The Us Weeky blog has further details regarding Larry Birkhead's lawsuit against Anna Nicole. Birkhead isn't just claiming paternity—he wants full legal custody of the child, as he alleges that Howard K. Stern is enabling Smith's methadone addiction (the fatal key ingredient in her son's death), and that the reason she delivered in the Bahamas was to avoid tests that would reveal the baby had methadone in her system as well:

On the day that Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand, the triumphant culmination of his bombastic, incomprehensible-action aesthetic, finally reaches retail shelves in DVD form, the deferential director who long ago quietly surpassed his idols is finally ready to surrender some of his trademarked humility and stake a claim to his rightful place among the auteurs whose work truly defines the medium:

Blushing commitment ceremony participant Anna Nicole Smith and the main mensch in her life, Howard K. Stern, seemed to have taken the day off yesterday from their whirlwind mourning schedule in memory of her son Daniel; perhaps the two were solemnly atoning for a year's worth of opportunistic sins in a Dom Perignon-stocked catamaran off the coast of Nassau. In any case, the Anna Nicole circus is back in full force with its cast of payout-seekers, scoop-hungry editors, litigious ex-boyfriends and bumbling Caribbean law enforcement clowns. A round-up:
· Radar is reporting that People has purchased the photos of the couple's lucrative photo-op legally nonbinding hitching-at-sea for a cool $1 million, an expense the magazine justified by writing it off as another generous charitable donation to the worthy cause of eradicating poverty in Anna Nicole Smith. [Radar]
· Why would anyone in their right mind pay $1 million for a legally nonbinding hitching-at-sea? Because one photo has Anna Nicole holding her newborn wearing nothing but pasties. As if that wasn't enough of a cruel tease for hungry little Dannielynn, sources overhead Smith drunkenly asking her daughter, "Want some milk? Want a Viper? Like my body? TrimSpa, baby!!!" [Gawker]
· Smith, still in the Bahamas, was served with papers yesterday from the other creepy guy in her life, Larry Birkhead, who wants mother and daughter to return to LA immediately for paternity testing. The Royal Bahamas Police Force, meanwhile, is still not completely satisfied with Smith's private autopsy findings that son Daniel died of a methadone-and-antidepressants overdose, and are still pursuing several theories, including the, "Hey—let's drag this out and cash in on some more free publicity!" theory. [AP]

By our count, the major Hollywood studios have released 107 films featuring computer-animated, talking animals since January of this year, a numbing procession of disappointing, nearly indistinguishable offerings like The Wild, The Ant Bully, Barnyard, A Prairie Home Companion, Over the Hedge, Akeelah and the Bee, and Garfield: Lasagna Inspector that's clogged the multiplex and mostly failed to capture the imaginations of children accustomed to being mindlessly entertained by wisecracking CGI critters. Today's NY Times takes a look at the animation glut currently reaching critical mass, which threatens to confuse—and worse, bore—their core audience, but which for the time being is still producing product that achieves its primary goal: giving grandparents a way to keep this generation of ADHD-addled kids quiet in between Ritalin doses:

Pity the canine thespian, chasing her Tinseltown dreams. From the moment she excitedly pads off the bus from Anywhere, USA, she's at an immediate disadvantage to her biped peers; the system, quite frankly, is set up to effectively guarantee the success of people over animals: their lack of opposable thumbs, inability to stand upright for long periods of time, and California's stringent, discriminatory health codes make it impossible to compete with humans for the waitressing jobs that provide a steady income while waiting for a break. (And the time-honored casting couch method of career-fasttracking, the dirty little secret that's produced countless stars, is closed to her, as bestiality is frowned up in all but the most deviant of productions.) So this dog, desperate to improve her million-to-one odds of success to a number her less advanced brain can more readily comprehend, scrapes together enough of her savings to enroll in some classes at a prestigious training institute like Hollywood Paws, hoping that the combination of newly honed skills and the school's claimed industry connections will help smooth the path to stardom.

· By now you may have already seen this video of David Cross showing his appreciation of Jim Belushi's "music" by hopping on stage during one of his "concerts." If so, watch it again. It really rewards a second viewing. If this is the first time, cherish this special moment. [via GoldenFiddle]
· OK, George Michael, you're on notice: Pass out in your car with some drugs just one more time and we're going to start saying you might have a problem.
Page-pampering Florida Congressman Mark Foley (no, not the Focus Features guy, how many times do we have to correct you on that?) checked into rehab today, possibly in Clearwater, which set off Wonkette's Scientology alarms. We're just going to assume that his possible ties to the Church are merely related to pandering to a large South Floridian constituency, and that he's not currently trying to sweat out his pedophilia in a Hubbardian sauna.
As Copyranter points out in regards to an ad featuring an image of ET's Mary Hart, there's a fine line between photo "retouching" and the "the wholesale erasure of twenty years of aging."
After removing the twenty-pound false stomach she wore for all nine (or was it ten?) months of her fake pregnancy, Katie Holmes now seems skinnier. A real headscratcher, that.

The suspense is crippling—proceed on to your blind item guessing game answers before you pass out from anticipation. But first, one more lap around One Headline-Hungry Blind Vice:

· Music round-up: Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Palladium; The Stills at the Henry Fonda; Band of Horses at Avalon; Wires on Fire at The Echo; Rocket begins their free Monday night residency at Spaceland.
· The No Budget Film Club hosts a screening of director Christopher Nolan's first feature, Following,
at the Egyptian, whose $12,000 budget wouldn't even cover the daily codpiece-upkeep costs on Batman Begins. Nolan will be on hand to talk about the wonders of shoestring filmmaking, as well as to preview his new movie, The Prestige.
· Tonight's show at Largo draws Patton Oswalt, Dana Gould, Greg Fitzsimmons, and Morgan Murphy will end with a drunken member of the audience offering, and then rescinding, sitcom deals to each performer. Later, it will turn out that the obnoxious fan actually works for The CW, and this is how their entire development department is operated since the network merger.

Having recently survived a life-threatening case of in-flight food poisoning on the trip back from a humanitarian mission in Darfur, noted actorvist George Clooney has been doing some soul-searching about how to best employ the considerable influence afforded by his worldwide notoriety. But after a brief effort trying to raise awareness of the ongoing genocide in the Sudan proved insufficiently fulfilling, Clooney's deeper appreciation of his own mortality has led him to rededicate his remaining, precious days to the cause he finds most ennobling: celebrity privacy rights. The AP reports on the actor's latest campaign to foil those who would document the comings and goings of the famous, born out of this newfound commitment to an issue he holds dear:

It is with heavy heart that we note that Paris Hilton, despite great wealth that renders negligible the costs associated with the cutting-edge cosmetic surgery procedures or custom-tailored undergarments that might minimize the unsightly deformation of her hindquarters, has yet to avail herself of either the surgical or sartorial option that might make the highly embarrassing documentation of her recurring ass-flap issues (like the one pictured here, taken at the club Tao in Las Vegas on Saturday night, and obviously noticed by a shocked security guard) a thing of the past. Perhaps things have improved slightly without intervention, as the double-goiter appearing back in August seems to have receded into a single flesh-lapel, but this is no guarantee that the problem will continue to self-correct; the condition is still a mysterious one, and for all we know the next time she hops up on a table at Les Deux, a baffling triple-flap manifestation might present itself before a photographer's unblinking, cruel lens if left untreated.

[Ed, note—Despite a nagging fear that disgruntled E! gossip Ted Casablanca's daily column is being written by a Random Celebrity Name And English-Like Word Generator ever since he aired his grievances, we have heard your pleas, and we are ready to return the Blind Item Guessing game to our weekly rotation. So we better see some guesses flooding in! Enjoy.] Wherein we invite our readers to build a makeshift raft from any buoyant materials handy on their desert islands and push off into the angry, churning sea presided over by humpy E! gossip-Poseidon Ted Casablanca, avoiding a lacerating trident-poke as they guess the identity of his weekly blind item. Marinate in the literal starfuckery of One Headline-Hungry Blind Vice:

We offer our thanks to the readers who so quickly identified the man whose face inaccurately illustrates today's THR story about disgraced, page-baiting congressman Mark Foley. As many of you pointed out, the not-so-mystery man in the photo is Jack Foley, the president of distribution for Focus Features, whom at least two readers described as "one of the nicest guys in the business," a compliment we imagine is not being applied to the former House representative from Florida these days. We've included a clarifying side-by-side image above to help clear up any residual confusion.

HarveyMania! The Weinstein Co. finds a home for their book business in Little, Brown and Warner Books, partners with international distributor UIP for releases in the UK, and has a variety of exciting film projects on tap, including Untitled Rob Marshall Musical and the Denzel Washington-directed Great Debaters. Hurray for Weinsteins! [Variety]
· Eric "Dr. McSteamy" Dane gets a regular gig on Grey's Anatomy, giving his character a full season to pit his abs against those of rival Dr. McDreamy. In the end, we suspect, there will only be room at the hospital for one cutely nicknamed, hunky doctor, and Grey's producers will have to find a new exotic disease or gory, freak accident with which to dispatch the newcomer. [THR]
Foreign moviegoers prefer World Trade Center's tragic rubble to Adam Sandler's magical remote, as WTC tops Click at the international box office. [Variety]
· Showtime extends its upcoming free preview weekend by offering programs to Yahoo users, hoping to hook the broadband crowd on its lineup of pot-selling soccer moms and lipstick lesbians. [THR]
Fox Atomic's upcoming, sequeltastic slate includes 28 Days Later, The Hills Have Eyes 2, and a remake of Revenge of the Nerds. Atomic was created to produce cheap films targeted to teens, who market testing has proven "totally hate" any idea they haven't seen before. [Variety]

A Defamer operative just sent us a scan of today's THR story on Rep. Mark Foley, the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus chairman accused of the filthily ironic cybercrime of sending sexually explicit e-mails and IMs to underage male pages, which seems to misidentify a dark-haired, bespectacled man as the disgraced Congressman. Our question to you: Who's the guy in the picture? Our political consult with our sibling Wonkette turned up no answer, and we'd love to know who's been on the receiving end of endless prank e-mails and instant messages centering around the clumsy online seduction of office interns.

We urge those troubled souls who might have suspected that Robin Williams' release from rehab and subsequent embarking on a press tour for his upcoming movie was a little too conveniently timed to open their desk drawers, look at the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels hidden under a stack of file folders, and ask themselves if their lack of charity might be fueled by their own, 80-proof problems. (If you must know, we failed this test of conscience so badly that had to freshen up our third cup of coffee with the devil juice just to continue with our day.) Today's Rush & Molloy column suggests that Williams' rehab timeline might have been massaged to beat a tabloid report about his trip to Hazelden, a much more palatable motive for playing fast and loose with the dates of his stay:

Yesterday's LAT audited FX series Nip/Tuck's attention-grabbing decision to have two of its characters respond to emotional enturbulation by seeking solace in the welcoming bosom of L. Ron Hubbard*, an instantly controversial storyline that creator/provocateur Ryan Murphy and network executives insist is rooted in a genuine curiosity about the religion, not a cynical attempt to court publicity or for e-meter-related gag potential. (Accordingly, their choice to cast Tom Cruise nemesis and postpartum antidepressant street-drug prescribee Brooke Shields as a psychiatrist was purely coincidental, based solely on the fact that the actress had always "felt psychiatristy" to Murphy.) But for someone who's obviously taking great public pains to present Scientology in a non-judgmental, unbiased light, FX's president still sounds a little spooked by the Church's possible overreaction to their ecumenical explorations:

On this solemn day of atonement, meditate on the box office results, the numerical manifestation of God's love on Earth:

· The Week In Anna Nicole: Howard K. Stern claims paternity. The pathologist claims overdose. Anna Nicole claims "I do." But not, like, "I do I do."
· The Studio 60 Drinking Game: Drink every time something sounds familiar.
· Mel Gibson emerges from Malibu exile, but the Jews are still waiting for some Yom Kippur-style atonement.
· Without A Trace's writing staff swelters on the Warner Bros. lot as their A/C falls victim to Oceans 13's higher priority shooting needs.
· Fox reps get creative with their diagnoses of their morgue-bound series.
· A week of Lindsay Lohan magazine covers, present and future.
· Power divisions of Hollywood's comedy elite, for visual learners.
· The specter of Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles wearing nothing but boxing shorts is narrowly avoided as Uwe Boll battles his critics in the ring.
· Dessarae Bradford, stalker of the people.
· Charlie Sheen's pom-pom budget triples, rendering him exhausted.
· Jack Nicholson's strap-on currently fielding offers.
· After two, history-making weeks, Survivor: Race Wars goes back to old fashioned, vanilla Survivor. Bo-ring!
· The new, Suri-inspired trend could result in plenty of extremely embarrassed babies on gusty, autumn days.
· What does the President need? An engraved invitation?
· Rumored doc captures former child star applying rudimentary cat whiskers to female companionship.
· Joe Francis puts one ugly, undocumented, underage chapter behind him, looks wistfully ahead to many more.
· Another baby step of justice meted out to street-terror Paris Hilton.
· And finally, ladies and gentleman: John Travolta, Precious Cheese.

· Now that Tom Cruise's team of genetic technicians have successfully engineered a baby molecularly stable enough to stay constituted for the duration of a major magazine photo shoot, they've moved on to bigger challenges, like manipulating the genes that have allowed Katie Holmes to grow a full foot since the beginning of September. [via CityRag]
· "Sexiest Woman Alive" Scarlett Johansson laments that her internal organs don't attract the same kind of attention as her most conspicuous external features.
Who says that comic book fans have too much time on their hands? [via BoingBoing]
Don't miss Wonkette's compelling coverage of the revelations that Rep. Mark Foley might be a Pedophile-American. Especially this post, with YouTube of ABC's Brian Ross narrating a disturbing IM exchange.
· Tomorrow is National Steve Guttenberg Day! It's probably too late to Netflix yourself a mini Guttenberg film festival, but here are some other suggestions on ways to celebrate.

Fresh from rehab and eager to prove that his newfound sobriety hasn't depopulated his manic improvisational mind of its teeming multitudes who speak in a handful of comically exaggerated accents, Robin Williams is already treating junket reporters to the Mel Gibson material he worked on while drying out: