the West Coast, explaining to Oprah Winfrey in deliberate and measured fake-British tones the exact circumstances surrounding the newest, hastily absorbed member of her family, little Malawian demi-orphan David Banda. And while the many details tumbled forth almost too swiftly to fully retain—David was abandoned! Malawi has no written laws! "Confessions on a Dance Floor" makes a great stocking stuffer this holiday season!—Whitney Pastorek of Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch blog was luckily there to liveblog the entire exchange. Some highlights:

A Defamer operative sent in this World! Exclusive! Photo! of a needlepoint pillow featuring the unmistakable likeness of perpetually put-upon screen comic Ben Stiller—an expertly executed craft set for prominent placement in the upcoming Farrelly Brothers production, The Heartbreak Kid (aka The Seven Day Itch). No background prop this, the painstakingly hand-stitched cushion plays a vital role in plot advancement, setting the star off on one of his trademark meltdown scenes that audiences—perhaps "love" is too strong a word here, but certainly expect—to see in a Ben Stiller film. Our operative explains all, after the jump:

· The Coen Brothers and George Clooney—the inspired pairing to which we attribute our ongoing addiction to huffing Brylcreem—reteam for Burn After Reading, "a spy caper about a CIA agent who loses the disc of the book he is writing." Yes, he plays the CIA agent. No, he doesn't lose any fingernails. [THR]
· ABC has won the 18-49 demo for the first five weeks of the season, thanks to returning powerhouses like Grey's Anatomy and Lost, and new, breakout hit Ugly Betty. NBC points to Powerpoint projection reading, "Heroes: #1 with America's men!" emits faintly audible fart, slinks back to chair. [Variety]
· David Cunningham, director of ABC's controversial The Path to 9/11, is shifting gears to direct The Dark Is Rising, a fantasy film based on a series of children's books in which a lazy, horny Warlock-in-Chief named Klinton allows unimaginable atrocities to beset a peace-loving people. [Variety]
· Sarah Jessica Parker replaces Rachel Weisz in Smart People, playing widower Dennis Quaid's love interest. Dennis Quaid's best acting in years comes when he feigns excitement at news of the recasting. [Variety]
· Bravo picks up six more episodes of Work Out, the gripping reality drama in which we follow lesbian trainer extraordinaire Jackie Warner dodge whatever flying stemware her latest de-institutionalized girlfriend happens to launch at her head at any given moment. [THR]

We realize that stumbling upon an unwanted Emmy statuette on Craigslist is about as rare and momentous an occurrence as, say, wandering into the Hyde ladies room on any given night and hearing a voice that sounds a lot like Lindsay Lohan's shouting, "What the hell did I do with that second baggie?!" Still, for some, the trophy carries a great deal of significance—Jeremy Piven, for instance, who's rarely been seen further than five meters from his own since winning one back in August, even breaking it out to use as an impromptu drum stick whenever the urge calls to hit the skins at a local rock club. That said, we're happy to pass along this most recent posting to the ever growing "los angeles craigslist > for sale > awards > emmys" section:

There may have been a rainbow-colored lining to the dark cloud of incivility that has been hanging over the Grey's Anatomy set recently, but that has done little to ease the high tensions still running between stars Isaiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey. The widely reported altercation had Washington allegedly outing co-star T.R. Knight to the cast and crew in just about the least "up with Gays!" language imaginable, moments before shoving Dr. McDreamy by the neck, an assault that inspired an entirely new vocabulary of "choke"-rooted terminology. (Chokegate, Dr. McChokey, David Chokachi, etc.) But all that is now thrown into question—at least according to this report, sent in by a Defamer operative who exists merely one personal-training degree of separation away from McDreamy himself:

Blood Diamond's ProstheticLimbGate is growing only uglier and more limbless: As you may recall, the controversy started with an item in Monday's Page Six in which the producers of the African diamond trade movie were accused of having callously failed to follow through with promises of artificial arms and legs for the film's cast of young amputee extras, a claim director Ed Zwick angrily refuted to LA Weekly's Nikki Finke yesterday, calling the smear "the work of someone who clearly bears the film ill will." Whomever this shadowy "someone" is—our minds run wild imagining a Bond-villain-type named De Beers with one eye and jagged, princess-cut diamonds for teeth—he appears to be at it again, as Page Six follows up today with yet another highly unflattering report. This time, however, they claim that in addition to failing to help pre-existing amputees, the Blood Diamond production was also managing to create all new ones:

As Mark mentioned last week, I took some time off to explore France's thriving black market baby trade, an impulsive idea that had lodged itself into my brain after having read an enticing Condé Nast Traveller piece entitled, "Paris: Good Food, Good Orphans." As it turns out, parentless Eurotykes are not quite as easy to come by as I had initially hoped—which isn't to say they were entirely unavailable: A few bills slipped into the palm of a surly, Babar-themed-carousel operator and I was eventually offered the pick of the litter. My new acquisition is a precious three-year-old who tells me his name is Henri, but whom, for socialization purposes, I've rechristened Andy Roddick. And while parenthood has gotten off to a somewhat rocky start for your associate editor, we think a homesickness-alleviating trip to the Paris-like environs of Santa Monica Blvd.'s French Market will be just what the doctor ordered to finally stop little A.R.'s incessant cries for someone he keeps referring to as "Maman!"

Courtney Love's $50 million sale of 25 percent of Nirvana's catalogue propels Kurt Cobain to the top of the list of the best earners the dead-celebrity world has to offer. In unrelated news, Love seems to have purchased a pricey new set of knockers.
· At least one reporter doesn't find it so cute to interview Sacha Baron Cohen while he's in character.
PopWatch Studio 60 apologist Whitney Pastorek's faith in the show might have been shaken by last night's episode.
We really wish we had more time to shop, because a Chachi, Gabe Kaplan, or Chuck Barris costume is easily better than anything we've come up with. [via CityRag]
· Arianna Huffington needs your help in portraying herself on a sitcom! Quickly, to the polls!
Baseball fans scandalized by generously pine-tarred Tigers pitcher Kenny Rogers' antics should enjoy this round-up of The Smudge related musings.
· People shouting at briefcases: the poster.