Defamer is committed to fostering the professional development of its readers by making them aware of exciting opportunities to either enhance the skillsets they already possess or get them started on an entirely new path to success. As part of this continuing mission to empower the entertainment industry's future leaders, we pass along the listing for tomorrow night's sure-to-be fascinating Introduction to Dark Publicity Arts at the Learning Annex, hosted by one of the field's most accomplished Warlocks Of Deception and Damage Control, longtime George Clooney flack Stan Rosenfield:

· Music round-up: Dresden Dolls at the Orpheum; Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter at Silverlake Lounge; Bobby Bare Jr. at Spaceland; Trainwreck and Supafloss at Safari Sam's.
· Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen sign their books and introduce their artwork at the Every Picture Tells a Story gallery in Santa Monica. After the signing, the event moves to the Aero Theatre, where Harryhausen screens the premiere of the new, colorized version of She.
· Riki Rachtman celebrates the 20th anniversary of his metal club, Cathouse, at the Key Club. Those not interested in experiencing the headbanging action up close can safely experience a somewhat less aurally assaultive experience by visiting Rachtman's MySpace page.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are now posted several times a week—so start sending them in more often. Send yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let the world hear all about the time Aaron Sorkin betrayed his high-minded comic tastes for the hilarious, acorn-hoarding hijinks of a prehistoric squirrel.

According to the Drudge Report, Naked Gun/Scary Movie 3 through 29 director David Zucker whipped up this charming video of then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright's 2000 visit to North Korea for Republican use in the 2006 campaign season. Unfortunately, however, it seems that some strategists didn't have the stomach for Zucker's wacky brand of Democrat-bashing:

Back in July, producers of A Mighty Heart deemed Angelina Jolie "ethnic enough" (a commonly used industry term applied to any actor or actress whose features and complexion are more "exotic" than those of Gwyneth Paltrow) to play Mariane Pearl, the biracial widow of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl. Today, Paramount Vantage has supplied USA Today with this "exclusive look" at how the film's make-up department went about the delicate task of transforming Jolie into a less thoroughly Caucasian-looking being. Those worried that Jolie's casting might usher in "a new generation of Hollywood in blackface" should have their fears of racial insensitivity allayed, as what we see here could really herald nothing more than "a new generation of Hollywood in bronzer and a wig* the stylist thought was 'just the right amount of kinky to pull off the half-Afro-Cuban thing.'"

• The Most Absurd Deleted Scenes of All Time [Cracked.com]

As breathlessly reported by every news outlet on Earth yesterday, Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion. Meanwhile, CBS makes a deal to split the ad revenue from "daily, short form content" they'll provide to YouTube, and to divide up any money they might make by selling ads around material posted by users that violates their copyrights. Fun! [Variety]
· David Lynch will self-distribute his latest film, Inland Empire, which promises to be even more incomprehensible than Lost Highway. [THR]
The still-iffy Studio 60 rebounds 12% from last week's disappointing numbers, despite the show's baffling insistence that a preachy monologue about America dropping Hot Pockets along with bombs was even remotely funny enough for a writer to bother stealing. [Variety]
Not wanting Wal-Mart to hog all the retail chain exortion fun, Target writes a letter to the studios hinting that they might not support their DVDs if cheaply priced movie downloads cut too deeply into their home video business. [THR]
Terrence Howard joins Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man as the hero's confidante/rival who probably won't get his own armored set of Underoos until a sequel. [Variety]

Panty-eschewing party starlet Lindsay Lohan has been vocal about her aspirations to graduate from light comedy to the more meaty parts that might better show off her impressive emotional range. But while her idea of stretching is to gravitate to grittier roles that ultimately don't require her to stray very far from her safe-zone, trusted advisor and Queen of the Self-Destruction Enabling Cool Moms, Dina Lohan, wishes her daughter would take a real risk by starring in a Tomb Raider-style action movie:

Truth be told, we could probably be very happy never hearing another word about Quentin Tarantino's Scandinavian talent searches or attempts to Trick daytime talk shows into helping him take his foot fetish mainstream. But because Page Six turned what must have been a harmless publicist tip about the motormouth auteteur's presence at an obscure Spike TV awards show into a queasy-making anecdote about his personal life, we have no choice but to pass it along:

Knowing that Diane Sawyer's "get" of Mel Gibson for the first televised stop on his Official "Hey, Me And The Jews Are Totally Cool Now" Redemption Tour will be a ratings bonanza, ABC News has already started chumming the media's shark tank with sound-bitable morsels from the coming interview on its website (which, apparently, is so bursting with the supplicating goodness that only a recently humiliated Hollywood superstar can deliver that it must be spread over two days). The first such quote features Gibson's obligatory dismissal of his anti-Semitic tirade as the devil-juice-fueled ramblings of a monster, pretty much in those exact words:

Today's Variety reports that somewhere within NBC, a development executive desperate for the kinds of groundbreaking ideas that might one day lift his network out of the Nielsen sub-basement has instead retreated to the half-remembered shows of his childhood, committing to a script for a potential Bionic Woman series. (For those who don't remember the original, late 70s spinoff, it was the story of a woman who had certain body parts enhanced or replaced by bionic technology so that she could better crush tennis balls with her bare hand and withstand the physical rigors of intimate encounters with her similarly semi-robotic boyfriend, the Six Million Dollar Man.) Executive producer David Eick, who recently revived Battlestar Galactica for the Sci-Fi Channel, promises to completely rebuild his Bionic Woman, not merely drag Lindsay Wagner out of storage and oil up her robotic joints:

Let it never be said that partially mummified, softball-tossing talk show host Larry King does not have sneakily impressive interviewing skills. King long ago realized that the majority of his guests would probably be inclined to share more of themselves by pampering their hindparts with his desiccated lips (it should go without saying that some kind of balm is applied prior to contact to prevent an unpleasant chafing), rather than by feebly trying to press an orthopedic shoe into their throats. On last night's show, King's ability to put his interrogee at ease was on full display, as the host somehow managed to coax notoriously media-shy real estate developer Donald Trump into sharing his opinions on a variety of
current figures of pop culture interest, first following up on his thoughts about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. On Brad: Smart guy for narrowly dodging the marriage issue! Angelina: Eh, not even that attractive:

Scarlett Johansson is not promiscuous, Well, maybe she is a little when she's, like, single and "dating." But right now she's in a relationship, so she's totally not "sexually available," OK?
Idolator's compiled a collection of the worst national anthem renditions you could ever want to hear. Warning: Scott Stapp is featured.
· Australian kids might miss out on their chance to see a hung-over Lindsay Lohan croak her way through some awards show banter.
Now that Penelope Cruz has more than a handful of American movies under her belt, she's finally going to take a crack at learning English. [second item] Also, she's pretty lesbian friendly.
· Maggie Gyllenhaal Lease Signatory Shocker: Actress Won't Be Evicted, Says Lawyer!

Today's LAT details the budgetary problems affecting Bruce Almighty sequel Evan Almighty, which threaten to saddle the movie with the unwanted distinction of becoming the most expensive comedy in history. According to the Times, even without Bruce star Jim Carrey and his massive salary, the Evan production could reach a $175 million budget, as uncooperative weather during shooting, the logistics involved in scheduling predatory animal actors so that they don't accidentally devour their tasty, lower-billed co-stars during their downtime, and the expense of convincingly staging Biblical disasters have all driven costs heavenward. Still, Universal executives Marc Shmuger and David Linde think they've got everything under control:

If this past Saturday you happened to pass a crowd of merciless, lumbering dead with the brains of their recently consumed victims still smeared across their faces, you were either driving along the Wilshire Blvd. and seeing some of L.A.'s hardest working agents putting in their weekend overtime, or you were in Hollywood witnessing the L.A. Zombie Walk. Pictured, the ravenous, reanimated corpses forego the whole brains thing for some In-N-Out animal-style fries and double-doubles. Of course, these being L.A. zombies, cell phones remain on at all times (bottom right) in case a zombie manager calls with word on a recent commercial audition for Target.

· Music round-up: Sufjan Stevens at the Wiltern; The National at the Troubadour; Burning Tree at King King; Rocket (free every Monday this month) at Spaceland.
· The Redcat hosts an evening of thematic shorts, featuring The Generic Remix Project, where artists play around with stock video footage "to create new works that question how commercial suppliers define subjects such as 'family,' 'business' and 'history,'" and adicolor Podcasts, short films for tiny iPod screens.
· Anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott will be at Laemmle's Monica Fourplex to screen a documentary on her work, Helen's War: Portrait of a Dissident, which takes on the myth that nuclear power is "clean and green"—when, in fact, it's long been proven to produce three-eyed fish and bizarre multiple births like the Olsen Twins.

For those who have been patiently anticipating an update to our ongoing, cultural critique series, "Overheard Celebrities," your wait is over: Blogger Johnny Hong Kong happened to be occupying the same sonic sphere as Keanu Reeves at a weekend screening of The Departed, during which the venerated screen thespian was overheard saying he would have taken Jack Nicholson's role of sociopathic mob boss Frank Costello in a different direction. He sent us this capsule report:

While we generally only dedicate the resources of the Defamer Photo Enhancement Lab to matters involving the involuntary baring of an actress's mammaries, when circumstances demand it, we've been known to break down our sexist double standard and illustrate bizarre or unexpected configurations of the male anatomy. We very briefly turn our attention to x17's photographs to a distressingly perky-nippled Tom Cruise, whose dangerously erect man-buttons threaten to shred the fabric of his turtleneck—even when the actor's posture should have produced enough slack to conceal them (see insert)—as he takes in his daughter's soccer game in Malibu. We'll have to examine further examples of this strange phenomenon before we can reach any conclusions about possible pectoral implants (or, God help us all, a set of permanently rigid, aftermarket areolas) but for the time being, we remain open to the possibility that his physique may have been cosmetically enhanced.

Because we scratch out our meager existence on the internets, we feel obligated to mention that Google has just bought YouTube for a reported $1.65 billion in stock, thereby seizing control of the world's largest online repository of Brokeback Mountain parodies, fake teenager video journals, and promotional clips for NBC's exciting new slate of Fall programming. We can only hope that Google will be a benevolent steward of the cultural treasure trove they've purchased, for we'd hate to have to visit a lesser video sharing site to view footage of P. Diddy basking in his ability to urinate in front of a television camera.

Not only were the producers of CSI generous enough to provide Kevin Federline with a speaking role on their hit show to help kick-start what is sure to be a celebrated acting career, it seems that they also let America's favorite background-dancing househusband improvise his own dialogue ("You bitches haven't caught them cats yet?" "Man, you're weak, weak, weak, weak."), wardrobe himself (white wife-beater, high-water pants, carefully tilted trucker hat), and perform his own stunts (getting sucker-punched in the stomach). Judging from this video clip of his upcoming cameo, their supreme confidence in the neophyte's varied talents was repaid handsomely, as Federline is utterly convincing as a sneering street punk begging to be brutalized by a cop. And based on how positively the viewing public will no doubt react to the doubled-over, wheezing K-Fed, CBS will have no choice but to invite him back for a prolonged, far more graphic televised beating later in the season.