Radar has devoted an entire feature to highlighting the screen-horror inspirations for some of the truly monstrous handbags currently rolling off designer production lines—a clever designer's trick, which, not unlike the slimming effect of vertical lines, transforms whatever plastic surgery disaster happens to be carrying it into a radiant beauty by comparison. While Miu Miu's textured earth tones clearly owe a tip of the hat to Night of the Living Dead's zombie allures, it's Charm and Luck's Sedona bag that manages to overstep the line of homage and teeter on the precipice of outright plagiarism. So reminiscent is it of Predator's titular menace, an unwitting attendee sporting the bag at a recent gubernatorial campaign stop was startled when the Governor, upon spotting the other-worldly accessory, instantly dove behind the podium, then placed an index finger to his lips to silence his concerned handlers, assuring them in an urgent whisper, "If that over-the-shoulder bleeds, we can kill it."

Today's NY Times uses the example of Smith, the quickly dispatched CBS drama whose birth/death cycle was an impressively efficient three weeks, to illustrate how the itchy trigger-fingers of jittery, hit-hungry TV executives seem to have doomed the on-air existence of TV's "modest successes," shows that fall somewhere between total Nielsen bed-shitters and instant, inexplicable, Deal or No Deal-type hits. But after hearing CBS head executioner Nina Tassler dissect the reasons she dispassionately strangled the show with a piece of piano wire, Smith sounds less like a "modest success" than a "show that people checked out once or twice, then decided they weren't interested in." Reports the Times:

One of the beauties of online communities is the relative ease with which they help to bring the world's most infinitely glamorous and important people—Paris Hilton, for example—in contact with their legions of utterly ordinary, pimple-faced fans. For while playing "Paris Hilton's Jewel Jam" in a tub brimming with her exclusive fragrance as her infectious CD blasts through an adjacent boombox offers an adequately simulative experience, it's really not until you've been granted the hotly desired "add" to her roster of MySpace BFFship that you can truly boast of virtually "rolling with the heiress." But as with any electronic cult of personality steeped in Orwellian undertones, sometimes something that seems so good can turn out to be quite the opposite:

The Farrelly Brothers, Hollywood's go-to guys for jokes about the handicapped, team up with Reveille (you know them better as the people who brought you Americanized versions of The Office and Ugly Betty) to adapt I'm With Stupid for NBC, the story of a guy who moves into his wheelchair-bound pal's home for the disabled. [Variety]
Trade Paper Redesign Mania! About a week after Variety got some cosmetic work done, THR unveils its own facelift. Don't worry, we're pretty sure that terrifying image of Rupert Murdoch is just tied to their top story, not a permanent fixture on their homepage. [THR]
· William Morris, always immune to the agenting fads that sweep up their younger, hipper rivals, are eschewing the currently hot relocation destination of Century City to kick it old-school in Beverly Hills, building a new headquarters just two blocks from their current office. [Variety]
Fox's World Series ratings rebound from a Saturday disaster to a respectable Sunday night number, raising hopes that this won't be the lowest-rated Series in history. [THR]
A NY judge orders to trial a case that claims that the idea for the Michael Bay disaster The Island was appropriated from Parts: The Clonus Horror, in which a clone escapes from the secret colony where he was being grown for spare parts. The highlight: DreamWorks' claim that the plaintiffs are "not entitled to any damages because 'The Island' wasn't profitable," an argument that seems to say it's OK to steal if the movie a studio eventually makes is shitty enough to bomb. [Variety]

With All Hallow's Eve quickly approaching, we thought it might be appropriate to pay another visit to the old Smith place—surely the most terrifying house on the block, where Anna Nicole's hollow, permanently lit pumpkinhead glows ominously in the window, and a neverending cast of ghoulish, payout-seeking relatives are ready to jump out at any moment, curdling your blood with exclusive excerpts from their ghostwritten tell-alls:

The self-deputized Alcohol Beverage Control officers of TMZ.com have once again used their clever cover as celebrity-obsessed documentarians of the every entrance and egress of notable persons from local drinking establishments to spring a trap on the hotspot they've been assiduously monitoring for possible legal infractions, noting the presence of the 15-year-old "JoJo," allegedly a "pop tart" of some renown, at Hyde last night. Regrettably, a food-service loophole (undoubtedly the reason the venue offers its wholesome chocolate chip cookies) prevented TMZ from making a sidewalk jailbait-collar, but their camera-wielding citizen-deputies made a valiant attempt at salvaging the disappointing evening by shouting at Lindsay Lohan as she pulled away from the club, hoping to capture the kind of exclusive accident footage needed to adequately replace the clip they'd hoped to get of a teenager being jammed into the back of a police car.

One day we will all be able to look back with a smile on the maelstrom of controversy that surrounded little David Banda, Malawi's most adorable demi-orphan, and the strange, leather-bodiced witch-lady who swooped in suddenly to spirit him away. (Perhaps it will require the part-time children's author adapting the entire series of unfortunate events into yet another whimsically illustrated bedtime story.) But as in all classic fairy tales, things tend to get darkest right before the "happily ever after" part, so it's somewhat befitting that the child's very much alive and increasingly media-friendly father has distressingly announced that he had never intended to give his son up permanently. From the NY Post:

In the shocking! exclusive! footage scheduled for broadcast tonight on Extra, Nicole Kidman, insensitively venturing out in public (to a showing of The Prestige at the ArcLight on Sunday) while her new husband battles his boozy demons in rehab, compounds the sin by pantomiming a long chug from an imaginary bottle, giggling loudly, then remarking, "Hey, at least I didn't marry a gay cowboy like that skinny bitch Zellweger."

Unfortunately, not every visit to Africa by the entertainment industry's goodwill ambassadors results in a Hollywood-quality happy ending like the one still being written about Madonna's selfless semi-orphan acquisition (much more on that shortly). Today's Page Six reports on Warner Bros.' promise to provide the 27 teenage and child amputees they used for atrocity-verisimilitude purposes during the filming of Blood Diamond with prosthetic limbs, a pledge that the studio apparently still hasn't fulfilled since shooting ended back in June:

Lay your head on your desk and have a quick nap. You've been back to work for minutes, and deserve a little break. When you awake, treat yourself to the weekend box office numbers:

UK tabloid Sunday Mirror is reporting that Kate Moss is pregnant with junkie/rocker Pete Doherty. Phil Michels, described by Mirror as a gardener and Doherty's "favourite uncle" revealed the news after Doherty spoke to him from the couple's rehab/vacation in Italy.

· NBC cuts jobs, drama budgets, and the power to selected offices. It's never been a more exciting time to be a former member of the NBC Universal family.
The MPAA plans to show up at Boy Scout meetings, start smashing iPods, and then hand out some merit badges.
Overlong valet lines: the next human rights tragedy that George Clooney is going to take on. Luckily, a solution might already be in the works, freeing him up to get back to the important work of banging Ellen Barkin.
Chokegate chases the gay-seeming TV doctor out of the closet, surprising only those whose televisions don't get ABC.
Katie Holmes picks out the designer for her wedding shroud.
Did Clint Eastwood address the three-apples-tall elephant in the room?
Now that Madonna's successfully bought that baby she had her eye on, maybe we won't hear from her for a while.
· More Borat news than you can shake an over-the-shoulder neon nut-sling full of junk at.
· Malfunctioning fog machines: Hollywood's hidden danger.

· At the Rome Film Festival, Harrison Ford attempted to prove to the media that he's "fit" enough to play Indiana Jones again by bending over slightly and pointing at the floor, currently the most demanding stunt that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have written for their aging star.
· When life gives Emilio Estevez "put my fucking hot Russian girlfriend who speaks no English into this movie or I'm pulling out my millions and going home," he makes the kind of really wordy "-ade" that would complete this hacky joke construction.
Idolator says goodbye to the freewheelin', wantonly copyright infringin' days of the pre-Googlized YouTube with this emotional montage of the site's greatest hits.
Radar blows the f'ing lid off the celebrity dental imperfection retouching game. You will be shocked and amazed. Warning: close-ups of the inside of Julia Roberts' cavernous maw are included.
Which celebrity cares the most about the environment? Let's have a green-off and find out!
Don't go here if you think that seeing a picture of Tom Cruise tweaking his own nipple will give you nightmares.
· Yup, we know that Keith Urban is in rehab. Call us when it's Nicole Kidman and we'll try to care. (And abandon this completely farcical moral high ground about what dirt isn't worthy of our attention.)

We know that the psychic scars we inflicted with last month's public commenter cancellations were ugly and deep, so as this week draws to a close, let us instead spare the rod and spoil the child by highlighting the comments that gave us a smile, a chuckle, or otherwise pleased us over the past few days. The celebrated receive nothing for this minor recognition, other than the knowledge that we may think twice about deleting them during the next cancellation cycle based on our fond memory of the well-executed bitchery of the past.

Friday
· Music round-up: Bob Dylan at the Forum; Johnny Vatos Tribute to Halloween featuring members of Oingo Boingo at the Greek; A.R.E. Weapons at the Viper Room.
· Mitch Albom will be at the Borders in Torrance (yes, Torrance) to sign his latest book, For One More
Day. We mention this only because some of you may require firsthand proof that books sold at Starbucks are produced by actual, hacky writers, not incredibly sappy baristas.
Saturday
· More music: Mew at the El Rey, The Decemberists at the Wiltern; Beirut at the Troubadour; the Beastie Boys at Etnies Skatepark in Lake Forest, CA.
· Get shitfaced, hurl rubber balls, and mangle words at the 4 Square Championships and Drunken Spelling Bee at the Met Theater. Really, either a 4 Square game or a drunken spelling bee would have been pretty great on its own.
· Another activity best undertaken while greviously drunk: the Hooray for Hollywood Scavenger Hunt at Hollywood and Highland.
Sunday
· Still more music: Placebo and She Wants Revenge at the Greek; Comets on Fire and The Fiery Furnaces at the Palace; You Am I and Lou Barlow at Spaceland.
· Reno 911's Carlos Alazraqui hosts the "season finale" of Fries on the Side at the SMC Theatre, a sketch show where they take only two hours to prepare. Sounds dangerous.

[Note: UPDATE about the misguidedness of the above graphic follows after the jump] Today's NY Post reports that Friday Night Lights will "quietly" be taking over Studio 60's spot on the schedule this Monday night, a once-off shift that can be read as a) an attempt to expose S60's scarce-but-rich viewers to the compelling, and even lower-rated, world of Texas high school football, b) a chance to give S60 a one-week breather from the crushing expectations the network once placed on it as their primetime savior, or c) the precise rearrangement of deck-top furniture on the doomed ocean liner of NBC's 10 p.m. timeslot. The network is publicly and firmly on the side of Option A, telling the Post:

When NBC Universal announced significant layoffs and a $750 million slashing of its operating expenses yesterday, it was clear they meant business, but we imagined it would take the lurching corporate behemoth quite some time to implement its various plans to save money. An operative within the rapidly depopulating NBC Uni empire reports that the company is much more organizationally nimble that we could have imagined:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are now posted several times a week (well, most weeks)—so send them in like your lives depended on it. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let the world know about how first and business class airplane cabin divisions can tear a showbiz family apart.

Because a gender-ineligible commenter responded to our earlier post about the MPAA's Boy Scout re-eduction efforts by expressing a wish to wear an official "Respecting Copyrights" merit badge "while defiling copyrights left and right," we're posting the art for the actual patch, made available along with the Scout curriculum over at the MPAA's official site, right here for your clip n' save convenience. And no, that's not our attempt at satirizing what we think it should look like; apparently, the MPAA and the Boy Scouts allowed a kid who has yet to achieve his Design for Propaganda merit badge have a crack at the task.

Drop everything you're doing—we mean it this time—and commit to memory this list of the fine products, movies, media companies, musical organizations, and craft booze producers whose online advertising dollars have kept us employed this past week; without them, we'd be right back to fetching some producer's dogs from the Chateau Marmutt. (Please don't make us go back.) If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and incite a spending spree by this city's most acquisitive consumers, see this page.